2-2 Ripper Roo's Museum of Horror

Dear god! This one was hell and a half to go through. I apologize for the potentially subpar quality from this chapter, I did my best. I couldn't even be bothered to get it beta read. Hope you can enjoy it at least. More info at the end of the chapter.

Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario are owned by their respective companies.

"So, who's Ripper Roo?" Mario asked as he and the bandicoots walked down the shore of N. Sanity Beach.

"He's an old enemy of ours. Far as I know, he was Cortex's first experiment with the Cortex Vortex." Aku Aku said.

"Yeah, he was the first. He went nuts after he went through the thing, and Cortex tossed him out of the castle after that. How's he doing, by the way? I heard he was studying for a PhD in Psychology or something?"

"Yes, he did. He's been using the grant money to run a Curio Museum on the island. It's where he lives in fact."

As if on cue, the titular museum came into view after passing a small outcropping of rocks. "Ripper Roo's Curios Cabinet of Curiosities," was carved on a large rock next to the cobblestone path leading inside. The building itself was completely dark, with no lights to be seen through the windows.

Crash smooshes his face on one of them, trying to see anything inside the building. It was all dark, with no signs of life to be spotted.

"Guess the museum's closed for the night." Mario said.

"Not to worry, Ripper Roo usually sleeps inside the exhibits. A strong, firm knock should be enough to wake him up."

The group all gathered by the door with Mario at the front. The mustached hero knocked on the door three times, stepped back to join the group, and politely waited for the owner to arrive to welcome them in.

The doors were answered at an almost unnatural speed, as they slowly parted open, revealing no one to be behind it, and showing them the dark, uninviting insides of the building. A strong gust of wind blew from somewhere inside the building, causing the others recoil from the unnatural coldness. When the wind receded, the door was fully open, and the group blinked in confusion.

"... Well would you look at that. They are open." Mario cheerily said, not at all perturbed by the very clearly supernatural nature of the entire scenario. "Looks like it's our lucky night tonight." He cheerily walked into the building, leaving behind the actually scared people to be actually scared. No wonder he always gets kidnapped by ghosts.

Still by the door, Aku Aku gulped as he looked inside the building. He could sense a supernatural presence inside, but by his leaf goatee, he could not figure out what it was.

"Crash, Tawna, keep your wits about you. I don't think we'll be able to get to Ripper Roo without some unwanted interference."

Tawna, a wide eyed, fearful look on her face, simply nodded in agreement. She looked down at her stomach to see Crash wrapped around it, the bandicoot staring fearfully into the inside of the building.

The three went to follow Mario inside, tensed up and wary of anything that could go wrong.

Dropping a large crate of junk, filled with stuff collected from whatever was left inside her lab, Coco put her hands on her hips as she looked at Luigi for guidance. "Alright, give me the goods on this Poltergust of yours."

"Okay, well, to begin with, it's pretty much a vacuum cleaner." Luigi explained, shifting in his seat at the rather intense look Coco was giving him. "It sucks, it blows, anything a vacuum cleaner does, it does it way better. I cleaned out an entire hotel's worth of trash in just one night with it."

"That sounds super powerful." The inventor said in slight awe. "Anything else? How exactly does it capture something that's incorporeal?"

"Oh, that's simple. Flashing ghosts with a bright enough light can stun them and make them corporeal, or something like that. My usual process is basically flashing the ghost with the strobulb, grabbing them with the poltergust and weakening them enough for capture."

"Interesting, interesting." Coco scratched her chin as she put all the pieces together. "Okay, the way I see it, setting up the suction and strobulb parts will be easy enough." She dug through the crate, pulling out a handheld vacuum cleaner with a bunch of tubes and wires wrapped around it. "I've been working on this thingamajig, my Vacusucker, for a while now. We can use it as the vacuum part of the poltergust."

"Ooh, how strong is it? I've been looking for a good model to have at home." Luigi inquired while grabbing the handheld vacuum off Coco's hands to inspect it.

"Guaranteed to be 10 times stronger than the average vacuum. Or more, I lost some of my notes on it when testing it out the first time. Aku Aku keeps telling me that it's way too strong for a vacuum cleaner." She thought about it a bit before shrugging it off. "Eh, it's probably not that bad. Anyhow, I think you know what the hard part is, right?"

