Super Paper Mario
Timpani and Blumiere in their own world.
Rated T for brief nudity.
PLEASE inform me if you think I should change it.
Contains spoilers.
Somewhere
.s.w.i.m.m.i.n.g.
blumiere
My hands, and my whole body, were shaking from the quiet sobs that rippled through me as I held the dark book. My tears fell on the cover of the Dark Prognosticus. Father wasn't home to stop me from releasing the dangerous magic held by the ancient manuscript. I could not live without her, so I would let nothing exist without her.
Knowing that the darkness would consume me as soon as I viewed the first page, I uttered the last words I would want to say as a free man.
"I love you, Timpani." As I said my final vow to her, I gritted my teeth and started to open what would be the end of myself.
Just as my fingers slid under the cover, the door of the castle opened, signaling the return of my father. He was too late to stop me now as I was opening the volume. He walked into the study, the oak door's hinges creaking. As he was taking his hat and cape off, he saw me peering at the first page of the book.
"BLUMIERE, NO!" he bellowed, eyes wide in fear. He ran towards me to cease this, but I had already read the first sentence. Father tried to grab the book away from my hands, but they were steel locks on the pages. I didn't budge an inch when he collided into me to take the Dark Prognosticus. Even his enhanced strength with magic couldn't move me.
I muttered the first statement aloud for him, telling him that I was already taken by the darkness of the book. "Let the doomed reader of this evil tome be taken by the spirit within," I said, slowly turning my head to towards his, a grin fit for a goblin on my face.
"Blumiere…" He released me at once to back away, his usually glaring eyes now panic-stricken.
"Blumiere is dead! Now I am Bleck, Count Bleck declared! BLEH HEH HEH BLECK!" I announced in an alien voice. I let go of the book, its powers letting it float in mid-air, and swaggered towards my father.
"No… Don't do this, Son," he pleaded for his life and the life of the worlds.
With my toothy smile of insanity that showed off a display of fangs, I sneered at him, my words dripping with bitter sarcasm. "Hello, Father. Thank you oh so much for sending Timpani away to die a slow and painful death, especially since you know exactly how I feel about her. Count Bleck will assure that yours will be likewise."
Cackling maniacally, I picked up the diamond letter opener on his desk and raised it above my head. The dagger came flying down in my fist and—
I sat up with a start, my hands gripping the blades of grass. Panting, I looked at my surroundings. The night sky above me told that the time was about midnight. Crickets chirped quietly in the forests while frogs sang throaty songs by the brook. The light breeze from yesterday afternoon still lingered and blew in my hair, the same color as the dark dome above me. One cool night long ago, Timpani and I had been staring up at the same stars, looking at the stars, wishing though Timpani said that I had already granted her wishes.
The rhythmic sound of Timpani's deep and even breaths next to me helped calm me down and bring me back to reality, if you could call this reality. Neither of us could believe that this would be how we would live for the rest of our lives, together in a pristine paradise.
I crashed back down to lay next to her again. She stirred and turned over in the soft grass.
"Blumiere…" she whispered and put one arm across my bare chest. Timpani sighed and stayed asleep. She had always been a deep sleeper, so my actions never woke her.
I stared up at the stars, thinking. The first night here, Somewhere we named it, and I had already been woken by a nightmare. Was this a bad omen? Could Somewhere be too good to be true? Would the past continue to haunt me, and even worse, would Timpani's past haunt her? Seeing her in torment would be the Underwhere for me; agony was the absolute last thing I wanted for her, especially since we were together now.
With all this worrying, I could have never fallen back asleep, so I decided to take a swim. I lifted her arm delicately off myself and placed it across her soft breasts. I leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek, and darted off to the brook.
Yesterday I had discovered the mouth of the stream: a small lake filled with all kinds of fish. Almost as if Somewhere was prepared by the Ancients for us, a rope was tied to a tree branch over the lake. Once Timpani had collected enough apples to last a year yesterday afternoon, I took her to the lake.
"It's just like the place we would run away to sometimes on the weekends," Timpani said as she reminisced while looking. "Remember how at first the locals were wary of us 'rich folk'? It took a month of our regular visits to assure them that we weren't going to tax their fishing at the lake,"
I chuckled and added, "The village elder tried to shoo us away with a broomstick."
She beamed at me and had dragged me by the wrist. "C'mon, Blumiere. See if you can still do a flip when you jump off!"
I gave her a half-smile and grabbed onto the rope. With a running start, I leaped off a big, flat rock at the edge of the lake. Once the rope took me high enough, I let go and did a front flip. I yelled in exhilaration, flying through the air as I dove into the cool lake. I saw as I "landed" that the fish parted with my impact.
