Part Four: Devastation
Luigi banked left, hard, up on his port fuselage and came around in a tight loop to rip apart the baddie behind him. Two brilliant streams of argent death sprayed out and ripped along the craft’s left foil and then cockpit; in another flash of lambent fire, its shrapnel shot out in every direction, its pilot disintegrated. “Nice one, Luigi! Thanks!”
“No problem, Plit Nine, I mean Casey,” Luigi corrected himself, trying to sound casual. Chances were they’d all not live through it anyway. The bulk of the invasion force still loomed inactively in the distance, waiting until its fighters had torn apart most of the counter forces before moving in for the kill. It was an admirable strategy, a compliment to the commander of their forces, whomever that was. Luigi wondered…
A torrent of raining fire and concussion missiles exploding near his aft side rocked his ship forward, spinning it slightly to the left. Luigi tapped the etheric rudder and dialed down the inertial compensator to ninety percent. He suddenly felt very sick, but he quelled the nauseous feelings in his stomach, grabbing the control stick and pulling back roughly. In the dizzying spin, his guidance system locked onto three ships in a wing, getting ready to split up. Taking advantage of the situation, Luigi flicked his wrist and thumbed the positively-charged torpedo launcher, sending two ion-trailed packages of death towards his prey. In another moment there was a great cluster of explosions, and his radar blipped. Three less enemy ships.
“Three Executor-class battleships coming in at point four, mark twelve. Batteries are blazing, and the breaker beam is charging steadily on the one portside. Take out the breaker relay tower, quickly!” That was Ryan-oshi. Luigi silently thanked the obsessive Yoshi for his thorough study of all the possible ships in the invasion fleet before its arrival. Sometimes it was good to be overly sure of something. Now he only wished he and all of his friends had never seen that awful letter from the monster Vuljiin and that none of what was going on now had come to pass. If there had been someway he could’ve turned the clock back and altered the course of history, he would’ve. He knew Mario, or at least the old Mario, had always loved a good adventure, but war was not an adventure, it was a horrific defilement of Plit, something that never should happen.
He knew Mario… Or at least the old Mario…
His own thoughts reverberated in his mind, reminding him over and over again that what had been Mario was now Stario, a proportionally different human being. The old Mario, though now existing in a very close replication, was, for all intensive purposes, really dead. He was not coming back. Ever. Luigi wished more than ever that he could have made the carefree days after Bowser had temporarily enlisted their aid stand still. Now things were just more complicated. The bubble of security he’d always placed around his friends and himself could always be trusted, but not now. He’d placed Mario, himself, Peach, Yoshi, and even Toad in it. That bubble had been burst, though. Vuljiin might have been defeated, but Luigi had always seen the world as a much more dangerous place from that point on. Now he would die alone, without a brother in the cold dark expanse of space. A tear rolled down his cheek involuntarily; he reached to wipe it away and switched on his comm. unit. “Wing Two, delta formation. Change to the gamma flight patterns one, two, and three sporadically to try and keep them off of your tails. I’m going to drop the rest of my payload on that relay tower. If we can take that out, all three ships will be without their breaker beams.”
“But what will we destroy the other ships with? There are still ten capital class vessels and several gunships and skimmers. We’ll run out of bombs!” cried Plit Three, Vexx, always the nervous one. Luigi wasn’t exactly sure what his real name was, not that it mattered.
Luigi was about to answer when another voice washed across their frequency. “You worry about the Executors; we’ll worry about the fleet. Just take out the breaker beams. The Death Egg, Maria, the Torte Juggernaut, and the Mushroom Kingdom fleet can handle them quite adequately.” It was Ganon.
“Very well then, Ganon. We’ll take out the tower and back off to continue our assault on the fighters. Luigi out!” The green-clothed plumber took a look out of his clear canopy, gazing at the stars one last time before diving into the fiery melee.
~*~*~*~
“Is the battle proceeding to your liking, Dread Lord?” asked the former admiral of the E-PEANUT subsidiary fleet. He now served under the mysterious malevolence who had seen it fit to exterminate all life on Plit, the reasons for which were still unknown to all but itself, and perhaps another…
“On your knees, Admiral,” commanded the figure, making a forceful gesture that carried out the order for it. The officer fell the rest of the way, shivering in the prostrate position. “That’s better. Now, I can tell you that yes, I am very pleased with the happenings of the battle thus far, though that squadron of Pop-class fighters that exited Plitian atmosphere has been doing the bulk of the damage. The massive fleet they’ve acquired is moving into position as well, so you have yet to be tested. Tell me though,” it said, cupping its left hand and holding the admiral’s gaze with its red slits, “where is my apprentice, Shimrra?”
