-Chapter 4

 

            Wow…what a strange dream!  I can’t wait to tell Dad and Mom—no wait, Mom’s already awake.  Is that her voice?

            “Wake up!” shouted the voice as she shook Joey awake.  “Wake up, you lazy excuse for a father!”

            Okay…so that’s probably not Mom…but then—arrgh!  Stop shaking me!  Fine, I’ll get up!

            Joey got off his back and opened his eyes.  And what he didn’t want to see appeared in front of his eyes.  He was face-to-face with his daughter, Tiffany, again.  He rubbed his eyes just to make sure.  Yep…she’s still there….

            “It’s about time!” Tiffany said.  “You’ve been asleep for thirteen hours straight and you drooled all over the seat!  What do you have to say for yourself?”

            “Well, firstly,” said Joey, as he stretched his arms, “you’re lucky Yoshata’s here, because I should be giving you a beating you deserve!”

            Yoshata turned around from her seat.  “I wouldn’t mind watching,” she said.

            “You be quiet!” snapped Tiffany.  “You don’t how much I’ve had to go through watching this brat!  He always begging for this and….”

            Joey mouthed Tiffany behind her back.  Yoshata, who was paying more attention to Joey than Tiffany’s yelling, laughed.  Tiffany turned around.  “What were you doing?” she asked Joey angrily.

            “Nothing,” said Joey innocently. 

            “Fine!” said Tiffany, still suspicious.  “Now what else did you want?”

            “I was wondering why we stopped,” said Joey.

             “We just stopped at a gas station.  We’ve got to hurry, though.  I’ll get the gas.  You guys take this money and get some snacks.”

            She handed Joey and Yoshata five dollars each.  They grinned and ran out of the car and into the station. 

           

            “Wow,” said Joey as he and Yoshata walked through the door, “what’s up with her?”

            “She didn’t get any sleep last night.  She had to drive all night and she refused to turn on the auto-pilot.”

            “Oh,” said Joey as he grabbed a small box of donuts from a shelf.  “Where’re we headed?”

            “Ummm…oh yeah!  Someplace she called ‘Orange Cataract City,’” replied Yoshata as she grabbed a small snack pie from the shelf next to her.

            “Orange Cataract?” Joey thought for a moment.  “Hey, I’ve heard of that place!  I went there once with my family…I was about eight.  It’s a big city on the southwest end of Yoshi’s Island.  It’s full of awesome places!”

            “Like what?” asked Yoshata as she opened the beverage freezer.

            “Well, there’s a hot beach near the beautiful blue ocean, donut shops, tall five-star hotels and fancy restaurants, donut shops, a tour across the area of the Orange Waterfalls which made the city famous, donut shops, really big malls, donut shops, and loads of other neat city things, and, of course, DONUT SHOPS!”

            “Wow,” said Yoshata.  “That sounds like loads of fun!  But why would Tiffany be taking us there?”

            “Who cares?” said Joey happily, as he grabbed a half-gallon of milk from a freezer.  He counted up the two boxes of donuts and the milk he got.  “Okay, I have enough money for this.  What did you get?”

            Yoshata closed the freezer she reached into just a moment ago.  “Well, I got milk, cookies, and some chips.”

            “So I guess we’re both ready!  Now we’ll just wait for Tiffany to come in, and we’ll all pay!”

            It didn’t take long for Tiffany to walk through the doors.  And Yoshata was right; Tiffany looked really tired.  Joey didn’t know why he didn’t notice it before.  Tiffany walked up to the counter, then pulled some money out of her pocket and gave it to the lady behind the counter.  Joey and Yoshata paid just afterwards, grabbed their change and walked back to the SkyCar with their snacks.

            “All right,” said Tiffany as Joey closed the car door behind him, “we all ready?”

            Yoshata and Joey, who were both sitting in the back of the car this time, nodded.

            “Good!  And we’re off!”  Tiffany started up the car, made it rise into the air, and flew forward past the gas station and a sign reading, “Orange Cataract City–180 Mi.”

