Chapter 16 - Final Showdown

After the light was gone, I unshielded my eyes and let out a strangled yell. I
couldn't believe what I saw... what Cackletta really was.

"King Boo?" I gasped.

"Yep," he said.

“You framed her?” I roared. “All of this was you?” King Boo smiled and nodded. Well, rather, bobbed in the air a bit.

“Yep,” he said, proud of himself.

“I knew it,” I whispered. “You turned into Cackletta during that vision.” I remembered that Cackletta had King Boo’s fangs, and Fawful had the French accent of King Boo’s assistant, Boonique.

“You were also Tatanga that night in the hotel!” I exclaimed after a second of thinking. “That’s how you knew that I could see elemental ghosts!” Of course, why hadn’t I seen it? King Boo… that’s where I had seen those fangs and eyes before that were so horribly familiar.

“Huh,” King boo said, his …er…eyebrows lifting slightly. “Maybe you aren’t quite as stupid as I originally thought. Yes, it was me. I was Tatanga... Cackletta... My first, second, and third sabotage attempts to break your heart were foiled by your clever brother. It's true... it's impossible to create an exact copy of another. I created the robots of Peach and Daisy that you saw, and the Rose robot. She isn't really your daughter from the future. I can't predict the future."

"Brilliant," I whispered, and meant it.

"Anyway," he said casually, as if we were just out getting a coffee, "I suppose I can't have you going around telling everyone that Cackletta was really me? You've got no Poltergust to protect you now," he hissed. "What do you have?" I formed a lightning bolt sword as fast as I could, but then I remembered, duh… he's a ghost, I can't hurt him with a physical attack…

King Boo laughed. Chills ran up my spine.

"Before I finish you off... I'd like to dedicate this to the true King Boo. You
trapped him in a painting..." he paused and smiled evilly. "You're not that
stupid, I'll have to admit. You'd rival your clever brother."

"You can't beat us," I said.

"You look like you're about to get married," Boo said.

"You wouldn't hit a guy in a tux, would you?" I smirked.

"Sure," King Boo said. He raised his stubby arms and formed a purple energy ball, one that was identical to the one that Tatanga had used on me before.

"Bye-bye," he said.

I jumped out of the way just in time for the purple ball to hit the ground and
disintegrate. Perhaps now, I thought, having the reflexes of someone who was very high-strung was a good thing.

King Boo growled in frustration. "Don't even try..." he started and shot another one. Again, I leaped out of the way and landed on the floor with a soft "ugh!" I formed a steady stream of electricity and it hit him in the top of the head. He let out a small "Auughh!"

I can hit him!

A new ray of hope lit up for me. I planted my feet firmly on the ground and
tried hitting King Boo with the same continuous stream of lightning. He recoiled in what I hoped was pain, but was able to shoot a purple stream of energy at me. It was interesting to see; a purple stream of light from King Boo, and a light blue one from me. That is... until the purple stream of energy hit me in the stomach.

"Don't stop," I told myself, as I felt my energy steadily draining. It wasn't
painful to be hit by the energy stream, it was just very tiring. "Don't stop.
Keep attacking him. He's falling faster. If you let go, he wins."

I kept my entire mind focused on staying upright and hitting King Boo with
electricity. It was working. Through blurred vision, I could see him recoiling
in pain.

After about twenty seconds of hitting Boo with electricity, I could hardly keep
my eyes open. All of my energy was gone, but from the weakened purple beam, I realized that I was winning. As everything started becoming black, I heard a door slam open.

"Holy crap!" came a teenager's voice. I think it was Julie, but before I could
try and figure out who it was from, everything went black.

"Hello..." came Waluigi's voice a little later. I could imagine that he was
bending over me. I felt him poke me in the nose. "Are you alive?"

I was exhausted. I managed to say "unk." to answer his question.

"Gee..." Julie said. "I never would have guessed King Boo." I opened my eyes. I was right, Waluigi was leaning over me. Julie was standing next to him. I sat up.

"Good afternoon," Julie chirped. "You've only been out for about ten minutes."

"Wh...what happened to King Boo?" I asked. Julie smirked.

"Taken care of," she said proudly. "Funny thing is, King Boo's pretty dumb. He can't find any flaws in his flawed plan. When we got transported by the rope..." Julie pulled a strap off her shoulder and in her hand hung the Poltergust 3000. It was a red vacuum-looking machine that was nearly half the size of Julie. "He transported me to the lab. Sure enough, I found this puppy, and then found you."

"What did King Boo do to you guys?" I asked Waluigi. "And where is everyone else?"

"He locked us in that room on the seventh floor." he replied quickly. I stood
up. Julie was now holding a portrait.

