After getting directions to the next door, we were back in the taxi-sub. Cappy was pacing through the air, sometimes bumping into the walls because he wasn't paying attention. As amusing as it was, I couldn't help but be curious as to why he was suddenly so lost in thought. Finally, when I was about to ask what was on his mind, he spoke;
"Did you know Tiara used to be afraid of bright lights?"
I stared at him. His eyes were drifting outside, to the fish, but they seemed out of focus, like he was looking at something in a memory, and not what was around him at that moment.
"When Tiara was younger, she took comfort in the darkness of Bonneton. It was familiar, and easy on the eyes, but one day, she was outside when the full moon was out, and it freaked her out! 'It's too bright!' She said, 'It hurts my eyes!" she said. She wasn't used to the brightness of it, so she would hide from its light, afraid it would make her go blind. I had to coax her out by saying that if it was bad enough to blind her, I would be blind, because I love looking at the moon..." he sighed wistfully, tipping to the side and relaxing his arms, "And now she can be in direct sunlight without fear...she's come so far..."
I frowned. I knew what that was like, caring about a sibling like that. It's the reason I often intentionally leave Luigi out of my "adventures", because I don't want to see him get hurt. That being said, though, Luigi and I were twins, so we grew up together, at the same time. I had no idea what it was like to watch a younger sibling grow up after you.
When I voiced this, Cappy drifted even further down, his forehead tapping against the glass of the sub, "It's not even close...I had friends who were the same age as me growing up, like Lucy, and of course I care about them as well, but when you grow up with someone younger than you, it's like finding a stranded bird with a broken wing. You want to protect them, to see them grow up strong, and to make sure they're happy. You feel like you have that power, until the bird's wing heals, and it flies away. You can't directly protect them anymore, but you never stop trying..."
Something dripped onto one of the sub's padded seats. At first I was afraid the glass was leaking, but then I realized it had fallen from Cappy himself.
He was crying.
"Mario, I'm so worried about her!" Cappy sniffled, rubbing his eyes, "That monster that took her is so horrid! And this is taking so much longer than I'd hoped! What if it's hurt her by now!? How much longer will this take!?"
I carefully stood, stepping across the floor to him. I wrapped one arm around him, trying to offer some kind of comfort. I'd lost track of how many times Peach had been kidnapped, plenty of times it wasn't even by Bowser, but she'd always come back unharmed. Tiara would be fine.
Cappy leaned into my shoulder, "You really think so?"
I used my hand to give the top of his head a few pats. His tears stopped falling, and his shaking came to a halt.
"Ugh..." Cappy wiped the rest of his tears away, "I'm sorry..."
I shook my head, pressing my hand against the glass of the sub.
"Heheh..." Cappy straightened up, his expression closer to his usual cheerfulness, "Thanks, Mario."
The sub came to a stop, and the glass covering opened.
"Well, here we are!" and just like that, he was back to his usual self.
The sand around us stretched as far as the eye could see, besides the pool of ocean we'd come from where the sub was now retreating. The Sand Kingdom could be seen in the distance, very far on the horizon. Where a random key door could be found all the way out here was beyond me, but I was ready to explore regardless, and so was Cappy.
"Alright." Cappy took his place back on my head, "Do you see anything?"
I pulled Cappy further down over my eyes to shield them from the sun. I looked for any Jaxi call points, but there were none to be found. Just sand.
"Whoa, what's that?"
I saw it, too. A large worm slid out of the sand, slithering through it as easily as a fish through water. I wonder if I could capture it? I threw Cappy at it, and amazingly enough, it stuck.
"Whoa! Be careful!" Cappy cried as I twirled in the air towards him, "This one's jittery!"
This worm was unlike anything I'd captured thus far. It had no limbs, and no eyes, but oddly enough, I could see through the sand, and move through it just fine. I never have explanations for how I can immediately pick up on a creature's natural instincts like I'd lived in their mind forever, and still be able to think like myself. Maybe that was Cappy's doing.
"Nice! Now we can travel much faster than if we were on foot!"
He was right, the sand worm was able to travel at near breakneck speeds that even rivaled the speed of Jaxi. It made it much easier to sweep the desert for the red door. Unfortunately, I couldn't distinguish any light or colors as the sand worm, so I would travel a great distance, then jump out of the worm to assess the landscape, then recapture the same worm, or capture a new one nearby. Finally, I hit something in the sand.
"Hey! Look at that!"
I jumped from the worm to see what Cappy was looking at. The red door, buried under several layers of sand. I began to push the sand out of the way, when I suddenly fell backwards out of shock.
"OW!" a chunk of my health was taken out, and I was back down to 2/3.
"What the-!?" Cappy reached for the door before he recoiled, "The door is burning hot!"
I waved my arm around in the air, trying to get the burning feeling in my fingers to stop. This door was so hot, it triggered the same response as when I fell into lava! And I hadn't even been immersed in it, it just touched the tips of my fingers! If we tried to unlock the door with the key, it would melt before the door could unlock! What was going on!?
"Ah!" tiny cartoonish sweat marks flew from Cappy's head, "Mario, are you okay!?"
