Mariopocalypse 5: Breakout

Something I realized I could finish quickly today to give you guys somethin early. More action than anything but getting things moving towards bigger things in the story. Something quick I just felt like doing when I didn't have the time to work on a bigger piece.

The handful of humans met in Daisy's changing room. Pink regarded it with her same dismissive stare as Daisy came walking up to her wearing her flower-patterned shorts, a stained shirt and a big grin. "Peach! That's really you!" Daisy laughed, her arms out for a hug. Pink made no motion to return the gesture, but it didn't matter. Once Daisy was close enough, she punched Pink across the face. Peach staggered, just to whirl back into position and angrily punch Daisy back. Daisy stumbled a few paces back, rubbing her cheek and laughing.

"Sorry 'bout that," Daisy said with a grin. "I just wanted to make sure you were real for a second there. How you been?"

Peach grunted and shrugged.

"Yea, it shows. You look like shit."

"You sure she's on our side?" Pink said, scowling over at Drew. He looked back at the gladiator princess, and when he let his eyes go out of focus she had a faint green aura around her.

"She is. She's just weird about showing it. It's been a weird time for her too."

"I'm sure being Wario's favorite attack dog was just awful," Pink said indifferently.

"Sure has. How's it been slutting it up around the Mushroom Wastes sucking the rust off of dead psychos?" Drew decided it was a good time to get between the two of former princesses.

"Alright, uh... ladies. Maybe that's enough catching up. We should probably focus on the mission before anyone gets too suspicious."

Daisy nodded and took an unlabeled bottle, taking a swig as she sat on her beat up couch. "Fair. He's not gonna like me leaving, even if I pay up all I owe him. So what's our move?"

Drew swept some trash off Daisy's table and had Peach lay out her map. He focused on it until the HUD displays popped up and he saw the various icons and appearing across the surface. "Okay... so there's the direct approach..."

"I like it!" Daisy blurted, getting a glare from Peach. She had made a point to simply sit on the floor opposite of Daisy.

Dean ignored her for now and tapped two tower-like structures a fair way away from the stadium. "I'm seeing two of the Koopa Kid bases a little away from here. I'm not sure who they're supposed to be..."

"That’s Roy," Peach replied quickly. "Probably the biggest weapons manufacturer left in the world. The Eastern one is Wendy Koopa, who runs the comforts. High end food, quality materials, prostitutes for those who need it..."

"Oh shit!" Daisy exclaimed. "We should totally get Pauline in on this."

"No," Peach replied curtly.

"Why not? She's still working out of Old Donk, right?"

"And we wouldn't stand out at all if she suddenly brought in four humans out of nowhere? We won't be able to sneak in."

"So..." Andy said, holding up a hand for attention before pointing at the map. They saw it as a random empty spot, but he saw it as a light blinking from green to gray. "There's more markers on here. There's a few beacons for allies..." He slid his finger along to an orange one. "And some jobs we can take. The story mission says we need to go to the fortresses, but I think getting some more help would be the smart move." He nodded towards Pink. "Probably someone with numbers, if we can't just sneak in."

"It's hard to keep track of who's alive these days, let alone trustworthy," Peach said with a scowl. "You saw E. Gadd. The good guys were picked off or buried in the sleaze of this miserable land."

"You're so cheery, Peachy. That's why I like you," Daisy said happily. "So who do we have for possible allies?"

Drew pointed out a few locations on the map and between the two experts they could figure out what most of them meant. The Kongs were practically their own country in what remained of the only jungle around. People knew that trees meant danger as the wild apes protected them with everything they had (which happened to include exploding barrels, cannons and barely tamed crocodiles). There were also some islands out north, but Daisy seemed firmly against it.

"No way. I had to fight a yoshi once. They're freaking monsters."

"Really? He always seemed pretty nice in the past," Drew noted.

Peach shook her head. "Yoshis are wild lizards who will eat anyone and anything they can fit in their mouth. I've seen the swallow whole trucks before, driver and all."

