Chapter Twenty-Four:

Taking Down The Big Toad

Back inside the castle, Mario, Meggy and SMG3 were having a rough battle with the "redesigned" Toad, who seemed to be very tough, especially with those big legs. Meggy leaped at the fungus, only for Toad to evade her swiftly. The former Inkling went at him again and launched several strikes at Toad, only for him to block with his legs.

He kicked up like a dancer, blocking Meggy's first strike, then the second, and then he kicked her into a wall. Meggy dropped, rubbing her head with a groan. Mario stepped in to defend his friend and leaped off the wall, heading for Toad.

The heroic fat Italian punched the large fungus in the face, landing a lucky strike, and knocking him down. But Toad was far from out, he rose back up and kicked Mario square in the face again. Mario stumbled over, taken by surprise by the attack. Meggy stepped in, attacking the not-so redesigned fungi only to get knocked over again.

And that was when Toad put his foot down, literally.

"Ow, I wish that was me!" SMG3 groaned.

"LITTLE HELP HERE!" Meggy shouted.

'Quick, Mario. Think fast...' Mario thought.

If he didn't do something, Meggy would have her brains squashed by Toad and she was still training to become a sports coach. And after seeing so much happen to her, after seeing her fall when Lawyer Kong signed the DMCA, after SMG3 banished her to the Internet Graveyard before that, Mario couldn't let something terrible happen to the former Inkling.

The plucky, dim-witted Italian thought fast and formulated an idea. He grabbed a phone and started video-taping Toad pinning Meggy down, he then stopped recording and approached the big fungus before calling out to him.

"Hey, stinky!"

Hearing his voice, Toad turned and Mario held the phone. "Now, all of China knows what you're into." Mario said in a mocking voice.

And that flipped Toad's lid. He stepped away from Meggy and ran towards the door, the fungus was so freaked out, he bonked his head against the wall and fell over. Meggy got back up, taking a minute to catch her breath, while Mario put away his phone. With Toad defeated, they were safe from trouble for now.

Creaking sounds perked the group's attention and they turned to see the door leading to the second floor of Peach's Castle open up on its own, it had to be the work of some unseen entity connected to that creepy goop thing that was possessing SMG4.

"Guess we're going that way." Meggy remarked.

She and Mario headed up the stairs, but SMG3 lingered behind to look at the fallen Toad. He made a passing remark that he missed being a villain and how being a good guy was too tiring. However, deep down, a part of SMG3 told him that being a hero and the leader of the Internet Graveyard was better than being a bad guy causing trouble for the Mario gang.

'Perhaps the universe doesn't need me to be evil anymore.' SMG3 thought to himself, 'It was my destiny to look after the Internet Graveyard, my Guardian Pod was meant to land there until Zero's power sent me to this world. Looking after memes beats causing trouble for SMG4 any day.'

He followed Mario and Meggy up the stairs and through the door, they kept an eye out for any signs of demonic goop as they walked up the winding flight of stairs to the door that led to the round hallway with the various paintings, the door to the mirror room and the door that led to the Tick-Tock Clock room.

The trio walked around, looking for SMG4, their eyes scanning the dimly lit hall. It was quiet, perhaps a little too quiet.

Just then, Meggy spotted a black board over one of the paintings and stopped, her eyebrows raising. "What the...?"

Mario and SMG3 stopped, wondering what Meggy was looking at. And that was when they saw what she was seeing, their eyes became fixed on the black board on the wall, seeing the six words etched into it; "You will never be good enough."

"What could this mean...?" Meggy pondered.

"All the paintings are like these..." Mario quipped, surveying the room as he saw similar boards hanging over the paintings, which served as portals to the various lands around the Mushroom Kingdom.

"It is not good enough." One sign read.

"Go away." Another said.

"You are a failure."

"Nobody likes your videos."

"Wow." Mario remarked sarcastically, "Whomever wrote these sounds like a nice person."

