Welcome To Mario Kart Part 8
(Ok, this part leads to a bit "James Bond/Bruce Willis" type action…well, maybe not…)
Exploding Cell Blocks
All over the Mushroom Kingdom were citizens forming opinions over this awful tragedy that had happened to their cherished princess.
"It's not that we wanna throw her out.." said a caller on the very popular Dusty Toad morning radio talk show. "…we just want her to admit it. If she really did kill Mario so she could have Luigi…well…we'll understand. But we just want her to be honest with the people. She owes us that much."
"I think we need to get back to the races," said another caller. "This whole mess has been just one big distraction."
"Peach and Luigi? I always thought they were a hot item anyways." said another. "Can we get back to the kart races now?"
When Princess Daisy heard these comments on her radio at the palace in Sarasaland, she threw her shoe and knocked the small gray box off of the counter and it hit the floor. Killed it on impact.
Luigi had used his one phone call to contact her. She hung up in his face.
"Ah, you got woman problems there, young man?" asked Wario like he was some kind of expert on the subject. "Don't worry. She'll forget everything after you get outta here. They always forget. All you got to do is show up with a flower bouquet and a little bubbly….hehehe... She'll forget. Take my word for it."
"I think she's gonna kill you when you get out." said Yoshi. "Unless you die first in here."
"Thanks for the encouragement, Yoshi." Luigi replied irately.
Yoshi nodded. "No problem, fella. Well, If we're destined to rot in here, I want to enjoy it at least. I demand more food!" he hollered out, then he ran over and yanked a metal water carafe from Toad's hands and began banging it along the cell bars. "I WANT FOOD! I WANT FOOD! I WANT FOOD!" he yelled as it clanked loudly.
"Noooooo!" Luigi got up from his bunk and tried stopping Yoshi. "The guards will come!"
"Yeah! That's the idea!" Yoshi shouted back and kept banging.
"AAAAAH AAAAAGH!" went Bowser. "I think it's a good idea." He grabbed another carafe from the floor and started clanking the bars.
Then Toad did the same thing, but when Wario got up trying to stop them, a fight ensued. The four of them had been in a least ten arguments and one other fight since being in the cold, dreary place.
Luigi just sat back down on the bunk, put his hands over his ears distressingly, and bowed his head. "..Mama mia-a-a-a…I can't take this anymore—"
"HEY! I TOLD YOU GUYS THE NEXT TIME YOU START UP I'M THROWIN' ALL OF YA IN THE HOLE!"
The fight stopped immediately when the toad guard pulled out a key to unlock the cell. Yoshi, Toad, Bowser, and Wario then seemed to read each others minds as they quickly jumped forward thinking they could overtake the guard and make a fast clean break, but soon as they grabbed him, about a dozen more guards were there, all aiming their guns straight into the cell.
"…Uh…guess that wasn't such a good idea after all." said Yoshi.
The toad guard with the key pulled away from them and brushed off his uniform, then he looked at each one with a brutish smile. "Good…very good." and he looked over at Luigi who sat on his bunk trying to be invisible. "You!" the guard shouted. "Get up! You're comin' with me!"
Luigi perked up and looked around him, then pointed into his chest. "Me? Why me? I wasn't doing anything."
"I said, GET UP!"
When Luigi didn't get up fast enough the guards went to the bed and pulled him up, and he resisted as they took him out of the cell.
Yoshi, Toad, Bowser, and Wario could only watch with terror while hearing Luigi's frightening yells echo all the way down the corridor.
"Too bad." said the guard. "Your friend's gonna have a little punishment. Maybe now you'll think twice before starting any more trouble." After looking them all over and grinning, he walked out and locked the cell behind him.
"Wow. Poor Luigi." said Toad. "I wonder what they're gonna do to him."
Wario sat down on the bed where Luigi was before. "..This is terrible… It wasn't even his fault… No telling what they do to him just because of us. Hey, Bowser! I-a know! You breath fire and melt away these bars!"
Bowser went up to Wario and slapped the cap off of his head. "If I could do that don't you think I would've done it by now? The only way we could get out of here is with help from someone on the outside."
After Wario got up to collect his cap, they all thought on it.
"Princess Toadstool?" said Yoshi. "Surely she could get us out of here."
"Bah," went Bowser. "The princess is too depressed about Mario to help us."
