Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

   There was not much Mr. Puzzles could do in the confines of his cell. Yes, he couldn’t move, bound with rope, but somehow his restricted movement also restricted him from retreating into his own head. Still, he could think, and ponder exactly how he ended up here.

   Mr. Puzzles tried to think back… but his thoughts kept falling to Leggy – probably because the only other “person” in his cell was Leggy 2.0. He had a vastly superior Leggy with him right here! He didn’t need the old one at all! And yet… for some reason, the first Leggy looked up to him, in a way that didn’t require brainwashing to accomplish.

   Leggy was like a little sister to Mr. Puzzles.

   Sister…

   He had a little sister, once. And a mother, too. How could he have forgotten them, and not his unsupportive father?

   Dad wasn’t always there, anyway. Most of the time, he was away at work, or on a business trip. When he was home, Puzzles felt Dad’s only purpose was to destroy his ideas in person.

   Mom didn’t stop Dad from stomping on little Puzzles’s dreams, but there were a few good things about her. She would cook his favorite meal after a long day of school and homework. She always made sure he did his homework before he enjoyed the TV.

   But before the… incident, Puzzles’s sister was the closest relationship he had. He would tell her about the plots of shows and movies, even when she was too young to understand. At least she appeared attentive, unlike the other children his age Puzzles talked to.

   As they got older, his sister proved to be the more responsible one in every way. She went outside to explore the world, make friends, and have adventures. She even got a job at nine years old! She got whatever love Puzzles’s parents provided, while he stuck to his shows and movies.

   He was forced outside, because it was the only place his parents could put him for a timeout that wouldn’t have him trying to look at any TV. The only times he was in timeout were when he refused to leave the television’s watchful gaze. While outside, the other kids would come by and ask him if they wanted to play. He didn’t like their games – he’d rather reenact his favorite shows - so he always said no.

   Still, Puzzles’s sister encouraged him. She said she’d only gotten the job to help fund her brother’s dreams. She used most of the money on stuff she wanted, like a normal child would an allowance, but she always set aside a piggy bank for him.

   In high school, Puzzles became a theater kid, surprising no one. He tried out for the play as soon as he heard about auditions, and got a small part. He admitted to himself he never was leading man material. He got along just fine with his fellow actors and the director, but he never got close enough to consider them friends.

   When the performance nights finally came, Puzzles’s parents never showed. They always had a “date night” or “other plans” – how convenient, Puzzles thought. However, he always saw his sister in the audience. She never missed a performance, and she always got him flowers.

   One night, after Puzzles graduated from school, something snapped within him. He had watched so many TV shows and movies, and never had the chance to make his own. There had to be some way for him… to get into television, as they said. He took the piggy bank from his sister’s room, and he took the television from his room.

   Then Puzzles drove to a place in the middle of nowhere to cut off his head. He went someplace secluded so… no one sister could find him. In the black mirror of the television screen, he looked at his reflection one last time. In the pale moonlight, he only saw a silhouetted head and the same light shining off his eyes. Probably an appropriate way to remember his past self: he was a nobody before replacing his head.

   Puzzles picked up the saw, hands shaking. There would be no going back from this. He sliced his head from his neck in one clean stroke. He only had mere seconds to put the TV in its place.

   Somehow, she still found Mr. Puzzles. She was barely able to drive, but she had managed to talk their parents into letting her borrow their car. When she saw him, she reacted exactly how he anticipated.

   She screamed, called Mr. Puzzles a monster, and fled. He was still recovering from cutting off his own head, so he could not give chase. Did he even want to try and reason with her?

   Oh yeah, he had to do something with his decapitated human head. Ugh, it was hard to look at. Maybe… if he left it here, and the rest of his family found it, they’d believe he was dead.

   Oh, what a twist! And it would get rid of any loose ends. Mr. Puzzles could start a new life, far away from anyone who ever knew him.

   With that new life, he created a new channel, new shows, and… he even made a new friend. Then the SMG4 Crew took ALL of that away from him! At least Leggy 2.0 was still here…

   But now he missed his sister.

   Tracy…

Chapter Text

   It was her big brother’s first stage play, and a musical, too! Tracy was so excited for Ness. A shame their parents hadn’t shown, but she hoped they were enjoying their date night regardless.

   She sat in one of the center seats of the high school auditorium. Far enough away that she wouldn’t have to bend her head to look at the stage, but close enough that she was sure nobody would obscure her view. Ness had taught her that trick when they went to the movies, and she hoped it would work here, too.

   Soon, the lights in the auditorium came down, the overture played, and the lights on the stage came up. It took about ten minutes for the titular character to show up. Tracy, however, wasn’t focused on Matilda.

   It was the last line of the opening song that got Tracy’s attention the most:

   “Dad says I should watch more TV…”

   Tracy was focused on her brother, who was playing Matilda’s TV-obsessed brother, Michael. Of course the director would give him that role. She must have had a great sense of humor!

   Tracy wondered if she’d be having that same thought if Ness managed to get the role of Mr. Wormwood. She worried that that was the man Ness would grow up to be, forcing television onto his hapless children. However, to have a family, Ness needed to be in a relationship, and to be in a relationship, he needed friends.

   As the closest relationship he had, Ness often griped to Tracy about his inability to make friends. She wanted to bring up the elephant in the room – Ness’s TV obsession – but she couldn’t bear to say anything about it. Their parents were already constantly on his case about it. School and theater gave Ness something else to do, but besides that, he would be watching the television.

   She shouldn’t have been that worried about Ness getting a leading role anyway - most of the lead parts went to seniors.

   Tracy had read the original Matilda book for school, and she was sure Ness had seen the movie. Both understood the plot. Still, it was weird, being a psychic sister with a television-obsessed brother, watching a psychic sister with a television-obsessed brother. She didn’t want to think about how neglectful their parents were sometimes, either. Not only did the director have a sense of humor, but fate seemed to have one, too.

   Tracy wondered how many people even knew she was psychic. She had adventured with Jeff, Paula, and Poo, and they kept in touch after defeating Giygas. They had met and helped many people in their adventures. Ness knew too, of course. Why wouldn’t she show off the cool psychic powers she gained to her big brother?

   Tracy remembered trying to teach him one trick she had picked up: turning PK Thunder into a finger gun to literally shoot a lightning bolt at enemies. She had lined up some soda cans on their picket fence and used PK Thunder on one to demonstrate. He made a finger gun with his left hand and tried to shoot down the next soda can. He pouted when it didn’t work, but she was sure she had seen some sparks come from his hand.

   Stop reminiscing and support your brother! Tracy told herself.

   She set her thoughts back on the musical.

   Because this was a high school production, Ness was also part of the ensemble. Tracy watched him the whole time: as a child in the opening number and a student in Crunchem Hall. Some of the kids were trying hard to sound British, others didn’t bother with the accent. Ness put on a fake British accent, but it was a surprisingly good one (for what few lines he had.)

   The show didn’t truly begin, in Tracy’s mind, until the second act, when Matilda got her powers. (Also, her brother got to appear in a little song about the “Telly” at the start of the second act.) Tracy was psychic, but she couldn’t move objects with her mind. She had always wondered if there was a way to be “naughty” with her powers like Matilda. Of course, there was little Tracy could do with her attack powers without getting into serious trouble.

   There was one day, however, when she and Ness had been late for school. He wanted to watch the end of a show before school, and they had missed the bus. They ran, Ness tripped, and he ended up scraping his knee. So they wouldn’t be even later, Tracy used her powers to heal the scrape.

   “I really wish I had cool powers like you,” Ness had said.

   Tracy had smiled at him. “Maybe you will one day.”

   Soon, the play was over. Tracy clapped loudest when her brother came onstage to bow. Afterwards, when the performers started to come out into the auditorium, Tracy ran up to Ness.

   She squealed, “Ness, you were amazing up there!”

   “R-Really?” Ness asked. “I didn’t have that many lines. I just stood or sat there most of the time.”

   “I mean, the part was practically made for you.” Tracy snickered.

   Ness rolled his eyes.

   “Oh, I also got you these.” Tracy pulled a bouquet of flowers from behind her back, giving them to her brother. “Apparently you’re supposed to get performers long-stemmed roses. So I did. And I didn’t want to get all red roses, so the florist recommended yellow ones. They look pretty, don’t you think?”

   “Yeah, they do.” Ness gave his sister a hug, holding the bouquet carefully. “Thanks, Tracy.”

   Mr. Puzzles surveyed the progress on his renovations to Didney World, soon Puzzle Park. Puzzle pattern floor tiles were being put into place. He had also put in carnival games where people could win plushies of himself. Finally, he had renovated the rides to be a little more… menacing. Only the best for his guests.

   Since things were going well, he decided to take a break with his sole employee, Leggy. Though she was a diligent worker, Leggy frequently took breaks in the form of watching television. Mr. Puzzles didn’t mind, so long as she used a television that wasn’t his head. With the renovations, there were plenty of screens around.

   He found her in what used to be a security office. One of the monitors was still a regular television, and Leggy was watching… Top Gear? Okay, Mr. Puzzles considered British television a form of punishment, but there were some exceptions. He pulled up a chair and sat next to Leggy, until she noticed he was there.

   She squealed and said in her high-pitched gremlin voice, “Puzzles watch TV with me?”

   “Of course I’d watch TV with you, Leggy. The renovations are going along great, and I'm sure I deserve a break, too.”

   “Yeah!”

   “So… Top Gear, huh? I didn’t take you as the motorhead type!” Mr. Puzzles wasn’t sure if she had absorbed the program at all, but he kept the conversation going. “You know what they call television in Britain?”

   Leggy tilted her head. Was Mr. Puzzles from Britain? He had the accent, but she still wasn’t sure. “I dunno.”

   “They call it a ‘telly.’ I think you’d like that word~”

   Leggy giggled and repeated, “Telly!”

   Mr. Puzzles gasped, his face switching to a pog. “Wait, Leggy! I just remembered something. I’d like you to join me in a song.”

   He cleared his throat and started singing.

   “Somewhere on a show I heard
That a picture tells a thousand words
   So Telly, if you bothered to take a look
Is the equivalent, of like… lots of books!”

   He gestured to all the screens in the room – all the security monitors and the one normal television.

   “All I know I learned from—"

   Leggy said the word “Telly” on cue, as if she already knew the song.

   “This big, beautiful box of facts!
If you know a thing already,
Baby, you can switch the channel over just like that!”

   Mr. Puzzles picked up Leggy and they strolled through the park together.

   “Endless joy and endless laughter
Folks living happily ever after
   All you need to make you wise
Is 23 minutes plus advertise-ments!”

   It was nice to enjoy something from the non-tragic part of his past with someone else. Okay, yes, Matilda’s family were supposed to be antagonists, but Mr. Puzzles didn’t care. He was a cold-blooded villain, and singing this with Leggy was fun!

   “Why would we waste our energy
Turning the pages one, two, three?
   When we can sit comfortably on our lovely bumferlies
Watching people singing and talking and doing stuff?”

   Mr. Puzzles walked them past the many TV screens he had set up around the park – all with his face on them, of course.

   “All I know I learned from—"
“Telly!”
“The bigger the—”
“Telly,”
“The smarter the man!
   You can tell from my big—”
“Telly!”
“Just what a clever fella I am~”

   They came upon a stage Didney World would use for shows and travelling performers. Only a mic stand was out right now, and Mr. Puzzles pushed it down for Leggy to use. He announced to a non-existent crowd, “Take it away, Leggy!”

   Leggy cleared her throat and a single syllable echoed from the mic: “A”

   Mr. Puzzles clapped for her before continuing the song.

   “All I know I learned from—"
“Telly!”
“What to think and what to buy,
   I was pretty smart already,
But now I'm really, really smart, very, very smart!”

   His screen flickered to his scary face for just a second.

   “Endless content, endless channels
Endless chat on endless panels
   All you need to fill your muffin
Without having to really think or nothing!

   Why would we waste our energy
Trying to work out Ulysses?
   When we can sit happily on our lovely bapperlies
Watching slightly famous people, talking to really famous people?”

   Mr. Puzzles opened the double doors, and slowed down for the final chorus.

   “All I know I learned from—"
“Telly!”
“The bigger the—”
“Telly,”
“The smarter the man!
   You can tell from my big—”
“Telly!”
“Just what a clever fella I am!”

   Mr. Puzzles ended the song in the Engine Room, right in front of the giant contraption he intended to hook himself up to, once SMG4 and his friends arrived. It was shaped like an upper body, with a big television screen that would serve as the bigger body’s head. As he looked it over, he tapped his screen.

   “Hmm, maybe I should make another song for my next encounter with SMG4…”

Chapter Text

   The bus rolled through the city that made up the Mushroom Kingdom. Soon, it came to its designated stop. A blonde woman in a red overshirt stepped out.

   She looked around, taking in the Mushroom Kingdom. She had been here before making deliveries, but now she was here on a personal mission. She pulled out her phone and checked something. The news article clearly stated the last place Mr. Puzzles had been seen.

   Should she ask the Mushroom Kingdom’s inhabitants about Mr. Puzzles’s whereabouts? Considering what she saw, what she heard, and what she knew, asking about him would just get her “no”s and doors slammed in her face. She needed to investigate on her own.

   She pulled out her phone and opened the map app. It still showed the location of Didney World, which for a brief time was “Puzzle Park.” She walked to the edge of the kingdom and found the amusement park.

   Since Mr. Puzzles’s defeat, Puzzle Park was in a state of disrepair. Dirt and dust coated the puzzle-patterned tiles on the ground. The carnival games were toppled over, and their prizes had been looted. The already dangerous rides looked like they would outright kill if ridden now. All the televisions around were either broken, had fallen from wherever they were hanging, or completely missing.

   Tracy took it all in. Then she walked around, hoping to find any signs of where Mr. Puzzles had been taken. The security office near the front of the park was empty, not just of people, but of the monitors she expected the place to have. The stages where people would perform were similarly empty, with no people and no props. She had made her way to a pair of double doors that read “ENGINE ROOM” when—

   Someone behind Tracy cleared their throat. She turned around to see four people staring at her. She knew SMG4 – the one in front, in blue and white – and Mario – the one dressed similarly in red – from name recognition alone. She didn’t learn of Meggy (the orange-haired lady who looked vaguely like an Inkling) or SMG3 (another “plumber-shaped” man clad in purple and black) until she watched PuzzleVision.

   “Hey…” SMG4 said nervously. “We don’t usually care about other looters, but we haven’t seen you around the Mushroom Kingdom before.”

   “I’ve made some deliveries here, actually,” Tracy pointed out, “though I’ve never run into the SMG4 Crew before. You are SMG4, correct?”

   “Hah, yeah, that’s me.” SMG4 managed to smile. “And you are?”

   “I’m Tracy Earthbound.” It was time to tell them her personal mission. They had to know where he was. “Mr. Puzzles is my brother. Where is he?”

   None of the four answered. In fact, they all looked shocked, scared, or angered at the mere mention of his name. They were probably wondering what she wanted with him.

   Tracy assured them, “I just want to talk to him.”

   They stayed silent for another moment.

   Then SMG4 answered, “I don’t know where you’ve been, but… your brother’s evil, and he’s lost his mind.”

   “Well, I knew both of those things… but I still need to see him.”

   “Alright,” Four sighed. “Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

   “Wait, wait, wait!” SMG3 stepped forward, between SMG4 and Tracy. “What if she was, like, brainwashed before Mr. Puzzles ended up in jail to say she’s his ‘long-lost sister’ that ‘conveniently’ shows up to break him out of prison? Meggy, SMG4, you said Mr. Puzzles only had a dad, right?”

   Meggy and SMG4 nodded, both recalling the backstory Mr. Puzzles had given him.

   Meggy said, “He never mentioned a sister. All he talked about was his dad.”

   “Ugh, Dad…” Tracy ran a hand down the side of her head. “Look, our terrible childhood is no excuse for what he put you through.”

   She had some familiarity with Mr. Puzzles’s father. SMG3 still wasn’t sure about her intentions, but her tone told the Crew she was indeed related to Mr. Puzzles. Mario broke the silence with a “Let’s-a go!”

   “Hold on, Mario,” Four spoke up. “We need someone to watch the park. If Tracy broke in, there’s a possibility someone else could try to break in while we’re gone.”

   Mario was an idiot, but that didn’t mean he was always stupid. He picked up that SMG4 didn’t want him coming with them… but someone had broken into the park. He might as well stay here to make sure nobody else showed up. He answered, “Okie-dokie.”

   Then, the remaining SMG4 Crew left.

   Once they were out of the park, Tracy asked SMG4, “What was that about?”

   Four answered, “Your brother and Mario have a… history. I’d rather he stay as far away from Mr. Puzzles as possible.”

   Oh, right. Tracy remembered what Four was talking about now. Every time her brother tried to brainwash Mario, somehow, the plumber’s idiocy broke him and his friends out.

   The walk to the prison was quiet. Tracy didn’t feel like talking to the people that incarcerated her brother. In turn, the SMG4 Crew didn’t feel like talking to Mr. Puzzles’s sister.

   The prison was a large, intimidating building. Tracy wasn’t shocked her brother was serving time here. However, just looking at the place gave her the fear she would end up behind bars for even mentioning she was Mr. Puzzles’s sister.

   There were a few guards around the place, but the main guards were two low-poly men named Chris Gordman and Swagmaster69696969696. Chris and Swag were the only ones consistently keeping peace in the Mushroom Kingdom, so they knew the SMG4 Crew by name. SMG4 himself introduced Tracy to them.

   Then it was time for Tracy to introduce herself. She stammered as she tried to think of how to say it. Might as well be honest. “I’m here to see my brother… Mr. Puzzles.”

   “Oh shit, that bitch has a sister?” Swag asked. Then he lowered his sunglasses. “…Are you single?”

   “Swag, please don’t hit on the prisoners’ siblings,” Chris warned. Then he looked back to Tracy and the Crew. “You can visit him, but he’s under high security clearance.”

   “I don’t mind.” Tracy shook her head. “Any hoops I have to go through, I’ll do it for him.”

   Chris took her and the others through the outside gate, the doors that led into the prison, and a metal detector. Tracy didn’t set it off, but the Crew did. All three of them sighed and disposed of any (metal) weapons they had on their persons. SMG3 had to empty the most, but Chris promised him he’d get it all back after the visit was over.

   He took them through another set of password-protected doors. As they went through the high security clearance area, Chris explained, “You’ll get 10 minutes with the prisoner. You cannot harm him, nor will you do anything to break him out. If you break any rules – even ones I haven’t mentioned - you will be escorted from the premises immediately and face possible jail time. Is that clear?”

   “Yes sir,” Tracy said with the rest of the SMG4 Crew.

   As the group came closer to the cell, Tracy could hear her brother’s insane laughter through the well-insulated walls. She took deep breaths, preparing herself to face the man her brother had become. Chris slid a keycard through an electronic lock to open the final door that led into Mr. Puzzles’s cell.

   The TV-headed man wore a bright orange jumpsuit, with some “personal touches” such as his bowtie and bowler hat. His body was tied to the bed, but he didn’t look uncomfortable. He just laid there, a manic expression on his screen, giggling and muttering to himself. Occasionally he would glance over at the toy version of Leggy he made, his only companion here.

   Then he glanced over to the new noise of people stepping into his cell. He was prepared to face Chris or Swag. Nothing could prepare him for her.

   She looked enough like Mom that it hurt. She had blonde hair, just like her, but hers was slightly darker, almost orange. She still wore a red bow, but it was now a small hair clip instead of a big one attached to a headband. She wore a white shirt with a different, red shirt acting as a jacket, jeans, and well-worn sneakers.

   She couldn’t have been a hallucination, because the SMG4 Crew were standing behind her.

   Mr. Puzzles sputtered out her name: “T-Tr-Tracy?”

   His face flipped through about a dozen different expressions. For a split second, SMG4 saw the same thing Meggy swore she saw during their last fight with Mr. Puzzles: a boy trapped in the screen. Finally, his face settled on what Four read as concern.

   “Ness.”

   Tracy smiled as she said Mr. Puzzles’s real name.

   SMG3 whispered, “That’s Puzzles’s real name? ‘Ness’?”

   Meggy elbowed him. “They’re having a moment, dumbass.”

   “Maybe we should step out, then,” SMG4 suggested. “She doesn’t look like she’s gonna break Mr. Puzzles out now. She really just wants to talk.”

   The Crew stepped outside, where Chris was guarding the open cell door.

   Tracy came closer to Mr. Puzzles’s TV head, so both could get a better look at each other. She needed to say something, anything, but the words weren’t coming. What do you say to the brother you’d ignored and run from after all this time?

   “You’re so tall.”

   “Uh, yeah.” His face turned to confusion. “Byproduct of… the TV head, I think.” He tried to gesture to his head but only ended up fighting against his restraints. He gave up and his screen switched to concern again. “I can’t believe you’re here, after all this time.”

   “I had to check on you. I knew after everything I’d seen that you had to be alive.”

   “Really? How exactly did you know I was alive?”

   “Well… you were there at the funeral.”

   Mr. Puzzles had seen dozens of depictions of attending your own funeral in shows and movies.

   “I never thought my death could somehow be worse than my life, but here it is.”

   “We must not forget the good times and the warm feelings we have for a colleague and a friend named Clark Kent.”

   “This is some pretty surreal shit, being at your own funeral.”

   "Brick was a great man, and I will miss him so much. And I will not rest until I find his killer."

   He never thought he’d have to go through it himself.

   He expected he would die after trying to replace his head with a TV. He never expected to be alive and technically a cyborg. He expected his family to believe him dead. He never expected them to give him a funeral.

   Only Tracy would have given him a funeral, and she was the only one that showed up. It was held outside, which gave Mr. Puzzles a chance to sneak up on the service. He couldn’t appear as himself – his lankier form stood above everything, it seemed. Not long after his transformation, Puzzles had learned he could retract his body into his television head. He found that was how he slept, but now it could be used to spy on his sister.

   As just a television, he watched the ceremony. He hid further by positioning half of his body behind that one tree every graveyard must have. It gave him a perfect view of his own gravestone.

   All they had to mark Ness’s death was a gravestone. The grave itself was empty. Ness’s head had been disposed of elsewhere, and his body was nowhere to be found.

   The ceremony was short, as the priest and Tracy were the only ones there. The priest said a few words that would be given at any funeral. Then he left to give Tracy some time to grieve by herself.

   Tracy laid a black rose on Ness’s grave. After Tracy had given him red and yellow roses at his first musical, Puzzles had looked up the meanings of other roses. A black rose meant death, but apparently, it also meant big changes and courage. Red roses were for passion, but he supposed they didn’t always have to be for romantic ones.

   Yellow roses symbolized friendship.

   Then, Tracy knelt at the grave and put her hands together. Even from this distance, Puzzles could hear her muttering, “I don’t know how to do this. Paula is so much better at this… but please, I hope Ness is in a better place. He deserves so much that his life couldn’t give him. I wish he could have done something great with his life – make a theme park, make a TV show, make a movie - any of those and more. He had so much promise, and I wish he didn’t snuff it out.”

   She cried some more before getting up. That was when she realized she wasn’t alone. She felt that buzz of an old TV being left on in an empty room. She turned to where the television sat underneath the tree, but by the time she was looking at it, the TV was gone.

   “I sensed you were there,” Tracy answered. “Maybe it’s some psychic thing, or a sibling thing…”

   Mr. Puzzles said, “That couldn’t have been the only way you knew I was alive.”

   “Well, there were a few other—”

   “Time’s up,” Chris announced, stepping back into the cell.

   “Already?” Tracy asked.

   Mr. Puzzles growled.

   Tracy gave her brother one last look before she left with Chris. Waiting outside were the SMG4 Crew. Mr. Puzzles looked straight at them and said, “If you do ANYTHING to my sister, I swear I’ll—"

   Mr. Puzzles screamed out several death threats to the guards and SMG4’s gang that Tracy simply couldn’t ignore.

   Chris added, “Hear that? That’s what your brother is like when he’s not talking to that toy.”

   The walk out of the prison was quiet. SMG4, Meggy, and SMG3 took their weapons back once they went through the metal detector again. No one tried to break the silence until they had left the prison.

   SMG4 asked, “So what now?”

   Tracy answered, “For the time being, I’m going to stay here.”

   “Really?” SMG4 stopped walking and turned to her. “You saw what Mr. Puzzles is like. I mean, you definitely influenced his behavior in there, but—”

   “I think you should help him,” Meggy chimed in.

   “Really?” Tracy asked, surprised by Meggy saying this. In fact, the crew all looked surprised by her declaration.

   “Yeah, and I can help. Well, I hope I can help. You see, he did make a friend while you were gone, sort of. Her name was Leggy…”

Chapter Text

   Meggy only remembered bits and pieces as Leggy, but she told Tracy as much as she could about her experience with Mr. Puzzles. She found Meggy’s recollections informative… but also terrifying. Her brother had really forced this woman into a different form, just because that other form was his friend?

   Meggy finished with, “Despite everything he’s done, I know there’s someone good in there. I saw him. So I want to see him genuinely get better. And it’s not just for my sake, or yours, but his too.”

   Tracy smiled. “Thanks for talking to me. I’m glad I’m not the only one who cares about him.”

   “No problem. Hey, you got someplace to stay?”

   “I was thinking of finding a hotel in town, but I’ll let you guys know if I need anything.”

   Tracy did indeed find a hotel in town. She made sure she had enough money to cover everything before she left, something she had learned from her first big adventure. She slept peacefully and visited her brother the next afternoon.

   Tracy was about to ask Chris if she could go into the prison when he stopped her.

   He said to her, “I’d like to remind you of everything your brother has done in the past two years: two accounts of first degree homicide, multiple accounts of attempted homicide, multiple accounts of aggravated assault, multiple accounts of kidnapping, multiple accounts of torture, mass brainwashing and enslavement, violation of civil rights, gross negligence, false imprisonment, trespassing, intimidation, theft, stalking, unlawful use of pocket dimensions, filming without consent, reckless endangerment, physical and psychological torture, mutilation, coercion, grand larceny, destruction of property, running a very roughshod amusement park, use of illegal weapons, and general terrorism. And you want to visit him a second time, after all of that?”

   “Yes. Meggy told me a few things last night, and I knew a lot of that myself.” Tracy didn’t want to say – or think – about how she was a victim of some of that. “I’m still going to visit him.”

   “Well, damn.” He folded his arms in defeat. “You’re nothing but determined, Tracy Earthbound.”

   Chris escorted Tracy back to Mr. Puzzles’s cell. When she entered the cell, Puzzles saw Tracy dressed today in an orange overshirt and not wearing a bow in her hair. Once Chris left to stand outside, Tracy said to her brother, “I wasn’t thinking about it, but we almost match.”

   Puzzles managed to chuckle at this. Then his screen switched to irritation. “We were so rudely interrupted yesterday, before you could answer my question. So I’ll ask again: how exactly did you know I was alive after all these years?”

   “Well… I saw PuzzleVision, among other things. The more I watched, the more it felt like more than a coincidence that you looked like that TV-headed…” Tracy wouldn’t use the word “monster” again. “Person that I saw with my brother’s cut-off head.”

   The Mushroom Kingdom often made the news, because some of the most popular YouTubers were from there. The reason they were so popular was because of their antics, but the consequences of said antics varied in size. Peach’s castle being swallowed up by an eldritch entity? International consequences, because a well-known princess had suddenly gone missing. One-Shot Wren’s death? Not many grieved, since a certain former Inkling publicly announced Wren had trapped her and her friends in a simulation that left her with a month-load of trauma to process. Marty the cardboard chef and Mario getting arrested? Casino Paisano was closed down, some say permanently, but not many outside the Mushroom Kingdom had heard of it.

   It was five months after Marty and Mario’s arrest that Tracy first heard about PuzzleVision. As a delivery woman for the Escargo Express, she worked Monday through Saturday. It was a Saturday, and she was delivering a load of chickens to Summers, France. She left early in the morning and got to the delivery destination early afternoon. The poultry package did not like the flight, but she delivered them all in one piece.

   After the delivery she had made, she needed a drink. She went to the nearest bar that was open at this time of day, but just got some juice. After serving her the drink, the bartender flipped through the hanging television’s channels-

   “And go flipping through the channels—”

   Tracy’s head snapped to the TV. Somehow, after all this time, she recognized that voice. She asked the bartender to switch back to that channel, and he obliged out of boredom.

   SMG4 was a brightly colored and fairly popular YouTuber. Mario was the red-clad protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. They were both in this show, for some reason.

   The TV-headed man just gave them a pipe bomb for watching the entire Bee Movie with bonus features. He waved them goodbye, but the camera lingered on him. Then there was a brief shot of him with a crazy smile.

   Tracy knew that smile. That was the same smile she saw – the same monster she saw kill her brother. What was he doing with SMG4 and Mario?

   Tracy grew up with Blue’s Clues more than her brother did. Ness always criticized the show as formulaic, but when it was on, he’d watch it with her. The rest of the show played out like a strange parody of Blue’s Clues, with meatballs, a smartphone, and animal abuse.

   Then, after the episode ended, an image and message appeared that looked like it belonged on an old film reel:

What did you think of this week’s episode?
Rate us below!
puzzlevision.tv

   After the credits played, Tracy decided she would rate what she saw. She pulled out her phone and typed in the web address. On the website was a place to leave a rating of at most, five stars.

   The episode was good - very nostalgic for Tracy - but maybe it could’ve played with Blue’s Clues’ formula and tropes more. She gave it 3.5 stars. That was probably what her brother would have given it.

   Once Tracy got home, she looked up more about PuzzleVision. It was a TV channel and streaming service because the owner, Mr. Puzzles, wanted to expand globally. He said that SMG4 allowed him to take over his channel as a goodwill gesture, to help PuzzleVision’s growth.

   Tracy looked in confusion at what she had just read. She didn’t watch a lot of SMG4’s content, but he didn’t seem the type to allow some upstart to take over his channel, even if Puzzles claimed it was benevolent. In fact, didn’t some purple guy try to take over SMG4’s channel a few years ago…?

   Tracy had found all she could find about PuzzleVision. This Mr. Puzzles had appeared out of nowhere, with no history or digital footprint. All Tracy could do now was wait until next Saturday, when a new episode would be released.

   Next Saturday, an episode titled “Once Upon an SMG4” was released. Tracy pressed play as soon as she saw it. The start of the episode appeared to have the same old film reel look that the end of the last episode had. Despite Mr. Puzzles pulling from modern TV shows and movies, this seemed to be his personal aesthetic.

   The episode was a parody of Didney princess movies, with the purple guy - SMG3 - as the princess, Mario as the animal sidekick, Luigi as the love interest, and SMG4 as the witch. Mr. Puzzles also made appearances as a magic mirror and a fairy godmother.

   It was very similar to the last episode: it played with the genre’s tropes, but she didn’t feel like it pushed things enough. And what was with that ending? Tracy decided to watch again before leaving a rating this time.

   As she watched the episode again, it looked like the actors were less like performers and more like puppets. That moment when SMG3 wished that they could all escape from here... wasn’t scripted, was it? Tracy felt there was something sinister below PuzzleVision’s surface. Yet, the temptation to rate the new video was too strong. She gave it 3.5 stars, the same as last week’s video.

   Mr. Puzzles, dressed in a chef hat, burst into the main room of his pizzeria, hand to his TV head. “Oh, it’s a NIGHTMARE!” He did a middle split. “Simply a TRAVESTY!” He clutched the sides of his TV head. “SUCH A–”

   Mario barked at Mr. Puzzles for pizza.

   Once again, the episode parodied a well-known franchise. This time, it was Scooby-Doo. Again, Mr. Puzzles’s control over his actors slipped. Mario and Luigi found a surveillance room, playing the other PuzzleVision episodes, before Puzzles threw them out, rewound the chase, and boarded up the previously-accessible room.

   As Tracy watched, something else felt familiar…

   The way he made these TV shows, the way he acted in them… and the way they never found her brother’s body, just his head. This “Mr. Puzzles” was actually Ness, wasn’t he? Tracy recalled the funeral, and the glimpse of a TV she saw behind that tree. That was him, watching her…

   She wasn’t sure how to show she was watching him now, though. She still felt some doubt about her growing hunch that Mr. Puzzles was her brother. What if she left a comment and instead of bringing her brother back into her life, she summoned a monster?

   All she could do was give him 4 stars. Would she give him 5 stars next week? She needed to know for sure it was her brother before she did.

   “Name something that’s hard to watch.”

    This was hard to watch.

   This week, Mr. Puzzles had decided to do a game show, a far cry from the previous scripted content. He had also allowed his viewers to rate the show live, instead of rating the episode after it was completed. If Puzzles was controlling the SMG4 Crew’s actions, that control must be slipping.

