The three boys stood confused, seeing what had halted their progress. They saw two regular inhabitants to the land, one looking like a Koopa Troopa with a black helmet on and two hammers attached to his sides. Mario groaned as he saw him. He hated Hammer Brothers, mostly for how hard their hammers hurt. The other person that had stopped them was a purple Shy Guy. The mask it wore looked a bit creepy with a jagged broken grin, and it held some odd type of wand. Luigi and Ness were confused by what they were exactly doing, stopping them here.
"Um, can we help you?" Ness chimed, presuming this to be some kind of border checkpoint, judging by the brick blockade in the way. The Shy Guy was as quiet as all the other ones, though now the young boy didn't find it as cute as the others.
"We're the border guards to Dry Dry Desert! We've been advised not to allow anyone through due to trade route robbers," the Hammer Brother explained. Mario and Luigi looked at each other confusedly, having never heard much about thieves robbing trade couriers.
"But we're the Mario brothers. You can trust us," Mario declared, insisting he and his brother were the most trustworthy people in all the land, and that was probably a true fact. Ness however could tell by the way the guards were looking to each other, they were doubting it.
"Hah! We've heard that before! We aren't falling for that," the Hammer Brother laughed, presuming the two to be lying through their teeth about who they actually were.
"Are your identities stolen a lot?" Ness asked the Italian plumbers who initially wanted to say their identities were never stolen, but they knew better. There were a lot of people who had done it in the past, and they were probably still doing it now. They looked slightly ashamed.
"Right. Is there anything we can do to prove that they're actually Mario and Luigi?" Ness requested while fixing his hat straight, trying to keep his calm demeanor instead of blasting them away with PSI to save some time. He didn't want to be a fugitive to the land within hours of arriving to it in the first place. The Hammer Bro pulled one of his hammers off his side and tossed it in the air, catching it. The Shy Guy mimicked him as they pointed their weapons at the three.
"We can have a fight!" he said. Ness wasn't happy about this.
"So beating you two to pulp will prove we're the real deal?" Mario rhetorically asked, mentally debating over this. Luigi was nervous from how the creepy mask wearing Shy Guy was staring at him, wielding that odd wand with a blue sphere at the top of it.
"Yeah! Exactly! 'Cept we choose our opponents. I wanna fight the brat here," the hammer bro said. Ness shrugged.
"Okay," he agreed, permitting him the opportunity of a fight. He watched the Hammer Bro jump up and smash his hammer into the ground hard enough to crack it open, startling the group as a green warp pipe opened up. The hammer wielding Koopa jumped in, vanishing. Before Ness could follow, Mario grabbed his shoulder.
"If things go wrong, use this," Mario handed over a Fire Flower to Ness's hands, a genus of flora that was big with red and orange colour, looking so bright in colours like it would catch on fire. Ness nodded, pocketing it before climbing into the warp pipe, leaving Mario and Luigi alone to fight the Shy Guy that stared at them ominously.
"Y-yikes… it's like Villager all over again when he first came," Luigi gulped.
Ness fell through the pipe. The fall felt a lot longer than it actually was. The pipe took him to an underground cavern that had blue floating bricks in it along with various question mark blocks. He forced himself onto his feet, rubbing his back sorely. He hated those kinds of falls. Landing on rocks just made it more uncomfortable.
"You ready, kid?" the Hammer Brother chimed in, having a hammer in both hands and ready to fight. Ness smirked.
"Yeah. I'll go easy on you," the psychic teenager claimed. He had fought many Hammer Brothers before in Smash Run. They weren't much of a threat to him, but he felt like this hammer wielding turtle was a bit different in comparison. Before he could move, the hammer brother began throwing a rain of tiny hammers, which he pulled out of the back of his shell, like it was full of nothing but an endless supply of them. Ness went wide eyed, standing frozen.
"PK Freeze!" the raven haired boy shouted, a light blue aura glowing in his hand. He smacked his hand into the ground, causing a wall of ice to rise in front of him. Each hammer bounced off the frozen blockade, chipping it heavily. The last one shattered it. He couldn't react in time, seeing the Hammer Bro run up to him and spin around, hitting him with both hammers and knocking him backwards. Ness landed on the rocky floor. Groaning, he got up, slightly dazed. His cheek hurt, and he saw a few droplets of blood go onto the floor, coming from his mouth.
"Figures I meet the only tough hammer bro…" Ness muttered, mentally cursing himself. His eyes kept focused to see the Hammer Brother charging at him, jumping up to try and bash him with the head of the hammers once again. Ness quickly slid under the attack. The Hammer Brothers weapons dove into the ground, getting stuck there.
"PK Thunder!" Ness shouted, unleashing a bolt of sparking electricity that hit the Hammer Brother, making him begin shaking uncontrollably. The teenager pulled out his baseball bat and swung, hitting the hammer wielding turtle in the head, knocking him unconscious and sending his helmet flying across the underground tunnel. Ness was panting tiredly, but seeing his enemy no longer fighting made him relax.
"Looks like I win…"