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Chapter Text

"That's weird and concirning." V said with a sneer as she watched the barely sentient toaster break the mirror.

"Bite me!" Uzi snapped. "This probably your weirdo fault."

"I've never seen that symbol before." V continued to taunt. "Wanna to do an autopsy to find out?" She said this with a more bloodthirsty tone. However, her interlocutor did not care.

While arguing with each other they missed the sound of something landing.

"What did you find?" Before N had even made it all the way down the stairs, Uzi had stuck the pilot's badge she had found on his hat.

"Did you know that was a pilot's hat?" Uzi put her hands on her belt.

"I was a pilot?! That's aweso..." A strange sound interrupted N enthusiastic speech.

Looking at Uzi and V who were equally confused, N decided to continue. "Where was I? Oh yeah. Ahem, I was a pilot?! That's..." A strange sound interrupted him again.

N looked at V with a displeased squint. "V, can you please stop snoring?"

The female murder drone was very offended by what she heard. "It wasn't me, you stupid rusty bucket of bolts!" She hit him on the head with a bubble blower nozzle, which made a squeaking noise.

"Oh, right, we don't snore." N began to wipe away a few drops of soap that had gotten on his visor. "Now that I think about it, that snoring sounds familiar..."

"Why don't we just go out and see?!" Uzi pushed N out of the way and started climbing.

"If it's what I think it is, it'll be awesome!" N nodded to himself and followed Uzi.

V looked at her teammate questioningly, then at the ladder, sighed, transformed the bubble blowers back into hands and followed them. She wasn't chained. The story is silent on how N convinced Uzi that V wouldn't cause trouble, the main thing is that she really wasn't trouble.

Leaving the drop pod (which is actually a ship), the three began walking towards the mysterious snoring.

"Nighty nighty..."

Finally reaching the source, they saw an amazing creature, a human! The most striking thing about him was his jumpsuit and cap, both red.

"Oh! It's really Mario!" N said excitedly.

"Ah, spaghetti... Ah, ravioli..."

"I wonder if he's having that dream again where he's snuggled up to a huge plate of spaghetti and making weird noises?" N's comment caught the other two off guard.

"You know a human?!" Uzi and V shouted at the same time, and noticing this, they looked at each other with hostility.

"You know a human and you didn't tell me?!" Uzi grabbed N by the jacket and pulled her towards herself.

"You know this human and didn't tell ME about this?!" V also pulled N towards herself.

"Well, yeah? I know a human. And um...You didn't ask?" N didn't really understand why they both paid attention to this fact.

"We have to kill him!" Uzi took out the wrench she got from her father and ran towards the sleeping man.

V noticed N's inaction. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"Mario can survive being decapitated, so I guess there's no need to worry." N shrugged.

"Wha... Humans can't survive when they losing their heads!" V stamped her foot, N's incomprehensible nonsense was getting on her nerves.

Uzi ran up to the sleeping Mario, swung the wrench and hit the man on the head, only to look in shock at the unharmed man and the wrench bent in half.

"See?" N chuckled at the shocked V and Uzi. "He is Mario after all."

Suddenly, a noise suspiciously reminiscent of an alarm clock began to come from the human, Mario slowly stood up, yawned, took off his cap and took out an alarm clock, there was a small dent on it. Mario turned off the alarm clock by punching it, smashing the mechanism to pieces.

The human stood up, scratched his butt and looked around. He groaned. "Mamma mia, Mario is tired of waking up in the middle of nowhere." He didn't see the drones, as he had his back to them.

"Hey, Mario!" N shouted loudly, walking closer and unknowingly covering V.

The human let out a loud, frightened scream, turned around and threw the remains of the alarm clock at N. N dodged, but the projectile hit V, who was standing behind N, her visor cracked and she fell unconscious.

"Stop scaring Mario like that!" The plumber walked up to N and poked him. "And Mario won't let you eat his liver!"

"Sorry, I think I forgot." N smiled sheepishly. "And I'm not going to eat your liver, thats gross."

Mario sighed in relief and his mood changed to a better one. "What's up?"

"Still afraid of the sun, and artificial life is still agony." N answered with a smile, and then remember about Uzi and V. "Oh! I can finally introduce you to my best friend! Mario say hi to Uzi, Uzi say hi to Mario!"

"Hello!" Mario waved his hand at Uzi.

Uzi watched all this with her jaw dropped. And then she grabbed N's hand and pulled her aside.

"Oh, it seems Uzi needs some secret character development! Wait a bit!" N gave the human a thumbs up.

"Okie-dokie!" Mario shrugged, his gaze moving to the unconscious V, he took a marker out of his pocket and chuckled slyly.

Having moved away enough, Uzi stopped dragging N. "Are you crazy?!"

"What?" N's electronic eyebrow rose.

"You're friends with a human?!" Uzi pointed towards Mario, who was doing something to V's face.

"In fact, he's Italian." N shrugged. "I don't understand, is something wrong?" He looked towards the human and didn't see anything unusual, and then looked back at Uzi.

"Humans want to kill us, that's why they sent you and reformatted your memories into soup!" Uzi growled at her friend's still uncomprehending look. "JCJenson! There are human in charge, you know!"

"But there's no JCJenson in the Mushroom Kingdom." N answered calmly. "I even saw a couple of robots there and no one was controlling them."

"What?" Uzi's anger turned into confusion.

"A friend of Mario's named..." N started to look guilty. "I didn't even remember his name!" He ran his hand over his visor. "I'll apologize to him next time when I see him. Well, he said that JCJenson never existed there. And about the humans, it's not just the humans, there's a lot of variety, actually, there was this little mushroom guy who was mad at me because I accidentally chopped his head off once. And there were these weird colorful squids..."

"Stop!" Uzi covered his mouth. "I don't want to hear about squids and clarinets!" She paused. "They've rearlly never even heard of JCJenson?"

"I think they have." N put his hand to his chin. "But I don't think they're welcome there, the locals don't like slavery and stuff like that." He looked at Mario who was trying to hold back his laughter as he looked at V. "So I assure you, Uzi, Mario is the first nice human you've met! I wish you could meet his friends too, they're cool. You'll give him and them a chance, right?" N looked at Uzi with puppy eyes.

Uzi groaned. "Fine, and stop looking at me like that!" N squealed happily and ran towards the human, Uzi slowly followed him, muttering under her breath. "What have you come to, promise to be friends with a human?"

As she approached, she noticed N's shocked face, looking where he was looking, Uzi had a hard time holding back her laughter; V's face had a mustache and goatee painted on it, and the word "stinky" was also written on it.

"Robo-Jesus, this is gold!" She couldn't help but chuckle a few times. "Okay, human, I'll give you credit, that's funny!" Uzi was also interested in what will happen when V wakes up.

Mario made another sound, this time not like an alarm clock, more like some kind of animal growl. "Say, I'm hungry. Have you got any food?"

Uzi and N exchanged glances.

Chapter Text

"Go fish." Uzi looked at N, bored.

"I thought we were playing cards?" N looked at her, confused.

She slapped her face and looked around; if earlier the spire of corpses looked menacing, but intact. Now it was still menacing, but the amount of damage was impossible not to notice.

Uzi also had a really bad headache, and N's stupidity wasn't the reason.

"AAAAAAAA, MAMMA!" Something red and very loud run past the card players. It was Mario.

"I'll rip out your guts and use them as a swing set!" Something yellow and very angry flew past them. It was V.

Watching human, Uzi was impressed by his acrobatic skills, maybe even better than what she saw in the anime. But she would never admit it, not even to herself.

"N, how long have we been sitting here?" Uzi looked from the still screaming Mario to her friend. It was clear from her face that she was irritated by what was happening.

"It's been twenty minutes." N looked at V. "I don't think she'll be able to catch him, when Mario is scared he can run for a surprisingly long time."

"I still don't understand how you two met." Uzi threw her cards on the ground (aka a pile of corpses).

"Oh, it's easy, I just..." N trailed off. "Now that I think about it, I have no idea." He shrugged nonchalantly. "One minute I was flying around the city, the next I was in a castle watching Mario watching memes. Then I tried to kill him, but he dodged really well, and then his friend hit me with a bat and we became friends."

"I hope you're not planning on becoming friends with everyone acting like that again." Uzi chuckled, supriced by the similarity between her first meet with N and N's first meet with Mario. "But if you somehow got there, how did you get back?"

"I don't know." N continued to look at the cards with interest. "Mario's friend said that it either happens on its own or according to some scenario, I didn't really get what he meant."

Uzi would have said something, but she was interrupted again by Mario's panicked screams and V throwing insults near them.

"Maybe we should do something?" N looked at her questioningly. "I'm worried that V might run out of oil soon."

"Well, that wouldn't have happened if your friend hadn't used a 'near-permanent' marker." She looked at him doubtfully.

"I didn't even know Mario had one!" N put the cards on the ground-pile of corpses. "The last time I went through his pockets I found an old man, and he was constantly asking me to feed him!"

"If that's the case, why wouldn't a human have an 'anti-near-permanent' marker?" One of the eyebrows on Uzi's visor rose, her sarcasm was too obvious.

But not for N, hes eyes widened. "That's a good idea!" He ran after V.

"It was a joke, dumbass!" Uzi ran after him.

Chasing after V for a few minutes, N managed to grab her, the female murder drone writhed in his arms, spewing curses. Mario in turn stopped screaming and hid behind Uzi.

"Let me go, idiot!" V hit N on the hands but it didn't help.

"V let's calm down! You're running low on oil!" N took a few steps back still holding her.

"Can you erase this somehow, or, I dunno, make it invisible?" Uzi whispered to Mario. "Otherwise she won't calm down."

The plumber put his hand to his chin, after a few seconds a light bulb appear above his head to big Uzi's surprise. "I got it!" And he took out another marker. Uzi was even more surprised when noticed a head mirror had appeared on his head.

N noticed his friend's actions and tightened his grip on V.

"Hold still, Schweinhund." Mario slowly approached the writhing V and just as slowly began to move the marker to her face.

"As soon as I'm free, I'll kill you both! Bury you alive! Burn you! Tear you apart! And then... huh?" V looked at the man in surprise, the word "stinky" had disappeared and no longer interfered with her vision. Running a quick diagnostic, she made sure that there were no traces of the marker on her face. "Dont think that I won't forget about it so easily!" She kicked him with her leg, sending Mario flying into the pod-ship.

"That must hurt." N grimaced, and then let go of V, which he instantly regretted, as her fist hit him in the face. "Ouch."

"Are you done?" Uzi asked indifferently.

V hissed at her, then walked away, turned her hands into bubble blowers and began to blow bubbles.

The worker drone rolled her eyes and looked at the duo. N was conscious, just lying on the ground and holding his face. Looking towards the pod, Uzi realized that Mario had flown inside. Groaning, she went to get the plumber, her mood continued to sink to the bottom.

Of course the drawings on V's face made her laugh, but listening to Mario screaming for twenty minutes wasn't exactly a pleasant pastime. And now she'd probably have to make sure V didn't turn human into an unrecognizable pile of flesh.

When she got down, she found Mario rubbing his bruised head. "Mamma mia, she's coo-coo crazy!"

"That's for sure." Uzi sat down in the pilot's seat. She propped her head up with her hand and watched with a bored look as the human examined the pod.

Mario didn't look around for long, he spent the longest time(one second longer) looking at the broken mirror with a question and then sat down on the chair next to Uzi, pressing the buttons (they do nothing) then he began to spin around in the chair making a "Wheeeeee" sound. But he stopped when he saw Uzi's sad face. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" She frowned at him. "Of course I'm okay! I literally found myself on death's doorstep! Innocent drones died because of me, and my father left me to die and teenage hormones don't make things any better! Of course I'm okay!" Uzi turned her back to him.

A recent memory popped into Mario's head.

["Okay, Mario, do you know what to do when you see a sad person?" Meggy asked in her coach suit.

"Oh, yeah!" He pulled out a piece of paper with a picture of a smiling human and the inscription saying 'KYS'.

"Well yes. But actually, no." Meggy sighed.

"Mother fucker!"]

Uzi sighed, feeling a little ashamed that she'd gotten mad at Mario when he was just worrying about her (the fact that human was already more worried about her than her father did not allow Uzi to feel calmer). She would have continued to sit in her teenage depression if it weren't the "Hey!" behind her.

"What? I'm not in..." She trailed off.

Mario had a strange black helmet on his head, the most noticeable parts were the large red lenses and what Uzi thought were the breathing apparatuses humans usually use, the helmet also amplified the sound of breathing. In his right hand he held a red laser pointer, plumber keep turning it on and off every few seconds while making laser-like sounds with his mouth. In his other hand he held a sign that said "free hugs."

"I'm am your father." Mario started pointing at the sign with a pointer. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Uzi wasn't sure if he was messing with her or if he was genuinely trying to make her feel better.

"Helping a friend?" He tilted his head to the side.

Uzi let out a weak laugh. "Well, thanks I guess? No hugging though." The silliness lifted her spirits a bit. She decided not to comment on his words about friends.

"Okay." Mario shrugged and tossed the sign behind him, not caring if it hit anything. He did the same with the helmet and the pointer. His stomach growled again. "I'm very hungry."

"I don't even know where we'll find you food, there haven't been any humans here for decades." Uzi stood up from her chair, looking less sad.

The plumber sighed in shock. "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna FUCKING DIE!" Mario wanted to shout something else, but Uzi shut him up.

"Oh, quiet you! There's probably some canned food and stuff left." She sighed in irritation.

"Yeah boooooi!" Mario danced out of the landing pod.

"I never thought about how hard it is to communicate with someone unusual." Uzi suddenly fell silent. "Oh, Robo-Jesus, don't tell me that's how everyone else sees me?!"

Not wanting to think about it, she followed the plumber. Outside, N was saying something to V, who looked calmer.

"... Fine." V groaned. "I'm not cutting him up into a salad unless he does something really stupid again."

"Thanks, V!" N hugged her, her face showing that she didn't like it. N noticed Mario and Uzi. "Oh, there you are, and I was just telling V how I met Mario!"

"Cool." Uzi gave him a thumbs up.

"But I'm still curious about something." V walked up to Mario. "The conditions here on Copper 9 aren't suitable for humans, so how come you haven't suffocated yet?"

"It's-a me, Mario!" The human replied with a derp face.

"Seems legit." N smiled.

"What did I expect from a human with an IQ below 10?" V sighed, stepped aside and started blowing bubbles again.

"So, what are we going to do?" N turned to Uzi.

"Find food for Mario, I guess." Uzi shrugged. "We have nothing to do anyway."

