That was the closest Mario had come to dying in nine years. He hadn't missed the feeling, but then again, he always knew this wouldn't be a walk in the park. The cable dropped him off at a station at the mouth of Kamek Island, he had finally made it. Time had come to get the girl and get the hell out of here. Yet, Mario thought, as he advanced through, was it not his job to take care of Bowser as well? Or was that a job now better left to the people of the Kingdom of the Koopahari or other nations in Sarasaland?

Walking into Kamek Island, Mario could hardly say he was surprised by the greenery that was everywhere. Yet unlike the rest of Delfino Isle, here it was untamed, left to overgrow whereas everywhere else it was strictly maintained and placed under serious care. This was like a mini jungle. Why was the girl locked up in this place? The first wall before him was blocked off, almost like this place used to be a tourist attraction.

The wall couldn't stop Mario, though, it was small enough that he easily jumped past all of the barbed wire and signs of death. The base of the Statue of Kamek was kind of built like a building out of Washington, D.C. with all of the arches and stone white Greek pillars. The inside was another circular room – the entire city must have been full of these – with a statue of Lena and more signs declaring that everything had been blocked off. There was disarray everywhere here, almost as if it hadn't been used in years. There were lockers with stuff still in them, almost as if everything was operating one day and then workers were told not to come to work the next. Some signs were talking about a specimen, calling it dangerous. Was that all this girl was to Bowser? A specimen?

There was a red line drawn in paint before a door, like it was a line in the sand not to block. Yet what did it matter to Mario? He crossed the line and entered the dark hallway, lit only by flickers of electricity. On the wall before him was a chart showing growth projections of the girl. At the end of the hallway was a room containing a gigantic machine out which electricity blared all around with the label Shine Stars Passive. There were three levers at the machine, dubbed transposes. Unsure what they did, Mario felt a curiosity coming over himself and pulled them. They opened up a seal over three containers in which three different items were stationed.

The one on the left was labelled age four and contained a small dinosaur plush toy. The middle one was labelled age eleven and contained the book Dinotopia. The one on the right was labelled age thirteen and contained… homework? Mario shrugged and just continued on to the next room, which wound up being a hallway divided in two sides. The first side was lit by a blacklight. No, it was a darkroom, one of those used to develop film. There were pictures there, hung to dry that had dried a long time ago. They were of a girl with black hair. Some of them appeared to be in some state of undress and others seemed to be of her doing some strange activity that Mario couldn't rightly make out.

Exiting the room and going to one on the other side, Mario entered it and there was a projector. The video it played was of old quality and Mario couldn't really make anything out. The first one was of a little girl, inspecting her surroundings. Several other clips played thereafter, but Mario just… he couldn't watch. It felt like he was watching some conspiracy theory video. It was disgusting, how Bowser had taken a life and just done this to it. Mario felt like smashing something, but he couldn't, he just kept on his path. He was almost there. He wanted to kill Bowser, but he couldn't. This world, it needed to take care of its own problems sometimes.

He couldn't be their saviour all the time.

Turning back, Mario pushed open an iron door, like it was built for a bank vault. He understood he was in an operating room immediately, raising his disgust higher. There was a dentistry-like chair, more notes, charts, x-rays, tissues covered with blood. There was research all over the room. This was… this was terrible. How could Bowser do this to someone else? Especially a little girl. How could Birdo sacrifice herself for a man who did this? How could Iggy and Wendy stroll around their father's city knowing he did this?

"What the hell are they doing to her?" Mario found himself saying.

One note caught his attention: 'Due to chronological anomaly of the Fire Crystal and the Quartz Charm existing at once, subject's aging was altered. She is now a composite being of several timelines. Had she not been placed under the stress of the Shine Sprites, she would be thirty-four years of age today as opposed to nineteen.' A composite being? What did that mean? This girl was thirty-four, but she appeared nineteen?

Mario couldn't stay in this room any longer. It was suffocating. Pushing back through the vault door and continuing through the hallway this time, Mario made it to the end, entering a giant almost hollow chamber filled only with necessary machinery and a blackboard. Before the blackboard was a table on which a Catch Card SP was placed and written on it was a chart, whose y-axis measured power readings and x-axis measured the specimen's age. That was all in white chalk. In yellow chalk it was written boldly: facility unsafe. Something had happened here, Mario just hoped he hadn't become irradiated. Mario hit play on the Catch Card, hearing Bowser's familiar voice once more.

