[Deleted]

"Cool!" Piped up Daisy while busily rummaging through a trash pile, "I knew you'd do a great job scouting ahead for us! I just knew it!" Daisy beamed with pride, not because of anything Skull Kid had said of course, but because she was obviously a natural enough leader to have guessed what the Kid would be good at before he'd even said anything. Yep, she was a born commander alright; pretty soon, she'd be leading some kind of army round Life Sphere Central and she'd take her march her forces to go save the world - not Mario, not Sonic, Daisy Bloom would eventually be the Hero of Li.

"Me, well, I basically kick butt," She said without even a hint of modesty, "I'm athletic, I like sports. Also, I trained in a martial arts technique from each of the four kingdoms that made up Sarasaland... my original home, y'know, before it was destroyed. The techniques use mystic abilities of the four elements: fire, earth, air and water. With focus, I can float in mid-air, drop like a boulder, ride the wind and even breathe flames." She said it all matter-of-factly, as if it could be done by anyone. While she bragged, the former princess spotted a used can discarded among one of the trash piles and picked it up, testing its weight, as an idea to show off her skills came to her mind.

"But that's not all," She said as she stood up, "Watch this, Kid!" She tossed the can up in the air and took a step back, watching it reach its peak before it dropped back down towards the ground. She waited until the timing was just right, and brought her leg around in a sweeping kick that connected her foot with the can. It went shooting off and ricocheted against a wall with a small metallic clunk. Daisy beamed triumphantly, giving a victory pose for Skull Kid's benefit.

"Not bad, eh?" She said, winking at Skull Kid, "It takes timing, co-ordination, and a lot of soccer practice to get good at that. Now it's your turn to show me what ya got, Kid!" She walked over to retrieve the battered can and held it up high in the air.

"C'mon," She said challengingly, "Think you can knock this out of the air with a dart before it hits the ground if I throw it? I'll give you to the count of three... Got your horn ready? OK, One...

Two...

THREE!"

[Mr. Game & Watch]

---((MOD POST))---

As the can flew into the sky, a louder sound of clanking metal arose from a heap of the junk near Daisy. It raddled for a good a second or so until a gray figure rivalling the size of Skullkid leapt out of the junk. It appeared to be an anthropomorphized mouse. It landed on its two feet once it fell to the ground not too far from where it emerged only the ground was much more solid and a lot less unstable. It wiped out a pair of triangular sunglasses and quickly placed them on its face, preferably its eyes. There wasn’t much sun in the alley way, so the creature obviously was wearing them more for their look than their function.

“Eh, eh, what are you two doing snooping around my collection here” the creature that anyone with a Mushroom Kingdom background could identify as a Mouser spoke in a rather hasty tone. “If you’re gonna be browsing around its gonna cost yah” he proposed.

[Deleted]

Daisy's answer was very enthusiastic, to Skull Kid's surprise. She exclaimed "I knew you would do a good job scouting ahead for us!" which really made him feel useful and needed. She then went on to explain her abilities to him. She was very athletic, which made her strong, quick, and balanced, but her abilities were more on the magical side, or so it seemed to Skull Kid. She claimed her abilities were based on the four elements, allowing her to float, breathe flames, ride a boulder, and drop like the wind. Maybe he heard some of those wrong, but it still sounded pretty awesome, and would make her very capable in a fight.

Then she showed her physical capabilities by tossing a nearby can in the air and kicking it into a nearby wall with intense power. The kick itself was of impressive form and balance, but the strength behind it made it the impressive combat ability she planned to use it as. When Daisy asked Skull Kid to shoot another can out of the air with his darts, he panicked, not knowing how accurate he might be with a flying, moving target. She counted up to the toss: "One.....two.........THREE!"

The can left her hand and was in the air. Skull Kid swiftly drew his horn and was about to begin shooting darts when a commotion nearby distracted both Daisy and himself. A rat hoped out of a pile nearby. It's size was nothing of importance to Skull Kid, as any rat he had ever encountered was as big, if not larger, and far more threatening. A trait to note was it's ability to stand on two legs naturally, with fully functioning arms, not legs, on it's upper body. It whipped out a pair of black, pointy glasses and placed them on it's face, completing it's human/animal appearance.

"Eh, eh, why are you two doing snooping around my collection here?" the creature asked, looking slightly irritated. "If you're gonna be browsing around it's cost yah."

Skull Kid was not sure how to react. The rat either wanted payment or a fight. All because they were looking through piles of trash? He noted that this probably meant there was something worthwhile in these mounds of metal.

"We were just looking for anything useful in these piles here. They're just laying out in the open, and don't really belong to anyone, so we thought it would be okay." Skull Kid said this with a pretty neutral tone showing no fear of the rat, but also trying not to seem threatening himself though he may have come off as afraid due to the passiveness of the sentences.

