This is also the first story to specifically be labeled as a "Numnums" story -- specifically, the full title according to the copy of it I still have is "Numnums: The Search for the Red Num." My elementary-school-era stories ended up separated into "Numnums" and "Supernum" stories around this point, with the "Numnums" stories being defined by Supernum either not being present or not being the main character of the story. There were a lot more Supernum stories than plain ol' Numnums stories, of course, since this was around the point where Supernum became the main character I wrote about. Anyway... on to this old thing I wrote when I was... well, I'm not entirely sure of the timeline on this one but it was probably finished when I was around 10, and started a year or more before that.
One day on Nummorro, Nummy the Numnum was hunting for Kirbys to put in his Kirbymeat ravioli. As soon as he had caught and killed one Kirby, his phone rang. It was Supernum!! He told Nummy about the Red Num, a Numnum that had been hidden for 1000 years, and about the bad guys that were trying to get it. They were: Yuckow Food, Marching Milde, and Killer Kirby! Nummy knew they had to be stopped, but he didn't know how a wimpy Num like him would ever be able to beat an army of tough badguys! Nummy thought that if Supernum came with him, he would have a better chance at beating the badguys, but Supernum told Nummy that if more than one Numnum goes to get it, only one of the Nums will survive. Before Nummy left, he heard Supernum say "Remember that only one Num will make it. If other Nums are there, don't fight any badguys, just run as fast as you can and grab the Red Num." Remembering Supernum's words, Nummy starts the adventure that every Num will be talking about 1000 years from now, The Search For The Red Num.
In this story, the main character is Nummy -- the Numnum master chef who owns his own restaurant (called Nummy's, of course) and who usually served as the mentor and advice-giving figure to Supernum himself in other stories. In this one, oddly, that seems to be flipped around -- Supernum somehow knows all these details about the Red Num which Nummy doesn't, for no apparent reason. Another odd bit: Supernum apparently counts as a Numnum for the purposes of the Red Num's "only one Numnum can make it out of there alive" rule, despite actually being a transformed human.
I also remember that in the original version of the story, when I first started writing it, the list of bad guys seeking the Red Num was a good bit longer -- including some big names like the Alligator Teacher, as well as probably at least a few that I've completely forgotten by now. I apparently went back and removed those extra names later after the story was finished and none of them actually made an appearance.
Also not making an appearance: any other Numnums seeking the Red Num, despite the warnings early on that if multiple Numnums go after it, only one of them can survive. I'm not sure if I had originally planned for other Numnums to be present and just forgot about that or if that was just a reason to have Supernum conveniently left out of the story.
Nummy hated this part of the trail because a Parupoo could be hiding anywhere, ready to come out of the ground and squish him. "This forest is creepy." Nummy said. As soon as he said that, five Creepy Centipedes jumped out of the bushes and attacked him! "Did you say creepy?" they asked in their creepy, centipedey voices. Nummy was frightened by the Centipedes and ran deeper into the forest.
"Creepy Centipede" was apparently a specific species of centipede living on Nummorro back in the elementary school years. I was probably thinking of those gray, skittery house centipedes that really creeped me out back then.
But the Centipedes were hungry for Numnum meat and followed him. Running from the hungry Centipedes, Nummy tripped over a Kirby that was stuck in the sticky, mucky rutoo on the forest floor. "Help me!" said the Kirby. He was sinking deeper into the rutoo. "If I help you, will you come with me to find the Red Num?" Nummy asked. The Kirby said yes and Nummy pulled as hard as he could and pulled the Kirby out. He pulled so hard that rutoo flew everywhere, hitting the Centipedes like fireballs and killing four of them. The Centipede that survived thought Nummy was a Rutoo-Tossing Centipede Eater and ran out of the forest in two seconds.
And here's the introduction of Nummy's only ally during this trip, a K'hyurbhi who doesn't actually get a name mentioned until later on in the story. He's inconsistently referred to as "the Kirby" and sometimes just plain "Kirby" (despite him never being intended to be Nintendo's Kirby at all... this is reminding me a bit of how the Yuckow Foods in some of my other old stories were called "Yuckow Food" as if that was their name) before finally getting the name "Kirb" sometime later on. Nowadays that name would be spelled "Kurb," and he'd have more of a personality and be able to use Kihlah... but none of that had been developed yet at the time this old thing was written.
