I iz backz

Chapter 11: What the Heck

"And…start!"

Goomnut nodded. "Okay, this is easy. Dodge the Bullet Bulls. I mean, Builds. I mean, Bills. Bullet Bills? Ouch!"

Mr. L sighed and stopped the stopwatch. At the same time, he deactivated the training systems. "Two and a half seconds. Well, it's better than last time, though, considering YOU DIDN'T EVEN MOVE, that's really just luck."

"It's not my fault!" Goomut assured him. "I have digestionintestinalization issues."

"I…really don't want to know what you were trying to say or what whatever it was you were trying to say means." Mr. L shook his head. "How am I supposed to train you when you won't even move?!"

"Hey, I can move! I've got great moves at dance parties!"

Bomby raised his hand. "Yeah, I attest to that. You should see him go!"

Goomnut whirled around, unable to take a compliment from his most bitter rival. "I'd like to see you go! Off a cliff! Into a shark! Who would then, like, chew you up and explode you until you were blown through the shark's blowhole and landed on the shore, so completely destroyed you couldn't even die!"

Bomby blinked. "Sharks don't have blowholes."

"If you don't shut up," Mr. L threatened, "I'll kill you both. And I'll enjoy it."

"Hah!" Goomnut puffed out his chest. "You saw the glowy lava thing that happened! I'm invisible!"

"Invincible."

"Invincible!"

"Yeah, well, if you keep pushing me like this, I'll make sure I find a way." Mr. L replied sourly. "Besides, you might be invincible, but your friend isn't."

Bomby's eyes popped. "Um, what?"

"I wouldn't really call him a friend," Goomnut corrected. "He's more like a…Bomby, how would you describe yourself?"

"Handsome? Powerful? Irresistibly charming?"

"Yeah, now take the opposite of what he said and that's what he is."

"I really, really hate this," Mr. L grumbled. "Why do I even have to train you?"

"Because the nice pink lady said so, of course!" Goomnut declared.

"The nice pink lady who tried to kill you and is the biggest enemy of our kingdom?" Bomby told him questioningly.

"Yeah!"

"I'm honestly surprised a statement that wasn't complete nonsense came out of your mouth," Mr. L acknowledged.

"I'm actually really smart, probably," Bomby informed Mr. L. "It's being around this nut that makes me dumber."

"This GOOMnut!" Goomnut corrected.

"Yeah, I feel my brain cells dying just being in the same room with him," Mr. L replied. "Okay, anyway, back to training."

"Actually, I kinda wanna ask - when will the train show up?" Goomnut questioned.

"The…train?"

"You can't do training without a train! That's like stretching without a stretch!"

Mr. L inhaled deeply. "Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't go on a murder spree. Don't go on a murder spree."

Bomby backed up. "Um, I don't feel very comfortable here anymore."

Mr. L managed to calm himself. "Okay, Goomnose-"

"Goomnut," Goomnut corrected.

"I really don't care. Now, try to hit me."

"Uh, with what? I don't have hands! Oh, what if my hands are just invisible? Gasp! I'm invisible and invincible!"

Mr. L scrunched up his nose. "Did you just say 'Gasp' instead of gasping?"

"EEEYAHH!" Goomnut charged at Mr. L and tried to throw punches with his non-existent hands. Mr. L just stood there, looking bewildered at this display of patheticness. Then, with a mere kick, he sent the goombo flying across the room, shrieking. Goomnut hit the back wall and fell to the ground, where he stopped and stayed for a few seconds, still shrieking.

Mr. L shook his head and walked over to Goomnut. "Shut up." He picked up Goomnut and set him on his feet.

A few seconds later, Goomnut finally stopped screaming. He looked around in amazement. "I'm not dead! Oh, I mean, of course I'm not! I'm invisible! Uh, invincible! Er, invisible and invincible!"

Mr. L took out his hammer. "Let's test that."

"Test wha- AHHHHHHH" Goomnut hit the ceiling, then bounced from it back down to the floor, where he bounced into the leftmost wall, where he bounced into the back wall, and he kept bouncing and bouncing.

Mr. L clenched his hammer tightly. "That felt really good. I want to do it again." He glanced at Bomby.

"Uh, you know what? I just remembered I have a very important…um, cake…to eat. Yes. This caked is very important. If I don't eat it, a lot of people will probably die. So, I'll just be going-"

Mr. L stretched out his hammer. "If you do eat that cake, a lot of people will also die," he informed Bomby with a sweet tone. "The first of which will be you."

Bomby put out a scaled lip. "You know, you've threatened me with death, like, five times, and we've only known each other for an hour or so."

"Yeah, well, fun fact: First impressions are important to me. And my first impression of you was when you were trying to kill me. Don't expect to get on my good list anytime soon."

Goomnut finally rolled to a stop at Mr. L's feet. "Okay, I never want to do that again."

Mr. L loosened his grip on his hammer and smiled. "Too bad."

"Aw, come o- AHHHHHHH"

Mario bit his lip. "Okay, weird purple swirley thing in the sky. Actually, that's not even in the top ten strangest things I've seen today."

"You mean The Void? The largest threat to the multiverse in the history of ever? The powerful vortex that engulfs entire dimensions and reduces them to absolutely nothing? You truly don't remember?" Merlon asked anxiously.

