Outside, Luigi wished he had an umbrella. The rainfall had increased again, so that his shirt began to stick to his skin. He was still warm from climbing the stairs all day, but it wouldn't protect him from a cold. On the other hand, it was better than drowning.
Was Booccaneer still rolling around? Luigi searched the deck, but found himself all alone. Only accompanied by wind, rain, waves and thunder. Not so unpleasant actually, if one ignored the matter of the aimless drifting and the impending catastrophe.
He hurriedly rowed his thoughts towards the bow. Even if his unwillingness slowed his own body down: couldn't he look for fuel instead and then tell Beanelda that the seniors were diligently searching? Anything so he didn't have to deal with this waste of time? What could they possibly contribute to the rescue?
But then he reminded himself that they were just as abandoned as he was, and deserved the same help. If Mario could hear him now, he would scold him terribly for even daring to think this nonsense. Right, his brother would jump from deck to deck in great leaps, gather everyone up and get to work without delay!
Mario's imaginary heroics managed to break the resistance in Luigi's mind and speed up the descent. Luigi still wasn't that motivated, but at least the excuses had stopped. Besides, the couple wouldn't bite him, right?
In front of him, from the hatch, a white light rose and he immediately saw his assumption confirmed.
"Booccaneer!" he greeted with a mixture of joy and scorn, "Oh my, are your eyes better?" The ghost kept rubbing his already reddened eyes as he blinked exceedingly frequently.
"Oh, my condition interests you! But torturing my friends and acquaintances with the strobe light and then sucking them in is okay, huh?"
"Please, calm down now. If you're so well informed, then surely you know they attacked me."
Booccaneer growled and bared his teeth. What should have been intimidating missed its mark entirely as he ran his eyes with a painful groan.
"Okay, you're right. But ..."
"Look, I understand your anger, I really do. If I were you, I'd be pretty angry too. That's why ..."
Luigi saw an idea coming, and as soon as it became more concrete, it horrified him. Was he going to go through with this?
"How does this sound: I'll buy you a drink and invite you to my place. Then we'll have all the time in the world to settle our differences. Deal?" He then held out his hand to him with a smile.
Booccaneer, however, looked at him suspiciously.
"Are you serious? No trap or anything?"
"Well, might be hard for me to stun and suck you in among people, mightn't it? But if you don't want to, I guess I'll just have to live with it."
Booccaneer looked at Luigi's hand and his arm even twitched for a moment. After a brief pause to grumble, however, he replied, "I'll keep that in mind."
Then he looked Luigi straight in the eye. "So, did you find anything in there?"
Luigi's face beamed with triumphant joy.
"A working radio, imagine that!"
"Oh wow, really?"
"Yup, Beanelda's already sat down and tries to reach someone."
"Then I guess you got the short end of the stick now, huh?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, that you've got to go down there and check on the seniors now."
"Now, just letting them rot would be unfair. Thought I'd stroll by and check on 'em."
"That won't be necessary anymore."
At these words, Luigi's darkest fantasies were about to be unleashed, making all too explicit what Booccaneer might have done to the retired couple. But wanting to assume the most innocuous here, he banished the images from his mind and inquired kindly, "Oh, does that mean I don't have to go anymore?"
"Something like that. But if you want to be more specific: I asked them to search the hold for something useful."
Luigi's eyes widened in amazement. How had Booccaneer managed to do that without being shouted into the ground by Goombekker?
"Not without resistance, of course. But fortunately, the woman was able to convince him that it would be best for all of us."
Luigi had underestimated him, apparently. For someone who was only interested in money and, as a ghost, would be able to jump ship at any time, Booccaneer showed a lot of commitment and care.
"Great job, really!" he praised him with a grin and a thumbs-up.
"You can thank me later." Booccaneer went past him, stopped at the stairs to the top and turned to face him. "Come on, let's get this pile of driftwood going."
"Wait, already? I mean, we have no GPS, no map, no compass, no nothing."
"That's true, but if nothing works except the engine, we might as well save all our efforts. And if absolutely nothing else helps, we can always torch the Soup hen."
