Mario is heading over to Flipside. Peach, Luigi, and Bowser, meanwhile, aren't in as good a spot.
I do not own Super Paper Mario or any of its characters, nor am I making money from them. They are property of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
Before Mario knew it, he had arrived with Tippi into a strange location. The sky was of a pure golden color, with strange white etchings on the horizon, almost as if drawn there by a mysterious force. Mario looked at the ground and noticed it was solid white, and also saw seven door-shaped arches. He took a small breath and walked a few steps, his anger calmed by the Pixl who transported him. Soon, Mario noticed that the ground went down at an angle too steep for him to see, so he took a closer look. Upon looking down, the red-capped plumber saw small buildings beneath. They were of great variety, with shops, bed-and-breakfasts, a fortune-telling place as Mario guessed by the crystal ball symbols etched on it, and a house. It was odd-looking, as it was colored with a mix of dark blue and green, with multiple star symbols etched on the walls. Mario wondered who could possibly own that house.
"Oh ho!"
Mario gasped in fright at the grand voice and immediately turned around to see an old sagely man. He possessed a blue cloak that completely hid his features aside from a massive white mustache that put even Mario's own mustache to shame. It went down almost to the ground, yet kept straight and unmangled, with a luminous shine.
"How does he keep his mustache so fine when it's almost down to the ground?" Mario remembered when he attempted to grow a mustache that long. That was during the awkward phase of kidnappings 12-15. Back when Mario wore a weird-looking tanooki suit and whipped foes with his tail. He was trying to find his hero identity back then. "It's almost as if he's…"
"Magic, hmm?" the man answered
Mario was startled again, even more so than before. This man read his thoughts before the plumber could even fully form them. He must have indeed been magic. After regaining his breath, Mario said sarcastically "Sneaking up behind people and laughing might not be the best way to introduce yourself."
"Oh my apologies." the old man responded, seeming genuine.
"This is Mario," Tippi said to the old man, introducing the red plumber. "He matches the description of the hero perfectly."
"Hold on, hero?" Mario began to question. He knew he was a hero, and a good one, but he didn't think he was the hero of anything outside of his dimension, which this clearly was.
"Indeed. Mario… your unmistakable red shirt, blue overalls, cap and magnificent 'stache all point to you being the hero of the Light Prognosticus!"
Mario immediately had some questions. What was the Light Prognosticus? Did it relate to the Dark Prognosticus or be used to stop it and Bleck? Why was he the hero of this prophecy? However, he stayed silent, assuming the mustached man would answer these questions and more without Mario actually asking them.
"I welcome you Mario. I am Merlon, a sage and descendant of the Ancients. This is the town of Flipside. The town is a dimension that is really no dimension at all. It is between dimensions! We are currently on top of Flipside's tower." Mario looked around again and felt stupid for not realizing it was a tower earlier. "I study the Light Prognosticus and other powerful ancient texts to forestall the end of all worlds." Merlon talked about the town and its history for a while, and Mario made sure to listen intently
Meanwhile…
"…" Princess Peach could feel herself finally waking up, and for a second thought that the events that had transpired just earlier had all been a terrifying dream.
"Bleh heh heh heh! So you finally awake, princess?"
Peach fully opened her eyes, and noticed she was in some weird wedding chapel, with flowers and ribbons decorating the altar. There was only solid white on the ground, no grass or lava or anything like that. "Wait…" Peach realized she was right at the altar, in a flowery white dress, and felt her hair done in a ponytail. It was as if she was the one getting married. At the other end of the altar was… Bowser?!
Suddenly Peach noticed all of the minions that were in Bowser's Castle cheering on the Koopa King at the other end of the altar. There were thousands of them, giving off their respect and admiration for the mighty king, though Peach seemed a bit puzzled about what the cheering was for-unless Bleck wanted to…
Suddenly other being materialized in the area next to Count Bleck, who was floating above Peach and Bowser. She wore business attire and rather severe spectacles, giving off that she was a no-nonsense woman, not someone Peach would be fond of. She had blue skin and purple hair rolled back in a bun. "Yeah, um 'k count. So preparations are complete." Bleck's assistant said in business-like monotone that furthered Peach's distaste for her.
"Then it shall be begun, by Count Bleck!" Bleck responded. Bells rang as Bleck gave a wedding speech. "Bowser… ferocious and fearsome, evil king of the koopas, do you take Peach to be your lawfully wedded wife 'til your games be over?"
"Bwah ha ha. Will I marry Peach? Are you kidding me? The answer's YEEESSS!" Bowser rang out joyously. Bleck then turned to the other end of the altar. "Peach, noble princess, fair of heart, do you take Bowser to be your lawfully wedded husband 'til your games be over?"
"What?" Peach asked, fumbling through words. "Why in the world am I marrying… Bowser?"
