Paper John: Sticker Star
Chapter 2: Grasslands. And a Mountain
Beginning AN:
I would make a joke about this being the next chapter to something nobody asked for but the reason why I prioritized this above some other things was because I held a poll and basically, someone actually asked for it.
So Paper John: Sticker Star is no longer the crossover nobody asked for. Oh well.
If Nintendo announces a "traditional" Paper Mario game I'm tempted to cancel this completely as few if any of the "jokes" here even work. Then again the whole reason why I am saying this in the first place is because I honestly think it's not very likely, seeing as outside of Smash Bros. it feels kind of like Nintendo barely even aknowledges that Paper Mario existed pre-Sticker Star. Well, I see that "bet" as a win/win. If I'm wrong, it means everyone's getting a return to what I thought was a much better battle system and probably something with more character variety. If I'm right, it means this fan fic will stay relatively relevant.
The sun was out, the wind was blowing a gentle breeze, and of course the grass was green.
The mood was set for John Egbert's quest to gather the six Royal Stickers and keep them out of evil.
His initially quite pleasant walk through the grasslands came to an end when he began his way down a considerably darker, foggier forest path. According to Karkat, one of the Royal Stickers landed off by some rocks out in the ocean, and John knew from this area that the best way to get there was through the forest.
Unfortunately, that path was blocked by another troll. One sleeping right on the trail, and bordered by a near-impassably thick cluster of trees that was everywhere but the pathway going through.
Said troll wore a long, olive-green coat over a black shirt that displayed a Leo si- you know this is Nepeta. She was sleeping on the trail itself.
John walked up to her and lightly tried shaking her.
Then Karkat outright belted: "WHO ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU INCONVENIENTLY BLOCKING OUR PATH?!"
No response. She stayed asleep.
John shrugged.
"...FINE. There's two more Royal Stickers near by anyway. We can get them first."
Okay, that door leading in to the desert wasn't there before.
Whatever it was, it has icons of... grist on it. Yeah, six different types of grist.
"There's something I can show you, but we'll need the right grist stickers. So, forget it, we're going to the mountain."
The grasslands gave the group no trouble until John approached a bridge over a river.
After that happened, the duo were smacked by something flying at them at, like, mach sixty or something.
A troll with a bronz- Tavros. In some kind of orange rocket-car thi- the one from canon. That he used in Sgrub to fly around.
"HALT!" He said in a creaking voice. "I, um, am serving Jack Noir, the Holder of Wishes, the Bringer of the New Wave of Darkness! And you are officially, my enemy and everything!"
John just took his hammer out and gave Tavros a battle-ready look.
That already got him to sweat.
"Your death stare is very effective! I will be back! W-with an army! And that ARM-y! Will completely demolish you in to... bye!"
He sped off, his red rocket car thingy speeding past John and Karkat.
"...Moving. On." Karkat tried to stare in the distance to see where Tavros was heading. Just before the rocketing troll was sucked in to the horizon, he suddenly flew up.
"OH! WAIT!" Tavros's voice again. Sigh.
He flew back down and gave an intense stare at the bridge.
"WHAT IF I, BLOCK YOUR PASSAGE? TAKE THIS!"
He stuck both hands in to the air. Suddenly, the bridge itself - no, the very space around it - was pulled up, revealing a purple void 'beneath.'
"HA! Beat that, you... um, do-gooder heroes?"
Tavros threw the space-bridge thing (which crumpled up, because paper) over on a ledge, and flew off, leaving John and Karkat to just stare.
John walked over to the void-bridge and, as he did with a certain plot device in canon, tried reaching his hand in.
It did not give him story-breaking 'meta travel' powers. Instead, it just made a weird noise and pushed him back. Karkat sighed.
"I was saving this for late in the 'adventure,' when, you know, our 'bro levels' have obtained the maximum level of togethership and friendhood, but this is a situation where we NEED this. It's called Cut Ou- Paperization."
John wordlessly nodded.
"Grab the paper-bridge. It's called a 'Scrap' now."
