smash_logs | O, Terrible Insects! In the Bowels of the School: A Chance Meeting! Chance Fate!

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O, Terrible Insects! In the Bowels of the School: A Chance Meeting! Chance Fate!

Who: Bowser, Hajime
What: Bowser is lost in the catacombs beneath school; Hajime is cosplaying a Magcargo.
Where: The bunkers below the school.
When: Whenever it most pleases.
Warnings: Bowser being a dick.

He was lost, but he wouldn't admit it. He'd been wandering in the bunkers beneath the school for the last two days, with some stupid robots and some koopas, looking for the source of the purple bug things. He was doing this as a favor for Eggman. Okay, fine, he was getting a car out of it, but that was beside the point.

He'd found the purple insects in spades, but he hadn't been able to locate where they were coming from. At this point, his favorite theory was that they were coming in from some other dimension, like those times that Bowser only had two dimensions; they were seeping through the cracks.

He refused to admit that he was lost, of course, because he was Bowser and therefore couldn't possibly be lost, but it had been quiet a while since he'd had seven hams, and he was starting to feel a bit peckish. He should have brought some Magikoopas along - they could probably magic up hams.

The likelihood of Bowser meeting anyone down here who wasn't a highly flammable purple bug was, of course, minuscule. No, Bowser would wander these dark halls until he found his way out, or he expired from ham deficiency.

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In truth, Hajime would perhaps have been more comfortable hiding away inside the volcano, or maybe curling up and solidifying in a nice, dark, concrete corner in the bunkers. But he was better than that, he reminded himself. He had better things to do than sit and mope for the rest of his life. He had to aid wherever he could, lighting the way to find the source of the insects he'd accidentally unleashed on the school, helping to fight them off, providing something of worth to his fellow intrepid explorers.

So he had to resolve to showing his deformed, charred face in public while wearing a poorly fitting, slightly itchy sweater.

A particularly persistent swarm of the dark insects had held Hajime up, buying the rest of the group time to get away and continue their exploration, and eventually leaving him lost. He, y'know, didn't mind. It was what he was here for. Spitting up some lava, dealing with bugs. It was great that they'd gotten away.

He'd just hang out here. Waiting. For someone to find him.

And someone did, indeed find him.

That guy.

That guy found him.

Bowser was that guy, and also there were some other guys with him. Turtle guys.

He really had no idea what it was that he was looking at. "Does it look like a pile of Blargg vomit wearing a sweater?" he asked to one of his turtles, who nodded in assent. "What is that?"

What is you, Hajime.

"I've been wondering the same, myself."

What he is, is tired and not in the mood for turtle sass. He hadn't gotten good sleep in a few days, why should he get a moment's peace in a nice, nonflammable cavern?

A pair of yellowed eyes squint at Bowser, and his posse. This, he knows, can only end poorly.

"It's such a relief, to see a teacher using his resources to help the school." He props his chin up on one hand, caked over in obsidian from trying to hold back Slugma drool. "Naturally, I assume that's what you're doing here."

"Do I know you?" Bowser asked. Seriously, he had no idea who he was looking at. "Are you some sort of new type of Blargg? Is there a sweater-wearing Blargg?"

The Koopa next to him shrugged his Koopa shoulders.

"Tell me who you are," he demanded, his own yellow eyes glowing right back at Hajime's stupid lavabod.

"I can forgive you for not remembering me." He straightened up, and went to push up his glasses before remembering he'd left the scorched lenses in his room before he could melt the glass.

"After all, I only did make it to one of your classes. I can't imagine I made much of an impression." But he will never forget what you did to him, Bowser. Him and his GPA. "My name's Hajime Tanaka."

Bowser did a bit of a double-take when the lump of hideous lavaflesh announced who he was.

Then he laughed until tears glistened in his eyes.

"BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA," he chortled, "You? You? What, did you fall into a lava pit? Did you get into a fight with a flamethrower? What happened to you? You look like something I left in the toilet!"

Bowser is enjoying this way too much.

The reaction isn't a surprise, nor is it welcome. Hajime considered waiting until he stopped laughing to continue. After a minute or so, he recognized that wasn't likely to happen soon.

"What caused this business is none of yours."

He stood, dusting the buildup of ash and embers out of his solitary article of nonflammable clothing.

"How assuring to know I can bring some people some joy in such a stressful time. But I assume you have better things to do than gawk at a living lava deposit."

Bowser continued to wipe tears from his eyes. Nope, you are officially the most interesting thing to happen for two days. Bowser's riding this one out, thanks.

"Do you need a job? I have a lava-themed outpost that I need someone to sit around in. You'd fit right in. You can, you can walk back and forth in a little pool of lava, you'll love it, BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"

You are. The best thing.

Wow. It's so nice to be appreciated.

"I'm afraid I'll have to decline your generous offer. From the glimpses I've seen of your relationship with your employees, I can't say I'm inclined to such an environment."