"Isn't it pretty?" she squealed. I eyed the portrait and smiled. It was King
Boo, his face permanently frozen into a painful grimace.

"Wonderful," I said. "Where's everyone else now?"

"First floor," Julie said. "We came here to find you."

"So... can we actually have a vacation now?" Ricky asked once we were all
reunited on the first floor.

"What happened up there?" Mario asked, noticing how exhausted I was.

"Well..." I said and held up the portrait of King Boo. Julie snickered as
Mario's face went white.

"You can't mean..." he started.

"King Boo," I said. "King Boo was Cackletta the whole time." Mario shook his
head in amazement.

"He's pretty smart, I've got to admit." Lauren said. "I don't know why I didn't
see it before."

"I want to go home," Wario whined. "I'm tired and hungry."

"I want to go back to Sarasaland," I said. "I'm sick of this place."

It didn't take long to get to the hotel. Daisy, Chompy, Yoshi and Peach were all waiting for us. Only I noticed that Peach had a cast on her arm.

"You broke your arm?" Mario asked in astonishment. "That's what I felt!"

"I want to go home," Daisy said. "I'm sick of this place."

"I can book my plane for right now," Peach said. "I would like to go home, too."

And so it was... Peach booked her plane. It was scheduled to take off that
night.

Julie, Lauren and Ricky bid their farewells at the Beanbean Airport.

"Thank you so much," I said, shaking Julie's hand. She wasn't interested in
shaking my hand, she threw her arms around my neck, making me drop my suitcase.

"I'm going to miss you," she said. I patted her awkwardly on the back.

"You're most likely going to lead the next amazing adventure," I said. "After
all, you can use a Poltergust just like I can." Julie let go of me and smiled.

"Really?" she asked.

"Of course," I said, picking my suitcase back up. I turned around.

"You'll have to tell me about America next time I see you," I said, and boarded the plane. Lauren laughed. I could see through the plane's windows that Julie and Waluigi were doing a high-five. They had, apparently, become close friends.

Yoshi sat next to Wario. He had hoarded all of Wario's peanuts and Cracker
Jacks. At about midnight, I was awakened by a desperate struggling I heard above me in the overhead compartment. I had the window seat, so I carefully stepped over the sleeping Daisy and opened it up.

"No way..." I said, choking down a laugh. Yoshi was crammed into the
compartment, straining against ropes, and had a sign taped on his nose that said "SHOOT ME!!!!" written in what looked strongly like blood. I glanced at Wario. He was sleeping in a disturbing way, his mouth was open and he was drooling and snoring loudly. Waluigi, who was sitting on the other side of him, had earmuffs and everything.

I pulled Yoshi out of the overhead compartment and sat him down in the vacant seat next to Daisy. Now that I was awake, it was a little hard to go back to sleep. I opened a pack of peanuts, but a long red tongue snatched them out of my hand.

"Yoshi..." I said irritably. He smiled and ate my snack, wrapper and all.

I sighed and opened a pack of pretzels. Only, this met the same fate as the
peanuts.

"Yoshi, stoppit!" I said. He just kept on grinning.

I opened a can of Sprite and took one sip of it. I set it down on the pulldown
table and glanced out the window. We were flying over a kingdom that I didn't recognize, but nonethelesss, it was pretty. You could see all the lights of the city, and from thirty thousand feet up, that looked pretty cool.

My eyes didn't leave the window, but I retreated my hand to reach my can of
Sprite. But I couldn't find it.

"What the..." I said, and looked at the pulldown table. It was gone. I looked
over at Yoshi. He was emptying the can in his stomach.

"Arrggh!" I said. I leaped on top of Yoshi and tied him up. Usually it wasn't in
my nature to do this, but I was sick of him eating my food. I stuffed Yoshi in
the overhead compartment above Mario's head. He jerked awake, forcing himself out of the fetal position he had curled up into the seat to sleep in. Eyes half closed, he mumbled something that sounded like "Unkhuh," and then laid his head back on Peach's shoulder and started snoring lightly again. I picked up a piece of paper off the floor and scribbled the words "SHOOT ME!!!" on it, and then set it on Yoshi's nose.

The next day, Daisy scolded me strongly for treating Yoshi like that. Wario
thought it was hilarious that not only he felt that way. The plane touched down in Sarasaland thirty minutes later, and I was the first one off the plane.

I leaped off the final step of the plane and breathed deeply. The air didn't
smell like lima beans. And as the warm Sarasaland wind lightly ruffled my hair, I think the last time I felt this glad to be home was when I took my last step out of my haunted mansion, never to return there.

-The End-

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