Chapter 2, Chapter 1? Dragon and Castle Part 1
I came out in this meadow, it was quite beautiful. "Well…" started Goombella "I guess we better get going. So, I wonder why they call it Hooktail Castle."
"I guess we're about to find out," I said, as we turned and saw a large dragon flying towards a castle.
"Wow, dragon. And I just got the last fight off of me. Now we've gotta kill something," whined Goombella.
"You've got quite a fire there, but you need to control it. Dragons are good sometimes. He could prove a useful ally," I said.
"And there you go assuming the dragon's a man," said Goombella. As I was about to find out, we were both right in correcting each other.
We got to a town, small, quaint, mainly inhabited by Koopas. I liked it.
"Umm, hi," I said walking up to a random inhabitant of the town, this was a blue-shelled Koopa listening to a CD on headphones. I recognized the tune, Starman by David Bowie, "I need to get directions to Hooktail castle."
"There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds," he sang along, oblivious to me.
I moved on to the next inhabitant (well, not actually), a weird blue guy with pink hair, a man I'd later come to know as Dupree. "How do I get to Hooktail Castle?"
"Oh, you just… Whoa? Who's the girl? I think I will like her," he looked at Goombella, "bonjour mon petit chou," (hello, my Brussels's sprout) he said, his eyes fixed in a dreaming state on my partner in crime.
"Get lost," she snapped.
"Ah, ma belle, I could get lost in you forever," he responded. It was at this time that I decided to get involved. Out of nowhere, I RKOed him to the ground. He got up, but didn't bother to respond.
Moving on to the next inhabitant, I walked up to a radish-looking man, "How do I get to Hooktail Castle?" I asked
"Oh," he responded, "just through that gate, you get three keys, then go over there, and enter them over there, just outside city boundaries. But you need the mayor's permission to enter the gate."
"Where's the mayor?" I asked.
"In that house over there," he said. I walked over to the house and knocked.
"Who's there?" came a voice from inside.
"We need to get into Hooktail Castle," I said
"Sure, come right in, but I don't have any falafels," he said.
"What about falafels?" I said.
"You're the one who mentioned them," said the mayor, a small wrinkled senile old Koopa.
"Um… just out of curiosity, who did you run against to become mayor?" I asked
"John Ashcroft"
"Oh, that makes sense," I said, "but I need permission to go through the gate to get the keys to Hooktail Castle."
"Why certainly, here you go," he said, handing me a note. I read the note, it said Let these people go through the gate. Hmmm… subtle.
I walked up to the gate and said to the Koopa on duty, "Um… can I get through?" holding up the note.
"Why certainly." And we were off. Or we would be, but a small Koopa in a blue t-shirt walked up.
"I… umm… can I ask you something? Erm, that is to say… can I… Oh never mind," he said, walking off.
"Wow, he's got issues," said Goombella, "and I know some serious people with issues."
As we walked, we came to a mini-castle, so we walked inside. There we were greeted by two rock-like beings lunging at us.
"Oh, crap, we are like screwed," said Goombella, "these guys are like, impossible to hit."
"We'll see about that," I said, jumping onto one of the two pillars, "You ever seen a ladder match?"
"I don't really watch wrestling," was her response.
"Well, we're going to fight rock with rock," I said, as I tipped over the pillar onto one of the beings, which I later found out were called clefts, knocking it out, "just a quick question, can you hold things?"
"Umm… yeah," she said.
"Okay, hold the pillar over there," I said, and watched in amazement as she gripped the pillar with her feet and stood on her head.
"I'm gonna grab the other one, and we're gonna do a pillar sandwich, okay?"
"How do you come up with these things?" she asked.
"E&C days," I said, aware that she had no idea what I was talking about. I grabbed the pillar, and we swung. BOOM! Two near-dead clefts at our feet. I don't kill unless I have to. A door opened, and we walked through it. One more mini-castle, and we ran into two more of these clefts, only these guys were made of steel and had spikes all over them. Nevertheless, two two person conpillartos (say that five times fast) (conchairtos with pillars instead of chairs) later, we had won. And now it was on to the final mini-castle. A thwomp stood in the open.
"Answer 5/7 questions right and advance, get them wrong and meet a horrible fate," he said.
