Chapter 9: A Flash in the Waves
I was inside of the Aqua Palace, the battle with the water imbued Underchomp now removed from my thoughts as I tread the dark-blue tile floors. I didn't know just how much time I would have until the walls of water came crashing down, but that feeling of uncertainty once again brought on a sense of urgency within me. "Now, if I remember correctly…" I looked to the left, noticing a crevice in the wall that lead to a passageway behind it. I could easily slip through, but there was something I wished to check out first. I walked to the edge and looked downward. There was a pit receiving a steady supply of water from the pipes, the depths of the pool looking as though it went on forever.
I knew better though from my previous travels, disregarding the illusion of the endless abyss that the singular colored environment tried to cast onto me and lifting my head up to turn it towards the crevice. In there was a block with a Frog Suit, which would honestly make the swim much easier to deal with. Of course, I had no way of knowing whether the costume would work with me. I never had a chance to try any of them out during my short time on Plit, and I'd rather not risk something happening to me. Not to mention the passage could be booby-trapped.
"Oh wait!" I snapped my fingers, berating myself in my head for my lack of insight into the situation. "Why do I need to swim? I could just do this!" I recall Mario pulling a metal lever at the bottom of the pit, and with a single thought I summon forth a vine from the ground in proximity of the device. I cause it to rise a couple inches before I decide to give it the command to arch towards the curved tip, but suddenly my connection to the plant is lost. With my right arm still raised in the air, I wiggle the fingers around in hopes for my link to be re-established, curling my lips in bewilderment and then frowning in frustration as nothing changes.
After a few furious wiggles I lean forward and glare into the water in anger, stamping my foot down and cursing to myself, "Useless ass plant powers!" Of course, my outburst leads into a sudden calm as I rationalize what may have happened to the vine I summoned. "Either it was the undersea wildlife or perhaps…" I murmured to myself, pausing in place and thinking with my left hand rubbing my chin before I take a cautious step towards the edge of the floor and kneeling down to peak through the murky depths. Though it was faint, I could see something rotating rapidly at the bottom.
"Ah, so there are a couple of razor blades down there." I noted, straightening my lips out and sighing as I lifted myself up and began to think about how to deal with this nuisance. "I just need to stop one of them to get to the lever, but how is the question…" I pictured two scenarios in my head. One where I repeatedly summoned vines from the ground until the sliced up portions are dragged in and jam up the blades, or another one where I summoned a really thick, hard piece of wood from the ground to jam the blades. Both had a chance of working, but what would it cost me to get either done was the next thing I had to ask myself.
The vines would save me time, but I could end up draining a lot of energy if it doesn't work. The wood had the best chance of working, but would take more time to solidify its form into reality. So it was really a matter of "Time vs. Energy." And really, the answer to that was simple. I didn't want to be low on energy when I went to the fight the inner guardian, and I had already used a decent amount fighting the outer one. So I raised my arms into the air and swerved my hands to the left and right respectively so the palm were pointed towards the center of my body.
I moved them in such a way that it looked like I was unscrewing the lid off of a massive pickle jar. Down near the razor blades the outline of the wood I wished to create swirled around multiple times until it was the proper size, at which point I snapped my right fingers and caused the wood to solidify. It dropped thanks to gravity, planting itself in the ground and causing the razor blades closest to it to stick right into the bark. With the thickness I gave it, there was no way for the blade to cut through, and after seconds of effort it becomes too much for it to handle and it breaks off.
So after that effort of mine I quickly summoned another vine and pulled the lever, because I've already wasted about a page of narration detailing the act of pulling a simple lever! The device causes a metal grate to slide open, draining a huge amount of water en masse before it seals itself and the pipes near where I'm at start to pump less liquid into the pit to keep the current level of the pool sustained. This action of mine revealed a few platforms to the next area, all of which I leapt down in a matter of seconds and made it to a wooden bridge that would lead me to a new passageway.
It was weird crossing the platforms without the fountains spraying water to make the traversing of them harder, but I theorized that the reason for this was because with my powers I could clog the fountains, thus nullifying the "threat" they posed to me. As I walked towards the passageway, I felt the bridge below me beginning to wobble uncontrollably. I kept myself stable by swaying my arms around, but noticed rather quickly that the bridge was retracting into the slot it popped out from. I ran to the other side, especially since its withdrawal would make it difficult for me to get to the passage.
