I edited the clue from last chapter to be a little bit more elaborate and neater. Especially since crudo turned out to be a descriptor, not a dish.

Most of the players made their way to their divided up rooms, some going to bed early, some staying up, and others leaving themselves til later, goofing around the palace and meeting up with each other. But eventually, everyone had to go to sleep at some point...

Though their rest was broken by a rapid rapping on their door, and an officiate from the show unlocked their doors.


Vivian jolted up from her slumber, for a moment yelping in shock at the bob-omb painting overhead, scrambling off of it and grabbing her hat off her side-table with a heavy yawn, rubbing her eyes as the sound continued.

"Ladies, please report to the town square immediately. You may get dressed in something other than pajamas if you wish... However Madame Flurrie-"

"Yes yes, I know." The wind spirit floated off of her own bed, her necklace in place around her neck immediately as she clicked on the light the duo was given, a soft yawn escaping her as she turned to the door. "Immediately does mean immediately, not 'when you are finished putting on your normal three hours worth of makeup.'" Grabbing a cloth from Vivian's bag and wiping off the mud mask she had on her face, she turned to the vanity with her new cosmetics. "Do not worry darlings, I don't have most of my supplies in my bag as of right now. Don't worry your little head."

"I'm sorry about that..." Vivian quietly grabbed Flurrie's bag, picking a few cosmetics of her own, and putting a few bits of it on herself. "If I could give you your makeup back, Flurrie, I could."

"It's not your problem, Vivian, 'twas my own fault. I forgot that it was Luigi who had knowledge of makeup out of the two of them from his few times disguising as the princess." She waves her hand, dismissing Vivian's worries with a soft laugh. "Besides, our complexions are both shades of purple, it works well enough."

Vivian paused at Flurries words, turning to her, before going back and reaching for the journal she left underneath her pillow. "Right..."


Opening the door, the aide had to duck as one of the women threw a pillow, almost hitting the glass full of cheep cheeps beside it. "Hey! You've got to do something, so wake up girls, or I'm going to grab that boomboxer to bring that penalty buzzer again."

Eva rolled her eyes and let a quiet laugh, Goombella's messy hair and scowl in the corner of her eye. "Tell Tippi not to fret, I will bring Goombella out soon enough." The aide rushed out before another projectile was flung his way, and tugging her helmet on she stormed her way out of the room, grumbling something about how this was worse than her all nighters in college.

"Come out quick, don't want us to lose any more money."

"I'll be out soon..." The moment the door clicked shut, Eva's smile turned slick, tugging a duo of journals out from under her covers and clicking the pen she had been given with a quiet laugh. "Might not be my kind of treasure, but who knows what we might need during this game..." She quickly opened the orange notebook, jotting what was on the other pages into the green one with a lsly smirk.


Yoshi stretched, a small smirk playing across his face as he poked Koops on the cheek. "Hey. Hey. Mayor-boy. Wake up." He kept poking the other, the aide's foot taping roughly on the floor and staring at the watch on his wrist.

"Mmm... koopie Koo, five more minutes." Koops turned over in his seat and Yoshi chuckled, standing up on the other's bed with a wide grin.

"MAYOR MAYOR THERE'S AN EARTHQUAKE." Yoshi started to bounce rapidly on the other's bed, sending Koops flying up and the older of the two latching onto one of the paintings, causing it to tilt over and the koopas inside visibly sliding from the shift of the magical painting.

"YOSHI WHAT THE- Oh hey there mister." Koops stared at the man by the door, and watched him jab his finger back, before storming out. Koops turned towards the fighter and frowned. "What's going on?"

Yoshi tossed the other his hoodie, grabbing one of Eva's masks to wear as an ascot with a chuckle, flicking a badge into the air like a coin. "My guess is the pot is about to get bigger. Hopefully. We got a mission."

"At midnight?" Yoshi nodded, which followed with Koops falling down from the painting with an audible groan. "Why couldn't it be tomorrow afternoon..."


The moment the rapping sounded, Mario jolted up, groaning as the toad-shaped clock beside him showed it was midnight, hoppingoff of his own bed. "Bobbery?"

"I'm up, I'm up. You would think they would give us more warning then immediately... But then again." The bob-omb yawned, stretching and spinning his wheel-fuse for a moment as he pulled his notebook out of his bag. "There is the reason for such a late mission, is my guess lad."

Mario rustled through his bag, tossing a few things out of it onto his bed and pulling a warmer undershirt on, turning to him. "You think we're having a mission?"

"Lad, it's midnight, and the menu said something about getting rest. I'm almost sure we're going to be exhausted once we finish with whatever they have in store."

