Time Trap
The World of Tomorrow:
The gear-like Chronos Aeon portal opened up from the clock of the Sarasaland Campanile to drop the eight Kruna onto the Bellbridge Terrace. Nova Daisy, Bowser, Warra, Athelstan, Ramona, Andrew, Marut, and Neva scattered and landed unceremoniously onto the hard combination Plexiglas-metal floor. Just moments after appearing, the portal shrank and vanished.
The Kruna all got to their feet, battered and bruised. It had all happened so fast. King Boo's sneak attack struck them all and set up Marissa's divine spell, the spell that sent them through the portal to where they stood now. The Sarasaland Campanile's clock read just several minutes after midnight. In their perception, the time between King Boo's attack and their exit from the Chronos Aeon portal could not have lasted more than five minutes. But when they all looked at the world around them, everything had changed.
The sky looked dark and murky and had a red and purple hue to its absurdly thick cloud cover. The air around them felt deathly still, making the near silence all the more haunting. All eight of the Kruna sensed an eerie undertone pervading all around in every direction that seemed to have strange characteristics on the atmosphere. Not only did the temperature feel uncharacteristically cool, but the air felt both heavy and light at the same time.
Then the Kruna looked down at the land below Bellbridge and beyond. Castle Town looked dead. Many of the buildings still stood, but all looked aged, charred, and abandoned. Bellbridge itself wasn't even lit up. The sources of light came from the ominous, almost non-existent glow of the Nirvana Barrier making up the sky, the illumination from the Sarasaland Campanile's clock, and some scattered lampposts down in the streets. The only sound that could be heard was that of the air itself; a creepy, faint, tunnel-like sound that felt hollow to the eardrums.
"No no no no NO!" screamed Andrew. In fury, he flared a powerfully dense orb of shadow in his hands, then spun around and sidearmed it out into the distance. It disbanded and faded out when it got too far away, its deep, pulsating hum the only other discernible sound the Kruna heard break the increasingly unnerving ambient noise of the world around them.
"How did this happen?" asked Warra. "What happened here to Castle Town?! What happened to us?!"
"We were only in that portal for like, two minutes!" exclaimed Marut, clutching his hat. "Tops! Did Marissa actually do all this in two minutes?"
"No, because the Nirvana Barrier is overhead," said Neva. "By what Marissa told us, it would've taken a few days for the barrier to become noticeable, let alone complete."
"And I don't think any of us can doubt that at least most of this was Marissa's doing," said Daisy. "No one else could've done this; not that we know of anyways."
"Something is wrong here," said Bowser. "Exactly what was Marissa doing when we were charging our Elemental Seal?"
"It was some kind of spell, I'm sure," replied Ramona. "I remember seeing her doing hand signs, and remember what threw us in that portal in the first place? Those light circles that resembled clocks-"
"And they threw us into the gear portal that emerged from a clock," said Athelstan, pointing at that of the Saraland Campanile. "That one over there. Call me crazy, but I think that the concept of time is somehow involved here."
"...Did she...bend time, somehow?" asked Marut.
"No..." said Daisy. "That can't be right. If she bent time, we would've still been around to prevent all this from happening."
"I don't think I get what you're saying," muttered Neva.
"If she bent time, she would've just fast forwarded everything," stated Daisy. "And if that was the case, nothing would've prevented us from fighting her and King Boo. Do any of us have any memory of anything regarding what happened after we got sent through that portal? Or better yet, do any of us remember anything in between that time period and...whatever time period this is? She had to have taken us, ripped us out of that time, and flung us forward into this world in some sort of time skip..."
"And it looks like in the time we were gone, Marissa went on a relatively uninhibited tear," added Warra.
"But Mario and Luigi should've been able to defeat her, right?" asked Ramona. "They're the real heroes, aren't they? I mean...we're just..."
"We suck..." mumbled Marut. "I think you can just flat out say it."
A string of quick flashes lit up sections of the sky. Thunder followed just seconds later, after which a bolt of lightning laced out through the clouds. A downdraft of wind briefly blew through over the Bellbridge Terrace.
