Flight of the Bloodmobile, Chapter 11

I wrote this ages ago (way, way back in 2010 along with the rest of what I had finished of this story), but for a long time I never uploaded it anywhere since it didn't have a title, and then it just kind of ended up getting forgotten about for a while.

But I recently found this story and read over it again last week, so now, after 4 years since the last chapter of Flight of the Bloodmobile appeared online, I present... Chapter 11! (Chapter 12 is also coming soon... 13, maybe if I ever get around to finishing it. XD)

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- How All This Numnum Stuff Started

Well, it's taken a while, but now I've finally made it around to the last of the old Supernum stories I wrote in my elementary school years (between 1994 and... maybe 1996 or 1997ish? I'm not entirely sure.)  This story is basically an "origin story" for Supernum, but despite that it was actually one of the later stories I wrote -- it might've even been the last Supernum story I wrote during the time when I was writing a lot of them, though I know I did write another one later on, when I was in middle school.  Anyway... here it is!

One day a few years ago, I was looking for water bugs and those little round things with lots of legs when I saw a rock that was moving! It was wiggling back and forth and bouncing up and down. Something was under there! I decided to lift up the rock. Who knows! It could have been a giant water bug! It was something I had never seen before. It was white, it had lots of shiny teeth, and two big bugged-out eyes. The weird thing was that I didn't see any feet anywhere on it. The only words it said was "Num Num".  I wanted to know what it was.

The "kid found a Numnum under a rock" part of Supernum's origin has been consistent ever since I first came up with the story of how Supernum got started, which was a while before I wrote this story down -- it was one of those things that had been bouncing around in my head for a while before it found its way into a story.  This one, like many of my elementary-school era stories, starts off with an immediate contradictory statement that doesn't just clash with other stories but with itself -- Numnums have never been known for saying nothing but "Num Num," and in the very next line of this story...

 I was surprised when it said "You're Eddie, aren't you?" The thing (I later decided to call it a Numnum) asked me if I wanted to be something called Supernum. I agreed to be Supernum, whatever it was.  It gave me a big coin which was as big as the palm of my hand. "O.K. Eddie, to turn into Supernum, just say this: It's Time For Nums!"  I said the words and suddenly, my head started to change. It felt like my ears were popping and I was sneezing at the same time. I got used to it soon, because it lasted about 10 seconds. My body changed  a lot. I was turning taller, skinnier, and I felt a lot stronger than before. A cape actually grew out of my back. My black Reeboks turned into black boots with a Num symbol on them. I was Supernum! "Come on, Eddie! You're Supernum! You have to fight bad guys!" said the Numnum. "FIGHT BAD GUYS!" I thought. "I can't do that!" But the Numnum took me through the warp to Nummorro anyway.

...yep, saying a whole lot more than just "Num Num."  I'm not sure where the idea of Numnums just saying "Num" over and over came from, but it wasn't present in any of my older stories or anything since.  I know it couldn't have been Pokémon-inspired, as at the time I wrote this I was not aware of Pokémon at all, like most people who weren't living in Japan (and heck, depending on what year I actually wrote this in, the Pokémon anime -- source of the "saying their names over and over" thing -- may not have even existed yet.)  Either way, the whole "Numnums saying Num" thing is abandoned seconds after its introduction, which is probably for the best.

And that description of what it feels like to transform into Supernum is really weird, looking back. 

      The Numnum took me to see Nummy, a Numnum that had arms and legs. I also noticed he wore a hat with "Numnums Rule Teachers Drool" sewed on it.  He showed me how to use all of my cool attacks, like the Num Bomb and Num Zzzter, and my Numnum Sword and Num Gun. He gave me a tour of his restaurant, Nummy's. The food was great. He had all of my favorites, like ravioli, and a new favorite, roasted kirbymeat. It was kind of like chicken and turkey mixed together with some tasty spices. Being Supernum was like being a Power Ranger without any other guys helping you. But I didn't know who (or what) I was up against. Something came through the door. It was a Barney! I had recognized Barneys from a stupid TV show my sister used to watch. And from what I already knew, Barneys were bad guys.

The phrase on Nummy's hat is a little odd here -- "teachers" has to be a reference to the Alligator Teacher, but when put in such a general way it sounds really, really weird.  I guess I was moving away from portraying the K'hyurbhis ("Kirbys" at the time) as being always bad back then, so I had to come up with something else to put on his hat... and apparently just an N or a Num Power symbol didn't come to mind, oddly enough. 

 I turned into Supernum and got ready to fight the Barney. My attacks were fully powered. I yelled "Num Bomb!" and an orange fireball came out of my Numnum hands. As soon as the blast hit the Barney, it started to explode and disappear. I had beaten my first bad guy!

Just as Supernum had beaten the Barney, Killer Kirby, who had helped his father, the Kirby King, send the Barney, was furious about the new Supernum beating his best Barney. Killer Kirby was not the first one to know about the Barney being killed by Supernum: Christy and her gang of bad guys had also heard and were already planning an attack on Nummy's.

I seem to recall that the original version of this story simply saying that Killer Kirby sent the Barney, rather than that he helped his father send the Barney (which was "his best Barney" apparently)... but it looks like I went back and added in a mention of the Kirby King later.  Apparently there may have been a point in time where I was going to ditch the older stories (such as How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy) and then I changed my mind and threw in a mention of the Kirby King from that story here as a way of showing that the older stories were still "canon."

There's also a mention of Christy and her gang already being established bad guys living on Nummorro at this point, and I'm pretty sure that part wasn't added in later -- so apparently it was only How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy that I was debating over removing from the timeline at one point.  The mention that they were "already planning an attack on Nummy's" seems to be leading toward the story of The Numnum Club, where they do indeed end up gathering up the whole gang and coming toward Nummy's.

