“Well well well,” Junior tutted in front of the captives, putting his knuckles on his hips as he sneered at them. He was quite a bit older now than when he had first kidnapped Princess Peach on Isle Delphino, although she was still about a head taller than he was. With age came less and less of a size difference between him and the princess, but he still had that young boy's smarminess that he'd had since he'd first started assisting his father in his kidnappings.

“I think you know the drill by now, Peach. Help yourself to some refreshments and what not— it’s not like you’re in any hurry to be anywhere right now.” He gestured to the significantly more frightened mayor bound by her side. “And would you tell her to pipe down? I can barely here myself think with all that racket she's making." He gave an evil, self congratulatory smirk. There was nothing as satisfying as a well executed kidnapping. Even after all the times the damn plumber always ruined he and his dad's schemes, nothing ever really diminished that thrill of having successfully kidnapped the princess of the mushroom kingdom yet again.

Junior puffed his chest out proudly and smirked at the angry princess as he heard her comments aimed at the kongs.
“Hah! Be as disappointed as you like, princess. These two dingbat lab chimps have to do whatever we say, or else their little brat Kiddie Kong is gonna get it.”
He strolled casually by Diddy, who was looking at the ground with a look of intense distress. ‘Man, he’s really selling it!’ Junior thought, proud of the kong’s acting chops. All they’d need to do is act like someone the kongs cared about was in some kind of danger — Kiddie Kong couldn’t talk and therefore wouldn’t dispute his claims, so he made the most sense— and the princess would forgive whatever Dixie and Diddy ended up doing here.
Junior turned his back to the princess to look at Diddy, but not before giving the girls a nod. Wendy's driving had been outstanding, and Dixie and Flurrie had been right on point as soon as they had arrived. A far better performance than what he normally got out of the bog standard goombas, for sure. When he turned back to Diddy, he kept speaking in his usual bad guy voice, but for the second time that hour he flashed Diddy the same kind of toothy grin he’d given the kong on the night he’d first asked him out.

“And besides, its not like we're planning to hurt either of you two, are we, Diddy Kong?"
The kong's lip trembled.
“… I can’t do this…” Diddy muttered softly.

Junior gave a villainous chortle. “Hah! Glad to see you’re so miserable, knuckle dragger. You don’t wanna go through with this? Well that’s too damn bad. As long as me and Wendy have your ugly little baby captive, you both have to—“

Diddy gritted his teeth and walked away from Junior, one arm wrapped tight around his body and the other pulling the brim of his hat down.

“No. I mean I can’t do this, Junior.”

Junior’s well practiced evil sneer melted briefly. He looked over his shoulder at Peach and then to Wendy, Flurrie, and Dixie for a moment before trying to regain his evil facade.  He gave an intolerant scoff and shook a finger in Diddy’s direction. “Listen, you stupid monkey, I know you think you’re hot stuff, but me and Wendy here are calling all the shots, and we say—”
Diddy turned around and grabbed the shaken finger. The kong looked him right in the eyes. Bowser Jr. had never seen his boyfriend with such an anguished look about him. It cut right through all the bullshit he was about to act out in front of the princess and the mayor.
“Junior,” Diddy husked. “I. Can’t. Do this.”
Junior’s façade slipped away. Naked concern lingered on his face.
“Dids, I—"
“I feel wretched, Jay,” Diddy said imploringly. He was fully aware he was ruining their cover by saying this, and he didn’t care. The guilt was at breaking point and he didn’t care much about anything other than freeing himself from it. “I didn’t think this was gonna hit me this bad. I was not ready for this—I was not ready at all for all this mayhem.”

Junior took a step towards the kong with an expression that was a mix between irritated and concerned. The two feeling warred with each other for a moment before irritation won out. The koopa’s face twisted into a impudent snarl.
“I thought you liked mischief!” Junior spat. “Ever since I knew you, I knew you liked it. You even said so yourself!”

“Mischief, yes!” Diddy admitted, stepping a bit closer to Junior. “But we nearly ran over people today, kidnapped political leaders and aimed a bunch of weapons at cop cars. That's a hell of a lot more than a little mischeif!”