   It was hard to tell what a contestant would do on a game show. Of the contestants here, the most chaotic one was Mario. Every time Mr. Puzzles tried to get the SMG4 Crew to play the game shows like how they’d normally be played, somehow, Mario’s idiocy broke the games.

   It all ended with Mario in a cage and the set falling apart around Mr. Puzzles. Mario escaped the cage in the ensuing chaos, but Tracy, like the rest of the audience, wasn’t sure where he could have gone. Then, the episode ended like the three before it:

What did you think of this week’s episode?
Rate us below!

   Tracy remembered something Puzzles said early in this episode: “And who knows, dear viewers… what wonders await us ALL… when we achieve that coveted 5-star rating…?” He said that right before he snapped at Mario, unleashing a terrifying face upon not just the plumber, but his audience too. In fact, Mario brought out a different, scarier side to Puzzles in this episode, one that the TV-headed man had more control over in the previous three shows.

   Like the first two episodes, Tracy left 3.5 stars.

   Whoever Mr. Puzzles was, he didn’t need five stars.

   He needed help.

   Tracy woke up with a start. She was at home, watching PuzzleVision with Paula on the couch. Tracy wanted to watch it with Paula, especially after Mr. Puzzles had promised a new movie in three days’ time.

   “And let me tell ya, once I hit five stars, NOTHING will ever be the same again…”

   They were watching the countdown. Tracy took local jobs for the next few days so she could keep a constant watch on it. As it ticked down, distortions appeared in the clips that played. Mario had disappeared from the shows, animations either flickered or were lost, music cut out or played backwards, and Mr. Puzzles’s prominence in each clip rose. Then, after 72 hours, the countdown ended.

   After that, there was…

ș̶̨̛̹̖̻͕̔͒͂͂̈͂͋̀̂̔͘ ̸̎́͜t̸̘̲͖̀͑̂̀͒̐͛̎̑͆̏̈́̔̂̇̕ ̶̪̯̖̮͎̻͍̬̟̠̪̥͕́̎̂̎́̌̐̇̔ã̵̢̡̤͉̩̭̗̪͙̰͖̜̲͕̓̄̅̊̊͑͊͝ ̴̢̢̨̢̼̖͈͖͇͚̭̯̱̑͒̅̓͆͌̆̋͛̎̿͛͊͘͘͝ͅt̵̡̪̱̫̄̈͑̍̄͗̂̂̃̑̋́͗̈́̄̒͘ ̵̡̛̻̥͓͎̩͆̄̅̒̐́̊̈́̅͗̅̋̄̕ḯ̵̧̢̛͔̬͎̜̤̏̅͌͐͑̔̓̈́͘͝͝ ̵̭̟͚̣̃̈́͜c̸̛̜̯̣͊̽̏̇͊̃̈́͗̌̕͝

   Tracy glanced at the clock. When had she and Paula started watching the movie? They had lost time.

   Paula looked at Tracy. The two of them could read people’s thoughts sometimes, and in an instant, they knew the other woman was thinking the same thing: something, or someone, was powerful enough to control them. Not even Giygas, for all his power, could control them directly to stop them.

   Tracy searched for anything regarding the PuzzleVision movie online. She managed to find footage from one of Puzzles’s victims - apparently, Bob had been wearing a bodycam this whole time. She started up the footage, and found most of it was corrupted. There were only two parts that weren’t, but she deemed both of them important.

   The first part that wasn’t corrupted was Mr. Puzzles revealing himself to the SMG4 Crew.

   “Pleasure to finally meet you. Well, the you that isn’t brainwashed.”

   He was already tall, but he had made himself a giant to introduce himself.

   “SMG4,” the meme guardian greeted. “Pleasure to NOT GIVE A CRAP! You’re just a dime-a-dozen bad guy. We’ve beaten worse than you with our eyes closed. So let’s get this over with…”

   Tracy and Paula heard the Crew pull out various weaponry. Bob pulled out two rifles, replacing his sword-hands. Mr. Puzzles laughed. “You REALLY think you can—”

   The SMG4 Crew started blasting. In less than ten seconds, everything above Puzzles’s legs became a sparking mess. Tracy was ready to assume the worst when—

   “As I was saying…”

   The Crew turned to see an in-tact Mr. Puzzles behind them. “My head…” He banged the side of his television, and the whole world shook. “My rules. SMILE! You’re on the air.”

   “This is bad,” SMG3 commented.

   SMG4 asked, “What do you want from us?!”

   “AND WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?!” Tari yelled.

   Then, Mr. Puzzles launched into a villain song. The bodycam footage switched to the images Puzzles wanted to show, like he was manipulating that camera too. Each lyric and image pounded in Tracy’s head.

   The silhouette of “little Mr. Puzzles” had a baseball cap and shorts, like Ness. He had no friends, like Ness. He watched TV all day, like Ness.

   And then—

   “I CUT OFF MY FACE AND PUT A TV IN ITS PLACE!!”

   The words echoed in Tracy’s mind long after the song ended. That confirmed it to her, because who else would have attempted that!? Mr. Puzzles was Ness… her brother.

   She didn’t notice when tears started flowing from her eyes. She only picked up that something was wrong when Paula asked her. She hadn’t told her roommate her hunch about Mr. Puzzles, but now, old wounds had reopened.

   Tracy asked Paula, “Remember… my brother? How he… he killed himself?”

   “Yeah…?”

   “I didn’t tell you everything about my brother…”

   So Tracy told Paula everything: Ness’s TV obsession, the TV-headed man she saw with Ness’s decapitated head, and the TV-headed man who had just stated he decapitated himself.

   Paula hugged Tracy tight as she explained everything. To her, Tracy’s insane theory made sense. She tried to calm her down further by saying, “Maybe we should go to bed.”

   “N-No. I need to know where my brother is, Paula. Did SMG4…?”

   Paula could hear Tracy's thoughts: Did SMG4 kill him? Paula wanted to say no, but SMG4 had killed in the past, and he’d very much tried to kill Puzzles in the footage. SMG4’s count mostly included cosmic horrors, like how her friends defeated Giygas, but most recently, Princess Peach’s “disappearance” was blamed on him.

   Paula answered, “Okay…” and they continued watching the video.

   The second part that wasn’t corrupted was the SMG4 Crew’s final fight against Mr. Puzzles. He’d already made himself giant in the TV world, but now he was giant in the real world. Across his chest, below his bowtie, were the five stars he so desperately craved. However, in the footage, he was only at 4.5 stars.

   Mr. Puzzles was about to hit the SMG4 Crew with what looked like PK Thunder. Instead, Luigi leapt in front of the attack, taking the hit. It didn’t hurt him, or kill him. To Tracy and Paula’s surprise, it turned him into his meat mallet form from “Mario’s Mysteries.”

   Luigi the Meat Mallet flew through the air and hit Mr. Puzzles in his screen, breaking it. The rest of the SMG4 Crew hit them with everything they had. Puzzles was about to strike back when…

   “GUYS WE DID IT!!!” SMG4 exclaimed. “WE HIT OVER FIVE STARS!!!”

   The rest of the Crew cheered.

   Puzzles shrank back to his normal size as he let go of Luigi the Meat Mallet. He collapsed to the ground. “I’m… I’m not the highest rated anymore?”

   “That’s right.” Four nodded. “Looks like the SMG4 show’s more popular than your shows, Mr. Puzzles. Which means…”

   Mr. Puzzles’s stars shattered.

   “You have no power here anymore.”

   His whole body twitched with electricity. His face switched through expressions faster and faster until it settled on a crying infant. “I just wanted… to make a good TV show…”

   Mr. Puzzles’s body levitated, glowing a bright white. Then it disappeared into his TV head. The TV landed on the ground and displayed NO SIGNAL.

   SMG4 grabbed Luigi the Meat Mallet and, with a scream, he slammed him into Mr. Puzzles’s screen. The TV was sent flying into the sky until he became a twinkle.

   “No!” Tracy gasped.

   Paula hugged her. “Tracy, he could still be out there.”

   “But where…?”

   Before the footage had ended, Tracy was searching for PuzzleVision’s other videos. They had been taken down from SMG4’s channel, but people had already put up “pirated” versions. She typed in the website and found it was down too. All it showed was a TV like Mr. Puzzles’s head with a NO SIGNAL message and a “That’s All Folks!” beneath that.

   Was her brother still alive after that? She hoped so. Because she would go searching for him.

   The next day was Sunday, her day off. This was too important to wait for transport. She was going to teleport to the Mushroom Kingdom.

   Tracy went into her backyard, and made sure nobody was around. Once she knew she was alone, she focused on the Mushroom Kingdom as a destination. She’d been there before, making deliveries, so she had some memories of what it looked like.

   Then she spun in a circle. When she showed off to him, Ness compared it to how Wonder Woman spun on the TV show. Focusing on him and the Mushroom Kingdom, she teleported in a flash of blue light. She ended up in an alleyway of the city, and with the map app on her phone, she found her exact location in the Mushroom Kingdom.

   Tracy had several hours to search for Mr. Puzzles, and she hoped that would be enough. She started her search in the city and then moved to the outskirts. Eventually, she came to a garbage dump.

   If a broken television would be anywhere, it would be the garbage dump. However, Tracy saw two problems. First, if she searched the dump, it would take all her time to search through it. Second, she’d have to search through a lot of regular trash too. She decided it wasn’t worth it, so she trekked further.

   Eventually, she reached the Showgrounds. Nobody was outside, so nobody would see her replaying the final battle on her phone and in her head. Good. She hoped she could somehow determine where Puzzles had been thrown to. The twinkle in the sky made it hard to determine distance, but she had some hours to search the woods.

   Tracy came up to the animals and “talked” to them, hearing their thoughts. None had seen anything resembling a television. Eventually, she ran out of time to search. She wandered through the Showgrounds, hearing screams of friends enjoying themselves. She wandered through the Mushroom Kingdom, hearing screams of general chaos.

   It was like Mr. Puzzles was never there.

   Tracy went back to the alleyway to teleport back to Twoson. Paula was waiting for her and gave her a hug when she saw how forlorn her friend looked. Fortunately, it would only take a month to turn Tracy’s mood around.

   In that month, Tracy had watched SMG4’s channel tentatively. She didn’t want to subscribe, but if anyone would know what happened to Mr. Puzzles, it would be him. Then, a month after PuzzleVision, a new video came out that got Tracy’s attention.

   The newest episode was called “Mario the Exploro.” It looked like a parody of Dora the Explorer. That sounded a lot like something Mr. Puzzles would make.

   Could it be?

   She watched to find out.

   As Tracy predicted, Mr. Puzzles did appear. In his infinite idiocy, Mario had gotten a certain TV from the garbage dump. SMG4 looked upon the PuzzleVision with dread, while Tracy looked upon it with relief.

   The TV sucked them into a parody of Dora the Explorer. It had Fortnite, demons, and Bob shanking SMG4. Then Mr. Puzzles appeared as a “helpful local.” The TV man and Mario worked together to save Four. At the end of the episode, Mario and SMG4 were thrown back into the real world.

   SMG4 looked back to the repaired television on the floor of his room.

   From it, Mr. Puzzles’s body emerged.

   “Oh no,” Four gasped. “He’s BACK…!!”

   “You bet your shiny white overalls I’m back!!” Puzzles said, smiling.

   He tried to get SMG4 and Mario to listen to him about transforming their channel. The two just left. Then the episode ended.

   Tracy watched the channel a lot more, hoping that Mr. Puzzles would become a recurring character. It was another two months before he showed up again, in an episode titled “Mr. Puzzles Breaks Into The Meme Factory.” She knew what the Meme Factory was from SMG4’s Willy Wonka parody two weeks ago, but why was her brother trying to break in? She watched to find out.

   Various security cameras around the Meme Factory showed Mr. Puzzles’s attempt to break in. He tried to sneak up on the factory gate, but someone (who looked like Meggy but just a head and feet) spotted him. The creature - Leggy - attacked Puzzles, he ended up triggering some alarms, and it ended with him and Leggy getting sucked into his own TV head.

   The footage thankfully sped up to when Mr. Puzzles woke up and Leggy came out of his head. Apparently, they’d been trapped in a “WACKY 💥 PUZZLEVISION 💥 ADVENTURE” as he put it, and had bonded enough that Leggy lowered the defenses on the factory gate entrance herself. They even shared an evil laugh together afterwards.

   As he entered the factory properly, Puzzles gave his scary face to the camera watching him. “Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?”

   Mr. Puzzles entered the Meme Factory, and neither he nor his sister watching him were prepared for the security measures he’d be facing. Leggy and Puzzles helped each other with the Bob-Ness Monster, a giant Luigi, and SMG3 with an emoji wand. Finally, he came to the Comedy Zone he desired to reach. Tracy recalled that SMG4 created the Comedy Zone as a place for memes in the factory to grow popular. Of course her brother would use it to grow his own fame.

   Leggy seemed to know it was a trap, but Mr. Puzzles ignored her warning. He went for the mic and told a joke. “Why is it so quiet in a bowling alley? Because you can hear a pin drop.”

   Tracy facepalmed. Leggy giggled. Puzzles felt his star power go up. Then the lights went out.

   “Wh-Where’s my fame? My power?” Mr. Puzzles asked.

   Then a spotlight turned on, showing Four dressed as Sans Undertale. Puzzles grabbed the mic stand to battle against the meme guardian. Despite him giving it his all, it looked like he would be blasted away by SMG4 again…

   Until Leggy turned Four’s own attacks against him. Puzzles called them a team, and Leggy a friend. Tracy couldn’t help but smile at this.

   However, all of this had occurred because Mr. Puzzles tried to break into SMG4’s Meme Factory. Mario and Meggy - turned back from her Leggy form - chased Puzzles out of the factory. Tracy wondered where her brother went this time, and in two months, she would find out.

   This time, it was not SMG4 that alerted Tracy about Mr. Puzzles, but Paula. Tracy and Paula lived together. While Tracy was a delivery woman, Paula was a school teacher. When she was young, she had helped kids in her parents’ preschool, but as an adult, she was working at Twoson’s elementary school.

   After work, Paula came straight to Tracy. She looked to see the teacher had an expression she only got after a bad day at work. Tracy asked, “What happened this time?”

   Paula pulled out her phone. “One of my students was trying to watch THIS in class.”

   She pulled up the video. Tracy couldn’t believe what she was watching. Some would call it a “content farm,” others would call it “brainrot,” but the word that came to Tracy’s mind was “bad.”

   Part of her mind cried out, This can’t be Ness! He’d never stoop so low! Then the other part remembered hearing about Ness pretending to faint in class, in response to another student who had genuinely broken her arm. Years had gone by, and he would still do anything for attention.

   Paula asked, “Is that Mr. Puzzles? Like, the real one?”

   “Has to be,” Tracy answered. “Only he’d be stupid enough to do something like this.”

   “Then I’ve got a better question for you: Do you think Mr. Puzzles can handle an audience of semi-feral children?”

   “No,” Tracy answered almost immediately.

   Neither was surprised to see Tracy’s prediction come true. Her brother faced the consequences of his own actions when he yelled at the child audience he had garnered. Again, Paula showed her the video someone (neither was sure if it was a phone-savvy child or parent) posted for all to see. Much like “Mr. Puzzles’s Incredible Game Show Spectacular,” Tracy found it hard to watch.

   Recently, Paula had told Tracy to find her brother. She told her after Mr. Puzzles reappeared in SMG4’s house, and again after Mr. Puzzles broke into the Meme Factory. Both times, Tracy made an excuse, but Paula could hear her reluctance to act.

   Still, she tried a third time. “You need to find him before he does something drastic.”

   “The content farm wasn’t drastic enough for you?” Tracy joked. “Besides, I already searched the Mushroom Kingdom once. Somehow, without even knowing I was looking for him, he evaded me.”

   “Well, if you keep putting this off, he may do something worse than kidnapping and brainwashing a bunch of entertainers.”

   Tracy wondered what could possibly be worse than that.

   It was October 2024, and Tracy was listening to spooky music on YouTube as she went to make her next delivery. Like most people, she had a regular YouTube account. Unfortunately, that meant ads for every couple of songs. She grumbled as she started up another song, only for it to be interrupted by an ad.

   Then she saw what exactly was being advertised:

Welcome to Puzzle Park!

   She stopped her delivery truck just to watch the ad in its entirety. As the ad showed the park, an even jauntier version of the “TV Time” theme played, with even more forced lyrics:

   “Where big smiles delight and happiness spark!
Welcome to the wonderful Puzzle Park!
   Bright lights! Fun sights! Oh, nonstop highlights!
You’ll never grieve cause you’ll never want to leave!”

   Tracy wondered if this was the only time someone was thankful to be shown a targeted ad. This was where Mr. Puzzles was now! She could find her brother… maybe.

   The end of the ad showed Puzzle Park’s address.

   That was Didney World’s address. She had looked it up a few times, wishing to go to the park someday. Sure, she had grown out of Didney’s main demographic, but everyone should go once in their lives, right?

   Tracy and Ness’s father went to Didney World (well, near the park) on a business trip once. Ness pleaded to come along, but Tracy pointed out it would be for business - no fun, and no guarantee they would be able to go to the park. Ness never talked about what happened, but he came back even more disappointed than before.

   Now Mr. Puzzles owned the park. She wasn’t sure what that meant for Didney… or her brother. She imagined some sort of literal corporate takeover, the kind that the company would shy away from making public. Yet, the name had changed on Google Maps.

   If that website had led her here, then maybe… Tracy should check puzzlevision.tv too? She typed in the web address, but was redirected to another website. Just what was “War of the Fat Italians,” and why was Mr. Puzzles asking for submissions for challenges to “tortu- i mean play with our fabulous guests,” as he put it?

   Tracy didn’t want to find out.

   She wanted no part in this.

   She wanted to find her brother, that was all.

   Then, as quickly as Didney World became Puzzle Park, it became Didney World again. Tracy found news articles about Mr. Puzzles’s arrest. She wasn’t surprised by this turn of events, nor was she surprised that no articles mentioned where exactly Puzzles was being kept. He was her brother, sure, but he had become a dangerous criminal.

   Still, she had to reach out to him. She knew now her brother was alive. Now he needed to know she still cared.

Chapter Text

   Since she was only allowed to talk to him for 10 minutes a day, it took Tracy some time to talk to Puzzles about her perspective of the past year. After a week, Chris became slightly more lenient and allowed her to talk to her brother for 15 minutes. Not only did Tracy check in with Mr. Puzzles daily to catch up with him, but she also kept an eye on his behavior.

   Maybe he was planning something against the SMG4 Crew… but she didn’t pick up on hints of anything. He was either talking to the Leggy 2.0 doll, talking to her, or yelling at those who “wronged him.” Maybe that anger was some sort of plan, but Tracy believed it was just rage.

   One day, a couple of weeks after Tracy’s first visit, Chris mentioned to her that Puzzles’s threats to the guards and Crew had lessened. Chris believed she was a positive influence on her brother’s behavior. A small voice in the back of Tracy’s mind wondered if he was faking it - he was an actor, after all.

   That day, she had finally finished discussing what she knew of Puzzle Park. She ended with, “Didney says they’ll reopen the park sometime this year, but they haven’t even started on renovations. I explored the park, hoping to find something about your whereabouts before construction started. I think it was a good thing the SMG4 Crew found me.”

   Since they still had some time left to talk, Mr. Puzzles asked, “So… why are you here now, and not months ago?”

   “Well after that was Thanksgiving… Oh, and Christmas. But I spent that with Paula. I spent Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad.”

   Ugh, why did she phrase it like that? She didn’t want to bring Thanksgiving up. She remembered, years ago, Thanksgiving was awkward with Ness’s empty spot at the table. It was awkward again last year, because she knew that empty spot could be filled.

   Tracy just couldn’t tell her parents that. How could she bring up, in a normal Thanksgiving catch-up conversation, that “Hey, remember how we thought Ness killed himself? Turns out, he’s still alive. He’s also a villain who kidnapped a few celebrities and ended up in jail.”?

   Memories Tracy had tucked away years ago came back into focus. Ness helped Mom with cooking Thanksgiving dinner, bringing up some tips he’d seen in cooking shows. Sometimes Mom would listen to his advice. Dad would never admit it, but he and Ness would watch football games all the time together. It wasn’t like Dad was forcing him to watch, either - Ness could yell just as loud as Dad about any win or loss their team made.

   Tracy tried to smooth things over. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up. Bottom line is, we’re both adults now, Ness. They can’t hurt us anymore.”

   Still, her wording got Puzzles’s attention. “Us…” not “you.” What had they said - done - to Tracy in his absence? She seemed like his sweet little sister all grown up, but maybe the wounds were deeper than either of them wished to acknowledge.

   Tracy continued, “I still had to do my job, of course, but as soon as I could, I went for you. And yes, I’ve made a lot of friends on the job and on my own, but I still missed the brother that I shared everything with.”

   “You didn’t quit your job just to find me, did you?” Puzzles asked.

   “I just told my boss that I needed some time to take care of a relative.” She shrugged. “Mr. Tomar is very understanding, actually. I’ll have to go back, eventually, but I will make sure you’re okay first.”

   Both siblings went quiet. They still had some time left to talk, and Tracy didn’t want to waste it. She thought of a question that maybe she shouldn’t ask Mr. Puzzles… but her curiosity about how he’d respond got the better of her.

   “Are you sure you don’t want to go back home?” Tracy smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “There isn’t anything you wanted to say to the old man?”

   “What is there to say?” Puzzles answered. “That he was right? That I didn’t have enough creative vision to make a theme park or television shows without resorting to such heinous acts?”

   “Sure you fell… spectacularly… many times… but you always fell from a great height. And you always got back up.”

   “But now I’m stuck HERE.”

   “Well… I’m not leaving until things are better for you, and I don’t just mean your prison conditions. That’s why I took the bus here instead of teleporting, why I’ve tried not to argue with Chris about only spending 15 minutes a day here. Maybe I can show you patience really is a virtue, and–”

   “Time’s up, Tracy,” Chris cut her off from her speech.

   Tracy smiled at Mr. Puzzles as she said goodbye, but again, it didn’t reach her eyes. Once she was gone, Mr. Puzzles reminded himself of what his sister was trying to say: Good things come to those who wait. He had already been waiting months for his situation to improve, but perhaps he could wait a little longer, for her sake.

   As his cell became quiet again, Mr. Puzzles reflected on some of the stuff he and Tracy had talked about. Thanksgiving was something he hadn’t celebrated in years. Still, he realized it might have been a specific Thanksgiving that brought him to the Mushroom Kingdom.

   “You know, our little Jimmy was in a web show!”

   The family turned their attention to Ness’s aunt. This Thanksgiving, Ness, Tracy, and their parents were meeting with some extended family that lived near the Mushroom Kingdom. This included their Aunt Judy, Uncle Hugh, and cousin Jimmy. Their cousin looked a lot like Ness, but just a few years younger, especially since he often wore the same red hat, striped shirt, and shorts.

    Ness was talking about some ideas he had for making a web show. He felt a little more comfortable talking to extended family (and Tracy) about his ideas than Mom and Dad. At least Dad could control his tongue enough not to shoot down his ideas in front of his aunt and uncle.

   In fact, it was Dad who asked, “Really?”

   “They picked me off the street,” Jimmy said. “Show them, Mom.”

   Aunt Judy pulled out her phone to show the video. Then, she sighed, “Jimmy, can you type it in? I can’t remember how to spell the title.”

   Jimmy got up from his seat to help his mom type in the title. The rest of the family crowded around Aunt Judy’s phone to watch “SM64: ṩṩἔᾗмὄḋᾗᾄʀ 8.” The video cycled through a few different skits before Jimmy’s came up.

   “And now it’s time for Pete the Piranha… and his best friend Jimmy”

   “Oh hey, Pete! WE’RE GONNA GO ON AN ADVENTURE! YIPPEE!” Jimmy danced around the room, excited. “So Pete, what do you wanna do tomorrow? Do you wanna go to the ice cream shop, or go to the park, or go fishing? I dunno! Bleeeeeehhhhhhh what do you wanna do today?”

   Pete coughed. “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!”

   Jimmy laughed at his own skit. The rest of his family let out little, polite laughs. Ness, however, didn’t find it all that funny, especially with the look he was getting from Dad. Dad glanced at Ness in a way that asked “Why couldn’t you accomplish something like that?” Again, he never berated his son when there were other people around, but Ness had lived long enough to pick up on even the unspoken hostility.

   Ness snapped, “This is the stupidest sh–”

   Tracy cut him off, “The stupidest show. The stupidest show you’ve ever seen. Right, Ness?”

   “Uh, y-yeah.”

   He thanked Tracy sometime after dinner. Sure, he got into trouble for calling the show “stupid” right to Jimmy’s face, but at least he didn’t get in trouble for swearing. (Now that Mr. Puzzles was thinking about it, that had been the last time he ever saw Jimmy.)

   That show - SMG4’s show - would not leave Ness’s head. It was so stupid, yet he had to watch more when Thanksgiving was over. Maybe there was some way he could ask for them to become more entertaining?

   Pssh, fat chance!

Chapter Text

   The sun was beginning to set at the Showgrounds. SMG4, SMG3, and Meggy had spent the whole day discussing a video idea. Three saw it was getting late and decided to leave to check on Coffee N’ Bombs and the Meme Graveyard.

   That left Four and Meggy to talk privately. Soon, the conversation shifted from the video idea. Meggy asked, “Hey, have you seen Tracy around town?”

   “Mr. Puzzles’s sister?” SMG4 frowned. “Not really. Then again, I’ve been busy makin’ spicy memes. Haven’t really been in town much recently. Why are you thinking about her?”

   “I just keep seeing her, and of course, I can’t help but think about Mr. Puzzles. She’s friendly and hasn’t tried anything against us, but I get the feeling she won’t leave until we do something about him.”

   “We can’t just release him. If he gets loose, who knows what he’ll do?”

   “But just keeping him locked up and ignoring him isn’t going to help anyone,” Meggy argued. “Remember Peach?”

   Four rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, Peach is a problem we need to deal with… sometime… in the future…” He sighed. “You have a point. But we should ask Tracy what she thinks before we even think about unrestraining Mr. Puzzles.”

   Then the two heard a knock from the castle’s front doors. Both of them went to see who it was and SMG4 opened the door. He found Tracy on the other side, wearing a yellow shirt with a black hoodie over it.

   “Hey SMG4, Meggy,” she greeted them casually. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Mr. Puzzles.”

   “Speak of the devil,” Four laughed awkwardly. “We were just talking about you.”

   “Good things, I hope!” Tracy managed to laugh back.

   The two led her to the game room to talk.

   Once they had settled in (SMG4 and Meggy took the couch, while Tracy sat in the armchair), Tracy started, “I just told my brother to be more patient… but my patience is running out. Mr. Puzzles has been stuck on a bed and tied up for… what? Almost four months now? Something needs to change.”

   Meggy gave SMG4 a pointed look.

   Four groaned, “Ugh, we were just discussing that. Are you psychic or something?”

   “Psht, maybe,” Tracy answered. Surely the meme guardian had seen stranger things than her powers, but she didn’t feel like revealing herself just yet. “You know… since they have him tied up with rope in the prison… what if we just let him out of those restraints, to give him some freedom of movement?”

   “He probably hasn’t been untied since they arrested him… so it’s worth a shot.”

   Then Tracy went back to the prison, with SMG4 and Meggy in tow. Chris was surprised to see her back, but Tracy explained what she wanted to do. Then Chris brought the three into his and Swag’s shared office.

   Swag was already inside the office. He looked ready to leave when Chris explained that Tracy wanted to release Mr. Puzzles from his restraints.

   Swag laughed, “No way, Jose! Puzzles asked about community service once. NEVER AGAIN.”

   “So he wanted to do community service?” SMG4 asked.

   Chris answered, “Yes, but I took Swag’s notes of ‘DO NOT UNRESTRAIN HIM’ very seriously.” He pulled out the corresponding file.

   As the person supervising Mr. Puzzles’s community service attempt, Swag explained, “Bitch tried to run the second he was released. Took about fifty guys and me to tie him back up. Puzzles is a slippery snake, and built like one too.”

   Tracy took a moment to think about what to say next. “You said he tried to escape when you guys let him go, right? What if I undid his restraints?”

   Chris, Swag, Meggy, and SMG4 looked amongst each other.

   Tracy assured them, “If anything happens to him, I’ll take full responsibility.”

   The four huddled together and talked amongst themselves. Tracy decided not to eavesdrop, physically or psychically. Finally, after they came to an agreement, Four and Chris stepped forward.

   Chris said, “Tracy, you have an effect over Mr. Puzzles that none of us have been able to achieve. However, we’re not letting you be completely alone with him. I’ll stand outside his door, like I always do, and Swag will be with me.”

   SMG4 added, “I’ll be outside the prison with SMG3, Meggy, Mario, and whoever else I can bring along, in case things go completely south.”

   Tracy smiled. “Sounds like a plan. Now, just so I don’t have to come back here again tonight, that’s what we’re doing tomorrow?”

   Chris nodded. “That’s our plan. I expect you to be here at 3 PM, and not a moment later.”

   Tracy said goodbye to SMG4, Meggy, Chris, and Swag. Then she went back to hotel room. She found it hard to sleep, anxious of what would happen tomorrow. When tomorrow came, she visited the prison at 3 PM.

   SMG4, SMG3, Meggy and Mario were waiting outside the prison, as Four promised. The only other person he had convinced to come along with him was Tari. Bob said he didn’t want to fight Mr. Puzzles again unless he could get a “booby channel” out of him. Saiko was eager at first, but SMG4 pointed out there was a possibility Puzzles would react calmly, which made her say no. Melony was sleeping and Four couldn’t wake her. Shroomy was playing with Karen’s kids, which meant she was busy watching them. Luigi didn’t want to fight Mr. Puzzles again. Four didn’t even bother asking Fishy Boopkins for help.

   Tari saw this as an opportunity to face Mr. Puzzles and conquer her fear. Tari and Tracy hadn’t properly met yet. However, both gave each other a friendly wave when Tracy passed Tari on her way inside the prison.

   Inside the prison, Chris and Swag were waiting for Tracy. This time, both of them escorted her back. When they got there, both guards came inside Mr. Puzzles’s cell.

   The TV-head noticed that today, his sister was wearing a green shirt with a black hoodie. Chris and Swag had already explained to him he’d be free to move around in his cell from now on. He was sitting up in his bed, so Tracy could grab the ropes around his body.

   “Thank you again for free— undoing my restraints.” Puzzles gave his sister a smile that she didn’t quite trust.

   Unfortunately, it would be hard to back down from letting him loose now.

   Chris asked her, “Do you need help untying him?”

   “I’ve undone quite a lot of knots in my time,” Tracy replied.

   Chris and Swag left the cell, but both of them stood right outside. Then Tracy started undoing the ropes around Mr. Puzzles’s arms. She untied her brother carefully, like one wrong move would hurt him. Soon the sets of ropes slipped off his thin frame.

   Puzzles moved his arms around for a minute before Tracy turned her attention to the ropes around his legs. Again, she did it carefully. As she untied him, she felt something, like a distant hum growing closer.

   The hum turned into a mad scream that almost made Tracy jump when the ropes fell off his legs. Mr. Puzzles felt the rush of abilities all coming back to him. As a fellow psychic, Tracy felt it too.

   Puzzles knew he wasn’t thinking at full capacity while roped up. All the ideas he had to assassinate his enemies and anyone who ever double-crossed him surged to the front of his mind. Now that he was free, he just had to take advantage of them!

   He stood up, tall and proud. Tracy looked up and felt her brother looming over her. He once again had the upper hand!

   “…Thank you, dear sister,” he said to her.

   As Mr. Puzzles tried to take a step forward, however, he felt something blocking him. It wasn’t an invisible wall, it was a shield. It was Tracy’s PSI Shield!

   “Tracy, what are you doing!?” Puzzles growled.

   She glared at him. “I thought you had changed, Ness!”

   “The only thing that’s changed is…” Mr. Puzzles wanted to stand down and say something nice, something good, about his sister. But things really had changed between them, hadn’t they? “You are standing in the way of my revenge!”

   He was nowhere near as powerful as her, but he pounded against the shield anyway. Eventually it gave way, if only because Tracy couldn’t hold it forever. He ran and she gave chase.

   As soon as they left the cell, however, Chris and Swag turned to shoot Mr. Puzzles. With a snap of his fingers, he sent the guards flying down separate hallways. He ran down the main hallway, the way out.

