Chapter Thirty-Five:

The Ever-Oncoming Tide of Challenges...

The next challenge that Mario partook in against a member of the SMG4 team was so near absurd, nobody would ever believe that it happened. The plumber went up against Karen, whom he'd met months ago during a conflict with the Old Man Hobo over spaghetti.

And shortly before the DMCA, she'd wound up staring in a game where she dealt with complaining customers all played by Bob. As for their challenge; It was to see who made the most money on OnlyFans.

All they had to do was record themselves doing something, put it up on said site and the magic happened, all in Peach's Castle.

Mario went first and the spell of that magic Nintendo contract Lawyer Kong had deployed wore off, long enough for him to shred his overalls, dance in his undershorts and then have a Mario doll make out with a Peach doll in the Bob-Omb Battlefield painting room. No points for the plumber, nobody seemed to care about his antics.

But now, it was Mario's opponent's turn.

Karen, who was watching the plumber's display, face-palmed with annoyance. A single idea coming to mind in a flash and she pulled up a sign with a foot on it complete with the words "foot rub" around the foot symbol, no sooner than she'd done that, the OnlyFans money count skyrocketed.

Who could have thought that advertising for foot rubs would have done the trick?

"EEERRRGH!" Mario raged furiously, "STUPID CAT!"

Karen smiled slightly, feeling somewhat proud of herself. "That certainly wasn't much of a challenge..." She remarked.

The cat's victory ensured another edge for Team SMG4 against Team Nintendo, putting them ahead against the gaming giant and their legal team. At the same time, Luigi was facing off against SMG3 in a theater before a large crowd consisting of humans and Toads.

Their challenge was pretty much simple as it was ridiculous; Who could try to be the least funny?

Given that he was the Lord of the Internet Graveyard, SMG3 had it in the bag. He pulled out a picture of a forgotten meme trend, involving a wacky monkey and troll-faces, showing it to the entire crowd.

The whole theater groaned and howled with disgust, all jeering at SMG3, which left him feeling very hurt. By that point, all eyes were on Luigi. Luigi stood at the front, trembling in his boots while his mind wailed 'mama mia' over and over again.

He didn't know what to do, the only thing he had in mind was coming up with a joke.

"Oh dear..." Luigi mumbled, sweating profusely by now. He searched his mind for a funny joke, but wound up muttering a bunch of random Italian words. And before he could finally figure it out, the whole room wound up exploding with laughter.

'Be the least funny.' Luigi had just proven to be the funniest, SMG3 looked at Luigi with shock, even as a wide-eyed Nintendo Ninja raised the former villain's arm in the air and declared him a victor. However, SMG3 was having none of it at this point, he stomped his foot and shouted angrily even as the laughter drowned him out.

"NOBODY FINDS ME FUNNY!" He yelled, "HOW DOES NOBODY FIND ME FUNNY?!"

The Internet Graveyard caretaker stormed off stage and headed out into the streets of Mushroom City away from the theater, grunting angrily. Did it matter if they beat Nintendo, he just wanted to go home and take care of Egg Dog and the memes.

And this was not the first time he'd been put through this absurd "War of the Fat Italians" nonsense, far from the first at that.

Memories rushed through his mind like a river, his consciousness recalling when SMG4 had returned from the Internet Graveyard and when SMG3 had faced him through many challenges, brought on by the spirit of the YouTube Remote and it had all culminated in SMG3 being sent off to the Internet Graveyard.

Further off, Mario and Karen were going up against one another again in another challenge. Thankfully, it didn't involve doing stuff on OnlyFans again, but paintings were involved. That was right, the two were doing paintings of each other.

Luigi, who'd just come in from his challenge with SMG3 via a portal, was judging and overseeing his brother and Karen's painting efforts. The green Italian took a look at Karen's painting, the cat was making the last touches to it and coloring it in.

Luigi was patient, you couldn't rush art, and was amazed by the effort when Karen showed him the finished picture of the cat in the apron resembling herself.

"That's-a pretty good." He said, the Italian then turned to his brother, who showed off... a realistic portrait of Mario.

"Mama mia..." Luigi gave the thumbs down.

Another victory for Team Glitchy in the can, the SMG4 gang had a big edge against their foes by that point with a good tally of nine for their team to the big zero that Nintendo had so far.

Surely, SMG4 would be happy with the gang's efforts had he been there to see Karen and SMG3's efforts and hadn't been preoccupied with the challenges he was facing.

On the far side of Mushroom City away from the castle, SMG4 found himself competing with Bob in a very ridiculous challenge; Pirating a Nintendo game.

Considering whom SMG4 was up against, pirating was a walk in the park for the foul-mouthed Garo, who'd dissed and ditched his friends many times over the years and done a lot of shady things.

On a plus note, nobody had forgotten Bob's rap career and what the Garo had done to achieve his fame from kicking Boopkins down a well all the way to putting together the infamous Diss Track.

Sneaky old Bob slapped on a pirate hat and fake eye-patch at the start, grabbed a laptop and started working on pirating whatever Nintendo game he could find.

He found one right off the bat and insta-downloaded it while making sure to make good work of his pirating skills, the download finished shortly and Bob declared; "YES, I HAVE DOWNLOADED SUPER MARIO BROS!"

"What?" A Nintendo Ninja asked, glaring at Bob with the other Ninjas staring at him too.

"I meant SuPeR BLaRiO FlOwS..." Bob quipped.

"HA! You fool!" SMG4 taunted, holding up his computer, "I PIRATED OVER TWO THOUSAND MARIO GAMES JUST NOW... AND I HAVE OVER SEVENTY ALTERNATIVE PIRATING ACCOUNTS!"

A Nintendo Ninja whipped out a gun and fired at SMG4, who ducked, while his computer took the bullet. Regardless, Bob scored a victory, which meant Team Nintendo had one point and was eight behind the SMG4 team.

Now it was time for the next challenge, a portal appeared and warped both SMG4 and Bob to a large room with a large crowd and the Twitter symbol hanging overhead.

Looking around the room, SMG4 had a funny feeling that Twitter was involved with the impending next challenge. He glanced at Bob, ready to proceed with this, ready to advance further.

Team SMG4: 9 - Team Nintendo: 1

All the players were in the final lap now, there was no backing out of dealing with the next wave facing both teams, especially the ones who wanted to continue co-existing with the stars of gaming fame...