Fighting in the Streets
Chapter 39 – Revival
A/N: As of now, all scoreboards for races will now display the rank of each player. Since they are displayed on the word document but not on the Fanfiction website, the word of their rank will appear capitalised before the partners' name. For example: TWELFTH: Toad and Toadette: 92.
A few days ago...
Somewhere in a series of Caves...
It's unknown really where this is. The only things mentioned by people are that it's underneath an abandoned mansion. It is not Twisted Mansion.
A body lied on the floor in the middle of the cave, surrounded by rocks formed around some tiny puddles made from an underground water source. Two other beings were here as well, one floating beside the other, who was carrying several pieces of time-worn paper. One was a human and the other was not quite describable to the human eye. The being was seen clearly by the other human in the cave, but as for the body, it was unconscious, asleep, and unable to see the two beings that kneeled in the cave in front of it.
"I don't know if this is going to work." The human whispered to the other figure. "I don't think I am strong enough to make this happen."
"You must remove anything that is there first." The figure morphed around the unconscious body, indicating the sight of a terrible open wound the body. It had the shrapnel of a bullet still buried deep through the skin. The clothes on the unconscious body were fully removed, placed aside, creased and tattered. The human reached down to the wound and created a dim purple light beneath his palm, attracting the shrapnel upwards and out of the wound, floating around his hand. He then released the pieces of steel aside in the cave and examined the wound again. The blood had dried, and some of the skin around the marks began to look decayed.
"It's too late." The human worried, almost starting to shed tears.
"Take a sample of the waters around you. Gently lather it around the wound to clean up any of the infection spewing up. The worst case scenario is if the inner blood becomes infectious. It can be a true killer to Galaxyë people such as you. It's a bigger killer than the mortal wounds." The figure explained to the human, morphing around him and showing him how to place the magical waters of the cave on to the unconscious body. The indescribable figure made the human bend some of the waters from the puddles, filtering out the dirty chemicals and spreading the purified magical compound over the bloodstains of the body's wound, soaking up the little infection already developed there. He then tossed it aside and splashed it on the cave floor in front of them, ready to gather a second sample.
"Very good." The figure whispered in to the human's ear. "Take a second clean sample this time, and bend it carefully in to the body. It will clear out the clot developing in there. Remember to say the words in your mind whilst doing so, as it is the difference between revival and failure." The figure moved from around the human and piled up on the other side of the body, filling up the puddles with magical waters from the source within the cave. The waters lit up, perfect for the human to take some of it and shape it together into a filtered, purified ball of magical liquid. He bended the water over to the wound and slowed delivered it down in to the body. The wound appeared completely cleaned on the outside and the water was now inside the unconscious body. The human closed his eyes as he slowly waved his hands on top of the body, controlling the movement of the water on the inside. After some time he stopped and opened his eyes; he was finished with the ritual.
"What happens now?" The human asked the dark figure in front of him.
"You wait."
"For how long?"
"Until she wakes." The figure started to distance itself away from the human, eventually fading away to the surroundings. The human did not bother questioning further. Instead, he put his trust in the figure, and stood kneeling on the ground in front of the unconscious body. It showed no signs of life still and was not moving an inch. He stared at the body continuously, for a few hours in fact, seeing nothing at all happen to it.
After some time, the waters around the rocks surrounding the body began to light up ever so slightly, moving about more around the body. The human woke from his trance and noticed the movements around him. He stood up from the shallow waters and watched it flow around the body. The source of the water began to leak some more, flowing extra water within the vicinity of the rocks, making the depth of the puddles large enough to form as one at the height just beneath the ears of the body's head lying on the floor. The human stood by the body's head and kept a firm grip on the shoulder, waiting for something to happen to it. Eventually, the waters began to calm, and the flow of them around the body became almost inactive and at a standstill. The human watched to see if anything would happen to the body, but nothing seemed to do anything to it. At least the body showed no signs of rotting and decay, meaning it could well still be alive.
