So I had a dream of this final mission last night. It was so vivid. But I wasn't a certain player or person at all. I guess I must have been the camera man...who knows? But then I woke and finished this.
The last game continues! :) Things come closer to its end! What other surprises could be in store?
Episode 8 (Part 4)
Only a small amount of time was left until the final mission of the game's journey was over. It was a race against time to escape Hotel Delfino.
ROOM 210
After a few seconds of trying, it became apparent that the metal key wouldn't unlock any room door in the hotel, as Wario's groan was heard loud through the door's front.
"Does it open?" he asked, even a little hopeful.
"Nope!" Yoshi replied.
"I guess I need a combination to open my door then?" Wario said with a heavy grunt. Yoshi thought for a second.
"Maybe this metal key isn't meant for your door," said Yoshi. "If I opened my door through a combination, then yours should open through a combination too, right?"
"But the thing is, where is my combination anyway?" Wario said, a little annoyed. "I'm pretty sure that key's a red herring, by the way. Doesn't unlock anything."
"Possibly," Yoshi replied. "Hurm...I'll go back to my room. And search for more."
"All right, and it's time to search my bookshelf," Wario said, giving in, then added, "I'll open up every single one of these five-hundred books, and look for my final, last clue." He laughed, and as he heard Yoshi go back to his own room, he groaned.
Wario: We only had forty minutes left in the mission. I knew that I had to move, instead of just rely on other people. We all had to move. Otherwise, we'd all be crummy from a game loss, just like we were from that Casino mission. And that didn't end well. For me, at least.
39 MINUTES REMAINING
As the clock ticked more, Vivian still held the crucial bottle of tan spray in her hands, looking down at it even more with a perplexed face. She turned to look at the painting above her television, admiring it slightly, but still felt scared in the bottom of her heart.
Vivian: I was really frightened. Not only cause I was confused out of my mind in this mission, but because we were always under tight situations throughout this game, and I thought I was used to them. But now here I was, in the final episode, holding my panic in for the final game.
"Insta-Tan," said Vivian, sitting down onto her armchair cushion forcefully. "If only...what's...this under my seat?" Shifting in her seat again, she noticed something small yet peculiar with her position, as she stood up and stared at her seat cushion with a sudden feeling. Lifting the top cushion below her, she noticed a hidden object that made her eyes widen.
"A small box!" she realized. "A new clue?" With new realization, she saw that the only way to open it, in order to obtain whatever was enclosed within the container, was to insert a single item into its front: a key.
"Archcsel." Discovering that the magnet letters were different shades of red, Yoshi separated them all into two different piles.
A, R, H, C, S, E, L - I, C, K, E, N, S, D,
"C...ch...ar?" Thinking hard, he moved the six letters around and then stared at the other set of letters.
Yoshi: The game was like a chain reaction. One clue would lead to another. We just had to get the correct order in order to escape.
"Chickens," he said, laughing a little bit. Suddenly, his phone rang, as he answered it.
"It's me," said Vivian, speaking into her phone with an urgent voice. "I think you should come here right now. I found something really important!"
"That's great!" Yoshi said excitedly. "What is it?"
"Well," Vivian said, "I'll tell you later when you come down here." Yoshi shrugged.
"All right, be right there. In a sec." Vivian smiled.
"Oh, but bring your key too!" Vivian called out, as she put down the phone and waited.
"Got it!" Yoshi rushed out, his feet racing and the key tight in his hand. Vivian waited, mapping the plan in her mind.
"Books...clues...no clues...books," Wario said, pulling out more books with annoyance. He was pulling out books at a faster rate all of a sudden out of his bookshelf.
"What's, photographs?" he said, surprised at an extra finding of various papers hidden in his shelf. Once he put them out on the floor, he looked at them and realized that several photographs had been hidden in his bookshelf, as he looked with squinted eyes at them all.
Wario: Maybe I should have looked in my bookshelf earlier. I admit, I was revealing more clues in my own room than we were all uncovering as a whole.
"Yes, more confusing pictures," gruffed Wario, but he studied them anyway. One photo showed a picture of a metal key, as he recognized it immediately as an item in Yoshi's hand. But the other photo displayed something odd, as if it was a metal object being pictured that curved endlessly. Inspecting it closely, he realized it was the inside of a metal pipe.