When I swam up for air, Timpani was getting ready for the jump. She ran with the rope in her hands, feet leaving the ground at the rock at the edge.
"Yahoo!" She let go and came towards me. I caught her in my arms just before she hit the water. "Hey, I wanted to splash, mister," she replied, giving a false frown.
"Fine, fine, go again. I'll swim out of the way this time." Rolling her eyes, she swam out of the water. Keeping to my promise, I let her do a cannonball into the lake. Timpani came up laughing, her light blue dress and luscious red hair sticking to her wet body. We raced to the rope to go again first and spent the rest of the day swimming. By nightfall we were both exhausted and collapsed at the same spot we had woken up. Timpani and I fell fast asleep right after we were done kissing.
Now, I simply sat on a rock we used as a launch pad, pondering about the future. I was so unsure of what would lie ahead of us here. It seemed like the picture of perfection, but I had learned well that perfection always has some skeletons in the closet. Surely we would find various surprises every day, like the lake, but would there be any unpleasant happenings here? I had already experienced one with my nightmare, but would we find any? Not only that, but would we find even another who we could communicate with? We had already seen the swing rope which would mean that someone tied it there. Maybe that someone would reveal themselves to us soon.
I was sure that they would be friendly, but I couldn't help but wonder what they have done about shelter. Timpani and I needed somewhere to live, but neither of us knew anything about build a permanent house from the ground up. Compared to our old, ravish lifestyles, this was a shell shocker. We were eating hand-picked apples. I used to be able to have a freshly-baked apple pie at the ring of a bell. I knew that one day couldn't be much of a comparison, but it still was a big change for Timpani and me.
As I was lost in thought, I saw the sun crawl up and over the treetops. I had been awake and sitting by the lake for longer than I thought. Either that or it was already early morning when I awoke.
Timpani came and sat down to my right to watch the sunrise.
"You're usually out like a rock," I observed. My eyes shifted to her and I asked, "Why up so early?"
"Bad dream," she answered so very matter-of-factly. My eyebrows knitted together, discontent that she too had an undesired blast from the past. Strangely, she didn't seem too bothered by the fact that she had a nightmare, her face only looked thoughtful, but Timpani could always keep her emotions under wraps.
We rested our hands that we held on the rock while we sat in silence, watching the pink sky turn light blue. The last time we had done this was the day before my dreadful father sent her away to wander dimensions. The birds in the trees sang of dawn as the creatures of Somewhere were roused from their slumber.
Once the sun came up all the way, we slid into the cool lake. The water helped wake me up as I swam a few laps around the perfectly-circular lake. Timpani simply dipped her head into the water, using it to push her hair out of her face. No matter how pretty the pampered princesses I had been pushed to court were Timpani's beauty would always outshine them. Even when she called herself mediocre, I would tell her that she was the most attractive woman in existence because that was what she was to me.
After out morning water routines, we had breakfast. I was able to catch a few fish with a crude fishing pole made of a stick, vine, and hook-shaped rock, using my hands instead of a net. After running away from my father so many times as a child, I learned how to survive outside of my palace home for at least a week. Timpani cooked the fish over an open fire and we had apples as a dessert. A passing thought went through my mind, wondering how long it would take us to be bored of apples as fruit.
She was the one to start the mealtime conversation.
"So, why did you wake up so early?"
I raised an eyebrow. "How do you know that if you were sleeping when I woke up?"
"I have my ways," she answered slyly, smirking.
"Well, I also had a bad dream."
"About…?"
"What happened when I first read the Prognosticus."
She nodded, biting into the fish on a tree branch. "I had a similar nightmare. I was dreaming about the first dimension your father sent me to." She shuddered at the thought as I reached over to place my hand on her shoulder. "Thanks," she said with a small smile.
Suddenly, a loud rustling came from the forest behind us. We both turned right away to the source of the sound. A dark figure was coming from the woods, pushing hanging branches and jumping over debris on the forest floor. Birds flew out of its path and small animals skittered away. The first body part to emerge from the green was a foot.
The person revealed themself.
Author Note: Hello and thanks for reading again! Sorry for the slow update; I couldn't really get my creative juices flowing with finals in school and such. Sorry to leave such a cliff hanger, but I need to think about how to get the new character developed and such.
To the Reviewers:
The Great Chicken Miasma: Thanks for that!
I've made Blumiere not a Shadee, but just a different humanoid race. Like dark humans or something.
I'll get to reading that then. :)
Minstrel of Ages: Hehe, my friend read this to edit it and she was tearing also.
I also like the fact that there's a lot of Timpani and Blumiere stuff. One of my favorite parts about the game was how the story was created.
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Look out for more chapters!
-Tea Bag's Hex