"Hey, we're just as good as those two are!" asserted Daisy, although her tone sounded less than enthusiastic. "But for them to not have prevented this is more than alarming."
"This is just utter desolation..." Andrew barely managed to even whisper. Ramona walked over to him and grabbed one of his arms. They both stood there for a little while and stared at the Central Castle and the gaping hole in its roof towards its rear as the wind picked up again.
Daisy turned to look at her team. "Buck up and harden yourselves, guys. We're going to need to scout around and find out what's going on...or rather, what went on. This is likely going to be a worldwide issue, so we've got a long road ahead of us."
Warra and Neva took out their pouches and distributed recovery Mushrooms and Nuts to everyone to try and get back some power and health lost. The items were just a quick fix though, for it would take a while for them to get back to where they were before the battle against Marissa, her former Sweeps, the whole hellhound horde, King Boo, and Cerberus. Even with the help of the recovery items, the Kruna looked drained and hurt. Thunder continued intermittently booming through the air.
"You're still going to stay in Nova Form?" asked Bowser.
Daisy nodded. "It's of no significant detriment to me anymore, remember? I haven't switched out of it since that day we were at Watcher's Cape. With Nova Form mastery, I can stay transformed indefinitely. I'll switch back to normal at some point, because it has been a while..." Her tone turned dark as she continued speaking. "But for now, I don't think it's a very good idea to at all. I get the feeling that we're in very hostile territory; and if I switch out of it now, it may be a while before I'm ready to go back into it again."
"I think just looking at you like that is making me tired," Bowser muttered, wiping at his forehead. "Or maybe I'm just more winded than I thought..."
"For Mario and Luigi to have not stopped this is one thing," said Warra. "But Rosalina, Geno, Culex, Donkey Kong, Arka Knight, the Comet Observatory; something couldn't've been done between their collective efforts?"
"Very disconcerting," said Daisy. "I don't like the way that sounds at all. Everyone, we'll move through the Bellbridge paths and descend back to the streets at ground level to get a closer look at the scene down below... Be on your guard."
When the Kruna exited the southern Bellbridge gate and stepped onto the Castle Town streets, everything they saw from up above on the skywalk suddenly looked and felt many times worse. Signs of devastation, decay, and a chaotic mass exodus – or massacre – lay all about in the broken, empty buildings and roads. A steady rain had developed and produced a musty, chalky smell. Puddles formed around scattered debris, discarded possessions that littered the streets for who knows how long, and decomposed corpses and skeletons strewn about like unwanted trash.
Thunder cracked through the sky as a breeze kicked up and blew the rain into a constantly shifting angle. As the Kruna walked through the desolated mess, Daisy replayed the battle against Marissa in her mind. She pulled up glimpses and flashbacks of her near-earthquake, her father's lethal injury by Marissa, the chase to the Bellbridge Terrace, the decision to allow Marissa to draw power through the Blood Moon, and then her own supposed death from a harsh string of the demon witch's attacks.
It was a mistake to let her power-up, wasn't it? Daisy thought. No, it couldn't've been, because I still got the best of her...
Then the Kruna of Earth recalled herself storming back up onto the Bellbridge Terrace where the other Kruna had taken her place. She had then battled Marissa on her own and had eventually wore the witch down. It was then that Marissa pulled the critical reversal off of King Boo's surprise attack.
But I knew King Boo was coming, thought Daisy. And I alerted the others that somebody hostile was on their way, so why didn't I just hurry up and finish everything when I had the chance? By dragging out the fight, yeah, I avoided the risk of burning myself out too soon, but I also welcomed the risk – and eventual actuality – of King Boo coming up to catch us all off-guard.
Daisy took a moment to look around at the Castle Town ruins some more as the Kruna continued their pace through the town. And now this...all this...it's...it's my fault...isn't it? If it were Mario and Luigi in my place, they wouldn't've fooled around nearly as much as I did. They could've prevented all this...but I...I...I showed the world why they were always the ones doing all the important work while I got left behind to live life as an unimportant pedestrian.