Luigi was still not enthusiastic about the idea. But if the alternative was to die of thirst or starvation, provided Beanelda didn't reach anyone, arson didn't seem such a far-fetched method to him. Provided they could, of course, survive the seawater long enough, but he didn't want to think about that any further.
So he agreed and followed Booccaneer upstairs.
Together they stood behind the tiller and examined the equipment. Even after the first touch, Luigi was afraid that the wood would fall apart just by looking at it. At the latest when it would be tampered with wildly.
The engine order telegraph, on the other hand, was clearly of modern design and seemed out of place on board. Just like the analogue fuel gauge mounted on it, the electrically controlled sails, and the engine. But that's exactly why they should work reliably. No, they had to.
At present, the lever was set to the central neutral position, the ignition key in the lock below. Luigi scanned the machinery for more levers and buttons in search of the sail controls while Booccaneer ascended high to the sails. But so far, apart from scratches, metal, and screws, Luigi had only found two buttons under the ignition key.
Each was marked with an arrow, pointing left and right. He could guess that they must be used to turn the sails. But weren't the buttons for hoisting and lowering missing? Hadn't the sails unfurled in the morning when the ship set sail? So either there had to be buttons here, or someone had forgotten something.
"Booccaneer? I think we have a problem!"
"Figures, hold on." From what Luigi could see through the storm, the sails were lowered. Which also meant that the sea might have carried them quite a few miles into the endless blue between morning and evening. Maybe even into international waters.
"Now then, what problem can we add to our pile?" asked Booccaneer flippantly after he had returned.
"The sails themselves. I have no idea which hare-brained flash Harry came up with that idea, but looks like the sails only work when either the engine or the propeller are running."
"I almost thought so, because they obviously can't be adjusted without rigging. But if they indeed only work when the engines are running, we'll have to do some testing."
"Just what do we do once the fuel runs out?"
"Then we're probably screwed, but maybe we'll get lucky and these things will work with only the power on."
"Which we have to charge the battery first, which requires the engine to be running."
"It doesn't have to run all the time, does it?"
"Yes, well, that's true. We can give it a try."
Luigi turned the key until the dashboard first began to flicker, but then lit up brightly. After that, he examined the fuel gauge: Illuminated by the yellow glowing reserve lamp, the needle hung like a tiny sword in the red area, only mere millimetres above the letter E, which could cost the passengers their heads. Booccaneer had indeed told the truth. Looks like the sails had to do the job for now.
He then pressed the left-hand button - Startled, he jerked his hand away as the creaking screams of the masts rang out into the night.
"What?" asked Booccaneer with a laugh, "The barge is ancient, so such noises are part of it."
But Luigi retorted pointedly, "Do you also think it's funny when the mast breaks under the strain? Or a rolling barrel knocks a hole in the wall? I don't know about you, but I'm quite worried about the rotten wood."
"So? If the masts break just because we turn the sails a bit, we'd be better off without them in the storm. Because then they won't capsize us, and won't fall on us in an unfortunate moment."
Luigi was not quite willing to follow this train of thought. Simply putting the masts at stake and if they broke, then they were simply unlucky, was too high a risk for him. However, if they were going to lose them sooner or later anyway, then maybe better now, when they still had the chance to repair damages. And if they held with a bit of luck, all the better.
After forcibly swallowing his misgivings, Luigi said, "Seems like we have nothing left to lose. So what the hell, let's roll with that."
"That's the spirit!"
Luigi put his finger on the button, but the idea of the main mast falling and the consequences kept him from pushing. The weight alone was possibly enough to cut the rotten hull of the Soup hen like butter.
"Don't forget," Booccaneer intervened, "in a storm, it's the end of the line for the Soup hen anyway. We can't do more than delay the inevitable." Just that provided Luigi with the necessary pressure and he sank the button into the casing.
Again the wood roared, begging to be made into firewood at last, but Luigi showed no mercy. He wanted to close his eyes, to avert his gaze so as not to have to witness the worst-case scenario. But his determination would not let him. Either he would go through with it now, and possibly do damage limitation; or meet his end in the storm under even worse circumstances.
