Chapter 38: Takedown

Larry flew in his clown car through the darkness. Everything would start to slowly take a shape around him as King Boo's magic grew fainter and fainter within the area. This meant that Larry was not only getting closer to Daisy, but that the entire time, they weren't in simple pure darkness at all. It was all an illusion a part of King Boo's zone.

"Clever dude…" Larry thought to himself as he sped up the engine, "This guy got some good magic stuff. He was playing us the whole freakin' time. Better hurry up and finish this quick!"

King Boo himself meanwhile was turning around in every direction to try and locate the flower princess. "Where are you you ugly misfit of a broken half-life?!"

The shouting would be met with simple silence for the longest moment. All would come to a slow crawl around the area. That is, until Daisy suddenly started dive bombing towards the ghost king from the air, aiming a hard punch to his head. Both her knuckles were equipped with entanglements of rose thorns that were shaped to form thorn knuckles. Of course, due to her own magic, they didn't harm her, but to her opponent…

Bam! One good sock to the King's head and it immediately made him gasp with pain. The thorns were sharp and had landed their mark pretty well.

"Agh! How dare you?!" He would suddenly begin to feel sluggish as Daisy jumped off of him, "What the….what…"

Daisy smirked as she landed on the ground firmly, "Not telling, hun." In reality, King Boo had been poisoned by the thorns she used to punch him with. Now he would be taking damage every so often.

Meanwhile...

At last, Larry had made it out of the void of blackness, and into the rainy forest in which he heard sounds of attacks landing. "Which way, which way…." he muttered as he followed the sounds.

Back with the other two, Daisy was still "fighting" King Boo. The ghost had already lost every shrivel of patience he had left, and wanted to remove her from the face of existence if it meant getting what he wanted. "You…" He muttered, "I will destroy you!" The effects of the poison were taking effect, albeit slowly.

"Whatcha got, come on?" Daisy folded her arms, "Might as well do something to keep me entertained."

King Boo glared at her, and used his crown to summon three ghostly lions that ran straight for her. "Try this!"

"Woah…" Daisy actually took a step back for a moment. Lions. That was new coming from King Boo. Ghost lions at that. However, this didn't worry her too much, as she had a plan. "Here kitty kitty…." she taunted with a small grin.

True to their real life selves, the three lions stalked the princess as they grew near, and slowly started to circle her. Then, without warning, one of them leapt at her with almost a blur of white.

Ghost or not, Daisy didn't enjoy hurting animals. Instead of directly fighting them back, she threw small pellets from her hand. "Sweet dreams!" The pellets were lavender scented mini-bombs that would induce drowsiness. On contact with the lions, two of them had fallen asleep immediately. "Yeah! Wait…" she took note of the fact that one was missing. "...Crap."

The ghost lion that had gone for her first had jumped over her entirely, and to her backside. From there, it would charge her from behind, and pin her to the ground. "Ahh! Hey!" The weight of the lion's paws were fierce and pushing heavily upon her despite it being a ghost. "Grrr!"

But before Daisy could make any sort of advance to try and push it off, a ghostly spring would launch her into the air, "Woah!" followed by a punch directly to the gut from a fist of dark energy that sent her flying back a few paces but landed on the ground with little struggle. "Hm." A smirk grew on her face, "That all you got?" As soon as she said that, two white ghost arms rose up from the ground where she stood, and attached themselves to her wrists and ankles, locking her in place. "Hey!"

"Ahahah!" King Boo cackled again, "Let's see how you'll make it out of this one, when I drain all of your magic from your very being!"

"Unnh!" No matter what she did to struggle, Daisy simply could not get free of the ghost arms as they started to suck away at her mana, "Really, dawg? You think that can stop me?" She pulled on them hard enough to move fifty pounds with ease, but that did nothing but make them latch more forcefully, "Ow! Ugrh! Really? You can't stand to fight me with my abilities so you take 'em away?"

