Well, it's the end of the month, and I figured that I've gone long enough without updating. The chapter still isn't done. No, it isn't my hard drive being erased by a virus or anything, but pure human laziness. However, I WILL get this entire chapter wrapped up by June.
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Level 4: Paradoxic Smashfest
Because The Last Part Should Have Been Out, But, You Know, It's Not...
Day 2 Noon: Semifinal Round
"Original Donkey Kong Theme"Toad slowly paced back and forth on the construction beam. Just up ahead was what seemed to be a battle, but the mushroom wasn't the best at fighting by himself, forcing him to wait for Proto Man. After a while, the anticipated red robot dashed up to him.
"What are you still doing here?" he asked with a slight hint of surprise.
"There are a bunch of guys up ahead and... well... I kind of suck at fighting," explained Toad in an embarrassed tone.
"I'm glad to see you finally admitted that."
"Yeah, well, look, don't tell anyone else about my lack of fighting skills, okay?"
"I don't think I have to," Proto Man commented, grinning as he flipped a large red coin in his hands.
"...Okay, I'll just ignore that remark, but--Wait, where'd you get that?" Toad questioned, pointing to the red coin being flipped.
"This?" asked a confused Blues. "I found this and four others like it just hovering in the air in certain places like the other coins. Since they were harder to reach, I figured that there was more to it, but other than being better at healing, there isn't much."
"That's a Red Coin! If you get all 8 of them, you can get a Power Star!"
"And both of us would be able to continue without starting over?"
"Yeah, but right now, let's go in," suggested the fungus as he jumped onto a platform raised into the air by a pulley just beyond where he was standing, followed by the Dr. Light robot. As soon as they got on, two of the fighters in the tournament jumped out of nowhere onto the other end of the platform--Luigi Mario and Princess Peach.
End "Original Donkey Kong Theme"Battle... BEGIN!
I could write the fight, but I won't.
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"1042... 1043... ah, 1044, here we go," commented Dan as he drove the Runaway Five bus up to a mail box, opened it up, and placed a package inside it, and got back on the bus.
"Okay, that's the last package we have to deliver in this area of Sony," he said.
"Thank god," thought Bill out loud. "I don't want to stay in this 'Los Santos' place any longer."
"I don't know," replied Manny. "It's kind of nice out here."
There was an explosion in the distance.
"You were saying?" Sam asked.
"We might as well go to the Reel World now. By the way, Manny, how're Eggplant Wizard and King Hippo?" Dan questioned.
"Still stuck in the window."
"Well, let's go then," commented Dan as he started up the bus.
After a couple minutes of driving, they passed a group of loitering gangsters. The Runaway Five ignored them, but unfortunately for them, they happened to be on the side of the bus Eggplant Wizard and King Hippo were on.
"Hey! You guys suck as cheerleaders!" King Hippo yelled as Eggplant Wizard threw an eggplant pIe (not pie) at them.
Some people would like this, but they didn't. As the bus drove away, all Gangster #1 could say was, "What. The. ----?"
"The hell! Nobody does dat ta us and gets away with it! Let's cap those ----ers!" suggested Gangster #2.
"How'd he know I was a cheerleader?" asked Gangster #4. Where was Gangster #3? You tell me.
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In the castle, Toad appeared on the sun emblem, facing toward the main stairway. After a few minutes, Proto Man, too, appeared.
"It looks like this will be the last part of the Mushroom Kingdom adventure," explained the mushroom.
"Thank god," Proto Man noted, "it seems like we've been here forever."
"You're saying that like it was a bad thing."
"...Yes, I am, aren't I?"
Toad gave the robot a look of annoyance, but didn't act on it. The invisible path, this time, led them up the stairs to a pair of twin doors with a large star in the middle. As soon as the came up to it, they automatically opened, revealing a long hallway with a picture of Princess Peach at the end. As they got closer, however, it transformed into one of Bowser and a pair of trapdoors burst open in front of the teammates, creating a large hole in the ground.
"Wow, Mario must have been having an off day if he got caught in this," commented Proto Man as he backed up a little. He dashed forward and used the boost of his thrusters to sail across the gap. "If I could get across this, why couldn't M--" he was saying until he crashed into an invisible barrier preventing anyone from going across and fell into the abyss.
"&Ah, the invisible-wall-at-the-edge-of-the-pit, it seems to get them every time&," the fungus thought as he, too, jumping into the hole.
They both appeared in a dimly lit area with dark, worn stones acting as the walls, floors and ceilings. The only light sources were candles held on the wall, the lava pits, and chains of fireballs attached to a strange gray box floating in the air.
"Bowser in Theme From Super Mario 64""Where are we now?" asked the red robot.