And that was when Luigi's attention followed the sails incessantly. They still creaked loudly. Loud enough that he wished he had two extra hands to cover his ears while the last one wiped the sweat from his face. His finger, however, remained ironclad on the button.
Only when nothing moved, the noise stopped and certainly nothing fell apart, did Luigi and Booccaneer breathe a sigh of relief.
Gently, the ghost nudged the plumber with a "There you go!" and followed up with the next instruction, "Now slowly push the lever forward. A few metres of sail is enough, we don't want to suddenly jet into the unknown at full throttle."
So the newly minted helmsman pushed the lever forward as the ghost intended. And he pushed and pushed and pushed. He pushed so hard that he held his breath, squinted his eyes, his face turned red and he soon collapsed. The lever, however, remained in neutral, unimpressed.
"Won't budge?"
"Like a mountain," Luigi said between pauses for breath, "We'll have to start the engine for this, I'm afraid."
"Shoot, would have been too easy otherwise." Booccaneer thought for a moment. "Well, that won't waste that much fuel. Start it up."
Turning the key a little further, a jolt went through the ship as before, until it calmed down and a waiting bubbling could be heard.
"Good, now!"
Luigi's fingers wrapped around the handle again, gripping tightly, and pushed.
At first, nothing moved. But after he had made it clear to the lever through the use of brute force that life in the junkyard was nothing worth striving for, it gave way. More than that, the lower end of the sails moved down along the rails where the fabric unfurled. Slowly and bumpily enough, however, Luigi was worried they would get stuck. So worried, he only had to look at Booccaneer, who flew off to examine each rail.
To put himself at ease, Luigi leaned back against the instrument, looking over the side of the ship and observing the wet, black void around them, while at the same time listening to Beanelda's efforts as a radio operator. Scraps of words like "S.O.S", "Soup hen" and "help" gradually burned themselves into his hearing, and he thought about how often Beanelda must have repeated them so far. Didn't she have a dry throat by now? Didn't she need a break? If only he hadn't emptied his water bottle when he left, he would have given it to her unconditionally. Was the rainwater clean? Although the bottle wouldn't fill up so quickly that it helped her, he believed.
"Everything looks good," Booccaneer called out, so that it jolted Luigi out of his thoughts and he turned to him, "Now shut the engine down and fold your hands."
With his pulse back on top, Luigi turned the key in the opposite direction, which silenced the machine. And then he waited for sounds that mustn't come. One of the rare moments in his life, where he was glad when a device was not doing its job.
Then he heard something coming from the masts.
"Luigi! The sails are staying lowered! It worked!"
Immediately Luigi grinned and jumped with his fist outstretched in jubilation.
"Perfect, there we go," Luigi noted when his first mate was back with him, "But what do we do now?" Booccaneer looked at him dully.
"What do you mean, what do we do now?"
"Yeah, uh, we don't have a course, where are we supposed to go?"
"I know that, man! But without clear skies, a map or GPS, getting our bearings becomes pretty much impossible."
"So now we're just supposed to sit here and wait?"
"We can still burn the ship if you want."
"No, that can't possibly be our last option! There must be a better alternative, like ..." Luigi looked away, folded his arms and muttered incomprehensibly to himself.
He dug deep into his box of ideas to see if he hadn't simply overlooked something somewhere that had been lost in the chaos. And the longer he rummaged around, the stupider he felt, so he dropped his head with a groan. Why on earth had no one considered this possibility before?
"Can we possibly make the Soup hen storm-proof?" asked Luigi like a teenager who thought he had asked the all-important question of life, the answer to which was not 42. His chest swelled with pride as he was finally allowed to shed his blockhead status until the end of the days.
"Never. It's in a pitiful state for that, firstly, and secondly, we don't have the people or materials to do it." And poof, so quickly Luigi put the blockhead cap back on, wanting to head for a lonely corner and let his self-esteem be overcome by shame.
"But if you don't like my suggestions, I'm afraid I don't know else what to do. It's not like I can suddenly conjure up a mobile phone with a Woogle Maps-app."