Were Hajime not busy wallowing in the pits of self-loathing and misery over his condition, he might have realized he had better things to do than get laughed at for events beyond his control. At the moment, though, he saw little reason he shouldn't be mocked.

Bowser looked at Hajime askance. "What are you saying? That my minions don't love me?"

Bowser turned to his Koopa companions. "Minions, tell this lump of leftover lava how much you love me."

"King Bowser's the best!"

"I love King Bowser!"

"His Scaliness is so cool!"

"His Burliness has great swag!"

"Wow! So Koopa! Such Scale! Very King!"

Bowser smiled sweetly at the hideous lump. "They love me."

"That's quite nice for them."

He made eye contact with a couple, and tried to smile. They hadn't done anything especially rude to him, and it's nice to know they don't mind atrocious treatment.

"Speaking from a personal standpoint, though, it hardly seems suited to my preferences."

"Hideous monsters don't have many job choices," explained Bowser, testily. "I'd think you'd be thrilled that someone would give such an ugly, hideous, crusty lava-boy like you a job at all. You'd probably get ash all over a regular house."

He picked an imaginary speck of something out from his teeth, and flicked the non-entity in Hajime's direction.

His gaze fixed on somewhere a few inches above the ground as he tried to block out the description. Too little, too late, however: it was true, and he knew it from the start. There was nowhere he could go, looking like this, causing violent messes wherever he tread.

Smoke rose thick with each breath as he struggled to keep composure, smoldering bile glowing between his teeth in a bared grin. "If someone like you can find regular employment, surely there remains a chance for me."

"I'm not a monster," said Bowser. "Unlike you, I'm handsome and I can walk into a room without setting it on fire. Unless I want to." He looked down at his claws as if he were inspecting them for dirt; he wasn't.

"I'm power; you're just the yoshi dung I'd wipe off my feet."

"There are a great many kinds of monsters, and a great many kinds of power. One is hardly exclusive from the other--really, having power makes a monster. And people will only call a monster of someone who has power over them."

His head cocked to one side. "Is there a reason you're so eager to have me placed subordinate to you?"

"Because you're a snot-nosed, uptight, do-gooder," replied Bowser. "Following rules, and believing in the upright goodness of society. I'd like to bury that bright attitude in a hole; a lava pit in one of my many fortresses is the next best thing, because it lets me visit you in your useless, dull, pitiful, state, and remind you of the nice, regular little boy you used to be, who didn't burn all of his friends with his touch, and who didn't have to wear a sweater made out of -- I don't even know what that is -- to keep the rest of the world from seeing his crusted-over balls."

The smile on his face would have found a home on Satan's visage, as he leaned down at Hajime to deliver his enthusiastic philippic.

Hajime stared back into those eyes, let the heat of his breath huff at him with little note, and soaked in the rant. And then, he broke out into a smile.

"My god. You're that afraid of such a little bit of faith? So shaken in your standing by a modicum of good cheer, a wisp of well meaning? The bitter and evil so rarely do have faith in themselves, I suppose it's why they get such a kick out of having someone smaller than themselves to prove insignificant and stroke their egos. You nearly even had me fooled, but..." He chuckled.

"To think! You're even worried about someone as low down as me rising against the odds, you're trying to put a stop to it immediately! Goodness, that is reassuring. I think you've put me in the best mood I've been in since all this happened."

Bowser punched Hajime in the face.

Hajime's nose spurted white-hot slag as he was knocked back against the wall, the back of his skull cracking against it before he slumped to the ground.

He might have liked to follow it up with a "yeah I thought so" or "ho ho resorting to violence when your words won't do" or something just as snide and uppity, but his head was too busy swimming and his ears quite overfull with ringing for him to even think of spitting a comeback through the basalt blood.

Bowser stomped over, peered down at the now grounded Hajime, and kicked him for good measure, and then laughed, "BWAH HA HA HA HA." His raucous laughter rang through the caverns.

"Let me tell you one thing. You are the worm the wriggles on the end of my hook. That I take pleasure in your pain as I skewer you doesn't mean that I'm afraid of you. It just means that I've learned to enjoy the little things in life. I am a Koopa of refined tastes," he paused momentarily to savor the moment, and his own best qualities. "I am Power; you are Nothing. I'm lightning in a bottle! I'm an earthquake in a can! I could, I have crushed entire stars in my claws, but I'm not so high and mighty that I can't also take pleasure in smashing a Squiggler beneath my foot. You. Are a beautiful Little Mouser that I enjoy dangling over the pit, not because I'm afraid of you, but because I enjoy your agony as you look down at your empty future."

The Koopas behind him clapped.

"Very inspiring, sir!"

"I'm moved!"

"You're the best, Your Nastiness!"

"So Speech! Very Words! Such Scary!"