Mario met his gaze evenly. "Merlon, if I'd seen a purple black hole trying to suck up the universe, I think I'd remember it."

Merlon paced the platform they were on. "This is bad. Very bad. Do you not remember Count Bleck? Tippi? The Pure Hearts?"

With each new object mentioned, the feeling of slight recognition grew stronger in Mario's mind, but not nearly enough to pinpoint anything. He shook the feeling away. "No, I don't. Also, can I just point out that you just KIDNAPPED ME?"

"Yes, yes, that's rude and all, but I thought that once you were out of that dimension, you would remember everything!"

"That dimension? At least it had something recognizable! This whole place is just weirdness and stuff I have no idea what is!"

Merlon sighed. "It looks like we'll need someone to restore your memories."

"Or," Mario offered, "You could just return me to whatever dimension you took me from, or better yet, my original one, and I won't beat you up."

Merlon pretended not to hear. "Let's see, there's Merluvlee. She's good with magic and time travel and things. Queen Jaydes. If she can restore life, she can probably restore memories. Nolrem knows a lot about dimensional calibration…"

"Okay, is there anyone in this dimension I actually know?"

"Ah! Of course!" Merlon shouted in a "Eureka!" kind of way. "Nastasia! She has more experience in matters of the mind than nearly anybody I've met! She can certainly restore those lost memories of yours!"

"They're not lost," Mario informed him. "They just never existed to begin with."

"Nonsense! Follow me!" Merlon walked to one end of the platform and opened the door to what appeared to be an elevator.

"Yeah, sorry, I seem to remember my mother telling me that if I was ever kidnapped to NOT follow the creepy bearded man who kidnapped me into a confined elevator leading to who-knows-where to meet up with one of his friends who's going to brainwash me." Mario declared.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous!" Merlon replied gleefully. "Her days of brainwashing are long over! I think, anyway! Alternatively, you could stay up here forever. You could go through one of the doors, but one leads to the vacuum of space, one leads to a gladiatorial challenge of the 100 most powerful fighters in the entire dimension, and another leads to hell, and it's so hard to tell which is which."

Mario looked at him incredulously. "What is wrong with you?!"

Merlon smiled. "So, what do you choose?"

Mario shuffled into the elevator alongside Merlon, but he didn't look happy about it.

"Excellent! We'll be there before you know it!"

They were there well after he knew it. After Nastasia had failed to show up at the place that Merlon thought she'd be for no apparent reason, they'd had a wonderful, if, by wonderful, you mean horribly annoying, time searching all of Flipside for this blue-skinned, purple-haired mind-reader. Eventually, they'd given up and went to Merluvlee for a mystical reading on where she was (Mario was quite angry when he found out that there was someone who could have shown them where she was the whole time). Now, here they were, in a town in the middle of the Yold Desert, meeting Nastasia just outside a large, restaurant-like building.

"Ah, Nastasia!" Merlon greeted her. "We've had quite a time looking for you!"

"I told you I was heading here three hours ago," Nastasia replied coolly.

"You did? Oh, so you did! Well, if my memory were a little better, perhaps we could have found you more quickly. Speaking of which-"

"Seriously?" Mario exclaimed, "We just spent the last two hours searching an entire dimension for this woman because you're old?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," Merlon pouted.

Nastasia raised an eyebrow, though it would be hard to tell her expression, due to the fact that her mouth never moved and the glasses she was wearing were practically impossible to see through. "You've certainly become more blunt, Mario."

"You know," Mario replied, exasperated, "I thought it was annoying when there was an entire dimension that had no idea who I was. Turns out it's way more annoying to have them all remember you for something you never did!"

Nastasia furrowed her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Ah, yes," Merlon explained, "that's what we're here about. Poor Mario seems to have forgotten all about the events around The Void and the Pure Hearts. I was hoping you could assist him in remembering this?"

Nastasia sighed, took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and then put them back on. "Merlon, I'm good, but I'm not sure I'm that good. You're talking about selective memory restoration. If a memory is lost, generally it's been decomposed, and all that's left are fragments, if we're lucky. Reconstruction those fragments into actual memories again is a very difficult task."

"Nastasia, look above you. We need him to remember! It's our only chance for stopping The Void before it consumes us all! The other three have gone missing - Mario's all we have!"

Nastasia frowned. "Fine, I'll try. But no promises."

Merlon rubbed his hands together happily. "Excellent! Well, get on with it!"

"Um, get on with what, exactly?" Mario asked.

"Just…hold still." Nastasia lifted her glasses off and stared into Mario's eyes. Instantly, Mario felt a piercing blow go through his brain, like it was being invaded. Which, to be fair, it was. The intruder seemed to have complete control - a mere whim, and his personality would change forever.

Then it was gone, and Nastasia's glasses were on her face again. Mario took a step back. He didn't remember anything new

Nastasia looked at Merlon. "Yeah, this is going to be more complicated than we thought, kay? See, his mind's not alone there. Well, it is, but it really isn't."

Mario blinked a few times. "Um, mind explaining that in terms aren't utter nonsense?"

She turned back to him. "Somehow, your mind is actually two minds. Two very similar minds that have merged into one. And one is destabilizing."