[center][b]Mario[/b][/center]
[b]"It's through that abandoned construction site, y'know? I bet we could find, like...giant metal piping there."[/b]

“Giant...Metal...Piping” Mario thought, unsure whether Max intended to use such vocabulary to convince him to come with her to some abandoned construction site where they probably should not be in the first place. If Maxine would have added ‘Green’ to what she had said, Mario probably could not take such a blatant reference to that infamous plumber, who, well, made his life difficult. Mario took a couple deep breaths before he answered Max so that he could get [i]the[/i] Mario out of his system.

“So, where exactly is this so-called “short-cut”? Where my cousins live, there is a road called “Short Cut Road. Only probably was that it was scary as heck to drive on and it most definitely did not make the trip any shorter.”

[b]"That's all fenced in, you know," [/b] an unfamiliar voice said. [b]"But I heard there's a section that you can climb through without messing with the barbed wire."[/b]

When Mario turned to see who had spoken those words, he saw a Latino kid walking towards both himself and Max. Mario had seen the kid before, but he could not place his thumb on his name because he seemed like he was a least a grade or two below Mario. It was right on the tip of his tongue, yet Mario still could not remember it.

“Did anyone ever tell you that eavesdropping is never polite? And what are you talking about jumping over fences, um, um...” Mario said to Theo, still blanking on his name. Mario quickly leaned his head over to Max’s ear and whispered, “What’s his name again?”