Chapter 4
The journey was exhausting, but at last, it seemed to be about over. Four members of the Yoshi species ran down the road, beyond the Rice Fields, going west, to find the next town over, carrying Mario and his friends to a place where they would find the ability to fly. What a journey the day had been, so far. The Mushroom Kingdom, the Royal Raceway, Sunset Village, Sunrise Village, the Rice Fields, and - soon - Windtown.
The Sun was just barely starting to set in the sky. Still, Mario and Luigi thought, they were so close to the end, they had to push themselves to make it all the way to Windtown. They could pass out at an inn soon. At least they could rest while riding on the Yoshis.
The dirt road led the travelers to an archway sign reading "WINDTOWN". All four Yoshis ran on into the town, and the exhausting journey seemed, at last, to be worth it. The four friends had started to sweat, but now they found that, indeed, Windtown was just as windy as it had sounded by its windy name. Before long, the four were complaining that they were too cool.
If there was one town in which to fly a kite, Windtown was surely it. Half a dozen mushroom-people kids were running about frantically, flying kites of all kinds. Two kites depicted Link and Princess Zelda. The other kites depicted a red and orange Super Mushroom, Fire-Flower, Starman, and Yoshi.
Indeed, the kites were having much success in the heavy winds of this town. Mario had not seen so much wind since the tropical storm that had passed through the Mushroom Kingdom . . . what was it now? 6 years ago? Windtown appeared to be like this all the time.
The four Yoshis began to run down the dirt roads of Windtown in rows and pairs. 4-1 appeared to be the area of the civlized village. To his left, Mario saw nothing but nature, enormous trees of green and brown rising up from the ground, and a wall of cliffside dirt below higher-up hillsides. To his right, he saw houses built up over the nature.
In these last 5 years, the Mushroom World had indeed seen a lot of expansion in its construction of houses. What used to be miles of empty fields of grass now saw enormous houses, more than enough space for an entire family to live in. The buildings all appeared to be pretty newly-built, with no decay or tearing visible in the paint or the copper pipes. Windtown was a very modernized town, where everyone was driving go-karts around.
"Okay, so remember," Mario said. "This is our to-do list. The four Yoshis are at the inn, and our two go-karts are still back at the Rice Fields, area 3-1."
Walking down the dirt road, past the new neighborhood of houses, Mario came to an INN building, which, though it had been around for years, had been renovated in more recent times to become enormous in size. 1984 was definitely a time when the entire neighborhood was stlll just a natural stretch of grass and trees. Now, one path in the dirt road lead all the way to the inn's doors. The four people walked inside there, leaving the Yoshis outside.
Mario, heading the group, walked to the desk, where he found no clerk visible. Mario waited for a moment, but still, nothing happened. Elevator music playing overhead made him think of the underwater ocean landscape. It was a nice tune, for him to drum his fingernails against the counter to. Finally, Mario walked to a bell at the end of the counter, and pressed it with his finger. "DING!" came a loud noise.
In seconds, a mushroom-person clerk emerged from the next room beyond, and came to the counter. "Yes! How can I help you?" he asked.
So many choices for what to say. I'd like to book a room? Never mind? Call the man ugly? Choices led to the next situation, leading to more choices, leadng to the next situation.
"I'd like to book a room for the night," Mario said.
"I see. How many rooms?"
"Two."
"Smoking or non-smoking?"
"Non-smoking."
"Yoshi-friendly or non-Yoshi?"
"Yoshi-friendly."
"I see. Let me just see what I can do for you here."
Mario nodded his head to Luigi. Then, Mario went outside and summoned the Yoshis inside. The four of them came to Mario, led by the green Yoshi.
"Your total will be 130 coins, per room, so, 260 total."
Griping, Luigi paid the man his coins.
The inn's manager gave Mario his room's keycard. "That's room 2-2," the manager said.
Mario looked at the enormous staircase, which spiraled around in a circular arrangement, like DNA strands in a human body. Yellow blocks were floating in the air, with the appearance of black eyes. These flat blocks were only a few inches thick. Mario and his friends jumped from the floor up to the series of yellow flat blocks, and jumped off at Level 2 of the inn, where they walked around the hallways in search of Room 2-2. Mario used his keycard on the door, which did not open, but seemed to work on the 4th try.
