One day at Eddie's house, Eddie was playing his favorite computer game, Commander Keen in Keen Dreams. He had gotten past Boobus Tuber's castle and was almost to Boobus's Chamber.
Suddenly, he heard something go "BUMP!" in the kitchen. So he paused his game and went to see what had happened. His sister Julia had dropped his clay Killer Kirby (also the remote control for Killer Kirby's trap) and was breaking it into a hundred pieces! "Oh Darn!" yelled Eddie. "Now I'll have to fight Killer Kirby again because you just broke the remote control for his trap!" Eddie ran back into the other room to play his game. But when he got there, his computer screen was almost blank other than these words:
"Ha Ha I'm Back! Killer Kirby
Greetings From Narnia!"
...Killer Kirby breaking free. It also involves Eddie playing Commander Keen games, which was a pretty common thing for the real-life Eddie back in the years when these stories were written. As the story's title suggests, Commander Keen is not only a video game character but a real person in this story, and Supernum will meet him at some point.
Also... Killer Kirby is in freaking Narnia. Probably inspired by the fact that one of my teachers had us read (part of?) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe during what I think was my 4th grade year if I'm remembering right, and back then I tended to randomly throw in references to things from the same time period (like Mario, Sonic, and an orca whale showing up in How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy... and Magic cards and wurms in the later revisions) without really even attempting to make them fit in that well.
Though, as it turns out, Narnia randomly showing up does have an explanation...
"Not only is Killer Kirby back, but he's messed up my game!" Eddie thought. Killer Kirby had only left him one clue about where he was: somewhere in Narnia, a place he had only heard of in a book that Mrs. Noffsinger had read to his class in Aspire. But how would Killer Kirby get inside one of the books Eddie had heard about in Aspire? Then Eddie thought back. "Big Beef got the Alligator Teacher out of those dumb Alligator Teacher books. If HE could do it, anyone could!" he thought. But going inside a book was different. Killer Kirby could have gotten everything out of the book, but then where would he put it?
Yep, he literally yanked the continent(?) of Narnia out of the book and brought it into reality... somewhere. Because going inside a book is apparently harder than pulling things out of it.
Also, here's the only mention in any of these stories of the events of the "Cowcocows" story-ideas I had bouncing around in my head during the early elementary school years -- humanoid cow-aliens came to Earth, pursued by walking-hunk-of-beef aliens known as the Beefoes and their worst enemy, the Alligator Teacher, who had destroyed their planet somehow. Or, in later versions (such as the ones this story makes reference to), the leader of the Beefoes used a machine to bring her into reality from a book. The book in question being Teacher from the Black Lagoon, in which a kid imagines his new teacher to be a magical fire-breathing humanoid gator-thing that very closely resembles the Alligator Teacher rather than a regular human teacher.
Narnia was bigger than any continent except Aisa, and almost as big as the continent of Blurbonazz. After looking at his Atlas of Parupoo, he saw a very big ocean slightly bigger than Narnia. It bordered the island where Killer Kirby's three main bad guy factories were on. He called Nummy and heard that something huge was forming in the middle of the ocean that he had seen in his atlas. But Killer Kirby was not anywhere near the thing that was forming. He wasn't even on Parupoo. He was attacking the cub scout camp Eddie had gone to just a year ago!
Yeah, "Asia" was misspelled as "Aisa" in this story. That's not the only word I consistently misspelled back in these days (the Christmas-themed story I'll be posting later on consistently mentions "Santa Clause"), but it's the one that stands out as most annoying to me now.
This is also the first story that references the planet Nummorro and its continents (well, it mentions the continent of Blurbonazz, not Nummorro as a whole, but still) as well as another planet in the same solar system, Parupoo. Parupoo was apparently mostly covered in water, enough so that a large continent could be plunked onto it without messing things up too much. It also seems to be Killer Kirby's base of operations in some sense, a detail which isn't really touched on in my other stories which have him hang around exclusively in Killa Castle (on Nummorro, or sometimes oddly enough on Earth!) or just have him appear in some other location to attack.
