Mario and Luigi petted their yoshis' heads as the dinosaur-like creatures drank from a nearby stream. The brothers soon followed their example and splashed themselves with water. Intense heat bore down on them from above and radiated across the sand dunes around them.
"Mamma mia, why did Peach and the toads want to colonize here?" Luigi fanned himself with his cap, but Mario remained more optimistic as he looked around.
"Aww, Luigi, Peach knows what she's doing. If she chose this place, it must be worth it." Mario assured Luigi, who smirked back at him.
"Right, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Peach herself picked it." Luigi chuckled, but his brother waved him off.
"Come on, Luigi."
"Yeah, I'm sorry if I, uh, well, interrupted anything at the festival." Luigi lowered his tone and tried to avoid Mario's gaze but soon felt his brother's arm around him.
"Luigi, you didn't do nothin. Peach and I, well. After we beat Bowser again, there'll be all the time in the world for, well." Mario's evasive response caught Luigi off-guard. However, his older brother soon went back on him.
"How about you and Daisy?"
"Huh!? I, I mean, I don't even know if you could even call us friends. I mean, I just met her in person the other night. I guess she's willing to help us, but after this, she'll probably head back to the human world. Go back to her career, and forget all about me." The air left Luigi, who stared at his reflection in the stream.
"Yoshi!" Blue Yoshi nudged and licked Luigi with a reassuring look while Mario likewise brought him back upright.
"Hey, listen to Yoshi here. I see the chemistry between you two. She may be a famous athlete, Luigi, but she's also just a person. You saved her back in the festival more than once."
"Yeah, just like Peach is just a person. But you, you're a hero. You never give up on anything. When Peach sees you, she sees a man. Me-"
"Luigi, look at me!" Mario now forced his younger brother to eye level by the shoulders.
"You're every bit the man I am. We're brothers! Two Italian plumbers from Brooklyn. Do you think I considered myself out of Peach's league cause of that!? Luigi, you need to stop thinking of yourself as just my little brother. Back in the Mushroom capital, I saw the way Daisy looked at you. She didn't see some guy's little brother or some plumber. She saw a hero, and she saw a man. That, Luigi, is who you are." Mario's speech lit a fire inside Luigi, who now stood at his full height.
"Yeah, it's no wonder Peach looks at you the way she does. You're right. What are we standing around for!?
"Yoshi!" Green Yoshi jumped up in an imitation of Mario before the brothers led them onward toward a yellow-roofed toad house. After an excited greeting from a dozen or so toads and toadettes outside, the heroes stood over two wooden chests within.
"Go on! It wasn't easy, but we saved them for your arrival! We knew our heroes wouldn't abandon us!" The toad elder clasped his hands together as the brothers each picked up a power-up and set it in their Yoshi's saddle bag.
"Where are the koopalings?" Mario and Luigi tightened their fists as the older brother asked. Both saw the toads and toadettes shiver or hold each other while the elder sighed.
"Still on their rampage, most of the colonists are turned into creatures. This way." He led the Mario Brothers back outside and to a hilltop. Once there, Mario and Luigi looked upon the desert colony. Despite the ocean of sand, dozens of rivers and oases provided plenty of water for farmland and hundreds of palm trees, which appeared to dance. The rest of the colony did not share this beauty. Dozens of buildings, houses, roads, and pyramids either lay in ruin or became ruins before swarms of rampaging koopas.
"Ohhh." Mario and Luigi's hearts sank as they saw dozens of toads and toadettes sob as they watched their homes burn. Luigi pointed to an airship that flew over Desert Hill and bombarded it with cannons and Bullet Bills.
"I don't think so, Koopas. Luigi, we gotta draw them down."
"Right! Give their ground troops a little trouble." They turned back to the toads, who looked upon them with hope.
"Don't worry. We're the Mario Brothers, and we're gonna get your homes back!"
"Cause that's what heroes do!" Luigi added, and Mario savored the bright animation and joy it brought to the toads. Green and Blue Yoshi likewise jumped up and down, kindled by the fiery enthusiasm. At this, Mario and Luigi stood tall and looked down at a platoon of Koopas and other minions running rampant in a town at the foot of the hill.
"Ready, Luigi!?
"I'm ready, Mario!" Together they bumped fists and got set.
(HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THEME Athletic Theme (NEW REMIX) - Super Mario Bros. 3 | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)
"Let's-a go!" The toads, toadettes, and yoshis gazed in wonder as the Mario Brothers charged straight into the fray. Mario leaped up and jumped onto the nearest red-shell sergeant and pounced him into his shell. As he propelled himself off, Luigi kicked the shell into half a dozen green shells behind him.
"Yaah!" The koopas tried to flee but could not escape their sergeant, who bashed them all aside. When Mario came down, he flattened two goombas one after the other, then held his hands up to help propel Luigi up into a trio of paragoombas whom he knocked away with a tornado-like spin of his fists.
