Chapter 5: Mario is caught/The punishment/The meal
Peach walked down the large steps leading up to the door to her castle and over to the wreckage, her eyes wide and disbelieving.
I searched around desperately in my mind for some excuse, some reason how I could have let this happen.
"Peach, I can explain!" I lied.
There was more movement from the wreckage behind me, and then Toad emerged, looking shaken. He looked around groggily, spotted Peach, and gave a yelp of relief.
He ran over to her, sobbing, and clutched the hem of her dress.
"Mario's gone insane!" He wailed. "I-I had to use up the whole bottle of my new mace! Oh, protect me, Peach!"
Peach looked down at Toad, her expression sympathetic and caring.
Great, I thought bitterly. Maybe if I cried and carried on like that, I could get out of this too.
Peach looked up, her eyes locked on mine.
"Todd, what in the name of the Mushroom Kingdom caused this? Did Mario do this? I thought you and Luigi were supposed to keep an eye on him?" She asked pointedly.
Behind her, I noticed that an old Toad had emerged from the castle and was hurrying over. I recognized him as Toadsworth, the princess' advisor.
I took a deep breath, thinking that I might as well just try to explain what happened.
"We were at the shops, you see, and then Mario disappeared, and we went outside, and he had driven off on his kart with Toad on the back-you know, acting crazy and suicidal. Luigi and I gave chase, but he started throwing fire-balls back at us, and then the shop-keeper (he's in the wreckage somewhere there) started chasing us, since Mario stole lots of pasta and said that we would pay him the money, but we couldn't." I said speedily, watching Peach's face. She didn't look amused.
"So we're chasing Mario, but he's going up on the sidewalk and almost running over random old grannies, and then we all get a power-up, and we catch up to him, but he refuses to stop, and then we lose him, and the shop-keeper, Mortimer, catches up to us. He's trying to get the money from us, but then his wife somehow sees him and starts chasing him, so he panics and drives away from her with us, and we stop and Luigi and I explain to him that we need to get the money off of Mario, and he agrees to help us, because if he doesn't his wife will kill him, because she thinks he's cheating on her or something." I continued breathlessly.
Luigi climbed painfully out from under the wreckage and came to stand beside me, his eyes on the ground guiltily.
"Luigi, is this all true?" Peach asked him.
Luigi nodded, still not being able to look her in the eye.
"There's more. On the way to tracking Mario down, we run into Donkey Kong, who's on the run from the police in his kart, and he said he wanted to tag along because…well, just for the heck of it, I suppose. Maybe he thought that there would be bananas involved. Anyway, we all manage to track Mario down to this spooky house, and it's night suddenly, don't ask me how. We go inside, and everyone's really scared-which isn't helping-but then we manage to find Mario, only he's being chased by this enormous Boo, which starts chasing us as well. We manage to escape, get back on the free-way, and continue to chase Mario, when Mortimer's wife reappears, along with the Mushroom police. After that, Mario suddenly stopped his kart, and we all…um, accidentally crashed into him." I finished, finally.
Toadsworth huffed. "What a preposterous story!" He exclaimed.
Peach looked thoughtful. "I think it's what actually happened. Why would anyone make up all that ridiculous nonsense? It would just get them into more trouble."
Luigi nodded, his eyes on the ground. "It all happened! He forgot to mention the part where I bravely fought off the giant Boo with my bare hands, though."
I blinked. "That never happened!"
"You just didn't see it," he defended sulkily.
"What? You were in front of me!" I cried.
"Enough!" Peach said.
Suddenly, there was a ruckus behind us, as everyone started to recover from the crash:
"Oh…I say…what happened? Am I dead? Is this heaven? It must be!" I heard Mortimer mumble.
"You're going to wish it was heaven after I get through with you!" His wife snapped.
"You're here as well, dear? It can't be heaven, then. It must be hell!" Mortimer sobbed.