There were some other bad guys with him which were helping him destroy the tents, smash the buildings, and eat the food supplies. The toughest badguys from the group were Boobus Tuber, YummerPlet, Christy, SlamBosh, and Count Crappadoo. Boobus Tuber was turning all of the good food into slimy vegetables. YummerPlet was chowing down on tasty tents. Christy was forcing the janitors and snack machine maintenance people to stuff their heads down toilets and flush. SlamBosh was slam dunking the flagpole. And Count Crappadoo was turning people into Kirbys and Yucks. And boy scout camp was just next week!
And suddenly, a ton of new bad guys are introduced -- along with recurring enemy Christy, who is inexplicably alive now after having been squished into some sort of bizarro waffle-pizza hybrid in her previous appearance in The Numnum Club. Slambosh and Yummerplet (who randomly have the last syllable of their names capitalized here) are round guys with big-eyelidded angry eyes and human-like arms and legs; Yummerplet's blue while Slambosh is golden-brownish, and both specialize in brute force as you can see from their descriptions above. Count Crappaddoo (pronounced "kruh-PAH-doo," by the way, not "crap-a-doo") is a vaguely vampirey little green guy with glowing yellow eyes, pointy bat-ish ears, and a black cloak -- and apparently in this story can use some bizarre magic that turns humans into K'hyurbhis and yuckfood-based creatures.
Finally, of course, is Boobus Tuber... who was just the villain of the Commander Keen game mentioned back at the start of the story. Between his presence among Killer Kirby's minions and the way that the game got glitched up when Killer Kirby's message appeared, it kinda seems like I was going for the idea that Killer Kirby used the "bring fictional stuff to life" thing to drag both Boobus Tuber and Commander Keen out of the game... but that's never actually touched upon anywhere in the story. Whoops.
The badguys had to be stopped, but there were too many of them for Supernum to beat alone. Eddie turned into Supernum, used his Computer Nummer password scrambler to find out Eddie's dad's Compuserve password and go on the Internet. Then he connected to the private goodguys-only Num.net site on the Internet. He connected to all of the goodguys he had ever heard of and said: "I need help at a cub scout camp in Virginia. The Killer Kirby trap rock is located near the camp."
Another reference that dates this story to the mid-'90s -- Eddie's dad uses Compuserve rather than AOL or... just having Internet through a phone or TV company. This is also the first and only mention of one of many oddball gadgets used by Supernum in these old stories, the "Computer Nummer" which can crack any password. And apparently there's some secret network of superheroes on the Internet which they use to coordinate battles against major bad guys. Both of these things are, of course, never mentioned in any other story ever again.
(Also, those are some pretty terrible directions. "A Cub Scout camp in Virginia" could literally be dozens of different places. I guess the rest of the good guys know exactly where Killer Kirby is trapped since he's such a big threat, because the rest of the "where" in that description really doesn't help much. XD)
Then he sent it and warped to cub scout camp. He started to fight Christy, hitting her with several Num Punches. Then the other goodguys started to come. The goodguys were The Big Bad Beetleborgs, Pototo and Potato, Bad Ribbit, Tootamatic Turtle, Commander Keen, Spiderman, Batman, Super Puss, Mr. Peanut, Roastado, Luke Skywalker, Auric, and Mr. Flicks.
Though this story will always be remembered as "the one where I shoved in a gazillion random cameo appearances for no good reason," the lineup of good guys here is actually fairly well balanced between original characters and cameos from TV shows, games, movies, and... peanut advertising campaigns. Yes, freaking Mr. Peanut was one of those who answered the call -- I'm not sure how exactly he fights aside from clobbering things with his cane, but he showed up while many others apparently didn't, so that's got to count for something.