"It's one of Bowser's fortresses. I've been to quite a few of them, and they are look basically the same," the mushroom replied.
Proto Man nodded. "You know, in a fighting tournament, this place could make a nice arena. You have to wonder why they didn't include this place in the previous tourna--wait, why do they have Bowser's fortress in this tournament when he's banned from here? ...Hand Stadium, I mean, not the fortress."
"I guess they finally gave in to the fans or something. There were a lot of people requesting this arena. I should know, I had to write angry letters replying to all of them. Took a while, but it was worth it..." Toad walked forward and Proto Man followed.
They both had an easy enough time getting across the small lava pits, but trouble started when they came up to the fireball chains spinning slowly in circles. While all Toad had to do was walk under most of them, jumping over the occasional chain on the ground, but Proto Man had to time his jumps and dashes carefully in order not to get burnt.
After the last chain in that section, the two met their first enemies in that area: a trio of Koopa Troopa skeletons, called Dry Bones.
The red bomber thought out loud, "They look easy enough," as he charged up his Proto Buster and fired a blast at the closest undead. It exploded into pieces, and the robot did the same with the others. After a while, however, the bones recombined, rebuilding the Dry Bones as if they were never hurt.
"What?" the robot said in shock.
"They're undead, you idiot! You can't just kill them with a plasma gun. It's best to just ignore them, they can't do much any way."
The two got past the Dry Bones and walked into a passageway. After walking a bit, Toad stopped, but the robot continued forward. Suddenly, the fungus brought out his bazooka, and as he pulled the trigger, a rocket shot toward Proto Man. It collided right into the shield on the android's back, knocking him forward, just before the spiked ceiling crashed down on where he was standing.
As the ceiling started rising upwards again, Toad walked forward under the gap formed. "Uh, thanks," the Light robot said. "I'm not used to looking up."
"No problem," the mushroom said.
... Dear God, I hope that none of the few people who will be reading this chapter are crazy yaio fangirls that will take Toad being kinder toward Proto Man than everyone else shown so far as a hint on shounen-ai (boy-on-boy for the uninformed) and draw pictures of it o0.
After a while, the two managed to reach what seemed to be the final room.
End "Bowser in Theme From Super Mario 64""Well, it looks like another one of the planned arenas for the tournament," commented Toad as he looked around. There were six platforms in all: four of them rose out of the lava lake below them while the other two were actually Bullet Bill launchers floating far above the outer platforms, but not so high as to be unreachable by jumping. The middle two platforms were connected by a bridge of blocks (for those who have played Super Mario Bros. 3, or Mario Advance 4, these are the blocks you have to trick Bowser into breaking through in order to defeat him) that, while hard to break normally, have been made brittle for the tournament. Between the 1st and 2nd platform, and the 3rd and 4th platform, there was a gap, where a fireball would jump out on occasion. In the background, Bowser's children, the Koopalings, could be seen doing random stuff, but they seemed more like an Easter Egg than anything.
"Since this is an arena from the tournament, there's probably an opponent here like the last one," commented Proto Man. Sure enough, when they got on the second platform from the left, the bridge leading them there disappeared and a single foe jumped down on the third platform from the left with a loud clank. He was not only large in stature, but he had a shiny metal coating. He was Giant Metal Mario, the plumber with both a Super Mushroom and a Metal Box.
Battle... BEGIN!Proto Man started off by firing a fully charged Proto Buster blast at the metal man, but it only knocked him back a few inches. Mario then dashed forward, at a slower pace than usual thanks to his metal status, and was about to do a dash attack when Toad quickly fired his bazooka at the bridge connecting the two platforms, destroying part of it, and forcing the giant to fall into it. Due to his extra weight, he couldn't double jump out of it in time and fell right into the hot lava, but like the acid in the Brinstar stage of SSB:M, the lava didn't kill him and instead caused him to fly into the air with quite a bit of damage done to him.
Proto Man quickly figured out where Giant Metal Mario would land and, changing color, shot a Poppy Bomb there. Unfortunately, when a fighter is knocked down and is getting up, they are invulnerable to pain, so the bomb had no effect on him. Speaking of invulnerability, a Power Star happened to appear right at that point and started bouncing around the stage. Without saying anything, Toad jumped up and grabbed the star, rendering him temporarily invincible.
