Two Koopas, One Shell

[Android 17]

With Ronald behind him, Seventeen made his way further into the Ashen Steppes.  If what Joe the Magikoopa had told him was accurate, he’d eventually stumble upon some sort of tower owned and operated by an entire kingdom of anthropomorphic turtles.  While the machine-hybrid wasn’t entirely certain that sounded like an appealing place for a non-reptile, he knew he didn’t feel like stumbling his way through the white world another time, especially if those angry-looking people had resorted to fisticuffs.
 
As Seventeen carefully made his way across a landscape dotted with small heat vents, fissured earth, and the occasional pocket of active magma, his thoughts turned inward.  What the hell is this place, anyway?
 
He knew that he was in a place called the Ashen Steppes, and that the volcano world was a component of ‘the Omniverse.’  At the helm of the Omniverse was the all-white man with the smile and the weird, disembodied voice.  Was Omni the guy in charge or was he just some sort of weird manifestation of this world?
 
Is this just another one of those simulation-based challenges?
 
Back in his world, there’d be a great rise in ‘reality shows’ during the last years of his mortal life.  Rich entrepreneurs would pour a lot of money into designing fancy locations and then drop people into strange situations.  Nine times out of ten, the ‘contestants’ were supposed to kill each other.  Most of the time, that’s how things worked out in the end...
 
What was that guy’s name? Seventeen scowled at how bad his memory had become since his death.  Axel?  Damon? …Brim? The machine-hybrid knew it would come to him sooner or later. 
 
“I wonder if this is any different.”
 
The cyborg paused for just a moment and let his words hover in the air around him.  He hadn’t thought of it before, but what if this was just another one of those events?  Perhaps some smirking executive in an expensive suit was watching him through a hidden camera and waiting for him to trip into a pool of lava.  Was his best friend lurking behind a bush somewhere, waiting to pop out and reveal that he’d signed him up for some inane adventure game?
 
I wouldn’t put it passed Kirano… He’d be all over this type of thing.
 
Unfortunately, the more Seventeen thought about it, the more he started to doubt the hypothesis.  How many television producers had enough money to build a device that could function in the vicinity of a collapsing galaxy?  If someone was trying to make money from him, they probably would have had Ronald betray him.  What was more conducive to ratings than a saucy betrayal from someone you trusted?
 
Wonder if that means I’m stuck in this place.
 
If all the Omniverse had to offer was a bunch of volcanoes and turtles, Seventeen knew he was going to be in for one hell of an existence.  Sadly, the reptiles with the cartoonish features were probably the only clue he had to get to the bottom of the situation.  All he had to do was find whatever tower Joe had been talking about prior to their separation.
 
As he weaved his way across a landscape marred by smoke-laced fissures and bubbling pools of magma, Seventeen’s started to daydream.  In his mind, he was back to a simpler time—a moment in his life when all he had to do was keep track of a group of misfits and outcasts.  A mansion in the woods had been their home for a few years, and during that time, the little collection of aliens, golems, robots, and amnesiac human had made the North Quadrant their playground.
 
Like many things, time had spelled an end for all good things.  One by one, the faces around the picnic table had vanished into memory or oblivion.  The true killer of friendships is time, and near the end of his mortal life, the table had been empty save the cyborg’s girlfriend, two small children, the girlfriend of his best friend, and the small child who bore his father’s moniker.  The gloomy woman, her eyes betraying just how deep the sadness ran, would never find happiness.  While Seventeen made true on his promise to find his best friend, Kirano and Phoebe never repaired the gulf between them.
 
What had once been a lovely couple had been sundered by time apart.
 
The pair faded from the vision in Seventeen’s head, leaving behind only the android’s immediate family.
 
His girlfriend had been a rock in his life for a long time.  In his worst moments, she served to pull him up from the darkness.  She’d been an angel when they met, but by the time of his death, she’d become something almost foreign to him.  He had never been able to solve it, but he knew that something had taken root inside of her.  When his lease on mortality expired, he’d tried to keep an eye on her, but she vanished, leaving behind their children.
 
The feisty redhead—the woman he’d loved without hesitation—faded from the picture in his head, leaving behind two smiling children.
 