As I entered said passage I made sure not to look behind me, since there was nothing of importance for me to note…And as I thought that, I heard the whirring of energy being built up, the noise causing me to turn my head around and watch as the circular platforms spun themselves towards the edge where the bridge used to extend out from and fired out a series of pure red lasers right at it. All of them collided together in a blinding flash of crimson, the field of detonation spreading partway into the passageway and successfully managing to knock me onto my back even as I brace myself with my arms raised in front of my tilted head.
The impact with the hard floor was painful, but it gave me an important reminder about the differences between this temple and the one in my memory. I got on my feet in a span of fifteen seconds, dealing with the throbbing of my back muscles with a grunt and a curved stretch. I patted the right side of my jeans, my weapon still in place despite all that has occurred. I do admit I was feeling rather paranoid about losing it, the uncertainty grasping me like the vines I could call forth in an instant. Of course, if there is one thing I can say for certain, is that I am really dutiful when it comes to keeping track of and holding onto my possessions.
It would take something really powerful to wrench my whip from my body, and with a happy chuckle I turned around, forgot about the events that transpired, and made my way to the end of the passageway without running into anymore obstacles. The room I entered had a major change to it that I noticed immediately. Floating on the surface of a shallow pond wa grid of stainless steel mines, the center mine replaced with a small platform that had a button on a pedestal, which was protected by a barrier of unknown energy.
I recall the previous solution to this puzzle, which involved following which mines the water on the ceiling dripped onto and stepping on them to press a button that would open the door on the other side of the room. However, there were no drops to be found, meaning the hint system had been removed. That was rather nerve-wracking, since the consequence of failing to notice the right path was to have your entire body splattered across the room thanks to a mine's explosion. As the gruesome image of that scenario happening to me enters my head, I feel an unnerving chill pass through my nerves as I held my arms to my chest and shivered at the thought.
After that, I overlooked the minefield and took something into consideration after analyzed the entire setup. It looked as though I didn't have to cross a path to reach the button and get to the other side now, but instead touch a certain pattern in the mines in order to dispel the barrier around the button. It was times like this I wish I didn't curse my powers earlier, since now I would be able to use them to summon gentle leaves to test them on each mine until I get a right answer. That does sound a reckless strategy at first glance, but I wasn't about to go in all willy-nilly after what happened with the platforms and the bridge just a few seconds ago.
What would the pattern be though? It had to be something that represented the theme of the temple, but could be visible on the minefield. I folded my arms to deepen my level of concentration, and with this simple action the solution came to me in a matter of seconds. The pattern I needed to create on the minefield was the very thing that was missing since the last time I was here. I held my right hand out and snapped my fingers. A small leaf appeared on top of the middle mine on the top row, which radiates with a light-blue glow upon contact. I smiled, especially when after a few moments of silence the mine didn't explode.
I snapped my fingers in rapid succession, the next two leaves appearing on top of the mines to the bottom left and right of the first one. The pattern of leaves goes diagonally for three rows, at which point I just duplicate the position of the leaves on the next row and start going inward until the last row, at which point I just put three leaves onto the center mines to finish things off. The final product looks like a droplet, and it seems as though my solution is acceptable to the mines, which glow on and off across the nine rows until the metal plates below the pond creak open and deposit both the waters and the mines into a massive pit.
After some blast doors seal off the ensuing explosions, the barrier surrounding the switch vanishes. I walk across the metal door and press the button with a light touch, walking past it as the door on the other side of the room opens up. I move past it, entering a luxurious room where a small staircase leads to a winged altar where a cascading waterfall creates a thin lake that surrounds the holy relic. Of course, the beauty is somewhat mitigated by the deep-blue hue that still covered the temple's insides. I walk down the staircase, reaching the altar in record time and dipping my hand into the cupped altar.