I'm not sure exactly why I referred to the rutoo hitting the centipedes as being "like fireballs," though I'm guessing I was probably thinking of Mario fireballs at the time for whatever reason. This also establishes the existence of another Nummorrian species, the centipede eater, which I never actually drew or made up any more details of until years later. (They're no longer known for tossing rutoo, though.)
Nummy went on, and eventually they came to a clearing with a huge house in the middle of it. The first thing Nummy noticed was that the house was surrounded by rutoo, not grass or Yumma Weeds. Nummy decided to enter the house and see who lived there, even though he didn't know anything about that part of the forest.
First sign that a house is suspicious: they have a giant rutoo pit around it rather than a grassy lawn or some other sort of plants. Also, this may be the first-ever mention of the Yumma Weed, the plant that Yum is made from, also known in Khurbyish as yummaguri.
As soon as Nummy entered the house, he noticed that something was cooking on the stove. When he looked to see what it was, it jumped out at him, missed, and almost hit the Kirby that was with him! "Hahaha!" it said. "I am Yuckow Food!" it said. "He's Yuckow Food, the first badguy to try to stop us from getting the Red Num!" said the Kirby. The Food attacked again, this time hitting the Kirby right in the face. "EEW! Get it off me!!" said the Kirby. Nummy knew that if he didn't get it off fast, it would eat Kirby!! It's a good thing Nummy brought his Yummo Food (made by squishing and frying the leaves of the Yumma Weed) to stop the Yuckow Food from eating Kirby. Since Yum was poisonous to Yuckows, the Yuckow Food fell right off of the Kirby and landed right in a huge pile of rutoo right outside of the house. As the Yuckow Food sank into the rutoo, a huge SlobberWorm came out of it and ate the Yuckow Food in one bite.
Originally, the Yuckow Food (and another character who shows up a bit later) spoke in my early attempt at representing Khurbyish -- which was just English written in the "Symbol" font, which made it a jumbled-up pile of Greek letters. Once again, the Yuckow Food is referred to as if "Yuckow Food" was its name as an individual in addition to that being the name of its species. There's also an explanation of why Yum hurts/kills yuckfood-based creatures, and the introduction of another Nummorrian species, the slobberworm. Apparently slobberworms can eat yucky stuff without any issues.
"We'd better check out the bedroom." said Nummy. So Nummy and Kirby went to the bedroom and saw Christy, who was eating a plate full of fried Numnums, roasted Kirbys, Blurby burritos, and Yuckow-baked Blue Nums with rutoo sauce. As she had just finished the last fried Num, Nummy and Kirby burst into the room yelling "Oowa oowa oowa oowa!" Christy screamed and tossed the rutoo sauce so high it splatted on the ceiling and dripped down on her head. She was so mad that her arms turned shorter, she got fatter, her eyes changed, her mouth rounded, and she grew little marks on her cheeks. She was turning into a Kirby!
And here's the second appearance of Christy, though chronologically it would have to be her first appearance since she's killed in The Numnum Club. Also here is the odd referencing of the young K'hyurbhi as "Kirby" as though that was his name (even though it's later revealed to be Kirb), and an example of bad guys eating yucky food with the "yuckow-baked Blue Nums."
The random "battle cry" the two of them yell out when charging into Christy's room was borrowed from a radio show that I frequently heard on my trips to and from school around this time, which if I remember right was called something along the lines of "John Boy and Billy." I can't remember the context of it now, but they would occasionally yell out something like "oowa-oowa-oowa-oowa!" during the show.
Oh, and Christy is magically transforming into a Kirby, which is apparently a thing she does now. There's a reason I say "Kirby" rather than "K'hyurbhi" even now for this particular transformation, which you'll see in a little bit if you keep reading.