"Don't just sit there! Get them!" A yellow-shelled koopa lieutenant pointed his spear at the brothers as two boomerang bros, small chain chomps restrained by koopas, rushed them while piranha plants emerged from pipes.
"Here we go!" Mario ran across a half-constructed brick structure and slid across the pink metal scaffold while two boomerangs flew over him. At the same time, Luigi jumped high over another pair and Mario himself.
"Oh no, come back, come back, come back!" The boomerang bros yelped in terror when they saw the Mario Brothers come in before their boomerangs could. Mario sprung up and slammed the first boomerang bro with two punches and then a kick, while Luigi stomped the second until his upper half lay buried in the sand.
"Ohh ho, you asked for it!" The two Koopa handlers cackled, then let loose the feral chain chomps, who barked as they bounced toward the brothers.
"Uhhg, still not as bad as Francis." Luigi muttered as he recalled the horrifying golden retriever.
"I'll take the piranhas. You take the koopas." Mario gestured toward chains behind both chain chomps, and Luigi nodded with a knowing smile.
"Okey-Dokey!" Luigi and Mario charged the chain chomps despite their razor-sharp fangs, then leaped up over them.
"Bark bark!" The chain chomps snapped upward but missed the Mario Brothers, who landed and seized their chains.
"Hold on, hold on, let's talk about this!" The yellow-shell koopa and his companions backed up when they saw the brothers' grins.
"You can have these back!" Mario and Luigi spun themselves, and the chain chomps with them.
"Burn em!" The Koopa lieutenant squealed at his fire piranas, who spat out balls of fire. However, the chain chomps' hard metal bodies shielded the brothers, who let their chomps go just before dizziness could set in. The toads cried out with the yoshis in renewed glee as the piranhas whined before Luigi's chain chomp ripped them from their pipes before any could retreat inside. The remaining Koopas and goombas, likewise fled before the second flying chomp, who collected them in its jaws one by one.
"It's the Mario Brothers!" Even a few transformed toads came out of hiding in their animal forms to cheer.
"You think you've won!" A booming voice seized the brothers' attention. For a brief moment, Mario and Luigi thought the two Koopalings might have come down to face them. However, upon closer inspection, they realized these were new opponents. The Koopas had oversized hands, spiked red shells, and bald heads.
"Watch out for the Boom Booms!" The toad elder cried, and both Boom Booms flailed out their massive arms. However, the Mario Brothers jumped up and slammed their feet into the Koopas' heads. Both went hard inside their shells and spun themselves around.
"Incoming!" Mario and Luigi jumped up, narrowly avoiding the spiked shells which raced under them. However, the Boom Booms kept up their assault while the toads gasped.
"Luigi, sneak attack!"
"Right behind you!" The Mario Brothers both jumped aside again and vanished inside two green pipes.
"Huh? Where'd they go!?" The Boom Booms remained in their shells, at least until Mario and Luigi emerged from pipes that hung upside down and performed ground pounds beside the Koopas. Their impact sent both Boom Booms into the air with high-pitched screams before the brothers leaped up and jump-kicked them into the ground.
"Oh, that's it!" The Boom Booms sprung back up and sprouted wings atop their shells, which caught Mario and Luigi off-guard.
"What the!?" Both now ran as the Boom Booms persued, fangs bore.
"We're gonna getcha!"
"This is gonna hurt!"
"Yeah, for you!" Mario and Luigi's grins infuriated the Koopas, who swooped in a moment before both brothers jumped up and over them.
"Yahoo!" Mario and Luigi came down and punched the Boom Booms into the sand.
"Night, night, mommy." The Koopa's sputtered, tongues out and birds flapping around their heads. Mario and Luigi panted a little as applause echoed from the hilltop.
"Alright, we got 'em." Luigi offered his fist to Mario, but the older plumber emphasized the toad elder, who pointed over another hilltop. Mario and Luigi scaled it until they saw a far larger Koopa host rushing straight toward them.
"Of course." Luigi sighed.
"Hey, Luigi." Mario's smile returned as he pointed up to a pair of power-up boxes the koopas missed right over them. Luigi now grinned with Mario as they leaped up and hit the boxes, which sent out two flowers, one red, and one blue.
"Let's-a go!" Mario and Luigi jumped up, and when they came down, Mario's overalls turned red and his shirt/cap white. Luigi's overalls, by contrast, became green, and his shirt/cap light blue. The Mario Brothers threw out a series of punches and kicks, which erupted into great balls of fire and ice.
"Look out!" Goombas, Koopas, Pokeys, and Boomerang Bros found themselves engulfed in explosive fire or frozen solid before the Mario Brothers' assault. The chorus of toads now echoed across Desert Hill as Mario and Luigi went on a warpath through the Koopa army before them. The brothers worked in perfect synch, covering each other and leaping around through pipes and across structures. High above them, Roy and Larry Koopa finally noticed the Mario Brothers' rampage.
