With Big Shells and Wings

Summary: Part 6 of 8. Fearing for his life, Yellow abandons his brothers and retreats to Isle Delfino for a "vacation". Mario and his gang find well-deserved help literally out of nowhere, and Doopliss and Darrik start to ransack Trowzer's phone records.

Wear Rainbows on Your Shell (part 6)

"We have less than an hour to get to Payday Waystaion and there's no form of transportation anywhere! What are we supposed to do?!"

"Just…just let me think for a second!" said Mario.

He sat down on a rock, wincing a little bit after his wound began to sting, and thought long and hard about his next plan. Perhaps if there was some sort of flying device or a flying creature, then this whole situation would resolve itself. Mario would even settle for riding in Bowser's Clown Car, but that wasn't in the cave either.

"Okay…if we can find a pair of rocket thrusters--"

"What?!"

"From the Magnus Von Grapple! You remember how that weird looking robot could fly in the air!"

"Yeah, but you only encountered Magnus twice; once in The Great Tree and again at the X-Naut Fortress. It wasn't in a cave Mario."

"Fine! If you're so smart, you--"

The ground started to shake violently as though there was an earthquake going on.

"Aw, don't tell me we gotta fight another dragon!!" whined Kooper.

A mouse cursor appeared and created five large squares in the background of the screen.

"Erm…what?" asked a confused Kooper.

The squares flipped themselves over and a red-violet dragon with a blue underbelly and spikes over its body appeared still stuck halfway underground, roaring so loud that it shook the cavern walls and caused a few rocks to roll.

"Thanks dude. Now I'm deaf!" complained Luigi.

"Hey, just be glad he doesn't have nasty poison breath." said Geno.

"INTRUSION DETECTED. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR BE PURGED." said the dragon.

"Hey, I know this dragon! It's the almighty Fracktail!" said Luigi.

A ! bubble appeared above the dragon's snout and it became clear he didn't know what was going on.

"WAIT. SCAN INITIATED. RED CAP DETECTED. BLUE OVERALLS DETECTED. LEVEL 5 MUSTACHE DETECTED."

"My mustache's level 5???" said Mario, caressing his mustache with his hand.

"INCREDIBLE. POSSIBLE SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION. BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. HOLD YOUR POSITION. SEARCHING DATA BANKS…"

Fracktail's eyes turned white with blue pupils and he began to roll them around repeatedly while he beeped occasionally like a sonar radio.

"Uh…what?"

"He does this. He's like this…technological dragon." explained Mario.

Another ! bubble appeared and Fracktail's eyes turned to normal.

"SEARCH COMPLETE. ONE POSITIVE MATCH. SYSTEM OVERLOAD! LEGENDARY HERO IDENTIFIED!"

"Long time no see eh, Fracktail? I thought you were dead?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. MY BODY'S MECHANISMS WERE ABLE TO REPAIR THEMSELVES AND I WAS BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE. THE BONES OF MY BEING WERE ABLE TO REINCARNATE THEIR FLESH."

"Amazing! I've never seen such an advanced piece of technology like this!" said Geno.

"How'd you know we were here?" asked Kooper.

"ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! ER--"

Fracktail bonked his noggin on the cave wall and shook it violently.

"FORGIVE ME, BUT MY CPU IS UNABLE TO PROCESS THE QUESTION YOU HAVE ASKED. PLEASE ASK A DIFFERENT ONE."

"Did you hear faint shouts and sword fighting?"

"SCANNING…"

Fracktail began to hum silently and his eyes changed color and began to roll around again.

"AFFIRMATIVE. THIS IS WHY I WAS ABLE TO DETECT YOUR LOCATION HERO."

"Well since you're here, can you help us?"

"SCANNING…"

Luigi sighed exasperatedly and rolled his eyes.

"Does he have to do that all the time?"

"Not unless you want to see what happens when he freaks out."

"Never mind! I am done with fighting dragons!"

"You're just scared you're gonna have to dig through dragon feces again." said Geno.

"(Censored) you."

"BEFORE I CAN ANSWER THIS QUESTION, I MUST KNOW WHAT…FAVOR YOU REQUEST."

"See, we're trying to save the world now and in order to do that, we need to get to Payday Waystation. But in the allotted time we have, we're unable to get there in time."