 "Little Kirby!" yelled Killer Kirby. "That Supernum beat my Barney, and I want you to make a bad guy to kill him!" yelled Killer Kirby. Little Kirby heard him and started making a bad guy right away. He put some water in a big pot, added gator tails, stirred in some instant yuck mix, dropped in home-made yuck food, and put in some Killa juice and bad guy making muck. Killer Kirby sniffed the mixture and told Little Kirby to add more yuck mix. He sniffed it again and said "Nice and yucky, just like yuck food should be!" Little Kirby positioned the bad guy maker so if he turned it on, it would blast a laser directly into the middle of the yucky mixture and turn it into some kind of bad guy.

This seems to be the first story to mention "Little Kirby," who was Killer Kirby's minion who helped out with the process of making bad guys.  This was a character that had been bouncing around in my head for a while but just never made it into any stories prior to this one -- kinda like the idea of Eddie finding a Numnum pinned under a rock and rescuing it from the beginning of the story.  The Power Rangers inspiration here is pretty obvious -- they always had some lesser villain who made the monsters-of-the-day, and Little Kirby is that guy for the Supernum stories.

I have no idea what "Kihlah juice" would be, by the way.   Juice infused with Kihlah energy?  Some kind of liquefied form of Kihlah energy itself? I dunno.

 But Killer Kirby accidently hit it and moved the bad guy maker so it hit the side of the pot and bounced into the yucky stuff, turning it into a blob of yuck with eyes and a mouth. It had turned into Yuckow Food! Killer Kirby was not happy with the bad guy he had made, but he still sent it down to Nummy's to attack Supernum and steal all of the food.

    But Nummy smelled Yuckow Food coming and called for me. I jumped through the Num Warp and fell through the other side in the dining room of Nummy's. I knew I had to turn into Supernum again to beat the Yuckow Food, so I picked up the Num Coin and said "It's Time For Nums!" I started to change again. My head turned into Supernum's head,  and I got taller and skinnier. This was the second time I had turned into Supernum, but I was still very surprised.

Killer Kirby being kinda clumsy despite being insanely powerful seemed to be a recurring theme in these old stories, between this bit and the way he accidentally brought down his own castle in the Thanksgiving story.

And sending a Yuckow Food to steal food from Nummy's is probably not the best plan, considering that Nummy's food is known for being yummy and Yuckow Foods are poisoned by contact with Yum... XD 

 As soon as I got over turning into Supernum, I noticed the Yuckow Food was just in front of Nummy's. It smelled like my school's green beans and dog poop mixed together. It was very yucky. It was so yucky, I almost threw up. Then I had an idea! If it was that yucky, something yummy would kill it! I told Nummy to pass me some ravioli. He tossed a big bowl over to me. I caught it and took a ravioli out of the bowl. I threw it straight at the Yuckow Food. It quivered a little bit. I threw more raviolis. It melted a tiny bit. Its eyes blew up like balloons and popped. I threw the whole bowl at it. The Yuckow Food started to explode, so I pushed it out the door and closed it tight. SPLUT! I heard it explode. I had beaten another bad guy. I went home to rest, but I knew the Kirby King and his son, Killer Kirby, would be back and he would have a tougher bad guy.

...I'm not sure why Supernum just throws food at the Yuckow Food rather than blowing it up with another Num Bomb, since Num Power attacks should work just fine on Yuckow Foods... but oh well.  I think this is the only time the smell of a Yuckow Food is described, also -- and yeah, it sounds pretty damn yucky. XD

And that's the end.  That last sentence makes it pretty obvious that this story was edited to include the Kirby King later on -- rather than saying that they would send a tougher bad guy the next time, it just says "he" (which was clearly intended to mean Killer Kirby in the original version, and I only went back and changed "Killer Kirby" to "the Kirby King and his son, Killer Kirby" without updating the pronoun used afterward to a plural form.)  Whoops!

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- Julia and the Big Bad Beetleborgs

This is one of several stories featuring Julia and also mentioning her in the title, and out of the bunch it's probably the one I wrote the latest -- unlike every other Supernum story it includes Zoombinis, which I was not aware of until my 5th grade year if I'm remembering right.  The others, of course, included How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy (posted on here) and another story I can't remember the title of, which if I'm remembering right was only Julia-related in being a sequel to the previously-mentioned story.  It actually revolved more around Upchukk the Blurby, who made his first appearance in that story.  Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of this one, so I don't remember many details about it either -- all I know for sure is that several different Yuckow Foods were present along with a bad guy named Michael with a heavy-duty war machine called the "Dorkmobile," which Upchukk managed to stop by Blubber Slamming the controls and causing it to go haywire.  Also, I'm pretty sure Fat Free Willy got kidnapped again, because back then I probably wouldn't have realized how stupid the "same thing again with different levels" formula (see: Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, the various Yoshi's Island sorta-sequel games, etc.) actually was.  At least elementary-school-age me put forth enough effort to come up with a new villain rather than recycling lame ol' boring ol' Bowser over and over -- he's not even entertaining outside of the RPGs, and even in them he's funnier when he's not forced into the taking on the main-villain role that he's not really suited for unless possessed by some other being or powered-up with some super artifact.  His antics when forced to team up with the Mario Bros. are infinitely better than anything he's ever done as the Designated Bad Guy.

