Chapter 8: Castle Town Showdown

The shuttles that ran through Fourside City were almost always overcrowded. They ran along smooth metal rails that zigzagged and wound their way across the thriving metropolis. To Vivian, the shuttles themselves looked like the body of Peach's private jet that had once taken Mario to Delfino Island—minus the pink. Though the vessels were a far cry from the futuristic public transportation of places such as Mute City and Corneria, to her (not to mention Link and Zelda, who would have considered a steam engine to be futuristic), this seemed like the pinnacle of technological convenience. And despite the close quarters she and her sisters were sharing with a particularly obese Gourmet Guy, Vivian managed to allow the sublimity of floating through the air over this magnificent city to sweep over her.

"Do you think Falco will come back?" Nana asked, seated beside Link and Zelda.

"Perhaps not willingly," Professor Frankly interjected from the seat behind them. "But with the way things are going, I doubt he'll have a choice of whether to join this conflict. Master Hand wants all of the Original 25, and I'm sure he's got a contingency plan for reluctant participants."

Their shuttle sped around the side of the towering "Fourside Department Store" and then plummeted to meander beneath a glass spiral skyway and on across a long stretch parallel to a wide street of nightmarish traffic below. It veered into a tunnel-like opening near the ground that turned out to be the station closest to the department store, which a fashionably dressed Zora announced from a screen at the front of the car in a cool female voice.

"Now stopping at: Fourside Department Store, the Pianta Parlor casino, and the Smash Hall of Fame. Please be courteous as you exit the shuttle and watch your step. Have a great day!"

Link was fixated on the cerulean-colored sea creature, trying to determine whether he recognized her from Lake Hylia, when he felt someone nudging his arm.

"I just realized," Professor Frankly said as about half of the current passengers lined up to disembark. "I need to run and grab a couple odds and ends at the store before we reach the hotel. We've still got two days before the tournament registration begins, so why don't you all come with me and see the sights, hm?"

A murmur of generally uninterested responses followed:

"Well, I dunno…."

"I don't want me or Zelda to get lost out there, so…."

"Guuuuhhh…!"

But Frankly stamped his foot, shaking his head firmly. "No, I insist. If you don't want to come shopping with me, you can explore the casino or the hall of fame. Besides, even if you get off at the right stop, the Grande Snifit Hotel is a huge place, and you'll never gain entrance into the Smash Brothers' Suite without me there. So you might as well come outside, unless you want to be accosted all afternoon by Chet Rippo and his assortment of wallet-ravishing rip-offs."

With that, he followed the crowd out the automatic sliding doors made of tinted Plexiglas and into the station lit by flickering fluorescent lights. Goombella and Goombario followed closely behind, both excited to explore downtown, but the Smashers and Shadow Sirens only filed out after deciding, with great reluctance, that there was no better alternative.

They made their way over to a complex of long escalators that took pedestrians down to street level and underground parking garages, or up to the skyways that connected the various malls and department stores in the area.

Frankly split off from them to take the ascending escalator. "Meet back here in two hours," he called over the noise of the crowd. "We want to make the four o'clock shuttle to reach the hotel by six."

Upon passing through the revolving doors into the bright urban life outside, it became apparent that they would have to choose between one destination and the other. The blue information sign before them, among a number of other more obscure locations, revealed the Pianta Parlor to be a few blocks across the street ahead, while the Smash Hall of Fame was to be found a ways to the right.

"We're gonna check out the casino," Goombella said to Vivian. "It's been a while since you and Mario and I have been to the one in Rogueport; d'you and your sisters wanna come with?"

"Sure," she agreed. To her relief, Marilyn and Beldam did not raise any objections, not appearing to care much about where they went at this point. She turned to Link, Zelda, and Popo. "You guys will probably want to see the Hall of Fame, since you're all part of it. See you later!"

"Bye, then!" Nana said cheerfully, waving as they crossed the gridlocked street. They ignored the road-raging Wiggler that was bright red and steaming with anger from the wait and was on the verge of climbing over the cars in front of it with its giant caterpillar body.

"What is this Smash Hall of Fame?" Zelda asked as they followed the sign and pushed through a throng of thuggish Kremlings (walking crocodiles with black skull-and-crossbones T-shirts).

Nana shrugged. "I've never heard of it. I guess it must have something to do with Master Hand's Smash Tournaments."

