"Mahawawa Jungle Trek?... No… Mahowjawe?... Grr… Yo, Luigi, get over here!"
Luigi just rolled his eyes as he walked over to where Waluigi was standing. Apparently, his purple-clad rival was having issues reading the name of the next attraction.
"What's up, Waluigi?" Luigi asked, pointing to the overhead sign, "Having trouble reading that?"
"Heck yeah!" Waluigi replied, "It's in Yiddish or something! You're a nerd, translate this stupid thing!"
Luigi took one look at the sign and quickly read it out loud.
"It says Maharaja Jungle Trek… Apparently, you have the same issues that Wario has when it comes to reading stuff…"
"HEY! Whadaya talkin' about, bub?" Wario shouted, "I can read any sign fluently, unlike twig-head over there!"
"Uh, huh…" Mario mumbled, "You sure handled El Rio de Tiempo very well…"
"Well… Um… Besides that… And that doesn't count, anyway, 'cuz Spanish is stupid!"
"Right… Let's just go in, okay?" Luigi suggested.
"Agreed," Daisy responded, walking ahead, "I've reached my acceptance limit for idiots today."
"Wha?... Hey! I'm not an idiot!" Wario countered, "Now, Waluigi… He's an idiot, but I'm not!"
Waluigi immediately shot Wario a death glare, but before either one of them could leap at the other's jugular, Peach grabbed them both by the ears and dragged them into the jungle trek.
"Ow! Hey, lady! Let go of my ear!" Wario demanded, "For crying out loud, I'm not in preschool here!"
"Gee, you could've fooled me…" Peach snipped back.
Once everyone finally entered the Maharaja Jungle Trek, they walked through some dense forest until they came upon the first exhibit: the Komodo dragon.
"Whoa! That's a big looking thing!" Luigi commented.
"Yep," Mario agreed, "Komodo dragons are the largest lizards in the world."
"Besides, Bowser, you mean?"
"Um… I always thought he was more of a turtle or something…" Mario mumbled, scratching his head, "… Remind me to ask him what he is exactly the next time I fight him."
"Yeah, well, this is boring," Waluigi dead-panned, "when are we going to reach the actual ride?"
"Ride?" Peach asked.
"What? Are you a moron? This is the waiting queue for a ride, right?"
"Um… No…" Daisy responded, "This is walking trail to see all the Asian animals. This isn't a real 'ride'."
"WHAT!? YOU MEAN ALL WE'RE DOIN' IS LOOKIN' AT A BUNCH OF FURBALLS!?"
"Technically, the Komodo dragon isn't furry. He's scaly…" Luigi corrected.
"I don't care! If there isn't a ride, I'm outta here!"
And with that, Waluigi promptly stormed off.
"Uh, huh…" Wario mumbled, "… You know what? I agree with him. See ya, losers!"
Wario then quickly followed Waluigi out of the jungle trek, leaving only the Mario Bros. and the Princesses behind to go through the rest of the trail.
"Okay, that was weird…" Mario trailed off.
"When are the Wario Bros. not weird?" Daisy asked hypothetically.
"Touché… Anyway, let's keep moving, shall we?"
The gang continued down the trail until they reached a rather large looking pagoda. Adorning the entire outside of it were various artistic renditions of bats, giving an all-too-obvious clue as to what was inside.
"Erm…" Luigi murmured, "There are gonna be real bats in there, huh? Not audio-animatronics, right?"
"Yep," Mario replied, "but don't worry, they're just fruit bats. They wouldn't even think of sinking their fangs into someone."
"Nice to know…" Luigi gulped, nervously opening the door.
Once inside, they discovered that the pavilion was divided into two sections: one containing the bats, and the other just containing info on them, in case one did not want to view the bats so… up-close.
"Well, it looks like you can avoid the bats after all, Luigi," Peach began, "you want to wait for us out here until we're done?"
Luigi thought for a moment, looked at Daisy, and then looked back at the entrance to the 'bat room' with a determined look on his face.