...Okay, enough modern-Mario-kinda-sucks rant.  Unlike the above-mentioned story that I don't have anymore, this one is unfinished -- I did at some point go back and add a little bit more to the end, but never actually got to a point where I added an ending, and so this one (unlike the rest) will cut off randomly at the last point I wrote rather than having an ending at all.  Not even a lazy rushed ending this time around.  Knowing that, read on if you want to see how ridiculous this one is...

One day, Julia was sitting around and watching her favorite show, Big Bad BeetleBorgs. Just then, the badguy alarm on her Cute Kirby Communicator came on! A badguy was attacking Numnummorro! She couldn't go to Numnummorro herself, so she called Eddie. But no one answered! So she decided to head for Numnummorro. She went out of the house and heard leaves rustling behind her, but she didn't stop. She should have looked, because a few minutes later, she was running from an army of Parupoos! The Parupoos chased her into a clearing surrounded by trees on all but one side. On the other side,  a mountain blocked her from escaping from the Parupoos. It looked like Julia didn't have a chance. But over the constant mumbling of the Parupoos, she heard someone saying something. She listened closer, and heard someone saying "Beetle Bonders!  Beetle Blast!" She didn't have to guess who said that. But how did the Big Bad BeetleBorgs get out of the T.V.?

This is the only one of my stories that uses "Numnumorro" for the name of the planet Nummorro, previously known as Numnum Land... and I'm pretty sure it's nothing more than the result of a lazy search-and-replace.  You see, back in my mid/late elementary school years, two of my teachers attempted to enforce a ban on Numnums -- so any story that I had thoughts of turning in as a class assignment or even just sharing with fellow students during school hours had to be "censored" somewhat so that the presence of Numnums wasn't obvious.  In stories where Numnums featured, this was accomplished by changing their name (first to "Muns" and then later to "Nurms.")  Related terms like Nummorro and Supernum were also changed.  Later on, after graduating from seventh grade and escaping from the grasp of both of the Numnum-banning teachers, I went back and reverted these name-changes back to their original forms.  Of course, with me still being a little kid, I was too lazy to go through and change every mention of "Numnum" or "Num" by hand, so I fell back on the find-and-replace feature of whatever word-processor I was using at the time (this would've been the old "Write" packed in with Windows 3.1, I believe)... which led to some awkward accidental name changes to some stories.  "Numnummorro" in this one is probably the best (maybe only surviving?) example of this.

This is one of several old stories that mentions the "Cute Kirby Communicator."  This bizarrely-named device isn't ever actually explained in any of these stories, and I honestly can't remember what its origin was supposed to be... presumably it would've come from Nummy or someone else on Nummorro since it seems only those with ties to Supernum have them, but it's hard to even guess what elementary-school-age me was thinking.

Also, this story apparently serves as an explanation for the Beetleborgs being real despite also being on a TV show within the story's universe, which I suppose puts it sometime before Supernum Meets Commander Keen in the timeline.  And, by extension, it also has to happen before The Search for the Red Num, since Killer Kirby makes an appearance in this one.

And of course, there's another "never-followed-up-on plot point" here -- just like in The Numnum Club.  The "bad guy attacking Nummorro" bit is never actually mentioned again.

The Blue Stinger BeetleBorg stepped out of the trees and into the clearing, followed by the Green Hunter BeetleBorg and the Red Striker BeetleBorg. "How did you, uh, get out of the T.V.?" Julia asked him. "Flabber let us out so we could help the Numnums beat Killer Kirby." said the Blue Stinger. The Red Striker came over to Julia. "Hey Julia, I think we could use some Super Julia power to kick some Parupoo!" she said. "It's Time For Numnums! Super Julia!" Julia said. The Blue Stinger got out his Stinger Blade and shicked it all the way through one of the Parupoos, making it explode. All the Parupoos disappeared except for the biggest one. All three of the BeetleBorgs attacked the Parupoo with their weapons and killed it.

Apparently Flabber, despite being a fictional character himself, has the power to release the Beetleborgs from the confines of the TV and into the real world.  Also, some more awkward changes here as every incidence of whichever Numnum-replacing term this one used back in the day ended up replaced with the full "Numnum" even in situations where "Num" would be used instead (such as "it's time for Nums!")

"Super Julia" is apparently not much of a transformation, as she doesn't actually help out in the fight with the Parupoos at all.  This was actually intentional, from what I remember.  I'm guessing that at least the starting bits of this story must have been written before the Thanksgiving story, as Julia has a much more powerful Julia Dragon transformation there rather than the "joke character" form known as Super Julia.

When the BeetleBorgs left, Killer Kirby came and captured Julia!  "Let me go!" said Julia. But Killer Kirby didn't listen. He just warped to his castle in the Kirby Desert.

Once Killer Kirby got to his castle, he threw Julia into a cold, dark, damp room with nothing but a hard, uncomfortable bed and a small window in it. She looked out the window and thought she could see a small army of Numnums and Kirbys, followed by a few Zoombinis. She knew that they had come to save her, but it would take the entire Blurbyish Army and SuperNumnum to beat Killer Kirby.

And the Beetleborgs vanish just in time for Julia to  be left alone, ready to be kidnapped by Killer Kirby.  It's doubtful the Beetleborgs would be able to do much good against Killer Kirby, but they could have at least bought some time for Julia to escape or something.  Just like how Commander Keen was only barely more involved in things than the other random cameo appearances in Supernum Meets Commander Keen (and actually had less of a role in the big fight scene with all the assorted bad guys), the Beetleborgs aren't really major characters in this story despite having their names in the title.

There's another awkward accidental name-change -- Supernum presumably changed to something like "Supermun" or "Supernurm" in the censored version, and then got distorted into "SuperNumnum" when I went back to using the term "Numnum" again.  This is also the only mention of the Blurbys in adjective form in these old stories, using "Blurbyish" rather than "Blurbian" like I use now.  This also establishes Killer Kirby's level of power pretty clearly -- an entire army plus Supernum is needed to definitively beat him!