"Hey, what's wrong with our men!?" Larry growled as he watched Luigi freeze two boomerang bros solid and then kick them into a swarm of Goombas while Mario shot down a trio of lakitu before unleashing a wave of fire into ten koopas.
"Grrr! How dare those wretched humans! Let's get down there and tear them apart!" Roy almost jumped off the airship when Larry grabbed him.
"Easy, big bro, work smarter, not harder." Larry gave a horrible grin as he gestured to their wands. Roy huffed out in frustration but nodded and waved his wand with Larry.
"Ahhh! What the!? Mario, Luigi, look out!"
"Woah!" Both yoshis joined the toads who tried to warn the brothers. Mario and Luigi turned around just in time to see one of the strangest things imaginable.
"Huh?" Mario and Luigi's mouths dropped when the sun flew down upon them with an angry face upon it.
"The sun?" Luigi started, but Mario seized his brother by the arm and yanked him away.
"Watch out!" They soon realized it wasn't the actual sun but a new type of monster that crashed into the ground behind them and then flew after the brothers.
"Eat this!" The brothers hurled fire and ice into the sun, which did nothing.
"Yaaah!" Mario and Luigi yelped then the sun struck and hurled them into the sand with fiery pain.
"Mamma mia." Mario rubbed his head and saw their power-ups vanish while the sun and more koopas closed in. "Come on, Luigi!" Mario got his brother back up and raced away from the Angry Sun, which continued its pursuit.
"Oh no!" The toads clutched each other while Green and Blue Yoshi held their breath. Mario and Luigi still jumped, punched, or knocked away the other minions in their path, but the Angry Sun kept on them and closed the distance.
"Mario!" Luigi pointed to a pyramid ahead of them, and the two plumbers scaled it within moments. Even so, the Angry Sun kept after them and descended upon the pyramid's top.
"Jump!" Mario and Luigi leaped off and fell far below as Roy and Larry cackled.
"Bye-bye, Mario and Luigi!?" Both Koopalings yelped when they saw Mario and Luigi atop their yoshi.
"Yoshi!" Green and Blue Yoshi cried in exuberation.
"Yahoo! That's a good Yoshi!" Mario exclaimed as he hugged his yoshi's head. Luigi laughed, too, as Blue Yoshi charged past a group of goombas beside his brother and trambled them beneath his feet. A few paragoombas and parakoopas came down toward Luigi, but Blue Yoshi snatched up a Koopa in his mouth and grew wings on his sides.
"Ohh, this just keeps getting better!" Luigi watched Blue Yoshi soar high and kick the minions out of the sky with a series of powerful stomps. Meanwhile, Green Yoshi crushed a few more minions beneath his feet, the Angry Sun still after Mario.
"There's gotta be a way!" Mario saw Green Yoshi snatch a green Koopa in his mouth and felt the lightbulb shine over his head. "Sorry, Yoshi, but I'll need you to spit it out."
Yoshi huffed out a pout but saw the Angry Sun and soon understood. With a great effort, he spat the shell out and watched it hit the Angry Sun, which flew into a nearby oasis and fizzle out.
"Woah!" Yoshi cried.
"No!" Roy and Larry snarled as their new creation disappeared. All the while, both yoshi cleared away more group troops. "That's it, Super Koopas! Get 'em!" Larry pointed at the brothers, and in an instant, dozens of shellless koopas adorned with bright yellow capes took off from the airship and flew after them.
"Mario, look!" Luigi pointed at the squadron of Super Koopas, followed by the airship close behind. Mario and Luigi looked at each other with renewed confidence. With a simple nod, the brothers reached into their yoshi's saddle bag, pulled out the power-up inside, then threw them to each other.
"Let's-a go!" Mario jumped into the power-up Luigi threw while Luigi leaped into Mario's. The toads let out thunderous applause as Mario flew through the air, fist outstretched, a yellow cape around him. Luigi soared beside him with a tanuki tail out of the back of his overalls, which turned dark green to contrast his now black shirt and ears over his cap. Mario punched, kicked, and swept away the incoming Super Koopas with his cape, while Luigi did much the same with his tail. Soon cannon balls and Bullet Bills flew past them as they dispatched the last of the Super Koopas. Even so, the Mario Brothers avoided them and spotted both Koopalings onboard the airship.
"There they are. Let's get 'em!" Mario led the way, and with Luigi close behind, they ground pounded atop the airship bow and sent the remaining crew flying.
"You!" Roy huffed out more smoke as he scraped his clawed foot across the deck.
