Chapter Seven:

In The Desert of Desolation

Somewhere out in the desert region known as Desolate Canyon, in the shadows of a palm tree's leaves near a large rock, two individuals lay unconscious upon the ground; one mustached male and one orange-haired female.

The former was SMG4, the famous internet star and the guardian of memes; both known as Super Mario Glitchy Four and Super Meme Guardian Four. SMG could stand for anything, initials were very common.

And the female who with him was Meggy Spletzer; the former Inkling citizen of Inkopolis-turned human Splatfest champion and sports coach in-training.

All of whom were friends of one important fella in the world; Mario.

Meggy's eyes opened slowly and she sat up, rubbing her head with a groan. Not long after, SMG4 woke up, rubbing his head and sitting upright. The two of them took a minute to regain their full senses, feeling disoriented.

"SMG4?" Meggy asked, she looked around, "Wh-What happened?"

"I... I don't know." SMG4 replied, "That last thing I remember is looking at dancing cookie memes on my phone while in the men's room yesterday."

Meggy eyed him with a raised eyebrow, SMG4 picked some odd places to look at memes.

He changed the subject quickly, "But why are we out here, away from the rest of the kingdom? What happened here?"

"Whatever just happened, I bet Mario has something to do with it." Meggy growled, she clenched her fist, "Oh, that stupid..."

"How about we go find him and find some answers first?" SMG4 suggested.

Meggy nodded and rose to her feet, dusting her SplatSquad T-shirt and black shorts off, then she examined her boots to make sure there weren't any rocks in it while SMG4 dusted off his hat too. Then they set off across the desert, surveying their surroundings and seeing nothing but rocks and... cliffs as far as the eye could see.

It was out of the ordinary, waking up in a desert, far away from your home. But how far away were they and was it just them who ended up outside the kingdom?

Obviously not.

As they walked along, they could see others here, seemingly somehow condemned like they were, and they were people that Meggy and SMG4 knew well, having befriended or battled them on previous adventures.

Shroomy the Mushroom, Boy Scout/Demon Hunter, was tinkering with a rocket launcher as he sat next to his grandpa Wheeler, the infamous mushroom robber. Meggy had encountered him while trying to help Bob run his pawn shop several weeks ago.

Oh, how she remembered what that led to as much as she could remember her adventures with Shroomy.

Wheeler held up a sign reading; 'Need Surgery Money, Health Bills.' SMG4 and Meggy ignored him and kept walking on.

SMG1 and SMG2 passed by, all scratching their heads in confusion. Meggy waved casually to them, she and those two meme guardians had come a long way since they first met, she'd forgiven them for... well, being so annoying on the day of their first meeting.

"Oh, hey, guys. Y'know what's going on, guys?" SMG4 asked.

"No clue in the foggiest." SMG1 remarked, "I just wish we had an answer as to why there's all this desert. It should be obvious we haven't been banished to another dimension."

"Hopefully, you guys can find our answer and fix it." SMG1 agreed.

"Until we do, hang in there." SMG4 encouraged.

"Oh, we will."

"Buy some corn." Rob the Scarecrow called, he too was out in the desert, and he'd somehow managed to set up a corn stand despite being in an apparent wasteland, "It's all free, buying corn doesn't hurt when it's free. We know you love corn."

Meggy and SMG4 passed the corn stand and Rob lowered his head, a tear rolling down his cheek, feeling neglect at the thought that someone had turned down corn once again.

SMG4 heard squeaking and saw Depresso riding around on his unicycle. He clenched his fist, feeling a sense of furious resentment towards the clown, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up at Meggy, who looked at him with an assuring smile.

The meme man calmed down, reminding himself that the... incident... with Depresso had only been a bad fever dream. It never happened, there was no need to resent him.

The meme man then saw SMG3 sitting by a rock and petting Egg Dog, his current majordomo and replacement for his late friend Terrance.

Wait, what was he doing out of the Internet Graveyard?