The shivering lackey’s own gaze was faltering, twitching left and right. “Well, sir, we did the heat scan as you commanded, and it turned up nothing. The only thing I can think of is that he would be…” The admiral trailed off, letting his master come to its own conclusions.
“Dead, Admiral? You think Shimrra is dead?” The questioned didn’t answer; he didn’t have the courage. “That is not your fault, of course. Go and see to the battle.”
“Y-yes, sir,” said the admiral, saluting. Without waiting for the dark-swathed figure to change his mind, he hurried off to the bridge.
“Very interesting,” whispered the evil being to itself. “Very interesting, indeed. It seems that Lord Shimrra does not wish to be found by me or any modern means of technology. Ashamed? Unlikely, but… possible, yes. Something is amiss.” Without further speculation, it returned to its murky broodings.
And then it was gone.
~*~*~*~
Kamek grasped the edge of his robes and tugged fiercely, left hand still behind his back. He concentrated his will, not having to watch as a pulsating orb of dark purplish energy formed, tendrils of pure black wreathing it. “Fly!” he commanded; the spherical bomb shot out. Shimrra brought both hands up as if to push back; the orb caught it, minimizing, but causing the alien to yelp in pain. “Doomstar! The powers of darkness, towers of hatred, burn!”
Kamek began to take on an ominous black glow. His blue tunic waved and billowed as the air was thrown about him, slinging atoms this way and that and causing a scorched crater where he was standing. Now a steady, somewhat evil fire engulfed him, licking his skin and ceasing to harm him. Like a shot of thunder, he was off with a crackle, left hand balled in a fist and out. Shimrra took the full force of the blow in his stomach, his lungs emptying and whining in protest. With a heavy thud, he fell to the ground, Kamek standing over him, hands still out, claws extended. He spied Shimrra’s arm. “So that’s why you’ve lost your edge. You’ve been smitten by the light of star power. How convenient… for me.”
Shimrra winced and coiled like a snake before Kamek lifted his wand and tapped the end with his foreclaw. A string of energy erupted and blasted the alien’s head into quite a few pieces. His fired died off, and he breathed in heavily. Suddenly his shoulders drooped and he fell to his knees, spent. Kammy rushed over. “Kamek! Are you well?”
“Of course I’m well!” Kamek snorted, bringing up a hand to ward her off. “Despite his being no longer an offensive threat, the dark, unknown power that radiated from him still considerably weakened me. Whatever magic he wields, it is not that of Doomstar, but something perhaps more evil, or more… potent. I must rest now.”
“And yet there is no rest for the weary, Guildmaster.” And like an unforeseeable doom, an ebony-shrouded figure leapt from a rocky terrace above. He landed, and two of the Magikoopas fell face-forward at his presence. Kamek immediately recognized him, yet, for the life of him, he could not bring himself to speak his name.
A great fire wall that spread in every direction formed from him as he laughed hideously, scorching the land and running across Plit with unflagging speed. Kamek looked upon it and bowed his head. Plit was on fire.
~*~*~*~
Ryan-oshi knew the moment he emerged from a horizontal loop that Plit was burning. Whereas the planet normally displayed a cloudy, blue face lit by its primary, a bright red sun, he now saw a fiery inferno. Smoke billowed high in the planet’s atmosphere as the surface boiled in outrage at some recent violation. It was spreading. The death was spreading.
Wanting to suppress the dread welling up inside of him, wanting to deny what he was seeing, Ryan-oshi banked his fighter into a steep dive toward the surface so he could take a closer look. The affected area was undoubtedly the Mushroom Village and its surrounding areas.
It couldn’t be happening, he told himself. There had to be someone left alive down there. Stario must’ve survived it. But his monitors were empty. There were no transmission sources, no signs of life.
“This is Ryan-oshi, Plit One,” he spoked into the comm. unit. “If anyone down there can hear this broadcast, please respond. Anyone!”
Silence was the only answer, scratched with buzzing static. He shook his tall, leathery head, hoping in vain to lose the vision, the thought, the truth. So many of his friends had lost their life since the whole mess had started a week ago, but not any so close. While a part of him had always registered a close death as a possibility, he hadn’t really imagined that it would ever actually happen.
