By Pteryx
11
A Third Truth Revealed
As the threesome continued towards Paradise Bay, they encountered more and more Koopas, probably sent by King Koopa in an increased effort to stop them before they could get to the Valley of Bowser. The rocky, hilly, broken terrain was tough to move through, and the fact that it was all the same shade of brown and covered in thick fog made it nearly impossible to see clearly. It was a good thing for them that none of the enemies were brown! Eventually, the sun began to set, causing it to get a little dark, making it even harder to see their way to the bay. Lakitu, Yoshi, and Luigi were forced to feel their way through the rough terrain and the rougher enemies. After a while, Luigi began to yawn.
"It's getting late," he complained sleepily, "and I'm getting too tired to walk."
"But we're running out of time!" Lakitu insisted/ "You don't want your brother to take his last bath in a lava pit, do you? We'vegot to keep moving! Come on!"
"But I'm too tired..."
"Yoshi no tired," Yoshi said. "Get on. Yoshi carry Luigi so Luigi can sleep." Luigi quickly accepted the invitation, and the trio continued. After Luigi was sound asleep, though, Yoshi heard some rocks getting disturbed by footsteps. He told this to Lakitu, who suggested that they just watch their backs and keep going.
Lakitu had a weird feeling inside. It was a gentle, comfortable feeling, but new nonetheless. A growing warmth was soothing him all over, giving him pleasure but confusing him at the same time. Why have I started feeling so good? he wondered. The only thing I can think of that was even vaguely similar to this was... no, no, no, that can't be it. It'simpossible! Tineeko fell all the way from Upper Sky Land. He can't be alive! Besides, we may have become good friends rather fast, but I never felt anything this strong with him.
After a bit, the trio found that they had stumbled into what could be called a small, straight cave passage with no roof. Since it was a dead end, they tried to go back. Unfortunately, three Dino-Rhinos and twelve Dino-Torches blocked the way! Lakitu tried to find a block with a power item in it, but only found a floodlight block that followed them around once it was punched. The scowling faces of the grey, growling, rhinolike dinosaurs were now clearly visible, as was the fact that the three adventurers were trapped!
As the Dino-Rhinos slowly advanced, forcing Lakitu and Yoshi to back up until the wall was just behind them, Luigi opened his eyes.
"yawn... What's going on?" When he saw the situation, he woke up immediately. "Leapin' lasagna! How did we get in this mess?"
"I'm not completely sure," replied Lakitu, "but I wish I knew a way out!" Suddenly, a turtleshell dropped out of the mist above, hit the biggest Dino-Rhino right on the head, bounced from there onto the other two, then sped along the ground knocking over each of the twelve Dino-Torches in turn. As Lakitu stared first at the unconscious dinosaurs and then at the blue Koopa shell, he said, "There's only one person I ever knew who could throw shells that well."
Then, the threesome heard a familiar voice: "Now, which way do we need to go to get to Paradise Bay?"
Lakitu's eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he stared in the direction he heard the voice come from. In the fog, a white shape began to come down into the light. When it was finally close enough to make out, the threesome saw that it was Tineeko without his shell, wearing a cape, and driving a cloud that also contained Toad!
"Tineeko?!" Lakitu blurted in complete astonishment. "Oh my stars! Is that really you?"
"Lakitu! You wouldn't believe how much I missed you!"
"Oh yes I would," Lakitu replied as he took Tineeko's hand in both of his.
"No, really! I missed you so much, I thought I heard you call out, 'Are you still there? Are you okay?' It seemed so real to me that I even answered." That sounded familiar to Lakitu. Didn't I have a dream like that? he thought.
"But how come Tineeko not die after fall?" Yoshi inquired.
"While I was falling, I thoght I was doomed until I saw a warp pipe below. I managed to position myself over it, then pulled into my shell. It's a good thing warps try to alter your speed until you're moving at a certain raite, because otherwise I would have come shooting out of the pipe in Ice Land a lot faster than I did."