"That's great! Hey V, are you in?" N looked at her teammate.

The female murder drone looked at them doubtfully, beginning to think she came to some disappointing conclusions. "Ugh, it's dangerous to let you go alone. There has to be at least someone adequate among you."

"You? Adequate?" Uzi asked mockingly.

"Shut your mouth while you still can." V snapped, then turned her head sharply towards the entrance to the spire. "Someone's coming."

"Phew, this place is going to give me nightmares, I hope Uzi appreciates that I brought her her railgun." It turned out to be one of Uzi's classmates, Thad.

"Thad!" Uzi ran up to him and took the railgun. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome, Zi!" Thad looked around. "This place is definitely creepy." He saw N. "N&M's." Then he saw V and beads of sweat appeared on his visor. "The scary lady who wanted to kill me?" And finally he saw Mario. "Uh..?"

"Hello!" The plumber waved at him.

"It's Mario, don't worry, he's dumb." Uzi waved dismissively at Mario, who was giving her the finger.

"Um, I thought you said you didn't like humans, right?" Thad didn't understand what was going on at the moment.

"Guess I'll just limit myself with humans who work for JcJenson now." Uzi shrugged. "I realized that not all human are jerks."

"Oh, that's cool." Thad nodded and turned to Mario, giving him a thumbs up. "Name's Thad."

"Are we just going to stand there?!" V yelled.

"Oh, I almost forgot! Mario, do you still have that endless canister?" N turned to the plumber.

With a short "Hmm." Mario began rummaging through his pocket, throwing out a variety of completely different items. "I got it!" He handed N a red canister.

"Good news, V, we're not going to die!" He took a sip from the canister and handed it to the confused V. "This canister contains endless oil that we can drink!"

The female murder drone looked at the canister doubtfully, then sighed and took a sip. So that she could start drinking even more right away. When she was done, she put the canister on the ground. "Godly... I guess I can forgive him for that."

The worker drones and the human watched this. "So they don't need our oil anymore? Cool." Uzi commented. Thad and Mario fistbumped eachother. "Hey, Thad, would you like to go on a food expedition with us?"

"Food? Wha-" The sound of Mario's growling stomach answered his question. "Oh, get it. I'd love to, but..."

"Oh come on!" The plumber shouted.

"Well, I don't see any reason why not." Thad nodded after a moment's thought.

"Hell yeah!"

Chapter Text

"Well... that's... definitely something, I didn't know humans could break the laws of physics, well, I guess I can too..." Thad thought as he drove around in a non-existent car. The feeling of literally sitting on air was very unusual for him.

Thad looked back at his team, it was probably the strangest lineup he had ever seen; himself, Uzi, two killer drones and a human. Mario gave him a thumbs up while everyone else looked on him in shock.

"And if I tell anyone else this, they won't believe me, even though I can show it." Thad slowly stopped and got off the non-existent seat. "Who would have thought that I would learn to drive because of a argue between a killer drone and a human?"

"That was awesome!" N clapped congratulatorily. "You did it the first time! Like, I can't do that yet!" He turned to his best friend. "Hey Uzi, let's get you a driver's license too?"

"Um, how about some other time?" Uzi smiled uncertainly. She turned to V. "You saw it, can we go now?"

"I'm going to go crazy..." V whispered, putting her hands to her face. She didn't want to be here and with them in general.

"Cognitive dissonance is cool and all, but I thought we were looking for food for you, Red?" Thad looked at Mario questioningly.

"Mario needed to show that he was always right!" The plumber put on his sunglasses and stood in a proud pose. His stomach growled loudly and Mario grabbed it painfully. "Ahhh! I need a medic bag!"

"This is your fault, show-off." Uzi noted indifferently. "Considering that the signs and markers are either weathered or broken, we'll be looking for a long time and there's no guarantee we'll find any canned goods." Her words made plumber panic.

"Uzi!" N patted Mario on the shoulder soothingly. "No need to be rude!"

"Shut up, both of you." V hit N on the head and flicked the Uzi across her face. "Humans can live for a long time enough without food, it's just that..." She poked Mario in the stomach. "Fat ass is panicking for nothing." V ignored the indignant "Hey!"

"How about we take a look inside this building? It looks really big." Thad pointed at a tall building with a lot of glass in it.

"Hmm, a shopping mall. At least one of you toasters actually a little useful." V took off heading towards the entrance of the building, forcing the others to follow her.

"Wow, that's the most polite V I've ever seen." N said in surprise.

"Well, now that you have this endless canister, maybe she doesn't see us as food anymore?" Thad suggested.

"She's still a crazy maniac, Thad." Uzi shook her head. "She might not drink our oil anymore, but she'll kill us with the same joy."

"She's not okey-dokey!" Mario added at the end.

"Give her time and things will definitely get better!" N said enthusiastically.

The team reached the entrance just as they saw V removing the last piece of debris blocking their entry.

"So, we split up; I'll take the human and you." She pointed at Uzi. "N, you take the other one."

"She remembers my name!" N. whispered excitedly.

"SIMP!" Mario shouted and immediately got hit on the head by Uzi. The others reacted in confusion to what they heard.

"Since when are you in charge?" Uzi frowned, breaking the awkward pause and, just in case, hit Mario again, causing his head to flatten a little.

"My name is Thad, just saying." Thad did not like being addressed by V in this way.

"First of all, I don't care." V looked at Thad, causing him to wince. "Second of all, I'm in charge since there's nothing stopping me from making a garland out of your entrails." V transformed one hand into claws forcing Uzi to take a cautious step back. "And I don't trust N to watch a human, considering they seem to share a single brain cell."

"But, I don't have a brain?" No one payed attention to N's confusion.

"Mario doesn't need brain cells, when Mario had too much, Mario tried to take over the world." No one payed attention to plumber's comment either.

"But..." Uzi sighed. "Okay, that makes some sense."

"You've developed a self-preservation instinct?" V was surprised. "That's quite a growth in character for a shorty like you." She chuckled at Uzi's annoyance. "Now seriously, I can't really guess, we're very far from the other disassemblers' territory, but we might still run into renegades."

"Renegades?" Thad asked, surprised.

"You don't have to be a J to know that they're defective, it's obvious; they act like crazy and look like crazy. They always act alone. Keep that in mind." V grabbed Mario and Uzi's hands. "That's enough time wasting, get moving!"

"Wow, this place is huge!" Thad looked around the place in amazement, fortunately their position allowed for it.

"You should see it when it's whole and working, I've never seen so many humans... and other creatures before." N nodded in agreement. "There are usually some cool fountains in the center, too bad this one is frozen." N looked down.

"I'd like to see it." Thad stood up. "Well, where do you think we should start?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure, like Uzi said, all the posters and signs are in such bad shape that we won't be able to tell which store we're going to." N looked around. Being on the second of the fourth floors, he had a great view. "I think we'll have to go into each one."

N was about to go check out the first store in line, when he noticed his partner looking thoughtfully at the ground. "Hey, what happened?"

"Hm?" Thad looked at him, confused. "I think I forgot something."

"If you forgot, then it wasn't important. This happens to me often!" N smiled encouragingly.

"Yeah, you're right."

[Meanwhile]

"Very dissatisfied. Where are they? They should have been here a long time ago. They are ruining my schedule." Eldritch J muttered to herself.

"Your turn." Frank's hologram said.

"One second." Tim's hologram rolled the dice. "Five and seven."

"One, two, three... hmm, out of space." Frank's queen ate Tim's bishop. "What happens when there's not enough space?"

"You have to draw more cards." Tim gave Frank the 'jail free' card. "And then... hmm, your dragon has to save the dominoes."

"What are we even playing?" Frank moved the checkers closer to the monopoly.

"No idea. Too bad that central core didn't eat someone who actually knows how to play board games." Tim looked at Eldritch J skeptically.

"Non-existent emotion. Motherfuckers, bitches, assholes, fuckers. These pieces of shit don't pay me enough for this crap. My software starts to defragment to Linux, even if I prefer Windows XP."

"It's so bad that even holograms like us are now self aware." Frank shook his head disapprovingly.

"Windows XP was a disappointment." Tim also shook his head.

"Optimistic. But while they're still not here, I finally figured out how to do this cool trick on a skateboard."

"But you don't have legs... and scateboard." Tim said uncertainly..

"Shocked pause. Playing appropriate music. Color detection parameter off. Hello darkness, my old friend..."

[Back to V and co.]

"This is surprisingly relaxing." V thought as she looked at the contents of the box. "I guess it's nice to do something different sometimes. Especially when J isn't fawning over the company anymore." She looked at Uzi, who was searching through another box. "I guess I can thank this toaster for that." V looked over at Mario, who was searching through the display case. "And even the human calmed down, this is definitely my prize for good behavior."

Finally, V's grip found something that wasn't unusable trash. Pulling her hand out of the box, she found a toy of a human in a suit, the force of her squeeze was enough to turn it on. "Hello this is your very former president Barack Obama, and I just want to tell you I know how to beatbox, with a little bit of..." Squeezing her hand as hard as she could, V snapped the toy in half and threw it back into the box.

"Ugh, it's a toy store." Uzi groaned when she saw V's find. She kicked her box and headed for the exit.

Which left V alone with the plumber. Which was exactly what she needed.

"Wait." She put her hand on his shoulder, making him flinch. "Am I to understand that you'll be returning to your place at random?" She saw his hesitant nod. "Good, am I also to understand that N gets to you in the same way?" She got the same answer. "I have a favor to ask." Same nod. "When N gets to your house, no matter how, make sure he doesn't come back here, okay?"

"Okey-dokey..." Mario raised a shaking hand with a thumbs up. He didn't want to argue with V.

Deciding not to scare human with unspoken threats any longer, V headed into another store alone.

"Bloody hell V, you awful." Someone was watching V closely through a scope.

"Found something?" V asked Uzi, who had entered her shop. "There's no point in looking here, it's all clothes."

"Some disks, found something called 'Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing Baby'." Uzi punched the wall in frustration.

"Maybe the human found the right shop." V tore the dress, which was out of date by a thousand years, with her claw.

Looking around, they realized that Mario was nowhere in sight.

"Well, that's just great!" Uzi kicked the stone, sending it flying. "Now we have to look for him!"

"It's useless to do this, but at least it's not annoying. He's loud enough, we will find him soon." V replied indifferently.

"You're surprisingly calm." The worker looked at her questioningly.

"Sometimes silence is enough to calm me down. And when I realize that the source of my irritation has lost everything above the waist, it calms me down even more." The murder drone smiled.

"You mean J? Wasn't she your boss?" Uzi was surprised.

"She was a bad boss, I've hated her and her voice for a long time, and I've wanted to kill her for a even longer time." V's strange look made the worker flinch.

"It doesn't look like you were trying to do that." Uzi raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"I didn't have one important part for this... but you did." Suddenly, V ruffled Uzi's hair, making her shiver. "It's N, or rather N's ​​loyalty to J. If I had killed her a long time ago, he would have been against it." V smiled at Uzi. "But you managed to catch the right moment, or arrange it yourself, it doesn't matter, the point is that N was no longer loyal to J and didn't really want to object. And this is the result; that bitch is dead. I guess I can give you credit, Uzi. Or better yet, I'm grateful to you."

"Huh?!" Uzi's eyes widened and she tried to take a step back, but the murder drone hand still ruffling her hair prevented Uzi from taking a step.

"Don't look at me like that, I can be nice when I want to." Such a reaction upset V just a little.

"Hey!" Mario's voice rang out. "I need some help!"

V removed her hand from Uzi's head. "If you tell anyone about this, I will do something worse than death to you. Dye your hair in pink is just one of many."

"You wouldn't dare..." Uzi growled angrily.

"You can try your luck, but don't complain later." V smiled slyly and, ignoring Uzi's anger, she headed towards the plumber's voice.

"Hold still!" The mysterious one continued to watch.

"Phew, phew." Mario tried to catch his breath, placing his hands on his knees. "This door is even worse than the ones that attacked my baby Mario's."

"Found the right store?" Uzi walked up to him.

"Yes, I do!" Mario picked up a steel pole from the floor with the inscription 'FoodFinder 9000'. "I'm a genius!"

"A food scanner, of course, why we not think of that?" V rolled her eyes as she approached. She noticed the crowbar lying on the floor. "And all that's left is to open this door?"

"Oh yeah!" Mario stood next to the treasured door in anticipation.

Turning her hands into claws, V dug them into the door, the frozen material of the door gave in easily and soon the door flew off its hinges. Thus revealing the hidden treasure; a cellar full of canned goods.

"Oh my fucking god! Yes! Whoohoo!" Mario began to look at the cans, shouting excitedly.

"I guess we're done." Uzi picked up one of the cans with interest. "Carbonated chicken soup." She put it back. "Humans are disgusting, how can they eat this? Is there anything better?" Cans labeled "Pancakes with BBQ sauce" and "Fried Water" convinced her otherwise. "Thanks Robo-Jesus I don't have a human-like stomach, or I would have puked."

Deciding to stop looking at cursed meals, Uzi noticed that Mario had emptied the shelves, shoving the last cans into his pocket and holding one labeled "Spaghetti."

"Are you done? Let's get out of here." V walked out of the store, the two following her.

"My precious..." Mario stroked the can.

"That was... interesting." Uzi was thinking about what had happened between her and V.

"I'll gonna eat you!" Mario brought the can closer to his face. Suddenly, a shot rang out and the can exploded, spilling its contents. "NOOO!"

"You big-head wanker!" The three raised their heads and noticed the murder drone. Uzi and Mario didn't know who it was, but V did.

"S! I knew we'd meet you, you damn psycho!" She instantly turned her hands into guns and opened fire.

The drone named S dodged the bullets and landed in front of the trio.

Uzi could now see him; he was more shabby looking than V, N, or J, he was holding something that looked like a sniper rifle. He had a slouch hat on his head, his whole appearance was reminiscent of some kind of hunter. But the most noticeable thing was the pile of photos attached to his clothes, each of them had a drone on them, and they were all crossed out. To her horror, Uzi noticed on his left arm photos of herself, V, Mario, N, and Thad. Luckily, none of them were crossed out.

"It's good to see you too, mate." S smiled widely. "Let's continue, shall we..."

"Who the hell are you?!" Uzi interrupted him.

"A psychopath who wants to kill absolutely everyone." V replied briefly.

"You're god damn right!" S aimed his rifle at the Uzi.

Chapter Text

Immediately, V acted by pushing Uzi aside to avoid the bullet, then she quickly moved towards S while getting ready with her claws and acid.

Almost right away, she had to quickly avoid a sudden barrage of bullets that caught her off guard. "Sniper rifles do not shoot that fast!"