"Awesome!" he simply said as he ran behind Mario without fear and started punching him (he did have the highest power rating in Mario 2). Blues joined in on this by turning green and firing Search Snakes, basically crawling bombs in the shape of snakes, at the foe. Eventually, Giant Metal Mario rolled out of the way of the assault toward the robot. This process was rather slow, so Proto Man had enough time to jump out of the way and charge up a blast. However, before the shot could hit, the altered plumber brought out a now-metal cape and reflected the attack back to the attacker, making a direct hit. However, while the red bomber was in the air, the now-back-to-vulnerable fungus fired a shot from his bazooka at the jump-man, knocking him off the platform
Giant Metal Mario, while flying into the pit, was hit by a fireball that flew out of it, sending him into the path of a Bullet Bill shot from a cannon above him. This sent him to the other side of the middle platforms, where he landed in the lava pit there. This sent him flying up again, where he was hit by the same Bullet Bill and was knocked into the living bullet that came out of the cannon on that side. He was sent to the other side of the arena, where he landed on the outside boundary of the platforms, another lava pit. This last pit sent him flying off the screen.
TOAD WINS! YOU GOTTEN... THE LOCK!At that point, the lock, looking just like the previous one, appeared on the rightmost platform.
"... Well, I'd definitely call that series of events blog-worthy," commented Proto Man before he and Toad destroyed the lock and logged-out.
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Toad and Proto Man returned to their bodies (technically, Toad was always in his body, but he was too distracted to see what was going on around him) to find that the door at the other end of the hallway, leaving only an energy barrier around the main computer, was now open. However, Jon Jones, the Game Master, was standing up against the terminal, apparently logged in to the network.
Before anyone could ask what he was doing, the shield protecting the main computer came down, and, a few seconds later, Jon snapped back to reality. "...Oh, hey, so you guys managed to get through the Mushroom Kingdom?" he asked in a rather tired voice.
"Yeah, we did. So what were you up to?" responded Proto Man.
"Huh?" Before the robot could repeat himself, Jon added, "Oh, right, I decided to go into the Pokémon Stadium myself, since I wasn't really doing anything--"
"So you weren't training?"
"That? That only lasted a few minutes. Anyway, I went to the Pokémon Stadium, and all you had to do was fight a large group of Pikachus, Pichus, and Jigglypuffs, who all died pretty easily. There were a lot of pokéballs too, so that made it even simpler. During the fight, I even got an Articuno, and that took out a lot of them, so, uh... anyway, I beat them, destroyed the lock, and here we are."
"So you broke a promise that you were going to stay here and went into a place where you could have been deleted, and left our bodies unprotected?" Toad asked.
"Well, yeah, but I don't remember making a promise about that."
"...Well, alrighty then, let's go to the main computer to do whatever we were supposed to do," recommended Toad, dropping his previous point.
After walking for a bit, everyone stopped. "Wait, exactly what were we going to do when we got to the mainframe computer?" asked the Real Worlder.
"...You know, come to think of it, Crazy Hand never really told us that. We better e-mail him," Proto Man suggested.
"I thought you didn't like e-mailing for help," pointed out the mushroom-man.
"Just e-mail him."
"Jeez, fine." Toad pulled out his PET and typed a message on it. A few minutes after he clicked "SEND", a letter from Crazy Hand appeared on the mushroom's screen.
I just got your e-mail. I'm sorry that I didn't mention this earlier, but when you get to the mainframe computer, you will be able to disable all of the locks in the area without uploading yourself. From there, I can access the computer and scan the entire area for the fighters. Then you can go to where they are and rescue them.
Attach the e-mail to the slot in the computer and type in the password MHoF under the username Admin. After that, go to "My Computer", go to the &: Drive (yes, the &: Drive) and select "Lock Options". There, press the "Open All Locks" button. There will be an error message. What you have to do is click the TEXT on the message, not any of the icons, exactly 20 times, and then press the OK button. After this, all locked doors and programs will open up, one every two seconds.
Signed, Crazy Hand
Dated 11: 49 AM
Attachments: mainaccess.exe (scan for viruses?)
Jon looked up from the message. "Attach the e-mail to the computer? What does he mean by that?"
Toad walked toward the mainframe. The computer was a golden octagonal tower stretching from ceiling to floor. Taking up two sides each were four screens with keyboards and metal platforms hovering above the floor by about a foot, acting as a seat.
He then pulled the wire out of his PErsonal Terminal and attached the other side to the nearest jack-in port of the computer, the e-mail now appearing on the larger computer's screen. Jon made a sound of understanding in response to this.
As Toad sat down on the floating seat, he downloaded the attachment and a new window popped up:
User Name:
Password:
After checking the e-mail again, Toad typed in the correct words.
User Name: Admin
Password: MHoF
Pressing ENTER, the window disappeared and the screen was replaced by a desktop. Instead of going to my computer, Toad instead went over to My Documents, and then My Pictures. He didn't find what he was looking for.
"Hmm, he seems to be hiding them very well..." he remarked.
"Toad, just follow the directions Crazy Hand gave to us," stated the robot.