Dejectedly, Luigi propped himself up against the engine order telegraph and longed for Mario. What would his brother do in a situation like this? He always managed to find a way out, usually. But now? What possibilities would he have seen? When things got tough, no work was too good for him. So would he also have searched every barrel, every crate, every chest?
Luigi's fist pounded against the metal. If only he had his mobile phone with him now! But typically: if it was available, it only annoyed him. If it was gone, soon a problem came running around the corner that he could have easily solved with it.
"You know, maybe you should check on the two old folks. Maybe they've found something by now."
"Yeah, like ..." At first he wanted to make a stupid crack out of frustration. But now that Booccaneer had just mentioned it ...
"A mobile phone!" Already Luigi jumped down to the upper deck and stormed down the steps, leaving a very puzzled Booccaner behind.
"Wait, you can't just leave me ... Well, guess I'll just go and annoy Beanelda, then."
Inside, Luigi immediately called for the two seniors. There was no answer, but he heard voices and noises from the hold below. Luigi stopped briefly to listen: Clearly Pira T. and Goombekker. But the lady's unusually loud voice did not bode well for him, even though he could only hear indistinct fragments of her sentences. The rain and the creaking hull ate up the words too much; what they could not drown out, however, were the screams.
These drove his legs until the quick steps soon became a sprint and he took the stairs in one go, right into the brightly lit hold. Whatever it was about, he had to intervene!
"Don't panic people, I'm here! What's ..."
As soon as he stopped and took in what was happening, the words stuck in his throat. What didn't get stuck were the questions that came to him. And every single one was a variation of "What the heck?"
"Honey, I'm begging you! Stop it, we're not at war!" cried a small figure in a blue dress who, crouching behind a mast, stuck out his head covered by an equally blue hat. At first Luigi did not recognise the person, thinking for a moment if the Soup hen was harbouring stowaways. But the voice revealed to him: Pira T. In an outfit as suited to the rough sea as Wario was suited for a charity event. Her husband, on the other hand, sat on the ground not far away with his back to her and talked incessantly, knowing only two pitches: Loud, and ear-splitting screaming. It was not a minute before Luigi's skull was numbing and he thought he felt a warm liquid flowing from his ear canals.
"Koopatriot, target, tank, left flank! Fire fire fire!" was the first sentence that was neither too fast nor distorted by hoarse shouting, which made Luigi finally understand what Pira T. meant at all. What remained to be determined in the end was whether Goombekker was either plagued by boredom, or the implications of their precarious situation had crushed his mind like Bowser had Peach's castle guards.
"Excuse me, Pira T.?" When she caught sight of him, she stretched out her arms imploringly, "Oh young man, it's terrible! Please, help my husband! You are my only hope!"
Instead of immediately plunging headlong into the fray, Luigi watched the goings-on of the Goomba. Goombekker was still conversing with people only he could see, and so far he seemed to make no effort to leave his place. His skin looked thin and wavy - unlikely to hold up for long in a battle. The cap in woodland camouflage caused Luigi to hesitate, though. Was this merely a preference for military clothing? Or actually a remnant of a career in the army? Back when the Mushroom Kingdom still had one?
But for bullets and bombs, Goombekker was prepared. For a ground pound out of nowhere, on the other hand, he was not. However, Luigi feared that Pira T. would not be thrilled if he drove her husband into the ground, giving him a traumatic brain injury to boot. Perhaps he could lock him in a box? There was one thing he wanted to know first, though.
"Madam, how did this happen? Was it all of a sudden?" She nodded determinedly.
"Ever since he ate those beans, I tell you!"
"Beans?" repeated Luigi as if he had heard something that didn't sound right, "We have beans on board?"
Pira T. pointed over her cover towards the bow and explained, "Up ahead, Goombekker had accidentally knocked over a barrel while climbing, and the lid popped open. Then all those green beans scattered across the floor!"
For a better view, Luigi climbed a few steps, knelt and looked between them.
"Do you see it?"
