“I’m having the most fun in my life!” yelled Larry, his eyes glinting in the semi-luminescent darkness outside Bowser’s castle.

“What?!” his Koopa brothers and sister replied.

“That’s not possible,” Roy breathed, adjusting his shades. He lumbered up from the ground, getting ready to pound Larry, but was intervened by Ludwig.

“It has been my fortunate experience to witness the decimation of my siblings to exist in a distant parallel to that of the excitement experienced due to a hostile competition,” the crazed Koopa held Roy back, but only barely.

Bowser sat up from beside the pool. “An excellent idea!” he exclaimed, after Lemmy had translated Ludwig’s long-winded monologue.  “An obstacle course shall ensue!”

The Koopas marched inside to the castle, Roy quite content to show Larry up in the race. Wendy, however, was slightly perturbed, as the event had interrupted her mid-early afternoon swim.

Upon arriving at the castle’s greenhouse, Bowser signaled the start of the race, while the stands were crowded with eager Koopa Troopas. A small, speedy Koopa took off into the lead at once, much to the delight of the fans.  He seemed to be everyone’s favorite.

“Hey, he’s cheating!” belted out one who shouldn’t be talking. As usual, he had veered off onto a side track, and was heading for a secret passage into the pool room.

Iggy was also doing well, though his glasses had been eaten by a passer-by Piranha Plant.

The leader, still rolling on, took a quick look behind him and was blinded by a flash of light reflected by something on another Koopa’s face. “Ahh!” he screamed, falling face-first into the turf, implanted in there for good.

The incident’s instigator laughed, causing him to almost crash into Ludwig, and then barreled into a tree, knocking him out cold.

A new Koopa had now moved ahead, but was upset to see that water lay ahead of him in the next room.  “Oh well,” he mused, climbing slowly in. He began to swim, slowly at first but, gaining more confidence, he accelerated until he breezed above the water at a decent speed. Proud of his accomplishment, the Koopa did the only thing he knew how. Of course, this caused him to swallow a tremendous amount of water, and he ended up gasping on the other side, very weak- and fainted.

Another Koopa, on the other hand, breezed through their native element at a tremendous pace, speeding into first, much to the displeasure of the others. This Koopa rounded the corner and was stopped in their tracks by a tremendous shock. The next room was full of lava and stepping-stones!

The kid who had taken an alternate route earlier, however, was faced with a similarly poor predicament. The path he had taken was a dead end! “How could I ever mess up at a time like this?” he wondered aloud.  The Koopa began walking dejectedly back to the start, knowing he was out of the race permanently.

Back in the last room, another Koopaling left in the race breezed by his stunned sibling, and proceeded to jump across the hot mess upon chunks of iron ore. Unfortunately, one of the lumps couldn’t support his weight, and he found himself shot up into the air from the heat of the hot lava, in Mario 64 style.

The last two Koopalings chose different routes, though they needn’t have bothered- they were much lighter than the Koopa who had fallen in. Crossing the lava, they were neck and neck to the end of the race, where one leaned forward at the last second and beat the other by a claw. The Koopa walked up the podium to accept a well-crafted gold Bowser statue, but…

“Hold on a second!” roared Bowser. “Who wrote this long-winded, boring, grammatically complex Mystery?”

One of his sons waved. “Whom other than I, oh glorious father?”

“Figures, only you could come up with such an awful title for a Mystery.” Bowser mocked his son with an evil grin.

“At the least I always convey the righteous ways of the truth,” he responded, simply.