One of the beefier Kremlings had seriously considered snatching the princess and relieving her of valuables, but one sidelong glance from the swordsman beside her caused him to reconsider and press on with his gang as if he'd seen nothing.

After some ten minutes, they reached an open block covered with a well-maintained lawn and a winding cobblestone path that led through an obsidian Baroque-style arch and onto the steps of a small but impressive structure. It looked like a Renaissance-era museum with its pearly white and maroon walls decorated with intricate floral patterns; the resolute spires on each corner; the finished rosewood double doors; and the engraved golden circles repeated around the building near the top of the walls. They soon recognized these designs to match the recurrent off-centered cross insignias that were found all over Master Hand's Fortress as well as on the faces of the Wire Frames.

What do they mean? Zelda wondered as they paused for a minute to admire the beautiful building before Link tentatively pushed open the right-hand door and stepped inside.

The interior was magnificent yet almost eerily antiquated. The entire building was one high dome-ceilinged chamber, lit entirely by candles attached to the walls and suspended from a glittering diamond chandelier. Link realized that although from the outside it wasn't as noticeable, the room itself was also rounded, mirroring the enormous red Smash symbol that was painted onto the floor's white marble tiles. He looked up at the domed ceiling and saw Master Hand and Crazy Hand illustrated in frightening detail, their fingers curled diabolically like a piano player about to forcefully extract a sinister sonata from his instrument.

And, all around the red-carpeted walls, elliptical portraits of each Smash Tournament participant hung in ornate silver frames, the fighter's name engraved on a brass plate underneath. The frames covered the curved walls in their entirety, and all of them above the second layer were completely empty.

Link soon understood the method behind the design. Arranged around the bottom layer were the twelve representatives of the very first Smash Tournament: Luigi; Mario; Donkey Kong; himself; Samus; Captain Falcon; Ness; Fox; Yoshi; Kirby; Pikachu; Jigglypuff. These frames made their way around the entire room, and as such were widely spaced out.

The second layer above it, slightly closer together, included those who had been invited to the most recent tournaments: Peach; Bowser; Dr. Mario; Zelda; Ganondorf; Young Link; Falco; Pichu; Mewtwo; the Ice Climbers; Mr. Game & Watch; Marth; Roy.

The Original 25.

"Hey, look at this!"

Link and Zelda came over to where Nana was poring over a large bronze plate underneath her own portrait. Looking closely, Link saw that it contained a list of fighting statistics about the Ice Climbers: their victories, losses, KO count, greatest rival, and other details. He stepped over to his own portrait and found his and every other to have a similar posting.

It was incredible. Not because he particularly relished fighting, but because Master Hand had somehow been able to keep track of so much astronomically complicated data. How did he do it?

"And to think," Zelda said at his side, "we used to think of all this as a game."

Link gazed back up at the many empty rows that had yet to be filled, at the dozens and dozens of slots that would house many new fighters in future competitions. Then he raised his eyes once more to the painted ceiling. "I think Master Hand still does."

"Wow; like, I can only imagine what this place must be like at night!"

The Goombas and Shadow Sirens looked up in wonder at the dazzling entrance to the Pianta Parlor. The entire side of the casino was covered in a giant neon pink Pianta (which resembled a blob of paint with a grass skirt, sausage nose, and a literal plant sprouting from its head) that appeared to wave with the movement of the lights beneath a swirly neon sun.

"Yeah, I haven't seen this much glitter since the Glitz Pit," Vivian agreed as they walked inside.

It was very similar to the one in Rogueport, filled with shiny golden surfaces, flashing lights of every color, opulent slot machines and whirling roulettes and wealthy gamblers crowded around extravagant card tables. The chatter and hubbub was matched only by the melodic beeps and sirens as the slot players won—or, more often than not, lost—their Coins, which was the accepted currency of the establishment. Piantas, of course, ran the place as poker dealers, ushers, and waiters wandering around with silver platters that bore precariously balanced glasses of tropical fruit juice.

They wandered around the casino for a while, fascinated by the diversity of customers and the vibrant array of Coin-sucking machines. None of them were much for gambling, but Goombario gave his girlfriend a single coin to try on the slots, which resulted in two Lucky 7's…and a Boo, which cackled at them for their vain attempt to deprive it of Coins.

"What's the point of all this?" Beldam grumbled. "We should be tracking down the Shadow Queen before Master Hand sics her on some unsuspecting village…."

