Some aspects of Super Mario 64 and its DS remake start to show up in this chapter. If you've never played or are not familiar with SM64, search it on the Mario wiki. The first paragraph will do. Enjoy! -Kat
By the way, the Colonel is a koopatrol, in case that helps you picture him better.
Melody
That night, I went back to the basement. The adults had realized that Pietro and Lillian were missing, and Father had just sent some guards to look for them in town.
I knew their disappearance had something to do with the machine, but I couldn't find out what it was and where they had gone until I knew what the machine was in the first place.
Think, Melody… What kind of machine would be so important that the King and Queen would have to hide it like that? Either it was some sort of weapon of mass destruction (that would explain why the authorities were unhappy) or something with magical properties.
It was more likely the latter.
So how did they disappear? The machine must have warped them somewhere… but where? They could be anyplace in the Eight-Worlds!
I looked at the olive controller resting in my hand as I descended the stairs in to the basement for the second time that day. Was this a part of the machine that was somehow left behind?
This confirms that the machine had magical properties, alright… Normal machines don't just have random parts falling off unless they're really broken. That also confirms the machine travels, but how? Machines can't just fly through stone walls and up out of the moat either.
I burst in the door of the plumbing and pressure controls room. It was just like I had left it, with an inch or two of water covering the floor (but that was always there), a wet canvas strewn across the foundation, and my flashlight resting against the wall.
However, there was one difference: the mystery twinkling noise was absent.
I began to walk the room, listening for the twinkling as hard as I could. But in my concentration, I was not watching where I was going. I tripped on a fold in the canvas and splashed head first into the water. I stood up, coughed, and sputtered. Ugh… nasty water…
But wait, something was moving underneath me! I was sinking, fast.
The cold stone of the plumbing and pressure controls room was changing before my very eyes. I ran to the other side of the room and watched as the stone floor sunk into what should have been hard dirt, revealing steps down into a shallow pit. The water drained into a hole, a gaping blackness revealed. The floor was perfectly dry. The water in the hole rippled like there was an unseen force behind it, methodically bobbing up and down, shaping the surface of the water. The stone made no sound throughout the whole process, which I found disturbing. But I was secretly thankful; all the creaks, groans, and moans something like this normally would make (but could I even use the word "normally"?) would attract the attention of the King and Queen. That was the last thing I wanted right now. What I wanted right now were some answers.
I was breathing heavily, clutching the wall. I dared to step forward, when I realized that in my surprise, I had left the controller near the water's edge. I took a deep breath, and descended the stairs into the dip in the floor. The stone floor was cold and wet, and I slipped on it and fell the rest of the way. Luckily for me, there were only about five steps into the shallow pit, and I only succeeded in getting myself even wetter than I already was, rather than hurt.
I didn't bother standing up again, but instead, inched my way across the wet floor to the controller. Why did I even bother going back for this thing anyway? Why is it so important to me? And why does this pit of water seem so ominous?
I reached the controller, took it, and began to crawl back to the stairs. But I looked back and saw that the rippling water seemed to be… calling me. I felt a powerful urge to look inside it. So, having no common sense at all, I move back towards it and stare into the empty blackness.
Before I know it, I've fallen in.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
But I don't hit the bottom. No, I keep falling, falling for ages, months, years, it seemed. I don't know how long I fell; time itself seemed to have stopped. The controller slipped out of my hands as I continued to cut through water, as if a strong gravity was pulling me hard, determined for me to reach the bottom. There was no need to breathe. The walls of the bottomless pit changed from stone to dirt, and I finally landed, softly, on a dirt floor.
I looked up, and saw that the pit I had fallen down had disappeared. I looked around. I was lying, sopping wet (my dress was forever ruined), on a shelf about two feet off of the ground. Torches in brackets lined the wall of the cave I had landed in. Two tunnels, one leading left and one leading right, were the only way out, it seemed, but there was not enough light to tell where exactly they led.
I stood up, and weighed my options. I must have fallen down a warp zone of some sort, and come out in a cave far below the castle. I needed to get back up to the surface, and the only way to do that was to follow one of the tunnels.
Which path was the better option? Was it the left tunnel, or the one on the right? Well, I suppose it doesn't matter…
I walked slowly down the one on the left, but stopped when I came to a pit even more bottomless than the pit of water back in the basement. I could faintly see land on the other side, but it was shrouded in shadow and looked several yards away (much too far for me to even try to jump). I stepped back, and walked down the other one.
