V: MISSING

The day was dawning on Toad Town. Despite the recent events, the city was calm; people were getting on with their lives, trying to forget that the proclaimed hero of the kingdom – missing for a day now – was charged with murder, and that a strange earthquake interrupted the trial before announcing his sentence. But everyone still had in mind that a new phenomenon could, once again, ruin the peacefulness.

Luigi left his home a few minutes ago to go to the castle. Yoshi, who had nowhere to stay in Toad Town, did not want to make the trip to his island and needed to know more about what happened to Mario, so he slept at the castle. He and Peach had not seen him since he got sucked in by the painting of the Aquarium Room, whereas Luigi only had a summary after he had joined them. They had a vague knowledge of Jolly Roger Bay, not as much as Mario; that was why they refused to jump into the painting, not to mention that they did not know how to get back since Jolly Roger Bay was far from the city.

Luigi arrived right when Yoshi woke up. The latter had been sleeping in the guest room; a room recognizable by its three identical paintings representing snowmen.

"Hey, anything new?" Yoshi said while yawning.

"No, I just got here. Where's Peach?"

"I think she's still asleep."

Yoshi straightened up on his bed, while Luigi sat on the one in front of him.

"How are you doing?" Luigi asked.

"I've seen better days."

"What do you mean?"

"Still having weird dreams. I think it has a connection with the other visions."

"I thought those visions were bullshit?"

"Let me remind you that, of the three I remember, two of them have been confirmed, and there is evidence to support the third one."

"Okay, okay, what did you dream about?"

"I can't remember exactly. Just two guys fighting against each other. There's no point in asking me more details; if I could remember, I would have told you already." Yoshi added when he saw his friend opening his mouth.

An awkward silence settled in the room and seemed endless. Both knew it was useless to discuss about a vision with no actual memories. What was important was that there was no bad news for Mario, nor for the masked man.

Yet… "I still don't understand. Why was the painting activated?" Luigi resumed to break that silence that was bothering them.

"We can't know that. The question to ask is rather whether it's still working, and whether the others are too."

"No, it does not." The answer came neither from Luigi nor Yoshi. The door was opened; Peach just arrived, head down, rubbing her eye. "I tried. I took some rocks outside and threw them at the painting to see if any of them would disappear inside, but they all bounced off the painting, as if I threw them against the wall."

She raised her head and lowered her hand. The eye she was rubbing was a black eye. Yoshi held back from laughing, but that was not enough and he let out a noise that Peach heard. In return, she glared at him with a frown.

"However, something I didn't expect happened."

Yoshi became serious again as she said that, paying attention to anything related to the painting. She raised her other hand and showed them that she was holding pieces of paper.

"The painting started to make some sorts of wave, just like when Mario entered it, and these sheets came out." She put them on the table in the centre of the room. They immediately stood up to look at them. But there was a problem. "Don't try, they're wet. I can't understand a word of what's written on them." Peach added.

Yoshi did not hide his disappointment while returning to his bed. Peach continued to stare at the sheets, even though she was not trying to decrypt them.

Luigi, on the other hand, was trying to analyse what were now just incomprehensible lines. "You said you don't know where they came from?" He asked the princess.

"No. I just threw some rocks, one of them came back straight in my eye." She stopped a few moments to give Yoshi a mean look, already chuckling again. "Then, when I reopened it, the painting was doing its weird waves, and the sheets came out."

Luigi was still looking at every corner of the sheets to try and figure something out. "I don't think they appeared by chance." He began pacing the floor. "In case you're wondering, I don't understand anything that's written, just like you. But if they appeared through a painting that got reactivated for some reason – that we don't know yet – it's not for nothing. These sheets must have something to do with the recent events."

"How can you know?" Peach asked in a tone of surprise, showing that she had not reached this conclusion yet.

"I don't have any evidence of that, and I probably won't until we know what's written there. But this looks obvious; I mean, in two days, the painting got reactivated, which didn't happen since Bowser has taken over the castle, it sucked Mario in against his own will, and now it sends us sheets? Usually, when the painting does that kind of waves when no one's been in it, it means that someone is about to get back…" For a few seconds, he stared at the wall in front of him. His point had made him realise something concerning. "Mario should have come back with the sheets. I don't know why he didn't, but I think something happened to him." He looked at Yoshi.

"What? I haven't done anything, I stayed there all night!" The dinosaur exclaimed.

"Relax, I wasn't about to accuse you of something… That vision that you told me earlier…"

"About dudes fighting?"

"Yeah."

"So what?" He figured out at this point. "Oh, okay! But with whom?"

"Someone who was there at the same time as Mario."

"Who the heck wants to go to Jolly Roger Bay?"

"Well, not that you're wrong, but we know that someone did just before my brother."

"Can anyone explain?" Peach asked, as she had not figure out their idea yet.

"This night, I had a vision of two guys fighting, and we think one of them might be Mario."

"And we saw someone who entered the painting just before him." Luigi continued.

"Are you implying that Mario fought with the masked man?"

"That's the most relevant thing we have, don't complain."

"But why would they fight?" She asked again.

Luigi thought for a few seconds, then pointed to the sheets. "Maybe Mario found them, somewhere, but they belonged to the masked man, and he didn't want to give them back. And if you're wondering why it's wet… well, do I have to explain that there's water in Jolly Roger Bay?"

"Actually, that's not how it works. When you put a piece of paper in the water, you can still figure out what's written on it. On this one, you can't even tell if this is English, French, Japanese, a strange alphabet, or even a drawing." Yoshi showed his doubt about Luigi's idea.

"If your sheet gets inside water for a few seconds, yes. But if you wait longer…" Even though Luigi found the logic before saying it, it was not until the words came out of his mouth that he figured out the tragic conclusion. "Shit."

