It was a long, dismal journey. Toadette looked out the window, gazing as their planet grew smaller and smaller. Her eyes were halfway shut and she was drooling. Wendy was sulking in a corner while Iggy and Lemmy nodded off with their heads against each other’s shoulders. Jolene piloted with precision, while Boshi peered over her shoulder, making unnecessary comments that made her grow redder and redder. Pork Chop paced up and down the floor, wearing holes in the ground. Bowyer was the only one who was wide awake, and was enhancing the dismal mood by reminiscing enthusiastically about his early victims, grinding an arrow into the wall for sound effects.
“Say goodbye to Plit, people,” Toadette said sleepily, as the planet disappeared fully from view. “We’re moving out!’
“Freaky this is,” Bowyer commented, pausing his monologue to peer anxiously out the window.
Iggy and Lemmy snorted, and said with sarcasm, “No, it’s-”
“Cool!”
Porky Chop sighed, still pacing through a four-foot hole in the floor. “Just born and I’m already leaving home!”
“Relax, little guy,” Jolene said, peering over her shoulder to look at him (or, to look at the tuft of his hair, which was the only thing she could see from the pit), “we should be on Earth in an hour or so.”
Wendy lifted her head out of her hands, intending to scream something at their pilot, but spotted a tiny tab on the ship’s wall. “Um, I have something to say.”
“What is it, dudette?”
Wendy peered at the tab. “It’s about how many beings are IN this ship. The weight max is one person. It says on the wall that if it goes over that max-”
And Jolene, who hadn’t been listening, screeched in Boshi’s ear, “Hey! I’m losing control!”
Before Wendy’s warning had sunk in, the ship’s gravity flipped upside down, everyone hitting the ceiling.
“Whee!” Mario yipped.
Jolene remained hanging from the steering wheel, desperately trying to keep control. It was the only thing that was keeping them remotely afloat.
“What the?!” Toadette roared.
“I’ve lost control!” Jolene cried, struggling with the wheel. “We’re going down!”
“HELP!” Boshi yelped. “HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP!” He kept on with this reverie, driving everybody out of their minds, not having realized that no one could possibly hear them.
“Wait, wait!” Wendy yelled. Having a much louder and whinier voice than most, she was able to quiet everybody. She peered blearily out the window. “I see something!”
“It’s another-”
“Ship!” Iggy and Lemmy shoved their sister out of the way to get a good look.
“IT’LL SAVE US!” Toadette howled, grabbing and discarding the Koopalings. “OVER HERE!”
Everybody watched as the other ship, which looked remarkably like a sailing vessel, attached to theirs by use of several gigantic, plunger-like structures. A megaphone descended from a porthole in the side, along with something that resembled a staircase.
“CLIMB ABOARD!” the megaphone screeched in a rush of static.
Jolene, who was hanging from the ceiling, made an important decision, if a stupid one. “You go! I’ve got to keep this ship from crashing!”
Toadette, the most level-headed of the group, looked up at her. “But you’ll die in the crash!” she said, exasperated.
“Better me than you!” Jolene said stubbornly. “Go!”
Ya don’t have to tell me twice!” Pork Chop rolled his eyes and, shoving Toadette out of the way, threw open the door and sprinted up the staircase to the odd-looking spaceship.
“Hurry!” Jolene screamed, the others looking at her as if she was being extremely idiotic. “The suction from the door will pull you into space!”
Toadette slapped her forehead. “I’M NOT GOING WITHOUT YOU!” she roared.
“Quickly!” the megaphone blasted.
Boshi shook his head at Jolene. “Come on, Mario dude!” Mario laughed insanely as the two of them left the ship.
Wendy whined, which made the ship’s other occupants cover their ears in pain. “This is melting my mascara! Come on!” she yelled to the other occupants, and ran off, followed by her siblings.
“GO! NOW!” Jolene was screaming, apparently thinking she was being heroic. “SAVE YOURSELVES!”
“Going I am not!” Bowyer sniffed, eying the other ship with a sneer on his ugly face.
Toadette, however, gave IN“This is a brave thing, Jolene, she said sarcastically, exiting. “We owe our lives to you.” Muttering, she boarded the other ship.
