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>> The Crown of Destiny >>
Sandwiched between the ground floor of Castle Toadstool and the subterranean dungeon, hidden in a quirk of architecture that the kingdom fire marshal would certainly not have approved of, was the strange laboratory of one Professor E. Gadd, a gifted but (at the best of times) rather inscrutable man of science. He was generally seen as the most practical among his colleagues, not nearly as dynamic in personality as Mad Sciencestein, nor as bold as Dr. Crygor in pushing the very limits of science and discovery. Professor E. Gadd had devoted his life to the study and understanding of un-life. He had spent years researching Dry Bones and Chinchos and such, but his true passion was found with boo-kind.
No one could quite remember when he had taken up residence at the castle, or who had given him permission to move in to start with. Peach assumed it was one of her advisors, who in turn assumed residency had been granted by someone else or the princess herself. Bureaucratic investigations are not a priority at Peach's castle is what you should take away from this revelation.
It was no mystery why he had set up shop within the castle, however. There was a small contingent of boo living (or un-living. Whatever) in the castle, which were worth studying by themselves, but what really interested the good professor was the portal to Big Boo's Haunt, known more formally as Big Boo's Mansion (Not to be confused with Boo Mansion) a mansion theorized to exist in the Paranormal Dimension, origin place of boo-kind and King Boo's personal kingdom.
While boologist like Professor E. Gad was naturally (supernaturally?) fascinated by such a place, his occasional 'research assistant' Luigi was less thrilled at the prospect of encountering more boos. A conflict of interests one might say. Just at the moment though, no expeditions or experiments were underway, nor was Luigi in attendance. We'll go visit him later in the story.
The professor was tinkering around on some new ghost-grabbing gadgets, to aid in a future venture and to (hopefully) put Luigi's concerns to rest. However, Professor E. Gadd was operating with very unstable elements, trying to merge magic and science, two things that sometimes go together and sometimes don't. And sometimes they don't go together but more explosion-y. This was one of those times.
A low rumble made the dungeon denizens look up fearfully, dust drifting down from the ceiling. Professor E. Gadd lifted his thick goggles and scratched at his remaining tuft of white hair, examining the larger chunks of the former electronic device, trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.
"Oya ma! Gung jnf na harkcrpgrq ernpgvba." He commented more to himself than to his laboratory assistant, R.O.B. The short, boxy robot chose not to verbalize, yet it still managed to express itself in how it reacted to comments or events. His contemplation was interrupted as a small portion of the wall crumbled away, revealing a hidden space behind it.
'Zrrrrrrr zrrr zzzzzzrrr." R.O.B. buzzed sarcastically as it rolled on treads to the new wall hole, shifting larger rubble away, and beginning to clean up dust and smaller pieces of debris. It was clear that the wall had been hastily patched up in the past, and probably wouldn't have stayed intact another year anyway, irregardless of explosions, making this a very fortunate accident. Or at the very least an interesting accident.
Surprisingly the false wall hadn't been the shoddy craftsmanship of lazy toadstools. Or at least not merely the shoddy craftsmanship of lazy toadstools. We can't rule anything out, really.
More interesting than Mushroom Kingdom construction workers and their possible work ethic duplicity was the mystery item therein. An object squirreled away in the hole for the future to find, or perhaps to avoid its future discovery. It was a crown adorned with a pink mushroom cap and eyes, also like a mushroom. Gadd had never seen such a power-up item before. "Zzzrr zzrrrrrr!" R.O.B. buzzed in annoyance, bumping into Gadd's leg to get him out of the way.
"Ubj phevbhf." Gadd mused, turning the power-up in his hands as he absently stepped away from the moody robot, the explosion already forgotten in his mind as he refocused completely on the new mystery at hand. Several hours of tweaking, testing and poking later and E. Gadd thought he had an idea what the crown did, though he still had no idea why it existed. Or who had hidden it away originally, or even why. But he thought it might solve Peach's issues with being kidnapped, if it did what he suspected, and minus any willing participants to experiment on, theories were all he had.