"Huh?" he said, seeing the last picture of a bathtub, empty, with no visible shampoo bottles present on its counters.
"Yoshi, is that you?" Vivian said, stopping her actions suddenly and walking slowly to her hotel room door. She looked through the eye hole and smiled, both with surprise and relief.
"I'm here!" Yoshi called out, looking through the eye hole also. "Can you hear me? I ran from downstairs."
"I can hear you clearly, don't worry," she said to him, and then turned around. In the center of her room was the small box that she had uncovered, small and black-colored, but on its front, a visible keyhole.
"What do you want me to do?" Yoshi asked. Vivian faced the door again.
"Slide the metal key under my door," Vivian instructed. "Just give it to me. I know what to do, because, well, there's a box here." Yoshi nodded, bending down and attempting to do what he was instructed. However, after a few moments, he stood back up again, as Vivian saw his troubled face through the eye hole.
"Does it go under the door?" Vivian asked, trying to sound hopeful.
"No," said Yoshi, shaking his head.
"Well, try again," Vivian suggested. "It's just a key sliding under the door. Maybe it can fit. Push harder." Yoshi tried to insert the key under the door once again, but after a while, he shook his head.
"Doesn't even fit," Yoshi confirmed. Vivian's face looked confused.
Vivian: I wanted Yoshi to keep trying to insert that key under that door, because maybe I was in false denial of it not working. It was a bad feeling.
"We can still do this," she told him. "As long as I get out of my door in time, and Wario can open his door in time too, then we'll win this. I felt like your combination was the easiest to find, and ours are a little bit harder. Well, mine might be easier than Wario's to find. Or vice versa."
"So you're saying that you think there's an inevitable order of us escaping?" Yoshi asked.
"Yeah, maybe the mission is made that way to play," said Vivian. Yoshi looked at his key.
"I still think this is meant for something," he thought.
"Hmm, well, it does seem coincidental, the fact that right in my room, there's a box with a keyhole," Vivian speculated further with agreement.
Vivian: We both felt like that was one more vital component. I felt that there was one more secret in the game that we were missing, in order to get out.
"Well, I guess the key's supposed to be for something else, then," Vivian said, her hopes going down a bit. "I guess...I'll search for my own key. Just go ahead. I'll be here on my on." Yoshi nodded, a little disappointed but rushed back upstairs to his own room. Vivian continued to examine her box with a heavier sigh.
33 MINUTES REMAINING
Wario: I felt so separated from the others. For all I know, they were both outside, celebrating their success. And I was doing my own work! But successfully, at least.
Wario frowned, looking at his own shower in his bathroom, and then looking back at the photograph in his hand. It resembled nothing like the one pictured in the photograph he had discovered, as he closed his shower curtain and exited the bathroom.
"What does this mean?" he said, squinting at the picture of the pipe layout photograph of twisting metal. He then stopped.
"Oh...wait, a pipe...is that folder title in Yoshi's room!"
How To Build A Hydro Pipe To A Designated Place
Yoshi looked at the mysterious folder in his room. He turned to the milk carton besides him, the one that held the crucial clue to escaping his room.
"Maybe this has more clues," he said, shaking it and chuckling, but overall, desperate. He turned over to the sink, the carton still in his hand, as he poured the contents of the fresh milk down his sink drain. Little did he know, a clue in another room would appear that would help them become one step closer to succeeding in their game.
Drip...drip...drip...
Vivian immediately turned around, stunned at first from the sudden sound, but stood up quickly. From her bathroom, the sounds of more drips began to appear, as she walked into her bathroom slowly.
"I thought my shower didn't work," she said to herself, laughing a bit. Seeing her shower curtain draped over the vexation of the sound, she pulled it open and looked at her bathtub with a gasp.
"White...milk?" she said, looking as baffled as ever at the drink that was coming out of her tub faucet.
"Here," said Wario, sliding his discovered photographs under his door to the other side, as Yoshi grabbed them. "I don't know in the faintest idea what these mean, but I think they aren't clues for my room. So I figured these have no purpose for me and would just throw me off."