"You mean like Rusty?" Drew bobbed his head back towards the garage where their pet Chain Chomp was chained to a pillar, bouncing around excitedly for their return.

"The only reason we can tame chomps is they have their own built-in leashes," Peach insisted after a moment's hesitation. "What else have you got?"

"There's the Piantas on the east coast," Drew pointed out. “The palm tree guys. They have enough of a trade that they can keep some of their islands to themselves."

"They're tough folks," Daisy said with a shrug.

"And too closely watched by Bowser's boys. Anyone more inland?"

"Well, what about this one?" Drew pointed to a spot off in the hills. The former princesses frowned and leaned over the map for a closer look.

"I... don't know that one..." Peach pondered. Daisy nodded and folded her arms.

"Think it's someone we haven't heard of?" the gladiator offered.

"Something secret. Or a wildcard," Drew added. "Either way, it'd be good to check them out, right?"

Peach grunted and nodded. "Alright. So here's the real question. We have Wario's gold and one of his most valuable employees skipping town with us." Peach nodded towards Daisy. “How do we get out without his whole troop of guards drowning us in Bullet Bills?"

"Ooh! I've got just the thing." Daisy went over to a beat up old locker (in particular, one with several fist-shaped holes) and forced the stuck door open. She kicked the back of the locker as a fake back fell open. She pushed her way inside, up to her hips in the dark tunnel before she came back with what looked like a large pot full of thick leaves poking out of the muddy soil.

"What are they?" Drew asked.

"Bomb plants. Rip em out, chuck em, you've got about twenty pounds of dynamite the size of a radish. Could take the whole place down if we wanted." The other two stared at her until Daisy shrugged. "What? I'm either bored or I'm drunk back here. Girl's gotta keep herself busy."

“Ugly and noisy, but they’ll do.” Peach admitted. “As long as Wario has been thinking of buying me out… let’s make it happen.”

“FUCK yea!” Daisy laughed. “If I had to say ‘Hi I’m Daisy’ one more time…”

It was an easy setup. Pink had plenty of trade leftover from Bowser's shell and she told the bookies she was willing to bet on herself against the champ. She had said it loud enough that the other passing gamblers jumped on it the moment they heard, making it too hard for Wario to back out on the deal. They sent Daisy a few healing mushrooms and the fat Boss had it ready within the hour.

"Introducin' first!" Spike started, the fat spiky turtle waving to one of the gates. "In the dirty pink jumpsuit, hailing from the Mushroom Wasteland, it's the mysterious PINK!" Peach came out in her standard travel gear. Her sharpened boomerang was tucked in its holster and she wore her biking helmet for some extra protection.

"And her opponent, from the stadium herself! The former princess who's now queen of the ring! It's Daisyyyy!" The redhead came out in her skimpy armor, less covered than when Andy had first seen her fight. A large green pipe was across her back and she wore a set of brass knuckles with dented, blood-stained old coins at the tips. She smiled and waved to the audience, sparing herself the helmet she wore last time. She blew Pink a kiss with her brass and gold-wrapped hand before slicing her thumb across her throat to keep up the act. A gong clashed and Peach quickly flung her boomerang at her fellow fallen princess. Daisy ducked under it as she charged in, drawing and swinging her pipe. Peach sidestepped to let it crash into the arena's dust and caught her boomerang in midair, shifting her grip to slash it at the vulnerable Daisy. She dodged a few swipes before one grazed her cheek, drawing first blood as the crowd went wild.

Daisy feigned surprise and stumbled back. Peach pressed her attack and jumped on her, bringing the boomerang down at her face. Daisy raised the pipe to block it as Peach grabbed her by the hair. "You could have blocked that one," Peach grunted from behind her helmet, indicating the cut on Daisy's face.

