Chapter 7: Rainy Day Stories

At Purpley's home, a small group of trees in a clearing in the woods, the herd was busy picking the berries that grew in the treetops. Half of them were in the branches. They picked the berries and dropped them down to the other yoshis on the ground who caught them and put them in a pile. Wario and Waluigi watched them for awhile.

"Hey," Wario said to the yoshis. "Waluigi and I are gonna go see what happened to the other guys."

"Really?" Waluigi asked. "I think it'd be better i-"

"And by that, I mean we're gonna look for treasure," the fat man said in a low voice.

The Warios turned and were about to leave when Pinky, Yosheta and the Marios arrived.

"Never mind..." Waluigi frowned.

"Where were you at, Luigi?" Purpley asked. "You had me worried."

"I went back and grabbed some fruit that we missed," Luigi said as he got off Pinky's back. "I had a little trouble though."

"It was the zookeepers, wasn't it?" said Blacky, his tone sounding sort of angry.

"How dare they mess with you," Yellowy also seemed upset.

"Actually, no. Just a mistake on my part," Luigi tried to assure everyone.

Mario stared at the trees that Purpley and Oshi called home. He couldn't help but feel that something about the place seemed familiar. Suddenly, he felt something on his nose. He went to rub it when he felt it onh is left shoulder too. He was about to say something when he felt it in a few more places. He and everyone else looked around as drops of water fell from the sky. It was beginning to rain.

"Great. Looks like the treasure hunt is off," Wario grumped.

"Treasure?" asked Mario.

"Whoops. Did I say treasure? I meant fruit. The fruit hunt is off. Yes. That'll do," Wario chuckled at his fib.

"Don't worry, yellow Mario," Oshi said brightly. "There's so many berries here that we should have enough to last us for quite awhile."

"I see that. Good work, Oshi," Luigi smiled and pet Oshi, causing him to smile as well. He felt happy to help out Luigi and the herd.

"Let's go back to my cave, everybody," said Blacky. "We'll stay dry there."

Everyone turned and left. A few minutes later, the zookeepers walked into the clearing.

"So this must be the 'Purpley's home' that they were talking about," said Nicky. "It's sort of cute."

"Looks like a fine place to set the trap. So let's hurry up and do it," Vicky demanded.

Vicky and Nicky set up the net as quickly as possible. When they finished, they baited it with some grapes.

"Yes. This looks good," Nicky observed. "Now we'll catch a yoshi."

"We're gonna end up catching a cold instead if we don't get out of here soon. Come on!"

Meanwhile, Luigi's party have arrived at the cave. Something seemed a bit off though.

"Hmm," Blacky thought aloud. "It's usually not this dark in here. Not during daytime anyway."

"Don't worry. I'll fix that," Luigi said as he stumbled around in the darkness for a bit. He eventually found his flashlight and clicked it on.

"Whoa!" Redy exclaimed in surprise. "What's that?"

"It's a flashlight," the human answered. "We use it to light up dark places like this one."

"Is that thing safe?" asked Bluey.

"It's completely harmless. See?" Luigi put his free hand right over the light to demonstrate.

Oshi also poked the light with a finger. "That's really cool!"

"We're gonna be stuck in here for awhile, aren't we?" Purpley said gloomily as she looked at the rain outside the cave.

"I'll check," Mario replied as he put a hand outside for a couple of seconds, drenching it. "Yup."

"Tell us a story, Luigi," Yosheta pleaded. "How about when you beat Blacky?"

"A story? Bah," Waluigi said in disgust. "Wait. You beat up one of these guys? Do tell!"

"Well, alright," Luigi said, figuring that it would be a good way to kill time. "After staying with you guys for a few days, Blacky challenged me t-"

"Get to the point!" Waluigi blurted out.

Wario smacked his brother on the head. "Pipe down!" he scolded.

"You yoshis obviously know what tilting island fights are," Luigi continued. "As for the rest of you, I'll explain before I go on. Basically, the fight takes place an a small tilting island."

"Oh, you mean like in the Bombs Away game in the first two parties we had?" Mario asked.

"Yes. Exactly. Anyway, the object here was to knock your opponent off. Now let's se-"

"Ooh! Ooh!" Wario interrupted. "You mean like in the Smash Bros. Tournament? I loved watching that! Especially the part when Mario got a beatdown from that pink thing! You know, the one with the blade!"

"Pretty much. Now then..." Luigi trailed off a bit as he searched his memory for every detail of the battle. "I believe it went something like this. Blacky tired to headbutt me, but I dodged and punched him in the back. I ended up getting whipped by his tail when I did that. That kinda stung. Then he jumped and tried to Ground Pound me. He missed and I bit his neck."

"Bit? That's what you call that?" Blacky thought aloud, also remembering the fight.

"Blacky was about to try another Ground Pound, but I nailed him with a fireball before he could pull it off. Now here's the part that got me. We both tried to headbutt at the time. Very bad idea. We both got stunned. At least I think we did. I know that I did anyway. Before I could focus again, Blacky swallowed me and put me in an egg. You guys know how uncomfortable it is in one of those things? Wait. Of course you do. Yoshis start life in eggs, huh?"

Pinky giggled. "We sure did. But what about you? Don't humans come from eggs too?"

Luigi didn't plan on anybody asking that question and he certainly wasn't going to attempt to explain it either. "I'll get back to you on that. Well knowing that the egg I was in could easily roll right off the island, I did everything in my power to get out. Only to get flattened with a Ground Pound. So annoying. In fact, I was so annoyed that I used my Hyper Burn attack and set his tail ablaze."