Julia thought about how to help them. She thought for a while, and later she got an idea! Her pet baby Kirby could fit through the bars of the window and tell the Numnums, Kirbys, and Zoombinis where she was. She looked through the door (which was open, but had invisible zzzters all over it) to the room across from her room. There was a girl Zoombini with long hair, glasses, a pink nose and a spring for its feet in the room. Shortly after she saw the Zoombini, a Barney came near her room, turned off the zzzters, and brought in a tray of food for her. The food wasn't very yummy looking, but she saw a few things she thought looked, at the very least, edible.

Not a whole lot to say about this part.  There's a Barney (back in the day I used "Barney" as a species name rather than the name of an individual purple monstrosity; now the individual would be "B'harne" while the species would be "Yenrab") working under Killer Kirby, and also a description of a Zoombini that pretty much matched the design I always tended to give at least one of them every time I played that game back then.  Also, yet another "food menu" scene coming up!

Julia took the tray of food from the Barney, who gave her a menu. The Barney left the room, turning on the zzzters as it left.  "Okay, let's see what's on the menu." Julia thought.
She looked on it and almost threw up. She saw things on the menu she would never even think of eating!
               
                           Menu:
roasted zoombini slices      yuckow food
fried kirbys                   toasted Numnums
poo special                   green bean pizza
green beans                   yuck shiskabob
barfaroni deluxe            Larfy Lettuce

And much like the one in The Search for the Red Num, there's a mix of things that sorta-kinda sound like food and things that are just plain gross.  "Larfy" was a term I used to refer to gross, wilty-looking lettuce rather than fresh crunchy lettuce, by the way.  It also sometimes referred to lettuce that had been infested with bugs, known as "larfies."

She decided that fried Kirbys would taste better than any of the other choices. She ate the fried Kirbys and left the rest for someone else to eat. But then she thought about that poor little Zoombini in the room across from her, and she felt bad about eating the yummiest food on the
tray and leaving the yucky things for everyone else. So she got out her portable Kirby roaster and roasted some small Kirbys that were in her backpack. She took the other kinds of food of the plate and replaced them with the Kirbys she had roasted.

And apparently Julia carries some (dead?) little Kirbys in her backpack which can be converted into tasty food with her portable Kirby roaster.  Convenient when you need to replace piles of disgusting food with tasty fried Kirbys on short notice, I suppose.

While she waited for the Barney to come back, she thought about how to escape from the castle. In a few minutes, the Barney was back and it took the tray. "I thought there were more yucks on this tray. Hmmmm...." said the Barney as it walked away from her room, turning the zzzters back on. The Barney was going to give the Zoombini some food. The Zoombini had seen Julia taking off the yucky foods and replacing them with yum! Fried Kirbys were the Zoombini's favorite food, so as soon as it saw them, it began pigging out on Kirbys. When it was done and totally stuffed, it said "thankyoujulia for *BURP* givingmethefriedkirbys *BURP* sorrybutialways *BURP* talkthisfast". Julia could almost understand the Zoombini and said "When I get out of here, I'm getting you out too."
The Zoombini made a happy "WEE *BURP* WEEW!" and went to the back of its room.

And oddly enough, the nameless Zoombini is referred to as "it" repeatedly here despite being described as a "girl Zoombini" earlier on.  I'm not sure why.

Julia saw the Numnums and Kirbys outside trying to get in. A Barney opened the door and said "WHAT! NUMNUMS! NUMNUMS AREN'T ALLOWED IN HERE! AAAAH!" The Numnums ate the Barney and went inside. The Numnums and Kirbys put the Barney skin on for a disguise. But the skin fell off. The Numnums and Kirbys  were running from the Kirby Guards!  "Get the Numnums!" said the leader of the Kirby Guards. "No! Get the Numnums AND the Kirbys!" said a smaller Kirby Guard. The Kirby Guards hadn't noticed, but the Zoombinis were outside trying to get the door back open to save the Numnums and Kirbys. They pushed and pushed, but the door wouldn't budge. It was locked!

Apparently Numnums have the secret technique of eating a Barney without damaging its skin in the process, making it into a convenient disguise.  Unfortunately, said disguise falls off easily and the notorious K'hyurbhi Guards (the strongest group of the Hoi tribe's army... among the K'hyurbhis anyway) come after them.

I'm not sure how the door got closed unless the Guards shut it behind the Numnums-and-Kirbys-in-a-Barney-skin after they came in, but apparently it's closed and the Zoombinis are trying to open it, with little to no success.

Meanwhile, the Numnums and Kirbys were getting very tired of running from the Kirby Guards. "I'm slowing down!" said Nummy, a Numnum. "We are too!" said an exhausted Kirby. "We have to keep going!" said Nummy. Outside, the Zoombinis pushed with all their might. None of them could get the door open. Then a young Zoombini had an idea. He remembered a card game he played a few days ago. He got out his telephone and pushed zero. After a short talk with the operator about long distance calls, the Zoombini called a number and talked with someone. Then he hung up. "Here comes some help!" squeaked the Zoombini.

Oddly, Nummy is just described as "a Numnum" here despite being a pretty major character in other stories.  And I'm not sure how a Zoombini operates a phone, as they don't have hands.