"SO YOU NEED ME TO FLY YOU TO THIS TRAIN STATION I PRESUME."

"That's right. If we don't get there, something perilous will happen…something that'll probably result in death and turmoil."

"COME THEN! THERE'S NO TIME TO WASTE!"

"Wait! Before we leave, there are a couple other questions I wanna ask you…" said Kooper.

"WHICH ARE…?"

"Can you use the bathroom?"

"SCANNING…"

Fracktail's eyes began to bloop and beep as they turned white and blue and spun around in circles.

"I HAVE NEITHER FLESH NOR ORGANS. THEREFORE, I HAVE NO STOMACH OR BOWELS AND CEASE TO RELEASE WASTE THROUGH MY ANUS OF BLADDER."

"Wow, that's awesome! Um…can you smell stuff?"

"SCANNING…NO. BUT I CAN DETECT THE COMPOUNDS OF VARIOUS SCENTS AND MY CPU SENDS SIGNALS OF WHAT THAT SCENT SMELLS LIKE."

"Cool. Hey, do you say scanning everytime someone asks you a question?"

"IF I SAY YES, WILL YOU STOP ASKING QUESTIONS THAT HAVE NO ALIGNMENT TO THE CURRENT CRISIS??"

"No."

"Oh, I got a good one! How many times has Kooper used the bathroom?" asked Luigi.

"SCANNING…32,490,721 AND ONE HALF TIMES."

"Half???"

"…Don't ask.

"GUYS! PAYDAY! WAYSTATION! NOW!!!???" shouted Mario.

"All right, all right, just one more!" said Kooper.

Mario sighed exasperatedly.

"Could you have sex with another robotic dragon???"

"ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! C:/DOCUMENT/INTERNET_EXPLORER! C:/MEGOGG_TRICKY! COMBAT! FRIZZLE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! MEMORY OVERLOAD! OVERLOAD!!!!"

Fracktail suddenly retreated behind a large placement of rocks that shielded his body. He then started roaring and howling loudly, moving erratically and panting like a sweaty soldier.

"What the…" muttered Mario.

Mario walked behind the large rocks and found Fracktail…doing unspeakable things you wouldn't expect a robotic dragon to do.

"What? What's he--OH MY GOD! Is he mas--"

"Just shut up and close your eyes Kooper!" commanded Mario, shielding his eyes.

After Fracktail was "finished" he flew back to the group, looking calmer than ever.

"FORGIVE ME HERO, BUT I STILL HAVE A FEW…BUGS TO SORT OUT."

"Clearly! Now can you take us to Payday Waystation?"

"CERTAINLY! HOP ON MY BACK AND I WILL TAKE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS THERE."

"I still have a few--"

"PLEASE DO NOT THINK THAT BECAUSE I HAVE NO ORGANS, I WON'T DEVOUR YOUR TINY KOOPA BODY, KOOPER." warned Fracktail.

"…I'll be quiet now."

Back in Trowzer's chamber, The Koopa Bros. were busy counting their coins and splitting the rewards as evenly as possibly, to prevent any bickering later in the day. Red made it as simple as possible: he gave a coin to himself, a coin to Black, and a coin to Green. Yellow wasn't in the room at the time, so he didn't count.

"That's 45,600 coins for you Green…45,600 coins for you Black, and 45,600 coins to me!!" laughed Red, handing his brothers their coins.

"How much money we got left to count?" asked Black.

"Another four chests and 17 moneybags to go! God, I wish Yellow were here so he could enjoy this with us!"

"Why? We get more money! I'm pretty sure he won't mind if we steal 12 millions coins of his…"

"Speaking of which, you guys are missing a good 20 million coins and I saw Yellow leave the castle." said Steve, who walked in from nowhere.

"Dude, when'd you get here?" asked Red.

"I dunno. I haven't made an appearance in this story for 9 chapters now so I guess I figured I'd come in and make a little cameo."

"Yeah, I remember the last chapter you were in--YOU STABBED ME!!" shouted Black.

"Yeah, I know. How's that hand healing?"

"Very…slowly…" said Black, with a stern tone in his voice.

"Well, see ya. I'm gonna go blow up some of Bowser's churro vendors." said Steve, holding up a bob-omb.

"Hey! I don't wanna die knowing I was used for blowing up a churro vendor!" complained the bob-omb.

