A/N: I do not own Super Mario or Harley Quinn.

Without hesitating, I replied, "I've come for Luigi. Where are you holding him hostage, you creep?" I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that last little trick with the lights had actually freaked me out a little.

King Boo narrowed his eyes. "If you're looking for ol' Green Cap, you're about…100 miles too far to the northwest.

"What are you talking about? What's 100 miles southeast of here?" My grasp on the Mushroom Planet's geography was sketchy at best. I knew Bowser's Castle was somewhere to the south...oh, and Delfino Bay, thanks to the relentless news coverage the past few days of tsunamis pummeling Isle Delfino after the remains of Bowser Jr.'s Fiery Flotilla crash-landed in the ocean, but that was about it.

King Boo's Resting Bitch Face faltered for a second, replaced by a flash of…was it confusion? He floated slightly away from me. "You're not from around here." It wasn't a question.

"What makes you think that?"

"Anyone who's grown up on the Mushroom Planet knows exactly what's 100 miles southeast of here. Fascinating. Where are you from, then?"

"I'll tell you when you tell me where Luigi is. Quid pro quo."

"Quid pro quo." Go ahead, let your crazed former psychiatrist flag fly.

King Boo inclined himself towards me. "You're the trespasser here. I think you owe me the first answer as a thank you for my…hospitality."

I sized up King Boo. I'd dealt with his type before. Fighting about who had to give the answer wasn't going to get me anywhere. My best shot was to answer and just hope he help up his end. Let's see, how vague can I be while still technically answering his question? "Gotham. My turn." If I ask "Where's Luigi?", he's probably just gonna say, "100 miles to the southeast" again. How about…? "What specific location is Luigi at right now?" I could already tell I was gonna have to choose my words carefully with this guy.

"He's likely at Bowser's Castle," King Boo said.

I raised an eyebrow. "'Likely'? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

King Boo wagged one of his...appendage-things, whatever you'd call them, at me. "Ah-ah-ah. We agreed. Quid pro quo. It's my turn now. How did you find me?"

I scoffed. "Oh, please. Don't sell me short. I saw through Hellen's facade in, like, two seconds. Between that and what Gadd told me about you and her, it was pretty easy for us to get here. My turn. What do you mean he's likely at Bowser's Castle? Is he or isn't he?"

"That's technically two questions, but just this once I'll give you a freebie and count them as one. I can't confirm if he's at Bowser's Castle or not, but last I heard, that's where the Koopalings were planning to transport him. How did you learn Luigi had been kidnapped?"

I shrugged. "I heard he'd been missing for a couple days, so I stopped by his house to check on him. The place was a mess, and I found a smear of ectoplasm on the wall. Didn't have to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together after that. Now…how do you know the Koopalings took Luigi?" I was about to ask if he was working with the Koopalings, but it was pretty obvious that yes/no questions were gonna take forever to get me anywhere. Better to pin him down for specifics.

"The Koopalings used Boos to abduct him, and all Boos have a hive mind, with me situated at the center of it. I see what they see. What were you making for breakfast the morning Shuma-Gorath destroyed your universe?"

"I-"

Wait, what?

"How do you know about that?" I demanded. Only the other Guardians of the Multiverse knew that I'd been about to sit down to breakfast when my universe started melting away. Not even all the Guardians – Wade and Sylvie were the only two who'd come to save me. The others had been elsewhere in my timeline saving other people. So how the hell did this sac of ectoplasm know what had happened to my universe?

"I'm going to take that as your next question. Now answer mine."

Dammit, another question wasted. If he had some sort of telepathic powers and could know all about my past just by looking at me, then why did he bother asking me where I was from and how I found him? What, to give me a false sense of security and then blindside me with this rug-pull?

King Boo frowned and narrowed his eyes. "Answer, or the game's over."

Another flash of sickly green light briefly illuminated the hall as I answered, "An egg sandwich."

King Boo was reactionless for a second, then turned and floated down the hall. "Walk with me."

"Hey!" I shouted. "I'm not following you anywhere. Get back here, you still have to answer my question."

King Boo waved one of his appendages, and suddenly the carpet I was standing on started rolling after King Boo like a conveyor belt, carrying me with it.

"People make such a big fuss about trying to avoid death," King Boo said as he floated just ahead of me, "but in reality it's not all that bad. In fact, death has a way of…granting one a new perspective on life, you might say. A broader perspective, the ability to see through the illusion of corporeal forms and into the infinity that lies beyond-"

"Oh for God's sakes, just spit it out already!" I exclaimed. Geez, this guy was almost as bad as the Riddler.

The conveyor belt floor lurched to a halt, flinging me forward. Before I could even get up, it had started up again. King Boo was now floating backwards, looking back at me. "Tsk, tsk, I would watch that tongue of yours," he said. "Not everyone is as forgiving as I am of occasional outbursts like that." He turned back around, facing away from me again. "Operative word, occasional."