"It is one thing to imagine one's future, it is another to see it. I have seen the seeds of fire that will prepare the other dimension for the coming of Secondus. But Daisy shall sow those seeds, not I. I will fall before the job is done… but she will take up my mantle. Kamek is calling me home. I feel his love in every tumor, because they are the train which returns me to the Boolossus. And I go with joy, knowing that my son will take my earthly place. But the Plumber is coming to lead my Kumo astray. I will not board that train until she is safe from his deceptions. I failed once but I will not fail again… this time I've made sure that she isn't who he remembers. She is not Daisy."

Daisy. Mario hadn't really thought about her at all since he'd gotten here. He hadn't thought about her since the days after he'd last seen her. He wondered how she was. She'd probably retaken the throne of the Kingdom of the Koopahari and was probably sitting in Dinohattan right now, fixing that city. She probably knew that Bowser was back, how could she not? The construction of Delfino Isle had been done by Bowser while he reigned over her people. Maybe he should've visited her, these last nine years, he should've checked on her every now and then. She wouldn't have been idle, he knew. She wouldn't have just been waiting for Luigi. He hoped she was safe.

Yet, as he made his way through the room, his thoughts distracted him, and he stopped thinking of the girl who he thought would be his sister-in-law one day. He went down the twin staircase at the ends of the room and sullenly avoided the machinery. He noted how, though, even thought it was metallic, there was a metal glow being sucked in and out of the various gears in the room. Passing into an elevator, Mario pushed the button and enjoyed the ride up.

He used the long elevator ride to gather his thoughts. This was about the Kumo… the Kumo – Bowser had called Daisy that once, before Mario drowned him. Yet this Kumo was also a specimen, a toy with which Bowser was trying to continue his plans for world domination. Bowser would be defeated again, thought Mario, but not by him. He couldn't keep doing this. He didn't want to. As much as he wanted to bash Bowser's skull in, he just wanted to go back home again more.

When the elevator finally stopped, Mariio emerged in a tight clean almost sterilized white room with a checkerboard floor leading to a hallway with a wooden flooring. At the end of the hallway was a tablet, a specimen tracker it was labelled. There were various room names listed there, with lights alongside them. The blinking indicated that the girl was currently in her dressing room.

"That's where I need to go," Mario muttered and he exited the door to his left. There was a giant metal dome around him while he stood on a sturdy wooden walkway below which was the full length of the tower. If he were to jump off, he would probably die from various impacts with the many machines below him rather than impact with the ground. The girl herself seemed to be contained in this chamber within the center of the tower, whose large metal exterior the walkway was built around.

Heading down the walkway, Mario entered the first door he saw, which was another vault like one. It closed behind him and then bursts of air blasted out at Mario, as if sanitizing him before letting him proceed through another vault-door in front of him. There, a window was blocked by a metal casing. There was a camera pointing towards it and a lever. Mario pulled the lever and the seal lifted, showing the dressing room.

There was a girl there, wearing a white shirt, a blue ribbon and a blue skirt. Yet before Mario could see her, she'd left the room. He only got a glimpse of her black hair. Could she see him, he wondered? No, it was a two-way mirror, the seal was just to preserve it. She had a picture of Paris in the dressing room, Mario knew the Eifel Tower from anywhere. Well, if it wasn't Paris then it was Vegas.

The door to Mario's left opened up and he darted through it, he needed to get to the girl. He was back at the specimen tracker tablet. She was in the dining room now? Going back over the wooden walkway, Mario passed through another set of sanitation doors, opened up another two-way mirror seal and got a view into her dining room. The girl's back was to Mario and she was looking out at a painting of Paris… she started pulling on the painting, she was ripping it apart from the seams of the canvas. Yet there was a warping noise growing louder as she pulled and in a flash of bright light, there was a portal opened up in the middle of the room.

"Woah!" cried Mario, as the girl stepped back before the portal she'd opened up. "What is…" The portal was black and white for a second, but then the busy road colourized and opened up before the girl. She was about to enter it, but the loud ringing of a firetruck interrupted and came blaring at her. When it was about to collide, the portal faded, and she was left bracing for impact. When she realized none came, Mario watched as she looked around. He still couldn't see her face, but her movements indicated that she was… disappointed. She put her hands to her face and moved on into the next room. "Whatever that was, it's got nothing to do with the job at hand," Mario told himself.