"Ice Land?" Luigi asked in surprise. "You were in Ice Land?"
"Yeah. Anyway, I still wasn't in the warp long enough to keep it from throwing me about fifteen feet up, though, so the landing was a bit hard. After I figured out how to walk on the ice, I went to a nearby mushroom house to ask for help. The trouble was, nobody would listen to me and they went after me. It was hard to avoid both the Koopas and the angry mushrooms on that slippery ice. After a day or so, I found a warp to Pipe Land, where I soon got lost. I really wished you were there withme. I was so lonely for you, Isang a song intended to reach you, then cried. Fortunately, a mushroom who'dheard about you and me heard my sobbing and gave me a hand and showed me a pipe to Grass Land. I managed to convince Toad, who had finally heard about some of the good things we'd done, to help me find you. I figured that you'd get to Chocolate Island soon if you weren't there already, so I asked Toad if he knew how to get there quickly."
Toad then told the rest: "I brought Tineeko to a warp to this island like he asked, but then he asked me to come along. 'Thinkof just the three of them on that dangerous island all by themselves!' he said, so I came. We've been floating around this placefor a day now."
"It's a good thing you came" Lakitu said. "We could use all the help we can get."
Yoshi then yawned loudly. "Anyone tired as Yoshi?"
"I suppose it can't hurt if we all go to sleep," Luigi reasoned. "We do have two days to get there, according to Pyrime."
"Pyrime?!" Tineeko almost screamed. "You can't trust her, no matter what you did to her to make her talk! She lies constantly. She's even worse than Koopa! For all we know, Mario and the Princess could already be dead! How can we --" But Luigi and Yoshi were already sleeping like logs.
"Now what do we do?" asked Toad. "We can't just leave them here."
"I've got an idea," Lakitu answered. "Tineeko, get back in the cloud" (he had gotten out and put his shell back on while he was talking) "and lower it a bit so Luigi and Yoshi can be loaded."
"But who'll drive it?" Tineeko asked. "You told me yourself that a cloud can't hold three people."
"We'll push it. I've never tried anything like this before, but I think it'll probably work. After all, it's not as if there would be a lot of drag to fight." The cloud moved easily when they pushed it, so they kept going, taking turn pushing.
Half an hour later, though, they encountered Paradise Bay. The waves on the salt water twinkled faintly with the light the moon shined on it, making it possible to tell the sea from the land in the thick fog.
"How are we supposed to cross all that water without leaving these sleepheads alone?" Tineeko asked. "If somebody isn'twatching them, they might get captured -- or worse." They all looked for power items, but couldn't see where the blocks were,if there were any at all.
Lakitu thought for a long time, but it seemed as if he was too tired to come up with a plan this time. Then, Tineeko got an idea.
"Lakitu, I think I've got it. Carry me over in the cloud, then carry Luigi, Yoshi, and finally Toad. I'll watch the sleeping ones in the Valley, and Toad will watch them over here."
"Wonderful!" Lakitu smiled, getting as close to real enthusiasm as he could when he was this tired. "Thanks, Tineeko!"
After Lakitu drove Tineeko, Luigi, and Yoshi over and started back to get Toad, he found he was falling asleep. He kepy trying to fight it, even resorting at one point to swooping down to splash himself with the cold salt water below him, but as soon as he got in Toad's vicinity, he finally dozed off.
Yes, he did have another strange dream. In this one, he was in front of Neon castle with thunder and lightning brewing. He was too weak to move, he didn't have any power items or even his shell, and he felt so depressed and hopeless he almost didn't bother looking up. When he did,he saw a hugem dark shape which had glowing, unmistakably evil red eyes about three-quarters of the way down. Lightning flashed behind it, showing that the eyes actually belonged to a dark, unclear figureroughly his size and that the shapeless darkness behind it was separate.
