It was a long, painful three days. The heroes(?) dragged themselves out of a seemingly never-ending forest and were absolutely stunned to see Bowser’s Castle, a majestic sculpture made entirely of gray bricks, rising out of the ground in front of them. Oddly, Mario was absent from the group.
Boshi threw back his head and laughed, as if he was totally expecting the castle at this spot. “I told you dudes I could guide you to this dudely castle!”
“Twenty-six times…” Toadette groaned, collapsing.
“You got us lost like three hundred times!” Pork Chop growled, collapsing beside her.
“Oh, dudes,” Boshi scoffed, “so what if I got you lost on the swamp moons of Magutti?!”
Bowyer glared at him, very much liking to stab as many arrows as he could into the blue Yoshi. “Also got us lost in the Forest of Illusion you did.” He collapsed beside the others. Boshi was the last one standing.
“AND the Vanilla Dome!” Toadette added, moaning. “AND Isle Delfino!”
“AND Sub-con!” Pork Chop groaned. “AND Poshley Heights!”
Mario sprang from the forest, to the surprise of no one. “Heehee!” he giggled, holding a large ball of what appeared to be dung. “I got it!”
“Dudes,” Boshi shook his head, grinning. “who cares about the dudely rest stops? We’re here, dudes!”
“See that I do,” Bowyer admitted.
“Let’s go.” Toadette sighed, lifting herself up.
Before she even took a step, a theatrically echoing voice shouted out, “HALT! Who goes there?!”
“Mario-a!”
“Boshi, dude!”
Pork Chop smacked both of them with one fist. “Show yourself, you cowardly guard!”
There was a gasp, which came in as a lot of static. “NO ONE calls the great Flavio COWARDLY!”
“FLAVIO?!” Toadette yelped.
“FLAVIO?!” Bowyer yelped.
“FUNNY BUNNY?!” Mario yelped.
“FLAVIO DUDE?!” Boshi yelped.
“Who’s Flavio?” Pork Chop asked.
Out of the shadows came Flavio, bedecked in his finest merchant gear and holding a long scabbard. He growled at them. “Ah, ‘tis you, ya horrible cads!”
“Uh...” Toadette looked at Bowyer, who frowned at her.
Flavio waved his sword in the air. “We shall fight to the finish, I say!”
“No,” Bowyer said simply, and shot him. Flavio stood frozen, a giggling arrow protruding from his nose. He had been shot with Bowyer’s patented five-minute poison.
Pork Chop grinned. “Nice job, man.”
“LA LA LAND!” Mario whooped, and he rushed at the castle, busted down the doors, and disappeared into the entranceway.
They looked, confused, at each other for a moment. Then Toadette yelped “LADIES FIRST!” and hurried after him.
“Wait up you must!” Bowyer yelped, running madly, arrows flying.
“HEY, WAIT FOR ME!” Pork Chop whined, racing after them.
“DUDES, WAIT!” Boshi groaned.
As Boshi ran into
the castle, Flavio jiggled his head. “What happened?”
The five of them met up inside the dark, dank, moldy castle interior, where every hall was lined with suits of armor (some human-shaped, some definitely not) and every cobweb had a monster, big or small.
“So...” Toadette looked around at the maze of hallways, “which way do we go?”
Boshi scoffed (again). “How should I know, dudette?”
“WHAT?!” Pork Chop yelped, “I thought you could guide us!”
“More annoying than Flavio you are!” Bowyer growled at nobody in particular.
“Sorry, dudes.” Boshi shrugged.
Toadette sighed. “Who votes we go down the easy hallway with the pink carpet?” She gestured at a hallway that was, indeed, bright shades of pink and seemed remarkably monster-free. She raised her hand. She was the only one that did.
“And who votes we go down the sinister hallway with the bats hanging from the ceiling?” she continued bitterly. She kept her hand firmly plastered at her side. She was the only one that did.
“Morons,” she muttered.
Bowyer, smiling in his element, began strolling casually down the dank hall, grinning at each suit of armor as if it was an old friend. Pork Chop, eager to please, imitated him as best he could. Mario skipped down the hallway, singing tunelessly and tipping his hat to every fifth suit of armor. Boshi followed casually, humming. Toadette, shaking her head, walked slowly after them.
“Creepy this is,” Bowyer said mildly.
Pork Chop, pausing in the act of imitating Bowyer’s smile, pointed violently at the ceiling. “Hey, look, a spider!”
His words were met by consternation- Bowyer let out a barrage of whooping arrows, Boshi shrieked and ran into a wall, Mario immediately named it “Lily”, and Toadette began trying to fire her gun, only to remember that Doopliss had stolen it. All of them screamed hysterically.