"No." SMG3 said, his voice cracking, "SMG4 wrote these. These are his thoughts."

Meggy gasped.

"What...? How do you know?"

"Because I felt the same way he was feeling." SMG3 explained, "Do you know what that's like, to live with the kind of expectations that he has?"

She wasn't a YouTuber, but during SMG3's pause, Meggy thought about his question and her eyes lit up a bit; She did know what it was like to live with certain expectations.

For a long time, before meeting Mario, she'd dreamed of becoming the Splatfest champion and had trained hard for the tournament, competing in standard Turf Wars and practicing as hard as she could.

Meggy remembered when she first met Mario, she'd told him she was an upcoming star, and they'd trained together after he joined the SplatSquad. Meggy gave it her all, training hard as she could, but ended up losing the Splatfest.

A few years later, while training harder than ever and after pushing her friends a little too far, Meggy felt herself at her lowest point. After being unable to come out on top in a single Splatfest then, she felt like a failure and it seemed as if she would never fulfill her dream.

Mario had comforted her that night on the rooftop, offering her a plate of spaghetti as he did so. He made her feel better and Meggy was happy that she had friends who had her back, motivating her to keep going despite the hardships and her eventual transformation into a human.

She kept going, no matter how many times life knocked her over. Meggy pressed on, training and giving it her all with her friends by her side. And several months after dealing with what had been the most traumatic experience of her life, Meggy was finally able to emerge victorious in the final Splatfest and fulfilled her dream.

Against all the odds and everything that had been thrown at her, she'd done it, she'd accomplished what she'd only dreamed of since the day she met Oneshot Wren, she'd faced the trials and pulled off what she hadn't been able to do years prior.

For her, that big victory was the greatest moment in her life and it still was. And then, she thought of SMG4, whose passion for making memes and videos were what Splatfest was to her. He'd been making content on YouTube for years and he had millions of subscribers and views. And making it to ten years, that had been a massive achievement for him.

But then, she thought about his struggles and what he was going through now, bringing her back to SMG3's comments.

"I had his channel for only a couple of days, while you and the others were in the Internet Graveyard..." SMG3 went on, "...and it was the most stressful thing in my life, having millions and millions of eyes on you and... being worried you'll make one mistake and lose everything that you worked hard to accomplish..."

SMG3 pulled out a phone as Meggy came to his side, the former villain pulled up a picture showing a Mario-looking man in dark-blue and black overalls strangling a Mario-looking man in blue-white overalls.

Everyone knew who those two were, it was SMG4 and SMG3, back when they resembled Mario, before they knew the truth about meme guardians and before Lawyer Kong came suing.

"Always trying to be perfect..." SMG3 said with a tear in his eyes, "It can... make you go… kinda crazy."

"Aww, Three." Meggy pat the former villain on the shoulder, "SMG4 is real lucky to have someone who understands him..."

"WHAT?!" SMG3 shouted, "I don't care about SMG4! I feel this way because I'm cosmically linked to the idiot! For crying out loud, we're Super Meme Guardians and it's our job to look after the avatar and care for the memes. But if you think I actually like SMG4, even after all that we went through to save all creation, I don't know what you've been watching..."

"Oh, it's okay, SMG3!" Meggy tackled the Internet Graveyard's ruler with a hug, "Let it out!"

"GAH! LET GO OF ME, YOU DAMN SQUID!" SMG3 protested.

"Who's a good ex-villain?!" Meggy said with a giggle, hugging him even more, "Who's a good number one celebrity of the Internet Graveyard, who's a good Super Mario Glitchy Super Meme Guardian?! C'mon, Three! Lighten up!"

At that second, Mario was peaking around a corner and his heart pounded as he saw a Beeg SMG4 waiting at the top of the stairs, blocking the way to the Tick Tock Clock room. He stared at the Beeg SMG4 and the Beeg SMG4 seemed to stare back at Mario, making the fat Italian mascot hero of Nintendo feel a sense of unease.