Toad in the Whoa Zone
Part 2: The Empire
Completed: 5/28/17
Disclaimer: Mario and the rest...you know the deal. They don't belong to me.
Author note: A quick little update. Things will get...weird...
Toad walked for what seemed like a million miles before he finally found something else. Ahead was a plain wooden door in the sand. It was normal sized, standing in the sand with a golden knob. As Toad got nearer he suddenly had a bad feeling. Giving the world he was stuck in, he was already sure that opening the door to nowhere would cause something to happen, but what else might he find?
"I'm about to lose my mind. Might as well," Toad reasoned after a second of deliberation. He grabbed the golden knob and opened the door. The flash blinded him momentarily and then all he heard was...the motor of a kart?
"Toad, what are ya doing!?" Bowser questioned. "Get in the kart!"
A truck zoomed past Toad, then another with a loud honk. Toad realized that he was setting on asphalt. His clothes were no longer dirty. His feet didn't hurt. He felt completely nomal.
Completely normal...
Convinced his nightmares were over, he hopped on Bowser's kart without question.
"We are trying to win, you fungus! Ugh!" Bowser growled as they accelerated again on the dark roads.
Toad observed the scenery, gladder than he'd ever been to be barely hanging on to a go-cart driven by Bowser. He felt the cool damp breeze on his face. He observed the cloudy sky with new reverence. He'd never complain about a rainy day again. Memories of the past flooded his mind. This was Toad's Turnpike, which was surprisingly not named after him but Toad Town itself. Toad had just became the personal mascot somehow. He remembered the grand opening of it. Never before did they all imagine the horrors of mirror mode.
After a moment Bowser continued to scold him, interrupting Toad's eidetic thoughts. "-It's like you don't know what's at stake here! Did that bob-omb that hit you make you stupid all of a sudden? Get this item!"
Bowser ran through a single item box and Toad got a feather, making him gawk at it for a moment. Bowser did a tight drift around several cars and Toad was almost flung off. They caught up to a cart with Mario and Peach in it. The titular hero and Princess were in one of Mario's karts, clothing and hair flapping in the wind. Glad to see his friends, Toad waved eagerly with the hand that he wasn't holding on for dear life with. Mario didn't give Toad a passing glance and stared straight ahead, his face tense with frustration. Peach glanced at Toad exactly once with a very sad face. She shook her head slowly and Toad saw a weird dread on face that he'd often seen when she was being kidnapped. Strange, Toad thought. A red shell came out of nowhere to smack them, and Toad and Bowser left them behind as they approached their third lap.
"Gosh! Mario Kart sure is brutal today," Toad remarked. "Say, Bowser, what Mario Kart are we in?"
"One we should win," Bowser answered through clinched teeth. He swerved around another beeping vehicle. All of this negativity coming from everyone and everything was starting to dampen Toad's mood just a bit. He knew Mario Kart could destroy friendships, but that was usually a player reaction. As participants their friendships wasn't supposed to be at stake also. Still, he'd take this over being in a void for all of eternity.
"I was just getting conflicting clues from different Mario Karts," Toad yelled over the wind noise, still hoping to get an answer. "What's next? We're gonna go zero gravity?"
"Shut up!" Bowser spat. "Just use that feather when I- OH NO!"
WOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!
A piercing alarm sound went off behind them, not entirely unlike the red shell alert but much louder. The noise was so horrible Toad felt like his head might explode, and covering one ear with his free hand helped little. Meanwhile Bowser drove even crazier, narrowly missing an eighteen-wheeler. But then, a force seemed to slow down Bowser's kart with a magnetic like pull. Bowser pushed the gas pedal to the max in desperation but soon the wheels were spinning in place as they went nowhere.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" Toad screamed.
"WE'RE UNDER ARREST!" Bowser shouted back.
The noise finally stopped as they became completely stationary. Toad let out a breath of relief and dared to look behind him. It was a let down, but in a good way.
"Oh... just a Lakitu," Toad sighed. He dug in his ears, wondering how many frequencies he could no longer hear now, but he turned around around when he heard someone bawling behind him.
"Bowser?" Toad asked, on the verge of laughter. "What's wrong, buddy?"
"WE'VE FAILED EVERYONE!" Bowser sobbed with his head down over the steering wheel. His hysteric sobbing shook the whole cart.
"Don't move!" the Lakitu officer warned. "Don't you know that kart racing is punishable by death?"
"Well excuse me then uh, Mr. L!" Toad jeered, having noticed a 'L' emblem tattoo on Lakitu's right arm. "We're professional karters so I guess we're goners! Hey, could you turn the volume down on that siren of yours too?"
The Lakitu shined his extremely bright flashlight in Toads face, making him have to cover his eyes.
"Hey, what's the big deal? I don't need to be blind and deaf! And since when do we have cops in Mario Kart? This a new Mario Kart 9 feature?" (Yes, that joke is outdated by MK8 Deluxe's battle mode, but whatever..)
"You mushroom idiot," Bowser said in-between sobs, "This ain't Mario Kart. This is Death Kart!"
"What?" Toad asked.
The Lakitu pulled out a radio. "This is 'Deathitu' number 5. I have the last racers right here. It's the renegade King Bowser and the traitorous Toad Toadstool."
"What?!" Toad asked again.
Bowser raised his hands up in surrender. "Have mercy!"
Bowser? Pleading like this? Toad was starting to question his sanity again.