A few minutes later, the Zoombinis saw someone coming down the trail to the Killa Castle.
No one really knew who it was except the young Zoombini. He kept on squirming toward the Zoombinis. It was Scaled Wurm!  He could smash the door! He came over to the Zoombinis and went past them. "SMASH!" The door smashed into millions of pieces. And Scaled Wurm wasn't even near the door! What smashed the door? None of the Zoombinis knew. But then they found out who it was: Crobombug! Crobombug was headed toward the Zoombinis. Then Scaled Wurm jumped out in front of them!  What was he doing? He could get killed!

One moment "long distance calls" are involved, and just a few minutes later the one they called is already there.  I suppose with Num Warps possibly being involved that's not too unrealistic, but it's still a little odd.

And of course, the Scaled Wurm makes another appearance here -- though this time apparently its appearance is not the instant-win it was in How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy.  Jumping in front of Crobombug's attacks is apparently pretty damn dangerous even for a gigantic wurm that could eat the Kirby King, and surprisingly...

Crobombug charged at Scaled Wurm, but Scaled Wurm jumped out of the way. Crobumbug grabbed Scaled Wurm with his pinchers and threw him into the castle. "THUMP!" Scaled Wurm hit the wall hard.

...he actually manages to get a hit in on him here, grabbing him with his big ol' stag-beetle pincers and flinging him into the wall of Killa Castle.  Of course, pretty much all fight scenes in these old stories are absurdly short (I could've probably done some work on the Kingdom Hearts manga, what with the "short, disappointing fight scene"-writing skills I had back then), so you can probably guess how things go in the very next sentence or two.

Scaled Wurm got back up, bared his powerful Wurm teeth, and ate Crobombug. Scaled Wurm wiped the muck off his teeth. "I think you might need my help, Zoombinis" said Scaled Wurm. Then they went in the castle.

Soon they were all in the castle, chasing after the group of Kirby Guards, who were following the Kirbys and Numnums. When they had nearly caught up, the Numnums and Kirbys ran into a door and lost the Guards! The Zoombinis started fighting the Guards but were soon killed. Then Scaled Wurm ate all the Guards in one big bite.

Yep, the Scaled Wurm kills off Crobombug right away.  This last little paragraph at the end, after they enter the castle, is the part I'm pretty sure I went back and wrote sometime later than whenever it was that I started the story.  It's not much, though -- it pretty much just removes the Zoombinis from the story (it didn't take long for me to decide to remove Zoombinis from my stories; this one and one of the "lost" stories were the only ones that included them) after showing that they're completely pitiful when it comes to actually fighting, and then has the Scaled Wurm being overpowered again, eating all of the Kirby Guards in a single bite.

I honestly can't remember where this story was going to go from here -- there's no way I would've had the Scaled Wurm actually be capable of beating Killer Kirby, and so far there's been no sign of Eddie/Supernum in the story at all.  There's also been no mention of the Blurby army being on their way.  Maybe that's why I never actually finished it -- because I couldn't think of how the heck to continue it from this point back then, either.

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- Deck the Halls With Hungry Numnums

As mentioned in the Thanksgiving story's post on here, "Turkey Day" wasn't the only holiday to get its own Supernum story during my elementary school years.  There were also stories for Christmas (the one you're about to read), Halloween (barely started and never finished; I remember that Killer Kirby was going to get inspiration for new monsters from a Cthulhu Mythos book in that one, but I don't think I ever wrote more than the introductory paragraph), and Easter (which I wrote much later than the others -- maybe when I was in middle school? -- and unfortunately I no longer have a copy of it since only the older stories ended up on the floppy disks I eventually found them on many years later.  I do remember that it involved Barney as the villain, delivering baskets of chocolate bombs to kids' houses rather than actual candy, along with a gang of Easter-themed monsters which included "Gas Basket" and "Rotten Egg" among others that I can't remember now.  It was titled "The Easter Barney.")

Like the Thanksgiving one, they all pretty much follow the same "Killer Kirby tries to mess up this holiday by sending themed monsters" pattern.  But this introduction's gone on long enough.... here's "Deck the Halls With Hungry Numnums: A Numnums Story for Christmas." (Yeah, the full title as given in the original file is that long. XD)

     'Twas the night before Christmas and on Nummorro,
      No Numnums were stirring, not even Snoro,
      When out of the castle came a "KILLA" and a clatter,
      Nummy rose from his bed to see what was the matter,
      He saw Killer Kirby, BlackBeard Santa was near,
      And on the roof there were eight Monster Reindeer.

This one starts off with a parody of the "Night Before Christmas" poem, because of course it does.  I'm pretty sure this story may have been one of the first to be modified to use "Nummorro" rather than "Numnum Land," but I don't think it was originally written with the term Nummorro in use -- the first line flows better if you say "...and in Numnum Land" rather than "...and on Nummorro."  So I figure the mysterious "Snoro" mentioned in the poem went by a different name originally, though I can't remember what it might have been.

Not mentioned in this story: Monster Reindeer.  Not mentioned in this introductory poem: a second evil Santa Claus monster besides Blackbeard Santa (who again has the odd capitalization seen with Slambosh, Yummerplet, and Thanksdumming Turkey in other stories.)

Well, that's kind of what happened, but let's see it from Supernum's point of view...
It was the night before Christmas, but everyone was excited. They waited for their presents and some little Numnums actually stayed up all night and searched for presents. Even Eddie was awake. He knew that somehow Killer Kirby would try to mess up Christmas. Eddie set up bad guy traps which only sprung on bad guys (he didn't want to trap Santa!)  In the Killa Castle, Killer Kirby was planning on how to mess up Christmas (for Eddie and the good guys.) He decided to use two of his new bad guys. The new bad guys were: Toothless Clause and BlackBeard Santa. They would capture the real Santa and turn the presents into Creatures. Then the fake Santas would deliver Creature Presents to people so the Creatures could eat the people.

