Chapter Text
The Koopa army charged.
“Samus, suit up!” Robin shouted. “We’ll hold them off ‘til you’re done!”
“Right.” She turned, then turned back. “Where am I going?”
“It’s in there!” Leaf pointed to a shabby wooden door some 10 feet down from the dungeon’s entrance.
A thumbs up was all the response needed, and Samus took off. The rest turned to their attackers.
Sheik drew her dagger. “Fall to my…” She caught Leaf’s glare. Put the dagger back in its sheath. “Non-lethal attacks… creatures of night.”
Hesitancy aside, she leaped into the air, kicked off a stone spire to attack a Koopa toward the front of the charge with an overhead, descending kick. When his shell shook from the impact, in a panic, he ducked his head and arms in and hid. Sheik took this opportunity to kick the, now unanchored shell into the crowd where it bowled over the whole next line of attack. A useful attack, since a lot of the Koopas in the back were wearing spiked armor to specifically prevent such tactics.
Kamek raised the staff over his head and swirled it in the air. A collection of geometry swarmed the ruby gem in the hilt, with a flick it was launched towards them.
Robin dropped out of the path of the spell. Turning his neck to see where it landed let him catch a brick in the wall get transformed into a fuzzy ball of creature made out of fire.
The mechanics of the spell intrigued him greatly in that instant, he had to tear his focus away and back to the approaching army. Whipping out his spellbook and flipping to the right page, he launched a glowing green “Wind!” that shoved both sides of the approaching forces to either side.
“Robin!” Leaf yelled.
Robin gave his attention.
“Do that again!”
He didn’t need to be told, but lifted his spellbook anyways.
“But not right now!”
Alright, now he was lost.
Leaf, frustrated at being unable to say what she meant, ruffled her hair and her hat and eventually pulled the Pocket Monster Ball off her belt and tapped a rune. “Go, Ivysaur!” She appeared with a bark. “Sleep Powder!”
The sprouting bulb on Ivysaur’s back quivered and pulled inward and with a reverberating Poof! Exploded a spray of spores into the air.
Robin picked up quickly. “Wind!” The burst of air from his palm not only shot through the Koopa forces, it carried these spores along with it. Down the line and covering far more soldiers than a simple cloud would’ve.
Within moments, a massive chunk of the army were teetering on their feet. They collapsed against cobblestone in waves, snoring away.
“You lazy reptiles!” Kamek yelled, waving his staff about. “This is no time to be sleeping on the job!”
It hadn’t been all of them. Much of the forces near the front of the army had been spared when the spores sailed clear overhead. Unfortunately, they had to deal with Mac, dominating the front line. One punch sent a Koopa flying through his brethren, in fact his natural instinct to tuck into his shell only made him a greater ballistic. Those who attempted to approach in armor only had said armor shatter at first touch. Even a creature, made of iron and propelled by continuously spewing flame, was redirected by Mac’s fist back into the crowd that had fired it, where it promptly exploded into metal shrapnel.
Robin could see the way Mac was growing more comfortable with his punches bound by these new gloves Doc had gifted him. With each one his restraint and need to pull back faded away, and each one became more recklessly thrown, and conversely more powerful, than the last. There was no fear of retaliation against these opponents, who could defend themselves, but were utterly incapable of counterattack. A true blue testing ground for this new gear which had already been thinned to only a few monsters still remaining upright.
Kamek was the only one with fight left, standing before his fallen army, clutching his staff in both hands.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Kamek,” Leaf said.
“Neither I, you, Miss Leaf. Moreso, to do so would go against a direct order from Lord Bowser. But, to let you leave, much the same. Therefor, I must decide what is best.”
This decision clearly came with weight. Kamek, unmoving and making no attempt to stop them, stared at the ground in thought. Multiple times his beak would open as if to speak, only to close again without ever saying what it was on his mind.
Whatever it was would never be said, as the door leading to the contraband storage exploded into a thousand splinters and Samus barged through it shield up, not stopping until well after she clocked Kamek and sent him flying out the nearest window.
“Sorry for the hold up,” she said. “Let’s get a move on.”