While fatherhood had never been something on his list of life goals, the machine-hybrid loved the twins with every fiber of his existence—mortal or otherwise.  He’d watched over them from the afterlife whenever he could find time.  After a few years, a version of his daughter from a darker future had found herself in the past, and Seventeen had done his best job to watch over her as well.  They’d been on the verge of meeting in person when the invaders had struck.
 
Seventeen had gone off to fight the dragon in order to keep the grown version of his daughter safe, and he had accepted his death knowing that he’d taken out the lone obstacle that she never could.
 
The picnic table was empty, save a scrawny young man with black hair drooped in front of his features.
 
Even in death, he’d never felt alone, but as he walked across the Ashen Steppes, the cyborg started to understand that he was no truly by himself.  No Kirano to share a few beers with.  No Paige to scratch his back as they went to sleep.  No Piper and Cole to cheer him on as he ran through the backyard with them on his shoulders.
 
All I’ve got now is a salt merchant and a turtle wizard.
 
With Ronald off to sell salt, that meant the machine-hybrid would have to go track down the latter of the two.  If what Joe the Magikoopa said was true, the Koopa Kingdom might be able to provide Seventeen with some much-needed information.
 
Hell, he’d take a soft bed to crash on for a day or two. 
 
And some air conditioning, while we’re at it…

[Android 17]

In his head, the cyborg had counted the steps he’d taken since leaving the salt merchant behind near the entrance of the verse. If the math was right, he’d gone a close to half a dozen miles, which meant he probably should have stumbled upon the landmark that Joe had mentioned.

Unless it’s hidden in some hill? Seventeen scowled and stopped. Everything around him looked exactly the same, and much like the place where he’d dealt with Ronald’s ex-partner, the landscape was growing increasingly rugged. At the first sign of a steep incline, Seventeen had tried to orb his way to the summit. He encountered another instance of failure, but at least he didn’t bruise or embarrass himself in the process.

At this rate, I couldn’t even jump a hurdle to save my damn life.

Would his powers naturally come back to him?

Was that how this place worked?

Could he expect to wake up some morning and be able to fly?

This place needs an instruction manual, I swear…

He’d conquered that first hill the old fashioned way: Sweat and curse words. As he stared up ahead, the jagged terrain turned sharply upward toward the sky, and unlike the last few mole hills he’d surpassed over the last few hours, this one was a mountain. To make matters worse—his left and right were both choked off by thick rivers of bubbling lava. Forward was the only viable option, unless he wanted to double-back a few miles to try and skirt around the mountain.

“Bull shit,” the young man muttered as he took a few steps toward the incline. He reached out with one of his bony hands and grabbed a fistful of rock. Turning his eyes up toward the hundred foot wall, he tried to find the next viable place to grab. He eventually found it in the form of a somewhat rounded outcropping that could probably support his weight.

A few seconds later, Seventeen was relieved when said chunk of rock didn’t collapse beneath his nonexistent girth. Many things were no longer going in his favor, but at least he didn’t have to worry about his gut. Once he was up off the ground, it became a little easier to start spotting the place he needed to grab. In a matter of seconds, he could already feel the gentle brushing of the wind against his back as he ascended above the little foothills and their streams of lava.

Five minutes later, the cyborg let out a sigh of relief as he pulled himself up over the edge of the cliff. While he wasn’t out of the shape, the climb had nevertheless proved a horrible, taxing affair. Fresh sweat stained his chest, neckline, and armpits. His unprotected hands were dotted with small cuts and abrasions. In the end, none of it mattered, because he’d made it.

With half of his body still draped over the cliff, Seventeen took some time to catch his breath. When the voice suddenly spoke just above him, the shock was nearly enough to send him careening back down the wall of rock.

“You lost?”

Looking up, the cyborg saw that one of the bipedal turtle creatures was standing just to his right. While he didn’t have the same vestments as Joe, the rest of the koopa’s features were identical to the wizard.

“I, uh,” Seventeen managed as he scrambled his way up onto solid ground. Once the immediate danger of falling subsided, he pulled himself into an upright position and looked at the three-foot reptile. “I’m looking for someone named Joe? He sent me in this direction?”

“The Magikoopa?”

The cyborg nodded his head. “Yea, he had a blue robe and some sweet sunglasses.”