"Yeah..." I rubbed my palm over the burn marks on my fingers. They were taking a long time to fade.
"How are we going to open this door if we can't even touch it!?" Cappy tried to reach for the door again, but once again recoiled before he'd even touched it, "Can the sand worms touch it?"
I tested the theory, throwing Cappy at one of the nearby worms, but upon ramming into the door, the worm disappeared and booted me out.
"Here, lemme see the key."
I obliged, handing it to him carefully. He shifted it in his arms so the handle was toward the door, then carefully brought it closer. The key began to glow, then slowly started to melt.
"Okay, the key seems pretty strong." he set it down carefully on the ground, "I have an idea. I'll be right back." and then he pushed himself into his flat red cap form before twirling away, in the direction of the ocean. All I had to do now was wait for him to get back.
Once he was out of sight over the sandy horizon, the ground started to rumble, pushing more sand over the door. I quickly grabbed the key before it could fall against the scalding door, stashing it away to keep it safe. What was happening? Would I have to fight something without Cappy's help?
My suspicions were confirmed when a giant sand worm burst out of the sand, roaring in anger. It tried to attack me, so I sidestepped and ran. Not feeling the weight of Cappy on my head made me feel unprotected, like he was my armor, but there was a time when I didn't have the help of Cappy, or Luma, or even my hammer. One time, I only had my bare fists to protect me, and I managed to save the day anyway.
So how did I do it?
I didn't have long to find a strategy. The sand worm had begun to manipulate the sand so it was closer to quicksand, dark and muddy, pulling me down. I couldn't jump very well, but out of the corner of my eye, I caught something on the worm's body as it whizzed past me; Its body was covered in tiny ligaments which it used to push through the sand, and they had grooves on them that I could potentially use to climb. Deciding to roll with the idea, I waited for the worm to come back around, then I reached out with my hand to grab the grooves. It was hard to hold on, the constant sand and shifting of the worm's body making my hands hurt since I didn't want to fall, but I didn't have a better option without Cappy. Finally, I managed to climb on the worm's back. It noticed my progress, and so it lurched forward, trying to throw me off. In its haste, however, it slammed its head against the red door, burning its face.
It quickly retreated when this process was repeated, (my hands feeling very weak and sore) leaving a shining multi-moon behind.
It was at this moment when Cappy returned, upside-down, with his inside full of water. I watched in awe as he carefully poured this water onto the door, cooling it down so it was no longer glowing so bright, and releasing a lot of steam.
"Awesome!" Cappy tested the temperature of the door, and found it to be acceptable, "This should be cool enough to..." his eyes fell on the multi-moon, and one of his lower eyelids lifted in a kind of disbelieved grimace, "Did...did I miss something?"
I waved an arm dismissively as I plucked the multi-moon out of the air. It was pretty intense, but I've been through worse.
"That's, um...not reassuring at all, but okay..." Cappy dropped onto my head as I pulled the key out to fit it into the lock, "I just can't leave you alone, can I?"
I shrugged, sliding the key into the lock and twisting it before it could transfer too much of the remaining heat to my hands. I kicked the door open this time, reaching in to get the new key. This one was two-toned, shifting in varying shades of gold, but still without the varying rainbow colors of the black castle door.
"Still?" Cappy visibly deflated, "Is this going to take as long as the first time?"
The concern in Cappy's voice physically hurt me. We could do this, those two will be fine. We just have to keep going.
"You-you're right!" Cappy straightened up again, "So, how are we going to find the location of this key's door?"
That was a good question. There were no natives here to point us in the right direction.
"Wait, what's that?"
I turned in that direction. Cappy flew off my head to point across the desert, "See? Over there? It looks like the Oasis Kingdom!"
I narrowed my eyes. It was!
"Let's go over there! Maybe there's a door that we missed!" he took his usual spot shortly after.
I used a desert worm to get over there, and then I abandoned it when I reached the water. The sun was high overhead, getting close to evening, so the water would be warm enough to swim through. I decided to look under the water first, since it would be too cold later.
"Hey, there are fish around here too." Cappy said, "You can use those to look around!"
So I did. I swam through the main body of the lake first, and then I explored its separate canals. I happen to swim over the place where The Odyssey had crashed, when something caught my eye under all the blackened metal.
I jumped out of the fish to investigate.
"Huh? Did you see something?" Cappy had been dozing.
I pointed with one finger, among the rubble. I dove deeper, pushing the large slabs of metal out of the way, and coming up for air fairly often, before I got to the thing that I'd spotted; A doorknob. It was made of gold, so it hadn't rusted under the water, and it gleamed under the light of the sun. I pulled the key from my pocket, and carefully unlocked the door, swinging it open. There wasn't just one tiny room behind the door, though. It was a whole tunnel that drilled into the Earth far enough that it was too dark to see the bottom. I went back to the surface for air.
"Wow." Cappy began to pace through the air as I treated the water around me, "That door didn't have a key behind it! Maybe this is the last one!"
We could only hope.
After grabbing another fish, I plunged into the water, sinking down further and further until it was impossible to see through the darkness. Something was going to jump out at me, I could tell.
Suddenly, a light was flicked on, and an angler fish opened its massive jaws.
