Me-We're at Merlon's Mansion! And I don't have to be sassed by story characters today because I got the chapter done one time!
Blecky-Barely.
Me-What did I JUST say?!
Blecky-Bleh heh heh~
DISCLAIMER TIME BECAUSE WE GOT NO REVIEWS: I don't own Super Paper Mario or the Mario franchise. Those are all property of Nintendo.
Finally past the foe-filled swamp, the Heroes strutted towards the imposing residency before them.
"So this is Merlon's Mansion." Said Bowser, relieved to know the group would not longer have to traverse the rancid swamp.
If the group could find the Pure Heart with haste, they'd be gone in no time; but fate, of course, had a tendency to provoke Luigi with unnecessary challenges. Nonetheless, they stepped foot onto the lawn of the trap-plagued property in anticipation.
Chapter 2-2
Tricks, Treats, Traps
The large, expansive manor stood dark and intimidatingly. The lack of any external lighting from the mansion did not seem to bode well with either of the Heroes, but they had no choice to proceed under the belief that the Pure Heart indeed resided inside.
Luigi rapped on the front door, accustomed to doing so whenever he needed to enter a house of any sort on his journeys. When no one answered after a second and third try, he grasped the door handle, gently pulling, and then pushing when the door did not respond to being pulled. The door creaked open when pushed, greeting the Heroes with dead silence.
The group let themselves inside when nobody came to scold them for breaking in or letting the air in; the interior certainly made up for the reception provided by the exterior with maroon colored walls and midnight blue curtains. The only unwelcoming sight was a group of large, blue, six-legged, stripe-horned, no-eyed, mangle-toothed, guard-dog like beasts waiting to devour them whole, or rather "kick them out" as Blecky put it as he analyzed the mangy creatures.
They were called Gnips, and were apparently trying to keep the group out of harm's way. Since they were all mouth however, they're methods of getting people away from harm involved scooping people into their mouths and spitting them out on the front porch, which brought the Heroes back a square one in terms of getting inside the mansion.
They tried again, this time by traveling in the Next.
...
The gnips were in the Next as well.
Granted, they were easier to avoid in the Next, so the Heroes narrowly dodged the slobbering maws of the guard dog-like creatures and entered the following room, closing the door behind them. Having left the Next, Luigi took a head count before examining the hallway before them.
It has same maroon walls and wooden floors as the last, but lacked any windows. Paintings whose eyes seemed to follow the viewer scattered the leftmost wall above a tall staircase. The floor they stood on had two doors, the furthest of which was blocked by a silvery suit of armor with yellow-gold trim around the mouth of the helmet and a cape of similar color.
Intrigued by the peculiar placement of the armor, Luigi approached the suit with great interest, noticing the elegant design of the trim and the imprint of a yellow-gold heart on the chest of the suit. The suit's hands held a broadsword, pointed downward on the ground it stood upon; the engravings on the side spelled out something, but the language was completely foreign to anyone in the group, aside from Blecky of course, who seemed to know everything.
The little bat hovered towards the sword to translate, but was startled off when the armor started speaking to the group as loudly as possible.
"OI! WHAT IN BLAZES ARE YE DOIN' 'ER?!" Called out the armor.
Normally, an outburst like this from an inanimate object would have started a chorus of yelling, but when one put into account the things that the Heroes had already been through that day, they would understand why the group was only mildly confused.
"We came to find Merlon." Said Luigi, who was more use to the concept of haunted objects than any normal person should be.
"He's busy. Also, this place is hainted." Replied the armor.
"Don't you mean haunted?" Muttered Blecky, who was peaking out from underneath Luigi's hat.
"Hainted! Haunted! Does it matter? There's ghosts 'ere!" The suit was obviously getting annoyed.
"I've fought plenty of ghosts in my life." Luigi bragged, "I even had one join me on an adventure once. Granted, I've also gotten my identity stolen by one as well, but that's not important right now. Right now, we need to speak with Merlon, so which way is he?"
"ARE YE MAD?!"
"No, but I am mildly aggravated at the minor inconveniences that I've had to deal with for the past few days."
"THERE ARE HAINTS 'ERE!"
"Does it matter?" Asked Bowser, "We have to find the Pure Heart so the worlds can be saved."
"Saved? Whyever would ye need te save 'em fer?"
"Don't you know? The Void has appeared to destroy everything."
"Whut? Bah! I don't believe ye!" The suit scoffed. "Whatever, ye can go look fer Merlon all ye want, just remember that this room behind me is off limits."
"Why?"
"It just is."
Deciding that this was an acceptable answer, the Heroes decided to start their trek for Merlon, after Luigi spent time at another 'save point' of course.
