***

The first thing that really hit them was the view.

"Wow," He breathed. "You can see the whole Mushroom Kingdom from here!"

"Yeah," Agreed Iggy. "There's Grass Land, and that's Water Land over there!"

"And there's."

"Peach's castle,"

"Uh-huh," Lemmy answered dully, suddenly realizing for the first time what a job they might have ahead of them. If they only knew.

"Dang her!" Lemmy yelled suddenly. "Why does Wendy do this? She gets herself into huge messes, and then decides that she can't deal. So what does she do? She finds someone else to dump her problems on! It's not fair!"

Iggy was surprised at this. It wasn't normally like Lemmy to be so aggressive.

"Life got fair?" Iggy asked. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Never mind," Lemmy answered, suddenly drained. "Let's get to it, we've got work to do."

So Lemmy walked off to another room close by to create a plan. Iggy stayed at the bridge, staring at the controls. He would have to figure them out in the next half an hour or so if he was going to be able to control the Doomship itself.

"Why couldn't Lemmy have been the one to drive?" Iggy complained to himself. "I'm better at planning stuff out anyways. Even he knows that! I don't even know what most of these buttons do."

He grinned to himself.

"I guess I'll have to find out."

Lemmy wasn't doing much better.

"Well, maybe we could disable the defense system and. No, that won't work. Too heavily guarded. Hmm, maybe if the main power source was knocked out and. Nope, there are always reserve supplies."

He stopped for a moment.

"Ugh, this is harder than I thought it would be. Why couldn't I be the one to carry out the plan? I don't even think Iggy knows how to-"

He was stopped short however, because the Doomship suddenly spinning loops in the sky. The whole room was literally spinning. Lemmy suddenly found himself on the ceiling.

"WOAH!" was all he had the presence of mind to say. He was being repeatedly slammed against alternating sides of the small room he was in, first the wall, then the ceiling, then on the floor. And then all over again.

Wall.

"Aaah!"

Floor.

"Oomph!"

Another wall.

"Ugh,"

Ceiling.

Then everything stopped.

Lemmy lay on the floor panting, too out of breath to speak at all. His vision was a hazy blur, and there was at least three of everything he saw.

"Oooh," He groaned, sitting up. He had a nasty bump on his head, along with other various bruises on his body.

The world was finally beginning to come into focus again, so he stood up, dizzy.

Wanting an explanation, he walked in a sort of zigzag pattern towards the bridge.

"Iggy," he gasped. "What. Happened?" He noticed that his brother was also sporting a few new bruises and a black eye.

Iggy looked somewhat embarrassed.

"Eh-heh, Well, you see." he began. I don't really know how to fly one of these things. I didn't know what any of the buttons did, so I, uh, just kind of pushed a whole bunch of different buttons to find out."

"You what!?" Exclaimed Lemmy. "You could have killed both of us!"

"Well, at least we're ok, right? It could have been worse. It's not going to happen again, I swear!"

"That's right, it won't happen again. I'm driving from here on."

"But-" Lemmy's look stopped him dead.

"Alright, alright," Iggy said. "I didn't want to anyways."

And with that, Iggy headed off to the room in which Lemmy was previously.

"We've got a long way to go," Lemmy sighed.

Some time later Iggy stepped back into the bridge.

"Well?" inquired Lemmy. "What's the plan?"

"First, you need to know exactly how hard I worked on this," said Iggy. "It takes a very superior mind to think up such a complex, diverse-"

"Alright, I get the point," interrupted Lemmy. "So I ask again. What's the plan?"

"We cloak the Doomship so no one can see it. Then, we fire some sort of bomb at the power plant. While the whole Mushroom Kingdom is in chaos, we sneak into the castle, snatch Peach and get out of there! It should be very dark without any lights at all, but according to my calculations, we must hurry. We have to do it all in about five minutes."

"Why five minutes?"

"Because that's how long it'll take for the emergency power to kick in. Then, the lights will come back on, and we'll be busted."

"Okay, then, let's get this show on the road! Iggy, when I give you the signal, you press that button," Lemmy indicated a large red button. "That will engage the targeting system. When the target falls on Peach's power plant, press it again to fire!"

And with this, Lemmy turned to the main screen.

"Screen on," he said. The screen snapped on, expanding the already huge view threefold.

"Cool!" exulted Iggy.

"Set direct course for the Mushroom power plant," ordered Lemmy. Amazingly, the Doomship began to do so. Lemmy relaxed a little, they were on their way. This feeling only lasted about two minutes however.

Suddenly, the whole Doomship shuddered. The force reverberated through the bridge and nearly knocked Iggy off his feat.

"Wha?" Iggy stammered. "What was that?" Amazingly, the ship responded.

"There is a fractured propeller on deck three," the disembodied voice of the Doomship informed them. "If the problem is not fixed in approximately 30 seconds, it will cease to function."

"Does that mean the whole thing will fall out of the air?" Iggy panicked.

"I think so. It must have been your previous loop-de-loops with the ship that broke it,"

Iggy gulped, because there was suddenly a countdown on the screen. 30. 29.

"What's happening here?" Wendy's voice suddenly growled from behind them.

"Aaah!" They screamed.

"First I end up doing somersaults in the air, and now it feels like there was just an earthquake! What happened?" She sounded angry and there was a little vein popping out on her forehead.

"There's a broken propeller!" said Iggy.

"And if it isn't fixed in," Lemmy glanced at the timer. "Twenty seconds, we're gonna crash!"

"WHAT?" Wendy screamed. "Computer, engage auto repair!"

"Auto repair engaged. Will take approximately three minutes."

"But we don't have three minutes!" Lemmy cried. The timer kept ticking.

15. 14. 13.

"We have to get out of here!" Wendy exclaimed. She hurried over to the escape hatch and grabbed a parachute. Iggy and Lemmy did the same.

"I can't get it on!" wailed Iggy as Wendy jumped out the hatch.

10. 9.

Lemmy, who already had his parachute on, struggled to help Iggy get his on. To his dismay, it soon became tangled.

6. 5.

"Go on!" Iggy ordered. "While you still can!"

"But I can't leave you!"

4. 3.

"Go ON!"

And with that, Iggy pushed his brother out of the escape hatch. Lemmy had no choice but to pull the cord on his own parachute. It ballooned out of the package and he began to float down.

Iggy struggled furiously with his parachute, now a tangled mess.

2. 1.

"Noooooo!" Lemmy cried. He could only watch as the huge Doomship plummeted towards the ground.

To be continued.

Rachelle Davison 2001