Pototo and Potato were characters I made up in my first year of school -- potatoes with arms and legs and faces who lived on another planet (unnamed at first but would probably have been known as "Potato Land" or something if I had given it a name; later called Tuberupoo and more recently Tuberoo) and fought against the evil Potato Chipper. Pototo apparently hates Numnums according to The Search for the Red Num, but since no actual Numnums are present here (Supernum doesn't count, despite apparently counting in that story) he's perfectly capable of working with the rest of the good guys here. This story was also the first appearance of Tootamatic Turtle (a big turtle with a frog-like tongue who flies by farting) and the re-appearance of Roastado, who showed up for the first time in the later revisions of How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy. There's also "Super Puss" (a Supernum-esque powered up form of one of the cats my family had at the time) and two that I can't remember much of anything about, "Bad Ribbit" (a frog, presumably?) and "Mr. Flicks" (who apparently has huge hands and fights by flicking people with them.)
And on the "random cameo appearances" side, you've got someone who should not even be anywhere near Earth (Luke Skywalker, from "a galaxy far far away"), some famous superheroes, some fictional characters come to life (Commander Keen if the "game glitched up because Killer Kirby brought Keen into the real world" idea was actually what I had in mind... and the Beetleborgs; yes, there actually is another story where their un-fictionalization is specifically mentioned), and the random tiki-head-warrior-guy Auric from Power Rangers Zeo. And of course, Mr. Freaking Peanut. XD
This is also the first of my stories to have named Num Power attacks in addition to the various gadgets, with Num Punches showing up here and the more powerful Numnum Smash making an appearance later on. Speaking of which, Christy has apparently gotten a lot tougher since her last appearance, because she definitely didn't come across as somebody who could fight hand-to-hand with Supernum before!
Super Puss scratched Christy, knocking her away from Supernum. Auric got his sword and smacked SlamBosh right on the face. Pototo and Potato surrounded YummerPlet and tossed him over to Mr. Flicks, who flicked him into a tree. Boobus Tuber sent a Tater Trooper out to attack Luke Skywalker. The Tater Trooper charged into him, hitting him back into one of the torn-up tents. Luke remembered only to use the Lightsaber when he was in danger, and having Boobus Tuber charging toward him with his super sharp french fry sword was definetly being in danger. He powered it up and sliced Boobus's sword into several pieces. Boobus was now without a weapon, so he jumped up and was falling toward Luke, ready to squish him flat. But Luke got the Lightsaber out again and cut Boobus into potato chips. One bad guy down!
Boobus Tuber is the first of the bad guys to be defeated -- and not by his own enemy Commander Keen, but by Luke Skywalker who has discovered a way to make freakishly huge potato chips. Also, apparently Boobus Tuber uses a super sharp french fry sword. I'm not sure if that was actually in the Commander Keen game or if it was something I came up with for this story.
Next Supernum decided to give Christy a dose of her own medicine and slammed her head into the nearest toilet. Several big "FLUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHH!!!" sounds later, Christy had no eyeballs and she was totally bald. Two down! Count Crappadoo tried one of his best attacks, the Super Roast, and hit Super Puss on the stomach. Supernum took Super Puss to the doctor and got her signed up for stitches. Roastado was mad at Count Crappadoo for hurting Super Puss, so he threw three roaster balls in Count Crappadoo's direction. Seconds later, Count Crappadoo had a new nickname: Roastado Fried Chicken. Three down!
The way Christy gets killed here is one of those things that I actually feel really uncomfortable about now. It's just an unnecessarily gross and kinda disturbing way for someone to get killed, and if I wrote these stories or something similar today it definitely would not happen that way. I mean seriously... flushing someone in a toilet until their hair gets yanked out and their eyeballs get flushed out of their sockets? Yick.
On a less disgusting note, Supernum is quick enough to get an injured superpowered cat to the vet and get back in time for the fight to still be ongoing. He's capable of opening Num Warps to get to other places instantly, of course, but this story doesn't feel the need to mention that for some reason -- apparently I just assumed everyone would know, or something. Also, strangely enough the Super Roast apparently wasn't Roastado's technique originally, but Count Crappaddoo's! Every other thing I've come up with featuring Roastado gave him that attack but in its first appearance, it wasn't used by him at all. Whoops.