He flicked on the comm. unit again, not because he seriously thought someone might answers this time, but simply because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. What had caused the ruination, though? None of the invasion force had broken through. Even protection wasn’t enough. He’d failed; they’d all failed. Something was happening, and all the ships in the system wouldn’t have stopped it.
Full of anger and an inexplicable rage, he barrel rolled to the right, avoiding two wings of newly belched enemy fighters zooming up behind him. Coming out of the spin, he looped around again, weapons letting loose his weapons. There was a flashing ruby blast before a deep explosion of topaz and oranges, followed by another spray of shrapnel. The explosion caught three of the ship’s wingmates, but still that wasn’t enough.
He kept his control tight, flying in below the bulbous belly of an angry skimmer, knifing it with cutting lances of red-hot, concentrated heat energy. There were more pockets of explosions as the hull super-heated and released balls of thick white goo, its cooling agents melted. He curved around sharply for another pass, releasing a pair of proton torpedoes into the breached hull. There was a dull explosion, a whump of lost air. Several examples of precision engineering lumbered out, along with bloated, frozen bodies that’d been exposed to the void. Ryan-oshi ignored them and ripped open another hole in the ship’s skin with similar results until the entire vessel imploded, blowing itself into a million tiny pieces from the inside.
“Direct all forward lasers to the nearest gunship. It has the rest of the enemy fighters in it. We have to destroy it before it can release any more of those peanuts,” he said, referencing to the common nickname for E-PEANUT fighters.
“That won’t be necessary, Master Ryan-oshi,” said Snifit 2, beaming but worn. “We’ve been rescued from our prison, and we have a very nice surprise for the invasion fleet.”
Ryan-oshi barely had time to turn his head before a bright beam concentrated on twin points at the top and bottom of The Death Egg formed and shot out, a massive plasmic rainbow of fire. Without care, it punctured the carrier gunship and the three Executors, blowing a double-sided hole in all their hulls. And like that, they were gone, destroyed, nothingness. Somehow though, the new weapon at the disposal of E-PEANUT worried Ryan-oshi more. Crazykoopa probably wouldn’t take the revealed technology too lightly either.
Crazykoopa!
Now that everything was finally beginning to look up in the space battle, he could save him. He thumbed the comm. system. “This is Plit One; I’m pulling out to refuel,” he lied, not wanting to tip off Chef Torte. “Luigi, you’re to assume command.” There was an affirmative click, and he was off to intercept Maria.
~*~*~*~
Gleaming claws cast a brighter light against the fire and fell. A double-pronged sword full of sapphire and ruby crashed, wreathing with the power of the stars, upon its blockade. The elemental force of Exor fought back, wrought by the evils of mechinaton. There was a shower of blooming sparks that lit up the night air as sulfurous thunder smote blue forks upon the land in the distance. Theirs was not the only battle proceeding so violently.
Stario brought up his sword high above his head, twitching it to the left and then bringing it down in a wide, sweeping arc that nicked a chunk of metal off of one of Alpha’s legs, severing a wire and making it dance like a snake. Bowser bellowed in anger more than pain when Exor barely made a thin gash against his right shoulder, drawing a small amount of blood. The refulgent reptile countered, slashing deep gashes in the robot’s metal casing with broad, sharp claws. The trio broke off in separate directions, two panting unevenly, one whirring under pressure and stress.
Clever Guy growled something incoherent and shifted his full weight against the robot’s leg controls, bracing himself as Alpha reared back on its two legs and leapt forward, rotating both hands as they reached for something to drill into. Stario and Bowser reacted almost instinctively, the spirits of star warriors coursing through their blood. Each came out at a dead run, flanking the robot and attacking again, divine sword and enhanced razor claws combining to effect a victory. It wasn’t quite over yet.
Alpha dodged again, escaping with nary a scratch or cut. Its body rotated in the air, coming down with both side cannons peeling out of their compartments. In another moment, a turquoise volley of quick-firing plasma pockets pelted out at them: heat-seeking presents of a final demise wrapped sardonically by a Shy Guy madman. Stario was the first to experience their potency, the last of his to dodge hitting him squarely in his wide chest, knocking him off his feet and singing the top layer of his overalls. He only winced, wiping a trickle of blood away from his forehead and rushing the robot again. Bowser did not fair so well, having caught five of the blasts. His head was lolling, his tail the only thing keeping him balanced; Stario and Alpha were a blur in the distance, two ghosts in a shadow world. Shaking his head of the dreaminess, he gathered his courage and followed his comrade into the fray, both hands swinging mightily, tail sweeping back and forth in vain attempts to trip the finely tuned creation of Clever Guy.
