Lemmy stumbled into his room and collapsed on the bed, thoroughly exhausted. It had been a long day. “I’ll get him next time,” he muttered before falling asleep.
The next morning, Lemmy awoke to the sound of his sister screaming in his ears. Well, not exactly in his ears. She was behind his bedroom door, but her voice was still loud enough to register on the Richter scale.
“Lemmy!” Wendy screeched. “Lemmy, you lunkhead! Wake up!”
He rolled out of bed and opened the door for Wendy. Cautiously, he opened the door.
“Well,” Lemmy yawned. “That’s a fine howdy do. What do you want?”
“Where were you yesterday?” she asked, or rather, yelled.
Lemmy yawned again. What could have possibly been so important as to get Wendy so riled up? True, that didn’t take much, but still. Before he had time to answer, she continued.
“You weren’t around to help with spring cleaning day! We had to clean the whole castle!”
“Oops,” Lemmy smacked his head. “I completely forgot-”
“That’s not good enough!” she whined. “Everyone except Larry, Morton, and I all found convenient excuses to be somewhere else. Roy said he had a class to go to,”
Lemmy stifled a laugh.
“Ludwig was inventing some new machine, and Iggy was off golfing!”
“Golfing?” he asked doubtfully.
“That was his excuse. What’s yours?” she demanded.
“For your information,” Lemmy said importantly, “I was launching my monthly assault on Mario.”
“Well, I could really have used some help!”
“What, is Princess Wendy above lowly spring cleaning duties?”
“No,” she moaned. “It was Morton I couldn’t stand! He wouldn’t stop talking! I had such a headache…”
“I pity you. Really. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s 7:30 AM and I believe I hear my bed still calling me.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” she said, grabbing his shell to prevent him from leaving. “I need your help today.”
“But I-”
“No buts. You are coming with me, right now.”
Lemmy gave up, defeated. He followed Wendy downstairs with a sigh.
Wendy told him more over breakfast.
“You see,” she began. “Today is the last day of this month. And, thanks to Bowser forcing us to do spring cleaning, I still haven’t attacked Mario yet.”
“What are you talking about?” Lemmy interrupted. “You had plenty of time during the other 30 days!”
“But I was going to come up with a plan yesterday, then execute it today!”
“But you knew King Dad was going to make us clean up.”
“True,” she admitted. “But I figured I would have a good enough excuse to ditch the spring cleaning! Except when Bowser saw that only three of us were left to do it…”
“He made you stay.”
“Exactly. He wouldn’t listen, and now I’m stuck with one day to execute a plan that I don’t have!”
“And where do I come into this?” Lemmy inquired, not really sure whether he wanted to know.
“Well,” Wendy smirked. “You are going to help me, along with Iggy.”
“But I-”
“Go get Iggy. NOW!”
Seeing that there was no way out, Lemmy reluctantly left the table and walked off towards Iggy’s room.
To his surprise, Lemmy found Iggy already awake. He only had to knock once.
“Come in.”
He came in and closed the door behind him.
“Hi Lemmy,” said Iggy. “What’s up?”
“The sky.”
“Ha ha. No, seriously, is something wrong?”
“Sort of,” Lemmy sighed. “Come with me, okay?”
Lemmy filled Iggy in on the way to Wendy’s doomship. Or airship, whatever you want to call it.
“Aww,” Iggy grumbled. “And I was gonna golf today.”
“Since when do you enjoy golfing, anyways?”
“Well, actually, I don’t.” He grinned. “It seemed to work on King Dad, though.”
Wendy was waiting for them at the docking bay.
“Come in,” she said, leading them to the bridge. “As you already know, you are here to help me attack Mario. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Attack Mario, kidnap Princess Peach and wreak some serious havoc while you’re at it! And don’t forget that you have to be back by tomorrow! Any questions?”
“And if we don’t choose to accept?” asked Iggy.
“Then I’ll lock you in a padded cell and force you to listen to Morton talk until you do accept.”
Lemmy and Iggy gulped.
“Who does what?” asked Lemmy.
“Well,” Wendy began, “Lemmy, you plan what to do, and Iggy, you help Lemmy follow through with his plan. As for me, I’ll come along to help you, and take credit for whatever you accomplish.”