"You could've stayed on the shuttle, y'know," Goombella pointed out, her natural sass beginning to come out.

"Guuhhh!"

Vivian saw that her sister was pointing at something. "What is it, Marilyn?"

They followed the yellow-hatted plum girl's arm to one of the more lucrative poker tables, where an orange Pianta with a lush mustache was busy dealing out cards to four Hylian soldiers who appeared to be taking vacation time. But there was a fifth player: a short, cloaked figure whose face was hidden within a black hood.

They watched as each soldier, examining his hand, pushed more chips into the center than the last, the players' confidence as clear as their inexperience with maintaining a poker face. They awaited the hooded figure's play, expecting him to fold, but after a moment's pause, he slid several stacks of chips that were nearly the sum of all of the others put together. He was going all in. The last soldier laughed and hiccupped with drunkenness and matched his bid, certain he had it won.

But whatever the dealer revealed came as a shock to the soldier, who made to grab at the hooded victor, accusing him of cheating.

Big mistake.

He leapt deftly onto the card table, kicking the soldier in the face while keeping all but two white-gloved hands concealed within his cloak. The other three inebriated Hylians began yelling in anger and protest, rushing the figure from three angles while the Pianta backed away, frantically waving his arms as he fled to call security. The figure didn't look too perturbed; he balanced himself on his fist, then performed a spinning kick, treading on the three soldiers' faces and toppling them like Styrofoam bowling pins.

Vivian and Co. watched open-mouthed as the figure bounced up and alighted back on the ground. Seeing the clusters of blue Pianta guards closing in on him with police batons, it sped straight toward them…

…then stopped. Vivian realized it wasn't headed for her and the others, but for the exit behind them. Yet as they stood before the hooded figure, it seemed to take a moment to consider them, peering into their eyes from beneath its hood.

"Welcome to Fourside, friends of Mario," the deep voice rasped.

The Shadow shot past them in a black blur and was gone.

"There's one thing I still don't understand," Fox said as they approached the F-Zero track's starting line. It was bright and early in the morning, the air chilly and the wind dropping the temperature another 10 degrees for good measure. The track was situated some 200 feet above ground level, held up by titanic spires that supported the track until, through some sort of miraculous engineering technology, it continued on its own without any supports at all. The starting line was marked by the traditional checkered strip with stoplights on each end. Behind the line, some 25-30 racers were arranged in a staggered formation (the track was far too narrow to accommodate all of them at once), engines humming and pilots performing preliminary checks to minimize the chances of a fatal malfunction. Many of the pilots were human, but some were most definitely not.

"What's that?" Dr. Clash asked as he accompanied them to their vehicles.

"How did you have the time to build Samus and me personalized racers after such short notice?"

The mechanic looked a bit sheepish. "Well, let's just say I've had a little extra time on my hands—"

"—all of it," Stewart coughed.

"—and watching you and your friends fighting in the Smash Tournaments got me thinking: How neat would it be if you all got together sometime and did battle not with strength, but with speed! So, uh, I may or may not have built racers specifically designed for each of the Original 25 long before I joined up with the Smash Brothers."

"Fair enough," Fox said, placing his hand admiringly on the Landmaster GX. "Let's get this show on the road, then!"

Samus climbed into the Metroid Masher beside Fox. On her right, Roy awkwardly squeezed into the Vanisher's passenger side while Gadd took to the pilot's seat, offering the estranged boy words of encouragement in an attempt to allay his fears, which seemed to help a little but not much. Finally, Jody Summer and Dr. Stewart made for the racers directly in front of the other three: the White Cat and the Golden Fox.

"Remember," Summer said to them before stepping into her cockpit. "This may be a race, but you're only here to make it to Fourside alive. We hang behind the pack and avoid as much conflict with other racers as possible." Her eyes lingered for a moment on Fox, though this suspicion was justified since he had been envisioning himself outracing everyone and waiting for them at the finish line with a two-hour nap on his belt. "Use the racers' communicators to stay together and watch each other's backs."

"Take your turns slow," Stewart added. "The tracks are magnetized for jumps and loops, but there are no rails in F-Zero; no second chances. If you fall, you're toast."

Everyone nodded, although the only one seriously affected by this comment was Roy, who gulped and redoubled his silent Divine Dragon prayers.

A buzzer signaled that the race was about to start, ordering all non-racers off the track if they didn't want to die a horrible death.