“Aww come on, that’s like Tuesday for me, not even the big league villain stuff!” Junior whined, ignoring all else around him in that moment. He looked almost as distraught as Diddy. Hearing all this out of the kong’s mouth felt like being stabbed in the chest. “From the very beginning, I have ALWAYS gone out of my way to make sure I wasn't rushing you into things, haven't I? I've ALWAYS wanted you to be comfortable with how we've paced things between us. I only did this because you said you were willing to give it a try. Am I wrong?”

Diddy balled up his fists.
"Yes, I know you have! I'm not saying you haven't," Diddy admitted, looking Junior in the eyes. "And I WAS ready to try it for you because I saw how excited you were to have me a part of this, but I expected you to still respect my boundaries when things got too much for me,” Diddy said, his voice growing heated. “THIS,” he said, pointing to the bound women, “Is too much. I really, truely tried, but I'm just... I'm not a villain. You HAD to have known I might not like this, Junior.”

Junior’s distraught irritation morphed into indignant anger.
“And YOU had to have known that I’d eventually be taking you to do things like this when you said yes to me for that movie that night. This is a big part of who I am, Dids.” Junior gestured to his own chest emphatically. “I am a villain! You KNOW I’m a villain. You’ve ALWAYS known I’m a villain! It's who I am, it’s who my dad, my people, and who I myself expect me to be, its not something I can just change willy nilly! Are you not able to accept that?”
“June, come on.” June. It was a name Diddy rarely called him except in their most personal moments. He said it with a note of desperation now. "Please, I know this means a lot to you, but just listen to me--"

“NO!” Junior roared, stamping his foot like the brat he still was, as much as he tried to mature for the sake of someone other than his father and himself. “No, no, no, no, I want an answer, do you hear me?! After all that's happened, after all we’ve been through together, and for all the time we've been dating each other, are you saying you can’t accept me for who I am anymore?”

Diddy froze, staring at Junior with wide, horrified eyes. It took Junior a moment to realize what he had done, and he slapped a hand over his own mouth, looking over to the bound women. The mayor didn’t look one way or the other, mostly confused at the spectacle going on between the two boys she barely knew. But the princess looked on with wide eyes full of thunderous comprehension. 'Shit. Shit shit shit shit', Junior thought. Diddy grabbed the fur on his bangs in disbelief and began to walk away.
“Diddy!” Junior called out, looking positively miserable as his boyfriend walked away. “Dids, please, I’m so sorry! I-I didn’t mean to—”
The kong walked out of sight, leaving Junior alone with Wendy, Flurrie, Dixie, and the two captive women.

On Lanky street of New Donk City, people walked in well ordered crowds in their sharp clothes and fancy hats. Kids played near fire hydrants, and dogs romped on little strips of grass among the concrete. Old ladies chatted amongst themselves while drinking coffee in front of cafes, and businessmen leafed through newspapers on benches while the calm afternoon sun twinkled above them. It was an ideal, peaceful day in this, one of many peaceful little streets of a safe, cleanly city.

It was around the time that a group of nuns started to walk across the crosswalk that a red hot rod blew through the red light at top speed, causing the holy mothers to dive to the side for dear life. The car blasted through a puddle, coating the now screaming playing children with mud and causing the frolicking dogs to yipe and run into the alleys. The old ladies shrieked as the roar of the engine blasted by so hard and fast that they jumped and spilled coffee all over themselves. The businessmen cowered under their benches as, just as quick, police cars chased the hot rod with sirens blaring and the ground rumbling from so many vehicles galloping by poor little Lanky street.
Bowser Junior cackled, wind whipping through his ponytail as he stood up with no seatbelt, savoring the chaos of the high speed chase while Diddy Kong sat rigid and fearful in his seat, clutching the seat in front of him for dear life.
“WOOOOOOO! I FEEL ALIIIIIIVE!” Junior crowed, pumping his fist joyfully as he threw a banana peel right at the police cars, hitting one of them and causing it to spin out of control. “Keep driving, Wends! They’ll never catch us! Ahahaha!” He looked over his shoulder in the back seat, where mayor Pauline and the visiting Princess Peach were tied up, struggling in their bonds as they were whisked away through the city streets. “Did you get a haircut since I last kidnapped you, Peach? It looks like crap, get a better barber next time!” Junior chided as he threw another item at the police chasing them.
“As for you? Hi there, I’m Prince Bowser Junior, I’m a long time friend of the Princess here.” Peach glared at him in annoyance while Pauline simply looked panicked.
“See, Dids? Didn’t I tell you? THIS,” Junior said, clutching a green shell and aiming it at the perusing cars. “Is the way to live!”