"Step out slowly, war criminals. Your game is over!" Lakitu sneered. Toad could faintly here noise coming from his radio, or he thought it was a faint noise. He was probably half deaf now. Bowser got out of the cart, the suspension lifting once he was out of it, and faced Lakitu with his hands still up. Through teary eyes, Bowser gave Toad a pensive glance.
"It's all over buddy," Bowser said in a soft voice Toad had never heard from the usually strident king. "I know I've cussed you out, left you behind, given you unrealistic deadlines, and eaten all of your emergency rations, but I do appreciate you. You managed to work undercover for that tyrant for months and you're the best freedom fighter a Koopa can ask for." Now that Bowser stood in the light, Toad noticed his haggard look for the first time. There were cuts and bruises on his scaly skin and he'd lost a little weight as well. His usually lush red hair was dirty and straggly. More strikingly, one of his horns had chipped.
"What are we doing again? You're right, that bomb or whatever made me stupid," Toad whispered back as Lakitu, still a distance away, continued to speak on the radio.
"We're freedom fighters," Bowser explained, "The empire must have caught wind of our plans."
"Empire? But why are we racing?"
"Because that's the only way to get a star. Remember the plan? We were gonna bust crap up together. You being a dangerous mushroom and all..."
A dangerous mushroom...
Decisively, Toad hopped in the driver seat of Bowser's kart. "Hop in!" Toad commanded.
"What are you doing?!" Bowser gasped.
"I still don't understand a thing, but we're getting out of here and I have an idea. Do it!"
Bowser jumped in the back seat and Toad stamp his foot on the gas pedal. Their cart sped off and Toad joined the traffic once more. Lakitu went hysteric behind them.
"I let go of the tractor beam and they're getting away!" Lakitu screamed in his radio. "GET BACKUP!"
Meanwhile Toad steered towards the rails on the side of the road. Toad's Turnpike was one big loop, which probably explained why the drivers on it was so restless, but it did have one exit... behind a wall however..
"Good thing we're in 'Super Mario Kart Double Dash! 64'. Take this!" Toad tossed the feather back to Bowser. "Use it...now!"
In a role reversal, Bowser unquestionably followed Toad's command. The feather item propelled them upwards, and in a swift moment they were over the wall and off of Toad's Turnpike to some other dark unnamed road.
"I'm going to be frank with you Bowser," Toad said after their safe landing. "Clearly some serious crap has went down in this world but I'm not the Toad you think I am. I was in my normal non- Death Kart world when I got warped to some desert void world called the 'Whoa Zone'." His last words predictably echoed.
"Whoa Zone?" Bowser repeated.
"No, Whoa Zon- never mind. I walked through a door and got here. So who are we rebelling against?"
"Luigi, or 'Supreme Lord Luigi' as he goes by now," Bowser said, still sounding unlike himself.
As his words sunk in, Toad failed to notice the multiple Thunder Lakitus rapidly approaching from behind.
WOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!
Toad cursed. "Not this again!"
Bowser looked back. The Lakitu's high beams, directed towards them, filled the night sky, making their shadow loom ahead of them on the road ominously. "I knew we wouldn't make it far. Luigi makes sure his solders never leave anyone behind. Same thing happened to Daisy and Toadette when they thought they could run. Again, nice working with ya," Bowser muttered.
"No!" Toad shouted defiantly. He pressed the gas pedal harder. Their speedometer creeped higher and higher. 54 mph. 55, 56...
"STOP YOUR VEHICLE!" a Lakitu announced through a megaphone.
59 mph. 60 mph. 61 mph.
"I didn't know it could go this fast!" Bowser yelled, gripping tightly. It finally started to rain.
64 mph. 65 mph. 66 mph.
"WE WILL NOW USE DEADLY FORCE!" Three red shells deployed towards Toad and Bowser, quickly catching up to their kart. Bowser looked back at the speeding projectiles apprehensively.
"We got this!" Toad screamed over the wind noise. Good thing this road was a straightaway. This was clearly going to be a drag race. Soon, they outran the red shells.
70 mph. 71 mph. 72 mph.
"DEPLOYING BLUE SHELL!"
Toad wasn't even sure why he was still driving. What was his plan? Either way, something pushed him to keep going. The same strong urge that made him open the door back in the Whoa Zone.
80 mph. 81 mph. The cart rattled at the speed it was pushed too.
"We're gonna break up!" Bowser screamed. His body was flailing in the air and the only thing keeping him with the cart was his iron grip on the bars. Toad once again became lucid. Bowser was right, they were going to die for sure. But he couldn't control himself any longer.
85 mph. 86 mph. The Blue shell, which was capable of faster speeds than red shells, had no issue keeping up.
"YOU ARE FINISHED! YOU LOSE THIS RACE!" Lakitu mocked. Laughter could be head from the flock of Lakitus behind him.
Zooom!
88 mph. In a flash, the kart left the dimension. Toad couldn't see anything. He felt himself screaming but he heard no sound. Then he felt an irritating sensation in his eyes, as if sand were in them, namely because there was. Toad was lying face down in sand. He lifted up in a jolt, dazed and confused. No cart, oddly depressive Bowser, or more jerkish than usual Lakitu. Just vast nothingness. Had he dreamed it all? Toad examined himself, his clothes were clean and his heart was beating fast. What happened was real.
But at least he no longer needed a bath...
To be continued.
Author note: I go else where with Toad's adventures in "Mario and Bowser: Frenemies Forever" chapter 6 and 9. The events there will not be canon with this story however, but if you just want to see more Whoa Zone shenanigans, go there.