"Come on Peach," Bowser pleaded, desperately trying to get her to marry him. "I don't get the details, but the count here has gone through a lot of trouble planning this. Just relax and we'll be married. You'll be a queen, and it'll be awesome."
"NO!" Peach yelled, uncaring about Bowser's pleading. Adding insult to injury, she stated "and who picked this dress out? It's awful!" Suddenly, Bleck's assistant lowered her glasses and Peach was on the ground, her mind being warped.
"Yeah um, being rude to the esteemed count is sort of frowned on, 'k?
"Nnngh"
"Now Peach, I'm gonna need to answer the count now. Do you, Peach, take Bowser to be your wedded husband 'til your games be over?"
Peach was going to say a strong "NO!", and felt it right on the tip of her tongue. That business lady though, was warping her mind, forcing her to say what she wanted. Before the mind-control, Peach didn't know if it was possible to hate her more, but now she did. Eventually, the thoughts of "NO" faded out of her mind entirely, replaced with a phrase she never thought she'd utter in front of Bowser. At first she tried to fight it, but slowly she began to yearn for that special life-changing phrase. Her mind was growing accustomed to the word, and finally, after what seemed like an hour to her but was really only a few seconds, she gave the word at last.
"I do"
Bowser was overjoyed, even if Peach was under mind-control. He was so sure she'd learn to love him and respect him as a wife does to a husband. He had spent so many kidnappings… 57 to be exact, for this ultimate goal. Sure he did want power and control over both the Mushroom Kingdom and the Koopa Kingdom, but he also wanted her. She was beautiful, intelligent, and good at cooking. Bowser felt that there was nothing that could ruin his perfect day.
Suddenly, the ground began to shake, and energy waves came out from the white altar.
"Wh-What?!" Bowser stammered.
A black heart began to slowly rise from the altar. Bowser got chills from its presence. Its sheer power was overwhelming, shaking the wedding chapel and surpassing even that of the Star Rod. The darkness radiating from the heart gave even the mighty Koopa King a hint of fear, and many minions outright fainted. It felt completely alien, having a strange aura to its power that Bowser couldn't quite place. If there was anything that was like it, it would be the force in Bleck's own cape. The Nothingness.
Suddenly Bowser remembered being pulled through dimensions into the monstrous Nothing. It felt completely soulless and sterile, as Bowser figured Nothingness should. However, there was also a strange evil presence. It was more subtle, barely a whisper in the yells of the Nothingness, but it was there. Bowser remembered feeling the most vile thing that ever was, is, and will be assaulting his senses once he caught on to its presence. It was like a cockroach in the eyes of a lady, small and barely noticeable, but terrifying if discovered. This heart had all the malevolence.
"Bleh heh heh heh heh! Precisely as written in the Dark Prognosticus. Already it is unleashed, the Chaos Heart!"
As Bowser was intoxicated by the sheer power and evilness of the Chaos Heart, he felt an all-too-familiar sensation on his head. The green-clad plumber was apparently there too and just stomped on him before landing on the heart. As Bowser recovered from the blow to his cranium, he noticed that the heart began to pulsate.
"Here's where Luigi rescues Princess Peach," Luigi said confidently, annoying the Koopa King with his limitless tenacity, but not distracting him from the Chaos Heart, which rose further into the air and at Bleck. Bleck wasted no time in bringing it to him, merging with the foul thing. The shaking increased, and Bleck began to laugh harder.
"Bleh heh heh heh heeeh. Bleh heh heh heh heeeeh! Bleck!"
Then everything went black.
…
As Merlon was talking to Mario about the history of the Flipside shops, the sky opened up, and a dark purple vortex came out.
"Is that normal?" Mario asked Merlon, whom he could tell was horrified even without seeing his face.
"That… is the Void."
"The Void?"
"Yes, it is a hole in the very dimensional fabric of space. It may appear small now, but it will only grow bigger and more powerful. Eventually, it will grow powerful enough to erase whole dimensions. Not one world will be spared from its hunger."
"So this is how Bleck will end the world?"
"According to the Light Prognosticus," Merlon cleared his throat "'A fair and lovely princess… A furious monster king… The union of these two will call forth the Chaos Heart, the consumer of worlds, and the Chaos Heart will ravage the sky, and so bring forth the Void.'"
"Oh that must be why he needed Peach and Bowser." Mario realized. "Wait, does this mean he married them?" Mario's eyes opened wide in horror.
"Well, yes." Merlon matter-of-factly stated, before continuing on as if nothing happened. "Where was I" he asked to himself. "Ah yes, 'The Void will swallow all. Naught can stop it… unless the one protected by the dark power is destroyed. The hero with the power of eight Pure Hearts will rise to the task' so it is written."
"The Pure Hearts, where can we get them?" asked Mario.
