17B - One Last Rematch
"Yup. Another Guard Door," Luigi remarked after he, Mario, and Watt arrived in front of a third Guard Door in one of the last rooms in Bowser's Castle.
"Bleeeaaaargh! How the heck did you get this far in the castle?!" the Guard Door questioned with frustration.
"Don't even ask, sir," Mario answered.
"Well, congratulations to you and your brother, Mario," the Guard Door said with sarcasm. "But this is the end of your adventure, I'm afraid. I've got much better defenses than the other Guard Doors do. Your luck has just run out!"
"Oh yeah? More like 'weaker defenses'!" Mario quipped.
"Quiet, Mario! Your words are wasting my time!" the Guard Door retorted. "Come on out, boys!"
"HI-YAA!" four familiar voices cried out. Mario and Luigi smirked, having recognized them. Suddenly, the four Koopa Bros., Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green Ninjakoopa landed in front of Mario and friends.
"Here come the Koopa Bros.!" Red Ninjakoopa announced. "I bet you never thought you'd see us again, huh, paisanos?"
"No, but it's awesome to see you again!" Mario beamed.
"Yeah, that's right! We were too cool to forget! A lasting impression, yeah!" Blue Ninjakoopa responded.
"Now they're going to beat you within an inch of your life! Feel like running away, worms?" the Guard Door asked Mario and Luigi.
"Absolutely not, sir! We'd love to go toe-to-toe with these bad boys again!" Luigi boasted.
"Wow. Nice confidence you got there, greenie," the Guard Door sarcastically praised Luigi. "Tell you what: if you beat them, you can go through here. Of course, you'll fail, but at least you can try. Geeaarrrharharhar!"
"Don't think we're like before! We've increased our power beyond our wildest dreams!" Red Ninjakoopa said.
"Increased your power?" Mario chuckled. "Yeah, right. You probably got another Bowser robot that'll make me and Luigi die of laughter!"
"That's not what Red meant, imbecile!" Yellow Ninjakoopa butted in. "We've been working hard to break out of our own dungeon and we eventually learned a new technique, training our butts off 24/7 for the last two straight days!"
"And because of that, we're not just the Koopa Bros.," Green Ninjakoopa chimed in. "Red, Blue, Yellow, what's our new name?"
"THE SUPER ULTRA MIGHTY KOOPA BROS. THE GREAT!" all four Koopa Bros. said before snapping their fingers. Mario and Luigi laughed so hard they fell on the floor.
"Here we go again..." Blue Ninjakoopa sighed. "We didn't intend to be comedians..."
"Hey! Get up right now!" Red Ninjakoopa ordered the Mario Bros. "What did I tell you about laughing at us?"
Mario and Luigi got up, but they were still laughing.
"I'm s-sorry! Y-you're just th-the f-funniest b-bosses we've m-met!" Mario chortled.
"Yeah! Th-the Super U-Ultra Awesome... M-Mega... Whatever n-nicknames you c-came up w-with!" Luigi laughed.
"Forget about our nicknames!" Red Ninjakoopa demanded. "Now wipe those smirks off your faces and we'll show you what we've got!"
"Yeah! Check out our coolest-" Suddenly, someone else interrupted Blue Ninjakoopa's comment.
"Uaaaaaaghhhh! I found you again!"
In a flash, Jr. Troopa came busting in from the ceiling, scaring the Koopa Bros. into running back the way the group came. His body eggshell was 75% broken while there were only a couple eggshell pieces on his head. Mario and Luigi immediately stopped laughing.
"J.T.?!" the Mario Bros. exclaimed with shock.
"Don't you ever give up?!" Luigi asked with anger.
"Never! Not until I score two more wins for myself including this one!" Jr. Troopa boomed. "I promised I'd win three times before I officially leave you alone! Hahaha!"
"All because of the playground?!" Mario questioned.
"Don't even go there! You know I've been ticked off about it from Day 1! Now check this out!" Jr. Troopa pulled out three powerups from behind his back: a Wing Feather (a typical white feather), a Metal Mushroom (a blocky black eyeless Mushroom with shades of pink, yellow, and blue), and an Invisible Orb (a slightly invisible blue sphere).
"Oh no... He's not messing around this time..." Luigi murmured.
"Hey! Those are MY powerups!" Mario argued, having recognized all three powerups from his 1996 adventure.
"Not anymore! Now there's no chance of you winning! Hehehe!" Jr. Troopa proceeded to use the Metal Mushroom first before the Invisible Orb and the Wing Feather. His body became dithered and metallic with two metal wings forming on the back of his head.
For this battle, Mario swapped Watt with Goombario.
"Remember when Jr. Troopa stole your father and Goompa's stuff?" Mario reminded Goombario. "This is your chance to get revenge."