[Deleted]

"Yeah, cool it cheese-for-brains!" Exclaimed Daisy, with a somewhat less neutral tone than Skull Kid's. As soon as he slipped on those gaudy sunglasses, she instantly recognised Mouser from her time spent in the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario & Co.

"Besides, what would we want with any of this junk? There's nothing useful here, and you expect us to pay you just for lookin' at it? Hah!" She threw her head back to give a full-bodied, derisive "Hah" with her hands fixed to her hips.

"I'll bet you probably couldn't tell us what most of this stuff is anyway..." She peered at the enlarged rodent searchingly with one eye closed. Even if she was wrong, and the rat could identify certain items among the trash heaps, it would mean that they had stumbled upon a handy guide who will have already done the work of searching through the piles for them.

[Mr. Game & Watch]

---((MOD POST))---

The rat glanced at the both of them, giving them an intense glare underneath his sunglasses, which wouldn’t be too visible to either of them. He chose the Skullkid to respond to first, for no specific reason. “That’s where you’re wrong straw hat, this here pile belongs to me. It took me quite a bit of time to collect all these Robotnik-bots and even more to make sure they stay disabled” his tone seemed none too threatening as he pointed to the piles of robotic wreaks that lied around him.

Though his tone quickly changed when Daisy began to play the role of the bad cop. “Hey, hey, hey, calm it down a notch there princess. This here ain’t no junk. Do you even know how difficult it is to even get your hands on scrap metal this nice? There ain’t no mining industry, so metal’s not so cheap. Besides, do you really think my comrades and I would stick our necks out for products we didn’t know anything about?” After he finished speaking more rattling sounds could be heard echoing through the alleyway. It sounded like way more than just one other mouser. “We wouldn’t attack the big egg for cheap merch.” The mouser grew a huge grin on his face as he stared at the both of them.

“So, what’ll it be? Yah walking or yah buying?” he asked with his hands behind his back and displaying a fairly neutral face which matched his tone.

[Deleted]

Daisy was very forward and non-neutral when she spoke to the rat, but he didn't seem too upset, he simply valued his piles of metal, but was willing to sell it, for a price.

"We might be willing to buy, if there's even anything useful here." Skull Kid spoke like a customer in a store might, inquiring about the wares of this particular vendor. "Why don't you tell us what some of this stuff is, and how it might prove helpful to us?"

Skull Kid noted the rat's rat pals emerge from elsewhere in the metal mounds. He decided this heightened the chances of a fight, as the rat wanted to level the playing field. To avoid fighting when it wasn't necessary, Skull Kid grabbed a random chunk of metal near his right hand and held it out in front of him. "What's this do? It looks interesting." he lied, not having looked at the piece at all before now, as he cradled it in both hands.

[Deleted]

Daisy simply crossed her arms and let Skull Kid do the talking at this point. She, too, had heard the scurrying of what sounded like other Mousers nearby. She may have been outspoken, but she wasn't stupid enough to let her mouth get them into a situation where they were outnumbered against hostiles in a dark alleyway. This close to Robotnik's tower, they couldn't afford to cause too much of a commotion and risk alerting security at their destination before they'd even approached it.

She stifled back an amused snort as Skull Kid picked up a random piece of junk, feigning interest for the sake of diplomacy, and continued to express a look of mild agitation at Mouser just to keep up appearances.

[Mr. Game & Watch]

As soon as Skull Kid agreed to the Mouser’s offer he grew a large yellow toothed grin. “I knew you’d see it that way. You seem like quite the business man, straw hat.” He spoke happily as the echoing sounds of clanking metal scurried away.

Skull Kid’s quick search of the nearby pile had acquired him the dislodged head of an Egg Pawn. It was an orange half-spherical object that would’ve had glowing blue eyes if it were attached to a power source or its original body. “That right there is an Egg Pawn’s head, its Eggman’s main infantry. They ain’t too tough, but they don’t take much resources to build either. It ain’t going to do yah any good, unless of course you’re planning to dress up for Halloween.”

“If you’re looking for something to be helpful, I would need to know what the two of yah are up to. I can’t recommend anything for yah unless I know what yah need it for” the rat explained simply as he shifted his attention over to the tower behind them. “I gonna take a guess that your heading over to the round man’s tower aren’t yah?” he asked curiously as he stroked his chin. "If you're doing what I think you're doing then maybe we can work something out."

[Deleted]

The rat seemed a lot more friendly now that he knew Skull Kid was interested. He was grinning, and although it was not a pretty sight, it meant they were in a much better situation now than they were several seconds ago. The rat began to expound upon the random piece of junk and it's uses. When he found out it was the head of one of Dr. Robotnik's robots, Skull Kid held it a bit more distant from himself, and once the rat declared it useless, he threw it back in the pile.

"You said a minute ago that you attacked Dr. Robotnik. How did you beat him if he's so powerful?" Skull Kid dodged the rat's question about the intentions of their trip, not wanting to give away any information about their mission. "Did you use any of the tools in these piles to infiltrate his base, or stop his army or robots? Anything that could accomplish that would be of great interest to us." he finished, dreaming of the rat pulling out some remote control that would basically do the mission for them.