"Thank you," said Yoshi, studying them. Seeing their contents, Yoshi's eyes lit up with discovery, just as Wario's phone rang. He answered it.
"Oh, Vivian," Wario said, listening to Vivian speak more. His eyes narrowed with confusion.
"Wha...what's that?" Wario continued to speak. "There's...no way...say that again? I heard you wrong." Wario's eyes widened even more.
"There's milk coming out of your tub faucet, huh?" Yoshi's attention was suddenly caught, as he banged on the door, but Wario ignored him.
"All right...well...I really don't see what that means," said Wario. "I know Yoshi had milk though...Yoshi, stop banging for a second, will ya! ...I still have that cow plushie. Maybe I have to tear it open and find a clue." By the time he had hung up, Yoshi had already ran back to his room.
"Thank goodness I'm not out yet," Wario commented, hearing Yoshi disappear. "I'd be useless, going back and forth."
"So, the milk coming from my tub...you really think that came from your room?" Vivian said, hearing the explanation from Yoshi but sounding a bit skeptical. "I don't see how that's possible. It could be anything." She looked through her bathroom door at her bathtub, but before her very eyes, she saw the mysterious bathtub dripping out nothing but Moo-Moo Farm brand milk.
"Try tasting it," Yoshi suggested. "If it's Moo-Moo Farm milk, it's milk."
"Umm..." Vivian said, looking at the milk cautiously coming from her tub faucet. "It's all right. So now what do we do?"
"I think there's an interconnected passageway between my kitchen sink and your bathtub," Yoshi concluded, looking at the folder title on his ground. "I'm pretty sure." His eyes lit up.
"The key," Yoshi said, his eyes shooting open suddenly. "If I can get it to you through the kitchen drain, we can win this."
Yoshi: Even though it all made sense, there were still risks. We all needed confidence. I needed confidence.
"What if the key gets stuck in the pipe?" Vivian said, thinking about the plan worriedly. "If it gets stuck in the drain...our game is over. I don't want to risk it."
"Well, then we know we tried," Yoshi said, smiling half-heartedly. Vivian nodded too.
"All right," she said, trying to smile as well. "Let's so this. Drop it now."" Yoshi put his phone down and walked towards the mysterious sink in his room. He peered into the darkness of the drain before letting go, dropping the metal key into his sink and hearing a series of clanging metal noises before it disappeared down the pipe, the same one that Wario's photograph pictured. There was silence from Vivian's side as he held his breath.
Vivian: I was hoping and praying that I would get my key. I was scared, but I fought that feeling with all the hope I had. And then suddenly...
Yoshi rushed back to his phone anxiously. He only waited, until Vivian's voice came back.
"Did it...work?"
"Yes...it did!" said Vivian, speaking into the phone again. "It did, it worked!" In her own very hand, she held the crucial key of the game, received from the very room above her, as they both celebrated silently.
"I guess the key belonged to me all along," Vivian said with a smile. "I'm going to go open that box now. I'll call you back." She was about to hang up.
"Wait!" said Yoshi. "Stay on. Maybe we can use what's in the box if you tell me what's inside." Vivian nodded, and went over to the box. Dragging it towards the hotel door's entrance, she stuck the metal key into its keyhole and twisted it, then slowly, opened the lid of the box up. Her eyes not only widened, but looked more confused at its contents.
"What's inside?" Yoshi asked.
"Huh...it's just a...mirror," Vivian said, picking up the object from inside the box and looking at it. "Here: relay the message to Wario about me finding a mirror, and keep your room door open so you can run out whenever we need you."
"Roger," said Yoshi happily.
Yoshi: I felt like the savior, connecting everyone. Maybe we could win this game. We were unstoppable.
"A mirror," Vivian repeated, hanging up and looking at it even more. She turned to her bathroom.
Vivian: To win this game, we needed not only skill, but luck. A lot of luck, I was discovering. But in my head, I knew all our luck was coming from our own abilities. My abilities too.
Wario: It was our final mission, and it was a little aggravating if someone didn't cooperate with you. Especially when you're supposed to cooperate to win in the first place.
Wario tried dialing Vivian, but to no avail.
