Chapter Two: A Mystery in Goop
From a distance, our three heroes and one interpreter watched the scene down on the airstrip, wondering what it could mean.
"That was odd." Link commented.
"Yeah," Yoshi began, "That moving brown glob stopped being a brown glob and turned into, well, what exactly did it turn in to?"
"Piyoh" Kirby told him.
"Kirby says that it looked like a giant, muddy, piranha plant."
"Now that I think about it, it did look something like that," Yoshi said, "But then it just sank back into a glob and disappeared." The four passengers on the small plane had a moment of silence and thought. Link thought of corn, Yoshi thought of fruit, Tiff thought about what Kirby could be thinking about, and Kirby thought of a new and better way to publish economic theorems.
"We've landed," the pilot reported. He was pulling levers, pushing buttons, and doing a multitude of other things, all so the plane would slow down and stop. The group of people in the plane unbuckled their seatbelts and hurried onto the landing strip, eager to discover what the mysterious brown substance was.
"There it is!" Yoshi exclaimed, slowly edging towards what was left of the goop, "It's even browner up close."
"Piyoh!" Kirby said, pinching the spot on his face where most creatures have a nose.
"Kirby thinks the goop smells bad," Tiff began, translating for Kirby, "And I agree with him!" Tiff pinched the spot on her face where most people had a nose as well. She, of course, was one of those people.
"Look over there!" Link shouted. He was pointing to a spot on the other side of the airstrip. The group jogged over to a what Link saw. It was a female Pianta, almost identical to their pilot. The difference was that this one had darker skin, wore a dress, and was covered in murky brown goop.
"Uhhhhh!" she said, obviously as grossed out by the goop as the heroes had been.
"What happened?" Link asked the woman. Meanwhile, Yoshi wandered over to a storage area of the airstrip.
"It was horrible!" the Pianta began, "When I arrived here this morning, like I do every day, there was this brown glob of something in the center of our airstrip. That stuff looked bad, smelled bad, and tasted bad too!" The three people listening to her almost vomited at the thought of someone eating the goop. "And to make things worse," the woman continued, "A huge monster that looked sort of like a plant, and was made of the goop, popped out of the brown substance and started spitting it everywhere, including on me! Oh, and my third cousin Lila over there got covered too. No, don't look at her! Pay attention to me!"
Meanwhile, Yoshi was examining an open box nearby the storage hut. It was empty, but had a strange symbol on it that reminded the dinosaur of an old man with strange hair and glasses. "E Gad!" he said, although not knowing why. It was not like him to shout phrases of fright at the sight of a mere container.
Kirby took a few slow steps around the airstrip, nearly falling off the edge and into the deep blue ocean (which, ironically, wasn't very deep at this particular spot) a few times. She saw Yoshi examining a tub of water, and went to join him. There was nothing suspicious about it, but it felt like there had been someone there that was important, someone with a water-pumping device, perhaps?
Link, however, did not lazily walk around casually glancing at things. No! He went straight to a man wearing a black coat. After tackling the suspicious-looking fellow, Link helped him up and further examined his outerwear. The man wore a black coat; as mentioned earlier; a funny brown hat; two large, black storm boots; and a monocle on his left eye.
"Thank you, my good man. I have no idea as to why I suddenly fell," the man said. He had a funny accent as if he was from that place with the big clock tower, and the bridge, and the river…
"Um, who are you, and what's wrong with your voice?" Link asked.
"Oh, how rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I am Detective Connor O'Connor! Greatest sleuth there ever was!" the man replied.
"So, you talk funny because you're a detective?" Link questioned. During the conversation, Yoshi, Kirby, and Tiff had ventured over to the edge of the airstrip that Detective O'Connor and Link were standing on.
"Not at all! I have an accent due to the fact that I was born and raised in the land of Shakespeare, Newton, and Sir Francis Drake!"
"Wyoming?" Yoshi suggested.
"No, of course not. En-" but the detective's words were cut off by another's.
"All aboard who's goin' ashore!" a Pianta in a boat yelled. His vessel sat right beside the heroes, the translator, and the detective. Needless to say, it sounded very loud.
"Piyoh byo poyo?" Kirby asked.
"Are you going to the Plaza?" Tiff translated.
"Sure thing," the sea loving male Pianta said. "I take the people new to the Island, to the Island. Ha!" He laughed at his own joke (but no one else did), "Get it? The Island's new… eh, never mind. Just get in." The five did as they were told, and before the small ship set off, Yoshi asked Detective O'Connor a question.
"Why, exactly, are you here?"
"Well," the detective began, "To solve Isle Delfino's case of the mysterious moving goop, of course!"
"Biyoh," Kirby began, "Piyoh byo?"
"Kirby thinks that you just implied that there has been more than one sighting of this goop. Is that true?" Tiff asked for Kirby.
"As true as the hair on my mother's chin!" The boat driver interrupted. "All the Island's Shine Sprites have left! And now it's darker around here than my cousin Elmer's shady past!" He laughed again.
"What are Shine Sprites?" Link asked.
"You don't know?" the boat driver began, "Well, I guess I'll just have to tell you the whole story. But to be honest, I thought that it was a obvious as the fact that my mother is really Captain Ahab!" He laughed another time. "Anyway, a long, long time ago, on an island very, very, close, the Shine Sprites flocked around the Shine Gate, providing light and heat for the inhabitants, and attracting many tourists. But then, they all left, thanks to somebody covering it with graffiti."
"Where is the Shine Gate?" Yoshi asked.
"Well, considering the fact that we've been sailing this whole time," the driver began, "Right in front of you."
Sure enough, there it was. They had arrived.
To be continued…