   Tracy caught up with him and slid under him. She shouted, “PK Fire!” Across the floor, flames appeared.

   Unfortunately, Puzzles leapt right over them. Curse his long legs! She kept throwing fireballs at him, and all he could do was dodge.

   Mr. Puzzles yelled, “You weren’t able to do THAT when we were younger!”

   “I’ve trained since then, idiot. And Paula taught me a thing or two.” Tracy didn’t hesitate to hit him again. “Paralysis!”

   Puzzles found his body frozen in place. He twitched like a video game player spamming buttons until the character moved again. Once he could move again, he ran again.

   Tracy caught up to him, again, and pulled out a finger gun.

   “PK Thunder!”

   He matched her attack with his own finger gun. The two charges of lightning connected and exploded. Tracy quickly switched to PSI Magnet, absorbing some of the attack and even healing herself. Puzzles, however, was caught in the full blast, and felt a nasty crack across his screen. Not the worst damage he’d ever taken to his screen but… his sister had caused it.

   He pushed down the condemning thought and ran for the prison entrance while Tracy was distracted. He gasped when he found the SMG4 Crew waiting for him.

   Four glared when he caught sight of Mr. Puzzles. “I knew you’d try something like this. Where’s Tracy?”

   “Right here!” she shouted as she came from the prison entrance. “I feel responsible for all of this… I’m sorry.”

   “Apologies later.” SMG3 pulled out a bomb. “Attacks now!”

   Chris and Swag joined them and started blasting Mr. Puzzles with their guns. Their attacks weren’t all that accurate. To everyone’s surprise, Tari was the first to hit Puzzles, with her arm turning into a blaster. SMG4 joined Chris and Swag with a gun of his own.

   Tracy shouted “PK Flash!” and a burst of bright light hit her brother. The Crew didn’t seem surprised by this. In fact, they adjusted well to her attacks. SMG3 would throw unlit bombs, and she’d set them off with PK Fire. Everyone sprung for Puzzles when she used Paralysis to stun him again.

   Mr. Puzzles felt an overwhelming barrage of attacks - a kick from Mario, Meggy’s ink, Chris and Swag’s bullets, and Tracy’s PK Thunder - hit him at once. He was about to give up when he realized something. He thought Tracy was helping him, not only to get out, but in another sense of the word. Now she was standing with the SMG4 Crew, who she had barely interacted with in her time here.

   His sister was just ANOTHER thing the Crew had stolen from him.

   Perhaps it was time for Mr. Puzzles to show Tracy the wonders of his television.

   From behind his back, he pulled out the remote linked to his head. He aimed at the group and pushed the INPUT button. A white glow surrounded them all. Perfect!

   Four realized, “Wait, this is just like…”

   “Last time? So glad you noticed, SMG4!” Puzzles replied sarcastically.

   He hit the OK button and the group flew towards him. Some screamed. Mr. Puzzles had never heard Tracy scream in horror… until now.

   In less than a minute, the group had been sucked into his television head.

   The silence was perfect.

   Everything was perfect.

   Perfect…

   Perfectly…

   Perfectly alone.

   Since there was nobody around, Mr. Puzzles let out a primal scream, his screen switching to a red, skull-like face. He had gotten his revenge on the SMG4 Crew, sucking them back into his head. He was finally free to do whatever he wanted with them. Why then, did it feel so hollow? So worthless?

   Because his sister had been caught in the crossfire. If she hadn’t gotten involved, she wouldn’t be inside his head, too. If she hadn’t gotten involved, however, he wouldn’t be standing here, outside the prison.

   Wait, he was still outside the prison. Chris and Swag weren’t the only guards there, either. Puzzles couldn’t stay. He ran into some woods he spotted, not that far away from the prison, but the guards chased him. The adrenaline and his lanky legs kept him from getting immediately caught.

   Still, the guards searched the woods. Somehow, despite his bright orange prison uniform, Mr. Puzzles managed to evade them. He would later thank the tall trees that matched his tall body.

   Once the noise of the search died down, he looked around. No guards anywhere. He sat on the ground and took some deep, steadying breaths. He needed to go inside his own head, to fix the mess he had made.

   Puzzles took one last deep breath. Then his body retracted into his television head. On his screen read a test pattern with the words PLEASE STAND BY.

Chapter Text

SMG4’s HOCUS POCUS

   Tari slipped out of the house before anyone else had woken up. She heard a song that was unlike anything she’d heard in nature. She followed it deep into the woods.

   Meggy, Tari’s older (yet shorter) sister, heard the song too. She woke up sweaty, her nightgown clinging to her. Despite the sweat, she also felt a chill in the air. She looked to Tari’s bed and found it empty.

   “Tari…” she gasped. Meggy quickly searched the rest of the house, but found no sign of her sister anywhere. Following the ominous melody drifting through Salem village, Meggy dashed straight for the woods.

   As she ran deeper into the forest, Meggy kept calling out for Tari. She didn’t call back, and Meggy didn’t see her… until she found the cottage. It looked like it had been there for centuries, despite being younger than the buildings in the village. The waterwheel turned and smoke curled from the chimney. Surely, the witches were wickedly working winside – er, inside.

   Meggy watched as Tari stepped inside the cottage. The orange girl sneaked up to a window and looked inside. She saw the three witches: SMG4, SMG3, and Mario. Four had his hat, warts and nose from his previous role as a Witch in “Once Upon An SMG4.” Three was dressed similarly, while Mario had everything except the nose (because Mario’s nose is ICONIC.)

   SMG3 sang in a woman’s voice until SMG4 slapped him on the back.

   “Shut up! We got the girl.”

   Tari sat in a chair in the center of the room, looking as if she were about to receive a gift.

   SMG3 grumbled, but turned his attention to Tari with his brothers. “Alright, the book says that we have to mix all this shit together. Then we give this girl the potion and chant around to suck out her life essence. Got it?”

   SMG4 and Mario nodded. The three of them started grabbing the potion ingredients from the shelves. They threw them into a cauldron. Four and Three had to stop Mario from trying to add spaghetti sauce (“for flavor,” he said) for the umpteenth time.

   Since they all had their attention on the potion, Meggy climbed up the waterwheel and through the window next to it. She came into the loft that made up the cottage’s second floor, which allowed her to hide from the witches but also spy on them. Meggy looked to Tari, who was still doing nothing - the witches had to be controlling her.

   Once the potion was complete, SMG4 grabbed a bottle and scooped some of it from the cauldron. “One drop o’ this, and the girl’s beauty will be mine.” He realized his brothers were staring at him. “I mean, ours.”

   When the three witches got close to Tari, Meggy sprung from her hiding spot. “No!” She dodged them and went for the cauldron. With a grunt, she toppled it over, the rest of the potion spilling out.

   Four still had the bottle though. Meggy launched herself at him, but he used his free hand to launch lightning at her. She heard him scream something about “UNLIMITED POWER” before she passed out.

   When she woke up, she found herself tied to a chair across the room from Tari. The witches were forcing her to drink the potion. Meggy let out a weak “No…” but the potion was already affecting her sister. Tari’s skin shined like the sun.

   “‘Tis her life force!” shouted SMG4. “The potion works!”

   He stretched out his hands. SMG3 and Mario grabbed his left and right hands, respectively. Then they spun in a circle around Tari, chanting “Ooga booga, ooga booga, ooga booga!”

   As they chanted, the light drifted from Tari to the witches. When they finished chanting and spinning around Tari, Meggy found her sister replaced with a skeleton. The witches’ warts and big noses had disappeared (except for Mario’s nose - again, ICONIC.) This left them in their witch hats.

   “I’m beautiful!” SMG3 squealed. “Boys will love me!”

   “We’re young!” Mario cheered.

   “Well, younger,” SMG4 realized. “But it’s a start! And we’ll be young forever once we suck the life out of all of the girls in Salem!”

   “You hag!” Meggy fought against her restraints. “There are not enough girls in the world to make you three young and beautiful!”

   Three pointed out, “We need to do something about her. Maybe not sap her beauty, ‘cause she’s hideous.”

   Meggy scowled as SMG4 and SMG3 went back to the book.

   “Oh-ho, what if we turned her into a cat?” Four pointed to an illustration in the book.

   “I’d prefer a dog,” Three commented. “Is there a spell for that in there?”

   Because he hated reading, Mario was more focused on Meggy herself. The two stared each other down before–

   “You’re gonna turn into a goomba!” he yelled. He started hitting her with his fists and kicking her with his boots.

   She screamed. Her bones twisted and body crunched before they disappeared completely. She was now Leggy…

   But at the same time, not.

   For as Mario beat her into her Leggy form, Meggy’s mind broke free from Mr. Puzzles’s brainwashing. She realized she was in one of his shows. She remembered what happened and how she got here.

   But how was she going to get out?

   SMG4 and SMG3 stared at Mario, and then each other. Three commented, “Well, that’s something. What IS it?”

   “I wanna call her Leggy!” Four smiled. “And she won’t just be stuck like this, but stuck to live forever with her guilt!”

   Meggy couldn’t help but think back to Wren’s simulation. She shook and, squealing, she ran from the witches. She ran towards the door, only for someone to open it from outside.

   It was Chris and Swag, who were wearing pilgrim hats. They let Leggy run past them. Then they turned their attention to the witches.

   It looked like the witches were about to be hanged, standing on a wooden platform with nooses around their necks. Then, everyone around them pulled out guns of various shapes and sizes.

   The witchfinder general announced, “Well you wicked-y wicked witches, looks like your days of being assholes have come to an end. For I, Witchfinder General Swagmaster69696969696 have finally captured you!”

   “You didn’t capture them,” Chris clarified. “We did.”

   “SHUTUP CHRIS”

   Then Swag turned to the witches. “Any last word?”

   SMG4 smiled as he looked at the rising moon. He proclaimed:

  “On All Hallows’ Eve, when the moon is round,
A virgin will summon us from under the ground,
   We shall be back!
And we’ll kill all the girls in Salem!”

   The witches cackled.

   “That’s a lot more than one word!” Swag yelled. “KILL THEM!”

   Then the firing squad shot the heck out of them.

   Mr. Puzzles – Ness – gasped as he found himself in a bedroom. Then he realized he was actually breathing, with lungs and… a mouth. He touched his face - his fleshy, soft face.

   Ness found he didn’t just have a human head back, but he also had a human body. Well, he had a human body before, but he looked to be about 13 now, wearing a striped shirt, shorts, and a red baseball cap.

   Then he took in his surroundings. He was in a bedroom… in a PuzzleVision parody. Ugh, trapped in one of his own parodies again. At least he was aware and not completely stuck in whatever role he’d randomly assigned to himself.

   Okay, whose bedroom was this? The bed had a tacky fish pattern upon its duvet and pillows. The walls had sailboat wallpaper on one half and purple paint on the other. In one corner was a drum set and there were stairs leading up to a small loft.

   This was Max Dennison’s bedroom. Ness was playing Max Dennison in Hocus Pocus. There were worse roles he could have been randomly given, in worse movies, but that meant Tracy probably was–

   The closet doors burst open. A small figure jumped onto the bed. It was Tracy, aged 9 and dressed in a red-and-black witch costume.

   She cackled when she saw how frightened Ness was. “I scared you! I scared you!”

   He let out a small sigh of relief at seeing she was brainwashed into playing Dani Dennison. He didn’t like the idea of being "the sane sibling," but it meant he had time to think of how to apologize for so thoroughly screwing things up. For now, though, he should stick to the script.

   “Mom and Dad told you to stay out of my room!”

   “Don’t be such a crab.” Tracy rolled her eyes. “Besides, Mom and Dad said you have to take me trick-or-treating.”

   “Okay, I’ll take you…” Ness smirked. “But we have to stop somewhere I want to go afterwards.”

   “Where would you want to possibly go on Halloween?”

   “Someplace we learned about in class today: the Old Witches’ House…”

   It was wonderful, going trick-or-treating with Tracy. Because Ness - Mr. Puzzles - had left some of the movie on the “cutting room floor,” there were no parents to argue with, no love interest to woo, and no bullies to confront. It was just him and his sister having a nice time together.

   What wasn’t so wonderful was that the only reason this was all happening was because Puzzles couldn’t control himself. He’d escaped prison, captured the SMG4 Crew, and in the process, captured his sister. The chances of him ever getting out of jail for real were slimmer than the Slim Jim someone had just thrown into Tracy’s bag.

   “Ugh, beef jerky,” she groaned when she stepped onto the sidewalk. She held it out to Ness. “Do you want this?”

   “Eh, sure.” He shrugged and took the beef jerky. Because it wasn’t real, he could just pretend it tasted like something else.

   Soon, they’d run out of houses to trick-or-treat at. Now it was time to go to Ness’s destination: the Old Witches’ House at the very other side of the graveyard. The place was naturally creepy, and nighttime made it even creepier.

   Tracy held onto Ness’s arm like he’d disappear at any moment. He almost felt bad he had to do this, but they’d never get out of this place unless he stuck to the script. That meant going into scary places and being a stupid teenager. At least this wasn’t a “real” horror movie.

   Once they’d crossed through the graveyard and climbed an iron fence to the other side, they found the Old Witches’ House. The cottage looked well-maintained, like any historical landmark. However, ivy crept across its walls, and its roof looked just about ready to cave in.

   As she looked around, Tracy asked, “How is this place completely empty on Halloween? It’s like, the spookiest place in Salem!”

   Ness grabbed the handle to the front door and pushed in, smirking. “How is this door completely open on Halloween?”

   Plot convenience, Ness told himself.

   The inside was much darker than outside, naturally. Ness found a light switch and flicked it on. Now that he and Tracy could see, they found the inside was one big room, mostly made of wood. Besides the modern lightbulbs, there were also some sprinklers to keep the mostly wood house from burning like a bonfire. Because it was now a tourist attraction, there were plaques everywhere and a gift shop in one corner. The gift shop housed postcards of Salem; Mr. Puzzles plushies with witch hats, capes, and brooms; and–

   “Oh, I’ll need this.” Ness grabbed a silver lighter engraved with a witch silhouetted against the full moon.

   “Ness, what are you doing?” Tracy asked.

   “Just having some fun.” He went up to the Black Flame Candle, which stood on a cast-iron stand. “Legend says if a virgin lights it, it will raise the spirits of the dead on Halloween night.”

   “No way,” she chuckled.

   Before Ness could light it, though, a squealing something leapt onto his back. He knew that in the original scene, a black cat jumped onto Max. Ness wasn’t that surprised to find Leggy in the cat’s place. He wrestled her off of himself and the startled creature hid under an old chest of drawers.

   Tracy asked, “What was that thing?”

   “Just a weird little gremlin,” Ness growled, but only in fake anger.

   “I think it was trying to warn you, Ness. M-Maybe we should go home.”

   He shook his head and held the open lighter to the candle’s dusty wick. He couldn’t resist doing a title drop in one of his own movies. “Oh come on. It’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus.”

   The candle caught instantly, and the flame was white at the edges with a black heart.

   One by one, the lightbulbs around the room burst in flashes of brilliant light. Each time, Tracy screamed in horror, again. Ness let out a quiet, frightened sound as the last bulb shattered, leaving them in the dark.

   Then a brilliant green light came from the gaps in the floorboards, and the cottage shook. Ness grabbed the nearby cauldron, but Tracy sat in the open, putting her hands over her head. The shaking stopped a minute later.

   Getting over her initial fear, Tracy groaned, “Of course… a virgin lit the candle.”

   Then light filled the cottage again in the form of the candles on the chandelier popping on. In fact, all the candles in the room relit. Ness gasped when the flame from underneath the cauldron came alive, and the kitchen hearth joined it.

   Finally, the door flew open, nearly flying off of its hinges. Three witches - SMG4, SMG3, and Mario in witch hats - were outside. SMG4 entered, grinning. “You see, guys? My plan worked perfectly.”

   They entered the cottage.

   Mario went straight for the candle. “But who lit the Black Flame Candle?”

   “Oh, I know! Four…” Three smirked. “I smell children…”

   “Maybe because there’s a kid right here.” Mario pointed to Tracy, who was hiding behind the counters that made up the gift shop.

   Before she could run for it, Mario grabbed Tracy by the scruff of her witch costume.

   “Hey!” Ness sprung out from his hiding place. “Let go of my little sister.”

   “Roast him, Four!” SMG3 shouted.

   SMG4 threw lightning at Ness. Since Mr. Puzzles’s body was part television, he’d gotten used to the feeling of lightning and electricity coursing through his system. But now he was Ness - soft, human Ness. The pain was so sharp and complete that he thought his heart would give out right there.

   Fortunately, the story would allow Ness to survive. He was thrown around the cottage by SMG4’s lightning until Tracy started swinging her candy bag around like a flail.

   “You leave my brother alone!” she yelled as Mario dropped her. She hit him right in his big nose.

   SMG3 went over to help Mario but Tracy hit him too. Before Four could assist his brothers, Leggy came out from her own hiding spot and started kicking him in the head.

   “Get this beast off of me!” SMG4 shrieked.

   Three and Mario tried to help Four, which allowed Tracy to escape the cottage. Ness stayed back, because he knew there was something else he had to do. He climbed up to the sleeping loft and reached out as far as he could.

   He got the witches’ attention with a “Hey! You have messed with the great and powerful Ness. Now you must suffer the consequences. I summon the Burning Rain of Death!”

   He put the lighter to the sprinklers and water spouted out all throughout the house. The distraction allowed Ness to escape, but not before he grabbed the witches’ spellbook. Leggy escaped with him while the witches screamed.

   Once Ness and Leggy were safely outside, they looked around. Ness couldn’t see Tracy. He grumbled, “She wandered off. Great. Leggy, stay close to me.”

   “I’m not Leggy!” she snapped. Ness turned to her when he didn’t hear a certain gremlin’s sickeningly sweet voice. “I’m… Meggy in Leggy’s body.”

   “M’Leggy?” Ness offered.

   “Stop.” Meggy glared at him. “I’d like to remind you that you’re the reason we’re in this mess in the first place!?”

   “I know. Don’t rub it in. And I know it doesn’t mean a lot right now, but… I’m sorry.”

   Meggy gave him a skeptical look, but her expression softened when he continued.

   “I will get us out of here. We just need to stick to the script and when we reach the end, a portal out of my head should open up.”

   Thankfully, Tracy had only made it as far as the iron gate that served as the border between the graveyard and the Old Witches’ House.

   Meggy spoke up. “We should cross into the graveyard. Witches can’t set foot there.”

   “She talks,” Ness said to his sister like that explained everything.

   “At least she’s not trying to electrocute us.” Tracy shrugged.

   The three entered the graveyard, hoping it would provide safety for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, Ness knew that wouldn’t be the case. He was reminded of where the story was headed when they came upon a certain grave marked:

HERE LIES AXOL

   Meggy shot Ness the meanest glare that he’d ever seen from her. She put it together exactly who Axol was meant to replace. If he could read her thoughts, he’d easily hear Do you have ANY respect for the dead?!

   Tracy, meanwhile, asked innocently, “Why’d you bring us here, goomba?”

   Meggy took a breath to steady herself. Then she explained, “I want to show you who exactly we’re up against here. Axol was a man who thought he could create a weapon to destroy the witches for good. When they found out his plan, they poisoned him and sewed his mouth shut so he’d never be able to tell anyone about the weapon, even in death.”

   “You must be Meggy Spletzer,” Ness said.

   “Yes.”

   “So the legends are true.”

   “There’s something else I want to show you.”

   Meggy took Ness and Tracy to a smaller marker on the same side of the graveyard. The name on this one read: TARI SPLETZER

   “SMG4’s curse keeps me alive,” said Meggy, “so I’ll never be reunited with my sister. But then I figured, since I failed Tari, I wouldn’t fail anyone else. When the witches returned, I’d be there to stop them. So for three centuries, I guarded their house on All Hallows’ Night, when I knew some airhead virgin might light that candle.”

   “Nice going, airhead,” Tracy told her brother.

   “I’m sorry, alright?” Ness folded his arms. “We’re talking about three ancient hags versus the twenty-first century. How bad can it be?”

   “Bad,” Meggy replied.

   Ness was about to open the spellbook he’d stolen, but Meggy shouted, “Stay out of there!”

   “Why?” he asked.

   “It contains the witches’ most dangerous spells. We need to keep it from them, not use it ourselves.”

   “Then let’s torch it.” Ness pulled out the lighter and struck it with his left hand. He brought the spellbook over from his right, but when the two objects touched, the lighter’s flame reared back from the book.

   “Oh yeah, the book’s protected by magic,” Meggy mentioned with a small smirk on her face.

   Then the three heard cackling from the air. They turned to see the witches, not on broomsticks, but flying on various cleaning equipment. SMG4 was on an upright vacuum, SMG3 was on a mop, and Mario, being himself, was somehow floating while holding a wet wipe.

   “‘It’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus!’” Four mocked the child.

   Ness put the lighter away and picked up a dead branch, swinging it around. “Take a hike!”

   “Book!” Four called out to it. “Come to papa!”

   The spellbook flew out of Ness’s right hand, but Meggy jumped on it, keeping it down with her goomba body.

   “‘Fraid not,” she taunted.

   “Meggy Spletzer, you nasty little gremlin!” SMG4 growled. “Still alive?”

   “No thanks to you.”

   “Thou hast waited in vain. You’ll never save your friends! You couldn’t even save your sister!” Then Four dove for the book.

   Ness snatched it up, and the three of them bolted away from SMG4. SMG3 went for them next, but they dodged her as she sailed past. Mario tried to kick them, but again, they moved out of the way of his attack.

   Ness glared daggers at Mario, but only Meggy picked up exactly why. He pulled Tracy closer to him as he asked Meggy, “They can’t touch us here, right?”

   “Well… they can’t.”

   Tracy frowned. “I don’t like the way you said that.”

   The witches regrouped and flew over to Axol’s grave. Four incanted:

   “Axolotl long since dead, deep asleep in thy wormy bed,
Wiggle thy fingers, open thine eyes,
   Twist thy fingers toward the sky!
Life is sweet, be not shy. On thy feet, so sayeth I!”

   With a tremble, the ground over the grave split. The coffin shook out from the hole before its lid burst open. A corpse Meggy thought she’d never see again dragged its - his - way out.

   Axol’s pale pink skin was even paler, almost white. He wore a disheveled, dark, Colonial-style suit. He had stitches over his mouth, keeping him from protesting with the witches' orders.

   Speaking of, SMG4 ordered Axol to “Catch those children! Get up! Faster!”

   With no choice but to obey, the axolotl chased them. Ness grabbed the spellbook before he and Tracy ran. Meggy led them through the graveyard, somehow instinctively knowing how to dodge the zombie. Eventually, they made it to what looked like a storm drain.

   “In here,” Meggy said.

   Ness helped his sister into the drain, and then he saw Axol was gaining on them. Ness grabbed the branch of a nearby tree and pulled it back as far as he could. He thought, Even though you’re not the real thing… I’m sorry, Axol. When the axolotl got close enough, Ness let the tree branch go.

   The branch smacked Axol in the head, knocking it clean off of his shoulders. This allowed Ness some time to get into the drain. He ran with Tracy and Meggy, distantly hearing the witches trying to help Axol get his head back on.

   Once they were a safe distance away, Ness asked his sister, “You okay?” 

   Tracy just nodded.

   “What is this place, Meggy?” he asked the gremlin.

   “It’s the old Salem crypt,” she explained. “It connects to the sewer and down the street.”

   “We need to find our parents,” said Tracy. “They’ll know what to do.”

   “Adults always show up too late,” Ness commented, “or they’re just… useless.”

   “We might as well try,” Meggy sighed. “We don’t have any better ideas.”

   “They’re at Town Hall,” Tracy said. “Can you take us there?”

   “Of course!”

   When they came to the part of the sewer closest to Salem’s Town Hall, Meggy told Ness and Tracy, “Up and out!”

   Ness climbed first, lifting off the manhole cover for the others. Tracy climbed second, with her brother helping her out. Meggy managed to climb out somehow with Leggy’s goomba body.

   Not far away was the town hall building, a two-story red-brick with the sound of a live band spilling out and down the street. A lively party was happening inside, with a banner above the double doors reading SALEM’S 16TH ANNUAL TOWN HALL PUMPKIN BALL

   When they made their way inside, Ness commented, “We’ll never find Mom and Dad in this place.”

   Indeed, the party in the second-floor ballroom was filled with many NPCs people, probably half the adults in Salem. In front of Ness was a skeleton, a Viking, and a knight. Thankfully, no parents, until–

   “Mom! Dad!” Tracy spotted them first.

   Ness spotted them second. They were easy to spot, being the only silhouettes in a sea of colorful costumes. Tracy didn’t seem to think there was anything off about Mom and Dad’s appearance, which was currently for the better. Instead of being dressed as Dracula and Madonna, they were dressed as Frankenstein and the bride. Again, Ness was glad - he really did not need the image of his mom as Madonna seared into his head (almost literally.)

   Tracy ran off to her parents, while Ness stayed back with Meggy. The boy and his gremlin seemed to be the only ones aware the music was looping. It seemed to be stuck on a rendition of The Munsters theme.

   Meggy asked, “This is that party scene from Hocus Pocus, right? Your parents are really here? Your ‘no vision, no creativity’ father, and—”

   “My uncaring mother, yes. Both of them are over there.” Ness pointed to them. “Tracy can waste her time with them. I’m going to the stage.”

   He did so, and as soon as he did, the witches came into the ballroom. On stage wasn’t a band the SMG4 Crew would be familiar with, but the Tonzura Brothers/Runaway Five, dressed in skeleton makeup and dark suits. Ness shouted, “Cut the music!”

   “Hey, I’m in the middle of a song,” said Lucky, the lead singer of the band.

   “It’s an emergency,” Ness told him. Then the boy turned to the crowd. “Everybody, please listen to me! Your children are in danger.”

   The crowd gasped, and startled parents stepped closer to the stage.

   “Those witches - SMG4, SMG3 and Mario - have returned from the grave!”

   Everyone in the room laughed.

   “I’m serious! I know it sounds stupid, but they’re here tonight. They’re right over there.” Ness pointed them out in the crowd.

   The spotlight scanned for them until it found the witches. The crowd gasped again, everyone nearby stepping away from them.

   SMG4 recovered quickly. “Thank you, Ness, for that stirring introduction.”

   Everyone laughed again, and some even applauded. Led by Four, the witches came up to the stage. None of the adults reacted as SMG4 pushed Ness away from the mic.

   “Don’t listen to them!” Tracy shouted, but she wasn’t heard over the crowd.

   Ness jumped off of the stage and ran to his sister and Meggy. There was no point in trying to reason with the adults. He might as well save his friends with what little control he had over the scenario.

   SMG4, SMG3, and Mario started doing a well-choreographed song-and-dance on the stage.

   “Cause this is thriller!
Thriller night!
   And no one's gonna save you
From the beast about to strike!”

   “It’s a spell!” Tracy covered her ears. “Don’t listen!”

   “They can’t hear you!” Ness said as he led her and Meggy out of the town hall.

   Soon, the adults were doing the same dance as the witches on the stage.

   Ness, Tracy and Meggy ran down the block until they came to the alley of a restaurant. Ness groaned, “This is really bad! Maybe we should just go back to the house. I’m sure I can take care of both of us…”

   Tracy shook her head. “I’m not leaving until we know those witches are taken care of.”

   From the restaurant, a chef (that looked like he was made of cardboard) came out. Ness, Tracy, and Meggy hid behind a large garbage bin. He threw out a failed pizza, not noticing the kids and creature on the other side.

   Once the chef was gone, Ness took in the other trash nearby. Along with other broken kitchen equipment, there was an old oven. The boy said with a smirk, “I have an idea.”

   After making the adults dance until they died, SMG3 took the lead in searching for the kids and the spellbook. He led his brothers to a school. He stated, “This place reeks of children.”

   “It is a prison for children,” SMG4 added.

   Surprisingly, the gate and front doors to the school were open. Four, Three, and Mario looked around the inside until they heard a voice.

   “Help! I’m stuck! Help me!” It sounded like that girl who was at the cottage.

   “Well, you heard the kid,” SMG3 giggled. “Let’s ‘help’ her.”

   Together, the witches followed her voice to a room filled with strange statues. The voice continued, “It’s so hot. Please, I’m trapped! I can’t get out of the kiln!”

   “Wait, what’s a ‘kiln’?” Mario asked, but his brothers ignored him.

   Eventually the witches found the source of the noise: a small room filled with even more statues and… pottery? The voice was coming from a tape player, hooked up to the microphone from the principal’s office. Then the kiln’s door slammed shut.

   Outside, Ness worked the controls so that the heat was at full blast. He only locked the door afterwards. The witches screamed to be let out over the crackle of flames. SMG4’s scream in particular was something Ness - Mr. Puzzles - had heard before.

   “LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

   Tracy covered her eyes. Only when the witches stopped screaming did she look. She smiled and let out a cheer, which Ness joined in with.

   Tracy, Ness, and Meggy left the school in high spirits.

   Meggy looked at the siblings and said, “Take good care of Tracy, Ness. You’ll never know how precious she is until you lose her.”

   Ness smiled. “I will. And you know what? You’re one of us now.”

   “Let’s go home!” Tracy cheered.

   “Home…” Meggy said under her breath. With every scene they did, they were a little closer to really getting home.

   When they made it home, Tracy almost collapsed in exhaustion. It was way past her bedtime. Ness brought her into his bedroom to sleep. Then he stayed up, but it wasn’t just because he needed to be a big brother. He needed to talk to Meggy, too.

   “Before I continue things…” Ness looked at her, concerned. They were sitting in the loft, and he had his hands around the witches’ spellbook. “You didn’t really feel those 300 years, did you?”

   “No, thank god,” Meggy sighed. “As soon as I left the witches’ cottage, I suddenly found it was night and 300 years later. I was awake by then, but I still feel that itch in the back of my head to follow the script. I knew fake-Axol’s backstory before I even said a word.”

   “Interesting.” Ness nodded. “I already know every show in PuzzleVision by heart, so it’s instinctual what comes next to me in here.”

   “Speaking of ‘what comes next’… is there any way to skip this next part? You’re putting your sister in danger again.”

   “I know, but we have to follow the story to get out.”

   Meggy asked, “We have to, or do you want to?”

   “Honestly?” Ness ran a hand through his hair, something he hadn’t done in a long time. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

   The kiln couldn’t keep going forever. When the flames inside it died down, its metal door fell off of its hinges and hit the floor with a thud.

   SMG4 hacked and coughed as he came out of the kiln, covered in black ash. The other witches were in similar condition. SMG3 used his big witch hat to bat away the smoke.

   “They tried water, fire - what’s next? Ice!?” SMG4 grabbed the nearest sculpture, a student’s rendition of a Moai statue, and threw it onto the art room’s concrete floor. It shattered into over a dozen pieces. “I’m gonna find those brats before sunrise. We find them, we find the book.”

   Ness waited a little longer, and Meggy “conveniently” left to get a look at the rest of the house.

   One voice in Ness’s head told him, Open the book, advance the plot! Another voice in his head told him, You already hurt Tracy. There’s no way you can make this worse. He couldn’t even tell if that thought was sarcastic or not.

   He took a deep breath and opened the spellbook.

   The witches had made it back to the cottage. They had tried to make the potion from memory, even getting fresh ingredients, but they realized their memories were shit. Still, if they were going to die when the sun came up, it might as well be somewhere familiar.

   Just as they’d resigned themselves to their fate, SMG4 saw something just outside the front window in the distance. Over the dark tree tops, near the full moon, shone a thin beam of reddish light. Four cackled, “Wait, I see it! They opened it! Come, we fly!”

   SMG4 grabbed the vacuum, SMG3 grabbed his mop, and Mario grabbed another wet wipe from the closet.

   “What about us?” one of their captives said.

   “We’ll have plenty of time for you later.” Three waved at them before he left.

   Their fresh ingredients, their captives, were kept in human-sized bird cages. The cages were perfectly sized to hold two low-poly guards, who weren’t wearing pilgrim hats anymore. Chris and Swag looked at each other.

   Chris asked his partner, “Swag, what’s the last thing you remember?”

   He put a hand to his chin. “We were fighting Puzzle-bitch and he managed to capture us.”

   “Yeah, me too…”

   Ness read aloud from the book, “‘Only a circle of salt can protect thy victims from thy power.’” He put on a voice similar to how Mr. Puzzles sounded, which he thought was amusing. Too bad nobody was around to hear it.

   Then, with a Leggy-like squeal, Meggy leapt onto Ness’s lap and kicked the spellbook shut. She got on top of it to keep him from reading it again. She yelled, “Are you crazy!? Nothing good can come from this book!”