"Jeez, fine." He exited out of My Documents and went to My Computer. He opened the file to find a huge number of icons, ranging from A: Drive to Z: Drive, and even the &: Drive they were looking for. "Maybe they're under the P: Drive or X: Drive?"
"Go to the &: Drive already!"
Grumbling, the mushroom dragged the mouse away from the X: Drive and double clicked on the &: Drive icon. Out of the icons appearing on the window, he selected "Lock Options". "Open All Locks" was double-clicked and, like predicted, an error message popped up. The text was clicked 20 times, and finally, the OK button was pressed.
As a result of this, a new window popped up:
Opening locks
Lock 4: 15
"There will be no one to stop us this time!" Jon said, trying to imitate Darth Vader, but failing quite badly. You could still tell who he was supposed to be, though.
Not as in reaction to that statement, but to a completely different one said by a guy named Jkglahlsdk on Planet Cwelavari, a large blast of fire came hurtling toward the fighters. They all managed to get out of the way, but barely. The attack hit the wall behind them, burning right through it and sending a smaller, but still large, wave of flames out to its sides, melting part of the two walls adjacent to it.
"What the crap was that!" the Game Master exclaimed.
Toad pulled out his kart racer from nowhere. "It's one of those things that attacked me before! We better get out of here!"
Proto Man briefly looked at the hole from the fire attack. "I'd have to agree with that advise."
Everyone hopped on, feeling rather cramped, and the mini-car shot off.
There were three possible hallways Toad could have driven down to escape the monster. Instead, he chose to drive right through the wall weakened by the fire attack. It seemed like the only short hallway in the entire structure was the one leading from the teleporter to the mainframe--it was no wonder that Crazy Hand wanted them to scan the area for the fighters instead of manually looking. The track twisted, turned, winded, and even turned upside down (obviously one of Crazy Hand's designs). At one point, there was even a large chunk of ice that suddenly appeared in front of the car. As it turned out, the ice was from one of the monsters they passed in the hallway who was trying to stop them.
"No wonder you didn't get a good look at the attackers before!" Jon yelled, because that was the only way for everyone else to hear over the engine. "All I saw was a flash of gray when we passed that last one by!"
After a while, Jon heard a beeping from his GBA, but only as a result of a bump in the "road" (most likely caused by the monsters) causing his head to drop under the seat, temporarily getting his ear stuck in the pocket where the portable system was kept.
"It's an e-mail from Crazy Hand! He's asking why some files are still locked! I'll tell him what's going on right now!" the Game Master yelled.
"WAIT! REMEMBER TO MENTION THE FACT THAT I'M KICKING ALL OF THE MONSTERS' ASSES!" the mushroom yelled much louder that Jon was.
The e-mail was sent, and after a while of driving around, avoiding the occasional gray monster, the response appeared on the Game Boy's screen.
I got your e-mail. So those gray creatures you mentioned before are chasing you? I assume that they must have stopped the unlocking after you left. I believe I have something that may help.
Go back to the mainframe computer, go to the Command Prompt and type in the command "Enter Network" just like that, without any coding. It will activate some new hardware the monsters must have added to the computer that will suck you right into the mainframe.
If you jacked in normally, your bodies would still be vulnerable, but this will literally transfer your bodies into the computer, and you will be safe.
Once inside, you have to go to the Mute City Adventure to open the last remaining lock, which, coincidently, will unlock the area scanner and allow you to find the missing fighters. Then, you can rescue them and somehow get them back to the entrance. By that time, the Good Scientists would have found a way to breach the shield and that army will be there awaiting the gray monsters.
Signed, Crazy Hand
Dated 11: 57 AM"The mainframe! How do we find our way back there!" Proto Man asked.
"Didn't you make a map of our path as we drove in your head or something!" Jon asked
"We were going too fast for me to have any idea what was going on!"
Just then, they passed by the hole in the wall they burst through to start this sequence.
"Toad! Turn back!" Jon yelled.
"NO, WE WENT TOO FAR! IT WOULD BE QUICKER JUST TO GO AROUND!" yelled back Toad.
Thus, they went around on the hallway again, passing by an actual entrance to the mainframe room, and finally drove through the hole, screeching to a halt in front of the computer.
The robot quickly got off, being unable to get carsick unlike his comrades, opened the Start menu, selected Command Prompt, and typed in Enter Network.
As soon as he pressed enter, a glowing circle appeared in front of the mainframe, causing Jon, Toad, his kart, and Proto Man to disappear in a flash.
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Thus ends day 2, part 2. Next time:
"So you're the one behind all this!" Toad yelled. "…Wait, who are you, again?"
Yes, it's the same preview as last time.