After she was finished turning into a Kirby, she began sucking in everything in the house. She tried to suck in Nummy, but everyone knows Kirbys can NEVER suck in a Numnum. But Kirbys can suck in other Kirbys, so Nummy had to hold on to the Kirby to keep him from being sucked in. When she finally stopped sucking in, Kirb tossed an onion (Christy hates onions) right into her mouth. "Hey Christy!! Eat This!" he said. "Yucko! Yucko! EEW! I hate onions! Yuck!" she said. As Christy gulped down the very spicy onion, she turned back into a cute, little, wimpy girl.
Yep... when Christy transforms into a Kirby, she actually gains the "vacuum" power that Nintendo's Kirby has and starts sucking in everything around here. Numnums are apparently immune to this power, so Nummy is safe... but Kirb (who finally gets his name mentioned here!) is in danger of being pulled in. I'm not sure why I had Numnums being completely immune to the vacuum-sucking ability that Christy had, but it was probably something to do with Num Power.
And Christy is defeated by... her own onion allergy, which is apparently strong enough to undo her magical Kirby transformation and revert her to human form as well as knocking her unconscious (though she doesn't die, at least as far as the story says. Though if she did, that would mean she'd get two unexplained resurrections. XD) I'm not sure why Kirb is randomly carrying an onion at this point, but he is. Was he planning on coming into Christy's house and poisoning her with an onion before he ended up stuck in the rutoo, or what?
"Let's get out of here." said Kirb. "Yeah. There isn't anything important in here anyway." said Nummy. They didn't know it, but their fight with Christy had woken up some Parupoos that were sleeping in one of the rutoo piles outside of the house. As Nummy and Kirb left, one of the Parupoos peeked out of the rutoo and saw them. The Parupoo was mad at them for waking it up, so it came out of the rutoo and tried to hit Nummy by throwing a PooBall at him. But Nummy saw the PooBall and ducked under it. Nummy saw the PooBall coming, but the other Parupoo didn't, so when he came out of the ground to attack, he got knocked out by the flying PooBall. The Parupoo that was left had just thrown his last PooBall, so he had no way to attack and hid under the rutoo until Nummy and Kirby had left.
Pooballs are not actually made of poo these days (they're actually partially-digested rutoo -- Parupoos are burrowing worms, so they end up ingesting little bits of rutoo as they dig through it -- hardened into a weaponized lump), though at the time I wrote this story I probably intended them to be. These Parupoos are apparently not minions of Killer Kirby or some other bad guy like those that appear in other stories, but just random Parupoos who got pissed off at being woken up.
And Kirb is randomly referred to as just "Kirby" again, after three uses of his actual name in a row. Whoops.
Nummy noticed a restaurant on the side of the road, so he decided to eat there and see how good the food is. As soon as he went in, he saw the name of the restaurant: The Milde Cafe. "The Milde Cafe. Who is Milde?" Nummy thought. Nummy decided to look at the menu and see what they have for him to eat.
Apparently Nummy has already forgotten that one of the bad guys mentioned at the very beginning of the story was Marching Milde. Who, as mentioned in my post on The Numnum Club, was basically ripped directly from Yoshi's Island. In this story though, I apparently at least tried to differentiate him a bit from his Yoshi's Island counterpart... by making him a chef, randomly.
And I only just now realized that Christy was not mentioned among the list of bad guys searching for the Red Num back at the start. So apparently Nummy and Kirb just kinda barged into her house and knocked her out with an onion for no reason. Whoops.
_____________ The Milde Cafe_____________
_______________Menu________________
Lunch: Supper:
Fried Numnums Yucked Chicken
Roasted Kirbys BeefYucko meat
Blurby Burritos Yuck Food meat
Yum And Yuck Special Yummo Food meat
Yuck Salad Cheese Ravioli
Num Sandwich Super Sandwich
Barf Burger The Big PooYum
BeefYucko Chomps Kirbymeat Ravioli
Sausage Pizzyuck Numnum Ravioli
Yuckfood Pizzyuck Grilled Fishies
Beef and Num Pizzyuck Roasted Bread
_______________________________________
Kentucky Fried Kirbys Bucket, Plate
________________________________________
Grilled Nums Fried Fishies
_______________________________________
Appetizers:
CheeseSticks
Drinks: Yums Deserts:
MiniNums Snacko
Milk Fishy Heads Cake
Mello Yello Yucks Choco-Num
Dr. Parupoo Salad Yucko Chocolate Ants
Numnum Juice Parupoo Yum
CoffeeTea! Gooey Tato BIG Snacko!