"What're they about?" I asked.
"Just general stuff," he said.
"I'm game," I said.
"Okay, first question, who sings the song "Rock and Roll suicide"?"
"David Bowie, my favourite singer," I responded. I was right.
"How many electrons are the maximum that can fit in the first shell of an atom?"
"Two," right again.
"Where can you go with the keys you receive here?"
"Hooktail Castle," three for me.
"Who plays Pheobe on Charmed?" was the question. Crap! I didn't know. My sister did, but I didn't watch the show.
"Alyssa Milano," came Goombella (had to look that one up), "that's my 2nd favourite show." I guess that made four.
"This one's gonna be super hard, who is Koops?"
"Umm… a Koopa?" I asked.
"NO!"
"Next question, who invented the assembly line?"
"Henry Ford?" Five.
"WHAT? YOU CAN'T BE RIGHT! I ONLY GET TO WAKE UP AND DO THIS LIKE, ONCE A DECADE! MY ONLY HOPE IS THAT HOOKTAIL WILL KILL YOU AND THEN MORE PEOPLE WILL COME!" yelled the thwomp.
"Actually, according to a book I read once, the person who enslaved you can free you," said Goombella.
"Oh, well I do this out of the goodness of my heart, so I can really just leave," he said.
"That's good, we were planning to see if we could use Hooktail as an ally," I said.
"PFFFFT!" he said, "She's so irritable from all the Koopas trying to kill her that she won't be too agreeable."
"See, I told you the dragon could be a girl," said Goombella, as I hit myself on the head.
"Well, I'm off. Go get the sun and moon stones," said the thwomp, leaping away, exposing a pipe. We entered.
"Eww, it stinks down here, and now I'm all wet," whined Goombella.
"Just don't think about why it smells," I said, "We'll clean ourselves off when we get to a hotel."
"Whatever," she said, "My guess is that we're supposed to go down one of these two paths." So we did. We took the one on the right first. We got to a moon-shaped rock so we grabbed it. Just then, a lot of fuzzies dropped down from nowhere. We cleared them out with a quick round of buzzsaw kicks and headbonks. Then we went down the other way, and came to a sun-shaped stone. Same story. We got back to the middle, and there was a gold fuzzy waiting. He lunged, and I responded with a superkick, catching him midair. Suddenly there were fuzzies all over me, sucking away at my life force. I felt myself get woozy, as the Earth around me seemed to fade to black. Suddenly I got an idea. It would likely destroy me, but it would give Goombella a fighting chance. I pulled out a match and lit it, lighting myself on fire. The fuzzies all scampered off, not just off me, but out of the room. I quickly doused the fire by dropping into the putrid water. All that was left was us and the gold fuzzy. Goombella was in much better shape than I was; I couldn't stand up to fight. I watched as headbonks were exchanged for bites. The gold fuzzy couldn't latch itself on to her. They fought back and forth, until the gold fuzzy finally had a hold of her.
"Let's see you escape now! I'm gonna suck all your life force out of your pathetic body," he taunted. Using everything I had, I stood up out of adrenaline and nailed him with a nearby tire iron. He was out like a light.
"Thanks," she said weakly. I would have responded, but I didn't have the energy.
We wandered back into town, reaching there about dusk. We stopped off at the inn and got a room. As we prepared to wind down, I took a big long shower. Goombella was next. "I'm like totally dying for a bubble bath," she said, climbing into the bathtub.
"You're gonna close the door, right?" I asked.
"Oh, come on, it's not like I couldn't get some action if I wanted to," she said, "I'm just busy right now."
"Okay, see this hand?" I asked, holding out my hand, "That's what I meant, now see the moon? That's where your perception of what I said is."
An hour later, she was out, and I was stretching, shadowboxing. I began to do sit-ups, and she just gawked at me.
"You always do that before you sleep?" she asked.
"Nope, normally I'm a fat lazy slob but I'm on an adventure, so I'd better get in shape," I said, not joking at all.
"Well, I'm going to bed," she said.
"Me too," I said.
"I call the bed!" she yelled.
"Umm… there are two," I said.
"Sorry, reflex," she said.
"Right, goodnight."
END OF PART 1
I would've written the entire chapter, but it was just too long.