"Do you have a name?" Blecky asked the irritable suit.
"I'm a hainted suit of armor, of course not!" It replied.
"Can I name you then?"
"What? Why wou-"
"I'm gonna call you 'Al'."
"Why?!"
"Bleh heh heh~" Instead of answering, Blecky flew back to rejoin his teammates, leaving the suit to curse out the spunky little bat as he and the others went through the door next to the armor.
The room was an exquisite one that was for sure; they judged it to be a dining room based upon the long table that stretched from the room's center. They couldn't see much else though, their vision was limited to the candles on the table.
Luigi felt the wall for a light switch, eventually finding one to the far right of the door they came from. Flicking the switch, for one reason or another, did not light up the room, which urged the plumber to search for a fuse box.
The search, however, was untouched upon as a trap door opened beneath Luigi's feet, dropping him into a featureless room inhabited by exactly three Boos, round, ghost-like creatures that were relatively harmless and lonely.
The spirits whispered among themselves in the presence of the fallen plumber.
"Will you look at that, another one fell down."
"He's a funny looking one isn't he."
"I don't think he's from around here."
"Didn't the sir say that he was expecting a funny looking person?"
"I believe so yes, let's give him the key to the room upstairs."
"That sounds like a plan, yes yes."
The specters made haste and carried the plumber back up the opened trap, placing a key in his hand as they did so. Once in the dinning room, the boos placed Luigi back at the room's entrance before going back inside the hole and closing the trap behind them.
"Thank you." Mumbled Luigi, facedown in carpet.
The others had already searched the rest of the room without much awareness as to what exactly happened, but seemed pleased to know that the green-clad man had a key. After all, when there's a key, there's a lock that goes with it.
Their next stop was upstairs, which contained three doors, all of which were locked.
"Hey Al, why're all the door upstairs locked?" Asked Blecky.
"Te keep out the crooks, ye crazed loon." Said the armor. "An stop calling meh 'Al'!"
Blecky did not hear the latter part of the suit's statement as he had already flown off to catch up with his teammates as they unlocked the door closest to the stairs.
The next room was a bedroom, mostly likely for guests based on the simple arrangement of its silhouette, for the room was quite dark.
"Blecky, can you use echolocation?" Luigi asked.
"Echowhatnow?"
"Can you use sound to see?"
"Oh that! No, I can't." The bat shrugged, "Sorry."
"That's fine."
"Wait," exclaimed Thoreau, "what kinda bat can't use ec-"
"ANYWHO!" Interrupted Blecky as he proceeded to the ceiling fan in the center of the room. "let's go find another key."
"But-"
"THE KEY THOREAU!" He shouted with a chain attached to the fan in his mouth. He yanked the chain in hopes of light, or a cool breeze. While the fan did actual spin, it did so rapidly and only for a split second as the bed underneath collapsed into another trap door.
"Ah sweet!" Said Boomer, "I got this. FIRE IN DA HOLE!" With that as his only warning, the bomb pixl dropped into the abyss.
"I'll get him..." Sighed Bowser, who trudged into the hole after Boomer.
The fall wasn't all that great, so Bowser landed into the room beneath without too much harm. In contrast to the previous trap room, this one contained a trio of lurking bat-like creatures called Swoopers. They were a common sight in the Mushroom Kingdom, but this fact did not make fighting the beasts any less annoying, especially since Boomer's explosion had wakened them from their slumber.
The swoopers were quick, diving towards the Koopa at all angles to latch onto his tough skin and suck the life out of him. Bowser retreated into his shell while the barrage of bats continued, the pests slamming against it to knock him onto his back, where they could attack his exposed belly. Boomer slammed himself against the creatures with his own might in attempt to shoo them away from his scaly friend; this action only encouraged the swoopers to behave more aggressively.
Having decided he'd had enough nonsense, Boomer launched himself towards Bowser and exploded on impact, blasting away the bats within a certain radius. Sensing that he was no longer in danger, Bowser uncurled himself to climb up the exit; he plucked a key tucked into the corner of the room before exiting with Boomer fluttering behind him. They emerged from the hole, back in the guest room that was suspiciously empty. The annoyed yelling from outside heavily implied that their comrades had returned to the hallway to bother 'Al' while they waited.
Sure enough, the rest of the team was outside the guest room, leaning against the guardrail opposite of the door; the only exception was Blecky, who was playing 20 Questions with the haunted suit of armor while the others were upstairs. Luigi made a sharp whistle, which alerted Blecky to congregate with the other Heroes, who were unlocking the next room.