“Yea, I know him,” the turtle replied as he stepped forward and offered a hand to the man. Seventeen wasn’t sure how an anthropomorphic turtle with stubby limbs was supposed to help him stand up easier, but he wasn’t one to turn down an offer of help. The pallid fighter reached out and snatched the claws, and with a shocking degree of ease, the koopa yanked him up from his haunches to a fully vertical position.

“Name’s Jed,” the reptile replied as he pointed to something. “Joe’s inside the tower.”

Seventeen followed the koopa’s extended claws and found himself looking at a nondescript stone tower. The ten-story tall structure was the same width from its base to its turreted apex. Near the top, a few slits had been etched into the stone, and at the bottom was a set of very simple metal doors.

“What’s the tower?” The raven-haired man inquired as he was led up to the front door by the turtle. “Some kind of watch tower?”

“You could say that,” Jed grunted as he knocked three times in quick succession on the door. After a short pause, the metal entrance swung inward, revealing an extremely plan corridor dominated by the start of a stone staircase that spiraled its way to the roof of the tower. “Bowser has these all over the place. Communication, recon, armed garrison… they got plenty of purposes.”

The cyborg furrowed his brow as he ducked to pass through the front entrance. Even close up, the place seemed devoid of value to anyone but some type of tower aficionado. “You sure? Seems pretty… bare bones.”

Jed frowned at the accusation. “This place is new,” he offered as he gestured to the emptiness around them. “It takes a while to develop a new tower into something worthwhile, y’know?”

“And you and Joe are the people who do that?”

The turtle nodded in response. “The two of us and four other people are the start-up crew. Once we have a place operational for a short while, they turn it over to a permanent team that starts expansion and fortification.”

“Makes sense,” Seventeen muttered as he glanced up from the epicenter of the tower. The stone stairwell wrapped around the inside of the building for nearly eighty feet before it was swallowed up by a wooden room. From the room up above, the cyborg heard the sound of metal hinges squealing as some light splashed down onto the stairwell. A beat later, Joe popped his head out and squinted down at his acquaintance.

“Oh, he’s good, Jed! You can send him up.”

Jed gestured toward the bottom of the staircase and smiled. “You heard the koopa.”

[Android 17]

Seventeen poked his head through the hatch in the ground and glanced up to see Joe standing on a chair near one of the tower ‘windows’. At the sound of the hinges squeaking, the magical reptile glanced over his shoulder and waved the cyborg over to him. “Come on over.”

The cyborg pulled himself up the little ladder that connected the top of the stairs to the observation deck. He let the wooden flap smack shut behind him as he made his way over to Joe the Magikoopa. The wizard patted on a small, turtle-sized stool next to him before pointing out the little hole in the stone building. “The Ashen Steppes is pretty nice from heights like this.”

Once he was squatted over the little stool, Seventeen glanced at the view, and after a moment, he had to admit that there was a lot of truth to his new pal’s remark. From higher up, the Steppes looked far more picturesque and less horrifying to the wayward traveler. “That’s a lot of volcanoes,” the cyborg remarked as he glanced out into the interior of the verse. While he’d spotted many on the horizon on his walk into the area, the view he was exposed to revealed more erupting volcanoes than he could count. In fact, the sky became black after what seemed to be a few dozen miles.

“You think this place is called the Ashen Steppes for shits and giggles?” Joe snickered as he pointed in what seemed to be an entirely random direction. “That’s where I’mma take you.”

Seventeen squinted, but he was still unable to see anything worthwhile on the horizon. “That’s just a bunch of nothing out there, Joe.”

The Magikoopa shook his head. “You can’t see it from here, because it’s beyond those mountains.”

“M’kay,” the machine-hybrid muttered as he turned his attention back to his short acquaintance. “So what’s out there?”

Joe smiled. “That’s where the Koopa Kingdom’s central headquarters is located. It’s where you gotta go if you wanna join the Troopers.”

“You want me to be a Koopa Troopa?” Seventeen chuckled before realizing that the anthropomorphic reptile was being dead serious. “I’m not a turtle, if you can’t tell.”

The wizard rolled his eyes. “Not every member of the Troopers is a koopa… they take anyone willing to offer their services to our little subterranean kingdom. King Bowser’s a firm, excellent ruler.”

Seventeen nodded along with the account; even though he wasn’t sure he bought any of it. In the cyborg’s mind, there were few ‘excellent rulers’ who called themselves king. Most of them were just sociopaths who used divine providence or bloodline or some other bullshit excuse to do as they pleased. “I mean, if you think so, Bud.”