“Never mind,” Pork Chop said after a while, oblivious to the chaos. “It’s a tarantula.” He sighed disappointedly.
The outcome was
predictable. After shrieking, screaming, howling, shooting, breakdancing
(Mario), crashing into walls, and generally freaking out, all but Pork
Chop ran (or skipped cheerfully) down the nearly endless hall. Pork Chop
smiled up at the spider for a moment, looked around, then strolled slowly
down the hall, smiling up at everything he saw, horrible or otherwise.
Several hours later, the five of them found themselves in a room filled with coffins. Cobwebs filled the air, rats ran to and fro, and the door was blocked by a coffin that nobody dared move. Pork Chop was the last to arrive, with a new pet spider on his arm.
“How strange, dudes,” Boshi pondered, examining a coffin (from five feet away).
“This is really a puzzler.” Toadette sighed. Tough as she was, there was no way she would touch a coffin. Especially one with somebody in it.
Before anyone could figure out a solution (or the lack of one), the coffin that blocked the door slammed open, covering them all with a cloud of dust. There was another few moments of general pandemonium, where Mario ended up inside a coffin, Boshi ended up on the ceiling, Bowyer ended up pinned to the floor by another coffin, and Toadette ended up with her head stuck halfway through the wall. By the time the dust cleared, though, they found that the monster they faced was nothing more than a female Toad in her mid-twenties with pink spots on her Mushroom cap, a curl of blonde hair, spectacles, and a red suit. “Huh?” She blinked furiously to get the dust out of her eyes. “Who’s there?”
Eventually they had all extracted themselves from coffins, ceilings, and walls and gotten dust out of their own eyes. “Who are you?” Pork Chop said apprehensively, waving his fists in the air.
The Toad made a noise somewhere between an “Awww...” and an “Oooh!”, which did not sound pleasant. “Hey, little Yoshi!” she awwed, “I’m Jolene!” She tickled him under the chin and received a sock in the face that didn’t even faze her.
“Hey!” Toadette said. “You’re the manager of the Glitz Pit!” The Glitz Pit was a highly successful fighting arena accessible exclusively by blimp travel. Toadette had been there only once, working temporarily as a guard.
“Yes,” Jolene nodded. “Bowser kidnapped me and stuck me in that coffin there.”
“Why?” Bowyer asked.
“I think he found me cute!” She gave a very manly giggle.
This statement
resulted in Boshi falling to the ground and laughing so hard that his lungs
shriveled up. Mario did the same. Jolene removed her glasses, set them
gently on a coffin, made her extremely fiery eyes clear, and began bashing
their heads with such vigor that the room shook.
Much later, Jolene had finished and was cleaning her glasses. Mario and Boshi were conscious, but just barely. The others stood, paralyzed with fear, up against the wall.
“Yikes,” Toadette murmured to Bowyer.
“Strong she is,” Bowyer muttered back.
“Wow,” Pork Chop added. “Just wow.”
“So,” Jolene finished cleaning her glasses and put them back on, smiling at them friendly, “what brings you to this castle?”
Toadette, giving a sigh, filled her in with great detail.
It took a few hours.
“So the Queen of Shadows has been released.” Jolene sighed, shaking off her glassy-eyed look.
Toadette observed her closely, nodding. “We could use someone with strength on our team,” she said, her voice extremely hoarse.
“Yes!” Bowyer said exuberantly, shoving Toadette aside. “Join us you must!”
Jolene smiled sweetly. “How can I say no?”
Pork Chop cheered. Boshi groaned. Mario giggled.
After a few minutes of arguing over who would carry the now nearly unconscious Boshi and Mario, Jolene simply slung them both over her shoulder one on top of the other, burst down the door (which was unlocked), and strolled out of the room. Toadette, Bowyer, and Pork Chop looked at each other apprehensively, then followed.
After a few miles of hallway, they came to a huge iron gate, which Jolene broke with one finger. They immediately found themselves in Bowser’s throne room, where the Koopa King himself reclined upon his throne, eating a grape.
“Jolene!” Bowser gasped, choking on his grape. “How did you get out of your coffin?!”
“I’m-a Mario!” Mario added.
“MARIO?!” Bowser roared. “What are you doing- HEY!” He spotted Bowyer. “You’re that BOW CREATURE I fought back in Rose Town!”
“Me that was!” Bowyer admitted. In fact, Bowser hadn’t done anything but spit one fireball and run away crying after several arrows in the back.
