"Hey Crash, I feel kinda funny ..." Marth complained shortly after downing his glass.
"Ugh, same here," Crash agreed, holding his stomach with one hand and the other pressed against his forehead. "Is alcohol supposed to make you feel all weird?"
Crash and Marth continued to grumble about how terrible they were feeling, completely oblivious to the fact that they were slowly beginning to rise out of their chairs and deaf to the screams and the sounds of chairs scraping against the floor as patrons fled the juice bar.
Banzai, Darros, and ZM merely stared at the two troublemakers in stunned disbelief. Freohr's hands flew to her mouth and she barely suppressed a gasp.
"They're flying," Banzai finally said, breaking the silence that had descended upon them. "They're floating at least eight feet above the ground. And they don't even seem to notice."
"Wait, since when can they fly?" Darros demanded. "That's not fair! I can't be more ordinary than those two!"
"PKL's serum!" ZM shouted out just then. "Argh ...! So that's where it went! One of them must have picked it up when I dropped it!"
"I thought you said there was no one stupid enough to drink something straight from a vial, Banzai," Darros remarked.
"As an English major, how was I supposed to know that Crash and Marth are that stupid?" he snapped back.
"Guys!" Freohr yelled, bringing them back to the situation at hand. "This is not the time! PKL's potion is experimental, we don't know WHAT exactly it's going to do other than cause flight! We don't even know how long it's going to last!"
"Well, now would be a good time to find out, I guess," Darros said. "Freohr, we're going to try to keep these guys from getting into too much trouble. Can you take notes?"
"Sure can do!" Freohr pulled out a notepad and a pencil from seemingly out of nowhere and focused intently on her targets.
"Hey, Marth, are you FLYING?!" Crash exclaimed just then. "How is it that you're flying?"
"I don't know, Crash!" Marth moaned. "Besides, you're flying too! What's going on?"
Crash was silent for a few minutes, trying his best to think -- it looked like it hurt. Then, he broke into a wide grin. "Oh, I get it! We're drunk, and now we're imagining that we can flying! Marth, we should make the most out of this!"
"Yeah, yeah, imagination yeah!" Marth agreed, nodding.
"Are they seriously that stupid?" Darros muttered.
Suddenly, a pair of gigantic white wings sprouted out from Crash's and Marth's backs. They both let out a whoop and immediately flew out of the juice bar.
"... How bizarre," Banzai said.
"Can't un-see ..." ZM shook his head. "Must - erase - from - mind ..."
"They're getting away!" Darros shouted. "Banzai! ZM! We can't let them get away! Who knows what they'll do!"
"They're just fools." Banzai rolled his eyes. "Still, I suppose it is not as bad as dealing with that incompetent Camdar."
ZM seemed to be trying to delete the mental image of Marth and Crash growing wings from his mind. "Ah, right, so ..."
"Come on you guys, it's cursin' time!" Darros yelled. "BLUE FOLGORE RANGER -- MULTIPLE IDENTITIES POWER!"
"BLACK FOLGORE RANGER -- ENGLISH LANGUAGE POWER!"
"ORANGE FOLGORE RANGER -- TROUBADOUR POWER!"
"Freohr here, taking notes!" she piped in.
The Folgore Rangers and Freohr ran out of the deserted juice bar, looking for any sign of Crash and Marth. They weren't hard to find -- especially since they were just outside, flying only ten feet above the ground, and laughing rather obnoxiously.
"Found them ..." ZM sighed. "So ... what, do we just babysit them until the potion wears off?"
"I suppose so." Darros didn't look very happy either. "Who knows how long that'll take?"
"Well, I hate to interrupt the moment, but there they go." Banzai pointed at the quickly disappearing troublemakers, who were floating towards the park.
"What!" Darros's hands flew to his head. "We can't let them go to the park! They'll freak out everyone there!"
"They already freaked out people in the juice bar," ZM said. "I think it's too late for that."
Freohr, not looking up from her note-taking, spoke up just then. "Shouldn't you guys stop them if you don't want them in the park?"
"Oh, right ..."
"I'll create a wall of text that they can't get though," Banzai said. Within seconds, he had created a large obstacle of words that was at least ten stories high and placed it right in Crash and Marth's path so that they couldn't bypass it.
Marth bumped into the wall first in an almost comical fashion. "Eh? Crash ... this thing is blocking our way!" he whined.
"Hey! What is a wall of text doing in my alcohol-induced hallucination?" Crash demanded.
"Because it's not?" Darros muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes.
"What does it say, Crash?" Marth complained. "There are so words, and a lot of them are big!"
Crash turned to him, with an annoyed look on his face. "Who cares? Let's just bust through this thing! After all, we're dreaming!" With those words, he easily punched a hole through Banzai's text wall, and he and Marth continued on their way.
"That didn't work," ZM said, as Banzai spluttered in outrage. "Any other ideas?"
"Shoot them down with arrows?" Darros suggested. "FE logic says that we must shoot flying things with arrows!"
"But you guys don't have any arrows on you," Freohr said.
"Oh, don't we?" Darros let out a laugh and raised his fist in the air. "POWER OF MULTIPLE IDENTITIES -- CHANGE TO UHAI!"
A blue flash of light surrounded his body and, just as soon as it had appeared, faded. Instead of his Blue Folgore Ranger costume, Darros wore a Sacaean-style outfit and a dark blue bandanna over his head. He held a Short Bow in his hands and had a quiver of arrows over his back.