Lillian
The colonel's words had shaken me thoroughly. When Bowser finds out we gave him information about the wrong princess, he'll be furious! And we'll be in some hot water (or should I say, hot lava…)! At first, this whole "back-in-time" thing had semed like a fun little day trip (besides my being knocked out during the time traveling itself), but now… our lives were in danger.
Pietro too, was worried. He was pacing the length of the cell, saying nothing.
Finally, an idea comes to mind. But it's so adventurous, so daring, so utterly insane that I don't dare speak it. But Pietro reads my face, and asks,
"What's wrong?"
My stomach is churning already and my throat is dry when I say in return, "We have to get out of here. We have to find Waluigi and the controller and go home."
Pietro nods, and says, to my astonishment, "Great minds think alike. I was thinking the exact same thing." There was a long pause.
All of a sudden, a familiar voice breaks it.
"Ah… so we all have great minds, huh?"
Pietro yelps and whips around, his nerves getting the better of him, to see the speaker: the Colonel. The Colonel opened the cell door with minimal squeaking and stowed the keys in his koopa armor.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Let's go!" he says, motioning for us to walk outside.
Pietro and I don't know what to say. Can we trust this guy? We had already been tipped off upon once by Yoshi… To trust a soldier of Bowser would be suicide. He seems to read our mind.
"Come on… I'm all you've got right now."
Well I supposed he was right, and stepped outside the door. Pietro hesitates, and then nervously follows.
"Where to?" I said. The Colonel motioned toward the door of the dungeon and began to stride over there, his metal boots making a clanking noise against the stone floor. I walk closely behind, but Pietro lags, walking slowly. Something seems to be troubling him.
We walk down the stone halls of Bowser's fortress, but taking a different route than we did to the throne room. The halls start to get wider, the red carpet disappears, and other troops are present, especially Magikoopa and winged koopa troopas.
Something startles Pietro. He motions toward a wall, and what I see makes my eyes round with astonishment: A great glass wall replaces the stone, and what seems like hundreds of paratroopas are working in harmony to build a monstrous ship. It looked like a sea vessel, but the wings attached to the side told me otherwise. Its frame was only half complete, and another office-holding koopa was barking orders at the soldiers.
The Colonel walked faster.
Two great doors, made of solid steel with bolts the size of my palm loom before us as we turned a corner. They stretched up to the ceiling, which was as tall as the tallest skyscraper of Mushroom City.
With an earsplitting creak and a bone-rattling groan, the doors open and a sight lay before us that I would remember for my whole life:
Orders streamed across a room as gigantic as two whole towns and several completed ships were parked in rows. Thousands of paratroopas and magikoopa flew across the room, loading one monstrous ship with cargo in crates as tall as me. It took several paratroopas just to carry one. I looked up, the ceiling had opened to reveal a moonless night with wispy black clouds floating across endless blackness. Lightning flashed, but thunder was never heard.
The Colonel pulls us behind two crates, similar to the way Pietro did in that dark alleyway that seemed so far from here. I fall over again. Pietro does his best to conceal his laughter.
I huff and squat behind the crate, peering over the top at the scene. I look next to me at the Colonel, wondering what we were supposed to do next. We crawled behind an immense pyramid of crates, now quite far from the door, and the Colonel starts to whisper instructions.
"It is very important that we are not seen. Is that clear?" We nodded. "The paratroops start by carrying the crates at the top of this pyramid, and work their way down. Crates have various things in them, and some are not filled up all the way. The Koopa King prefers his shipments to the Territories to be organized. Find two half-full crates. There is not enough space to fit both of you." His instructions were very clear and short. The Colonel kept glancing upwards, where the winged koopas were starting to carry the crates from the top to the pyramid, as if one would suddenly cry out, and alert other troops of our presence.
So we did. Pietro's crate was halfway full of some bright-red apples, and mine contaned a burlap sack filled with something lumpy.
The Colonel continued, "This freighter goes to the farthest Territory of the Darklands, Kharak. All shipments have to come through Bowser Castle first, so be sure to get off the ship somehow at Kharak, or you'll end up back here."
"Wait," said Pietro, "You make it sound like you're not coming with us!"
"No, I'm not. You're on your own from here."
What? I felt betrayed, but the paratroopas started to move the crates closer to us, so we gave one last look at him and hopped into our respective boxes. I always knew he was a scoundrel. But then again, he'd given us safe passage to a place far from here, though the Mushroom Kingdom was thousands of miles away… But that's adventure! Adventure is being spontaneous, always on the move.