A metallic appendage shot out frenetically, whipcracking Stario’s left arm and catching him temporarily off-balance. The coiled dish at the robot’s head glowed and fired a thick beam as another arm crashed upon the plumber’s head, completely pulverizing him. Stario momentarily lost consciousness, catching himself at the last minute and throwing a right hook before bringing his sword down again. As the strike was parried, a massive reptilian tail caught the body frame of Alpha, causing a fissure two inches thick and three inches deep. Clever Guy gritted his teeth at the jostle and manned the controls again, firing both machine guns. The two heroes retreated for the moment, but came back as the twin weapons stopped firing, giving their own volley of pain a shot.
Just as things were slowly approaching a permanent impasse, a bright yellow bolt of lightning threw the robot off balance, tossing it to the ground some fifteen meters away. Behind the star duo was Mallow, both hands up, breathing raggedly. He’d just loosed his second-most-powerful attack. Still, he pressed on. Screaming in weary pain, he shouted something unknown to the heroes, evoking the wrath of the heavens. Down came a prodigious diamond star, a new attack of his, that bounced on and drained Alpha of his vast power supply. Spent, Mallow fell to his face, into darkness. Both armies behind him burned with a new sense of obligation, and the shouting throng swarmed forward, joining Bowser and Stario in the final charge.
Clever Guy only looked on in disbelief. He bit his tongue in lips, drawing his first blood, and thumbed a large red button on his control panel. With a hissing spray of fire and air, the two machine guns to his side flipped into a vertical position, the bottoms of them spewing out sparks. The two hidden rockets blasted the middle of the robot off into the sky as the arms and legs were trampled underfoot below him, never to be used again. “Well,” he thought, still shocked, “there will always be a Beta.”
The united army below watched Clever Guy disappear through sulfur crowds with contempt, turning to their new leaders for advice. Stario spoke, “A battle of such proportions that we cannot manage is raging to the east; that is the source of the poisonous clouds and deadly lightning that are forming even now. Though we greatly appreciate your help with our first enemy, this new foe is beyond any of you, and even us.”
“Do not fear, though,” Bowser chided, almost ruefully, “for we will be in the ranks of the lost tribe of Magikoopas. Together, we must fight this malevolence, and all of you will only die twenty meters within his presence. He is that evil. Please, find any space-worthy crafts you can and join the battle in the stars, for it is the only other ground of conflict now. Off with you now! The time has come for judgment! Fly!”
As the army behind them drifted and hurried off to carry out their orders, Stario made a makeshift bed for Mallow and returned to Bowser’s side. Off in the distance, the maelstrom of dark magic versus one unknown was raging brilliantly. Without looking back, they ran towards the mountain rang separating them from the engagement, skimming along jagged rocks and climbing the slopes at unthinkable speeds.
~*~*~*~
The invasion fleet never stood a chance. With the full might of the Plit strike squadron, the Mushroom Kingdom’s fleet, the constant pelting of The Death Egg, and the Torte Juggernaut, they were quickly dispensed of, all destroyed or left to decay in space in less than an hour. “Excellent news, Ganon,” chortled Snifit 2, proudly holding the damage report in his hands. “The entire enemy fleet has been crushed. We only lost a few of the Mushroomer battleships, but no harm there.”
“Truly wonderful,” said Ganon, beaming. “Now, charge up the Egg Beam once more. Set the coordinates for Maria.”
“What?!” Snifit 2 asked incredulously. “The Torte Juggernaut will turn on us; they respect the one called Genius Guy.”
“Ah, that is also true, my attentive second-in-command, but you must also realize their gullibility. I simply told them that Chef Torte had turned on his friend out of jealously and murdered him. They believed it instantly. Now, unless you have any more objections, round up the crew and charge that beam!”
Snifit 2 was silent except for the crispness of a military salute. Clicking his heels together and spinning around, he ran off down the bridge to relay his master’s orders to those responsible for the Egg Beam. Their hard-found victory seemed closer than ever.
