The Luigi Story

Chapter 9: The Bowser Express part 2

I came down from the ladder with a shocked look on my face.

'They are coming!', I said to Johnny.

'Oh no!', Johnny replied as he started to climb the ladder to take a look.

'What are we going to do now?', I thought to myself. 'We have no means to protect ourselves against these robots. We barely escaped the four in the tunnel'.

Johnny came down the ladder and had the same questions as me.

'They will be here any minute', Johnny said. 'What should we do?'.

The only thing I could think of was to go faster than them.

'Let's go to Captain Toad', I replied. 'We have to speed up this train!'.

We ran through the last few carriages and finally reached the locomotive where Captain Toad was.

'Hey guys, how is it going?', Captain Toad asked. 'What was that explosion in the tunnel? It scared the crap out of me!'.

'We will talk about that later', I said stressfully. 'The robots are right behind us!'

'What?!', Captain Toad responded. 'I surely hoped we had gotten rid of them'.

'Not yet', I replied. 'Can this train go any faster?'.

'I will try', Captain Toad answered.

He turned back towards the engine and looked blankly in front of him. Then, he started pulling levers and turning valves.

'Do you know what you are doing?, I asked him.

'No, but I managed to start it', Captain Toad replied. 'However, I don't think we will be going fast enough to escape them.'

'Damnit!', I replied. 'We were so close!'.

I turned around and looked through the window. The train was going in a slow turn to the right, which meant it was now possible to see the robots and the airship gaining on us. It was still a couple of minutes before they would reach us, but with every second the feeling of dread was becoming stronger.

'We have to lose weight!', Johnny suddenly said. 'If we uncouple more carriages, the train has to pull less weight and will go faster'.

'That is a great idea, Johnny!', I replied. 'Let's get going right away. Captain Toad, you try and get this train rolling faster'.

Johnny and I ran towards the back of the train and almost crashed into people and children along the way. I could hear them ask all kinds of questions, but we didn't have time for any of that. Once we reached the last carriage, I yelled at all those inside.

'Get out of this carriage!', I yelled. 'We are going to let this one go!'.

The people in the carriage were confused, but, as I was talking to them, Johnny was opening the hatch. When they saw what was going on, they started running towards us and quickly passed by us. When everyone was out, Johnny pulled the lever and the carriage uncoupled from ours, leaving it behind.

It was not a very notable difference, but the change in weight did speed up the train a bit. However, when I looked at the distance between us and the robots, it was clear that, no matter what, they would get to us. We went back in and quickly went to the front of the next carriage. This was already empty, so we uncoupled it and the train sped up again. The robots were still in pursuit and gaining on us. We were now at the last carriage before the buffet car. As we ran towards the end of the carriage, a crying Toad headed our way.