“BOWYER!” Jolene roared. “GO!”
“NO!” he yelled back. Then he had a ‘bright’ idea. “Go you must! Sacrifice my life I will!”
Thus, he pulled her off of the steering wheel and shoved her towards the door.
“But-”
“GO!” Bowyer roared, and pushed her right out the door. The other ship, apparently deciding that he was not going to join them, detached.
“What I was waiting for this is,” Bowyer said impressively. “Regret this I will not in the afterlife.
While he was monologuing, the ship, having achieved its desired weight limit, was sailing smoothly. All he needed to do was take the wheel. But, no. He was wrapped up in his heroism.
The ship crashed
into a small moon. There was an explosion.
Inside the space-sailing vessel, all was in blackness. The various occupants shoved each other, called each other names, and picked each other’s pockets and noses (Mario).
“Where is everybody?!” Toadette demanded, having broken Mario’s nose when he tried to kiss her.
“Over here!” Pork Chop roared, right in her ear. She slammed him into the wall.
“DUDE!” Boshi howled in her other ear. “WHAT IS THIS PLACE?!”
He went flying into the ceiling.
“At least we’re safe!” Jolene sighed, slapping Iggy’s hand away from her wallet.
“JOLENE?!” Toadette roared, almost disappointed. “How did you save yourself?!”
“Bowyer...” Jolene sighed again. “He took over the ship...”
“But...” Wendy began, delighted, “does that mean...?”
“I saw-”
“The ship crash,” Iggy and Lemmy confirmed, sounding equally ecstatic.
“There’s no hope that he survived.” Jolene sighed, sounding more mildly disappointed than anything.
Then another voice broke in. It wasn’t Boshi, nor was it Mario, Toadette, Jolene, Pork Chop, or any one of the Koopalings.
“Arr,” she began, “he was very brave to save you!”
“Whuzzat?” Pork Chop questioned, smacking his head into Mario as he turned. There was a few moments of general confusion as everybody made a leap for the voice, but crashed into one another, beginning an all-out brawl.
“It’s-a molasses!” Mario whooped, breaking Boshi’s shades.
And the mysterious voice, mistaking the comment as addressed to her, roared, “NO! ARRGH!”
The fighting stopped. Everybody scampered for cover.
“STOP CALLING ME CAPTAIN MOLASSES!” the screeching voice continued.
“She goes good on pancakes!” Mario said randomly.
Again, the voice mistook this as an insult rather than gibberish. “DANG YOU! YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR GOOD-FOR-NOTHING COUSIN!”
Most of the occupants mistook this as directed at themselves, and began cursing their respective good-for-nothing cousins. Only Toadette realized the significance.
“Only one being could hate Wario THAT much!” she decided (wrongly). “Captain Chocolate!”
And Pork Chop, mistaking her statement as ordering dinner for the group, timidly added, “I thought it was Captain French Fry!”
“CAPTAIN MOLASSES!” Mario roared, busting eardrums all over the ship. Following this was a large placement of orders, ranging from makeup to waffles. With every order, the voice took offense and ranted angrily for several minutes about mistranslations and grimy fast food.
The last straw was: “Captain-”
“Burger!”
“I’M CAPTAIN SYRUP,” the voice exploded, “YOU MORONS!”
The lights switched on. Mario had his head in Boshi’s mouth, Toadette and Jolene had their arms twisted together, Iggy and Lemmy both had one foot smashed through a porthole, Wendy had smeared her makeup all over the wall, and Pork Chop was stuck halfway through the floor. And in the center of the room, shaking so fast that she was boring a hole in the ground, her face purpler than the purplest... purple... thing... stood a female pirate in purple robes, a cutlass at her side, murder in her eyes.
Toadette gasped. “It’s Captain Chocolate!”
Captain Syrup looked as if she might give off a sonic boom. She gestured at a bronze plaque: “THIS SHIP IS PROPERTY OF CAPTAIN SYRUP”, several banners: “WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN SYRUP”, and an engraved toilet seat: “ONLY FOR CAPTAIN SYRUP”.