"Yea, but we gotta make it sell. Plus it's more fun this way, right?" Daisy flashed her a manic grin before kicking her feet up into Pink's midsection. She swung her over her head so the helmeted blonde landed in the dust, whirling around and punching with her gold knuckles. A blow caught her in the side, but the armored pads soaked up the worst of it. Peach caught her by the wrist and pulled her against her, rolling to mount Daisy's back and put her in a chokehold. Daisy thrashed and struggled for a few seconds, but when it seemed like she wouldn't get loose she reached into her shorts. With a bit of rooting around she dramatically pulled out one of her bomb plants. The bright black orb with its sleepy-looking stare and long leaves instead of a fuse still got a shocked gasp from the crowd. Pink even feigned surprise, but her helmet helped with her rather grim expression.

"That's right! You don't fuck with crazy, bitch!" Daisy laughed, wiping the blood and dirt from her cheek and licking it off her fingers. She stepped towards Peach and the blonde backed off as the crowd's excitement peaked. Daisy finally bit off the leaves and spit them out, the bomb plant's eyes popping open wide and sparks popping from where its leaves had been. She flung it with all her might towards Peach, narrowly missing and hitting the gate behind her instead. It blew up with a resounding crash and the rubble was still falling when Peach turned and ran into the now opened tunnel.

"Oh hey, boss!" Daisy called up towards Wario's booth. "I kinda quit. Sorry for the short notice! Seeya!" She could hear the muffled but booming shouts of her fat master through the protected glass as she laughed and ran out after Peach. She had already knocked the watching Sledge Bro with a smash of her helmet into his beak, dropping the fat guard to the floor as the ladies ran for the garage. When they started to hear the tromping bootsteps behind them, Daisy dug the rest of her garden out of her pockets and chucked so many bombs behind them that that wing of the stadium would be under repairs for weeks to come. When they entered the space full of go karts, wagons and other caravan vehicles, there were already piece of guards all over.

"Whoa! Whoa, easy, Rusty!" Andy clung to the top of the chain chomp as it barked happily, thrusting and ramming into random vehicles. Its big, dimwitted eyes were wide and happy as some koopa troopa blood stained its big white teeth.

"Broooo! You guys have a chain chomp?! Nice!" Daisy gushed as she casually tossed her last bomb into the door behind them. She slammed it shut and let the dulled BOOM speak for itself. She reached out for it when Rusty turned and snapped wildly at her.

"No! No, Rusty! She's friendly!" Andy insisted, knocking on the chomp's head. It bounced up and down, looking puzzled around itself as the knocking seemed to distract it enough to listen. "There's a good boy. Come on. Do you have a ride?"

"One sec!" Daisy went to a dull orange motorcycle with a chain and lock around it, smashing the lock off with her pipe. "I do now! I had one just like it until I got into a demolition derby battle royale! Except it was nicer. I mean, it was before the royale. Anyway, we were in a hurry, right?"

"I told you we should have waited until she was sober," Andy said as Peach jumped into her kart behind him and fastened it to Rusty's chain. They had stashed most of their money and items, along with Daisy’s things (it was mostly just a large golf bag full of weapons anyway).

"Trust me. It would have been a long wait," Peach grunted, revving her engine to life as the four of them made their break for it. They plowed out past any guards and a few cannons rose out of Wario Stadium, firing off some shells and cannonballs their way. They steered around towards where Daisy had blown out the walls and taken out a few guns in the process, but even then Andy had to blast a few larger shots out of the air with their fire flowers. They made their escape in the chaos, the fact being that they weren't prepared for the sudden escape when everyone was crowded in to see the fight of the century. It made organizing their guards even harder when there were hundreds of visitors demanding refunds or breaking into a panic over the explosions.

Player and his pair of princesses kept up their pace for a while, but between Daisy's bike and the tirelessly towing chain chomp they left Wario's boys in the dust. When they stopped to check Pink's map, it confirmed what Andy had expected. Wario Stadium was now written in red, showing them as hostile to the group from now on. "Well that's one more place that doesn't like us," Drew reported.