"Well I happen to have one right here," the old man answered as a heart of red and pink color floated a few feet upwards from him. The presence of the heart felt calming, yet empowering. Mario could look into the red heart and see mercy and hope. "Now Mario," Merlon said, "The prophecy said that the hero wields a mighty hammer. Do you possess one?
"Yes" Mario said while taking out his Ultra Hammer, which somehow fit in his overalls despite being over half as tall as Mario himself and the head being bigger than Mario's own head.
"The red middle covered by yellow on the sides?" Merlon exclaimed in awe. "Just as was written in the Light Prognosticus. You are the hero of legend! Take this and save all worlds Mario!" referring to the Pure Heart. "You are our very last soap!"
"Huh?" asked Tippi and Mario
"Hope!" Merlon corrected. "Our very last hope!"
Feeling powerful and confident with the heart nearby, as well as just his own natural heroism, prompted him to say boldly…
"Yes, I will!"
"Excellent!" Merlon directed the Pure Heart to Mario, who put it in his overalls despite it being almost the size of him.
"Now Mario, you must place this Pure Heart in the Heart Pillar in the town. Tippi will lead you there." Merlon gestured to the butterfly, who gave off a gesture as close to nodding as you could get when you were a rainbow butterfly.
"This way, she said as she led Mario to the tower's elevator. They took it down and got to the second floor, where the buildings Mario saw earlier were. Tippi sped towards what looked like another elevator, and Mario followed quickly, dodging the citizens of the town, who had strange multicolored skin tones, some yellow, some blue, some green, and blocky faces. After jumping over a guy and attracting the stares of the populace, Mario finally made it to the elevator. He entered alongside Tippi and went up to the third floor.
"You could go a little slower." Mario said somewhat sarcastically to Tippi.
"Sorry, I'm just really excited to do this," the Pixl responded in a frenzy.
Mario could see more of the town's citizens on the third floor. They weren't as shocked by Mario. They were more concerned over the Void in the sky, as they could see it much more clearly than the people on the second floor due to the lack of buildings.
"What do you think it's…" Mario heard passing a townsfolk, not able to hear the rest of the sentence due to the speed he and Tippi were going, which while not as fast as that on the second floor, was still too fast to really tell what exactly people were saying.
Finally, Mario got to a white pillar with a heart-shaped hole that Mario assumed was the Heart Pillar Merlon mentioned. As he got closer the heart began to pulse wildly in his overalls, and when he got close enough, the heart sprang out and entered the pillar, the heart's red energies flowing through the pillar and into Flipside Tower. Mario wondered at first what was happening, and jumped on top of the pillar to get a better view. He saw the energies flowed into one of the door arches, creating a door of the same color filling it in. Mario could tell, even without being told by Merlon or Tippi, that he would need to enter that door. It was just hero's intuition.
Mario returned to the tower and found Merlon.
"Let me guess, I gotta go through the door." Mario said to the man once he got in earshot.
"Good senses, Mario. This is a dimensional door," Merlon said looking at the door, which Mario now noticed was dark red with light red markings in the center square, and light red with dark red markings outside of it, with a solid dark red edge. "Somewhere beyond this door lies one of the seven other Pure Hearts. Tippi will accompany you and use her powers to aid you on your journey."
"Right" Tippi said.
"I also have this" Merlon said to Mario, handing Mario a strange small pipe. It was purely red at the stem but had a mix of red and white at the head like a candy cane.
"With this, you can return to Flipside from anywhere in the universe! Use wisely though, you can't go back to where you were when you used it."
"Got it." Mario responded.
"Now to save all worlds!" Merlon yelled as the door opened. A shiny red portal was within it, likely to take Mario to the dimension he needed to go.
"Let's-a-go!" Mario pumped his fist in the air, then stepped into the portal, ready to begin his adventure.
Meanwhile at Castle Bleck...
Bleck stood in a mysterious black room. The walls were black, the floor was black, the platforms were black with white outlines on the edges. The only things that showed any color were Bleck himself and his loyal minions. Bleck stood on a high-floating platform with his assistant, Nastasia, to his right on a slightly lower platform.
Facing Bleck, and closer to the door that led to the room, were Bleck's mightiest minions. A tall, burly, Bowser-sized man stood at the top floating platform other than Bleck's and Nastasia's. He was bald but had big brown eyebrows and a massive beard on his chin. He wore a brown tank top with brown fingerless gloves and red boots. Clearly he was not to be messed with.
On a lower platform was a less-intimidating character. He looked like a jester, having big yellow and purple frills on his upper body. On his head he wore even bigger ones with the three larger purple ones on the center and edges respectively, and the smaller yellow ones in between those. He wore a half-black, half-white mask that seemed to have its own expressions, given its eyes, yellow on the black side, black on the white, visibly blinked. The rest of his form was entirely black, almost camouflaging him within the castle walls. He also had a perpetual yellow smile on his mask that was almost as creepy as Bleck's own.