Sadly to the human's expense, this carried on for a few days, to the point he lost track of time of how long he spent in the cave with the body. The dark figure never seemed to return either, leaving him all alone with the body and the waters. There weren't even any insects in the cave. No pipe exits, no creatures, not even any blocks. Nobody was even sure how anybody could get there without the use of teleportation. During these few days, the water occasionally moved about again, but the amount of water in the patches never reached above the height of the tiny rocks that surrounded the body. The source was almost always dormant, but glowing every so often.
A few minutes after the last time the water moved about, it moved about again, out of frequency. Not like the human had any concept of time in the cave, but the movement of the water happened approximately once every six hours. The human was able to wait all this time without the need for food, and the taste of the magical waters was so off-putting that it was meant not to be consumed for nutritional purposes. A breakthrough finally happened in this time however, as the human finally noticed movement. The body's head moved ever so slightly and the eyes began to widen. He leaned up and stepped over to the side of the body, watching it finally wake up.
"You're... alive." The human said to the living other in the cave. "I can't believe it worked." The other human turned its head over to the one squatting beside it, staring into his eyes. After a few seconds, the revived human reached up with its right arm and felt around the area of the wound where it would have been had it still been there. It was gone and the area felt completely normal. Afterwards, the human realised its nakedness and began to cover its breasts, her breasts. She was alive and without clothes. She then used her right arm to cover her other private parts, leaning forward to sit on the floor instead of stay lying down. Despite being alive, she still felt slightly lifeless, as if the period of death had taken some bits of her away from her.
"How long has it been?" She said quietly to the other human, looking around the cave and realising she had no idea where she was.
"...Probably a few days, maybe a week. I have lost track of time being here for so long." The human approached the girl more closely, putting his hand around her head and rubbing her cheek with his thumb. "What do you remember?"
The girl, sitting on her rear, completely naked, was silent. She was trying to remember anything that she could, but it was as if it took time for all of her memories to come back.
"The last thing I saw... the last thing I remember... was staring at the evening sky. I don't know where I was at the time." The two stood silently beside eachother in the cave, making no other sounds. The boy human just kept looking at the girl as she stared at nothing straight in front of her.
"What was it like?" He said softly. "Death... Did you see anything?" He watched her take some time to turn her face towards his, waiting for her to say something back to him.
"Nothing." She replied almost silently. Her actions felt delayed to him, as if she was still a little bit dead on the inside. A few seconds after responding to him, her head pivoted slowly like the creak of an ancient sliding door, facing forward again to look at the dark stalagmites at the edges of the cavern they stood in.
"Do you remember anything before staring at the sky?" He asked again, hoping she had anything else to say. She still looked pale and rough, but she managed to keep her eyes open.
"It's... cold." She stuttered. The other human took off his navy coat and wrapped it around the girl, clothing her as well as attempting to keep her warm. She was now able to move her arms as her private parts were covered, but she only put them at rest. "Th-that's all I can remember. F-for now at least." She was still staring straight ahead, almost entirely unresponsive to gestures.
"Rosalina." The man tried to get her attention. Luckily, calling her name did. She slowly turned her head back towards his, and looked him straight in the eyes once again. "What do you want me to do?" He shed his first tear in over a hundred years, quickly getting rid of it and then hugging Rosalina. She didn't move her arms at all in response, she just kept sitting still was what she always has been doing. "I want to know what happened to you." She whispered in her ear, and stopped hugging her. He sat back down and watched the tiny little interactions she would make with him. "How do you feel right now?"
"I feel... like I'm still lying down there..." Rosalina said quietly and monotonously. "It's all I see." He knew that her wand was not with her when he found her body. Where he found her was not exactly where she was left. He had no idea that when she was staring up to the evening sky, that it was where she was at the time. Before this, the human was able to summon her body to the caves using the rituals and the magic learned from studying the pieces of paper he had brought to the cave behind him. Sadly, he actually had no idea what happened and how it happened, all he knew was that it happened.
"Somehow Rosalina... you're going to be able to remember everything before that. I'm not going to let fate leave you blind to the past and blind to the world." He couldn't take his eyes of her, the unconditional love he had for her was showing on the outside for the first time in so long people couldn't remember the last time.
"What is there to remember?" She looked back at him again.
"Everything."
...