——————

Usso was still in a bit of a dark mood and trying to get himself out of it as he walked to the nearby stationary store on Yoshii avenue. He looked around, and saw that the ‘New Donk City’ he was now in was clean and orderly, with little of the depressing urban decay he’d seen in the place he’d just been. Everyone here was dressed up in sharp suits, fedora hats, and fancy dresses. His work with the League Militaire had led him over to Tokyo once, where people had a similar predilection for dressing up in fine clothes for all occasions. There was a tinkle of a bell as he walked into the stationary store, exactly where he was told it would be. As he walked in, still deep in thought, he didn’t see the man standing in the corner of the store, waiting for him.

——————

The man that had been following the Wendigo and the burned man turned a bend and was slammed face first into the brick work of the alley wall. He cried out as a giant gloved hand lifted him by his neck before an iron mask with glowing yellow lights leering out of its eyeholes.
“Bon jour, kind stranger!” said Defago, as if he were warmly greeting a long lost friend, his grip tightening around their tailer’s throat “I think you seem to have lost yer way round these parts! That’s a bit o’ bad luck on your part.” He leaned his mask closer, the stench of rotten meat and icy cold forest air emanating from the mouth grille on his mask. “But never you worry. Me and my compatriot here’d be happy to send you where you need to go.”
The man struggled in the gloved grip, eyes bulging and mouth working like a carp dragged onto land. He appeared to be mouthing curses and threats.
“Ohhh… mon Amie, I’m sorry,” the giant coated thing said. “It’s the mask, right? It’s making you uneasy right now. Let me help with that.”
He unfastened the clamps to the heavy metal mask and it fell to the ground with a crash. The man screamed, but the scream was cut off by the constriction around his throat. A face that looked eaten away by starvation and blue-blackened by untended frostbite smiled with needle teeth in an expression that was kind, almost amused, as if he were playing a funny prank on the man he was currently choking to death.
“Better now, oui?” The Wendigo said a few inches from the man’s face, and the voice had changed markedly from even the few moments the choking man had been hearing it. The thing’s smile faltered, and without that smile the face looked as utterly dead as a corpse that had been left to the elements for months on end. “No? Well don’t worry, boss, I ain’t gonna eat you. Although, I might have a little nibble at what’s left of you after my friend here is done with ya.”

He shoved the man to the ground, who collapsed and gasped for air. A bandaged man walked in front of him, holding open a holy book in one hand and a pistol in the other. His eyes were the coldest, most piercing sun bleached blue the gasping man had ever seen. “It is said ‘Ye must go away into that lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable.’” This bandaged man’s voice, unlike the wendigo’s, was entirely human in its monstrousness. It was the deep, zealous voice of a man who had ordered thousands of people to their deaths and felt nothing but a vague sense of cosmic hygiene while doing it. “‘And whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever, which lake of fire and brimstone is endless torment.’ Today, you shall see it for yourself. Where you will go, you shall suffer anguish and horror greater than any earthly torment could afflict, until what’s left of your soul is thrown into the outer darkness for the ungodly things beyond the veil to feast on. This is your fate if you don’t give me and my companion a full report of who you work for and why you’re following us.”

“Y-you’ll all die for this!” The man said, his voice full of the hysteria of a drowning man desperately grasping for a life preserver. “Wh-when my master hears of this, h-he’ll have you freaks b-burned!”

