(After months upon months of traveling through rain, sleet, snow, possibly even lava, the brave adventurers - 1-up Boo, Vim, Kingfin, and Void - have made it back to their studio! What awaits them NOW?!)
1-up Boo: That was completely unnecessary.
(Hey, it’s been years! I’ve got to get narrating spirit up again! I even got “Narrating for dummies!”)
Vim: We’ve been walking aimlessly through a forest for weeks, I’ve been stuck with these lunatics this whole time, and I don’t need some insane narrator causing me even more stress.
(Fine then.)
1-up Boo: Hey, look at the bright side. You can go back to doing the one thing you love!
Vim: And what might that be?
1-up Boo: Interviews! Through the power of friendship, rainbows and sunshine, we shall PROSPER!
Void: You do realize there’s a thunderstorm going on STILL.
1-up Boo: Yeah, it still hasn’t stopped since that Interview with the Fuzzy.
Kingfin: Me got water in bones.
Vim: At least we finally found shelter… Shame you have to be here too.
1-up Boo: Ah, you’ll get back in the flow of things sooner or later.
Vim: One of these days… What are you doing?
(1-up Boo is examining the door up and down. It appears to be in horrible condition, the giant hole left by the Giant Koopa Robot is still in the studio wall. All but one of the windows of the studio are broken.)
1-up Boo: … You’d think a few weeks wouldn’t cause THIS much damage even.
Void: Well, it has been getting poured on for weeks, possibly months.
(1-up Boo goes to open the door, he barely touches it and it crumbles to dust.)
Vim: So much for shelter.
1-up Boo: No, I got this, Vim. Don’t you worry.
(1-up Boo floats over to the only non-broken window.)
1-up Boo: Who has a crowbar?
Void: … Why would you need a crow bar?
1-up Boo: To break in of course! We can’t just float or walk in normally! We need to be dramatic, we need to be UNIQUE. For all we know, some hostile interviewer has taken over our studio! AND WE WILL NOT ALLOW THAT!
Vim: That seems highly improbable.
1-up Boo: Psssh, improbability is just one of the many factors in this situation, Vim.
Void: Sir, you are making little to no sense right now.
Vim: He never makes sense.
Kingfin: Me still got water in bones.
1-up Boo: Don’t worry, Kingfin, all will be well soon.
(1-up Boo floats to the window, puts on sunglasses and a black tuxedo, and begins forcing the window open.)
Vim: … Where did he…?
Void: Just let this play out.
Kingfin: Water.
(1-up Boo is struggling.)
Void: …
(Void goes in the studio and goes to the window, opening it normally. 1-up Boo rolls in James Bond style as soon as it opens.)
Void: Was that REALLY needed?
1-up Boo (taking off the sunglasses and tuxedo): SEE THAT, INVADERS! I STILL GOT IT!
(Vim and Kingfin go in the studio through the giant hole.)
Vim: That guy needs therapy.
1-up Boo: The last therapist I had didn’t last long.
Void: … Didn’t… last… long?
1-up Boo: Well, you see-… Where is everyone?
(The entire studio is empty, most things are in very poor condition. Wow, even I don’t remember it being THIS bad.)
Void: Rain can only do so much, it looks like someone came in and ransacked the whole place.
Vim: Oh joy.
Kingfin: Maybe they have cookies.
1-up Boo: Great, zombies have come and taken over my studio! And all I have to use against them is this darn hammer! And this is for Shy Guy-whacking purposes!
Vim: Thanks.
Void: … Zombies?
1-up Boo: Just go with it, Void, I got a plan.
Kingfin: Does plan involve cookies?
1-up Boo: We’ll see.
Kingfin: Yay.
1-up Boo: All right, guys. Follow me, keep low, and keep QUIET.
Kingfin: But…
1-up Boo: Okay Kingfin, you’re an exception.
Kingfin: Yay.
(They proceed down a carpet that leads to the stage. All the audience chairs appear to have been destroyed, with only about five or six that are still useable. They then proceed onstage, 1-up Boo heading over to the office door.)