"Hmp, you two are tougher than you look. Ashamed, all your hard work will be for nothing. Our dad and Uncle Bowser have big plans for this world. I can see it now! Each of us Koopalings will have our own Kingdom modeled after us! Ahh, statues of Larry Koopa, and fountains of chocolate, so much chocolate." He beamed bright red at this thought while Mario and Luigi turned to each other.
"You Koopas are weird."
(Recommended theme Fortress Boss - Super Mario Bros. 3 - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)
"Give us those wands. We don't wanna hurt a bunch of kids!" Mario squared off while Roy lowered his head like a bull.
"Kids!? That's it! You two won't be around to see my Kindom! In Roy Land, only the strongest will survive!" Roy charged Mario, who leaped up and over him. However, the Koopaling turned on his heels in an instant, and Mario had to jump aside again. He avoided Roy by inches but had to keep on his feet as the Koopaling's rampage continued. Luigi, meanwhile, yelped as Larry waved his wand and sent bursts of magic that homed in on him like Bullet Bills. He tried to fly around Larry, but more magic followed him.
"I don't think so, human! You can't escape us!"
"Who's trying to escape!" Luigi smiled, and Larry's grin vanished when he saw the plumber fly straight for him, the homing spells right behind him.
"Ahh! No!" Larry cast a few more, but Luigi dodged these and continued, adding them to his arsenal. "Waaah!" Larry now ran away, and Mario spun himself over Roy, who huffed like a bull. It was in this instant that the older plumber realized his foe did fight like a bull. Mario looked at his cape and grinned back at Roy.
"Toro! Toro!" Mario waved his cape in front of Roy, who turned bright red.
"Gaaaah!" Roy charged Mario again, but the plumber spun himself to the side and hit Roy with his cape. The blow tripped him up while Mario pivoted before Roy could.
"¡Ole!" Mario delivered a punishing kick to Roy's head when Luigi came down and stomped on Larry's. The moment he did so, the Koopaling's homing spells vanished. Despite this, Roy and Larry went right into their shells and spun around on the deck like pool balls, bouncing off the edges.
"Mario, look out!" Mario jumped back into the air and flew around with Luigi when both Koopalings sprung back out.
"Eat this, humans!" Roy and Larry waved their wands over the deck, and black magic transformed into bob-ombs.
"Woah!" Mario and Luigi performed evasive maneuvers to avoid the explosions but felt numerous close calls.
"You can't run from us!" Roy and Larry cast magic together and formed a King Bob-omb sized bob-omb over the deck.
"Mama mia!" The Mario Brothers cried moments before the explosion enveloped everything above the airship deck. Roy and Larry laughed until they realized they did not hear the distinct sound of a power-up fading.
"Huh?" Both looked up just in time to see Mario and Luigi both coming down in ground pounds. Their sudden drop allowed them to just avoid the blast radius and slam both Koopalings back into their shells. Mario and Luigi, still equipped with their power-ups, landed back on their feet, ready to fight.
"Huh, is that all you got?" Luigi's taunt filled Mario with a sense of pride, but he honed back in on Roy, who looked ready to explode inside his shell.
"That's it! I'm through playing around!" Roy took out his wand and, to Mario's bewilderment, ate it. Larry followed his brother's example, and within moments, a shadowy aura enveloped both Koopalings. Their laughter deepened into booms, and when they emerged, Roy and Larry were fully-grown, only a little smaller than Bowser himself.
"Mamma mia." Mario and Luigi flew up again just in time to avoid a spray of fire from both Koopalings. However, they kept up their flamethrowers, and the brothers struggled to stay safe.
"Ok, any ideas, Mario?" Luigi turned to avoid fire from Larry when Mario saw Larry stand up taller and try to follow him.
"Yeah! Backflip, now!" Mario followed his own advice, and Luigi did the same without question. Rather than target the closer brother, Roy, and Larry remained fixed on their respective opponent and stumbled backward in an attempt to keep them in sight.
"Let's-a go!" Mario shot at Larry while Luigi came for Roy. Both brothers like missiles. The Koopalings tried to adjust their targets but did so too late. Mario and Luigi punched their stomachs with momentous impact and watched the two wands fly out and land on the deck. Roy and Larry flew backward, now back to their normal size, and fell toward the desert below.
"Yeah! Mario and Luigi are the winners!" Mario and Luigi seized the wands and fist-bumped each other. Unknown to them, two blue-shelled parakoopas carried away a dazed Roy and Larry.
"Ohhhh, my head's spinning." Larry groaned.
With the airship under their control, Mario and Luigi cast magic down across Desert Hill. Within moments, every toad and toadette transformed back into their old selves. They raced to celebrate with their families, all while destroyed buildings and homes reformed around them. Green and Blue Yoshi celebrated with the toads while Mario and Luigi held each other around the shoulder.
"Mario Brothers, our heroes!" The toad elder led his people in a triumphant cheer.