Here we are with the second installment of MYL... And no, there's no Pokémon. ;)
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"I a-don't want to a-get up!"
That was the first thing sound that greeted Peach's ears when she stepped into Mario's bedroom the following morning. Rolling her eyes, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom strode over to the leafy paradise that served as a bed and attempted to pull the plumber out by his bare arm. (She also happened Mario had donned his summer suit for the vacation. Hopefully no one would accuse him of graffiti this time, eh?)
"Mario!" Peach called right into his ear, tilting her head so that one of her highlighter-yellow locks fell from below her diamond-studded crown and draped itself right across his nose. "Are you getting up or not?"
"Mm! That's a-some mighty fine pasta!" In a flash Mario bolted out of bed, sniffing the air hungrily. "Oh," he declared as reality clicked in, "it's a-just you. I should have figured a-you'd put on the lasagna-flavoured hair spray."
"It was just to get you up, of course," Peach said with a laugh, trying-to no avail, of course-to wrench him out of bed. "Now get up, sleepy Garfield, and join me in a journey of this Monday morning madness."
Mario laughed and pushed Peach's arm away, just about persuading to her to leave him be while he got dressed. The princess left after that, promising that if he didn't come in five minutes all the good Yoshi maple pancakes would be gone.
As soon as she'd left, Mario dressed as fast as he could, almost forgetting his traditional red M cap in his haste.
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Yoshi breezed in the Yoshi eating hall that morning for breakfast, accompanied by Luigi. Mario's younger brother had his arm on the dinosaur's bare back, which, he thought, was strange with the usual red saddle.
"Well, you know, I only wear it when I'm with you and the others," Yoshi grinned, wiggling and rippling his red scales in delight. It was a beautiful day, he was back in his favourite vacation spot, and his friends were there with him. Today I'm going to show the others the wonders of the modern Yoshi world, he thought with a small, not-so-hidden grin.
"You guys a-make pancakes, right?" Luigi asked Mera as the two of them walked around the leafy oval table that they had been seated around the night before. "At least, that's-a what I heard Peach shouting at Mario when he a-got up this morning."
Mera tossed her head back and laughed, not bothering to hold herself back. "That's a good one," she said with a good-natured smile when it was over. Her long red tongue flashing vibrantly as she talked, she went on: "Maple flavoured, but then again, that's because we don't have maple syrup. We have Yoshi syrup."
"Yoshi syrup?" Luigi queried.
"Best syrup in the whole kingdom," Yoshi cut in, roguishly lifting up a bottle of honey-coloured liquid. "Made from fresh Yoshi leaves crushed the day they're picked, they say it's even better than Chucklehuck Cola."
Luigi took a platter of the pancakes from the middle of the table (the Yoshi's had a buffet every morning, it seemed), licking his mustached lip in anticipation. Gratefully he accepted a bottle of the syrup from Yoshi, who grinned and leaned back in his chair. Carefully he squeezed the middle of the bottle, watching in amazement as thick, tasty, sweet-looking syrup poured out. The enticing smell was enough to make Luigi's eyes burn as he reached to put the bottle away-but then decided against it and happily filled his plate once more.
When he was done, Yoshi wagged his short tail and asked, "How was it?"
Luigi seemed to relish the taste of the native syrup in his mouth for a second, his eyes closed. Suddenly, his eyes popped open and he grabbed Yoshi by the scales, pulling the rideable dinosaur close to his face so that big nose rubbed against green snout.
"It was A-DELICIOUS!" Luigi yelled into the dinosaur's ear (or where his ear should have been, anyway) and, as expected, ran off to tell Mario. A few seconds later, the elder plumber had been told and Yoshi cocked his head, expectantly waiting for the clomping of shoes to be heard.
In the meanwhile, though, Yoshi sensed movement. A purple figure came and sat down beside him, her cheeks glowing red among the violet. Yoshi recognized her. She was Violet, another Yoshi he had known since childhood.
Yoshi's cheeks flushed. "Uh-hi, Violet," he stuttered, feeling the blush creep across his face.
She was blushing almost as much as he was. "What are your friends doing?"
"Wha-Oh. Mario and Luigi," Yoshi informed her, his groove returning, "have recently tasted the wonders of Yoshi syrup, which can cause even the calmest person out there to act like a demented Gourmet Guy."
Violet giggled at that, and her blush disappeared in unison with Yoshi's own. "Ha, that's a good one. I always wondered what would happen if humans tasted it."
Yoshi cocked his head to the side and grinned.
Miraculously enough, after his five-minute outburst, Luigi calmed down somewhat, though by this time Mario - crazy guy that he was - had already tasted the Yoshi syrup and was experiencing a hangover some hours later, when Yoshi descended down to the foliage of the island's wide-spread forest.
A satchel filled with lunch swung over his shoulder, Yoshi hummed to himself as he climbed down the woodland cliff that led to the forest, like he had so many times as a child. It wasn't a cliff really; it was more like a ridge that led from the island's highlands down to the forest, which was set lower below the cliff. The forest itself was a peaceful place; thick green leaves formed a sunlight-dappled forest canopy and helped all things growing. Sometimes, if Yoshi listened carefully enough, he thought he could hear the serenade of the forest (Not minuet, Ocarina of Time fans. Serenade sounds better.)
Childhood memories assailed Yoshi as he hopped from the rocky ridge and ran into the forest. Playing make-believe with his friends in the forest, listening to shells at the beach, swimming, all sorts of stuff… Yoshi grinned and delight as he ran on, nearly colliding with a familiar figure who had been standing there, snout raised toward the sky.
"I'm so sorry!" Yoshi squealed as he helped the other person up.
"'Sall right," answered the other being, cocking his head to the side.
Suddenly, a memory wended its way into Yoshi's brain canal, a small, darting streak of remembrance, like a vein of pain. Judging by the expression on the other Yoshi's face, something like that was happening to him too.
Before they knew it, they were giving each other a big bear hug.
"Yoshi!"
"Midnight!"
"So, how have things been going?" Midnight asked his old friend as the two of them walked through the forest a seconds later, chatting amiably.
"Not bad, not bad. But sometimes I get tired of all this hero work, you know?" Yoshi filled his friend in happily, stopping at one point to pull some leaves off a tree. He handed some to Midnight and the two of them walked on, talking as they munched their leaves.
"What about you?" Yoshi wondered, nibbling off the top of his own leaf. "What's been happening on the island since I left?"
"Oh, you know, normal life," Midnight replied with a nonchalant shrug. "A few new eggs hatched yesterday."
"Really? Whose?"
So they continued wandering through the forest, getting reacquainted with each other since the last time Yoshi had visited Junglestream Island (I knew something was up when he rescued Mario from Yoshi's Island so many years ago, Midnight reminisced reverently. As he soon learned, his green-scaled friend had become the steed for the noblest plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom.). "So much stuff has happened, it's weird to think you've been gone all these years," the blue one stated, wolfing down the last of his leaves and reaching for a fiery red berry perched in the heights above.
"Careful with that. You'll burn your tongue," Yoshi remarked with some amusement.
"Yeah, but then again I can shoot Spinies with it," Midnight joked, laughing and zinging one of the newly-appeared spiked turtles with his now-zesty tongue.
And so, laughing, they progressed through the forest.