Mario shook his head, jotting something down in his notebook before shoving it into his bag and turning to Bobbery. "We going?"

"In a moment, I want to find my journal just in case."

"Doubt you'll be able to write anything in it until after Bobbery." Mario waved his hand and slipped out of the room, and the bob-omb decided to follow right after.


the mole hanging overhead of the remaining two was daunting, but after a brief rest, the toad and android woke up surprisingly easily at the wake up call.

TEC flicked through his notebook, a list already on the page with a circle around a few people as he looked towards his roomate. "So, before we head out... any leads after you slept on it?" his pen hovered over Toadette's name, somewhere in the middle of the list as he filled it in.

Toadette stared at her own notebook, flicking through it as she shook her head. "Not really, no. I know some people I want to look at, and I'm so happy that Goombella let all of that information slip to me once I started asking her about that journey." Toadette let a soft laugh out, covering her mouth with her hand. "We would've been at a huge disadvantage without knowing the names and dates."

Tec laughed as well, holding his hand out for a high five. "Outsider Coallition is a go?"

Her hand met his with a matching grin. "Go team~"


The players all gathered in the town square, with Tippi standing there with a cup of coffee steaming in her hands. "Good, you all arrived promptly. No more penalties it seems..." Some glares were shot through the group. "Now then, this mission is called "Surf or Turf.", which should sound familiar for those of you who looked closely at your menus last night." Tippi pulled out a small notebook, flicking through it and pointing at the group. "Mario, Vivian, Goombella, Toadette, Bobbery, you all chose fish dishes last night during dinner. You five will be the Surf team. Flurrie, Yoshi, Koops, TEC, Ms. Mowz, you five had dishes that came from land animals, so you will be the Turf team."

TEC: So my guess was right, it was way too obvious what with only one of each that we were going to be divided according to what we had.

The ten slowly split up into their two groups, and their host continued.

"The Turf players will be going down south with me, where I will tell you your task first. The Surf players will head to the west and wait beside the docks for me to return."

The groups split off from one another, and Tippi spoke as she lead the others towards their task. "You five will be tasked with collecting ten oink-oinks of different colors by the time I return from you in an hour. There is a timer on the building-" She pointed, a digital clock set for 60 minutes set on top of the rainbow beneath the screw. "-however it is not so easy. As you spin the dial different oink-oinks will come into the pen over there, and you can only collect them one at a time. And there are 10 colors of oink-oinks set to come out of the machine, so as time goes on, it will become more and more difficult for you to collect the appropriate colors." Tippi tapped a slot on the side. "You also must earn coins to use this machine, by playing in the casino over yonder." She points towards a set of warp pipes not too far away.

Yoshi raised his hand. "So how does the coins work, we betting our winnings?"

Tippi smiled. "Precisely. You will start with 20,000 coins as your possible earnings, which is also the maximum amount of coins for this challenge. Each win in the casino games counts as 1000 coins earned. Each loss however is 1000 coins. Using the oink-oink machine however, costs 2000 coins per spin."

A soft whistle was heard, and Eva quickly stared at it, turning. "We will be earning chips I believe if we are talking casinos and such." A curt nod was her only response.

"Now then, pick someone whose good with their head, someone whose good with their hands, and a trio who can handle slippery situations."

Yoshi quickly latched onto the good-with-their-hands, flexing his arms, and Koops was the one assigned to use his head, while the others were left as the slippery situations.

"All right, Yoshi will be doing the hammer game, Koops the jumping game, and you three will be the ones who are collecting them. Gamblers, your rules will be on signs in your respective games, and the chips you are using to gamble are here-" She handed 6 chips to Eva and Flurrie, and seven to TEC with a quick clap of her hands.

"Your competition begins now."


It didn't take long for Tippi to head to the Surf group after the others began their competition, clapping quietly and pointing at a wall of ten question marks.

"Before I say anything, I want you guys to decide who should wet their feet. You must have at least one person, and at least one person must NOT wet their feet." Tippi smiled as the quintet rapidly bustled, Vivian being drowned out by the louder Goombella.

"Wetting your feet means the easy task, right? I think Vivian should definitely be one of them."

"Excuse me-"

"Why though?" Bobbery stared at Goombella.

Goombella rolled her eyes. "This is still the first episode too, it shouldn't be THAT hard either way, but the way she's talking makes me think that we're going to want some people on both."

"Maybe you should get your feet wet too." Mario scratched his head gently, turning towards Toadette, who was fiddling with her pigtail and staring at the others. "What do you think?"

"... I want to be on the not-wet side. You mind if I pick for myself since I didn't actually for the other one?" There was no complaints, and eventually Bobbery decided to join Vivian in her portion of the challenge.