They looked back at her blankly.
“Arr!” Syrup growled, steam coming from her ears so fast that it smogged up the cabin. “Don’t make me make ye walk the plank!”
After they had deciphered this sentence from pirate-speak (Jolene happened to have a dictionary handy), Pork Chop snorted. “You can’t fool me, Captain French Fry!” He stuck out his (ten-foot) tongue at her. “There are no sharks in space!”
Syrup stared at him. “Right now we are flying over a black hole.”
He looked back at her blankly.
She shook her head. “Then we will fly over the planet of hungry monsters.”
Pork Chop paled. The other words were indecipherable, but he knew ‘hungry’.
“Any questions?”
“I’ll shut up now.”
“So,” Toadette decided to break the ice, “why did you rescue us?”
“I heard,” Syrup beckoned to them, and they all leaned forward, “ye had Wario-haters on the ship.”
The occupants turned to Jolene, who began laboriously translating from pirate to English.
“Yup!” Toadette confirmed, once they had finished the translation of ‘ship’. “We hate Wario!”
“Yeah!” Pork Chop added, having no idea who they were talking about. “Wario stinks!”
“Wario dude is the WORST!” Boshi cut in, also in the dark.
This was followed by various deprecating statements about Mario’s cousin.
“We-a all love Wario!” Mario giggled.
Captain Syrup looked murderous. She stuck her cutlass inches from Toadette’s throat. Everyone gasped.
“What?” Mario asked.
Once Mario had been tied up, gagged, and stuffed in a corner, they turned to the problem of transportation.
“So...” Syrup glanced at Mario, who was flopping around like a fish out of water, “where can I drop you off, mates?”
“Earth.”
“Earth?”
“Earth.”
“What for?”
Everybody looked at Toadette, who groaned long (approximately forty-five minutes long) and loud. “Do I HAVE to tell her the whole story?”
“Yes. Do it. Now.”
And in short, Toadette told the whole story, with no embellishment, except that the character of Luigi was replaced with that of Disgustoid, an evil frog with no brain. No one bothered to correct her.
“Blah.” Syrup sighed once she had finished. “Serves those Sirens right, always sending me hate mail...”
“Why,” Boshi gasped, horrified, “would they send you hate mail, dudette?”
“Because I send THEM hate mail!”
Silence.
“Whatever.” Syrup waved the comment away. “I’ll drop ye off at Earth.”
Jolene glared at her. “But you’ll need to pick us up!”
“Not a chance!” the pirate sneered, sticking her face in Jolene’s. “I’ve got urgent business!”
“Fine!” Toadette said quickly before Jolene could tear off the head of their pilot. “We can fly away with the flying potion!”
Syrup smiled wickedly at Jolene, who settled for merely thinking of disemboweling the pirate. “We should be on Earth in an hour or so.”
The others were in the process of nodding contentedly when Boshi burst out, “That long?! Dudes!” He smashed his fist into a porthole, shattering the glass. “This dudely dudette,” he jabbed a finger in the pirate’s eye, “has a dudely slow ship!”
“Keep it up,” Syrup drew her cutlass, “and you’ll never make it there.
“An hour’s fine.”
“I thought as much. Now... Find yourselves something to do!”
It took a while for them to find something to do, but they settled on-
“KICK THE CAN?!”
“It was actually fun to play,” Jolene muttered.
“Until we smashed that dudely window,” Boshi added.
“YEAH?” Syrup roared. “WELL, GUESS WHAT! YOU SMASHED ALL THE ‘DUDELY WINDOWS’!”
“But it was fun!” Pork Chop stuck out his lower lip, bugged out his eyes, and began forcing tears down his cheeks. Everybody melted (figuratively).
Except Syrup. “Fun, schmun. Do something else!”
Next came Hide and Seek in Syrup’s cabin, where they uncovered the pirate captain’s chilling secrets (which included a sticker book and pink tricycle).
“YOU SAW ALL THAT?!” she roared.
“So...” Boshi waggled his eyebrows, “why do you have dudely hearts painted on the walls?”