   “I was just trying to find a way to help you…” Ness grumbled.

   “You can help by finishing this movie,” Meggy grumbled back.

   “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get some salt for the final act.”

   Ness realized if they were entering the climax of Hocus Pocus, he’d need some salt to defend himself. Without a love interest to woo, he’d have to go down to the kitchen by himself. The house was still empty. If this were any other time in his life, he would have seen this as an opportunity to watch television without anyone yelling at him for it. However, it was just a movie, and much like Meggy, he’d like to get out of his own head soon.

   He got the salt canister from the kitchen, along with a knife he knew he’d need later. Then a crash thundered down the stairs. He gasped, “Tracy,” but he didn’t sound surprised.

   He ran upstairs. In his room, he found the book and Meggy missing. There was something with a red witch hat and the covers pulled all the way up in his bed. Ness took a deep breath and prepared himself to get jumpscared.

   He reached out for the thing in the bed and said, “Tracy, wake up.”

   Mario bolted upright and screamed “WAHOO!” in Ness’s face.

   He still screamed, but only because the fat Italian was truly frightening to him.

   From the closet, the SMGs appeared.

   “Looking for this?” SMG4 held the spellbook.

   “Or this?” SMG3 had one hand around Tracy’s mouth, and another around a sack with something kicking around inside.

   Four was about to throw lightning at Ness when he brandished the salt canister like a weapon. He spun around and the canister made a hasty circle on the floor.

   “Salt!?” SMG4 laughed. “Nice trick, but it won’t save thy friends. Come on, brothers.” He ascended to the loft. “The Black Flame Candle’s magic is almost spent. Dawn approaches!”

   SMG3 followed behind Four, and Mario followed behind him. They went out the window, flying on their cleaning supplies. They had Tracy and Meggy.

   Fortunately, Ness knew just how to catch up to them.

   "Use thy voice, Three,” SMG4 ordered as they flew. “Bring all the girls to the yard!”

   Three turned in his flight so that he’d go over the town. As he did, SMG3 sang in a woman’s voice:

   "Come, little children, I'll take thee away,
Into a land of enchantment…"

   Below him, girls left their homes and began moving towards the Old Witches’ House.

   "Come, little children, the time’s come to play,
Here in my garden of magic…"

   Ness ran out of the house and saw a crowd of girls wandering through the streets in a trance. Some had flashlights or candles in their hands. A few of them wore costumes, but most wore pajamas or nightgowns.

   He could hear Meggy in his head. “You changed the song at the party, but not the song here?”

   Shut up! He thought back. We need to save my sister one final time!

   “You need to save me too.” Thankfully, her voice was also guiding him. “Are you sure you’re tall enough to drive?”

   I can’t give up now!

   “That’s not an answer!”

   Ness ran to the garage and opened the door that led the car onto the road. Then he hopped into the SUV. He found he could reach the pedals, stick, and wheel just fine. However, it was quite different from driving as a tall TV-head who had forced himself into a toy car.

   Soon though, Ness got the hang of it. He also knew the back streets of the fake Salem well, well enough that he could probably get there faster than SMG3 returning to the cottage. But how could Ness fight against a story he made? And how much could he fight back against said story before it broke entirely?

   SMG3 returned to the cottage. SMG4 was trying to get a tied-up Tracy to drink the potion he’d made with the spellbook. Mario was watching Meggy as the bag she was in “cooked” over the hearth.

   Suddenly, the witches found orange daylight shining through the eastern windows of their cottage. They screamed and started writhing in pain. They were out of time!

   Three screamed, “It hurts!”

   Tracy was the only one who picked up the noise of the SUV’s engine. She gasped, “Ness…”

   Sure enough, her brother came through the cottage’s front door and ran to her. He undid the ropes with the kitchen knife and grabbed the bag Meggy was still trapped in. Then he told Tracy to “Get outside.”

   She fled the house. Then Ness noticed Chris and Swag in the cages that were dangling above the floor. They needed to get out of here as much as the rest of the SMG4 Crew. He found the thing that kept the cages suspended and managed to pry it loose. The cages dropped to the floor and miraculously opened.

   While Chris and Swag escaped, Ness pushed over the witches’ cauldron, spilling the potion all over the floor. Only then did the boy leave the cottage. He jumped into the driver’s seat of the SUV, parked outside the Old Witches’ House. Tracy and Meggy, thankfully now out of the sack, were already in the backseats. Ness drove away, taking the “light of dawn” with him.

   Meanwhile, the witches had stopped screaming and realized they’d been tricked again.

   “Damn that boy!” SMG4 said. He got to his feet, his face as red as Mario’s usual attire. “The candle’s still gonna go out, and my potion…” He peered into the bottom of the cauldron. “There’s just enough left for one child. Get the vial!”

   Mario handed it to him and Four carefully ladled the last of the potion into the vial.

   SGM4 continued, “Forget the sleepwalkers. I’m going after that towheaded brat. We’ve been tricked by her and her stupid brother too many times!”

   Again, Ness knew the roads around this fake Salem well enough not to hit any of the entranced girls. His character shouldn’t have known, but at this point, he wasn’t letting a small plot hole like that stop him. Soon, he saw SMG4 flying on his vacuum in the driver’s side window.

   Ness swerved away, trying to keep driving steadily. Then he knocked the SUV into Four. That managed to throw the witch off.

   Ness made it to the graveyard. He, Tracy, and Meggy made it out of the car and onto the hallowed ground. However, it didn’t take long for them to run into the zombie version of Axol again.

   “Catch those children!” SMG4 yelled, having caught up to them.

   Axol grabbed Ness with ease. The boy pulled out the kitchen knife, trying to fight the axolotl with it. Unfortunately, Axol grabbed Ness’s knife-wielding hand. Fortunately, he used the knife to cut through the threads that kept his mouth sewed shut.

   Then Axol released Ness and let out a dry, guttural cough. Small brown moths flew from his lips, fluttering away. He growled, in a raspy voice that almost brought a tear to Meggy’s eye, “Bitch! Clown-faced, vacuum-powered demon from Hell!”

   SMG4 scowled.

   Axol smirked. “I’ve been waiting centuries to say that.”

   “I killed you once and I can kill you again!” Four snapped.

   “Come on!” Axol told the kids and Meggy. “I know somewhere that might be safer.”

   Meggy followed closest to the zombie, while Ness and Tracy somehow trailed behind. SMG4 didn’t follow them, which made Ness even more nervous about the climax. Soon, they made it to Axol’s still-open grave.

   Axol said, “You’ll be safe in there.” He seemed to be talking about Tracy specifically, because the next thing he did was help her into the hole.

   Ness surrounded the grave with salt from the canister he brought from home. Unfortunately, Axol had left the knife at the graveyard’s gates. Ness had no other weapons.

   He had no other weapons.

   He realized now that was why he was dreading this moment so much. In the movie, Max and Allison had a whole duffel bag of weapons. Without someone to help him prepare and pack…

   How could he have been so stupid again!?

   By now the witches had arrived. Ness could only dodge their attacks from above. Axol could only taunt them.

   “Go to Hell!”

   “Oh, I’ve been there, thank you,” Four quipped. “I found it quite lovely.”

   SMG4 dove for the zombie. He reached out his hands to grab his vacuum, but Four kicked Axol in the head, sending it off his shoulders again. Tracy saw his head roll close to her. She decided to leave the safety of the salt-encompassed grave to save Axol’s head.

   Ness was so distracted from fending off the witches that he didn’t notice Tracy giving Axol back his head until it was too late. SMG4 saw his chance and grabbed her, hoisting her into the sky. Four bit down on the potion bottle’s cork and spat it out a second later.

   As he tried to get Tracy to drink the potion, Meggy tried to save her. She climbed the tree with agility she didn’t even know she had in her Leggy form, and jumped for SMG4’s vacuum. Unfortunately, she missed and fell to the ground, leaving the potion in Four’s hands.

   Ness watched all this play out. Meggy was supposed to make the potion drop out of SMG4’s hands. To save Tracy, he had to go off-script. He aimed a finger gun at the bottle, hand shaking.

   “PK Thunder!”

   First, a bolt of lightning shot from Ness’s finger. Second, it hit the bottle and the potion inside spilled onto the ground. The witches were so shocked by this display that they all fell off their rides. Touching the one place they couldn’t set foot, the three turned to stone almost instantly.

   Only then did the sun come up, bathing the graveyard in warm light. Ness caught Tracy as she fell out of SMG4’s grip and to the earth below. The nightmare of a night had finally come to an end, and all because Ness decided to stop sticking to his stupid script.

   The siblings took a couple of deep breaths. Then Tracy asked Ness, “Where did you learn that?”

   “Uh… from you. You still don’t remember?”

   She looked confused. If the brainwashing hadn’t broken yet, then they had to find the exit. Even without the witches, the movie still had yet to come to an end.

   The siblings saw Axol get back into his coffin, putting the lid back on.

   “Have a nice sleep,” Tracy giggled.

   Meggy mouthed under her breath, “Rest in peace, Axol.”

   That was the last thing she did before she sat and closed her eyes.

   “Wait…” Tracy realized what was happening to the gremlin. “Wait, Meggy! She’s gone!”

   Meggy’s body fell over, limp and lifeless. Tracy started to sob. Ness hugged her - he didn’t want to see a dead Leggy, either.

   “Come on,” said Meggy’s voice, though it wasn’t coming from her body. “Please don’t be sad for me.”

   The siblings looked up and saw a ghostly Meggy, back in her human form and wearing a white nightgown.

   “Meggy, that’s really you?” Tracy asked.

   “Yeah.” She smiled. “We’re finally free. Ness… thanks for lighting the candle.”

   “Any time.”

   “Meggy?” another voice called. It was another human girl wearing a white nightgown. However, she had blue hair and blue eyes, and she was a head taller than Meggy. She came out from behind a tall tree. “Meggy Spletzer?”

   “That’s my sister, and my cue to leave…” Meggy trailed off, as if she was waiting for something.

   Ness was waiting for it too.

   Finally, it appeared. At the gates of the graveyard was a square screen that displayed nothing but static.

   “That’s it!” Ness gasped. “That’s the way out!”

   Meggy smiled. “Everyone, follow us! And bring the witches, too!”

   Ness managed to pull SMG4’s body. Tracy and Tari looked at each other and shrugged. They both headed for the square portal. Ness groaned, thinking he’d have to drag out the witches alone… until Chris and Swag showed up.

   The two guards quickly understood the situation and brought SMG3 and Mario to the portal. Ness dragged Four along. Then everyone - Tracy, Meggy, Tari, Ness with SMG4, Chris with SMG3, and Swag with Mario - jumped into the static square.

Chapter Text

   The SMG4 Crew, Tracy, Chris, Swag, and Mr. Puzzles groaned as they found themselves in the woods not too far from the prison. Only now did their memories come back. Everyone reacted differently.

   Tari was already in the fetal position, whimpering, “I was dead… I survived, but I was dead…”

   Chris pointed out, “As far as the law is concerned, it’s a miracle he didn’t really kill any of us.”

   “But he totally would,” Swag argued. “And he’s totally killed before.”

   Mr. Puzzles immediately looked at his sister, the worry clear on his screen. Tracy didn’t scream, but Puzzles could see the fear in her eyes.

   Mario was usually pretty chill, even in world-threatening situations, but today, something snapped within him. He remembered being forced to hurt Meggy. He glared at Mr. Puzzles and yelled, “Mario should-a throw TV man even farther than SMG4 did!”

   “Damn TV freak…” SMG3 grumbled.

   SMG4 also yelled, “What the HELL, Mr. Puzzles!? Were you broadcasting to get your power back or something?!”

   “I didn’t broadcast anything!” Puzzles shouted. “I was trying to save you from the mess… that I created.”

   Meggy realized, “The only reason you threw us back in there was because you tried to escape. And the only reason you tried to escape was because you were roped up for so long, wasn’t it?”

   “Yes… I promise not to do it again.” Mr. Puzzles looked at Tracy as he said that.

   Since he was the leader and the man who’d thrown Puzzles in prison, everyone was looking to SMG4 to know what to do. Prison and “just keeping him locked up and ignoring him” was ineffective. Four had just discovered Tracy was psychic, and she had some influence on Mr. Puzzles’s behavior. However, she could barely do anything about his severe lack of sanity.

   Eventually, SMG4 groaned, “Fine, we’ll discuss changes to Mr. Puzzles’s punishment, but neither of you are interfering.” He pointed to Puzzles and Tracy. “And you’re staying in prison until we figure it out. Got it?”

   The siblings nodded and replied, “Yes, sir.” Tracy said it sincerely, while Mr. Puzzles sounded slightly sarcastic.

   “Chris? Swag?” Four looked to the guards. “Do you know the way back to the prison?”

   The guards did know the way back. They led everyone back to the prison to figure out what to do about Puzzles once and for all. Well, almost everyone went back…

   Guards that were not Chris or Swag led Mr. Puzzles back to his cell. Tracy followed behind them. They allowed her to come back because she seemed the only one who could keep Puzzles calm.

   Because his status as a prisoner was now in flux, the guards didn’t strap him to the bed again. They simply stayed outside his cell. Inside, Tracy and Mr. Puzzles looked at each other.

   He just needed to apologize to her. He’d played this scenario out whenever he had a stray thought in the parody they were trapped in. Why was it so hard to do it in reality?

   Finally, after the longest silence ever, Puzzles worked up the nerve to say “I’m truly sorry for pulling you into all of this - my fight against the SMG4 Crew and my head. I don’t even know how to explain everything.”

   “You don’t have to,” Tracy assured him. “I mean, I appreciate the apology, but I knew the risks of coming to see you. It’d be a strange day in the Mushroom Kingdom if something didn’t go wrong.”

   Both of them chuckled at that.

   Mr. Puzzles looked at Leggy 2.0, but Tracy knew he was talking to her, not the doll. “Before they hauled my ass to jail, I tried to say that I’d learned a very valuable lesson. I guess I can tell you what I learned, because I finally get it: Fame is but a fleeting shadow. What I really needed all along… was a friend. Friends are eternal.”

   Tracy sighed. “Finally. Took you long enough, bro.”

   As Mr. Puzzles and Tracy repaired their relationship, SMG4, SMG3, Meggy, Chris, and Swag discussed what they should do about Puzzles in the guards’ office. Tari went home, too terrified to even talk about the TV man. Four convinced Mario to go home by telling him it was late and Tari would like an escort. He could deal with Mario’s antics anywhere else, but he really needed to have a serious conversation.

   SMG4 started said conversation with: “Alright, so… it’s clear Puzzles regrets his actions now, but only because his sister was there. I don’t think she wants to stay here forever, and Puzzles doesn’t want to stay in jail forever. So what do we do?”

   “I could try therapy with him…” SMG3 suggested.

   “Maybe I could try coaching him?” Meggy added.

   “Those aren’t bad ideas, but I think Mr. Puzzles won’t be too keen on working with his archnemeses to reform.” Four shook his head.

   Three and Meggy muttered in agreement, but SMG3 gave SMG4 a glance at the mention of “archnemeses.”

   Swag spoke up next. “Well, lady and gentlemen, I have the perfect solution for this problem: the canoe.”

   Chris tried to stop him, “Swag, no-”

   But the other guard continued, “If he behaves well, his reward can be the canoe. He can sit in the canoe for up to an hour.”

   Chris facepalmed. “Swag, stop trying to force well-behaved prisoners into the canoe.”

   “Well what else am I supposed to do with the canoe? Canoe in it?”

   As Chris and Swag squabbled further, Three looked ready to explode. He did so just a few seconds later. “This would be so much easier if we could just kill Puzzles!”

   Everyone else - even Chris and Swag - gasped.

   “Oh you guys know I’m right! Sure, we’ve had a few villains reform in the past - including yours truly - but I don’t see that happening for TV man. Every time he gets the opportunity, he tries to kill us or torture us or…” SMG3’s rage died, and he sighed. “I wish Mr. Puzzles would just go away forever.”

   “Wait…” SMG4’s face lit up. “Three, you’re a genius!”

   “I am?” His confusion turned to smugness. “I mean, ‘course I am.”

   “So what’s your genius idea?” Meggy asked the meme guardians.

   Once they’d come up with a plan, Chris and Swag were the first to enter Mr. Puzzles’s cell. Behind them were SMG4, SGM3, and Meggy.

   “Well?” Puzzles asked. “What’s the final verdict?”

   Chris said, “As much as it pains me to say this… we’re letting Mr. Puzzles free.”

   “With certain conditions,” SMG4 butted in. “First, we’d like you to stay one more night at the jail. Then you must leave the Mushroom Kingdom in the morning.”

   “And don’t even think about coming back here!” SMG3 added. “If you EVER come back to the Mushroom Kingdom, we’ll haul your ass back to prison or find some way to kill you for good.”

   Meggy added, “Your brother doesn’t just need you to support him, though. He needs a therapist.”

   “Yeah… we’ll find somebody once we get home,” Tracy assured them.

   “Is that all?” Mr. Puzzles sounded somewhere between shocked and relieved.

   “Yeah.” SMG4 nodded. “Chris and Swag will see you out in the morning. Uh, goodnight and good luck, I guess?”

   The rest of the Crew, the guards, and Tracy said goodnight as they left. Afterwards, Puzzles laid in the cell, a strange mix of emotions flooding his TV head. He would be free from jail, but there were limits. Those limits meant he could no longer menace SMG4. However, he could spend as much time as he wanted with his sister.

   His screen flipped through many expressions. Again, the boy trapped in the screen came up a couple of times. He felt less trapped now. Holding onto that thought, Mr. Puzzles fell asleep.

   Little Puzzles – Ness – watched the television with his friend Leggy and sister Tracy. Both were smaller than him, so he kept an arm around both of them. Through the TV’s static, he heard the chime of someone new entering the white void.

   She was about the same age as Ness, though she looked a lot like Tracy: a blonde bob of hair, blue eyes, and a red bow in her hair. However, her blue eyes were bright instead of dark like Tracy’s, and she wore a pink dress instead of red overalls like Tracy.

   “Who are you?” Ness asked. “What are you doing here?”

    She answered his second question first: “Sometimes I can reach out to certain people. I call them ‘friends I haven’t met yet.’ But… have we met?” She looked past Ness, to Tracy.

   Oh! He remembered her. Tracy’s cute friend. But he couldn’t say she was cute – that would be weird, right?

   “Maybe we have. You know my sister, Tracy?” Ness pointed to her.

   “Oh, yes! You must be her brother, uh… Ness, was it?” She smiled. “I’m Paula. I know your sister because we… we saved the world together!”

   “Wow! Just like the heroes on TV!” Ness gestured to it. “You should watch with us.”

   “Yeah!” Tracy and Leggy said in unison.

   Paula hesitated. This was unlike any time she’d ever reached out to someone before. Previously, it was more like a phone conversation – even if she didn’t hear a person respond to her calls, she knew when they’d “picked up.” Having vision and a different body and other people around felt slightly overwhelming.

   Paula knew Ness – Mr. Puzzles – was a powerful psychic, just like his sister, but this still went beyond her understanding of what psychics could do. However, it couldn’t hurt to indulge the young Puzzles, right? He just wanted to watch TV, nothing more.

   “I guess I could watch some shows with you.” Paula smiled sheepishly.

   “Awesome!”

   Ness put Leggy in his lap so Paula could sit right next to him. She sat down, and she almost jumped back when she felt Ness’s arm. He felt warm and soft and… real.

   Don’t flinch, Paula, she reminded herself. He’s just a kid.

   She gave Ness another sheepish smile. Then she looked at the TV. It displayed static, like it had the whole time… but then she saw something.

   “One and a half stars…” Ness gasped, seeing it too.

   “Have you seen this before?” Paula asked.

   “Yeah, actually. I’d get more or less stars based on… something…” Ness tried to remember. “I felt really angry about the stars going up and down. B-But then there were five stars on the screen once! And I got really happy! But then they disappeared… For a while, I didn’t think anything would make me happy like that again. But then Leggy showed up and my sister showed up after that.”

   “And now you have a little bit of happiness wherever you go?”

   “Yeah… how did you know?”

   Paula opened her mouth to answer—

   Someone banged on the door of Mr. Puzzles’s cell, waking him. Puzzles groaned and turned to see a guard that wasn’t Chris or Swag. He didn’t like Chris or Swag, but he liked the other guards even less.

   “What do you want?” Mr. Puzzles asked the guard. “I was having such a nice dream…”

   “You’re being released today,” the guard said. “That girl is straightening everything out with Chris and Swag right now.”

   “Oh, goodie!”

   Puzzles almost leapt out of bed. The only thing stopping him was the rope. Wasn’t he unrestrained last night? Someone did this in his sleep?! He ended up falling out of the bed and onto the floor. He grumbled, “Maybe someone could get me out of these ropes…”

Chapter Text

   As the guard had said, Tracy was straightening out everything with Chris and Swag regarding her brother’s release. There was a lot of paperwork involved, which Tracy read through the fine print before signing. Swag fell asleep during this part of the process, only waking up again when Tracy gave all the documents back to Chris.

   “If there’s anything else I need to sign, let me know,” Tracy said.

   “That should be everything regarding the legal side of Mr. Puzzles’s release,” Chris said. “There is something I want to give to you, though.”

   He pulled out a long length of rope, the same rope that had been used to secure Puzzles during his jail time.

   Chris explained, “As you saw, that rope was the only thing holding Mr. Puzzles back. It’s surprisingly effective at nullifying his powers.”

   Swag added, “Don’t try to use it for anything kinky. You only make that mistake once lol”

   Chris gave Tracy the rope. She stuck it behind her head, and it went into her inventory. Inside her inventory were many things: some items from her job, some items from her friends, and even some items from her family. Sometimes she’d forget what she had stored in there, and she hoped she’d forget about the rope.

   Still, she told Chris, “Thank you.”

   He quickly put the paperwork away. Then he and Swag led Tracy back to Mr. Puzzles’s cell. The TV man was waiting outside, back in his regular outfit. He noticed Tracy was dressed in a white shirt with a different, purple shirt acting as a jacket.

   He smiled at her, but then he blinked. “Oh, almost forgot! My ‘cellmate’ is coming with me!”

   He went back into the cell and when he came back out, Leggy 2.0 was in his hands. Neither Tracy, Chris, nor Swag decided to comment on Puzzles’s attachment to the doll. They just motioned for him to follow them out of the prison.

   Mr. Puzzles wasn’t expecting anyone to be waiting for him outside. Yet, there was Meggy Spletzer, probably the person in the SMG4 Crew he would be closest to even considering a friend. She gave him a shy “Hey…” on the way out.

   “Hey.” Mr. Puzzles waved with his free hand.

   “What is that?” Meggy pointed to the doll in Mr. Puzzles’s hands.

   “Leggy 2.0.” Puzzles looked away. “She’s uh, my ‘friend’ from prison. She’s getting out today too!”

   Meggy chose to ignore the doll and turn her attention to Tracy. “I don’t think I have to tell you again, but he’s done some terrible things in the pursuit of fame, acknowledgement... friendship.”

   “Yeah…” Tracy sighed. “I’ve experienced that firsthand now. But don’t worry - I’ll keep an eye on him.”

   “It beats being trapped in there.” Then, Mr. Puzzles muttered to himself, “Nine chapters just to get out…”

   Meggy told Tracy, “I trust you know what's best for him... and for you.”

   “Again, don’t worry. He’s my brother. I know every trick he could pull on me. Probably because he’s tried them all before.” Tracy whispered to Meggy, “If you haven’t noticed, Puzzles is as original as a counterfeit.”

   Meggy giggled.

   Mr. Puzzles just stood there awkwardly, a perturbed expression on his face. He didn’t like the two women whispering about him, and he really didn’t like Meggy giggling at his expense. He stated, “Since I’m now banned from the Mushroom Kingdom, we really should get out of here.”

   Meggy, Tracy, and Puzzles all said one final goodbye to each other. He managed to get one last hug from Meggy. He wondered, somehow, if there was a way he’d be able to at least see her again.

   As they walked to the bus stop, Tracy told her brother, “We’re going back to Twoson. You know my friend, Paula? I’m living with her there.”

   Mr. Puzzles realized that was the girl from his dream. He didn’t want to tell Tracy that… but maybe she had had a similar experience? Still, it was probably best to not say anything, lest he end up looking even crazier.

   To get to the bus, they had to go back into town. Mr. Puzzles noticed many people staring at him as they went into the city. The adults were probably staring at him for PuzzleVision (he probably deserved it), while the children were probably staring at him for PuzzleBox (ugh.)

   Soon, Puzzles and Tracy made it to the bus stop, and soon after that, the bus back to Twoson came. Getting on the bus meant Puzzles got more stares from the driver and other passengers. He took a seat near the back of the bus, and Tracy sat next to him.

   “Can you hold onto Leggy 2.0 while I work on some… internal maintenance?” he asked her.

   “Um, sure.” Tracy grabbed the doll and put it in her lap. “I have to make a couple phone calls, but I promise I’ll keep her safe.” She patted Leggy 2.0 affectionately.

   Mr. Puzzles smiled. Once the bus started moving, he retracted his body into his television head. During the ride, he worked on PuzzleVision. Mostly, he was getting rid of any parodies that would be too dangerous to Tracy if he snapped again, but he was also hoping the lull of the bus ride would bring forth some new ideas.

   While Puzzles was distracted, Tracy made her first phone call. “Hey, Paula… Yeah, the visit went well. I’ll be back tonight… Uh, h-here’s the thing: Ness - Mr. Puzzles - he’s coming back home with me…”

   A few hours later, the bus arrived in Twoson. Tracy looked at the television next to her; it appeared her brother had literally gotten lost in his own head. She banged on the side of the television, and Mr. Puzzles snapped back to reality with a gasp.

   Tracy said, “Sorry, I wasn’t sure how to wake you. We’re at our stop.”

   Puzzles made his body reappear and stood up. He almost hit his head on the ceiling of the bus, but he managed to get off gracefully. Tracy followed him off and handed Leggy 2.0 back to him.

   Twoson, the town they’d arrived in, was once smaller than Onett. However, it had grown considerably since Tracy’s grand adventure - probably because she’d driven a cult out of a nearby village. It was now large enough that Tracy and Paula could live as roommates without feeling like Paula’s parents were constantly watching them. Sometimes they’d bump into each other, but it felt more coincidence than something planned.

   Tracy and Paula’s house was just the right size for two people: two stories, three beds, and two baths. Around the front door was a porch with a two-person swing attached to it.

   Mr. Puzzles asked Tracy, “And you’re sure Paula is okay with me staying here?”

   “I talked with her about it over the phone,” Tracy explained. “She didn’t like it at first, but I told her you were literally kicked out of the Mushroom Kingdom and had nowhere else to go.”

   “So… does she like me now?”

   Before Puzzles could get an answer, someone squealed, “Tracy!”

   The someone threw her arms around her. The someone had her long blonde hair tied in a ponytail. She wore a simple pink dress and slippers. She and Tracy almost looked like twins.

   After the hug, Tracy made the introductions. “Ness, this is Paula. Paula, this is my brother, Ness/Mr. Puzzles.”

   “I prefer Mr. Puzzles.” He extended a hand for her to shake. “Pleased to meet you.”

   Paula shook his hand, her lips pressed in a firm smile. “I knew you would come. I had a dream that a boy named Ness would be coming. Well, I guess you’re that boy all grown up, huh?”

   “Really?” Puzzles blinked. “That was you?”

   “Yeah…” Her smile faltered. “I wasn’t sure what to say to your younger self. Tracy and I had been keeping up with your… activities. Does that version of yourself know about that?”

   He sighed. “I’m not sure myself. I usually try to put some distance between my childhood memories and who I am now.”

   “I should show you your room.”

   Paula and Tracy led Mr. Puzzles into the house. Right inside was a hallway, a set of stairs to the second floor, and archways leading to the living room and kitchen. Puzzles noticed that over the front door was a Bible verse:

Psalm 121:8 - The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

   He glanced between the verse and Paula, but she didn’t seem to pick up on it. She led him upstairs to his room, with Tracy tailing behind both of them. There were four doors on the upper floor and Paula opened the middle right one.

   She explained, “The bathroom’s the first door when you come up. Tracy’s door is next to that, and this is your room.”

   The room was so spartan that there wasn’t even a bed. There was, however, a desk and a futon. Paula continued, “Sorry about the lack of… bedroom-ness. This was just a spare room before you showed up and I only had time to move the junk out.”

   “Well, it’s still very nice of you to make room for me.” Mr. Puzzles smiled. “And I can sleep almost anywhere. The futon will do just fine… for now.”

   There was a pause, and Puzzles suddenly felt tension in the air. Paula looked at Tracy, who was standing at the door frame, and asked her, “Tracy, can I have a word with your brother… privately?”

   “Oh… sure.” Tracy looked disappointed, but also like she was expecting whatever Paula was about to do.

   Paula closed the door on Tracy. Puzzles put Leggy 2.0 down on the desk. Then he turned her around so she wouldn’t listen in.

   Mr. Puzzles asked, “What’s this about?”

   Paula turned back to him, glaring. “Tracy went quiet when she was visiting you. She still tried to call me, usually in the evenings… but she went completely silent last night.”

   “Oh, right,” Puzzles sighed, “last night. Look, Paula–”

   “If I find out you did anything to her, changed her in any way, I will do more than break your screen.”

   “Why does everyone believe I’d hurt my own sister!?”

   “Give me one good reason I should believe otherwise!”

   Puzzles fell silent.

   Paula sighed, “You are welcome to stay in our house, but I will not let Tracy or I be taken advantage of.”

   “I’ll be outside,” he said awkwardly.

   Before either woman could stop him, Mr. Puzzles made his way out of the house.

   Mr. Puzzles smoked, but his habit varied greatly. He went through a few cigarettes while reading reviews for PuzzleVision. He went through a few packs during his lowest point. He took a smoke break every few days while working on Puzzle Park.

   Now he was smoking again, on the porch swing of Paula and Tracy’s house.

   Tracy didn’t come out to check on him until dinner was nearly ready. She wasn’t surprised to find him outside smoking. It was a bad habit he’d formed before he became Mr. Puzzles.

   Tracy hated smelling smoke on Ness. Every time she confronted him about it, he didn’t seem to see what the big deal was. Every time she asked her parents to intervene, Dad would say it was better he was smoking than drinking.

   She wasn’t sure how smoking worked for Mr. Puzzles, but she figured he still saw it as a stress reliever. He didn’t seem to notice her until she sat on the porch swing next to him. Instantly he put out the cigarette.

   Tracy said, “Hey. I know Paula is intense sometimes. She’s just… looking out for me. She really wanted me to reach out to you, you know. But—”

   “‘But’…?” Puzzles asked.

   “I don’t think she was expecting me to take you in.”

   “I thought your roommate was religious,” he grumbled. “Aren’t those types all about ‘turning the other cheek’…?”

   “Well, Paula taught me that forgiveness isn’t the same as letting yourself be hurt again,” Tracy explained. “My friends all view me as the younger sister too, and that means—”

   Mr. Puzzles interrupted, “It means we should all be one big family.”

   “Hey, you and I know better than anyone else that family doesn’t always see eye-to-eye.” Tracy stood up, getting out of the porch swing. “I helped Paula with dinner, and now it’s ready. I hope you’re hungry.”

   “We’ll see…”

   Mr. Puzzles came into the house again. Some of his senses had dulled due to having a television head, but he could still hear, taste, and smell. As soon as he came into the house, he smelled his favorite food.

   Paula stood at the dining table, waiting for them and smirking as she saw Puzzles’s surprise. She asked him, “You like your steak rare, right?”

   “Yes, I… how did you know?”

   Tracy said, “I was on the phone with her while you were sleeping on the bus.”

   On everyone’s plates was steak, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. In the center of the table was a plate of assorted cookies. Since Paula had already taken her spot at the table, Mr. Puzzles assumed the one that wasn’t charred (well done) was his. Then Tracy took her seat. As she did, she realized she hadn’t seen her brother eat yet. They must have given him some sustenance while he was incarcerated.

   Paula said a quick blessing over the meal and then looked at Mr. Puzzles. “Hey, I’m sorry for cutting you off earlier. It sounded like you were going to explain why Tracy didn’t call last night?”

   “Let’s talk about that later,” Puzzles deflected. “Right now, I’d like to enjoy this surely lovely meal you’ve made.”

   Tracy wanted to say (again) that she’d helped, but she could tell her brother was flattering Paula. She let them both have that and started eating. Paula took a bite of her own steak, but sometimes she’d glance at Mr. Puzzles.