Apparently Numnums celebrate Christmas according to this story.  Yeah, I was a little kid who really hadn't thought things out too well when it comes to how alien species would work (they wouldn't celebrate not-even-2000-years-old human religious holidays, for one thing. XD)

Also, I consistently misspelled "Claus" as "Clause" in this story, as seen with the name "Toothless Clause" here.

There's actually a bit of a story behind Blackbeard Santa and Toothless Claus -- it's not just as simple as "little kid version of me came up with evil Santa monsters," oddly enough.  They were based on "evil Santa" monsters that a couple of my classmates in elementary school claimed existed and were hiding out in some room under the stairs of one building of Clifton Forge East Elementary School.  Specifically one of them claimed to have opened a door to... I think it was the boiler room or a storage room?... and ended up having to run out of there because this evil Santa was coming after him.  I'm still not sure if "Blackbeard Santa" and "Toothless Claus" were intended to be the same entity or not, but since both were mentioned sometimes back in the day, I used both names for two different evil-Santa-clone monsters in this story.

As soon as Toothless Clause landed at the North Pole to capture Santa, the elves sent an alarm to Nummy, who sent an alarm to Eddie, who warped to Nummorro. Nummy, knowing that Supernum would need extra help fighting these bad guys, gave him a new, shiny, red Num Coin with a big, white N on the front and a Numnum on the back. Just like his old coin, only with different colors. "How can this help?" asked Supernum.

"It will give you new, better Num powers." said Nummy. Supernum used it and his cape turned red and so did his suit. Then a belt grew around his waist. Then a santa hat appeared on his head and the N's on his cape and on his shirt turned white and the circles around them turned green.

Apparently Santa's elves are in contact with the Numnums.  Which I suppose makes more sense than a lot of things in these stories -- someone who's outside normal human society having contacts with aliens isn't too unbelievable, and how else would someone be able to get around to every kid's house in one night without using Num Warps?

Also, this story introduces a new Num Coin which seems to be vaguely Christmasy-themed, which apparently gives Supernum a pretty significant boost in power.  It's also the first time I ever actually described Supernum's Num Armor (specifically, the location of the N markings in circles on it), though for some odd reason I referred to the upper part as his "shirt" even though it's always been intended to be armor.  Those Ns are now Num Power symbols, which are basically identical to the Khurbyish letter representing the N sound.  So in a way, he still has Ns on his suit... just not in the English alphabet. XD

"So what? It's a new suit. So what does it do?" asked Supernum. "Well, why don't you try them out on the Test Bad Guy, you know? The one you couldn't beat before?" said Nummy. Supernum did, and he was surprised that now he could beat the Test Bad Guy. "My Numnum Sword is stronger, my Numnum Smash is bigger, and I can lift twice as much as I could before!" said Supernum, tilting Nummy's house to pour out what was left of the Test Bad Guy. "Go knock the beards off those fakes." said Nummy as Supernum warped to the North Pole.

Apparently Nummy has some sort of robot(?) test dummy thing which can be set to ridiculously high levels of power, considering that apparently there was one Supernum couldn't beat before.  Also, Supernum is strong enough to lift an entire house -- and the image I've always had in my head of this scene has him lifting it with one had, not even having any difficulty with it.  I think this might be the first of these stories that describes the extent of Supernum's superhuman strength.

I still really like Nummy's last line here before Supernum heads off, which is rare for a line of dialogue in these old stories since most of them are really bad. XD

As soon as he finished warping, he noticed he was surrounded by some snowmen. He walked up to one and Kirbys popped out of the snowman. Then more Kirbys, some of them holding spears, popped out of the others. Supernum was surrounded by Kirbys! He got out his Numnum Sword and started slicing one of the small ones. But then a big one disarmed him and he was without a weapon. He took the spear from the small one and used it to pop the big one and several others. Now there were only two Kirbys left: the biggest ones. He jumped over the first one's Spit Missile and popped the second one with the spear. Then the spear broke. He kicked the other Kirby and it rolled a few inches. Then he kicked it into some freezing water. Soon it was a Kirbcicle.

I find it a little strange that Supernum has this much difficulty fighting regular ol' K'hyurbhi thugs despite just getting a power boost.  A big one just randomly being able to disarm him like that doesn't make much sense, and why would he need to borrow one of the smaller ones' spears when he could just clobber the others with his bare (okay, gloved) hands?  Eh, let's go with "little kids suck at consistent writing" as the explanation here, nothing else makes any sense.

He walked towards Santa's toy shop, hoping that he would get there before Toothless Clause did. He opened the door. The place was wrecked. Broken toys were everywhere and ripped elf clothes covered them like blankets. Digging through the wreckage, he found Mrs. Clause. Her glasses were cracked from all of the toys that were on top of her. "H-h-h-help! Creat-creat-creatures attacked here! They st-st-stole all the presents and kidnapped Santa!" she said. "Where can I find any of the elves?" asked Supernum. "D-d-dig through the st-st-stu-stuff!" said Mrs. Clause, still shaking with fear of the Creatures. Supernum did and found a few elves. Their clothes were torn and some of the elves had scratches on their skin. "We tried to stop those Creatures, but nothing w-w-w-w-worked!" said an elf. "I know. I'll get Santa back." said Supernum.

Some of these old stories seem to use "Creatures" as a term for Killer Kirby's creations, and this one in particular even capitalizes it a couple times.  Also, apparently it was only Toothless Clause who did the Santa kidnapping? Not sure what Blackbeard Santa was up to during this.

