Chapter 7 - The Dinner Party

Mario’s face went red again. Gruffawha Ruins was the place I had to come and get Crabbie Grass to cure his Bean Fever last year. Oh, yes, I knew this place too well. There was supposedly a horrible monster in the ruins, but that was just a rumor. I never found such monster. I had found out from numerous lectures from Julie that you could almost never believe anything a Toad told you. Though I got along very well with toads, I had to admit that it was mostly true.

Chompy barked again, and nudged me in the arm, signaling that he wanted attention. I patted him on the head briefly.

“Come on,” I told everyone else, still holding Chompy’s chain. “I know a way out of here.”

Waluigi and Wario started talking excitedly. I could hear every word they said, which made me feel rather sick.

“I hear the monster sucks out all of your blood!”

“No, no, it breaks every single bone in your body.”

“I think it wouldn’t do either of those. It probably just peels off all of your flesh.”

“Maybe it does all three!”

“It’s a rumor,” I convinced myself. “Last time you were here you didn’t see anything but a talking statue.” I didn’t want my wristband to react.

Mario was laughing at what they were saying.

“No,” he said. “I think it probably eats your intestines like spaghetti!”

All three of them were laughing hysterically, and then going on about how the monster uses your blood for taco sauce. I was becoming very sick to my stomach. I kept my lips pressed together tightly to avoid nausea.

“You guys, could you please-“ I turned around. They had stopped talking, and were now staring, wide-eyed, at something behind me. They were all very white, and their jaws were dropped. They all looked like little statues wearing identical expressions.

“What’s wrong…“ I asked, starting to get nervous. Chompy started barking frantically, as a deep voice said, “What are you five doing here?”

I slowly and shakily turned around. I made eye contact with a creature, that if it was the size of a normal person, I was the size of a housecat. It had eight arms and pincers, which resembled a spider closely, except that it was standing on what looked like a single leg. Eight arms were attached from its shoulders to its waist.

“Well?” It demanded. Chompy whined. I could see something dripping off of its teeth, unmistakably poison.

“AAAAAAAUUGGHHHH!!!” all four of us screamed in unison, as my wristband became warm, and with a flash of light, did what it was supposed to do.

I tried to run, but I felt something grab me around the waist. I turned around in horror to realize that the monster had picked me up.

“Nooooo!” I heard Mario scream from the floor. But to my surprise, the spider creature had picked me up simply to stroke my hair.

“You have the neatest fuzz on the top of your head,” it said, in now a female voice. My heart was racing wildly. What was going on? This monster was treating me like its pet!

I could see Mario’s shocked expression from all the way up here. Two of the spider’s hands were holding me by under my arms, and the other six were occupied in messing with my hair. (This was getting a little annoying.)

“So you’re another one of those… humans?” she asked me. I nodded slightly, mouth agape. She squealed slightly. “Ooooh! Wow. Humans almost never come in here. Except for three… they always come in.” She slowly put me down. Mario bolted next to me.

“Where are your other two friends?” she asked.

“They…uh… ran away,” Mario said. Clearly, he didn’t know what to think.

“Oh, dear… did I scare them?” Mario smirked and nodded.

“Kai!” came a voice from behind the spider. Apparently, Kai was its name.

“What happened here- hey!” A young boy appeared from behind Kai. He look around 12 years of age, and was a little shorter than Mario. His hair color was strangely similar to mine, only slightly darker. It was also about the same length.

“Aren’t you guys Mario and Luigi?”

Mario and I nodded in unison.

“Cool,” he said. “I’m Rick. I work with the hospital in little Fungitown, I’m collecting Crabbie Grass from the ruins.”

Mario’s face went red.

“I’d better go get Waluigi and Wario,” I said, and turned to leave the way that I was sure they had gone. I was right. Almost immediately, I found them both hiding behind a rock.

“Woah,” Waluigi said once he saw me, “You aren’t dead!”

“No,” I said. “The spider thing is nice, actually.”

Wario stepped out from behind his rock. “Really?”

“Yep,” I said. “You get to keep all of your blood.” I smirked.

“This is getting frustrating,” Wario said, coming out from behind the rock and going into the chamber I just left. “I want to go back to the hotel.”

My mind raced. I tried to think of something to say other than “I told you so,” but came up with nothing.

“It is,” I said.

Ricky walked out of the next chamber with Mario.

“You know,” he said. “I’ve got reservations at the same hotel that you guys do. I’m meeting Lauren and Julie for dinner, you guys want to bring your friends and come along?”