"I'm ready!" Goombario declared. "Let's go!"
To kick off the battle, Jr. Troopa did a forward flip as part of a diving kick. An advantage of the Invisible Orb is that he can attack physically, but his opponents' attacks will go through his body.
Mario and Luigi ducked to avoid the kick while Goombario jumped to his right. While he was behind Mario's back, Jr. Troopa tried to throw a punch at Mario's head, but Goombario saw it coming and jumped in the way; he was thrown back against the Guard Door, but he was not seriously injured.
"It would've been worse if Jr. Troopa had a spear or something," Goombario said to himself while standing back up. Meanwhile, Luigi distracted Jr. Troopa by jumping as high as he could, slightly hovering upon the jump's highest point. Jr. Troopa jumped at the same time, hoping to backflip kick him while hovering, but only got as high as Luigi's knee before quickly dropping to the floor.
As Mario prepared to take his next move, he saw Jr. Troopa attempt to do the backflip kick before falling. "He doesn't know the Metal Mushroom increases his weight," he told himself. "Maybe he thought it only increased his strength."
Five seconds, Jr. Troopa began to flash between his regular and dithered form; his metal form was also wearing off. At the same time, he tried to kick Luigi in the crotch, thinking the Metal Mushroom will hurt Luigi more than a regular kick.
At the last second, Jr. Troopa turned back to normal and Luigi barely felt Jr. Troopa kicking him.
"What are you trying to do?" Luigi asked. "Kick me in the crotch?"
Suddenly, Jr. Troopa realized his invisible and metal form wore off, but his head wings remained.
"Are you- What?!" Jr. Troopa cried with shock. "I thought those powerups were permanent!"
"Heh! You should've known they weren't before you used them!" Mario taunted Jr. Troopa.
"Did you know powerups wear off after a certain time period?" Goombario asked. By now, Jr. Troopa was getting angrier.
"Who said that?!"
"Uh, whoever spawned these powerups?" Mario stated. "It was probably the Stars that-"
"I don't wanna hear it!" Jr. Troopa exclaimed with rage. "At least I can still fly, which means I'm gonna win after I-"
Suddenly, Luigi lunged for Jr. Troopa and grabbed his body, nearly cracking the shell.
"No! No one touches my shell!" Jr. Troopa tried to fly out the way he came through the ceiling with Luigi holding on to him.
"Mario, let's give Luigi a boost!" Goombario said. He and Mario ran toward Luigi and grabbed his legs before pushing him and Jr. Troopa through the hole. Luigi and Jr. Troopa ended up on the castle's roof beneath Peach's castle's yard. Jr. Troopa's body shell had cracks all around.
"No more stalking us, J.T.!" Luigi declared. "It ends tonight!" Just as Jr. Troopa did the diving kick attack again, the wings on his head began to flash, indicating his flying ability was about to wear off. Luigi jumped out of the way and punched Jr. Troopa's back, destroying the shell and exposing his entire yellow body.
"You son of a gun!" Jr. Troopa screamed, having noticed the shell pieces scattered on the roof. "That's the last straw!" The wings on his head immediately disappeared.
"And that's the last time you'll ever fight in your life!" Luigi retorted before he grabbed Jr. Troopa's head with his left hand and tossed him off the roof.
"CURSE YOOOUUUUU!" Jr. Troopa shouted as he fell to his death.
"Goodbye forever, J.T.," Luigi stated before going back into the Guard Door's room.
"I heard all that, bro!" Mario cheered before he and Goombario high-fived Luigi. "It's about time we got rid of that obnoxious whiner!"
"And no one will break into my home again!" Goombario added in.
"What did I just see?" the Guard Door questioned. "Since you beat the guy that beat the Koopa Bros., does that mean you beat the Koopa Bros.?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mario replied.
"No. You beat him, he beat them... But you didn't actually lay a finger on..."
"Just shut up already! Nobody cares anymore!" Luigi said with irritation.
"Okay, fine! It's too confusing anyway!" the Guard Door grouched. "I guess there was no big difference between that guy and the Koopa Bros. I'll let you go through, but it's still not possible for you to beat King Bowser anyway. I'll let you have the honor of being beaten personally by the evil King Bowser. Lucky you!"
The Guard Door opened, revealing an elevator at the end of the hall.
"This has to be the castle's exit," Mario said. He beckoned Luigi and Goombario into the elevator, which had two buttons; the top one would take them out of Bowser's Castle and stop in Peach's castle's yard.
During the short elevator ride up, Mario silently prayed for him and Luigi to win the final fight against Bowser.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Wing Feather, Metal Mushroom, and Invisible Orb have the same abilities as Mario's cap powerups from "Super Mario 64".