“Outsiders are good.” Joe nodded his head, as if he had to agree with himself before moving onto his next thought. “They help inject some variety into the group.”

“You some sort of bigwig?”

Joe shook his head. “Middle-management, really. Kamek, my boss, he’s the guy with the king’s ear. I just do what Kamek tells me and hope I don’t disappoint him.”

“He one of those…” Seventeen pantomimed a wizard’s hat, eliciting a nod from Joe.

“He’s a wizard too. A Magikoopa. He was the first.”

Seventeen nodded his head. “So how do we get there?”

The question caused the magically-imbued reptile to smile just a little wider. “I thought you’d never ask! Let me go get the gear ready, and we can be there by sundown.”

There's a fucking night time here?! At that, the cyborg glanced out the window at the mixture of gray and black clouds that lined the sky. “Man, I hate to see this place somehow darker than it normally is…”

[Android 17]

The pair arrived at the base of the fortress after what felt like an entire day of walking their way across a landscape ravaged by sputtering geysers, lava floes, and unstable soil. After the long march, the sight of the grandiose fortress—nestled as it was in a mountain range that made it hard to see the building until you were nearly upon it—was a welcomed one.

“Isn’t it awesome?” Joe asked with a grin as the machine-hybrid scoped out the enormous stone building.

“That Bowser?” Seventeen inquired as he looked at one of the many stone visages that decorated the outside of the building. The largest one was just above the main doorway and seemed to be bleeding black smog from its nostrils. Gargoyles at various corners of the structure had the same general appearance as the central decoration. When Joe nodded his head, the cyborg nodded his head. “Gotta respect a guy who likes himself enough to put his face on his castles.”

“He is a very handsome and terrifying individual,” Joe said without the slightest hint of humor or sarcasm.

Looking at the giant castle made Seventeen recall the mansion where he’d spent nearly four years of his life. Unlike the stone monstrosity that loomed before him, the home where he’d live with his friends had been a rustic structure tucked away in the western forests of the planet where he’d been born. Home to a slew of criminals before it wound up reposed by a bank and sold to Capsule Corp, the mansion had been as good a home as anything else the cyborg had known. He’d had the closest thing to a normal existence within those walls, before the Avatars and then the Construct sullied any chance he may have had at retiring young.

“You all right?” Joe remarked before poking a limb into Seventeen’s side. When the cyborg let out a grunt and swatted away the koopa, the wizard snickered. “You zoned out again.”

“Memories,” Seventeen shot back as he gestured toward the fortress. “So you gonna show me the foyer or what?”

The Magikoopa nodded his head and started toward the giant front doors of the stone monstrosity. As they drew closer, the large red doors—studded around their periphery with shinny steel bolts—groaned and started to swing outward. By the time Joe and Seventeen where a few paces from the entrance of the fortress, a small group of heavily armed Koopa Troopers had marched out to greet them. The red-shelled soldiers’ steps were perfectly synchronized as they formed a neat little semi-circle and allowed for a taller koopa to step forward.

“Welcome back, Joe,” the taller koopa replied. Even if this new individual hadn’t been taller and stronger-looking than his peers, anyone would be able to tell he was some sort of bigwig. Instead of sneakers, the koopa wore very shiny leather boots, and the top of his head was adorned by a very well-maintained beret. To complete the look, the koopa had a large mustache that made him seem much more dignified than his rank-and-file peers. After exchanging a nod with Joe, this important-looking koopa turned to look at the wiry human. “We’ve seen a lot of outsiders recently.”

“Name’s Seventeen.”

The koopa nodded his head. “I’m Von Koopa.” At that, he stepped forward and offered his hand to the machine-hybrid, who was more than happy to exchange a short, firm shake with the reptilian military officer. “What brings you back here to ‘Main’, Joe?”

“My friend here would like to help out.”

At that, Von Koopa once more simply nodded his head. “He’ll have to compete with some of the others who want into the Troopers.” The officer turned to look at Seventeen. “You’ll have to prove yourself more worthy than some other outsiders… is that something you believe you are capable of?”

“Well, d’uh,” the machine-hybrid replied, eliciting a grin from Von Koopa.