"The track takes a detour through the Big Blue Route before completing the Mute City circuit," Dr. Clash yelled over the whirring machines as he walked off the track. "But take you to Fourside it will. Good luck!"

On second thought, maybe this won't be so bad. It's not like anyone here's out to get us, right? Roy looked out of the right side of the cockpit and accidentally made eye contact with the pilot next to them: an alien whose head resembled that of an elongated turtle skull. It grinned at him, drawing a line across its throat and pointing at Roy.

Heaven help us….

Beep…

Beep…

Beep…

BEEP!

Roy felt like he'd just been sucked into a kaleidoscopic black hole. The Vanisher lunged forward like a pebble released from a slingshot, rocketing them forward at Mach-something and almost immediately breaking the sound barrier with a bone-shattering boom (in reality, they were only moving at some 200 mph and no such barrier had been broken, of course, but to Roy's tender ears, it might as well have been the case). He felt his stomach leap into this throat, his eyes and face peeled back in spite of the insulating windshield. He was truly grateful to not be in control right now.

The flock of racers zoomed through the initial stretch of the course, which mostly consisted of straight shots and gentle curves, the lights and towers of Mute City reeling beneath them. Stewart led their small formation of five, while Summer fell back to cover their flank. The two veterans were not overly concerned, though; seeing as they had purposely begun in the rear of the pack and gotten off to a slow start, the rest of the racers were far ahead of them.

However, even this relative security was eclipsed by the burning racer remains that began to show up on the track as the competition ahead apparently became more violent.

"Don't worry, the pilots aren't dead," Stewart said over the electronic speakers. "Pilots like Pico and Michael Chain's clan are known to play dirty, but despite what I said earlier, fatalities are relatively rare because the racers are equipped with teleporters that'll beam you to the finish if your racer's destroyed on the track. It's when your vehicle's seriously damaged and then pushed over the edge that you have to worry; without contact with the track or the racer's computer, the teleporter has no way of triangulating your position and getting you out."

Then a steep, steady curve took them north, snaking back and forth in a manner that Roy personally felt went far beyond what was necessary. Samus, Fox, and Gadd were thoroughly enjoying themselves; it was technology such as this that they lived for and thrived on. Sure, they weren't putting on much of a televised show for their audience, but then again, the kinds of people who relished F-Zero races were often not the sort you would be able to please with any vestige of common sense or concern for personal safety.

And before they knew it, the city below them was gone, replaced by a flat, endless sheet of blue. They had reached the Big Blue segment of the course. The track wound up and down, undulating like ocean waves and tilting the racers up to 45 degrees. They passed through short tunnels running through huge, white, oddly-shaped silos that dotted the sea like aquatic skyscrapers.

Roy began to relax for the first time, leaning back and closing his eyes, pretending he was riding a perfectly smooth-running horse….

"Get 'em, boys!"

As they exited a tunnel, Roy looked back to see a pink racer with yellow flames come down from one of the silo's ledges and land behind them in hot pursuit. Worse still, some six or seven other racers fell down in his wake. A grizzly male voice had bellowed through their speakers; whether the pilot had intended for his quarry to hear him or not, none could tell.

"It's Samurai Goroh and his thugs," Summer grunted. "We've gotta shake 'em."

"How do we do that?" Fox asked, finding with disappointment that the Landmaster GX did not come with a laser cannon. "There's only one track!"

Summer grinned from within the White Cat as Goroh's gang closed in on them. "You misunderstand me," she said. "Not 'shake' as in lose; 'shake' as in rattle them up!"

Stewart, meanwhile, made a fairly hopeless attempt to reason with them. "Goroh, call off your dogs. The Captain isn't here. You have no reason to come after us."

"You think I care if Falcon is here to see me kill you?" Goroh spat. "You and Summer've been thorns in my side for too long; I'm gonna take you out, and then I'm gonna take down your precious Captain!" He glanced greedily at the three unfamiliar racers. "As for your friends, well…we've all got a living to make, bub. And since all this new blood'll be easy pickins, I'm sure we can make a pretty penny off whatever they leave behind!"

Summer sighed. "Have it your way, then." She suddenly slammed on her brakes, did a 180, and accelerated toward Goroh's gang. This caught the bandits off-guard. As eager as they were to do away with their boss's competitors, committing suicide in a game of chicken was not on the list of things they were willing to do for some cash. They all split off to the edges, but this stretch was so narrow that three of them were accidentally bumped off the sides to make room for the rest.