There was a slap, and then Mortimer climbed out from under the karts, rubbing his cheek, followed by his wife.
The wife, who was actually a lot younger than I expected, surveyed the wreckage, her expression angry.
"Now see what you've done? Not only have you destroyed your kart, but you've wrecked mine as well! And for what? What little hussy have you been chasing around town when you're meant to be at work? Oh, my mother warned me not to marry you, and I see now that I should have listened!" Mortimer's wife rattled on, not giving anyone else time to speak.
"No dearest, you've got it all wrong! I had to go after Mario, who stole from my shop for some reason, and get the money off of him! I swear!" Mortimer begged.
"A likely story!" The wife huffed, and then suddenly seemed to notice me, Luigi, Peach, Toad and Toadsworth standing there listening into the conversation.
"And who are all these people?" She demanded. "No-good bums, I bet! I…" Suddenly she faltered, having recognized Princess Peach at last.
"Your highness! What are you doing here?" She asked, turning red and bowing. "Don't tell me my husband's crash has distracted you from your duties!"
Peach shook her head, and it seemed to me that she was trying hard not to laugh.
"Not at all. The crash wasn't your husband's fault, and I believe that he is telling the truth about Mario stealing from his shop, I'm afraid." The princess explained.
"Oh." The toad looked shocked. "Are you quite sure?" She turned to her husband. "How are you going to get the money now, huh? Do you even know where Mario is?"
"Somewhere under the pile-up still, I think," I mumbled.
"I will be happy to reimburse you the money that Mario owes," Peach said. "Just go into the castle-Toadsworth will escort you-and I shall be in shortly."
"Oh, thank you, your highness! You've saved me from an extra month of nagging!" Mortimer cried, while his wife glared at him.
The two toads went up into the castle, escorted by Toadsworth, who looked confused about the whole situation.
I felt relieved. At least that was one problem taken care of…
But we still had the Mushroom police to deal with. Two police toads crawled out of the crash-site looking quite grumpy and spiteful.
"Right!" One declared, walking over. "Who is responsible for all this? That's two police cars we have wrecked, not to mention all the bruises and bumps you've given us! I think I'll need to use up my whole ticket book for this lot! Speeding, causing injury to two police officers, harboring a known criminal named Donkey Kong, trespassing on the Castle grounds, and in general, causing a ruckus. Oh, and see that sign over there? It says "Keep off the grass", right? The worst offense of them all!" He cried, scribbling in his notebook.
My jaw fell. Oh crap…
The second police toad looked around curiously. "Where is the felon Donkey Kong, anyway?" He asked.
I looked around myself, and then spotted some movement up in a near-by tree. Examining the branches, I found two brown eyes staring out at me, blinking slowly. Donkey Kong held one finger up to his lips, and I shrugged. He hadn't really done anything too bad, so I wasn't about to snitch on him to the police.
"Please, officers, this has all been one huge accident." Peach said. "Mario's going through some…tough times, and I'm sure he didn't mean any of this to happen."
The toad holding the notebook blinked at her. "Your highness, are you saying that Mario is responsible for all of this, and not this young gentleman here? I had assumed that he was the ring-leader."
"No, I am afraid this was Mario's fault. Todd here was just trying to chase Mario and bring him back before he could do anything stupid," Peach explained.
The police officer looked thoughtful. He eyed me suspiciously.
"So…would it be correct for me to say that it was your job to make sure that Mario stayed out of trouble? He asked, his lip curling up in a sneer.
I knew a loaded question when I heard one. If I answered no, it would be like me admitting that the accident was largely my fault, as I had no business chasing Mario. But, if I admitted that it was my job to look after him, I could be held responsible for the whole mess.
"Um…wait, I'm thinking." I stalled. "Er…well. Heh. It's sort of…complicated."
"Just yes or no, please."
"…Yes?" I tried.
"Then I find you guilty of letting Mario run amuck!" The police toad declared, putting away his notebook. "However, since this can't be your entire fault, you will not be charged."