[Deleted]

Careful there, Kid, Daisy thought to herself. He was on a roll, sure, so she wasn't planning on interrupting him but she was worried about giving the giant rat too much information all at once. She gave the situation the benefit of the doubt for now and looked over to Mouser for an answer to Skull Kid's question. She raised an eyebrow inquisitively - how the rat reacted and responded next would affect Daisy's next move. Mouser had mentioned about somehow keeping the Eggbots deactivated. If he went back on this now, she would know something fishy was going on.

She waited, and continued to listen in on the bartering between Skull Kid and Mouser.

[Mr. Game & Watch]

---((MOD POST))---

The Mouser squeaked as he laughed at Skull Kid’s question. “Infiltrate his base? Kid we fished these Egg bots out of the tower. We didn’t use no tools. We made some noise and they came out running. Everything here now is the corpses of his robots, no more, no less. We reprogramed one of those bots to radio back to the tower that everything was well and then we scrapped’em.”

The Mouser then grew a smile as he was quick to figure out what Skull Kid was intending on doing. “Look the two of you venturing off to assault that tower is gonna get the both of you vaped, but this is where our paths intertwine. Bowser would love nothing more but to weaken his enemy, how about we cut ourselves a deal here. Me and loyal comrades here can sneak in and cut the power lines, leaving the tower completely vulnerable. Then, you two can do whatever damage you plan on doing there. I’ll do it with no extra charge” he spoke with a wide grin and a hand held up displaying that he swore to an oath. “Don’t look at it as us doing you a favour, its more the other way around.”

[Deleted]

"Great" Skull Kid thought to himself. The rat easily figured out their plans after what had been said. He clearly hadn't been as smooth as he thought. However, the guy did offer to help them out by cutting the power in Dr. Robotnik's tower, saying he worked for Bowser, who would also like to see Dr. Robotnik sent down a few notches. This doctor sure had made a lot of enemies in a short time.

"Sure, I guess that would be alright." He shrugged his shoulders slightly and looked back at Daisy, searching for reassurance in her face and hoping she would say something confident to this villainous rodent.

[Deleted]

"Woah woah, hang on a second," Daisy interrupted and placed a hand Skull Kid's shoulder, "Mouser, we're gonna need a second to talk this through. Come on Kid, over here." She walked Skull Kid back along the alleyway to the furthest point away from Mouser in the hope of getting enough distance to be out of the rodent's earshot. She spoke in a lowered tone just to be on the safe side.

"Look, I don't know about this," She said while crouching down to meet Skull Kid's eye-level in height. "We said we'd even the playing field between the bad guys... we didn't say anything about taking one of them completely out of the game. That's totally fighting dirty, Kid. It's not right." She stood up and leant against the wall of the alley, folding her arms.

"Plus, I know Bowser. If we give him the slightest advantage, it'll be bad news for everybody. If we give him access to all of Robotnik's high-tech stuff, who knows what he'll be able to do? I say we turn it down. What do you think?"

[Deleted]

Daisy had a point. Skull Kid knew nothing about Robotnik or Bowser, but they clearly weren't quality guys. If given the opportunity and resources, they could probably do some pretty nasty stuff.

"Well, you know more about these guys than me, so I'll go with whatever you think is the best idea. But how are we to know that we're only evening the planting field? K. Rool could be planning to completely wipe out Robotnik's tower, or HE might want all of the technology to use against his enemies." Skull Kid explained this in as hushed a tone as he could muster. He watched as Tael floated around nearby, his multi-colored insides moving and pulsing as he hovered about. "I don't think we can trust any of them, but here we are doing a mission to get one of them ahead. And you know Bowser pretty well, but if K. Rool has been keeping up with these two so far, he will likely do some similarly bad stuff if he gains the advantage. If you're worried about gangs getting an advantage, you probably shouldn't have even gotten involved. But it's your call. I think that whatever goes down here today, we can handle it." He finished with a somewhat-smile and relinquished power of the decision to Daisy.

[Mr. Game & Watch]

---((MOD POST))---

“Sure, we ain’t anything if not flexible” the rat acknowledged Daisy’s inquiry. He kept his spiky toothed grin as the two of them left to discuss amongst themselves. He turned to the robotic remains of the Egg Pawns and tapped on one of the chrome skulls of the pawns. “Alright yah guys, we got some work ahead of us. There ain’t any room to mess this stuff up, so yah better be ready” he announced to his brethren as they scattered around the alley to form a complete group.

“Egg brain thinks he’s so smart, he hasn’t even seen what happens when yah mess with the rat” the mouser proclaimed to his audience while pointing to himself with a bright smirk. He had no doubt that the two would only come to the conclusion of wanting his help because as he saw it there was no other option.