"What!" he cried, dialing for the third time in the past three minutes. "Does she want to win this game or not?" On his hotel room floor, a scattered assortment of books was created by none other than Wario himself, and when he turned to look at them, he tripped over a pile of one of his formed stacks.
"Argh!" he groaned, getting up and relieved with the fact that nobody saw him. But at his feet, he saw another photograph that was concealed, until that very moment. It was a picture of a single blank color, and as he looked upwards in his room with thought, he realized what was being displayed in the photograph: a hotel room ceiling.
"Which...hotel room?" The phone rang, as Wario went to pick it up.
"Hello...finally!" he said, hearing Vivian.
"I'm sorry, you called earlier?" said Vivian, though she sounded busy. "I'm finding clues one by one, nonstop! They're just piling up here. What have you found?"
"Yeah...well, right now I found a picture of a hotel room ceiling," Wario informed her, looking at the photograph in his hand while thinking heavily. "That's one clue, huh?"
"Check your bathroom mirror," Vivian told him, holding the mirror in her hand. "I found a mirror clue here."
"I can't even see it from here," Wario grumbled. "My phone cord is too short." Vivian just looked at her own bathroom door with determination.
"Hey, didn't you hear me about the ceiling clue?" Wario reminded her. "It has to mean something!" Vivian shook her head.
"It could mean anything," Vivian said. "Like, it would be useless trying to work on something like that. We have no idea what it means!"
Wario: Vivian was totally ignoring a clue, and from what I know, you need those clues in order to escape. I don't know what she was doing.
"Well, all right," Wario grumbled. "But tell Yoshi to check his ceiling too. And I'll look at mine again."
"Okay, I will," said Vivian, and she hung up the phone. She instantly ran into her bathroom the second she hung up, then stood there, looking a bit unsure but facing and staring at the large object before her: the mirror of her bathroom.
"This has to mean something," she said, and looked at the various bottles on the sink counter. She walked out of her bathroom and was back in her room, searching for an object she had found earlier.
"Maybe if I spray..." She looked at the can of Insta-Spray on her bed with a curious Look. Slowly picking it up, she walked towards her bathroom again with new object in hand, and faced the mirror before her.
Vivian: It was like piecing the pieces of a puzzle. For some reason, I decided to do something, and I was relying on my gut instinct.
Vivian faced her bathroom mirror, a little hesitantly at first, but then finally sprayed the unknown Insta-Tan onto the mirror. Opening her eyes again after closing them, she gasped.
"Oh my gosh." In front of her, the mysterious liquid had been sprayed as droplets on her mirror. But as she looked closer, she saw something, within the extra layer of liquid she had made, almost as if someone had run their fingers through the frosted mirror and written out a number. On her mirror was a hidden message.
"A...four?" she looked carefully. Fortunate to have more spray left in her bottle, she began to spray her mirror even more, covering her mouth at the same time as the spray in the air seemed to fog up the room. After spraying the entire can, she walked outside, coughing a bit and looking a bit worried, but relieved that not only could she go back in, but that she had finally discovered the last aspect of her room. After a few seconds, she walked back into her bathroom and gasped again.
"Numbers," she said in a voice of disbelief, looking at her mirror.
346679
"Maybe...?" Repeating the numbers in her head again and again, she exited her bathroom and went up to her door, cautious about having only one guess, but entered it in anyway. Typing in each number one by one, she took a deep breath and entered in the final number of her combination.
CLICK!
"I...opened it," Vivian said in a whisper of disbelief, seeing her door open up as she was exposed to the outside world. She looked back into her room, seeing her clock with the game's timer.
24 MINUTES REMAINING
"Nope, I don't see anything," said Yoshi, peering at his ceiling carefully. "Umm, maybe it's not a ceiling in your photo? After all, many things can be blank walls. Maybe it's just a regular wall in your room." Wario shook his head.
"No, but this is a ceiling, I'm sure," Wario said insistently, looking at the photograph. "Well...all right. How's that anagram doing?"
"I'm doing better," Yoshi said, playing with the magnets and thinking. "I'm think I might be close even! I think it's a name."
"Why would you say that?" Wario wondered. "How do you know?"
