Chapter 11
Weapon Guardians


The 'lid' of Mt. Teapot had been opened in the previously thanks to Luigi, but nobody thanked him, so it doesn't matter.

Because of this, the water level within the hill had lowered down to only about ankle level, so the Smashers were able to get to the bottom and walked through the originally inaccessible place.

"Wow! I can't believe there would be such a secret in this place!" Ness exclaimed.

"I'm sure the Hands had their hands in all this," Young Link said.

"You lot wouldn't have found it if it weren't for me, eh?" Luigi said, trying to earn some praises.

"Hey, there is a door there," DK said, pointing to an opening that was at the massive pillar in the center.

"Good going, Donkey!" Mario said. "Da weapon must-a be over there, so let's-a go!" So they went for the newly discovered passage.

"Um, do I get any praises?" Luigi asked. He let out a depressed sigh and then followed them.

They entered into the passage and then made their way to the bottom of the spiraling staircase and eventually emerged into a new room. It was a very large room and the floor they were standing on consisted of a circular platform situated on a pillar that was erected in the middle of a pool of boiling lava. Across on the other side of the room there was a small staircase that had two statues, one a turtle and one a bull, standing at the sides of it and on top of the staircase was an altar.

Both the wireframes pointed to the altar and G&W said, "The weapon is over there! We finally found it!"

"But why hide it in such a dangerous room?" Peach asked. She looked off the sides and trembled at the sight of the lava down there. "One wrong step and it's the end of someone's life…"

"Just don't fall down then," YL told her.

They went across the place and then past the statues and up the stairs. Bowser stayed behind to look at the turtle statue and commented, "I look better than this!"

The others got to the front of the altar and looked upon it to see the weapon, a frying pan. "A frying pan…?" Ness said with an awkward expression.

"Theez eez da weapon?" Mario asked.

"Frying pans can make good weapons too if you ask me," Peach told him as she picked it up to have a better look.

"Okay, now that we have found the weapon here," G&W said, "I think we can leave now."

They began to leave through the way they went, but as they were heading for the exit, the door suddenly slammed shut. "What?! We're locked in!" Luigi asked.

"Hey, I think the statues are moving!" Bowser claimed. Everyone turned around to look at the two statues that were guarding the staircase and it was as Bowser said; the statues were starting to move! The turtle and the bull statue stepped down from the pedestals they were on and slowly approached them.

"Uh oh… Looks like they're not letting us get away with it so easily…" Ness said.

"We will have to fight them!" DK said, raising his fists.

"Good! I was dying from boredom already! This will be fun!" Bowser said with a smirk. "I'll show those rocks that they're nothing compared to me!" And he took off towards both the statues.

BGM: Wario Land Boss Theme

The turtle statue withdrew into its shell and then spun horizontally in place for a while before launching forward. Bowser quickly raised his arms and caught it, but the force of the impact sent the both of them sliding backwards and back to the group. They got out of the way fast and Bowser smashed into the door hard, but it did not break. "Get lost!" Bowser shouted, and he hurled the turtle away to the side and off the edge, but it managed to grab onto the edge on time and then climb back up.

"The cow is heading for us!" Luigi cried. The bull statue ran towards them with its head lowered and horns pointing in their direction. DK quickly got in front of it and caught it by the horns and wrestled against it. "Ngh!" They both pushed each other back and forth and then DK eventually managed to lift the bull slightly off the ground and then hurl him aside.

The bull got back up again and stomped the ground a couple of times before jumping above him in order to fall back down on top of him, but DK got away. Immediately after the bull landed, DK ran towards him and threw a powerful punch to its face.

POW!

Though the statue was made of rock, DK still made a crack on its face by simply using his fists. The statue then returned its own punch and smacked DK right in the face, almost smashing his nose.

POW!

"Oof! Take this!" DK shouted, and he threw his fist at the statue again and they both started trading punches in a manner similar to boxing.

"You can do it, DK!" Ness rooted for him.

"You can do eet too, Bowsa!" Mario said to Bowser, who was fighting the turtle nearby.

