Rainbow Road [Super Mario Bros.]

17

They played a few games of Uno, and then Mario headed back to their room after a fifteen minute wait for the elevator to get into place. Luigi had headed back about an hour previous, and when Mario got into the room, he was lying on his bed, sulking.

Awkwardly, Mario said, "She didn't mean it. She said she was sorry."

Luigi grumbled.

Mario considered launching into a lecture about not taking stuff on the Internet so seriously, but thought better of it — it was easy for him to say so, since most of the stuff people posted about him was glowing praise and admiration. So he just wound down for bed after programming their check-out time in the Hospitality AI.

The interface woke them up the next morning around 5:45 AM. Luigi looked like he'd barely gotten any sleep, and didn't brighten even when Mario served him the last of the Hootin' Tootin' apple cider. He and Daisy were good friends, so her backhanded comment must have really stung. Mario wondered if he'd had a bad dream about it — Luigi was the type to carry his worries straight into the realm of the unconscious, after all.

After they finished packing, they waited for the Orbital Motel to shift to the six o'clock position so that they could take an elevator down and out of the place, and Mario tried to engage his younger brother in conversation. But after several failures, he was at a loss as to how to cheer him up.

Then his phone rang.

"Mariooooooooo!" Dash the Hooski said on the other line. "Majoooooooor update ooooooooon Nabbit!"

Mario jumped to his feet. "Did you catch him?" he demanded. On the other bed, Luigi sat up, finally looking interested.

"Almoooooooooost," Dash said. "Authoooooooooorities spooooooootted him taking an illegal spacewalk near the thirty mile mark."

Illegally spacewalking. In other words, driving your space-faring vehicle out of reach of Rainbow Road's gravity wells, where a technical malfunction could leave you stranded in the middle of the void, drifting with little to no inertia. From what Mario knew, violations of this sort usually occurred when some daredevil was trying to take a shortcut from one part of the Road to another. "Where does the 'almost' part come in?"

"A space chase," Dash said. "Ooooooone ooooooof oooooooour flying shrooooooooms tried toooooooo nail him with an EMP, but missed. Sooooooorta. It clipped him, shut dooooooown his gravity drive but nooooooot his CPU. He managed to dooooooooo a Blackoooooooooout and goooooooooot away."

A Blackout! Another space travel violation. With the right coating of paint and some technical adjustments, you could program your space vehicle to reflect the sun's rays in such a way that rendered your rig invisible, and impossible to detect either visually or on radar.

"When was this?" Mario demanded.

"Last night, arooooooound 8 PM."

"Any contact since then?"

"Noooooooooo. Yooooooooou?"

"Noooooo... I mean, no. But we've got our eyes open. Can you send me the security footage of this chase?"

It arrived on his phone three minutes later. Mario sat on Luigi's bed, and they watched it together. Luigi found the video of Nabbit getting tagged by the EMP but still managing to get away infuriating.

"That'll slow him down at least," Mario said. "Nabbit's not going anywhere fast with a busted gravity drive." They were what allowed vehicles to maneuver like regular cars in zero gravity. Without it, Nabbit wasn't taking any spacewalks anytime soon, and would have to get wherever he was going the regular way: Rainbow Road. And if the closing walls of police blockade didn't catch him, Mario and Luigi would.

"Operations," the Hospitality AI chirped. The room rattled as it came to rest at six o'clock. Mario stood.

"Let's get going," he said. "We've still got a lot of ground to cover, and there's a good chance that we'll run into Nabbit on the way."

Luigi frowned as they went to the door. "Where do you think he'll be?"

"Hiding, probably," Mario said.

"Or getting his space scooter fixed," Luigi said.

Mario gazed at his brother with respect. "Excellent deduction," he said. "I'll call Dash again in a moment, ask him to send some flying shrooms to the space dealerships up ahead. They sometimes do repairs even though—"

"Space dealerships?"

"Yes, they're real," Mario said wryly. He opened the door, and they stepped outside, once again standing by the Operations Booth. The Goomba took their room keys, and they struck back out for the Road. On the way there, they ran into a small group of Rainbow Walkers milling at the junction, including Daisy. She pulled away from them when the brothers arrived.

"Morning guys," she said. "Ready to get started?"

"Sure," Mario said. Luigi said nothing, and took care not to look at Daisy. Awkwardly, Mario said, "Er... I kind of expected for you to be gone already. You like to get an early start on these things, don't you?"

"I thought I'd walk with you guys today," Daisy said. She shifted uncomfortably. "Plus... I wanted to give Luigi this."

She held up something in her hand, and Luigi's head whipped around incredulously. "Hey," he said, gaping, "Is that a—"

"An Item Box," Daisy said, nodding. "I figured it could help you with your Nabbit chase."

Luigi was speechless. What a gift! Item Boxes sounded plain, but they were actually hugely expensive, running at around 500 coins each. That was because each tiny container was enchanted by hand by a Kamek to produce a random item when it was opened. Sometimes when you opened an Item Box, you got a coin. Sometimes you got a thousand coins. Sometimes a Boo popped out and scared you. Other times, you were graced with a 1-Up Mushroom. Luigi had even heard tales of people receiving Grand Stars, which Rosalina's Observatory would buy off of you for about 1.5 million coins each.

Luigi took the tiny sparkling box from Daisy and stared at it with wonder. "Thanks," he stammered. "I'll cherish it."

She smiled. "You're welcome. And I'm sorry about what I said last night. Mario's right, Luigi: don't listen to that stupid video. You've got more than what it takes to bring Nabbit to justice." She spread her arms. "Now then. Why don't we take a walk?"