As the cold water tickles my skin, I reach for a lever and give it a light tug to the right. Suddenly, I felt a tremor coming from the main room behind me, and in a matter of seconds the beautiful waterfall stop flowing. I wait for the sensation to subside, and at that point I pull my hand out and shake it around to dry it off a bit. Satisfied with its current condition, I dip it into my pants pocket and turn towards the way I came in, tilting my head in caution as I think to myself, "I wonder if the platforms will try to blast me as I leave…"
I rubbed the backside of my left hand against my chin, going "Nah!" to dispel my belief of what could happen to me. After all, if push comes to shove I'll just sprint out of the passage and land on the platforms that'll take me to the final room. So I began my journey back to that point with no difficulty, and once I made it close to the end I dashed outward and leapt past the edge of the platform, landing on one of the circular platforms without slipping up in the slightest. "Alright, now that I'm here…" As I say that I start to think about the one thing that will be important to me soon enough.
And that is who the identity of the inner guardian will be. Mr. Reality revealed it as clear as day, that the inner guardians were the very friends that had traveled with me once before. The question is, which one of them would fit the water element? I could only think of one, but he would be better suited for guardian the Sky Temple, not the Aqua Palace. As I leapt down onto the platform that led into the final passageway, I wracked my mind trying to determine who I would be fighting. The path I traversed felt a bit cramped, but it was nothing that I wasn't already aware of existing, so the feeling didn't annoy me in the slightest.
At the end of the passage is a expansive room with an ankle deep pond filled with lily pads. At the end of the room is a three-tired water fountain that released a steady stream of liquid that flowed over the cupped segments into the pond. In any other situation, this environment would make for a rather peaceful relaxation zone. However, with Mr. Reality's adjustments this place was going to be a battlefield for my opponent and I. Each step I took was probably a signal for the guardian to leap out from nowhere and strike. That's what happened with Driad anyways…
I approached the fountain with my whip in the grasp of my hand. At the top there should be an energy reserve similar to the one I found in the throne of the Nature Castle. It was when I was only two feet away from a proper leaping point that a large portion of the ceiling pulls back, and two streams of water thrust down and smash into the pond, sending a consistent amount of ripples across the surface that raise the water between my feet and kneecaps. A gentle mist blew into my face as a figure descending from the newly made hole with the water gushing from their extended palms.
The person was tall and slender, clad in a strange garb where half of the clothing consisted of sapphire overalls and a hat along with a silver-blue shirt, while the other side had black overalls and a green shirt. The two sides were separated by stitches, which even extended onto the skin of his face. Speaking of his face, there was a bandanna attached to the right side of it, which made his eye look completely white. The hat he wore had a sapphire "L" on one side, and a reversed green "L" on the other.
Despite his mismatched appearance, I knew who it was right away. It was Luigi, the cowardly yet sometimes brave brother of Mario, and the person who was infamously known as the "man in green" Mr. L. His outfit blended together both images I had known him as, while at the same time showing traits of the element that he had control over. As he descended past the level of the ceiling he started to move forward, the tattered cape on his back flying backwards as I noticed that his eyelids were shut tight.
I backed away from where he was going to land, and when his body landed on the surface of the pond like a spirit hovering menacingly above the mortal plane he thrust his eyelids open. He had the same yellow eyes that Driad did, but at least his looked more natural compared to the ones that he had. Still, I never expected Luigi to be here, since he seemed more like a guardian for the Lightning Palace. Then again, there was another member of our merry group who was more adapt to the element, so I guess Luigi just got the short end of the stick once more and was made the guardian of the last element that he could possibly been allowed to have.
Though this does bring a problem, since despite gaining control over the water, he probably was able to use the Thunderhand too, which would prove troublesome when combined together. For now though, I had to face the "Shadow's" verbal onslaught. Luigi rested his left arm against the side of his body, letting out a melancholy sigh as he shifted his eyes towards me and began to frown on the left side of his face while the right side raised the lips up into a grin. "Hey…It is nice to see you again, I guess…" The left side said in an uninspired tone of voice.
The right side continued to be silent, giving me that obnoxious grin alongside its glazed stare. The "Shadow" looks at me, and continues to speak. "You know, I really wish you wouldn't have returned. Everything was fine while you were gone. I was starting to get more respect from the people, and it even looked like I was emerging from my brother's shadow all on my own. But now you, the almighty Elemental Overlord, have come back to ruin all that for me. …Why does this keep happening? Every time I want something, there is always an obstacle that gets in my way. I wanted Daisy for myself, and my cowardice and self-esteem issues made it difficult to even look her in the eyes. I wanted respect, but my bro's popularity proved difficult to overcome. And now I want to be this planet's protector using nothing more than my own brains and strength, and you just happen to come back at this very moment to do that yourself! Well you know what? I am sick of being the butt of the jokes, I am sick of putting on an act of acceptance every time I'm mistreated, and I'm sick and tired of having to deal with a new problem every time I want to do anything important with myself in life! You are an obstacle to me Overlord, and I'm going to take my own destiny into the grasp of my hands and conquer you to finally give myself some well-deserved satisfaction!"