"This is not an ordinary sniper rifle, mate, this is a sniper rifle of a crazy gunman!" S shouted, and as soon as he pulled the trigger, a huge amount of bullets headed V's way, sending her into a panic-stricken scream. She was too used to hunting defenseless worker drones.

Meanwhile, Uzi, who had narrowly avoided being shot, quickly retrieved her Sick as Hell Railgun from behind her back and aimed it at S. He saw what she was doing and redirected his attacks towards a worker, causing Uzi to seek shelter.

Also, in the meantime, Mario made a grave for the destroyed can. "Here lies Super Mario Spaghetti." He did not pay attention to his surroundings.

When S was distracted by the Uzi, V increased her speed and was ready to pierce the madman with her claws. However, a kukri knife suddenly intercepted her attack. Caught off guard, V was unable to respond before the knife sliced off her left hand. She was knocked to the ground after getting hit in the face with a sniper rifle.

"Not bad, huh? I made by my own." S stroked the knife, which turned out to be attached to his tail. "Now this is a real weapon, not some stupid claws." He turned around swiftly and the knife cut off V's tail, which was trying to jab S. "This won't work, sis, only our little simpleton N would fall for this."

"You'll regret this!" V said, clenching her jaw in agony. Because she rarely got injured, she did not have a high tolerance for pain and this is what prevented her from transforming her uninjured hand into a gun.

"Big words for such a little bugger, I've been here longer than you, I know how to kill disassembly drones as well as workers." S stepped on V, he aimed his sniper rifle at the most important place for any drone. "No core, no drone."

V was suddenly blinded by a bright green light. After her vision cleared, she realized that S had disappeared without a trace.

V slowly stood up and looked in awe at Uzi who had dropped her railgun on the ground. "That, that was a good shot, Uzi." She smiled encouragingly at the worker. V winced, her severed palm just beginning to regenerate.

"Ugh, thanks." Uzi didn't even notice V calling her by name again. "Good that he was distracted by you." She sat down tiredly.

"Good news, S was the most dangerous of the renegades, so if we meet the others, it will be easier." V looked around, the huge number of bullet holes made it clear to her what would happen to her if S managed to hit her. Disassembly drones can regenerate a lot, but not when your body resembles a sieve.

"That one was worse than the three of you combined!" Uzi stared at the ground, not paying attention to her surroundings, but she should have.

"I'm much worse." A sudden voice from Uzi's right side made her flinch, but before the worker drone could do anything else, the renegade dismantler's leg hit her in the face, causing her to be thrown several meters away, knocked out.

"You were supposed to be dead!" V tried to attack him with her wings, but the gunman was quicker and shot both her legs, making her fall. Then he almost ripped out her wing with another shot.

"You're right about that." S lowered his sniper rifle, seeing that his opponents were defeated. "But I always keep an eye on everyone, and N's example showed me that I can't underestimate our small purple friend." He kicked Uzi's unconscious body. "Such talent, a shame it was wasted." S took her railgun and hes tail cut Uzi's creation in half. ""She could have been an excellent student, she hates everyone so much, it's perfect for 'kill everyone you meet' philosophy, it's a shame she crossed paths with you three."

V attempted to stand up, but her wounded legs failed to move, and with only one wing functioning, she was unable to do anything. Even if she could fly, V would not leave Uzi and a human... a human?!

Where is Mario?!

"Oh, right, there are three of you." S saw Mario standing by the makeshift grave. He poked the plumber with his rifle, who was standing with his back turned. "Are you just going to stand there and mourn over that trash? Turn around, I want to kill everyone while looking at their faces."

Mario turned around slowly, growling in anger. "You don't fuck with the Mario."

"What are you going to do, meatbag? Beat me with your big meaty claws?" S grinned.

"Mario's going to do something very illegal!" Quickly putting his hand in his pocket, the plumber pulled out a giant chainsaw, it was already turned on and ready to tear apart. "I'LL END YOU!" He charged towards S.

"Where the hell did you get that from?!" V seemed to have seen S panic for the first time in her life, she liked it.

Gunman had to make every effort to dodge the chainsaw of the furiously screaming Italian. Which left him completely defenseless from gunfire. Leaning on the elbow of her injured arm, V transformed her uninjured arm into a rifle through the pain, aimed at S's legs and opened fire.

The bullets hit his legs perfectly, causing the madman to fall to the ground, and he had to block the chainsaw that was quickly about to saw him in half with the only thing he had, his sniper rifle.

Mario almost finished off S when his leg hit the plumber and he flew several meters away.

S stood up and looked at the sniper rifle that had been sawed in two with an unreadable expression on his face. Throwing the remains of the weapon on the ground, his hands turned into knives. "I'm gonna blow the inside of ya head all over four counties!" S screamed furiously and rushed at Mario, aiming to shred human to pieces.

At the same time, another quick memory flashed through Mario's mind.

["I'm the best, yeah, I'm the best." Mario danced around looking at the defeated Pokemon.

Nearby Tari looked at him puzzled. "Mario, that wasn't even my main one." She threw the red and white ball to the ground.

"QUAСK!"

"Oh no." Mario managed to say before the hand of a huge rubber duck with super buffed up arms and legs sent him flying into the atmosphere.]

That was enough for the plumber to figure out what to do. "Scary, but very handsome monster, I choose you!" Mario shouted and everyone suddenly felt the ground beneath them shake.

S, who had almost reached Mario, didn't even have time to react before a hand came out of the ground and hit him in the face, causing him to crush into the wall.

"WAHOOOOOO!"

When he came to, he could only watch in horror as something scary and similar to Mario crawled out of the ground; dark red hat and overalls, and black shirt and boots, pale skin, but most of all the face stood out, eyes hidden by the brim and a large menacing grin. This entity was known as MX.

"Hey!" Mario caught the monster's attention. "Get that motherfucker!" He pointed at S.

S's terrified scream was drowned out by the noise of the wall shattering as the creature burst in and toppled it over alongside the madman.

"Phew." The plumber wiped the sweat from his forehead. He ran up to V and helped her up.

"Next time, don't wait until the last minute!" V hissed. She spat on her hand and applied it to her shot knees. She saw Mario's disgusted look. "My saliva will help me regenerate faster, now get Uzi here!" V looked at the sounds of battle with apprehension. "And hurry up! I don't want to know what your monster friend thinks about me or her!"

Uzi's visor was completely broken, it was all cracked, V only hoped that this was the only thing that was damaged. And she was also glad that Uzi was unconscious, because V didn't want to listen to complaints about how gross all this saliva thing was (even though it was true). Something showed up on the visor, but because of the cracks it was impossible to tell what exactly it was saying.

Suddenly they heard some goofy sounding horn and soon saw Thad and N driving up to them in a non-existent car.

"We hurried as soon as we heard the shots!" The duo ran up to them.

"Uzi!" N fell to his knees next to his unconscious friend. "V, what happened?!"

"With her? Nothing more serious than a kick in the face." She squeezed her recently regenerated palm with the uninjured one. Afther that they all heard a prolonged scream. "I think you'll figure out the rest soon."

Soon MX approached them holding something in his hands, he saw N and grinned mockingly. N in turn smiled fearfully and waved a trembling hand. "Hi... MX. You, you're not mad at me anymore, r-right?" MX slowly shook his head in response. N sighed with relief.

MX threw what he was holding in his hands, a torn apart S, at Mario's feet. The limbs and head, was severed from the body and seriously damaged. The number of dents on the body of the dead renegade was innumerable.

"Thank you so much!" The plumber gave a thumbs up. "Spaghetti is on me!" He waved his hand at the monster that was begin to disappear.

MX chuckled warmly (which still sounded like his usual ominous laugh) and waved back at Mario before disappearing.

"I think that answer satisfies you." V turned to N, then pierced the body of the dead S with her wings. "He's definitely dead for good, but I want to make sure." She pushed the remaining parts towards Mario. "Take his parts, I think they might be useful to Uzi." N and Thad stared at her in surprise.

Without asking, the plumber did as she asked and put the parts in his pocket.

"Please tell me you both haven't gotten into as much trouble as we have?" V turned to Thad. "I wouldn't want you two to get hurt"

"Uh... um... we don't." Thad shook his head, strange kindness surprised him. "We were searching the stores all the time, but we didn't find any food, sorry Red." He turned to Mario.

"Ah, that's nothing!" Mario waved his hand in a relaxed manner and dancing he took out one of the cans, showed it to the duo. "We did it!"

"Oh, you did it! Lucky you... Well, besides S finding you." N picked up Uzi in bridal style. "Well, good riddance I guess. V, are you sure you're okay? It looks like you're seriously hurt."

"Nothing bad that can't regenerate." She put her hand to her head, groaning. "I didn't think such a simple trip would be a problem."

She noticed Uzi's broken railgun, V looking at it thoughtfully. "I hope this works." Taking the pieces of the weapon, she covered the cut with her saliva. To their questioning looks, she replied. "I don't think our little girl will be happy to know that her toy is broken." She placed the pieces together and to her relief they did indeed become one, but V didn't want to test whether the railgun worked. At the moment she didn't want to do anything.

"Did we miss something?" Thad whispered to N.

"It seems we missed some kind of relationship improvement." N shrugged.

The sound of slurping caught their attention, Mario was eating canned food... along with cans. He burped. And then he eats more, and more, and more...

Thad looked around at the unresponsive murder drones and decided not to ask questions, with every second he spent near Mario, humans seemed stranger to him.

"Well..." He broke the pause. "What now?"

"If you don't mind, I'm going to pass out." V said before falling to the ground.

Chapter Text

"What do you think he's doing?" N asked Uzi. They were both looking at Mario who had climbed to the very top of the corpse spire for some reason.

"Something stupid... or something really stupid." Uzi crossed her arms. Realizing something, she looked at her friend with confusion. "You have wings! Why don't you ask him yourself?"

N looked back at his wings in surprise. "Oh, you are a genius Uzi!" Having flown to Mario, leaving Uzi alone.

"No wonder V wants to protect you so much." Uzi giggled quietly, and then headed towards the drop pod.

Going inside, she saw a familiar scene once again; V was lying on something that resembled a bed and was blowing bubbles, looking absolutely relaxed. And there was also Thad sitting in the pilot's chair, tossing a ball against the wall out of boredom. This particular setting felt more like home to Uzi than her actual home did.

"Hey." She sat down in the chair next to Thad, propping her feet up on the console and placing her hands behind her head.

"Hey, Zi." Thad caught the ball again. "You know, it's cool here and all, but we should probably go home."

"We?" Uzi raised an eyebrow. "I exiled myself, yeah, I remember you saying that everyone thought I was grounded, but what's the point of me being there?"

"Well..." Thad was about to say something about her father, but quickly remembered what Uzi thinks about him now, Thad didn't have much respect for Mr. Doorman too, he was completely on her side. "How about we bring all your stuff here, since you've decided to live here?"

"Hm, yeah, I miss my anime." Uzi put her hand to her chin. "But how do you imagine that? As if no one would notice that I walk and come with this taking all my things, even a blind ass like Khan would notice it."

"Vents?" Thad nodded his head towards V. "They are quite spacious, I think."

"If I only needed to get to my place once, then I think the vents would be fine, but I have too many things that I can't take out at once." Uzi shook her head.

"What's stopping you from just coming, taking them and leaving without caring about the opinion of those jerks?" V spoke up.

"Maybe you can throw the drones around as you want, but I don't have the strength for that." Uzi turned to V. "Even if none of them can fight, that doesn't stop them from overpowering me with numbers."

"I thought you said they didn't care about you." V continued. "Why would they want you to stay?"

"They don't care about me, but you can't say the same about their safety, as soon as I go inside they'll decide to lock me up because I can bring some kind of danger with my trips back and forth." Uzi gazed up at the ceiling, visibly annoyed.

V remained silent and proceeded to blow bubbles.

"Yeah." Thad looked at Uzi with sympathy. "I would help you, but I guess one of me won't be enough."

That gave Uzi an idea. "One of me won't be enough, you say?"

"Hey Mario, whatcha doin'? Flying up to the top of the spire, N saw Mario holding a phone and a strange long stick, the kind N often saw on the roofs of buildings.

"Shhh!" The plumber put his finger to his lips. Extending his hand so that the stick was even higher, he began to press something on his phone.

After a few beeps, the phone showed an image of a man with a blue hat like Mario's, only instead of the letter M there was an S. He seemed surprised. "Mario!?"

"Hey!" Mario held the phone up so that the other person could see him and N.

"Oh my god, where have you been?! We've been looking all over for you and..." He noticed N. Murder drone could swear he heard the sound of glass breaking, and when human in blue cap slowly turned his gaze to him, N heard the sound of rock sliding. "Well... I guess that explains it."

"Hi... um..." N hesitated.

"You forgot my name again, didn't you?" The man sighed. "N, it's SMG4, simple and I've told you over and over again not to use the full version." SMG4 shook his head at the drone.

"Sorry! It's just kind of... impolite, isn't it?" N smiled guiltily.

"That would make sense if I hadn't asked you to call me by the simple version of my name." SMG4 now addressed both of them. "Am I correct in assuming you're on Copper-9?" They both nodded at him. "Well, that makes things a little clearer. Mario, did you just happen to be there?"

"We just found Mario sleeping near the drop pod!" N answered the question.

"We?" SMG4 was surprised, but quickly understood. "Oh, you mean Uzi." He put his hand to his chin, thinking.

"V was with us too, and then Thad came!" N said excitedly.

"Huh, but what about canon?" SMG4 wondered. "Wait, in our case it doesn't matter." He waved his hand dismissively, noticing N's confused look. He continued. "Don't think about it for too long, an existential crisis isn't worth it, I know from my own experience."

"Hey!" Mario shook his hand holding the phone. "Did Mario miss anything?"

"Mmmm, nah." SMG4 shook his head lazily. "Only thing is that Miyamoto is looking for you, he seems a little upset that he can't find his "precious baby", but I think when I explain it to him your situation, he will understand."

Mario sighed with relief, and N felt calmer, murder drone did not really understand the owner of Nintendo and did not want Mario to have problems.

"Well, enough of that, are you okay?" SMG4 asked with a little concern.

"It's okie-dokey!" Mario gave him a thumbs up, then burped.

"Oh, i see you don't have a problem with food." SMG4 looked relieved. "What about you, N?"

"It's cool!" N showed him his finger guns. "Thanks to the infinite canister, me and V don't have to kill anyone anymore! Thanks a lot for this!"

