(A/N: So Mario's been slightly cured of the Bean Fever that the Invincishroom gave him, but he'll need the Crabbie Grass if he wishes to be completely cured! I know you want to see that, so I'll get the chapter started for you!)
Mario, Luigi, and Peach took the lift back to Teehee Valley, keeping a sharp eye out for any Gritty Goombas as they looked for the elevator to Guffawha Ruins. No way was Peach going to get captured by those idiots again!
Before long, the group happened upon the elevator, but they learned that only it allowed one rider at a time.
"Okie-dokie. Peach, I know I usually let you go first, but I think it's-a best if I go first, then you, then Luigi." Mario said to his girlfriend.
"How come I have to go last?" Luigi asked, sounding a little annoyed.
"Because if Peach goes first or last, she could get attacked and/or captured if she's not careful. You're going to watch her back until she's with me." Mario said.
"Fair enough." Luigi replied, not annoyed anymore. He understood because he and Mario hated that enemies enjoyed making Peach suffer. But he had to wonder why Toadsworth didn't try to stop the princess when he had to warn them about her getting easily captured when they started making their way to Little Fungitown. Or maybe Peach had just continued on because she really didn't want to hear his lecture.
"Here we go!" Mario said, and he got on the elevator. When he reached the top, he got off, and the elevator went back down.
"Get on." Luigi told Peach. So she did, and Mario took her hand to help her off.
"Your turn!" the couple called to Luigi, who hopped on, then stood next to his brother and the princess after getting off.
"Now let's-a go and look for the Crabbie Grass. But we have to be very careful for the monster we heard tell about..." Mario said as they began making their way towards the ruins.
"R-right." said Luigi. He didn't want to see any monsters or get into fights with any enemies, for fighting them might drain Mario's energy, and Mario didn't need that.
To their surprise, the place didn't appear to be all that dangerous. It also seemed to be located at the base of Hoohoo Mountain, where they had been. Mario and Luigi told Peach how they climbed the mountain and met Prince Peasley and a talkative pterosaur named Blablanadon.
They saw some enemies walking around the place, but Mario and Luigi decided that it was best to keep away from them, if they could.
But Peach was also keeping the enemies away, too, much to Mario and Luigi's surprise. Perhaps she was angry about being attacked in Teehee Valley, and that told her it was time to show the enemies here that she was no pushover, if that's what they were thinking.
"Look at how good Peach is at fighting off any approaching enemies. Maybe Toadsworth doesn't need to worry about her as much as he thought he did." Mario whispered to Luigi.
"Peach seems to be keeping a sharp eye out for them, and she's catching them before we even know they're around. Perhaps she has eyes like a hawk..." Luigi replied, impressed with Peach.
After what felt like a long time, they met up with a moai, a stone head who told them that people in Little Fungitown were spreading rumors that he was a monster. But from what they could tell, he wasn't a monster; he was actually very nice and misunderstood.
"You're no monster!" Mario exclaimed.
"You don't even look like a monster! You should see Bowser! Now he's a monster!" Luigi said.
"Compared to him, you're a pussycat! But I'm not saying that to be mean or anything. You're actually very nice." Peach added.
It made the moai really happy to know that Mario, Luigi, and Peach didn't think of him as a monster, but he was still very stressed out from the rumors of him being thought of as one. Mario and Luigi agreed to help him blow off some steam. Peach quietly stood off to the side, watching as her heroes helped the moai. Thankfully, no monsters showed up to take her during this time. Maybe they were scared of the moai?
After helping the moai release his stress, he felt so much better, but then Mario asked him if he knew where to find Crabbie Grass. He told them that it was in the next area, so he opened the way and allowed them to move on and find... the Crabbie Grass!
"This is it! This is the cure!" Luigi exclaimed in happiness as he picked up the grass and pocketed it.
"Wonderful! Now let's take it to the doctor so he can make it into the cure that Mario needs to completely recover from Bean Fever!" Peach cheered.
"Wahoo! I'm gonna get well!" Mario cheered.
"Should we also tell the people in town that Guffawha Ruins is really not as dangerous as they were saying?" Luigi asked.
"We should, but you guys might want to fix the Beanstar problem before we tell them anything else." Peach said. She remembered Mario and Luigi telling her about that when she first arrived in the Beanbean Kingdom.
They found a pipe that took them right back to Little Fungitown, and they found the hospital with no problems. When they entered, the Toad nurse at the desk saw them and said, "The doctor told me to expect the three of you. I'll take you right to him!"