Though he couldn't life his head high enough to see them, Lakitu heard Mario and Princess Toadstool calling out, "Help! Lakitu! You're the one who has to save us! Nobody else can do it!" As they cried out, it sounded less and less like Mario and the Princess and more like the entire population of a small country built up of people he didn't know. However, the voicessounded sincere -- and familiar. "But I can't --" he started to explain, but a red Spiny egg from the dark figure followed byanother flash of lightning stopped him.
He then heard a familiar voice to his right: "Lakitu, Yoshi sorry, but friends can't fight this with Lakitu." Slowly turning his head, he saw Yoshi holding a place with an omelette on it in one hand and a fork with a bite of the food pointed towards Lakitu in the other. He strained to reach it, but was so weak that he fell, seemingly rooted to the spot. Yoshi spoon-fed him the bite of omelette, which gave him so much energy that he didn't need another one. Yoshi then stepped back and vanished, and a shimmering, white light began to form behind him. Luigi then appeared with a feather, saying, "It'll be hard to do this if we don'tall help in the little bits that we can. Try hard, Lakitu." Luigi then disappeared as well, and the glowing, iridescent whiteness grew. Toad then came forward with a cloud, blushing a little. "Well, I guess this won't hurt. Just don't tell anyone, okay?"Again, he faded out and the glow became stronger.
The strangest event in the dream, though, was when Tineeko appeared. He was holding a white shell, the exact same one he had seen in his dream on the Starpath. It shone like the mysterious light that was building behind him. As Tineeko put it down, he shook his hands and blew on them as if the shell was too hot for him to handle. When Lakitu picked it up, though, he not only found it comfortably cool to the touch, its markings changed to those on his shell and on the shells of those in the ruined painting in the wreckage of the Wytortiel house, with the exception that the star remained and it remained glowing white instead of turning green. Even though Tineeko's mouth never opened, he heard him say, "Lakitu, you have something that few others have, I have a little bit of it, too, but you have much, much more if it than anyone else."
"More of what?" Lakitu tried to ask, but Tineeko was gone. The glow behind him was now larger than the darkness behind the red-eyed figure, which vanished. The figure advanced, throwing another Spiny egg and cackling. Lakitu, in self-defense, attacked the whatever-it-was, which was thrown backward as if it had been attacked with an iron battering ram instead of just a spin attack from a caped hero. The thing landed near a lava pit with a moan. Lakitu went over to it, but it didn't move, appearing to be dead. Another bolt of lightning flashed, and with a gasp of shock he saw what the thing looked like. With the exception that it wore a blood-red Koopa shell instead of a green Wytortiel shell, it looked exactly like him.
He then heard Tineeko's voice again: "Lakitu, you have nearly accomplished what you really went running around helping all these people for. Now, you must finish the job. To stary doing so, you've got to save Mario and the Princess! Lakitu! Lakitu, wake up!" He then woke up to find Tineeko shaking him awake.
"Lakitu, wake up! Lakitu! You've got to save Mario and the Princess!" Looking around, he noitced that the five of them were all in the Valley of Bowser and that he and Tineeko were the only ones who weren't asleep. After a long silence, Lakitu tappedTineeko on the shoulder.
"Yes?"
"Uh, Tineeko?" Lakitu instinctively looked all around to make sure nobody else could hear, even though if anybody besides the sleeping threesome next to them were around, the fog wouldn't have let him see them anyway. "About your, uh, thinking youheard me at one point when you were in Ice Land?"
"Yes?" repeated Tineeko, now slightly pink.
"Did it happen the day after you ended up in Ice Land, sometime in the morning?"
Tineeko tried to remember, then gasped. "But how did you --"
Lakitu hushed him, then looked to each side again. "I've been having weird dreams ever since we got separated. The same morning you heard me, I was asleep and having one." He then described the dream he'd had at Hapshu's house to him.
"Hmm... Maybe we should discuss this more later. Right now, we've got a job to do. Help me wake the others up." After Lakitu and Tineeko persuaded the others to get going, Luigi pointed out the distant, colorful light coming from the sign on Neon Castle. Though they were sleepy, they were, at least, on their way.