Descending into the depths of Mt. Maim, our heroes found it increasingly difficult to see. The path ahead of them had many bends and turns, and it was difficult to move at times. "This place is just as dangerous as the mountain above it," reflected Tippi. "Let's hurry and find them. This place makes me nervous..."
CHAPTER 2-4
Twisting and Turning
The heroes continued through the winding tunnel. They soon found themselves descending deeper below the surface, but it was not completely dark due to the small lamps hung on the walls.
"Someone's been here before," observed Mario. "Maybe this is their true hideout?"
"Gee, they have a fake everything," noted Luigi. "A fake leader, a fake hideout, a fake...a fake...uh..."
After a few more minutes, the narrow tunnel suddenly widened into a larger room that seemed to have no exits. "Now where are they?" asked Tippi.
Our heroes stood there, silent for a few moments, when they heard a faint fluttering sound, and...
"AIIIEEEEE!" shrieked Peach, nearly in hysterics. Dozens of bats had descended from the cave ceiling and were flying around the heroes. "Get these things away from me!"
"C'mon!" urged Mario. "Let's..." But Peach was too hysterical to answer.
"Stop trying to comfort my wife," ordered Bowser. "I'LL comfort her. You two look for a way out of this place."
"Fine."
Mario and Luigi walked around the room, wary of the bats, trying to find any possible exit. The room seemed to be deserted, and there was no hint of an exit besides the passageway from which they came. "You think we've hit a dead end?" asked Tippi, who had moved toward them.
"We can't have," protested Luigi. "The Ruffians came through here, so there must be some kind of exit. Hmm..." His gaze shifted to what seemed to be an upside-down U shaped crack in the rock on the right wall. "I wonder..." He examined this area closely. The longer he looked at it, the less it seemed like a crack, and the more it seemed like a rock covering a hole in the wall. He tried to pull the "rock" out, but didn't get very far. "Here's the exit!" he announced.
"OK, good," said Bowser. "Excuse me, Peach." With his mighty strength, he pulled the rock out of the hole, revealing a passageway. "They must have covered it up."
"Yes!" uttered Peach, running into the exposed passageway.
The others followed. There were only a few lamps here, making the area much darker. Our heroes walked for a while in this darkness. After a while, Bowser grew bored. "How long is this pass-WHOOAAAAA!" Our heroes suddenly felt themselves being pulled downwards. Apparently, the tunnel abruptly sloped down, and our heroes were sliding down, down, down!
"Let's hope there's not anything dangerous at the bottom!" wished Peach. "Or even worse, more bats! Ugh!"
Unfortunately, after they had slid for some more time, Mario, who was at the front, noticed what seemed to be the slope's end, and blocking it was several large stones. Worse, though, was the intensely sharp rock that was set into the rubble in such a position that it would tear right through the heroes when they reached the bottom.
"It's a sharp rock!" announced Mario. "Duck as low as you can!" The others obeyed, and when they reached the end of the tunnel, they fortunately weren't speared, but Mario was slammed into the rock by the others. Fortunately, his body hit the rock, and he didn't suffer a concussion. "Looks like a job for Bowser!" the Koopa king announced. He slammed into the rock, careful to avoid the sharp one, but nothing happened. "This rock pile must be thick if I can't even bust through it!"
"What can we do?" asked Tippi.
Mario thought for a while, and then got an idea. "Stay here, everyone. I'm going to try something." He flipped into 3D, and noticed small space between the wall and the rocks on the left side. He flipped sideways (so I guess you could say he was in 2D) and squeezed through the hole to the other side. There was an opening to another room, but in front of that was one of those handy blue switches. He jumped on it, and the rocks disappeared.
"Whenever you see a blue switch, it's good news," reflected Mario as the others joined him and walked into this new room. It had several passageways leading out of it, and no indication of which one was correct.
"Which way should we go?" asked Mario.
"Well, I guess we should just try every path until we find the correct one," suggested Tippi.
They walked down the path closest to them. It ended at a dead end, so they went to the next one. Almost immediately, the passageway became a slope. "We probably shouldn't go down there," advised Tippi. The others, remembering what had happened last time, agreed. The third hole also lead to a dead end. The final passageway ended with another room.