"Hyper Burn?" Yosheta questioned, not knowing anything about the move. "What is it like?"

"It is a very powerful attack," Blacky said sternly. "Do not underestimate it."

"Big deal!" Waluigi scoffed. "Give me ten seconds with this guy and I'll show you that there's nothing to be scared of."

"Observe closely," Luigi smirked as he raised his arms and summoned some flames. Then he brought his arms forward in Waluigi's general direction.

"Aww...crap..." said a wide-eyed Waluigi when he saw what Luigi was doing.

Luigi hit Waluigi with a powerful beam of fire, causing him to scream in pain and run out of the cave. The yoshis, Mario and Wario quietly watched the scene in awe.

"That was amazing!" Bluey commended. "Such a display of strength!"

"Anyway, Blacky ran around out of control after that. Victory was as easy as giving him a good shove."

"Wonderful story!" Yosheta said as she clapped her hands. "It's no wonder you're the leader!"

"Hey, guys," Waluigi moaned as he returned to the cave. "The rain is coming down pretty hard. I can safely say that there is no way that the zookeepers can find us in this weather. I'm gonna lay down now." He fell to the ground and fainted.

Later on, Luigi told the yoshis more stories. Mario was nice enough to revive Waluigi. However, he strapped a pair of headphones on his head afterward so he didn't have to hear him complain. Waluigi was trying to convince himself that Mario did not just revive him. Wario was waiting for the rain to stop so he can, you guessed it, look for treasure.

"And so I chucked that veggie into the freaky frog's mouth once more," Luigi said during the climax of a story. "Wart choked on it and died. Who's the man now, Mario?"

"Oh yeah. This song is great," Mario wasn't paying any attention to Luigi.

Luigi became very annoyed. He yanked Mario's headphones off and slugged him in the arm as hard as he could. "What the heck, Mario? You didn't hear my story, did you?"

"The one about Wart? Big deal. Must I remind you that I could've easily dealt with him?"

"If that's the case, then why didn't you?"

"Whatever," the glory hog replied as he put his headphones back on.

"I don't care what he says," said Purpley. "I thought it was a neat story. By the sounds of it, you can beat up anyone."

"Well now...I couldn't possibly..." the modest hero said nervously.

"You got that right!" Oshi shouted. "I bet Luigi can beat up the zookeepers! That'd be cool!"

Luigi felt rather uncomfortable. "I seriously...doubt...that I could..."

"Relax," Blacky said and put a hand on Luigi's shoulder. "No need to get worked up."

"I just thought of something," Luigi changed the subject. "Does Yosheta have a dad? I was wondering because...well..."

"Of course she does," Pinky began. "He's a light blue yoshi. His name is Cyany, but since he is Bluey's younger brother, we had a habit of calling him Mini Bluey."

"Huh. So where is he?"

"Last we knew, he was looking for the legendary Super Happy Tree," said Bluey. "They say that it is somewhere in the mountains. You've heard of the Super Happy Tree before, haven't you?"

"Oh, sure. I think so," Luigi replied after giving it some thought. "Large tree, has a lot of different fruits on it? Yoshi mentioned it to me once or twice."

"That's what we heard anyway. Mini Bluey wanted his daughter to grow up happy and healthy so he decided to go into the mountains and bring back the tree,"

"He never came back," Pinky frowned.

"I would've been happier if he didn't go," Yosheta sighed. "I never even got to see him."

"How...lame, Waluigi commented, unable to find a better adjective.

"Hey, guys. Looks like the rain stopped," Wario pointed out.

"Ah. Oshi and I have been wanting to go for a walk," said Purpley. "We'll just go to our home and back."

"That's really too bad about Mini Bluey," Luigi said sympathetically. "Wish there was something I could do."

"Hey...uh..." Wario stammered. "Two of the yoshis just left. They said something about going back to their home. Just thought I'd say something since the zookeepers might be around and-"

"Zookeepers?" the leader of the yoshis cried in alarm as he looked around saw that Purpley and Oshi were gone. "Outta my way!"

At the home of Purpley and Oshi, it would appear that Luigi was too late. The pair were trapped in a net that hung from one of the tree branches. Luckily, Luigi arrived before anything else could happen.

"There you are," said a relieved Purpley. "We need a little help here. You see, there were some grapes here that we must've dropped. But when we went to pick them up, this thing came down on us."

"I think I hear something coming," Oshi worried.

"Darn zookeepers," Luigi said in disgust. "Hang on."

Luigi began to free the yoshis by carefully burning the ropes with a fireball. Oshi was able to get out with little trouble. However, the zookeepers showed up while Luigi was working on getting Purpley out.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" Vicky threatened.

"Getting your stupid net out of the way," Luigi said, not too pleased with the humans. "I already told you that you can't have the yoshis."

"Now now. I'm sure we can come to some agreement," Nicky said in a weak attempt to haggle.

"I don't think so. I, Luigi Mario, will see to it that you never get them. Now get out of the way."

"Let's see you make us," Vicky stood her ground.

"I said get out of the way!" Luigi repeated as he called forth a fireball which he immediately threw at the zookeepers.

"Whoa!" Nicky was in absolute shock. "Fire! Flee!" He and Vicky took off before they could get burned.

"Hee hee. My hero," Purpley cooed gratefully as Luigi finished getting her free.

"We'd better get back to the cave," the man in green said sternly. "We won't be ambushed if we just stick together."

Luigi escorted his friends back to Blacky's cave where they and everyone else stayed put. They slept as usual when nightfall came along with more rain, but is the cave really as safe as Luigi thinks...?