“Great,” Lemmy rolled his eyes. “We work and you check up on us.”
“Yeah,” Wendy agreed. “That’s the basic concept.”
“Well, guess we’d better get to work,” he said.
“Oh joy,” Iggy muttered, as the two stepped up to the steering wheel of the enormous doomship.
***
The first thing that really hit them was the view.
“Wow,” Lemmy breathed. “You can see the whole Mushroom Kingdom from here!”
“Yeah,” agreed Iggy. “There’s Grass Land, and that’s Water Land over there!"
“And there's-”
“Peach’s castle.”
“Uh huh,” Lemmy answered dully, suddenly realizing for the first time what a job they might have ahead of them. If they only knew.
“Dang her!” Lemmy yelled suddenly. “Why does Wendy do this? She gets herself into huge messes, and then decides that she can’t deal with it. So what does she do? She finds someone else to dump her problems on! It’s not fair!”
Iggy was surprised at this. It wasn’t normally like Lemmy to be so aggressive.
“Life got fair?” Iggy asked. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Never mind,” Lemmy answered, suddenly drained. “Let’s get to it, we’ve got work to do.”
So Lemmy walked off to another room close by to create a plan. Iggy stayed at the bridge, staring at the controls. He would have to figure them out in the next half an hour or so if he was going to be able to control the doomship itself.
“Why couldn’t Lemmy have been the one to drive?” Iggy complained to himself. “I’m better at planning stuff out anyways. Even he knows that! I don’t even know what most of these buttons do.”
He grinned to himself.
“I guess I’ll have to find out.”
Lemmy wasn’t doing much better.
“Well, maybe we could disable the defense system and… no, that won’t work. Too heavily guarded. Hmm, maybe if the main power source was knocked out and… nope, there are always reserve supplies.”
He stopped for a moment.
“Ugh, this is harder than I thought it would be. Why couldn’t I be the one to carry out the plan? I don’t even think Iggy knows how to-”
He was stopped short however, because the doomship suddenly began spinning loops in the sky. The whole room was literally spinning. Lemmy suddenly found himself on the ceiling.
“WOAH!” was all he had the presence of mind to say. He was being repeatedly slammed against alternating sides of the small room he was in, first the wall, then the ceiling, then on the floor. And then all over again.
Wall.
“Aaah!”
Floor.
“Oomph!”
Another wall.
“Ugh,”
Ceiling.
Then everything stopped.
Lemmy lay on the floor panting, too out of breath to speak at all. His vision was a hazy blur, and there was at least three of everything he saw.
“Oooh,” he groaned, sitting up. He had a nasty bump on his head, along with other various bruises on his body.
The world was finally beginning to come into focus again, so he stood up, dizzy.
Wanting an explanation, he walked in a sort of zigzag pattern towards the bridge.
“Iggy,” he gasped. “What… happened?” He noticed that his brother was also sporting a few new bruises and a black eye.
Iggy looked somewhat embarrassed.
“Eh heh, Well, you see…” he began. "I don’t really know how to fly one of these things. I didn’t know what any of the buttons did, so I, uh, just kind of pushed a whole bunch of different buttons to find out.”
“You what?!” exclaimed Lemmy. “You could have killed both of us!”
“Well, at least we’re ok, right? It could have been worse. It’s not going to happen again, I swear!”
“That’s right, it won’t happen again. I’m driving from here on.”
“But-” Lemmy’s look stopped him dead.
“Alright, alright,” Iggy said. “I didn’t want to anyways.”
And with that, Iggy headed off to the room in which Lemmy was previously.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Lemmy sighed.
Some time later Iggy stepped back onto the bridge.
“Well?” inquired Lemmy. “What’s the plan?”
“First, you need to know exactly how hard I worked on this,” said Iggy. “It takes a very superior mind to think up such a complex, diverse-”
“Alright, I get the point,” interrupted Lemmy. “So I ask again. What’s the plan?”
“We cloak the doomship so no one can see it. Then, we fire some sort of bomb at the power plant. While the whole Mushroom Kingdom is in chaos, we sneak into the castle, snatch Peach, and get out of there! It should be very dark without any lights at all, but according to my calculations, we must hurry. We have to do it all in about five minutes.”