Luigi and Daisy were in Room 2-3. The light went from red to green as it unlocked for them. Finally, they could go to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, the four people emerged from the doors to their inn rooms. "Well, that settles the room situation," Mario said. "Time to get us some food and drink!"
Now it was a matter of hopping down a series of flat yellow blocks to reach the ground level. Luigi slid down the spiral staircase's bannister. Peach and Daisy ran down the staircase on-foot instead. Once they were back at the lobby, where the four Yoshis were waiting for them, the dinosaurs rose up from their seats and got ready to rejoin their masters. Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Daisy rode the four Yoshis outside the inn, and back to the outdoor village of Windtown.
The next place to go was the BOTTLED WATER store. Indeed, the blue and white logo for this store was the same here as it had been in the other towns. Bottled water was a necessity, even though they had done a lot less exercise while riding the Yoshis. They stopped in here, and bought a little more water for all the people present, and for the Yoshis as well.
Finally, it was time to eat! They took a ride on the Yoshis to examine the entire town, until they could find a pizza place. The only place they could find here was SPIKE'S PIZZA BAG. The sign over the store depicted the green creature called Spike, whose hair and beard was gray, throwing from a brown bag a full pizza pie. They hadn't eaten in so long, they could all literally feel weakness and other symptoms of hunger pains.
Inside, the four waited to be seated. "How many?" the hostess asked. Everyone gave a different answer. "Okay, so . . . how many? . . . Four? . . . Yes, all right. Four."
"Can I have a cookie? For my Yoshi?" Luigi asked.
"Yes! Certainly." The hostess walked away, and returned a moment later with a cookie for the Yoshi. "How many do you have outside?"
"All four of us have a Yoshi outside."
"Oh! Well, then, take four." The hostess gave Luigi three more cookies, which he walked outside.
"All right, Yoshis! Here you go!" Luigi yelled. He tossed a cookie into the air, and the green Yoshi ate it right up with his enormous stretchy tongue. One by one, Luigi fed the other cookies to the other three Yoshis. Then, he went back inside the pizzeria. They were all seated right away, but it would take some time until they were eating food.
They ate pizza for a while. They also tried some chicken alfredo, their favorite blend of meat with pasta, covered in white marinara sauce. It was surprising how many things had become more than globalised, between Earth and the Mushroom World.
After eating, drinking, and going to the bathroom, the sky was dark out, and the four heroes were just too wiped out to do anything more. It was time to pass out in their rooms at the inn, and they knew it. All four heroes, and all four Yoshis, passed out in two rooms at the inn.
It was a great sensation to finally catch some sleep.
.
"Gwaaaah ha ha!" a man said. Behind the man was an enormous wall of blue water-like energy, rippling about. The man was blurry, a shadowy silhouette. As he became less blurred and more clearly visible, it became noticeable that he was wearing a brown coat over green skin. He appeared to be like an enormous version of a frog.
"I am Wart," the man said. "I am the traveler of dreams, the master of nightmares. Remember this: every time you fall asleep, I will be back here. Tick, tick, tock . . ."
A dozen white and brown clocks all appeared around Wart at once, fading in from nowhere. All the clocks were ticking their second hands away at once.
"It's just a matter of time before you have to sleep again," Wart said. "And when you do sleep, you'll find me in your dreams. I am Wart . . . and this nightmare torture will end when you pledge your loyalties to Tatanga, and nobody else."
"You . . . work for Tatanga?" Luigi asked.
Luigi looked to his left, where Mario and Peach were laying down on the floor, and to the right, where Daisy was laying down. Now everybody was sitting up. It appeared that the other three had heard his words.
"Am I dreaming?" Mario asked.
"Is this MY dream?" Peach asked.
"Is this . . .? Wow! I feel so awake!" Daisy remarked.
Wart laughed again. The four turned their attention to Wart. "I am indeed real," Wart said. "I'll show you. Here . . . take these mushrooms with you!"
Wart pulled from his coat two Poison Mushrooms. He laughed loudly as they flew through the air. Mario and Luigi screamed, as the entire world around them fell black, and the entire dream they were seeing died out.
.
They woke up in two different rooms in the inn, each room now seeing a Poison Mushroom on the ground, while the sound of Wart's laughter died down to nothing.