 He warped to Killer Kirby's newly rebuilt castle. By the time he got there, he saw a pile of reindeer steaks. That's why he didn't see any reindeer at Santa's toy shop. He entered the castle. A guard pushed him away. "Can't you tell that no bad guys are here right now?" he said. Supernum warped to the first house Santa visits every year. Santa was there, but he was  being tied to a tree by Toothless Clause and BlackBeard Santa. "Stop that you morons!" Supernum said. BlackBeard Santa turned around and saw Supernum.

This story seems to follow shortly after the Thanksgiving one, as Killer Kirby's castle is described as being "newly rebuilt" (it was destroyed at the end of that one when he tripped over the rope with the Numnum Sword tied to the other end and smashed into it.)  And rather than being transformed into "Monster Reindeer" as the poem spoof said, the reindeer were instead transformed into reindeer steaks, which Killer Kirby and/or his minions presumably ate later.

Then both of the fake Santas charged at Supernum. Supernum ducked between their legs and ran over to the tree that Santa was tied to. Cutting the ropes with his Num Army Knife, Supernum released Santa and warped him to his sled. Then Supernum got some flying Numnums to replace his reindeer. Santa flew off in the sled, led by eight flying Numnums. One of the Numnums' eyes glowed red. Santa called him Poodolph the red-eyed Numnum. Just as Supernum looked back at the fake Santas, Killer Kirby appeared. "YOU RUINED MY PLAN!" yelled Killer Kirby. Killer Kirby lifted up his Shicker and said "KILLA!" A few seconds later, a zzzt flew out of the Shicker. The fake Santas began to grow until they were equal in size to Killer Kirby. "HA HA HA!" said Killer Kirby, "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO STOP THEM NOW, NUMNUM?"

Apparently the fake Santas are quite large even before Killer Kirby embiggens them, as Supernum is able to duck between their legs in order to get behind them and get to where Santa is.  And here's another appearance of the Num Army Knife -- this really must have been written pretty soon after the Thanksgiving story, because normally the random Supernum gadgets don't make multiple appearances in these stories.

Supernum's Num Gun didn't have a setting for fake Santas, so he decided to see if his new powers would let him "size up"  with the bad guys. He was amazed to see that he started to grow as big as the bad guys! In the distance he saw an old friend that he thought was long gone: Super Big Num! He thought that Super Big Num had been destroyed in an earlier battle, but somehow his new powers had brought Super BigNum back to life!

And here's the first actual appearance of the Super Big Num -- basically a giant robot Numnum -- in one of these stories.  The Super Big Num was going to show up (and be destroyed) in The Return of the Coraudos, but I never actually finished that story.  Originally this story mentioned that Super Big Num had been destroyed "in the battle with the Coraudos," but at some point when I gave up on Return of the Coraudos entirely I changed it to "in a previous battle" like what the currently-existing version of the story says.

Super BigNum bit Toothless Clause's arm. Supernum got out his Num Gun, put it on top of Super BigNum,  and flipped a switch on his Num Coin. Super BigNum charged at BlackBeard Santa with the Num Gun blasting lasers in all directions. While Super BigNum was killing BlackBeard Santa, Supernum got out his Numnum Scanner and scanned Toothless Clause. His weakspot was Zzzter! Getting a Zzzter Launcher out of his invisible pocket, he launched two Zzzts at Toothless Clause. Both of them hit Toothless and killed him. As Supernum shrinked and Super BigNum disappeared, Santa and his Numnums were delivering presents to Eddie's house. And at Killa Castle you could hear Killer Kirby shouting "I'VE BEEN GOOD, SANTA! I'VE BEEN GOOD!" as Santa completely bypasses the castle.

It seems the "embiggened" Num Gun can be attached to the top of the Super Big Num's head, as the giant robot Numnum has no gun-type weapons built in.  Also seems like the Num Coin has some sort of auto-fire switch for the Num Gun built into it, oddly enough.  And here's yet another random gadget that never appeared in any other story -- Zzzter Launchers! Pretty sure they were only mentioned here so Supernum had a way of using a Zzzter attack without the Num Gun since it was being used by the Super Big Num at the moment, as I don't think I had come up with the full list of Num Power attacks (which included a Num Zzzter) that he would later have -- only Numnum Smash, Num Punch, and Num Kick make appearances in these older stories (though there was an "origin story" for Supernum written in the later elementary school years that mentioned at least one other one besides those three -- I'll probably post that one here in the near future.)

And apparently I didn't know the word "shrunk" back then, as I wrote "shrinked" here instead.  Whoops! XD

And... yeah, that's it.  Not much of a fight at the end, though I suppose considering that Supernum got a power boost in this story it wouldn't make much sense if a couple of evil Santa clones had put up much of a fight.  It just seems weird considering how the brief clash with some random K'hyurbhis early on took about the same length of time to finish, I guess.

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- The Nummiest Thanksgiving Ever

At one point, I started writing Supernum stories that took place around major holidays and were overall at least loosely themed around that holiday (usually with a "Killer Kirby tries to mess up that holiday for everyone and sics a set of holiday-themed monsters on Supernum" pattern to them.)  This was, as far as I can remember, the first one of these stories that I wrote.  As you can probably guess from the title, it's the Thanksgiving-themed one.

Killer Kirby was sitting in his castle one day, not doing anything but laying around. Then he got an idea! He could use Thanksgiving-type badguys to roast Supernum like a Thanksgiving turkey. The first one he made was the ThanksDumming Turkey. He was completely impossible to beat unless Freeze was used on him. He also made three others: Stuffing Stinko, Gravy Ghost, and (his favorite bad guy) Mashed Potato Monster. He sent the bad guys to the backyard of Eddie's house. He sent them the night before Thanksgiving so they could ruin Eddie's Thanksgiving dinner. Then Killer Kirby made 3 extra bad guys in case the other 4 got killed.