~*~*~*~
Both Tortes launched themselves ingloriously at Crazykoopa and Toad, screaming, “MON DIEU!” at the top of their lungs. In a flurry of spinning, they mixed themselves up again, making it quite impossible for their enemies to tell them apart. To make matters worse, Changling was slightly confusing their mind to make them see things they didn’t. A quick jab from Torte went unnoticed, pummeling Toad in the face and knocking him to the ground unconscious. He was already tired from the previous battle, and even the chef’s super weak punch was enough to knock him out.
Changling rushed in from the left, plunging both arms, donning a purple spike sleeve, of course, into Crazykoopa’s gut, causing him to loose his breath for a moment. The Magikoopa-in-disguise followed up the score by levering his knee with the Koopa’s face, felling him. “How vonderful! Zhat vas magnificent!”
Ryan-oshi entered none-too-late, his mysterious saber out and leveled aggressively. “Chef Torte, and… Chef Torte? Don’t ask me; one of you is Changling.” The Yoshi knew if he waited for a moment, the bumbling foreign Koopa would spell his own doom.
“Zhat’s right,” said Chef Torte proudly. “Moi and Changling zought up zhis great scheme even before zhe battle began. It’s flawless!”
“Master Torte!” screamed Changling angrily, quickly morphing back into his true Magikoopa self. “You’ve ruined our chances!”
Chef Torte held back a beet red face. “Don’t be silly, my humble and veiry naïve apprentice, er, Magikoopa pal. Zhis vas in my plan all along. Zhat stupid Yoshi ist too weak to handle DOUBLE TORTE TROUBLE, vhich, by zhe vay, vould make a great concept in later battles,” Chef Torte gave a little wink, “but enough of zhat! Time to get to verk. Let’s tan zhat green hide off zhis incompetant dino dummy!”
Ryan-oshi snorted derisively and made his move, spinning around. His heavy tail thudded against the ground and brought Changling off his feet to the ground; the Yoshi brought his sword in an extremely low arc that snipped the end off of Changling’s pointy red hat before fluttering away, chuckling. “I’ve had some practice.”
Chef Torte was fuming. How dare that stupid Yoshi insult his strongest fighter?! Little did Ryan-oshi know that besides being a good cook and a terrible villain, Chef Torte was a master swordsman. “Vell, you zhink you are clever-go-smartie, don’t you? Vatch zhis!”
Before Ryan-oshi could counter, a violent tremble overtook the zeppelin, throwing the pair to the ground with Changling, who had already soiled his pants in fear from the near-death experience with Ryan-oshi’s blade. “Chef Torte! What’s with your ship?”
“She ist not ship,” Chef Torte corrected, words stuttering under the earthquake-like shake. “She ist Maria, zhe greatest vessel around, and she could vhip you any day. Somevone ist attacking us, zough zhe day ist vone!”
“Come on!” screamed Ryan-oshi over the tumult, gathering his two pals under his arms and instructing a nearby Princess Peach to follow him out. Before exiting the cockpit, he turned back to Chef Torte and Changling. “I’m taking off with your idiot crewmembers too on your last transport beside my one-Yoshi ship, so I’d come along if I were you.”
Chef Torte spat at Ryan-oshi’s feet. “Neveir! Moi vill go down vhiz Maria, right Changling? Changling!?”
But Changling, Ryan-oshi, and the rest had already made a dash for the Torte Transport, leaving the chef all by his lonesome in the cockpit. Slowly, with melodramatic tears streaming down his cheeks, he pulled his unharmed self up to the main controls. Suddenly, and without explanation, the cockpit eject button lit up, as if beckoning him to press it. “Maria… I’m going to keep my promise to you. I’ll never let any harm come to you.” The beeping became more insistent. Reluctantly, Chef Torte pushed it. “Ist zhis vhat you vanted Maria? I vill keep zhis promise, Maria. May ve meet one day again.”
The cockpit ejected, but Chef Torte exited, having a better idea. “I vill keep my ozeir promise to you, Maria, instead. I promise you… REVENGE!” With an evil laugh turned broken cough, Chef Torte climbed into Ryan-oshi’s fighter, started it up, and flew out of the cockpit before the Egg Beam silenced his only love once and for all. With a heavy heart, the maniacal chef went off to deal with his arch-enemy, the most troublesome Yoshi in his plans to that date, Ryan-oshi.