 

            Olivia had been walking for ten hours now, and still, not a parked car in sight.  How could I have failed? She wondered.  Why wasn’t I prepared?  I’m such a fool!  If only I had seen that girl come up from behind me!  But how could his daughter have gotten someone with such magical powers?  Wait…the girl with her and her father at the beach…she must have brought someone from the 2000’s with her!  And if I’m correct, then that “someone” is none other than Yoshata—

            Olivia’s conveniently readable thoughts were interrupted by a red convertible sliding sideways off the pavement and onto her side of the road.  Now was her chance.  She ran through the cloud of dust and over to the orange Yoshi in the convertible.  “Are you all right?” she asked, trying to get the driver’s attention.

            The orange Yoshi shook the dizziness from his head and turned to Olivia.  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” he said.  “Just got bumped in the side of my car…But it can get fixed!”

            “Wow,” said Olivia, looking the orange Yoshi straight in the eye.  “That sure is a nice car you’ve got there….”

 

            The green numbers on the car clock read “2:00.”  Tiffany took a quick look at it, then turned back to the window and continued to watch the road.   “Okay,” she said, still looking at the road, “we’re almost there.  We’re going to stop at a supermarket to get food first.  Later tonight, we’re going to the hotel in the middle of the city.  I have a friend who works there who can help us get a good and safe place to sleep for the night.”

            “Oh, thank goodness,” said Joey.  “It’s been three hours since I finished those donuts and that milk, and I want more!”

            “What—do you think I’m made of money or something?”

            “With all the money you stole from the future me, I’d say ‘yeah,’” grumbled Joey.

            “For goodness’ sake!” shouted Tiffany.  “I have never met such a selfish and bratty person in my entire life!  It’s a wonder you got a wife!”

            “If all that’s true, then it explains where you got it from,” countered Joey.  He stuck out his tongue. 

            Tiffany’s face turned darker, but before she lost her temper, she turned around to face the road.  She found some headphones in the glove compartment, connected them to the headphone jack, and turned on the radio as she put them on.

            “Wow,” whispered Joey as he turned toward Yoshata, “I’ll be glad when she gets to bed.”

            Yoshata nodded in agreement.  Then she looked past Tiffany and out the front window.  “Look!” she said as she pointed forward.  “There’s the city!”

            Joey looked out of the front window as well, and just as Yoshata said, before them was the city of Orange Cataract.  Several giant skyscrapers loomed over the bright city.  They could see large and small malls and stores, gas stations, and houses in large groups under the buildings.  They could see motels with pools in several areas in the city, and there were even some tall buildings with pools on top of them!  There was one noticeably large hotel near the center of the city, where every other tall building could be found.  There was what seemed like an endless, sparkling blue ocean to the left of the city where a long beach was.  And on the opposite end of the city was a large forest.  Joey recognized it as part of the Orange Waterfalls Tour he had mentioned three hours earlier.

            “Yeah, isn’t it just amazing?” Tiffany asked in her sarcastic voice.  “You guys look like you’ve never seen a city before.”

            “Well, it wasn’t this big over twenty years ago,” said Joey, still eyeing the entire city.

            “Yeah, and I’ve never been here before in my entire life,” said Yoshata.

            “Well, as you might not have known, we’re not here to enjoy it.  We’re here to make sure Joey doesn’t get killed.  Not even he deserves that.”

            “Oh, go get hit by a car,” grumbled Joey.  He received a slap on the cheek in return.

           

            They passed down a long hill until they were at the bottom of the valley in which the city was built.  Joey looked out his window and saw most of the houses and motels.  Yoshata, who was on the left side of the car, saw the bases of several large hotels and skyscrapers.  Tiffany continued watching the road as if none of this was important.

            “Hey!” Joey shouted.  “I see a donut shop!  Oooh!  Oooh!  Can we stop there?”