With a deep, maddened grimace, Daisy clenched her fists. The wind moved through again and became a nuisance as the rain continued to come down. One short gust blew a faded, dented rattle out into the street in front of the Kruna. Ramona and Andrew both winced when they saw it.
We've got to fix all of this! Daisy yelled in thought. I've got to! Somehow! We can't let this-
Her muse got cutoff by an explosion in the distance that shot a massive fireball into the air. The Kruna stopped and turned around to see the red and yellow illumination around the ascending smoke cloud. The explosion itself didn't surprise them as much as the action of it happening did.
"Who did that?" asked Ramona. "I can't sense any other sentient life here besides us eight!"
A loud, rhythmic, clanking thud became audible in the background of the now constant wind and heavy raindrops. Still, no discernible source could be found for either the explosion or the metallic sounds. After a few moments though, the thuds sounded like they had a similar likeness to footsteps; muffled only by the booms of thunder.
"Metal Mario?!" grunted Bowser. "Even in this time, that thing's still here?!"
A crash and another explosion went off in the same general direction as the first, biting into one of the taller buildings. Several more buildings near there shook and collapsed.
"Metal Mario got buff," said Marut, wide-eyed.
"That's not Metal Mario," said Warra. "Whatever that thing is, it's moving too fast."
"It's too dark for us to see a silhouette," said Bowser. "The rain and wind is certainly not helping either! Daisy! Andrew! What can you see?"
"It's something big," said Daisy.
"Big? Try giant!" exclaimed Andrew.
The very next second, a golden laser beam three feet in diameter burst down through the buildings the Kruna had been facing. Though none of them took a direct hit, the immediate concussive recoil from the resulting explosion in the ground scattered them all along the street. Already hurting enough, the eight Kruna had to force themselves back to their feet as if the planet's gravity had doubled.
More buildings cleared and crumbled as fires ignited and spread over the mounting destruction. A titanic, mechanized abomination lumbered over the flaming rubble and debris, its thirty foot tall apple-shaped body shuffling its way over on its set of arachnid-esque legs. The robot had two colossal, segmented, tentacle-like crab claws, each almost half the size of its body. A tail several feet longer than its height stood on end at its rear over its "head," where a thick, cylindrical stump housed a pulsating red eye. Its black metal skin glowed with neon red markings of mostly unknown origin, but it looked like the most prominent of the symbols was Marissa's Mark of the Witch. Though the robot was mechanical in nature, its movements appeared all too organic. It even had living tissue mixed in to its machinery; some of it exposed and pumping with fluid.
With surprising quickness, the mechanized abomination spun the dials in its "head" and readied another laser through its eye to fire at Athelstan and Marut. The Kruna of Air got out of the way in time, but Athelstan couldn't move quick enough and had to get up his Avalanche Spear to block. Unfortunately for him, his tool didn't last long and snapped in two under the pressure of blocking the powerful laser. As his tool gave out, Athelstan let go and rolled out of the way.
"What? C'mon!" Athelstan hollered. "That was my only elemental tool!"
"That makes two of us," said Ramona, her Light Broadsword having broke in the fight against Marissa. "At least you have those Boot Club Additions to help!"
Bowser threw out a Fanning Torch fireball to tear along the ground at the monstrous robot, expecting the green flames to lay down some formidable damage on the organic portions of its body. Though the Fanning Torch created a large, steamy explosion in the rain that smothered much of the bottom portion of the robot, it did not elicit nearly as much damage as the Kruna of Fire thought it would. The koopa stared at his Blazer Claws with confusion.
"Did I really undercharge that?" Bowser wondered aloud, sounding strained.
The robotic fiend readied another laser from the eye in its head and tried to sweep around in a wide wave as it fired. The Kruna all shot down to the ground to go prone as the laser buzzed by overhead and bore into the many buildings lined up behind them. The smoke and smog from the combination of the explosions and rain spread out and dispersed over a wide area, made worse by the winds. More explosions triggered from the gas and electrical power supply in some of the buildings the laser had hit, adding even more to the chaos.