"Waaaah!" Luigi yelled.
"Gaaaah!" Mario yelled, from the other side of the thin wall that separated the two rooms.
Luigi grabbed the Poison Mushroom, and raced a short distance to drop it into the toilet and flush it down the pipes. "Bye-bye, Poison Mushroom," Luigi said.
Mario had thrown the Poison Mushroom at the wall. It bounced off, and hit the floor, continuously sliding back and forth across the floor with zero reaction to friction, until Mario managed to flush it down the toilet.
"How did Wart do that?" Mario yelled.
"How did Wart throw that Poison Mushroom into the real world like that?" Luigi asked.
"I don't know," Daisy said. "But I had that same dream as you. Wart."
It was the morning time now. Sunlight was pouring into the rooms through the glass windows intensely enough to make it clear that they were past the early morning.
Still inside the inn, they could now resume the travels that they'd been in the middle of when they had first gotten here. However, they would wait until 12:00 noon, when the room expired, to move on, they all decided.
"So, you saw the same dream as me?" Luigi asked Daisy.
She nodded her head. "That . . . frog in the coat. Wart?"
"He seems to demand we pledge our allegiance to Tatanga. I wonder why?" Luigi asked.
"Who knows?"
"Well . . . let's not worry about it too much," Luigi said. "Until the next time we fall asleep. We have things to do. We have to feed the Yoshis. Get them water. Take care of our own hygiene. Eat, drink."
"Breakfast is complimentary," Daisy said.
"Really?" Luigi wasted no time flipping from yellow block to yellow block to find his way down to the ground level, where breakfast was complimentary. Waffles with syrup were complimentary. Bagels, with cream cheese applied with a plastic knife, were complimentary. Orange juice was complimentary. Luigi was piling the food up like a waiter.
Soon enough, Daisy was gathering eggs, a piece of toast, orange juice, and a bowl of cereal filled with milk.
Mario ate ziti with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese.
Peach ate small veggies.
Back inside their room at the inn, they fed the Yoshi some of the complimentary water, as well as giving them some berries and melons. Next, it was time to leave the inn and go on with the adventure. They had to walk the Yoshis, but that would be no problem.
Today's plan: shop around Windtown for a flying artifact, since they were legal here. Fly to Tatanga's ship. Stop him. If they could stop Tatanga before the next time they fell asleep, there would be no need to worry about Wart.
The four Yoshis ran about town, in search of a store that sold flying artifacts.
.
"Do you have anything that makes you fly?" Mario asked, using both arms to gesture flapping his wings.
"Hmmm, generally we do NOT," the manager said. "Sorry."
"Well, what place has them?"
"To be honest, I . . . DO not know."
Mario grumbled.
.
"Do you have stuff to make you fly?" Luigi asked the next store's manager.
"Stuff to make you fly? No. We don't carry that here."
"What?" Luigi shrieked. He started walking away, grumbling. "What kind of place doesn't sell stuff to make you fly?"
.
The Mario Bros. began to develop a suspicious feeling that the managers of these stores just weren't trusting them. They sent Peach and Daisy to do the talking, while the plumbers kept an eye on them from outside, staring in through the glass double-doors at the front entrance.
"We're all sold out of those," said the manager of the third store they'd visited that day.
Wow. Even when the women were the ones asking, they still weren't available. Mario and Luigi sighed. It was beginning to look hopeless.
.
Three shops did not seem to have anything for flight. However, nothing in the names of the stores had suggested flight in particular. Maybe it was time to scan for stores that more directly implied flight. So far, time was going to waste. Time was valuable, considering that the King had been abducted. Not much of it was left.
Outside, Mario noticed that the winds were carrying visible debris. He wondered what exactly it was that he was looking at, making the wind visible. Soon, the wind died down, and the debris continued to fly around. The so-called debris had wings! It was a gnat!
Gnats were everywhere! They were difficult to jump on. They were difficult to see, to locate. Mario wasn't quite sure how to deal with these gnats. For now, he tried jumping up into the air and swatting at them with his white gloved hand. He heard the sound of a few males groaning as they were struck, and a female gnat as well.
Yellow bee-like gnats flew into the scene, gliding through the air with the use of gray wings. Before long, they had sent a dozen more small gnats into the scene, to fly at Mario.