"Is this a dead end too?" asked Luigi, for there was no apparent way out of this room.
"There's got to be some way out," assured Bowser, looking at the walls.
After a while of looking around the room, there appeared to be no way out. "How do we get out of here?" wondered Peach.
Luigi had a sudden thought. "There's no way to go in this room, and the first and third passageways were duds. But we never went down the second passageway, the one with the slope."
"I'm not going down there!" stated Peach. "You know what happened last time."
"But there's no other way. If we don't go down there, we'll be trapped here forever."
The others mulled over what Luigi had said. "Hmm...well, I suppose we could try it," supported Mario.
"Yes," agreed Bowser. "I'll go first this time, 'cause I'm the toughest." So they walked back to the tunnel with the slope, Bowser leading the way, and began sliding. At the bottom of the tunnel, there were no rocks, which was a relief to our heroes. They walked out of the tunnel and into a very large room, well-lit by several lamps.
"I can't believe they made it here!" shouted the leader of the Ruff Ruffians. He and his fellow Ruffians were standing in the center of this room, holding the Pure Heart.
"They're heroes," explained Tippi. "They never fail. And we need that Pure Heart. We'll fight you if we have to."
The leader stepped toward them. "All right, 'heroes'! Who's the leader here?"
Everyone stared at Mario. "Um...I guess I am," he sputtered.
"All right, then. Come here, and face me! I'm just warning you, I'm called the Ruffer Ruffian around here. I'm the roughest of them all, and you wouldn't be very wise to pick a fight with me!"
MINIBOSS
The Ruffer Ruffian
"Taste this!" the Ruffer Ruffian challenged. He pulled out a lasso and aimed it at Mario, but Mario, being more agile, dodged the weapon. The Ruffer Ruffian tried once more, and this time he caught Mario off guard. Snagged in the lasso, Mario was whirled around in the air. "Not so much of a hero now, are you?"
"I've worked my way out of situations worse than this," explained Mario. With effort, he slipped out of the rope holding him, and "OOF!" fell five feet to the ground. He immediately got up and did a backflip, in case his enemy was preparing any attacks.
"So you've got some skill," admitted the Ruffer Ruffian. "But can you survive this?" He pulled a knife from his pocket and hurled it at Mario, who jumped and dodged the weapon.
"You aren't trying to kill me, are you!?"
"If I must do it to prevent you from getting the Pure Heart, so be it!" Apparently, he had several of those with him, as he quickly pulled out two more and aimed them at Mario. He dived to avoid the higher one and then jumped to avoid the lower one. Three more knives came from the Ruffer Ruffian's pocket, all targeted at Mario. He dodged the first two with expert precision, but the third one came straight at his face. Not knowing what else to do, Mario performed the Matrix so that the knife sailed over his head.
"Darn! That was my last knife!"
"Are you giving up now? You really should give us the Pure Heart."
"Never!" He pulled out his lasso once more, twirled it around especially fast, and whipped it in Mario's direction. It hit him squarely across the back.
"YOWCH!" yelped Mario. He stumbled.
"Are you giving up now?" demanded the Ruffer Ruffian.
"I may be in pain, but there's no way I'm giving up!" Mario dodged all of the remaining lasso swipes.
"Grr...you're tougher than I thought, I'll give you that. I guess it's time to pull out the last resort."
"The last resort?"
"The person you call Dimentio gave this to me as a last resort. I'd like you to meet him!" He pulled a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. Suddenly, the ground began shaking. Before long, a huge, black, unmoving horse emerged from the ground!
"Do you like him? He's the Robo-Horse, the ultimate weapon for us! With this remote, I can control his every move, and make him destroy all of you! Giddyap, mechanical horsie!"
BOSS
Robo-Horse
"We've got to help Mario," suggested Tippi.
"Good idea," agreed Peach.