I got back to my feet, which was harder than I thought it would be on a moving surface, only to reach the point where the hallway turned to the right, and be thrown off-balance again by the conveyor belt-carpet's sharp turn. King Boo was silent, but he shuddered slightly for a few seconds, like he was trying to hide a bout of laughter.

"As I was saying," King Boo continued, "dying allows you to see in a way that living creatures cannot. They say that the eyes are the windows to one's soul. For such dearly departed beings as me, they're more like the windows to one's past. Looking at you, I can see where you're from, everything you've ever experienced, yet still can't descry your thoughts or feelings, your motivations. Which leads me to my final question: why do you want to save Luigi?"

"You tell me," I said, standing back up. "You can read my mind. You can see all the messed-up shit I've done. I just...want to do what I can to make up for that. You know, be on the right side of things."

"Hmm," King Boo said. "If you say so. I sense that might be a hint of guilt I detect in your voice, but I can't say for certain. Guilt isn't a concept I'm familiar with, not even back when I was alive. Fair enough, I suppose. To each their own, I suppose." He paused. "I think we have time for one more question before we reach our destination. Do you have one in mind?"

Was it me or was the hallway getting narrower, the suits of armor lining it and their razor-sharp halberds closing in on us?

"Why did you ask me those questions about where I'm from and how I found you if you could just look in my mind and see the answers?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Why, to see if you would play by the rules of the game."

"The rules?"

"Answering honestly. That way I would know how I should answer. After all, if one person isn't going to play a game by the rules, why should the other?"

I think I saw what he was getting at. "So if I'd just fed you a line of bullshit, you would've done the same."

"Precisely. You catch on fast, Ms. Quinn." King Boo looked to the right, where we were approaching a doorway between two suits of armor. "We're here." As soon as we reached the doorway, he held up an appendage and the carpet jolted to a halt. I fell over backwards and gritted my teeth.

Stop. Frigging. Doing that!

I looked through the doorway as King Boo floated into the room that lay beyond it. It looked like a study, with a desk in the center of the room, a large, leather chair behind it, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a few more chairs lining the walls. The room was lit by a pair of floating taper candles, their flames flickering and casting unsteady shadows. I got up and walked to the doorway. King Boo, meanwhile, floated above the table and flicked one appendage to the side. Several papers strewn across the table flew onto the floor, while a few others levitated into the air, their edges glowing pink.

King Boo beckoned me towards him. "Come. Have a look."

I looked warily at the pair of heavy wooden doors that opened into the study. It would be all too easy for him to telekinetically shut them and trap me in there with him. "Nah. I'm good right here." I nodded towards the floating papers. "What are those?"

King Boo sighed. "You still don't trust me." King Boo blinked, and a thick book halfway up the bookcase behind him gave off a pale, rosy glow. "Had I wanted to trap you in my study, I would have simply flung Kamek's Guide to Villainy at you as soon as we reached the room. Speaking from experience, the hardcover version is more than heavy enough to knock one unconscious with a single blow. The paperback edition, on the other hand…." He shook his head, and the book's radiance faded. "I digress. These papers are schematics of Bowser's Castle. I've sketched them over the years based on what I see through the eyes of the Boos who live there. They're largely incomplete, but Boos form a large percentage of the guards in Bowser's dungeons, so that area of the castle is almost completely mapped out." He and the papers floated towards me, allowing me a closer look at them.

I glanced over the papers. "This dungeon is huge. How the hell am I supposed to sneak in, find Luigi, and sneak both of us back out?"

King Boo gave the closest thing to a shrug he could, given his spherical form. "The way I see it, that's more of a 'you' problem. However…." He tapped a passage on the maps that led from the lower level of the dungeons to an open area labeled "LAVA FIELDS" near the edge of the paper. "…I would advise using this route to make your entrance and exit. As I understand it, most of the castle's inhabitants don't even know it exists. It leads directly to the…VIP section of his dungeons, if you will. He uses it to smuggle in his most valuable prisoners, ones Bowser doesn't even want his other prisoners to know are being held in his dungeons."

I studied the map more closely. The passage King Boo had pointed out certainly looked like a secret route. Based on the notations on the map, it seemed like it entered the dungeons behind a tapestry (though why there were tapestries in a dungeon in the first place was another question entirely), and came out in a natural alcove between a few rock formations at the edge of the lava fields.

"I've got one more question," I said. "Why are you so willing to help me?"

King Boo glanced at the papers, and they rolled themselves up. He then grabbed the bundle of papers in one of his appendages. "Luigi and I may be enemies, but make no mistake, Bowser and I are no friends either," he said. "Ever since he made that goop version of me back in 2002…."

"Goop?"