"Why the (censored) do inanimate objects have mouths in Nintendo?!"

As Steve walked away, Red's cellphone rang, which he answered.

"Hello? YELOW! Where the hell are you?! We're already counting the money!"

"I know by now you know everything and I think it's best that I go on vacation for a while."

"Wha…? Vacation?! I mean, we just hit the motherload but why would you go on vacation now?! And where are you anyways?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you my location at this time."

"FLIGHT 107 FOR ISLE DELFINO IS READY FOR BOARDING!" said the intercom at the airport. Yellow rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.

"You're going to Isle Delfino?! …Did you dump mayonnaise in my underwear drawer again???"

"No, that was Green. But I feel that I should just separate myself from you guys for a while okay? I already took my cut of the money and no one suspects a thing so I should be fine; don't worry about me."

"…Yellow if you did something that will involve me inflicting pain upon your face, running away will only make it worse dude."

"I'm serious! I just…I just need to go away for a while okay?" sniffled Yellow.

"Heh Heh! Are you crying?"

Yellow inhaled sharply and said, "I love you. You know that, right Red? You know that no matter what happens, no matter what nauseous, ghastly thing you do to me, I'll still love you."

"See, you did do something!! You only act like this when you did something horrible to my stuff and you wanna reduce the punishment by getting all teary-eyed and bawling like a baby, saying you love me!"

"JUST…just tell Green and Black…that I love them. C--can you do that Red? Please just…tell them Yellow loves them okay?"

"…Yeah, I got it." said Red.

Yellow hung up the phone and Red slipped his cellphone back into his pocket.

"So what did Yellow have to say?"

"…He wanted me to tell you that he loves you guys and all that junk."

It wasn't that Red didn't care for his brother; it was quite the contrary. He did love his brother with a passion, even though he spent most of his time teasing him or bullying him like Roy does to Iggy. The bottom line is that they were a family and they loved each other, no matter what they did to one another…no matter how many stinky shoes were shoved in their nostrils. Although, at the moment, Red thought Yellow was simply trying to get out of trouble.

"So what did Yellow say about mayonnaise in your underwear drawer?"

"Yeah, about that. Green…could you come here for a second…?" asked Red, turning on a small blowtorch.

"…What are you doing…?"

Back on Bowser's side, Darrik and Doopliss were having a clandestine meeting inside of Darrik's house, looking at the cellphone that had been acquired by Doopliss.

"I can't believe you actually got the phone from Trowzer!"

"Yes. I've scarred my sanity and had to burn my hand in acid in the process, but at least some good came out of it. So what's the plan now?"

"Easy. All I have to do is crack through the algorithm inputted in the records by hacking into the data stream with my magic and presto! I can recover any phone records Trowzer deleted!"

Doopliss cocked an eyebrow. "You lost me at algorithm…"

"All I have to do is activate this mathematical spell that can make a hologram and process data like a computer. Then, I can activate more spells similar to that one and, with luck, I should be able to decrypt the phone's password protectors."

"…You lost me again."

"There's a password I need to decode; with magic I should be able to do that."

"OOOOHHH!! I get it now! Geez, why didn't you just say that before?"

"Just let me do this please! If you break my concentration I could transform your head into that of a platypus!"

"Ooh…I do not like platypuses." said Doopliss.

Darrik concentrated his mind onto the cellphone before waving his wand into the air and lifting the cellular device with it.

"So what should I do until then?"

"Go keep lookout from Bowser's chamber and see if Trowzer or one of his cronies tries anything sneaky. I'll call you when I uncover the records."

"All right."

Doopliss continued to stare at Darrik as he performed his magic spells onto the phone.

"You uh…mind stepping back a few feet? I can't work with you peering over my shoulder."

"Okay."

Doopliss took two steps backward.

"Little further Doopliss."

"Okay."

Doopliss took two more steps backwards.

"Little more Doopliss…"

"Okay."

Doopliss took two more steps backwards.

"Little more…"

200 steps later, Doopliss was still walking backwards…when Lemmy spotted him walking backwards while staring in Darrik's direction.

"What are you doing?" asked Lemmy.

"Walking backwards."

"Why?"

"Darrik told me to."

Lemmy looked down out of his window and realized that Doopliss was walking backwards…in mid-air. It seemed like gravity didn't affect his being.

