This is a week behind my intended schedule...ah well. Time for reviews!
AmberAngelle: Yeah, Nassy taking the role as Dimentio is SUPER WEIRD. But you wanna know what's even weirder? Dimentio was originally going to replace Merlon. MERLON. Needless to say, I think this is better. And thank you for the compliment and liking the Mistress, it means a lot.
jeremy1555: Don't worry friend, Luigi is the definition of quick!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Super Paper Mario or anything else made by Nintendo. If I did that would be amazing, but I don't, so deal with it.
In a feat far greater than anything before, Luigi had been tasked with saving not one world, but all worlds in the universe. This, of course, would not be a small task. Could he really prevent Mistress Tempo from from pulling off her sinister plot? Would he reunite with his friends and brother? These and many more questions buzzed through Luigi's brain as he transversed the very fabrics of space to the start of a truly inter-dimensional adventure.
Chapter 1-1
The Adventure Unfolds
A bright morning sun greeted Luigi and Blecky when they passed through the other side of the red door. To Luigi's surprise, all traces of said door quickly vanished when it closed behind them. Leaving an empty spot where it had previously stood.
The world of Lineland was a typical plane: grass everywhere, colorful flowers popping up here and there, tall hills with gentle slopes, the usual. What wasn't usual were the illusions in the sky that seemed to depict mathematical equations and the still prominent Void looming above.
Blecky's ears twitched as he circled the area around Luigi, quickly returning with some excitement in the way he was flying.
"I can sense the Pure Heart!" Exclaimed the bat.
"Oh good! Is it close by?"
"Of course it's not close by you big goof, it's still far away from here! Lucky for you, my keen sense of direction will get us there in no time. First things first however, we need to find Bestovius."
"Then so be it." The plumber mumbled as he moved forward, the most logical direction given that a sign reading "Lineland Road" was placed in that very direction with a noticeable dirt road next to said sign, also heading in that direction. Needless to say, it was quite obvious which way they needed to go, so they walked, admiring the brace new world around them as they did so.
Aside from luscious variety of flowers and a single species of tree, there wasn't a lot of life in the area until our hero approached a tiny pink creature with many legs and a little round mouth. The tiny hairs on its head shuddered by the approach of the tall man in green.
"What is that?" Luigi asked, the pink thing squeaked and bounced in response to the loud man.
"That is a squiglet, its power is tantamount to the common goomba in your world. Their immediate instinct when they meet someone new is to bounce up and down and squeak in the most persistent manner, so their completely harmle-what are you doing?" Blecky watched in confusion as his partner pulled out a small package of crackers and gave one to the squiglet who happily nibbled on the salty disk.
"Completely harmless, right?" Luigi stood up and walked past the content critter as his pixl companion followed in annoyance. When Blecky himself was offer a cracker, he begrudgingly accepted the snack and perched on the plumber's head as he ate.
Soon they approached a locked door edged inside a small hill which, in turn, was surrounded by a fence made of a type of brick or stone. The fence had no defined signs of having an entrance and even covered the top of the hill, which left climbing it out of the question, not that it mattered to Luigi, he was too busy trying to figure out the meaning of this 'door to nowhere'. He eventually caved in and asked Blecky, who at this point had long since left his perch on Luigi's head, about the situation.
"Listen closely my friend, this 'door to nowhere' is actually a lesser dimensional door and our only method of cutting some huge time off of our journey, don't ask me how, but they will. Unfortunately there's no way for us to get in under normal circumstances, we'll have to find the owner of this barrier."
Luigi nodded as they shuffled pass the door and continued forward. He asked Blecky why he couldn't just teleport them to the Pure Heart like he had when they arrived in Flipside. The bat explained to him that his job as a pixl was not to teleport, rather this 'special ability' as it was called was temporarily gifted to him by Merlee to find the one of the legendary heroes. When pestered about what his actual powers were, he insisted that he could unveil illusions and analyze things of interest. Luigi found these powers to be rather pointless, claiming that anybody could do either of those things, not realizing how soon he would be eating those words.
The two of them had found a particularly tall and steep hill with a small, cream colored house on top. Based on the local points of erosion, it looked like there had been a time where a smaller hill lived next to the taller one but had long since vanished, in the place of this humble, smaller hill was a ladder. A broken, and therefore unusable, ladder.
It was at this point Luigi showed his partner what a 'real' special ability looked like and used his famous Super Jump to reach the house. Upon entering the house, he was surprised to find the building completely empty. This didn't shock Blecky in the slightest.
"I do believe this is where MY abilities come in." The bat said in a smug voice as he pressed a claw on one of the walls, revealing a hidden door. "Bleh heh heh, you sure are lucky to have me around aren'tcha? I guess you could say my illusion piercing abilities aren't as useless you initially thought?" He teased, his voice saturated in sass.
Luigi invited himself into the next room where he met a very angry old man and a terrified pixl. The hero couldn't let out a single 'hello' before the elder lunged and attacked him with his cane. This attack resulted in a chorus of screams from members of both parties for a good number of minutes before Luigi could scurry away from the brutality that was a senior citizen with a big stick. The old man, being rather persistent, continued to chase Luigi around the room for a decent amount of time while Blecky and new pixl decided to become aquatinted with one another.