There was a long period of silence between the two of them. Everything they said to eachother had periods of silence between them, but this time they stopped talking to eachother for more than just a while. Rosalina sat straight and kept staring at nothing whilst the other human had his eyes on multiple things: Rosalina, the papers, the walls of the cave, the waters, and the rocks. He knew that he would inevitably have to take her out of the cave. Hopefully seeing familiar faces would help her bring her memories back. At the moment, it seemed to him that nothing new came back whilst sitting in the cave for a forgetful period of time.
"Do you remember who I am?" He asked Rosalina. He would turn upset if she got a no back from her.
"You're my brother." She replied to him quietly, at least relieving him from another possible worry.
"Is there anything else you'd like to add to that?" Zane wanted to help her be herself again as much as possible, even if it meant one tiny step at a time.
"No." She said softly.
He had an idea. Whilst Rosalina kept staring at the walls of the cave, Zane sat up and reached over to one of the pieces of paper, one with visible writing and nothing hidden to the average person.
"Can you read this out loud for me?" He asked her, showing a sheet of time-worn paper in front of her. She made little effort to hold it herself, or even focus her eyes on the words. She stared at the paper but not adjusting her eyes to accommodate to the proximity of the sheet. Zane got one of her hands and held it up to the paper, sliding her grip on to the bottom-right corner of it. Her eyes finally adjusted.
"Meh, foo-kin-ë, e oojë-rav, të shenj-ta, ne-jer-e-oo doo-het, të zo-të-r-ro-jë-." Zane took the sheet of paper away from Rosalina, not letting her finish it. He could tell that her reading was slightly handicapped, but hopefully he could test it out on something far easier and in the common tongue.
"At least you can read... Do you know what that meant?" He asked her.
"Something about lifting up sacred water?" She finally responded with a small bit of enthusiasm, surprising Zane. He felt a little bit of relief, maybe she was getting her thoughts back together.
"It's something I had to learn, in order to bring you back to yourself again." He started to shed more tears, happy to see that she would one day be full of life again and nothing like how she was for the past few days.
"So... we are alive?" She began to smile for the first time since she woke up as well.
"Yes, yes we are." He gave her another hug, and then got up to grab her tattered clothes she had worn before. "You're going to have to see somebody about this to get this tailored and repaired. You might very well need an entirely new dress." He offered the remains of her cyan tall-dress, not looking as bright as it used to be and still with a bloody red mark surrounding a hole where a bullet went through. Rosalina held the dress and stared at the bloody mark, giving her flashbacks. For a second, she went to check her chest again, feeling where she thought it was. It was now twice she remembered it, and Zane noticed this too. Maybe she was indeed getting her memories back.
"Where are we?" Rosalina whispered to Zane slowly. Her speech was not one hundred percent perfect. There was still a small bit of impaired vocals that the two could both notice from her.
"Underground." He replied. "You don't need to worry about that. Once you see familiar faces you might get some things back together." He realised that she was poorly clothed and also without her wand, the source of most of her magical skill. It was how she channelled the powers she could use and improve her accuracy at it. Rosalina was not as proficient as her brother in the knowledge of the magical arts, and was not able to use her magic without the use of her wand yet. She would either have to find or make a new one, or find her old one, wherever it may be at the moment.
...
February 6, 2015 – 5:00PM
Toad Town
After spending a few more hours bringing themselves back to reality in the caves, the two got their sense of time back, warping out of the caves and back above ground. They appeared within the woodlands inside of the town, somewhere in between the Mario Circuit setup and the other side of the lake in the main street of Toad Town. The right wall of Peach's Castle was a distant sight. Rosalina became amazed at the sight of her surroundings and the fresh scents of nature all around her.
"Wow." She said with delight, looking all around the trees and the buildings beyond. "I remember this place."
"You should." Zane added. "Everything will come back to you. Hopefully by tomorrow you will be yourself again." She looked at him with a plain face, neither disappointed nor amused, despite showing positive expressions just earlier on their arrival.
