Chapter 9: Chapter 9

A battle inside the deep unknown that would test their biggest fears, an adventure inside the so-called Subcon Forest. Mafia Joe probably didn’t know what he was going to find himself in, but he knew that when adventure called, the best thing was to go all the way in. He kept thinking about how his spirit would be tested and how he would have to confront his biggest fears, he kept trembling, but he went ahead because he wanted to at least try, just try! If he failed, he would stand up and try again, and if he died, he would at least know he died fighting for his dreams, because that’s what adventure was all about! That’s what life was all about!

What was he going to find? What things would he discover? If he came out alive from that, Mafia Joe was sure he would become a better man, a better person, and he would grow more as a Mafia Man! The Mafia had made a partnership with the Nyakuza, and now they both were in this together. They would go there and fight without hesitation to commit their goal in the blink of an eye!

“Mafia will go and help Cat Lady, but Mafia won’t stay in scary forest for too long!” He said, and The Empress just scowled at his apparent cowardice. Darn it. Mafia Joe was never good at words or talking outloud. He had always been an emotional person and it was hard to express himself without overwhelming others. If he spoke too much, people would find him annoying, but if he spoke too
little, he would always find issues looking for the right words to
express his feelings.

Mafia Chad (known to have a small soul patch of beard that made him considerably more attractive compared to the other Mafia Goons), was thinking about the upcoming trip as well, he was constantly reading about everything that he could find about the forest and how it came to be.

The thing that caused the energy and magic of the forest to exist was a complete mystery and it seemed to be completely undocumented in history books, but even then, he kept searching and investigating about it, from retroradioactive ouroectoplasm to mana nanomachines and fall applied math the moment of the planet’s creation (What did that even mean at the end anyway?!) The books with theories about it were endless and he kept devouring them one after the other.

There was an interesting book mentioning several things about the Subcon Forest, written by someone going by the name “Tim’s Friend” called “Investigations and Research In Three Dimensional Humans and Related Oddities”, and it talked about how the death of a person could affect the memory of a ghost. If a person died instantly or got attacked without seeing it coming, they would probably not absorb any aura or lifeforce. (The terms changed as the book continued) in the moment of their death so they would lose all of their memories. What was more interesting though, was the effects of the Subcon Forest’s magic in people, it explained how the energy could be absorbed by a person without them knowing and how this one could have effects in the real world based on the thoughts and feelings of the person that absorbed it, could he mean that his most subconscious desires and biggest fears would come to light if he wasn’t prepared?

“Cat Lady might think Mafia is scared, but Mafia is never scared! Mafia is always prepared to fight!” He blurted out, despite everything, Mafia Chad was a very insecure guy who had to deal with a lot of anxiety. Which always betrayed him when he came to speak.

The Empress scowled at both of the Mafia goons' words. Perhaps going on her own was an even better idea. “Your crooks better prove to be of some use.” She hissed at Mecha Boss.

“And I hope you follow our part of our agreement!” Mecha Boss replied. “Remember, we are going in there looking for the Kid with the Mustache! We are going to help you get in, but we are not going to look and deal with that kid with the hat!” He shrugged, just trying to think about their encounter made him shiver. He could try and disable things that caused him to feel dumb like fear now that he was a futuristic cyborg, but he had already tried that once making himself forget how to understand things visually by accident! That day he tried to make himself a pasta, but he couldn’t distinguish between the prepared noodles and the unmade dough, so while Thor came back in to fix him he got himself a Mafia Sandwich instead, it tasted horrible.

The Plan was for the Mafia to go and capture Mu since after the events on Time’s End, Mafia Town had gotten quite a lot of reputation. Some people called them monsters because someone in their town had almost completely destroyed the planet. Others simply made fun of them saying that a little girl could totally achieve more than the Mafia, and the Mafia didn’t want to be seen as weak!

At first nobody knew where the two girls had gone. It all started with The Empress, once the issues caused by the cops ended she went back looking for the timepieces and heard from someone called Shady Sunburnt, a thief that explored weird places and that was looking for work from the Nyakuza, about the possible whereabouts of the kid, apparently she had ended up in a haunted forest far away from any city.

The Mafia Men couldn’t find Mu anywhere they looked, but Oldster, a resident of Mafia Town told them she saw her disappear with a spooky alien one day, he also saw some weird blue hedgehog running around like crazy.

Some Mafia goons, not trusting Oldster's word, decided to hire a man called Sam the Detective to look for Mu, who ended up sending them a letter telling them that Mu had gone to the Subcon Forest. After that, Sam the Detective was never heard of or seen ever again.