"We gotta get out of here!" Warra called out. "We're too weak right now!"
Marut brought in an opposing gust of air to expand the great explosion cloud around them and give the Kruna some cover to take off. They had to hold in their coughs and ignore their burning throats as they fled in a sprint for the southern gate of Castle Town. Bowser looked behind him with the power of his Pendant of Omnidirectional Vision and saw the robot rushing through the wild smoke cloud to chase them down.
"That thing's coming up!" Bowser shouted. "We didn't fool it as well as we thought!"
Several smaller lasers spayed out in a burst fire that peppered the buildings all around the Kruna. One of them caught Andrew in the back and slowed him down. Daisy looked back when she heard the Kruna of Shadow scream and immediately focused energy into her palm.
"Marut! Grab me and let's fly!" Daisy ordered.
Giving a quick nod, the Kruna of Air activated his Alkemei Furaito and lifted his feet off the ground. With his Pendant of Flight working to its fullest capacity, Marut wrapped his arms around Daisy as she materialized her Crystal Fist and rocketed up into the air while the rest of the Kruna kept running. The robot in pursuit paid special focus to those two exclusively and fired another laser beam to snipe them out of the air. Marut pulled off some swift aerial maneuvers to get him and Daisy around the incoming blast, but in the process almost clipped into nearby buildings twice coming out of the evasions.
"Easy, man!" Daisy snapped. "You're really pushing that pendant! Don't lose control here!"
"Sorry!" Marut replied. "Still kinda getting used to it!"
The robot shot off another laser at the two aerial Kruna, but it missed and blasted off a chunk of the building it hit instead. The huge debris fell in front of Athelstan, though he made a great reaction by whipping around and slamming a kick into it with his Boot Club Additions. Thanks to the Kruna of Stone's timely move, the chunk ripped through the air and struck the incoming robot dead-on. But even with the brutal blunt hit, the organic robot abomination had only become discombobulated and slowed down for a handful of fleeting moments.
"Ah, I should've used my Alkemei!" Athelstan grumbled. "A double-strength kick could've doubled the speed that debris flew at that mechanical monster!"
"I'm trying to focus my remaining energy for an illusion!" Andrew yelled. "Let's just keep running south, and when we get out to Sarasa Field, cut east so we can get to Geno's Sanctuary!"
"Let's stay up here for a little while longer, Marut," said Daisy. "I don't want to waste this Crystal Fist!"
"Okay, but that Crystal Fist is weighing me down a bit!" Marut responded.
Ramona turned around to backtrack and fire off her Photovado to see if her inverted, spiked conglomeration of thick light rays could elicit any damage on their mechanized pursuer. Warra added to her offense with two Water Bullets from his Aqua Axes to try and pierce through the robot's hull. Neither attack did much more than produce some modest damage and slow the fast-moving robot down some more, only for the mechanized abomination's head to spin around and fire another laser at Ramona and Warra. Luckily for them, Bowser had angled a Tavado blast up in a vertical arc to reach over them and clash with the incoming laser.
The Kruna collectively sped up to try and outpace their pursuer through the fiery explosion, but to their shock, the robot leapt onto the side of a building and began leaping across the sides of whatever structure it could to keep pace. Not only that, but its erratic, hard to track movements made it very difficult to even get a good target on it. The robot only stopped long enough to let out more lasers, but its position tampered with its aim. Much of the shots went into the ground or other buildings, racking up widespread destruction in an already dead city.
"What kind of hellish harbinger of death are we dealing with here?!" screamed Ramona. "It's climbing along the walls like some sort of frog-spider!"
"It's getting awfully close to us now, Daisy!" cried Marut, looping around the robot's outstretched, snapping claw.
"Exactly! This is perfect!" exclaimed Daisy. "It doesn't have a stable base now! Try and aim me at its head!"