"So what? That place sucked," Daisy laughed as she drank something out of a flask. She gestured out at the horizon where the massive sword of Smithy remained embedded in the earth, the colossal weapon forever tilted. "If good people were in charge, we wouldn't be like this. So if they're pissed at you, it means you're doing things right."

"Blowing up half a stadium and running away," Peach huffed. "Yea. We're the good ones here."

"But we freed Daisy and got her on our side. We must be twice as strong as when we started out together." Player tapped the blinking spot on the map. "If everyone in the world is unhappy with how things are, we should outnumber the koopas. And if we talk to enough people, we can stand up and stop them. So let's head... uh... whichever way is north from here and find these allies."

It was another day of travel to get there. Peach thankfully had the foresight to trade some of their gold in for food, since they could only eat one of the two. Drew was a little pleased to see Peach eating her meat sandwich so ravenously. After eating so many mushrooms, it was apparently something of a treat. They reached the hills that were marked on the map with their mysterious mission, but they didn't find anything at first. They got off and had to explore on foot to navigate the dunes when the kart and bike didn't handle the repeated dunes so well. While the ladies walked ahead, Drew checked his map. It made him easy to ambush as a small but heavy body slammed into him and pinning him to the ground.

"SHEEEEE!" her high voice hissed as she pushed his hands into the sand. Drew's eyes went wide as he looked up at the woman on top of him. She had wild hair, full of knots and sand and bits of plantlife. It appeared to be pink with thick streaks of bloody red substance painted over it like a crude dye. She was only about three feet tall, but she was curvy and lined with dirty muscle. She bared some crooked teeth between her cracked and sandy lips, snarling as swung a hard little fist into his face. He winced, but he saw her sizeable breasts that took up most of her torso wobbled behind some old leather hides tied around her chest and hanging as a loincloth.

"Ow! What the hell?" Drew hissed. Her fist wasn't big, but she still hit hard. He caught her next strong and stubby arm but she bit him on the knuckle. "OW! Quit it!"

"Yosheeee!" she hissed viciously, but Drew felt an itch in his eye. He saw some white letters run across the bottom of his vision: "Give me back my friend."

"Wait, what did you say?"

"She said 'yoshi.' The girl’s gone kong shit in the wasteland. See it all the time." Pink drew her boomerang and grabbed the feral Toad by the hair, pulling her off with a firm yank. "They call it the angry sun. All you can do is put them down at this point..."

"No, wait!" Drew rubbed his eyes as the lady Toad kicked and thrashed in Pink's grip. She ranted out her favorite word a few more times, but more words came across his vision.

"You can't take them from me! Where's my yoshis?! Give us back the eggs and brothers and sisters!" the letters scrolled along with her shouting.

"Holy shit! She speaks yoshi!" Drew proclaimed. Pink gave him a strange look while the wild girl stopped and stared at him.

"Yoshi?" she said with a tilt of her scruffy head. The feral Toad woman's subtitles filled him in again: "You understand?"

"Yea... hi," Drew said, waving cautiously. "I understand you."

"How?” Peach asked. “I knew a yoshi in the old days, but I don't even know that much. Their language is ridiculously complicated."

"And it's entirely one word," Daisy added. She kept her baseball bat out and ready just in case she got the opportunity to hit something.

"That's what I meant," Peach sighed.

"I must have subtitles on," Drew said, tapping his head. "Maybe she grew up around them. Uh... do you understand me?"

"Why are you talking to me? I don't understand. You can hear me, right? For a human?" He was starting to get good at looking between her subtitles and face to keep up.

"Uh, this might take a minute... can you put her down? I think she's calmer now."

Pink huffed and dropped her unceremoniously. "Fine. She tries something again and I feed her to the chomp." Drew found a spare stone and started to doodle on the sand. He made a basic lizard shape and the wild girl nodded along, and soon he had some means of communication going. She tapped the map and pointed around, still only using the one word that only he seemed to understand. She didn't totally understand him, but some basic miming and doodling did the trick. He pieced together that she was a feral Toad raised by yoshis, and that her family was missing. It didn't take him long to figure out why this was a chance for a potential ally.