"Don't mind me!" SMG3 called out to SMG4, "I just came up for a visit, I had nothing to do with our predicament!"

"Never said you were..." SMG4 told him.

Even then, his mind flashed back to all of their previous battles, recalling the trouble SMG3 had stirred up, then memories of their battle with Zero flashed through their mind. That had been when they'd buried the hatchet, set aside their grudges, and became who they were supposed to be.

SMG3, king of the Internet Graveyard or not, was SMG4's brother in a way.

Fugeo the Water Bottle hopped by, offering water to people. They saw Whimpu at one point, looking at his I-Phone, probably texting someone. SMG4 and Meggy saw Saiko standing in a corner, looking up at the sky with confusion, and they saw her partner Kaizo fiddling with a drumstick.

Oh man, it had been a while since they'd seen him.

Kaizo was an old friend of Saiko's, originating from the very same dating sim that Fishy Boopkins had brought her to life out of. When Saiko was trying to find a new band, she dragged Tari to her house and used her technology to bring Kaizo out of the game, unlike how Boopkins had used Kamek's wand to bring out Saiko.

Recently, during an event hosted by Mario, who'd captured SMG4 and the rest of the gang, Saiko and Kaizo buried the hatchet, just as SMG4 and SMG3 had done so, and joined together as a band again to help the others take down Mario as he was using Octarian warlord DJ Octavio's Octobot King.

What were Saiko and Kaizo up to until today anyway, the last SMG4 had heard, they'd gone on a little world tour with one of their stops being Octo Valley, where they rocked DJ Octavio himself real hard.

Oh man, that must have been one heck of a battle.

SMG4 saw Hal Monitor, the Mushroom Kingdom's officer of the law, surveying the area with confusion as he held his service pistol. Meggy, despite being a cop for a time, got slight chills seeing him. Then they walked by the Old Man Hobo, who was sitting in a bathtub, holding an egg as he looked at it.

"Egg." The old man said.

"Hiya."

Meggy and SMG4 saw Tari as she sat on a rock, playing a Switch, with her rival Belle, sitting next to her. The two friends waved back, then they walked past a cat in a green apron with a bored expression on her face. Karen, the store clerk, Mario had encountered her during a... misadventure.

"ITS RAW!" Someone yelled in a British accent, "ITS BLOODY RAW!"

Chef Ramensay stamped his foot, throwing down a piece of stake into a garbage bin, then he screamed at the top of his lungs while cursing up a storm. Meggy held back a gasp, she knew him; he was the head teacher of the cooking club at Omnia Academy.

She and Melony had encountered him once before in-between classes, she hadn't seen him in a while, not since... not since Zero's defeat. And speaking of Melony, Meggy turned, seeing her former anti-cast double/BFF/sister figure laying upon a rock with Axol's old Inkweaver in her arms, sleeping without a care in the world.

"Real strange..." SMG4 remarked after they'd passed by everyone they'd known.

"Hopefully, it won't take long to sort everything out." Meggy said, "And I swear, if Mario is behind this... Whoa!"

She and SMG4 stopped, their eyes widening as they took in the massive firewall in front of them, gleaming brightly. They could see the Mushroom Kingdom's countryside and Peach's Castle on the other side, but this was impossible. Was this some sort of mirage, a hallucination brought on by a heatstroke?

No, it was very real. SMG4 and Meggy ran towards the firewall, looking at the force-field with bewilderment and taken by surprise by the sight. SMG4 raised his fist and banged on the firewall, nothing happened. He looked at Meggy, filled with uncertainty.

"AHHHHH, MAMA MIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

SMG4 and Meggy turned. On the other side of the firewall, panicking and banging a fist against the force-field with Luigi right behind him, was Mario.

And now, they knew for absolutely sure that the culprit behind this madness, them and everyone else being out in the desert and with a firewall blocking them off from the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom, was someone else entirely.

Mario was innocent...