Wow, I am so sorry about the late update guys! I don't know why I always do that with Daisy's part. I even knew exactly how I wanted this chapter to go... Anyways, I've been so excited because this is definitely one of my most popular stories so I've been working really hard to get the next chapter done. So thanks to everybody who like my story! :)

I know its been awhile, but really, I still don't own Mario or the other characters or settings or etc.

Chapter 13- The Hostage

Daisy had one word to describe this entire situation: dumb. No matter how many times she tried to explain that she wasn't this princess the idiot alien, Tatanga, just kept blowing her off. At this point Daisy was sitting alone in the tower of the castle he dropped her off at waiting for her "wedding". She had been forced into a yellow ballgown with orange trim with white gloves and a golden crown with a green centered daisy for the jewel. She felt girly and frilly and ridiculous. She kept staring out the window anticipating seeing a green hat cross the desert. However, Luigi had yet to appear. She was beginning to get a little worried that he wouldn't come at all.

"So my dear, are you ready to get started?"

Daisy felt her hands ball into fists. She turned around to face Tatanga.

"Unless you want your ugly purple face rearranged, I would leave now." She threatened.

Tatanga sighed. "Is that how you want to start our reign together? Full of senseless violence? I would have thought you had more respect for your kingdom, Princess Cynthia."

"I've already told you that I'm not a Prin-" Daisy stopped in mid rant.

She frowned. Cynthia was her mother's name. Was it just a coincidence that he called her that? Tatanga smirked obviously convinced he had broken her down. He opened his mouth to make another snide comment when the entire tower shook violently.

"What was that?" Daisy asked trying to steady herself.

Tatanga marched over to the window before he jumped back in anger and surprise.

"Super Mario!" He seethed.

Daisy watched him storm out of the room without giving her another glance. As soon as she heard her door lock again, she ran over to the window wondering who would have Tatanga in such a twit. However, she couldn't see anything other than a sparkling blur quickly speeding towards her. She didn't know what this 'Super Mario' was, but she hoped it was some form of help.

Tatanga's forces began to up their antics and started attacking the sparking thing more vigorously. Daisy watched amazed though, as every weapon and attack just bounced right off it. It never once slowed down either. It just kept moving towards the castle in the same manner it had been.

The tower rocked again, and this time Daisy was thrown to the ground. Lucky for her, the door to her prison was knocked open as well. Finally feeling like she could do something again, she sprinted out the door and down the stairs. She arrived in what she assumed was the throne room judging by the tall seats sitting against the wall. She was trying to figure out where to go from here when a boy around her age in red attire ran in straight toward her.

"Are you Daisy? Thank God, I found you. Let's go before that alien comes back." The boy breathed in relief instantly grabbing Daisy's hand.

However, she was sick of this kidnapping thing. After all, how did she know he wasn't just going to take her to another tower and hold her captive? Without hesitating, she reared her arm back and punched the guy across the jaw. He instantly let go and staggered a couple of feet away.

"SON OF A…WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?" He yelled at her angrily.

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me who you are and what you want?" She demanded.

"I'm Luigi's brother and I thought it was obvious I was rescuing you!" He shot back.

She punched him again. "Liar! Luigi doesn't have a brother!"

"Shit! What does he see in you?" He seethed rubbing his sore cheek.

Daisy was about ready to punch him again for that comment when something dawned on her. His hat looked just like Luigi's only it was red with the letter M.

"I had a brother once. And the last time I wore this hat was the last time I saw him."

"Wait a minute! Luigi said something once about his missing brother, that's you?" She questioned surprised.

"Yes." The boy sighed exasperated. "And if you quit hitting me I'll take you to him."

She cocked an eyebrow suspiciously. "How do I know your telling the truth? Tell me something that only the brother of Luigi would know."

The boy slapped a hand to his face. "Porca puttana! Questa cagna `e pazzo!"

Recognizing a few of those words from Luigi's vocabulary Daisy almost believed him right then and there.

"Okay, um, his favorite color is green. And he's really smart and he plays soccer." The boy began to list off.

"Ha! I almost believed you until you got to the soccer thing." She declared triumphantly.

The boy gave her a confused look. "Luigi doesn't play soccer anymore?"

"He's never played soccer." She countered.