"Glad you like it, it was hard to convince E Gadd to make it." SMG4 smiled. "Knowing V, I hope she didn't cause any problems?" He got a head shake in response. "Good then."

"Uh, time to take a piss!" The plumber suddenly said.

"Mario! Ew, gross! Why you didn't do this earlier?!" N spread his wings and flew away.

"Uh, is something wrong?" Both humans knew that N found human waste disgusting, even in a humorous sense. Which meant that Mario didn't want N around right now.

Mario brought the phone closer to his face and whispered something.

"Really?"

More whispers.

"Hmm, I don't know, science isn't my thing. But I can try asking those who know."

Even more whispers.

"How nice of her, I'll try to tell them about it, maybe even Miyamoto will help."

And even more whispers.

"Well, it depends on whether the others want it or not. But I think four or five for sure."

And even more whispers again.

"I don't think there will be any difficulties in this regard, you easily can pass through worlds."

And again the same thing.

"That's probably it, I can't promise when, but I think you'll know when it happens. Take care of yourself, otherwise Luigi, Meggy and Tari will come to you themselves to take you to the siblings' sleepover, you know them well enough."

"Bye-bye!" Mario waved to his best friend and turned off his phone, then tucked the homemade antenna into a small bundle and threw it away. Then Mario took his hat and used it as a parachute to float down. Just in time to see Uzi, N, V and Thad discussing something.

"I'll only do it because it'll probably be hilarious." V chuckled. N gave her a stern look.

"But, no killing anyone." Uzi crossed her arms.

"Only if they're too annoying." The murder drone looked down at her. Uzi winced when V made fun of her height.

"I don't think anyone would come to you willingly." Thad shrugged. "But they'd definitely be scared."

"That's the point." V nodded to Thad. "I'm not going to do anything to them, but they'll think the opposite. It'll be funny to watch them tremble in fear."

"I guess I wouldn't mind watching Lizzy and Doll be scared of you." Uzi giggled, earning a stern look from N as well. She noticed Mario flying up to them. "Hey, we're going to my bunker, are you in?"

"Oh yeah!" Mario was all for any action. He also held a sign that said "foreshadowing." However, the others just ignores it.

"Oh! Great!" Mario looked at the bunker door. "A wall!"

"Geez, you kinda of bitch." Uzi irritably commented on another of Mario's random lines.

"Hey, calm down." Thad patted them on the shoulders. "Let me just go over and ask the guys to open the door for me... and, H&M's and ViVi, you two should probably hide."

"What's the point if we can still get in through the ceiling." V rolled her eyes, but flew up and hovered above the door so it wouldn't be visible when it opened, N hovering next to her.

"And you, Red..." Thad said hesitantly. "I don't think you need to."

"Mario is a stealth master!" The plumber put a lampshade on his head and gave a thumbs up. The worker drone just silently agreed with the disguise.

"Wait, you're going to ask?!" Uzi grabbed Thad by the shoulder. "You didn't take the key card?!"

"Uh, yeah?" Thad didn't understand why she was so mad about that.

"Dumbass!" She ran her hand over her face. "And if there's no one to answer?! Then you'd be alone here if we weren't here!"

"Well, first of all, there's always someone there, even after..." Thad looked awkwardly at N. "There aren't that many people there, but there's definitely one or two. And secondly... um... Mr. Dorman has started wearing the door master key like a necklace."

"Well, of course, it seems the old jerk has gotten even more crazy about doors, and he'll probably start wearing clothes made from blueprints soon." Uzi muttered something else to herself, discontentedly. "Next time, steal master key from him, let him go crazy, the main thing is you're safe."

"Awwww." N looked at it with delight. "She cares about him!"

"How cute, of course she cares about her boyfriend." V giggled softly. "I thought all she could do was swearing."

"Hey guys!" Thad knocked on the door. "It's me, Thad! Let me in!"

The doors opened just a little and one of the WDF members appeared in the gap. "Thad, is that really you? Oh, praise Robo-Jesus, everyone's been looking for you!" He noticed Uzi. "Oh, Uzi! Glad to see you're alive! I'll open the door, one second!" He also noticed Mario. "That's a cool lamp."

"Thank you Ron." Thad gave the finger guns. He noticed Uzi's gaze. "Maybe I... didn't tell anyone where I was going?" Uzi put her hand to her face again.

"And, open!" The door opened completely and the trio saw that there were many drones sitting at the card table, even those that were not originally part of the WDF.

Ron was about to say something, but he started screaming as V and N landed right next to him. The worker drones sitting at the table jumped up and also looked at the murder drones in fear.

"Ah! A lamp with legs!" One of them pointed at Mario.

"Mario's Tunnel of Doom! Ooooh, very scary!" The plumber said, holding his hands out towards the frightened guards.

"Ah! A lamp with legs that pretends to be a human!" Another guard screamed and soon everyone ran away screaming in fear, except for Ron, he stood in place hiding his face with his hands.

N, V and Mario were laughing at what had just happened. While Uzi and Thad were looking at the backs of the escaping drones in disappointment.

"Please don't eat me..." Ron muttered fearfully.

"Eating cowards like you is bad for my figure." V didn't want to stop having fun at their cowardice. “And most likely I will get infected with viruses if I try such bad oil.” She laughed mockingly.

"We weren't going to eat anyone." N continued to giggle at the fact that the WDF drones were scared of the Mario-lamp, and not them. "Well, that just a shame."

"Let's just move on!" Uzi snatched the keycard from Ron's hands and closed the door. "And take that off already!" She took the lampshade off Mario's head. Then she looked at Ron with disdain. "And they're supposed to protect us. I think the D in WDF actually stands for 'defenseless'." She shook her head and walked further inside.

"Even Luigi and Tari individually are braver than all of them put together!" Mario wiped away a tear that had formed from laughter. "Well, that for sure was fun!"

"Braver next time, you said?" Thad said sarcastically standing in front of Ron. Receiving no answer, he followed the others. "It's a good thing I didn't join you."

Still in a state of panic, Ron slowly removed his hands from his face and noticed that they were all leaving. Slowly touching himself in disbelief, he raised his hands to the ceiling. "I'm alive! Alive!"

Chapter Text

"I can't do tricks on a skateboard, I'm depressed ;(" Mario read one of the graffiti on the wall and laughed. "Hah, what a loser!"

The group would have found the atmosphere a bit scary if it weren't for the abundance of these graffiti. Like: "no skateboard - no point :(", "i cant do a double ollie, life sucks" and even "even if I get legs it won't be the same >:("

"A worthy reason." V chuckled. "And I thought it was impossible to become even more pathetic, but this someone prove me wrong."

"I wonder who it could be?" Uzi put her hand to her chin thoughtfully. "I thought that I am the only emo here."

"I don't remember seeing anyone with a skateboard." Thad looked at the similar graffiti doubtfully. "And without legs."

"Ooh, I'd like to try!" N was interested. Mario handed him his a skateboard pulled out of his pocket. "Thanks Mario!" Taking the toy, N rolled towards the exit, almost falling over along the way.

"I wonder if this will scare them even more?" V mused. "If they were scared of Mario with a lampshade on his head, what would they think of N on a skateboard?" V chuckled again, she was in a very good mood.

"That he's some kind of hellish chariot of painful death." Uzi chuckled too and made sure Mario was right behind her.

"This looks pretty cool." Thad watched as N rolled. He turned to Mario. "Can I have one too?" Having received what he asked for, Thad rolled after N. "Thanks!"

Uzi and V watched indifferently as these two disappeared from sight.

"Ugh, boys..." Uzi was about to say something else, but noticed her father running towards them. "Oh, fantastic..."

"Uzi! What's going on..." He noticed V and took a nervous step back. "You led a murder drone here... again?!"

"Yeah, so what?" Uzi put her hands on her hips. "I'm an adult now, I can do whatever I want." She smiled cheekily. "Whatchu gon' do, binch?"

"Hah, nice." V chuckled.

"Language! Uzi, I'm your father and you can't do this..." Khan focused his attention entirely on his daughter, forgetting about V.

"Peekaboo!" Mario, who was hiding behind Uzi, peeked out from behind her.

Khan, in turn, saw human and acted very worthy of a drone of his position... he screamed like a little girl. The scream was so loud and high-pitched that cracks appeared on Uzi and V's visors, and Mario's ears exploded. After that Khan fainted.

"Why do you need doors if you have ultrasonic weapons like that?" V ran her hand over her face. "I afraid to think what would happen if he was given some kind of sound booster."

"It sure can't be worse than Boopkins and Toad singing." Mario pulled a box of spare ears out of his pocket and replaced the blown ones. He held out his palm to Uzi.

"That was... awesome." She gave him a high five. "Aside from almost going deaf." Crouching down, she saw the master key hanging on a string around her father's neck. "Wow, he really does use it as amulet." She took off the master key. She smiled slyly at Mario. "Wanna do it again?"

"Hell yeah!" Plumber jumped up excitedly.

"Loud screams, not the death I was expecting." V shook her head. "But I guess it's worth it."

Walking down the hallway that was near her class, Uzi saw that the panicking WDF had rushed through and broken everything that could be broken in a panic. The chaos was funny to watch.

"Of course it was you, freak." Uzi's entertaining look at the aftermath of the chaos was interrupted by one of her least favorite drones.

"Ugh, it's you two." Uzi sighed as she watched Lizzy and Doll approach her. "And here I was wondering why I felt something stinky coming."

"I told you, Doll, as soon as she appears, something bad happens." Lizzy looked at her friend with a smug smile.

"Конечно... (Sure...)" Doll rolled her eyes.

"Bite me! Uzi shouted. "You know what, Glizzy?" Uzi managed to hold back her laughter at the hateful expression on Lizzy's face. "My coming back and our valiant gatekeepers running screaming in horror when they saw the lamp are definitely not related."

"A lamp?" Doll asked, confused.

"A lamp!" Uzi nodded. "You know, the one with arms and legs and it wants to touch you." Uzi's very strange comments made Doll and Lizzy look at each other in confusion.

"You've completely frozen your processor out there." Lizzy took Doll's hand. "Let's get out of here, she's completely lost her mind."

"Oh, come on, girls!" Uzi grabbed their shoulders. "You're leaving without meeting my new friend? Hey, he's already here!"

Hearing the sound of something sliding across the floor, the girls stared in surprise at something with a lampshade for a head approaching them in a T-pose.

"Hey, you have a nice liver, can I have it?" Suddenly, a knife appeared in the hand of the disguised Mario, forcing the drones to take a cautious step back.

"Damn, who knew that a man with a lampshade on his head could actually be scary?" Uzi tried to hold back her laughter, looking at the confusion of her bullies.

Taking another step closer, Mario suddenly received a punch in the face from Doll. "Ah! Ow! What the hell is wrong with you?!" Taking the lampshade off his head, Mario began to rub his bruised nose, thereby surprising the girls even more.

"It that a..." Lizzy muttered in shock, pulled out her phone and began streaming.

"Человек... (A human...)" Doll said even more furiously.

Only it seemed that Mario noticed a completely different detail in Doll's voice. "Someone tell me what she's saying! What the fuck is she saying? Dude I don't speak vodka!" The plumber pulled a small tablet out of his pocket. At this point, Uzi couldn't hold back her laughter and the some giggles occasionally came out. The cheerleader looked surprised, and the Russian-speaking drone was offended.

The inscription "PutOS" with a smiling head of a bald man appeared on screen, but after a few seconds it was replaced by a blue screen.

"Oh, come on!" Mario shouted, put the tablet back in his pocket and began to quickly search for something else.

And he found what he was looking for, a remote control with many buttons. The remote control itself was white and red and had a symbol of a red rectangle with a white triangle inside. Pointing the remote at Doll, Mario pressed at one of the buttons, nothing happened, but it seems the plumber was satisfied with what he did and put the remote back.

"E questo cos'è... (And what is this...)" Doll covered her mouth in shock. Her speech sounded completely different.

Uzi couldn't hold back any longer and began to laugh out loud. Even Lizzy chuckled quietly.

"Now you speak a language that Mario understands." Mario looked very pleased with his work. Then he said something something that to Uzi and Lizzy sounded like complete gibberish. But not for Doll, unfortunately for her.

"Che cosa hai fatto?! (What did you do?!)" Doll grabbed Mario by the neck. "Riporta la mia voce alla normalità! (Return my voice back to normal!)" She began to strangle him.

The sound of something falling behind her made Doll stop. "I wouldn't advise you to do that." A mocking voice made her flinch. Throwing Mario to the ground, Doll turned around. The murder drone was standing in front of her.

Lizzy, who was filming this, hid behind Uzi, who was still laughing. She was too scared to be picky at the moment.

"Voi... (You...)" Doll whispered quietly, but angrily.

"I don't think we've met, I usually remember my victims." V smiled ominously. A clawed hand grabbed Doll's shoulder. "Although, I remember someone similar to you. Did you miss her?" The grip tightened, V enjoyed the hateful expression on Doll's face. "How about getting to know each other... closer?" 

"I think Lizzy would be more interested in this." Uzi said, calming down a bit. The cheerleader behind her took a step back, scared. "A very close encounter with a drone that could kill you and drink all your oil, what could be better?"

"Oh, I guess you're right, Uzi." V let go of Doll and started walking towards the scared Lizzy. "You said this one is pretty tasty, I'd like to check it out." V grin widened.

Uzi chuckled as she watched V walk towards Lizzy who tried to back away.

"Ti schieri con i droni assassini?! (You side with the murder drones?!)" Doll asked her, looking at Uzi like she was a traitor.

"More like they work for me." Uzi shrugged. "And Mario, too, sort of." The plumber in question was sitting on the ground, twirling a lampshade.

"Come hai potuto?! Non sono l'unica ad aver perso la famiglia a causa loro! (How could you?! I'm not the only one who's lost family to them!)" Doll sounded very indignant.

"Like they have a choise." Uzi didn't care about Doll's words. "And what does all this family crap have to do with me? Want to cry? Find someone else to be your pillow." Uzi chuckled, seeing that her comment had offended Doll. She suddenly became more serious. "And if you touch them with even a finger, my railgun will reduce you to ashes." Uzi picked Mario up off the floor. "Okay, that was pretty funny, Red, V, let's keep moving."

"Tsk. I just got to the most fun part." V groaned but followed Uzi, leaving Lizzy huddled in the corner.

Left alone, Lizzy stopped streaming (even if it was one of the most popular streams) and walked up to Doll. "Why haven't you... done anything?"

"È troppo presto. (It's too early.)" Doll hissed through her teeth. "E non so cosa aspettarmi da un essere umano. (And I don't know what to expect from a human.)"

"You still speak... whatever it is." The cheerleader said, puzzled.