I wondered what I was lying on top of. The paratroops had long since loaded my crate onto the freighter (and hopefully Pietro's too), and the gentle hum of what must be engines had put me to sleep. Now, my muscles were horribly sore from sleeping on top of something very spiky.
I rolled over onto my stomach (a bad idea) and looked for an opening in the canvas. My clumsiness, rather than settling my curiosity, lands me smashed in between the wall of the crate and the canvas bag. I got back up and rested for a bit in a semi-comfortable spot, but the ship hits a spot of turbulence, and my leg was then stuck underneath a spiky canvas bag.
Wonderful… just great…
I tore my hands around the canvas bag, trying to find an opening to its contents, so that I could get out of this mess. Being so dark in here, I could not see a thing. Ah ha! A zipper!
A zipper?
Oh well… I yanked on the zipper with all of my might, and the bag tore open and my leg was jostled free.
But then I saw the contents of the bag, and my situation just got a whole lot worse.
It turns out that the bumpiness I felt was not a spot of turbulence, but the vessel landing in Kharak, because the engines turned off. And as for the contents? Well…
I had primed, by the yanking of the zipper (which was made of more than one microscopic metal part, obviously…) a giant crate of winged bombs.
That sure explains a lot.
In a frantic panic, I slam my head against the roof of the crate, but more crates were clearly on top of mine. I grab one of the bombs, and use its spiky wing tip to pry a sideboard of the crate off. My crate was on the edge of the stack in the hull of the airship.
"Pietro!" I call, not thinking about the possibility of troops hearing me. A hand grabs me from the shirt neckline and pulls me behind a crate. It was Pietro.
"What did you do now?" He whispers loudly in my ear.
"Bombs!"
"Bombs? Where would you find…" but then he hears the ticking in the background. "Oh no… Lets get out of here!"
We dart out from behind the crate pyramid and dash out the door, no longer worried about being seen. I barely remember anything but shouting guards, and stairs… endless stairs… Pietro seemed to know where he was going, but I was just going to have to trust him, because I had no idea where we were on this giant ship.
Then, an explosion rocked the ship hull, and hundreds of troops were no longer organized, running about the ship in a crazed frenzy to get to the Bridge. Commanding koopas were trying desperately to restrain order, but were unsuccessful almost to the point of comicality.
Thankfully, Pietro and I stayed together and joined the hundreds of troops in the race for the Bridge.
I wondered, even in all of the panic and confusion: How much of the future had I changed so far? Or was the future only the future because I changed these things? I don't know… explosions I would consider "major future changes".
And how did I get myself into this mess?
Luigi
"Well bro, here you go… the Silver Star, ready for action! Why don't you give her a test run?"
Mario and I were standing in the garage of our house (smack in the middle of the woods, of course) with the garage door open, admiring our work. We had repainted, renamed, and hidden the flying and battle tank controls of the Shooting Star. It would now be called the Silver Star until I retired from racing.
I nodded toward Mario, and stepped inside the one-person cockpit of the Silver Star. The steering wheel felt natural under my white gloves, and the pedals were just the right length from the front seat. I turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful engines hummed to life, vibrating under my fingers. The kart was full of stored-up energy and ready to ride.
And so was I.
I step on the gas and tear down the tiny path that led the way to the warp to Toad Town. At full speed… I crashed into nothing. The kart seemed to respond to my very thoughts, turning whenever there was an unexpected tree off the path or once even jumping when there was a stump in the middle of the trail.
Before you could say, "Let's-a-go!" I was speeding around the outskirts of Toad Town, far exceeding the speed limit. These back roads were almost never used, and their thin, dirty complexion was a good practice for drifting.
I felt so free and with this kart whipping around turns without even sending up dust, the engine humming underneath the hood, and the perfect stats.
But would this be enough? How tough would Banana Cup racers be? Do I even need to worry at all?
A/N: Sorry this one was a little shorter than the others, but if I continued, the product would've been too long to be called a chapter.
Coming up next… CHAPTER 8 (LESS ANSWERS, MORE QUESTIONS): A mysterious stranger rescues Lillian and Pietro from certain doom in Kharak, but who is he and is he working for Bowser? Melody finds the owner of the mystery cave, and she seems to know something about Melody's flashbacks. Bowser sends his eight children to look for the escaped prisoners while Luigi races in the Banana Cup.
Yep! Lots of interesting stuff coming soon… stay tuned and REVIEW!
Press it… You know you want to…
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