“Burned?” repeated Joshua, who purred the word with all the warmth of a jaguar’s predatory rumble. He slowly unraveled the wraps on his face, revealing a horrifically fire damaged face with a grinning set of white teeth set in a mouth that had only blackened husks for lips. “I’m afraid your master is a little late at that. But it’s not too late for you.” He raised the gun to the man’s head.

“N-no, stop! Stop right now! I’m warning you!” The man shouted, his voice rising with panic.

“There there now, it’s okay,” Defago said comfortingly as he patted the man’s shoulder with gloves that now had razor claws sticking out the front. “Dying ain’t so bad. After all, I died once and look how well I turned out!” He cackled heartily, while the click of the gun’s hammer being cocked could be heard, Joshua’s finger half closed on the trigger. “To hell you go, then.”

“WAIT! WAIT!” the man wailed, his hands thrown up in blubbering surrender. “P-PLEASE! I’LL TELL YOU ANYTHING, JUST PLEASE D-DON’T-“
“And how do I know what you’re going to tell us is the truth?” Joshua asked as he brought his horrible blue eyes down to the man’s level. “Perhaps I should have Defago here eat a few of your fingers, just to be sure.”
“NOOOOO!” The man sobbed, crumpling into a weeping ball. “I’ll tell the truth! I’ll tell the truth! Please! Pleeeease!” He desperately produced a note from his pocket and thrust it forward. “Take it! These are my orders, I w-was just doing my job! Please!”
Having gotten what they wanted, the two men were content to leave the little man sobbing on the ground unharmed as Joshua rebandaged his face and Defago refitted his mask. Joshua straightened the note and looked it over. Before  he read the orders, he read the name of who the order claimed to be from.
“… Chong.”
Defago scratched at his mask roughly where his beard would be, as if forgetting he’d put his mask back on.
“The big bad man himself? We’re on the Spire o’ Winter, yeah, but he’s never targeted us two specifically until now.”

"So I guess we'll be following your lead in this, right Wends?" Junior asked Wendy. He sounded a bit hesitant in saying it. He was used to either taking his father's lead or leading kidnapping missions himself-- following anyone else was still new to him. But he at least knew Wendy of all people would be capable of pulling this off. The gundam pilot pressed his lips together. "Where's this stationary place? I'll do that. I don't kidnap people. I've already been kidnapped one too many times myself," Usso said.

---

"Agreed," Joshua said, casually moving a hand to his pocket where he kept one of his pistols. "Don't kill him. I want to talk to him a bit."
"Wasn't plannin' ta," Defago replied, sickly yellow light twinkling like dim stars in the slits of his mask. The footsteps behind them were constantly getting closer. They were clumsy-- not a professional killer. Just a tailer. Who out here would be tailing the likes of them, Joshua wondered. "This bend," Joshua said simply as the two of them walked under a flickering street lamp and towards a turn into a dark alley.
"Aye," Defago said with a grin behind his mask. "This bend."

The two boys listened to the list as it was read off to them.
“Yeeaaah, I mean part of the reason we need them is from making too many tire swings,” Diddy admitted sheepishly. When the idea of kidnapping Pauline came up, Junior gasped loud enough that several heads in the pizzeria turned their way and he suddenly turned to Diddy, his button eyes bright with excitement.
“We should totally help!” Junior exclaimed, his hands on the Kong’s shoulder as he shook him emphatically. “I’ve waited for the day I could take you on a princess kidnapping trip!” Junior then pouted when he saw the skeptical look on Diddy’s face. “Come oooon, you haven’t LIVED until you’ve abducted a politically powerful woman against her will. Some of the best times I’ve ever had with my dad have been when we’ve kidnapped peach together. I wanna share that with you, Didds!”
The sincerity in his eyes and his smile and his little tail wag ate away at Diddy’s good-guy resolve with every second he was exposed to it. “Welllll… Maybe if the girls will tolerate us coming along,” Diddy said, giving the koopa a one armed squeeze. “And if Donkey doesn’t find out. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? Just as long as no one gets hurt, and I can wear a mask or something. Just don’t let me be around to hear your brother’s operas. I’m sorry, Junior, but they’re terrible.”
Diddy pointed to the girls. “If not, getting stationary would at least mean I don’t have to worry about Donkey getting angry at me. And it could be fun! I don’t mind trashing a stationary store as long as I got you by my side, BJ.”