It was easy to see what Luigi's "Shadow" was expressing. Deep down, Luigi always hated being the second-fiddle, and it seemed that no matter what he felt that something was going to keep him in that position for the rest of his life. I was just the latest in a series of problems in his life, and he was going to use all of his pain against me whether I liked it or not. But his explanation didn't provide and answer as to why the silent right side of Luigi's body looks like Mr. L. In all honesty though, I wasn't expecting an answer to that question to come from anyone. I just looked at Luigi's "Shadow" head-on and position my legs in such a way that I will be able to easily charge forth when the man in green makes his first move. With lily pads set up on the pond, both of us already had a bit of each element prepared for our battle…
The Two-Sided Puppet of Fate: Shadow Luigi
Luigi leaps at me, throwing his left hand outward and firing a torrent of water at me. I curve my body in the opposite direction of the liquid, which rubs against my shoulder and releases a high amount of heat into my skin. I flinch from feeling it, but I quickly realize that instead of using the Thunderhand he is using the electricity to super-heat the water against me. At least I won't be insta-killed by being hit by the water now. So I don't have to be AS cautious. Still, pressurized water can blow a hole right through me, so I was still going to be wary of those type of moves.
The next thing Luigi did was fall to the ground and slam his left palm against the water. Circular ripples flowed across the surface until it was beneath me. I knew what was going to happen, and instinctively jumped to the right, slamming my whip straight into the wall to suspend myself in place as a geyser erupted from the water and went right into the ceiling. The collision caused droplets to rain around, some of them hitting my skin and sizzling for a second before they left in the form of miniature stacks of smoke.
I kicked myself off of the wall, somersaulting across the pond with no regard to the moisture that will stick to my body. While I'm rolling I use my powers to lift three lily pads off the ground, spawning unnatural spikes around the edges and flinging it at Luigi while he is still kneeled onto the ground. He lifts his head up and lifts his right arm into the air to make the water explode three times in rapid succession, each one stronger than the last, in order to knock the lily pads out of their flight patterns and collide up into the ceiling.
But I used the distraction brought on by his focus in the attack to get on my feet and fling my whip straight through the rain brought on by the bursts, the metal front of the weapon impacting with Luigi's slender gut and sending him recoiling through the air into the front dish of the lowest tier on the fountain. His body arches backwards, and he falls to the ground after a few seconds of suspended animation. He doesn't land on his face though, but on his knees. There he gets up with great tenacity and runs at me like a flash.
His rapid movements were recorded across the surface of the pond, each individual ripple being watched by me until the moment he is but a foot away, at which point I stamp my foot into the water and summon a wall of vines around me that block his thrown punch. Water swirls out of his knuckles and tries to strike at me through the cracks in the form of super-heated needles, but I duck below them and drop my guard. From behind the protection of the vines I had holstered my weapon and prepared a swirling green energy sphere in the palm that I flung into Luigi's gut with great vigor.
The released energy has an aftereffect that hits Luigi's legs with the force of a million leaves, his arms with the strength of one hundred flowers, and his chest with the brute girth of a giant tree. All three blows hit simultaneously, but the damage is surprisingly not noticed by Luigi's "Shadow" who is blow backwards across the water while remaining on his feet. The waves brought up by his feet gliding across the water splash against both walls in the room, dampening them halfway. Luigi then swings his hands towards the walls, the droplets peeling off of them so they could be flung towards me as projectiles.
The bullet storm of raindrops was impossible to avoid, the heat inside of them singing my skin with each successfully connected hit as I swung my whip around and raised the lily pads in self-defense. A few bullets punctured through the flattened water-based plants, but that only elicited a momentary, flinched gaze over to them before I resumed focus on the battle. To my surprise though, Luigi had vanished from sight, his figure briefly slipping around various areas for a nanosecond before he returned to a more physical form and slammed his fist right into my gut.