So the group followed the nurse down the halls, to the lab where the doctor was working. He had finished examining the Mushroom, and he was not the least bit happy with his discovery.
"How in the world could the arcade proprietor be so stupid?! That was a Mushroom no one should have eaten! Now I have to wonder just how many of his customers have been affected by such a thing!" the doctor angrily mumbled to himself.
"Doctor, the people you were expecting have arrived." the nurse said, getting his attention.
"Oh, good. Please let them come in." said the doctor.
The nurse stepped aside, and Mario, Luigi, and Peach entered the lab.
"Good to see you! You made it through Guffawha Ruins with no problems, I assume?" he asked.
"You assume correct. We had no problems over there. And we even saw the monster, only he wasn't really a monster at all. He was a nice yet misunderstood moai." Peach smiled.
"I guess I'll have to find some way to spread the word that there is no monster." said the doctor.
"Before you do that, we need to tell you that we really came here to see you because we found the Crabbie Grass!" Mario happily said as Luigi showed him the grass.
"The moai told us where to look for it after we helped him out." Luigi said with a smile.
"He did? That's great! That proves he's not a monster! Anyway, hold on a second, and I'll prepare the cure!" said the doctor as he took the grass. Then he quickly turned it into the cure that Mario needed.
"Okay, Mario, here you go!" said the doctor, and he fed the cure to Mario. Now his skin was back to normal, and he was fully recovered!
"Yahoo! I'm back, and better than ever!" Mario exclaimed cheerfully. He shared a group hug with Luigi and Peach, who were glad that he was out of danger.
"All right, now that Mario is cured of his Bean Fever, I have something to tell all of you, and you're not going to like it. I should know, because I didn't like it myself when I figured it out." said the Toad doctor.
"What is it?" Luigi asked.
"The Mushroom that Mario ate was, as you have figured out, not an Invincishroom." the doctor began.
"That figures, if the main ingredients made Mario sick, even though they have no negative effects on him when he has them in the Mushroom Kingdom!" Luigi said.
"Well, I did a little research on the computer and found that the Invincishrooms are actually better known as 'Invincibility Mushrooms'. They also look like this." said the doctor as he walked over to the computer in the room. As he spoke, he brought up the picture of the Mushroom for them to see.
"As we clearly saw, that's not what Mario ate." Luigi said.
"So what did I eat? A Mushroom that went bad?" Mario asked.
"I don't think Mushrooms ever really go bad, Mario. The most a Mushroom can do is dry up, and that makes it taste pretty bad, as you've noticed. But they don't really make anyone as sick as you were." said Peach.
"After careful research, I found out that the Mushroom Mario ate was... this is the part you're going to hate... a Poison Mushroom." said the doctor. Then he showed them what a Poison Mushroom looked like, and it was a perfect match with the one Mario had thrown up.
Mario, Luigi, and Peach gasped in shock when they heard this news! Someone had the gall to give Mario a Poison Mushroom and tell him it was a good one! It was unthinkable!
"You boys got this Mushroom from the arcade, you say?" Peach asked, feeling mad.
"Yes!" said Mario, sounding angry.
"Then that's where we're going right now! Let's go and give that proprietor a piece of our minds!" Peach replied, and they were getting ready to leave.
"And while you're at it, ask him how many of those he's got, and how many people have eaten them! If he does have some left, then tell him that he'd better not to feed them to anyone else! He needs to throw them all away!" yelled the doctor.
"We'll tell him!" Luigi called back as they exited the hospital.
As they walked, Mario was mad at the proprietor for offering a Poison Mushroom to his customers without realizing it, but then again, he went ahead and ate the Mushroom without doing extensive research on it first. He felt like an idiot for doing that, and Luigi was wishing that Mario hadn't been so impulsive.
"I really should have waited before eating that Mushroom. If I had done my homework on it first, like the doctor did, then I wouldn't have gotten in that mess." said Mario.
"I'm glad I didn't want to eat it." said Luigi.
"You were smarter than me. From now on, I'm going to have to look before I leap with foods like that. I hate feeling like un idiota." Mario replied.
"You're not un idiota, bro; you're just impulsive. But being careful is sometimes the best thing to do." Luigi said, placing a hand on Mario's shoulder.
"It was bad enough that Mario was struck down with that disease, but if you were also hit with the fever, Luigi... I'd go off my head for sure!" Peach said.