Scans revealed it was a transformation magic item, not unlike a Super Leaf. The crown function seemed to alter the wearer to a specific gene matrix. Another note being the crown was much older than it looked. Possibly as old as the castle itself. Which just begged the question- why a priceless family heirloom was hidden away to be forgotten? Or was it meant to be retrieved at some future date but circumstances wouldn't allow its retrieval?
A little later in Peach's throne room. "I'm sorry, what now?" Peach asked in confusion, not quite believing what she had just heard proposed. "You want to use this... untested artifact... to change one of my loyal subjects into a clone of me, so Bowser will kidnap them next time?"
Well, when she said it like that it sounded kind of amoral. This was one of the issues of not having an assistant that spoke in words. You couldn't bounce ideas off them to sort the bad ones from the good. And E. Gadd had so many ideas, who could sort all the terrible ones from the brilliant ones?
"V jnf whfg huvat..." Gadd started to say, perhaps to salvage the idea, but Peach just raised a gloved hand for him to stop, something she reserved to impress seriousness. The princess was not known for being severe. This very rare cutoff was the extent of her unbecoming indulgences. That and lying her spoon the wrong way when she was finished with tea.
"I'm sorry, Professor, I simply can't endanger my people, and whoever takes my place would be doing just that. Furthermore, it would be really easy for this to get out of control. If our enemies got hold of this item the results could be catastrophic, not even to bring up the ethical dilemma of using an experimental object on my citizens-"
That was all the spy-toad known as Shif T. needed to hear. He quickly exited the castle and made his way to a mostly forgotten warp pipe located in the abandoned Mario Circuit raceway, a weed-choked relic of bygone events. He crouched at the base of the rusted tube and held his breath a moment, listening for hungry jaws snapping, or the tell-tell scraping of a piranha plant slithering around inside. Of course this system had been supposedly cleared of monsters, but that was years ago when this was still an active racetrack, and all it took was one careless mistake to become a piranha snack. Climbing into the tube with a grunt, he was whisked to his destination with a speed that defied physics and logic. The warp pipe exited just outside the creepy old Toadwood Forest, a place of deep shadows and creepy vibes even in the middle of the day. It was a haunted place that was fertilized on death, torture and fear.
"Pssst." Shif T. hissed, trying to alert his contact without actually entering the shadows. "PSSSST!" Still no response from the Dark Land contact. Shif T. reluctantly walked into the spooky woods, imagining sounds in the brush and eyes in the dark. He hadn't taken ten steps when something grabbed the back of his shirt. "Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!"
"Silence, traitor. It is I." The contact recoiled from Shif T. like a receding shadow. It was a black-clad Guy who loved sneaking around and making grand proclamations about Bowser. No wonder he hadn't been noticed among the dark trees. "What information do you present for our supreme sovereign?" He was a rather forward 'guy' that went by the handle 'Shadow Guy', a laughably fake name. "Waste not the time of he who serves might, lest you find yourself poised under the hammer of judgement, for we are all mere bugs for our lord to trample upon."
"That senile lunatic... Gadd... He discovered an artifact buried in the castle. A unique crown power-up that has Peach all kinds of paranoid. Something of catastrophic proportions according to the princess herself. I assumed it was something Bowser would be interested in." Shif .T looked around as he reported, imagining he could hear unseen horrors surrounding them.
"You presume correctly." Shadow Guy replied, silently disapproving of the lack of honorifics in regards to the Lord of the Dark Land. "All power naturally flows to the center as nature commands it. Our lord is a vacuum to which all strength is drawn and assimilated, glory to his power and might." Shadow Guy paused dramatically for a moment. "Who else knows of this object?" The dead eye-holes of his mask bore into Shif T. intensely.
"No one else! Peach won't be talking about it and the old man has probably forgotten already." Something crunched some leaves behind him, making Shif .T spin around in fear, visions of angry toad ghosts and feral piranha plants dancing in his head. When he looked back, Shadow Guy was already gone
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