“Sure!” Wario said happily. “It’s almost dinnertime anyway!”

Mario grumbled something and looked at his feet.

“Well,” I said, clapping my hands together. “We could go now.”

“Good,” Wario snapped. “I’m starving.”

Still looking at his feet, Mario mumbled “Since when is that new,” in a barely audible voice.

Back at the hotel, Peach, Daisy and Yoshi met up with us for dinner. The hotel was very fancy. Daisy and Peach insisted that we dress up a bit. This was easy for me, I just replayed the Haunted Mansion ordeal and in an instant, my wristband reacted, and I was immediately changed into the most formal clothes I own. Julie and Lauren came a little later. They were wearing twin everything: The same black dresses, pearl necklaces, and diamond bracelets. Except one thing, Julie had a gold bracelet with teacups on it, (she always wore this,) and Lauren just hand a plain gold chain around her wrist.

I was surprised to find that Julie was a master of the Thunderbrand, as well as I was. I noticed this when she electrocuted her glass by mistake. Apparently, she wasn’t really a master.


And of course, Daisy and Peach being princesses, were quite dressed up. Daisy was wearing her favorite really short dress (that was perhaps my favorite on her, too,) and Peach was wearing a slender, long dress. Mario and Rick looked like they were about to go to church, and Wario and Waluigi were wearing identical black silk outfits that almost looked like tuxedos.

And Yoshi… well, he doesn’t wear clothes.

After waiting for what seemed like forever, the waiter finally came. Mario was silent and sulky, and said that I should go first. I picked up the beverage menu and glanced at it. I caught sight of a drink called “Green Bean Tonic.” I didn’t know what that meant. I was curious, and wanted to try it.

“I’ll have that,” I said, and pointed at it. Daisy leaned over my shoulder to look at the menu.

“I’ll just have your Hoolumbian coffee,” she said.

Wario was next. But he didn’t get a drink; he picked up the dinner menu.

“I’ll have this… and this… and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.” He pointed to about a thousand things on the menu, saying this rather loudly. Waluigi whispered in his ear that we are ordering drinks now.

“I see,” Wario replied casually. “Then I’ll have…” he snatched the drink menu out of my hands. “This and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.”

Lauren picked up her napkin to put it in her lap, but accidentally used Firebrand on it and ignited it. With a loud scream, she threw it over her shoulder and it landed on the Toad at the table directly behind us. Julie burst out laughing as Lauren tried to go apologize, but while leaning on the Toad’s chair, set it on fire as well. She snatched the chair from under the toad and tried waving the fire out, but all that did was spread the sparks around. The curtains and carpet were ablaze as Lauren ran to get a bucket to put water in it, only setting that on fire as well. She dropped it on her toe, igniting her shoe, and after kicking it off quickly, it hit the face of a Toad and set that toad’s face on fire. Julie started choking on air as she laughed at the panicking toads… and the panicking Lauren. Now, her hair was on fire, as well as the back of her shirt. She was running around in frantic circles.

“It’s okay,” I said loudly, and stood up. All eyes came to rest on me. I shot a single lightning bolt into the floor, and almost instantly it was glowing and the fires went out. All of the toads relaxed, and sat down to resume their eating and conversation. I sat down. Lauren did, as well, hair and back charred. I snickered to myself as Julie caught her breath and picked up a basket off the floor.

“Hey, everyone,” she said. “Do you want to try my homemade breadsticks?”

“Sure,” everyone said in unison. Julie lifted the napkin off the top. I let out a tiny gasp of horror.

The breadsticks looked like something that you’d pull out of a clogged sink. They had hairs, warts, and were a vomit-green. They smelled like someone had peed all over them. One of the breadsticks leaped onto the table and barked. Julie slapped it with a fork, and it whined.

“Uh…” I said. “I’ll pass. I ordered a large entrée, anyway. I uh… don’t want to ruin my appetite.”

Everyone else came up with an excuse to not eat Julie’s er… fabulous cooking. The excuses ranged from “I’m allergic to poisonous things” (Mario) to “I’m sorry, I just waxed my otter and for some reason are not in the mood to eat bread.” (Waluigi)

“I’ll try one,” Wario said. He reached into the basket and picked up the mildest breadstick, one that smelled like iodine rather than urine. After calming the breadstick so it stopped growling at him, he took a bite of it.

Everyone was curious about what would happen. Wario lifted his eyebrows.

“Hey…” he said. “They really aren’t that bad, once you get past the tough alligator skin.”

“You like them?” Julie squealed.

“No!!!” Wario spat. “It’s disgusting!” Julie sat down, disgruntled.