Leaf nodded. “Ivysaur, return!” With a tap of the PMB, Ivysaur disappeared into light and into the ball. “Go, Charizard!” Without another tap, Leaf called forward a dragon. A dragon that Robin had for sure not seen before. There wasn’t a chance of him forgetting a dragon.
It had been a while since they’d last seen each other, enough time to warrant a reunion, but it hadn’t been that long.
Leaf saddled onto the dragon, and with a kick it took off into the air. Samus, Sheik, and Mac fell into a run behind it. Robin tried.
“Ah… wait…!” He eventually had to cry, out of breath and sweating up a storm beneath his cloak. It had felt like they’d at least made it halfway across the castle. Looking back, he’d made it maybe 50 feet.
Leaf turned the dragon, swooped down, and grabbed him up onto its back behind her. They took off again, for real this time.
“So we made it past the army, what now?” he asked.
“Oh, that wasn’t all of them,” she said.
As they turned the corner, they were met with a fresh force of assorted Koopas. With momentum built, however, the dragon they were riding opened its mouth and let a stream of flame down to flood the corridor. The forces very quickly parted, and the flames faded in time to let the rest of their party through the smoldering gap.
“How many monsters can he pack into a single castle?” He shook off the question. Didn’t matter. “Where are we going?”
“To where Bowser docks his ships. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
“Should we-” While surprisingly smooth, they were flying very fast and Robin had to grip in to avoid falling. “We came in on a boat. Would that-”
“Would it get us out over open ocean?”
Robin blanked. “Uh… maybe?” He didn’t know much about boats.
“We’re going with my plan,” she said firmly.
Robin put his hands up. Then shoved them back down when he started tilting a bad direction on the dragon’s back. “Alright then.”
The ride (finally) stopped outside a large door. All the doors in the castle were large, obviously, so that Bowser could fit through them, but outside of the front gate this was the first that seemed built to accommodate a large number of people, or he supposed, Koopas, to go in and out at the same time. Wide, reinforced, and with built in stoppers so they could be held open. When Samus threw the doors open she did not bother to stop them.
They were now at the ends of the castle, the room beyond was a large cave that was mostly submerged in water. A length of wood paneling stretched across the back wall forming a pier. Calling it a dock wouldn’t do service to its size. A dozen warships were lined across, the space, each floating by their own platform, each easily reaching 50 feet tall, it was nothing short of miraculous the cavern could fit them all. An exiting hole in the rock, leading out to the ocean and, eventually, the fog bank, could fit maybe three of them at a time.
Leaf wasn’t picky and she wasn’t hesitant. The moment they entered the room she and her dragon flew up onto the nearest one. She and Robin stepped off onto swaying wood planks of the ship’s deck as Mac, Samus, and Sheik came up the boarding plank.
Mac and Sheik were both breathing heavily, hiding it by doing so through their nose. Samus, though, despite all she’d been through, barely looked fazed by the run over.
Well, if they were doing this, they were doing this.
“Samus,” Robin called out. “Raise the anchors.”
“On it.” She ran to the ship’s side and began hauling up chain at such speed you’d think it was a loose rope.
“Sheik, get the sails down.”
Without a word, a collection of nearly invisible needles sidled up between her knuckles. A flick of the wrist and the ropes holding the sails up split and came undone.
“Leaf, you know where we’re going?”
“Uh,” she put a finger to her chin. That was more in line with the girl he remembered. “North?”
With a taught smile he gave her the order anyways. “Take the helm.”
The ship began to move, very slowly. With no air currents in this cavern to push it out. And, of course, within moments they weren’t going to be alone anymore. Already the door was swinging open again as an armada of still more Koopa soldiers flooded in behind them.
Robin hustled up to the highest point behind the sails and dug out his spellbook. Once he flipped to the right page. He was actually starting to run low on these.
“Wind!” The ink traveled up his arm and burst into glimmering golden sparks and launched from his palm as a burst of green air. It wasn’t much, but it caught the sail and pushed in a way only wind resistance could. The ship rocked out of the dock, as it moved it caught more circulating air, and before they knew it, they were out of the cave and out onto the ocean.
On their way.