The middle upstairs door led to a bathroom with a typical sink and toilet on one end, and a shower tub on the other. The trap door in this location was much more obvious, as seen by how the bathroom rug depressed into the floor. A quick removal of the rug revealed the hole to the next trap room, which the whole group leaped into, the opening sealing behind them.
A group of shlurps loafed about, uninterested by the strangers. The heroes searched the room throughly to no avail, every nook and cranny in the dank room was fruitless; logically, the heroes could only assume that the shlurps were needed to find the key. Boomer, with a mixture of enthusiasm and disgust, allowed himself to be consumed by each shlurp in the room, combusting within their insides to discard of them.
A chest fell from the ceiling, urging Luigi to investigate. While there was certainly a key in the chest, the team was faced with a new problem. The room was a special scenario where one had to chose between either the key or the exit. If the shlurps were defeated, the key to the final room appeared, but if a shlurp, or something of equal weight, was pushed onto a pressure plate that the group discovered at the last minute, the exit would open up.
"I could try weighing it down." Suggested Bowser. While his weight was certainly enough to open the hatch, the switch proved to be a fickle thing that required the weight on it at all times to keep the exit available for use.
"We could get Thoreau to push the box over." Said Laddie.
"Why don't you build us a ladder outta here, Laddie." Mumbled Thoreau.
"A ladder can't get us out of a sealed room, Thoreau. Why are you being so irritable?"
Thoreau didn't respond.
"Well?"
He still refused to respond. Instead he flew to Bowser, lending him some of his strength, and then urging the koopa to push the disproportionately heavy box onto the switch, all without speaking a single syllable.
"I guess we can exit now." Said Luigi, briefly looking at Thoreau rather crossly before climbing up the hole.
With little to no exchange between the group, Luigi unlocked the furthest upstairs door into the master bedroom. It was the only well lit room in the vicinity, and also the tallest. A whimpering sound could be heard from one side of the room in a loft-like area. The loft was seemingly inaccessible due to the broken ladder at the foot of the bed, shattered to pieces by some form of brute strength. Luckily, the loft was a decent enough height that Luigi could reach it by a hair, so the plumber made his way up with a hop, skip, and a jump to find the source of the whimper.
Slipping through the boxes of junk and rubbish, Luigi reached the back of the loft to find a rather small, and terrified gnip of bluish color.
"That's Gnaw," said Blecky, "he's the runt of the litter waiting at the entrance. Merlon normally takes especially good care of him to help him grow. What's he doing up here? It doesn't seem like a safe place for such a little thing."
"He's shaking..." said Luigi. He beckoned to the little gnip, who scurried towards the plumber, and then abruptly stopped, unable to move forward due to a undetachable chain on the wall. Luigi then called up Laddie, who delivered him to the Next. A visible latch appeared on Gnaw's collar, which the plumber unfastened; the collar slipped off without problem, prompting Gnaw to run about and bark in joy.
The little gnip launched Luigi onto its back, carrying him with great speed and agility off the loft, barging through the bedroom door and dashing downstairs. The canine-like creature, huffed and growled at the suit of armor, kicking open the doors to the entrance hallway as he did so.
There was one thing not brought up in Blecky's description that deserves some merit at this point; while Gnaw was indeed the runt of his litter, he was no coward, and was, in fact, the alpha of the pack. With this in mind one could certainly understand why, upon allowing the much larger gnips to enter the main area, the rest of Gnaw's pack would put all other intrusions aside to attack the gleaming suit of armor that their leader utterly despised, and utterly catapult the suit out of the vicinity with great haste.
The suit of armor, more annoyed than it had been previously, shouted a good number of unlisted profanities at the beasts as they carried it out of the mansion, allowing Luigi and co to proceed through the previously obstructed door. Gnaw rubbed against the plumber in utmost content, now that the suit of armor was gone.
"I wonder what Al did to bother Gnaw so much." Said Blecky, "I understand it must have been a sign of gratitude but it seems a bit strange that he'd go after an empty suit instead of a group of obviously uninvited intruders."
"Whatever the case," panted Bowser, who had been making his way downstairs as fast as possible when Gnaw was released, "we've got one more option for us to search for Merlon, since it seems he's not in this particular section of the house."
"Good point." Luigi agreed, "That suit must have been trying to deceive us. Merlon's most likely deeper inside."
As soon as everyone has been accounted for and the kind gnips were thoroughly thanked for their help with a bounty of pettings, Luigi and co passed through the previously obstructed door, entering a long, expansive hallway into the heart of the mansion.
Me-AND THAT'S THE CHAPTER!
Blecky-I miss Al, he was cool.
Me-Indeed he was Blecky, indeed he was. ADIOS!