The swearing did not reassure his friends who, in turn, grasped what Luigi had just thought. Tears started to appear on Peach's face, which hurt her black eye.

"You think he drowned?" Yoshi questioned cautiously, as he was not sure. At the same time, Peach's eyes were getting red. She wanted to burst into tears, but the pain prevented her from doing so. "Hey, wait! That's not what I meant it! Maybe he just stayed on the surface for a while!" Yoshi was trying more to keep her from crying than to convince her, to the point he did not believe his own theory.

"Why… would… he do… that?"

"I have no idea but there must be a reason!"

"So how do… you explain… that he… didn't get… back if… it was… only that?"

She was not wrong, and Yoshi had nothing to answer. That was a mistake not to make, and the lack of an answer made her even sadder. She turned on her heels and walked out of the room.

"I hope nothing happened to my bro…" Luigi whispered when the door closed.

"Neither do I, but if something happened, we have to do something."

"What do you want to do? The painting doesn't even work anymore."

"Of course, but…" He looked at the sheets. "We have nothing to do other than try to decipher what's written here. But even this, there's nothing we can't do about it.."

"We can't do anything. But I'm pretty sure someone can. We didn't get these sheets by chance, and if the masked man fought with Mario to get them back, that means there's something important on them."

"I agree, but do you really think that someone could read on a wet piece of paper? Like, a Cheep Cheep?"

"Have you ever seen a Cheep Cheep talk?"

"What about a Blooper?"

"Are you dumb? Who even mentioned reading a wet piece of paper in the first place?"

"So, you think someone could dry that sheet to read it? Nice joke, have you seen how it looks like?"

"I'm not kidding."

"You think there is someone crazy enough to…" He interrupted. The word crazy had set him thinking. "You're talking about professor ?"

"There you are!"

"Okay, let's assume he won't give us some weird stuff that will end up blowing up half of the castle, and that he can actually dry these sheets. Where are you going to find him?"

The smile on Luigi's face disappeared. He started pacing again. "Yeah, that's the annoying part, you have a point. But I guess we have nothing else to do than to go to every lab in town…"

"Great!" Yoshi exclaimed wryly.

"It's either this or nothing… aaAH!"

Luigi had got his foot stuck in the carpet. His head hit the wall, against one of the three snowmen paintings of the room…

"Jeez, are you okay?"

"Yeah, don't wo…"

…the one in the middle.

Luigi could not finish his sentence. His head went through the painting, and his body was carried off.

Yoshi stood up suddenly. He stared at the painting, immobile, in shock. After a few seconds, he moved his hand closer… and touched it. He did not go through it, and felt as if he had just touched a wall.

It was already deactivated. Yoshi could now only stare at the painting leading to Cool, Cool Mountain, exactly like the Jolly Roger Bay's one did the day before…

Yoshi decided to do what he and Luigi were about to do before the latter got sucked in by the painting. Unlike Jolly Roger Bay, Cool, Cool Mountain was not very far from Toad Town. Yoshi thought that Luigi would come back by the end of day. He also told Peach what happened to Luigi and what he was going to do, while trying to comfort her, but it was much harder than what he had originally thought, so he gave up.

The afternoon was over. The search for the correct laboratory seemed endless. Professor Gadd had many laboratories, scattered all over the kingdom 'to keep the inventions well preserved and to continue the research if one of them goes wrong and blows up the laboratory', he used to say.

While finding a lab was easy, knowing which one was the right one soon became an ordeal. Most of them were closed, and the opened ones were deserted. Except for one, where a Toad, who claimed to be an assistant, apologised and informed the dinosaur that 'the professor is in another lab' in such a familiar way that Yoshi got angry.

On a town map that he had taken with him, Yoshi had marked every lab in the city that he knew with the help of the assistant Toad. In total, no less than twenty-seven crosses had been drawn on the map. Ultimately, he gave up and returned to the castle with a bitter taste of disappointment and failure.

Flashes followed one anoother. He could not make them out, due to how fast they were.

He felt a pain in his body and could not figure out its origin, nor its exact position.

The flashes continued in quick succession. All he could see were some colours.

The pain in his body was getting more and more precise. It was not pain, it was some kind of strange substance, like poison, that was slipping and bubbling inside his body, from his feet and hands. He wanted to scratch but could not move.

The flashes were slowing, but that was not enough.

The liquid inside his feet was rising faster than the liquid in his hands, which was reaching his elbows.

He was finally able to see something.

The mixture reached his elbows and his stomach.

A black and white vision of a shape going to what seemed to be a hill, with two shorter shapes.

The liquid reached his neck.

The bigger shape was coming back without the others.

He could feel it in his throat. He felt like throwing up.

Another shape with indiscernible outlines was doing something, but he could not see what. At the same time, the vision was shaking, as if he was seeing it from a shaking camera.

He could not breathe anymore as the liquid blocked his nostrils.

The previous shape, and the large one before, were fighting.

He had the feeling that his eyes were about to jump off his body.

For half a second, from a point of view overlooking the scene, he saw another shape that he had never seen so far, different from the others – small, with something on its eyes, cowering in the corner of a room that looked familiar. A shadow appeared on the wall next to it. Then, his point of view changed, but he was watching the same scene. Another shape that looked terrifying, was about to attack him.

Right before he got attacked, the liquid reached his brain. Everything went black, and he had the feeling to be burned alive. He tried to cry, but his vocal cords seemed burned and unable to produce any sound. His muscles gave out on him, and he fell for a long time. Just before he hit the ground, the pain disappeared.

In fact, everything was gone. Even him.