"Yep, the containment part. Honestly, I never understood E. Gadd's explanations on it. Way too much technobabble." Luigi rolled his eyes at the memory of the 5 hour long seminar E. Gadd had held. He had fallen asleep thirty minutes in and woken up a day later in a trash can. But that's not important right now. "Do you think you can make one yourself?"

"Well, hammerspace technology is an extensively studied subject here. Plus, I don't have to make it contain too much anyway. How big is this King Boo guy, anyway?"

"Ehmmm, boulder sized? Large? He can be as big as he likes, any size terrifies me, anyway."

"Mmm, I'll just highball it and do my best." Coco shrugged. "Anywho, while you stick around back here and test out the basic stuff, I'll be in my lab doing the real science."

Luigi tilted his head in confusion as he watched Coco walk towards her lab. "Wait, test?"

"Yeah, test out the vacuuming and the strobulb part in here. We have the perfect test subject hanging out in my kitchen, eating my food." She gritted the italicized parts out while glaring at the kitchen, where their guest was currently helping himself to dinner. "You can deal with that, right? Right." She slammed the door to her lab closed, leaving behind Luigi to do his part of the job.

Luigi sighed, going to dig into the crate of junk to look for something to make a strobulb with, and preparing himself to ask their ghost guest to be a willing test subject, and wondering how his brother and the others were doing.

Inside the dark, dreary and unwelcoming museum, where it felt like the paintings were staring right into the souls of the current visitors, Mario was cheerfully humming a familiar tune about haunted mansions, not the least bit scared. Following behind were two cowering bandicoots and a nervous mask, looking around in fear.

"Hmmm, we haven't seen the owner anywhere." Mario realized. He took note of a conveniently placed map of the museum not far from where they were, and went to examine it. "Maybe he's in his office or something?"

As the group gathered around the map, Crash jumped in the air when he heard a strange, skittering noise coming from somewhere. He tried to see where it was coming from, but the darkness made it a difficult task. All he could see was a blue blur flashing by in the distance.

Aku Aku felt Crash tap the back of his head. "Crash? What is it?" He turned to ask Crash, only to catch a glimpse of something blue running in between two of the pillars that decorated the area.

Tawna's ear twitched as she heard footsteps coming from… the roof? She looked up just in time to see the tail end of something run past, leaving behind a set of claw marks scratched onto the roof.

The three now on edgeheroes huddled closer together, back to back as they searched for whatever the mysterious blur was. They were trembling in very visible fear.

And all of it went completely unnoticed by Mario, who tapped a spot on the map and nodded cheerfully. "I found it! It's just further inside, at the end of the hallway. "Let's a go!" With a cheer of his catchphrase, Mario broke into a light sprint and headed into the dark, claustrophobic hallway and left behind the cowering bandicoots and mask to rush after him.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Tawna muttered, with Aku and Crash grunting in agreement.

As they left the room, someone began to giggle maniacally, and started following the group, rapidly crawling on the roof without their notice.

"So, what are we doing again?" The goob asked as he scratched his back, sandwich in hand while he was standing in the middle of the room while Luigi readied himself in front of him.

"Well, I need you to help me test out the poltergust we're making. I hope you don't mind that, uhmmm… what's your name? I don't think we ever got it?"

"Wade. And no worries, I don't mind at all. I do plenty of experiments for E. Gadd, and I'm perfectly fine." Wade said with a dopey smile on his face, before going to take a bite out of his dinner, missing his face entirely and phasing the thing through his neck.

Luigi gave Wade a worried look while the ghost tried to find their mouth. Maybe he should ask E. Gadd to let up on the experiment, mostly on this one. Regardless, there was at least one more experiment this ghost needed to go through.

Luigi adjusted the strobe light he had basically taped onto the handheld vacuum, making sure it was secure and perfectly usable. Step one was making sure that the strobulb was bright enough to properly startle ghosts. It didn't work on boo's, no, but it would come in handy in keeping the other ghosts at bay if the need arose.

"Okay, I'm gonna try this one out. Don't cover your eyes, please."

Wade took notice of what Luigi was aiming at them, and decided that the only logical thing to do was pose seductively. "Make sure to capture my good side."

Luigi pressed a button on the side of the makeshift poltergust, charging up the strobulb. When he saw the light on it rapidly flicker, he let go, and a bright flash engulfed the room, surprising Luigi.

Rubbing away the stars in his eyes, Luigi slowly regained his vision, and noticed that the goob had turned solid. Exactly what needed to happen.