“And pink stars on the ceiling?” giggled Wendy.
“STAY OUT OF MY CABIN!” Syrup exploded.
Pork Chop stuck out his lower lip, bugged out his eyes, and began forcing tears down his cheeks. Everybody melted (figuratively). “But-”
“DO SOMETHING ELSE!”
And she booted them into the engine room, slammed the door, bolted the door, chained the door, and formed a human shield around the door. A few minutes later, she got bored and went in to check on them.
“DON’T TELL ME!”
Boshi belched. “That soda was good.” He downed a black liquid.
Toadette belched. “And the swiss cheese.” She munched on a hard, gray, metallic-looking item.
Jolene belched the loudest. “And all that bologna!” She swallowed a good amount of a thin, metallic... thing.
Syrup was about to explode, but then Wendy interrupted. “OOH! YOU HAVE NAIL POLISH?!”
“So...” Iggy sighed, drinking more ‘soda’ while Wendy slathered her hands with more black liquid, “why do you stash all that food in the engine?”
Syrup blew up (almost literally). “THAT ‘SODA’ WAS FUEL! THAT ‘SWISS CHEESE’ AND ‘BOLOGNA’ WERE PARTS OF THE ENGINE! AND THAT ‘NAIL POLISH’ WAS THE SPARE FUEL!”
When this had sunk in, Lemmy was the first to voice what was on everyone’s minds. “So we can’t get to Earth?”
Of course, this was their problem. Not that they had swallowed fuel and metal. No, not at all.
“WE’LL FALL OUT OF THE SKY ANY MINUTE NOW!” Syrup howled. She fell to the floor and said her final prayers in a hysterical scream.
“But, lady,” Pork Chop murmured, “we’re already ON the ground! The spaceship landed on Earth five minutes ago!”
Her scream ended. Her eyes twitched. “But- But-”
“C’mon!” Toadette said merrily. She led the happy adventurers out of the engine room and off of the ship.
Syrup ran after them, cursing and waving her irreparably broken engine. “NOW HOW WILL I GET TO MY URGENT BUSINESS?!”
Jolene stuck her face in the pirate’s and sneered, “Relax, Captain Pancake.”
Syrup let out a wordless roar.
“Yikes!”
They took off down an Earthian road, Syrup throwing things after them and jabbing them with her cutlass.
“I’ll have to take up sailing again! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
And with the pirate left to her unfortunate fate, the intrepid, if insensitive, adventurers continued down a lonely road. Come to think of it, they didn’t even know if this LED to Grodus’s shop. The shop could be on the other side of the world! But for now, Toadette had other worries.
“Oh great!” she suddenly exclaimed, horrified, stopping in her tracks.
“What?” Jolene yawned.
“I forgot!” Toadette cried.
“What is it?” Boshi groaned.
“That was so stupid of me!”
“WHAT?!” Wendy roared.
“We left Mario on the spaceship!” she bawled.
While Toadette wept, the others looked at each other with barely concealed glee. “Let’s pretend Mario was never here,” Boshi whispered, “dudes.”
“I’ll second that motion.” Iggy cackled.
And meanwhile, while the heroes (except for Toadette) celebrated over their loss, hundreds of miles away, Luigi was bound tightly to a stake in a cave made out of clouds.
“You’ll never get away with this!” the heroic Luigi yelled to his captor.
His captor was getting irritated. “But I already have!” King Boolossus shook his gigantic head... body.... thingy. “Black Yoshi!” he addressed his companion. “Pay up!”
“What?!”
“You get Luigi out of your way,” the giant ghost explained, “and I get my revenge AND some cash!”
“Ah, yes,” the black Yoshi muttered. “Here you are, King.”
He emptied some cash into the king’s ghastly hands. However, due to the fact that Boolossus was a ghost, it just floated through his hands to the cloud ground, and through the clouds.
“That will be sufficient,” King Boolossus said happily, not having noticed. “You may go now.”
“I shall,” the black Yoshi smiled, and he, oddly, floated into the air. “My queen awaits.”
He flew off in the direction of his falling money.