            Tiffany looked back at Joey with a look that he read as, “No.”

            “Pleeeeease?” Joey and Yoshata begged. 

            “No,” said Tiffany firmly.  “First of all, Olivia could still be alive and after us.  Second, We’re going to stop at a supermarket soon, and we can’t waste a minute.  And thirdly, I don’t want to even touch one of those revolting things.”

            Joey looked shocked.  “What?  You mean you don’t like donuts?”

            “No!”

            “What!?  Is that even possible?  Everyone in my family besides my older sister likes donuts!  And you, my only daughter, haven’t found the same desire for them?”

            “No!”

            “You are a disgrace to my family, Tiffany!  I would’ve thought we would have had one common desire….”

            “Hello?  Perhaps I didn’t inherit the…donut-liking gene, or whatever….”

            “You had to have!”

            “You do know I have a mother too, right?”

            Joey thought about this.  Does she mean to say I’m gonna marry someone who doesn’t like donuts?  That’s unheard of!  But wait…. 

            “Um, who am I gonna—”

            “—No.”

            “What?”

            “I can’t tell you who you’re going to marry.  That is what you were going to ask, right?”

            Joey ignored her second question.  “Why not?”

            “Because one,” began Tiffany, “it’s not safe for your future…or mine, for that matter.  And two, I want to torture you.”

            “Oh, come on!”

            “No, already!”

            “You’re a big jerk and a bully!”

            “YOU WATCH YOUR MOUTH!”

            Joey sat down and cowered in a corner.  Yoshata looked sternly at Tiffany.  “That’s no way to speak to your father!” she said.  Tiffany rolled her eyes.  “I mean it!” said Yoshata.  “It’s very dis—are you listening to me?”

            But, of course, Tiffany was not listening to Yoshata.  “Aha!  There it is!” she said as she turned the steering wheel to the left.  The SkyCar turned into the parking lot of a large supermarket.  Tiffany looked around for a moment, then found an empty spot and landed the Skycar there.

            “Aw, I hate shopping!” whined Joey.  “Can I stay in the car?”

            “Of course not!” snapped Tiffany.  “Don’t you know by now that I’m supposed to be protecting you?”

            “But you’ll take forever!  That’s what my mom does!”

            “Oh, just shut up and get out of the car, or I’ll make you!”

            “Fine!  But I want donuts from the bakery section!”

            Tiffany opened her door and walked out.  She walked around to Joey’s door and yanked it open.  She grabbed Joey tightly by the wrist and pulled him out of the car.  Yoshata followed them and closed the door behind her. 

            From the outside, this supermarket didn’t look much different than any one Joey had seen in his own time.  It had a regular set of automatically opening doors near the front.  Past those doors was a small room where the shopping carts were kept. 

            The inside, however, was quite a bit different.  The supermarket had several moving escalator-like, straight platforms along every aisle, moving slowly so that one could pick up all their needs at their own pace without having to walk.  If an item shelf was missed, there was a second moving belt going in the other direction.  At the far end of this room was an escalator moving upwards into a second floor, which held everything that would have to be walked to.  The escalator moving upwards, however, did not have steps like stairs and didn’t go at such a steep angle, so that shopping carts could be brought up it.

            “All right, then,” said Tiffany, “since we don’t need to get food by the shelf, we’ll just take our cart upstairs!”

            “And we’ll get donuts?” asked Joey.

            “Yeah, sure, whatever.”  Tiffany pushed her shopping cart onto the rising platform.  Joey and Yoshata followed her.  When they reached the second floor, she said to them, “Now, we’re going to go to the clothes department first to get you two new stuff to wear.  Then we’ll a quick bite to eat at the little fast food place over there.  Then, we’ll head out to the car as fast as—”

            “Ahem….” interrupted Joey.

            “Fine,” said Tiffany monotonously, “we’ll go to the bakery, then we’ll head out to the car as fast as we can…Now let’s go!”