Eh, Tavros did not really put it anywhere that difficult to get. John got it with no effort needed.
"Now do this."
A circle of light flashed around him... and, er...
Everything just kind of went flat. Well, flatter than usual - paper joke. John was pulled 'out' of the flat surface, seeing everything below him as just a rectangular post-card version of the previous immediate surroundings. And around that card was just some long expanse that slowly shifted color, going all around the entire spectrum.
"Put the scrap on that purple spot."
Okay, he did - rolling it out, smoothening everything...
And then the setting went back to normal. John stood by the bridge, which was now fully repaired.
"Thank fuck." Karkat said.
John barely even took one step before he was interrupted yet again.
"What do we even have here, Tavros warned me a fuckin' human would be trying to stop Jack but I wasn't prepared for this."
Eridan.
Holding some kind of awful wand-looking thing in one hand, and a flip-flop in another.
"Unlike Tavros, I don't run away." He said in his trademark wavy manner. "Give up now or I am going to do far worse than tear up a bridge."
"This is the part where you tear us in to shreds while you expect us to go down praying to new deities that we 'coincidentally' just started believing in when it became apparent that our old ones aren't 'good enough?' NO! That's not how this fight will happen!" Karkat jumped in to a prepared fighting stance. "Even if you aren't more pathetic than me and can put up a fight that would slaughter us both, we're not giving you the pleasure of hearing us quit! I hate, I do not give up. I will go down screaming even with my last breath, a cacophonic 'FUCK' of utter resistance to the utter culmination of my life! This entire time, BOTH of my hands will be permanently raised with their middle fingers extended, like daggers that will burn in to your retinas as my hate passes on to you from the grave!"
John, also starting to get prepared, nodded seriously.
"Stop flirting." Eridan said.
"John... I can't fight." Confessed Karkat. "You beat this asshole up with your stickers."
Ah, crap-
"Perfect. I can finally use my science wand to change the molecular structure of those stickers in to flip-flops."
Ah, fuck.
Okay, so he selected a hammer attack, and got ready and charge to Eridan-
And he got blasted by some kind of white shine magic. (Or, science, considering the fake-ness of magic.) Suddenly, the hammer sticker he equipped turned in to a flip-flop sticker, and the hammer he held turned in to... well, exactly what was on it. John found himself only able to slightly smack Eridan in the face, lightly, with the shoe.
But that was apparently enough.
"Ow! Okay, fuck! I wasn't expectin' you to to try hitting me with those! I'm leave-fin'!"
As he walked off, he uttered something to himself:
"Who the fuck even uses shoes to hit people anyway..."
The plains eventually gave away to a large mountain set. Tall, spiralling gray structures that thinking about it would actually be pretty epic to run around in a 3D Mario game.
More importantly, there was a fortress on top. One where trumpet sounds were playing.
"There." Karkat said, pointing the place to a tired-out John. "I can sense the first Royal Sticker."
John analyzed the mountain before turning back and giving Karkat a 'There? Okay...' look.
Karkat was almost huffing as he struggled to finish the climb's final few steps. John, too, was definitely dealing with his fair share of scratches, but Karkat in particular looked relatively more beaten than him.
What helped was that this was almost strictly a vertical climb.
"I... I have a lot of... training." He said. "I fight beasts all the time. Where... where I'm from, they have a saying. Your front is at the top of the food chain, but your back is at the bottom. It's... gritty. But... I never had to climb a titanic mountain before."
Against all odds, they made it to the top. Both parties panting, both of them looking at the fort up close now that they were actually standing among it:
The fortress's walls were a contrast, to say the least. Namely, the fortified brown cardboard walls that spoke fortification (naturally, given that it is a fortress), yet they were utterly covered in some kind of bright green paint. Especially showing smiley faces with... large, round noses.
"Is that... sopor slime?" Karkat asked.
A single honk played, echoing through the fortress.
Then a ton of Imps showed up. With a small handful of Ogres walking out too.