“Why five minutes?”
“Because that’s how long it’ll take for the emergency power to kick in. Then, the lights will come back on, and we’ll be busted.”
“Okay, then, let’s get this show on the road! Iggy, when I give you the signal, you press that button,” Lemmy indicated a large red button.“That will engage the targeting system. When the target falls on Peach’s power plant, press it again to fire!”
And with this, Lemmy turned to the main screen.
“Screen on,” he said. The screen snapped on, expanding the already huge view threefold.
“Cool!” exulted Iggy.
“Set direct course for the Mushroom power plant,” ordered Lemmy. Amazingly, the doomship began to do so. Lemmy relaxed a little, they were on their way. This feeling only lasted about two minutes however.
Suddenly, the whole doomship shuddered. The force reverberated through the bridge and nearly knocked Iggy off his feat.
“Wha?” Iggy stammered. “What was that?” Amazingly, the ship responded.
“There is a fractured propeller on deck three,” the disembodied voice of the doomship informed them. “If the problem is not fixed in approximately 30 seconds, it will cease to function.”
“Does that mean the whole thing will fall out of the air?” Iggy panicked.
“I think so. It must have been your previous loop-de-loops with the ship that broke it.”
Iggy gulped, because there was suddenly a countdown on the screen. 30… 29…
“What’s happening here?” Wendy’s voice suddenly growled from behind them.
“Aaah!” they screamed.
“First I end up doing somersaults in the air, and now it feels like there was just an earthquake! What happened?” She sounded angry and there was a little vein popping out on her forehead.
“There’s a broken propeller!” said Iggy.
“And if it isn’t fixed in...” Lemmy glanced at the timer. “twenty seconds, we’re gonna crash!”
“WHAT?” Wendy screamed. “Computer, engage auto repair!”
“Auto repair engaged. Will take approximately three minutes.”
“But we don’t have three minutes!” Lemmy cried. The timer kept ticking.
15… 14… 13…
“We have to get out of here!” Wendy exclaimed. She hurried over to the escape hatch and grabbed a parachute. Iggy and Lemmy did the same.
“I can’t get it on!” wailed Iggy as Wendy jumped out the hatch.
10… 9…
Lemmy, who already had his parachute on, struggled to help Iggy get his on. To his dismay, it soon became tangled.
6… 5…
“Go on!” Iggy ordered. “While you still can!”
“But I can’t leave you!”
4… 3…
“Go ON!”
And with that, Iggy pushed his brother out of the escape hatch. Lemmy had no choice but to pull the cord on his own parachute. It ballooned out of the package and he began to float down.
Iggy struggled furiously with his parachute, now a tangled mess.
2… 1…
“Noooooo!” Lemmy cried. He could only watch as the huge doomship plummeted towards the ground.
***
On the way down, Lemmy looked around. All he could see for miles was a vast desert. There was a huge expanse of mountains in the distance, and a few rocky hills scattered around the desert itself. The whole place seemed abandoned.
By the time Lemmy floated to the ground, Wendy had already landed. She looked relieved to see him.
“Whew!” she sighed. “I thought we were done for up there!”
She looked up in the direction of the doomship. It was gone, but her eyes were still aimed skyward.
“Lemmy,” said Wendy slowly. “Where’s Iggy?”
“Well, um,” Lemmy felt like he was going to be sick. “Iggy’s not here.”
“Well I can see that. Where is he? He’s not… He did make it down, right?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud, but Wendy only had to see the look on his face to figure it out.
“No,” her voice wavered. Her eyes voiced a silent plea. “No. He’s not dead. Tell me he’s alright. Please…”
“I couldn’t… couldn’t help,” his voice cracked. He couldn’t say it, or he knew he’d fall apart. “I tried… not enough time…”
He clenched his fists in anger suddenly. He hated everyone and everything right then. He was mad at Wendy, for bringing this upon him. At himself, for not being able to help his brother when he really needed it. At Iggy, for pushing him out, when there was a chance he could have helped. A chance…
Lemmy held back tears. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to think this way, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. He ran through the last couple of seconds on the doomship in his mind. Through his blurring vision, he could almost see Iggy trying to get his parachute strings untangled.
He closed his eyes abruptly. He didn’t want to see any more. But the still fresh memories could not be shut out.