"Mio Dio... Strapperò le braccia a quell'uomo. (My god... I will rip that human arms off.) "

"Oh, that was awesome, Red." Uzi couldn't stop giggling. "That was the first time I've seen anything resembling emotion on Doll's face." She patted the man on the shoulder approvingly. "And you did a good job too, V."

"Mario has 200 IQ! Mario didn't learn math and corn neuroprogramming for nothing!" The plumber put on his sunglasses, still looking pleased with his work.

"An unusual trick, I admit." V clapped her hands slowly. "Too bad you didn't let me have my fun." She looked at the worker drone with displeasure.

"Don't worry, you can do whatever you want to Glizzy when we leave, I won't be coming back here anyway." Uzi's face showed a satisfied smile, V shared her mood.

"I thought you were the type who didn't use nicknames." V asked with interest.

"You have to earn a nickname from me, it's rare. And it's more of a Thad thing than mine." Uzi shrugged.

They walked on in silence, almost, Mario hummed something under his breath and V began to scratch the wall with her claws out of boredom.

"Lost family to them, my ass!" Uzi remembered Doll's words. "I don't give a damn what she says, THEY are my family now."

She had this thought after returning from the mall, N took care of her like an brother, and V acted like a bitchy sister. The main thing is that Uzi liked this attitude! She had never felt such warmth inside from interacting with someone. In any case, this is better than a dead mother about whom she knows almost nothing and a pathetic excuse for a father whom she does not even want to think about.

And Mario, it's not a fact that without him some of the events would have happened, the trip to the mall for sure. He's definitely her friend, and Uzi wants to give him a gift, but she has no idea what kind, a plumber is both simple and complex in this regard. The fact that she's never given him a gift before didn't help either.

She thought about making him spaghetti, but the fact that she has no idea what cooking is and the lack of... everything cancelled that idea out.

A weapon wouldn't work either, Mario could take anything out of his pocket anyway. And, well, the idea of ​​giving Mario a weapon she made herself didn't seem like the best, Uzi is sure that the plumber has never heard of such a thing as careful handling. She was worried more about her possible gift and not about the invulnerable Italian.

A little upset, Uzi decided to put it off for later, she just doesn't have a suitable idea at the now.

"Hey guys!" Once outside Uzi's house, the trio saw N and Thad, both looking a little worse for wear, but very happy. "How are you guys doing? N&M's and I had a great time!"

"Except for the fact that we fell a lot." N smiled, looking a little embarrassed.

"Dude, we're new to this, is this normal." Thad patted his friend on the shoulder.

"We? Awesome, I think I can safely put this day down as one of the happiest." Uzi entered the house and the others followed her.

"Not bad at all." V nodded in agreement. "I missed the prize, but I think I'll catch up later."

"I had a great time, hee hee!" Mario laughed. Once in Uzi's room, the plumber stared in delight. "Oh, nice computer you got here!"

N looked at the posters, notes, and everything else on the walls with interest. "Ooooh, I wonder what that is."

V picked up a framed photo of Uzi when she was little untrained neural network and sat on the bed. "So this is what babies look like."

Thad just leaned on the door frame, he had been to Uzi's place before and didn't see anything new. "Dusty as usual, huh?"

"Bite me!" Uzi give Thad the finger, then she pushed Mario away from the computer. "Move. This will take a while, I've pirated a lot of stuff. Mostly anime."

"Anime is trash!" Mario yelled.

Uzi glared at him. "Say that again, fatso."

"Anime belongs in the trash!" As Mario finished, Uzi jumped on him.

They started to fighting, causing a bit of a mess, and soon they inadvertently spread their battlefield to the rest of the house.

"Uh, should we do something?" Thad asked worriedly. He managed to dodge when the battle cloud of the purple worker drone and the plumber almost knocked him off his feet.

"I don't think they're actually trying to hurt each other." V rolled her eyes before standing up and putting the photo back. "Simple childishness."

"I don't get why Mario doesn't like anime, one of his friends is literally an anime girl who's almost six feet tall and wields a giant hammer." N said, confused.

"Mario has a lot of unusual friends." Thad commented.

"Which means N will fit in well." V thought to herself with a smile.

"This is an understatement." N chuckled before looking around. "Hmm, what would Uzi want to take?"

"Everything?" Thad stuck the poster back on the wall. "She probably wouldn't want to leave anything behind, everything here is important to her, and that's basically all she has."

"It's a good room. Too bad she can't just take the whole thing." V picked up the framed photo of Uzi and her father from the floor and broke it.

The pause was then interrupted by the sounds of Mario and Uzi fighting.

"Mario." The three of them came to a realization.

"It would be weird if he couldn't do that." Thad smiled.

"He was able to summon a demonic copy of himself, so he can do that too." V said and left the room.

"I hope I don't turn into a cube this time." N chuckled as he remembered something and followed V.

"What about me?" Thad thought alone. "I don't want to be buried underground forever, Mom and Dad said I deserve better than this. But on the other hand, the outside is unknown, it could be dangerous. What should I choose?"

Chapter Text

"Well, that's... weird..." Uzi said, holding a small cube in her hand. "Are you sure I won't accidentally crush it?" She looked at Mario questioningly.

"Oh yeah!" The plumber gave a thumbs up, putting the strange pistol with a screen attached back into his pocket.

"Wow..." Thad looked in amazement at the empty space that used to be Uzi's room from which only metal walls remained.

"That's right." N carefully took the cube from Uzi's hands. "I've seen Mario use this before. I have no idea how it works, but you sure can count on it." He tried to break the cube, but no matter how hard N tried, he couldn't. "This thing can do literally anything, well, I think so." Uzi take her shrinked room back.

"Literally anything?" V asked with interest. "It sounds too incredible to be true"

"Yeah." N nodded. "Shrinking, spawning objects out of nowhere, literally erasing anything from existence and even creating clones and much more." He looked back at plumber. "Mario once made a bunch of clones of his brother as a joke, it's really unnerving when you say one name and about a hundred pairs of eyes look at you." N shuddered.

"That's was a lot of fun, Mario even teach them some cool tricks." Mario sat on his ass, started spinning and making 'Weeeeee' sound.

N leaned towards V, Uzi and Thad and began to whisper. "That thing could be dangerous, Mario more, um, careful now, but when I first met him, it was something. Clone thing was one of harmless things he do." He squinted at the plumber.

"And Mario just casually carries that thing in his pocket." Thad chuckled. "Real smooth of you, Red."

"Wait." Uzi look at him puzzled. "How long have you known each other? You said it was a long time, but I don't remember you being gone for long, and V can say the same." V nodded to her.

"I don't know." Mario answered boredly, he not really interested in thinking about such things.

"Something about different time zones." N looked unsure. "I was in Mario's world for a few months, but when I came back, it was only a few seconds passed." He shrugged. "This all interdimensional thing sounds really confusing to me."

"So that's why you were so happy to see me." Uzi looked satisfied with the answer. "And now I understand why you were so socially awkward one moment and more normal the next."

"Decent personal growth." V's comment made N blush. "Too bad it didn't happen earlier, I would have loved to see the shock on J's face when you confronted her."

The rest of the conversation was interrupted by a blue wormhole appeared, after a short pause, a small object fell out of it and then the wormhole disappeared.

Being the closest, N picked up the object that appeared, which turned out to be something very similar to a retro game console. There was a piece of paper attached to it.

"It says 'for Mario', here." N handed the console to the plumber.

Mario took it and pressed the red button that was labeled 'start'. After that, noise appeared on the screen and after a while it was replaced by SMG4.

"Hey Mario!" He waved his hand. "If you can see this, it means we've made some progress."

Everyone crowded around Mario with interest, they was interested  to see another human. N in turn was happy to see his friend once again.

"Well, I won't explain it for long." Meanwhile, SMG4 continued. "We have everthing we need; scientists and resourses, but the main problem is the feedback."

"Hm?" Mario scratched his head in confusion. "No one to feed?" Others looked at Mario like he was an idiot (which he is).

"And no, I don't mean feed as food." SMG4 rolled his eyes. "I know you good enough and I answer in advance." He signed. "My god, recording something other than video is surprisingly harder..." He silenced for second. "Oh yeah, this is recording by the way, I forgot to mention that."

"No, SMG4 is trapped in the Game Boy!" Mario whined and started shaking the console. Uzi hit him on the head to stop fooling around, and N took the console from him.

"Just in case, I am NOT trapped in the Game Boy and I am perfectly fine... and don't ask why we use Game Boy for this." SMG4 rolled his eyes again. "Okay, stop wasting time. I need you to climb to the high place again and hold the button for a few minutes. That will give us a signal of where exactly we need to go. N, I'm sure you're hear all this, so please help him with that. SMG4 is out." The screen went black.

"He's still using monologues." N smiled. "It's nice of 4 to try so hard to get you home, although I don't understand why it's so urgent, you usually do it yourself."

"Then we need to hurry." V ​​thought to herself. "The sooner N leaves, the better for him." She looked at Uzi with a little sadness and the realization finally came to her. "Wait... I don't even know if they plan to bring Mario back with someone else! I screwed this up..."

"What the hell was that?!" Uzi snatched the console from N's hands and pointed at it.

"Oh, it's just was Mario's best friend, well, and my friend too, 4 is trying to bring him home." N smiled.

"V told Mario to take N with him." The plumber pointed at V, and then stuck his finger up his nose.

She was very shocked that he revealed their 'agreement' so easily. "You shouldn't have said that!" She grabbed him, although it seemed Mario didn't care.

"Take me with him?" N raised an eyebrow, looking at V. "What do you mean?"

A pained expression appeared on V's face, she didn't want to explain why she did this and for what reason. She didn't want to ruin their perception that the dismantling drones were the most dangerous thing on Copper-9 with the news that there was something that wanted them all dead, and that, most importantly, it was capable of doing so.

She wanted to leave, but Uzi's hand grabbed her and didn't let V escape. "Oh no, you're not going anywhere until you explain yourself!"

Thad, who wanted to say something fell silent, realizing that something was wrong. Looking around the living room they were in, he noticed the absence of one detail: a very red, noisy and spaghetti-loving detail. Mario left. Of course, Mario didn't seem to cause mass destruction just by existing, but he decided to play it safe. Looking back at the trio and realizing that they would be busy for a while, Thad quickly went to look for the escaped Italian.

"Mamma mia, how boring, Mario missed TV." The plumber thought to himself as he rolled on his ass down the hallway. "And there's not even a scary TV guy to punch."

He was bored, and as everyone in Mushroom Kingdom knows, a bored Mario is a dangerous Mario. The plumber may be a complete idiot, but he knew that causing chaos for fun was not a good idea here, this wasn't his house where he would be easily forgiven (of course, only after he cleaned up his mess), so it was a little hard for the avatar of the universe to restrain himself.

If his new friends weren't around, Mario would have snapped a long time ago, especially considering he hates being completely alone. So far, Outpost 3 has avoided the fate of catching fire and burning to the ground (defying the laws of physics), exploding (defying the laws of logic), or going extinct (defying the comedy tag).

Looking around, Mario realized that he was in the same hallway where with Uzi and V they pranked those two cheerleader-looking drones. The hallway looked a little better than it had before, but it still looked like a bunch of elephants had just passed by.

Out of boredom, Mario decided to peek behind the closed door, carefully opening it, looking inside... and immediately closing the door back. One look at the tables, which turned out to be desks, was enough for him to understand that this was a school. That one incident with the bald hobo in green who taught Mario math was enough for him to want to stay away from schools for the rest of his life, except when he himself wants to be there and right now he don't want to be in school.

After waiting a bit and making sure that no some crazy teacher was going to chase him and beat with a ruler, Mario headed further. He didn't wander for long until he noticed a drone in a WDF uniform standing with its back to him. Rubbing his hands in anticipation, Mario tiptoed towards the drone, wanting to scare it for his own entertainment.

Finding himself just a step away from his target, Mario began making loud noises for a whole minute, only to find that the drone was not responding. Surprised by this outcome, Mario walked around the drone to see what was wrong, and the answer became obvious, the drone was sleeping... and she (her hairdo obviously said it) had just taken a sip from the mug she was holding, still sleeping. The smell quickly made it clear that it was coffee. (he didn't even tried to think why drone drinks coffee)

"Khan, I'm working... zzz... on it." Sleepyhead muttered. "They ran away... zzz... I get it..." Another sip of coffee. "I've been working... zzz... nonstop... zzz... give me a break..."

Tired of waiting, Mario grabbed the sleeping drone, slapped her in the face and began shaking her. "Wake up!" The shaking became stronger. "Wake up!" The shaking became even stronger. "Aaaaagh! Wake up!" Realizing that it had no effect (and he hadn't even spilled her coffee) Mario put her back on ground.

"Mama fucker!" He stamped his foot on the ground and walked on, leaving that drone to continue sleeping and drinking coffee. This didn't help with his boredom, and the not-so-colorful surroundings didn't help Mario, who was used to an abundance of color.

Continuing to wandering, he came across an unexpected duet; Lizzy and Doll. Mario tried to go away from these two, he didn't find them interesting; the cheerleader looked and sounded like a typical character from a college soap opera (Mario had to watch a lot of them when he was with Melony, to his biggest regret). And the Russian-speaking drone who became Italian had emotions at the level of stone or even worse, which definitely didn't make conversation with her any more interesting.

"Hey, you!" Unfortunately, he was unable to leave unnoticed. Turning around, the plumber saw Lizzy and Doll approaching him. Lizzy was in her usual bitch-like mood, and Doll seemed to calm down, because she did not try to strangle Mario. "looks like the freakiest of all freaks has lost his fellow minds?" She asked mockingly. Mario ignored her, and Doll's piercing gaze too.

"Ugh, you're like Saiko, but boring." Mario thought to himself not even trying to listen what the cheerleader says. "Mario would rather die."

It seems she didn't notice this yet and continued talking about something, Doll made no contribution and continued to try to set him on fire with her eyes. Mario's brain was focused on a much more important task: imagining a plate of spaghetti with legs doing a conga line with candy, soda, pizza, and Ronald McDonald, the famous clown was made of cheeseburgers. Meanwhile, Meat Mallet Luigi and Leggy started arm-wrestling, while Eggdog and Beeg SMG4 competed to see who could impersonate a microwave better, and after that...

It seemed Mario's blank stare become more noticeable and Lizzy finally sees it. "Hey, are you even listening?!" She flicked her fingers in front of his face, breaking Mario out of his thoughts. "I just got to your freak group, that crazy emo, Thad which she somehow got along with, you out of nowhere, and two murder drones!" She leaned toward him and whispered so Doll can't hear her. "Although, that V is pretty hot."