Blue gnats began to fly into the area, flying slower than any other species. Once they settled into one place in the air, Mario had a bad feeling. An orange explosion went off, as four orange sparks flew through the air, heading northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. Mario ran away to avoid the sparks, while Luigi, Peach, and Daisy attacked the dozens of gnats.
This was painting a very grim idea into Mario's head of what to expect next. Three more yellow bees began to glide through the windy air. One flew at Mario so fast that he was sure it would strike him, and kill him. He ducked his head down, then back up, and jumped up into the air to land on the yellow bee.
Two blue exploding gnats flew through the air, slowly settling into one place in front of Mario's torso. Mario worked quickly to punch one of the blue gnats, followed by the other.
Peach floated through the air, grabbed one blue gnat, and threw it at an oncoming cloud of small gray gnats. Many insects screamed in agony at once.
Mario saw a few blades of red grass growing in the ground, and he pulled it up to unearth a veggie, which he threw right at the gnats. But the gnat attack was not over. Bob-Omb Flies began to fly through the air, in the direction of the humans - 13 of them.
While they were flashing yellow, twice per second, was the time to knock them away. Luigi kicked one, who exploded after being sent back 7 feet through the air. Mario quickly knocked away three in a row with two punches, then ran away as they all began to explode around him. He and Luigi just barely reached a safe distance from the blast radius.
Three more were about to be set off. Mario ran forth, quickly punching one away, before Luigi kicked another back. They both ran away as the third Bob-Omb Fly went off.
A dozen small gray gnats still remained. Their offensive power seemed nonexistent, for now. But Mario didn't want to take any chances. He bopped them with his fist, jumping into the air, knocking the gnats out.
"Whew!" he said, exhausted. "Every town, it's something!"
The area of 4-1 had been gnat-filled, all right. Mario and his friends jumped back onto the Yoshis. As they rode on, the Yoshis gladly ate the gnats that they found.
What they found was the leader of the nest, the queen insect, enormous in size, three times the height of Mario, gliding slowly through the air with the use of wings. She was angry. Remarkably angry.
Four Yoshis were here to help Mario. The green Yoshi threw an eggshell at the insect queen, an eggshell made from one of the gnats he had eaten. The queen seemed slightly hurt. The fight went on. Mario and Luigi jumped into action. Peach floated through the air, and Daisy leaped into the fight as well. Yoshi yelled "Booming hat!" and executed a downward stomp, to land on the insect queen wth.
She spun around in a circle for two full rotations, knocking everyone away.
The gray insect queen was quite possibly winning. Mario grabbed Luigi by the hands, and swung him around in a circle several times, throwing his taller brother into the insect queen. Luigi struck the queen, who was hurt, and flew away in a circle to recooperate.
Mario and his friends were only able to hurt the insect queen about twice per minute. Once they had attacked it four times, it began to show signs of redness and irritation. It only got angrier, faster, in the final stages of the fight. But the four heroes were relentless, and would never give up. Finally, after another two attacks, the insect queen fell to the ground, giving up.
"Wow," Mario said, putting his hands on his knees and catching a breather. "Don't mice eat insects, or something?"
"This is not our usual adventure," Luigi noted. "Not our usual adventure."
Now they were able to resume with their normal duties. The four Yoshis rode around the village, carrying the four humans, until they had scanned over a dozen different buildings, searching for one place in particular, which they finally managed to find.
FLIGHT STORE
"This is it!" Luigi said giddily. Everybody hopped off their Yoshis and walked into the Flight Store. This was just about the end of the adventure, it seemed.
"Welcome!" the mushroom-person manager, wearing a feather in his cap by his right ear, said. "What can I interest you in?"
"Ummmm . . . we need a way to fly," Luigi said.
"Can I interest you in a store-card?"
"No thanks, uhhh, we need to find some way to fly up into the sky. Our goal is to reach Tatanga's spaceship."
"Perfect, hey, I've got just the thing for you, and you know, it's buy 3, get the 4th half-off. Remember that. Now! Over here, we've got . . ." The manager presented the group of people with a vertical arrangement of Raccoon Leaves. "Raccoon Leaves, that is, the reverse-tanuki effect, you become like them. Some are brown, some are green, as you can see, however, the difference is entirely cosmetic. Both lead to brown ears and a tail. 80 coins."
