Chapter 16: A Daring Rescue
His face set in a determined grimace, Punio once again led the way through the Great Tree. His focus was unwavering, so none of them really had the chance to admire the wonders of the insides of a giant, mostly transparent tree where they could see what looked like rivers running upwards. The filigree in the wood reminded Matthew strongly of an ice castle though this atmosphere didn't carry into its temperature. It was actually quite balmy, which did nothing to detract from the tree's beauty. The hard steel doors, on the other hand, did quite a lot to detract from it, like clunky prosthetics on a delicate dancer. He felt a bit traitorous swiping his card to open each door as if he was some corporate official trying to force the natural environment into an artificial order of cubicles
But cold, hard constructs did have their upsides, he realized a few moments later. They came into an enormous chamber with no bottom, crisscrossed by natural bridges that dipped down, climbed up, and branched in other directions like an M. C. Escher drawing where one wrong step could send you falling into a never-ending abyss. At the very center of this spaghetti bowl was a glass tube - not the strange but beautiful organic branch of the tree but a literal glass tube housing an elevator.
As the group took measure of the room, Goombella plopped down with a heavy sigh and then announced, "All right, I know this sounds mutinous, but does anyone else think that those X-jerks might have actually done us a favor in putting in that elevator? No? I mean, it's not like we asked them to install it, so why not take advantage while we've got it? Go on, Matthew. Tell them it's a good idea."
"It's a good idea," Matthew agreed to which Goombella's mouth fell open in astonishment. "It could save us a lot of time. The sooner we save your friends, the better, right Punio?"
"Er, yeah, but... won't the X-nauts be waiting for us at the top?"
"Which is why we go to the second to the top and sneak the rest of the way up there," Matthew answered as though this had been his plan all along and everyone else had been too slow to realize it. He couldn't afford to mar his reputation as a fearless and brilliant leader by making rookie mistakes like that.
"I... guess that makes sense," Punio admitted.
They made their way to the elevator, with Punio making sure they didn't take the wrong paths. Matthew used the card to open the elevator and they all squeezed inside. "Squeezed" was something of a hyperbole as the elevator was surprisingly roomy, affording plenty of space for Matthew, Goombella, Koops, Punio, and finally Madam Flurrie who was the largest of the company. Matthew pressed the button second from the top and with a "ding" and a whoosh as the doors closed, they began riding up. As the light climbed the buttons, indicating which floor they were passing, the top button suddenly lit up. While Matthew had never ridden an elevator before, he had seen plenty of movies that gave him the general idea of how they worked, and unless he missed his guess, the top light coming on meant someone from the top floor had called the elevator. And that was a problem.
"Okay, nobody panic," he said in a calm voice.
Goombella gave him an odd look. "Why would we panic? Unless some of us have acrophobia? Or claustrophobia...?"
Punio turned to Matthew in alarm. "Is something wrong?"
Koops answered him, "I think Matthew meant to say that we should just relax."
"I meant to say that we might be in trouble," Matthew snapped without thinking. Seeing their surprise at his outburst, he hastened to make amends, "But don't worry. If we work together, we can beat them."
"What are you talking about?" Madam Flurrie asked. "What's the problem?"
"Ah! Er..." Matthew pointed at the top button. "Someone's called the elevator."
Goombella tossed her hair with a huff. "Couldn't you have just said so instead of telling us to calm down when we're already calm? You're only making us more nervous when you do that, telling us things like that without telling us what it is we're supposed to panic about..."
The elevator stopped and the doors opened with a ding. The button second to the top flashed to indicate they were at their floor, and despite Matthew's warning there were no X-nauts waiting for them.
"Everybody off then," Madam Flurrie announced and herded them all out. "Thank goodness you had the foresight to stop us before the top floor, Matthew, or else we surely would have been outmatched."
"Right," agreed Matthew, his face burning. It had been a close shave but worse than that, he was only realizing that he wasn't as prepared as a leader as he was pretending to be, causing unnecessary panic and more or less winging this expedition, which meant that sooner or later his blunders were going to cost them.
Koops cut his moment of self-doubt short, "So n-now we sneak our way up, r-right?" He turned to Punio. "A-are there secret ways up there? Ways the X-n-nauts don't know about?"