Eventually, Luigi was able to reason with the old man who introduced himself as Watchitt, Old Man Watchitt to be precise. Now that he wasn't being chased, Luigi was able to notice the details of Watchitt's person, such as his deep blue tunic, the pair of yellow glasses hidden under his sombrero-like hat, the mustache-and-beard combo he was sporting, and his uncanny habit to blurt out 'WATCH IT!' between sentences.
"I suppose I should apologize for my aggressive mannerisms. WATCH IT! You see, this darn fairy fella is a friend of my cousin, who I rarely meet now in days. Apparently there's some commotion going on in our childhood home of Yold Town and he sent this pixl over so I could WATCH THEM until some legendary hero shows up or something. WATCH IT!" Old Man Watchitt explained to his visitors.
The pixl he spoke of, known as Laddie, had the appearance of being part of a ladder, with purple sides, two blue-green rungs, a visible pair of eyes between the rungs, and two pairs of semi-circular wings.
"Nice to meet'cha." Greeted the somewhat shell-shocked pixl, its wings still shivering long after the race of a thousand minutes had ceased. "If I might ask, how did you get here? The dimensional door from Yold Town is locked, the ladder outside is out of order, and the door to this room should be invisible to the naked eye of almost every creature imaginable."
"Well you see, we came here from Flipside-"
"FLIPSIDE?!" Laddie was quick to interrupt Luigi. "Did-Did Merlon send you here?"
"Only because I need to receive the power to flip between dimensions from Bestovius." Was Luigi's brief answer as he anticipated another interruption.
"About that, Bestovius gave me some of his 'flipping powers' before sending me off and told me to only give the power to a mustached man in red garments."
"Red garments? He must have been expecting a visit from my brother then."
"Your brother?!" Both of the pixls asked in surprise.
"Yeah, we're twins...kinda. He's just a bit older than me."
"Where is he?" Laddie continued to question the hero.
"I...don't know." Every other person in the room wanted to fall at the ground at this respond.
As the inquisition between Luigi and Laddie continued, it became increasingly obvious that the ladder-shaped pixl would need to follow the bat and plumber duo for them to find the Pure Heart and save the universe.
"I suppose there's no other choice, you need to find the Pure Heart, and I need to find the man in red. We have to work together for either of those things to happen, so from this point onward, I'm sticking to you guys like mentally traumatized glue." And just like that, Laddie joined Luigi's party, upgrading the dysfunction duo into a troublesome trio.
Before leaving, the group requested a key to the door outside. Watchitt was happy to oblige, provided that they never entered the vicinity ever again, a simple request really. It was agreed, and the misfit musketeers that were Luigi, Blecky, and the newly recruited Laddie continued onto their heroic endeavors.
Reaching the locked door, Laddie used their recently acquired ability to 'Flip' the team into a place known as the 'Next Dimension', otherwise known as the Next. While everything looked relatively the same, there was a feeling of extra depth to the world, like turning a statue a certain way to view it from another angle.
In the new perspective, Luigi noticed large chucks of the fence were completely nonexistent, the gaps were large enough even for Bowser to squeeze through. Laddie returned them to the Normal Dimension when they entered the inner boundaries of the fence where they could now unlock and go through the illusive 'lesser' dimensional door.
When asked about the properties Next Dimension, Laddie explained that the length, width, depth, and even existence of objects between the two dimensions varies, hence why the fence from before did not fully exist in the Next.
Out of curiosity, Luigi asked about Laddie's normal powers.
"Well, normally I have the ability to create and repair ladders. As of right now, however, my gift has been overwritten with Bestovius's; until I give the flipping ability to somebody, it's the only ability I can use, so we better hope there aren't any ladders in the near future in need of being fixed." He answered, the ladder-shaped pixl finally growing accustomed to the plumber and his odd partner, as hinted by the lack of shivering in their presence.
The obstacles ahead of them were few and usually required a brief a trip to the Next. One visit in particular had occurred near a tall hill with a spring next to it, Luigi requested a flip to see if the hill could be passed through in the Next, his explanation being that he considered springs a challenge to his jumping abilities. They flipped, Luigi was right about the hill being hollow, as expected; what wasn't expected was the hoard of hungry squiglets living inside the hollowed out hill. They ultimately used the spring to spare Luigi the grief of having to attack the harmless critters.
And then there was the squig. "It's just like a squiglet," Blecky said, "expect its purple, and it-"
"OW!"
"-shoots rocks at people." He didn't even bother hiding the grin on his face when Luigi was assaulted by rocks during his feeble attempt to feed this different-colored and semi-hostile squiglet.
Other the the occasional squig attacked, curtesy of Luigi eventually squishing the first one with his hammer, nothing else seemed to stop the hero as he eventually approached a sign indicating his eventual arrival to the mountainous region of Lineland, Mount Lineland, leading to Yold Town. With the afternoon sun shining bright, our hero headed forward in anticipation to finally meet the mysterious Bestovius in his town of residence, unaware of the dangers ahead.
And that's a wrap! Stay tuned because I'm planning on releasing a chapter on Thursday as well.
And with that, Adios.