   Puzzles held the steak up to the mouth of his screen… and “ate” it. It disappeared from his fork and an animation of Mr. Puzzles chewing appeared on his screen. Tracy watched him intently. Paula just stared. They had seen many strange things on their adventures, but somehow Mr. Puzzles eating made the top five.

   “What?” he asked, not wanting either woman to stare at him like this. His voice sounded muffled, like he was talking with his mouth full.

   “I haven’t watched you eat before,” Tracy said. “W-Well, watched you eat with your TV head.”

   “What did you eat in prison, anyway?” Paula asked.

   “Just bread and water, like a bad Western. Well, actually, just bread. I can still eat, but water shorts out my head. Chris and Swag found that out the hard way.” Puzzles cringed. “I think Swag felt really bad about it. He sometimes snuck me cupcakes from the breakroom when Chris wasn’t looking!”

   Tracy chuckled at this, but Paula didn’t. Puzzles took that as a challenge. He already knew Paula was watching him eat, so there had to be some way to get her to laugh about it. He took another bite, and then he looked at Paula.

   “Say, do I have something in my teeth?”

   She looked and saw he did have something in his “teeth” - that is, he’d managed to make it look like a bit of steak had appeared between the color bars that made up his mouth. Paula snickered.

   “Puzzles, you have a terrible sense of humor.”

   “Oh yeah?” Tracy said. “Then why are you laughing?”

   “He just surprised me is all.” Paula’s smile said otherwise.

   Puzzles smiled back.

   Perhaps this living situation could work out after all.

Chapter Text

   After dinner, Tracy, Paula and Mr. Puzzles started to get ready for bed. Puzzles decided he owed Paula an explanation for why Tracy didn’t call last night. Before he went to bed, he told Paula what had happened: his prison escape, him trapping everyone - including Tracy - in one of his parodies, and somehow managing only to get a banishment out of the entire ordeal.

   “I see,” was Paula’s initial reply. “That’s… a lot. For you, for me, for her…”

   “And everyone made a decision immediately,” Mr. Puzzles agreed. “If you want to throw me out now, I–”

   “I’m not going to throw you out. You know… I was the one who wanted Tracy to see you.”

   “You?”

   “She was the one who was hesitant about seeing you. I wasn’t pushing for your release, but… You’ve been given an opportunity few criminals of your magnitude get. Don’t blow it, okay?”

   “I won’t. I promise.”

   “Okay.” Paula gave him a firm push out of her room. “Goodnight.”

   “Goodnight,” Puzzles managed to say before she closed the door on him.

   He went to his room, which didn’t feel like his room yet. Like Paula had said earlier, she’d only had enough time to clean the spare room out, leaving only a desk and futon out for him.

   Mr. Puzzles sat on the futon until he felt ready to sleep. To sleep, his body retracted into his television head. His screen displayed NO SIGNAL, and he “slept” until he felt rested.

   When Puzzles woke up, he found the sky outside the spare room’s window was the dark blue of early morning. He could go back to “bed,” or maybe, he could use this time to do something nice for Tracy and Paula. He tried to go back to sleep, but worry crept into his mind.

   Mr. Puzzles had only escaped prison because the SMG4 Crew got sick of him. Would Tracy and Paula tire of him too? Ugh, he should not be thinking about this! Tracy was his sister and she’d never throw him out… right?

   “Monster… MONSTER!”

   DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.

   Puzzles couldn’t chase ratings or fame anymore. So what could he do now? All he knew how to do was put on a show.

   He could… make breakfast. He could prove himself useful, surely. Tracy and Paula wouldn’t throw him out!

   Mr. Puzzles ran down the stairs and– Paula was already in the kitchen. She wore a pink dress, similar to the one she had on yesterday, with a red sweater on over it. Her hair was in a ponytail, held in place by a red bow.

   “Good morning,” she said, holding a mug of coffee. “Do you usually have breakfast, or…?”

   “Uh, yes, I do.” Puzzles’s face switched from nervous to smiling. “Good morning. You’re up early.”

   “I kind of have to be. I’m a school teacher, remember?”

   “Oh, right. Tracy mentioned that. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve been in school, so I forgot how early teachers have to get up compared to students…”

   Paula made a noise of agreement. She could tell Mr. Puzzles had been planning something. She had heard him practically run down the stairs, and he had that manic look on his screen before he noticed she was in the kitchen.

   She asked, trying not to sound too probing, “What do you want for breakfast?”

   “I was hoping you had flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, milk, butter, and eggs-”

   “You want to make pancakes?”

   “If it’s not too much trouble.”

   “It’s no trouble at all, Puzzles.”

   Soon, Tracy came down dressed in her Escargo Express uniform: a white, long-sleeved shirt with the company’s logo and red pants. She blinked as she found Mr. Puzzles and Paula making pancakes together. She said to both of them, “You’re up early.”

   “I thought it’d be nice to make pancakes,” Puzzles said. “And Paula’s helping.”

   “Just to make sure you don’t turn my fridge into a monster or something,” Paula joked.

   (That was a joke, right?)

   The three sat down in the dining room to eat together. Tracy got herself a cup of coffee to go with the pancakes. Then she said, “So, yesterday, I was also talking to my boss on the bus ride. If you need something to do, Ness - something legitimate - then you are welcome at Escargo Express.”

   “Really?” Puzzles perked up.

   “They’re REALLY lax about background checks. They just want one thing from you.”

   “And what is that?”

   “They want you to have a therapist. Me and the company want you to get help - real help - before you help me.”

   Puzzles couldn’t hide his anxiety. His hands shook, and he nearly dropped his utensils. His expression twitched, but he tried to keep his face on a neutral smile.

   Tracy continued, “I can help you decide, but I’d like you to do some research on your own.”

   Paula added, “I’ll help you too, alright?”

   Mr. Puzzles kept quiet, but his hands stopped shaking and his face stopped flipping. Tracy sensed his inner turmoil, and not even both women’s offers to help quieted the thoughts she heard. The three stayed quiet until they finished breakfast.

   When she finished her breakfast, Tracy said, “I can’t help until after work, though. Maybe… you can come along to get a feel for the job, Ness?”

   “Uh, maybe. Where are you going today?”

   “Scaraba. It’s in Egypt.”

   “Oh, Egypt? You mean… a desert?” Puzzles’s head immediately switched to an appropriate clip. “I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.”

   “You must be feeling a little better,” Tracy remarked. “You don’t usually quote the prequels.”

   “The point is that sand and my vent don’t mix.” Mr. Puzzles scowled.

   “Well, if you stay here, you should try to find a therapist.”

   “I will,” he said maybe a little too quickly.

   Paula left for her job first, and Tracy left for hers soon after. Puzzles found the silence comforting… for about ten seconds. He needed to spend some time today looking for a therapist.

   But first, a nap. Now that Mr. Puzzles was feeling a little less stressed, he tried to go back to bed. He managed to fall back asleep for an hour, laying on his futon like a normal person.

   Then it was time… to wash the dishes. It would be good - perfect, even - to clean them while Tracy and Paula were out of the house. Fortunately, water didn’t affect the rest of his body like it did Puzzles’s head.

   Once he washed up all the things they had dirtied during breakfast, he pulled out his laptop. He’d safely hidden the device away in his head until he needed it again. Mr. Puzzles started to search for “therapists near me”…

   Then he opened a new tab and started searching for new TV shows and movies. A lot had come out while he was incarcerated, and he did have to live up to his reputation as someone who “had seen every moving picture that exists.” As he watched the new programs, he pulled up some PuzzleVision scripts and “borrowed” from the shows. He had no idea when he’d be able to use the scripts, but it was better to work on them now when he…

   While he…

   He couldn’t…

   They would brainwash him, he knew it!

   Time got away from Puzzles. Before long, he was making himself lunch. Then he binge-watched even more. The afternoon flew by and Paula came home first.

   “Hey, Mr. Puzzles,” she greeted when she got back. “Being stuck in the house wasn’t too bad, was it?”

   “Considering I’ve been stuck in a prison cell for four months, anything is better! Oh, I ate the turkey in the fridge for lunch. I hope you don’t mind.”

   “I’ll put it on the grocery list.” Then Paula’s expression shifted to something more serious. “So? Did you look for a therapist while we were gone?”

   Puzzles stiffened up. “W-Well! I started looking for one. Suddenly, I was catching up on some movies and shows that came out while I was in prison. Four months is a long time in the realm of entertainment!”

   “You’re still worried about going to therapy, aren’t you?”

   Mr. Puzzles did not answer.

   “Look…” Paula sat down beside him on the couch. “There’s no shame in going to a therapist. After Tracy and I defeated Giygas, I felt like I needed to unpack everything that happened. Talking to my parents, as patient as they were, only helped so much. Then I met Doctor Paccu. She was really nice. I’m not entirely sure how much she understood about me being kidnapped by a cult, or saving the world, but she helped me settle back into being a regular kid. A good therapist won’t judge you, or make you feel worse. They’re trained to help all sorts of people.”

   She waited for Puzzles to say something, anything. She hoped he was speechless now because of her explanation, and not from his trepidation. After he didn’t speak for a minute, she continued.

   “Doctor Paccu’s still practicing, but her specialty’s teenagers. Maybe she knows some adult therapists you could talk to.”

   “Could you reach out to her now?” Mr. Puzzles asked.

   “Her office is probably still open. It’s worth a try.”

   Paula called Doctor Paccu and thankfully, she reached the therapist in between sessions. Paula asked her if she knew any therapists who worked with adults with a “special sort of background,” as Paula so delicately put it.

   Paccu asked, “This friend of yours has a criminal background, doesn’t he?”

   Paula hung her head down. “...Yes.”

   Puzzles snickered as he heard the exchange, but Doctor Paccu quickly put a list together. Over the next few weeks, Mr. Puzzles went to a few different therapists. Some barely got to know him, others asked too much of him in one session. Then he met Doctor Cantrell.

   Somehow, Puzzles found Cantrell easy to talk to. He opened up about his sister, Leggy, and his television shows to the therapist without really thinking to stop. Before they both realized, the session was over.

   He would have to meet again with Doctor Cantrell.

   However, with therapy came the opportunity for a job. Like Tracy said, Escargo Express did not care about Mr. Puzzles’s shady background, only that he was seeing a therapist. He would start his new job next week!

Chapter Text

   It was now the Sunday before Mr. Puzzles started his job at Escargo Express. It was Tracy’s day off, and Paula was at church right now. That gave the two siblings time to discuss what needed to happen before Puzzles’s first day.

   Tracy explained, “We need to get you weapons. Something non-lethal, but you do need to be able to defend yourself. You lived in the Mushroom Kingdom for a while, so you know how dangerous the world can be. Plus, I want you to meet my other friends. They can be your friends too.”

   “Really? It’s that easy?”

   “I’m going to make it that easy. I mean, you’re getting along with Paula.”

   “‘Getting along’ is NOT the phrase I’d use, and I don’t think she’d use it either.”

   “She did help you find a therapist. And you said you saw her in your headspace? The one where Leggy and little me are?”

   Oh right, the headspace. Tracy knew about it from Meggy, and then she asked Puzzles about it. He told her it was usually a young version of him, sitting in front of a TV with his friends, or playing whatever game Leggy felt like playing. Somehow Paula had shown up there too, as his “friend.”

   Puzzles pouted. “Hmmph, she did, but I’m just keeping her there because I’m not sure how to kick her out.”

   Tracy smirked. “She only shows up like that to friends. That’s how we ‘met.’ So you’re either friends now or you will be.”

   Puzzles let out another “Hmmph…”

   “We’re going to teleport there,” Tracy stated. “We haven’t teleported together yet, have we?”

   “We haven’t. You’ve just shown me how it works. You spin around and can only do it outside, right?”

   “Right…” She tilted her head. “Do you want me to carry you?”

   “I’m a grown man!” he snapped. Then he blushed, looking away from her. “Yes please.”

   Tracy snickered and Mr. Puzzles folded his body into his head. She carried the television that served as his head into the backyard. Once she saw she was alone, she spun in a circle. Focusing on her destination, she teleported in a flash of blue light.

   The siblings ended up in a place that felt 20 degrees colder than Twoson. Tracy shivered and clutched her brother’s head tighter. “I-I forgot my coat. Luckily the lab sh-shouldn’t be too far away.”

   Snow crunched under her sneakers. It was only a light sprinkling of snow, Puzzles noticed, but it was enough to make him worry about being dropped into the semi-frozen water.

   Tracy took his mind off of his worries by explaining, “Your powers are fueled by your popularity. That makes things REALLY tricky. The best place to start is by talking with Jeff. He doesn’t have psychic abilities, so he makes weapons for himself.”

   “Oh, is Jeff that um…” Ugh, Mr. Puzzles couldn’t call him cute, either. “Blond boy you adventured with?”

   “The very same.”

   Soon, they came across a gray building that was dark enough to contrast with the snow. Despite every part of the building being the same color, it was obvious more had been added to the place over time. For instance, there was a garage that didn’t quite match the aesthetics of the main part of the building. Over the main building’s door was a sign that simply read ANDONUTS; beneath the sign was an older one that Puzzles couldn’t make out.

   Near the door was a doorbell and Tracy rang it, carefully carrying her brother’s head.

   “You can put me down, you know,” Mr. Puzzles mentioned.

   “Oh, right.” Tracy frowned as she looked around. “On the snow?”

   “Er, maybe we should wait until we’re inside…”

   “Tracy Earthbound,” someone answered the door. “It’s been forever!” This someone hugged her briefly.

   Then he looked at Puzzles. The man had a blond bowl cut and glasses. He wore green coveralls and loafers.

   “And you must be the infamous Mr. Puzzles. Er, where’s your body?”

   “Underneath my head. I can retract it in.”

   “Fascinating…”

   “Can we go inside?” Tracy asked. “I’ve been carrying him for about a mile and I really don’t want to put him down on the snow.”

   “Of course.”

   The man, who Puzzles realized was Jeff, allowed them to come inside. The main room of the building was filled with every sort of mechanical device that could possibly exist. Amongst the machines were many tools: standard toolboxes that didn’t look completely full, along with welding and soldering equipment. Mr. Puzzles took notice of some televisions and computers that appeared to span the entire history of the devices. Another thing he noticed was a horse-like motorcycle near the center of the room (probably the only vehicle not in the garage) and a couch next to it with a blanket and pillow on top.

   Finally, Tracy set Puzzles down. His body formed underneath him. Jeff watched as this happened.

   Then, he asked, “So, what brings you here today?”

   “Ness finally has a job. He’ll be delivering stuff with me. But you know what it’s like, going to strange places and encountering all sorts of monsters. That’s happened to me on the job, and my brother needs something to defend himself with.”

   “Are you sure he needs something to defend himself with?”

   Mr. Puzzles flashed his current star power - 1.5 stars - on his screen briefly. “Without some sort of power source, I can’t do even half of the stuff you’ve probably seen me do online.”

   Tracy added, “Can you give Ness something non-lethal?”

   “Because you don’t trust him with something that could kill someone?” Jeff asked.

   Puzzles scowled at his bluntness.

   Tracy just nodded.

   “I’ll help you guys on one condition.” Jeff looked straight at Mr. Puzzles’s screen. “Can I look at your body?”

   Puzzles exclaimed, “WHAT”

   “Not like that!” The blush on Jeff’s face said otherwise. “Your body is fascinating. You decapitated yourself and switched your head out for a television like it was nothing. I must get a closer look at your TV head. In exchange… I will give you any weapon you want, within reason.”

   This man was determined to find out what made the cyborg tick, and Mr. Puzzles was willing to let him look. Attention gained from allowing your body to be studied was still free attention. Puzzles managed a smug grin as he replied, “Well, how can I turn down a deal like that?”

   Tracy frowned. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m gonna leave you two to your own devices. Can I look at what you’re working on in the lab?”

   Jeff replied, “Just don’t touch anything, especially Dad’s stuff.”

   Tracy gave a thumbs-up before she left.

   Jeff looked at Mr. Puzzles and smiled. “Let’s start by looking at your head. Do you have any other mechanical parts?”

   “Er, no. Everything below my neck is flesh and bone.”

   “Oh.” Jeff sounded slightly disappointed. “Well, I’d still like to check out your head. Sit on that stool over there.”

   He gestured to a stool that looked like it belonged in a high school science lab. Puzzles sat on it, feeling like he was about to be dissected. As Jeff unscrewed the back of Mr. Puzzles’s head, he asked, “So, you’re a mechanic?”

   “Yep! I fix everything from computers to cars to Inkling weapons. I’ve probably worked on everything in this room at least once.”

   That put Puzzles slightly more at ease. Once he unscrewed it, Jeff removed the back panel of the PuzzleVision TV. He half-expected a mess of body horror in the back of Mr. Puzzles’s head - a brain and skull mixed with wires and metal. Much to his relief, the inside of the TV man’s head looked like any regular old television.

   Jeff said, “Wow, it’s… it’s actually a TV.”

   “That’s a good thing, right?” Puzzles asked.

   “You’re like, the perfect fusion of man and machine.”

   Mr. Puzzles’s whole face warmed up at being called “perfect.” It warmed up so much that his fan sped up. Jeff chuckled.

   Then he asked, “So can you feel anything in here?”

   “I’m… not sure myself. I was so afraid of hurting myself that I never did much in the way of ‘internal maintenance,’ so to speak.”

   Jeff started to feel around. As a mechanic, he knew what he could and couldn’t touch with his bare hands. Soon, his hands settled on a bundle of plastic-coated wires. Puzzles gasped as he felt Jeff grab them.

   “Oh, did that hurt?”

   “No, that was the… opposite of pain.”

   “Oh. So they’re sensitive. Good to know.”

   Mr. Puzzles started to relax as Jeff continued to inspect his head. It was almost like Puzzles was being massaged or getting his hair washed (if he still had hair.) Then he felt something very similar to having hair yanked as Jeff pulled on his wires.

   Mr. Puzzles hissed, “Now THAT hurt!”

   “I know.” Jeff sounded a little too casual. “I was taking advantage of your vulnerability. I just want to say… I may not be psychic, but I will find out if you hurt Tracy. And as a mechanic, I know just how to make it really painful for you.”

   “Ggrk!” Puzzles grunted as Jeff slightly tugged on the wires more. “Look, Paula has already threatened me. I thought Tracy wanted me to make friends with you guys, and I will, for her, no matter how difficult you two insist on behaving.”

   Satisfied with the answer, Jeff put the wires back in their proper place. He took a quick picture of the inside of Puzzles’s head to study later. Then he took Mr. Puzzles’s back plate and screwed it on again.

   “So… the weapons,” Jeff said.

   “Movies and TV already have a lot of cool weaponry to use! But…”

   “But it needs to be something non-lethal.”

   Jeff pulled out blueprint paper and started sketching on it. Puzzles offered his input wherever he could. Soon, the two men had come up with a signature weapon for Mr. Puzzles.

   When Tracy came back from the lab, she found the men chatting with each other. She smirked at them before she spoke up. “I guess you figured out some weapons for Ness to use?”

   Jeff explained, “I figured he could use some of the stuff I used while I was adventuring with you: bottle rockets, the HP-Sucker, the Shield Killer, but no guns. ”

   “I don’t trust myself with a gun, either,” Puzzles agreed. “But we did figure out something unique I could carry. You might say it’s an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”

   Tracy recognized the quote immediately. “You gave him a lightsaber!? Those things ARE deadly, you know!”

   Jeff said, “I modified his to be more like your light-based attacks. It should do some damage, but nothing lethal.”

   He showed Tracy the blueprint for the lightsaber. It would be yellow, with a star at the end instead of a dull tip.

   “Okay, that’s really cool.”

   “Now I just need to make them. It should only take a few hours. Until then, I’m going to need some alone time.”

   “Oh.” Mr. Puzzles looked disappointed, but his screen soon switched to a smile. “Well, it was nice meeting you!”

   “I’ll text you when everything’s finished,” Jeff told Tracy. “Until then, see the sights, get some fish and chips, and maybe catch up with Tessie or something.”

   Then Jeff pushed Puzzles and Tracy out of the Andonuts building. He slammed the door behind them.

   Mr. Puzzles realized something Jeff had said. “Wait, Tessie, as in the Lake Tess Monster!?”

   “Yeah?” Tracy looked at her brother. “Jeff introduced me to her after we adventured together. She and Jeff have an understanding, but I can talk to any animal, including her.”

   Puzzles just hoped Tessie would be nicer than the last lake monster he’d encountered.

   As they walked to the lake, Tracy asked her brother, “So… was that a date?”

   Mr. Puzzles stopped walking, a thin red line appearing across his screen. “Wh-What do you mean?”

   “Jeff was literally looking at your body, right?”

   “Like a doctor would!”

   “Doctors don’t blush when they look over their patients, Ness, and the patients don’t blush, either. Plus I think Jeff’s always loved machines more than people. I just didn’t know it’d be so literal…”

Chapter Text

   Mr. Puzzles groaned as he heard an alarm clock blare. It was 3:30 AM, according to the clock (which was a “gift” from Tracy.) He turned it off and sat back on the bed. He closed his eyes and almost fell asleep again–

   “Rise and shine!” Tracy exclaimed, barging into her brother’s bedroom.

   Puzzles groaned again. “Why do we have to be up at this ungodly hour for my first day of work?”

   “If this were a normal first day, we’d get up at my regular time and you’d just be helping me through my own workday. But, we’re doing a special delivery today!”

   “Joy…”

   “Now, get into uniform. We can eat on the way.”

   Tracy pulled out an Escargo Express uniform. After he took it, she left to give him some privacy. Somehow, the uniform fit Puzzles’s proportions. Like his sister, it was a white, long-sleeved shirt with the company’s logo and red pants. He still had on his gloves and shoes, but he took the bowler hat off.

   When he stepped out of his room, Tracy handed him a red baseball cap. “Here, so you won’t be bare-headed.”

   He immediately recognized it. “Is this one of my old hats?”

   “It’s part of the uniform,” she replied. “I didn’t expect you to get sentimental about it.”

   “Well, I didn’t expect you to keep it.” He put it on anyway.

   Tracy put her own cap on and handed Puzzles a slice of toast. “We don’t want to miss our flight.”

   “We’re taking a plane? That’s why we’re up so early? Can’t you just teleport there?”

   As he asked her all these questions, he stuffed the toast in his “mouth,” followed Tracy out the door, and got into her car. She answered as she drove them to the airport.

   “We’re heading to Summers, a town in France.”

   “That still doesn’t explain why you can’t teleport. And can’t you put this cargo in your inventory?”

   “First, I can only keep ‘handheld’ items in there. Anything I can put in there with two hands, I can take out.”

   “Okay, that makes sense. So why can’t we teleport?”

   “It’s livestock. Too big to carry in my inventory, and too much to teleport with. People in Summers seem to trust us with delivering them, for some reason. Last year it was chickens, this year it’s cows.”

   “Can’t say I’m fond of either.”

   “Hey, at least you’re not in your regular clothes for this.” Then Tracy remembered something. “Oh yeah, here’s the fun part of your first day–”

   “Oh it’s been so entertaining so far,” Mr. Puzzles grumbled.

   “See that suitcase in the backseat? You get to go inside it as my carry-on.”

   “Why can’t I just sit on the plane like a normal person!?”

   “The Escargo Express plane can get kind of cramped. Plus, we’ll be riding with the cows, and they can get nervous on a plane ride–”

   “Okay, say no more.”

   The rest of the car ride was quiet. Soon, they reached the airport and Puzzles got into the suitcase. It was square, with his television head fitting neatly inside. It also had wheels and a handle so Tracy could easily carry the luggage around.

   She checked in. Then came the next troublesome part of going through the airport. She bent down and whispered to the bag, “We’re going to have to scan your head.”

   “My head!?” The suitcase shook a little.

   “Look, it would’ve happened whether or not I put you in there. It’ll probably just feel like someone x-raying your skull.”

   Tracy put the suitcase through the scanner, and indeed, Mr. Puzzles just felt like he was having an x-ray done. He turned his screen to NO SIGNAL so nobody would identify him as the criminal he was. That was probably why his sister had hidden him in the first place…

   The scanner beeped, but the airport security guard just said, “Please keep the television off during the flight, ma’am.”

   Tracy replied, “Yes, sir.”

   “Television off”? Puzzles hoped that being in this compact form would suffice. He could also go into literal sleep mode – maybe that would be best. Plus he could make up for the sleep he lost by getting up so early…

   As soon as they were on the plane (he could tell when he heard the muffled lowing of cows), Mr. Puzzles fell asleep.

   Mr. Puzzles awoke as the plane hit the runway. Once they’d landed and could safely get off of the plane, Tracy took her brother out of the suitcase. His body reformed beneath him and he stretched his limbs.

   “So how do we get the cargo to its intended destination?” he asked.

   “Well the pilot’s going to load up the cows into that truck.” Tracy pointed to said truck. It appeared they were in a private hangar. “Then, we’re the ones who will drive the truck to the farm.”

   “And we’ll have to unload the cows once we get there?”

   “The farmer usually does it.” Then she realized something. “You weren’t going to brainwash the cows to herd them, were you?”

   “It was a thought I had…”

   “Take it from someone who can ‘talk’ to animals: they don’t like having their minds messed with, just like people.”

   “So… can you hear the cows right now? What they’re saying?”

   “I try to tune them out. They sound exactly how you think they’d sound: they just want to make it to their new home and roam free.”

   Soon, the cows were in the truck. Tracy got in the driver’s seat, while Mr. Puzzles got in the passenger’s seat, surprised to find there was enough room for his legs. Then Tracy left the hangar.

   Summers was a place named and known for its beaches. However, they drove past the beaches and the main city, to a farm on the outskirts of the city. Puzzles was thankful he didn’t have to deal with sand, though a group of animals wasn’t much better.

   Once they made it to the farm, the farmer and his farmhands took the cows out of the truck. Tracy and Mr. Puzzles stayed to make sure everything went smoothly. As they watched, she told him, “You know, it was around this time last year that I had my last delivery to Summers. That’s where I first saw PuzzleVision.”

   “That’s right.” Puzzles nodded. “You told me. I know I said I wanted to expand globally, but it’s still strange to think about how far my signal went.”

   “Want to go to the bar where I saw ‘Mario’s Mysteries’ after this?”

   “Er, I think it’s best that I stay low for now.” Mr. Puzzles adjusted his cap, as if it would magically hide his TV head, when he saw one of the farmhands give him a nasty glare. “Plus, I can’t drink???”

   “Oh, right…” Tracy sighed. “Well, I’m still gonna take a little break. We have plenty more deliveries to make after this.”

   After the delivery had been made, she pulled out a juice from her inventory. She took out an instant coffee for Puzzles, as coffee was somehow the only liquid he could drink without problem. He gulped it down.

   Now that the big delivery had been made, Tracy could easily teleport them to their next stops. Most of their next stops were towns and cities no different from Twoson or the Mushroom Kingdom. The next notable stop was an isolated forest.

   “Our next stop is…” Tracy pulled it up on her phone. “A Diggersby who wants some Escape Orbs.”

   Mr. Puzzles commented, “Diggersby, what an unusual name.”

   “It’s not a name. It’s a Pokemon.”

   “Oh…”

   Puzzles realized they were in a place crawling with the creatures when he took a closer look at the trees and grass. He had nothing against them, but his only experience with them was the anime and movies that came out featuring them. And he hadn’t seen either of those in a while…

   Mr. Puzzles hoped this would be a quick job, but the Pokemon were strangely attracted to him. A Magnemite floated close enough to mess with his screen. A Smeargle jumped at him and made grabby-hands towards his television head.

   Once Tracy had completed the delivery, she turned to see her brother getting harassed by all sorts of Pokemon. She giggled, “Looks like you’ve made a lot of friends.”

   “They all think I’m one of them.” Puzzles found a light blue turtle with a brown shell clinging to his pants. “Uh, what’s this one?”

   “That is a Squirtle. It’s uh… a Water type.”

   Puzzles yelped at the mention of “water” and kicked the Squirtle away. However, the Pokémon retreated into its shell and ricocheted off a nearby tree. It ended up hitting Mr. Puzzles in the side of his television head.

   He fell to the ground, and the Squirtle got back up. It ran away - along with the other Pokemon following him - as Tracy checked on her brother. His screen showed a dizzy expression, but she saw no dents in the metal and no cracks in the glass.

   Tracy gasped, “You’re okay!”

   Puzzles sat up. “I’d like to think I’m more resilient than that!”

   “You literally took a turtle shell to the head.”

   “Trust me when I say I’ve taken way worse.” He quickly straightened out a crick in his neck.

   With the Pokemon out of the way, they could safely teleport to their next stop. The job became monotonous again. Curious after meeting so many Pokemon, Mr. Puzzles asked his sister during the lull, “If I was a Pokemon, what type do you think I’d be?”

   “Hmm… I’d say Steel-Psychic,” Tracy answered. “Or maybe Psychic-Steel? The Psychic because… well, you are, and the Steel for your TV head.”

   During another lull, she asked back, “So what type do you think I’d be?”

   “Probably pure Psychic,” Puzzles answered. “I can’t really think of a second type you’d be. You’re too normal.”

   “Well, ‘Normal’ is also a Pokemon typing.”

   “Yes, but ‘Normal-Psychic’ sounds like an oxymoron.”

   Soon after that, they had made it to the last delivery of the day. Instantly, Mr. Puzzles felt the heat of the new location. He saw he and Tracy were standing on sandy (ugh), rocky terrain. There were stairs built into the rocks, smaller and larger platforms, and… giant vegetables?! He’d definitely seen weirder, but this was the most unusual part of his day. Below the rocky platforms was a pink, boiling liquid.

   Puzzles asked, “Is that lava?”

   Tracy answered, “I don’t think it’s actually lava, but it might as well be. Why? You afraid of getting burned?”

   “It’s less that and more my head. It could overheat around here. Remember how we were talking about Pokémon typings? Steel is weak to Fire, right?”

   “Okay, I get it. Uh… how fast can the fan in your head spin?”

   “I think it’s synced up with my heart, and my heart is pounding right now…”

   Tracy paused before she asked, “Would it help if we held hands? There’s no way I’m carrying you around here, but-”

   Mr. Puzzles grabbed his sister’s hand. Then he realized. “Wait, are we actually going to have to jump around and move like… like…”

   “Mario?” she finished. “Yes.”

   “Then I'm sure I’ll be much better suited for it. And you…” He squatted and gestured to her. “Can hold on.”

   “You know what? I suck at platforming. Thanks.” Tracy wrapped her arms around her brother’s shoulders and her legs around his waist. As he stood up, she asked, “Do you know where we’re going?”

   “Not at all.”

   She pulled out her phone and showed Puzzles a map. “We teleported here and we need to get here.”

   “Alright. I can do it… especially if that pesky plumber can…” He muttered the last part under his breath, despite the fact Tracy could easily hear him.

   Thanks to his long legs, Mr. Puzzles jumped across the platforms and food with ease. The only difficulty he and his sister encountered was a pool of the pink, boiling liquid right in their way. He found Lava Bubbles jumping out of the liquid. He jumped on them to reach the rocks on the other side.

   Then, the siblings came to the village where they needed to make the delivery. The settlement was populated by sentient forks and surrounded by colorful rocks that looked like vegetables. Puzzles put Tracy down and she pointed to a giant blue cooking pot.

   “That’s where we need to take these spoons to.”

   Mr. Puzzles tried not to laugh at the absurdity of a bunch of living forks needing utensils.

   Tracy gave the talking fork in charge of the pot the package. Then she smiled at her brother. “Last delivery of the day!”

   They high-fived.

   Tracy continued, “You did a good job, by the way. I just don’t know how well you’d do on your own.”

   “I can totally do this on my own,” Puzzles argued.

   “Oh yeah? What if you run into an upset or rude customer? Someone who ordered a pizza but says you forgot a drink?”

   Tracy could see her brother was fuming at just the thought. He sighed as he realized she had a point. She told him, “Let’s go home.”

   Tracy ran in a small circle, and Mr. Puzzles followed her. They both teleported in a flash of blue light. They were back in Twoson.

   “So, that was your first day of work.” Tracy looked at Puzzles. “How do you feel now that it’s over?”

   He fell to his knees. “Like I want to sleep for a week. Can we not get up that early ever again?”

   She patted his head sympathetically. “Hey, it only happens once a year. And maybe by this time next year, you’ll be working on your own or have a different job.”

   “Oh, either would be perfect.”

Chapter Text

   “So this guy is your last friend?” Mr. Puzzles asked.

   Tracy answered, “Of the ones I adventured with, yes. He’s royalty, but don’t let that intimidate you.”

   “It’s hard to find a man called ‘Poo’ intimidating,” Puzzles snickered.