Punio's antenna wobbled indecisively. "I guess so. There are these tunnels we call 'the Narrows' but, well, they're narrow, meaning I don't think you guys will fit in them."
"There are multiple pathways to the Convocation Crown - that's what they call the area at the top of the tree," Madam Flurrie explained to the group. "The pathways are guarded by the various tribes of this Tree: the Jabbies, the Punies, the Piders, the Clefts... Perhaps we could try asking the Chiefs of the tribes if they can give us safe passage to the top."
"Wait, you want us to talk to the other tribes?" Punio cried in alarm.
"Punio, dear, there isn't much of a choice. The Elder and your friends are in danger and every moment we delay brings them closer to their doom. Let us talk to the Chief Jabbicus of the Jabbie tribe..."
"Oh, wow," Goombella sneered, "Jabbicus the Jabbie, real orig..."
"Can we get past that already?" Matthew cried in exasperation.
"Yes, indeed, as I was saying," Madam Flurrie shot Goombella a stern look that caused her to duck her head meekly. "I think we should talk to the Jabbie tribe and ask them to give us safe passage to the Crown. Chief Jabbicus is a fairly reasonable Jabbie..."
"No he's not!" protested Punio.
"Oh, I think he is," Madam Flurrie countered, "especially if he thinks we can win him back his crown, so to speak." She chuckled at her own joke.
But when they arrived in the Jabbie village - a low-ceiling section of the Tree that was occupied by honeycomb-shaped nests - they found it ominously quiet. Even after a couple of "hello"s from Goombella and a plea from Madam Flurrie for Chief Jabbicus to come out, there was no sign of life.
"Guess those X-jerks got the Jabbies, too," Goombella remarked, kicking at a nest that had fallen and been trampled.
Koops wondered aloud, "You think, m-maybe, they got the other tribes, t-too?"
"These X-nauts are proving themselves to be depraved more and more by the minute!" Madam Flurrie declared, swelling with indignity.
"I guess we won't need Chief Jabbicus's permission," said Punio. At the stern look Madam Flurrie gave him, he added, "A silver lining in this whole mess."
"Whatever it is, we'd better get a move on," Matthew commanded. "Punio, take us to that Concovation Crown or whatever it is so we can rescue your tribe... and the others."
But as they started to leave, they heard a tiny, buzzing voice call out, "Wait!" Turning around, they saw something fly out of one of the nests hanging in the corner and dive straight for Punio.
"Look out!" Koops cried and used himself to shield the little Elder.
"Eeek!" the little creature, who very much resembled a hyperactive mosquito, cried and flew back toward the nest it had come from.
"Wait!" This was Punio, who scuttled out from behind Koops. "Is that you Jabble?"
"Punio!" Jabble buzzed and zipped back toward his friend. "Boy, am I so glad to see you!"
"What happened here, Jabble?" Punio nodded to the village. "Where is everyone?"
Without warning, the little Jabbie burst into tears. "They were taken! By some round giants in white! They used smoke to chase us out of our homes and these nets to capture us all! I was the only one who wasn't captured. I hid in my nest, shaking so hard I thought they'd hear me! Oh, Punio, I was so scared!"
"It's okay, Jabble," Punio consoled him somewhat awkwardly, his face beet-red. "I've got some friends who can straighten everything out. Everything will be back to normal soon, don't worry."
"Yeah, kid, chin up," Goombella stepped in. "We're the best at what we do. We'll have those jerks out faster than you can say 'Sarasaland.' Speaking of which, did you know Sarasaland is the only kingdom in the world to have five leaders who rule jointly? The Textile Treaty of 1485..."
"Who's that?" Jabble buzzed, hiding behind his friend.
"She's a friend," Punio explained patiently. "Her name's Goombella." He then introduced the rest of them except for Madam Flurrie, whom it seemed he already knew, and finished with, "Everyone, this is Jabble. We're sort of... secret friends."
"Yeah, our tribes don't like each other, but we do!" Jabble buzzed enthusiastically.
Matthew thought to himself, This guy's mood swings faster than a karate chop. First a talking flea and now a bipolar mosquito. With his skin itching at this medley of creepy crawlers, he wasn't sure he wanted to meet the other tribes. What was next? A drooling spider? A centipede with a lisp?
Punio it seemed was rather eager to leave Jabble for he hurriedly said, "Well, we'd better get going, so Jabble, you just wait here and when we've gotten everything straightened out we'll let you know..."