"If you'd been listening to the radio like us, you'd know of the rumor going around about her and Luigi…as a matter of fact, that was supposedly what started this whole mess. She killed off Mario just for him."
"Huh?" said Bowser.
Toad shook his head. "It's just a rumor. I don't believe that for a minute!"
"Well, I think there could be something to that." said Wario. "And it could be good for us. If she's got a thing for Luigi, she will come down here to rescue him, right?"
They looked at each other until Yoshi made a final assessment.
"We're doomed."
Twinkle Twinkle Power StarGuided by the light of a single star, Peach traveled in the darkness to reach her destination. She was not afraid of the goombas and other creatures that would surely come out from their caves to try scaring her along her journey because Mario had taught her to fight very well. Also, in an effort to camouflage herself, she wore a black cape borrowed from a friend from a far away land known as Kokori Village, and wrapped her head and all of her face except the eyes with a black scarf to keep from being spotted by the toad guards posted along all the roads leading to the jail complex. Miraculously, she was able to get through without a hitch, and within less than an hour she made it into the outer perimeter of the complex and avoided the guards. Once inside, she shorted a few security panels to get through the force fields, avoided more guards, then she finally got to the inmate area where she could see King Bob-omb, Birdo, Bullet Bill, Dragonzamazu, Magikoopa, Triclyde, the Snifits, and Koopa Troopa fast asleep. She moved quietly to look in the next cell, seeing Tatanga, Lakitu, Mouser, The Hammer Brothers, Wart, and King Calamari. In the next cell were all the Koopa kids cuddled in individual beds, and next to them were The Shy Guys, Barney Bubble, Smithy, Culex, Belome, Baron Von Zeppelin, and Croco. Then was an aquarium-like cell containing Bub & Bubba. She also noticed a list on the door with all their names, and next to the name Sonic the Hedgehog she read "released on own recognizance." She took a few more steps and turned the corner, seeing two guards posted outside of a cell down that hall, and knowing that must have been where they were keeping her closest friends, she diverted the two guards attention by spinning power stars in front of them, and they were instantly hypnotized.
Peach crawled around the corner as not to be picked up by the security beams, and she went to the cell to peek in, seeing Yoshi, Bowser, Toad, and Wario, all sleeping. But then Toad must have sensed her presence because he woke up right away.
"Princess!" he said just above a whisper.
"Shhh. I want you to wake up the others….slowly." she said. "And Toad, where's Luigi?"
Toad slipped from his top bunk and hit the floor with a thud and Peach jumped then checked the guards to make sure they were still deep into hypnosis.
"Toad? Are you alright?"
He got up and was a bit embarrassed as he quietly approached the bars near the princess. "I'm okay. But Luigi….I don't know about him….they took him earlier this evening and told us they were gonna punish him. We all heard him yelling. It was awful, Princess…"
Peach was horrified by the news.
"We have to find him." said Toad. "That's the least we can do."
Peach didn't say a word.
"Princess?"
"Oh….Toad…Wake them up and I'll open the lock." she said after snapping out of a saddened trance.
Toad went to Yoshi first, and shook him, then Bowser, then Wario.
"Hey…hey..what's-a goin' on…."
"Shhh." said Toad. "The princess is here to rescue us."
Wario looked over and saw Peach jiggling some sort of sharp object through the lock. "Good-a…." he said quietly and hopped from the bed in his long johns and got dressed, and by the time Peach had opened the lock, they were all ready to go.
"We didn't mean to get Luigi in trouble, Princess." said Yoshi. "We really didn't!"
Wario, Bowser, and Toad glared at him.
"We were gonna have to tell her eventually guys." he explained, then turned back to the princess. "I just wanted you to know that we're all very sorry."
Peach stood there for a moment and was furious at them for a second or two, then she calmed down and turned her anger into a determination not to lose yet another very important person in her life.
"Let's go." she replied firmly. "We'll find him…. …Alive."
Getting back through the corridor was tricky, but somehow they all made it quite a ways until coming to an area that appeared to be cordoned off and completely locked down.
"This must be where he is." said Bowser.
No guards were posted in front of a huge door with a hefty padlock, but of course it would be tough enough getting through that. Wario—eagle-eye that he is—also noticed security cameras aimed at the door.
"How will we get passed those?" asked Yoshi.