“Follow me,” the dignified turtle remarked as he spun on his heels and marched back into the fortress. With the common soldiers forming tight lines around their superior, Seventeen and Joe followed a few paces behind as they were led inside. Once through the massive front doors, the cyborg glanced behind his back to see them start to swing shut.

Seventeen got a few moments to glance at the massive foyer—lined with giant flags, Bowser statues, and ornate chandeliers—before he was led into an adjoining chamber by the marching column of koopas. Inside the side room, the cyborg found a variety of other non-koopas either seated on wooden chairs or standing and talking near what seemed to be the turtles’ version of a water cooler.

“You’re dismissed,” Von Koopa informed his posse of Koopa Troopers. All six of the soldiers snapped off firm salutes before spinning perfectly and making their way back into the central chamber. Once the last of them was gone, Von Koopa cleared his throat and addressed the room of outsiders. “You’re all here because of the same reason, but for a moment, I need to be frank with you. We koopas are not intolerant of outsiders, but we don’t have need for all of you. Our king only wants to accept the best that the outside world has to offer, and to prove that, only the best in this room is going to join our ranks.”

From the back of the room, a rugged-looking man with an eye patch made his precense known. “What must we do?”

Von Koopa grinned as he pointed through the wall of the castle. “There’s a mountain out there, and if you want to join the Koopa Troopers, you’re going to need to get to the top of it.”

A different person—a woman with a mohawk—let out a derisive snort. “Climb a mountain? I could do that shit in my sleep.”

With a small laugh, the koopa lieutenant brushed his mustache and stared over at the woman. “You won’t be climbing the mountain. It’s far too dangerous to go up there on foot, as you’d be killed almost instantly.”

“Then how?” The third speaker was a weird little animal with bat wings and a stupid-looking pompom bobbing above its head.

“We have transporation for you,” Von Koopa answered as he produced what seemed to be a small model car of some sort. “You’ll all be provided with koopa karts.”

Seventeen snickered. “A race?”

Von Koopa grinned once more. “A race.”

[Android 17]

Near the rear of the fortress, the groups of would-be Koopa Troopers were assembled in what seemed to be—for all intents and purposes—the building’s garage. The far wall of the room was opened up to the outside world, showing a rapid incline up the side of the adjoining mountain. Throughout the large room, nearly a dozen vehicles sat with idled motors. While Seventeen has hoping for ATVs or at least small cars with nice traction, the machines set out for them seemed like the rejects from an experimental garage. Most of them were no larger than your standard go-kart, and one of them looked like little more than a golf cart with a larger engine.

“What is this nonsense?” One of the men asked as he stepped toward one of the machines and set a hand on the high-back seat. “This is like a child’s plaything!”

Von Koopa snickered as he quickly counted the number of participants and then the number of vehicles. “It seems like we have ten karts and twelve of you, which means two of you are going to be left out of the race.”

With the words still fresh in the air, an armored man who’d been silent the entire time made a subtle movement toward two people near to him. The pair didn’t even realize what was coming at them until the blades were poking out of their stomachs. They offered a small struggle before the serrated swords traveled up their thoraxes and out their shoulders. Seventeen chuckled softly as the dead individuals collapsed into moist, bloody heaps.

The koopa officer nodded his head. “I suppose that’s one way to settle the situation,” he remarked as he gestured to the vehicles. “All of you select a kart and drive over to the edge of the garage. We’ll begin the race in ninety seconds. If you try to leave before then, you may be subjected to a very explosive ejection from this trial.”

Seventeen didn’t wait for further instructions. He spun on his heels and made for the nearest kart that didn’t seem like the brainchild of someone on LCD. With no one near him, he was able to calmly hope into the faux leather driver’s seat and secure his seatbelt. After glimpsing down at the controls, he watched silently as a small fracas broke out over a pair of karts near the other side of the room.

This time, it was the gentlemen with the swords who ended up staring down at his intestines. A much large ‘man’ with tusks snapped back the swordsman’s left arm and proceeded to bite down through whatever material the armor was made out of. Muffled screams could be heard behind the face guard as the man with the swords had his stomach ripped out by his attacker’s teeth.

All that over a go-kart in the shape of a flower? Fuck.