Now the next step, activate the vacuum part of the poltergust. Examining the vacuum closer showed that it had 6 settings. Numbers one through 5, and a little decal of a skull and crossbones at the end of the dial. Luigi simply turned the dial to 5, knowing well that a skull and crossbones always meant bad things. He wasn't falling for that, no sirree.

He aimed the handheld vacuum at the still frozen goob, put his finger on the trigger, and pressed it.

The doors to Ripper Roo's office slowly opened as Mario peeked inside. The walls were covered by what was basically a massive library of books, in themes ranging from psychology , philosophy, ancient history, dating advice. And at the center was the tidy desk of Dr. Roo, Museum Curator. The usually impressive and welcoming sight was not present on account of how dark everything was. It was darker than dark. It was… extra dark.

"Hello? Anybody home? Helloooo?" Mario called out for anyone indoors, slowly entering the room. Crash followed in after him, fearfully looking around inside the room, his ears flat on his head.

Aku Aku and Tawna had elected to stay out of the room to keep an eye on if Ripper Roo were to show up suddenly, so he and Mario had to pair up and explore the office. It would be a far less terrifying experience if someone were to at least flick on the lights.

Crash reached out for the lightswitch to do just that, but found that the lights were not turning on for anyone, leaving the room in darkness.

"Guess the lightbulb must be broken. We should have brought a flashlight with us." Mario commented. He shrugged and went back to looking around the room, Crash clinging close to him.

The two searched high and low through the room, checking corners, drawers, even pulling on books and lamps in search of secret passageways, all in search of a crazy blue kangaroo curator.

All the while, Crash's ears kept flicking around at the slightest sounds, on high alert after the previous incident. He could swear he could hear the same scratching noises from before, but he could never find the exact source. He was practically hugging Mario as they did their search.

Mario didn't seem bothered by Crash at all, as he took off his hat to scratch at his hair in confusion. "Well if he's not in his office, where else could he be? You know him, right, where do you think he might be hiding?" He asked Crash.

The bandicoot shrugged, too busy being terrified to think properly.

The plumber sighed. Guess it was time to head back outside and look elsewhere.

Before any of that could happen, Mario felt something wet hit his head. He reached out to touch his hair, feeling the slimy substance stick to his glove. He gagged as he quickly wiped whatever the substance was off his hair. Where did that come from?

Crash, as curious as Mario was, decided to look up to see what was dripping from the roof. What he saw made him freeze in place, staring wide eyed at what he spotted. Mario took notice of his state, and looked up as well. The sight made him drop his hat and gape in terror along with Crash.

Clinging onto the roof by his feet, Ripper Roo was giving them a very discomforting stare with his swirling eyes, drool practically leaking out of his mouth. He apparently noticed the stares, since he decided to crane his neck around a full 180 degrees to get a good look at them, his neck audibly cracking as he did.

Crash and Mario stood frozen in place, staring at Ripper Roo in horror. Ripper Roo stared back. It was only a matter of time before someone reacted appropriately to the scene.

"...Hey!" Crash cheerfully greeted Ripper Roo, waving hi at his crazy friend. Good ol' Ripper Roo, up to his old tricks of crawling on walls and twisting his neck in uncomfortable directions. That never got old. He patted Mario's back, trying to introduce him to the crazy kangaroo.

Mario remained frozen in fear, staring at Roo as he slowly crawled his way from the roof onto the floor, never letting his gaze leave them.

Outside the room, Aku Aku and Tawna were chatting with each other, keeping guard by the door.

"And he laid an egg?" Tawna said, baffled and just a mite bit disturbed at the mental image.

"Indeed he did. Poor Coco couldn't look at an egg for weeks without puking. But the egg did hatch eventually."

"So it did. I mean, I'm pretty sure N. Brio can be a good dad. He's not that bad a guy, just has those bolts screwed on too tight into his brain, is all." She said, leaning her back on the door. "Do you think the guys found anything inside?"

The two were startled by the sound of two loud, girlish screams coming from inside the room. They both jumped away from the door in response, right as Mario and Crash smashed it open, panicked looks on their faces. They slammed the doors shut behind them, chests heaving as Aku and Tawna looked on in confusion.

"We found him." The red plumber said.

Everyone was blown away from the door by a huge blast of force forcing it open, sending everyone sprawling across the hallway. Ripper Roo was giggling like crazy, his head spinning around non stop as if it wasn't connected to his neck.