 

            A red convertible with a scratch on the right rear side pulled into the parking lot of the supermarket.  Eyeing the area around, just to confirm what she saw, the driver spotted what she was looking for.  A Model 3 blue SkyCar, parked only a short way from her. 

            She stepped out of the car and walked over to the car.  She looked into the back window.  It was as she expected.  No one was there.  She walked to the back of the car and eyed the license plate number.  It was what she was looking for.  “Good,” she said.  She left the SkyCar and walked through the doors of the supermarket. 

            As she entered the second set of doors, she put her hand on one of her best weapons.  She wouldn’t use it yet; she would have to wait until she found Joey.  First, she looked down every food aisle, to find that each one was empty.  So that left the second floor.  She ran through the small line and jumped onto the escalator moving upwards.  

 

            Meanwhile, Tiffany and Yoshata were in the Saddles and Boots section.  Trying to get away as soon as possible, Joey picked out the nearest things to him: A jet-black saddle, and yellow boots.  Once he did that, he shoved it into his daughter’s annoyed face and rushed off toward the bakery section not far off.  Not really wanting to be around Tiffany either, Yoshata quickly grabbed a purple saddle and neon orange boots and piled them on top of Joey’s new saddle and boots.  Then she rushed off to find Joey. 

            Tiffany dumped Joey and Yoshata’s new clothes into her shopping cart.  After looking down the aisle for a moment, she found some cool see-through boots and a bright yellow saddle.  She put those in her cart and began to walk to the bakery section to find Joey and Yoshata.  As she walking to find them, she saw something periwinkle move out of the corner of her eye.  Deciding that she couldn’t be too careful, Tiffany turned around.  There was no one there.  “Hm,” Tiffany said, rubbing her chin.  “I could swear I—Oh, maybe I should get Joey before I go crazy.  Ridiculing him always makes me feel better.”

            Tiffany quickened her pace a bit after that.  After about a minute of walking around several clothes racks and walking through several aisles, she found Joey and Yoshata looking at everything in the bakery section.  There were several cinnamon rolls, honey buns, and other pastries on steaming racks, although Joey seemed to only be paying attention to the assorted donuts.  Yoshata was the first to notice Tiffany.  “Hey, Joey,” she called to him, “Tiffany’s here; you can start now!”

            Joey grinned and grabbed two bags.  He passed one to Yoshata, and kept the other for himself.  He grabbed several donuts and stuffed them into his bag.  Yoshata took a bit longer, thinking carefully about what she should take.

            Tiffany rolled her eyes and looked at her wristwatch.  Will they hurry up already? She asked herself.  She looked at her watch a second time, then lowered her arm and looked behind herself for a moment.  Then she saw her.

            Olivia Norton, holding a shotgun with explosive shells, was hiding behind another aisle, and she was aiming at Joey.  She grinned as she realized Tiffany had seen her.  She began to pull on the trigger.

            “Joey!” Tiffany screamed.  She jumped forward and tackled Joey and Yoshata to the ground.  She had done it just in time; a small explosion made a hole in the wall behind them.  “What was that?” asked Joey as he picked up some donuts he dropped. 

            “Who do ya think it is?” asked Tiffany angrily.  “Now hurry, we’ve got to get out to the car!”

            “But I’m not done getting my donuts!” complained Joey.

            Tiffany ignored him and turned over to where Olivia was hiding.  A small family had passed by her, and Olivia was hiding behind the aisle again, waiting for the family to pass by.  Then Tiffany turned her attention to the escalator she, Joey and Yoshata had gone up.  It was quite a way away, and that meant that they’d have to try to get away from Olivia as quickly as possible.  And that meant that they’d have to run through aisles and around other people.  She had to think quickly.  Joey and Yoshata had apparently just noticed that Olivia was about to spring out and kill them.  Then Tiffany had an idea.  She turned to Yoshata.  “Yoshata,” she began.

            “What?” Yoshata whispered back.

