Chapter Ten: Revolution of the Dying Kingdom
The hospital ward was deafly silent, beside the haunting hollow pumping of Tatanga's iron lung. IVs fed life-giving oxygen into his spacesuit, as he lay tucked in beneath the hospital covers. The star man scowled because he was unhappy about being in a coma. He was surrounded by family and friends from all blocks of life who looked on in concern.
Doctor the Angry Sun came forward solemnly. "Three months ago, our beloved Tatanga fell into a deep comatose state from which we did not know that he would recover. Today," Doctor paused and slowly took off his stethoscope, "he is still in a coma."
"No!" MisStar wailed in despair and exploded into tears. "Tatanga! Honey! Please, please come back to us!"
Tenderly, she held his exhaust port and pleaded ever more desperately for him to wake up. But Tatanga just wouldn't wake up.
Croco looked away bitterly. "That fool. He doesn't know how badly we need him. He should be awake and not in a coma. That's pretty dumb."
MisStar glared angrily at Croco, "Don't talk about my fiance that way!" She shoved Croco violently and knocked off his top hat.
"OW!" Croco snarled and jumped. "Don't mess with me! It'll make me REALLY angry!"
MisStar threw a chair at Croco and kicked him in the face. Doctor the Angry Sun was upset at the fighting.
"CALM DOWN, CROCO!" Doctor the Angry Sun shouted furiously. "Our situation is much too desperate, we can't afford to fight each other. The Prophecy is already at work and we are running short on time."
"I'm sorry," said Croco, ashamed. He looked out the window. "I'm just upset. I really miss my best friend, Tatanga, who is in a coma."
"Yeah. I know."
"What are we going to do?!" Croco cried. "Without Tatanga, how are we going to stop the Nightmare Fortress from advancing? Some chosen one, if he can't keep the machines from breaching the city walls!"
"... There may be one way we can revive him," Doctor the Angry Sun said thoughtfully as he dramatically took off his stethoscope.
"What?" MisStar asked.
"I said 'There may be a way we can revive him'."
"No, I mean, what can we do?"
"What?"
"I said 'What can we do?'"
"Oh."
Doctor the Angry Sun considered this thoughtfully.
"Legend says that there is a magic herb that grows in The Special Zone that can cure any illness. If we could get that herb, it might just wake up Tatanga, since being in a coma is a kind of illness."
Croco's eyes lit up. "Then I'll go and get it! I will do anything to save my best friend, and he will save us all!"
"But I must warn you! It is dangerous. No one who has gone looking for the herb has ever returned. That is pretty dangerous"
"Woah!" Croco said, "I’d better not go then."
Doctor the Angry Sun looked sad. "Then all is lost."
"Okay."
Silently, they looked on at their dear friend Tatanga. All of their hopes and dreams rode on him. They hoped he would wake up sometime. They waited for like a half an hour, and he didn't wake up. It was REALLY boring and MisStar cried a lot.
"Come on," said Doctor the Angry Sun said as he comforted MisStar. "There is cake in the lobby."
Solemnly, everyone proceeded out of the room to go get some cake. It was chocolate-flavored. Dark chocolate. Dark as their lives without Tatanga.
As soon as everyone had cleared out, a figure stepped out from behind the curtains. Tolstar grinned wickedly as he crept closer and closer and EVEN CLOSER towards the helpless and vulnerable and in a coma Tatanga.
Delicately, Tolstar reached inside of his shell and pulled out a syringe that was filled with inky black DARKNESS. Licking his lips evilly, he went to puncture Tatanga's IV with the needle, but before he could inject the contents, the syringe was knocked out his hands by a chi blast from Croco!
"You!" gasped Tolstar. "But you went to go get cake!"
"I always like to eat cake," Croco gritted his teeth, "but not when there is EVIL hiding behind the curtains."
Tolstar's eyes widened. "How did you know I was hiding behind the curtains?"
"You are very bad at hiding behind curtains because you are fat," Croco explained.
"Well, I may be fat, but at least I am not…" Tolstar suddenly revealed his dual shotguns, "DEAD."
Tolstar shot his shotguns eighteen times at Croco, but he ducked and was not hit. He countered with his karate and broke all of Tolstar's ribs and also his guns and a leg.
"Very impressive. The Master taught you well. It is a good thing that he is now... one of us."
"SHUT UP AND STOP TALKING!" Croco shouted angrily. "If you lay a hand on Tatanga, I will get really angry!"
