The Doom Ship banked hard to port as the rising heat from the streets of New Donk City sent ripples of turbulence through its hull. Air howled over the deck, sweeping between the Mario brothers as they fought to stay standing with hands clamped down over their caps.

A morbid creaking sound shivered up from the wood of the ship as it rotated upright. The brothers had been in this position many a time before: surrounded on all sides by the elite Koopa guard Troopers brandishing boomerangs, throwing hammers, and fireballs. Roy and Wendy Koopa were cutting them off from the exit, making sure that their father had the confrontation he desired. Bowser's massive form blocked the door to the cabin where he had locked the Mushroom Kingdom's kidnapped ruler. he raised his arm skyward and tightened his clawed fingers into a fist. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get the plumbers!" he said with a voice like rocks being ground together.

A Bullet-Bill raced toward the brothers only for Mario dodge to the side, colliding with Luigi with him. An explosion behind where they had been standing sent Koopa Troopers flying in all directions. One of them landed on Roy and he shrugged the dead weight aside as she charged in.

Hammers, boomerangs, and fireballs ricochetted off of walls, collided with each other, and sometimes hit other Koopas as the guard let loose. Wendy extended her wand out in front of her and a pink bubble enclosed around her as a rain of fire balls crashed down on the deck around her.

"Daddy!" Wendy yelled. "I can't spend my three day weekend on this! This is too much for two plumbers!"

Luigi slid in behind her, using her own shield as cover from three Bullet-Bills that were in pursuit of him. "She's right about one thing Mario, there's too many of them."

In the middle of the deck Mario was dealing with Roy, he bounded off of the Koopa's head, touching down with his fingers as he leaped over. "Come on, Weegee," Mario said before hitting the deck and dropping into a tight crouch to avoid a boomerang. "Peach is counting on…" The boomerang hit Roy, knocking him off balance. "…us."

The opening left a clear path to Bowser, but the Koopa King wouldn't go down without a fight. He reared back to blow a trail of fire across the deck, not caring if his own minions were caught in the blaze. Koopa Troopers dropped into their shells to pass as the fire engulfed everything around him in his attempt to pinpoint Mario.

A flash of a shadow passed over the deck as something passed between the Doom Ship and the sun. It was too fast to discern the shape or size of the object, but the following cry gave every indication of what was about to happen.

"Hyah-cha!" The melodic ring of metal filled the air as Bowser's face jerked down until his chin was against his chest. The flames in his throat sputtered out in the shock of what was happening.

Peach landed on the deck between Mario and Bowser with a mockingly graceful bow. Her dress was covered in soot and ash and in her hand was the biggest frying pan the brothers had ever seen.

"You? But how?" Bowser's voice was muffled through his hands clenched over his snout.

She held her white gloved hand up, her thumb slightly off-center from where it should be. "Handcuffs, Bowser? Really? Ask Mario how fast I can get out of regular handcuffs…"

Mario glanced around nervously and saw the moment that realization struck everyone present. He stooped down quickly, picked up a boomerang and flung it toward the Koopa King.

Bowser dodged to the side, still holding his face. "This insolence won't stand!" Bowser yelled.

"Well, tell us what to do, Dad?" Roy said.

"Yeah, Daddy, I've got a Yoshi Philosophy Paper due on Tuesday and if I don't get my bibliography straight the professor is going to dock points off my final score." Wendy said. "I don't have all day to play with your Born-Again-Incel love fixation all day."

Bowser growled, pointing an accusatory finger down at Peach and then his expression softened. "What—what is that?"

A strange force passed over the Doom Ship like a massive pressure drop. A weight sunk into the pit of everyone's stomaches and the wind seemed to still for a second as if something had stifled the breeze. Everyone on the deck of the Doomship stopped moving, Peach's frying pan dropped from her hand to clatter on the deck.

The force that had pulled them away from the conflict was heavy in the air, but the peace it had caused was quickly broken as an Odyssey that was passing over New Donk City careened hard, narrowly missing the starboard side of the Doom Ship as it rolled out of control and crashed into New Donk Bay.

One of the Koopas was the first to call attention to it. "Ah, something is very very wrong. I don't feel—" his body seemed to deteriorate in wispy, black ash, caught on on the wind. Another Koopa reached for him, but he was gone in an instant.

"What is this? Is this your doing?" Bowser bellowed.

Another Koopa Trooper fell to the deck, his form graying until he was just a loose curdled mess of ashes. Then another. The effect seemed too random to actually know what course of action to take. Wendy dropped to one knee, her wand planted against the deck of the Doom Ship. "Daddy, what's wrong with me?"

"Sweetie-kins, hold on, just…" Bowser raced across the ship toward her, knocking Peach and several Koopas aside in his frantic attempt to reach his daughter. As he neared her she faded into nothingness and slipped between his fingers like sands through an hourglass.

"I don't know about this, Mario. I don't like it." Luigi fell against the deck railing, clambering at the weather-worn wood for his footing as his legs began to go gray and fade.

"No," Peach mouthed the word over and over after actually saying it. Mario was already at Luigi's side.

"We'll figure something out." Mario said. "We have to."

Luigi's eyes were pleading as what was left of his arms clutched at Mario's shoulder. "I don't want to go, Mario," said Luigi. "I don't want to—"

As Luigi faded from existence, Mario felt Peach's hand on his shoulder. Her voice had softened to a tone he didn't hear her use often. "Mario."

"Who could have done this?" Roy asked. "You would attack us all"

A Koopa Trooper pointed over the side of the ship. "It's not just us, look at them!"

In the streets beneath the Doom Ship's massive hull people could be seen in a panic, cars rammed into each other as their drivers were pulled out of existence. At a rooftop jazz club a woman swept at the ashes of what used to be a friend or lover up, trying to gather them into her lap.

"It's all over the city," Peach said. Pushing her way to the helm of the ship past discarded weapons and the ashes of people who had been standing there moments ago, Peach barked orders over the rush of the wind around the deck. "We're not going to make it back to the Mushroom Kingdom on this fuel, I'm putting us down in Sarasaland."

"This is no time to see your crazy cousin!" Mario shouted.

"Sarasaland is the nearest place with a warp zone straight back to the Mushroom Kingdom…from there we can assess the situation and try to come up with a course of action…"

Bowser looked as if he might say something. The Doom Ship was his, but Peach was angry and right. Something bigger than them was happening. Peach jerked at the wheel, rotating the ship toward the east. "Did you feel it," Bowser's usual growl was low now, like a Diesel engine. "Before they were taken I could feel something bad…" Bowser stopped himself, clenching his hand around the bannister of the stairs that led up to an upper level.

The Doom Ship tilted forward so that its nose was aimed slightly at the ground. The aft propellers roared and everything to shook around them. "Everyone hang on," Peach had been abroad these ships enough to know how to lock a course in and as she went to work Mario sat down with his back against the center mast of the ship. His cocky demeanor replaced with a somber expression.

"I-is it possible they were warped somewhere else or th-that aliens got them?" Roy questioned his father.

"I don't know." Bowser said. "I saw the same thing as you!"

"They cut our numbers in half," Peach said. "From up here you can see it. There were twenty Koopa Troopers, plus the two kids, plus the three of us," she pointed between herself, Bowser and Mario. "And Luigi. Now there's exactly half left."

"What does that mean?" Asked a shaky voiced Koopa Trooper.

"It means it's not random," Bowser said. "It means we find whoever did this and make them pay."