"You really think that is all I am after?" the ghost king chortled, "I am after your soul. I will shatter your subconscious and make you a living zombie. No one will know or care that you've disappeared from the face of the earth either!"

"Grr! Don't get cocky, bro. You still gotta deal with Larry!" She screamed at him.

"Pff!" The Boo scoffed, "What is he gonna do? Force me to play dollies or dress up? Ooh, or maybe he'll bore me to death with sucking on his wittle thumb? Or maybe…"

As the King ranted on about how much he considered Larry to be worthless, the blue-shelled Koopaling had finally made it to where the action was happening. He froze as he heard everything said about him, and by now, simply had enough. He clenched his left claw into a fist, and his wand in his right. The young koopa slowly stepped out into the clearing in the middle of the forest where King Boo and Daisy was, and spoke in a voice that was low and seemingly calm, but filled with intense subconscious anger.

"I don't have anymore tears to shed."

"...baby whining tutu wearing-" King Boo was cut off by the Koopaling's sudden interjection, "Aw, that's so cute! Look at him trying to sound tough with his little quotes!"

"You think you're funny, huh?" Larry asked him, looking into the King's eyes, "If it wasn't for the fact that you were allied with the boss, I'd take you down and put you in the dirt! Well guess what? Whoever you're talking about right now doesn't exist. I'll show you who I really am."

Daisy watched as Larry walked in and cheered for him, "Get 'em man!"

King Boo simply fell into another laughing fit. "Hahahahah! Ok, what game are we playing? Hopscotch, frisbee?"

Larry's scepter suddenly turned into a tennis racket with his face symbol within the mesh. At the same time, he conjured a ball of blue fire in his claw, "I prefer tennis."

King Boo laughed at him once again, "HAH! You think you can hurt me with that?! Go ahead and try it."

Larry shrugged, and served up the fireball, sending it flying and hitting the massive ghost, and doing nothing more than bouncing off.

"Hahahahaha!" King Boo continued laughing at him. So hard that the trees in the forest flinched from the booming of his cackle. However, the fireball did more than what he had expected as the ghost king spontaneously lit up in a blue flame that surrounded his body, causing the ghost to then scream, "Aaaah! Rotten little piece of feculent scum!" Fortunately, the king had a breaker spell which he used to force push the fire off of him with a blast of brown magic. "Grr! You!"

But Larry was standing where he was when the ghost monarch tried to confront him. Instead, Larry was in his clown car once more, atop a tree behind King Boo. He pressed a button, and the clown car fired a cannonball straight at King Boo followed by Larry launching himself out of the cannon with his hammer at the ready. "YAAAAH!"

The cannonball slammed into King Boo's backside, exploding into a fiery explosion with shrapnel flying into him. "AHH!"

"Take this!" Larry would then follow that up with a swing of his hammer down upon him.

"Grrr!" King Boo was growing irritated and grabbed Larry in a magical hold, "Looks like you aren't the weakling that I thought you were…"

Larry grunted with struggle as he tried his best to get out of the magical aura that was crushing his body. "No duh, Sherlock. Unh! What do ya need someone to help you figure out how ugly your face is too?"

"Shut up! I am the epitome of spectral handsomeness!" He controlled the magical grip that held the Koopa, and flung him towards the trees.

"Ahhh! Oof!" Larry slammed against a tree trunk hard enough to leave an imprint of his shape on the side of it. "Uhh…." he groaned and fell off. After a moment or two, he picked himself up, shaking his head. He wasn't the most durable of the Koopalings, but he certainly wasn't about to give up. "Cheap move," he dusted himself off.

"Come on, Larry! You got him!" Daisy shouted from where she stood.

King Boo laughed. "Your pain is amusing. Come forth little child! Face me!"

With his scepter in hand, the Koopaling smirked, "More like your face in the dirt!" and broke into a sprint headed straight in a beeline for King Boo.

His turn had come.