"No thanks. If I can handle Expedition: Everest, I can handle a couple of fruit bats. Let's-a go."
Without a second's hesitation, Luigi walked into the bat room. Inside, the room was also divided into two sections: one where the guests watched the bats, and the other where the bats flew around. As it turned out, the two sections were separated not by a cage or a pane of glass, but simply by a series of columns about three feet apart that went halfway down from the ceiling and a solid wall the rest of the way to the floor. Cautiously, Luigi stuck his head in-between the pillars.
"Hmm…" Luigi pondered, "There's nothing solid keeping them over there, I wonder why the bats aren't flying around in---"
"WHOA!" Mario shouted, "LUIGI! LOOK OUT!"
Luigi quickly decided it was probably better not to look and just pull his head back into the other side of the room. Once he did so, he caught a glimpse of a bat swooping down and landing right on the other side of the divider, where Luigi's head was moments before.
"That was a close one!" Luigi gasped, "Thanks, bro.!"
"No prob!" Mario answered, giving him a thumbs up, "Just looking out for my younger brother!"
"Tee hee!" Peach giggled, waving her camera at Luigi, "The look on your face there was priceless! And I got a picture of it! That one's definitely going into the scrapbook!"
Rather than replying to Peach's tease, Luigi turned his attention back to the bat, observing it looking at him funnily, then spreading its wings and flying back towards its section of the room. Upon seeing it extend its wings, Luigi promptly figured out the answer to his own question.
"Did you see the wingspan on that thing!?" Luigi asked, pointing at the bat, which was now feasting on a sliver of fruit, "It must have been at least five feet long! No wonder they can't fly in here! If they tried, they'd lose their wings trying to fly between these poles!"
"Hmm, your right, Luigi!" Daisy commented, sticking her head as far into the other side as possible, "That's a pretty cool idea Disney had there, eh? They really know how to make the connection between the humans and the animals virtually unnoticeable!"
"Daisy! Get your head back in here now!" Peach demanded, "I don't want some bat taking out half your face!"
"Hmph… Spoilsport…" Daisy sighed, retracting her head back into the other room, "Before this vacation is over, I'm gonna show you what its like to be a little more on the wild side."
"And I'm going to show you what its like to actually have the dignity of a princess!"
"You already did! You dragged me into that spa, remember?"
"That doesn't count!"
"Why not?"
"Because… Because…"
Mario and Luigi quickly lost interest in the playful quarrel the girls were having and looked at the bats again.
"So…" Luigi began, "Why do ya think the bat dove at me like that? I guess the phrase 'blind as a bat' is real, huh?"
"Not really," Mario answered, "Although they do indeed have poor vision, they are able to detect their surroundings by making noises and listening to them echo as they bounce off of things, like a natural sonar. Some bats are even able to catch insects as they are flying through the air! Chances are, he probably thought your nose was a huge fruit or something."
"Um… Okay…" Luigi replied, looking at his nose, "But my nose doesn't look like a fruit!"
"Well, its round like one, and that's probably all the bat 'saw'. Hey, I'm only saying they're not totally blind, I'm not saying they're intelligent."
"How do you know all this stuff, anyway?" Luigi asked, "Did E. Gadd give you lectures on animals or what?"
"Well, I had to take some biology courses when I was getting my doctrine," Mario explained, "Did you know that I'm only a few credits away from being a legitimate veterinarian?"
"Sigh… You're such a nerd, 'Dr.' Mario…" Luigi teased, giving his brother a playful knock on the shoulder, "I'm still learning the ropes of mechanical engineering by hanging around in E. Gadd's garage."
"Yeah, well, you still seem to know a lot about mechanics. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have been able to fix our Double-Dash kart in time for the All-Cup, remember?"
"Oh yeah… Heh, heh…" Luigi responded, recalling the rather humorous memory, "Well, I wouldn't have had to do that if you didn't decide to see what happened if you used a blue shell in first place! You know, for someone who has a doctrine… Anyway, I guess it's time we moved on, eh?"