"Perfect, I'll take 2," Daisy said, handing him some coins.
"All right! Now, understand, you WILL need a clear, open space in which to run, for at least a good 10 meters, before you can achieve liftoff. It's not unlimited, and may not end up taking you all the way to space. However, due to the tail, you are guaranteed a safe landing."
Daisy tried out her Raccoon Leaf by squeezing it with both hands. The transformation was immediate. The leaf's energy covered her entire body in a white cloud for a moment, concealing her from sight, and in seconds the bubbles of white energy had died down to reveal brown raccoon ears over her head, and a raccoon tail growing from behind.
"Here's a mirror," the manager said, showing Daisy what she looked like.
The next row of items was the large feather. "Another object that transforms," he explained. "The Feather Cape bestows upon your back a yellow cape, yellow on the outside, black on the inside. Again, at least a good 10 meters of running, to achieve liftoff. Similar to the Raccoon Leaf, but you can continue to travel up and down, slowly losing velocity. Again, a safe landing is guaranteed with a Feather Cape. 80 coins.
"The Winged Cap. When you wear this cap, its wings enable you to fly. However, it does not last forever, and it WILL wear off after a minute. 80 coins.
"The beet radish. Instead of giving you raccoon ears, it bestows upon you rabbit ears, which guarantees a safe landing from any fall. 40 coins."
"Hmm . . . what else you got here?" Mario asked.
"Well, for 600 coins, FLUDD, the water-based jet-pack. It has three add-on devices, of which we sell only the Rocket Jump add-on. It comes packaged together, here: FLUDD, with Rocket Jump. This would allow you to travel over a dozen meters up into the air."
"We'll need that," Mario said.
"600 coins, we do not have," Luigi reminded him.
"Do you have it used?" Mario asked.
"Yes, here I have a FLUDD unit with a scratch on it, making its price 100 coins."
"Oh! Well. I'll take the one with a scratch on it. 4 of them, actually. And whle I'm at it, we'll also need 4 Raccoon Leaves, to be sure we survive a long fall."
"Coming right up! It's been good doing business with you, Mario!"
.
Outside, it was time to finally fly up into the air and find Tatanga's ship! It was just incredible how easy it had been. Four Raccoon Leaves, four FLUDD units with Rocket Jump enabled . . . it was enough money spent to save the world.
Mario looked up at the sky. "You're all mine, Tatanga," he said confidently.
"Yoshi!" the red Yoshi said. (What are we to do?)
"All you guys have to do is go back to the inn," Mario said. "Once we're done with Tatanga, we'll find some way to get back here, to Windtown, and back to that inn."
"Yoshi!" the red Yoshi replied. (All right!)
The four Yoshis ran off, back to the inn. All four of the people ran in their empowered raccoon forms, and, with enough momentum built up, they took off into the air! Mario and Luigi's tails were flapping back and forth quickly as they left the ground, rising up dozens of feet. Princess Peach followed behind them, and Daisy left the ground for the first time in her life.
Now they were airborne. This was the first time, in today's adventure, that they had all gone airborne. At the crest of their flight, they activated the FLUDD jetpack's Rocket Jump, which used a state-of-the-art water propulsion system to throw the wearer a couple dozen feet higher into the air. This double jump brought them as high up into the air as they could get. Every one of them could hear and feel the sensations of heavy winds hitting their bodies.
At the height of the Rocket Jump, they all looked up to see Tatanga's ship, still higher up above them, far too high for any of them to reach. Unfortunately, they all began to sink back down toward the ground.
"No! No, no! Not the ground!" Mario yelled, but it was entirely true: no artifact in town could bring someone all the way to Tatanga's ship. They had been naive to think it would work.
Luigi tried to follow Mario, as the two brothers flapped their tails endlessly to accomplish a slow landing. Peach and Daisy tried to follow Mario and Luigi. The ground was still so many dozens of feet below them. It would take a while for the ground to grow closer.
They all landed on the ground, Mario and Daisy in one area, Luigi and Peach in another. Mario and Daisy had landed in area 4-5, and Luigi and Peach had landed n 4-6.
"Peach? Peach?" Mario yelled, but the sounds of heavy winds drowned out his voice.