Marut bolted ahead of the Kruna and twisted around to propel into the air in a spiraling drill dash, then looped back down to gain momentum. He curved up and let go of Daisy just as the biomechanical robot got close. As she came out of the air, Daisy pulled her Crystal Fist down and back and then swung up at the top of the robot's head. It was an awkward hook to make that broke Daisy's Crystal Fist on contact, but a necessary strike to carry out in order to launch the robot back and away.
"That's not gonna keep that thing down for long," Daisy said as she landed. "I short-armed that punch. We gotta move now!"
With the southern gate just a couple blocks away, the Kruna wasted no time and sprinted for the exit. Marut stayed in the air for a little while longer but shot back to the ground when he saw the robot stirring about further back up the street. As the eight elemental wielders exited the gate, Andrew directed them all into some nearby bushes.
"Duck down, keep still, and stay absolutely quiet now!" whispered the Kruna of Shadow. He then used all of his available elemental energy to pour a wall of shadow over all his fellow wielders. Within just a few moments, their bodies had all camouflaged with their immediate surroundings. Only seconds after Andrew got the illusion off, the robot charged out of Castle Town's southern gate and stopped. The lightning picked up and began flashing again, intermittently lighting up the dark land and the robot that sought what it now seemed unable to find.
This formidable robotic monster had outmatched the weakened Kruna so far, and it now surveyed the area to try and get even the slightest glimpse of something out of place. If they gave away their position at all with even the littlest sound or minuscule rustle, they would be dead. Everyone kept their breath shallow as the robot continued to slowly pace out from the southern gate and rotate its one-eyed head around. The darkness of the night and the rainstorm should've helped to make them unnoticeable and to drown out their respiration. Every cautious footstep the robot made on its heavy metal legs echoed its loud thud through the Kruna's attentive eardrums. Marut could feel his own heartbeat throbbing in multiple places throughout his body and wondered if the others felt the same of their own.
Much to Andrew's chagrin and strain, the mechanical abomination before them was taking a long time to survey the southern gate area; much longer than he had expected. C'mon, man! Andrew thought. Just go already! I can't hold this forever!
The robot moved a little further away, but still kept too close to where the Kruna were. Then, the robot turned around and lumbered closer to them, coming up to just a handful of yards away from their spot. It had gotten too close to them, and they knew it. The robot's eye turned and stared right at the Kruna's position, making all of their hearts beat hard, fast...and loud.
Uh-oh, Daisy thought. She wiggled a finger in the direction of the huge robot and put her focus well behind it to dig up a little mound of earthy soil near a tree. She then raised it and slammed it back onto the ground where it was. Alerted to the gravelly sound behind it, the robot turned around and fired off a laser at the tree with no hesitation. The attack created a large explosion that engulfed everything within a seven-foot radius of that same tree.
The robot then rushed over to where it had fired and scanned the immediate vicinity, thus drawing attention away from the Kruna. Crackling ash and smoldering wood sprayed up into the sky and dropped all around with the rain. After just a few more moments looking over the area, the monstrous robot turned and stormed off westward on Sarasa Field.
Once the robot had marched almost out of sight, Andrew canceled his illusion. Neva helped him up as the rest of the Kruna got back to standing. The danger had left, allowing calm to return to the area.
"Critical save, bro," said Athelstan. "No way we could've outran that thing!"
"Whatever that thing was," Neva muttered, reaching into her pouch. "Last Super Mushroom goes to you, Shady."
When Neva pulled the recovery item out, Andrew grabbed her hand and shook his head. "I'll deal until we find more," he said. "It might be a while before we do. I'd hate to say it, but that Mushroom could end up saving one of our lives if we don't get away with another one like that..."
"We should go now," said Bowser. "There's a chance that that robot might not be the only thing we have to worry about out here. Let's get to Geno's Sanctuary to figure out what happened."
"Is he still even gonna be there?" asked Marut.
"We're just going to have to find out," said Warra, running for the eastward path.