SlamBosh and YummerPlet decided to team up and smash Roastado. YummerPlet threw SlamBosh at Roastado and knocked Roastado's armor off. Now he had almost no protection from the approaching bad guys. Supernum decided to take Roastado's place and attack SlamBosh. While Supernum fought SlamBosh, YummerPlet was sneaking over to attack Batman. Before Batman could notice, two of YummerPlet's PletPlet Bombs were right behind him! Batman dodged the first PletPlet Bomb as it exploded. When the second PletPlet Bomb was about to hit Batman, who was dodging YummerPlet's attacks, Spiderman caught the Bomb and pulled it away with his webbing.
Seems like these guys are a good bit tougher than Foofoo and Coocoo from back in How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy -- Roastado scared the crap out of them, while here he's quickly overwhelmed when the round twins decide to team up on him. And yeah, Supernum is already back from dropping Super Puss (...or I guess just regular Puss, since I don't think he'd have her still be transformed when taking her to a regular ol' human vet?) off at the vet.
Also, despite having no superhuman powers, Batman is capable of dodging one (but not two) Plet-Plet Bombs. Good thing Spider-Man was around to catch that second one, though, because I don't think ol' Bats would've handled that kind of blast too well...
Tootamatic hit YummerPlet with his tooting tongue, knocking him into SlamBosh. YummerPlet hit SlamBosh so hard that it killed SlamBosh. Four down and two to go! Commander Keen and Pototo attacked YummerPlet. Commander Keen got out his laser gun and zapped YummerPlet. Pototo used his Pototo Spin to attack YummerPlet. Potato and the Big Bad Beetleborgs killed YummerPlet with their weapons and laser guns. Five down! But where was Killer Kirby? He was the only bad guy left and no one knew where he was! Nummy checked the map of Parupoo and saw a huge island exactly like Narnia! But Killer Kirby wasn't there.
Apparently Slambosh is the weaker of the two round guys -- Tootamatic's tongue attack hits Yummerplet with enough force that the impact into Slambosh afterward kills Slambosh, while Yummerplet not only survives that but also a laser blast and a Pototo Spin before finally being ganged up on by Potato and all three Beetleborgs at once.
And yep, the big group fight is over... and there's not a single mention of Mr. Peanut's role in all this. Was he "off-screen" fighting off one or more of these guys and just not mentioned, or was he just shaking in his shell somewhere, unable to even lift his old-timey pimp cane in their direction from the fear of getting cracked?
Also, note the whole "Killer Kirby wasn't there" bit here. That turns out to be one of those contradictory bits of these stories later on...
Mr. Peanut searched for Killer Kirby while Supernum and Commander Keen explored the island. The first thing Supernum saw was lots of snow. Then he saw a castle on the horizon. A huge lion jumped out at Supernum and almost hit him with its claws! "That must be Azlan the Lion!" thought Supernum. Commander Keen came over to Azlan and zapped him with his laser gun, but Azlan didn't move. Supernum hit Azlan with a Numnum Smash, knocking him backwards into a snow covered tree. Then Commander Keen tossed a Boobus Bomb over to where Azlan was. After a huge "KA-BOOM!!!" sound, pieces of Azlan covered the snow around the tree. "That was easier than I thought it would be" said Commander Keen.
...and that's what Mr. Peanut did. He looked for Killer Kirby. Apparently that was Mr. Peanut's only contribution... staying behind to look for Killer Kirby. What he'd do when or if he found Killer Kirby is anyone's guess, but "get eaten" seems highly likely unless Killer Kirby has a secret peanut allergy never mentioned in any other story. Also, it seems that everyone besides the peanut and Commander Keen randomly vanishes at this point -- apparently those two are more devoted to the whole "stop Killer Kirby" thing than the others, who just came along for the big fight.
Also, this is the start of the "Supernum and Commander Keen kill every living thing in Narnia" part of the story. Yes, they just slammed the Jesus-lion into a tree and blew him up. I'm not sure why Aslan was randomly jumping out to attack Supernum in the first place, but apparently since Killer Kirby brought Narnia into reality, everything in the snowy place is allied with him by default... or something.