A few seats back, Rogan slowly turned to his partner with a ridged not-smile that practically screamed 'Welp. Look what we got ourselves into.'

“Alright!” Junior said dramatically, drumming his hands on the table. “Just to warn you guys, I like my pizza with mushrooms.”
“Like a freak?” Diddy asked.
“Like a freak,” Junior agreed.
 They had found a good pizza place with relatively few magical ingredients involved— as per Diddy’s request— and the two teams of kids were occupying several booths and tables in the pizza joint.
“Are you sure you guys can afford all this pizza?” Diddy asked Dixie and Wendy with some concern. Far more than the koopa prince had, it seemed, as Bowser Jr. seemed more interested in gazing around the pizzeria than agreeing.
“Oh!” The prince said suddenly, taking out a shell phone. “Since we’re all here and I’m not paying, I’mma invite Usso to join. I swear, that kid needs to stop moping around and meet some people.”
“Kid? He’s like 15. And he has a foster kid,” Diddy pointed out. “Details, details,” Junior said dismissively. “Rogan and G over there can pay if it’s too much for one more person.”
Diddy nodded. He’d seen them tailing them as well. “Nice to have babysitters,” he said with an ungenuine smile. Junior grunted and barked out a terse invitation over the phone— leaving no room in his speech for the pilot to refuse— before abruptly hanging up and smiling at the two girls. “So what’s the plan after this?” He asked.

Junior eyed his boyfriend’s ex on the plate carefully. He would have never dreamed of it before dating Diddy, but he’d grown to respect her quite a bit, and wasn’t going to underestimate her. He cocked his head and stuck a finger in his mouth, bringing it up to the air as if measuring the wind, while giving a sagely nod. Diddy facepalmed quietly in the outfield.
Sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth as an aid to concentration, Junior wound up his pitch and threw the hardest fastball he could muster.

Joshua closed the diary with a soft snap, causing Defago to tilt his head. “Is that all there is, boss?”
The heavily bandaged man shook his head. “No. But I’d like some time to think about what I’ve read so far before going any further. Ponder this Currien more before I see what else happened in his life. Also I don’t want to keep you hear in this library against your will for too long, either.”
Defago grinned a friendly corpse-like grin. “Ohh, you know I don’t mind listenin’ to a good story. But perhaps yer right. I’m sure the others are a-waitin’ on us.” The Quebecer popped a clawed thumb over his shoulder. “Wassay you and I go find the others, eh, mummy-man?” The tone in Defago’s voice made it clear this wasn’t meant to be an insult. He had hoped for a chuckle from Joshua, but as always he merely gave a polite, stoic nod in agreement. “Yes. That would be for the best.”
---
 
Diddy was up on the pitcher’s mound while Junior was on second base. With the lack of players between the two teams, there would have to be only one fieldsman, so second base was a logical place to be given it was the most central position.
Diddy scrunched up his face as he stared down the batter, tongue out in thought, running the ball through his fingers behind his back as he thought of the next pitch. Junior beat his hand into his glove, ready to catch whatever hit would come his way, even if he had to skedaddle all the way to the deep outfield to catch it. Diddy settled on a slider—which he could sort-of-kind-of throw, on occasion, with a little luck—wound up, and threw.
Nearby, Rogan and G were half watching the little baseball game take place. Both were reading several files on their PDAs, trying to get caught up with paperwork from back home.

Usso's lips tightened. As awful as the nightmares were-- and they WERE awful-- not having them sounded worse. He didn't want that: the nightmares were a representation of his fear, guilt, his better nature. He didn't want to not feel the guilt of killing people in combat. But, he suspected, the longer he was in this line of business, the closer that day might come. "I-I'm not a killer," he whispered to himself, hoping Stripetail didn't hear. "Not anymore..." Then he cleared his spoke and said louder. "Thanks, Stripetail. I-I appreciate your help here. I really do." He wanted to end things before his mind wandered to anyplace darker than it was now.