"Why are you gay?" Mario asked, slightly surprised, such a quick crush was strange for him... or maybe he didn't find V attractive.

Looking at the plumber in shock, Lizzy tried to say something, but she couldn't and, getting angry she kicked him in the most important place for any Italian who loves meatballs, in the groin. A dull sound was heard and Mario was glad to feel the absence of pain. Groin protection saved Mario from pain, perhaps it was the best birthday present he had ever get. Lizzy, in turn, began to jump on one leg, holding the one she had kicked Mario with, while constantly repeating "Ow!"

Mario chuckled at what he saw, mentally he showed both middle fingers to the entire universe, thereby telling her that his Baby Marios would not suffer anymore.

Meanwhile, in the absolute void, the Mighty Divine Being who was reading the newspaper felt the bitterness of loss. "I felt a great disturbance in the Force..."

"Riporta la mia voce alla normalità! (Bring my voice back to normal!)." Doll said rudely, looking serious.

"Say the magic word!" Mario put the wizard's hat on his head for effect. "Repeat after Mario... Pizza!" Throwing up his hands, several sparks flew out of them. Mario looked at Doll expectantly.

"Non fare scherzi con me! Ridammi la voce, accidenti! (Don't play games with me! Give me my voice back, damn it!)" One of Doll's eyes was replaced with a triangular symbol.

But Mario didn't care about this change. He was rather disappointed that Doll did not repeat after him. "Boo!" Mario put the wizard's hat back in his pocket and gave Doll a thumbs down. "Nah, you big monkey." If Doll had said 'please' he would have actually returned her voice to its how it was, but apparently Doll didn't need that, otherwise she would have said 'please'. 

Doll growled, angry at the plumber's refusal, then pointed her hand at him and...

"Oh, there you are dude!" They both turned to see Thad, leaning his hands on his knees, tiredly. "You've sure get far." He noticed that the plumber was not alone. "Oh, hey Doll." Thad waved at her.

Without saying anything, she turned around, grabbed Lizzy, who was still jumping, and walked away.

"Red, dude, why did you leave?" Thad walked up to him. "Honestly, I don't think this is the best time for a tour, especially since you told us that secret of V."

"Mario is bored!" The plumber raised his hands in frustration.

"So that's the point? I get it." Thad nodded in agreement. "Yeah, its kinda boring here, but I have an idea." He sees curiosity on Mario's face. "Board games! I have some at home."

"Ooooooh... no one's going to jump on it in the middle of a game?" Mario asked.

"Uh, no?" The worker drone had already realized that Mario had quite a diverse group of friends. And now, apparently become accustomed to this keep happening, Mario was now afraid that this would happen again.

"Let's-a fucking gooooo!" Mario shouted, picked Thad up and then ran back to Uzi's house at full speed, not paying attention to his friend suprised screams.

"I screwed up, I get it, that's enough!" V crossed her arms, looking tiredly at Uzi.

"You were literally hoping for luck, even though some scary crap is threatening us all!" She poked V accusingly.

Meanwhile, N, sitting on the couch, had long ago temporarily turned off his sound perception; listening to V and Uzi's argument turned out to be very tiring for him, especially when he realized that their argument was easily resolved.

Having his memories back with V help, N remembered Cyn and what a monster she had become. And V found her scary enough to try to save him with Mario's help. N himself was not at all against settling in the Mushroom Kingdom, everything was much better there than on Copper-9, but he would do that only if Uzi, V, and Thad (if he wanted) will be with him.

And then the main reason for the argument emerged - teleportation. More precisely, its disposability and limitation to one person. At least Uzi and V thought so, only N understood that they thought that the teleporter was here, on Copper-9, and not in Mario's world. So even if these shortcomings were there, what prevented the plumber's friends from making more than one teleporter?

He tried to convey this idea to them, but it seemed that the girls were too focused to argue with each other, the only plus was that at least it looked like an argument between sisters, and it was nice to see how they both cared about him, although they were still trying to prove to each other that they were right.

And that is why N, having given up, decided to sit on the couch and start reasoning. N took the understanding that his life was once different more or less calmly, and even the thought that Tessa was dead too. If it weren't for Melony, then everything would have been exactly the opposite, conversations with the watermelon girl showed him how to cope with the loss of a close friend.

The last thing on his mind was the rest, all the other drones that would be left behind on Copper 9 to be torn apart by Cyn, while N and his friends would end up in a more suitable world for life.

His kindness and newly-emerging selfishness fought hard to get N on their side.

"Leaving so many to die is terrible!" N looked at the Angel-like mini-him who was sitting on his shoulder and looking at him pleadingly. "We can't do that!"

"Of course we can!" N turned his head to the other side and saw the Devil-like mini-him sitting on his other shoulder. "We don't owe them anything, considering they'll probably try to kill us themselves! The only ones we should be concerned about is ourselves, Uzi, V, Thad, and Mario!"

"What would happen if we thought that way when we were hunting Uzi, huh?!" Angel pointed accusingly at Devil. "Then none of this would be happening!"

"This is called combining our forces, you stupid plucked chicken!" Devil crossed his arms. "Morally gray, that's the only reason why we're here! With your stupid charity, we'll only end up in the trashcan!" Devil N looked at the original. "Think about it, this won't get us anywhere, we won't get any gratitude, and we'll only upset our friends!"

"We can't live with such a sin on our soul!" Angel N knelt down and prayed. "Oh, Robo-Jesus, please forgive us!"

"We're robots, dumbass, we have no soul!" Devil  facepalmed and looked at N with hope. "I hope you do what you think is right, without killing us in process, and please, don't listen to that brainless idiot ever again."

Devil N disappeared and so did Angel N.

This strange dialogue gave N enough thoughts to think about. So far, the only thought he was sure of was that defeating Cyn would come at a very heavy price.

And from this thought N was going to draw his final conclusion.

Chapter Text

"Hey everyone, we’re back!" Thad and Mario stepped into living room, lugging several boxes filled with board games. "We brought Monopoly, Crocodile Dentist and even..." The worker drone fell quiet. "I missed something again, sweet."

The mood had shifted significantly since he had left; Uzi and V were positioned in opposite corners, still grumbling at one another, and N was nowhere to be found, Thad assumes that he went to do what SMG4 asked. The most unique thing was Khan's presence, though judging by his frightened expression, he clearly wished to be anywhere else.

"Where did N go?" Mario asked, trying to ignore the WDF leader. "Mario wanted to show him his favorite game!" The plumber retrieved the Crocodile Dentist and plunged his hand into it, causing the toy's jaws to snap shut, and Mario falled to the ground. "Ah, classic." He remarked with pleasure.

"Whatever you say." Thad regarded the toy crocodile with a hint of skepticism before shifting his focus to Uzi's father. "Hey, Mr. Doorman, what you... doing here?" The question felt very awkward since this was Khan's home and he had every right to be there.

Khan rose from the couch and approached them with cautious strides, casting wary glances at Mario. "Your friend... uh... mentioned he was going outside to... press something?" Noticing the lack of response, Khan slowly circled around the pair and hastened towards the door. "I..." Without saying anything more sensible, he ran away.

"He has no style, he has no grace, this dad is a fucking disgrace!" Mario sang briefly. "Even Mario's dad, who Mario has never seen, is better that this!" The plumber shook his head.

"I dont get it, what so scary?" Thad gazed towards the exit with dissapointed. "If N and V wanted to do something to him, they would already do this." With a sigh, he made his way to the couch.

"Awesome writing, that's not sarcasm for sure." Mario remarked to no one in particular.

"Screw you, fat ass! I'm trying!" The author showed both middle fingers to the screen.

"Yeah, yeah, everyone says that and then they make Mario go crazy for no reason." The plumber waved his hand dismissively at the air.

"Dude, who are you talking to?" Thad looked at him blankly. "Sit down and let's start play, we don't have anything else to do since N&M's decided to go press the button all alone. Are you with us girls?" Not getting an answer from either of them, Thad shrugged indifferently. "Okay, more for us then, are you ready for your butt getting kicked in Monopoly, Red?"

"Oh, its on, asshole!" Mario sat down next to him with a determined look on his face. "Too bad, I'm the king!"

"Great! You held down the button and we have got a signal!" The SMG4 image reappeared on the display. "Well done N! I'm sure exactly you did it, Mario usually does something else than what he suppose to, but I think you already knew that." The Meme Guardian chuckled. "Now just wait, we'll get you out soon, just dont lose the console." The screen then went dark.

With a sigh, Serial Designation N sat down. The knowledge that he was in the middle of something very crucial and was contributing to its progress evoked in him different emotions; from excitement to a strange apathy. A few months (or more if count the time he spent in the Mario world) ago, N would never have thought in his life that he would ever leave Copper-9, or more like: he didn't think in general much back then.

His life before this consisted of hunting worker drones, unsuccessful attempts to talk with V (he remembered Mario shouting a word 'Simp'), and listening to J idolizing what turned out to be a long-destroyed company. So monotonous and pointless.

He understand V's actions to protect him and he's not blaming her, as for J... well, there is no point in talking about the dead, N will forget her in one day.

Then Uzi happened. Such a bright and beautiful ray of light in the darkness (N forgot about her megalomaniac tendencies for a while), N could not even dream of a best friend, their relationship began to remind him of the relationship of a plumber and a cyborg girl, a sibling-like.

Then Mario himself and his world, not the best first impression, but then it was the best time N had ever spent in his life. Living with the realization that he didn’t have to kill anyone to survive, living for himself, for his friends, and genuinely feeling alive was incredible for N.

And now he was on the verge of finally having the best time from a short moment become a permanent phenomenon for him. And he was going to fight for it with all his might, even if Cyn himself came to kill him, he would fight. For himself, for Uzi, for everyone he was proud to call friends!

"You finally started thinking like a normal person!" A high-pitched voice made N turn his head to his shoulder in surprise. There was a another miniature of him, not a Devil one, and not a Angel, just him. "Proper priorities are a good thing!"

"You... are you trying to convince me of something too?" N asked doubtfully, that conversation between Devil and Angel still lingered in his mind, it was strange and N didn't want to think about it for long.

"Oh, Biscuits, no!" Miniature shook his head vigorously. "You made your own decision, and unlike those two, I am not on either side of conscience." He put his hands behind his head and began to float. "I'm your subconscious."

"So, it's like, you different from just 'good vs bad'?" N raised an eyebrow.

"Yes! These two imaginary simpletons think too... simply..." The subconscious awkwardly fell silent. "Ahem, anyways, they only think about what is good and bad, and nothing beyond that. I'm far better in this." He looked pleased with himself. "I understand the reasons, I understand the consequences, I understand the price and reward, I value common sense and desire. But most importantly, I value You."

"Uhh, that sounds like selfishness." N was confused.

"If you knew more about psychology, I could explain it to you better, after all, I am you, I can't know more than you." The subconscious crossed its arms, looking at N in disappointment. "But what else can you expect from a murder drone that talks to himself and thinks that it is not actually it."

"Huh?" To N's surprise, the subconscious disappeared.

Subconscious returned for a moment. "You went a little crazy from the emotional stress, but you've already recovered with our help. Let's not have a next time, okay?" It disappeared again.

"Oh." N wanted someone to call him an idiot, in this case he deserved it. "So this is what go coo coo crazy feels like." He winced. "This sucks."

N sat for a few more minutes looking around, he was expecting the uninvited guests to appear on his shoulders again. But afther remembering that they was his imagination, N stood up. "Wow, this whole character development thing is so tedious, I hope the others are doing something much more fun than boring self-analysis."

The red cap figure moved from a red square to another red square, passing four more red squares, as well as a purple beanie figure standing on a square that said "Collect 200 coins salary as you pass."

"Oh yeah!" Mario shouted excitedly while spinning on his butt, and then looked at the huge mountain of game money next to him and grinned. "Mario is the winner!"

The unconscious Uzi with her arms and one leg twisted behind her back said nothing.

"Woo yeah baby! That's what I've been waiting for! That's what it's all about!" Mario stood up and victoriously threw his hands in the air, while not paying attention to the bullet that flew past his head. "Mario finally did it! Suck Mario's penis!"

A piece of furniture that flew past him, thrown by something red, also did not attract the plumber's attention, he was too drunk with his victory in Monopoly. Such a long streak of unsuccessful games was over for the spaghetti lover.

He would have continued to dance and hum victoriously to himself, if he had not heard a painful cry.

"Hmm, it seems Mario forgot something." He put his hand to his chin.

"I should have killed you along with your worthless parents!" It was V, the murder drone holding on to the place where the other had been with other one. "I would gladly do such a favor to your bunker!"

"Puoi parlare quanto vuoi, non ti aiuterà. (You can talk as much as you want, it will not help you.)" Doll said emotionlessly, examining the knife with which she cut off V's hand, and then she licked the oil that was on the knife. "Uno di voi non avrebbe dovuto andarsene, altrimenti non avrei deciso di agire adesso”. (One of you should not have left, otherwise I would not have decided to act now.)”

Mario was so focused on the game that he even forgot what situation he was in all this time. Doll attack not impress him, she reminded him of Enzo, but not scary or threatening.

"Hmm, what to do" Looking for advice, Mario looked at the unconscious Thad, who was lying next to Uzi. Obviously didn't get a response from his knocked out friends, the plumber decided to go another way, he will figure out what to do with the help of remembering one of the SGM4 videos.

(Why doesn't Mario just go and help V? No one knows, not even the Italian himself, logical thinking is often absent from his head.)

The cloud of thoughts that appeared above his head (visible only to Mario himself) showed how Mario inflated his hand and increased it several times and with one hit sent Doll into space.

But after that, Donkey Kong, who was in the dressed as film director's said "Not funny, didn't laugh." SMG4, who sitting next to him, said that Mario's idea was too unoriginal and they need something more entertaining.

Mario's hand deflated.

The cloud exploded, and was replaced by another.

In this one, Mario took a shotgun out of nowhere and after shouting "The kids gonna die tonight!" he was about to run towards Doll, but was interrupted again.

This time, by Black Scotish Cyclops who shouted "You suck!" he was also dressed in a director's costume. SMG4 shook his head in disappointment.

"Oh, come on!" Mario threw the shotgun on the ground in irritation, but the force of the blow caused the weapon to shoot off his head.

The cloud exploded again, and was replaced by another one once again.

This time, Bob appeared next to Mario, Goro looked around in confusion. Without saying anything, the plumber grabbed his friend and began to stretch him, after a few seconds and one 'Oh my ovaries!' Mario revealed to the world what he had created: a Bob Launcher! Taking the weapon, the plumber was already heading towards Doll with a malicious laugh, but he was interrupted once again.