"Croco," Tolstar wheezed in pain, "I know your secret. The Darkness told me."
"What?!"
"I know you are in love with MisStar. But she will never marry you because you are not Tatanga and she loves Tatanga, who she is going to marry."
"Tatanga is my best friend!"
"Then he should want you to be happy and marry MisStar!"
Croco hesitated. He knew he should not listen to Tolstar because he was a bad guy, but he wanted to.
"Let me destroy Tatanga, and the Prophecy can take its true form once and for all. You can be with MisStar, and everyone will be happy in The Darkness."
Croco could feel the darkness. But he looked at Tatanga, his best friend. He fought with himself, and wondered what to do.
At last he made his decision. He pulled out twenty grenades and threw them all at Tolstar!
"No!" Tolstar screamed and exploded in a big way.
The door slammed open, and in rushed Doctor the Angry Sun, "What just happened?!"
"Never mind," Croco said urgently. "We have to get to the Infernal Tower!"
*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*-*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*
"Man, today hasn't been very eventful, has it?" Koops said.
Then a space train burst through the window of his bounty hunter office, sending him into one of the cabins. Koops grabbed his Japanese katana sword.
"Who dares challenge Koops the Bounty Hunter?!" Koops roared as he tore out Bonetail's bones. He then electro-shocked Bonetail's dead body, and fired three laser harpoons into the floor.
"HEEHEEHEE!!!"
Popping out from the engine room stormed a familiar face. Koops's eyes narrowed recklessly. He hadn't seen such an unwelcome face since Sluggy the Unshaven had eloped with Toadette. He spit out his golden cigarette and lit another one.
"Stanley the Bugman," Koops spat.
"That would BEE me! HEEHEEHEE!"
"Yes, yes, I know that."
"You'd better PRAY like a MANTIS!" Stanley shrieked as he pulled out six cutlasses. "Because you ANT escapin' me!"
Koops felt his heart beat frantically. Stanley was a ruthless killer, and there was no way he could win or WAS THERE?
Stanley threw the cutlasses at Koops, but they didn't go very far because they were very heavy. Koops tripped and fell on eight of them.
"AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
"There ain't no gettin' off this space train we're on," another voice said. Koops looked up to see Oaklie. Oaklie was holding his scythe gun that could shoot fire. He lowered his face so Koops could hear. "Wanna hear something cooool?"
"If it's about the Prophecy," Koops growled, "I don't wanna hear nothing."
"That was a double negative."
"Darn!"
"Turns out," Oaklie whispered, because he didn't want to disturb Skolar's nap in the next cabin, "Organization Enigma discovered that the Elemental Whip of Time isn't part of the Prophecy at all."
"NO!"
"But Organization Seventeen still doesn't know the Dark Sonata, so there's no way for them to activate Dark Chaos Space."
"NOOO! NO! NO! NO!!!"
"And the Order of the Crying Fire Flower? They have eighty-nine of the Dark Artifacts," said Oaklie.
"NOO- Oh, really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"ENOUGH TALK!" Stanley howled as he pulled out his quadruple-barrel pump shotgun with needles taped to the side.
"Wait, Stanley!" Oaklie warned. "We still haven't told him about Lady Lima-"
Stanley shot Oaklie in the face and poked him a few times with a needle. He then threw him out the window of the space train into space- as Belome had predicted.
"Why did this have to happen?" Koops sobbed because Oaklie was his father. "Where did you go wrong, Stanley?"
"YOU'RE GO WRONG!"
Stanley backhanded Koops and sent him flying back through sixteen cabins. He then had to jog for a bit over there because sixteen cabins was a really long ways away from the front of the space train.
"It's time to die," Stanley gasped. He had run, seriously, like a mile.
"Would you really kill me?" Koops whimpered. "After what we went through in Sarasaland?"
"YOU’D BEETLE BELIEVE IT!"
"Wait… What? That didn't make any sense."
Stanley paused. "Well, I thought beetle and better sounded similar enough, but that didn't turn out so well. I did like my 'pray like a mantis' line earlier."
"Yeah, I chuckled a little at that one."
Both Koops and Stanley chuckled for a few seconds until Stanley viciously kicked Koops in the eye.
"ENOUGH MIRTH! TIME TO DIE LIKE A FIREFLY!"
