Chapter 8: Dat Ain't No Map Features
Artemendo: Sorry for me being missing all that time. I know I couldn't leave my semi-real "fans" (ha, ha) waiting all that time. However, I was in a coma, but now I'm here again! Wahooey!
"I hate the Wii
'cause video games just aren't about swinging your arms." ~Some Wii hater
(my answer: Yes they are! Look at Super Arm Swing 256!)
"Test, test? Good. This is cameraman Dazzle Glitterstein, this time from the long-forgotten island of Mario Land, which I bet Mario doesn't even remember. Prince Larry Koopa and me came here due to an order of the Great King of the Koopas: ‘Buy a map of this kingdom!' Well, that seems easy enough, as we have plenty of cash with us, conveniently provided both by the Koopa empire and EAT AT DAZZLE'S, the infrastylish Star Bar, now featuring new features such as triple-fat non-dairy gum-based beverages. So EAT AT EAT AT DAZZLE'S!"
"You didn't even ask me how I am today."
"Oooooooooh, the big bad little Koopa Kid's angry! Since I am Rogueport's wealthiest resident now that Flavio spent all his money on worthless Super Luigi books and the one rich Koopa fellow moved to Poshley Hills, I consider myself a person of one importance that greatly over-importances a mere prince like you. Got it, li'l freak?"
"I hope this is turning out to be a very non-funny joke, because if else, I will have to tell our audience that Dazzle's new beverages are made out of..."
"NO! Your Highness,
I beg you to forgive my insolent treatment of your
honor! Never
shall I be known to repeat a thing of such mindlessness!"
"You get away this time."
"Thank you, Lord Larry."
"It'd be a good idea always to call me so. Where were we? Ah well... I just returned from the local map store-"
"They have MAP STORES here?"
"Do not interrupt my speech. I just returned from the map store, and they told me that all of their maps fell prey to a gang of paper-eating infantry units about five weeks ago."
"That sounds pretty whackaroundo with extra nutso. What are we to do now?"
"I believe that our only way out of this terrible dilemma is to find a professional map drawer."
"You mean a cupboard partition designed specially for storing maps?"
"No, you numbskull, I am speaking of a person who can draw maps."
"I was just joking, uh, Lord Larry. Looks like we have to order one."
"Yes! Let's phone the Give-me-an-assistant-or-I-gonna-kill-you Hotline, known from An (F)awful Story."
"Good idea. I am dialing now. Five-five-five-3560436120938560126583. Hello?"
---"Welcome to the Give-me-an-assistant-or-..."---
"Shut up and give an assistant map drawer or I gonna kill you!"
---"This is rude, man. Always being yelled upon is no fun, stinkers. Anyhow... We've got one in your area. He's a Dino Torch by the name of Tôrchéz, better known as Dino Torch 45H7. He was mentioned in the story earlier."---
"Absolutely no idea who that is."
---"You're hopeless.
I'll send him to you. Wait 40 minutes. And never, I
repeat, NEVER
again call the Give-me-an-assis-..."---
"Shut up. Well... It looks like the audience might take a little break while we're waiting. See you thereafter!"
***
"This is yet again cameraman Dazzle Glitterstein from Mario Land. We've been waiting for that Shatro guy for 42 minutes now... Ah, there he comes."
"Good day, on-a-trip ones. And, by the way, it's Tôrchéz. Well, it came to my ears that you need a 'map'."
"Indeed. My name is Larry, seventh heir to the Koopa throne."
"And I'm Dazzle Glitterstein, proud owner of EAT AT DAZZLE'S, the supernaturally good Star Bar in multiple popular and easy-to-reach locations, including Cloudy Climb, Minus World, and the 94th floor of the Pit of 100 Trials."
"Oh, I've been to the one in Minus World already! The beverages are delicious. Say, what are they made of?"
"Uhhhhh... Lord Larry, please refrain from doing anything I might regret."
"Awww."
"However, fellas... Time to go draw a mappy-dappy-doodle."
***
"So, what do we have here? Tree Zone, I think. Map it."
"A little question from a humble creature: did you ever see single trees being drawn on a map? Ludicrous, I say. Let's ignore it."
"Sounds plausible, I think."
***
"And what about this Turtle Zone?"