"Take this!" Bowser swung his claw at the turtle but it withdrew its head into the shell and avoided it. "Don't think you can get away with this by hiding in your shell!" Bowser then grabbed the shell and lifted it over his head to ready to hurl it away, but the shell started spinning furiously and slowly floated into the air, and because Bowser was still grabbing onto it, he was also carried into the air while spinning like a top. "WEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!!!"

He eventually let go and fell back down, but because he was so dizzy from the spin, he was unable to stand properly and fell onto his back. The turtle shell then flipped upside-down in air and fell onto Bowser and grinded him in the stomach using the spikes on its shell. Wait, I didn't bring up the turtle statue having a spiked shell, did I?

"OW!!!!"

"Oh no! Bowser is going to torn into pieces!" YL gasped. "We must help!"

Bowser, however, grabbed the shell by the side with such a strong grip that he managed to stop it from spinning. "I'm not at the level where I need help from other people in fighting!" he yelled. "Hiya!" And he hurled the shell aside as far as he could.

The shell was hurled across the air and flew off the platform and slammed into the wall above the lava very hard, and then Bowser ran to the side and took a deep breath before breathing fire at the shell. The turtle statue was heated by the fire to the point it started glowing brightly in orange, and then it fell off from the wall and splashed into the lava and sank.

"Haha! How'd you like that? Like I'm going to lose to a statue!" Bowser laughed.

Meanwhile, both DK and the bull statue were still punching each other. DK was badly bruised all over the face while the bull had several cracks on its body, but it didn't look like it was going to break apart yet. "This is getting nowhere…" DK thought. The bull threw a punch again and this time he moved his head aside and then slammed another fist into the bull's face and punched it back.

While the bull statue was trying to recover, DK ran up to it and shoulder bashed it hard and managed to push it across the place and to the edge. The bull statue desperately tried to retain its balance at the edge of the platform, but then DK leaped at him with his arms raised over his head and then slammed it down onto the statue's head very hard in between the horns.

SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!

The powerful attack shattered the head from the body completely; the statue fell back lifelessly into the lava and was gone.

"Phew… Made it…" DK sighed with relief, and he fell back to take a break.

"Yes! They did it!" Ness exclaimed.

"Thanks goodness! I was worried for a moment…" Peach sighed.

Luigi turned around and saw the door reopening again. "The door is open! Maybe it's because we managed to beat those two moving statues! Even though I did nothing at all…"

-

In Stove Canyon, the other group of Smashers was traveling inside through a network of caverns. "Boy, it sure is boiling here…" Yoshi panted.

"That's why it's called Stove Canyon," said Kirby, who was holding a marshmallow on a stick. "Hmmm, roasted marshmallows!" And he ate it along with the stick.

The wireframe was taking the lead here and as he stepped over a small crack on the ground, flames suddenly shot out of it and the wireframe shrieked in a high pitched voice and jumped onto Captain Falcon's arms. "It's just fire. How scary can that be?" CF said to him. They continued on the way with the wireframe still in CF's arm. They were about to turn around the corner when fire suddenly shot out from the wall in front of them, but CF leaped aside in time. "Whoa! That's dangerous! Fire is scary all right!"

"You don't say…" Fox mumbled with a comically charred face.

Despite the constant spurting of flames, they kept on braving through the place and managed to get through without losing any lives, and then eventually came to a new location. "Okay… What do we have here?" Samus asked.

Before them was a massive pool of lava that had several rock platforms dotted all over its surface. "So we have to jump on the rock platforms to the other side?" Yoshi asked.

"It's just like things you see in games and such," Kirby brought up. "One of those rock platforms might be fake and will sink if you stand on it."

CF looked around and said, "Who wants to go first?" But the others simply looked at each other and said nothing. "No one…?"

Finally, Samus sighed and stepped forward with her arm raised. "Fine, I'll risk myself to cross over to the other side…"

"Bravo!" Yoshi said, clapping his hands. "That's the spirit! I've never seen such a daring woman!"

"My power suit is strong enough to protect me from the lava to some extent," Samus explained as she approached the edge of the pool. "So even if I fall in, I won't die as long as I get out fast. I'll figure out the correct path for you guys first."