"This slime that he and his bratty son used to take over Isle Delfino. He made a horde of sentient creatures out of them, including a ridiculous-looking goop ghost called King Boo. I confronted him about it and he said that he made this King Boo to 'honor' the real me. But I saw through that. The goop King Boo was a mockery of me, like…like one of those political skits in that show Saturday Night Live that you apparently used to love watching."

Okay, this mind-reading thing was getting creepy.

"After that incident, I immediately cut all ties with Bowser and switched to being a solo villainous act full-time," King Boo continued. "So…any small strike I can make against Bowser is a win in my book. And besides, I'm an agent of chaos."

"Agent of chaos." He said that on purpose.

"Sometimes I like planning the chaos I cause. Other times I prefer to blindfold myself, aim a loose cannon," he gazed at me intently, "in a random direction, and leave the destruction purely to chance." He floated closer and extended the bundle of papers towards me. I warily grabbed them. "Just be sure you do cause some destruction. Don't disappoint me."

"Sure. Happy to oblige." I shook the papers. "Aren't you gonna want these things back?"

"When I want them back I'll take them back. You won't know I'm coming, you won't know when I'm there, but one morning you'll wake up and they'll be gone."

A chill crept up my back – I didn't know if it came from me, or some other telekinetic ambience trick King Boo was pulling. Either way, assuming the maps were legit (which, unfortunately, it seemed would have to remain an assumption for the time being), I'd gotten what I needed, and had no intentions of sticking around any longer than I had to.

"Great. Thanks for your help," I said. "Now, if you could kindly call the elevator back up, please, I'll be getting out of here, and you can go on…doing whatever it is you ghosts do in your free time."

"Actually, there is one more small matter that must be attended to before you leave," King Boo said.

And here it is. Shit, meet fan.

I grabbed my Fun Gun off my back. I knew it wouldn't do anything to King Boo, but it was still comforting to hold. "What?"

King Boo gave a sharp snort. "Such mortal weapons cannot harm me, Ms. Quinn. I do not mean you any harm, I simply must be certain that you won't tell anyone else about my…living arrangement here. I would much prefer it if the rest of the world, especially that buffoon Gadd, still thought I was safely trapped in the Poltergust for the time being."

"So what are you gonna do?" I asked. "Try to keep me trapped here?"

"Of course not. If I did that, you wouldn't be able to rescue Luigi. No, I only intend to partially wipe your memory of our interaction."

Did he seriously just say that?

I took a step backward. "'Only' wipe my memory? Like hell you will! You're not poking around in my grey matter, asshole!" I turned and ran down the hall back towards the elevator. But I hadn't even gotten halfway to the turn when the carpet glowed pink and rippled up behind me, slapping me in the calves. I fell flat on my ass, and the carpet suddenly lifted into the air and looped over on itself. When it dropped again and deposited me back on the floor, I was back in front of the study.

Goddammit, there's no getting away from this guy.

"Please don't make this harder than it has to be," King Boo said. "And based on what I know about you, I predict your next attempt at escape will take the form of jumping out one of those windows behind you. Don't bother. My carpet will follow you and haul you back into the building. You see, once you set foot in my domain, there is no escape unless I permit you to leave."

"Why did you bother telling me where Luigi is if you were just going to wipe my mind anyway?" I shouted.

"What a selective memory you humans have. I said 'partially wipe your memory.' You will still remember all the relevant information I told you. The only memories I intend to dismantle and reshape are those pertaining to how you learned said information. See, I can't have word getting out just yet about my humble mountaintop abode here. I have big plans in the works, and the last thing I need is the Mushroom Kingdom learning about them prematurely and ruining my fun." He sighed, and his appendages started glowing with a purple light. "I suppose I'll alter Gadd's memory and send him back home too. Under different circumstances I would take full advantage of you practically hand-delivering him to me, Ms. Quinn, to trap him here. But as I said, my plans for this place are not quite finished yet. And hermit or not, were Gadd to go missing, sooner or later someone would notice it and trace it back to me."

As King Boo floated towards me with those glowing appendages of his, I turned and tried to run again. I doubted I'd get far, but if nothing else, no one would be able to say I didn't try to get away.

Not that anyone'll ever know to begin with, since I doubt I'll even remember this happening once he's done with me.

Immediately, the carpet wound around my legs, tripping me up and hauling me into the air. I hung upside-down in front of King Boo as the giant ghost floated ever closer. "Now, stay still," he said. "This won't hurt a bit…." He extended his appendages towards the sides of my head, and my vision started to blur and fade.

"Oh, and one last bit of advice for you, Ms. Quinn," he said, his voice becoming more and more distorted. "Don't let Gadd drive you around in that death trap he calls a car ever again. Seatbelts are important, and it would appear his hunk of rust doesn't have any. In fact, if cars were made with seatbelts back in my day, I might still be alive today." He tilted his head slightly…at least I think he did. My vision was really crapping out at that point. "On the other hand, as I said, being dead isn't all that bad…."

That was the last thing I heard before everything went dark and silent.