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Up in his office overlooking the main Mario Kart stadium, Lakitu was NOT in a good mood.
“Road surface torn up, landscaping repairs, one Piranha Plant that’s still in intensive care, Bob-omb damage to the viewing stand—and that’s just the damage that Mario’s caused!” Lakitu threw the sheaf of papers down on his floating cloud desk. “Honestly, these racers. It’s like some kind of mean switch flicks on in their heads the minute they get behind the wheel of a racing vehicle!”
The phone rang. Lakitu hit the speaker button. “Mario Kart offices, Lakitu speaking.”
It was one of the Shy Guys on the track crew. “Hey, boss, we’ve got bad news. We won’t be able to reopen the Haunted Mansion track for a while. The Boos are all still traumatized.”
“I TOLD Luigi that he couldn’t bring that Poltergust machine with him!” Lakitu raged. “Give the Boos a few more 1UP mushrooms, see if that’ll help.”
“Sure, boss.”
Lakitu hung up and went back to muttering over the damage reports from Cheep-Cheep Beach.
The door opened and a green-shelled Koopa Troopa walked in. “Lakitu, the Mushroom Kingdom Gazette wants to talk to you. They want to know if Yoshi’s really suspended from the next five races.”
Lakitu took a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm. “As we said in the official statement, Yoshi violated a very important rule: no eating your opponents, even if they show up unharmed a second later inside a giant egg.”
The Koopa Troopa left. Lakitu resumed sorting papers while trying to ignore the growing number of Yoshi-related hashtags appearing on his computer.
The door opened again, and this time it was a blue-shelled Koopa Troopa holding a stack of paperwork. “Lakitu, we’ve just heard back from Princess Zelda. Hyrule’s sending an entire racing team this time, not just Link.”
Lakitu’s goggles flew off his head for a moment. “Tell me you’re not serious. I’ve seen how Zelda drives that Master Cycle Zero.”
“I’m serious. The Triforce of Speed, they’re calling themselves,” the Koopa Troopa said. She added eagerly, “And they’ve got big sponsorships lined up already. Sheikah Tech, Zonai Amalgamated Engineering, Lon Lon Farms…”
“Fine, fine, fine,” Lakitu said, waving his hands. “Tell Zelda I’ll call her back to finalize the sign-up details.”
No sooner had the Koopa Troopa left than the phone rang. Lakitu hit the speaker button again. “Mario Kart offices, Lakitu speaking.”
“This is a collect call from Planet Zebes. Do you wish to accept?” the voice on the other end said.
Lakitu sighed. “Sure, why not?”
The call was picked up by a female voice. “Hi, Lakitu, this is Samus Aran. I wanted to see if you’d had a chance to review my proposal for a Metroid Cup…”
By the time the call ended twenty minutes later, Lakitu had reluctantly agreed to get the Hammer Brothers to work on designing a Brinstar-themed course and to have the Koopa Troopas register Samus’s gunship as a vehicle, among myriad other requests.
It was time for the regular racers to have a practice run down on the stadium track.
Lakitu glanced out the window at the line of racers by their vehicles. Mario was doing a bunch of woo-hoo jumps about something as Bowser tried to breathe fire at him. Peach and Daisy were having an impromptu duel with fire flowers and ice flowers. And Luigi was running for cover as Wario and Waluigi chucked green Koopa shells in his direction.
With a sigh, Lakitu opened his desk drawer to look for a stress ball. Instead he found a handful of spiky red spheres: Spiny eggs.
He rolled them around in his hand, and a smile crept across his face.
“Been a long time since I used these little guys,” he said.
Putting the Spiny eggs into his satchel, he grabbed his checkered racing flag and floated out of the office on his cloud.