Mace vomited. It gathered into a puddle at the bottom of the pipe he was guarding.

He stared at it. In a way, he was sort of glad he just barfed. It killed time.

For what seemed like the five hundredth time that day (actually, it was the seven hundred and eighth), Mace exercised his memory by recalling everything he still remembered from school. This kept him from going insane.

The green Koopa Troopa walked to the second green pipe in the area he was responsible for, and sat down in a heap. Mace wiped his beak and looked up. Thick clouds were scattered around the sky. The sunlight torched the atmosphere and the desert around him. Mace wondered if his shell was hot enough to give someone a third degree burn. He groaned. Boredom had eaten most of his mind months ago.

First things first. What was his name? Oh yeah, Rydan the Third. Named after his father, who in turn was named after his grandfather. Mace's grandfather that is, not his father's grandfather. Which would be Mace's great-grandfather. Anyways, where was he? Oh... right. His name. He had gotten the name "Mace," from doing one thing or another during military training, but he couldn't recall what.

Training. That word floated around Mace's head for a moment. What exactly did he do in training? It must had been to help him fight in the Koopa army or something, but he couldn't imagine how he trained to guard the same fifty square metres of sand every single moment of every single day.

Then a thought struck him. If he was fighting in a war then who was he fighting for? He strained his brain to remember what his old teacher used to tell him. They had a king. Who was that guy? Bow-something. Bowie? Bow Wow? Oh well, it wasn't important. He remembered his teacher forcing those graphic descriptions of how the king destroyed all those who got in his way, and decided that it didn't really matter what his name was.

What else did he learn in his elementary years? Whoever the king was, he had become king over the Koopas entirely by force and terrorism. He grew to amazing sizes, almost three times as large as the others. With every part of his body a sharp lethal weapon, he could easily kill anyone of his humble race. That was how the king took over. By spreading fear of death and injury, he managed to enslave the entire Koopa race.

Wait. Koopa? The word had been bouncing around his brain, but he when he thought about it he realized he didn't know what it meant. What's a Koopa? Oh that's right. He was a Koopa. The Koopas were originally a small tortoise like animal called Shellcreepers that were considered pests to the people that lived there before. They were often exterminated because they crawled around through their plumbing. Then one day, the people that exterminated them all moved out of the area, leaving only the Koopas. They evolved into intelligent, kind and gentle creatures that refused to harm another living thing, unlike when they were killed off before. They didn't even need to build houses. The original homes whose owners they terrorized were so ruined, that now most that remains of them are the green metal pipes.

Mace looked up to the green pipe where he had vomited. The puddle had mostly evaporated, leaving only a mess of stained sand, which he was sure would eventually disappear. He looked around his environment. He was guarding a desert. His assigned station was between two pipes, though he couldn't at the time remember who the one that assigned him this station was. Whoever it was, he told him that he was never allowed to cross the boundaries. Occasionally, a piranha plant stuck its head out of the pipe he was currently leaning against, but it usually just shot back down as soon as it came out. Between the two pipes, there was a boulder and what looked to be a cactus growing out of a small patch of grass. Sometimes, he sat on the boulder. He had tried to sit on the cactus, but it was too sharp. From time to time, he still tried to sit on the cactus, despite knowing that it would hurt, just so he could have something to do.

Mace stared up at the sky again. He sighed.

What was his name? Oh yeah…