Chapter Fourteen - Let's Ride!

    “You have got to be kidding me…” The words were muttered under my breath as I scanned the colorful scene before me. Though my childhood was slowly creeping up in my mind, the annoyance at the entire situation maliciously squashed it back down and out of existence.

    “No way! This cannot be part of Machine for Pigs… This has got to be copyrighted, right?” Toby looked at us in question, confusion plastered on his face.

    “This isn’t the game anymore, Toby. I have a feeling there’s a Mod Developer glitching the Matrix out there somewhere. This is just ridiculous…” With that he nodded in understanding. Felix shook his head quickly then jumped forward a bit in excitement.

    “Who cares?! It’s freaking Mario! Let’s go save the princess, bros!” Suddenly he was sprinting down the path towards the castle in the distance.

    “Pewds, wait! We don’t know how dangerous it i- Awe he’s gone…” I sighed, “C’mon, let’s go get him.”

    “Right behind you.” Laughter laced his words as we jogged after our friend. Slowly we caught up to Felix as he perched atop of an overhang. Below us was what looked to be a gigantic prison ball and chain. Floating up from it was a bunch of Z’s as if to tell us the object was sleeping. I couldn’t help but scoff at the child-like nature of what seems to be one of the realm’s enemies.

    “Is that seriously…?”

    “It’s a Chain Chomp, Cry!” Felix jumped up and down excitedly as he spoke.

    “Yes, so it is. Wait… why are you excited about that?”

    “It’s just like in the game, this is freaking awesome!”

    “You’re excited about something that can kill us, Pewds. That’s just not right.”

    “Oh, lighten up Cry! We’ve beasted it up this far. Just relax, dude.” Toby laughed stepping up beside Felix to lean over the cliff. Shaking my head, I smiled realizing he was right. My eye caught sight of a small, dinosaur looking creature and let the childhood feelings take a hold of my mind. Soundlessly I slipped away. Then without warning I charged for them.

    “Onward my Yoshi!” Upon reaching the two, I gripped their shirts and hauled them aboard before leaping from the ledge and slowly falling all the way to the other side of the Chain Chomp. Its sensitive, nonexistent ears picked up our sounds and woke up. Immediately its eyes latched onto us. It made it all the way to the end of the chain, which just happened to stop centimeters from us. Felix and Toby released whimpers in fear of their almost death. I, on the other hand, giggled at the convenience. “Oh, come on guys, lighten up.”

    “Ha ha.” Toby said sarcastically as he hopped down.

    “So where do I get one of these fella’s?” Felix had dismounted the mini-dino as well to gently pet its large, blue nose.

    “Follow me, friends! I shall lead you to the Yoshi.” We walked on for some time before I located another nest I had spotted on the cliff earlier. Inside were several eggs. I waved my hand to them as if to tell the two to choose. Felix instantly picked up the one with yellow spots on it. Within seconds, it hatched into a brightly yellow colored dinosaur. Toby’s hand hovered over a few before he picked a green one.

    “So… are they all called Yoshi or is that just the specie name or what?” Toby pondered as we all trotted forwards on our separate riding buddies.

    “I never did understand that either… I think just the green one’s called Yoshi.” Felix offered.

    “So what do we call your guy’s?”

    “Stephano!” I chuckled at that, partially because I knew that was going to be his choice. Then I began brainstorming for my own name.

    “I’ll call mine… Crystoph!” I felt slightly proud of my name choice as I pat his smooth shell. A sound of pure delight came from the creature as its long tongue lashed out to lick my face. All of us shared a laugh before we felt the earth shake. Looking to the sky, I noticed it had darkened drastically. Suddenly a rather large metal contraption in the shape of some aircraft appeared out of the smiling clouds. I couldn’t help but glance at the others with the look of wtf, only to receive the same looks back.

    “So I have a feeling we found the main boss…”

    “Yeah, Buscus, that would be my guess.” I replied, still gaping up at the huge floating object. From it a metallic arm stretched out towards us. Reacting quickly, I jumped onto Crystoph and called the others to follow. We moved out of the way of the arm just in time to make sure it didn’t crush us.

    “What do we do? There’s no way we can beat that thing!”

    “C’mon, Pewds! We’re in freaking Mario World, hell yes we can do this. Crystoph, let’s ride! ”