Author's Note: I really am sorry for another late update and this might not be the last one. When I started writing this, I wanted to do a chapter every week for two reasons. The first is that I felt a consistent schedule would help me to not let this die and the second is to help make writing a habit. But I have more things in life than just writing. I have a project that my high school graduation somewhat depends on so the next chapters won't be uploaded on a weekly basis. Doesn't mean I won't try though.

Review Response:

Guest: This is late so it's not St. Patrick's Day anymore. So belated St. Patrick's Day to you and an early April Fool's as well.

Elysium: Yeah, maybe you're right. But what will happen then?

Chapter 20: Oh shoot, We're at Chapter 20

Chk!

Immediately, I threw up a shield. A second after, several arrows shot out of the wall and bounced harmlessly off the bubble.

"Why are there so many arrow traps in here?" I sighed as I resumed a brisk pace, watching the floor tiles for any inconsistencies.

"Not sure," Toadette chirped. "Those always seem to be one of the most popular, along with rolling boulders."

At the mention of that, I stopped to look around. We were stuck in a cramped corridor (Actually, Toadette was fine. Those arrows from earlier flew over her head) and a boulder rolling to crush us seemed unlikely.

"Of course, she also said that donkey curse traps were also unlikely." I shuddered at the memory. Clearing my head with a shake, we pressed onward. Eventually, however, we were forced to stop.

The corridor gave way to a small chamber, which presented a door to us. Inscribed in the stone door were a series of odd runes, nothing that I could read. There were some runes on the walls when we entered earlier but Toadette dismissed them after translating, saying that they were basically decoration.

"Soooooooooooo," I started, as the small pink Toad walked up to the door to translate. "Do-"

"Shh!" Toadette held a finger up, keeping her eyes glued to the runes. I decided to just look at the room we were in while Toadette did her own thing. The room was made of stone and there were patches of moss here and there. The only notable thing was a picture of a person.

The picture was odd to say to say the least. The picture only showed a black silhouette. Meanwhile, the person was splayed out, like the picture showed the man laying face-down but also had his head turned to the side. The person was about Toadette's height and looked cartoonish overall.

As I stared the picture down, Toadette spoke out, "Hey! I think I translated the door!"

I turned, "Really? What does it say?"

"Um," She turned back to the door to peer back at the runes, "It says, 'Fight this guy.'"

"'Scuse me?"

The answer came quickly as an attack to my back. I landed on a foot and turned to see the picture from earlier was facing me. It was completely flat, as if it just peeled itself off the wall. I slashed with my Beam Sword as it advanced, which presented a new problem. The sword made contact but it did no damage.

"Toadette, can you fight?"

"I'm more for exploration than fighting so I'll just hide in the corridor!" She squeaked as she ran back to the room's entrance. Meanwhile, I managed to wake Oblivion up.

"Why in the name of all that is good and grain are you singing Let it Go?"

"A little help please?" I asked, jumping back from the Flat Man swinging an equally flat torch at me. My back slammed into the wall and I rolled to the side, dodging a flat chair.

"Sure. For one, you need to be more in the moment. You were doing the song pretty mono-Heeeeeeeyy. Is that Mr. Game&Watch?"

"I don't know, is Mr. G&W invincible?"

"'Scuse me?" To show my point, I swung at Mr. G&W again. Like before, my sword did nothing and I leapt back. "That's not normal."

"Of course not!" I hissed as I kept backing up. "Any ideas?"

"Easy. Hit him when he isn't invincible."

"Oh easy for you to say!" I jumped over the flat character as I had backed up into another wall. Jumping off the opposite wall, I aimed a slash at his back. I'm starting to see a pattern since the slash did nothing again.

"No, you're supposed to hit Mr. G&W when he's not sparkling."

I peered closer at the fighter. He was indeed sparkling faintly. The sparkles disappeared as Mr. G&W jumped. I leapt into the air after him and swung. The moment before the blade made contact, Mr. G&W began sparkling again.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" The blade bounced off. Mr. G&W pulled out a hammer and hit me with it, whipping out a sign with the number 5 on it. Electricity began running through when the hammer made contact and I flew into a wall.

I burst into smoke once I hit, then reformed to land on my feet. Mr. G&W slammed a key into the ground in front of me. I dodged another chair swing before retaliating with my own attack. The sparkles had disappeared and Mr. G&W flew back.

Running after him, I switched to Death's Scythe and jabbed. Mr. G&W started sparkling again when the scythe made contact. Knocking it aside, the flat character brought down a torch. I hopped away before trying another swing.

The swing bounced off again. Mr. G&W approached, the sparkles disappearing. He tried swinging his hammer. I shielded, and the number came out as 1. Dropping the shield, I swung the scythe, aiming for the head. The scythe cut through cleanly.