"What? You're not really expecting me to put LIVING BEINGS on a map? If that continues, I'd have to look for every single Goomba! Forget it, pals!"
"Well... Might be reasonable."
***
"Pumpkin Zone east and Macro Zone west... Note that."
"Hah! Every time I look at a country map, I see pumpkins and little one-family houses! WE NEED SOMETHING BIGGER, OK? And don't expect me to put that idiotic Mario Zone machine thingy on it. Not gonna happen."
"You could have a point here."
***
"Space Zone? Maybe?"
"You're stupid? Maybe? It's a map of MARIO LAND and not of THE UNIVERSE, guys! Look for Super Mario Galaxy if you want one!"
***
"So, and now let's take a look on the map."
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"I... I can explain that!"
"Get him, Dazzle."
"Yes, Lord Larry."
***
"This is cameraman Dazzle Glitterstein, proud to be able to report that Prince Larry and me finally managed to obtain a map of Mario Land after a wackolorico fight with the paper-eating infantry units. Luckily they had a non-already-eaten copy. Shatro became our personal servant after a light persuasive speech from Larry's Pocket Morton Record."
"That's Tôrchéz..."
"Shut up. This is Dazzle Glitterstein, signing off. Your line, Lord Larry."
"END OF CHAPTER!"
Intermission...
NEVER TRY TO ESCAPE
YOUR WORK!
Chapter 9: Metro Retro
Artemendo: You know what? I just today learned the word "seamstress". Cool, huh? You must know that English is only my third language. But I think my stories are not half bad, right?
"3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798..."
~Divide a circle's
perimeter through its radius and you'll get this.
I've typed it
by heart and it's right. I'm serious.
The Malevolent,
Malicious, and Malignant Adventures of Roy and Ludwig von Koopa, Tile 2!
70 years in the
future: Told by Grandpa Ludwig to his grandchildren Rose and Steve!
Rose and Steve hopped around Ludwig's rocking chair. "Tell us a story, te-hell us a sto-ho-ree!"
"Yes, yes, let me finish reading that chapter..." Ludwig muttered. "Well, young ones, what kind of adventure-like lie-type kind of made-up story would interest you today?" he asked after putting away the dictionary.
Rose asked, "How about a flashy and tubular story with funky drumsticks involved? That'd be truly outstanding!"
"And don't forget all that hard beating-up stuff," added Steve menacingly.
Ludwig frowned. "For now, I'll simply disregard your self-defying and utterly wasted advice and continue a story I started last time.
"The Map of Plit. The memories... After getting that genuine map from the fake Fawful, Parakarry, an utterly generic postal service Parakoopa, brought us a letter from King Dad. Aside from having approximately 65 misspellings and loads of bad grammar, its basic contents revealed to us that we also needed a map of the Mushroom Kingdom Wastelands, the place where SMB1 took... place. In spite of knowing it would be really a waste of time..." Ludwig stopped and laughed about his "humorous" speech. "Woooooooo... I'm da master. Anyway, it was still sort of fun."
Steve used the break to ask, "How comes that there were no Make-'Em-Less-blahblahblah things since Chapter 6?"
Rose cast a Make-'Em-Less-Attention-Paying spell onto Steve. Steve's eyelids went halfway down.
"Get on, Grandpa, forget my meaningless and only-slowing-you-down question."
Ludwig blinked a few times and continued. "We, by which I mean me and Roy, had played Super Mario Bros. so often that we could easily get to World 8-8 and get the map from Bowser's old fort. If it wasn't for one mean, mean meanie there to disturb us... Mr. Little! Oh no, that's from another opera." He giggled. "No, the true villain was none other than..."
"Wanda?" Rose suggested.
"Get on, get on, it's mind-numbingly suspensive, I can hardly bare it," demanded Steve somewhat annoyed, still with his eyelids halfway down.
"No, though Wanda was eerily close. It was another rejected character... kind of a green disosaur with a huge nose... pretty rarely seen in Mario games... could throw eggs and eat enemies... and had a flutter jump attack... could turn into vehicles, breathe fire and ice, sprout wings, sniff out treasure... some standard no-much-personality background NPC that I can't remember the name of. Let's refer to him as Gween Donkey."