"She says they went out west," Drew explained as he slid a finger along the map. "Further into the Dry Dry Desert."

"Well that's not good," Peach mused.

"Why not? I thought the desert was your thing," Daisy countered.

"Because of right there. That's the Bullet Bill Express." Peach tapped a spot with a few dark spots on the map, also written in red letters as the name popped up to Drew's eyes. "Old turrets abandoned by the koopas. They just auto-fire at anything in range, so you're walking a fine line. Can't go too close or too far, and I don't exactly trust a dustbaby and a chomp to be able to stay inside those boundaries."

The wild girl nodded and chirped a few times. "Big boomers. Very mad," he read.

"Do you know who's camping there?"

"Probably Wendy's goons. She sends hunters for more exotic meats and yoshis and their eggs would be good eating. The stomachs can make for solid leather. The girl whined slightly and Peach rolled her eyes. "So how do we save them?" That got the smaller ally to smile.

"I think I remember this trick from the older games," Drew pondered. "Sometimes you had locked gates or bricks you could only break down with an exploding enemy."

The group was quiet as they pieced his plan together. "Player, you are mental," Peach pointed out.

"I call dibs!" Daisy shouted, thrusting her hand up. Drew smirked and nodded.

"I can go with her to guide the way. Peach, do you think you could sneak in with Shishi here and help get the yoshis out of harm's way?"

"Its name is Shishi," Peach repeated grimly.

"From what I can tell," Drew said as he climbed back on top of Rusty's back (or head or whatever). Peach sighed and climbed back into her kart.

"Alright... Shishi? Come."

"Come on, Pink. She's a human being," Drew tried to defend Shishi but the savage Toad scurried over to leap onto the back of Peach's vehicle.

"She's a Toad, technically. And as far as she's concerned, she's a yoshi. I at least know how they think when they're friendly."

The group split up into pairs; Shishi and Pink went right through the safe zone, guided by their map. Peach only had to grab Shishi by her bushy hair once to keep her from leaping out of the kart into the empty sands pockmarked with craters. Drew and Daisy didn't bother, making a wide sweep around the territory of the variously-sized cannons ahead.

"What about that one? He's big and way up there," Drew shouted over to Daisy on her bike, pointing towards one of the high-mounted guns.

"Nah, see the double barrel on it? That's Boomerang Bills. They'll only go so far and then turn around. We want... OOH! We want THAT one!" Daisy suddenly veered off on her stolen motorcycle, making Drew tap on Rusty's head to make him turn with her. A number of the huge guns shifted to aim at the grinning escaped gladiator, dropping sand and rust from their colossal idle forms. The barrels swelled and started to glow as a half dozen of them took aim, including one that looked big enough for her to drive inside like a tunnel.

"Daisyyyy?"

"One sec. Gotta let 'em get a lock on me," she called back as if that were assurance. She suddenly swerved away just as a series of thunderous booms went off in the distance. Shark-toothed faces on the heads of oversized bullets rocketed towards them, including on the size of a house that kicked up a miniature sandstorm in its wake.

"Now we got 'em! Go! Go! Go!" Daisy shouted. She shoved a mushroom into her gas tank, blasting her bike into overdrive as a number of explosions hit right where she had been riding. More sand shot up behind her as the biggest of the Bills moved slower, but it would swerve and turn to keep a lock on her. Rusty and Drew bounded up alongside her.

"Straight ahead! Stick to the path!"