Goroh, on the other hand, tilted his Fire Stingray only at the very last second to skirt around Summer and took out his ire on his accelerator, rapidly closing the distance between him and his new target: the Vanisher.

"Gadzooks!" Professor E. Gadd tried to accelerate out of Goroh's reach, but it was no use; the bandit's vehicle was much more powerful than his own. In a few seconds, they would be wedged from underneath and shoved off the track….

"Fox," Samus said, seeing their predicament and glancing at what lay ahead. "Are you ready to try out that maneuver we've been practicing?"

"You know it," Fox said.

As one, the Landmaster GX and Metroid Masher decelerated until they were between the Vanisher and the approaching Fire Stingray. Then, Samus began spinning her racer clockwise while still moving forward, and Fox did the same except counterclockwise. They pivoted faster and faster until they were all but two whirling tops.

"Idiots!" Goroh guffawed. "Spinning like that on the track'll just help me knock you off easier! It's been nice knowing—NO!"

Too late, Goroh realized they were all about to go off a jump. But go off it they did, and while doing so, it was impossible for him to brake and avoid being bounced off the two gyrating racers. He spun out of control, sailing backward into his remaining cohorts and sending them all tumbling off the track into the ocean. Fox and Samus were temporarily thrown off course, but the spin on their vehicles soon brought them back to a safe trajectory.

The rest of them, against Roy's understanding of physics, landed smoothly on the sloped track below. Summer caught up to them a few seconds later.

"Now that is how it's done!"

The race continued. For Roy, it felt like days, but it was in fact a couple hours before the track veered back toward the Nintendo mainland. He was once again extremely grateful for the distance between them and the rest of the pack; although Stewart had reassured them the chances of death were slim, he had no desire to find out what it felt like to be teleported out of an exploding machine.

At last, the coast came back in sight, and the course resumed its terrestrial route. Mute City was certainly a vast settlement; only Fourside surpassed it in size. For they had gone who-knew-how-many miles, yet Stewart informed them that they were still only about two-thirds of the way there.

It was on another flat stretch when their 200 mph tranquility was once again cut short. This time, two faint dots, one red and one blue, rapidly came into view. The alarming thing was that the two unknown racers were coming from opposite directions. They were on a collision course with the cluster of five racers caught in the middle, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

"Hug the edge!" Stewart yelled as he and the rest frantically swerved out of the way of the kamikaze vehicles. A few seconds later, the red and blue racers crossed within inches of each other, clearly in a coordinated effort to dislodge them from the track.

"Gaargh!"

One of the incoming vessels had clipped the corner of Fox's Landmaster GX, sending it over the side where it plummeted and then exploded in midair.

"Fox!" Samus peered over the side as she watched her friend's fall, having trouble registering what had just happened.

"He'll be fine," Summer said. There was a note of sharpness in her tone that hadn't been there before. "We need to worry about ourselves now; Stewart, did you catch which racers those were?"

"One was definitely the Blood Hawk. Falcon's mindless clone must be after us again. The other…my eyes must have been playing tricks on me, because it couldn't be true…."

Gadd's eyes widened. The rogue racers had doubled back and were coming again for round two. "I'm afraid you saw correctly, Doctor. It's the Blue Falcon. That doesn't make sense, though. The Captain is…Gadzooks!"

This time, rather than simply speeding through, the two newcomers matched the speed of their quarry—the Blood Hawk behind them, and the Blue Falcon reversing directions and accelerating backwards so that they were all moving at the same velocity, sandwiched between the hostiles like a bunch of scarecrows stranded in the no-man's-land of a firing range.

Samus peered closely at the Blue Falcon. "It's Captain Falcon all right. Not the one we're thinking of, though…it's his metal lookalike!"

Meanwhile, Summer spun around to face the Blood Hawk. "And Blood Falcon, too. Master Hand must have enlisted them to collect bounty on us all. There'll be no negotiating here."

And, indeed, behind the Blue Falcon's cockpit, the metallic pilot maneuvered the backward-moving racer with every bit of expertise as its original. Blood Falcon, from within the Blood Hawk, looked exactly like Captain Falcon except with a red jumpsuit and purple helmet—and a merciless glint in his eyes above a cruel smile.