"Just cause it's two words." Yoshi rearranged the two sets of letters again, his eyes narrowing with frustration.
"Hey, hold on, will yah?" Wario said, realizing his phone was beeping. "I think Vivian's calling me from the other side..." As Yoshi nodded, Wario hung up, and then picked up the phone again with anticipation. However, in the process, he had hung up on Vivian's call accidentally.
"He's not answering me...huh?" Vivian turned to look at the painting in front of her, the one she had been admiring since the second she stepped into her hotel room. But as she looked closer, she realized that not only did the painting of the house look even more suspicious than it did at first, but in the corner of the frame, a portion of the painting paper had been lifted up.
Vivian: As an artist, I felt that this room specifically was chosen for me. So when I saw the painting in the first place...I knew something was up with it.
Peeling back the edge of the peeling paper that held the painting, Vivian gasped as she realized the truth: the painting was just a large print. As the piece of paper fell to the ground, Vivian uncovered the two words that were hidden under the surface of the painting.
"Charles...?"
Yoshi stepped back, having formed the first word of the letters he had been trying to decipher since he had entered the room:
C H A R L E S
"I knew this was a name," Yoshi said triumphantly. With seven letters remaining, Yoshi switched around the last permutations left in his head of the refrigerator letters before him.
I D C K E N S
"No," he said, and he switched the first two letters of the word around, as the anagram was complete. He stared at the last name.
D I C K E N S
"Charles...Dickens?" Vivian read, seeing the name behind her painting. Anxious but with new discovery, she walked to her door and went outside of her hotel room.
"Well, I guess-" A figure hit into her on the hotel stairs, as she stepped back, stunned. But as she came back to her senses, she gasped.
"Vivian!" Yoshi cried.
"Yoshi?" The two of them hugged each other tightly, mostly from relief but both with surprise as well.
"I never knew you were out!" Yoshi said, amazed and baffled. "How did you get out?"
"Well..it was luck," Vivian said, but she was smiling a bit. "Well, I guess we're both out now."
"Wario's the only one still in his room," Yoshi said. "We have to get moving. We can free him. Let's do this."
"But wait, first look at...this," Vivian said, stopping him. "I think I wanted to show you a secret message in my room." Yoshi followed her, as Vivian grabbed his hand and led him downstairs, to the open door of Room 108. As they entered Vivian's room, they saw the single painting frame on the ground, as Yoshi looked at it.
"Charles Dickens," Vivian read.
"That's funny," Yoshi said. "I just found his name also, in my refrigerator letters. I was spending all my time trying to anagram his name."
"Are you serious?" said Vivian in disbelief. "Well...it has to mean something now, right?" They both laughed.
"Wario has a bookshelf in his room," Yoshi remembered, as they both looked at each other. Side by side, the two of them rushed up the stairs of Hotel Delfino, to its top third floor, as the timer ticked one more minute down.
17 MINUTES REMAINING
"Whoa...not only do I hear Yoshi...but Vivian? Is that you also?" Wario looked through his eye hole, surprised, shocked, but overall, frustrated as he held a stack of random books in his two arms. "You're out?"
"I'm out," Vivian confirmed to him with a smile. "Well, I used the Insta-Tan spray on my mirror, and apparently, my combination was hidden there. I guess it all happened to work out."
"Did you find your combination yet?" Yoshi piped up.
"If I did, do you think I'd still be trapped here in this room?" Wario ridiculed. "No, I'm still clueless...unfortunately. And I'm the only one left in a hotel room. I just don't want to enter the wrong number. It's the worst risk ever!"
"Well, now that I look back, it was a risk," Vivian said, realizing the fact. "You just...have to be confident." Wario nodded, shrugging.
"Look for a book by someone named Charles Dickens," Yoshi called out to him, as Wario turned around. "We both found the same name in our rooms. It's most likely important."
"Charles Dickens," Wario repeated. His books all scattered on the floor, he only frowned, hearing and realizing his next task. But as he knelt down and searched through his books, it took him less than two minutes to find the crucial, required book, a novel that would bring him one step closer to opening his own hotel room door.
"Okay!" Wario said out loud, holding up a book in the air: Greatest Expectations by Charles Dickens.