1-up Boo: And then he opens it!
(Yeah… he does that. The office appears to be completely unscathed. On the main office chair sits a shadowy figure however…)
Void: What the…
Vim: Shadowy figures are never good news.
Void: Unless it’s me.
Vim: Sure.
1-up Boo: All right, who are you? This, sir, is private property!
(The chair suddenly spins around to reveal a shadowed cloaked figure… as in, it’s completely shadowed… This isn’t good.)
???: I am Shadoo.
(Awkward Silence.)
Vim: … Y’know, I think I liked it better out in the rainy forest.
1-up Boo: Okay, WHY are you here, Ms. Shadoo?
(Shadoo casts a glance at Void, Void tenses.)
Shadoo: Boo, I’ll keep this short. Ever since that rat Mario beat me, I was removed from the Shadow Pit of One Hundred Trials by my master. I have been traveling in search of an ideal place to settle, and would you look at that! A… ONCE… perfectly good studio. The audience didn’t last long.
Kingfin: They run off?
Shadoo: Let’s go with that. Anyways, long story short, I decided your studio would be a great place to construct a new, lovely, amazing… Shadow Pit of one hundred and TWO trials.
Vim: And the two is for…?
Shadoo: I have to change it up.
Vim: All right.
1-up Boo: … Right. That’s nice and all, Shadoo, but this is MY property!
Kingfin: But didn’t we move here after our original studio go boom?
1-up Boo: Kingfin… just stop talking, you’re ruining everything.
Kingfin: Okay…
1-up Boo: Shadoo! How about this, we give you a lovely Interview, and you give us back out studio-
Void: Why don’t we fight for it back?
Shadoo: You’re not up for it.
Void: I’m far better than you now-
1-up Boo: NO NEED FOR A BACKSTORY, PEOPLE! I don’t care what happened between you two, obviously this is an amazing climax! But we can do an action scene later; now, we interview! And uh, we’re VERY popular, and you can keep all the profits!
Shadoo: … Sounds reasonable.
1-up Boo: Void, I think you should get the camera this time.
(Void floats off to do so without question.)
1-up Boo: See Vim? He does it with no problem!
Vim: Gee, I wonder why.
(Void eventually arrives back with the camera and begins filming. He also hands 1-up Boo a biography on Shadoo since he knows nothing…)
1-up Boo: Thanks, don’t know where you got this, but it’ll help. Right, first of all, just clarify your gender. Since… I can’t really tell by just looking at you. There’s deaf people out there!
Shadoo: Female.
1-up Boo (flipping through the biography): Okay, so you’re a shapeshifter… Oh no, hope you’re not like Mimi.
Shadoo: Most certainly not.
1-up Boo: So how does your shapeshifting work?
Shadoo: How does it work? I am a construct of a much greater force. I am an heir of Darkness itself. I can take the void energy and fuse it into something, in the shadow dimension is where I make these things. I simply need to know how a creature works and functions, then I can take that knowledge and put it into the Shadow Dimension. There I use pure void and dark energy to construct Shadow clones of anyone, or anything. All I need is the knowledge and materials.
(Awkward Silence…)
Shadoo: … What?
1-up Boo: … I was kind of expecting something a little more… easy to understand? What’s all this talk about void energy and dark energy?
Shadoo: You have a pathetic mind, don’t you?
Vim: He most certainly does-
(1-up Boo does the unimaginable: he whacks Vim with his hammer.)
Vim: Urgh, bad idea…
1-up Boo: It was, perhaps you should make us some snacks.
Kingfin: COOKIES!
1-up Boo: Yeah, cookies, get cookies.
Vim: Well, if Shadoo decides to kill you, at least I won’t be nearby.
(Vim leaves.)
1-up Boo: Good thing I’m already dead.
Shadoo: That won’t help you.
1-up Boo: … Right, anyways, could you clarify what void and dark energy is?
Shadoo: Have you interviewed you Magiblot buddy over there?
1-up Boo: What? Void? Yeah, he’s awesome. He has hands and everything.