Bowser turned to Toadette. “And YOU’RE that TOADETTE! YOU gave Mario all those cool badges and showed him how to use them!”
Toadette laughed nervously. “Well, um, er...”
Bowser roared. “GUARDS!”
Quickly, from every room came armor-covered Koopatrols, who surrounded the five of them with every lethal weapon imaginable.
“ATTACK!” Bowser ordered.
The Koopatrols attacked. Toadette immediately knocked out a few with merely her pigtails by flinging them around, while Bowyer shot them with every arrow he had. Jolene knocked out several per second with merely a flick of her wrist, while Pork Chop flew into the air and pounded into them from above. Mario, predictably, danced around the room kicking them, while Boshi did nothing but slap helplessly at one. Within one minute, there was a pile of unconscious Koopatrols behind them.
“My Koopatrols!” Bowser gasped, then growled ferociously at them. They were not fazed.
“We haven’t come to fight you, Bowser!” Toadette said angrily. “We need a spaceship!”
Bowser froze in place (so suddenly that everyone immediately looked at Bowyer). “A spaceship? Really?”
“Yes.” Bowyer pointed an arrow at him threateningly. “Have one you must!”
Pork Chop took a nicer approach. “C’mon, we really need one, Koopa dude!”
Jolene took the threatening approach. “Give one to us, or we will knock you out!”
Bowser gave a highly haughty “Hmmph!” and growled at them. “Well, I wouldn’t, but considering I’m terrified of you, I will.”
Boshi nodded. “Good, dude.” He smirked.
Mario broke the drama with a hearty chorus of “LALALA!”
“Where is it?” Jolene demanded.
Bowser leaned to one side of his throne, starting to smile. “Right... HERE!” He laughed maniacally as he slammed a claw down on the side of his chair. Immediately his throne lifted off the ground, flew through the ceiling, and went out of sight.
“Is this some kind of trick?” Toadette wondered, becoming the next Captain Obvious.
“Hmm...” Pork Chop stroked his chin. Suddenly there was a rumbling beneath his feet, and he dove into Jolene’s arms. Out of the ground came a gigantic mechanical Bowser (known by some as Mecha-Bowser), piloted by seven of Bowser’s children, the Koopalings, who all laughed wickedly at them.
“You’ll never-”
“Get the spaceship!”
“ATTACK!”
“Mwahahaha!”
They leapt inside the mechanical head, which closed around them. Mecha-Bowser’s giant fist came down on Toadette, who barely had time to utter an “Uh oh” before being knocked clear across the castle. The others stood in stunned silence for a minute, then jumped into fighting poses.
“Get ready to fight, dudes and dudettes!” Boshi commanded in a surprisingly deep voice.
The Koopalings cackled with wicked glee as a gargantuan fireball shot from the robot’s gullet towards Bowyer. Bowyer rolled out of the way and opened fire with his arrows. Every arrow bounced off of the robot’s metal ‘skin’ and just barely missed hitting Mario.
“What?!” Bowyer yelped.
“Nothing can stop Mecha-Bowser!” a Koopaling screamed.
“Give up, give up, give up, give up!” another roared.
Bowyer got ready to shoot another arrow, but was knocked away by the robot’s giant fist, and flew through every wall in the castle. Jolene, after dodging another fist, swung a punch at the mechanical monstrosity’s leg. She rebounded off with such speed that she flew into a wall, unconscious. Pork Chop jumped up onto the robot’s fist when it attempted to flatten him, and began running up the arm. As soon as he reached the head, he flew into the air and pounded down on it from the sky. Before he knew it, the giant fist had flattened him against a wall. Mario and Boshi stood stunned.
The head of Mecha-Bowser began to float into the air, revealing the Koopalings, who stood, laughing smugly, at the two of them. “Why don’t ya dorks give up now?!” one of them taunted.
“Nothing can stop us!” another cackled.
Boshi looked at Mario. “What do we do, Mario dude?!”
Mario grinned. “Me going to burp-a!”
“Huh, dude?”
Without warning, Mario let out a belch of such volume that it created a miniature earthquake. With an equal amount of warning (or lack thereof), a rocket spewed from his gullet, one he had swallowed years before. The Koopalings screamed. “What in the-”
“World?!”
“Brace yourselves!”
“HELP!”
The rocket made impact with a disastrous explosion. Koopalings went flying, smacking into walls, smacking into each other, smacking into Boshi... By the time things settled, Bowyer, Jolene, Toadette, and Pork Chop had all made their way back to their original positions, basically unharmed but quite rattled.
