Peach's laugh was nervous over the speakerphone "You want to know where Mario is AGAIN? Daisy, dear, I really am starting to suspect you are up to something!"

"Can you get your head out of the gutter for one minute?!" Daisy snapped. "This is about saving the world! Don't you see those evil black monitors everywhere?"

"Oh, I was WONDERING about that!" Peach said. "I was very surprised to see Wart again after all these years. Did I ever tell you about the time I helped defeat him to save Subcon?"

"No, but if you want to come do that again it would be a big help right now!"

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary. I have to assume Mario has a handle on this already."

Daisy was losing her patience. "Only if you tell us where to find him!"

"There's no need to yell, just give me a moment." The phone picked up her tapping through the app. "Looks like he's near Pi'illo Island castle?"

"Cool, bye." Daisy hung up and turned toward Reverie. "Did you get that?"

The commander was already cranking the dials on the Dream machine. "I've set the coordinates. Observe."

A rainbow-rimmed monitor poofed into the air showing a bird's eye view of the island. With a bit more knob fiddling the screen zoomed and panned to show a battle happening in the courtyard of the castle. Mario was having a throwdown with waves of ninji, snifits, and pidgets.

"There!" Waluigi said. "Open the portal!"

Reverie pulled a lever and the Dream Machine spat out a flask of red bubbling potion. It smashed against the ground and a warp door appeared out of the fumes with a FWUMM.

Daisy barged through the door and stepped into the middle of a fight in the waking world. Mario was outnumbered a hundred to one as Wart's minions came at him from every direction. Mario cartwheeled through the air over swooping pidgets and beezos and pinballed off the head of every chump who got within stomping range.

Dreambert, who was standing on the sidelines of the brawl, took notice of Daisy at once.

"You!" Dreambert said, "You lied to me! Mario is alive and Wart is about to conquer the world! How dare you show your face here again?!"

"Okay, we don't have time to process the first thing you said right now because of the second thing," Daisy said. She whistled through her fingers to get Mario's attention. "Yo! Mario!"

"Hm?" Mario glanced in her direction causing just enough of a distraction for him to get hit and dogpiled by minions.

"Way to go," Waluigi said. "Now we have to go help him."

"Yeah, yeah."

Daisy punched and kicked a path through the hoard to the flailing mound of snifits heaped on top of Mario. Waluigi helped her peel the minions away with the application of yet more violence to drag a stunned Mario out from under the pile. The two of them then thrashed enough of the leftover enemies to force them to scatter.

"Mama mia!" Mario said as he sat up. He looked at Daisy and Waluigi and his grateful smile slumped into a frown. "Ohh no!"

"Show a little gratitude for the assist," Waluigi said.

"Hmph!" Mario said.

"He has every right to be mad at us!" Wanda said. "We did play some mean tricks and lie about him."

"Can we not phrase it that way?" Daisy said. "We were rivals. I'd consider that stuff just good-natured competition."

Mario glared at her with a righteous yet doofy fury. Daisy sighed.

"Alright. I admit I've been less than heroic in my pursuit of being a hero. And I'm sorry! I messed up! Things are worse now because of me and I— Ugh…"

The words stuck in Daisy's throat. She knew she had to do this for the greater good, yadda yadda, but it was still hard to degrade herself like this in front of Mario of all people. She cringed and steeled herself to go through with it.

"…I can't do this on my own. I need your help. I'm in WAY over my head and I need a real hero to tap in – please. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

Mario's big, piercing blue eyes peered into hers as if to pass judgment. After a long and breathless moment, just long enough to make Daisy worry, he smiled and nodded twice.

"Mhm!" he said.

"Wait!" Dreambert said. "You're just going to trust these treacherous ruffians, just like that?!"

Mario provided a thumbs up.

Well, that was easy. Daisy wondered if she could have gotten away with being stingier with the sincerity, but it was too late to worry about that now.

Waluigi rolled his eyes. "Disgusting, isn't it? Only a star child could afford to be so forgiving."

"Can we not push our luck here, please?" Daisy said. "Mario. You came here to get to Subcon, right? We've got a door straight to Wart's lair ready to go. You ready to save the world?"

"Let's-a-go!"