Artemendo: Short break here. Of course Ludwig's not that dumb or senile to forget who Yoshi is, he even said that I'm a Yoshi interpreter in Chapter 4. He just despises him. And secondly, Yoshi's not an NPC, I just thought it'd add an even more discriminating touch.
"Well, and that Gween Donkey dude always made red floating platforms fall when we stood on them longer than two seconds. We never saw him doing this, but we're sure it was his vile handiwork. YOU CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE how HARD the courses are when you can't stand on those platforms forever!!! It's like playing Zelda: OoT and finding out that you can carry only eight Deku Sticks instead of ten!" Ludwig gasps and trembles in fear. "Let's not think about this kind of horror scenario anymore. Since the wastelands were deserted, we met no enemies until... A flashback will show."
Everything's in 8-bit colors and an orchestral remix of "The Lemmings 2 - The Tribes - Medieval Tribe" is playing in the background.
Ludwig and Roy come in from the left, they're horribly drawn 16x16 pixels with two animation phases each.
Gween Donkey comes in from the right. He's a 32x32 pixel square, which means he's a major boss.
An RPG fight commences!
LVK: 50/50 HP
Roy Cooper: 100/100
HP
Gween Donkey:
'full'/'full' HP
Ludwig attacks
with Violent Violins!
Gween Donkey
takes 'little to no' damage!
Roy attacks with
Roy-al Punch!
Gween Donkey
takes 'incredibly pathetic amount of' damage!
Gween Donkey now
has 'you barely scratched him'/'full' HP
Gween Donkey
uses his notebook to summon his pals!
Ludwig: How did
he get into possession of such an advanced item?
Gween Donkey:
Do Yoshi look dumb and/or prehistoric?
Bully: No, no.
Just Summoned:
Boshi (I was
in the middle of a race so TAKE ME BACK!)
The White Yoshi
(I'm actually for world peace...)
Notmyfriend-o
(Come on, the existence of Artemendo's archnemesis shouldn't be revealed
until Chapter 11!)
Boddle (Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh...
Okay, I guess lots of money and wooden dolls would help you greatly.)
Poochy (Woof!
Woof!)
Mario (Actually,
I'm only taking part in Morton's story. I'm wrong here.)
"Luigi" (WHAAAAAAAAT?
I, that is, Morton, the Shadow Queen and Luigi in one body, order you to
STOP AT ONCE!)
Dazzle ("This
is cameraman Dazzle Glitterstein... fighting against Ludwig and Roy Koopa.")
Kooky groans and
casts a Make-'Em-Less-In-Number spell!
Everyone disappears
except Ludwig, Roy, and Notmyfriend-o!
Notmyfriend-o:
'just laugh at me'/'not enough to be considered a Goomba' HP
Notmyfriend-o:
Well, I'd fight against you, and I'd win for sure, but I have cheerful
agogo music to compose (as opposed to Artemendo's scary pizzicato music).
Think of you as a winner by luck. Brwnahhahhahhahhah!
Notmyfriend-o
is defeated!
"End of flashback," continued Ludwig. "After beating all those idiots to a pulp in a spectacular fight full of action and boom-bang-tadah, we reached the abandoned Koopa Castle of World 8-8. In there, we found a large collection of maps, including Minus World, both the Apple and the Pear Kingdoms, Hyrule, Brinstar, the Northern Kremisphere, Johto, a small Earth country called Moldavia, and of course the Mushroom Kingdom Wastelands. And now, kids, don't waste time..." he chuckled again "...and go to bed. I think I'll be going too. I have the strange feeling that either the moon will come crashing down in three days or some metallic Santa Claus-esque weapon freak will attack us in the next Ludwig-Roy chapter. Ha, I must be getting senile or something like that."
Guess who used the Mind Transmitting Device in the next room?And guess whose heart-shaped mask floated above the house and laughed meanly?
Artemendo: I'm afraid we'll have to scratch that celestial holocaust. Too unoriginal and badly-thought-out for this kind of story.
"Awwwwwww..." responded Majora's Mask. "At this rate I'll never get to have a comeback. I must try something completely and utterly new, like taking down the SUN in FOUR days. Weehee! And, uh, END OF CHAPTER!"
Intermission...
BUY OLD, RETARDED, AND BY NOW COMPLETELY USELESS AND MONEY-WASTING NES GAMES!