The other Kruna followed under the falling rain, heading east on the darkened, somewhat decayed Sarasa Field. As they ran, Daisy took up the rear and got one final look back at Castle Town and the ruined wreck it had become. A haunting, disturbing question then snuck into her mind.
If Castle Town is like this, then what has the rest of Sarasaland become? Daisy thought. She looked away and returned her gaze to the path ahead. What about the rest of the world? Is it going to be just as bad? Is it going to be worse?
So...my Dark Sentinel has been activated... Marissa thought. I suppose it is about that time now...
The demon witch stood on the balcony of a grand, familiar castle, her two normal eyes looking out at the shadowed horizon and the darkened tan and green fields as her Malocchio Eye kept focus on the freshly emerged and fleeing Kruna. Where she was in the world, it was daytime. The Nirvana Barrier's red and purple sheath covered the top of the whole sky, appearing much brighter than it did over in Sarasaland where it had only recently passed midnight. A dim, blurry gold circle tried to poke through one area, but failed.
It's been eight years already... she thought. My...how quickly it came...
Marissa stood in a dark red sheath dress with purple embroidery, a silver hat with black trim, black forearm cuffs, and knee-high black boots. Though her new dress had sleeves, areas had been cut out to reveal her shoulders; particularly the deltoid area, unlike her old maid-style dress. Centered on the sides of both her shoulders, a large, scarred, diagonal slit stretched across most of the exposed skin. She raised one of her hands to look at her palm, where an equivalent, horizontal scar-slit rested across the middle. More likely than not, her other hand had a matching scar.
I am now more powerful than I have ever been, the witch mused. In this world, I am the Lord of Lords, the perpetual pinnacle of power, the divine demon demigod; Marissa Arkana.
Similar to her dress' shoulder cutouts, a space in her dress had been tailored to expose the front of her waist. Where her navel was supposed to be, yet another horizontal gouge in her skin existed instead for a total of five scarred slits on her pale body. Though the dark marks looked weak and sensitive, Marissa kept all of them exposed without any protection for them whatsoever.
The time has now come, Marissa said in her mind. Through her Malocchio Eye, she focused on the black-clothed Nova Form earth wielder. You and your band of Kruna are out of place, Sarasa girl. A new order has taken center stage. This is my world, and I make the rules here. Every city that still stands is mine. Every race, species, culture, and cult answers to me.
Her Mystic Broom had been abandoned in favor of a double-sided, claw-bladed black staff that took the former magic tool's place across her back. This Dominion Scepter had a red jewel built-in through the base of both of its asymmetrical dual-bladed ends. She clenched her fists, showing no aggravation from the pressure on her scarred slits.
But look at this pitiable scene, Marissa thought. Ah, yes; the bludgeoning they endured before I cast them away in my Chronos Aeon spell those many years ago has left them weakened and vulnerable. It would be neither fair nor nearly as enjoyable to eradicate them in this pathetic state. I have no reason to rush to an endpoint. Should my Malocchio Eye lose sight of you, or should I direct my Eye to focus on something else, my Dark Sentinel will follow and stalk you and alert me of your location. I have all the time and power in the world that I would ever need, so I will deal with you when I see fit. That is, if you ever make it past the Dark Sentinel – let alone the powerful assemblage of archfiends that now roam and patrol the Earth.
The demon witch giggled. And even should you somehow defy the insurmountable odds placed before you, I will finish what I started and send you all off with a one-way ticket straight to Hell. She then giggled even harder. Oh, sorry; that's right. We're already in Hell, aren't we?
Marissa continued to laugh for a few more moments until her eyes suddenly shot wide open. In anger, she grabbed her dress near her groin area and tugged it a couple times as if trying to readjust something. She fidgeted around with her legs, showing discomfort and annoyance, then frowned and gave up after several more tugs.
"Why?!" grumbled Marissa. "Why does EVERY pair of underwear that I buy ride up when the label explicitly says that it's not supposed to ride up?!" She paused for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to kill that salesperson..."