She took a good look at the pool and the platforms first, and then bending down a bit, she jumped to the platform nearest to her and landed onto it with no issues. "No problem here." And she jumped onto another one, and then another, and another, and another… This is getting boring…

When she landed onto a platform that was near the other side, the platform wobbled and she almost lost her balance. "Whoa!" She quickly bent down to suppress weight onto the platform and eventually stopped it from wobbling. "Phew…"

"Are you all right?" Fox called out to her.

"Yeah, I'm all right," she replied with looking back. "Just be careful that some of them aren't embedded to the ground and are actually floating." And then with a single leap, she got onto the other side. "Done!"

"Looks interesting!" CF said. "My turn to try then! It's all or nothing!"

"Be careful…" Yoshi told him.

CF crouched down and took a running start and did an amazing jump across the lava and landed onto a platform. In fact, his jump was so far that he actually skipped several platforms at once. Luckily the platform didn't shake or anything. "Phew… That had me scared…" Kirby said.

"Don't be so reckless, Falcon!" Fox called out to him. "This is no joking matter!"

"I know, I know…" CF said, getting back on his feet. "I'll be careful from now on." He then jumped onto the next platform and then so forth.

As he was approaching the other side, he landed onto a platform that wobbled and he almost lost his balance and fell backwards. "Whoa!"

"Falcon!" Samus gasped.

CF was about to fall back into the lava, but then he performed an unexpected back flip into the air and landed onto the previous platform. "Phew… That was close…"

"Man! Stop scaring us!" Samus yelled at him in frustration.

"How can I help it if I do not know which one is safe and which one is not?" he told her, but then he heard a crack and looked down to see the platform breaking and sinking. "Uh oh…" And he desperately kicked off the platform and into the air before it fully broke and landed onto the other side where he raised his arms in triumph. "Yes!"

"He made it… I was about to get heart attack for the moment…" Yoshi sighed with relief.

"Let's get to the other side fast," Fox said. "You'll never know if someone bad happens and we cannot make it."

"I'll go first," Kirby said.

"Be careful…" Yoshi told him.

Kirby approached the edge, inhaled air into his body, and then floated into the air and flew across to the other side and landed. "Done!" he said cheerfully.

There was silence as everyone looked at him with strange expressions. "Damn cheater…" they all said.

"Oh well, let's go then," Yoshi said to Fox. "Ride on me. I'll carry you to the other side so we can save time."

Fox hesitated however. "But what if our combined weight…"

"You're starting to sound like Pikachu, you know? Just get on!"

"All right, all right…" And thus Fox hopped onto Yoshi who then walked to the edge and leaped onto the nearest platform and continued from there.

"See? Nothing is happening!" Yoshi told him. "Whoa!" Suddenly, the platform he was on wobbled and cracked, so he frantically leaped up into the air as high as he could and started flapping his arms and kicking his legs like crazy to try and fly over to the edge. "We can make it! We can make it!"

"We're slowly going down!!!" Fox cried.

Yoshi was starting to go lower and lower and it didn't look like he was going to make it. In an attempt to save his own hide, Fox jumped off of Yoshi and managed to land onto dry land, but in doing so, he also kicked Yoshi downwards.

"YOSHI!!!" Yoshi was about to fall into lava, but just as his life was flashing before his eyes, Kirby inhaled air the strongest he could and managed to pull Yoshi towards him and into his mouth, and he spit him out afterwards. "Yoshi… I'm saved…"

"Yeah, that was close…" Kirby said.

"I'm sorry… I was too scared just now that I didn't know what I was doing…" Fox apologized to Yoshi.

"It's all right. We're all at the other side and that's all that matters!" Yoshi told him.

"Yeah, that's all that matters," CF said. He turned to look at the wireframe walking towards the opening on the wall. "The weapon must be near now."

In the next room, the floor was suspended over lava by four poles on the four corners, and on the other side was an altar with the weapon on it. "We found the weapon at last!" Kirby exclaimed.

They ran over to the altar and gazed at the weapon which was a spiked mace. "So this is the weapon?" Samus asked.