   “Get out your laughs now.” Tracy smirked. “He’s heard it dozens of times.”

   The TV-head had no problem adjusting to Dalaam’s thin, cold, mountain air. He even picked up the smell of wild grass as it blew in the wind. The residents of the principality were used to seeing Tracy visiting sometimes, but they all stared at Mr. Puzzles as he walked past. He tried his best to ignore them.

   At the mountaintop was a gold-colored and gold-plated palace. The middle of the palace had an onion-shaped dome. At each corner of the palace’s four walls was a tower with domes shaped like soft serve ice cream. Flanking the palace’s main entrance were two giant elephant statues.

   Puzzles and Tracy entered the palace, though he was shocked to find no guards around. A red carpet led them to the throne room. On a gold throne with a red chair was the crown prince. He wore black and white robes, with another black robe acting as a jacket. He also wore gold earrings and a gold band to keep his black ponytail in place.

   “Mr. Puzzles, this is Prince Poo of Dalaam,” Tracy introduced them.

   Puzzles bowed to him. “Your Highness…”

   Surprising both siblings, Poo laughed as he got up from his throne. “He is more well-behaved than the news led me to believe. So this is the…” As someone who learned English as a second language, Poo tried to grasp at the right word. “Video man?”

   “‘Television man’ is more accurate,” Mr. Puzzles corrected him. Then he realized he’d just corrected royalty. “Oh, wait, sorry, was I supposed to say that?”

   “It’s fine,” Tracy assured him. “Poo, this is Mr. Puzzles, my brother.”

   Poo asked, “And you are absolutely sure he and Ness are the same person?”

   “I mean, I’ve read some of his thoughts, and they definitely feel the same as my brother’s.”

   Puzzles raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Wait, you’ve been reading my mind?”

   “Not on purpose!” Tracy raised her hands defensively. “I just pick stray thoughts up sometimes, like picking up TV signals without meaning to.”

   “I might do the same,” Poo said, “just to make sure you are not planning to betray either of our trust.”

   Puzzles sighed, “Is this going to end with you making some thinly-veiled threat that if I hurt Tracy, you’ll kill me?”

   Poo answered, “Um, no. But now that you mention it—”

   “Well, I’m taking that as my cue to leave,” Mr. Puzzles interrupted him.

   “You can’t really leave. I’m your ‘ride,’ remember?” Tracy pointed out.

   Poo frowned. “He’s a powerful psychic, but he cannot teleport?”

   “Apparently,” Mr. Puzzles groaned. “I don’t quite understand it myself…”

   “Then maybe I could help you,” Poo suggested. “Are you familiar with Mu training?”

   Tracy tried to cut in. “Poo, please–”

   But Puzzles answered quicker. “No, I’m not, but I assume it’s some sort of psychic-enhancing technique?”

   Poo explained, “Once I completed the final trial of it, I could teleport wherever I wanted to go in the world.”

   Tracy warned, “Ness, Mu training can get really intense. Paula wouldn’t do it because it was ‘against her religion,’ and I didn’t need it because I can already teleport. Are you sure you want to do this?”

   “I can’t stay dependent on your powers for everything.” Mr. Puzzles shot his sister a small glare. “I should at least get a chance to prove myself.”

   “If you’re sure…”

   “Oh, I am.”

   “Then it’s settled. We’ll go outside to the Place of Emptiness.” Poo started to walk out of the throne room.

   Tracy followed behind him.

   Puzzles, however, stayed back. “Wait, before we do this… Aren’t you going to make the delivery?”

   “Oh, right!” Tracy pulled out a packet of cups of rice pudding with cinnamon on top. She gave it to Poo and then explained to her brother, “It’s one of the only foreign foods he likes.”

   The “Place of Emptiness” was a platform that was only accessible by climbing up some ropes to the top. Mr. Puzzles found getting up there was the easy part. He remembered not doing terribly climbing rope in PE class, and the height of his new body really helped.

   Once Puzzles made it to the place at the top, he saw Tracy and Poo on the other side of a gap in the air, sitting on the dirt on the other side.

   “We will watch from here,” Poo told Mr. Puzzles. “Just try to meditate and empty your mind. Then you should hear a voice. It is best to answer ‘yes’ to it.”

   Puzzles sat down criss-cross applesauce on the little bit of ground that made up the Place of Emptiness. He closed his eyes and tried to meditate. It took some time, but eventually, he’d cleared his head enough to only hear a buzzing drone.

   In the nothingness he saw when he closed his eyes, he made out a ghost-like figure. Then he heard the voice Poo mentioned. “Ness… Mr. Puzzles… I am the spirit of your ancient lineage.”

   Puzzles smirked at that. He had never thought about his ancestors, especially now that he’d taken up another name. Still, he listened to the spirit.

   “To complete your trial, I am going to break your legs. Do you accept this?”

   “Yes,” Mr. Puzzles answered. Prince Poo said it would be best to answer “Yes” to it, and Puzzles wanted to show he respected the prince’s authority. Besides, it was probably just a metaphor, and he wouldn’t feel anything.

   Then he felt his legs breaking. The bones snapped before they completely disappeared along with the pain. His legs couldn’t truly be gone, right?

   “So, Mr. Puzzles, you cannot walk, or dance, as your legs are broken. Next, I will tear your arms off. I shall take your arms and feed them to the crows. The taking of your arms… Do you accept this?”

   “Yes…” he answered, hesitance slipping into his voice.

   Then his arms were taken away. It felt less like the bones were snapping and more like a sword had cut clean through them. Puzzles winced.

   “Ah, Mr. Puzzles… Without legs or arms, you can only lie there… Now I’ll cut off your antennae. You do not mind my taking the way you sense the world, do you? Do you accept this?”

   “Y-Yes…”

   It was already dark from Puzzles closing his eyes, but then everything went quiet. He couldn’t hear the wind, or his heartbeat, or any sort of ambient noise. Still, he could hear the spirit.

   “So, Mr. Puzzles. No legs, no arms, and no sound… Do I care if I take your head? Do you want to live in eternal darkness? I shall steal your vision… Do you accept this?”

   He couldn’t let this thing take his head. It was everything he was! How was he supposed to get more powerful without his precious head!?

   “No! NO! NO!”

   Outside of Puzzles’s meditative state, he began to thrash and scream “No!” repeatedly. Tracy and Poo gasped and got up at the same time.

   “I knew this was a bad idea!” she exclaimed.

   Tracy leapt across the chasm, and grabbed the edge of the Place of Emptiness. She pulled herself up and looked Mr. Puzzles over. He was still spasming and still screaming.

   Tracy said, “I’m going to grab your head,” even though she knew Puzzles couldn’t hear her.

   She did so a second later. The siblings yelled as they both felt an intense electric shock, probably the most intense either of them had ever felt. It lasted less than a second before a new sensation came over them. Tracy felt like her head had been stuffed into a box, while Mr. Puzzles felt like he had been put into a container too small for him.

   “Ness?” The voice sounded more like Ness’s, but slightly feminine and with an American accent.

   “Tracy?” Likewise, the voice that replied sounded like Tracy’s, but slightly masculine and putting on a British accent.

   Ness - Mr. Puzzles - opened his eyes, and Tracy opened hers. They saw their own faces staring back. Puzzles, stuck in Tracy’s body, brought his hands up.

   “A-Am I…?”

   “Don’t you dare touch those!” Tracy saw he was going for her (now his) chest, and simply reached her now lanky arm out.

   Mr. Puzzles grunted as he felt an invisible force grab his body. He couldn’t move. “Let me go!”

   “Ah… sorry.” Tracy dropped him, and he tried not to stumble. “I don’t know your - my - strength.”

   “You two have swapped bodies,” Poo realized, watching them from across the gap.

   “Yes, we have.” Puzzles glared at him. “And it’s all your fault!”

   Tracy said, “Ness, Poo didn’t know what would happen, and neither did I. Maybe if we just try to replicate what happened a minute ago, we’ll swap back?”

   “It’s worth a shot…” Mr. Puzzles sighed.

   Tracy got on her back and tried to relax in her brother’s body. When she started to calm down, Puzzles grabbed the sides of his (now her) TV head. They waited and wished for something to change, but neither felt the same sensations that led to the swap in the first place.

   After a few minutes, Mr. Puzzles growled, “It’s not working…”

   Tracy got up and looked at Poo. “Do you think your ancestors would have encountered anything like this?”

   “I’ll have to consult our scrolls,” He answered. “It could take hours to find something even remotely related to this.”

   Puzzles growled again. “We can’t be stuck here for hours. This was supposed to be a simple delivery and meeting between friends.”

   Tracy shouted, “You’re the one who thought Mu training was a good idea!”

   “If it will keep you two from squabbling, I will take full responsibility for this,” Poo said. “I’ll start looking through my ancestors’ notes now.” Then he left, heading back to the palace.

   The siblings came down from the Place of Emptiness, but not without difficulty. Mr. Puzzles had to get used to being much shorter now, and Tracy had to get used to being much taller.

   He told her, “Maybe we should call Mr. Tomar and tell him we’ve both fallen ill.”

   Tracy shook her head. “I know I said he was understanding, but we’ve already started our shift. Surely we can still finish it like this… please?”

   Tracy pouted, and her brother relented seconds later.

   “Oh, alright. If you’re sure you can handle being me. Wait, we still need to teleport out of here.”

   “I’m sure I can do it in your body! It can’t be that hard.”

   “We swapped minds, not powers… right?”

   “You’re as psychic as I am. I’m sure I can manage. Now, do try to keep up.”

   “Don’t act smug in my body,” Puzzles grumbled.

   Tracy ran in a small circle, and Mr. Puzzles followed her. They both teleported in a flash of blue light. How did she do that?! She looked so insufferably smug about it, and that was his smug face…

   However, the smugness went away when Tracy went up to the first house. She tried to deliver the package, but she ended up with a door slammed shut. She left the package on the doorstep, as was company policy, but she looked confused.

   Many more people slammed the door on Tracy. Some answered the door when she delivered, but they didn’t look happy about who was giving them the package. Only a few actually had a normal exchange with her. Puzzles picked up on the pattern sooner than his sister did.

   In an alleyway between jobs, Tracy said, “I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

   Mr. Puzzles explained, “What you’re ‘doing wrong’ is somehow you haven’t realized you’re in the body of a notorious criminal, who is suddenly acting… Hell, you’re not even acting. You’re really good at actually being an upbeat delivery person. Look, I can take the next delivery.” He tried to grab the package from her.

   She yanked it back. “I… don’t think you should. You’re not ready.”

   “I’m not ready?” Puzzles frowned. “I’ve been following you around since our first day, like a dog on a leash, hoping that you’d give me something to do on this job instead of standing there and ignoring everyone staring at me.”

   “Oh, suddenly you don’t like attention?!”

   “You should know very well why I don’t want attention right now!”

   Mr. Puzzles suddenly found himself on the receiving end of his own scarily realistic face. “OF COURSE I KNOW WHY! I’m not going to allow YOU to treat me like an idiot!” Tracy’s temporary lapse gave way to a teared-up expression. “Being around you… you coming back… it’s all been so difficult…”

   “Do you think this is easy for me?” Puzzles looked at Tracy’s TV head. “The Mushroom Kingdom was the closest thing I had to a home, to a place where I truly belonged, and now I can’t go back ever. If I don’t belong in someplace so wacky and dangerous, then where do I really fit in?”

   Tracy didn’t answer. She was still crying, but not really because she was still stuck in her brother’s body. She sat on the ground, and Mr. Puzzles brought her as close as he could, softly stroking her antennae.

   After a few minutes, she stopped “crying.”

   Puzzles told her softly, “I think I have an idea…”

   He explained to her his idea: he would deliver packages to people Tracy was familiar with. Tracy would deliver to people that she was sure wouldn’t slam the door on her, because they didn’t know who she (or Mr. Puzzles) was. Puzzles’s plan actually went rather well; most customers were satisfied, and so were the siblings.

   Then came the last delivery of the day. Mr. Puzzles looked at the order and nearly dropped the phone in fear of who it was. Tracy looked at the phone - her phone - when she heard Puzzles yelp.

Customer: KAREN KATPHISH
Location: MUSHROOM KINGDOM

   “Oh, Karen! I know her. I’ve delivered to some of the places she works at. We swap bad customer stories sometimes and she has ties to the SMG4 Crew, doesn’t she?” Tracy realized why her brother looked so scared.

   “Yes. She and SMG4 are friends. He even personally entertains her kids. I briefly brainwashed her during WOTFI last year. She put on an excellent perform—”

   “Hey! Don’t say that about our customers, even if they were one of your ‘actors.’ How are we going to do this? If I teleport there, someone will spot me and think I’m you.”

   “We’ll need to think of another plan…”

   So the siblings did. Puzzles told Tracy how to retract her body into her television head. She practiced for a minute before she got it down. Tracy told Mr. Puzzles to keep the interaction short so Karen wouldn’t get suspicious.

   Then Tracy teleported to the Mushroom Kingdom. Immediately, she saw a bush and hid in it, making her body disappear. Puzzles went up to a dark blue house with some boarded up windows. Didn’t there used to be a giant fish leaning against it? Whatever. He rang the doorbell.

   A familiar white cat woman answered the door. “Tracy! I haven’t seen you in a while.”

   “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve delivered to your house before.” Puzzles managed to sound like his sister.

   Karen took the package and asked, “How did your visit go?”

   He blinked. “Visit?”

   “You told me you were visiting relatives here?”

   “Oh yes! It went well.”

   “Visiting relatives” - Tracy seeing Mr. Puzzles in prison - had gone well. That wasn’t a complete lie. He shouldn’t linger on it, though.

   “I should head out. My shift ends soon.”

   “I get it, hun. My shift starts soon. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

   “Okay!”

   Karen closed the door. Puzzles only exhaled once he reached the sidewalk.

   He looked at the bushes Tracy was hiding in and whispered, “The coast is clear.”

   Her body reappeared and she stepped back out of the bushes. Before Mr. Puzzles could even react, his sister grabbed him and teleported back to Dalaam. Then she put him down and exhaled.

   “Maybe I should tell my boss that I don’t want to deliver to the Mushroom Kingdom for a while…”

   “Oh come on, Tracy!” Puzzles exclaimed. “We still worked around my banishment!”

   “Just barely! What if someone saw me in the bushes!?!?”

   “Tracy, we managed to get through today. Don’t stress yourself out over it. You really don’t want to know what happens to my body when I get stressed out…”

   “I already have some idea of that…” She remembered her earlier crashout. Then, as they went up to the palace, she saw a scorch mark on the ground. “Was that where we teleported earlier today?”

   “Looks like it,” Mr. Puzzles said.

   “So your body plus teleporting equals leaving a fiery trail behind like a DeLorean.” Tracy thought about it more, and then sighed. “You’re so wired… no pun intended. I can feel so much power flowing through my body - er, your body.”

   Puzzles blinked. “I only feel like that when I hit five stars.” He sighed. “I guess that means I am wired differently. Pun intended.” He tapped his - now her - screen.

   “Ugh, that feels weird.”

   “I just hope Prince Poo’s found something by now…”

   The siblings entered the palace and found Poo still looking through scrolls in the library. However, when the prince noticed the two approaching him, he perked up.

   “You’re just in time. I believe I’ve found a solution. I found something called ‘swapping spirits’ that one branch of my family used as a sign of trust. It appears that the way back to your own bodies involves you two reliving a shared experience.”

   “So a memory we both share?” Mr. Puzzles realized.

   “Yes.”

   “It shouldn’t be hard to find something like that,” Tracy pointed out. “We should use one with significance, though.”

   They got into similar positions from the last time they tried to swap back: Tracy got on her back and Puzzles held the TV head in his hands.

   As they tried to focus on a specific memory, she warned, “We’re not going back to that night.”

   “NEVER that night,” he agreed.

   “Maybe… another night? Like, the other night I was stressed out of my gourd…”

   “That could work. I-I remember it too…”

   For the siblings, reality faded away as they both recalled the memory perfectly.

   The memory opened on a little Mr. Puzzles - Ness - sitting in front of his bedroom’s TV.

   “Ness, dinner’s ready!” his mom called. “Come down to eat!”

   “In a minute!”

   He didn’t want to get up. Ever since Tracy left on some sort of adventure, he felt lonelier than ever. All he wanted was to sit in front of the television and forget the outside world even existed.

   Mom called again, “Tracy’s back! And she brought friends!”

   That got Ness to turn the TV off and come downstairs. He saw Tracy’s friends with her at the dining room table: two blondes, a guy and a girl (who he thought both looked cute), and an older boy who looked to be Asian.

   Ness took his place at the table, right across from Tracy. She looked like she had been crying, and even now it looked like she was holding back tears.

   Before they started eating, the blonde girl asked if they could say grace. Mom said a quick blessing over the meal, and then everyone dug in.

   Tracy went for the cookie - her favorite food, her comfort food - first. She pushed the rest of the meal around her plate in an attempt to make it look eaten. Was Ness the only one noticing this, or were her friends in some silent agreement not to bring whatever was troubling her up?

   During dinner, Tracy didn’t talk much. Mom would ask her things, but she would give the shortest answers possible.

   “Yes.”

   “No.”

   “I’m fine.”

   She was acting and Ness knew it. He’d point it out but he didn’t want to be scolded for doing so. They needed to talk privately.

   Tracy did eat some of the rest of her meal, but only because she picked up how worried her brother was. When the other kids finished, Mom offered to let them stay in the living room. The blond boy said they were going to pitch a tent in the yard. Mom just rolled her eyes and told them to take it down in the morning.

   Now was Ness’s chance. After he and Tracy went upstairs for bed, he asked if they could talk in his room. Tracy let out a small “yes” and came into her brother’s room.

   As soon as Ness closed the door, before he could even ask “Are you alright,” Tracy broke down. She started sobbing into her brother’s chest, and all he could do was stroke her hair. The last time he’d seen her like this was after a very intense nightmare.

   For Tracy, the nightmare was now real. Through the tears, she told Ness everything: she and her new friends needed to defeat a very powerful being called Giygas. Tracy had just turned nine that summer, and she was the youngest of the “Chosen Four.” She had been expected to not only lead them, but also save the world - no, the universe.

   She finished her story with, “I-I-I don’t know if I can do it… What if I never come back? You’ll be all alone and… I-I don’t want to be a hero.”

   He whispered to her, “Well… tonight, you’re not a hero. Tonight, you’re my little sister who gets to watch whatever she wants on my TV.”

   Tracy sniffed and wiped away the last of her tears. “R-Really?”

   “Of course! What do you want to watch?”

   “Something mundane. Maybe kind of boring…”

   Ness put on Oliver and Company. The movie was perfect for lulling his already exhausted sister to sleep. She was about to doze off when she spoke up.

   “Ness… I need to show you somethin’...”

   Tracy showed him the palm of her hand and small lights, like fireworks, appeared from it. Then she put her hand away and closed her eyes.

   “I can do that… and so much more… Imma psychic…”

   As Tracy finally fell asleep, the memory started to fade. As it did, Tracy heard one of Ness’s thoughts from the night: I wish I could do something like that…

   Mr. Puzzles and Tracy gasped as they felt their minds snap back into their correct bodies. Puzzles felt a dull soreness in his limbs, like his sister had overexerted him physically. Meanwhile, Tracy felt a similar soreness in her face, like her muscles weren’t used to her brother’s exaggerated expressions.

   Both of them groaned.

   Mr. Puzzles clutched the sides of his head. “That was cliche and ridiculous and I never want it to happen again.”

   Tracy asked, “But we learned something, didn’t we? Like how hard it is to be someone else?”

   “That is exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe the real lesson is that I should take better heed of your warnings.”

   “Oh, I like that one.”

   “And I learned that we should hold off from training Mr. Puzzles’s psychic powers until we know he’s ready,” Poo chimed in.

   “Agreed,” the siblings said at the same time.

Chapter Text

   After his first day on the job, and meeting Prince Poo in Dalaam, time flew by for Mr. Puzzles. He had work Monday through Saturday, and therapy every other Sunday.

   Despite Puzzles’s love for order, for control, he thought he would find the routine boring eventually. The places he and Tracy visited on the job, however, were rarely ever boring. Usually there was at least one that stood out to him during the day.

   Today, Mr. Puzzles and Tracy were starting off strong with a delivery to Inkopolis. Tracy teleported them into the center plaza of the bustling city. Around them were various shops selling Inkling weapons and clothing. At the front of the square was Inkopolis Tower, with a kitsune statue to the left and a tanuki statue on the right.

   The siblings delivered to the stores around the plaza. Upon closer inspection, they saw that lanterns and colored lights had been strung up. There were also trucks in the plaza that Puzzles knew were for idols to perform on, but they only performed at night.

   Once they finished their deliveries, Mr. Puzzles commented, “It looks like Splatfest is coming up.”

   Tracy added, “You know, we could take a break here before our next delivery. There’s lots of stuff for non-Inklings to do: food, face-painting, fireworks—”

   “Meggy?!” Puzzles exclaimed.

   “Meggy?”

   Tracy looked and, sure enough, there was Meggy Spletzer, talking to a group of four Inklings. It took her a moment to remember that the woman had been an Inkling and Splatfest champion a few years ago. Of course she’d use those skills (along with her coaching abilities) to help other Inklings out.

   Meggy still hadn’t noticed them, though.

   Mr. Puzzles grabbed Tracy’s shoulder and asked her, “Should I talk to her?”

   “Well, she’s busy, and we’re busy–”

   She looked up to see her brother was staring at her with big, pleading eyes on his screen. Meggy was the closest thing that Puzzles had to a friend in the SMG4 Crew and they hadn’t seen each other in a couple of months. Tracy didn’t like the idea of keeping them apart, either.

   She asked Mr. Puzzles, “Do you want to spend the whole day with her?”

   “If possible, yes.”

   Tracy sighed, “I’ll pull some strings, but I’m only doing this because you’re my brother and you deserve to be friends with good people, alright?”

   “Oh, thank you so much, Tracy!” Puzzles pulled his sister into a tight embrace.

   She smiled at his enthusiasm and returned the hug. When they let each other go, Tracy went off to make a call to her boss. Mr. Puzzles went up to Meggy. As he approached, he heard her talking to the Inkling team:

   “Splatfest is in less than a week. I know you four are well prepared for the actual thing, but there’s still room for you to grow, change, and get better in just a few days.”

   Puzzles only spoke up when he was sure she was finished. “If it isn’t Meggy Spletzer! I never thought I’d see you again…”

   “Mr. Puzzles?” She turned to him and noticed his delivery uniform. “Shouldn’t you be working?”

   “My sister, Tracy, is allowing me to spend some time with you, and since I can’t really come into your house anymore…”

   “Considering what happened last time you were at my house–”

   “Are you really Mr. Puzzles!?” one of the Inklings exclaimed.

   She had her hot pink tentacles shaped into “hair” that looked similar to Meggy’s Inkling “hair.” She wore designer headphones, a berry ski jacket, and pink trainers. Slung over her shoulder was an Inkbrush.

   “Uh… yes?” Puzzles said.

   “I’m a big fan of PuzzleVision and love all the shows you made!” The Inkling put the Inkbrush down and pulled out a notepad and pen. “Can I have your autograph?”

   Was... was this really happening? His first real fan interaction?! Oh, this was amazing! Finally!! After years of putting everything he had into his work, it was finally paying off!!! He was one step closer to earning the fame and recognition he had been after his entire life!!!!

   Er, not that it mattered right now, as a humble delivery man looking to spend time with an old friend. Still, he took the pen and notepad from the Inkling and said, “I would love nothing more~”

   All that time Mr. Puzzles had spent practicing his “fancy actor signature” was finally paying off now, too. He wrote his name in cursive and drew the PuzzleVision logo next to it, along with five stars around the whole thing.

   When he handed the notepad and pen back to the Inkling, she squealed, “Thank you so much!”

   As she showed off the autograph to her teammates, Puzzles whispered to Meggy, “Does she not understand what I did to Wren? Or you?”

   She whispered back, “I don’t think a lot of Inklings - a lot of people - understand all the connections. You did so much back then. Not to mention Wren wasn’t that popular before Western Spaghetti.”

   “Look, that’s in the past. What I’d like to do now is spend some time with you.”

   “Well, like you, I’m supposed to be doing my job: getting these guys ready for Splatfest. Uh, maybe you’d like to watch us train?”

   “Sure!”

   Meggy turned her attention back to the Inkling team and told them, “Alright, troops! Mr. Puzzles loves it when people put on a good show, so I want you to do your best not just for me, but for him too. Got it?”

   Her words inspired the one PuzzleVision-obsessed Inkling, at least. The team all shouted together, “Yeah!”

   “For practice, Kitty and Austin will be one team, Claire and Nemo will be the other. Now let’s go!”

   The group headed to Inkopolis Tower. While the Inklings could take spawn points right to stages, Puzzles and Meggy had to take a subway to get to the stage she wanted the team to train in. Thankfully the Inklings waited for them to arrive.

   Goby Arena was a modified basketball court, which allowed Mr. Puzzles and Meggy to sit in the stands as they watched the team practice. Meggy blew a whistle and shouted advice and encouragement to the Inklings. Eventually, they settled into a rhythm and Meggy saw a chance to talk to Puzzles. He appeared to be captivated by the small Turf War.

   She commented, “For some reason I thought you’d find sports dull.”

   He said, “Meggy, I’ve watched anything and everything broadcast on TV. That includes all types of sports, and many Inkling ones, too. I’ve never actually been to a live sporting event, though.” Puzzles went silent for a moment. Then he continued, “My dad would get tickets, enough for all of us, but he never took me.”

   Meggy gasped. “That’s terrible.”

   “I know… but like I said earlier: that’s in the past! Now I should be enjoying time with you.”

   “It’s not a bad thing to reflect on your past, you know.”

   “I know, but I don’t want to open up to just anyone.”

   “Well, I don’t mind you opening up to me.” Meggy paused as she remembered something too. “You know, my family didn’t always support my dreams, either. Some Inklings’ families practically push them into Splatfest and Turf Wars… but not mine. They never stopped me, but they never showed up at any of my games.”

   Mr. Puzzles frowned. “That is… equally terrible.”

   “That’s why I wanted to become a coach, especially for Inklings. I wanted them to have support beyond their teammates. You know, maybe you could–”

   Meggy was interrupted by one of the Inklings, Nemo, getting too close with his Roller. He managed to get his ink past the barrier and into the stands, almost hitting his coach and Puzzles. Luckily, she saw the attack coming and pulled out a Splat Brella to protect against the ink.

   “Be careful!” Meggy yelled.

   Mr. Puzzles said, “Thank you, Meggy.”

   She put the Splat Brella away and sat back down. “Does ink short out your head?”

   “Probably.” He shifted in his seat. “I did not want to find out.”

   “Me neither.”

   Practice ended shortly after that. Meggy, Mr. Puzzles and the Inklings left Goby Arena and went back to Inkopolis Plaza. Meggy talked to the team, telling them what they did well and where to improve. Then the four Inklings left.

   Now that it was just them, Puzzles told Meggy, “I should text Tracy, and let her know we’ve finished up.” He pulled out his phone and shot his sister a text. Then he looked at Meggy. “If it’s not too much trouble, could I have your phone number? So we can keep in touch.”

   “Uh, sure.” She didn’t see the harm in exchanging numbers with Mr. Puzzles. What was he going to do, spam her with messages?

   Once they had each other’s numbers, Tracy appeared in a flash of blue light. Puzzles noticed she had six stripes of color on her cheeks, three for each cheek: yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, and blue. Those were his smile’s colors.

   “I’m back!” Tracy smiled at Mr. Puzzles.

   “Welcome back. Love the face paint, by the way.”

   “I took a little break myself.” Then Tracy noticed the other person standing there. “Hey, Meggy.”

   “Hey, Tracy.”

   “How’s the training going?”

   “Great. How’s delivering stuff going?”

   “Oh you know, busy busy busy. At least I had enough time for this.” She gestured to the face paint. “My brother didn’t give you a hard time, did he?”

   “Tracy…” Puzzles grumbled.

   Meggy laughed. “Not for a second. It was nice to catch up.”

   “It was nice to see you too.” Tracy smiled again.

   Then Mr. Puzzles and his sister headed back to work.

   Meggy groaned as she woke up the next day. She was staying at a hotel in Inkopolis so she could easily reach the team she was training. She immediately went after her phone and found messages from Mario, Fishy Boopkins… and Mr. Puzzles.

Hello, Meggy!

It’s me, Mr. Puzzles!!!

📺

   She smiled and sent him one back:

Hey, it’s Meggy. 🦑

I missed you!

I was sleeping?

Still in Inkopolis

You can still be missed…

I know

Because you’re so lovely! ❤️

   Meggy flinched as she read the message. She felt like Puzzles was overstepping his boundaries, but did he know that? It wasn’t like she could call him “lovely” back - that would be like calling Mario “boring.” She channeled her coaching skills and sent back something else:

Well you’re loved ❤️

Chapter Text

   Fourside was a bustling city, comparable in size to the nearby New York City and the Mushroom Kingdom. It almost made Mr. Puzzles miss the latter… At least there was nobody actively trying to kill him here.

   He and Tracy made several deliveries across the city. They even split up to cover more ground. Then they met up in the restaurant district for their break.

   Puzzles got there slightly earlier than his sister, allowing him to look at where he wanted to have lunch. One building in particular caught his electronic eye: Jackie’s Bar and Cafe. He wasn’t sure why it stood out to him.

   He needed to go inside.

   He needed to be rewarded.

   “Hey,” Tracy interrupted his thoughts. He turned to her as she asked, “Do you know what you want for lunch?”

   “Still deciding, but that bar has got my attention.” Mr. Puzzles pointed to Jackie’s.

   Tracy stiffened up as she looked at it. “Oh no. We’re NOT going there. I went there during my big adventure. It’s bad luck.”

   Puzzles tried to hide his dismay. He needed to get in that cafe, but he couldn’t brainwash his sister - not again. However, they were both hungry, so it would be easy to distract her with food…

   He told her, “See that hotdog place? I want something from there. Get me one with ketchup, mustard, relish, mayo - all the fixings.”

   “Okay. You know, we could just order it togeth–”

   “Please get it for me?” He pushed her slightly forward. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

   Tracy knew Mr. Puzzles was trying to get her to look the other way, but why? It was hard to get a read on his thoughts, for some reason. Her brother should know by now to heed her warnings… right? She hoped that lesson had stuck as she headed to the hotdog shop.

   As soon as Tracy entered the food place, Puzzles zipped to Jackie’s Bar and Cafe with cartoonish speed. He pushed through the cafe’s double doors. It was a small place with indigo walls, tiled floor, and only a couple of tables. Right near the doors was a jukebox. Past that was a bar. At the bar was an older man with tan skin and an eyepatch.

   Mr. Puzzles went up to the man and asked, “I take it you’re Jackie? Or at least the bartender/owner of this place?”

   “Yeah, I’m Jackie, the owner. Don’t usually see many people here this time of day. Do you want something to drink? Martini? Beer?”

   “Oh, I literally cannot tolerate alcohol. Do you have something nonalcoholic? Like coffee?” It was one of the few liquids Puzzles could drink.

   “Oh yes! Try my special blend!” Jackie pulled out an espresso cup and filled it with what Mr. Puzzles assumed was the correct beverage.

   The TV head took a sip of the drink and immediately he felt woozy. “Wh-What’s in–”

   He tried to stand up, but he ended up falling over the counter.

   Mr. Puzzles woke up when his head stopped spinning. Jackie’s looked different now, with bright outlines making everything visible. It also felt different, like the whole place was covered in black velvet.

   Puzzles saw Jackie was still manning the bar. He asked him, “What’s going on? Where am I??”

   Jackie answered, “No, that’s right. I am the host here.”

   “Uh…”

   Probably best not to ask how long he’d been passed out, or about payment. Mr. Puzzles exited Jackie’s Bar & Cafe, only to find the whole city was dark. He could only make out where everything was from the neon outlines of solid objects. People wandered the streets, but they didn’t seem to be aware of him.

   “There is something strange going on in this neighborhood…” Puzzles commented, but nobody nearby responded.

   He needed to keep moving.

   He needed to be rewarded.

   Maybe talking to the locals would help him get his bearings, though? It couldn’t hurt, and they didn’t seem hostile. He went up to the closest individual, a man in a black hat.

   Before Mr. Puzzles could say anything, the man said, “In Moonside, no means yes and yes means no! Understand?”

   “Er… no.”

   “Good! I’m glad you get it.” The man wandered off.