"Lol, Chris do you see this crap?" Swag said, pointing at Mario. The military men were also wearing director suits. Swagmaster6969696969 was chuckling as he looked at Mario, while Christopher was leaning his head on his hand, bored.

But this time, SMG4 didn't seem disappointed with the idea. "It might work, but I think we need a more popular character among the fans, Bob is a good idea, but we need something even better."

Ignoring the offended "Fuck you!" from Bob, SMG4 pulled out a huge wheel out of nowhere, it was divided into many sections, each with a silhouette on it.

Mario watched in interest as the wheel began to slow down, passing familiar silhouettes until it stopped at one that could be described as "a head with legs and long hair."

"Oooh!" SMG4 rubbed his hands together in excitement. "They're definitely going to like this one." 4 turned to the plumber and a dark hood appeared on him. "Dew it Mario!"

The cloud disappeared, this time without exploding.

"Okay." The plumber shrugged. Mario reached into his pocket, throwing out unnecessary things, like a rope, and after a few minutes, Mario found what he was looking for. He pulled out four Goomba-like creatures; no taller than Mario's knees, they had red hair, and a beanie with headphones and glasses. It was Leggies!

They happily made a sound that sounded like "EEEEEE" when they saw Mario, he waved at them. Mario waited until they fell silent and then leaned down and began to whisper something and pointing towards the place where V and Doll were fighting.

Three of them were about to run where the plumber pointed, but the fourth said something in their language, which stopped them. After that, they all stared at Mario with a demanding look.

"I don't get it." He scratched his head, and then a lit light bulb appeared above his head. Realizing what they wanted from him, Mario began patting each Leggy on the head, making them make even happier sounds.

When he finished, he again showed them where to go. Saluting (despite the fact that they have no arms), Leggies squad with a battle cry rushed to help V, along the way they took the rope that Mario had thrown away.

Mario cleaned his ear, despite the fact that they were very cute (when they weren't helping the villains) their squeaks really hurt Mario's ears.

Yawning, he sat down on the ground and began to listen without much interest to the sounds of Doll reacting in surprise to the very angry gremlins. Putting his hands behind his head, Mario was going to sleep, it's good that before getting to Copper-9, he managed to rest and had enough energy for so long.

Closing his eyes and slowly starting to snore, he didn't notice how the door opened (it was surprising that it remained undamaged considering what was happening) and N entered the house.

"Hey guys, I..." N was shocked to see how everything in the house was destroyed. The loud sound of something crashing into the wall made him even more worried. "Good Lord, what is happening in there?!" Moving his sight from the sleeping Mario and the knocked out Uzi and Thad to the part of the house where the fight was taking place, but unfortunately it was hidden by the remains of the wall.

After making sure that the working drones were okay, just slightly bruised, he made a decision.

Finally making his way through the rubble, he was surprised, worried and horrified by what he saw.

Surprised because he saw Doll tied up, he only knew about her from Uzi's words and could not think of a reason why Doll would be here and tied up.

Worried because he saw V injured, very seriously, almost on the level of a fight with S. And considering that Doll was tied up, it became obvious who injured V, and what worries him most is that he understands that an ordinary working drone is NOT capable of such a thing (Uzi does not count, she is a unique case).

And finally, Horrified, because he saw THEM. Leggies. He did not like them, and it was mutual. Little rascals often caused him troubles just for fun, their disgusting squeaking noises gave N a severe headache, and given their history with TV head guy, he had no reason to trust them even more so.

"Oh god, why did it have to be you?" N groaned in frustration, V looked at him blankly. All four Leggies stuck their tongues out at him.

Lifting the tied up Doll onto their heads, the little gremlins walked back to Mario. Leaving him alone with a very angry V, N was calm about it because he knew he was not the cause of it.

"That useless piece of..." V whispered angrily through clenched jaws. "He did it again!" While her tail swung from side to side, her lost arm began to regenerate.

"I think he did it because... he believed in you?" N patted her shoulder encouragingly, but he doubted his own statement. "Mario is good at understanding the strength of others. And uh, if you weren't strong, he probably wouldn't have left you?" He tried to calm her down by sounding convincing.

"Then what about those... whatever this things is?!" V pointed to where the four Leggies had gone.

"I don't think we should look for logic, there obviously isn't any." N smiled at her, and she sighed and smiled back. "And, uh, dont want to remind you, but... what happened?"

"That drone is crazy, that's all you need to know. And once I shoot her, she won't matter anymore." V headed to the main part of the home, grabbing N's arm and dragging him along.

There, Leggeis squad already managed to throw Doll next to the sleeping Mario. Now they was playing monopoly, sometimes whispering among themselves. While Thad, who had woken up, looked around in a daze, and Uzi staggered as she tried to stand up.

"Oh man..." Thad looked towards N, or rather at something next to him. "You're back already..? And there are three of you... I didn't know you had two twins." He looked up. "Wow, I have stars..."

"I didn't know we could have visual hallucinations." N whispered to V, who shrugged.

"Thad, shut up." Uzi leaned against the couch, barely standing. "That crazy bitch hit you hard on the head, so sit still." She leaned against the walls and walked up to the murder drones. "Give me a hand, please, that bitch made me feel like I was crushed."

Without saying anything, N picked up his best friend, allowing her to no longer struggle to stand on shaky legs. V, in turn, threw Thad, who had passed out again, over her shoulder.

"And what are we going to do with them?" V pointed towards the sleeping plumber and the four gremlins playing.

"Well, first of all, I think you'll have to wait with the reprisal against Doll, sorry." N looked down at the ground, knowing that V didn't liked it. "As for the rest, I have an idea."

N decided to take the easy way out, he started kicking Mario's leg until human woke up.

He smiled awkwardly at the plumber's very displeased look. "Hey Mario, sorry for waking you up, but I think we should head back to the spire, and uh, can you help with Leggies?" Receiving no answer, N decided to use his trump card. "We had a bed there, after all."

Mario yawned widely, gave a thumbs up, and then walked over to the couch and whispered something to the gremlins. They made displeased noises, but stopped playing, picked up Doll again, and followed them.

Uzi sat in the pilot's seat trying to relax, the key word was trying, the dents all over her body from the fight with Doll may have healed, but the remaining pain was still there. However, it was better than being in a half-daze from a hit in a head.

"Are you okay?" She called out to Thad, who was sitting next to her, he was trying to keep his head from falling onto the control panel.

"A little better... but everything still doubles." He looked at her absentmindedly. "Now I understand why Liz is friends with Doll: they both are jerks."

"Don't talk about them." Uzi winced. Her mood was already bad, and mentioning the one who beat her up without much effort didn't make it any better. The only thing that made the situation strange was Doll's reaction to the fact that her trick didn't work on Uzi... for some reason. Uzi herself might have remembered that the symbol on Doll's visor was the same as hers when she accidentally broke the mirror, but the sheer number of events simply overshadowed it.

"Do you think they've... finished her yet?" Thad asked hesitantly.

Oh, right, as soon as N and V got everyone (including those weird heads on legs) down, the murder drones started arguing about what to do with Doll. V wanted to put a bullet in her head. And N wanted to keep Doll tied up and... his idea didn't get any further. Uzi herself was completely in favor of V's decision, and Thad seemed willing to accept either option. The odds were obviously not in the Italian-speaking drone's favor, but N seemed determined that none of them should dirty their hands with murder. Uzi found that cute.

A loud snore reminded her of another member of their gang, and four more who had recently joined it.

Mario was sleeping on a makeshift bed, and four red-haired gremlins were sleeping on him, and it seemed that the plumber was not bothered by this at all. Uzi inhaled, recent events simply killed her desire to make plans for the near future because she was sure that something out of the ordinary would happen again. So she planned to go with the flow and hoped that a waterfall would not await her in the end.

And Uzi was also worried about her helplessness, for the second time she had become a burden, and V was forced again to make sure that she would not get hurt. It was sweet of the dismantler, but it really hit Uzi's self-esteem, and considering that everything initially started because of her desire to prove her worth, it became some kind of very unfunny irony.

Meanwhile, outside, N and V were lying on the ground looking at the sky, it could have been considered romantic if not for the tense expressions on their faces. The discussion about Doll's fate was going on actively, and neither side wanted to give up yet.

"She hates us, idiot!" V didn't really want to insult N with that word again, but at the moment it was the best fit. "Once she gets free, she'll try to kill us again!"

"I know that!" N shouted in irritation, surprising her. "But then we won't be better than her if we kill her. I don't want either of us to stoop to murder again." He looked sad. "We're so close to starting a new life, and I don't want my old life to affect the new one... like, again."

"I know." V hugged his arm. "I don't care about killing this mad waste of metal or something like that. But she's a threat to us, especially our worker drones, they're defenseless against her, we can't just let her go."

"That's why I want to keep her with us, so we can at least keep an eye on her." N took V's hand in his.

"But what about that weird thing she did? I have no idea how to control it." She sighed.

"We'll figure something out." N gently turned her head towards him and smiled.

She smiled back. They looked at each other. They blushed. Their faces slowly began to move closer to each other, they closed their eyes and...

"AAAAAAGH!" A loud scream, combined with the amplified sound of the wormhole appearing, deprived the two murder drones of any privacy.

They both quickly stood up and became wary when they saw an unknown figure. It wasn't a drone, but the clothes similar to an astronaut suit obviously said that it was a human, and the familiar blue cap with the letter S told who exactly it was.

"Ouch... I knew they needed to adjust where it would appear a little." SMG4 rubbed his side. Even though his face was hidden behind his helmet, it was obvious that he was wincing in pain. Looking around, he noticed them. "Oh, hey N, and uh, V, right?"

V just nodded in surprise, and then N gave SMG4 a death glare (which was even more threatening than Luigi's one) causing 4 to flinch. Considering the moment that Meme Guardian had interrupted, he deserved it.

"Listen, I'm sorry if I interrupted anything, I didn't mean to and, uh... stop looking at me like that! It's really unnerving!" SMG4 shouted uncontrollably, raising both his hands in the air.

N looked down at the ground, he didn't want to be mad at his friend's unfortunate timing, but 4 had just ruined perhaps the most romantic moment with V that N ever had. "It's okay... let's just forget about it."

"Yeah, sure." SMG4 shook his head and then cleared his throat. "As you can see, everything is ready and we're ready to go." He pointed to the wormhole a few meters above the ground. "And I think we should hurry, the portal is fine, but I don't want to risk with Deux ex Machina's evil twin showing up."

"We?" V asked in surprise. "We all can go?" She said it in disbelief. V had believed until the very end that she would be left to rust on Copper-9.

"Eh, yeah?" 4 nodded. "It was Mario's idea to let anyone come with him." He nodded towards N. "And I really mean anyone, everyone who wants, can go with us." He placed his hand on the place where the helmet supposedly had a chin. "Though I suppose we can safely come back here later."

"Huh..." V looked at him in surprise. "I guess I can forgive him for leaving me to fight alone... again." Turning to her friend (romantic interest?) she saw that N seemed lost in his thoughts, V nudged him with her elbow. "Let's tell the others."

"Please hurry, time is moving faster there now than here, and I don't want to keep the others waiting." SMG4 rubbed his palms. "Brrr, it's really cold out here."

Uzi and Thad came out from under him, hearing the screams.

"What's going on?" They stared at the new guy in surprise.

"Our ticket out of here, shorty." V ​​patted Uzi's head mockingly, and only smiled harder when she saw Uzi's angry glare directed at her. "We'll taking fatso, those four things, and get out of here." Without waiting for their answer, V began to descend into the landing pod.

"Oh, biscuits, I can't wait!" N followed her.

The worker drones just looked at each other in confusion, left alone with a human they didn't recognize, even though they knew his name, everything else was a mystery to them.

"So you're the one we saw on the screen?" Uzi asked, coming up close to 4.

"Yeah, that was me." He nodded. "It's nice to meet you in person Uzi, N has spoken very highly of you." SMG4 turned to the other drone. "And you're Thad, huh? I assume you're coming with us too?"

Uzi turned to her friend in shock, realizing she'd never asked if he was coming with them.

"Well... I've been thinking about that." Thad put his hand to his head, still struggling with his headache. "I realized I need to move forward instead of sitting at one place... um, I hope I'm not a problem?"

Happy with his answer, Uzi hugged him.

"Huh, that's another plus of alternate universes, in the original, those two don't interact like that." SMG4 smiled to himself. "Oh, sure buddy." Meme Guardian patted Thad on the shoulder. "I already told that to N and V, everyone can come with us, we won't turn anyone down." 4 shuddered from the cold. "And one more thing, we even found you a temporary place to live, the only thing missing is a kitchen, but I don't think you need one. Later we'll build you a normal house."

"That's too generous." Uzi crossed her arms. "You want something from us."

"Hey, Mario's friends are my friends, I'm ready to do anything for my friends." He put his hand on Uzi's shoulder. "We won't ask anything from you in return, I promise."

Uzi sighed. Then she saw the tied up (and awake) Doll. "What are we going to do with her? She wanted to kill us."

"Hmm." SMG4 put his hand to the bottom of his helmet. "We have places where criminals are kept, and also places for the especially, um, enthusiastic ones." He crouched down to get a better look at Doll. "I don't think she's any more dangerous than Mr. Puzzles, so she won't be a problem."

"Vi ucciderò tutti. (I'll kill you all.)" Doll whispered contemptuously.

Uzi's shrunken room flew into her face, knocking Doll unconscious again.

"Annoying." Uzi picked up the cube back up.

And finally N appeared, carrying all four Leggies (it was obvious he didn't like it) and V, who was struggling to drag Mario along the ground.

"Why is he so heavy?!" She let go of the plumber's hand and he fell to the ground, keep snoring.

"Mario weighs infinity minus two." SMG4 shrugged. "I'm surprised that you have enough strength to carry him." He looked at the four gremlens and sighed. "I hope you haven't gotten on anyone's nerves yet."

"Is there something wrong with them?" Thad asked, surprised. He found them cute, even if they were way too hyperactive for hip. "They seems nice."

"Nothing bad actually, but I'd like to see them as little as possible. They're funny, but get annoying fast." 4 sighed. "Okay, is that all? You done?" He received a determined nods in response. "Okay, we'll go through the portal one at a time: I'll throw Mario in, N will bring Leggies, V will take Uzi and Thad and I'll take... uh, whatever her name is."

Taking hold of the sleeping Mario, SMG4 easily lifted him up (the others looked at him in shock, considering the previous comment about the plumber's weight) and groaningly threw him into the wormhole, Mario didn't even react and continued to sleep until he disappeared.