Stanley grabbed his beam sword tightly and was about to perform the finishing blow when he was stopped by the sight of something so powerful that it stopped him right in his tracks. In Koops's eyes, he could see the spirit of Oaklie, telling him to stop fighting. Slowly, he remembered the precious moments that he and Oaklie had shared together…
Oaklie was holding his scythe gun that could shoot fire.
"And the Order of the Crying Fire Flower? They have eighty-nine of the Dark Artifacts," said Oaklie.
"Wait, Stanley!" Oaklie warned. "We still haven't told him about Lady Lima-"
How could he have forgotten? Oaklie had been such a good friend. With tears gushing from his eyes, Stanley put down his nunchaku and-
"SUCKER PUNCH!"
Koops socked Stanley in the teeth with silver knuckles and blew up the space train. The force of the explosion was so powerful it could not be measured on the power scales.
This woke up Skolar, and he was really upset.
*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*-*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*
"GET OFF OF THE TRAIN!" shouted Blue Goomba.
"… No," said Bow because she didn't think leaving the train was something she should do.
"Seriously?" asked Blue Goomba.
"Yeah," Bow replied.
Blue Goomba turned red with embarrassment. He didn't realize that Bow didn't want to leave the train, and this fact alone was a huge damper in Organization Enigma's plans. He knew he had to find another way.
"What are you DOING?" he asked.
"I'm going to college!" Bow replied proudly, showing off her impressive transcript.
Blue Goomba thought this over for a moment, and tried to think of a witty response to this. "You're not going to college!"
"Please get out of my cabin," she said.
Blue Goomba left, quite frustrated that he'd failed like this for like the fourth time in a row. He wasn't very good at this at all!
"AZUL WEASEL!" roared a voice from the other end of the hall.
Blue Goomba looked over and saw Goombaria. She looked really upset with him.
"I've got half of the passengers to leave the train!" she said. "Have you also got half of the passengers off the train?!"
Blue Goomba bit his lip and looked aside. "I… I've been doing pretty good…" He was lying because he actually was doing really badly. He didn't mention that though.
"I hope you haven't failed us again, Azul Weasel," Goombaria said, stepping forward. "I hope you haven't forgotten what happened last time you failed us…"
How could he forget? The last time he failed Organization Enigma, he caused the horrible accident at Tubular. The one that took Cloud N. Candy's life… "That was different!" he said, fighting back tears. "That wasn't my fault!"
"YOU thought you could control the Echo Sphere!" Goombaria said, coming uncomfortably close to the Goomba. "You didn't listen to us! You tried to go against the Prophecy!"
"SHUT UP! STOP!" he yelled, fighting back all the horrible memories. "IT… IT WASN'T ME! I'M INNOCENT!"
The train then went through a tunnel and it was dark and they couldn't see because it was dark. The Goombas held their breath and made wishes, but Goombaria ran out of breath so her wish didn't come true. When they reached the end of the tunnel, Blue Goomba resumed his madness.
"NO!"
"YES!"
"NOOOOOO!"
"YEP!"
"AAAARGH! Youch!" Blue Goomba's stare went blank and he fell to the ground, knocking over a service table in the process. It was a huge mess that Goombaria wasn't looking forward to cleaning up.
"Did Blue Goomba just die of a heart attack?" General Guy asked, entering the hallway and clutching the Danger Trident in his hands.
"Yeah."
"Oh wow, that kind of stinks," he said, kicking Blue's lifeless body. "Anyway, I think we're ready to carry out this plan. Is everyone in place?"
"Yes…" Goombaria said, grinning a sinister grin. "This is the moment we've all been waiting for… This is going to change everything!"
There was a slight bump as the train hit Chef Torte and killed him upon impact.
"Let's do this then!" General Guy shouted as he was running towards the engine room. "There's no getting off this train we're on!"
On top of the train, Mouser stood in front of Morton Koopa Jr. and was patiently waiting for the signal from his fellow squad members.
"I will stop you right now!" Morton yelled.
"You probably won't," said Mouser, "because you're tied up and I shot you in the leg earlier and also you're blindfolded!"
"Ouch!" Morton yelled because his leg hurt. "You'll never get away with this! Yakkey will never allow this!"
"On the contrary, my dear friend," Mouser chuckled, waving his golden hook in Morton's face, even though Morton didn't notice because he was blindfolded. "Yakkey will always allow this!" Morton gasped at the realization.
"Hey, Mouser!" yelled Goombaria from below.