The heroes looked on in fear and confusion as he suddenly started floating in the air, strong winds coming from all directions towards the kangaroo, causing a vortex to start forming in the hallway itself. Things were about to get crazy.

Coco's lab was empty. Which was odd given that she had explicitly come here to work on the storage module for their makeshift poltergust for the past few minutes. The room looked more or less the same as before she had entered.

Well, if one ignored the small, glowing vacuum cleaner bag lying on the table violently convulsing, something confined within it. That was probably out of place.

Whatever was in the bag shifted around, attempting to escape. Out of the hole of the bag, a furred hand suddenly stuck out, desperately reaching for something to grab onto. Once it grasped onto the edge of the table, it slowly started dragging itself out of the bag, revealing the owner to be a disheveled, somewhat electrocuted looking Coco.

The bandicoot fell off the table onto the floor, a wide eyed look on her face as she lay there for a bit. "This is why I have Crash test out all my stuff." She groaned out as her body twitched erratically.

After a little while of resting on the cold, hard ground, the teen genius managed to get back on her feet, stretching her body to get the feeling in her bones back. At the very least her invention worked. The inside was at least as big as her room. That should be a good enough size to contain a "King of ghosts." However, there was still one last thing she needed to do before she could declare it complete.

She grabbed the bag off the table, and made her way to the door out of her lab, on her way to ask a certain ghostly intruder for a favor.

She opened the door, and she just stood there as she looked at the chaos in front of her eyes.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Luigi screamed in terror as he flew around the room, dragged around by the powerful suction force of Coco's Vacusucker at it's highest setting. The entire room was basically destroyed, with furniture upturned and several odds and ends lying broken around the room, likely sucked into and expelled out of the handheld vacuum cleaner. Now she remembered why Aku complained about it. He had a good point on that.

Without uttering a word, and without once changing her expression of tiredness, Coco simply walked further into the room, not flinching at all at the debris flying around. She stood in one spot, extended her arm out, and waited.

"HELP ME!" Poor Luigi felt his grip slowly slip away from the handle. He could already feel what was going to come to him. When he finally lost grip of the vacuum, the poor ghost hunter was sent flying into a wall, slamming painfully into it.

The Vacusucker flew around for a bit, inhaling everything in sight, now free of the dead weight holding it back. It was now free to wreak havoc upon the world, and have itself be named as the greatest threat the world had ever known. Decimating buildings, ravaging nature, toppling societies! Nothing would stop-

Coco grabbed the handheld vacuum out of midair, and turned it off, ending it's reign of destruction. Just to make sure, she flicked the dial back to one, preventing any future incidents of out of control suckage.

Luigi peeled his face off the wall, leaving behind a nice, nose sized hole in the drywall. He was seeing stars as he fell onto the floor with a thud.

"Yeah, I probably should have warned you about that setting. Sorry." Coco said as she approached Luigi, pulling him up to his feet by the hand. "So, how did things go?"

The plumber simply gave her a thumbs up, too busy watching the stars that were circling his head to give a verbal answer.

"Well great. Now I just need a sample of ectoplasmic residue and we can officially consider this project complete!" The bandicoot looked around the room, and spotted a giant puddle of… something lying on the floor. She hoped dearly as she approached it that it wasn't what she thought it was.

The droopy, half awake eyes popping up in the center when she poked it answered her question. "Whuhappen? Is thiz Luncheon Kingdom again? Ah promized ah was a good boy, zir." The eyes closed after that incomprehensible non-sequitur.

"Oh, thank gosh it's just you." She sighed in relief as she pulled out a spoon out of her overalls pocket, scooping up a small bit of ectoplasm off the floor. "I'll be needing this if you don't mind."

She made her way back to her lab, passing by Luigi as he regained his bearings. He stared around the room, at all the destruction that was caused, and at Coco leaving him alone. "Wa, wait! Who's gonna clean up?"

"Oh. Yeah, there should be a broom somewhere around here. Just look for it while I finish inside." Coco answered, quickly shutting the door behind her, and leaving Luigi to do all the work. The poor plumber sighed and shook his head.

The doors to the museum atrium were blasted open, sending two bandicoots, a mask and a plumber smashing through some of the exhibits. Ripper Roo levitated through the hole, crates of TNT and Nitro flying around him in his vortex.