He offered her his hand, and the two walked through the woods towards the walls of the castle. The two lied down on the grass on the top of a hill before the main street of Toad Town, overlooking the lake and the houses along the road. Everything felt so pleasant and harmonious to Rosalina, but something else there caught her eye that she felt like she had seen before. There was a human walking down the road, being escorted by several Toads who didn't hold him in place. She felt like she remembered the person, but her memories came back to her even more once she saw who the human was meeting with. Zane and Rosalina watched to see Peach, stood outside her castle doors, greeting Muji, who had came all the way down from Aypyidaw to see her this evening.
"This is why we're here..." Rosalina whispered to Zane whilst watching the two by the castle doors greet eachother. "Wait." She got up and slid down the hill pointing away from the castle. Zane turned around and watched as she put her hands on her head closed her eyes. All of the memories she had with Peach, with the Mushroom Kingdom, with Muji and the Red Martyrs all came back to her. She looked up in to the sky and was reminded of the stars and all of her past memories of being up there with the Lumas.
"Zane, everything's coming back. What happened to me?" She opened her eyes and turned around to face her brother, but he was no longer sitting on top of the hill.
"Zane?"
Rosalina crawled back up to the top of the hill and watched Muji enter the castle with Peach. One of the last memories that came to her mind was the reminder to herself that she was part of a grand double dash tournament. Having lost her sense of time and what day it is, she felt like she had to go and see Peach and ask her about it. At the same time however, she thought about what could have happened. Has she missed it all? Did Bowser win? Did he lose? What is the world like now?
...
INSIDE PEACH'S CASTLE...
...
The doors were closed, the guards were dismissed, and the two were now able to take a walk down the halls of her castle.
"I must say..." Peach began. "...that it's good to see you this far south. It's already made me feel a lot safer. Is there anything you can remind me of about the status of the northern lands?"
"As I have said before, the good of the people cannot be achieved by monitoring them all the time with our people. Every time we aid those in need up there, there will be others to make more of those people in need. The northerners are a stubborn lot. They want help from us, and refuse it when we actually give it to them." Muji lectured the Queen of the South, speaking to her as if she was just another person. "I was also told by your workers that Daisy would be here as well, where is she?"
"Daisy was meant to be here with us today, but she's been rather occupied with the press at the moment. She thought it was the people's best interests for her to clarify the changes to the races in the future. I believe you have been told about that already?"
"As indeed I have by a different group of workers. Having a race every day buys us even more time to devise a plan to prevent an arising problem up there from happening." The two reached the end of a hallway, and turned left, aiming to go in the direction towards one of the elevators. "Speaking of arising problems, have a look at this." Muji handed over a set of photos to Peach, taken from one of the cameras belonging to a Red Martyr. "Tell me what you see." Each of the photos was that of a Dargovi armed hostile Koopa. Peach couldn't tell whereabouts the picture was taken, but it was from that area based on the timestamp and location drawn on the corner of the pictures.
"I see an armed hostile from Dargo area." Muji took the photos back from Peach and had another look at them himself.
"When I was working in the United States Military I knew of the weapons that our side used, and the weapons used by the enemy. I can tell you with confidence that these weapons the hostiles have are not manufactured anywhere around here."
"Are you telling me that these weapons were found from the other world?" Peach gasped as they reached the elevator, pressing the button on the wall to go up.
"There is a lot that you and I need to know about our enemy. This isn't the only weapon we found that didn't seem to be from around here." The lift opened and the two entered. Peach selected floor 20, the highest floor. Shortly after, Muji pressed the button for floor -3, the second lowest basement floor. "One thing I need to know about is found below us, according to sources." She looked at him confused and stood awkwardly inside the lift as it started to go down.
"So... how do you think those Koopas got their hands on those weapons then?" She asked Muji.
"Somebody who is able to go from one world to another enough times to deliver these across. It's either somebody we know... or somebody we don't know."
"And what if it is somebody we know? Who could possibly be the person to have access to all those weapons and then distribute them all to the hostile Koopas from this land?" She began to feel slightly worried, wanting to look at the pictures again. Muji waited until the lift had opened on the basement floor before replying back to Peach.
"It could be you, it could be me. It could be Rosalina, Marrec, Zane, Tom or Enrique. It could be what the twins are up to these days, or it could be someone else like Ledro, the coward. Maybe that's what he's been up to ever since he deserted us."