   Well, that explained some of the oddness of this place. Yes and no meant the opposite. Puzzles still wasn’t sure if this was just a drug trip or something more profound. If he really got into trouble, could Tracy find him? And there was also that voice in the back of his head, telling him he’d be rewarded for doing… whatever this was.

   A question formed in his throat. Before he could stop it, he asked a random person, “Do you know what brought me here?”

   The person turned to him, their expression serious. “Fate is fickle. A hero can become a bystander with a single decision. Is that wrong, Ness? Much like a bystander can become a villain due to circumstance.”

   Puzzles grimaced as soon as this person used his real name. “What are you talking about?”

   “Who knows? Nose knows! Nose nose nose!!” Then the person dashed away.

   Before Mr. Puzzles could think about what that meant, something barreled into him. It was a red, old-fashioned gas pump, with two cartoony eyes at the top. It felt like they were now locked in combat.

   The pump whispered, “Three…”

   That sounded like a countdown. To what, Puzzles didn’t want to find out. He tried to zap the thing, brainwash it, and make it turn away from him. However, it shook off the attack. Maybe it didn’t have a brain.

   Then the pump murmured, “Two…”

   Okay, it was definitely counting down to something - probably a super powerful attack. Mr. Puzzles pulled out the star-tipped lightsaber Jeff had made for him and swung. It barely made a dent in the pump monster’s health.

   It muttered “One…”

   Before Puzzles could figure out his next move–

   SMAAAASH!

   Something tore through the living pump like it was nothing, shattering it. To his left, Mr. Puzzles saw Tracy holding a fat, pink baseball bat. He looked at the broken pump and then at her again. He could say she saved him, but she had already done that countless times.

   Instead he asked, “You’ve had a baseball bat this entire time?”

   “I’ve been saving it for the right occasion." Tracy’s smile of smugness quickly turned to a look of anger and concern. “But what were you thinking!? I should smash your fricking screen in!”

   Puzzles brought his TV head low. “I’m sorry for not listening to your warnings again.”

   “In the future, you probably should… but it might be a good thing you stumbled on this place. It’s not supposed to exist.”

   “This place is called Moonside, right?”

   “It’s like an evil, opposite Fourside. The only way for Moonside to exist at all is if–”

   “Tracy…”

   The deep voice tore through Tracy and Mr. Puzzles’s psychic brains like a hot knife.

   “It’s been such a long time. You’ve grown into quite a powerful woman, and I see you’ve brought good company this time. I look forward to our next battle, and it’s best not to keep me waiting.”

   The voice echoed for a moment after it stopped. Again, Puzzles felt the compulsion to leave his sister and go for the voice. Again, he ended this train of thought with a question directed at her.

   “And what was that?”

   “That’s the source of all of this: the Mani-Mani Statue,” Tracy replied. “It represents the greed of the human heart, in all its gilded decadence. We need to find it before it finds us.”

   “It sounds like it already has found us…”

   “We’ll know when it’s found us. It’s best to keep moving. I just hope it’s at the same place it was last time… Oh, and you’ll definitely need this.”

   She handed him the hot dog he wanted, loaded with all the condiments he could think of. He quickly consumed it as Tracy ate her own ketchup-and-mustard-covered dog. Somehow, Mr. Puzzles could feel the hot dog restoring his health.

   As they ate, Tracy remembered the last time she was here. Paula had been kidnapped, again, and Tracy cried about it. Jeff tried to comfort her, something she appreciated the more she thought about it.

   Instinctively, she grabbed Ness’s hand after they finished lunch. He kept him close as she took every twist, turn, and teleport to get to the Monotoli Building. As Tracy led her brother through the maze-like city, they encountered more enemies.

   There were more Robo-pumps, but also fire hydrants that spewed fire, melting clocks, and abstract art. Now that Tracy was here, she easily finished off most monsters in one hit. However, groups that took a few turns to defeat became a learning experience for Puzzles on how to use his new weapons properly.

   “Bottle rockets deal big damage, but can miss if you’re not quick about aiming them right. I’m sure your speed is high, though.”

   “You can use the HP-Sucker any time and it sucks HP from all enemies. But Jeff said you have to be lucky, or else it fails? He believes in luck for some reason…”

   “The Shield Killer, true to its name, takes away enemy shields. It’s not as reliable as the Neutralizer, but I think Jeff didn’t want to give you something that affects allies.”

   “The reason you didn’t defeat that Robo-pump with your lightsaber is because you were wielding it… well, like an actor. You actually need to get in there and swing hard if you want to hurt something. I’m sure Poo can give you some better tips if you ask him.”

   About halfway through their journey, Mr. Puzzles and Tracy fell into a rhythm with their fighting styles.

   After yet another fight, Tracy saw her brother had an unhinged smile on his face. She had to ask, “Are you alright?”

   Puzzles answered, “You know, Doctor Cantrell said I was carrying around a lot of repressed anger.”

   “And?”

   “It’s not repressed anymore!” He let out a mad cackle.

   Tracy gave a reluctant smile. At least he was directing his aggression at a common enemy. Hopefully he’d do the same once they reached the statue…

   Finally, they came to the front of Moonside’s Monotoli Building. (It was now owned by Enrich Flavor, but he admitted the old name had a better ring to it than “Flavor Building.”) At the front doors was the Mani-Mani Statue. It looked like a golden devil with large, slightly curved horns. It also held a sword that was pointed at its feet.

   Somehow, both siblings had seen it before.

   A familiar deep voice reverberated from it. “It’s nice to see you face-to-face, Tracy. I couldn’t get close to your friend again, but maybe YOU will make the perfect sacrifice…”

   Puzzles pushed Tracy out of the way of the statue. “If you do ANYTHING to my sister, I swear I’ll—"

   “Ah, Mr. Puzzles. You were quite easy to guide here. Of course, you know a thing or two about corrupting people yourself. SMG4, One-Shot Wren, Marty–”

   “Shut up! I’m trying to be a better person now. And I guess that includes stopping your corruption.”

   “But you’re nothing without some sort of power source. I could give you all the power you’ve ever wanted! I guided you here to be your reward. Or… maybe your award~? I mean, look at me, I’m an Oscar statue with horns.”

   “An… Oscar?”

   It was one of the top awards a filmmaker could receive, and now Puzzles saw the resemblance. He saw something he’d always wanted just within his grasp. He reached out for it with his right hand…

   But Tracy pulled him back with his left. “Ness, don’t listen to it! It just wants some way to spread its influence. It wants to control you, like Didney!”

   That snapped Mr. Puzzles out of the trance. He shook his head and looked at her. “So how do we defeat it?”

   Tracy smiled. “We go all out with our weapons, duh! I defeated it two-against-one before, and I can totally do it again! Use the Shield Killer!”

   “Got it!”

   Puzzles got out the item and used it on the statue. It didn’t work. As the battle properly started, the Mani-Mani Statue created a pink, holographic shine around itself.

   “Dang it…” Tracy sighed. “I thought for sure it’d work this time.”

   The statue tried to attack, but it missed. “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why I’m back?”

   “Don’t care!” Tracy shouted as she took her turn to attack.

   She bashed her baseball bat against the Mani-Mani Statue and managed to hurt it. Then she used PK Flash on the statue, but it failed. The Mani-Mani Statue hit Mr. Puzzles, and he grunted from the pain. He fired one of the bottle rockets at the statue, and it exploded right against it.

   Puzzles used his own variation of PK Thunder on the Mani-Mani Statue. Then Tracy got in the “killing” blow to the statue with her bat. As it fell apart, Mani-Mani gave one final message:

   “I’ve got a new boss, you know, and he can’t wait to see you ag—”

   Mr. Puzzles and Tracy woke up and found themselves in the storage room of Jackie’s Bar & Cafe. She was laying on the cold tiled floor, while he was in the awkward position of being stuck in an open box. She pulled her brother out. Then they both saw the remains of the Mani-Mani Statue strewn across the middle of the room.

   Puzzles asked, “Why are we still here? Didn’t we wander around the city?”

   Tracy explained, “The Mani-Mani Statue doesn’t just affect people’s behavior. It also creates illusions. I just knew it’d be in the hidden storage room this time, so I went right for it… How did you end up in Moonside, actually?”

   “...I might have drunk some sort of spiked coffee…”

   Tracy smirked. “That was how I first ended up there, too.”

   They left the bar without Jackie stopping them on the way out.

   Before they went back to doing their delivery job, Mr. Puzzles asked, “What do you think the statue’s final message was about?”

   “Don’t care,” answered Tracy.

   He put a hand on her shoulder. “Should we tell anyone about this, Tracy? Paula? Jeff? Prince Poo?”

   Tracy's uncaring mask faltered, and her expression shifted to concern. “…I don’t know. This is a sign something powerful has returned, but I don’t know where or when it’ll strike next.”

Chapter Text

   The rain poured down on Mr. WPNZ’s stub of a body. The only noise besides the rain were the sparks coming from the remains of his limbs. He knew nobody would come to save him.

   However, that wasn’t the end.

   Instead of a television’s light shining down on him, he heard a voice from a large garbage bin in front of him.

   “Well, well, well, you look like you’ve seen better days.”

   WPNZ could only stare at the bin.

   “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

   That was a very specific phrase. This thing had been watching him this whole time, and didn’t bother to help? Did it want him to be left so broken that he’d have no other choice?

   “I know what it’s like, to be part of something magnificent, only for it to be ripped away.”

   The two lids of the garbage bin opened. From them, eight spider-like metal claws pushed their way out, and Mr. WPNZ finally got a good look at the person speaking to him. Well, maybe calling it a “person” was stretching things (thought the living weapon.) The claws were attached to a large tube. In the tube, WPNZ could make out a figure. He looked young like a boy but also old like a corpse.

   “You’re alone, again… It hurts, doesn’t it?”

   The tube directly faced Mr. WPNZ, looming over him.

   “A long time ago, I thought I needed friends. But what I really need are like-minded people, people just as cruel and cold-blooded as me! Where you see crushing defeat, I see an opportunity to get back up, even stronger than before.”

   The boy in the tube managed a smile.

   “I need a weapon that will surpass anything you’ve made previously.”

   WPNZ replied, “It’s in my name, sweetheart, but I’d like you to help me before I help you.”

   “That can be arranged!”

   Mr. WPNZ gasped as he felt someone pick his body up. Someone else grabbed his limbs. They were dressed in a pink military uniform, with a mask over their head that looked like a cross between a pig and an alien. He assumed the person who picked him up was dressed similarly.

   WPNZ clarified, “I appreciate you doing this for me, but I don’t work for free, either.”

   “That can be arranged too!”

   Another pig-masked person came, holding a briefcase. Mr. WPNZ didn’t look surprised when the guy opened it to show it was full of money.

   “And that’s just the signing bonus,” tube-boy said. “There’ll be more where that came from if you help me build the ultimate weapon!”

   “Ultimate weapon, huh?” WPNZ smirked. “Sounds fun.”

   The Pigmasks followed the tube as it started to click away from the scene.

   As he was forced to go with them, Mr. WPNZ spoke up. “Just one more thing: Does my mysterious savior have a name?”

   “Call me Porky! Everyone else does.”

Chapter Text

   Mr. Puzzles didn’t hate thunderstorms, but he didn’t love them, either. The noise could probably be soothing, if it was from a distance, but it was roaring right over the house at the moment. Plus now his head was a giant lightning rod and susceptible to water, which made him hesitant to go out in any storm.

   Puzzles couldn’t get to sleep, with the noise and his own thoughts keeping him awake. Maybe he could find something to watch or read quietly, lest he disturb Tracy or Paula. He left his room and immediately noticed a light from downstairs.

   Mr. Puzzles followed it and found Paula in the kitchen. She wore a nightgown but no robe over it, probably because she didn’t expect someone else to be up. He noticed the nightgown was black but patterned with outer space objects like planets, moons, and… stars. In fact, it had some words on it too, with the word STARS right at the chest area.

   Probably best not to stare at that.

   She clutched a mug of hot chocolate, and gave Puzzles a neutral look when he came in. She asked, “Couldn’t sleep?”

   “Yes,” he answered. “It’s so noisy that it’s hard to doze off… The thunder doesn’t scare me, though. It actually reminds me of… Well…”

   “‘Well’ what? Spit it out.”

   “I kidnapped the SMG4 Crew on a night such as this one. These storms have a way of bringing people together, you know? And that made it easy to push them to the basement. But of course I was defeated in a storm just a month later, so that undermines my little victory…”

   As another roll of thunder passed over, Paula’s grip on her mug tightened.

   Puzzles asked, “You’re afraid of thunder?”

   “Well, I’ve got memories tied to thunderstorms, like you, but mine are the complete opposite.” She frowned. “I was kidnapped by the Happy Happy cult during a thunderstorm. I was trying to get to sleep, trying to ignore the noise. The next thing I knew, I was in someone’s blue-robed arms. I think they attacked then because they knew my parents wouldn’t hear me over the storm.”

   He let out an “Oh…”

   “Tracy rescued me a few days after that. I knew she was coming, but I owe her so much. You probably wish I was used as a sacrifice by them…”

   “I mean, if you’d been sacrificed, you would have never saved the world, correct?”

   “True…” Paula looked Mr. Puzzles up and down. “Are you still wearing your regular clothes? Don’t you have sleepwear?”

   “You’re just noticing that?”

   “It’s two in the morning. Forgive me for being unattentive. Plus I need to make some sort of conversation until the storm passes.”

   “Oh! I could talk about some scripts for PuzzleVision I’ve been working on…”

   “So you’re going to try to put me to sleep.” Then, a moment later, she sighed. “Okay, let’s hear them.”

   Puzzles went on about his scripts, and Paula gave criticism where appropriate. What felt like forever was probably only fifteen minutes. By the time he was on his third idea, she had stopped criticizing and couldn’t keep her eyes open. Fortunately the thunder had passed by then.

   “‘m goin’ back to bed…” she muttered out.

   Paula tried to put the half-empty mug of hot chocolate in the sink, but Mr. Puzzles took it from her.

   “Allow me.”

   She didn’t say anything. She just went to bed.

   Puzzles emptied the mug into the sink, but the hot chocolate inside splattered on his left glove. He cursed under his breath (or what was left of it) and pulled off the stained article of clothing. At least no one was around to see what was underneath. He’d replace it in the morning, before anyone saw him without it.

   For the next few months, every time a thunderstorm rolled over Twoson, Mr. Puzzles and Paula would talk over it. He would explain his script ideas to her, whatever he was watching currently, but eventually he started listening to her. She would tell him about her students, the most interesting fights she’d been in or seen, and ask him what he thought she should watch.

   Spring turned to summer. Paula got the same break as her students. She used that break to help Tracy and Puzzles make deliveries around Twoson one day.

   Puzzles asked, “Wouldn’t you rather be at home relaxing than driving around town with us?”

   Paula shrugged. “Sitting in the back of the delivery van is relaxing for me. Plus it’s a good way to keep up with everyone and everything happening around here.”

   “Paula Jones, are you spying on people?” He smirked.

   She elbowed him slightly. “It’s called being a good neighbor.”

   Indeed, Paula made some of the deliveries herself for people she knew - she even took a minute to catch up with her parents. Tracy did the same with the townsfolk she knew. Meanwhile, Mr. Puzzles was put in charge of complete strangers.

   In a particularly busy neighborhood, the three split up. Puzzles went up to one house alone. The package in his hands felt extremely light, like there was nothing inside it.

   Someone wanted just the box…

   Why did that feel familiar?

   Waiting for Mr. Puzzles at the delivery address was a man sitting on the porch. The guy didn’t stand out to him in any way. The only thing that stood out was the knife he held in his hand.

   As Puzzles put the package on the porch next to the man, he tried to add some levity to the situation by playing a classic meme.

   “Let me see what you have.”
   “A KNIFE!”
   “NO!!!”

   It would have worked, but the man didn’t respond. Mr. Puzzles was used to rude customers by now, and could easily brush them off. However, as he had that thought, the man started to speak.

   “That’s a nice TV you have as your head. Let me take a closer look!”

   The man lunged at Puzzles with the knife. He dodged, but he ended up on the guy’s porch. He kept dodging, going in a circle around the porch. He was back on the stairs to the walk when someone came out of the front door.

   They had a cardboard box on their head.

   They said, “Larry, we’ve been over this. We don’t need to separate his TV head from his body. We just need to knock him out.”

   A third person, behind him, did that.

   Even while unconscious, Mr. Puzzles panicked. He thought all of those Box Club members had disappeared years ago, along with their precious God Box! Why were they here? Why were they after him?!

   Puzzles awoke with a gasp. He found himself in a familiar yet unfamiliar position. The first thing he realized was that he was bound with rope. This time, it was by his wrists and ankles, spreadeagle style. The next thing he realized was that the ropes were attached to weights. Then he saw the candles around his body. If he had to guess what was beneath him, he would assume it was a summoning circle with a symbol inside of it.

   Mr. Puzzles fought the ropes restraining him, but they wouldn’t move. Not only were the weights attached keeping him from flailing too much, but he had a suspicion these ropes were made from the same material as the ones used on him in prison. Maybe, in his desperation, he could tap into a new psychic power and get the candles to burn through the ropes! Unfortunately, the cultists had placed the candles a safe distance away from him and the weights.

   There were many cultists in the room, and it appeared they were in someone’s basement. These people were of all shapes and sizes, but the one thing they all shared were the cardboard boxes on their heads. Again, they looked how Puzzles remembered, with two perfect circles in the front for the eyes. He couldn’t see the top of the boxes, but he assumed they also had the same symbol there.

   Soon, the “club leader” came downstairs. He was dressed in robes, similar to the original Box Club Leader. However, this one’s robe had a hood and zipper. He also wore black gloves and boots.

   He looked over Mr. Puzzles and said, “Excellent work, my disciples. Our new gods told us this ‘boxhead’ was living here, and they were right.”

   “Should we give him the spiel?” one of the cultists asked.

   “Of course. Our source of salvation should know what he’s in for.” The leader spread his arms wide as he stood near Puzzles’s head. “We are the Neo Box Club! We have risen from the ashes of our fallen God Box and united around the new Happy Boxes! Almighty beings, please convert this poor soul into our new savior!”

   Mr. Puzzles only understood half of what the leader was saying.

   Then he noticed the objects decorating the room. These “Happy Boxes” looked to be renovated PuzzleVision TV sets. They had been painted pink, displayed only static, and everything but the “P” on the bottom was scratched out. Mr. Puzzles knew his PuzzleVision wasn’t the only one out there, but who would make so many models into something like this?

   The silence was long enough that Puzzles thought - hoped - nothing would happen. Then his body glowed pink and the cultists started chanting. Only then did the TV-head notice someone in the back.

   She pushed her way through, cutting off the cultists’ chant. She took the box off her head, and sure enough, Mr. Puzzles saw Paula. She pulled out a frying pan before the cultists could react.

   Then she quipped, “You guys just let in any weirdo wearing a box on their head? You really need higher standards.”

   “HEATHEN!” the Neo Box Club Leader shouted. “GET HER!”

   “PK Freeze!” Paula shouted back.

   Frost and ice surrounded her, freezing the cultists closest to her. As the rest started attacking her, she kept them back with her frying pan. One snuck up behind her, carrying a cattle prod.

   “PAULA, LOOK OUT!” Puzzles cried, but it was too late.

   She gasped as she took some of the shock, but not all of it. Mr. Puzzles noticed that she had a distinctive badge clipped to the collar of her dress. The badge had a bright blue lightning bolt in the center and said FRANKLIN BADGE around the edge.

   Paula turned to the cultist with the cattle prod, glaring. Her frying pan ignited, fire crackling along the edge. “I said there would NEVER be another cult in Twoson… and I meant it.”

   She smacked the weapon out of their hands with her own. Then she smacked the cultist in the head. The fire barely burned them, but it did burn away the box. She quickly dealt with the remaining cultists in a similar manner, including the Neo Box Club Leader.

   Paula snuffed out her flaming frying pan. Then she snuffed out the candles around Mr. Puzzles. She put away the weapon and started to untie his limbs.

   She said, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

   “Thanks for nothing, by the way,” Puzzles replied. “Don’t you wish I was used as a sacrifice?”

   “If you were, Tracy might kill me. Or you might get your power back. Neither’s great…”

   If this was a way for Mr. Puzzles to get his power back, then he didn’t want it, either. He should probably tell Paula about the other way he almost got his power back, but he’d wait until Tracy was there and both he and Paula were safe. He snapped out of his thoughts when Paula snapped the last rope around his left leg.

   Puzzles stood up and looked around. “They called these ‘Happy Boxes.’ They don’t look like regular televisions anymore…”

   “They could be listening devices,” Paula pointed out. “The cultists seemed to know who you were. We should probably do something about them, just to be sure.” She took out the frying pan again. “Uh, you might wanna turn away…”

   Puzzles looked at a Happy Box near his foot and kicked the screen in. He explained, “As much as I’d love to save all these PuzzleVisions, someone has already mangled them beyond recognition. Let’s put them out of their misery.”

   Mr. Puzzles and Paula smashed up the Happy Boxes, leaving nothing but glass and pink-painted metal behind. None of the cultists woke up while they did so. Either Paula had knocked them out thoroughly, or they were smart enough to pretend until they left.

   Before they left, Puzzles took one last look at the summoning circle. The symbol in it had four points like an unconnected diamond, but instead of the circle and square in the center, there was an oval with two lines in it. The new symbol almost looked like a pig’s snout.

   Mr. Puzzles and Paula walked out of the basement and the house. Tracy was waiting at the delivery van for them, and she stood up when she saw the frying pan in Paula’s hand.

   Tracy asked, “What happened? I haven’t been waiting here long, but I thought you were doing okay.”

   “We weren’t,” Paula sighed as she put the pan away. “Puzzles was captured by a cult. They almost sacrificed him, but I saw them take him into that house. I grabbed a box to look like them and kicked their butts, but… Why would there be another cult in Twoson?”

   Puzzles said, “It’s happening again.”

   Paula looked between him and Tracy. “Wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”

   Tracy sighed. “I didn’t want to talk about it, but while we were making deliveries in Fourside a couple of months ago… we ended up in Moonside. We found the Mani-Mani Statue again and defeated it again. And now there’s a group of cultists in Twoson again. It’s like someone is bringing up parts of our old adventure, but why?”

   “And these cultists weren’t the same as the Happy Happy cult,” Puzzles added. “They were like the Box Club, something only SMG4 and his friends have dealt with. That’s something only I am familiar with. Not to mention their ‘Happy Boxes’ were renovated PuzzleVisions.”

   “So they know our past and Mr. Puzzles’s past too.” Paula thought about it a little more before groaning in frustration. “Whoever this is is only giving us breadcrumbs to follow! They won’t let us get to an end until they want us to get there.”

   “And I’m not sure what that end will be…” Tracy added.

   Mr. Puzzles and Paula both nodded in agreement.

Chapter Text

   Mr. Puzzles had spent his past several birthdays alone. Because Tracy’s birthday was June 5th, and his was August 27th, their parents made them “share” a birthday party sometime in July. It wasn’t a bad way to celebrate, because it allowed little Puzzles - Ness - to not be alone on his birthday.

   However, after being alone again, the past two Julys stood out for both siblings.

   The first one, in 2023, only stood out for Mr. Puzzles. That July was when Western Spaghetti happened, his second big victory over the SMG4 Crew. Sure, One-Shot Wren died, but he wouldn’t get good ratings without a little bloodshed, right?

   Then came the next July in 2024. By then, Tracy knew that her brother was alive and what exactly he was up to. In different ways, the two experienced Puzzles breaking into the Meme Factory. Mr. Puzzles left the factory, powerless and without the only friend he’d gained. Tracy had watched all of this play out, and she was left wondering if she should search for him again.

   She decided not to, but she bought herself a cupcake and put a star-topped candle on it, for him.

   Meanwhile, Puzzles baked himself a whole bunch of cupcakes. He used chocolate batter and topped them with vanilla frosting. On only one did he place a star-topped candle, but he knew he’d eat the whole batch later.

   Even though neither believed in birthday wishes anymore, the siblings said the same thing before blowing out the candle: “I wish to not be alone for my birthday next year.”

   They both got their wish, just in a way neither expected.

   Now Tracy was thinking of the best way to throw a birthday party for Ness. Not only were they celebrating their birthdays together again this year, but they were also celebrating Puzzles’s progress as a person. She never said the phrase aloud, but she wanted it to be perfect.

   With her friends, Tracy got everything together for a specific Saturday: July 26th. She kept her brother busy by working overtime at Escargo Express. By the time they came home, they were both exhausted.

   Mr. Puzzles yawned as he came into the house. “Did we really have to work that late?”

   “Hey, the extra pay will be worth it,” Tracy pointed out, trying not to smile.

   “Yes, a little extra pay for a lot of–”

   “SURPRISE!” Paula, Jeff, and Poo shouted as they came out of their hiding spot behind the couch.

   Tracy turned on the lights to reveal some decorations had been put up: balloons, streamers, and a banner in the living room that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

   Puzzles’s mood did a complete 180, his screen changing to match. The irritated expression he had before turned to one of delight. He gasped, “This is all for me…?”

   “This is your birthday, alright?” Tracy put a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

   He turned to her. “Tracy, you deserve a birthday party too.”

   “No, Ness! You deserve this way more than me!”

   Not wanting another squabble to start, Poo spoke up. “I believe we’re all hungry right now. We’ll have dinner first, then cake, and then we’ll give you presents. Right, Paula?”

   “Yeah.” She nodded. “Does that sound good to you, Mr. Puzzles?”

   “It sounds amazing.”

   Tracy and Puzzles went upstairs to change out of their work clothes. Soon, everyone was sitting in the dining room, eating steak and French fries with gravy on them. Even Poo, who could barely stomach food that wasn’t from Dalaam, ate the whole thing. Mr. Puzzles thanked Paula for the meal.

   (It was probably as close to Salisbury steak - Ness’s real favorite - as they could get without Tracy asking Mom for her recipe.)

   After dinner, Paula brought out a cake. It was chocolate with vanilla frosting, topped with two candles that read 29. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Puzzles, and he blew out the candles with an invisible breath.

   Then Tracy pulled out three presents from her inventory: two boxes and a bag. Three presents, but four people… Puzzles realized someone hadn’t brought one. Before he could suspect someone specifically, Tracy spoke up.

   “Pick whichever present you want to open first!”

   “Oh, I can’t possibly pick,” he said. “How about you each present your presents - heh - to me?”

   Poo pushed forward his present first. Underneath the wrapping paper, Mr. Puzzles could tell it was a rectangular box. He shook it around and, from the noise alone, he got a good idea of what it was.

   Puzzles tore off the paper and found a jigsaw puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle.

   “I hope you really live up to your name,” Poo commented.

   Puzzles replied, “Oh, I do. It’s just been a while since I’ve done one of these. 1000 pieces shouldn’t be too hard, though. Thank you!”

   He set the jigsaw puzzle back on the table, to his left side. Then Tracy pushed forward her gift. It was slightly bigger than Poo’s box, but similar in shape. Whatever was inside didn’t shake around, though.

   Mr. Puzzles tore off the wrapping paper and there was a painting set. It had only six paint colors (black, white, red, yellow, blue, and green) but Puzzles was sure he could mix them to make more. There was also a palette, some brushes, a small easel, and a few canvases.

   Mr. Puzzles recalled talking to Leggy 2.0 about taking up painting. When Tracy started visiting him in prison, he had told her the same. It was nice to know at least one of them could fulfill his request.

   “Thank you, Tracy. This is a very thoughtful gift.”

   He put it next to Poo’s.

   “I also put a lot of thought into mine,” Paula said.

   “So this bag is yours?” Puzzles asked, grabbing it.

   “Yeah. Jeff’s gift can’t fit in anything.”

   Mr. Puzzles took out the paper from the bag to reveal—

   “This… is a nightgown,” he said, stunned.

   “Yeah, like mine,” Paula replied.

   It was the black nightgown with the moons, planets, and stars on it, the one she’d worn the first night they stayed up together. The only difference was that it was made for someone larger and taller.

   “For me to wear?” Puzzles guessed.

   “Yes…” Paula answered. “Is there a problem?”

   A thin line of blush refused to leave Mr. Puzzles’s screen. “I-I-I… You can’t just give me that on my birthday, Paula!”

   “Well, you seemed to be staring at my nightgown that one night we were up together. Either you wanted one for yourself, or you were staring at it for other reasons.” She smirked.

   Ugh, she did see him staring… and she also seemed to know he was into crossdressing. Then he thought back to his fairy godmother costume and the times he had worn wigs on PuzzleVision. Great, everyone knew and of course Paula would turn it into an excuse to embarrass him on his own birthday!

   She added, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

   “Thanks for nothing, by the way.” He put the nightgown back in the bag.

   Paula kept smirking, noting he didn’t outright refuse the gift.

   Jeff spoke up. “Well, I hope my gift will make up for Paula’s. Tracy had to bring you back here late because mine requires it to be dark out. I’ve set up some fireworks.”

   Puzzles’s eyes grew wide. “A fireworks show? For me?”

   “We’re allowed to entertain you sometimes, right?”

   “Of course! I-It’s just…” A thin line of blush reappeared on Mr. Puzzles’s screen. “A very thoughtful gift too!”

   It was now sufficiently dark out. Tracy, Paula, Jeff, Poo, and Puzzles headed out of the house and went to the edge of Twoson. The women and Jeff pulled out their phones to use as flashlights, Poo relying on them not to trip. Mr. Puzzles used his own head as a light source. They were also carrying towels to sit on once they made it to their destination.

    At the edge of Twoson was a field. Sometimes it was used for festivals, fairs, and other events. Now it would be the spot for Jeff’s fireworks show.

   Tracy, Paula, Poo and Puzzles sat on their towels on one side of the field. On the other, Jeff set up his fireworks display. It didn’t take him very long to pull out and set off some of them.

   Fireworks in every color of the rainbow launched into the sky. They burst in different formations and patterns. Mr. Puzzles found all of them beautiful, especially the star-shaped ones.

   In the middle of Jeff setting up various firework displays, Puzzles said, “I love him…”

   Tracy and Paula both turned to look at him as he said that.

   Then he realized. “Wait, did I say that out loud!?”

   Paula smirked as she said, “You did. You know, Tracy, I think it’s time we told Puzzles about Tony.”

   “Tony?” Mr. Puzzles asked.

   “Jeff’s boyfriend.”

   “Jeff’s ex-boyfriend,” Tracy clarified. “They broke up a year ago. Don’t worry about him.”

   After a few more clusters of fireworks, Jeff ran out. Then he asked for a teleport home. Everyone said their goodbyes and Poo helped Jeff get back to Winters.

   As Mr. Puzzles, Tracy, and Paula walked back home, Paula asked, “So, besides my gift, did you enjoy your birthday?”

   “Absolutely,” Puzzles answered. “Thank you both for putting this together.”

   When they got home, Tracy and Paula went straight to bed. Mr. Puzzles, however, still had some energy left in him due to the party. He went to his bedroom, but started talking to Leggy 2.0.

   “Oh Leggy,” he said to the doll, “I wish you could have enjoyed dinner with us and seen the fireworks! But you know how people get when you show up…” He sat at the desk and pulled out the jigsaw puzzle. “Fortunately, Prince Poo got me this puzzle - heheh - and you can help me put it together!”

   Puzzles dumped the pieces onto the table and started working on the jigsaw puzzle. When finished up the edge of the picture, he started to feel tired. Then he turned in for the night.

   As Mr. Puzzles fell asleep, two and a half stars flashed across his screen.

Chapter Text

   Ness was 15. Tracy was 11. King, their beloved dog, was 16… and dying.

   Tracy had been crying most of the day after her parents told her that King would be put down. Tracy was already overwhelmed, and going with them to the veterinarian would make things worse. If she went with her parents to the vet’s, she’d be picking up not only King’s thoughts, but also every other animals’. When she picked up animals’ thoughts, she also picked up their feelings… even the bad ones.

   Tracy spent five minutes petting King before he went off to the veterinarian for the last time. Ness stayed home with his sister, because he didn’t want her to be alone. How was he supposed to comfort her? All he understood about comforting her was with TV shows or movies, and most of the ones she liked featured animals in some capacity!

   Perhaps the best way to comfort someone was to simply be there for them…

   As Tracy cried some more, Ness hugged her tightly and grabbed some tissues that were in reach.

   “And that’s when I realized I could never become a vet,” Tracy ended her explanation to Mr. Puzzles, her brother. “Yeah, it would pay a lot more, but… you have to deal with all the good, bad, and ugly of animal care.”

   “But you still pet sit sometimes?” Puzzles asked.

   “Yeah, for our neighbors,” Paula explained. “We told you we have one coming over today, right?”