"I want to come with you!" Jabble burst out.
Punio blinked in surprise. "Er, wait, really? Uh... but it'll be dangerous..."
"You'r going to the Convocation Crown, right? I know the way up there! I can show you! Come on!"
Poor Punio tried to protest but was severely outmatched by the Jabbie's boundless energy as he immediately sped for the tunnels. Matthew tried to help him rein the ensuing maelstrom in as everyone chased after him but he too proved ineffective. With a sigh of exasperation, he scooped up Punio and followed behind the rest of them.
...
"There they are!" Jabble keened in a pitch so high that surely dogs everywhere were rolling on the ground in pain.
"Please, dear!" Madam Flurrie whispered with a fat finger to her lips. "They'll hear you!"
They had arrived at the top where the X-nauts had taken all the captured denizens of the tree. And with the exception of the excitable Jabble, the diva Madam Flurrie and the junior Elder, they were all dumbstruck. The Concocation Crown was... well, to say it was huge was to say the ocean was wet. The word didn't even come close to conveying it. When Matthew tried to come up with a word for it, he arrived at "busy" and that barely said a thing about the place. Put most accurately, it was what a city would look like if some crazy Magikoopa came along, cast a spell, and commanded the skyscrapers to grow like trees, and then afterward the X-nauts had taken it over and converted it into a giant animal testing center. Quite literally on the last part.
There were wires everywhere, weaving all around the trees until they connected on one end to glass orbs stuffed to bursting with wriggling creatures that the group recognized as the tribes of the Tree like Punies and Jabbies as well as googly-eyed spiders, weeping clouds, and snarling rocks while the other end hooked into giant monitors, which were churning out data by the buckets. X-nauts were stationed at these monitors, their goggles fixed to the screens while their stubby fingers tapped away on the keyboards. And strutting among them like an overweight peacock was the X-naut himself, Lord Crump.
He came to a stop behind one of his cronies and barked, "Anything yet?"
After jumping a foot in the air, the X-naut said crossly, "Nothing yet, Lord Crump. Our reconassaince team is still searching the Tree. X-342 reports he's found a chamber at the very base of the tree that looks promising and will report any further developments. As for the Cognitive Filtration Program, there's a lot of memories to sort through. With so many subjects, it's difficult to pinpoint anything related to the Crystal Star. It's possible that they don't call it a Crystal Star but refer to it as something else entirely, so we'll need to scrutinize the data very carefully."
"Humph!" snorted the big bully. "I still think we ought to beat it out of them the old-fashioned way."
"Likely as not, you'll only end up squishing them and you can't get information out of a dead subject. Besides, there's the chance they'll lie and send us into a trap. This ensures we get accurate and detailed information with minimal loss of resources."
"You mean the grunts," snorted Lord Crump. "In my day, they didn't hesitate to sacrifice themselves for the good of the mission."
"With an average loss of 64% of the force with each invasion. The battle against Tatanga and his forces severely crippled us. It was only thanks to Sir Grodus's innovative approach that we managed to avoid extinction. You are merely a surviving relic of an outdated dogma."
The Crown echoed with a resounding crack as Lord Crump backhanded the underling. "Remember who you're talking to, you number-crunching grunt!" he bellowed. "You will show me respect or I will personally shove you into the re-Integration Chamber!"
The grunt rubbed his head sullenly. "As you command, Lord Crump."
The group watched this from behind one of the twisted skyscrapers, Punio shaking with either anger or fear and Jabble shaking harder than him. Madam Flurrie's fists shook, definitely with anger, as she spat, "Those despicable, deplorable, detestable brutes! Trapping those poor, innocent dears in such a cruel way! They need a sore lesson in manners and I'm of half a mind to teach them some!" She started forward, figuratively rolling up her sleeves.
"Whoa-ho-ho! Easy there, Ms. Temperamental!" said Goombella, grabbing her by the tail. "We can't just go in there swinging our fists. In case you haven't noticed, they outnumber us one hundred and one to four! But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we don't do something. What I am saying is that we should have a plan to tip the odds in our favor..."
"Like freeing all those guys?" Matthew suggested.
"And how do you propose we do that?" Goombella asked, irritated that he had interrupted her.
