Roy woke up with Peach's hands tight around his neck.
"Lady… Peach.." He struggled out, but Peach's grip only tightened. Roy threw a merciless punch at the princess's face and clocked her right in the eye, causing her to topple backwards to the edge of the roof. There was another level of the roof just ten feet below, should she fall.
The world spun around Roy for a while as he recovered from being strangled and got to his feet. The princess came at him again, this time with a golf club in hand. Roy caught the swing and punched her in the nose with his other hand, wincing as Peach shrieked with pain and fell on her butt again.
Roy heard glass breaking as a man- the red-jacketed fellow playing pool the night before- lept out of a window onto the lower level of the roof. Mario long-jumped out of the window behind him, landing square on top of the man.
Without thinking, Roy leapt onto the lower roof. One of his feet sunk right through the red shingles, and as he pulled it free Mario approached with a hammer. The plumber lept several feet into the air and aimed to bring the hammer down onto Roy's head, but Roy drew his blade and caught the hammer just in time.
The two exchanged blows, the Binding Blade glancing off Mario's metal hammer a few times before Roy was finally disarmed. Mario wound up to strike the swordsman down, but stopped in his tracks with a violent convulsion.
The plumber was consumed with an electric shock emanating from a small yellow rodent the jacketed man had summoned. After Mario had passed out, or perhaps died, the rodent ran onto the man's shoulders and he booked it for the edge of the rooftop.
Roy picked up his sword and ran after the man, a million questions racing through his head. There was no time however, as the man summoned another creature and lept onto it. The creature resembled a large manta ray, and appeared to be capable of flying as the man and his rodent stepped onto it and off the roof.
Roy jumped after them, landing on the left wing. The extra weight sent them into a death spiral above the woods outside Peach's castle.
"Get off!" The man shouted in vain. They hit a tree branch and tumbled to the forest floor. A few silent moments passed as they both got to their feet, brushing off tree debris. The jacketed man procured a red and white orb and used it to fire some kind of laser at his manta ray, apparently containing it within. Of course this was a pokeball, but it was all very alien to Roy.
"What just happened?" Roy asked.
"You tell me, Your Highness. Looked political."
"More like crazed. I was friends with Princess Peach last night."
"Obviously something went wrong since then." The jacketed man replied tersely, shaking the device on his wrist. The screen was garbled, and then it was an image of the man's Trainer Card.
"Gold, that's your name then?"
"What's it to you?"
"It's nice to meet you, Gold." Roy said, extending a hand. "I am Roy, husband of-"
"I don't really care." Gold interrupted. He didn't take the handshake. "I can't find out where we are. No signal."
"What is that thing anyways?" Roy pointed to the device Gold was fumbling with on his wrist.
"My PokeGEAR? It's like, a wrist-mounted computer." Gold sighed, giving up on his GPS quest.
"A computer? It does numbers?"
"And a whole lot else. Jeez, you really are behind aren't you?" Gold shook his head. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised, with the sword and everything."
"Are you making fun of the Sword of Seals?" Roy gritted his teeth. "It's extremely powerful. It even lights itself ablaze."
"Guess what." Gold asked as he took out another pokeball. "I can do fires too. Go Typhlosion!" He threw the pokeball forward, releasing a large, badgerlike pokemon with a mane of flames.
"Flamethrower!" The creature opened its mouth and let out a torrent of hot fire into the woods. Gold turned to Roy with a smug grin, only to find the swordsman appalled.
"They're over there!" a mushroom-headed man from Peach's Castle cried. Gold couldn't run to his right because he had just set that part of the woods on fire, and the cry sounded from his left, so he turned around and booked it for the woods behind him.
Roy followed close, but it wasn't long before they came to a river with a swift current. The Toads, now armed with spears, had cornered them and were closing in. Gold recalled Typhlosion and threw a different pokeball into the river, summoning the manta ray again.
"Mantine, surf!" He called as he jumped onto Mantine's back. Roy followed suit, and they were quickly carried away by the river current. However an array of Toads had gathered along the river's edge, and began throwing their spears. Roy deflected one with his sword but another hit Mantine, piercing the pokemon's wing.
"If you're gonna stick around, make yourself useful!" Gold called. "We're not gonna stay afloat if they keep poking holes in my pokemon!"
Roy nodded his head, and summoned a font of flames to wreath the Binding Blade. He threw it into the river, where the water exploding against the fire into a wall of steam. Mantine hugged left to avoid the hot vapor, and while Toads tried to throw their spears through the cloud not a single one hit their mark.
"Wow, I'm surprised you were willing to part with the sword of destiny there. Guess it isn't really that valuable?" Gold turned around, sitting cross-legged to address Roy.
"As soon as we are not in mortal danger I will reclaim the Sword of Seals." Roy said firmly, almost in an authoritative hiss. "And then we're going back to Peach's Castle to find Lance."
"We?" Gold recoiled. "There is no we, and certainly not one that goes back to that place. They tried to kill me. Wait, Lance is there?"
"How do you know Lance? He's from my world."
"No, he was the leader of the Indigo Plateau in Kanto and Johto."
"Wait."
"Yeah, I don't think we're talking about the same person."
"No, Gold. Wait up and turn around!" Roy shouted, just before Mantine crested a waterfall. They were luck though, they landed on a wooden platform jutting out of the waterfall. Their luck quickly turned sour when two apes of moderate size approached them, each from an opposite side of the platform.
They reached to about Roy's abdomen in height, a little taller than that on Gold, and each wore a red tie around their neck that read "D.K." And they looked angry. Gold and Mantine turned to face the one to their side, and Roy grabbed the spear out of Mantine's wing and turned to face the one on his side.
Roy stabbed his spear towards the DK near to him, but the ape caught it by clapping its hands together, forcefully enough to snap the wooden shaft.
"Mantine, ice beam!" Gold commanded as the DK on his side charged. The attack landed, and the ape was frozen solid.
The other DK wound up a punch and struck Roy in the chest, knocking him backwards into Gold. It continued forward, slapping its palm onto Mantine's head and knocking it unconscious. Roy, with no weapon, opted to tackle the ape. He knocked it off the waterfall, nearly sending himself careening into the water as well.