Shaking off the debris off of himself, Crash jumped to his feet and rushed towards the crazed kangaroo, ready to throw down.

While Mario helped Tawna stand up, they both briefly stopped to acknowledge the explosion, and the sight of the flaming bandicoot flying through the air into a wall.

"So, how do you normally beat this guy?" Mario asked Tawna.

"Well, Ripper Roo loves his explosives." She explained, peeking through the broken taxidermy exhibit she crashed through to see Roo giggling like a maniac, tossing around his explosives like a confetti thrower at a parade. "It's not too hard for us to make it backfire on him."

One of the crates, the red TNT one, crashed into a wall near Crash. The crate did not instantly explode, instead counting down with a helpful timer showing up on its body somehow.

"So, we grab the red crates and throw them back?" Mario began formulating his plan.

Tawna took her time to respond, first catching Crash from the air in her arms. Crash giggled dizzily, his eyes spinning from the force of the explosion. He was just conscious enough to give a thumbs up to the plan. "Yeah, that should work." She agreed with him.

Adjusting his cap, Mario got ready to get to work. Throwing boxes was nothing new to him.

Boss Time

Ripper Roo laughed it up as he wreaked havoc on his museum, his love of explosive based destruction overriding anything else that could be going through his mind. What was going on in there, anyway?

He briefly stopped though, when a flash of red caught his eye. Mario was standing in the middle of the room, waving hello at him and making himself a deliciously attractive target.

Welp, only one logical course of action to follow.

Mario watched the possessed kangaroo ready a TNT crate to through, spinning it around his body at an alarming speed. Exactly what the plumber wanted.

When the crate was sent flying towards him, Mario jumped backwards, letting the explosive land on the floor and triggering the countdown. With quick reflexes, he rushed to the crate, grabbed it, and gave it a powerful kick, sending it flying into Ripper Roo's face.

The kangaroo did not have enough time to give a humorous reaction. The crate blew up on impact, sending him careening onto the ground, and having all of his summoned crates fall along with him.

"Oh yeah!" Mario did a celebratory jump.

As their enemy lay unconscious on the floor, something strange occurred. A strange, glowing orb emerged out of his body, slowly floating up in the air. The sight confused Tawna and Aku Aku, who had dislodged himself from the rubble to witness the whole thing. Mario, however, was familiar with this.

"It's a Boo?"

The orb slowly materialized into a white, orb shaped ghost, holding and shaking its face in apparent pain. "Owie. You Mario Bros. sure do love ruining our fun, don't you!" It removed its little nub hands to reveal a comparatively large mouth with rows of sharp teeth, bared in an angry grimace.

"That… is the most adorable thing I've ever seen." Tawna said out loud for everyone to hear, angering the ghost.

"Uh, no, I am not adorable! I'm the terrifying Boorator. Yeah, coincidence, I know." The boo explained. "And don't think looking at me in the face is gonna work on me, plumber boy. I took a self confidence class!"

Mario gasped in horror. A boo that wasn't shy was a far tougher enemy to defeat than a regular boo. They needed something else other than kicks or explosives to beat it. They needed a ghost hunter!

Poor Ripper Roo raised his head from the ground, reeling from his personal encounter with the supernatural. That got the boo's attention fast.

"Oh no you don't."

Before the kangaroo could even begin questioning what was going on, the boo dove into his mouth, possessing him again. He started to float again, his eyes glowing as he started to summon his explosive crates again.

Mario rushed over towards Aku Aku. "We need Luigi. We can't do anything against a boo who isn't shy."

"Then I'll go look for them and bring them here. You all should hold him off for as long as you can." The mask agreed with the plan, and after finishing his instructions, flew out a nearby window out of the museum.

That left the others to deal with their possessed kangaroo friend, who started up with his seesles laughter again. He chucked one of his nitro crates straight at the cluster of heroes. It sent them all scurrying around the museum like rats.

Hopefully Aku Aku was a fast flyer.

"- And that's how I won my first acting award. It probably helped that I was actually terrified for most of filming, but the extra exaggeration really helped sell my performance."

With all their work finished, and some unnecessary reassurance by Coco that their hodgepodge poltergust would not randomly explode and kill them all, no need to ask, the two had begun to make their way to the museum to meet up with the others.

"So you're famous back where you're from. What's that like?"

"Oh, it's pretty good. We do mall openings some times, and we have to sign autographs once in a while. Of course it's usually my brother that's recognized while with me people struggle to remember my name."