They had the location of the girl and knew how to get there, everything was ready, except for one thing, they didn’t want to go to the forest alone, the Mafia goons were too scared.

The plan had to be delayed for a while, that is until they were approached by the Nyakuza. The Mafia, known by their races powered by rockets and pyrotechnics used for huge events, had control of the production of most rockets in the planet lately, and the Nyakuza, who used rocket launchers for weapons, went looking to threaten them to give them more rockets. The Mafia heard about their plan to invade the forest and told them they could team up to go inside the forest together. The Nyakuza would get rockets, scooters and any other equipment the Mafia could provide, and the Mafia would get help from the cats working under the jewelry’s payroll.

At first The Empress was dubious about the whole thing but after a while she accepted, some people used to say that most cats that entered the forest would get cursed and turn into bush cats tired into the forest, which sounded like a lot of nonsense, but some cats were scared themselves so maybe having a back up would calm them out.

They agreed to help each other, the Mafia would go for Mu, and the Nyakuza would go for Hatkid. If there was something they would have to do together, they would do it. Bad guys, ready to fight, together!

The trip was really long though, they had decided to travel in the Mafia Airship and it turns out traveling in an Airship is usually really slow.

Mecha Boss felt he was going to fall asleep, sitting in the control room and looking at the sky through a window. He started to yawn, when suddenly from his mouth music had started to play really loud to the point he couldn’t even hear anything. The music could be heard out loud in the entire spaceship.

“What is going on?! Thor? Thor!” He tried to say, but his jaw was stuck. Mafia Gons had started to dance around the room at the rhythm of the music.

"Get up on the floor! Dancin' all night long! Get up on the floor! Dancin' in the moonlight gazing at the stars so bright holding you until the sunrise sleeping until midnight! Dancin!"

After a couple of minutes, he managed to close his mouth by force and the music had finally stopped. Angrily he stood up and went directly to the table where Thor was at while playing cards with some of the goons.

“You! What is even the meaning of this?!”

“The meaning of what, sir?”

“The music! Why did that music start playing out loud from nowhere! What was all that for?”

“Oh, that was just the music player I installed you, sir.”

“Why would you even install a music player inside of me, Thor?!”

“So we could play some music and have our bingo night here while we travel, no?” Thor looked at Mecha Boss confused.

“No! There is going to be no bingo! No party! And no music! And now I want you to take that out from me as soon as you can!”

“Well…” Thor scratched his neck.

“What?”

“I kinda can’t do it without the tools I have at home.”

“Are you serious?”

“I mean, yeah, but it’s still a pretty cool feature, maybe we could play some games.”

“No! There isn’t going to be any games, there isn’t going to be any bingo, and there isn’t going to be any party–” He got interrupted again, when opened his mouth even more to yell, an announcer started to speak from his mouth.

“Hello there people! The Narrator speaking, today we are going to teach you what are the best mods for you to harvest tons of pons! Find out about this and more after these messages!”

Mecha Boss was finally able to close his mouth again and this time he just gave Thor one big angry scowl.

“Oh yeah, I might have installed a radio in there too.” He looked at him sheepishly.

***

Hatkid had just woken up and went to the TV in the room looking for something to watch and distract her mind with. There had to be something that would grab her attention somehow, right? She passed through several channels without paying too much attention to them.There was a comedy show that used to broadcast at that hour and she liked to watch at times.

“Hello, is TV broadcast on?” A Mafia Goon was talking to the camera wearing a lab coat and safety goggles. At his side there was a huge machine with interconnected pipes and tubes. Hatkid identified the machine as a particle accelerator.

“Mafia Scientist is going to do big investigation and create number 5 today. This creation is going to be big step for Mafia!” The goon started pressing some buttons in the accelerator’s console.

“Mafia has brought all the materials to discover number 6!” Another goon with a lab coat came into the screen with a bucket with several things on it and put it on the table.

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“What? Take that away! Mafia is creating number 5!”

“Oh, Mafia thought there would be a big discovery today.”

“No, discovery of number 6 before creation of number 5 could be dangerous!”

“Mafia brought several things that could lead to discovery of number 6! Like small green flower!” The goon showed a clover leaf in his hand. The first goon looked at the clover curiously.

“Hmm, will flower be good enough for discovery of number 5 too?

“No, Leaf flower has 4 petals.” The goon threw the clover on the floor and took out a triangle instrument. “But Mafia also has funny triangle!”

“Will triangle work for big discovery?”

“No, triangle has 3 sides.” He threw the triangle along with the clover. “But Mafia has also very big coin!”

“And will coin work?”

“No, coin has only 2 sides.” He threw the coin as well. “But Mafia also has poker dice.”