As the wreckage of his beloved burned and froze behind him, Chef Torte spotted the transport Ryan-oshi was piloting in front of him. Behind it, he saw the hangar opening, releasing Torte’s own fighter. “You foolish Yoshi! You must respect your owner and fight me zo zhey vill escape. Now zhat traitorious rat Ganon vill kill us both!”
“I’m not letting you harm my friends or yours,” Ryan-oshi said sternly, locking onto Torte’s ship.
“Your ill-fated ezteem und valor vill get you nozhing but fragged!”
Twin proton torpedoes shot out of Torte’s launcher to intercept a rapid-fire volley by Ryan-oshi, the two equal forces meeting in a bright explosion that knocked both ships off course, rocketing them to be grasped by Plit’s atmosphere. So it was that they spiraled out of control, sulfuric clouds passing them, the image of Isle Soshi and its volcanic mount closing in.
~*~*~*~
It was far too late by the time Stario and Bowser arrived. Had the stars deceived them? A blasted corpse was in flames, along with several dead Magikoopas. Seventy or so stood in a locked contest of power with a figure beyond description, the awesome might of his power greater than all the evil that they’d ever felt combined. “Come on, we have to help them!”
“It’s too late,” consoled Bowser, putting a scaly hand on Stario’s shoulder. “Look!”
With another evil scream, the figure let a beam thicker than the Egg Beam and Super Laser Thingie combined loose on Kamek and his team. Ten more died, the others, including Kamek, falling back, all defeated save their leader. “No!” shouted Stario, jumping aside Kamek. Bowser did the same, hopelessness eating away inside him.
“Bowser, mi’ord,” Kamek wheezed, still full of power, remarkably, “you’ve come, and with Stario! You’re glowing, sire!”
Bowser placed a hand on Kamek’s forehead, easing as much of his pain as he could. Combined with Kamek’s resolved, it helped quite a bit. Kamek eased back up. “Come, we must face our doom together. We are Plit’s last fighters for freedom. Let us ride into battle together! For Plit!”
“For Plit!” Stario and Bowser both bellowed in unison.
Above the stars, having thought they’d destroyed Chef Torte, The Death Egg and all its ships, new and old, disappeared into star lines. It looked like a shooting star above the venomous cloud face. Things were happening too quickly. Those below, of course, thought they’d triumphed over both forces. Stario believed his brother was dead. But no, it couldn’t be. There still was that spark of existence, the twin bond that now swelled within him. It gave him hope, a little anyway.
And so the sword of the stars, ruby and sapphire together, yellow divine tendrils wreathing, crashed down, spraying sparks as it pierced the Dark One’s shield. Two claws aided by the healing prowess of the stars and given the sharpness of a thousand diamonds swiped low and high, joining the barrage of the Star blade. Finally, a blast of magic, a conjoined feed of energy concentrated by those Magikoopas alive and directed by Kamek shot out to meet its two friends in battle: a three branched energy blast of pure starlit fury that banged upon the threshold of death and hatred like the joyous ringing of churchbells. There was a mighty flash, and then all fell into blindness. The ground collapsed beneath them.
Plit had swallowed them up.
~*~*~*~
“Put zhat in your pipe and smoke it!” yelled Chef Torte, hovering above the weakened form of Ryan-oshi by means of his Torte Jetpack. Twin cannons blazed on either side, sending blasts of chaos down to scorch the land behind the fleeing Yoshi. “Now you shall feel zhe TERROR OF TORTE! I’ll put zhe FEAR OF TORTE in you. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!”
The deranged chef had gone mad, Ryan-oshi thought grimly, probably the result of a bump on the head after crashing. Both of their ships had crash-landed behind them, unusable. Now Ryan-oshi was fighting a one-sided battle with a chef that just couldn’t seem to die. Ryan-oshi made an egg out of a nearby rock, a heavy, gray matter that exploded against Torte’s face. “Hey! No fair! Here’s vhat I zhink of you!”
Ryan-oshi dodged another quick volley of stutter plasma, rolling along the ground and coming up, his long, claret tongue shooting out. It wrapped around Torte’s hat, pulling it off and retracting. “Zhat’s moi’s hat you fool! Give it back!”
Following up the idea, Ryan-oshi grabbed another rock and chucked another egg, belting Chef Torte another good one. “Zhree more hits and I’m done for! Neveir!”