I exhaled in relief.
"However!" He snapped. "To make sure this does not happen again, I have decided on your punishment."
What now…I sobbed to myself.
The police toad sauntered over to the wreckage, reached in, and managed to pull out a sheepish-looking Mario.
"It-a all his fault!" He defended.
"You're lucky we don't arrest you. But, seeing as you've saved the Mushroom Kingdom, what, more then five times, I'm willing to give you a second chance." The police toad lectured.
To everyone's surprise however, he suddenly snapped some handcuffs on Mario right hand.
"Wha?" Mario cried, astonished. "It's-a me, Mario! You said you let me go!"
"Yes, but, to make sure you stay out of trouble, I am going to do this." The police toad gloated.
Before I knew what was happening, he led Mario over to me, and connected the other end of the handcuffs to my left arm.
Mario and I stared at each other, now connected arm-to-arm.
Then, to make matters worse, the police toad brought out a second pair of handcuffs and connected Mario and I leg-to-leg.
"What's this?" I asked.
The police toad smirked. "Your job is to look after him, right? Well, now that he's connected to you, it should be no problem."
"No! Wait! You can't! At least leave me with the key to unlock them!" I protested wildly.
"No can do-we don't want another accident to happen." The toad said. He turned to the princess. "Your highness, I trust you to inform me once you believe that Mario can be trusted being un-cuffed. Then, I shall return with the key and set them both free."
"This is ridiculous! How am I meant to use the bathroom? Or wash? OH! And he SNORES like you wouldn't believe!" I sobbed.
"What? I-a don't snore! It's Luigi!" Mario defended angrily.
"He snores as well, but you lead the orchestra! And there you go again, always blaming others!" I snapped.
"Oh yeah? Blame THIS!" Mario cried, and started to slap at me nastily.
"Bring it, biatch!" I retorted, slapping him back. I was in an especially bad mood.
"Boys! BOYS!" Peach cried. "Stop it!"
We both stopped fighting, glaring at each other.
Peach turned to the police toad. "I think this is a great idea. Thank you for being so understanding."
The toad bowed, and then nodded to his partner. "Come on, we might as well report back to the yard about the ruined police cars," he muttered, and the two moved away.
Once the police were out of ear-shot, Peach turned to me, her eyes aflame.
"Stop complaining! You should be grateful you both weren't locked up! Now, you're going to have to deal with this situation as best as you can! Honestly, you couldn't even go to the shops without causing a public disturbance!" She snapped.
My jaw fell open. Whoa. I had never seen Peach so angry before.
"Peach, I'm so sorry. I only looked away for a second…" I mumbled, feeling like a child who was being told off by his parents.
She seemed to cool down. "I know. And at least you caught Mario…Mario, this was all your fault! Anyway, you can all come into the castle now, and we'll get you cleaned up and fed."
She spun around and moved up the steps to the castle.
Toad made to follow her, but turned around and looked at me instead.
"…I guess you weren't lying about being hired to look after Mario. I won't try to mace you anymore…for now. But I'm watching you!" He squeaked in a threatening manner, and then hurried up to the castle.
Next to Mario and I, Luigi snickered suddenly.
"What's-a so funny?" Mario demanded angrily.
"Oh, nothing…I was just picturing the two of you trying to make it up the stairs to the castle." He smirked, clearly enjoying himself.
"Hey, just because you got off blame-free…" I muttered. "And what's so hard about walking up some stairs? Just because I have a fat, Italian plumber attached to me, I'll still be able to do it without breaking a sweat."
Mario nodded in agreement. "I'm not fat, but I-a agree with you…for once."
"Okay, let's see you do it then!" Luigi challenged.
Mario looked at me. "Let's a-go!"
"Right!"
I moved my right leg forward easily enough. But then Mario must have moved forward too quickly, because suddenly he was in front of me, and then the short length of the cuffs on our legs caused him to turn right, being pulled back, and collide into me.