"Ah, I've got a plan for that." said Wario. "All we have to do is get behind the cameras, aim them directly at each other, then…Wal-la! They short each other out, and we get through."
"Hmmm, clever." Bowser nodded.
"Cool." said Toad. "Where'd you learn that one?"
"I saw it last week on Voyage To The Bottom Of The Mushroom Sea."
"You're a genius." said Yoshi.
"I know." Wario said confidently. "Now, you two little guys need to get over there because you can climb along those rafters up there without bending them, and me and Bowser stay here with Princess Toadstool until you kill the cameras, and we all meet over there to help her get Luigi out. Deal?"
They all agreed and stacked fists in a huddle until Bowser said, "One-Two- Three-Break!" then the mission began.
Yoshi went up to the left rafter and Toad went right to the other side, and within less than a minute they were behind the cameras. It took just a few tries to get the angle just right, but once they had it, the cameras sparked, fizzled, and smoked.
"That's it!" Wario hollered out. "Come on. We move in now!"
Peach, Bowser, and Wario ran for the huge door and Yoshi jumped down from the rafter, then Toad, and they all were about two feet away when alarms started ringing and red lights flashed.
"OH NO!" Wario shouted. "THE FLOOR!"
They couldn't turn back now. Peach pulled from beneath her cape some sort of powerful laser-like weapon and zapped the lock, cracking it open in a flash, and Bowser pulled the heavy door, opening it just enough for her to get inside. She could still hear them out there and knew the guards must have come because Bowser was roaring and Wario sounded like he was throwing fists, but then she blocked out everything else when she saw what was in front of her….
Peach choked up at the sight of Luigi, his hands chained to the bars on a small window and his feet bound in some kind of rope, and he looked like they'd done practically everything they could short of killing him. He groaned when she went up to him and began struggling to untie his feet, and coming from the other side of the huge door she heard fighting again then worried that they would be caught before getting him free, and if they did, how they would ever get out to bring Mario back—
"..you can do it, Peach….come on…keep trying. Just keep trying…"
She thought she was hearing Mario's voice again but then looked up and saw Luigi looking at her and although he must have been in pain, he smiled and winked an eye.
"I knew you'd come," he said and grunted once after she tugged the rope away from his feet. "Hurry…" he said. "I hear the guards. They're close…"
"Bowser and Wario are out there," Peach answered. "Toad and Yoshi too."
She then stood and opened her cape, lifted her long pink dress, revealing the holster around her thigh, and she pulled from it a long, sharp nail file.
"Nice," said Luigi when he saw it, but she didn't know he was referring her long shapely leg instead of the file.
"Thank goodness I have this.." she said about the file.
"Yes. Thank goodness." he said about the leg.
Sticking the file into the lock, Peach jimmied it around and heard a loud click.
"I got it!" she screeched.
The handcuffs fell off and Luigi was finally free. He then grabbed Peach who was about to run back out to help their friends fight off the guards,
"No." Luigi pulled her back. "We go up." and he pointed to the ceiling where there was a big vent. "You can be pretty sure Bowser and Wario will beat them, then Toad will finish them off…and Yoshi…well, they'll be his nighttime snack. Now come, let's go."
Luigi lifted her onto his shoulders so she could reach the vent and open it, then after she climbed into the rather large square opening, he got a chair, stepped upon it, and he took her hand for leverage before climbing in with her, then closed the grate behind him. They could still hear the sirens ringing and actually it sounded louder inside the vent than it did down below, and Peach looked back before she started crawling and noticed that Luigi had stopped to catch his breath.
"Luigi! Are you okay?"
"Ah, I'll be fine," he said and wiped the sweat from his brow. "I just need to get my strength back…"
Peach knelt beside him and unfastened the cape again, reached into the front of her pink dress and pulled a small bottle from there and unscrewed the cap. "Here, drink this." she said. "You'll feel much better."
Luigi took the small flask and tasted a cool, semi-sweet liquid roll down his parched throat. He then gave the bottle back to her and watched as she concealed it once more within her dress.
"That should help you." she said about the drink.
"Yes, indeed it does." he said about the dress.
"Uh…I think we should go now, Luigi. I talked to Mario and he told me you need to—"
"Now you wait just one minute," he grabbed her hand. "You spoke to… ..Mario? Please, Peach, I can't stand seeing you punish yourself like this,"
"I did speak to him!" she snapped. "He told me you need to go south…then east….then north…."