"And what if it's somebody we don't know?" Peach asked again as Muji got out of the lift first.
"Then it is somebody we don't know." He replied, keeping his head facing the direction he was walking, away from the lift.
They were on one of the prison floors, the same one that contained the prisoners seen before. Peach headed up to Muji to catch up with him, walking by his side and asking what he was looking for.
"There is something else I wanted to see first before we discuss those plans of yours." Muji said, going straight towards the Toad prison guards on the floor. There he saw Toadlynn and two other guards standing by the corridor. "I'm here to see Will Rodneyras." He informed. The guards all looked at Peach, questioning their appearance down here.
"Shall we allow it, my Queen?" Toadlynn and the two guards had their weapons raised at Muji, stopping him in his path.
"I will allow it." She replied with a slight tinge of frustration. The guards lowered down their weapons and stood out of the way for them. Toadlynn turned around and followed on behind them while the other guards stood at the entrance to the hallway. The hallway wasn't wide enough to fit three people walking together, so he stumbled behind the two as they reached the door to Will's cell.
"Is it true that scar has gone from your back entirely?" Muji asked Peach, standing by the door and considering the use the eye hatch.
"I can confirm that." She replied quietly, anxious to talk about it with Toadlynn standing behind them. He squeezed past the two of them and opened the lower eye hatch, getting a sight of Will inside his cell. He appeared to be sleeping whilst chained up.
"He's asleep. I recommend you leave him that way." He mentioned to the other two as he opened up the higher eye hatch for their height. Muji slid it open and had a look at Will trapped in the chains.
"Open the door." Muji stood out of the way. "I want a minute alone with him inside." Toadlynn turned his head from facing him to facing Peach, awaiting her opinion. She nodded back at him and allowed him to get the keys out to open the door. Muji stepped inside and got a closer look at Will. Upon the door closing, he was woken up by the sound made from it. His eyes opened slowly, all he saw in front of him was Muji.
"Who are you?" Will uttered, holding himself up with the grip from the chains attached to both of his arms and both of his legs.
"I'm just another friend, but I'm here to help." He didn't seem as angered to see Muji as he has been seeing other people visit him in his cell. Instead, Will seemed rather upset. He had been in so much pain that it no longer made him feel angry and instead it just made him weaker.
"I want it gone... It hurts too much." The darkness that took over Will's body had left him with dark scar that reached all the way down his back to the sides of his legs. It was a bigger mark left on someone than ever before seen. "Every time I try to fall asleep I see the darkness, and I don't mean lack of light darkness, I mean the darkness. It wakes me up every time until my body has been awake for too long so it forces me to sleep." Muji gasped, and turned around to see Peach doing the exact same thing but through the eye hatch outside the cell. He walked around to examine Will's back, giving him an accurate view of the entirety of the dark mark.
"What about the doctors? Have they not done anything about your case?"
"Don't get me started on the doctors." Will said softly. "All they do is torture me." Muji turned around and looked directly back at Peach behind the door.
"Unchain this man immediately!" He commanded, walking back towards the door.
"Don't leave me here!" Will called out to Muji. "This is all her fault!" He made him stop walking, standing just a few metres away from Peach behind the door.
"I would like to get you out of here. I haven't a clue why they would put you here." Muji turned around and tried to help him, but the anger in him started to take over the weakness look and the sadness in his feelings.
"I think that's enough time in there for you." Peach opened up the door and beckoned Muji to leave with her. "This is what Elvin Gadd told us to do with him. This is meant to be the most optimal conditions to keep him and that thing on his back in." She grabbed Muji's hand and tried to get him to leave. Instead of trying to defend Will though, he went out with Peach, looking back at him trying to move about the chains he was tied to. She closed the door and ordered Toadlynn to lock Will up in there again. "Any contact can cause the spread of the scar. This is why we have him here, so there is no way he could escape. When the guards deliver him his food, we cannot afford to have them be touched by him. E Gadd will return in a few days to try and get rid of the scar; we just had to experiment on him for the time being to gather anything we can from it." Peach managed to persuade Muji about the problem arising with Will's back. They didn't learn enough from when Peach had had it on hers.