"Argh! Slower!" I chastised.
"Sorry…not used to being attached to slow-poke!" Mario insulted.
"Fine! Let's run, then!" I snapped.
We both ran forward with an awkward gait, up the stairs of the castle.
"Marioooooo!" Mario yelled in triumph.
"Um…Toooooodddddd!" I tried, and Mario turned and gave me a look.
We were half-way up when Mario tripped, fell on his face, and started to drag me down with him. I leaned back, trying not to fall, which just pulled us both backwards, causing us to tumble down the stairs and arrive, battered and bruised, at Luigi's feet.
"AHAHAHAHA!" Luigi screamed with laughter, his face turning red. He clutched at his sides, doubling over with mirth.
"I…hate…everything." I groaned, face-down on the concrete.
Ten minutes and three more painful falls later, Mario and I dragged our sorry selves into the main hall of Princess Peach's castle. Luigi closed the door behind us, out of breath from laughing too much.
I gazed around the huge room. Stain-glass windows decorated the walls high above, and two massive staircases led the way up to the second floor.
Doors seemed to be everywhere, and toads hurried about the place, some carrying documents, others carrying trays or other items.
"Okay, where are we meant to go?" I asked aloud.
"I don't know. I always get lost in this place." Luigi admitted.
Thankfully, Toadsworth appeared from a side-door, and hurried over to us.
"Where have you been? Oh, never mind. You could have washed up before eating, but seeing as you're so late, we might as well go straight into the dining area. Follow me, please." He said.
We followed the old toad, and personally I was quite relieved at having missed washing. There was no way I was taking any of my clothes off while being attached to Mario!
Toadsworth led the three of us through multiple rooms until we reached a long room that was fitted with a long table decorated with candles, flowers, cutlery and jugs of water.
"Sit, please." Toadsworth instructed, unnecessarily.
Mario made to move to the right side of the table, while I headed for the left. There was a crash as we both fell to the floor, cursing and complaining. Luigi -who had quickly sat down at the table to drink a mouthful of water -laughed so hard that the water sprayed out of his nose.
Picking myself up from the floor, Mario and I carefully both decided to go right, and finally sat at the table. On my right sat Toad, who was thumbing his butter knife and looking at me warningly, while Princess Peach sat at the head of the table, which was also to the right.
Opposite Mario sat Luigi, and next to him Mortimer sat with his wife, both looking pleased to be seated in the royal castle.
"What happened to you three?" Peach asked.
"Trouble with the stairs." Luigi giggled.
I shot him a glare, but Peach was still talking: "Oh? I'm sure you two will get used to walking like that. Anyway, I thought it would be nice if we all settled down for an afternoon meal, so I arranged for my chef to cook something up."
"We are so honored, your highness!" Mortimer's wife beamed.
I figured that the Princess probably already gave them the money that was owed to Mortimer, or else his wife wouldn't be looking so happy.
I took the time to look around the room. Behind me, large windows that went down almost to the floor gave an excellent view outside to the gardens of the castle, while in front of me a huge fireplace stood un-lit.
The walls were adorned with various paintings, and I noticed that one showed Peach playing golf, with Mario, Bowser, Yoshi, and a few other characters standing around in the background.
With my free right hand I sipped at my glass of water, and before too long toads carrying silver trays entered the room, bustling about the table as they set the food down.
Once everything was in place, the toads pulled the covers off the trays, revealing food that ranged from weird, mushroom curry, to fire-flower salad, and-of course-pasta.
When no-one moved to eat, Peach laughed and said "Please, help yourselves!"
Slowly, Mortimer reached a hand out to the mushroom curry, his eyes fixed on the side of his wife's head, who was looking elsewhere.
He had almost reached the food when, lightning-fast, his wife's hand shot out and slapped his hand away from the curry.
"Morty! You're on a diet, remember?" She pointed out.