Matthew grinned conspiratorially, "You know how Mario can take out multiple foes in a single jump?"
"Y-you mean without touching th-the ground?" said Koops.
"No, I mean with just one jump on a very specific enemy." He turned to the trepid Koopa and waggled his eyebrows meaningfully. It wasn't long before Koops got the drift and his eyes grew wide.
Matthew thought it was a pretty good idea but Goombella thought otherwise and wasted no time giving him every reason why it was too dangerous, including the question of how Koops was going to stop himself. She made the suggestion of using Punio and Jabble to scout the area so they could come up with a better plan while somebody else suggested that Madam Flurrie take them all on single-handedly as fearsome as her physique was. While everyone tried as quietly as possible to convince each other they had the soundest plan, Jabble, overcome by frustration, wailed, "Oh, why did those bullies have to come here? What did we do wrong? I just wish they never came here!"
That gave Matthew his Eureka moment. "That's it! Wish!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Crystal Star.
Punio, Jabble, and Madam Flurrie oohed at the sight of the glittering gem. Koops stammered, "A-are you sure that'll work? Didn't you try w-wishing with it before and it didn't?"
The young man hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. "We won't know until we try. It can't hurt, right?" Then he held it up and whispered to it, "I wish these X-nauts would disappear."
The Star winked and then flashed, blinding them all for a moment. There were confused shouts from the X-nauts who had seen the flash and then they all began stampeding toward the group hiding behind the branches.
Goombella snapped, "Uh, Matthew? I don't see any X-nauts disappearing, do you? What I do see is that we're about to go under the world's biggest dogpile if we don't do something..."
Then every last one of them froze as there came a horrendous creaking like the world's biggest pirate ship being squeezed by a kraken's tentacle. The giant, twisted skyscrapers suddenly came to life, thrashing angrily and causing the entire tree to shake. They were all thrown to the ground. A lucky few, including Matthew and company, managed to cling to the ground and hang on for dear life but a huge chunk of the X-nauts were tossed around the Crown like baseballs in a snowstorm, smashing into the glass cages, computers and equipment.
Then it stopped. Glass and broken machines were littered everywhere. Many of the X-nauts had been thrown off the tree into distant sections of the Boggly Woods though there were a few unconscious ones mixed in among the rubble. The various tribes of the Tree - Punies, Jabbies, Clefts, and others - seemed rather dazed but miraculously still in one piece.
The adventurers climbed shakily to their feet. Goombella rasped hoarsely, "Never... ever... make a wish with that... rock... ever... again!"
Madam Flurrie replied, "Yes, I quite agree. Is everyone all right?" She turned to the Tribes who had seen her and were slowly making their way to her. "Well, come come everyone! This is not an opportunity to be wasted! Elder! Chief Jabbicus! All of you! This way!"
With the tribes at last spurred to action, they all bade a hasty retreat back down the Tree.
...
"Well, well, well, what have we here?" snickered an oily voice.
Lord Crump's goggles flickered on. He put a hand to his forehead as he pushed himself to his feet with a groan. "Buhhhh..."
"Napping on the job, hm?" sneered Beldam. "I ought to report this to Sir Grodus, and we'll see what sort of lovely punishment he comes up with, eh?"
"Quiet, you shade!" Lord Crump barked angrily, wobbling a bit on his feet. "Someone else found the Crystal Star first and used it against me!"
"Oh, you mean Mario was the one who caused the whole tree to shake?" Vivian giggled delightedly. "You should have seen it! All those big, round balls like giant fruit flying every which way. I'll bet all the little critters in these woods got quite the surprise!" She broke down completely into hysterical laughter.
"Guh!" Marilyn agreed, making a gesture of exaggerated surprise.
Beldam snapped at the youngest, "Vivian! Control yourself! Really, you have the most annoying laugh!"
Vivian quickly stifled her giggles and apologized profusely. The big X-naut harrumphed, "Well, I'll show him! You just wait. Nobody humiliates Lord Crump like this and gets away with it! By the time I'm finished with him, you won't be able to tell which of him is his insides and his outsides!" He stormed off toward the Great Tree, waving his fists threateningly.
Beldam grinned wickedly. "Oh, will you now? I'll admit this it turning out to be more interesting than I suspected. Who'd have thought that skinnybones and his ragtag team would actually get this far?"