"I'll not forget about this." Muji smiled, and offered to walk with her back to the elevator. Toadlynn followed them and eventually stopped where he would resume his guard duty on the floor. He made sure that the other few prisoners on the floor were kept well-behaved and if any were to finally submit to the crown then they would undergo a safe procedure to do so.
FLOOR 20...
Secretly roaming through the castle, Rosalina's memories had nearly fully gotten back to her. On her stroll through the rooms of the top floor, she found out the day's date, the current scores on the races and the plans for the next ones. Sadly however, she still wasn't able to remember what happened on the day she was shot. The last thing she could remember was lying somewhere on the ground and staring up to the sky. Inside Peach's headquarters she found several newspaper articles about her, all with the same topic of her being missing. Even though she was back, her wand was still missing from her, and she wasn't able to perform most of her magic without it. Having spent lots of time up here reading about what all the people had to say about her disappearance, she finally began to hear the sounds of others on the top floor. The left side elevator had opened and she could hear the sounds of two voices coming out of it. She knew that they were Peach's and Muji's.
"What we need to do now is figure out who is responsible for laundering all of those weapons to the Koopas."
"We may have to send someone else up there to gather as much information for us as they can."
She moved over to the back of the map table, knowing that the two might come by to the room and possibly see her in there. There was no better way she thought than to see Peach directly.
"You know that our missions we conduct up there barely go off of urban land. The further rural we go the more dangerous and useless the tasks we devise can be. Every time somebody of ours sets foot out of Aypyidaw they risk their life trying to help us as much as they can. If we send a squadron of soldiers to a red zone, odds are they will not return and we will not have learned anything about where they went to visit." She overheard Muji speak to Peach. "If you want to send somebody, send one person who can protect himself or herself against anything." The two walked in to the headquarters room and stopped at the sight of what they saw across the map table. Rosalina didn't say a thing to them, and they all just looked at eachother silently for a few seconds.
"You have returned." Muji eventually muttered. Both the girls were still frozen in their speech. "Might I ask where you have been all this time?"
"Dead." Rosalina replied softly. Muji looked back at her confused, and didn't seem to understand what she meant by it.
"I wouldn't joke after not being around for such a long time in the context of what is going on in the world at the moment. You've missed two races." Her attention was diverted from Muji as she watched Peach rush from around the table and gave her a big hug. She wrapped her arms around Rosalina and held her tightly. Rosalina didn't feel anything emotionally and just watched Peach in front of her. She didn't even hug her back. Her arms stood normally as if nothing was touching her.
"Does that explain the tattered dress?" Peach asked whilst hugging her, noticing that she didn't react at all to what Peach did.
"If I have no memory of anything for the past four days then I can't think of anything else." She removed Peach's arms from her body and stood away from her, sitting down on the closest chair. Peach began to feel upset, starting to believe her.
"How did it happen?" Peach asked her, noticing that she was yet to put a smile on her face.
"I don't remember." Rosalina replied monotonously. "I only remember staring up at the sky."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
Muji had a closer look at her again and noticed the red on her turquoise dress.
"You were stabbed by someone. How could you have let someone do that to you?" Although Muji was wrong, nobody else knew how it happened, so they all started to believe that Rosalina was stabbed by someone, causing her untimely 'death'.
"I wouldn't have let anyone do that to me, unless it happened when I was distracted, or sleeping." Rosalina raised her voice slightly, trying to make no conclusions to what actually happened.
"It looks like you were hit with something to the chest. It could have been a bullet." Peach suggested, standing away from the two. Muji examined the look of the stain, noticing that no wound was on the other side of her clothes. This made him assume some sort of process was undergone to revive her. He had only known of it in the past but had never seen it happen.
"I need my wand back." Rosalina mentioned. "I managed to lose that as well."
Peach and Muji sighed, not knowing where it could be if Rosalina couldn't even remember where she was herself when she was struck.
"Well wherever it is it might be in the hands of whoever killed you." Muji suggested. "You're going to have to figure out where that person is somehow. Maybe it will come back in to your head eventually."
"My brother said that to me when I was with him beforehand. He told me I didn't remember anything but eventually the memories would come back. It should only be a matter of time." Peach and Muji froze at the mention of her brother.