   Mr. Puzzles nodded. “Yes, you did. I hope that goes well. Are you sure you don’t need me? I’m sure I can handle Tex.”

   “His name is Rex,” Tracy corrected him. “Also, you need to go to therapy.”

   Paula practically pushed Puzzles out the front door. “Somehow you haven’t skipped out on that yet. You’re not starting now.”

   “Okay, I’m leaving! Don’t have too much fun without me.”

   Then Mr. Puzzles left the house.

   Maddy, Rex’s owner, showed up with the dog a few minutes later. She told them that Rex was house-trained, he liked jumping over the fence around their house, and he was fond of chewing on any shoes he could get his teeth into. Tracy had already put up a fence at the bottom of the stairs, but she was sure if she kept a close eye on Rex, she could keep him out of trouble. Paula put all their shoes away in the downstairs closet.

   Rex was a German Shepard puppy, and very energetic. Fortunately, the two women could easily keep up with him. Dog-sitting Rex went well… for thirty minutes.

   The dog sniffed around for something. Tracy picked up his thoughts and found he was looking for shoes. Paula had put every pair away… right?

   Then Rex bolted for the stairs. He leapt over the fence easily. He ran all the way to Mr. Puzzles’s room. As the women followed the dog up, they realized what pair of shoes he was going after.

   Tracy and Paula entered Mr. Puzzles’s room. They found they were too late. The jigsaw puzzle he had been assembling had its pieces scattered, but that wasn’t what Rex was after.

   The dog was after Leggy 2.0. All the color drained from Tracy’s face as she saw the remains of the doll. Rex had ruffled Leggy 2.0’s wig, smudged up her face, and stolen both of the shoes that served as her feet.

   Tracy whimpered, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

   Meanwhile, Rex took the shoes - now his chew toys - down the stairs. Paula chased after him and found him gnawing on them in the kitchen. She grabbed the shoes from Rex, but they were now in tatters. She threw them away. Then she went back up to Mr. Puzzles’s room to find… Tracy stroking Leggy 2.0?

   She had been crying, but she had a very broken smile on her face. She said to the doll, “Oh Leggy, I’m so sorry. Don’t leave us, please don’t go… I should’ve never let Rex get so close to you! I’ll get you fixed up before Puzzles even comes home!” She let out a laugh.

   …Nope! Paula already had to deal with one Mr. Puzzles living in her house. She did not need another.

   Paula grabbed Leggy 2.0’s remains and snapped, “Tracy! One of you has to be the sane sibling here!”

   “Uh, right…” Tracy sniffed. “I’m sorry. I just… don’t want my brother to be upset with me.”

   “I don’t want him to be upset with you, either. I’m sure if you apologize to him, he’ll forgive you.”

   “...Are you sure?”

   “Tracy, you are the sister that got him out of prison and gave him a better life. Leggy 2.0 is a doll he talks to when he’s feeling lonely. I know he’s erratic on a good day, but it’s hard to imagine a world where he’d choose Leggy 2.0 over you.”

   Paula gave Tracy back the doll. Tracy put the doll back on the desk, and it rolled over, the wig falling off. She sighed and held her own head in her hands. Paula patted her on the back.

   They went back to dog-sitting Rex, but the situation was now tense. Paula had found a real chew toy for the dog, which he accepted. She told him he was a good dog for gnawing on the toy, not a pair of shoes. Tracy, meanwhile, was trying to fix things in her brother’s room. She couldn’t fix the doll without Ness’s help, but she could fix the jigsaw puzzle by putting the pieces back into place.

   Soon, Mr. Puzzles came back from therapy. He announced, “Tracy! Paula! I’m home!”

   Rex made his way towards the noise first.

   Puzzles knelt when he saw the dog coming. He started petting the dog as soon as he showed no fear towards his TV head. “And you must be Rex!”

   Most would probably think Mr. Puzzles a cat person, if they thought he liked animals at all. Ness, however, loved dogs and remembered King fondly. As he petted Rex, Puzzles even allowed him to lick his television screen.

   He immediately wiped the drool away when the dog was done, though.

   “I hope you haven’t given Tracy and Paula a hard time.”

   Tracy and Paula were watching Mr. Puzzles, and both felt a pang of guilt when they heard him say that. Tracy, however, felt much guiltier about what happened. She took a step forward.

   “Ness… something happened while you were gone. Y-You should see this.”

   Once he was finished giving Rex attention, Tracy led Puzzles to his room. Mr. Puzzles saw how damaged Leggy 2.0 was, but said nothing. He looked disappointed, but he assumed Tracy would have an explanation.

   Sure enough, she said, “Rex found Leggy 2.0 and started playing with her. I should’ve stopped him or hid her. N-Ness, I’m sorry…”

   “Tracy…” Puzzles said in a much softer tone, almost reminding her of how he used to sound. “It’s okay. Objects can be replaced. You or the dog can’t.”

   Tracy blinked. “Wait, you know Leggy 2.0’s an object?”

   “Just a cheap doll I made? Yes, but I felt I needed some reflection of the one inside my head.”

   “It is a little weird, that she’s only in your head and not… totally real.”

   “That’s exactly why I made Leggy 2.0. Just so I wouldn’t go completely crazy in prison.” Mr. Puzzles giggled.

   “Right…” Tracy decided not to bring up just how her brother managed to get out of jail. Then she remembered something. “I think I understand now, actually.”

   “Really?”

   “Yeah, I… I have a whole other world in my head, apparently. Or had? I’m not sure. It’s called ‘Magicant.’ It’s where I learned to teleport and got a big boost in strength before our fight with Giygas. It was filled with memories: friends, family… even enemies.”

   “Enemies in your own head?”

   “I had to defeat the evil inside of me to become stronger.”

   “Was I there?”

   “Yeah. You just talked about the Sea of Eden, where the center of the evil in my mind was. There was also another me with you? Selling and storing items???”

   Puzzles snorted. “I can see that hasn’t changed.”

   Then Tracy remembered something else. “Oh, hey, remember that creature you helped me make up for that one project in third grade? The Moonicorn?”

   Mr. Puzzles smiled and nodded. “The unicorn that lives on the moon.”

   “She was there too! Th-There were a bunch of them, but I only used two of them. She was my courage.”

   “If you don’t mind me asking, what was the ‘evil inside of you’? What did it look like?”

   “The Mani-Mani Statue. I was afraid of it corrupting me too, even after we defeated it.”

   Mr. Puzzles nodded again, but in the back of his mind, he wondered.

   How did Tracy get a whole magical wonderland in her head, while he got stuck with a white void and a television? Sure, he also had 999 channels, but most of those environments were copy-pasted from things he’d watched. It wasn’t important - she was trying to empathize.

   Puzzles said, “Well, I’m glad it’s not just me with a whole other world in their head… and I’m especially glad it’s you. Must run in the family!”

   Tracy turned her attention back to the doll. “So, what about Leggy 2.0?”

   “We should repair her, obviously! Make her even better than she was before!!” Puzzles gasped as inspiration struck. “She could be Leggy 2.5 now!!!”

   “I mean, we’re not completely replacing her. Just making her better.”

   “And ‘Leggy 2.5’ could be the latest iteration.”

   “Alright, let’s make ‘Leggy 2.5.’”

   The siblings spent the rest of the afternoon doing so. Mr. Puzzles did most of the work, brushing the doll’s wig and drawing a new face for her. Tracy pulled out a new pair of shoes - Barazushi’s Suede Basics - and put them under the doll’s head/body.

   Tracy explained, “It felt appropriate, especially after we saw Meggy in Inkopolis.”

   Puzzles smiled as he looked the Leggy doll over. “Aw, look at her! She looks so fresh!”

   Tracy smiled with her brother. “She really does.”

   With that, Leggy 2.5 was complete.

Chapter Text

   It was a Sunday. Mr. Puzzles and Tracy had the day off, Paula was only busy in the morning, and Poo had a fluctuating schedule. Jeff brought them all to him with a single group text:

NEW INVENTION COME TO THE LAB!!!

   Tracy teleported over with Paula and Puzzles in tow. Poo also teleported over. He knocked on the door to the Andonuts building for the four of them.

   Jeff answered a second later, a manic smile on his face. Nobody present seemed to be unnerved by his expression. In fact, it reminded Mr. Puzzles a lot of himself. He hoped no red line had appeared on his screen.

   Tracy snapped him out of his thoughts. “We got your text. What’s up?”

   Jeff explained as everyone came into the lab, “A friend of my father - Professor E. Gadd - sent me some very interesting blueprints.”

   “Professor E. Gadd”... That name sounded familiar to Mr. Puzzles. He was a scientist from the Mushroom Kingdom, wasn’t he? It made sense he and Doctor Andonuts, another semi-famous scientist, would know each other.

   Jeff continued, “I had to build the thing and see what it did. And of course, you all get to see the demonstration!”

   Paula said, “Jeff, remember the last time you copied E. Gadd’s blueprints? We ended up with ghosts in the lab.”

   “Oooh, and you hunted them like Ghostbusters?” Puzzles asked.

   “No, it was not like Ghostbusters!” Paula pointed at Mr. Puzzles. “Ghostbusters is fun. That was not fun.”

   Jeff had pushed a lot of his machines to the edges of the lab to make room for this new one. It was a giant gray ray with a red star on it and a big red “ON” button attached to the side. In the ray’s line of fire was a Reese’s peanut butter cup on a table.

   “It doesn’t look like much,” Puzzles commented.

   Jeff said, “It’s supposed to split things into their base components.”

   Poo said, “It looks kind of ominous for something designed to do that.”

   “Even if it doesn’t work as intended, it’s pointed away from us,” Jeff assured them. “Just stay out of the way, and we should be fine!”

   Part of Puzzles had a bad feeling about all of this. Paula and Poo’s worry made him worried. Also, he had seen enough plots in similar shows to know something was off.

   However, another part of him wanted to stay. He couldn’t leave Jeff’s demonstration! It’d be rude and what would Jeff think of him if he left? Like Tracy and her friends, he stood firm.

   Jeff smacked the big red button and the machine turned on. A siren blared, which did nothing to help half of the group’s unease. As it continued to blare, the ray turned away from the peanut butter cup… and towards Mr. Puzzles. Jeff tried to find where he had plugged the ray in to unplug it, but it was too late.

   Puzzles didn’t have time to react before the ray shot at him. A flash of bright blue light filled the lab. When everyone could see again, they found Mr. Puzzles was gone. Tracy was ready to assume the worst when she saw someone hiding in a pile of Jeff’s old machines. She moved the stuff out of the way, and her friends followed her.

   Tracy’s eyes widened when she got a proper look at the figure. It was Ness Earthbound - no, not Mr. Puzzles. Ness was 13 years old with black hair and dark blue eyes. He wore a red baseball cap, a blue-and-yellow striped shirt, shorts, and sneakers.

   Tracy was too stunned to speak.

   Paula was the first one to talk. She asked Jeff, “You said the thing splits things into their base components, right? Ness is just one part of Mr. Puzzles. Where’s the TV part?”

   “B-Behind you,” Ness muttered, pointing.

   The four turned and saw the figure they’d become familiar with over the past few months. Yet, he seemed unfamiliar, unnerving, and unhinged now. Mr. Puzzles didn’t look that much different - same outfit, same TV head - but the way he carried himself felt off to the people staring at him. What they saw was something pretending to be human, and not as good an actor as his original self.

   “Hello, friends… and goodbye!”

   Puzzles’s body moved strangely, the movements too loose. He waved and then zipped off like a cartoon character. He moved fast enough that he made it into the woods that surrounded the building before everyone else had made it out of the lab.

   Tracy asked Ness, “Why’d Mr. Puzzles run off like that?”

   “I don’t know,” he answered. “He’s acting on his own now. I have no idea what he’s up to.”

   Paula told the others, “Two of us need to go after Mr. Puzzles. The other two should watch Ness.”

   “Hey, I’m a teenager!” Ness pouted. “I can take care of myself! Besides, Mr. Puzzles is the one you shouldn’t trust!” He turned to his sister. “Tracy, stay here, please?”

   Torn between Paula and Ness, Tracy recalled a memory that had been buried deep. When she and Paula had watched the PuzzleVision movie, they ended up like everyone else who saw it when it first premiered: brainwashed and wiped of their memories of ever watching it. Like the rest of Puzzles’s puppets, however, the memories were still there, just waiting to be recalled under the right circumstances.

   Most of the premiere watch played out how Tracy remembered things going the second time. At the lyric “I cut off my face and put a TV in its place,” she knew that Mr. Puzzles was her brother, and she started sobbing. Paula comforted her, and hugged her friend until she calmed down.

   Then she asked Tracy softly, “Should we give your brother the five stars he wants?”

   Tracy pushed her way out of the hug and exclaimed, “Absolutely not! You’re getting creepy vibes from that too, right?”

   “Yeah… but I had to ask. Gotta make sure there’s one sane sibling between you two, you know?”

   Tracy playfully punched her roommate’s arm.

   Then, Paula frowned. “What if someone does give your brother five stars? Someone who’s watching this is bound to cave in.”

   Tracy replied, “Well, I guess we’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

   Paula paused.

   “Would you fight your brother, if we had to?”

   “If we had to… yeah. This whole thing has proven just how dangerous he is, and not just to the Mushroom Kingdom.”

   It wasn’t just the first watch of that movie that proved how dangerous he was. Yet, she had still hesitated to go after him. She couldn’t hesitate now.

   Tracy told her brother, “Sorry, Ness, but if anyone should confront Mr. Puzzles, it’s me. Poo, come with me. Paula, you keep an eye on Ness. Jeff, maybe you can find a way to reverse this?”

   “I’ll try,” Jeff said.

   Paula looked at Ness. “Let’s go back inside. We can find something to watch on Jeff’s TV, okay?”

   “Okay…” Ness sighed.

   “We’ll be right back, bro,” Tracy said before she and Poo headed off.

   She waited until Paula and Jeff were back in the building to grab Poo’s shoulder. Because they were psychics as well as friends, he already knew what she wanted to ask him.

   Poo said, “You want to confront him alone?”

   Tracy paused. She hated when Poo used his powers like this. He knew how rude it was, but he was willing to drop his manners in front of friends… and in tense situations such as this. Finally, she answered, “Yes.”

   Poo frowned. “Tracy, I don’t think that’s wise. We have no idea why he ran, or what he wants now that he’s separate from Ness.”

   Tracy stated, “I want to talk to him, and… fight him, if I have to.”

   “Fine. If I find him first, I will do the same. If I do not find him in a few minutes, I’ll go back to the others and tell them what you did.”

   “Fine.”

   Tracy went deeper into the woods, and away from Poo.

   A minute later, she found Mr. Puzzles. He was sitting on a log. He looked to be lost in his own thoughts, and his screen blinked when he saw her approach.

   “Oh, hello. I’m sorry for running off earlier.”

   Tracy sat next to him.

   He continued, “I just needed a moment to myself. I’ve been pondering what to do. TV shows, movies, an amusement park - those were all the dreams of a young boy. What does Mr. Puzzles want to do?”

   “Um, yeah.” She nodded. “What do you want to do?”

   “Well… I think the best course of action would be…” He suddenly stood up. “Controlling everyone who ever wronged me!”

   She stammered, “N-M-Mr. Puzzles, you know I can’t let you do that.”

   “Why? Because we’re siblings?” He smiled. “Not anymore. Don’t act like that’s the only thing holding you back from killing me!”

   He stared at her, and his body swiveled to face her as well.

   “So? What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to at least try and fight?”

   Tracy froze. She couldn’t run, but she couldn’t fight him, either. Puzzles - it - wasn’t her brother anymore, but why couldn’t she move?

   Mr. Puzzles provided an answer. “After all these years, you’re still scared of me? All you see is the one monster you couldn’t face because, maybe, all of that time, you knew the truth: that your brother was that monster.” He laughed. “You can’t lie to anyone but yourself! It was much easier to convince yourself your brother was dead instead of facing reality. You know, maybe Ness did die that night, and I’ve just been puppeting what’s left of his body…”

   “Stop…” Tracy whimpered through the tears. “P-Please…”

   “You’re right. I’m just monologuing at this point.” Puzzles grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and lifted her up. “We should get to the fun part.” With his free hand, he touched her forehead.

   As he brainwashed her again, Tracy screamed.

   With what little thought process she still possessed, she thought back to the first time it had happened. No, not outside of the prison. During the PuzzleVision movie, Tracy and Paula were watching the SMG4 Crew escape from each channel. The women didn’t watch Four’s videos that much, but what they were watching now seemed almost… normal for him.

   This could be our normal.

   Tracy quickly realized what she had just heard wasn’t her own thoughts. She asked, “Who’s there?”

   So you can hear me. How unexpected. Nobody’s ever responded to me before.

   “What are you?”

   I guess the best way to describe myself is as Mr. Puzzles’s brainwashing, or corruption, or influence over his audience. Again, nobody’s ever picked up on my presence before. Just look at your friend right next to you!

   Tracy looked at Paula on the other side of the couch. She was sitting up, unnaturally straight. Her eyes were filled with static, but she looked happy with what she was watching.

   “Paula!” Tracy exclaimed. “Paula, wake u–”

   Tracy’s mouth was forced shut. All she could do was think at the brainwashing. Even then, she could feel like her thoughts were slowing to a halt.

   Such a special girl, related to such a special man. Once I’m in control of you, I’ll be sure to bring you onto my show as a special guest. It’ll be a beautiful family reunion, don’t you think?

   Screw you! I can fight against this! I can win, just like I did against Giygas!

   Oh Tracy dear, the fact you can hear me is just proof I’m already inside your head. And once I’m inside someone’s head, it’s really hard to get me out. You’re all alone, with no friends to help you. JUST GIVE IN.

   The corruption was right. This wasn’t her fight to win. The SMG4 Crew would find a way out of PuzzleVision, surely.

   She let go…

   At least Tracy had woken up from that. She kept screaming at the nightmare she’d never wake up from.

   Ness and Paula were watching a nature documentary on Jeff’s TV while Jeff tried to figure out a solution to the problem with the splitting ray. Ness wanted to focus on the show. However, he felt like Paula would rather be searching with Tracy and Poo than babysitting him. He had to say something about it.

   “Y-You know, Paula, you can go outside with the others instead of staying here.”

   “Oh, uh…” She looked at him. “It’s okay, Ness. I don’t mind spending time with you.”

   “Really? I thought you’d like to stop whatever Mr. Puzzles is up to.”

   “I guess I’d rather spend time bonding with your friendly side than fighting your evil side.”

   “Wait, I’m the ‘friendly side’? But I have no friends…”

   “Well, you haven’t tried to kill me or brainwash me yet. That’s a step up from your usual ‘charming’ self.”

   “Hey, you tried to kill me when we first met!”

   “I threatened to hurt you. That wasn’t really our first meeting anyway.”

   “Oh yeah…” Ness remembered that strange dream he had during his last night in prison.

   Curious about their situation, Paula asked, “Are you the shadow in Mr. Puzzles’s head?”

   He fidgeted and looked away from her. “Sort of…?”

   She could tell that question made Ness uncomfortable. She went back to watching the show with him in silence. A minute later, she muttered, “I just hope Tracy and Poo are alright.”

   Right after Paula said that, Poo came into the lab. He told them, “Tracy went off on her own. She wanted to confront Mr. Puzzles alone.”

   Ness jumped out of his seat. “What?! Th-That’s really bad! He could do anything to her when she’s alone.”

   “Okay,” Paula sighed as she stood up, “now is a good time to fight your evil side.”

   Then Tracy ran into the lab. Everyone turned to her. She didn’t look different, but if Puzzles had brainwashed her, how would they be able to tell?

   Tracy panted, “He ran and I couldn’t keep up. Tried every psychic trick I could think of to get him to stop, but… he was too fast.”

   Paula came over to Tracy, but as she got closer, she slowed. She was starting to pick up her friend’s thoughts… and they weren’t her friend’s. Paula said, “You’re not Tracy. NESS, RU–”

   The Puzzles-possessed Tracy grabbed Paula and touched her head. Already, Ness was running, but he didn’t see Jeff and Poo with him. He heard the sounds of a struggle, but he didn’t look back. He ran out of the lab and into the woods.

   Mr. Puzzles made Tracy and her friends search for Ness. They cried out in twisted parodies of their own personalities.

   “C’mon, Ness! You know I’d NEVER hurt my brother!”

   “You know how much I love children… even damn useless brats like you!”

   “I’ve never experimented on a specimen like you before. I wonder how much you’d scream…”

   “Remember Mu Training? How empty it felt? I’m sure I can find something much worse if you don’t COME OUT NOW!”

   Ness tried to take deep breaths as he watched the Chosen Four search for him. He’d hidden in one of the tallest trees he could find, and climbed until he couldn’t anymore. He prayed that none of them would look up.

   Why would Mr. Puzzles do this at all? Ness was the one who liked to toy, while Puzzles just liked to torture. There was no reason to play this twisted game of hide and seek… unless Mr. Puzzles couldn’t directly go after Ness.

   They couldn’t touch, or otherwise they’d be one person again.

   Ness got an idea. Hopefully, Puzzles wouldn’t see right through it. Ness just had to act how Mr. Puzzles saw him: an annoying child.

   Soon, Tracy and her friends heard someone sobbing.

   She groaned, “Finally, my brother reveals himself.”

   The four of them followed the sound and found Ness crying in a tree.

   Paula yelled at him, “Get down here right now!”

   He did as he was told. When he reached the ground, he sniffed, “C-Can I see Mr. Puzzles one last time?”

   “Yes, you can. He wants to see you anyway.” Tracy grabbed his hand tightly.

   The Chosen Four walked to Mr. Puzzles in sync. They weren’t fazed by Ness crying. They walked perfectly.

   For a long time, this was what Ness had wanted. Now that he had it, and it was being used on someone he cared about, he could see how empty it was. Why couldn’t Mr. Puzzles see the same?

   Finally, Tracy and the others brought Ness to Puzzles. The TV-head was sitting on a tree stump. The two, split from one person, stared at each other.

   Then Puzzles sighed in relief. “Good. You’re still in one piece. Now take him away.”

   Ness blinked. “What?”

   “I’m going to get revenge, just like we’ve always wanted! But that means you need to be somewhere safe. Take him back to Twoson. He can watch me from there.”

   Ness fought, but Tracy’s grip was strong. If she teleported, he’d never be free again. He’d just watch TV for the rest of his life, just as he had before. Then he found the words that would shake Mr. Puzzles to his core.

   “YOU’RE JUST AS BAD AS DAD!”

   Ness didn’t want to say that, but the comparison shocked Mr. Puzzles enough that he lost his concentration. His hold loosened on all of his puppets, and Tracy’s hold loosened on Ness’s hand. The boy ran at Puzzles, and jumped into his lap.

   “Gotcha.”

   With a bright flash of light, Mr. Puzzles was whole again. Tracy, Paula, Jeff, and Poo were freed from the other Puzzles’s control. As they realized what had happened, the TV-head wrapped his arms around them.

   “Oh, I missed being me! And I missed you guys too!”

   The Chosen Four yelled in protest, Paula especially. Mr. Puzzles let them go, frowning.

   Paula asked, “What was that for?”

   “I’m sorry for what he - I - did,” Puzzles apologized. “I was not completely myself.”

   “No, I’m sorry,” Jeff said. “If I’d known what that ray would do, I would have never built it, much less turned it on.”

   After the apologies, everyone said goodbye. Mr. Puzzles, Tracy, Paula, and Poo went to their homes. When he got back to the house, Puzzles went up to his room. As soon as Mr. Puzzles was sure he was alone, and locked the door just to be sure… he let out a cathartic yell.

   Why did he have to have therapy every other week?! For the first time since he started seeing a therapist, he actually wanted to tell Doctor Cantrell everything that happened today in excruciating detail. However, if he did have therapy today, he wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.

   Puzzles kept thinking about the day’s events until it was bedtime. He had work tomorrow. He needed to get to sleep.

   As he tried to settle his mind so he could rest, Mr. Puzzles heard his door creak open. It was Tracy.

   She said, “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

   “No,” he answered. “I can’t sleep.”

   “Me neither. I just keep thinking about… well, you. The other Mr. Puzzles.”

   “When I said I was sorry, I meant it.”

   “I know, but… why was he so obsessed with finding Ness, just to separate you two again once he found him?”

   “Puzzles did want to protect Ness. It’s just that he has a… different idea of how that should work. He wants to protect ONLY Ness, and even then, he would protect himself first if he really needed to.”

   “Oh.”

   “I’m glad the other Puzzles didn’t see through Ness’s plan, because if he did… I would never be whole again.”

   Silence hung in the room. Neither sibling moved, nor did they look at each other.

   After several tense minutes, Tracy asked Mr. Puzzles, “Can I sleep here? I don’t… I don’t want to be afraid of you anymore.”

   “If that will help you… of course you can.”

   She got into bed with him. The siblings closed their eyes. As he fell asleep, he heard two small, distant voices.

   I’m sorry I compared you to him…

   Don’t be. I needed to hear it.

Chapter Text

   Mr. Puzzles had just left the Meme Factory via shipping himself off in a FedEx package. Meggy had just awoken from… being Leggy? She barely remembered her time as the gremlin.

   “I can’t imagine what Mr. Puzzles must have done to brainwash you into helping him!” SMG4 said. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Meggy.”

   “Yeah…” She smiled. “I’m just glad I’m back.”

   As Four walked off, Meggy noticed the hole in the ceiling. That made her remember what Puzzles had actually done while she was Leggy. From what little she could recall, it wasn’t exactly brainwashing he’d used on her, but how could she tell Four that? He had treated her nicely, for the most part, but more like a pet than a former human. One part of her missed him… but the other part of her still wanted nothing to do with him.

   Over the next few months, Meggy was continuously reminded of Leggy. Not only was Mr. Puzzles still around, but he was obsessed with getting his only friend back. He had managed it in a video called “SMG4 INSIDE OUT,” but nobody seemed to know if that had actually happened, not even Meggy and her friends.

   It all culminated in Puzzles breaking into her house once he was feeling more powerful, and forcing her to become Leggy again. The little Leggy in her head wanted her to join him, but she said no. Mr. Puzzles’s Didney minions changed her back into Leggy.

   She woke up as Meggy again when Mario changed her back, just like at the Meme Factory. She wasted no time in joining Mario and SMG4 in defeating Puzzles at his theme park. However, she still felt like giving him the thing he really needed: a friend. When she saw the opportunity to do so, she went straight into Mr. Puzzles’s head.

   There, Meggy found the child she had seen on Puzzles’s screen. She didn’t know his original name - Ness - back then, but she left Leggy behind with him. She also didn’t know if it really helped his sanity in the long run, but she assured Mario that Leggy had “escaped off to a better place.”

   Meggy thought that was what had happened, but it didn’t stop the dreams.

   Throughout the year, Meggy had been experiencing strange dreams. She’d had good dreams before, of winning Splatfest and spending time with her friends. She’d also had many nightmares, revolving around Francis, One-Shot Wren, and most recently, Mr. Puzzles.

   These dreams, however, fit into neither category. They centered around wandering through the wilderness, without purpose. She had never cared much for the woods, only using it for training sometimes, so why was she dreaming about it now? And these dreams had started after the Meme Factory…

   The dreams ended after Meggy took part in Professor E. Gadd’s latest experiment. She wasn’t sure what that giant ray was meant to do, but it had separated Leggy from her. Unfortunately, a television E. Gadd had on caused the surprisingly calm gremlin to freak out.

   “Puzzles?! PUZZLES?!?! PUZZLLLLLLLES?!?!” She squealed and bounced around the room.

   As Leggy ran around, Meggy tried to walk. Somehow, the gremlin had gotten all of her strength, leaving Meggy without the use of her legs. Luckily she had SMG4 on speed dial. He picked her up from E. Gadd’s lab and pushed her around in a wheelchair.

   SMG4, Meggy, SMG3, and Mario chased Leggy around the city. Traps, Bob, and Boopkins didn’t help. Then Meggy got an idea.

   “Wait… that’s it! That’s how we catch her!! We use Mr. Puzzles!!!”

   “Uh, small problem,” Three pointed out. “We banished bro, for good reason! It’s not like we can just bring him over here.”

   “Wait… yes WE CAN!” Four exclaimed.

   So SMG4 and SMG3 pretended to be Puzzles. It worked… for about ten seconds. Leggy didn’t see completely through it, and she talked to the piece of cardboard she thought was Mr. Puzzles’s screen.

   “Puzzles, Puzzles? It Leggy! ‘Member? Leggy is… friend!”

   Meggy watched, and something stirred within her at Leggy saying that. She still didn’t want to call Mr. Puzzles a friend, but he wasn’t an enemy anymore, either. When she saw him in Inkopolis, it took all of her strength not to yell at him. She couldn’t yell at the gremlin, either, lest she scare her away.

   Meggy came over to Leggy and said, “Hey, can we talk?”

   “No!” The gremlin glared at her. “Mean Meggy HATES Puzzles!”

   Meggy shook her head. “I-I don’t! Not as much as I used to, at least. Remember when I saw Mr. Puzzles in Inkopolis? Just a couple of months ago?”

   Since her memories were tied to Meggy’s, Leggy nodded. “Mm-hmm!”

   “You kept me from freaking out. You’re the part of me that wants to see the good in him, and I did see some good that day. I’m actually glad we still keep in touch.”

   Meggy’s words got Leggy to come closer.

   “But he still needs to take responsibility for what he did. That’s why I can’t drop everything to see him. He was banished for a reason.”

   “Puzzles GOOD! You saw it! You saw him!”

   “I know! I know…” Then Meggy got an idea. “If you come back with me, I promise we’ll see him again, okay?”

   She knew she couldn’t promise anything.

   “...Okay!” Leggy was convinced, however, and she jumped into Meggy’s lap.

   The two embraced and in a flash of light, they were whole again. Meggy smiled and stood up from the wheelchair. The SMGs and Mario turned the corner when they saw the light.

   “You’re back to normal!” Four smiled.

   Three groaned, “Aw, I didn’t get to hit anything!”

   “How’d you get the goomba to listen?” Mario asked.

   “I never told you guys I… saw Mr. Puzzles in Inkopolis, did I?” Meggy chuckled nervously.

   “WAIT WHAT!?” SMG4 exclaimed. “DID HE HURT YOU!?!”

   “No! He was on a delivery job with Tracy. He was happy to see me. He didn’t cause any trouble for himself or for me. He seems like a completely different person.”

   “With his sister, right?” SMG3 asked.

   “She wasn’t there. He was doing this on his own… for me? For Leggy?”

   “Or for himself,” Three said. “Who knows what that freakshow’s actually doing now that he’s alone?”

   “Hey, who had the idea to banish him in the first place?” Four pointed out.

   “No, my original idea was to kill him! You’re the one who thought banishment was a good idea.”

   “Look, we could do this all day. This crazy adventure has ended. Let’s go home.”

   The four friends walked in the direction of their houses, but then Meggy grabbed SMG4’s shoulder.

   She asked him, “Hey, can we talk?”

   “Uh, sure?” he answered.

   The two went to the game room of the Showgrounds castle to talk. Three went off to tend to Coffee N’ Bombs. Mario also went to the cafe, to ask if SMG3 had added a “Spaghetti Special” to the “secret menu” yet (the answer would always be no.)

   In the castle’s game room, Four sat at one end of the couch, and Meggy sat on the other. She looked down at the floor until she spoke up.

   “Do you know how SMG3 said it would be easier to just kill Mr. Puzzles? Well… the prison was going to try it.”

   “Really?” SMG4 raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

   “After Tracy showed up, I wanted to try something. Only me and Chris and Swag know what I did. I made a case for Puzzles to at least not get the death sentence. It took a lot of lawyering, legal loopholes, and luck, but I worked something out before I even mentioned improving Mr. Puzzles’s prison conditions to you.”

   Four took a breath as he processed what Meggy had told him. “That’s… wow, that’s a lot.”

   “You’re not mad?”

   “Maybe about you keeping this from us, but we ended up getting rid of Puzzles anyway, so it all worked out, right?”

   “I guess. So…” Meggy looked away from Four. “Since I bared my soul to you, I was wondering… What about all the other Leggies?”

   All of the stress of today made SMG4 snap, “OH MY GOD, MEGGY! I don’t know, okay?!” He took another deep breath. “I literally don’t know. Honestly I was expecting to sic a swarm of Leggies on Mr. Puzzles when he snuck up on the Meme Factory, but it was just Leggy-you… biting him.”

   “So if they left you… where did they go?”

   “Heck if I know! And if they weren’t that loyal… good riddance!”