Hidden in the shadows, he spied the roundish, horizontal outline of the container in question. For the beans, however, he had to go there in person. Which meant slipping past Goombekker. Without either being riddled with lead by him or receiving a skull-crushing headbutt.
"Clearly," Luigi confirmed her information, "But unfortunately your husband is blocking the way to the beans. Was he aggressive, I mean, did he attack you?"
The pensioner stuttered, shook her head and needed several attempts before the first complete sentences finally escaped her lips, "Well, yes. Or, come to think of it, no. He was stumbling around like a drunk, talking about beanmugs and tanks and shouting orders. But lunging at me directly, no."
That was enough for a plan to take shape.
"Okidoki! Then I'll have to ask you to hold the fort for a bit now. I'll get something from upstairs quickly, but if Goombekker does anything dangerous, call for me, will you?"
Her face, marked by dozens of years of life, developed even more wrinkles as she looked over at her husband and back again.
"A-all right, but please hurry!"
"I will, you'll be fine!" Luigi then returned to the lower deck.
He headed straight for the bow, where he had found Beanelda in a barrel - disposed of like an NPC who had fulfilled his role in the story or was liked by nobody.
Before that, however, the table and the chest beneath it presented themselves at their best in the lamplight. The container was large. Big enough to stuff Goombekker in and close the lid completely without him having to complain about a lack of space. Oxygen, on the other hand, was a rather tricky thing. So something else was better.
Luigi looked at one of the boxes and pushed it with his foot to make sure it was empty. But the comparison with a barrel showed how one would first have to make Goombekker fit. For example, by crushing him. On to the barrels!
Their suitability was so clear, that he even recalled how Bowser had put his Goomba troops into barrels on the Koopa Cruiser. Though Luigi had never wondered until now how the whole thing went down and how they had survived it. But since that wasn't an impossibility, why not do the same with Goombekker? All right, a little bit of squeezing might be required. But something always required sacrifice.
Luigi grabbed Beanelda's barrel at the open end and pulled it back towards the hold. While he was still manoeuvring his load between obstacles by looking over his shoulder, he went through the methods he would use to squeeze the senior in. Put the barrel down, grab Goombekker and ram him into the hole? Or better slip it over his head like a giant hat? Did he need Pira Ts. help? For the latter alone he wanted to get Beanelda to assist him, but time was running out.
Then, however, a trampling approached from above, and quickly at that. It must have bent the wood, the way it stomped and creaked. In any case, this caused Luigi to stop and wait tensely. The photographer was unmistakenly in a frenzy. With good news or bad news?
"Luigi Luigi Luigi Luigi!" Beanelda sent forward, even before she reached the first step.
Nope. Still not a clue what she wanted. Except building up suspense, which she excelled at.
"Yes, here! At the back of the entrance to the hold!"
She rushed down the stairs, slipped as she turned around, sprinted off again and came to a stop in front of Luigi like a car with emergency brakes. Even though she was breathing heavily and swaying, she showed him the widest grin physically possible for her.
In any other situation, Luigi would have increased his distance by "to the next town immediately"-lengths. Here, however, her state of mind had an extremely infectious effect. Liberating to boot, it now granted the more pleasant notions of returning home. Or not, for there was the image of a mountain of dirty dishes looming in front of him.
"Luigi!" she struggled to say between pauses for breath, "we did it!"
"Oh boy! What-" His words dissolved into a torrent of confused stammering as Beanelda smacked her hands on his shoulders, shook him vigorously and bounced up and down.
"We've got contact! We're saved!"
"Uh, contact?" came back from Luigi as he was still busy holding his head up and getting rid of the double images of this twisted world, "What do you mean?"
"That we have reached another ship, stupid! What kind of question is that?"
Now that Luigi's brain had stopped bouncing from wall to wall in his skull like a bouncy ball, he was able to fire the first accurate question at her, "Wait, aren't you supposed to be upstairs talking to the contact then?"
"Don't worry, I parked Booccaneer there. He's got everything under control."
This was precisely what Luigi didn't want to hear. Instead of having his worries taken away, those words conjured up a stomach ache. Who knew what Booccaneer was up to unsupervised on the radio?