"Bleh heh heh heh! Bleck! The Void has been ripped in the dimensional fabric! Count Bleck is pleased. All has gone as foretold in the Dark Prognosticus. Now it's just a matter of time until all worlds meet their demise. Bleck!"
"Wow, that's just super, Count!" the burly man replied with a slight accent. "Yeah, first you'll erase all these naughty worlds, and then you're gonna build a perfect world without war and all that other icky stuff."
"Yes, yes, no one likes the icky stuff," the jester said to the muscled man with a high-pitched, shimmering voice. "A perfect world sounds magical," the jester's voice slowly faded as he said the sentence, almost like an echo. "Ah ha ha," the jester laughed.
"Sorry I'm late!" someone yelled out with a much stronger version of the burly man's accent. He entered the door in a rush and he… was the burly man. Now there were two of the same person in the room, with the second one occupying the middle platform. The second did not let this escape his notice. "What in blazin' bog rats? How'd I beat meself 'ere? What's goin' on?"
'Mimimimimimimiiii" the first responded, voice losing all similarities to the second one's and sounding more like a teenage girl, unnatural-sounding for someone who looked like that. "Oh, O'Chunks, you big silly. Did you oversleep or something?" Suddenly, the first vanished in a purple smoke and out came a duplicate of Count Bleck. "I guess it's kinda hard to be on time though, when you've got muscles instead of brains." Her voice stayed the same, not changing to that of Bleck's.
"Eh!" the second, and true, O'Chunks yelled. "Yeh can't fool me wit' that shape-shiftin' tomfoolery! It's Mimi innit? Show a little respect for the count. Yeh can't go a-borrowin' 'is face lass!"
"How delightful Mimi. Almost as dapper… as Count Bleck." Bleck said clearly amused or flattered as opposed to angry like O'Chunks.
"Aww, thanks count." Mimi sweetly said as she suddenly changed forms again, showing a duplicate of Peach. "Hanging out with you is my idea of a perfect world."
"And here I thought Mimi's ideal world was a gem-filled pool with hunky lifeguards." The jester spoke, confusing Bleck and O'Chunks.
"Hey Dimentio, have you been reading my diary?!" Mimi yelled, changing her form and voice to that of Bowser to sound more intimidating. She realized within a second or so that she accidentally revealed her diary to the rest. "Uh, never mind." she said weakly, still with Bowser's voice.
"Remember minions, after these rotten worlds are ended, Count Bleck will make all your dreams come true." Bleck said, ignoring Mimi's reveal of her diary. "But for that to happen, we must follow the instructions of the Dark Prognosticus." Bleck then took a dark book out of his cape. The book's cover had a diamond-shaped line which started red and gradually faded to blue as it went down, much like the Count's cape. It was the Dark Prognosticus he had spoken of!
Nastasia, the one who hypnotized Peach, spoke for the first time in the meeting.
"Yeah about that, just an FYI. I got an urgent memo for your inbox," she informed Bleck in her usual monotone. "Apparently there's been some unapproved inter-dimensional activity lately. Yeah I'm thinking it's the hero of prophecy. We're gonna need an action plan for this guy."
"A dimensional interloper?! Possibly the hero?! Are you sure of it Nastasia?" Bleck asked with a hint of surprise but no major concern. "We shall put an end to this nuisance at once!" stated Bleck surely, affirming to his minions that he was in control.
"Wait, e' minute. This 'ero guy. He yer enemy?" O'Chunks interrupted.
"Well… Count Bleck does not know who he truly is."
"Red cap, blue overalls, fine mustache." Nastasia clarified to Bleck.
"'Dang it!' exclaimed Count Bleck," yelled Count Bleck as if he were directly reading from a book. The minions' took expressions of surprise, except the jester, who had the same creepy smile he always had. "Count Bleck had him at one point, but did not know he was the hero to oppose us!"
"Ooh, how unfortunate. Ah ha ha." the jester said in response.
"Don't worry Count. I'll 'andle this if yeh cut me loose on 'im." O'Chunks interrupted, flexing his muscles to show his raw strength.
"Very well, O'Chunks. I'll leave the hero-chunking to you. Do not fail Count Bleck," said the count to his thick-accented minion.
"Yeh can count on me." O'Chunks then turned to his fellow minions. "Yeh should tag along. Yeh could witness a proper chunkin'." O'Chunks then jumps off of his platform and exits the room. The jester, apparently wanting to see a chunking, exited the room as well, through sucking in energy in a cube around him and warping out. Then, the energy snapped back into the room with a satisfying ziiing.
"So hero… You would defy Count Bleck? Then hurry, for your world's end draws near." Bleck had confidence, as he had powerful minions and weapons, plus the Chaos Heart. He figured no one could stop his omnicidal plans.
"Bleh heh heh heh! Bleck!"