I lurched forward out of recoil, the remaining droplets flying towards my defenseless body and putting holes through most of my clothing with relative ease. As I spat out a cough I wondered how Luigi could possibly be moving this fast. The man in green pulled his punch away, his bones cracking from the aftereffect of his hard blow. I wobbled back slightly as I tried to avoid slipping into unconsciousness, but my vision was made dizzy and thus it was harder for me to keep myself together. Luigi approached me, ready to deal another blow, but I grasped the part of my gut where his blow had connected and gritted my teeth.
Even with the fuzziness of his appearance in my line of sight, I knew how close he was getting, and raised my other arm to create a short-lived distraction in the form of a venus flytrap that I spawned from nothingness. The sentient plant opens its acid-dripped mouth up wide and snarled at the being that threatened my existence. I knew it wouldn't do any damage to Luigi, but I needed something to avert his attention away from me as I backed up and took in a few steady breaths to restore consciousness.
By the times the ten seconds of relaxation had lapsed, Luigi had created a blade of water between his right middle and pointer fingers and swung it out in an arch, parts of it dripping off before it cleaved the flytrap in two across the stem and the tip was just seconds away from striking my face. I raised my whip and blocked it with my renewed reflexes, but some of it slipped past the metal segments and cut off the bottom half of my vest in one fell swoop. My skin was unfazed, thankfully, but with each passing second Luigi was gaining an advantage against me in the battle.
On the other hand though, I managed to determine an answer as to why the man in green was giving me so much of a hard time. His strength was connected to the water below his feet. He used them in his attacks, he glided along it as if he was the element itself, and he didn't take any damage because even with a corporeal form he took on the trait of water where it is impossible to harm him with physical blows. That's why the only reason I got any damage on him during his battle thus far was because my whip had launched him away from the water.
So the only way I would be able to win was to cut him off from the pond, or launch him into the air and strike him while he was vulnerable. With my theory noted inside my head I rushed at Luigi and dragged the tip of my weapon along the floor, the segments curving forward before I push them all ahead and the foremost portion rises up and uppercuts the man in green in the jaw. He goes into the air just as I predicted, and during this most vulnerable period of his I spun my weapon so the tip goes into the holster of my belt and my released grip allows the rest of it to follow soon afterwards.
Once that minor detail was out of the way I jumped up. Straining my mind, I concentrated most of my power at the walls that surrounded me. As Luigi began to descend as I approached him, the walls trembled and through them burst a dozen, tendril like branches that clashed against each other in the center of the room until they created a perfectly sealed floor that will prevent any further water from the pond to get in my way. Though that effort exhausted me somewhat, I let out a light breath and opened my eyelids, raising my right fist into the air and punching the man in green square in the back, withdrawing my limb and flipping around so my body landed gracefully at the front edge of my bark-enclosed platform while Luigi crashed onto it without breaking or cracking the wood.
I knew he wasn't unconscious yet though, so I turned myself around and watched as the man in green's trembling body works its way back onto its feet in a matter of seconds. However, he was now leaning forward slightly, his arms hovering beside him as he tried to lift his head up to glare at me with utter fury. Like with Driad, I expected Luigi's "Shadow" to curse me, but this time it was not his lips that moved but instead those of the side that looked like Mr. L. "See what happens when you try and do things alone, Luigi? You are worthless, the man you are now will never accomplish anything when the mistakes you've made in the past are still recorded in the minds of the populace!"
There was a certain ferocity in this half's tone of voice, a chilling sensation creeping in the air as a thin layer of aqua-blue fog looms across the room and an aura of similar color surrounds Luigi's body. "Remember when you were me? Remember how confident you were, how smart and strong you were? I am the real you, and the sooner you accept me as your identity the sooner you will get the recognition you believe you so rightfully deserve!" And then Luigi's "Shadow" did something unprecedented. "Shut up! I don't need you to accomplish anything, I have my own power, my own heart and personality! I refuse to hide behind a mask to get people to respect me!"