“Finally,” I heard Waluigi say. “Here comes the waiter.”

And indeed, here comes the waiter. He set a cup down in front of me. I peered into it. The liquid was a dark green similar to the color of Julie’s “Breadsticks.” It smelled good, though.

I lifted the cup and took a sip of it. Lauren suddenly jumped out of her chair as if to stop me, but it was too late, the liquid slid down my throat.

My hands rushed to my neck, making me drop the glass. With a loud crash, it broke into fifty million pieces and the liquid spread all over the floor. I painfully swallowed, as a few tears budded in my eyes. I’ve never tasted anything so disgusting; it was even nastier than the fried dandelions Professor Gadd made for me in 2001. I thought I was going to die.

Mario stood up, too, dropping his fork with a slight “clink”. His eyes were widened with alarm, widened to the point where they were greatly boasting their purple tint. “You don’t feel sick, do you?” he asked suddenly.

I nodded, feeling a little more than just “sick.” I was so desperate to get this taste out of my mouth that I almost grabbed one of Julie’s breadsticks. But I snapped into my right mind and grabbed Daisy’s cup of Hoolumbian that the waiter had just set down. Finally, I was able to exhale.

Waluigi was in hysterics at seeing this. He had fallen out of his chair, clutching his stomach, laughing.

“S…sorry,” I said to Daisy, setting down the now empty cup of Hoolumbian coffee. “I’ll order you a new one.”

But Daisy was laughing too. So was Julie. In fact, everybody was. Out of the whole group, only Mario seemed upset.

With a quick glance at my hand to make sure it wasn’t turning green, I turned to the waiter.

“Uh… can I just get some of your red wine, and another order of the Hoolumbian coffee?”

“Sure,” he said, scribbling this down. “Now that the dilemmas are over, might I take your order?”

“Yeah!” Wario said. He picked up the menu. “I’ll have this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.”

A different waiter came and set a glass of red wine in front of me. A fly flew by Yoshi’s head.

“Ooooh!” He said, interested. The fly zoomed away from him and toward a different table. It landed on a Toad’s napkin. Yoshi chased the fly, and pounced in the toad’s lap. The toad made a funny “Nnngack!” noise that made Julie laugh so hard her soda shot out of her nose. Yoshi, still sitting on another diner’s table, stuck his twelve-foot tongue out of his mouth and snatched the fly. He swallowed it.

His eyes widened. “Yuck!” he said, and hurled in the toad’s lap.

“Luigi,” Waluigi said from across the table once Yoshi had finished barfing and sat down. (Julie was still dying of laughter; Yoshi had puked all of his stomach out. Yoshi has a big stomach, let me tell you. It looked like he barfed so much that you could fill a bathtub with it.) “What is that you’re drinking?”

“Just wine,” I said and took a sip. To my relief, it was delicious. Waluigi called the waiter and ordered some.

A few minutes later, the waiter brought our food. Wario was a sight to watch eat; he unhinged his jaw like a snake and swallowed the hamburger as big as his head whole. Julie and Lauren started laughing again. Rick raised his eyebrow quickly, and then picked up his fork.

Waluigi took a few sips of his wine. His eyes drooped.

“That’sgoodstuff,” he said, voice droning. He stood up. “I’ve got to go shave my car.” he took a few steps and fell, face down, to the carpet, mumbling something about a kitchen sink.

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. “Are you getting drunk too?” Daisy asked me with a smirk. “What’s in that wine?”

I shrugged. “I don’t feel funny,” I said. Apparently, Waluigi got drunk very easily.


Everyone who stayed in this hotel was very rich and proper, and were probably disgusted at our group of girls who make breadsticks that looked like a lion coughed them up, laugh loudly at everything, squirt Pepsi out of their noses and set every tangible thing on fire, pets that barf a swimming pool in peoples’ laps, and men who order every single item off of the menu, fall out of their chairs laughing and then get severely drunk, and go rigid at taking a single sip of bean juice. Peach, Daisy, Mario and Rick were probably the only pleasant example-setters here. But then again, they had all laughed loudly, which is also very “Improper” to these elderly, wealthy toads.

Julie was the first to finish her food. Wario would have been, but he ordered so much that it took a while to finish.

“So…” she said, obviously wanting to make conversation. Waluigi stood up, clutching his forehead.

“Man,” he said. “I’ve got the worst headache…” he sat down. “What have I missed?”

“Nothing, really…” Peach said. “Now eat. All of us are almost finished.” I snickered to myself; she sounded like his mother.

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