"Oh, yes." Mortimer sighed, looking crest-fallen. "How could I forget. Guess I'll just have the salad, then."
"The salad is spicy though, being made with fire flowers," Peach warned. "I have the best cook! Her name's Zess.T, she can make pretty much anything."
I wrinkled my nose up at all the food. I just wanted something normal! The closest thing I could get was the pasta though, so I reached out with my fork to start shoveling some onto my plate.
There was a clang, and suddenly Mario's fork was locked against mine, in an intercepting movement.
"What are you doing?" Mario asked calmly, but there was fire in his eyes.
"I need some of that pasta, man! I'm starving! I can't eat any of this other food!" I pleaded.
"I-a don't think so! There's barely enough for a-me!" Mario hissed.
"There's a huge bowl of the stuff! Come on, I just need a bit!"
"You don't want to do that." Mario threatened. "You-a play with fire-flower, you-a might get burned!"
"That's cute. Seriously though, I'm having some. I saw how you were shoveling those frozen pasta meals in before: you've already eaten enough!" I snarled.
Mario's eyes narrowed menacingly.
"Let's do this thing, then." He whispered.
"I'm ready if you are!" I hissed.
Our forks clanged together-it was on! I'm a single-child, so I'm used to getting my own way. But, even being an only-child, I had still experienced the frenzied battles at the dinner-table a few times, and sometimes you just had to get in there with your fork and fight it out!
Sparks flew from our forks as Mario and I struggled to disarm one another.
"It's mine! My precious!" Mario hissed madly. "I am the master of the pasta!"
"You're only the master of evil, Mario!" I shouted.
I suddenly noticed that, from an open doorway to my left, plenty of toads were peering in, watching our epic battle take place. However, they weren't ordinary toads-they were all musicians.
I don't know why, but suddenly they began to play a sweeping, epic score-the violins leapt up, and a choir of toads started singing dramatically in Latin.
Our forks parried and struck over and over again, but I could see that Mario was winning-soon he would disarm me and take all the pasta! My stomach rumbled warningly.
I glanced around the table, and was met with shocked looks. Luigi had his fork half-way up to his mouth, hovering in the air, while he stared at us open-mouthed.
"What…the…" He said, but the last word was drowned out by a sudden tuba sound.
"You are weak! You do not know the power of the pasta!" Mario gloated, sensing that he was about to win.
Suddenly, from the band of toads, an electric guitar sprang up, which totally went against the mood of the dramatic Latin song.
Mario's eyes widened in horror. "That-a guitar! No! NO! Not him!" He cried.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but a toad wildly playing an electric guitar suddenly burst into the room. He leapt up onto the table and continued to play heavy riffs.
"Rock on!" He screamed.
Mario turned on the toad. "I thought-a I told you never to play that horrible thing again!" He screamed.
While he was distracted, I seized the opportunity to plunge my fork into the pasta, scoop up a large wad of the tasty-looking stuff, and speedily crammed the whole thing into my mouth.
Mario turned back to me, in slow-motion. "NOOOOOOO!" He warbled, but it was too late.
I chewed happily, a satisfied expression on my face, my cheeks bulging from the amount of pasta in my mouth. It really was pretty good!
The battle over, the musicians stopped playing and went back to their rooms. The toad with the electric guitar jumped off the table and scurried off.
Mario put his head on to the table and started sobbing quietly.
After lots of chewing, I finally swallowed the pasta. "Oh, knock it off! I only got a bit-there's plenty more there."
"It's-a ruined now! It's not all mine!" He sobbed.
"…what a baby." I said, shaking my head.
The others at the table still hadn't moved, their eyes wide with shock.
"I…I don't know what just happened." Peach finally said. "But I would like to get back to a…a normal meal, if we could."
Luigi finally ate the food on his fork. "That was epic." He said, simply.
The rest of the meal passed mainly without incident. I just sat there, not being able to eat anything else, while Mario sobbed to himself between spooning pasta into his mouth. What a pig.