The left half spoke with brutal anger in his voice, but from the words he used I could tell that this wasn't the "Shadow" talking, but the real Luigi slipping through to tell his Mr. L side off for trying to sway him away. I don't how this was possible, how there could be two "Shadows" drawn out from a single body and fused together as they were, but with the real Luigi's intervention a new problem arose, one that the man in green was going to make a reality as he opened his lips and said to his other half, "I don't want to hear you anymore, because you are not-" Midway through the sentence, I thrust my arms out in a panic and yelled out "NO!", a warm sweat dripping out of my head in this humid atmosphere as I clenched my fingers against my palm.
A multitude of vines burst through the wood around Luigi's body, wrapping themselves tightly all over his figure and forcing him to go silent as he expresses his pain through a quiet yet anguished cry. "Sorry Luigi, but I couldn't let you finish that sentence…" I apologize to my friend as he shifts his shoulders and head back and forth to try and break free, but with a single command I tighten the vines around his body to constrict him for a few seconds, at which point I release him and he falls to the ground cataleptic. My actions were sudden, but they prevented a new being from emerging to fight me.
With the battle done, I mentally told the wooden tendrils to retract into the walls after I jumped off of them. Luigi fell into the shallow pond, with his face thankfully falling onto a lily pad so it wouldn't fully submerge and cause him to drown. I quickly moved towards the fountain and leapt onto the second-tier, the water there being deep enough to cover my kneecaps. It was warm, a feeling that was nice to experience after that conflict. In the reflection I was able to note the damage done to my body, which needless to say was a lot more than what Driad had done to me. This was a good enough sign as any that since the warm-up had now passed everything was going to just get increasingly difficult from here on out.
After these thoughts passed through my head I looked into the upper most dish where the water was spraying out from and saw a tiny crevice with a light-blue glow coming from it. Just like in the Nature Castle I impaled my whip into the crevice, and light radiated out across the room. I felt the water element returning to me as I could hear the luxurious flow of a waterfall in my eardrums, and the smell of saltwater in my nose. When I had finished closing my eyelids to relish in these sensations, I opened them up. The immediate thing I noticed was that the room had returned to its pristine appearance, which was something rather welcome for me after the dullness of the deep-blue hue that covered it before.
The next thing was that I was now wielding my sword, my appearance returned back to normal as a reward for completing this temple. The blue trigger was back on my sword, and I was grateful to now have two powers back under my belt. The last thing I needed to do now before returning to Toad Town was obvious. I turned myself around and saw Luigi's body still in the pond, but now he was wearing his familiar green and blue garb instead of the unnatural appearance he had before. Like with Driad, I was going to take his body back so he could rest, but as I leapt down to go get him something very surprising happened.
The man in green moaned, obviously from the pain I had inflicted on his body during the battle, and he moved his right hand to the back of his head and rubbed it while using the other one to push himself onto his knees. His eyelids were shut, but his ability to feel was still active, as I found out when he said to himself, "What feels wet around here?" He opened his eyelids up and noted the pond that he was kneeling in, the lily pads and clean environment reminding him of the familiar territory he had awoken in. "The Aqua Palace? But…Why am I in here? The last thing I remember, I was with my brother and-"
He was recapping the events that had transpired in his life as he tilted his head around the room, but upon looking at me he stops talking and freezes his expression at one of bewilderment. Without missing a beat he gets on his feet, calling to me at the edge of the pond with a puzzled, "Hey, do I know you?" His voice expressed familiarity at my appearance, which was something I was expecting to hear from him. Giving him a grin almost as wide as my face, I folded my arms in front of my chest and replied to him, "Oh come on Luigi, don't you recognize an old friend when you see them?"
The man in green tilted his head, quietly saying "What…" as if the answer to my question was a solid "No". Though I was a little upset, I could forgive Luigi on the account of my different appearance and the fact that he was probably disoriented, so I said to him, "Remember? I'm Mewmaster, the young Elemental Overlord you traveled with over a year ago!" Luigi expressed shock in my declaration, pulling his body and arms backward as his eyes widen immensely. The surprise from his recognition was obvious, and I chuckled at his reaction. However, if I had known just why he was reacting the way he was ahead of time, I wouldn't have been so quick to laugh. After regaining his composure, he waves his right hand out in front of him and says to me with utter honesty, "I think you got the wrong person. While I did travel with someone who eventually became the Elemental Overlord, his name was not Mewmaster."
Next Time: A Conflicting Identity