________________________________________
Yep, this story included a full menu, consisting mostly of all kinds of really gross foods like "Yucked Chicken," "Barf Burger," and "The Big PooYum."
"I guess that's where Christy gets her food." he thought. Nummy decided that he wanted Kirbymeat ravioli and Mello Yello with a side of Cheese Sticks. It was the yummiest meal he could get. First, he ate the Cheese Sticks, then nummed up the ravioli, then gulped down the Mello Yello. "MMM mmm, yummy!" he said. The waiter came by and said "I hope you enjoyed your meal, Numnum, because it will be the last one you have after you meet Marching Milde, the manager of the Milde Cafe!!" "Oh No!" Nummy thought. "Marching Milde!! You have a Num that would like to be eaten by you!" the waiter said. Marching Milde rushed out of the kitchen yelling "Mmmmm, Numnums! Yummy!"
And now Nummy remembers the name "Marching Milde." Apparently just "Milde" didn't make it obvious enough for him, or something.
Nummy could throw a table at Milde, but he might bounce it back with his rubbery skin. Then Nummy got an idea. He could lure Milde into the kitchen, then stand on the edge of the huge pot with lava in it (which was used to cook the spicy Fire Nums) and have Milde jump to attack him, but fall into the lava and be turned into Kentucky Fried Milde. Just as he thought, Marching Milde followed Nummy to the kitchen. But instead of jumping at Nummy, he poured the lava out and it flowed like a river through the restaurant with Nummy running from it. As soon as the lava got outside, it mixed with the rutoo and disapeared. But Milde wanted Numnums for lunch and ran after Nummy. As soon as Milde stepped outside, he sank deep into the rutoo.
A random thing that makes this bit make a little more sense -- in my elementary school years, Nummy randomly had arms in addition to legs (back when most Numnums had neither.) So when he thinks of throwing a table at Marching Milde, that means picking one up with his hands, not grabbing it in his mouth or something like that. This also makes it pretty clear that Nummy is no slouch in terms of strength even if he's far behind the super-powerful characters like Supernum -- being able to pick up a table and throw it isn't something a regular human could really do.
Apparently Christy isn't the only one who dies and then mysteriously comes back to life -- Marching Milde just sank into some lava-infused rutoo, which implies that he probably died, and yet in The Numnum Club (which has to take place after this story) he's completely fine. Whoops.
Nummy would never go out of the restaurant without leaving the tip, so he did that and then left. As he walked past the clusters of Muckpoo Plants and Crakkunut Trees, he saw a cute Numbunny jump out from behind a Muckpoo Plant. As soon as it jumped out, a sharp flying sword flew at it and killed it. It looked just like the sword that Pototo (who was not bad, but hated Numnums) used to kill Numnums. "Pototo Smash! Throw you in the trash! Oh what a poopy Yuck!" Pototo said as he jumped off the top of a huge Crakkunut Tree. Pototo picked up his sword and the dead Numbunny. "Hahaha! I see Nummy, the Numnum that is looking for the Red Num! I think I will just kill him for my little potato friends!" he said. Nummy hid behind a tree. When he looked at the bark, he noticed a strange language carved into it. Above all of the strange language, Nummy saw these words: Chart Of Kirbyish Words And Letters.
During this point in the story, Kirb mysteriously vanishes and is not mentioned again for a while. I'm not sure why. I'm pretty sure this part of the story was changed at least once -- the "Pototo is not bad, but hates Numnums" thing seems like something that would have been added in later, while in the original I just randomly made Pototo into a bad guy for some reason. Pototo's words here were originally written in the Symbol font like the Yuckow Food's from before, and the "Chart of Kirbyish Words and Letters" (actually just letters...) was just a way of translating that early attempt at Khurbyish into English so you could see what was being said.