"...You have been collecting stickers as you climbed the mountain and went through the fields... right?" Karkat asked. "Remember, these monsters are immune to almost anything that isn't a sticker."
John nodded, and looked through his album-
Wow. That's pathetic. He frowned. Just some poor-jumps and hammers. Well, he selected one of the hammer stickers, went up to the enemy, and with all his might... hit an Ogre lightly, barely leaving a mark.
The enemies, on the other hand, each delt powerful blows; he guarded with all his might and barely left with his life intact.
"...You're dead, we should just give up, everything is pointless." Karkat said.
Then he acted like an astonishing idea came in to his head. "Wait, that's it! Give up! There is one last thing I can explain! ...Running away!"
John gave Karkat a look that indicated that that was a pretty stupid idea.
"No, running away almost always works! If you don't trip!"
Well, there were a lot of Imps and Ogres... and his inventory was really shitty...
Okay, what the hell. Just run away. And so John did, taking off in the distance, rushing backwards through the bridge.
"At least it smells like there are a lot of powerful stickers here." Karkat said. "We can... save going down the mountain for later."
John lightly tapped his out-of-battle hammer against a wall that looked like it was loose, and sure enough, it fell.
There was a cluster of stickers all over the wall there. Conveniently.
And they were oddly shiny.
"Hell yes, shiny stickers!" Karkat thankfully explained. "These stickers are more powerful! They are towering forces of hatred that accurately express my-"
John just started peeling them as fast as he could.
"YOU'RE TRYING TO GET OUT OF MY RAMBLING, AREN'T YOU?!"
John just shrugged and took off.
ALRIGHT. Time to fight the Ogres!
"Another thing! The Battle Spinner!" Karkat said.
He then explained the jist. Pay some coins, use two or three stickers. He managed to luck out and complete the roulette, giving himself three of them.
Oh, hey, this giant gray hammer-sticker looks interesting. A Hurlhammer, according to an offscreen conversation with Karkat. So, John threw it in the air-
The shockwave or the impacting hammer itself just took out every last one of them in one hit.
It also made the fortress shook, which did not go unnoticed by the fortress's apparent patron. John and Karkat both heard a honk.
"What the fuck?" And a voice.
And a blur lept out from the tallest tower and down to land on the same bridge. It was Gamzee, holding on to a trumphet and with a red crown atop his head. The crown, by the way, was something Karkat took notice of almost immediately.
"He has one of the Royal Stickers!" He cried. "FINALLY! John! Use that overpowered collection to tear it off his head!"
Alright!
ROYAL STICKER BOSS #1: GAMZEE MAKARA
After another successful Roulette (which also happened to heal him, as a bonus effect), John just plopped three of the strongest stickers in his entire arsonel together: a Big Flashy Jump, a Flashy Eekhammer, and what the heck, a Big Shiny Baahammer to put him to sleep. Gamzee barely even seemed focused.
A hard, firm jump, a number of powerful consecutive blows via one hammer, and another hammer that caused an erruption of sheep cries everywhere later, and Gamzee seemed to have been hit pretty badly.
"Oh! Ow! You're not taking this, motherfucker! Feel the wrath of the trumpet call of the Mirthful Messiahs!"
He flipped the fortress's trumpet around a few times, glaring at John the entire time. And John could swear that his eyes were getting redder.
"This sticker is mine..." Gamzee said in a borderline whisper. Then he yelled: "YOU'RE NOT LAYING YOUR MOTHERFUCKING HANDS ON IT!"
Staring blankly, Karkat just shook his head. "Who are you...?"
Gamzee readied his trumpet. "THE AGENT OF THE GODS! TAKE THIS!"
His trumpet fired an extremely powerful blast of pure sound. John guarded - which ultimately did little to keep the attack off in the long run. The attack still hit him so hard, in fact, that if one were to quantify his life, he would only be at about one hit point.
(Okay, so technically the blocking did not do 'little,' since it meant the difference between his life and his death.)