The boy looked like he was about to argue with her about that when something went flying into the ceiling knocking debris all around them. Daisy looked up with dread to see Tatanga's flying saucer.

"Oh no." She complained before his tractor beam swallowed her up.

"Hold on Daisy!" The boy hollered up at her before she was trapped within the metal spaceship.

She was getting so sick of this. This time instead of meandering around randomly hitting the walls of her metal prison, she began to look for some sort of switch or button that would let her out. It was in all of the sci-fi movies so why couldn't it happen here? She practically jumped up and down with glee when a panel gave way under her touch opening a sliding door.

"That's right nobody can contain me!" She announced proudly.

Now she just needed to show Tatanga that. It wasn't that big a ship, it couldn't be that hard. She sprinted down the large hallway looking back and forth between the doors on either side, but not finding the purple freak. Finally, the hall ended in a large circular room that she could only assume was the control room. Sitting in the large chair in the center looking out the glass in front of him was Tatanga.

"Alright, I'm done playing games! Put me down now or the next few minutes of your life will be an extremely painful experience!" She threatened.

He wheeled around in surprise and gasped. "How did you escape?"

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Really?"

However, before either of them could say anything else the entire craft rocked and alarms began to blare.

"What?" Tatanga cried in confusion.

They both looked out the windshield-like glass to see the red capped boy was flying one of those old World War I planes shooting at the spaceship. She couldn't help but wonder where he even found one of those.

"Damn that Super Mario. I'll kill him if it's the last thing I do." Tatanga grumbled grabbing a joystick looking instrument that maneuvered the craft.

Daisy fell to the ground as the spaceship made a sharp right. Then Tatanga started pushing buttons on the control panel that made the large windshield look like a targeting computer. Daisy gasped as he started shooting back at the boy. She clenched her hands in anger. She may not be completely convinced about the identity of the boy, but he did try to come after her. He was either a stalker or trying to help. She decided upon the last one.

Getting back to her feet she ran over to Tatanga's control panel hitting various buttons. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he shoved her aside. However, it was too late. Whatever she had done caused the entire room to be bathed in an eerie red light with alarms blaring throughout the hull.

"What did you do?" He yelled panicking.

"Sabotage." She declared triumphantly.

"No, you've activated the self-destruct!" He exclaimed after pushing some more buttons.

Daisy raised an eyebrow. "What sort of moron puts a self-destruct button inside his spaceship?"

However, he just pushed past her. "Sorry Princess, if you live through this, I'll be back."

Before she could comment back he opened the door to an escape pod and launched himself away from the ship. Daisy covered her ears as the blast of a rocket sounded through the failing spaceship. It was at that point that it seemed to click for Daisy that she was on a vessel that was about to explode. All of the color drained from her face as she ran over the newly created hole from the escape pod. She was still several hundred feet in the air. Even if she was eleven feet tall again she wouldn't survive that jump. She looked back to the control panel. Conveniently, the self-destruct sequence came with a timer counting down from ten. If she wasn't so frightened, she would have rolled her eyes at the cliché situation she found herself in.

"Daisy!"

Daisy looked down to see the boy in the plane was pulling up beside her.

"Jump Daisy!" He called over to her.

"Are you insane?" She hollered back.

"Just jump, I'll catch you!" He shouted impatiently.

"This isn't a stupid action movie!" She yelled back.

At that moment she checked back to see the timer now read two. If she had any hope of surviving the explosion she would have to jump. She held her breath like she was about to dive under water and jumped out of the spaceship. A mere second later Tatanga's ship exploded showering her in hot metal and embers. True to his word though, the boy managed to catch Daisy in the plane.

"Hold on!" He told her as he began to spin around the debris.

Daisy grabbed onto the first thing she could reach which happened to be the boy's arms.

"What are you doing? I can't steer!" He yelled at her perplexed.

Daisy quickly changed her grip to the back of his seat, but it was too late. A chunk of metal hit one of the plane's wings sending them into a nosedive for the ground below.

"We're going to crash!" She squealed.

"Thank you, I didn't notice that." The boy shot back sarcastically.

Daisy would have hit him if she wasn't so scared to move. He started digging through his pockets and pulled out two mushrooms. They looked exactly like the one Daisy ate earlier except they had green caps instead of red.

"Here, eat this." He ordered.