Chef Torte stopped his blaster pummeling long enough to swoop down in a low bridge, spraying his boiling thrusters along the ground and skimming the end of Ryan-oshi’s tail, eliciting an abrupt scream. Ryan-oshi was fuming. No one messed with his tail. Chef Torte swooped down again, but the Yoshi was ready for him, hitting a home run with his tail. Chef Torte’s head lolled to one side as he spun out of control, barely managing to come back to his senses and assume command of his apparatus before he slammed into a rock face.
Ryan-oshi threw quick successions of several rocks at the chef, slurping them up and spitting them out at high speeds. The super-heated stone finally chipped the chef’s jetpack and ripped its restraint cords, dropping its load and zooming off to explode on the side of the volcano near them. It was Chef Torte’s base.
Upon landing, Chef Torte rolled up, blood running down his face. Grounding gums, he pulled out his own sword and rushed Ryan-oshi, screaming.
Ryan-oshi closed and lunged at Chef Torte’s upper chest. With two hands on the sword, the chef parried the blade high, then ducked his head and whirled around in a circle. The chef’s blade snapped straight against Chef Torte’s right forearm, then he lunged. Pain exploded from the Yoshi as the other sword stabbed deep into his guts. The tip dented the back of the scales over Ryan-oshi’s right hip; then the Koopa yanked his sword free, spinning the Yoshi to the ground. Ryan-oshi curled around the holes in his right flank, drawing his legs up. His own blade lay scorched on the grass. “Chef Torte, you bumbling idiot, you’ve finally accomplished something,” Ryan-oshi mocked, trying to invoke rage to blind his enemy. He retrieved his sword and slowly made his way up.
It worked. Chef Torte’s eyes snapped open. Though Ryan-oshi could not read him through feeling, the fury and hatred coursing through the Koopa was unmistakable. The warrior darted forward, bringing his sword up and around in a two-handed overhead blow. He smashed it down on Ryan-oshi’s upraised blade, driving the Yoshi back a step.
Again and again he rained the blows down with bone-jarring impact. Ryan-oshi retreated, giving up a step or two with each attack. As Chef Torte’s fury built, so did his strength, forcing Ryan-oshi to raise his left hand from the hole in his side to the hilt of his blade. Another blow battered the Yoshi’s sword, and another, buckling Ryan-oshi’s legs, dropping him to his knees. Chef Torte towered over him, rising up on his tiptoes to deliver that final blow. The saver rose and crashed down, set to bash the Yoshi’s blade back into its wielder. Ryan-oshi sagged forward, plunging his weapon into the chef’s unprotected middle, driving it all the way through. Blood gushed out, and Chef Torte’s eyes rolled over. He fell limp, and Ryan-oshi stood up, his life force bleeding away, unable to be stopped.
In the distance, the bright moon, receding into the horizon, had turned a dark crimson, like blood. The black sky had spider web cracks of white and was shattering like glass.
It couldn’t be.
But it was. The mountains were sifting into the wind like sand, the sky now open to space. Ryan-oshi faltered and fell, watching as the ground before him fell into nothingness, a dark void of no return. Blood mingling with dirt and volcanic rock, he gave up his last cry of defiance, and was exhumed into the world of shadows, still alive, eaten by his home.
~*~*~*~
At first, Chef Torte thought he was dead, in some warped Star Haven where only bad cooks went. A cook… that’s all he was. He hated himself, and he hated that cursed Yoshi. But now, something dim and bright at the same time was coming towards him. It was warm, comforting. It was irresistible.
“Chef Torte,” it called, and he felt young again, a vigor unlike any ever felt running through him.
“Who are you? Vhere ist Maria!”
The voice laughed lightly, feminine. “You are not dead, Chef Torte,” ts said soothingly, “you are here to face judgment.”
“Judgment? Zhis isn’t Judge Judy! Get moi out of heir!”
“No!” the voice said sternly, and then motherly, it spoke, “You have brought about the end of my world by breaking one of the most sacred laws.”
“Vhat?” asked Chef Torte, more than a little confused.
“You kidnapped the Chancellor instead of the Princess. You broke the fan fiction rules.”
“Vhat’s fan fiction? Oh no! You must be Genius Guy. Zhis isn’t Star Haven. Zhis ist zhe ozeir place!”
“No, Chef Torte, you really did bring about the end of your world, but for your bumbling sake, I’m going to give you another chance, another chance to realize your dream of leaving a mark on this world and finding yourself. Your selfishness and stupidity has vanquished all the hopes that I had for this world.”