N, recoiled from the shock, took four gremlins and flew into the portal, disappearing just like Mario.

Sighing hesitantly, V took the worker drones by the hands and, after letting them get ready, followed into the portal.

SMG4 took Doll onto his shoulder, after which he quietly croaked and complained that she was heavier than she looked.

"Ugh, and why can't I lift everyone as easily as Mario?" 4 sighed, he leaned down to his feet. "I hope this thing going to work without problems." After SMG4 pressed a small button on his boots, flames began to emerge from the soles, slowly lifting him into the air. "And why exactly like that? I'm not a hedgehog."

He flew into the portal.

N was very glad that he didn't have a stomach, otherwise he would have thrown up from the swirling colors he saw, not to mention the feeling that he was in a washing machine turned on at maximum power.

He sighed with relief and looked around, and was surprised, this place was unfamiliar to him. He expected the castle of that not very polite princess in pink, and not something like a circus building, however, it looked good in his opinion.

Leggies squad broke free from his grip and they rushed in a direction only known to them, N was glad to see that they were leaving, maybe this time they did not cause him any problems, but he still did not want to risk. Then at a short distance from him, N saw the figure of Mario, still snoring.

And only now he noticed that it was night. The full moon illuminated the surroundings and... It seems he was too focused on his thoughts that he even forgot to move and V, who was following him, landed right on him and it all ended up with a dogpile of drones.

"Dude, why didn't you move?" Thad, who landed on the ground and not on the murder drone, grabbed his aching head. "So this is what a magnet high looks like..."

"Move!" V, who quickly stood up, pushed and pulled everyone away from the landing site.

SMG4 then landed on the spot and grumbled loudly enough for everyone to hear, then he unceremoniously dropped Doll to the ground and rubbed the shoulder he was holding her on. "Phew, she's surprisingly heavy." With a sigh of relief, he pulled his helmet off himself, revealing his face. "God, being an astronaut sucks." He noticed the others, including Uzi who was still lying on N. "Okay, we're here, all we have to do is wake everyone up."

"Wake everyone up?" N stood up carefully, picking up Uzi and looking around. He began to mentally curse his own lack of attentiveness. There were a lot of things around them that N could only describe as scientific. And there were a lot of people, some of Mario's friends, and there were also people in white coats whom N didn't recognize, everyone was sleeping,white coats in chairs, Mario friend's in sleeping bags.

"And I know exactly how." SMG4 walked up to Mario, rummaged through his pocket, pulled out a large party horn and, taking a deep breath, began to blow.

The drones winced at the unexpectedly high volume, and everyone else (including Mario) woke up.

"What the hell?! People are trying to sleep here!" SMG3 shouted angrily, rubbing his eyes, and when he finished, he saw that it was 4, and that he was not alone. "Oh, already? Took you long enough." He noticed the drones and looked at Bob with a mocking smile. "I think I won."

"God dammit." Goro handed him a wad of money and then left upset by the defeat.

"Mario!" Before the plumber could recover from the sudden awakening, he suddenly found himself in a whirlpool of green, orange and blue.

"They overreacting to this, or I'm wrong?" N whispered to Uzi.

"Well, Mario usually returns from such trips on the same day." N whispered back. "But it's been a week or more, so it's no wonder his friends are worried."

They watched with interest and giggles as Luigi, Meggy and Tari celebrated Mario's return, while he still didn't understand what was happening and tried to get out of the sibling dogpile.

"So these are the ones I promised to shelter." SMG3 walked up to the drones and looked at them with interest. "This time N, you won't be getting out of a visit to the therapist, and that goes for the others too." He narrowed his eyes at the aforementioned, causing N to smile awkwardly. "This is a real gold mine, in both senses."

"So this is why you made a bet with Bob?" 4 raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

"Dude, what's wrong with me taking advantage of the situation a little?" 3 smiled slyly. "I knew we'd have guests, and he didn't. Plus, I'll be housing them temporarily, so to speak, our homeless friend just made a generous donation." He said the last word louder.

"Donation?! Oh no my heart stopped!" Bob, who had not gone far enough, heard this, he screamed in shock and then fell to the ground in convulsions. "I'm fucking diyng!"

"Well, that's fair, I guess." SMG4 rolled his eyes, ignoring Bob's seizure. Then he yawned. "I don't know about you, but I'm going to bed." He turned to the drones. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, 3 will show you your temporary home, have a nice night." He headed towards the new castle.

After that, everyone heard a desperate "Nooooooo!" from Mario and something about nail painting, but none of them were going to think about it, N was tired, and the others were not yet accustomed to the radical change of scenery.

"I'll have to ask them to take pictures." SMG3 chuckled, and then walked towards another building, calling the drones to follow him. "I'm too sleepy right now, so I'll just show you your rooms and that's it for today."

V wanted to say something, but seeing that N was silently following new human, she decided to remain silent. V did not forget to take their prisoner, in all this mess she almost forgot about Doll.

They approached a building whose most distinctive feature was the huge bombs on the roof. The sign read "III's Coffee and Bombs".

"I warn you, don't touch anything, one Mario who accidentally tries to blow everything up is already enough for me." 3 warned them, and then led them into the room located behind the counter. "I hope you know what an elevator is." Pressing a button, the doors opened in front of them. "There are only three floors here: the cafe itself, my personal villain lair which you are NOT allowed to enter, and last one is what was supposed to be a storage, but I didn't need it, and it was idle for a long time, until now."

The elevator doors opened and the drones found themselves in a room with white and red walls, a parquet floor with a large red carpet with numerous patterns, lots of furniture that reminded N and V of the one they had seen in the mansion, several bookcases full of books and a fireplace, as well as doors leading to other rooms. Unlike the Elliott mansion, this place didn't look like it was hiding some kind of terrible secret.

"Good night. Make yourself at home, because that's exactly what we were trying to make out of this place." 3, who hadn't left the elevator, pressed the button and its doors closed, leaving the drones alone.

V quickly sat down on the nearest chair and laughed. "This isn't Copper-9! We actually escaped from there!"

"Oh, that's exactly how I felt the first time." N put his hands on his girlfriend's shoulders.

"What do you think?" Thad asked Uzi as he sat down on the large sofa.

"This is going to be awesome! No, more like - This IS awesome!"

"Oh! I almost forgot!" SMG4 pulled out a small remote control from his pocket and immediately pressed the button. "If I didn't know who Cyn is, I'd feel really, really sorry for her."

Meanwhile.

"Depressing. What's the point of living if I can't do skateboarding tricks from birth?"

"Disappointed. And the fact that I got legs later doesn't change anything! It's just a bunch of..."

Cyn in her skin suit fell silent when she saw a wormhole appear out of nowhere.

"Interested. What is this?"

To her surprise, a man in a red Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans and brown boots came out of the portal. The most unusual thing was his face, or rather his chin, a big chin with a deep cleft.

The man looked at her, and Solver, who controlled Cyn's body, felt afraid for the first time.

"This isn't the first time I'm going to giggity a robot, and I'm all for it again! Giggity Giggity Goo!" To Cyn's shock, the man began to undress.

"Scared. I need an adult!"

"I'm AM an adult." Quagmire began to walk towards her.

"Angry and terrified. It's all your fault Liam Vickers!"

Chapter Text

"I should have seen this coming, like, seriously." SMG4 thought while extinguishing the last of the flames that had erupted in the kitchen. "I don't even want to think about blamimg someone. Meggy is Meggy, and I don't think Uzi is bad enough to cause a fire by just being there."

The drone in question was still looking doubtfully at the cookbook and at Meggy, former inking was giving her a thumbs up... completely ignoring the fire behind herself.

"We're done, well, I think so." 4 watched as Bowser extinguished the stove. The Meme Guardian wiped the sweat from his brow. "Hey Bowser, it's a shame it happened again, but thanks anyway."

"It's okay. As a chef who values his craft, I couldn't ignore someone eager to learn... even if it is Meggy." The giant turtle crushed the empty fire extinguisher, then leaned closer to SMG4 to whisper. "I think we're actually making progress, she almost grasped what utensils were meant for what and how to use them... well, except for the toaster."

They both looked at the toaster which was filled with a chocolate bar, a bottle of water, and a cabbage leaf. Somehow, all three of them were toasted and had the texture of bread.

"Guess I overlooked her turning the heat up to maximum while I was busy with Uzi." Bowser smiled sheepishly.

"I don't blame you." SMG4 gave Koopa's arm a supportive pat, since the man couldn’t reach his shoulder. "Without you, things would probably be much worse. It's lucky you wanted to help, because everyone else was busy and there was no one to watch after Meggy."

With that, 4 concluded his conversation with him and approached the girls.

"Meggy." He caught the attention of the redhead. "I’m not going to say anything; repeating myself over five times is genuinely exhausting."

"I’m sorry!" Spletzer slumped her shoulders and concealed her hands behind her back. "I think I got a bit carried away..."

"I still don’t understand what you were trying to make." Uzi tossed the cookbook onto the dining room table. "Cake, cheese, cola, hot dog, fish, milk... and uh, bleach." Uzi sighed. "I don’t know how this cooking thing works, but you could definitely poison someone with that."

Meggy appeared even more dejected, but SMG4 couldn’t help it; no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't think of anything positive to say to her.

So he walked up to Uzi and started whispering to her. "Listen, go easy on her, Meggy's trying her best." Uzi sighed in frustration but nodded. Then 4 began speaking without whispering. "And as for you, do you hope you've learned an important lesson?"

"Bite me! I already knew what to do! I followed the recipe!" She pointed at the cookbook. "But some of the pages were dirty, and, well, I had to improvise!" Uzi exclaimed, crossing her arms.

"Oh, so that’s why you put the pasta in the oven." Spletzer eyed the stove curiously. "Fried spaghetti sounds kinda interesting."

"Pasta... in the oven...?" SMG4 groaned, his inner Italian was in agony. "Oh god, I... okay, I guess I'm a little to blame here. I made everything in the kitchen fireproof, but I didn't think about the cookbooks, especially considering how Mario treats them." He slapped himself in the face.

Uzi signed, failure at cooking had upset her a little, but she knew it wasn't that big of a deal; she could try another time... Preferably with someone who actually knew how to cook; this big turtle dude is good, but he was more focused to make sure Meggy didn't overdo it. Red haired human herself is cool and all, but if Meggy got too excited, any sense of order went out the window.

In this regard, Uzi preferred the neatness she had in her workshop. Sure, the comparison wasn’t the most obvious, but the explosion from a railgun and the combustion from a stove were surprisingly similarly destructive.

"All that's left is to clean up all this soot." Bowser looked at the blackened, but still intact kitchen with interest. Koopa thinking about making something like this one for his own kitchen, he is fire breathing turtle after all.

"I think Luigi can help, he's must be around somewhere." SMG4 pulled out his phone and called the green plumber.

A brief pause, filled with the sounds of the phone ringing and a soft conversation between 4 and Luigi, was interrupted when Mario opened the door and stepped into the kitchen.

"Hello..." The avatar of the universe went silent upon witnessing the chaos that the unfortunate cooks had created. "What?" He glanced at the Meme Guardian in confusion.

"Meggy and Uzi were practicing cooking, Bowser was helping them, as you can see, everything went as usual." 4 shrugged.

"Really?" Mario's eyes have become much longer, they almost reach the Meme Guardian, looking at him with suspicion.

"Red, we promised we wouldn't make a giant... anything without you, again." Meggy sighed. "I was just practicing, this time with Uzi, that's all."

Mario's gaze shifted to Uzi, making her a little nervous, ex-Doorman (she didn't think about new family name) didn't know any human of her world, but Uzi was sure that they could never do anything like that.

"Ugh, I was making you... a present, it's NOT ready yet." She rolled her eyes. Uzi had learned that keeping secrets from Mario was futile, and it was much simpler to just say it from the start.

The plumber's eyes returned to normal, he seemed pleased with the answers.

"Do you need something or were you just passing by?" SMG4 asked.

"Drinky!" Mario looked at him pleadingly.

"No, I not going to summon a cow for you, check the fridge yourself." SMG4 shook his head.

"Fine..." Mario headed for the soot-covered fridge.

But suddenly, he stopped.

His nose caught a whiff of his favorite scent: spaghetti.

Mario moved to the stove and opened the oven, pulling out a plate (yes, Uzi did indeed put a plate in the oven) filled with burnt spaghetti.

"For a first try, it looks... not bad." Bowser said tentatively. Koopa was not a fan of the smell of burnt food.

"It looks better than I expected." Uzi remarked, a bit surprised by the outcome.

4 noticed that Mario was slowly bringing the plate to his mouth. "Don't even think about eating that, Mario." SMG4 glared at his friend. "I'm not going to give you stomach transplant, like, again."

Mario gazed at SMG4 and the spaghetti with disappointment, but then a light bulb appeared above his head, and he headed to the fridge, pulled out a dozen ice cubes, and placed them atop the spaghetti.

Everyone exchanged puzzled glances

"It doesn't work like that...well, most of the time." Bowser scratched his head. "Ice is not my thing, so I'm not sure."

Uzi wasn't going to say anything, she had enough time to learn that it was never worth wasting time to looking for logic in Mario's actions.

Meggy watched with interest, she really wanted this to work, it would save a lot of her failed dishes. Although common sense told her that it definitely didn’t work that way.

SMG4 sighed. "Do whaterver you want, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'."

Mario shoved the contents of the plate into his mouth and began chewing slowly. Very slowly, with a contemplative expression. The longer he chewed, the more pleased his facial expression became. After finalizing his chewing and swallowing, Mario let out a loud burp.

"Ah, you're so good!" He stuck a star which says 'you did great!' on Uzi's clothes!.

"Congratulations on your first successful cooking attempt." Bowser applauded a few times.

"And that's even better than 'you tried', maybe you have a talent for this?" Meggy nudged Uzi playfully.

"Nah, thanks, I'll pass." Uzi shook her head, sporting a proud smile. "I only wanted to thank Mario for getting me and the others here, that's all. And I want make bikes, not food."

"Well, that's good, less chance of someone burning down the kitchen again." SMG4 thought with satisfaction. "It's a good thing she switched from guns to bikes. One Funky Kong as arms dealer is enough already, we defenetly dont need another." He resolved to prevent Uzi from donning a tuxedo, "Lawyer Uzi" already sounds ominous enough for him...

And Mario, who already managed to get milk from the fridge, was leaving the kitchen when the door opened, revealing his brother... dressed in a maid's outfit. 

"Hello Mario."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"