"All right, you guys have a rather... simple task. Solve those puzzles."

Vivian turned to the wall, then back at Tippi. "Er... What puzzles?"

Tippi quietly turned her finger down towards the docks, the surprisingly deep depths murky as she smiled. "Down there. Some of you must get your feet wet to find them, and then those left over will have to be good with pictures. Down below are clams and inside those clams are pictures perfectly sized to place onto the wall over there, you will have to figure out what the pictures represent and write that down on the right side of the board before the hour passes. I will be timing you, starting-"

"Wait can't we talk stra-"

Cutting off Toadette, Tippi smiled. "Now."

Immediately at the beginning, Vivian turned towards the goomba angrily. "I'm based around fire magic and you expect me to swim?!"

"Sorry, how was I supposed to know it was literal. Besides it shouldn't be that hard to find the pictures. Get going." a quick bump of her head sent Vivian staggering back, and a loud yelp came with her crashing down into the water as well. Bobbery glared at her for a moment before jumping in after, followed quickly by Goombella laughing. "Oops. Well they're in the water, so now we wait."

Goombella: She was being aggressive when she could've been swimming, not my fault I had the wrong impression.

Bobbery: At least one of our talented swimmers was doing that task...


TEC and Flurrie watched Eva rushing around the pen, scrambling to catch the second pig darting around. The moment they saw the gold piglet pop out, Eva was after it like a light, and before they knew it she caught it, and was right after the second one as well with coins in her eyes.

"Ohoho" Flurried watched Eva spin with the pig, holding it up over her head as she dashed to the pen and returned, grabbing her last two tokens and popping them into the machine. "It seems like this isn't as difficult as they made it out to be."

"Keep in mind." TEC tapped the rainbow with a finger, watching as the machine worked it's magic. "We've only done twice, we don't know how rare the actual pigs are. And we don't know how difficult the casino games are as well."

"Mine's not too bad." Koops appeared out of nowhere, placing six tokens down on the makeshift table beside the machine they had. "I just hit blocks and hope for the best. Lost my first few because I got too greedy, but other I made more than my money back."

"Splendid!" Flurrie's smile was wide as she lifted the tokens, slipping them in and watching the silver pig rushing around the pen as it's bretheren joined with him., now we've broken even!"

"Not... exactly." Yoshi grabbed a trio of coins from the table before storming off back to his game. Koops quietly sighed, grabbing a few himself and darting back. TEC quietly tossed another group of chips into the machine, darting in after the new green oink-oink that had joined them.

Yoshi: So my task was to smash blocks and try to find chips inside, and this martial artist dude would reset the entire thing if I waited a few moments before starting. Knowing we had a time limit I wanted to get as many blocks smashed as possible... But I just kept LOSING. Over and over!

Down in the casino, Yoshi dipped into his game, glaring as he placed the chip down, looking around and smashing the first block he could see. Again. The Yoshi searched through the remains and found a single chip placing it right back to the aide, an elderly toad in a martial artist's gi.

"Patience young one, one must not rush into battle."

"Hey, that's what I do best." Another smashed brick, though this time no chips were found within. Yoshi quickly grumbled, putting his hammer over his shoulder and looking around. "There's gotta be something to these blocks though..." Placing the hammer down beside the toad, starting to look over the bricks on the ground, the martial artist sighing quietly.

Over in the other one, Koops was dawdling for a few seconds, staring up at the bricks above him and walking to the farthest one, reaching up and poking it for a moment, hearing a roar sound out as he laughed, sliding to the next and one the noise was good, breaking it, catching the two coins that he found inside with a grin, placing the coin down to the teacher grading on the counter, who pulled the coin back and pressed a button, and Koops got back to work with a small smile on his face.

"Oh, miss, sorry to bug you while you're grading miss."

Koops: I had to smash the blocks above me and find chips inside. The sign itself mentioned 'To the Mole, every sense is needed.' at the bottom, and when I saw the teacher I just knew I had to TEST the blocks and use my senses. The muffled noises signified which was which, so I kept winning. Heh.

"It's no problem at all."

2/10 oink-oinks. 15,000/20,000 coins. 50 minutes remaining.


Vivian popped back up, gasping for air and struggling to the side, all the while clutching desperately onto a paper wrapped in plastic that she placed onto the side, which Mario quickly picked up, before grabbing her hand and helping her out of the water. "Vivian stay up here for a bit."

"But we need-" Bobbery hopped up out of the water, shaking himself off and handing a paper to Mario quietly, before pausing and staring at the shadow siren.