Once again, the track acted as a form of impersonal deus ex machina; it chose that point in the race to do several 360-degree corkscrews while continuing straight on, imitating the kind of rollercoaster segment much dreaded by those who have never gone upside-down on a ride. Blood Falcon took the opportunity to plunge himself toward Samus and Summer, who found themselves unexpectedly shifted by the rotating track, causing their adversary to just miss them.

As one, the two female pilots pivoted their racers inward and rammed into the Blood Hawk, crushing the cockpit and sending up sparks. Then the Metroid Masher backed off to allow the White Cat to push the crippled racer off the track.

Back at the front, with Gadd rather uselessly wedged in the middle and unable to catch up, Stewart found himself face to face with Metal Captain Falcon.

"Alright," he said. "Come and get some!"

Mid-twist, he lifted the left side of the Golden Fox so that it flipped away from the inverted track. At first it appeared as if he'd just thrown himself off the course, but as the track came back around in its rotation, it remagnetized the racer and sucked it back on—in this case, right on top of the Blue Falcon's cockpit.

Stewart allowed himself a smirk as he saw that the prow of the Golden Fox had penetrated straight through the windshield, surely pinning his foe inside. But then he looked closely: There was no one there. It must have been thrown out during the twist….

Thunk.

The weight of the object landing on his racer jarred Stewart in surprise. But before he could do anything, a metal fist punched through the glass above him and dragged him up onto the top.

Summer turned her vehicle about to see ahead. Metal Captain Falcon had her companion by the throat as they rode atop the Golden Fox.

"Robert!" she screamed.

But it was too late. The doppelganger thrust him off the side of the track, with no teleporter to break his fall onto the unforgiving buildings several hundred feet below. He was gone.

Metal Captain Falcon pushed off from the Golden Fox and cast itself onto the Vanisher, sending the two damaged racers into each other. They collided and exploded.

Now the track was making a steep ascent, as if the rollercoaster were preparing for its grand finale. Samus and Summer floored their acceleration pedals in an attempt to gain on the Vanisher, but their heavier vehicles could barely keep up with the Vanisher's lighter build—albeit one which had become significantly heavier with its unwelcome boarder.

Inside the rattling Vanisher, Gadd panicked, swerving back and forth in an effort to dislodge the metal Smasher. The track reached the peak of its ascent, but instead of a straight plummet, it formed a steep funnel down to the finish line and platform, which sat on the border between the outskirts of Mute City and that of Fourside. The midday sun glinted off the glass, but especially off of Metal Captain Falcon's iron body like a deathly solar flare.

Roy's senses were running amuck as the spiral descent began. He felt like his head was spinning even faster than the Vanisher, except in a different direction that threatened to pull his body out into space into some convoluted gravitational field. He grimaced as something sharp dug into his leg.

A metal arm broke through the glass overhead, reaching around for its next victim. The open air sucked at its occupants, causing them to pull against their seatbelts like sticky Cheerios on a carpet beneath a howling Eureka vacuum.

Suddenly, it dawned on Roy what it was that had jabbed into his leg. He reached down to his thigh and drew out the Binding Blade. The sword burst into flames, just inches away from the side of the racer and E. Gadd's sweating face. He first severed the metal arm like an ice cream scoop through a particularly frozen half-gallon. Next, he pushed himself out into the open where Metal Captain Falcon was in the middle of swinging its leg around toward his face. Roy ducked, then poked back out and heaved his sword at the clone with a yell, slashing along with the centripetal force of their spiraling course. The rippling flames danced across the glowing hot blade as it cut through the metal body at an upward angle (though not without much resistance), sawing Metal Captain Falcon in two. Its torso and head suddenly became as a statue, toppling onto the track along with its lower half.

The track leveled out and pulled in to the finish line, the rest of the F-Zero racers smirking at the last ones to finish, the crowd cheering and whistling from the stands in ignorance of the struggles and sacrifices and deaths that had just taken place.

The real Captain Falcon could not help but think that the Rainbow Ride would make an excellent F-Zero course. True, it was a bit happy-go-lucky for the Grand Prix, but the thick, swirling white clouds; the triangular yellow platforms; the poles and flags; the green-spired floating castle; and even the magic carpet following a winding rainbow path would be a colorful addition to the typical racing environment. He didn't even bother to question why such a place existed; there were enough things about the Nintendo World that didn't make sense as it was.

But he was brought back to reality by the heated argument taking place at the stern of the flying ship where control of the steering wheel was at issue.