He remembered trying to help. How Iggy had saved his life, but Lemmy couldn’t help him. He couldn’t help… couldn’t help. The ship with his brother on it had fallen right out of the sky, and Lemmy had been powerless to stop it.
It was all too much. He turned away. He didn’t want Wendy to see him cry.
He could hear Wendy crying, cursing at herself behind him. He guessed that she must have felt just about how he did right at that moment. There were so many emotions and thoughts, all racing at a mile a minute inside his head. Sadness, anger, and regret were all jumbled together in a confusing mess.
“It’s all my fault!” Wendy sobbed. “It’s all my fault, for forcing you two into this! I’m sorry,” she took a deep breath of air. “I am so sorry,”
It was the most sincere apology that Lemmy had ever heard from anyone, let alone Wendy. He knew he should be trying to comfort her, but he couldn’t even concentrate any more.
“It’s not your fault,” was all he could manage. “I need to be alone for a while…”
And with that, he began to trudge off. All he knew was that he had to be alone. Each step felt like his foot weighed a ton. He took about three steps, stumbled, and collapsed on the hot sand. He didn’t even know where he was. They were both lost. Lost in some sort of barren wasteland, without even the vaguest idea of how to get home.
Soon, he was vaguely aware that Wendy had sat down beside him. He was too confused to hear what she was saying, but her soft words comforted him. His crying slowed to a soft whimper.
He soon drifted off to sleep, shrouded by a depressing sense of hopelessness.
***
The next morning, Lemmy woke with a start.
“What?”
Why wasn’t he in his room? Where was his bed? Everything was wrong. He sat up and looked around. He saw miles of sand in every direction. Wendy was curled up asleep a meter or so away from him.
“Oh no,” he muttered. So it wasn’t all a bad dream. Iggy really was… gone. He and Wendy really were stranded in the middle of nowhere.
He shut his eyes again. Maybe he was still dreaming. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed long enough, he’d wake up in his bed. He closed his eyes and kept them that way for a long time. Eventually, he fell asleep again. His body may not have needed sleep, but his mind was still exhausted.
It was quite a while later when he woke up again. He probably wouldn’t have even gotten up at all if it weren’t for Wendy.
“Lemmy?” she whispered. “Lemmy, wake up.”
“Mmmph,” he grunted. He never wanted to get out of bed again. But then again, he wasn’t sleeping in a bed, so he slowly sat up.
“Come on, sleepy head,” she prodded. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible. Wherever this place happens to be.”
“What?” Lemmy questioned, getting to his feet. “You mean we’re not in Desert Land?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“How exactly can you tell? It looks for all the world like Desert Land to me.”
“See those mountains in the distance? They are very far away, but we can still see them clearly. That means that they’re probably huge.”
“So?”
“Desert Land has no huge mountains like those. I don’t know where we are, but it is not Desert Land.”
“How fast did that doomship of yours travel?” Lemmy wondered aloud. “How could we have ended up way out here when we were only in the air for about five minutes?”
“Well, Ludwig designed it to be as aerodynamic as possible, reducing any resistance. This makes it very fast, so… I would estimate about 40 thousand miles per hour.”
“That’s your idea of an estimate? You just pull all this info out of thin air?”
“Hey, some of us actually pay attention in class. Also, Ludwig told me how fast he thought it was capable of going when he gave me the ship’s blueprints.”
“But you just said-”
“Okay, okay, so it was Ludwig’s estimate, not mine. But either way, I still think it’s best to get out of here, soon.”
“Right,” agreed Lemmy. “We’d better get going. Those mountains seem as good of a direction as any.”
“I don’t know. Those are a long ways away, Lemmy.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I guess not.”
And with that, they were on their way. The mountains seemed a long way off. And they were. Neither of them did much talking for a long time after that. They trudged on endlessly, never stopping to rest. Perhaps if there had been any food to speak of, the two Koopalings might have rested for a while. But there wasn’t, and so there was no reason to stop.
The hours passed by. Every now and then, one of them would look up a little, but the mountains never seemed to be getting any closer. The sun beat down on them mercilessly, and fatigue began to weigh down their legs. Each step on the scorching sand was painful.