The machine that the cyborg had selected was decorated to look like a little wooden train from the dawn of the railroad age. The seating area was designed to look like an empty mine cart. Turning his focus to the controls, Seventeen shifted the kart into drive and eased on the gas. Much to his surprise, the toy-looking vehicle sprung forward with all the horsepower of a full-sized car. All it took was a little juice to drive the train-kart over to the ‘starting line.’ With a smirk, Seventeen revved the engine a little bit and watched as the little plumes of gray belched from the smokestack near the engine.

As he waited at his spot, the cyborg heard a voice call out from his left. “Tch.”

Glancing over, the black-haired warrior scowled at the gaudy machine idling next to him. It was little more than a framework of metal pipes lashed together and connected to some wheels and an engine. Seated inside the kart was a man with long black hair styled into large spikes. For some reason, the hairdo was very familiar, even if the scrawny pale man attached to it was not.

“Can I help you?” The cyborg asked as the remainder of the racers lined up at the edge of the garage.

“Yea,” the man replied as he revved the engine of his utilitarian kart. “Can you do me a favor and collect all the dust I leave behind?” With a snide laugh, the man looked out at the mountainside in front of them. “This’ll be a blast.”

Down at the other end of the line, one of the racers edged forward just enough to put the nose of his cart over the barren soil. Before anyone had a chance to register the subtle movement, the kart and its driver exploded, showering the nearby walls and racers in a mixture of dirt, blood, and twisted metal.

“That’s a shame,” Von Koopa shouted through a megaphone as he took a position on a small platform to Seventeen’s left. “The track is in front of you… it’s marked on the edges by little more than a line in the dirt. If you leave the course, your kart will self-destruct. In the event that you think I’m lying, you can ask the smoldered bits of the man sticking to the floor. The first one to the top of the mountain will become a Koopa Trooper. Any questions?”

Only the rev of the collected karts answered the koopa lieutenant.

“All right!” Von Koopa added as he reached for a revolver at his side. With the gun aimed in the air over the racers, he started the countdown. “Three… Two… One… GO!”

The revolver discharged, and just like that, the racers burst from the garage and onto the track that would lead them up the mountain.

[Android 17]

Seventeen tucked his bandana into his shirt with one hand as he steered around the wide bend with the other. As it stood, he was currently in fourth place, but the remaining contestants were all within a few seconds of skirting passed him at any moment.

Up ahead, the tusk-man was second in the standings, and despite his aggressive style, he hadn’t managed to close in on the woman leading the pack. Whatever fueled her pink dragster, it gave her the edge over the growling, snarling murderer trying to take her spot. A few places behind Seventeen, the man with the pipe kart just seemed to be enjoying the sights. Despite his proclamation that he would leave everyone in the dust, he had settled into seventh place without any effort to pass his adversaries amidst on the wide curves of the mountainside.

While the first five minutes of the race had been rather nondescript, a glance at what lay ahead revealed a landscape increasingly pocked by pools of sputtering lava. Amid the pools of fiery death, Seventeen spotted what seemed to be…

Are those floating boxes?

A few moments later, the cyborg was close enough to see that he was definitely looking at floating gold boxes emblazoned with giant question marks. The woman in first place casually passed by one of the boxes and smashed a palm down onto it, causing it to shift to dull brown and drop to the ground. Even though he had some apprehensions, Seventeen steered toward the nearest box and gave it a sturdy thwack as he drove passed.

Just as the box went inert, Seventeen noticed that a black pouch popped into life on his lap.

…Huh.

Before he had a chance to assess the situation, the tusk-man pivoted in his seat and chucked something red at the racer behind him. The third place driver had zero time to react before the object crashed into the front of his vehicle and exploded through his engine. Seventeen let out a silent curse and veered hard to the right to avoid the shrapnel, and as he steered around the charred mass, he saw what seemed to be a spinning red shell skittering back toward the other racers.

Now in third place, the machine-hybrid placed his attention back on the course laid out in front of him. A sharp turn up ahead nearly claimed the life of the woman in first place, and when it became the cyborg’s turn to round the bend, he felt one of his back wheels skirt over the cliff edge as he rounded the mountain. Moments later, he heard a horrible scream followed by the sound of crunched metal.

Six racers…

With a straight shot up ahead, Seventeen glanced down at the bag in his lap after shifting into a higher gear. Once his hand was free, he reached down and pocked the container, discovering that its contents were semi-solid.