By then, they reached the arcade, and they stormed in there, looking really mad. But the proprietor didn't seem to notice their anger. He did, however, recognize Mario and Luigi from earlier on. He told them that if they had come back to try and win another Invincishroom, then they were out of luck, because he was out of them.
"You're out?" Peach asked.
"Fresh out! The man in red was the lucky recipient who got the only one I had!" said the proprietor.
"Lucky, you say? That's not what I'd call myself!" Mario angrily replied.
"Huh? You weren't lucky? What do you mean?" asked the proprietor.
"First off, the Mushroom you thought you had for customers is really supposed to be called an 'Invincibility Mushroom', and secondly, the Mushroom you fed my brother was not an Invincibility Mushroom! In fact, it didn't even look like one!" Luigi yelled, and he sounded just as angry as Mario had.
The Toads playing games were hearing this, but they were half-listening.
"You mean... it wasn't what I thought it was?" asked the proprietor, feeling nervous.
"Did you not see how sick he got while he was eating it?!" Luigi asked, still angry.
"Ohhh... that's not a good sign. Those Mushrooms are not supposed to make people sick..." said the proprietor, now upset.
"But it did! And do you know why he got sick?!" Peach asked.
The proprietor gulped nervously. The way they were talking to him about that Mushroom didn't sound too good.
"Believe it or not, you actually fed him A POISON MUSHROOM!" Luigi shouted.
Everyone in the arcade heard that, and now they stared at the proprietor and his angry customers with shocked and horrified expressions on their faces. If they had gotten a super-high score, they would've been poisoned as well! That was too awful to think about!
"A P-P-Poison M-Mushroom?" the proprietor asked, shocked out of his mind at this information. How could that be? He had been told that it was the Mushroom he was looking for!
"And take a good look at the customer you fed the Poison Mushroom to! You might recognize him as Super Mario of the Mushroom Kingdom!" Peach added.
All of the Toads recognized Mario at once, and since their shock caused them to lose the games they had been playing, they left the machines to yell at the proprietor for trying to kill their hero!
"You tried to kill the Super Mario?!" asked one of the Toads.
"Are you out of your freaking mind?!" asked another Toad.
"I can't believe you actually fed Mario, of all people, a Poison Mushroom! How could you do such a thing?!" shouted yet another angry Toad.
The proprietor felt sick. He hadn't realized that the Mushroom he was given was a bad one, or that it could have killed the famous Super Mario. In fact, he hadn't realized that the customer was the famous Super Mario!
"P-please let me explain everything... I did n-not get that Mushroom myself..." the proprietor began, trying to get his very angry customers to stop berating him.
"You didn't?" asked Peach.
"Who gave it to you?" Luigi asked.
"Earlier today, a Koopaling who wanted to take over the town, but he was stopped by a Goomba, a Boo ghost, and a Shy Guy who were all wearing flags on their heads. They also rescued me when I was cornered by enemies." the proprietor explained.
"Them?!" Mario, Luigi, and Peach asked in unison. They weren't expecting to hear such a thing. They knew that such creatures worked for Bowser, but where did they get the flags from?
"Yeah. And I asked them to please go and get it for me because the cave where it could be found was dangerous and full of monsters, and I... I didn't stand a chance against such creatures! After promising them something nice if they did this for me, they went there and brought one back!" said the Toad.
"But it wasn't the right Mushroom, as you can now tell!" said Mario.
"I didn't know it, then! I never saw one of those Mushrooms before; I only heard of them! I had no idea that they had obviously never seen one, either! I'm so sorry!" said the proprietor.
Mario, Luigi, and Peach thought for a moment, and it didn't take them long to figure out why the proprietor had been given the wrong Mushroom.
"Of course! Bowser's minions did that in order to try and bump me off so Bowser can take Peach away with ease!" Mario said.
"And yet we were going to work with Bowser to try and get back something that didn't really need rescuing to begin with..." said Luigi.
"All right. You're off the hook." Mario said to the proprietor.
"I am?" asked the proprietor.
"Yeah. Bowser's minions were the jerks who grabbed the wrong one without even thinking about it. Now I'd like to give them a piece of my mind for doing that to me!" Mario declared.
"Thank you. I've also decided on a new prize for a super-nice score in any game. I will reward the players with a free bean! A nice, sweet type of bean, too! I have plenty of those to go around!" the proprietor said.