"Makes sense for a weapon if you ask me," CF said. He picked it up and said, "Okay, now that we have found the weapon, let us get out of here."

"Do we have to go back through that place again?" Fox asked. "I doubt we can get back to the top of the canyon the same way anymore…" The wireframe tapped him in the shoulder and then pointed to another door that was nearby.

There was a sign on the door that wrote: Emergency Exit.

"Okay, so the Hands really took into consideration for everything…" Samus thought.

"Thou shalt not leave this place with weapons in ye hand!" shouted a loud voice all of a sudden.

They Smashers looked around and Fox asked, "Who was that just now?"

"It's coming from up there!" CF pointed out. They looked up and saw something lowering itself from the ceiling.

It was a large floating head made of rock and its face resembles that of a demon's. Its size was about as big as a house. "Those who touched thy weapons must face thy test!" said the voice which came from the floating head.

"What did we do wrong…?" Yoshi asked.

"Looks like they aren't going to give up the weapon so easily," Samus said, readying her arm cannon. "But this makes things a lot more interesting!"

"Yeah, let's show them that we are worthy of these weapons!" CF said, cracking his fist. "Let's go!" And both CF and Samus ran towards the floating head to fight it.

BGM: Wario Land Boss Theme

When they approached, the floating head released two streams of fire from each of its nostrils and CF and Samus stopped and moved back to avoid coming in contact with the flames. The fire stopped coming out and the floating head sneezed out fireballs instead.

"Burning boogers! Beware of them!" CF cried out. He dodged a fireball by rolling aside and then jumped into the air to avoid another one. He jumped in the direction of the floating head and pulled back his hand to deliver THE punch up his nose. "Falcon Punch!"

SMAAAAAASH!!!

The impact of the punch pushed the floating head across the air, despite its size. Samus then took aim at the face and fired several super missiles. The missiles struck various parts of the face and blasted off chunks of it with ease as the rocks were no match for the destructive force of the missiles.

BANG BANG BANG!!! KABOOOM!!!

"How do you like that?" Samus asked.

The smoke cleared and the floating head was revealed to still be alive, but it had several cracks all over it and looks horribly disfigured. It floated towards them again and then continued shooting out fireballs from its nostrils, but they managed to avoid them.

"It's coming towards us!" Yoshi cried.

Fox, Yoshi, and the wireframe ran away, but Kirby remained in place and opened his mouth wide and swallowed the fireball whole instead. After swallowing it, his body flashed brightly and in an instant, he gained a burning hat over his head. "A bit too hot," he said.

"You really can eat everything…" Fox said to him.

"Thanks for the compliment!"

Samus dodged another fireball launched at her and it hit the floor, she fired an ice beam at it and the fireball instantly cooled down and froze over. Latching her grapple beam onto the fireball, she jumped up and pulled her grapple beam upwards with all her strength to lift and throw the frozen ball into the air. "It's yours!" Samus shouted to CF.

"I'm on it!" CF said, and he ran and jumped at the ice ball. "Fire in your brain? Cool down then! Falcon Hail Storm!" And he gave the ice ball a punch that wasn't covered in fire. The ice ball crashed into the nose of the floating head and was embedded there tightly.

"Now eat this! Missile Diffusion!" Samus charged up her arm cannon and shot out a large missile. When the missile struck the ice ball that was lodged to the floating head's nose, it exploded and sent frozen gas everywhere.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!!

The frozen gas engulfed the floating head and froze it completely. Not being able to stay airborne any longer, the floating head crashed onto the floor and shattered into a million of pieces.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

"They did it!" Yoshi exclaimed.

CF dusted his hand and said, "Looks like we've passed the test!"

Samus noticed something lying among the remains of the shattered pieces and went over to look and saw that it was a key. "A key?"

"I think there's a keyhole on the emergency exit," Kirby said.

"Why would an emergency exit be locked up anyway…?" Yoshi asked.

"Cheer up; at least we are able to use it now! Now we can finally leave this burning place!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Trivia:
1. The turtle, bull, and the floating head statues are based off the first, second, and third boss of Wario Land respectively.