"This is my kingdom, my ship, and my turn to be in charge," Bowser growled, gripping the spokes of the wheel so hard that it was a miracle they didn't snap off.

Ganondorf, unimpressed, got right in the Koopa King's face. "My patience is at its end. We have wasted days of precious time scampering across the galaxy because I made the mistake of trusting any of you to know what you're doing. A mistake I do not intend to make again!" Without warning, he kicked Bowser full in the underside, knocking him away from the wheel.

The Kongs, Paula, Jeff, and Poo watched from the safety of the deck, hoping this villainous tirade did not result in the destruction of the only thing keeping them from falling out of the sky.

Bowser grunted as he clomped back onto his feet, his eyes burning with a livid flame. "Alright, tough guy, if you're so sure of yourself, go ahead and point us in the direction of Master Hand's Room and lead the way."

They glared at each other for a long, tense moment. Finally, for practicality's sake, Ganondorf had no choice but to relent.

"Very well, Koopa. Have it your way. But if we take any more detours to so much as sniff a flower, I shall personally see to it that you and everyone on this ship suffers a most painful death."

Bowser shouldered past Ganondorf and took hold of the wheel once more, spinning it to cause the ship to face northwest. The Gerudo went off without a word, no doubt to plot and brood as he usually did.

"That's what I thought."

Soon leaving behind the rest of Rainbow Ride, the ship sailed on for the next several hours, completely independent of the wind. They were so high above the ground that the clouds below almost completely obscured the Nintendo World's majestic landscape. Now and then, though, they did break through into a spectacular vista of mountains and plains and distant woods, the bright sun creating a postcard-quality portrait. Their world seemed so much smaller from up here.

The social dynamic on board became interesting after a while. Paula, Jeff, and Poo sat in a corner of the deck discussing their game plan once they reached Master Hand's Room. Seeing as the Phase Distorter 4 had abandoned them, they really had no choice but to go along for the ride—no matter how unpleasant some of their company might be. They didn't have much to go on as far as planning went, though; there was no telling what had become of Ness or what exactly awaited them in Master Hand's lair.

Diddy, Tiny, Lanky, and Chunky, meanwhile, where playing some kind of game around the mast tossing oranges to—or at—one another (not the exploding variety, of course). Tiny had suggested this mostly for Chunky's sake, who was terrified of heights and had already been through enough traumatic air exploits as it was.

Captain Falcon and DK stood at the prow, mostly just appreciating the view but occasionally talking about what they might expect from their old tournament host and how they might prepare for Bowser and Ganondorf's inevitable betrayal.

Speaking of whom, after their initial run-in, the two villains began to converse and form an almost comical bond. They exchanged retellings of treasured past tournament matches, relishing victories and sharing their resolve to avenge humiliating defeats (usually at the hands of Mario and Link). The frustration of their oft-frustrated efforts to dominate their own kingdoms proved a relatable common denominator between them despite their strong, independent personalities.

At length, a patch of cloudless sky revealed a dramatic change in the terrain below: It had become a desert, although from this height it much resembled a children's sandbox. The sun was beginning to relent to the advance of evening as everything—cloud and ground and ship—was bathed in a splendid topaz radiance.

"Looks like we're flying over Akaneia now," Bowser announced to no one in particular. "That means we're not too far from Fourside, and from there, a straight shot to Master Hand. At this rate, we should be there tomorrow morning!"

"Hmph," Ganondorf grunted, still slightly bitter about Bowser commandeering the ship even though he'd had little idea where the Mushroom Kingdom was in relation to their destination.

The blanket of clouds swept the view away once more, and again they sliced through the air, pressing almost blindly through the foggy sky. All was well until as night settled in, a yellow glow penetrated through the cloud layer beneath.

The ball of fire, about the size of Red's Squirtle float, came so fast that nobody had a chance to even tell Bowser to steer away before it came upon them at an angle. Fortunately, it did not hit the main hull—otherwise they would have already been dead. But it did incinerate a good portion of the prow and most of the mast, burning several of the ship's wings to a crisp.

Jeff desperately hoped that, with all the laws of physics their ride had already broken, it would somehow be able to shake off this setback and carry on.

It didn't.

The ship tilted forward. The Kongs and Earthlings and Smashers all searched for something to cling on to as the burning wooden marvel began to nose-dive some thousand feet to the distant surface below.