"Where is he?" They both asked.
"He's disappeared again, but it was he who saved me. Down underground in those caves, he put those waters in to my body whilst I was unconscious and I woke up to the sight of only him amidst the darkness of the cavern."
"Well at least he did something good this time." Peach felt relieved, but slightly worried at the fact that Rosalina's brother was out there somewhere, still hiding from their sights.
"How well do you remember the situation in the north?" Muji asked her, moving over towards the map table and showing her all of the papers that Peach had originally laid out there for his own viewing.
"Not very well. I'm obviously not up to date with it because of... you know." She said.
Muji walked over towards Peach, who stood on the left side of the table before Rosalina, indicating her to explain the plans she had arranged for the two of them to be told about.
"Well the main thing we need to start knowing about is what is happening in the north. We haven't got any surveillance on most of the towns up there, but our borders are secure. There haven't been any new incidents happening south so we need to concentrate everything up there. We need not just one person but a certain amount of singular people who are willing to investigate the places for us to give back information." Peach turned her head towards Rosalina whilst placing her hands down on the table. "I would have suggested somebody like you but it seems that you're not capable of doing that at the moment. If you were shot up there then I can understand that it is dangerous. If you weren't then we need to know about it. If you can't look after yourself down here then you have no chance up there."
Peach and Rosalina broke off into a small argument. At the same time, Muji walked around the map table and examined all the sheets of paper he saw on there. He frowned, noticing something highly disappointing about all of the pieces of paper. The writing on them didn't look new at all, and they were just old designs of strategies to move soldiers across various areas in the north. These were things that Muji had assisted in creating, and usable for things occurring in the past and not what is to come in the future. He began to realise that Peach's headquarters were intended to look professional, and that the map table only appeared to be just some exquisite, aesthetic furniture in the centre of the shiny wooden flooring.
"Peach, can I ask you something?" He softly interrupted their conversation about what Rosalina can and cannot remember.
"Yes, you may."
"You said to me that you discussed plans for what to do beyond the mountains, and that you needed my help in leading it all?"
"...Yes?" She said with a higher pitch than usual.
"So who exactly did you discuss with? I'm not seeing any new papers on this table. What are your workers doing?" Peach froze for a short period and was stared at by both of the others in the room.
"T-the main reason for calling you here was to help me figure out the best course of action for both scenarios now assuming Rosalina would still be missing, but she is back now so that is no longer a problem. What I need us to do is make sure everything is safe there without putting a big influence out there. Does that make sense to you?" She responded back very formally, feeling very relieved on the inside after seeing a change in Muji's approach to her. He now looked less interrogating and stood back a bit from her.
"Good, we're finally getting somewhere." He smiled. "Now on the matter, what we need is eyes. As we said before, who can we get that can look after themselves, Tom and Enrique?"
"What about any of your soldiers, disguised?" His grin turned immediately into a frown.
"I will not sacrifice any of my martyrs unless they are given the funding necessary for their equipment they can use. Each and every one of the selected soldiers we send up there will need to be able to transmit any information on what they see. It will be like what Eoréc's expedition is but instead it's up north."
"Very well." Peach agreed and the two finally came to a plan for the next few days. "I will keep the border checked with the Patrol and the new recruits, the Brigade will keep the south protected, and another batch of recruits will spy on the hostiles up north."
"You should open up a recruitment advertisement." Rosalina suggested. "Volunteers will be the best thing if you're not going to choose any of the Red Martyr soldiers."
"Sounds like a good idea to me." Peach smiled. "I'll send word to the marketing sector to create one. You can specify the requirements since you have more experience in the field." She looked over to Muji.
"I will do what I can... I take it that concludes everything here? It's getting very late here. I should be making my way back to the real headquarters." He said out of spite, still feeling relieved that he wouldn't have to spend much more time in Mushroom City.
"You don't need to depart for Aypyidaw just yet, for you can stay the night." Peach smiled at him, beckoning him over to herself and Rosalina, standing on the opposite side of the table.
"I would rather not. As much as I appreciate being your advisor for Résethal concerns, I should really get back to leading those who are risking their lives for the cause." He argued back with Peach, hoping to leave her tonight.