"Now don't be like that," Beanelda said, noting his silent protest, "Let him have a go, you put in a good word for him after all."
"Yes, I know. But ..." Hastily he thwarted himself as he saw a wave of further horrors rolling towards him and with it the urge to run upstairs, drag Booccaneer away from the device, put a weapon in Beanelda's hand and let her guard the ghost.
He flung the fantasies away by shaking his head and then changed the subject, "You know what, scratch that. Right now I need your help for something urgent anyway."
Beanelda looked at him, blinking, but shrugged simply in response.
"All right, whatever you say. What can I help you with?" Luigi put his hands demonstratively on the barrel.
"This has to go down to the hold. Can you help me carry it?"
"Sure can. But why don't we find one in the hold instead? Then we don't have to carry."
"True, yes, but there's an emergency with the old man. But explaining all that would take too long now, because we have to hurry before something bad happens."
She pierced him sharply with the stare of a detective, who noticed how the matter stank to high heaven. Until she smiled.
"Okay! But only because it's you!" she said with a wink and lent a hand.
Even as they descended, Luigi noticed that something was off - he hadn't heard any of Goombekker's tirades. Normally he should have heard them at the top. And if not there, then actually now, when he was close. But nothing of the sort. If that was supposed to reassure him, he had to conclude the exact opposite.
Only to suppress a laugh when he noticed the absurdity: the resident screamer used to be quiet? Abandon ship! Women and children first!
Pira T. would certainly be able to tell them what was going on with her husband.
However, when he met her at the bottom of the stairs, not behind the boxy cover as he had suspected, but sitting right next to Goombekker, his hair catapulted his cap into the air and he stopped, frozen.
"Luigi, what's wrong?" asked Beanelda, before Luigi's green hat fell onto her own, blocking her view.
But he said nothing, instead surveying the scene like a deer in the headlights.
Pira T. turned her tired smiling face to them and shouted quietly, "He just fell asleep, you can come down."
After Luigi's stupor lifted and Beanelda indignantly returned his cap to him, the plumber asked his workmate to carry the barrel to Goombekker.
But when the old lady saw the barrel, she stood up, her smile gone.
"What are you going to do with the barrel?"
"It's just in case if he-"
"Hurt my husband and I swear, the darkness of the barrel will be the last thing you'll ever see again before I drown you in the sea!" she hissed, her face disfigured by a sinister grimace.
A display of the kind of partnered love that brought the duo to a complete standstill. Who- or whatever had taken over the shell of the harmless pensioner, neither Luigi nor Beanelda dared to take a step. In any case, one thing was certain: Luigi's plan and effort were for nought. And not to forget that they, of course, did not want to unleash Pira T. and therefore put down the barrel without complaint.
As soon as that was accomplished, the smile returned to her lips and she said, "Good, you can look at the beans now. I'll let you know when Goombekker wakes up."
Still disturbed as well as shivering, they both agreed via glances to give the couple a wide berth.
There at the bow lay the overturned barrel, now clearly visible due to the lantern. The lid though was some distance away, and a small mountain of green beans had gushed out of the opening.
"Now can you please explain to me what is going on?" urged Beanelda impatiently.
"You see those beans there?"
"Those that look like Woo Beans? Yes, why?"
Luigi knelt beside them, picked one up and turned it in his hand.
"Beans!"
Puzzled, he turned to her - and immediately felt the tension in his arms and legs as he saw Beanelda's wide grin and heard the unmistakable sound of a growling stomach. A second madman was all he needed.
"No, no! Don't eat, don't eat!", Luigi implored, shaking his head and waving his open palms in front of him, "Goombekker ate some of those and went nuts!"
At least that stopped Beanelda from eating her meal for the moment, looking at him confused.
"Say what? These are gorgeous, healthy, nutritious, delicious, vegan, slenderizing, green, inexpensive Woo Beans from the finest organic, sustainable, Beanbean cultivation! If he has an allergy, then that's sad of course, but still, no reason for me not to eat them!"