"Now look through it!" Yoshi commanded, trying to get in the door despite it being locked shut. "Our time is running out."
"I'm searching...searching..." Wario said, flipping through the pages, then dropped the book. "Nothing."
"Hmm," Vivian said to him, and thought for a second. "Try looking at the back of the book, at the back cover description. Maybe something is hidden. Or inscribed as a clue."
"Okay..." Wario flipped the book over, reading its back description. His eyes narrowed.
"See anything?" Vivian asked hopefully.
"Nope," Wario replied, "except for a boring synopsis. Greatest Expectations? Hah."
"I actually liked that book," Vivian said quietly. "It was...well, I read it a while back." She shook her head, as Yoshi looked at her curiously.
"Well, I've never seen this book in my life...hold on," Wario realized, looking at the inside of the back cover. As if it were a book borrowed from the library, a miniature card was located within the pocket of the book's back cover.
"It's a card in the back of the book...must've been borrowed," Wario said to them. "There are names here: Will McFaniel, Xatherine Dice...seems like fake names to me. Maybe it's a puzzle."
"Maybe those names are anagrams," Yoshi said out loud. Wario shook his head
"Hey, but...one of these names are highlighted," Wario said, looking at it closely. Before him, he read the mysterious name with his eyes: Turner Litesoph.
"Turner...Litesoph?" Wario read. "Huh?"
"Turner Litesoph," Yoshi repeated.
"Turner...turn," said Vivian. "Hey, it might just be me, but does that name sound more of a hidden message to you?" Yoshi repeated the name in his head, then jumped up.
"Turn the lights...!"
"Lights off," Wario finished. "Hey, that's it! Turn the lights off." He turned to the switch before him, and with a single flick, his lights went off, as Vivian and Yoshi saw from under the door the light shut off from inside the hotel room. After a few seconds of staying silent, they spoke.
"Do you...see anything?" Vivian asked quietly.
"Wario!" Yoshi yelled, as the player came back to them.
"I'm right here!" the annoyed player said. "Geez, be quiet. We have time left. Well...I shut off my lights and looked around my room, and..."
"And...?" Vivian asked him. " did you find anything in your room that was crucial?"
"Nope," Wario replied. The other two remaining players looked at each other.
"Our rooms," Yoshi said, as the two of them ran off, back inside their own hotel rooms.
It took less than a minute before Wario's phone rang again, as he picked it up, optimistically.
"Hey, now what?" he said.
"I...just turned the lights off in my room," said Vivian, peering into the darkness of her temporary abode. "But I don't see anything. Nothing is sticking out. But that clue had to mean something."
"Darn..." said Wario. "So none of our rooms worked with this light clue...wait, how about Yoshi?"
"Whoa..." said Yoshi, hypnotized and looking at his ceiling. With the lights off in his room, his ceiling was sparkling, little drops of glowing material splattered here and there on his ceiling
"The white paint," he realized, seeing the mysterious can in the middle of the floor glow as bright as his ceiling. As he looked up more, he saw something written on his ceiling, glowing down to him:
4.321
"Okay," said Vivian, perplexed at hearing Yoshi on the phone. "Wait, let me get a pen."
"4.321," Yoshi explained. "It's what's written on my ceiling. The white paint in my room must have been some glow-in-the-dark substance. Never the less, I think that's it."
"Finally," said Vivian happily, then paused. "Wait...I don't think that can be Wario's combination."
"Why not?" asked Yoshi. "What else could that clue mean?"
"I doubt his combination would have a decimal point," Vivian pointed out. "It's too risky. I wouldn't enter it...yet. There has to be another meaning for it." Yoshi sighed, then looked at his ceiling.
"Well, it seems like our last step," he reasoned.
"I think this could be our last step too," Vivian said suddenly, as she turned to the TV remote places besides her. She picked it up into her hands, and with a small smile, mostly of hope and accomplishment, she pressed down five buttons into the special remote that would secure their win for the game. Or at least, bring them one step further.
"Whu...the radio?" Wario said, jumping up at the sound of static from behind him. But as the static became more clear to him, he heard a low and distinct voice begin to speak, slowly, as he listened fully to the mysterious message that was being emitted.
