XXIV

Like Falling Stones

The gunshot cleared and faded, the silence magnifying the tinnitus buzzing in his ears. "The hell was that?" said Toad, sticking a pinky in his ear and wiggling it.

"Agent down," Fox said through the earpiece. His voice was dry and emotionless.

"Fox, report," Mario commanded. It almost seemed like he had a grip on things. Never mind that he just got attacked by his brainwashed brother.

"There was a shot and I took it," said Fox without a trace of irony or regret. He had heard those words before but under vastly different circumstances. Fox directed them to their quarry. They moved in a V-formation, with Mario at the point. Peach stayed several steps behind as she had made the mistake of going unarmed. Lady Bow lay under a tree, shot through the left leg. Her encasement suit was breached and her vapors were leaking out of the bullet wound like a jet of steam. She choked and gasped for air.

"Good shooting, Fox," said Mario. "Let's patch that suit and cuff her."

Toad took the hint and holstered his gun. He took one step towards the boo before a voice sounded through the earpiece. "Aren't you forgetting something?" asked Fox knowingly. He was watching them through the glass.

"We'll get Luigi on the way back," said Mario, misunderstanding the question.

"That's not what I meant."

Toad turned to Mario, who stared back at him blankly. He blinked several times and then his mind cleared. Suddenly, he understood and the fact that he hadn't seen it sooner terrified him. What if Fox hadn't been there? Someone else could have gotten injured or worse. "Toad, wait," said Mario. "Consider her armed and dangerous. We move together."

"Even if it looks like your enemy is incapacitated, never send your man into a dangerous situation alone," Fox instructed.

"That's just Toad, though," Mario complained. "He doesn't use his head."

"I'll second that," said Falco, chuckling.

"No," Fox said definitively. "You're the commander. They obey your commands. Make sure they're the right ones." He watched through the scope as the team fanned out with their pistols raised at the boo. Her pistol was in her left hand, a finger ready on the trigger. Despite choking on her last breaths, she still had a mind to kill.

"Toss it," said Falco. She obliged the command. Toad cuffed her hands behind her back and fixed the breach in her suit with medi-gel. Its viscosity was high enough to plug the hole. She took a deep breath to settle the burning in her lungs.

"Why did you shoot at us?" asked Mario in as commanding a voice as he could muster.

"Oh sugar," she said unfazed. "You really don't know what you've stepped in." She was chalk white and bald, with plump red lips that curled out of mischief and dark eyelashes that batted. She had a pink bow tied around each earlobe. Her figure was slender and feminine.

"I know what's out in the dark."

"So you went through the warp pipe." She wore an expression of mild interest.

"No, but I looked in."

"I did," she whispered. "It felt like the whole of my being was ripped apart and put back together. We boos are made of different stuff than you organics. It was terrible. But then he found me and he gave me such joy. And he showed me how to share it with the galaxy. The answer was right here underneath the gardens of Pinna. You saw it with your brother."

"Mind control?" spat Toad.

"The Maple Tree doesn't control," she countered. "It sets you free. Free from the illusions of structure and dignity. Like the wisps of my kind, it is all vapor. The great cosmic nothing. This galaxy, these people, Mario, they're all ghosts. Shadows on the wall. But he is coming to tear down the walls."

"Then, the galaxy will stop him," said Falco, clenching his fist.

"The hour is later than you think," she said and her smile broadened. Her teeth were sharp like fangs. "We must join with the turtle king."

"When did the great Spectre agent abandon courage for cowardice?" asked Fox through the earpiece.

"Let's get her back to the ship," said Mario. There was a pipe in the rock just beyond the Maple Treeway that led out of the deep woods. Soon, they were back on the Great Fox. Slippy and Peppy put Lady Bow in the brig. They each went to their stations and took off, leaving Pinna behind. Mario retired to his quarters. He needed some time away to collect his thoughts. He looked out the window of his room and saw the ships of space pirates in the distance. They were locked in a vicious dogfight with a hunter gunship that was bright red with a striking green cockpit window. The gunship fired and struck one of the pirate ships and it exploded in a ball of fire. There was no sound, no shockwave. It seemed so distant and somehow unreal. Mario's eyes fell from the visions of fire and death.

There was a knock at the door and Fox came in. He nodded and Mario returned the gesture. "Maybe the Lady is right," he said after a long pause.

"How's that?" asked Fox.

"We rise, we build, we collapse. And the stars shine all the same. As if it didn't even matter. Maybe it doesn't." The second pirate ship exploded and the gunship made the relay jump and was gone. The only evidence they were ever there at all was a handful of glittering dust in the great black void.

"Of course it does," said Fox affirmatively. "The galaxy is not vapor but a vast lake. And we are all stones falling from the sky. Who's to say the ripples you make don't one day become a great wave that crashes upon the grassy shore?"

"And those stones will sink and erode and be lost to time," Mario countered.

"Yes," said Fox. "But the grass will be thankful for the water."