            “We’ve gotta get down that escalator.  When I say, ‘three,’ You need to shoot a heat ray at Olivia to divert her attention.  Then I’ll force her into the wall using the magnet gun.”

            “Okay.”

            “Then we’ll make a run for it, running behind anything and anyone we can.”

            “Wait.  Why don’t you just kill her now?”

            “Well, I sure wish I could, but we’re in public.  Which leads me to the next thing I have to say.  Whatever you do, stay calm—”

            “RUN!” shouted Joey.  “THERE’S A MURDERER WITH A SHOTGUN OUT TO KILL US ALL!”

            There was about one second of silence, which was followed by everyone on the second floor running toward the escalator and screaming.  Joey had done exactly what his daughter didn’t want him to do again.  He could tell by the look she gave him when she shouted, “NOW!” to Yoshata.  And upon hearing this, Yoshata shot another heat ray from her eyes.  She missed Olivia and hit the shelf behind her.  The jackets on the shelf burst into flames, and the shelf itself fell backwards, causing a “domino effect” with every other shelf behind it.  This, fortunately, distracted Olivia.  This caused the remaining Yoshies to scream harder and run faster.  Not paying attention to any of this besides Olivia, Tiffany pulled out her magnet gun and fired it at her enemy.  This forced Olivia through the air and into a fallen shelf.  Joey and Yoshata ran with their protector and hoped that Olivia wouldn’t catch them. 

            Tiffany continued to hold down the trigger to her magnet gun.  It effectively held Joey’s assassin to the shelf, but soon it would be to far away to hold her down.  And then that very thing happened.  Tiffany, Joey, and Yoshata saw Olivia get back up from the ground and prepare her shotgun again. 

            “Oh, gosh, get out of the way!” shouted Tiffany.  She pushed Joey and Yoshata into another aisle just as the second shot was fired.  Boxes and shoes went flying in all directions from the explosion.  Tiffany looked back as they rounded another corner.  She could see Olivia running after them, getting her gun ready at the same time.  “All right,” she told Joey and Yoshata.  “What we’ve got to do is run around these people that Joey panicked,” she continued, glaring at Joey.  “Then, if everything goes well, we’ll hopefully have lost Olivia.  Ready?”

            Joey and Yoshata nodded.  They were getting closer to the escalator.  And Tiffany was right; there were several different Yoshies running toward the first floor, some alone, some bringing their entire families with them.  Then they heard Tiffany cry out, “All right, NOW!”  The three of them ran around several people, rushing in and out different aisles.  Olivia followed them, but soon was lost in the crowd of screaming people.

            They were almost there.  The escalator was only feet away, and it seemed that they had lost Olivia.  The three of them leapt toward the “down” escalator and ran down.  It was when they reached the bottom that Yoshata had seen Olivia again.  “Run!” she shouted to the others.  “She must have cut through the crowd and seen us!  Now hurry!  I’ll take care of this!”  Joey and Tiffany did as she said and ran out the doors.

            Yoshata concentrated once again.  She was almost hit by Olivia’s fire, but she continued to concentrate.  Then, her eyes began to glow a very bright blue color, and finally, an ice ray zipped from her eyes and hit Olivia.  Most of the people around gasped; Olivia’s body was covered in frost and she could no longer move.  And before anyone in the building could speak, Yoshata rushed out through the doors and into the parking lot. 

            Once she reached the car, she opened the door and jumped in, taking her seat to the left of Joey again.  She locked her door and fastened her seat belt.  “We haven’t got much time,” she said nervously.  “She going to thaw any minute now.  Now where are we headed?”

            Tiffany activated the SkyCar’s propellers, forcing it into the air again.  “We’re heading to that hotel I told you about.  Like I said, I know a friend who works there, and he can get a place to sleep for the night.  It’s a long trip, but these donuts should hold Joey off.  The faster we get there, the better off we’ll be.”  And with that, she began to drive forward, toward the center of the city.

 

-End of Chapter 4