"I know! I know!" Daisy dismissed, her manic grin almost identical to the one crudely painted on the titanic bullet. She made a few skidding turns as the Banzai Bill kept rocketing after her, keeping pace with the racing motorcycle until they caught sight of a crude camp. Simple metal fences with some sort of electrical gadgets made up most of it that wasn't a handful of tents, burly turtles and creatures in football pads lazily patrolling before raising their heads. It wasn't clear if they saw Drew and Daisy, even with their mounts racing so far away, but they had to see the giant bullet. They certainly couldn't do much about what was effectively a fantasy nuke coming their way.

As the minions started to panic, Drew veered off from Daisy. "Just remember. Close to the fences but not blowing them up."

"You act like this is the first time I've run away from a giant explosive!" Daisy laughed, shaking her head. "He was a fat fuck, but Wario threw the sickest parties." Her engine roared as she shot ahead, swerving one way and then the other. The Banzai Bill weaved along with her, and as she shot past the camp the unstoppable missile ripped apart half the fencing in the area. Drew kept his distance as he saw Shishi and Pink hurry to the opening as a large number of vicious-looking lizards the size of horses stormed out of the crippled fences. They didn't look like the yoshis Drew remembered, far more dry and scaly to adapt to the desert. They had a passing resemblance to raptors now that their plump and jolly looks were withered away by weather and hunger, giving them a much more nasty look. One snarled and twisted its head to nip at another one's head, while another suddenly whipped out a tongue and hastily wolfed down a koopa troopa who foolishly tried to herd them back inside. It was just just seconds of blood and spit before the entire body was gone, weapons and all.

"Shishi! Yoshoshi!" Shishi's voice shrieked over the mayhem. The yoshis all immediately perked up their heads and turned towards the fleeing and panicking koopa poachers. With a few snarled "Yoshi!" they swept around like a grim pack of wolves, taking out every last one of the armed men with shockingly efficient tactics (and digestive systems). Drew finally had to turn away when two of them caught the same Chargin’ Chuck by different arms and recoiled their tongues, ripping him in half and greedily swallowing the bloody prey.

"Wow... good allies, I guess," Drew noted. He rapped his knuckle on Rusty's head. "Remind me of you."

The chomp barked happily as it kept its distance. A massive explosion went off in the dunes beyond the camp, but Daisy's piercing whoop told him that she had outmaneuvered it just fine. Her bike soon came rolling back over, skidding to a showy stop next to him. Peach parked her kart near them and passed Drew the map. He unfurled it and smiled as a green check mark appeared over the part of the map.

"We got 'em," he reported as the pack of monstrous lizards came scrambling over. A few of them snarled quietly but it mostly seemed to be posturing, or perhaps some kind of communication. They didn't have subtitles, but Shishi was happily hugging to one of their backs.

"Shishoshi!" she chimed.

"My family is free! We owe you all my species life! You are friend to yoshi!"

"That's great," Drew replied. He turned the map around and tapped Roy's base. "You guys might want to lay low for a little, but can you meet us back here when we call for you? I'll try to find you at the dunes where we met." A little pointing and gesturing and Shishi nodded, the busty little shroom putting her fists on her hips proudly.

"Yoshis pay a debt! We will fight for human like human fight for yoshi!" She barked sharply and the other yoshis replied in kind before they went racing off.

"She said yes, by the way," Drew answered preemptively. "We're cool, in case that wasn't too weird for everyone."

"Fuckin' sick," Daisy smirked. "It'll be nice fighting on the side of a yoshi rather than inside one."

"That's... do I want to know?"

"Only if you're not a big fuckin' pussy." Daisy laughed as she took another swig from her flask.

"So I don't want to know," Drew muttered. Daisy just nodded. "Well... that's one ally down. I have a feeling we'll need more than a pack of dinosaurs to take that base out."

"Only if you're not a big-" Daisy started before Peach smacked her in the arm.

"Good point. Come on." Peach latched Rusty's chain back onto her kart. "Let's go. There's got to be more good creatures out there willing to help." Drew just smiled and nodded as she slid off Rusty's back to join her in the kart. It wasn't much of a change in her demeanor, but hearing her say it outloud felt reassuring about her outlook.