“Stop fooling around! Mafia has to focus on discovery of number 5 first!” The Goon with the goggles got interrupted, suddenly, the particle accelerator started to tremble so strongly it moved the whole room around it.

“No! It is not possible! Mafia did all the correct calculations!” He looked back at the goon with the bucket. “How many sides does poker dice have?”

“Uh… 6?”

“NOOOO!” The particle accelerator overheated and then everything in the room exploded.

“PLEASE WAIT, WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.” A message on the TV showed. Hatkid just changed the channel.

Snatched had arrived on the ship and passed through the small hallway from her bedroom to the main room, there, he saw her watching TV, laying down on her pillow.

It seemed Hatkid hadn’t noticed him arriving. Snatcher looked back at the TV.

“Please! Erick! I know that it was the accident I caused that got you killed, but please let me go!” "On the TV, there was a show playing. In the middle of a forest, a guy was on his knees, trying to argue with a ghost. 'I signed your contract and gave you my soul! Now, I just want to get out of here, please!'

“Hmm, it is true that you have done my evil biddings as a ghost!” The Ghost replied back to him, he looked like a normal guy, but mostly translucent. “You could say that after you have gone all the way to do my evil beddings, you have repaid the debt you gained when you killed me, and I could give you your soul back again!”

“Yes, please. I’m really, really sorry for all of what happened.” The guy on his knees was already crying, looking desperate.

“But why would I even get rid of you after you have proven to be so useful to me? I think I’m just going to keep asking you to do jobs for the rest of your life!”

“What? But… that is not really fair! Please, let me go!”

“Fair? Of course it is fair! After all, you took away my life, so now I am going to keep using yours! Besides, how could I say goodbye to my old good best pal? We are going to have so many adventures, and we are going to cause so much mayhem, together!”

“NOOOO!”

The scene finally ended and a theme song started playing, along with the title card of the show with heavy guitars. “My Life As A Minion! I accidentally killed my best friend and now his ghost forces me to do his evil bidding!”

“What on earth are you watching, kid?” Snatcher looked at Hakid in confusion. Was that what kids used to watch on TV?

Hatkid looked back at him with a tired face. She had just woken up after all. What did he even want now?

“Well, no time to explain! Come, quick! The forest is in trouble and I need your help!”

“Eh.” She just turned around leaning back on the pillow.

“Come on kid, I need you awake and sharp! People are in danger! Let’s go, in and out, twenty minute adventure and then you can come back!” Hatkid stood up and after rubbing her eyes and did a captain salute. If the forest was in danger, she was ready to fight!

They teleported over using Hatkid’s trusty incantation spell that she always used to teleport and appeared in the forest.

Hatkid looked around at what was happening and she saw… a group of Subcondites having a snowball fight.

“It seems a civil war has been unleashed between the minions, and now there is no way to stop them!” Snatcher faked an alarmed expression and turned back to Hatkid. Who seemed to be just confused as a few of the minions who didn’t seem to be why they were ordered to have a snowball fight.

“Uh…” Hatkid was about to turn around to go back home, when a snowball hit her head. She turned around and so did a Subcondite who seemed to be laughing, or at least it sounded like they were laughing.

“Hmmph!” She armed a snowball herself and threw it back to the Subcondite, but she failed the shot when another ball had hitten her in the back of her head, she turned around and saw Snatcher whistling while looking away.

“It is on!” She exclaimed, and started throwing several snowballs around, thanks to her timestop hat, she had the advantage. In a few minutes the forest had become a battlezone where nobody could be safe.

Once Hatkid started to laugh again, Snatcher finally sat down close by the area so he could go back to reading his book, now that his mission had been accomplished.

What was his mission though? Well it was all part of his plan for revenge of course! It was just a matter of finding a weak spot in her attack patterns for the next time she confronted him, besides, if she kept playing without gloves, she would probably get a cold or something! It was all completely calculated in his plan to make the Kid suffer!

On the other side of the forest, Mu was finishing burying all the ouija boards the cultits had brought in to communicate with the dead. Snatcher would always end up being called and it annoyed him, so all the boards had to be hidden away. It took her a while but she finally finished, and at the end it left her completely exhausted.

“So we meet again, kid with the mustache!” A male voice said to her while she stood up and cleaned herself from the dirt. She turned around to see… the former Mafia Boss in a robot body, along with tons of Mafia goons and a tall, evil looking cat lady, as well as a huge herd of black cats behind them on scooters and rocket launchers on their backs.

Mustache Girl looked at the huge group in horror, unable to say a single word.

"It's time for us to handle some loose ends." Mecha Boss announced with a big smirk on his face.

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