"Y-you should heal up!" Karkat said. "Use one of the mush-"
John knew how close Gamzee was to defeat. He ignored Karkat's word. Without even using the Battle Spinner another time, he picked one hammer sticker.
And glared the trumpet man down.
John rushed over to Gamzee as he barely had time to recover, charged up that ol' hammer, and just whacked. Hard.
"N-no...!" He said. "The shine of the gods! My... my messiah flash! The sticker! It's... gone!" He shouted.
"Gone..." Gamzee then whispered.
"GONE!" He roared.
Before collapsing on the ground, motionless. The Red Royal Sticker just popped off of his head, and both John and Karkat looked at him.
"...You know," Karkat said, "I should have also explained Things to you. Because you wasted a lot of stickers. Something like a pair of scissors could have worked a lot better on him. It could slice him in half or something. Oh, that trumpet is an example of a Thing. Pick it up."
Gamzee disappeared in a puff, leaving the Royal Sticker and the Trumpet 'Thing' behind.
John grabbed it. To avoid one annoying mechanic from Sticker Star, it instantly turned in to a card with its image on it.
Nodding, John also grabbed the Red Royal Sticker, bringing a quick end to 'World 1.'
Responses to Reviews:
Emeraldpichu: Thanks, it might start off as a joke but I promise this will use at least some "potential" in it. The first two chapters are probably the most "on-rails" in the story.
Closing AN:
Alright! One Royal Sticker down, five to go "already!" (Going by chapter count, there's no need for the quotes, but going by time in between updates, there is.)
And this is going on hold again. Twofold, in fact. First, I have a list of "updates" based on a poll, and next in line is the next chapter of the new Sweet Jade and Hella John. Which, admittedly, might be about as long as this yet at the same time still take as much time to overall finish because of my relatively low enthusiasm for the beginning. (Although things will go down a bit later. Kind of like with this story, but to a greater extent.)
Second, for some reason, I thought that my "Omegacrossover" Bobby Hill Gets Hit by a Car was actually slated for May or June, or that I forgot I even promised a hard date to begin with. I did remember that I promised it was the anniversary of my first-ever story on this site, The Eds' EDventure, but I forgot the exact date until it just snuck up on me. And... the way it stands, the current chapter is a trainwreck. But, in the past few days, I have been thinking about just starting it over in a slightly different way. The last time I did that with something that was not even published was Ordinarily United over on Fictionpress (oh look I'm shamelessly promoting that; if you want something less "boring" and more NSFW then read that, and despite saying it's NSFW I solemly swear that it's free, specifically in the sense that absolutely nothing about it is paywalled), and I can safetly say that I like OU as it stands now way more than I liked the old plan where it felt like it would have probably just been a Scott Pilgrim ripoff but with creepy people-eating Unitias. And yes, in one of the (many, many, but that's for OU) old plans originally the Unitias were going to flat-out eat human criminals on their debut. It's kind of amazing how their characters changed over all the plans, "starting off" as creepy little alien antagonists and then slowly becoming more heroic. Funny enough, in OU proper "becoming more heroic-"
I should stop talking about how much you should read Ordinarily United over on Fictionpress and instead talk about Bobby Hill Gets Hit by a Car. Right, soon (but not soon enough) I'll edit my profile to reflect this, but it will still be... let's just say a lot like how it would have originally been, just that instead of hopping from universe to universe from the beginning "everyone" is together at the same university. My biggest obstacle with BHGHBAC was introducing about two "franchises" (Cuphead and Undertale, it would have gone in the same order as the "teaser" I posted) in one chapter, but then trying to get the specific characters that would become the main "party." Anyway, with that sneaking up on me, new BHGHBAC will just be written in about a week (like EFFI's first chapter, which I thought was not completely terrible) and will still be out on the 18th. With "everyone" in the same setting in the first place, setting up the "gang" should be a lot easier and quicker.
Yes, this will also mean that the King of the Hill Omegacrossover I promised years ago will start out with a very short beginning. Probably not as short as a chapter of Sticker Star, but still. Although considering how bloated my chapters often get, this might be a "good" thing.
