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.”