Void: That is true.
Shadoo: All right, so he probably told you that Magiblots go into the Shadow dimension. The Shadow Dimension is where the majority of dark and void energy lies within the world. Both are basically like a gas that multiplies itself.
1-up Boo: Did you make these “energies”?
Shadoo: No, I helped maintain it so it doesn’t go out of control however.
1-up Boo: Okay, so what exactly IS the shadow dimension? I know that it’s a place where Magiblots go to heal. But no one really knows anything about it.
Shadoo: To put it as simply as possible, it’s another “plain” of existence. It’s a place that only things of shadow, dark, or void energy have a passage to.
1-up Boo: Sounds like a great place for the whole family.
(Vim arrives back with a bowl of cookies. He throws it into the audience. I’ll give you one guess on what Kingfin does.)
Kingfin: COOKIES!
(Kingfin jumps into the audience to devour the cookies.
Vim: You realize you had a vending machine in the office filled with cookies this WHOLE TIME.
1-up Boo: Hey, we were stranded in a forest, don’t judge me.
Vim: Judging anyway.
Void: Pssst.
1-up Boo: Yeah, yeah. Right, so you have a shadow dimension where evil occurs, but what about the Shadow Pit of One Hundred Trials? Did you make it yourself?
Shadoo: I didn’t make the place itself, that was made by the Ancients. Why Flipside was made on top of it I don’t know, perhaps they wanted a cool attraction. I personally made all the Shadow creatures within it.
1-up Boo: For what purpose?
Shadoo: I didn’t want adventures to come down and to try to examine the place, so I made “guards”. But then Mario came along, and he ruined everything.
1-up Boo: But he just did it for the loot…
Shadoo: Yeah, well I had to be careful.
1-up Boo: Why didn’t you want anyone to study the place? What’s the harm? Were you… HIDING something?!
Shadoo: I’m evil. No lesser being is going to go in and examine this ancient architecture… even if it just looks like shadow blocks to you. Some of the blocks contain invisible runes, runes that could possibly be seen and read by a professional archeologist. I don’t think anyone is worthy of that knowledge but me.
1-up Boo: You said it was made by the Ancients, and in the game you appear in. *cough* Super Paper Mario *cough*.
Vim: Not needed.
1-up Boo: Don’t care, there’s those occasional people who know nothing, Vim, got to be prepared.
Vim: You only know these things because of that biography.
1-up Boo: We interviewers get special privileges.
Vim: SURE you do.
1-up Boo: Right, so you said you don’t work for the Ancients…
Shadoo: Bah, I’m my own ruler, I run my own kingdom. The Shadow Kingdom, as I like to call it. I was and still am plenty powerful enough to do things my own way, I don’t need to work for anyone.
1-up Boo: Plenty powerful enough? You got beaten by Mario, just like everyone else!
Shadoo: Those were clones that I sent after them, you dimwit-
1-up Boo: WHAT DID Y-
Shadoo: AHEM. Those were clones. I was watching Mario as he was descending, and yes, he was quite skilled indeed. You don’t get much entertainment in the Shadow Dimension. So I decided, why not watch? I made some shadow chests, warped into that card place, and stole that fool of an owner’s precious, rarest cards and then warped back. I put the cards in the chests and hid them. When he got to the bottom, I decided to have fun and tell him to redo the whole thing. I can’t believe he actually agreed.
1-up Boo: You explained more than was needed.
Shadoo: Eh, killing five birds with one stone… one very sharp stone.
1-up Boo: Hey, children could be watching.
Vim: Says the guy who blasts people with rocket launchers.
1-up Boo: It only HARMS them… doesn’t actually kill them… usually.
Vim: Exactly.
Kingfin (on the studio floor with cookie crumbs everywhere): Boss should make launcher thing shoot cookies!
1-up Boo: I’m sure I’ll get on it.
Shadoo: You guys are an interesting bunch.
Vim: This is actually less chaotic than it usually is.
(1-up Boo hammers a wooden plank that is part of the stage; this makes the left side of the wooden plank fly upwards. Vim was on that side… yeah, he flew upwards.