I began to feel a tugging on my pant leg, and felt something hairy under the table. I ignored it at first, figuring that Peach must have some kind of dog in the castle. However, when the thing started to punch me in the leg, I started to suspect that it couldn't be a dog, and lifted up the tablecloth inconspicuously to have a look.
Under the table, Donkey Kong grinned up at me innocently.
"D.K! What do you want?" I hissed, trying to keep my voice low so no-one would notice. Beside me, Mario was crying too much to hear anything.
He held out a hand, and waggled his eyebrows.
"I really hope you're not hitting on me!" I whispered in dismay.
He frowned. "I want food, you idiot!" He hissed.
"Oh. Right."
He had obviously snuck into the castle just to get his hands on some food. I didn't see why, because surely he was famous and wealthy enough to afford to feed himself. But still, I grabbed some of the mushroom curry onto a plate, pretending to eat it, and then carefully slipped the entire plate under the table for the monkey.
He squealed softly in delight, and then I heard smacking sounds as he vacuumed the contents up. To my horror, he then let out a massive burp that actually shook the whole table.
Everyone turned to me, their eyes filled with disbelief and accusation.
I blushed, seeing that I was going to have to take the fall for it. "Um…heh. Excuse me." I said lamely.
"Todd, really!" Peach exclaimed.
And, Dear Diary, with the meal over, we were all free to "relax" around the castle. I couldn't do much relaxing though, with Mario attached to me! It's night now, and I'm about to go to sleep. Where am I now? Well, Peach invited all of us to stay the night at the castle, so Mario and I are sharing a room, and…a bed. Oh dear Jesus. I can't see how I'm going to be able to get through this! I'll have to stop writing now, though. Tomorrow I shall write more on how the night went, whether Donkey Kong is still hiding in the castle, and hopefully I'll find out how I can…can STOP MARIO FROM PEEKING OVER MY SHOULDER AT MY WRITING!
…He just said that he "wasn't trying to look at my diary, but was looking at an interesting spot on the desk next to it." Yeah, right! All through-out the afternoon he has been sneaking glances at my diary, the nosey bum! I still have to find a way to snap Mario out of his depression, but I'm starting to fear that I'll need someone to snap me out of a depression, soon!
And there you go! Sorry about the long and weird chapter name, but it sort of describes the chapter well. It's late, so if there's any major mistakes in this, blame the fact that I need sleep. :p
Since the start of the story was sort of not that funny (I had to describe what happened to everyone after the crash, obviously), I decided to throw in a very weird part during the meal: that's right, where Mario and Todd battle dramatically over the pasta. For that part, I made a reference to Lord of the Rings (Mario saying "It's mine! My precious!" like Gollum), and numerous references to Star Wars: "You're only the master of evil" was a line from the, erm, 4th movie, I think, Mario saying "You are weak" kind of makes him like a Sith, and the whole Latin music thing and dramatic fork battle are all a nod to the movies.
While I'm not that big a fan of the movies (I like them, but aren't obsessed with them), I just thought it would be fun to put in there.
Oh, and the electric guitar toad, for those paying attention, was the same toad that got out-of-hand in the Mario skit, during Mario's date. That's why Mario's easily distracted by him, and yells at him to go away. :p I might try to make a reoccuring joke around the electric guitar toad, hehe.
Second last thing: when Mario says "You-a play with fire-flower, you-a might get burned!", it's a reference to the saying "If you play with fire, you'll get burned", or whatever it is. It's kind of lame, so Todd's not really impressed. :p
Well anyway, I like where this story is going, I like writing it, and I think it's pretty funny at parts. I have to give a huge thank-you to Rynada, who went through and left 5 reviews, one for each chapter! Thank you so much! Hardly anyone reads this, so those reviews really counted. If I get even a couple of reviews per chapter for this, I'll be able to write heaps more happily. Until next time!