Chapter 14 : A Fishy Trick
As we trekked out of the forest and along the landscape, I decided to keep my eye out for any lakes that may appear. I figured the Marios knew what they were doing, but I had a hunch that the temple was in a lake. Lydia was up to her usual tricks, however I managed to elude all of them this time around due to her already having used them. Weird, I thought. Usually she doesn't let me off so easily. I wondered what was going on inside that head of hers when I accidentally bumped into Mario, causing us both to fall. "Sorry. I was a little lost in thought." I apologized. "It's-a ok. We're-a here! Sort of." Mario forgave. I looked out beyond the beach ahead of us and my suspicions were confirmed: The Water Temple was beneath water, in the 3 dimensional center of the lake.
I immediately was concerned about drowning. "Mario, won't we drown down there?" I expressed. "Don't-a worry, I brought Frog Suits for everyone!" Mario replied. Mario drew them from hammerspace (you know, that one area where anything a fictional character holds goes to, has unlimited space?) and had each of us put one on. "Thanks, Mario!" Lydia and I voiced simultaneously.
As we swam under the water I noticed that Lydia was very close to me and I started to swim away from her. She kept trying to come closer and these processes repeated until we reached the entrance to the Water Temple. There was a notice which read: "To proceed, the two who are destined to get this orb must share their air." I reflexively covered the notice up and started blushing. There was no way I was going to be forced to kiss Lydia again! Mario bubbled "Hey, Nydall, why are-a you covering up-a that sign?" "Well…I….um…" I stumbled. Lydia used my distractedness to pry my hand off of the notice and read it herself. I swear she started glowing in that water. "Because Nydall probably isn't sure he can handle this one." Lydia teased while winking at me. "No, I'm completely sure I can't handle this one!" I confirmed. "There's got to be another way!"
Lydia started closing in on me as I struggled to wrap my head around what co9uld very possibly be irony at its greatest. "Fine. I guess you win. Mario, Luigi, please turn away if you don't want to see me cry after this." I pleaded. As Lydia closed in and, well, shared her air with me, the door to the Water Temple opened. I immediately pulled away and rushed inside. It was then that I thought of the Grass Orb and "D'oh"ed. As I saw the inside of the temple, I blurted "Woah! You guys might wanna come and check this out." As Mario and company drew themselves up, I pointed to a 30 feet by 30 feet by 30 feet pool of water with spike fish and barely any room in said water. "Oh no! How are we-a supposed to-a get across?" Luigi desired to identify. "I have an idea, but we'll have to take out Frog Suits off and save them for later."
As we took our Frog Suits off, I told my plan to the group. "Alright, I have a Super Mario Galaxy Ice Flower. If we absorb it's power together and use its ice to freeze the water below us, we can get across!" I explained. "Nice idea! What happens when it runs out?" Lydia questioned. "Well, I have multiple, so I think we're covered." I informed. As we executed my plan, I sensed a disturbance in the water beside us. Moments later, a gigantic fish leaped out of the water straight as me! I kicked it on its wide open lip, sending it back into the water.
When we reached our destination, the Ice Flower wore off. I slowly walked up and opened the Ice chest to find that the Water Orb was there. I opened up my Magic Backpack and tractor-beamed it inside. "Alright, is everyone here?" I wondered. "Yeah!" Mario exclaimed. "Okay-dokey!" Luigi exuberated. To my surprise, Lydia wasn't there! I thought of where she could've been lost and rapidly my mind came to the conclusion that Lydia was being eaten by that fish! "Hurry! We have to go get Lydia!" I shouted in anguish. We needed Lydia. As much as I hated so say it, I had actually warmed up to Lydia in a way.
As we equipped the other SMG Ice Flower and raced across the ice, I saw Lydia with her head inside of the very same fish. It was frozen, quite literally! I rushed over to her and lifted her up, carrying her by her head and legs to the exit. As we ran on to the exit, the Ice Flower wore off. I immediately started digging into my backpack for a Fire Flower to thaw the fish into water with. When I equipped it and started using its power the fish melted off of Lydia's head, just as I thought it would. Lydia appeared to be knocked out. Fudge, she might be dying! I remarked to myself. I recalled my CPR lessons and started to do mouth-to-mouth.
Eventually Lydia sat straight up and started giggling, then laughing her a** off. "I fooled you!" She hooted. As my cheeks turned beet red, I warned "Don't EVER do that again. I actually thought you were dying!" Lydia retorted "You should've seen the look on your face! Oh man, I thought you would've fainted!" I sighed and began to put on my Frog Suit. "Wait, I still owe you something for at least attempting to save me!" Lydia reprimanded. "If it's anything like your past-"I didn't even get to finish my sentence before my suspicions were confirmed by Lydia lunging for me. My reflexes were fast enough to dodge her and dive into the water. As I made my way to the beach, I looked back and saw Mario, Luigi, and lastly Lydia following me.
Thinking that I was out of Lydia's reach for now, I hopped onto the beach and took off my Frog Suit. Moments later, however, my thoughts were proven wrong when her tongue wrapped around me multiple times. I turned around and saw that Lydia had to be at least 100 feet away, How… I started to ponder. It then hit me that frogs tended to have pretty long tongues. Combine the frog's tongue length with the Yoshi's and… well, this. I easily wiggled free of Lydia's tongue due to it being so long that it didn't have much strength to it and began to dash away from the beach. I climbed a nearby palm tree in an effort to keep Lydia from using her frog-tongue from grabbing me again. Luckily, it worked.
As they worked their way onto the beach, Luigi thought aloud "Hey, when do you think we'll hear from Toadsworth again?" while they took of their Frog Suits. As if on cue, Toadworth spoke from his device "Sooner than you think, Master Luigi! Nydall, it seems that we have a problem. Remember the choice you made? It seems that even if you went after the Earth and Fire temples, you would still not be able to use all of the powers of the Orbs." "Yeah, I know. Just now, we didn't have to use the Grass Orb entering the Water Temple (although I wish I would have thought of it)." I answered. "I'm going to guess we're going after the Earth Temple next?" "Indeed, Nydall. Your deduction almost never fails you, does it?" Toadsworth praised. "I'm not so sure." I modestly shrugged the comment off. "After all, I did make the mistake of not including the Electricity Temple in my basis and the fact that the last orb would have remained unused, which coincidentally happens to also be that orb." "Well, aren't you the humble one! Well, I won't trouble you longer than I need to. Good luck on your quest" Toadsworth remarked as we started our journey to the Earth Temple.