“Zhat’s not true! Zhat shadow dude vould have come regardless. None of zhis makes a bit of sense. Zhis is just a lame excuse to not let me win.”
“You got stabbed, and you would’ve died. So shut up. Anyway, yes, I sent E-PEANUT to punish you for breaking the rules, without them being aware of it, but even I did not know that they were being controlled by a greater force. Even then, I thought there was hope, but how little I knew about them! You see, I am Plit, the spirit that inhabits and breathes through the organic mass you call Plit. The Star Spirits assigned me the task. But that’s not important. What is important is that you know those Shadow People were not all that they seemed.”
“I think people that are stronger than even Vuljiin are pretty straight-forward killing machines. At least they’re dead, as well as moi I guess.”
“I didn’t say they were dead, and,” Plit added mischievously, “I didn’t say they were stronger than Vuljiin.”
“Zhis ist all veiry inrigueing, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go find a cloud and learn how to play some Sonic Adventure 2 tunes on a harp, ok vhiz you?”
“Chef, chef, chef,” Plit chided, “it is not over. You will be given another chance, didn’t you hear me? I will undo the things that have been done and erase the memories of all involved, so that things will continue as they would’ve without E-PEANUT ever coming or you thinking of kidnapping the Chancellor.”
“You’re jealous!” accused Torte, “Because moi vas vinning! Zhis ist verse zhan zhat old pirate movie I saw. Moi hates pirates… and JELLO!”
“Hmm, than perhaps we can make this more humorous than I had planned,” muttered the spirit. “That you’ve caused this much trouble must be some sort of consolement. Never give up on your dreams, but don’t go and do anything really stupid, ok?”
“ZHIS DOESN”T MAKE VONE BIT OF SENSE! I HATE YOU! YOU RUINED EVERYTHING, AND MOI IS CONFUSED! YOU TOOK AWAY MARIA! YOU TOOK AWAY EVERYZHING! I DON’T VANT YOUR CHAI-”
But it was too late. Chef Torte’s odd mistake had erupted into something massive, and now it was as if none of it had ever happened. If the events had been a story, the reader would probably feel really dumb for participating in what perhaps was the biggest, most elaborately constructed trick plot on the grandest scale. Oh, well, all’s well that ends well.
~*~*~*~
Chef Torte awoke on the day that in an alternate universe might’ve been a day he would’ve felt like doing something completely wacky, such as kidnapping the Chancellor of the revered Mushroom Kingdom. Now, though, Genius Guy was standing in front of him on his bed, staring down at him. “GET OFF OF ME!” the chef spazzed, throwing the Shy Guy across the room. “I feel so dizzy, like I had some kind of rough beating last night. Oh vell,” said Chef Torte, looking out a window that was carved out of the edge of the volcano. He didn’t remember that being there before. “Hey, Genius Guy?”
“Yes, Master Torte?” asked Genius Guy, making faces at the chef.
“I don’t know vhy,” said Torte, setting his jaw and scratching his head while looking out on the wide expanse of the Northern Tropacine Seas, “but suddenly I feel like you should refer to me as… Cap’n Torte!”
The Credits!
In the true spirit of The Good, the Bad, and the Torte, GBT 1.5: Aftermath will also now conlude with credits, although not on such a grand scale. Before the final farewell, take a look below at some cool visualizations from the novel. Gaze at the glaring colors and jagged lines until your eyes explode!
I’d like to give special thanks to the following:
- Lemmy and his site Lemmy’s Land for posting GBT and GBT 1.5: Aftermath
- Chef Torte for letting me play in his world and waiting out the long time I spent writing it to release his next masterpiece, as well as answering all of my inane questions.
- All the fans who encouraged me throughout the long process and appreciated the way I’m trying to keep the GBT dream alive. It’s all the reason for me to immediately accept any further offer to participate in The Good, the Bad, and the Torte universe.
The Team of Terror, minus Chef Torte and Apprentice, along with Shimrra and the Dark Figure (unnamed), are original to the GBT Legacy, while Ryan-oshi and Crazykoopa are original to themselves.
Fin~!
| If you would like to send some feedback
to the author of this submission, please complete this form.
What's your name?
What's your Email address?
How do you rate this submission?
Does this submission belong in Little
Lemmy's Land?
Would you like to see more from this author? Comments and suggestions:
|
