"Well, well, well. Look what we have here." The inkwell looked over the scene, dark wings flapping to keep him afloat. "Bombette... Flavio... Goomboss... Mr L... I can't thank you enough."
"Whaaaat?" The Bob-Omb blinked.
"I am serious. You all managed to weaken this guy so badly that this was a piece of cake! I really don't know how I would've pulled this off without you. Name's Inky." With a sudden stop in hovering ominously, the inkwell dropped to Bombette's height and swooped past her face without warning, only to smack Flavio's hat off and take to the air again.
As he did so, the sky became just a bit darker. Inky looked up and shook himself out. "Ah, dangit. I forgot that happens every time I appear. It did help to make a pretty great entrance, though, don't you think?" The others could only gape as he circled about them.
Mr L shook off his silence first. "So, uh, care to explain WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE?"
Before Inky could respond, a spear of bright yellow paint whizzed just past him. Three of the Paint Stars floated at the archway - Crimm, Solde and Tacolb respectively, each with large blobs of paint surrounding them.
"Don't think we didn't see that weather change from a mile away!" the Yellow Paint Star yelled, launching another barrage of spears at the inkwell. "Now release Huey, and get out of our island, right now!"
"Solde, I'm at least 95% sure that's not going to work," Tacolb said.
"SHUT UP AND LET ME SCREAM AT IT."
"Ah, yes, our other guardians of the island. Great job not noticing me until today, by the way. I was around for months, waiting... just waiting..."
"In my defense, I was in space," Crimm replied.
"Nobody cares. Anyway, I have bigger plans right now, and none of you are going to get in the way of that. All right? All right." With that, Inky flew past another barrage of ice, light and flame projectiles, swooping off into the distance.
Everyone stared over the scene for a second. Goomboss shook his head. "Yeah, no, I'm out." Then he pulled a raft out of his hammerspace and left as all six others present stared after him.
This moment of staring afterwards, the other three Paint Stars rushed over. Emelda spoke up first. "Yo, what just happened? Where's Huey?"
"The Dark Paint," Crimm answered. "That blasted thing fused with him and took over, then flew off like the coward it is."
"In that case, why don't we... locate it?" Fortilla turned towards the distant ocean.
"Locate it?" Mr L raised a brow.
"Even if it's part Huey now... the two of them can't have gone far. Huey ain't a guy who can't hold his own. No matter where it's going, it can't do nothing if we catch up first."
"It's one step towards saving him," Tacolb agreed. "Although Inky did mention 'bigger plans'... so even if we find him, we still need to be cautious."
"So, uh, seeing as you're around..." Tarino lowered himself until it wasn't uncomfortable for the trio to look up at him. "Uh, mind helping out with this?"
"I mean, it was kinda our fault..." Bombette said. "So I'm in, and I'm taking these two with me, and there's nothing anyone can do about any of this."
"Great! Then let's get started. Pink Bob-Omb, you're scouting the Red and Orange areas. Guy with the mask, you're checking Yellow and Green. And red-jacket, you'll check the Blue and Purple sectors, as well as the rest of town here." Crimm floated upwards.
"The rest of us will start developing a solid plan to breach whatever base there is," the Blue Star next to them added.
"Report back once you find something. If you don't, well, tough luck I guess. We aren't going to come get you." Solde finished.
"Aye aye, madam!" Bombette then attempted to move the other two, but ended up having to bomb them to their respective sectors. "Teamwork..."
All right! Before we get to the challenge, I'm just going to list out precisely what happened, and a few red herrings/trick clues that I put in there.
1. We all know the "black paint" was involved - I'm calling it Dark Paint, though, because of the Dark Prognosticus and Shadow Queen and Dark Star and all that, and also because I want to differentiate it from outlines, which are made of paint and also black. Tarino foreshadowed an attack in Chapter 1.
2. Huey was possessed, but nobody predicted he and the Dark Paint would fuse! I'll expand on this in later chapters.
3. Adding on to that point, I mentioned beta elements were involved. I didn't mention how many. Both the "Dark Paint Cape" AND elements from Huey's old designs - particularly the bat thing's hair and paint wings plus "Inky" in itself were used. Ohhh ho ho ho ho, messing with readers feels GREAT.
4. Although Mr L may have mentioned "this is what happens when he gets mad", Huey's emotions aren't actually directly linked with Prism Island. After all, we're talking about Mr L here. What does he know? The only thing that happened was that his guard was down when he was too sad to notice the problems going on behind him.
Rewards:
BOOMFanficALatta/Mr L: +10
TuliDream/Bombette: +7
NintendoJedi: +0 (sorry, again)
Anyway... challenge time!
9: SEARCH CHALLENGE
For this one, you need to go to ChocoChicken, my Original Works account! In my book Gods Aren't Perfect, in a certain chapter, I will have put a comment containing nothing but "Huey was here". Your job is to locate the comment ASAP and reply to it! First to reply wins, second to reply is second, and so on.
also while you're at it check out GAP please-
it's like PMP but not paper mario, i swear
RULES:
- No asking other contestants, although I'm not sure how far you were expecting to go with that "strategy".
- No asking me. I probably forgot where I put it.
- Actually getting invested into GAP is not required but highly recommended.
Points Handout:
1st: 10 points
2nd: 6 points
3rd: 3 points
Current Standings:
TuliDream: 40
NintendoJedi: 38
BOOMFanficALatta: 28
YOU ARE READING
Paper Mario Party (User Interactive)
Humor(ORIGINAL IDEA BY @pinkandpeachy ) This is based on the book "Mario Party 9.5" by @pinkandpeachy , except with my own rules and with a bare semblance of a plot instead of slice-of-life style. In a nutshell, you Wattpadders will sign up as a Paper M...