Fuck it. Without a second though, the raven-haired fighter lobbed the sack up over his head. As he made the next turn, he shot a glimpse back to see that the bag had contained some sort of tar or oil-like substance, and when the oblivious woman behind him drove over it, she immediately lost control. A beat later, she was tumbling down the side of the mountain. I’m only a little sorry for that one.

With the incline growing steeper, all the racers found themselves mashing down on their gas pedals in an effort to get everything out of the karts. During a nearly forty-five degree climb, Seventeen saw the fancy man behind him drop what seemed to be a large gear from his kart. The comically oversized cog crushed the strange cat person and reduced the pool of racers to four.

Just as soon as that thought passed through his mind, Seventeen looked up to see the tusk-man drive the female racer off the side of the incline. Screaming and wailing her head off, the woman fell silent after the second tumble snapped her neck.

Three’s company…

[Android 17]

Grinning as he did it, Seventeen shifted into the highest remaining gear as the race neared its culmination. While it hadn’t been quite as thrilling as he’d expected, he couldn’t deny that he had missed driving over the last few years. Flight had accustomed him to the feeling of the wind whipping his hair around, but there was something pleasant in controlling the little vehicle and guiding it up the rugged slopes and around all the treacherous bends.

With the race nearly at an end, the remaining three contestants were all within a few feet of one another. Seventeen knew that he was technically in second place, but the tusk-man, who had fallen into third, was breathing down his neck as they reached the stretch.

“I can smell your fear!” The bestial man growled as they neared another assortment of question mark boxes. As they came at the boxes, the three karts were all in a line, about three feet away from one another.

“That ain’t fear you smell,” Seventeen replied as he smacked the oncoming box and grinned at the object on his lap. Hammers are fun.

Before he had a chance to formulate a perfectly choreographed attack, the cyborg caught motion from the corner of his eye. The suave, smack-talking man from the garage let out a little titter as he chuckled a red shell at Seventeen’s kart.

Fuck me. The machine-hybrid swerved hard, but the shell readjusted its direction and came at him like a blurry red comet. Letting go of the wheel, Seventeen smashed the button for the driver’s harness and leapt out the opposite side of the vehicle as it soaked up the impact of the shell and erupted like a tiny bomb. With the hammer still in his right hand, the cyborg threw it with all his might at the tusk man. Oblivious to the survival of the ejected racer, the other driver remained oblivious until the hammer opened up the side of his skull.

Crashing against the thrashing body of the dying creature-man, Seventeen grabbed for the other driver’s harness and wrenched it loose.

“Tuh-tiny man not—” A mouthful of angry teeth snapped in the cyborg’s direction, but he pulled back and retaliated by burying the head of the hammer through said pearly whites and down his adversary’s throat. A beat later, he got a hand up under the tusk-man and shoved the would-be corpse out of the kart.

Shifting his body to the front, Seventeen found the gas and smashed the pedal as he eyed the man who was now nearly fifteen feet ahead of him.

Can’t close the gap in time. The end of the race was clearly at the end of the current stretch, and the vaguest outline of a few humanoid reptiles could be spotted along the sides of the makeshift track. With a scowl, Seventeen reached behind his back and grabbed the handle of the sword. His foot was already aching from the pressure he was placing on the little gas pedal, but even as the engine roared behind him, he knew he wasn’t going to have a better chance. Flinging his hand forward, he launched the Power Sword like a javelin, and while he was unpracticed, he had enough muscle memory to land a solid, impaling blow through the other driver’s right shoulder.

The kart in front of the cyborg swerved wildly as the injured driver tried to will himself through the pain. In that moment of panic, Seventeen was able to close to distance and pull his kart up alongside his would-be rival. “Eat my dust, yo!” The machine-hybrid shouted as he grabbed the handle of his weapon and tore it out through the side of the other driver.

As Seventeen cruised over the finish line, the last intact cart sputtered to a stop after its driver became a corpse.

Hoping out of the cart, the cyborg grinned as a clapping Von Koopa approached him.

“Nicely done.” He replied as he handed the raven-haired man a green shell not unlike the red one that had nearly ended his life. “This signifies your status as an Honorary Koopa Trooper. You will be welcome and accepted within the halls of our outposts and forts, but you may also be called upon to serve in the name of our glorious leader, King Bowser.”

“Of course,” Seventeen replied as he accepted the turtle shell and turned it over in his hands. Was he supposed to wear this thing or something? Huh…