To Mario's left were two doors in fact, one which would return him to the walkway and one which appeared to lead him further up. Perhaps there was a way to actually get the girl out of this place from there. The wooden steps led up into another vault door which took him up steel steps. This job was getting worse all the time, he thought. There was once again another lever sealing a two-way mirror. Behind the mirror, though, Mario could hear singing… the girl's voice was familiar, but more youthful and innocent than any voice he'd ever heard.

Pulling the lever, Mario saw her looking out of a gigantic window, the intense light making her silhouette barely visible. The distance between herself and him was considerable as well, she was above twin steps below which there was a gigantic bookcase. Continuing to another vault door to his left, Mario passed through a hallway now filled with a lot of heavy machinery. The vault door at the end of the hallway did not open automatically, forcing Mario to pull the valve, which even with his enhanced strength was shut very tight. Yet when he pulled it open, it nearly slammed shut on his hand, forcing him to push it up with his shoulders. "Holy shit," he breathed, when he finally got out.

Standing at the top of the Statue of Kamek, Mario was being pummeled by the wind. There was a small walkway leading from the shoulder of the statue to the ear, where a small door was swinging inwards. All right, Mario thought, moving slowly. He could do this. The wind was intense. He didn't want to be knocked down. Inside, he could hear the heavy hum of machinery all surrounding a tiny chamber with a smooth golden floor piece. There was another door across the floor piece, likely the way in to the girl's room.

"Oh God!" screamed Mario as the chains holding the gold flooring up snapped. He went tumbling downwards, trying to catch onto the bookshelf below him. Out of breath, Mario pulled himself up over the bookshelf and he came face to face with… a much younger Daisy? That was what Bowser meant. She wasn't Daisy. But she was. "Uh, hello?" asked Mario but she just shrieked and tossed back the book she was holding. She was… different, Mario thought as he fell backwards.

Daisy must have picked the book up, because the next thing Mario knew, she was throwing it at him. She was running down the stairs with another book in hand, which she promptly launched at his face once he got in range. "Knock if off! Stop it! I'm not here to hurt you!" shouted Mario. "Will you stop it?" He put his hand up as Daisy grabbed a giant book and approached him, as if to whack him into oblivion. "Stop!"

"Who are you?" asked Daisy, holding the book above her own head. What?

"It's a… me, Mario!" cried Mario. "We're friends. I've come to get you out of here." He put his hand on her shoulder, but she recoiled immediately.

"Get away!" she cried, and Mario grabbed her hand. He held it gently, but he didn't let go until she'd calmed down. When he felt her ease up, he let go. She put her hand to his face. "Are you real?"

"Real enough," said Mario. Before the could continue their conversation, steam began pouring out of a golden statue of Bowser to their left. It's eyes glowed yellow as it hummed out a strange tune through harsh whistling.

"He's coming," she whispered and then turned to him. "You've got to go!" She started pushing him away, towards the corner of the room as if to hide him.

"Why?"

"You don't want to be here when he gets here!" she said, sternly, but quietly. Then she swung her head up to the ceiling, addressing the hole that Mario fell through. "Just a minute! I'm getting dressed!"

"I can get you out of here," said Mario as she started swinging around wildly. She was panicking.

"There's no way out, trust me," she said. "I've looked." Then she got a strained look on her face again and turned up to the hole once more. "Stop it! You're too impatient! That's enough!"

"What about this?" asked Mario and he pulled out the key with the red coin symbol.

"What about it?" she asked, half paying attention, more continually looking upwards.

"This is the way out, isn't it?" he asked. It had to be, why else would he have gotten he key in the first place? He hadn't thought to use it anywhere else he'd been in this wretched city so far.

"What, what are you…?" she hesitated, looking at him. Then she looked at the key with recognition. "Give it to me!" She grabbed it and twirled it in her hand. It was the way out. It had to be. She ran to a gigantic vault door at the end of the room and put the key in it. This vault door was different than the other ones, this one was like that which hid atomic formulae. The key twirled and the doors gears – engraved with Count Bleck's name – twirled open, revealing a passage. "It's a way out!" She quickly darted in without Mario, as the whistling started to get so much louder that Mario could actually hear it from above. Pushing the door open, Mario got in the passageway himself. "Come on! This way!" Yet, as he went down the stairs, he almost fell off. Something collided into the top of the tower and rubble from the ceiling of the passageway started to chip away. "It's his job to keep me locked up in here!" said Daisy.