Windtown, infamous for its heavy winds, was also filled with visible debris at this point. No longer were the gnats attacking. Now, normal debris made the wind visible. Two kids were bouncing around together on a green trampoline, only to fly up into the air and be carried off, gone with the wind. Luigi and Peach walked slowly, carefully, their feet not leaving the ground.
"And they called Chicago the Windy City," Luigi joked.
Para-Goombas, with brown wings, were flying around up in the air, along wth Para-Koopas, with white wings, flying Fuzzies, blue exploding gnats, and yellow bees. All at once, these flying monsters came at them, apparently loving to dwell in Windtown.
Luigi and Peach would have to deal with this themselves. Luigi leaped up into the air, and flew right at his enemies. Peach leaped up as well, knowing that it was only for a few seconds that she could levitate.
In the intense winds, every living thing was forced to move quickly through the landscape at once. It certainly changed the way they traveled. However, it soon became clear to them both that another half a minute of walking would bring them to a cliffside, where the ground could not be seen in the mists hundreds of feet below.
The empty chasm had mushrooms growing out of the ground, mushrooms which were, by now, hundreds of feet high. The stems were light orange, almost white. The mushroom heads were red and orange. Although Luigi and Peach had no choice but to leap off the edge of the cliff, these enormous mushrooms gave them some option of safety.
Luigi jumped onto one mushroom in the pit, a mushroom whose head was bigger than his entire body. The mushroom began to lean in the direction in which he was standing. Quickly, he jumped from mushroom to mushroom, trying not to look down below, where the ground was hundreds of feet below, down in the mists.
Peach had all the advantage here. She could float through the air for 2.5 seconds. She was able to minimize the time she spent having physical contact with the mushrooms.
Still, where had Mario and Daisy gotten to?
.
Mario and Daisy, in area 4-5, were also running with the wind, moving dangerously fast, along with any monsters outside in the area. Being forced to run with the wind, Mario and Daisy finally took a moment to get a running start, before flying up into the air again, for all four were still armed with Raccoon Leaves.
Up in the air, he found a swarm of winged Goombas, Koopas, and Para-Beetles, flying at him at fast speeds in the wind. A red Para-Beetle just about hit Mario's body. Mario swatted at it with his raccoon tail, and the animal was knocked away, to fall to the ground.
Mario and Daisy were slowly settling back to the ground level, and now, Daisy understood, truthfully, that it was up to her to fight the monsters or else be killed by them. She struck a Para-Koopa with her tail, knocking it away. Still descending toward the ground, she was shocked by how well she was surviving all this.
The black debris in the air made the wind visible, and it made the area difficult to see. But that wouldn't stop Mario or Daisy. They jumped onto a green trampoline, launching up into the air to be taken away by the wind. They continued to land on the heads and bodies of monsters wherever they went.
After a while, the winds began to calm down, for a minute. "Let's fly up into the air, and find the other two," Mario suggested.
"Okay," Daisy said.
Mario began to run, and he waited until Daisy was by his side for himself to resume running. "Let's take off into the air at the same time!" Mario yelled. Soon enough, running as fast as they could, both Mario and Daisy leaped up into the air, and flapped their tails to bring their flight from one mere jump to a continuous flight.
Up into the air they both went. The higher Mario's body soared, with the flapping of his raccoon tail, the more of the area he was able to see. At last, on his way down, he was able to locate Luigi and Peach, a fair distance away.
"Daisy!" Mario yelled. "Just follow me!" Mario slowly began to descend again, flapping his tail repeatedly. Daisy did her best to follow him without getting lost.
Luigi and Peach were still jumping from mushroom to mushroom, making sure not to fall into the chasm hundreds of feet deep. Luigi jumped slowly, landing on a winged Para-Koopa and jumping up higher as a result. After another 3 jumps across enormous mushrooms, Luigi and Peach had made their way to the end of the mushroom pit, and back to normal land. Running quickly across the ground, Luigi and Peach found their way back to Mario and Daisy.
Mario and Peach ran back into each other's arms. Luigi and Daisy ran back into each other's arms. At last, both couples were back together. They took a moment to savor their reunion. Soon enough, the four heroes were traveling down the road together, side-by-side. They were far from the inn, where they had left the Yoshis, by now. They would go back there, soon enough. That would happen after they rescued the King from Tatanga.