"Hey Toadette! You can come back in now!" I tucked my scythe away and captured the Spirit as the pink mushroom entered the room. "Shall we go see what worth putting a guard for?"

Pushing the door open, I entered the next room first, with Toadette following close behind. The next room was barren, with only two things of note. "CHEST!"

Lunging forward, I grabbed the chest before us. Opening it, I dumped the contents on the ground and tossed the chest over my shoulder.

"Hey! You almost hit me!"

"Sorry Toadette!" I called before turning to the chest contents before me. "I don't know why I did that. There's not much here."

Only one item had fallen out of the chest. It looked like a yellow flag with a red S next to it. I picked it up, turning it over in my hands. The item was pixelated and flat, like Mr. Game & Watch was.

Item Acquired:
Special Flag

"I have no idea what this does."

"Neither do I," Oblivion added. "But as long as it doesn't blow up, we should be fine."

"Nathaniel, if you're done gawking at that, do you mind helping to copy these?" I looked up to see Toadette writing down the runes on the walls.

That was the other thing. The entire opposing wall was covered from top to bottom in runes and a giant mural of an angry sun with wings and an eye with dark lobster claws. "Whazzat?"

Toadette looked up from her notepad, clearly irritated, "I'm not sure. Some of these I haven't seen before so I might not be able to completely translate but it's something about two ancient forces that existed since the beginning of existence. Um," She looked at the notepad in her hand. "One's called Galeem, he's also referred to as the lord of light several times so he might be the sun. The other is called Dharkon, the lord of darkness which sounds extremely edgy."

"It's not that edgy."

I ignored the voice. "You had to look at your notes so I'm gonna take 10 points off your final score Ms. Toadette."

"You're not my college professor. He had better jokes. Now," she pulled out a second notepad and pencil, "start copying."

I massaged my sore hand as I listened to the campfire crackle. Toadette and I finished copying the runes and were currently sitting outside the ruins. We had made camp since night had fallen and Toadette was already asleep.

Letting out another sigh, I rose to go practice. Walking some distance away from camp, I withdrew my Beam Sword and began to follow Oblivion's instructions as I started swinging.

"No no no. Don't swing so wide. Pull your shoulder blades together a bit more!"

"Maybe it would be easier if you stopped yapping so much." I repeated a swing, doing what Oblivion said. The rest of practice fell into that pattern. I would mess up on a move, Oblivion tells me what I did wrong, and after several tries that mistake would be corrected. Meanwhile, my thoughts were occupied by a pressing matter.

"I could really go for some fried chicken. Wait no, brain focus please. Okay, so, if Galeem is the angry sun in that mural, wouldn't that mean Dharkon was the eye?" I recalled the eye I saw in my dreams. "So, that could be Dharkon but, why would he show up in my dreams? Actually, that would apply to Markus as well."

"Hey, Oblivion. Do you know who Markus is?"

"The guy in your dreams. No, but seeing a person in your dreams just sounds like some cliche plot for romance fanfiction."

"Y'know, I really hate you sometimes."

"Oh sure, hate on a guy for no reason."

"I do have a reason," I leapt into a jump attack, driving my sword into the ground. "Crazy might know who Markus is, she talked to him in my dreams after all, assuming that those actually happened. Therefore, I could have simply asked her but nooooooo. That would lead to the question of why I'm having those dreams. Which is most likely your fault."

"Oh sure, blame the guy without a body."

"Hush already." I pocketed the Beam Sword and jumped into my sleeping bag. I shut my eyes. Finally, sleep washed over my body and mind.

And water did as well. I was in deep enough for the sun to be a faint light, swallowed by the ocean's depths. There was one other source of light that continued further down. I merely thought about it and my phantom body moved closer to follow the light.

"Markus do this. Markus do that. Markus, don't set fire to kitchen." The diver grumbled. Besides an air tank and a flashlight, he also carried a camera that was held on a strap. Markus stopped descending as we looked at an enormous trench that was before us.

Clicking through the camera, Markus began to look through the pictures on it. "If the info was right," he muttered. I got close enough to look at the image he stopped at. The photo he stopped on looked like the trench before us. "This should be the right spot. But where is the so-called Ruins of Darkness? It's a dumb name if you ask me."

He paused, scanning the trench. "Yeah, yeah. I got it. Stop complaining then." He started swimming further down and I followed. Swimming further, he stopping, pulling out his Beam Sword. From within the trench, "things" swam out.

Some were the standard Primid, only with a helmet on. The first of two new enemies were like a goldfish, with pinker scales and several feelers. They were quite a bit bigger than goldfish, maybe smaller than a car. There was also a giant eye instead of the usual fish face features.