---

"I can't promise Junior won't cry if we lose," Diddy teased as he razzled the prince's hair. Junior responded with a face that was half a snarl and half a cheeky smitten beam. "Hah! As if we'd ever lose," Junior said, turning to Wendy and giving her a more normal smile. "Although for baseball we're gonna need more than two people. Got any ideas on roping in some players?"

Junior tweeked a pinky claw behind his one prominent fang to clean it and got up.
“Shopping sounds great! I could use some more stuff ruin people’s day.” Diddy tilted his head. “Yeah, sounds good to me too. Although I don’t know what to buy... maybe a brain for BJ.”
“Harharhar,” Junior intoned Before cocking his head to the door. “Well, lets skedaddle. Ladies?”

——-

“I vaguely recall you mentioning the word ‘Chariot’ when I asked about your family, Rogan,” Joshua said to the seated AMS agent. He closed the diary on one of his fingers to mark the place and regarded him through the eyeslit of his bandages.
Rogan nodded and took a swig of whiskey from his hip flask.  “Uh... yyyeah, I might have,” he said, and didn’t elaborate further, instead returning to reading the dossier on his PDA. Joshua was a man who could read people well, and he could tell that Rogan would, in fact, elaborate if he pressed him on it. But he had a feeling he had little to gain from it.

“Seems like this guy Curien had a changement de paradigme over seein’ his monsters up and aboat. Not shore I ever heard of anything like that ‘fore I was convinced to come aboard the Spire.”

“What did Stripetail do to get you aboard, exactly?” G asked. “I don’t think either of you ever mentioned it.
Defago shrugged. “Boss Stripetail, he very persuasive.”
“How so?” Joshua asked, and Defago tipped him a wink out of a sunken frost bitten eye socket.
“Lets just say he be making up for me bringing some badness to a cute little girl and her home, oui?”

Joshua, G, and Rogan all nodded.
“Oui en effet,” Joshua responded, his translator-educated French much closer to a Parisian dialect than Defago’s.
“He does have a knack for setting up those kinds of arrangements.”
He opened the diary back up to the spot his finger had been marking.
“Let’s continue...”

——
Usso spoke of how he got involved in the war— or at least the things he was willing to diverge in a first session of talking. Some memories were to heavily guarded to be given that freely even if a person dearly wanted to. It became habit to hide them for so long that it became hard to fathom ever not hiding them. Still, he told Stripetail what he could up to the burning of Woowig, or “Prague” as it had apparently been called in the past.

Usso Evin slowly made his way over to where Stripetail was, contemplating all the messed up elements of his fairly young life he desperately needed to talk about. It wasn’t easy: there was a LOT to talk about. Not just from the war: people he’d killed, people he’d SEEN killed, people who were far too young or far too old to die in combat. Even people he was fighting against who themselves saw just how terribly humanity had botched it’s dream of a peaceful and noble future. Times he had been abused by his CO, or by the enemy when he had been captured. Both enemy and allied adult women who had... “taken advantage” of his youthful male naivety, drawn to the clear talent for piloting a mobile suit that he could only assume he inherited from his great grandfather. He never told anyone except Shakti and Mrs. Marbet that he was actually related to him, of course— lord knows, a lot of people still, to this day, held a grudge against the legendary Red Comet for trying to destroy the world.

He had a lot of confusing thoughts, and he lived in a confusing period of history. In his time, no one batted an eye at a fifteen year old boy and a fourteen year old girl raising an adopted son together. Hell... they didn’t even bat an eye when a fifteen year old boy had gotten their fourteen year old girlfriend pregnant with his child, because who was around to call such things wrong or immoral any more? No one. After the Zanscare war the world shrunk to such a degree that no one cared about pretty much anything except “am I gonna have enough to eat tomorrow?”

And so it was with those heavy thoughts and feelings in his young heart that Usso Evin knocked on the door of Stripetail’s room on the Spire. “Mr. Stripetail? Can I come in?” Usso asked.