"We'll see about that!" said Mario, trying to reassure her from a threat he didn't even know the name of.

They continued downwards, emerging on the same wooden walkway that Mario was in earlier. Whatever was attacking the Statue of Kamek was doing it with more ferocity now, a wooden bar slammed to the ground in front of Mario. He could hear the shrill whistling, it was so loud. It was almost a roar. "Who are you?" Daisy asked. "Why did you come here?" Another assault on the statue and sparks went flying everywhere. She started running faster than before, getting into the observation room with the old camera and soon into the hallway Mario entered this level from. "This way! Come on!"

Whatever thing was outside hit the statue once again, sending Mario flying to the ground with impact. "Wait!" yelled Mario and he started crawling backwards as the metal frame blocking him from the outside started to shred away, the beams blocking their path to the elevator. Rounding out on the walkway once more, Mario tried to catch up to Daisy but the assault on the statue continued, splitting the walkway in half. Luckily Mario could jump, he didn't want gravity to claim his life.

"Call the elevator!" yelled Mario as she made it to their destination.

"What?"

"Press the button!"

She did so, but she'd also finally noticed the two-way mirror leading into the rooms that she'd lived in. "What is this?" she asked as the whistling got louder. Mario was unsure if she was asking him or herself. "They were watching me? All this time… why? Why did they put me in here? What am I?" Then she turned to Mario. "What am I!"

"You're the girl who's getting out of this tower!" he told her, and the bell of the elevator came. As they approached it, waiting for it to open up, they were suddenly pushed back as a giant black scaly hand ripped through the elevator. Daisy scampered back to the wall, hugging it as Mario came face to face with a giant black saurian face, with its conical teeth bared with anger and its red eyes flashing with hatred. He threw multitude of fireball after fireball at the thing, but it had no effect. Luckily, before the dragon could force its way in and promptly eat Mario, a large mass of metal came crashing down on it, forcing it away.

Yet a path had opened up for them, revealing one built far below the walkway with a staircase leading upwards. "This way!" Mario told Daisy, grabbing her hand and deftly jumping down there. She couldn't survive the jump on her own, but with his enhanced abilities, they could get there relatively unhurt.

"We have to keep moving!" said Daisy as they continued to look for another path. "He's tearing the building apart!"

"Be careful, Daisy!" warned Mario.

"Daisy? Nobody ever calls me that! How do you even know that name?" she asked as she ran up the staircase ahead of him.

"Not now!" said Mario, they could deal with her amnesia later.

"There's a door up here!" said Daisy, reaching it before Mario. It was a vault door sealed by a valve. Rushing and using his full strength, Mario easily turned it to open. It was another path to the outside of the Statue of Kamek he soon figured as the wind blasted away at him. He let Daisy in through him first and then let himself out. "Which way?"

"Up!" he shouted, but he didn't know. He just didn't know anywhere else he could go from here. With the wind blasting at him, Mario followed Daisy as she headed up, catching glimpses of the dragon attacking the Statue of Kamek and catching glimpses of its destruction of said statue. Yet as soon as they made it to the top, it was as if the statue had been decapitated as Daisy went flying downwards into the empty open air.

Mario grabbed her hand as she screamed wildly, panicking with true fright in her eyes. They passed a set of cables as Mario noticed the dragon swing behind them. Heating up his hands and hoping the impact didn't snap all the bones in his wrist, Mario grabbed at the next set of cables. Like a train on a track, he wildly went forth, with Daisy hugging on to him for dear life. There was a giant bridge running adjacent to them, with their cables holding on to several support towers.

As they raced path, though, they found themselves to be no match for the dragon as it smashed into a support tower. Their cable turned leftwards through another support tower and then backwards for the bridge, giving them a full view of what used to be the Statue of Kamek. The head of the statue fell from its former position and collided into the bridge, severely damaging the structure. When the cabling turned again, attaching itself onto the bridge, Mario saw the dragon race ahead of them again.

Unfortunately for them, the bridge now also began to collapse, no thanks to the dragon and the cabling loosened, then ended. Mario screamed for dear life, trying to hold onto an also screaming Daisy, yet the wind force was too much and pushed them apart. They fell for the water below and Mario wondered for a second if he was going to go splat when he hit the ocean. He didn't, but he went so deep that when the dragon came in to kill him, the pressure… forced it out? It was a giant massive black dragon… oh God, maybe if he died now… maybe Luigi would collect his soul.