"Now that sounds like a much better prize, and a lot less dangerous, too." Peach replied, and all the current customers smiled and nodded in agreement before going back to playing video games.
"But Mario, what if Bowser's minions anticipated you finding out and removed the flags so we can't pick them out of the crowd?!" asked Luigi.
"Then we'll ask Bowser if he can pick out the ones who were responsible. He knows his minions, even though they all look like each other to me, but he can tell them all apart from each other." Mario replied.
"I think we should wait until after we take care of things over here before we question Bowser about such things. Partly because of something that hasn't been fixed, and also because I really don't want to see him and have him find out that my voice was never stolen like he was told." Peach said.
"Okie-dokie. You make a good point, Peach, but you also know that I don't like the idea of waiting. I want to find out who did it now!" Mario said.
"Mario, there's not a whole lot we can do against Bowser right now! Remember what happened to him when we saw him again, after Sergeant Starshade lit the cannon he was stuck in and blasted him out of Stardust Fields before we could even explain?" Luigi asked.
Mario sighed and said, "I remember. We learned that Bowser got amnesia on Hoohoo Mountain, and as a result, he was a rookie for that annoying thief, Popple." Then he smiled a little and said, "It's-a kind of funny. The latter's name sort of rhymes with 'Fawful', and they're both really annoying. You think maybe they're distantly related?"
"Let's not worry about villain relations right now, Mario. We don't really know whether or not Bowser has regained his memory since the last time you saw him. And if he hasn't done it yet, then I don't want him to see me. I might be the one to jog it, and I don't want to do that, since he was planning to kidnap me when you showed up, thinking that Birdo was really me." Peach reminded him.
"Yeah, if Bowser sees you, he'll do just what he intended to do from the moment he came to your castle: kidnap you." Luigi said.
Well, Mario and Luigi soon found out something awful! Cackletta's spirit had somehow been fused with Bowser, and he became Bowletta, which meant Bowser's mind was not his own! Mario and Luigi were really worried about Peach now. They knew what Cackletta had wanted from Peach, and if she had fused her spirit with Bowser's body, who was always kidnapping Peach, there would be chaos if Bowletta were to find her!
"You have to get to safety!" Mario told Peach.
"We can't have Bowletta seeing you, Peach! And you don't wanna see him... or her... or whatever it's-a supposed to be right now! The sight will make your eyes bleed!" Luigi warned.
"Are you sure? Your eyes look fine." Peach said, noticing that his eyes didn't look like they had been bleeding after seeing this Bowletta he and Mario spoke of.
"Your eyes won't be if you see what Bowletta looks like. Both of them are ugly enough as they are, but together... they'll make you turn sick! It almost made me sick!" Mario said.
Peach completely understood the danger of being seen (and captured) by something like Bowletta, so she agreed to go back to Beanbean Castle, where she knew she would be safe from the villains, who were even more dangerous than they were before!
Toadsworth was relieved that the princess was okay, but he was not the least bit amused to learn that Cackletta had been stupid enough to fuse with Bowser and created Bowletta. He said that this was why he was against coming to the Beanbean Kingdom in the first place.
Eventually, Mario and Luigi defeated Cackletta, who had been using Bowser's Castle to try and destroy the Beanbean Kingdom in hopes that they would surrender the Beanstar and Princess Peach. Cackletta's evil spirit was forced out of Bowser's body after the battle, and Bowser was finally back to normal. He was also taken back to the spot where his castle was supposed to be when the princess and her group were on their way home.
Although Mario wanted to question Bowser about the minions right after they got home, Peach asked him to please wait a while before doing so.
"Mario, I know that Bowser's minions were trying to kill you. The thought makes me angry, too, but as a princess, I say that we need to be fair and give him some time to rest and get his strength after all that he endured on that adventure. We should also let him get his castle rebuilt, too." Peach told him.
"And I just want to relax after all that we've been through, Mario. The adventure we had over in the Beanbean Kingdom consisted of one big problema after another, thanks to Cackletta and Fawful. And we knew that the problems weren't going to stop coming until the main problems were properly dealt with." said Luigi.
Mario let out a sigh and said, "Okay. I'll give him una settimana, a week, but that's it."
"All right. That should be long enough for him, and us, to recover from our respective trips to the Beanbean Kingdom." Peach said.
And in the next chapter, they'll see if Bowser can find out which of his minions attempted to do his job for him! Stay tuned if you want to see how that plays out!