"You're not seriously going to shoot them down, are you?" ZM asked.
"Watch me!" Darros -- or rather Uhai -- nocked his bow, took aim, and fired. The first arrow missed Crash by about a foot. The second one nearly hit Marth in the shoulder. One thing that was quickly becoming apparent was Darros' lack of skill in archery, despite becoming Uhai.
"I thought you were supposed to be shooting them down," Banzai deadpanned.
"Eh?" Crash blinked as a stray arrow flew past his head. He turned to look behind him and caught sight of Darros releasing yet another arrow. "Stop shooting at me, you loser! Quit ruining my booze dream! Marth, let's get out of here!"
"Huh, uh, right!" Marth said, narrowly avoiding an arrow to his wings.
"Oh, no you don't!" Darros yelled, chasing after the fleeing troublemakers while shooting at them. "Come back here!"
ZM sighed. "Uhai can't hit. That is sad."
"So much for bringing them down," Banzai grumbled.
Freohr giggled. "My ... this is really fun to watch! Come on, guys, I still have to take notes!" She took ahold of ZM's arm in her left hand and linked her right arm with Banzai's, then she skipped in the direction that Darros had gone in with the guys in tow.
-
By the time that the others had caught up with Darros, he had powered down to his Blue Folgore Ranger self. Crash and Marth were still flying in the sky, circling overhead as if mocking Darros' failure. Arrows lay scattered on the ground as far as the eye could see.
"I see that you've had no success in bringing them down," Banzai noted coolly.
Darros glared at him. "They just avoided all of my arrows ... my aim isn't even that bad! They must have dumb luck powers like Harpoon, I swear."
"Pegasus knights are nimble and quick," Freohr commented, as she continued to jot down notes. "Perhaps PKL's serum gave them better dodging skills?"
"That's awfully convenient," ZM muttered. "And inconvenient for us."
"Hey, ZM, don't you have troubadour powers?" Darros asked. "Couldn't you just put them to sleep or something?"
"Oh! Why didn't I think of that?" ZM pulled out a sleep staff from seemingly out of nowhere and held it up in the air. "Nighty night, Crash and Marth!"
The gem mounted atop the sleep staff glowed blue, and then a cloud of powdery white sparkles spiraled down from the air and onto the two troublemakers.
"Eh? Crash, what is this stuff?" Marth complained, flicking the sparkles off his arm. "Is it snowing on just us two?"
"Yeah, that must be it!" Crash gave a triumphant laugh. "It's snowing in Serenes Forest! It doesn't have to make sense! This is all an illusion, after all!"
The three Folgores watched in disbelief as Marth and Crash simply shook off the effects of the sleep staff and continued to hover in the air. Freohr was furiously scribbling in her notepad, not wanting to miss even the littlest detail.
"It didn't work," Banzai stated, as ZM let out a curse and threw his sleep staff to the ground.
"We can see that it didn't work," Darros snapped back. "But why? Since when could those two resist magic, especially magic cast by a Folgore Ranger?"
"You guys know PKL," Freohr said amicably. "He likes pegasi a lot. Knowing him, he probably created the serum so that it would give the user some characteristics of pegasus knights."
"I am going to yell at him over his lack of foresight," Banzai grumbled.
"Well that's just great!" ZM tossed his arms up in the air. "So Banzai can't stop them with his walls of text. Darros can't shoot them down. I can't put them to sleep. What do we do to stop them?"
"There's nothing we can do except wait for the potion to wear off by itself," Darros said, with a shake of his head. "I'm out of ideas."
"Me too." ZM sighed.
"And how much longer are we supposed to wait for the effects to wear off?" Banzai demanded.
-
"Hey Crash," Marth said just then, "does it feel like we're flying a lot lower than before?"
"Huh ... that's odd, I feel it too." Crash looked down, only to realize that he and Marth were quickly losing altitude. "Aw, man! And I was having such a great hallucination too ..."
"Aw ..." Marth echoed.
-
Two loud thuds from a nearby dumpster startled the Folgores and Freohr into a jump. Warily, they turned to look at it -- not knowing what had caused the thuds.
"What was that?" ZM asked.
"Let's go check it out," Darros suggested. He, Banzai, and ZM slowly made their way over to the dumpster -- Freohr close behind them. They peered inside and were exasperated to find Crash and Marth in the dumpster, unconscious. "Those two! I should've known!"
"I guess they ran out of flight power." ZM shrugged.
"About time, too," Banzai huffed. "They are far more trouble than they're worth."
Freohr giggled. "So ... PKL's flight serum gives increased mobility, speed, and magical resistance in addition to flight powers! And it lasts about ..." -- she looked at her watch -- "fifteen minutes! All right!"
"I don't see how you can be so happy about this," Darros muttered.
"So, guys ... should we take them back with us?" ZM asked, poking Crash's arm with a stick he had picked up from the ground.
"No," Banzai replied.
"After all the trouble they caused us?" Darros crossed his arms. "I agree with Banzai. Let's just leave them."
"Yeah, I guess." ZM tossed his stick into the dumpster. "I just want to get back to HQ and forget that the last half hour even happened."
"I'll go with you!" Freohr said, draping her arms over Darros' and ZM's shoulders. "I have to give PKL the results of his potion!"
Muttering unenthusiastically in agreement, the three Folgores -- with Freohr in tow -- headed back to their secret base, prepared to get some well-deserved rest.