Vim: GAAAAaaaahhh…
1-up Boo: There.
Shadoo: Whatever works.
1-up Boo: I know, right? So, when Mario came down the second time, how’d you remake all the shadow creatures?
Shadoo: The only really hard part was making them the first time. After that, it wasn’t nearly as hard to remake everything. Mario has to go prepare for his second descent, and in that time I remade all the creatures as well as got ready the clones of his party.
1-up Boo: Okay, now… you seemed quite upset when Mario beat you… your CLONES. If supposedly you’re so much stronger, then why didn’t you do more to defeat him?
Shadoo: Those were mere shadow clones, yes, they were harder to make, but still. Mario felt he had defeated some powerful evil, but I was just playing with him. I don’t need his pixels or anything.
1-up Boo: But-
(*CRASH!* Oh look, Vim came back down.)
1-up Boo: Vim, nice of you to join us.
Vim: At least you were unique that time.
1-up Boo: I still got it.
Void: Shadoo, you’re implying you could have beaten Mario but chose not too. WHY. Why would you not go all out to destroy the planet’s greatest hero?
Shadoo: I have my own battles in the shadow dimension. This dimension is not just in this world, I don’t want to waste any resources on some plumber, he was mere amusement.
1-up Boo: You didn’t act like it was amusement when he beat your clones.
Shadoo: I was just acting, made him feel good.
1-up Boo: Yeah? HOW POWERFUL ARE YOU THEN?
Shadoo: I would do a demonstration, but you haven’t annoyed me enough yet.
1-up Boo: Aw… I think…
Void: I think you should be grateful.
1-up Boo: Eh, I can take anything with courage!
Shadoo: How touching.
1-up Boo: Exactly… Is there even anything else to ask? You make it seem there’s a whole lot more about you than meets the eye, you only appeared briefly in Super Paper Mario and that’s it!
Shadoo: To sum it all up. I am a mysterious shadow entity. I do what I want, and I will not follow orders. I used to work for the Ancients of the world, but then I rebelled. I created Magiblots along with shadow creatures, and took rule over a section of the shadow dimension. That is all you really need to know.
Vim: One more thing though. Do you have ties with Count Bleck? Bowser? Any Mario character?
Shadoo: As in, have I worked for anything of them? No, Mario and his friends are the only ones to lay eyes on me… unless you count those cursed cockroaches. Darn cockroaches.
Kingfin: Bugs scare me.
Vim: Even though you’re huge?
Kingfin: Yes.
Shadoo: Well, I think that’s a good moment to wrap this up.
1-up Boo: But… audience questions…
Shadoo: Do you see an audience?
1-up Boo: I see a bug.
(A bug is on one of the front row seats.)
Shadoo: … Point?
1-up Boo: … I don’t know. I was hoping the bug would be comedic relief. Guess not.
Shadoo: I’ll take my leave then, you can have this dump. I’ll go construct my Pit of One Hundred and Two Trials somewhere else.
Void: I’m sure we’ll meet again someday, Shadoo.
Shadoo: We’ll talk another time.
(Shadoo walks casually out of the studio.)
1-up Boo: … Huh. He said only Mario and his friends were the only ones to lay eyes on her, yet she was willing to be on camera. This is prime footage here, folks.
Void: Too bad we ran out of tape.
1-up Boo: … What?
Void: We ran out of tape five minutes in.
1-up Boo: … Oh, well great. There goes my plans for making a swimming pool. We need a get rich scheme.
Vim: Sell your hammer, that’s a start.
Kingfin: Make a cookie business.
1-up Boo: I’ll not consider both of those. First things first… we need to either repair this place or find a new studio… AGAIN.
Void: How do you plan to do that?
1-up Boo: I’ll find a way, in the meantime I can start fixing things myself.
Vim: Not again…
(A shock is heard a little ways off.)
1-up Boo: DARN VENDING MACHINE!
Void: That was already working!
1-up Boo: SO?!
Vim: End transmission?
Void: Indeed.
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