"Right! Hey, ladies?"
Mario turned back to Peach and Daisy, who were still debating over something or other. At this point, however, they seemed to be wrapping things up with some sort of agreement.
"So it's a deal then!" Daisy declared, "You'll do something tomboyish with me, and I'll do something girly with you, agreed?"
"Agreed!" Peach replied, shaking Daisy's hand.
"Um, what's up?" Luigi asked, "Finally settled your little quibble?"
"Yep!" Daisy answered, "Now let's get outta here! This place is starting to get a little boring!"
Although no one could quite understand how a room full of bats could ever become 'boring', they did agree that it was time to leave the bat pavilion behind. Moving onward from the pagoda, they found themselves in the ruins of an ancient Asian temple… and it was roaming with tigers!
"Heh heh…" Luigi chuckled, tapping on the huge glass window separating them from the tigers, "I guess even Disney realized that safety was more important than discreetness here."
"No kidding," Mario agreed, "I'd rather play it safe as well when it comes to things that eat other animals… and humans."
"Eh, I'm pretty sure they're well fed," Daisy countered, looking at a tiger lying lazily in the shade of a tree, "they probably wouldn't bother with us either way."
"Still I'd rather not take any chances," Peach concluded as she pulled out her camera again, "especially when I want to take a good picture of them! Okay you big cats, say cheese!"
The tigers didn't really respond to Peach's call. Most of the pictures she took either had them not facing the camera, yawning, or looking dead-on with seemingly complete indifference. Mario looked over Peach's shoulder and glanced at a few of the pictures on the screen as she scrolled through them again.
"Hmm… Not a photogenic bunch, are they?" Mario joked.
"Right, but it'll have to do," Peach answered with a sigh, putting the camera back in her purse, "you have to admit, though, the yawning ones are funny."
After the tigers, it wasn't much longer until they found themselves walking out the exit of the jungle trek and back into the park.
"Well that was fun," Luigi commented, "we got some pictures, we saw a giant lizard, I nearly got my face flattened by a low-flying bat… Not a bad nature trail, if I do say so myself. So, what's next?"
"Well, the first order of business is, of course, to find the Two Stooges that ditched us on the trek…" Daisy replied.
"How are we going to find them?" Peach asked, "We were in there for quite a while, they could be anywhere!"
"Simple," Mario assured, "look for someone doing something really stupid. That's where we'll find them."
Sure enough, Mario was right. After about five minutes of searching, the group found Wario and Waluigi, completely loaded down with various snacks and drinks, standing in front of a series of Asian ruins that was teeming with howler monkeys. As they approached, one of the monkeys made a bellowing call that was so loud, could probably be heard on the other side of the park! Wario, however, wasn't impressed.
"You call that loud, you Diddy Kong knock-off?" Wario sneered, "Here, watch. I'll show you how it's done!"
With that, Wario swallowed a huge gulp of the soda he was holding, waited a second, and then released a deafening belch that was just as loud, if not louder, than the howler monkey's call. The monkeys seemed to enjoy this, as they all began hollering in unison after Wario's act.
"See, you dopes?" Waluigi announced, "THAT'S how it's done! Give a big hand for him, will ya?"
The rest of the group simply remained silent, not so much from shock, but because they simply couldn't come up with anything to say that hadn't already been said about the Wario Bros. Eventually, Mario was able to come up with something.
"Hey, Luigi…" Mario mumbled.
"Yeah?"
"You know, I don't believe in evolution, but…" Mario paused as he looked at Wario, Waluigi, and the monkeys, "… I think I'm beginning to see why people would think that we came from monkeys."
Author's Note: Phew! Talk about cutting it close! I know I've been doing that a lot with this story (resulting in somewhat sparse updates), but things at home have been rather hectic these past few months, so I've been focused on things a little bit more important than fanfictions. That doesn't mean I've forgotten my little schedule: I still plan to update at LEAST once a month. However, just hang with me as I have to push that self-imposed rule to the very limit.