Daisy reached for one wondering what good being super tall was going to do them. However, she went ahead and took a big bite out of it. She felt that funny sensation again, but this one was slightly different. She looked down to see they were fixing to collide with the ground and closed her eyes awaiting the end. She felt a blaze of heat, then nothing.

She was dead. This had to be what death felt like. It was surprisingly painless for death by explosion. She slowly blinked her eyes open to see she was standing in the desert still. In front of her was the remnants of the plane with flames still clinging to it. Daisy suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulder.

"Oh my God! We're alive!" She cheered patting herself just to make sure.

"Yeah, no thanks to you." The boy grumbled.

Daisy shot him a look. "What are you talking about?"

"I could have avoided getting our wing ripped off if you hadn't latched onto my arms like that."

"Fine, I'm sorry. But it's no big deal. It all worked out."

"Yeah, but I had to use my last two 1-ups."

Daisy tilted her head curiously. The boy pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation before pointing towards the crash site. Daisy looked closer and saw what used to be a red cap burning next to figure in a yellow dress. She quickly turned away looking at her hands as if they were foreign items.

"Am I a ghost?" She asked.

The boy sighed before putting his arm across her back leading her away.

"No, I told you we used my last 1-ups. They're like an extra life." He explained.

"Oh." She remarked still unnerved by seeing her dead body. "That's kind of strange."

He laughed. "Yeah, normally I'm falling over a cliff when I use it so I don't have to see my old life."

Daisy gave an involuntary shiver. However, she was starting to get over it. At least she was alive. That's when she realized the boy's arm was still around her back. She glared at him and elbowed him in the ribs. He yelped instantly retracting his arm and giving her a few feet of space. An awkward silence seemed to fall over them at that point. Daisy began to feel a little bad for being mean to him, but he really shouldn't have assumed he could just do that like they were best friends. She didn't even know his name.

"So Luigi's brother, do you have a name?" She decided to ask.

"I don't know, do you finally agree that I am Luigi's brother?" He shot back.

She shrugged. "Nothing's impossible. I mean, I just saw my own dead body."

He looked like he was fighting the urge to smile. "It's Mario." He finally told her.

"Hi! I'm Daisy." She introduced shaking his hand enthusiastically.

He stopped walking and raised an eyebrow. "Are you mental?"

She narrowed her eyes. "What makes you say that?"

He shook his head starting to walk again. Daisy grudgingly followed after him. She couldn't decide if she liked the red clad boy or not. He was such a stark contrast from Luigi that she was still having trouble deciding whether they were actually brothers. Although they did sort of look the same if Luigi was shorter, stouter, and had a moustache.

"Can you at least tell me where we're going?" She finally huffed.

"I told you before I was taking you to Luigi." He responded.

"Well surprisingly enough, that still doesn't give me a basic idea of where he's at."

"Fine, he's at a friend's place."

"Thank you, I feel so much better now." She remarked sarcastically folding her arms against her chest.

He looked at her surprised. "Don't worry, he's okay."

"So why didn't he come with you?"

Daisy instantly regretted that. She didn't want to be upset with Luigi, but it was bothering her a little bit that he didn't save her. Mario grimaced realizing what she was thinking.

"Don't be mad at him. I told him not to."

"I'm not mad." She quickly snapped.

She saw by his disbelieving look that her words seemed to have the opposite effect. She decided it was time for a subject change.

"So what did you mean by Luigi playing soccer?"

Mario shrugged. "He played soccer. We were on the same team. He wasn't as good as me, but he was decent. It was definitely the sport he liked best out of baseball, tennis, ice hockey…"

"Wait! Are you telling me that Luigi used to be a big athlete?"

Mario gave her a funny look. "Are you sure you know my brother?"

Daisy wasn't sure anymore.

"Maybe you should tell me some more about the Luigi you remember." She suggested.

Mario slowly nodded his head. "Alright, but you have to tell me about your Luigi and how you got here."

"Deal." Daisy agreed.

With that Mario launched into the story that would nearly blow Daisy's mind. She didn't know why Luigi hid all of this from her. But between him and her mom, she had come to an important realization. The people she was close to, she really didn't know at all.

Okay, I don't know about you guys but I loved writing the meeting between Mario and Daisy. Oh and the phrase was in Italian, if you're really curious just copy and paste to google translate. Leave me more reviews, I'd love to know what you guys thought!