"Vivian, I'll be trying my best to do this myself. You don't need to worry too much." Bobbery gave her a slight smile. "They did say it's possible for only one person to work on the clams after all, just come down whenever you think you can and search through them, I'll get to work." Before she could say anything, Bobbery jumped into the water and she stared at it, sitting on the edge and watching him work.

Vivian: Two of us searching definitely was a better idea but I could barely swim, and the lack of sleep... I knew I couldn't help the others, but taking a break at Bobbery's request didn't seem too bad.

"All right that's two of our pictures." The first picture was of what Mario recalled was one of the Nimbi sitting in a lakitu's cloud and holding a rod with a cheep cheep on the end, and another picture was of Mario holding onto a laser gun in his hand and aiming it. "... But we don't have any ideas of what these could be."

Goombella slapped the pictures onto the board and Toadette tapped her chalk against the answers. "Maybe if we get a few more we would be able to see a pattern start to come about."

"Maybe... Vivian-"

"On it." The siren reluctantly stood, nodding towards the others and pinching her nose, diving down into the water once more as the splashing of her struggled swimming sent some water towards the others.

Goombella grabbed her own chalk and jotted "Nimbi" and "Mario" onto the right side, before placing it back down in the tray. "What species we've got is the only thing I can immediately think of, so like... It's a start."

Toadette was just staring at the pictures, trying to make heads or tails of it.

Almost simultaneously once again, Vivian and Bobbery came up for air, though the former struggled to stay afloat with a sputter. "K-keep your clams open, Bobbery. That way we can make sure we're not checking the same ones."

"What's taking so long!?"

Vivian glared at Goombella. "You try searching in the dark for a needle in a hay stack."

The goomba shrugged as best as someone without shoulders could. "I would, but it's your challenge."

Bobbery grunted for a moment, diving back under, going towards the many MANY clams currently scattered on the bottom of the harbor. "

2/10 found. 0/10 solved. 40 minutes left.


Koops hopped back up through the pipe, carrying twenty chips in his hands as he came over, watching Flurrie rush around and try her best to tackle the red oink-oink. "GET BACK HERE."

"... So how long's she been chasing after that guy?"

"About a minute actually. we're doing pretty well with the oink-oinks themselves." TEC ran a hand through his hair, staring at the six Oink-oinks already all lined up, and then staring at Koops's chips as he placed them into their pile.

Yoshi came up, cussing and growling as he flung the hammer down beside him, storming over. "How am I supposed to win a game that's complete and utter luck?!"

"Got him! Oink-oink seven has been captured!" Flurrie's laugh sounded as she placed him into the box and floated over, TEC moving to take his turn next, staring at the two. "What's going on dearies?

Koops put a hand on Yoshi's head, trying to calm the other down, "They're not though. You probably have some clues in your room that tells you what you've got to do. He's having trouble with his hammer game."

"The only thing I haven't checked is the guy who just keeps telling me to be patient."

Flurrie put a hand on her chin, thinking for a moment. "... Maybe if you give him the chip, and then wait a while?" Flurrie tilted her head for a moment before turning, seeing another green oink-oink charging around the fenced-in area. "Here, I have been keeping some chips on my person in case we had ran out, but with Koops... somehow being able to always win his game..."

"Hey, it was easy."

Flurrie: Too easy in my opinion.

"We don't need it. Try it my way, sit there and watch the game for a few moments."

Koops nodded and turned to Yoshi. "She might be right, I mean my observer was who showed me to test the blocks, maybe yours is doing the same."

Eva quickly turned and shoo-ed Yoshi and Koops. "Get going, we've to hit the point where it's taking quite a lot of chips to find new oink-oinks."

Flurrie shook her head, and pushed the two along. "Yes, that last one took ten thousand coins to find get going dearies."

7/10 Oink-oinks, 20,000/20,000 coins, 20 minutes remaining.


Bobbery swam up fro the bottom, passing by a still resting Vivian with another paper, panting and barely able to speak as he handed the sixth paper to them. Joining the nimbi and Mario was a picture of keelhaul key, minus what appeared to be a moving van with whatever started it missing and the letter k, the ocean plus a light fixture minus some green plant, someone arguing about the price of a product- if the speech bubble was any indication-, a picture of a container of something similar to the picture of the nimbi.

Mario scratched his head, wiping out Goombella's repeated guesses for the answers and tapping them. "All right, we've been waiting too long now, we need something. These two are too similar though." Mario tapped the Nimbi and the container, looking close. "It's what looks to be some Jammin Jelly and a Nimbi fish-"

"OH GRAMBI THAT'S IT!" Goombella once again shoved Mario out of the way, Toadette grabbing a piece of chalk as well, both of them quickly scrambling as Mario fell onto his rear.