"No, no allergy. Really nuts, and the full programme with loss of balance and hallucinating until he fell asleep at some point. In his case about a war against the Beanbean Kingdom and his comrades in battle. Must have been sitting in a tank while doing it."
At first, Beanelda smirked, which within moments grew into a hearty laugh, as if Luigi had just told a good joke. It only stopped when Pira T. glared at her angrily, and even then she had to struggle not to start again.
"Luigi, Luigi, Luigi," Beanelda let out the head teacher, "you're not seriously telling me those are Dream Beans?"
Now it was Luigi's turn to look confused. How could it be that, despite his adventures in the Beanbean Kingdom, he had never heard of Dream Beans? At the same time, he and his brother had accumulated several different types of beans and had them processed into boosting juices! That's why he had no choice but to return a puzzled "Dream Beans? What are Dream Beans?" back. Although, judging by Beanelda's reaction, he was ambivalent about whether he wanted to know.
"Trust me, the less you know, the better you sleep."
Now Luigi definitely didn't want to know, but miss's teacher continued undisturbed, "But to make absolutely sure and show you what to look out for, you will now take a Woo Bean and break it, please."
Not taking his eyes off Beanelda, Luigi picked up one of the green beans and broke it in two effortlessly.
"You can easily recognise a Dream Bean by its rainbow-coloured pulp. You don't need to look at the shell, because they always have the colours of normal beans."
What struck him first on the spot and seemed strange was a glitter like pure sugar. Was this some kind of candy? Extra sugary Woo Beans for children?
But even in the shadows, he could tell that there was something wrong with the pulp because different shades of colour were shimmering. So, under Beanelda's watchful gaze, he used his lantern for help.
Rainbow compressed into the shape of a bean. Childlike, striking, delicious. At least, that's how a commercial would have sold it, and the thought was already enough to make the emptiness in his own stomach noticeable. If he hadn't known about Goombekker's affliction, he would have thrown himself into the pile as well and raged like a Poltergust.
"Looks pretty colourful to me, if you ask me." He showed her the fragments and held up the lamp.
"Right. And what does that mean?" Beanelda seemed to take this news surprisingly well.
"That this is a Dream Bean, I think. Is that actually bad now?"
"No, why should it be? It's just an ordinary Dream Bean, so -" Her expression froze instantly. The green skin turned almost white, and as Luigi noted from his renewed sweat, his instincts knew the implications.
Faster than Luigi's reaction time allowed, Beanelda pushed past him to the vegetables and began breaking open beans at random.
"So does that mean we have a problem?"
White as a ghost, merely lacking luminosity and transparency, she stood up and, breathing rapidly, looked at the dissected vegetables at her feet. Dozens of pieces revealed their colourful contents; Beanelda grabbed her head with both hands.
That was answer enough for Luigi. Was this the right time to panic? Because somehow the problems just seemed to pile up.
However, after Beanelda took one breath and let her arms hang, she turned to him, her skin colour noticeably greener again, "Okay okay okay, don't panic!"
So no.
"If we just pick up all the beans, put them back in the barrel and put the lid back on, we'll be fine. For sure!" She grinned, ignoring the watery beads on her forehead.
Sighing and not questioning what was happening any further, Luigi set about shovelling the beans back into the barrel with her.
"Guys, guys! Great news!"
Everyone in the room, except for Goombekker who was sleeping peacefully and snoring, looked toward the source of the voice.
Just below the ceiling, Booccaneer hovered, his trademark grimace pulled up at the corners of his mouth.
"There will be a ship here in about an hour! They can already be seen on the horizon through their searchlights!"
"Thank the maker!" uttered Pira T. with folded hands her relief and Luigi also joined in with a laugh.
Except for Beanelda.
"What kind of ship?" she asked as if spotting disaster around the corner.
"From the Royal Beanbean Navy. Introduced themselves as the S.S. Vicia faba, if I haven't forgotten the name again."
Then Luigi gave Beanelda a gentle nudge and teased, "See, you can add another exciting story to your blog!"
She, however, turned pale again.
"Yup. We're in trouble as deep as the ocean."