Luigi gazed at her in shock. "He did? Then….then you did speak to him. You wouldn't know that otherwise..." He looked down shaking his head in disbelief and wiped more built up sweat from his brow. "Means just what I suspected about that Sergeant Toad."
"What?"
"Kamek's behind all of this. He has finally succeeded at destroying my brother…he thinks. But I have discovered a way to bring back Mario. What we must do now is go back to Sub-Con to collect seven hearts Mario left there."
Peach freaked, recalling the terrible conditions when they went to Sub-Con.
"I specifically remember telling him to take them along just in case." said Luigi. "But he left them, can you believe that? My brother thinks he is so invincible that he ignored me when I urged him to use those hearts as a back-up just in case anything like this ever happened here….and now where is he? I'm sure he is in no Mushroom Heaven—"
"Luigi!" Peach scolded.
"Sorry to say it but you know well as I that my brother wasn't exactly angel material to begin with,"
Just as Luigi was about to say something else derogatory about Mario, shroom pellets blasted behind him, some of them even penetrated the metal grill and others ricocheted off the panels.
"Let's go!" he moved quickly within the tight space, taking Peach by the hand, hoping to get her out of harms way and to the nearest exit—through whatever ceiling that might have been. "This way…" he said, taking her left and then right and then left again, and the miracle they needed came true when he spotted a ray of light at the end of the shaft. When they got to the end of it, he opened up the vent and jumped down, then helped Peach get out. Indeed this place was a good escape—as a matter of fact it was some sort of secret exit leading to an underground tunnel.
When they came out on the other side there was gravel and a small bubbling lake.
"Can you believe it?" said Luigi as he could hardly believe his eyes. "…Choco Mountain….here, we are standing on the track."
Peach always thought she knew every secret passage in her kingdom, but she didn't know this one at all.
"Hey! Look out!" Luigi yanked her aside soon as a huge boulder came down, and thankfully, it tumbled right by them into the ditch below.
Luigi took a deep breath and looked up the road which they would soon travel.
"Well, are you ready for this, Princess?"
"Ready as I'll ever be." she said eagerly, hiding her reluctance and went alongside Luigi on this voyage, doubting that they would be successful, yet keeping those thoughts strictly to herself.
Flour CupAfter breaking out of jail and freeing the other inmates, Bowser, Yoshi, Toad, and Wario went to the castle to see if anyone there had heard from Peach and Luigi, but no one at the castle knew anything except for what they'd heard on the Kingdom Eyewitness News Network.
"Oh no," Toad bowed his head and started to cry. "That means they didn't get out. They've been killed!"
"Stop that!" said Wario. "We can't be sure what happened to them. And I, Wario, don't have time to worry about that! I have other business to take care of!"
Once saying that, Wario turned on his heel and ran off.
"Eh hehehehe…Eh hehehehe….Eh hehehehe!" he laughed all the way out the door and down Castle Road and disappeared over the hills.
"Well, good to see all this hasn't changed him one bit." said Yoshi. "So what should we do now, guys? I was just thinking…if we could all go out and get something to eat…or maybe order a huge pizza—"
"We can't order pizza, you dummy." said Bowser. "Mario and Luigi are both gone. They were the only pizza suppliers in Mushroom World."
Yoshi thought on it again. "Spaghetti?"
"That too." said Toad.
"Shrimp scampi?"
"That too!" Bowser and Toad said in unison.
Yoshi sighed. "Maybe some won-ton soup?"
"They had the only connection to that too." said Bowser.
"Wow.." Yoshi's hunger pains were throbbing by then. "Then what can we eat?"
"Mushrooms." said Toad. "We've got plenty of those.
"I hate mushrooms!….oops…no offense, Toad."
Toad gave him a mean glower.
"I think we should go in the kitchen and see what we can find in there." said Bowser.
Being that it sounded like the best idea, the three of them went into the kitchen and looked around, finding many of the castle's toad guards busy sifting through bins of shroom flour.
"AAAAH AAAAAAGH! What's going on in here?"
"Worm search, Bowser." said one of the guards. "We've found more wigglers, so we're going through everything."
Just what Yoshi didn't want to hear. "So I'm still not gonna get to eat."