Supernum and Commander Keen went on closer to the castle. After fighting a few very weak wolves, they were at the castle. As they went into the castle, several laser blasts shot at Supernum and Commander Keen. One of them hit Commander Keen and turned him into a statue!!!! "COMMANDER KEEN!!!!!" yelled Supernum. "ARRRRRRG!!!" Supernum yelled again. Supernum took Keen's Boobus Bombs and went on into the castle. After a while, Supernum saw who shot the lasers. It was a witch. She shot another laser right at Supernum, but it missed him. Supernum used a Numnum Smash and knocked the witch into a statue of a deer. The statue cracked and turned into a pile of sand.
Along with the planned "Super Big Num (basically a giant robot Numnum) gets destroyed" element of a story I never finished, this bit is probably the closest to one of the good guys dying in any of these old stories. Also an example of an odd thing in these stories -- I for some reason didn't like to describe anything as "magic," so instead of casting spells to turn someone to stone, a witch shoots lasers from her wand that turn people to stone. Also, when I said "Supernum and Commander Keen kill every living thing in Narnia" I wasn't exaggerating -- first Aslan, then the wolves, then poor old Mr. Tumnus (in statue form) and soon the White Witch, whose whiteness and... having-a-name-ness... is never acknowledged in this particular story for some reason.
The witch noticed that her magic wand was broken. She was totally defenseless! Supernum tossed one of the Boobus Bombs at the witch. Just like when Azlan was beaten, the Bomb exploded and turned the witch into a useless pile of blubber and skin. Commander Keen turned back into Commander Keen and came to where Supernum was.
I'm somewhat puzzled as to why the Numnum Smash only seems to send enemies flying backward on impact in this story, while Boobus Bombs blow things up. Boobus Tuber didn't seem to be that powerful during his previous appearance, and it takes multiple Boobus Bombs to finish him off... so why is it that Supernum's strongest attack randomly seems weaker than them now?
And apparently when the White Witch is blown up, she'd leave behind a pile of "blubber and skin." I guess I figured that a witch that likes eternal winter would be fat for the extra built-in insulation all that blubber would provide, or something. XD
Also, if you were expecting Killer Kirby to make an appearance and possibly even get a legitimate fight scene for the first time ever, prepare for the biggest disappointment. I had probably planned on something along those lines originally, but this story was never finished in the time I originally started writing it...
Then they left the island. After they left the island, it started to disappear. After a few minutes, the island was gone. They trapped Killer Kirby and closed his trap. "We won't have to worry about those bad guys any more" said Commander Keen. "Yeah. They're dead meat now." said Supernum.
...instead, I went back later (possibly months or even years later) and slapped a lazy ending after the last part I actually had finished. Looking back now, it seems like "Killer Kirby isn't on Narnia" actually wasn't an inconsistency like I thought... but it's still never said where Killer Kirby actually was, or how they managed to trap him, or anything. Mr. Peanut is apparently absent at this point, so I guess maybe he laced himself with super-concentrated sleeping pills and had Killer Kirby eat him so that when Supernum and Commander Keen found him they could trap him without a fight.
If I wrote this story now, I'd definitely try to actually wrap up the story rather than jumping to a quick and lazy ending... and I wouldn't have Killer Kirby get sealed away again, because it's obvious that he just breaks free again later (there are other Supernum stories that almost have to take place after this one -- one that mentions the Super Big Num being destroyed in the past, an even that took place while Killer Kirby was sealed, has Killer Kirby as the main villain behind everything.) Instead, I'd have Supernum fight Killer Kirby, but before there can be any conclusion, Killer Kirby takes a shot at Commander Keen or the bringing-fictional-things-to-life machine, forcing Supernum to jump in the way to deflect the attack. With Supernum caught off guard, Killer Kirby would escape, and the story would end with Supernum saying goodbye to Commander Keen, sending him (and the potato chips that were once Boobus Tuber) back into the game where they belong, since Keen doesn't really have a place in the real world due to his family, friends, the alien worlds he visits, etc. all not existing outside the games.
...well, except for the Dopefish.
Dopefish definitely exist.
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