Goombella scavenged through the hot, punishing desert sand. "PROFESSOR FRANKLY, IS IT ANYWHERE NEAR YOU?" She cried out.

"No, Goombella!" Professor Frankly cried back. "I'm still searching!"

"How about you guys?" She yelled out, attempting to make her voice distinguishable from beyond the punishing sandstorm.

Kooper was still digging. He looked up over the blowing sand dune and called back to Goombella. "No, I haven't found it yet, Goombella!"

Kolorado was lying down in a lawn chair, twiddling with his clock and holding his hat. "Oh, it is most dreadful," he called out. "this sandstorm had better end soon." He tweaked his moustache. "I can't imagine going on any further than this..."

Kooper decided to switch place and go closer to Goombella, where he found the small Goomba girl had begun to develop a rash under her left eye. "Uh... Goombella, your-"

"I don't care about that right now! I'll deal with that after we find this fossil!" She continued to dig, which Kooper found to be a very curious thing, as she had no hands or arms.

Professor Frankly noticed Kooper leaning towards Goombella's face. "Hey!" he called out. "None of that, you two! We have an ancient necklace to find!"

"I found a shard!" Kolorado called out, removing his hand from under his lawn chair. "It was right under me!"

"Lucky bastard," Goombella muttered hatefully. They went over to observe the trinket Kolorado held in his left hand. Goombella eyed it carefully. "This is, without a doubt a piece of the Necklace of Goom. Soon, when we assemble it 100%, by finding the other two shards around here, we will open the Temple of Goom."

"That's what the ancient epitaph said." Professor Frankly recited.

"He who has the three pieces of charm, shall

find shelter in the place adorned

with gold, steel, and metals of sorts

but will contend with the crimson eye."

"That could mean anything," Kooper left it open for possibilities.

"It sounds good to me, old chaps." Kolorado exclaimed. "Infinite wealth and sellable metals!"

"But I'm still trying to figure out what 'the Crimson Eye' means." Goombella announced, feeling unsure of the whole situation. She felt that if it was something that she couldn't record in her Tattle log, she should be wary of it. Goombella was certain that she had known positively everything about anything, but this riddle tested this. She had many hypotheses as to what it could mean, but it remains to be seen.

Kooper had begun to walk and tripped on a shiny, metallic object. "Hey, look! I found one!" he said, picking it up, along with himself.

All that remains is to find the third one. Goombella thought. She had tried to look around, but her vision was shrouded with flying debris and the painful stinging of dirt and what could have been glass in her eyes and cheeks. The rash began to itch like crazy. She began to scratch at it, and it busted open and began to bleed. "Oh, beautiful!" Goombella exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "just what I needed!"

Kooper ran over and placed a temporary bandage on the open sore. He looked at the bandage on Goombella's cheek and touched his own. "Hey, Goombella! Matching bandages!"

"Shut up." the grouchy Goomba girl said, walking past him.

She walked over to the old Goomba. "Professor," she began. "this is hopeless. The wind's blowing the dunes over the dunes. Finding the third piece will be like looking for a needle in a haystack!"

"That's fine." Professor Frankly dismissed the idea. "I was a champion at that sport, myself. All due to my persistence."

Goombella began to feel ashamed. "I'm a graduate of the University of Goom, and I helped Mario defeat the Shadow queen. There's no way I can give up if I've come this far! Rash or no rash! Storm or no storm!" Suddenly, her eye caught a glimpse of a shine in one of the dunes. She rushed past Kolorado, who was in the way, and she retrieved what looked to be the third shard!

"I found it, guys!" She exclaimed wildly with joy. "I found it! The last shard!"

"Good work, fellow archaeologists!" Kolorado clapped his hands. "Now, let us join the pieces together as we planned, hmm? I can't wait to see the Gold-errr- temple."

Goombella, Kooper and Kolorado joined the pieces together. The cracks between them closed up and sealed together with a golden light. The light began to draw out a mystic seal on the floor. Accompanying this was a massive earth rumble, and sand began to pour on different directions as a mound began to rise from the ground. More sand sliding off revealed this mound of sand to be the temple of Goom. It was a temple with a triangular roof, a Goomba with a pharaoh's hat as a stone monument on the building, above many columns with different designs on it.

The four archaeologists stared with wonder. Before anyone could say anything, Kolorado shot like a bullet into the temple, Goombella, Kooper, and Frankly following suit.