"Harsh."

"Ah, there you two are!"

The two's conversation was interrupted by Aku Aku flying in from the horizon, a worried expression on his face. "Have you finished the poltergust?"

Luigi pulled out the device out of his pocket and presented it, looking as if they had duct taped a camera strobe light to a hand vacuum with the bag on the outside. Because that's what they did.

"All tested and cleared for use." Coco said with a smile on her face. Aku Aku's questioning stare made the smile falter a bit. "Promise."

"Well, we will need it now. There is a boo at the museum."

"A what?" Luigi and Coco both said at the same time, one in surprise and one in confusion.

"Quickly, they are doing their best to hold it off!"

The wooden mask flew back to the museum, leaving Luigi and Coco to follow after him. Coco simply dashed ahead, while Luigi stalled for just a moment when he felt a chill in his spine. Like some presence was watching him.

He shrugged and just went forward. He felt chills from someone slamming the door too hard. It was probably nothing.

"Woah!" Crash screamed as he was blasted face first into a pillar, faceplanting hard enough on it to crack it.

Ripper Roo had practically wrecked the entire museum, filled it with crater after crater with each throw of a nitro box. That was a problem on its own, since he wasn't throwing as many TNT crates as before, only doing so incredibly sporadically.

Mario did a sideways somersault, perfectly dodging a crate and letting it blow up an expensive faberge egg display. "Come on, already!" He complained to the boss. "It's been 5 minutes of this! Can't we please get a TNT crate!?"

Roo scratched his chin with his foot, humming exaggeratedly as he thought it over. "... Nah!"

"Oh boy." Mario shook his head. This was already getting tiring.

On the other side of the atrium, Tawna peeked from behind a pillar, seeing things blowing up left and right. She had no experience fighting boss fights, in spite of her full year away on her own adventure. So she had to use her brains to deal with this issue.

And if she knew anything about Ripper Roo, it was that he loved explosives. Kinda obvious in their current situation, but that wasn't the point. The point was…

She looked around the area for any sign of what she was looking for. Where would a somewhat crazed psychology major hide a stockpile of explosive armaments.

The bandicoot woman froze still when a nitro crate flew right in front of her, barely missing her by the nose. It exploded on contact with the wall, creating a gaping hole in it.

She blinked owlishly as the dust cleared, revealing, and at a very convenient time, a hidden room filled to the brim with TNT crates. She could only stare in confusion at the massive coincidence.

She shrugged it off. Oh well, best question coincidences later and take advantage of it now. They needed the stuff anyway.

Ripper Roo's ears perked when he heard a sharp whistle from behind him. He turned around to see Tawna, standing coyly with a TNT crate in her arms. She took her chance and chucked it right at him. This time he did have time to give a little humorous reaction, turning to look at nowhere in particular with a deadpan look on his face.

The blast sent the kangaroo smashing into a pillar, the same one Crash crashed into in fact. He slid down painfully and landed right next to Crash, who had only recently gained consciousness. The marsupial simply greeted the kangaroo before face planting on the floor again, a bit too tired to move.

Once again, the boo came floating out of the body, dazed by the power of the blast. Tawna realized what they needed to do in this situation.

"I'll get Ripper Roo away from the ghost! You deal with him! I can't hit something that adorable!" She yelled at Mario, who nodded in agreement. Boo's were pretty adorable when one thought about it.

Boorator spun around with stars circling his body. He shook himself back to normal to spot Tawna dragging away Ripper Roo by the tail, freezing in place when she was spotted.

"Oh no you don't!" He growled out, twirling around at high speed and launching himself at the bandicoot.

He forgot about the other Bandicoot, though. Crash had woken up, and with a spin, sent the boo pinballing around the museum.

Mario was waiting at the other side of the room, and when he noticed the boo coming at him, he gave it a swift kick and sent it back to Crash.

This went back and forth for a while, like an extremely bizarre form of pong. It kept going faster and faster and faster.

At some point, Crash failed to hit the boo, and winced painfully when he slammed into the pillar behind him. At this point the abuse was too much for the pillar to handle, and it broke apart into pieces, burying the ghost in rubble.

Tawna, Crash and Mario cheered at their apparent victory, congratulating each other with high fives and hugs between Crash and Tawna.

Behind them by the door, Ripper Roo slowly got up to his feet.