"Oh, I'm not giving you a choice here. This reminds me, Rosalina, you are excused. Please leave, you showed up here uninvited." Rosalina was shocked, but instead of getting herself involved in the heat she already sensed coming from Muji and Peach, she decided to head towards the doors out of the headquarters. As she opened the doors she was met with several Toad castle bodyguards, some were ready to escort her towards the lift and out of the castle. Peach, still inside the room, turned her attention back to Muji. "As for you, I want you to stay here for the time being and be my advisor for my southern issues."
"Do you also want me to do nothing whilst you go out on your Mach Bike and drive around with the people you love and hate for the next six weeks?"
"I'd be careful with what you say to your Queen in her own castle." Peach began to feel angry at Muji and the way he was acting right in front of her. However, having known him for many years and having been protected by him for all of that time, annoying him for all that he had done for her was not the smartest thing to do, she just thought in her head. Muji began to walk in front of her, making her walk backwards with the slightest bit of cower.
"You call yourself a Queen of the south? Any Queen who threatens the advisor she just chose for herself is not fit to be a good Queen. You want me to advise you? Lesson number one, don't threaten your advisor." Peach slouched back slightly, losing her imposing presence in the room. "Calling yourself a Queen does not give you power. A powerful person wouldn't allow someone else to walk all over them like I just did to you."
"Guards!" Peach shouted, getting the castle bodyguards' attention from the other side of the entrance to the room. Muji reacted and backed away from her, turning around to see the armed guards enter the room. "Arrest this man for threatening the Queen. Put him in the cells on floor -1, as far away from Will as possible." The guards started making their way towards Muji. "Advisor's lesson number one, do not threaten the Queen." She whispered to him before the guards arrived. As they did, they took Muji's arms and cuffed them.
"Archbarn will hear about this." Muji growled, being taken away from Peach's vicinity and out of the headquarters. Peach smiled evilly as she watched him go around the corner and out of her sight. A few seconds of staring straight ahead later, her expression completely changed. It went from a powerful glare to a weak whimper; she knew already that she had blundered.
"What... am I doing?" Peach fell down to her knees and put her hands together, leaning down on the floor and beginning to cry.
February 7, 2015 – 10:00AM
Mushroomheath, North Mushroom City
It had been a rough few weeks for Revan after being involved with Peach for the first time in his life. He thought that after assisting her and the others in Aypyidaw when Menskem Koopa threatened to blow himself up at the Koopa Cape participants' tent, he would be able to be more useful to them in the future. Only when he managed to sneak himself in to Toad Town for an hour or so did he manage to get the bigger picture of what they were all like. Even then he was trespassing and sent out by Daisy calling security, the way she refused his help infuriated him. He began to hate her even more than Peach.
Toad Town made him see a huge comparison in the way people live in Mushroom City. Revan thought about this in his head whilst eating breakfast in his ran-down apartment and struggling to pay off his rent. All he had that was expensive was his place, his car, and his phone. Over time, seeing the huge difference between the living standards of the rich and the poor, he began to feel less and less motivated about doing anything to benefit the society he lived in. He had paid for several tickets to the races, thinking that the money accumulated by all the sales would be used to help and give back to the main contributors to the society. It had been nearly a month and he saw no changes, only everything became far more expensive due to the currency value changes indirectly caused by the implementation of the Mushroom Accords. Everything became too expensive for him, and now he was losing the will to keep fighting for his apartment. Revan didn't want to go homeless, but he was losing the energy to keep up his job.
However, something else appeared. Revan found an advert whilst scrolling through the news apps on his phone.
Volunteers wanted! In partnership between the Mushroom Kingdom Government and the Red Martyr Council, have you got what it takes to become the lands' greatest undercover spies? Enrol now at Aypyidaw's Special Spy Division! Limited numbers allowed. Catering included.
Revan had nothing to lose, could this be his breakthrough? Could this be his way to make himself known again and build up an insurmountable level of respect that would allow him to find a purpose in life around those he always looked up to?
EOC: A bit messy, but things should be back on track again. So many things are happening at once.
See you next chapter! There will be a race.