"Yeah?" Mouser replied.
“It's time to commence Project G.E.N. Esis!" Goombaria shouted.
"What? Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."
"It's time to commence Project G.E.N. Esis!" she repeated.
"Okay," Mouser said. "Well then, Mr. Morton, this is where you get off." With that said, Mouser leapt into the air and roundhouse-kicked Morton in the face seventeen times. This caused him to fall off of the train. His scream filled the air and a fiery explosion followed shortly after. Mouser didn't have to cover his eyes because he wears sunglasses even when it's night time.
General Guy looked back at the brightness of the explosion, grinning madly. What the rest of Organization Enigma didn't realize was that he was actually part of Organization Seventeen and was also going to betray them because they were fierce enemies. Wickedly, he pushed four buttons and pulled nineteen levers… They now had a one-way ticket to Waluigi Pinball.
*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*-*\\~//*//~\\*\\~//*
Baby Luigi shoved the barrel of his Uzi roughly under the chin of the bank teller and backhanded him across the face. He gestured angrily toward the bank vault.
"Do what he says," Major Burrows snarled, waving his flamethrower. "He's CRAZY,"
"I..." The bankteller was sweating bullets as Baby Luigi glared murderously. "No! We mustn't! The vault must only be opened once every thousand years! The Prophecy MUST BE FULFILLED!"
"OPEN THE VAULT!" Francis demanded.
"Okay."
The bank vault groaned open on its hinges, and a million killer bees shot out.
"NO!" Major Burrows screamed. "KILLER BEES!"
"HURRY! STOP THEM BEFORE THEY STING US!"
"I, can't!" Major Burrows panted. "I'm too scared!"
Francis put his hand on Major Burrows shoulder, "You can do it, because I believe in you, and that's what believing in you is really all about."
Major Burrows sniffled, and saw Baby Luigi giving a thumbs up. He found the courage deep within himself to fight the killer bees.
"ARAHHGAGAHAGH!!!" he bellowed, and threw a chair at the bees and then they went away.
GOOD JOB MAJOR BURROWS.
"We did it! We broke into the vault! That is TOTALLY hiiiiiiiiiii-technical!"
"You mustn't take the Adam Encryption!" the bank teller said.
"We must! Or the Order of the Crying Fire Flower will find it, and then ALL WILL BE LOST."
"Oh. Okay."
Suddenly, all of the police showed up with guns. So Francis, Baby Luigi, and Major Burrows got on their getaway train and sped out of the bank.
The Excess Express was barreling down the tracks at a hundred and eighty-seven thousand miles an hour. Francis knew this was pretty fast, almost too fast.
"IT'S A TRAP!" he screamed in time for the others to take cover. Machineguns fired from the shadows and shot three hundred and eight bullets into Major Burrow before he managed to duck behind a box.
"NO! MAJOR BURROWS!" everybody shrieked, but it was too late. Major Burrows fell down and died a whole lot. Baby Luigi came out from behind the cover, sobbing uncontrollably as he cradled the gentle giant in his arms.
"No!" the train engineer gasped. "You... You can't die here! YOU CAN'T DIE NOW! We were so close to decrypting the Chaos Mainframe!"
Francis looked on gravely, "This is totally not HIIIIII-TECHNICAL at ALL. Who could've done this?"
Agent Smithoshi stepped out of the darkness. Everyone was really scared because he had a gun.
"I've come for the Adam Encryption."
"NO! YOU CAN'T TAKE IT! WE WON'T LET YOU!"
Baby Luigi and Francis snapped into action; after years of training together their cooperation was at its zenith. Using his Ninjitsu, Francis made copies of himself just like Naruto and then punched Agent Smithoshi eight times, and Baby Luigi fired all of his bullets all at once.
They tumbled behind a crate together, Baby Luigi reloading his gun really fast.
"If we die, I just want you to know that you are my best friend forever."
They clasped hands, and did their secret handshake, and then leapt out over the crate. Baby Luigi let loose with his twin Uzis while Francis gathered his Chi energy and fired it in a laser beam. The bullets and chi bounced off of Smithoshi's personal force field.
Slowly, Agent Smithoshi pulled out a remote control with a big red button, "Game over." He pushed it.
The train exploded and killed everyone. Agent Smithoshi stood amongst the rubble and slowly picked up the Adam Encryption.
It was not too late for The Prophecy to be stopped.