“Come on Lemmy,” panted Wendy much later. “Can’t we stop for a few minutes? I’m sure I’ll collapse if I have to stand a minute longer.”
Lemmy hesitated. There was no shade, so even a rest wouldn’t keep them from the sun’s blistering rays. Those mountains still seemed awfully far away, too. They would need every bit of distance they could get if they wanted to make it at all.
On the other hand, he wasn’t even sure if his own legs would support him much longer if they went on like this.
“Okay,” Lemmy answered wearily. He sat down abruptly, and Wendy collapsed on the sand.
“Ooh,” she gasped. “We’ve been walking since we woke up,”
Lemmy was surprised. Daybreak had been a long time ago. Had they really been walking for that long? He berated himself. He should have known not to push their limits like that.
They waited about half an hour, and then pressed on when they felt ready to walk again. The walk was more or less uneventful. Apart from the sand, the only thing they saw was the occasional cactus. Wendy almost fell over when she thought she saw something move.
“Whoa!” she cried suddenly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw…” she trailed off. Already it seemed more like an illusion. They kept walking.
Suddenly, something whizzed by them, blowing a cloud of dust in its wake. The dust blocked his vision a little, but Lemmy caught a glimpse of feathers. It continued on its speedy path.
“What was that, a roadrunner?” Lemmy demanded of no one. Whatever it was seemed to be coming around for another pass. It zipped closer to them than before, and came to a dead stop right in front of them.
“That’s it!” Wendy exclaimed. “That’s the thing I saw!”
This bird-like creature stood about a foot taller than both of the Koopas. It had two powerful legs and was covered in feathers. Atop its long neck rested a small head with a beak and two intelligent-looking eyes. Its two feathery wings somehow didn’t look as if they were meant for flight.
“It’s…” Wendy examined the creature carefully. “An Ostro. That’s what it looks like.”
The Ostro curiously tilted its head at them, as if to ask, “What are you doing here?”
“Maybe we could eat it,” suggested Lemmy hungrily. “We haven’t eaten for at least 24 hours, and I’m starving!”
“We certainly will not!” Wendy practically screamed. “How could you kill something this sweet?”
“Well, gee. That makes perfect sense,” Lemmy rolled his eyes. “If we are going to starve to death, we probably shouldn’t live if its at the expense of something cute, should we?”
“Oh, shut up. We could use it for something else. Did you see how fast this thing was running?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, maybe we could ride it! Wouldn’t that be better than walking?” She turned to the Ostro. “You’d give us a ride, wouldn’t you?”
As if to answer, it lowered its long neck. It was too tall to climb onto, but they could use its head as a sort of ladder.
“See?” said Wendy. “It even wants to help us.”
Having no better ideas, Lemmy followed his sister onto the back of the tall bird.
“Are you sure this is safe?” he asked uneasily as he sat down behind Wendy.
“Nope,” responded Wendy immediately. “But now we don’t have to do the walking anymore! Isn’t that right, Ossie?”
“Now it has a name?”
“Ignore him, Ossie,” Wendy told the Ostro. She patted its head lovingly. “Now, can you take us to those mountains over there?”
The Ostro, or Ossie, as I suppose we must now call him, responded by heading off towards the mountains at top speed. Unfortunately, with two Koopas now weighing him down, Ossie’s “top speed” was only about the average running speed of a Koopa. Still, even Lemmy had to admit to himself that it was better than walking.
This didn’t solve all of their problems, not by a long shot. The sun was still hot and hunger still tore at their insides. But at least now they wouldn’t have to worry about transportation.
Their spirits now slightly higher, the two Koopalings tried to enjoy themselves as they rode on the back of their newfound friend.
Even though it was clear that Wendy was enjoying herself, one single thought kept returning to Lemmy’s mind.
It was Iggy. He still couldn’t bring himself to believe that his brother was gone. The two had been like best friends from the beginning, always looking out for each other. The best of times, the worst of times, they had always come through together.
And now, Lemmy thought to himself sadly, Iggy was gone. Only in memories did he still exist.
He knew that he shouldn’t raise false
hopes for himself. But still, he couldn’t help nursing the small hope that
his brother had somehow survived the crash. That he really was still alive
out there somewhere.
Somewhere…
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