"Dude, are you walking in mid-air?!" asked an amazed Lemmy.

"What…"

Doopliss looked down and realized that he was hundreds of feet in the air.

"Huh…guess I can walk in mid-air."

"Aren't you supposed to fall now? I thought if you look down or step forward, gravity kicks in and sends your sorry ass to the ground."

"Really?"

Doopliss took a few steps forward, but nothing happened and he was still walking in mid-air.

"I DIDN'T SAY STOP WALKING DOOPLISS!!" shouted Darrik.

Doopliss took another two steps backward.

"OKAY!"

"FURTHER!!"

"Hmm…maybe if I try walking in mid-air--"

But as Lemmy climbed out of his window, he screamed and fell straight to the ground, landing with a huge thud that would've killed him if he didn't hide in his shell at the last second.

"Hey Lemmy! Are you okay?! …Can you answer me? …Lemmy…?"

But Lemmy continued to lie on the ground, unconscious and bleeding.

"I should really call the hospital."

"FURTHER!!!" shouted Darrik.

Doopliss sighed heavily and continued to move backwards…

Mario, Kooper, Geno, Blaze, and Luigi were riding on Fracktail's back when they suddenly realized that they forgot to blow up the castle.

"Oh, (censored) guys! We forgot to blow up Iggy's Castle!" announced Luigi.

Blaze slurped up one of Fracktail's spikes and turned around, blasting the fiery blunt object at the castle. Suddenly, the whole building burst into flames and began to crumble to the ground in a matter of seconds.

"…Why didn't you just do that in the first place?" asked Mario.

"Where's the fun in reading if you take out the best chapters? I mean, who didn't love that epic battle with that samurai?" asked Blaze.

"How'd you know we had to fight a samurai?"

"…Internet."

"But you weren't accessed to a computer!"

"HELLO! Flying robot dragon?!!"

"Oh. Right."

"WE ARE ALMOST AT OUR DESTINATION HERO AND PARTNERS." announced Fracktail.

The gang began to violently cough and gag when the pungent smell of smoke and ash was carried into the updraft and they were doused in grayish-black clouds.

"What--COUGH!!--what is that?!" asked a hacking Kooper.

"THIS MUST BE SMOKE EMITTING FROM THE SHY GUY'S PERPLEXED EXPRESS AND BOWSER'S BAD-BREATH EXPRESS."

"That's stupid. Who names a train Bad-Breath Express?" asked Geno.

"PERHAPS A BEING WHO HAS A SERIOUS CASE OF BAD BREATH. THIS WOULD EXPLAIN WHY IT IS NAMED AFTER BOWSER."

Everyone laughed heartily at Fracktail's comment about Bowser and his bad breath.

"Yeah! His breath does stink pretty bad! Fracktail made a funny!" said Kooper.

"YES. I HAVE MADE YOU ALL LAUGH."

Before the gang knew it, Fracktail arrived at Payday Waystation. The robot dragon stopped flying forward and lowered his head down to the station where Mario and his gang walked off and landed at the resting train station. Like the samurai said, the airship Iggy was riding was getting refueled by a couple of Shy Guys.

"Thanks Fracktail! You've been a great help." said Geno.

"NO PROBLEM. IF YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS ARE EVER IN A PERILOUS SITUATION, I'LL KNOW WHERE TO LOCATE YOU. UNTIL NEXT TIME HERO!"

Fracktail disappeared when another mouse cursor appeared and made five large squares around him, which turned around and revealed nothing but thin air.

"…Why didn't he just fly away?" asked Blaze.

"Quit questioning weird experiences; the airship's getting away!!" said Mario, running for the anchor hanging on the back end.

Everybody quickly sprinted their way to the gray anchor that weighed over a ton and latched onto it as the airship began to ascend back into the sky. The airship's engines raised the anchor into its slot and the team was able to jump onto the main deck, going deaf at the thunderous noise of the propellers spinning right behind them.

"So what's the plan now?" shouted Blaze over the noise.

"There is no plan! We find a way to slow down the engines; we find Iggy and kick his ass! Hopefully he'll be able to tell us what his father's planning!" said Mario.

"Why didn't we just have Fracktail bash the airship to the ground?! I mean, he's a friggin' dragon!"

"Stop asking questions Kooper and let's go!"

To be continued…