"Not 'til we clear out the kitchen, and first we have to sift all this flour."
Toad and Yoshi and Bowser looked around the large kitchen seeing bins of flour from one end to the other, then a guard passed out sifters to each one of them. "Get to work, men."
Meanwhile, Wario had rounded up a few of his goons and put his own personal plan into action. It took him no time to circulate word around the kingdom about the kart races starting back up again, and within a matter of hours he had the billboards and neon signs, television, radio, and newspapers advertising his newest grand event—Wario Kart X-treme.
With his newly found adventure, he redesigned all the tracks and battle courses to suit his needs, then rounded up his own list of players: Captain Syrup, Spearman, Cook, Grunt, Punch, Hen, Genie, and the Black Syrup gang to knock everybody around just to make things more interesting. "Now, we have-a real kart racing!" Wario shouted, balling his fists in the air. Now Koopa Troopa Beach was littered with sludge and dark gooey syrup that the kart's wheels would get stuck in if they got too close, Frappe Snowland was no longer a winter wonderland, instead it became a land of iceman giants who stomped anyone in their path. Kalimari desert was loaded with more than six trains, Yoshi Valley had flying turtles dropping big eggs and quicksand, all the guardrails on Banshee Boardwalk were taken out, and huge craters were pounded into Luigi's track and the Royal Raceway, yet he made his own Wario Stadium an absolute treasure, spreading golden nuggets all over the dirt tracks and making new shortcuts where only the luckiest of players would find stashes of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and pearls. But the worst damage done by far was Mario Raceway, where Wario cut down trees, planted land mines, scattered nails and pellets all over, and rebuilt the famous tunnel, turning it into a large loop like a rollercoaster, but at the end each kart would go flying in the air and come down who knows where, and then he replaced Mario's red cap replica atop the stadium seats with a big fat Wario statue...
Last but not least, he installed pit stops on all the tracks and hired his own goons as pit crews.
"Now, we have a race! Lakitu, you have no need to stick around…we go when I say go!"
Lakitu looked angrily at Wario then took his signal and floated away.
"Alright troops!" yelled Wario as he came first to the starting line and waited while everyone else fell in behind him. "GO!"
"Hey, where's Mario?" said one spectator to another. "I thought this was called Mario Kart?"
"Didn't you read all the billboard signs and messages in the sky from those airplanes and hear the announcements on the radio and see the stories on television? This isn't Mario Kart anymore, It's Wario Kart X-treme."
Disappointed that she wouldn't see Mario, the fan got up and headed home, even losing the inflated fifty-five dollar ticket charge she'd paid at the gate. But for most of the other people who came to watch this event, it was probably one of the most thrilling they'd ever seen in the history of Mushroom Kingdom kart racing, and they stayed glued to their seats watching Wario thump his enemies with gold pellets and wipe them out with his oil slicks and smack them with exploding shells. And the karts(that initially belonged to the players of Mario Kart) actually took damage when they were hit. First one to suffer the curse of Wario X-treme racing was Captain Syrup—recipient of Mario's shiny red kart. Now the once brilliant piece of machinery was mangled like a pretzel.
"Eh hehehehe!" Wario laughed his way into first place at the finish line and was followed by cheers from his newly won fans. "It's-a me, Wario! I will rule the world of kart racing in the Mushroom Kingdom forever! Mario is-a no more!"
And Wario went on to defeat his enemies round after round in the 150cc level, celebrating with barrels of champagne and some of the most gorgeous women in Mushroom World, then he bought more karts—ones that would handle 200cc and above—enabling death-defying speeds and some pretty bad accidents, but Wario was very well satisfied with this, getting most of the gold cups and applause, not to mention knowing all the shortcuts in his own motorcross stadium, therefore giving him the advantage at finding all the precious jewels. As a token of appreciation to his enemies for allowing themselves to be humiliated by him, he presented them all with pure gold medals, paid the pit crews, lighting and tech folks, and all other event organizers and personnel with cold hard cash, then ran off with millions in profits, forgetting everything that had happened before this, and went into seclusion where he could continue his plans to take over and eliminate whatever was left of Mario's lucrative gaming empire.
(hmmm…a huge market for Super Wario?…Super Wario Sunshine? Super Wario Bros. Melee.? Wario Teaches Bad Behavior?….) ....On to the last chapter! YAHOO!!!!!