“Wow,” Toadette gasped, panting loudly. “Mario, your stupidity finally came in handy!”
“FUNNY BUNNY!” Mario screamed. Boshi sighed.
“All right, Koopalings!” Jolene roared at the weak, battered Koopas who were spread across the room. “The rocket! NOW!”
“All right, all right!” The closest one to them, a Koopa girl with no hair but a bow on her head (which was smothered in makeup), stood weakly and slid open a section of the wall. She punched in some numbers and the entire wall opened up, revealing a gigantic rocketship with various Bowser heads painted on it.
The Koopalings began to walk weakly to the rocket, deactivating all of the safety measures. From the knowledge of the five “heroes”, the Koopalings were:
Lemmy and Iggy- two Koopa boys with identically rainbow colored hair. Iggy wore glasses, Lemmy was short. They tended to finish each other’s sentences.
Wendy- the only female Koopaling, who had no hair and a whole lot of makeup.
Roy- the tough Koopaling, who was also bald and wore sunglasses.
Ludwig- the smart Koopaling, and the oldest, who had extremely wild blue hair.
Larry- the sneaky Koopaling, and the youngest, who looked identical to Iggy except that his hair was blue and he had no glasses.
Morton- the extremely talkative Koopaling, who had a birthmark in the shape of a star on his cheek.
“What do you need the rocket for, anyway?!” Ludwig grumbled, entering an extremely complicated code onto the rocket’s computer.
“Yeah, what gives?” Roy growled. He wasn’t doing much of anything, except for kicking the wall.
Pork Chop, always friendly, spoke up. “That Shadow Queen was released!”
The Koopalings looked blankly at them. “Who?” Larry asked.
After a bit of arguing, it was decided Jolene should be the storyteller. So, after everyone had settled into comfortable positions, Jolene told the whole story- not her story, but Luigi’s story, as it was passed on to Toadette and then passed to Jolene.
The Koopalings were bored by the end of the tale, except for Iggy and Lemmy. “Wow. That’s-”
“A lot of bad things!”
“Really,” Ludwig scoffed. He returned to his work.
“MUMMY!” Mario voiced.
“And Mario’s still his stupid self!” Wendy sighed dramatically. Toadette and Jolene glared at her. The others nodded.
Toadette rubbed her hands together. “So you see, we need this rocket so that we can get to Earth, which has Grodus’s Magic Cure Shop. With that, we can cure the Shadow Sirens AND rescue Luigi! And then we can whup the Shadow Queen!”
“I see...” Wendy yawned, not seeing at all.
Morton spoke up. “That’s weird, horrible, fantastic-” Wendy immediately slapped a hand over his mouth.
Iggy and Lemmy sighed deeply. “It is our duty-”
“To stop this queen!” They looked at the ‘heroes’ impressively.
As the ‘heroes’ looked blankly at the two of them, Wendy translated. “What they’re trying to say is we really want to come with you.” She nodded impressively. Anything to get away from these boys!
“Three more helpers?” Jolene thought it over.
Boshi elbowed in front of her. “Sure, dudes and dudette, come along! We need all the dudely help we can get!”
Iggy and Lemmy cheered. Wendy snorted and said “Yay!” with the most sarcasm you can squeeze into a word.
Roy grinned. “We’ll take care of things for ya ‘til you get back!” he promised, thinking of how he would trash their rooms.
“We certainly will!” Ludwig added, already dreaming of stealing their personal possessions for use in his newest invention.
“MMPH!” Morton managed, for Wendy still had her hand over his mouth.
“See ya, guys!” Larry cackled. Immediately he began thinking of places to set tripwires and bombs in their rooms.
Iggy and Lemmy made their way onto the rocketship, followed by Wendy, who was already complaining about something or other. Jolene, after a quick (much too quick) look over the controls, made herself pilot.
“Bye-”
“Siblings!” Iggy and Lemmy laughed at the Koopalings who were being left behind. They obviously thought they were getting the better deal.
Toadette, Boshi, Bowyer, and Pork Chop all managed relatively friendly goodbyes, while Wendy, sulking, managed a “Later, losers!” Mario settled with “Byebye birdie!”
Jolene handled the countdown. “Twelve seconds until liftoff. Five seconds... One second!” She pressed the ignition button so hard that it broke, and the ship fired up.
“SEE YAS!” chorused Roy, Larry, and Ludwig. Morton managed another “MMPH!” as Roy now was covering his mouth. They were all blanketed in dust and soot as the rocket took off erratically, crashing through the ceiling and bouncing its passengers around the ship.
“We have liftoff!” Jolene announced, a tad unnecessarily.