Three...five...six...seven...seven," it spoke, as Wario shook his head, not believing what he was hearing.
"Three...five..."
The voice from the radio repeated the numbers again, and again, until Wario got the numbers recorded into his mind.
Wario: This had to be something...possibly my combination...I remember Vivian saying to trust my instincts. And Yoshi did it too, so I had to do this.
"Okay...three..." he said, as he entered his first number into the combination lock of his door.
"Five," he said, pressing down on yet another button. "Six...seven..." His eyes lingered on the last button, as he closed his eyes for a second, then opened them with a big breath when he pressed down: seven.
"Well, if this is wrong, it's too late anyway," he said with a defeated smile, and nonchalantly, he pressed the final button of the combination on his door: seven."
A piercing sound was heard, as he stepped back.
CLICK!
"No way. It's...open?" With eyes wider than ever before, his door was unlocked. All three players, with time to spare, were free.
"Come on, Wario's probably out!" Vivian said, talking to the phone with Yoshi. "I mean, we did do something correct, right? My TV just flashed on, with a 'Congatulations!' message."
"You said you pressed buttons on his remote?" Yoshi asked. "If that controls his radio..." Before he could answer, his door opened, as Yoshi jumped back with a small yelp in his own room. But as he looked at the figure in his doorway, Wario, he jumped again with excitement.
"Wario!" he cried, going up to the overwhelmed player, who reluctantly took a hug from his peer.
"Easy fella," Wario replied, stepping back "and yeah, yeah, I made it out. But now what?"
"We have to get Vivian," said Yoshi, "and then we find McHallyboo. Then we could win this game."
"Is that what the rules are?" Wario questioned. "For all we know, there could be a final obstacle or something."
"I don't know," said Yoshi. "But let's go!" The two of them ran to the stairs of the third floor and descended down to the floor where Vivian was. As they looked across from them, all the way at Vivian's room, they saw that she was already outside herself as well. When Vivian saw Wario, she covered her mouth in disbelief.
"Oh my gosh...it can't be," she said, shocked but mostly happy. "You really did make it out!" Wario shrugged, but smiled.
"How much time do we have?" Wario called out to her. "Check the clock in your room!" Vivian went back into her room and found the clock on her bed, looking at its time remaining.
11 MINUTES REMAINING
"Around ten minutes remaining, no worries," she reassured. "We just have to reach McHallyboo outside, and that's all. I believe...we won the game." Vivian walked over to the remaining two others, as they faced each other, looking triumphant. Walking down the final flight of stairs, they reached the lobby of the hotel, seeing the door ahead of them.
"Freedom never felt so good," Yoshi said with a smile, as they all walked through the blue sereneness of the lobby, their feet crossing the wooden floorings beneath them and eyes ahead of them. "I'd actually like to stay here a bit."
"Well, every second is worth it," Vivian said. "I want to stay here also, and just feel...this final moment a bit." Wario approached the hotel's door.
"Yep...it only takes one-" Wario twisted the knob, but then stopped, then looked at the door with a frown.
"Huh?" he said, face filled with confusion as he stepped back, then all of a sudden, he looked mad. "No way...they didn't."
"Are you hurt?" Vivian asked, looking at him. "What's wrong?" She looked at the door as well.
"Hey, aren't we supposed to get out?" said Yoshi, trying to open the door himself. But as he tried, it wouldn't budge. He twisted it both ways, then looked at the others.
"It's..."
"It's locked shut," Vivian gasped, as the final game seemed to change completely for all of them.
DUN DUN DUN! Oh gosh...I could not avoid this cliff hanger at any cost. I'm sorry.
And this might even be the final cliff hanger ever! (besides the revealing of the Mole), because, lo and behold! The final part of Episode 8 comes next! I can't believe it! THIS IS THE END, FOLKS.
I seriously don't want to type up the next chapter, because that is the end, but if I don't, I know a lot of people would want my head on a sparkling platter :) hehe. So will the players win their final mission and where will the final pot stand? And what will the final quiz have in store as the final three players of the game take it?
A final message from the Mole in the picture clues! But...is that the only page hidden? Is there another?
Stay tuned for the final part!