The other enemy was not a fish. Instead, it was vaguely humanoid. Emphasis on vaguely. It had four limbs and a head, organized like a person. Instead of flesh, ot was made of dark gray rectangles with a red one on the head. Surrounded by a shadowy aura, it advanced in jagged patterns.

"We don't have time for this," Markus muttered. He pulled out another item. It was a sphere, with a cross pattern on it. A familiar rainbow aura surrounded the sphere. As the enemies approached, Markus crushed the sphere between his hands and the aura enveloped him.

"Big Breaking Beam Buster!" Markus swung his Beam Sword as the blue blade grew, slicing through all the enemies. Their forms dissolved into Shadow Bugs. Ignoring them, we swam through heading deeper into the trench.

The darkness of the trench swallowed even the faint glimmer of the sun above us. The flashlight in Markus's hand was the only light left. Everything else remained black.

"Breathe slowly Nathaniel. This is just a dream. There is no reason to panic." Markus's light went out. I heard him start swearing while I tried to calm down. After all, this is just a dream, right?

"I'm pretty sure someone in a horror movie said that before getting murdered." At that thought, my chest started beating faster. I twisted, checking behind me, only to see nothing was there besides the darkness. Anything could be in the darkness. Anything could be hiding right in front. Isn't this a dream? Nothing could hurt me if this is a dream, right? I should be fine. I should be fineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbefineIshouldbe-

"There we go, just needed some concussive maintenance." My eyes teared up as a light lit up. I swam as fast as I could with my ghostly limbs as the light continued deeper. Somehow, we made it to the bottom of the trench.

Sitting at the bottom of the trench, was another temple. It was a far cry from the one I explored with Toadette. The temple was smaller and the architecture looked to be Greek. Regardless, I followed Markus as he entered the temple.

While the exterior was different in appearance, the corridor inside had a familiar feeling. Besides the fact everything was filled with water of course. We probably skipped over several traps as we went along. After several minutes, we reached a room like the one where I fought Mr. Game & Watch. No enemy jumped out as Markus pushed through the doors.

I stopped. If you ignored the water, the room we stood in was a copy of the room with where I got the flag. The runes were written on the wall from floor to the roof and right in the middle of the runes were Galeem and Dharkon, facing each other.

Markus got out his camera and took a photo of the two before looking at the runes. I almost didn't catch what he said but under his breath, he muttered, "I wish I knew how to read these."

"Are you sure I can keep this?" I held out the Special Flag. The sun had risen again. Toadette decided to stay at the Ruins to decipher the runes we found. Meanwhile, I decided to head back to Honey Bee's Dojo.

"Yeah, just think of it as a reward." Toadette waved me off as I walked back into the forest, entering the purple mist that thickened around me.

I kept quiet at first, listening to any signs of Puppet Fighters. The only sounds were my footsteps and the wind.

"Hey Nathaniel, do you have any idea where you're going?"

"Of course I do." I stopped to point at a tree. "We passed that tree yesterday."

"No we didn't."

"Yes we did."

"It's been what, ten minutes since you left Toadette's camp? That was the amount of time it took for you to go from where you met Piranha Plant to the Ruins."

I glanced around. "Okay, I know this isn't where I saw Piranha Plant but that's because we're taking a minor detour."

"Is the detour called being lost?"

"Maybe." I kept walking forward. "If we keep walking in a straight line, we'll get out of the forest eventually."

"Why not just go back and ask Toadette for help?"

"Well you see Oblivion," I faltered before finding my voice again. "Because we already bothered her enough today."

"Honestly, it wouldn't be much to-"

"Oblivion, we can get out of this forest by ourselves. We don't need to bother Toadette with our problems."

Oblivion let out a long sigh, "If you say so."

I went back to walking in silence. But just like before, that silence was soon broken. "What's that?"

No response from Oblivion.

"Alright fine, I'll just check out that completely inconspicuous building myself and will hopefully not die to any Puppet Fighters inside without someone to give me hints or at least bounce commentary off of." I took a deep breath and waited for a response. "Still nothing. Alright then."

Save File 2: Saved

Party: Nathaniel, Oblivion(?)

Items: Nathaniel- Beam Sword, Steel Diver, Death's Scythe, Fire Flower, Special Flag

Smashers: Mario, Link, Kirby, Fox, Pikachu, Captain Falcon, Peach, Bowser, Lucario, Villager

Author's Theater:

MG: I'm disappointed in myself.

Crazy: Why?

MG: I thought of something funny for this Author's Theater but I forgot what it was.

Nathaniel: I don't care. CRAZY! WHERE IS THE DUCT TAPE?

Clarence: Why do you need duct tape?

Nathaniel: *points at MG*

Clarence: I'll help.

MG: Shoot.