The Robo-Horse charged for Mario, who ran out of the way quite easily. It charged again, faster this time, and would have crushed Mario if Bowser hadn't pulled him away at the last second. "I'll take care of this mechanical menace!" Bowser announced. He unleashed his firey breath on it, which didn't harm its metal surface at all. It ran straight for him and sent him flying into the wall. "OOF! Man, that thing must be made of solid metal!"
"You just figured that out?" asked Peach.
The Robo-Horse than charged for Luigi. He recoiled in fear for a second, then got an idea. Just as it was about to hit him, he jumped up and landed right on top of it. "Hey guys, you should see the view from h-WAAGH!" The horse bucked him, and he landed facefirst on the floor. It was about to charge again, but Bowser ran up to it and clawed its leg.
"Pick on someone your own size!" His attack crippled its mechanical leg.
"You haven't seen anything yet!" announced the Ruffer Ruffian. He pressed another button, and the horse looked straight at Bowser and fired two eye lasers!
"Whoa, so it does do more than just run around," observed Bowser. He ducked into his shell, and the lasers did no harm.
The horse then aimed its eye lasers at Mario. He did some pretty cool action moves and dodged every one.
"Let's crank it up a notch," stated the Ruffer Ruffian. He pressed yet another button, and one of the horse's metal horseshoes detached and flew through the air like a boomerang. It sailed past Bowser and hit Peach before reattaching itself.
"Peach! Are you OK?" asked Bowser, running toward her. Before he could reach her, the horse summoned two of its horseshoe boomerangs and aimed them straight at Bowser. "Hey! You aren't stopping me from seeing how my lovely wife is doing!" He attacked both of the horseshoes with a mighty punch, sending them flying back at the Robo-Horse. They collided with its midsection, causing a large explosion. "That'll teach you not to mess with the Koopa King!"
"Bowser, are you talking to a robot?" asked Peach.
"What? Uh...maybe. Why?"
"It looks like it's weakened!" noticed Mario. "Let's get it!" It charged for the Mario Bros., and they repeated the maneuver that Luigi had used to climb onto it. They rushed to the part where the explosion had occured and started tearing apart the wires and all the other mechanical stuff. The horse soon bucked them off, but they had done serious damage.
"I can't climb up there," said Bowser. "Peach, we'll do a duo attack. I'll send you up there, and you deliver the final blow!"
"Me? How are you sending me up there?"
"Like this!" Bowser grabbed Peach's arm and sent her flying toward the Robo-Horse. She'll probably yell at me for this, but I hope I can convince her that I did it out of love! Then maybe she'll want to stay with me!
"Ugh! I can't believe he'd throw me like that! And he probably thinks he did it out of love, too!" Nevertheless, Peach reached her target and slammed her fist into the damaged area with full force. She dropped down from the horse, which sparked like a 4th of July fireworks show gone haywire. It blew apart with a deafening explosion.
"NOOO!" shouted the Ruffer Ruffian. "You've defeated my last resort!"
"That's because they're heroes," explained Tippi.
"How could they have? They must have superhuman strength if they could defeat that thing!"
"Well, they're heroes."
The Ruffer Ruffian eyed our heroes curiously. "Are you really heroes?"
"Yes. They are. And they need the Pure Heart to save all worlds."
He looked at the yellow Pure Heart, and then back at the heroes. "Well...if you could defeat that thing, then maybe you really are heroes."
"They are."
He paused for a moment, and then picked the Pure Heart up and walked toward them. "Well, I've decided. You guys certainly were heroes. And I'm not sure if I should've trusted Dimentio anyway. Here, take the Pure Heart."
"Really? You're giving it to us?"
"Yes. Isn't that what you want? It is rightfully yours. Take it, and do what you wish with it."
"Thank you. All right, Mario, take the Pure Heart!" He did just that.
PURE HEART GET!
-END OF CHAPTER-
Dimentio had tricked the Ruff Ruffians into believing that Mario and his friends wanted the Pure Heart for evil...but in the end, they proved they were heroes and recieved the Pure Heart. With three Pure Hearts now in our heroes' possesion, five still remain. There is no time to celebrate. Our heroes must find the other five-and quickly, for who knows what sinister plot Dimentio has planned next?