He was smashed into the wall by someone, specifically Coco, kicking the door open and slamming him with it. She didn't notice it as she, Luigi and Aku Aku ran into the building.

"Where's the boo!" Luigi asked, holding the makeshift poltergust in a threatening manner.

Tawna simply pointed at the pile of rubble, and the small ghost tail sticking out of it. Luigi let out a sigh of relief at that. The hard work was done for him.

"Is everyone alright?" Aku Aku asked.

Crash walked up to Ripper Roo, poking him in the head to check on him. The kangaroo giggled lazily, still dazed from the abuse he suffered. Crash nodded and gave the others a thumbs up. He was alright.

With that all out of the way, the group gathered around where the ghost was, Crash staying back to keep an eye on Roo. The boo was pulled out of the rubble, the dazed ghost trying to regain his bearings as he was held at vacuum point. "Ah, what do you want from!? If you want my credit card number, you're out of luck, I forgot the numbers on it!"

"We don't want your credit card. We want to know where your master is." The mask questioned the ghost.

"He's in the middle of the island! There's this giant door blocking the way! Please don't put me in the thing, I have a wife and kids!"

"You do?" Luigi pulled back the vacuum.

"Well, no, I'm still single."

With a deadpan look, Luigi activated the poltergust, sucking the boo inside. He twirled the thing around in his hand and stuffed in his pockets, dusting his hands off at a job well done.

"So he is at the center of the island, huh. Guess all we need is that key and we'll have a ghost king caught before the clock strikes midnight." Tawna said. When Aku and Coco nodded in agreement with her, she turned to look at Ripper Roo, only to notice something lying on his unconscious body. "What's that?"

That caught the others attention, and they all made their way to the kangaroo. It was a purple letter, which Luigi grabbed and began reading the contents.

Dear Luigi,

Did you miss me? I know I did it. I've been thinking of how your face will look like once I finally stuff you and all your little friends into paintings the entire time inside that old coot,s containment unit. Good times.

But I got out again! And guess what, I got your brother again. Now you know the drill. Come to me, I show you your brother, I stuff you and your weird, furry friends into paintings, I shove them down a woodchipper, I laugh, I party, and then I conquer this stupid island. Shouldn't be anything too complicated for you to do, especially with that dorky looking hand vacuum you got on you.

See you soon,

King Boo.

"Oh boy, this again." Luigi sighed. "Mario's been kidnapped."

"Over here bro." Mario said casually, startling his brother. He hadn't seen his brother for a short while, so the surprise was understandable.

"Oh, thank goodness. You always get kidnapped whenever King Boo escapes... Wait, then who did he kidnap?"

It was then that everyone finally took note of a certain presence being missing in this room. One with no voice, but who usually made himself known by some slapstick skit to lighten up the room, like doing a goofy dance, or mistaking the letter on the floor for a chip, eating it and choking on it like the last few times it happened.

"Where's Crash?"

"What in the name of heck is this thing?" King Boo complained, looking at the weird, furry thing he had grabbed instead of Mario. It was staring at him with a vacant look in its eye, as if it had absolutely no idea what was currently going on. Or ever.

Crash dumbly blinked, scratching his head as he looked around while floating in the air. He let out a very girly scream when he swiveled around face to face with King Boo, passing out from the terror, and capping off an excellent first impression with the king of boo's.

"Well, it certainly isn't Mario, but I feel he will still make for good bait for your plan, King Boo." Hellen reassured him. "Which reminds me, should I get the workers to set up the trap?"

"Mmm, yeah, you're right." The ghost king tossed the bandicoot off into a makeshift cage he made, sinking a perfect shot and slamming the poor marsupial face first into the bars. He had to chuckle to himself at that. "Heh, I think this is gonna be fun. Go ahead with the preparations. Chances are the green nerd and his friends are already on their way as we speak. And when he's here, sweet, sweet revenge will be mine!"

The clouds above the island merged together under King Boo's power, allowing for purple lightning to strike along his maniacal laughter.

Everything was going to go according to plan.

I'm gonna be taking a break from posting for this story until the New Year. I can use the spare time to work on the other chapters and make sure this doesn't happen again. I'm assuming the trouble came because of how the plans changed. This chapter they were supposed to be making way into the woods already. The Ripper Roo fight was for the previous chapter.

Have to make sure this doesn't happen again. Either way, please enjoy the holidays and have a safe rest of the year.