"Are you ready to try again?" Mario asked.
Luigi nodded his head: yes.
Mario spent a minute telling his comrades how important it was that they all run together, at exactly the same time. All four people were standing next to one another as they got ready to run. All four took a running start, and Mario counted to 3, out loud, to signal when to achieve liftoff. Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Daisy used their racoon-powered flight to take off into the air.
It took a short time for everyone to reach the crest of their flight. The FLUDD water-based jetpack, with its Rocket Jump, boosted them another long distance higher up.
They had gotten closer to Tatanga's ship this time. But not close enough to reach it. All four of them began to fall back down through the air again. "No! No, no, NOOOO!" Mario yelled, refusing to believe it. Yet it was happening, for the second time in a row: they had failed to actually reach Tatanga's ship.
Mario kept an eye on his comrades, this time, as they all fell. Nobody would get lost, if he had his way. All four were able to land a pretty short distance from one another, once they all got to the ground. Gone were the go-karts, and gone were the Yoshis. Yet, once they got back to the Yoshis, they would use them to help deliver gasoline back to the Go-Karts, which they would drive back to the Mushroom Kingdom.
In the meantime: where were they?
"We flew over most of the land," Mario said. "So, who knows what it would have had. Hmm. Let me see here. According to this area of the map . . . let me see here . . . it would appear that we are just barely west of the area marked 4-8."
"4-8?" Luigi asked. "So we're almost out of Windtown?"
"We're almost at the next land over," Mario said.
They all walked past an ELECTRONICS shop. Two large holes served as windows, through which they could see the red and orange TV sets sold inside. "Hey! Look at that!" Mario said. "Our decision to bring TV to the Mushroom Kingdom has paid off after all."
"It has?" Luigi asked. The four people walked inside the store, and Mario turned on one of the TV sets. At first, it played nothing but static. But, in time, a hushed silence fell over the TV set, as Tatanga's face appeared against an empty black backdrop again.
"Mario. You're doing . . . remarkably well," Tatanga said. "I have eyes and ears both in my ship, and on the ground. I have been . . . monitoring your performance . . . however, know this. You will never make it to my ship. Never. I have the leader of the humanes, and in time, he will serve my army, as the entire kingdom that he ruled - the entire galaxy - becomes mine."
He wanted the whole galaxy? Well, it kind of made sense. "Doesn't he have enough galaxies already?" Luigi asked.
After 7 seconds, Tatanga said "No, Luigi, I do not have enough galaxies already! Mario and Luigi. Although you fight and resist now, you will, in time, be serving me as my two champions, who will live in my castle and fight my enemies for me as I command. This will be done. Tatanga out." Tatanga's face faded away, replaced with alien text which scrolled about the TV screen frantically, not turning into static.
Peach began to cry.
"We have to do something," Mario said. "We've rescued the King before . . . when he had been turned into a dog by King Koopa. We can rescue him from his abduction. We must!"
"HOW? Peach screamed. "Flight didn't work! FLUDD didn't work! How can we reach Tatanga's ship now?"
". . . We find a way to get abducted," Mario said.
"Explain to me how."
"All right. Remember when we beat Mouser? His body was broken apart into pieces during Tatanga's 'beaming' process. You see, all we had to do, right then, was to touch Mouser, and we would have been caught in the path of the beaming beam! So, you see, what we need to do is to beat up one of Tatanga's minions, his servants, again. When he gets beamed back to Tatanga, we grab onto him, and accompany the servant back to Tatanga's ship!"
"Why did we not think of this before?"
"Well, we've thought of it now. Let's give this a shot!"
If Mario was correct in his attempts to predict Tatanga's behavior, the spacelord would have likely conquered the area of 5-1. More of Tatanga's lackeys were probably around here. Logcally, they would have to be. They would be his way to Tatanga's ship.
They walked for only a few minutes when they found a wooden sign planted in the ground. WELCOME TO NEON LAND. The neon-yellow sign was placed before two brown trees, which hid absolutely everything beyond. Mario and Luigi walked between the two trees to find the hidden path into this new town, to the area where a smaller sign read 5-1.
Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Daisy might have failed to reach Tatanga's ship, twice, but now they had reached Neon Land. The adventure went on. The enormous orange flaming eye, in the far distance, was much closer now.