“My friends,” Luigi paused to reconsider the term and decided that ‘gang of those who either dislike or hate me’ was too long, “WILL come rescue me!”
“Not a chance!” the giant ghost cackled. “That bow-friend of yours died in a spaceship explosion! The rest of your pathetic ‘army’ was last seen in the care of Captain Syrup, who will be investigated!” He gave another cackle.
Luigi blinked. “Bowyer... died?” A slow smile spread over his face. “No!” he said incredulously.
“Yess...” Boolossus confirmed, apparently mistaking his delight for anguish. “Now sit tight... I’m going to build myself a castle...”
And he flew off in a continuation of his futile attempts to pick up a brick.
“No...” Luigi said, astounded. “It can’t be...”
Ahem. Now, back with the heroes who were wandering aimlessly...
It had been nearly a day since their walk had begun. They had gotten nowhere. Everywhere looked the same. They had managed to go around in circles several times on a perfectly straight road. They hadn’t eaten since their feast on engine parts. And they were tired.
“That magic cure shop should be dead ahead.” Toadette groaned. Nobody paid her any attention. She had said the same thing every few minutes.
This time, however, she was miraculously correct. The road took a winding turn, and ahead of them... ahead of them... ahead of them...
...was a broken down shack.
And rather than celebrating this change in their luck, as the shack was indeed the magic cure shop of Grodus, they chose to ridicule the situation.
“You weren’t kidding about the DEAD ahead.”
“When was the last time they cleaned this place, 1881?”
“I’d like to see even GRODUS put up with this place!”
“What did they use to hold this house together? Syrup?”
“Wait, this can’t be Earth! Earth has houses!”
“Maybe this is 1800.”
Then Boshi said something about a goat, and had his head rearranged by Jolene. They went inside.
The shack looked little better on the inside. In fact, nothing was there except for a couch that snapped when Toadette sat on it, a chair that crumpled to the ground when Pork Chop poked it, and a mirror that shattered when Jolene looked at it. Oh, and there was a large computer screen on the wall.
“Where’s Grodus?” Iggy groaned, and Jolene smashed the mirror frame into a million tiny shards.
Boshi, who had his head on backwards, cackled. “Maybe he’s a-HEAD of schedule?” He laughed for several minutes before realizing that everybody was glaring at him.
“That’s not funny.” Toadette sighed as Jolene trampled him into the floor. “That’s just wrong. Where’s Grodus?”
And then, the screen flickered to life. It was blue. Everybody screamed.
“SIR GRODUS IS AWAY ON URGENT BUSINESS.”
Everybody screamed again.
“I AM HERE TO TAKE HIS PLACE.”
Everybody screamed... once again.
Eventually, it was determined that the voice was coming from the blue screen on the wall. And of course there’s only ONE large screen that talks...
“TEC?!” Jolene exclaimed, referring to the wicked Lord Grodus’s disobedient mechanical helper, who was in love with the Princess Peach. “But you blew up like three years ago!”
“I WAS REBUILT,” the computer said mysteriously. “WHAT DO YOU NEED?”
Before the others could ask for the bathroom, Toadette put in, “One Flying Potion and one Life Potion, please.” She could not ignore how ridiculous that sounded.
TEC worked out the equation on the screen, taking note that none of those present understood math and thus adding a good deal of extra cash to the price. “THAT WILL BE 50 MILLION COINS.”
Toadette gave a cry of despair, having never considered that they would actually have to pay.
“PAY UP,” TEC hissed. In a rush of static, a huge number of laser guns sprouted from the computer screen.
“Fine,” Pork Chop sighed. “Who has money?”
Since nobody had ever thought about using money to buy things, their total was thirty-one coins and a fake credit card.
“NO DEAL,” TEC said nastily, as their money was sucked into the gun barrels. He’d gone to seed since losing the princess.
“I’ll go hack into his system,” Iggy said casually, and walked towards the back room.
“HEY!” TEC roared. The gun barrels all swiveled towards Iggy. “NO HACKING! SECURITY!”
“Dude, you have security?” Boshi asked, ignoring the guns.
TEC was silent for a long while, but then admitted, “NO.”
