Usso didn't look delighted to hear this answer. "Oh..." he said simply, drinking from his cup of tea. "I see..."
Bowser Junior and Diddy Kong shared a sly look before Junior slouched in his chair and yawned. "Well, whatever. As long as it keeps our interest."
"True. No offense, but we don't really have anything against this Chong guy or whoever," Diddy explained. "We just want to have some fun. Right Jay?" The koopa grinned and gave him a fist bump.
"Duh," Junior said impishly as he stretched a little. "Man, that squirrel sure is taking is sweet time. Where'd he go, anyway?"
-----
Joshua had half a mind to refuse the brown bag held in front of him, but after a good moment of hesitation, he took it. "Thank you," Joshua said. "But before you give this to me, you should know I plan to give it to the first needy person I see." The stretchers went away, carrying the two men with them. Already a clean up crew had arrived-- they wanted to get the lobby cleaned up as quickly as possible.
-----
In a secluded corner of Mawashi, insects suddenly went quiet. The sound of frogs around the trees huddled around the oasis like thirsty cows gave out one loud alarm call and then retreated. Silence fell upon a rare place of noise and life in the desert. A man walked into the comforting shade of the trees, and collapsed, groaning. Red blood was pouring out of wounds peppered over his body. The mosquitos of the oasis did not heed the frightening smell that had scared the rest of the animals away. They swarmed the man and immediately stuck their needle like beaks into its skin. The moment they did their body temperatures plummeted so fast that they dropped off of him into a ring of carapace and wings, dead.
The man crawled on his knees towards the oasis and drank thirstily from it. His blood dripped into the oasis water, causing little puffs of air to hiss of the surface. Without his mask and without
la b’te maudite kneading his skin and twisting his face, he looked like a man on the verge of death. His skin was grey and blue in the places they weren't black as peat tar. His eyes weren't sunken in anymore, nor did they shine with the ghostlight of the netherworld, but were still a shade of yellow that no earthly creature would possess. The antlers remained; they always did. Defago knew he'd need to saw them off before he could go into a settlement and get a new mask, but for now they were the least of his worries. Despite all this,
he still looked passably human.A bird flew down on the perch, too curious for its own good. It watched as the man emerged from his drink and collapsed against a tree. He never stopped bleeding, even though by all rights he should have bled out by now.
Defago grimaced. "Ce que l'enfer Ètait dans ces balles?"
The bird didn't know french-- or any language for that matter-- but the suddenness of the voice caused it to retreat to a further branch. But the man didn't move much-- he just sat there, panting and grimacing. He slowly took off his thick winter clothes that were so covered in blood by that point the Quebecer had half a mind to leave them there. But he knew he couldn't just yet. Not until he found something else to put on. It was a funny conundrum-- he couldn't die, but he was honest to god ashamed of just going into any town without covering up at least some of his hideous deformities.
The bird saw, as the coat fell to the side and the shirt unbuttoned, there wasn't a shred of fat on the man's body. He was virtually a skeleton with grey, frostbitten skin stretched over. No longer needing to worry about his coat, he dunked his feet into oasis water. They immediately hissed like a pair boiling hot pans rinsed under ice cold water. The man stayed in that sit for awhile, his eyes glazed over with relief of the awful burning in his feet. Minutes passed. A few frogs cautiously returned to the waters edge.
The man pulled out a box of medical supplies that was stuffed into one of his thick coat pockets. He took a scalpel in one hand a pair of tweezers in another. Then, just as the bird felt safe enough to chirp aloud in the quiet, the Defago began to cut open the bullet holes and plunged the tweezers inside. He grimaced hard as he did this, his body shivering from the pain. Out came the first bullet, and Defago held it up to examine it. As soon as the bullet had left, ice spread over the cut open bullet hole, sealing it. A few moments later the ice subsided, and unblemished skin was in its place. He continued, searching hole after hole.
After awhile, he began to hum to himself.
"Tu es mon compagnon de voyage! Je veux mourir dans mon canot," he hummed to himself, plucking out bullets one after another as he rocked back an fourth the ignore the pain.
"Sur le tombeau, prËs du rivage, vous renverserez mon canot."
A frog that had hidden near the man took a step too far out of its hole. Defago looked down and saw it. Almost immediately a glow came to the man's eyes, one so otherworldly the frog felt too petrified to move. And then almost as quickly it subsided, with the man scowling and cursing in french.
"Shoo," the man said, which the frog was too happy to oblige. Sometimes, after days like this, the hunger got the better of him and he felt like eating something--
anything he came across. It never helped. Anything he hate was never more filling than a mouthful of snow. There wasn't any point in bringing another creature misery if it didn't even ease his own.