I'm not sure why Khurbyish was "a strange language" that Nummy was unfamiliar with at this point, but I think that's just down to my elementary-school self not having thought about things much yet and just making everyone speak English by default.
Nummy read the chart. He noticed it was easy to understand after he read the chart. But looking at the chart, he forgot about Pototo and almost got hit by his flying sword. "Yikes!" Nummy said. Pototo jumped at Nummy and tried to get his sword back, but Nummy was already pulling the sword out of the ground. As soon as Nummy got it out, he started to swing it at Pototo and, if he was lucky, hit him and get him to go away. Nummy hit Pototo with the sword with a loud "SHICK!!" sound. Pototo knew his punch was much wimpier than Nummy's sword, so he ran away.
Apparently Nummy with Pototo's sword is too much for Pototo without his sword to handle. Oh, and Nummy randomly doesn't have the sword anymore after this one scene -- or at least, it's never mentioned again. Of course, we're coming up on the point where I had stopped writing this for a while and only much later went back to finish it, so inconsistencies coming up probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
Nummy followed the trail. He noticed that some of the Muckpoo Plants were smushed down or broken. Then he saw that the Crakkunuts on the trees were cracked open and the Snackonuts were half-eaten. Their Snacko juice was spilled everyehere. He saw footprints on the trail in front of them. He saw a sign beside the road. It said "Milde Cafe: Go South. Pleco Land: Go East. RedNum Cave: Go North a Long way." Nummy decided to go North to the RedNum Cave. Nummy was now only inches from getting the Red Num. What he didn't know was that Killer Kirby was getting the Red Num to use against Nummy!
And here's the cutoff point between "stuff I wrote at first" and "stuff I went back and finished later." Specifically, the directions to various places on the sign were the last things I had written down for a while. Originally, there was going to be a dragon in this story (I believe it was a Julia Dragon like the one in The Numnum Club, if I'm remembering right), and that was why there were footprints on the trail and half-eaten nuts on the nearby trees. But when I came back to this story after a while, I ditched that idea and jumped straight ahead to the Cave of the Red Num instead.
The sign even says "go north a long way" to get to the Red Num Cave... and yet Nummy gets there almost instantly after finding the sign. D'oh. >_<
Just seconds before Killer Kirby powered himself up to fight Nummy, the Kirby barged in and kicked Killer Kirby right on the butt! But to Killer Kirby, it was more like someone tapping him on the butt. As Killer Kirby gulped down the Kirby, Nummy ran in and grabbed the Red Num. But now Nummy had to beat Killer Kirby and get out of the Red Num Cave. Nummy didn't know how to use the Red Num, so he just aimed its mouth at Killer Kirby (still eating the Kirby) and.. well, he just held it in his hand and kept aiming it at Killer Kirby.
Kirb reappears!... and randomly loses his name again, becoming just "the Kirby." And he may or may not be dead at this point, since Killer Kirby is apparently a cannibal and is trying to eat him. But Nummy has the Red Num, which means this story's just about over now...
In about 20 seconds, a laser shot out of the Red Num's mouth and hit Killer Kirby. As soon as the laser hit Killer Kirby, somewhere at cub scout camp a huge rock moved out of a huge hole and Killer Kirby was squished into it. The rock covered the hole, trapping Killer Kirby! Later, Eddie made a remote control for the trap. It was shaped just like a minature Killer Kirby. And if it got broken, so would the rock. And if that happened, Killer Kirby would escape.
...the Red Num doesn't give Nummy the power to fight Killer Kirby, of course, but instead makes it possible to seal him away. This part had to have been written during the summer of my 4th grade year or slightly afterward, as it wasn't until that year that I had ever gone to Camp Shenandoah (referred to as just "Cub Scout camp" here) and made the clay Killer Kirby statue referenced here. I actually still have it to this day, and it hasn't ever been broken (unlike in these stories, where of course it breaks after a while and Killer Kirby escapes.)
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