The guns fell away to reveal painted Styrofoam.
“Go hack.” Toadette sighed.
“HEY, NO FAIR!” TEC whined as Iggy left. Then his voice buzzed out entirely and was replaced for a while by uncontrollable giggling. “ACK!” came out in a high-pitched southern accent. Then, in an extremely girly voice, the computer shouted, “LOSING CONTROL OF SYSTEM!” “ACK!”, “ICK!”, and “OOH!” came in a British accent.
Finally, having cycled through every accent known to man and Yoshi, TEC sent two labeled vials, filled to the brim with potion, sliding towards them.
“Life and Flying.” Toadette smiled. “Perfect.”
“Yay.” Jolene rolled her eyes. “Now let’s get off this freaky planet before we meet,” she shuddered. “’humans’.”
“Huma- What?”
“GO, ALREADY,” the computer grunted, this time in a low, monster-movie voice.
Upon Iggy’s return, he was hailed as a hero.
“What did you do to him?” enthused Jolene.
“Yeah, dude!” Boshi said inconsequentially.
“I poured soda pop on his server.”
Silence.
“That’s...” Toadette struggled for a word, “weird, but whatever.”
So they left.
“HAVE A BAD DAY,” TEC called, this time sounding rather like a British butler.
“Which one do we use first?” Lemmy questioned.
“The first one,” Toadette said.
“Which one is the first one?”
“The purple one,” Jolene added.
“They’re both purple!” Lemmy shot back at her. “What does the first one look like?”
“It’s fizzing,” Wendy suggested.
“THEY’RE BOTH FIZZING!” Lemmy shouted.
“The one with the green bottle,” Iggy said timidly.
“THEY ARE BOTH IN GREEN BOTTLES!” Lemmy screamed.
“THE ONE WITH THE YELLOW CORK!”
“THEY BOTH HAVE YELLOW CORKS!”
“JUST OPEN THE BOTTLE!”
“I CAN’T OPEN THE BOTTLE!”
“WE NEED TO USE THE FLYING POTION!”
“WHICH ONE IS THE FLYING POTION?!”
“DUDES!” Boshi screamed over them. “IT’S THE ONE THAT SAYS ‘NUMBER ONE: FLYING POTION’!”
Silence.
“Oh!” Lemmy said. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He uncorked the bottle before Jolene could rearrange his vital organs.
“Let’s get flying!” Jolene growled, pouring a little on her hand. The others followed her lead, though Boshi, who drank it, turned an unpleasant shade of green as his spleen flew up into his nose. Eventually they all managed to sprout wings from their backs (a painful process).
“Sweet, dude,” Boshi said with a grimace, as his wings were still sprouting.
“I think the rest of the FBI should know about this,” Toadette said suspiciously, flexing her wings. “There must be something illegal involved. But for now, we FLY!”
Silence greeted her dramatic statement, as no one knew how just yet. However, after a few minutes of flying lessons, they were (sort of) ready.
“Let’s do this!” Wendy whooped, doing a figure eight in the air (and then smacking into a tree).
In the bushes outside of the magic cure shop, the black Yoshi hid, muttering into his communication device. The foolish computer had told him everything he needed to know...
“Yes, my queen.” he hissed. “We searched Syrup’s ship thoroughly, but it only contained Mario, who I shipped to King Boolossus. Syrup is now in your dungeon. I have found the rest of Luigi’s ‘army’ here on Earth. They have just purchased the Flying Potion and the Life Potion. Yes, my queen. I understand the urgency of the situation. The Shadow Sirens WILL NOT be brought back to life. And Luigi and Mario WILL NOT be recovered. King Boolossus, though... If they reach him, they can easily defeat him. He is weak, though scary. I will send out Hooktail and Gloomtail. They are still angry about capture of their brother, Bonetail. They were not obeying commands right then, so I got them trainers... Wario and Waluigi.”
The Black Yoshi paused to grimace. He doubted very much that the Wario Brothers could control out-of-control dragons. Nor did he think much of the easily penetrated dungeon. But he was not about to tell this to the most all-powerful demon in the universe.
“Goodbye, my queen.”