"Nimbi's are also known as Angels, so this one has to be Angelfish."

"And Mario's comment, that must be JELLYFish here, you can't really do much more than this otherwise it'd be too obvious." Toadette scribbled it down, before starring and jotting down "Starfish" on one of the blanks.

"Why did you-"

Goombella shook her head, "No Toadette's got a good idea, if we find one of the star spirits fishing, just place it there. Mario, think of ocean creatures. That's what the puzzle's answers are!"

"Did you say star spirits fishing?" Bobbery shook off the water, pulling a picture from his hat that showed Eldstar doing just that. "Like this?"

Mario grabbed it, putting it into place and looking at the puzzles. "Mama Mia, a few of these must be rebuses then! Keelhaul key, minus the letter K, so Eelhaul K-"

Toadette jumped at that, scribbling down "Eel" into the position "I don't know how you get it, but it's the only thing out of keelhaul key that even sounds like any kind of sea creature. So that's 4 that we think we've got out of these seven."

"That's missing the key, so eelhaul, so the man must be one of those hauling ones. Keelhaul key minus k-haul key equals eel." Mario nodded, running his finger along the one with the light fixture. "Vivian!"

"Yes?"

"Give Bobbery a bit of a break, he's been swimming for most of the last hour, you take a bit of time looking."

"O-okay."

"Cheep-cheep." Goombella scribbled that one beside the arguing picture. "If these guys're talking about the price, it's either expensive, or cheap."

Tippi quickly called out. "Ten minutes remaining."

The hero quietly cussed in Italian, shaking his head. "Never mind, if you guys can find any more, bring them up. Soon."

"On it."

"Okay there's me holding a... ray?"

Toadette started jotting down "Ray" for a second before frowning. "You're a guy, so man-ray. This is probably manta ray then."

Mario turned his head for a moment, then shook, looking at the last one they currently had.

Mario: Okay, she keeps getting these before we even think these over once we figured out they were ocean creatures... but Goombella was the one who kept just jotting ideas down over and over and not talking about what it could be. Ugh, the first elimination's going to be... interesting.

7/10 puzzles found, ?/10 solved. 9 minutes remaining.


"One more oink-oink, one more oink-oink." The trio had stood at the dial for the past while, glaring as they kept finding the same colors over and over, green, red, green, red, silver, white, green, red.

Yoshi had eventually gotten the swing of his challenge as well, finally waiting more than a second and seeing numbers jumping out of the blocks he had to hamer, smashing the highest ones. Now Yoshi and Koops had basically a heap of coins sitting beside the oink-oink machine, Only heading back every so often to add more once they felt like the number was getting below 20.

"Come on, is there only one of whatever the last color is!?" Yoshi kicked the machine, leaning against it as another green oink-oink came down, Eva frowning for a moment.

Eva stared at them, leaning close over the fence and turning towards the other two. "Wait a second, could it simply be another shade of something rather than a completely different color?"

"Of course!" Flurrie's hand went to her head. "The menu yesterday had quite a few words based on colors altering. Right now we've got mostly reds and greens, so Eva, look over and TEC, help me try to think back on the menu."

The duo paced, Eva rushing around and searching through their captured ones, and looking at what they already had. "It mentioned Reds and Greens."

"Red-y or not, let you escape with all the "Green"..." Tec looked inside, but then he spotted it, hopping the fence and chasing after one of the oink-oinks. "It wasn't color! That one over there has a few darker spots on it!"

"Go TEC Go!"

1 minute left


"Vivian, Bobbery, Come on, have you found any?!"

"Sorry! I can't find any more, there's too many clams to search!"

"Have you solved the last puzzle you've got yet?

Goombella stared at the last one, grumbling "Ocean Light..."

"Angler Fish? Those have lights on them..." Toadette frowned, looking at it.

"No, no, it's gotta be something you can subtract whatever that is from it." The three tapped their chalk for a moment, but the time was slowly starting to tick away.

"Ten seconds left."

Vivian and Bobbery climbed out of the water. "Come on, you guys, you can do it!"

Bobbery shook the water off of himself. "I may be a bomb of the sea, but this competition is too much."

"Wait. Sea... That's it!" Mario scribbled down right before Tippi called time, dropping his chalk and hoping his guess was correct.

Sorry for the long wait, but you can see why it took so long. Two missions, bouncing back and forth. I tried my best to give everyone a bit of focus and attention as well, Also blame losing my plans. Again.

Here's hoping it doesn't take another few MONTHS before I post a chapter.