Edited 2014-05-26 05:57 (UTC)

To be entirely honest, Hajime wasn't fully certain if he had bones anymore, but if he did, a few had definitely broken. The kick brought another sudden wave of sharp, angry pain, and he coughed up more of his bile. It was a sudden clearing of the blockage he'd built up--over the days he'd managed to slow the slow to a slow dribble, but he hacked and wheezed and great gobs splattered out around him, hissing at Bowser's feet.

He tried to regain his breath, regain composure, while his joints flared and his stomach churned and his ears burned from the words Bowser threw at him. It was a lie. He knew it, more sure than he knew anything. Cruel people were just miserable, lonely people, fighting to assure themselves of their own relevance. It didn't matter who they were, how much power they had. Bullies were bullies.

Hajime had been at the feet of a lot of bullies before. He was so sick of bullies.

"Path...et...ic."

No, Hajime, cruel people were the ones who had the most fun in life; it was at others' expense, of course, but such wonderful, sustaining fun.

"Yes," said Bowser simply. "You are."

"All that... all that power..." and he had no reason to believe Bowser lacked it, "all of that, and the best you can think of... is to waste it... on a worm like me."

Smoke plumed out, from his nose and through gritted teeth, from each and every cracked joint along his charred skin, the ash and embers surged from every bit of poisoned plasma roiling inside him, while he pushed himself upright.

"You small-minded... insignificant... drain of potential energy. All that, just to put down a nobody like me." Flames licked over his tongue. "I'm nothing, but you choose to be less. Willful scum."

Bowser turned to his Koopas. "See, this is why I prefer Mario. He doesn't say anything. He just shows up. I can deal with that. But this guy, he keeps talking, and unlike Mario, he doesn't even have the will to do anything about it. He's a chump, born of a chump, from a long line of chumps, who don't know when to shut their mouths. It pains me, right here," he said, gesturing to his chest with a tap of his claw, "right in my Koopa heart, to think about how stupid he is."

He turned back to Hajime, and smiled. "I've died before, worm. I had the flesh seared from my bones and even then, I kept on going; my bones rearranged themselves and my skeleton kept fighting. I couldn't be stopped. And then, I came back to full life. Know this," he pressed a single claw into Hajime's chest as if he intended to pierce through to his stone-encased heart, "No matter what you feel I am, no matter what little victory you may think you have over me, whatever cheerful personal moral hogwash makes you think yourself better than me... I'll always be there. I do what I want. And nothing you do, in the end, matters. Never forget that."

"Then... then you know what comes next, don't you? You know what happens when you've hit the bottom, so what I'm going to do... shouldn't be a shock to you. You may think I'm stupid to try, but you're just as stupid to think I won'BLRRRHGH"

And then he barfed lava all over Bowser. Like, like a lot.

To be clear, that wasn't what he had been alluding to.

Bowser wiped the lava off of his face with one claw, and then returned the compliment, by searing Hajime's hideous, charcoal'd visage with his own fire breath.

Edited 2014-05-27 05:54 (UTC)

It took him a few seconds to realize this onslaught of fire did not hurt as much as it should. Or perhaps it did, but it was almost exactly the same amount as he was hurting already.

Bracing himself, he leaned forward, through the flames, and slapped Bowser across the face.

Bowser was surprised by being slapped in the face. Usually he was slapped in the face by a beautiful woman, not by whatever it was that Hajime was.

He stopped breathing fire on Hajime out of shock.

And then headbutted him instead, with a roar.

He stumbled again, ears ringing and brain rattling around his skull. He was too small and too untrained to hope of doing any damage against someone like this, but rage and disgust had wiped away his capacity to care. With a snarl, he hocked up a mouthful of magma and spat the gobs at Bowser's feet.

What an annoying twat this child was. Hideous and awful. An affront to his dignity and position. Entirely too full of magma. His feet were thoroughly befouled.

"I should dump you in the school pond," growled Bowser. "But carting you back up would be more trouble that it's worth."

He, instead, leaped up at Hajime to give him a righteous 'slam my scaly ass into you.'

Hajime was known for a generally even temper and calm demeanor. Anger accomplished little, being a cheap use of passion, fueled not by faith but by fear. But he was very scared right now, in pain and misery and fear and it had become too much for him to be anything but furious. All he could think of was how everything was terrible and unfair and he wanted something else to be miserable for once.

He was right. Being angry accomplished jack shit.

The crushing power of Bowser's fat ass struck hard, and with a last sputter of cinders, Hajime went down for realsies this time.

"Everybody spit on him," ordered Bowser, standing up as he hocked up a righteous amount of dragonturtle spittle and let it drop beneath him.

Whoops, Bowser's spit was flammable. The regular koopas' was not, however.

Wow. The fire didn't do jack and the spit evaporated, but now he's going to need to figure out how to wash this sweater. Thanks, jerk.

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O, Terrible Insects! In the Bowels of the School: A Chance Meeting! Chance Fate!

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If you dodge this attack enough times, it'll make a hole in the floor that Bowser will fall through.

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