Oddly enough, it seems that this one actually features a bit of a change in the status quo from my oldest stories -- whereas Killer Kirby was "trying to figure out who Supernum was" as of How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy, now he's fully aware that Eddie is the one who can transform into Supernum and sends batches of monsters directly to Eddie's house.

A lot like Supernum Meets Commander Keen, this one randomly capitalizes a chunk of one of the villains' names -- in this case, the D in Thanksdumming Turkey.  Also, apparently the monsters are sent out "the nigh before Thanksgiving" rather than on Thanksgiving night... so did they wait around overnight and only attack on Thankgiving day, or what?

ThanksDumming Turkey immediately attacked the house. Eddie heard him attacking and rushed outside. "It's Time For Nums!" Eddie said. Just as soon as he said that, he began changing into Supernum. Supernum easily knocked off ThanksDumming Turkey's attacks, but nothing even scratched ThanksDumming Turkey. Then Gravy Ghost came. Supernum was overpowered by the two bad guys and ran. While he was running, He put some Numnum Land Mines on the ground. Both of the bad guys stepped on them, but only Gravy Ghost was hurt. Gravy Ghost stopped chasing Supernum. ThanksDumming Turkey slowed down, but  he didn't stop.

...apparently not, because "Thanksdumming Turkey immediately attacked the house."  I guess I just got things a little mixed up as to exactly what day Thanksgiving dinner took place on when I was writing this -- I must have gotten it mixed up with Christmas, since there's both Christmas Eve (where my family usually had Christmas dinner) and Christmas Day (presents.)

Also, it seems like Killer Kirby's minions are getting stronger and stronger over time -- in previous stories Supernum didn't have any trouble fighting multiple opponents at once, but here just two of the Thanksgiving-themed monsters would be a bit too much for him to fight at once.  This is also the first (and only) appearance of "Numnum Land Mines," and they're not the last odd random gadget that Supernum will end up using in this story...

When Supernum was far away enough from the bad guys, he stopped running and threw out all of the mines. He turned on his Numnum Scanner and scanned the bad guys as they came near him. He discovered that ThanksDumming Turkey's weak spot was Freeze and Gravy Ghost couldn't stand Zzzters. Supernum programmed his Num Gun for Freeze/Zzzt and aimed at the bad guys. ZZZZzzzzz! A few minutes later, ThanksDumming Turkey was a pile of turkey cold-cuts and Gravy Ghost was a bowl of gravy. Suddenly Stuffing Stinko appeared. Supernum scanned him and said "Numnum Smash!" A few seconds later, Stuffing Stinko was a pile of stuffing. Turning back into Eddie, Supernum picked up the gravy, turkey, and stuffing, put it on a plate, and said "My mom will love this!"

...such as the "Numnum Scanner" which reveals the bad guys' weaknesses, for example.  Also, I'm pretty sure Thanksdumming Turkey's weakness to ice-based attacks is based on the way that turkey starts to smell absolutely disgusting after it's gone in the fridge for a little while.

I'm not sure exactly when this story was written, but I think it might be one of the only stories to feature both the "random gadgets" style of Supernum fighting and the "Num Power energy attacks" style in the same fight.  The Num Gun and its various settings (which in this story are elemental-based rather than anti-Barney, anti-dragon, etc. like in their previous appearance), land mines, scanners, and Numnum Smashes.  Also, the Numnum Smash actually has an appropriate level of destructive power in this one rather than just... knocking things backward... like in Supernum Meets Commander Keen.

When he got home, he put the food on the table and everyone ate. Eddie ate turkey, Julia ate turkey, Mom ate turkey and stuffing, and Dad ate turkey, stuffing, and gravy. Just as they were about to leave the table, Killer Kirby's back-up bad guys and Mashed Potato Monster came crashing through the window. "What.. are those.. things?" said Mom. Eddie didn't have time to explain. He turned into Supernum and calmed down Mom. Mom couldn't beleive it! Her son Eddie was the only person who could stop Killer Kirby and his bad guys! The back-up bad guys were: Cranberry Creature, Dressing Dragon, and Lima Bean Leprauchan. Eddie gave the Sign Of The Numnum to Julia and soon they both were turning into Supernum and Julia Dragon. Supernum went after Cranberry Creature while Julia Dragon chased Lima Bean Leprauchan.

And here's probably the first appearance of Eddie's entire family in any of these stories.  And of course, right when Thanksgiving dinner is about over, Killer Kirby's minions crash the party (by literally crashing through the window.)

This is also the first appearance of the Julia Dragon as a Supernum-esque transformation for Julia rather than just a random monster.  I think this might actually be the only story where the Julia Dragon makes an appearance, oddly enough, though she was going to be involved in a battle against Killer Kirby at some point (this was mentioned in a comic I started but never finished when I was in the later elementary school years, but never actually written down or anything.)  I'm not entirely sure what the "sign of the Numnum" was supposed to be, but my first guess would be a hand motion that resembles a Numnum opening and closing its mouth.  Also, I consistently misspelled the word "leprechaun" throughout this entire story. >_<

Another odd detail present in this story: Eddie's mom apparently knows about Supernum and Killer Kirby, but not that her son is Supernum.  No reaction from Dad though, oddly enough -- did he already know somehow?  But yeah... between this one and the Christmas-themed story I wrote later, it appears that Killer Kirby is a known figure on Earth in the later Supernum stories -- these two actually make it sound like he has a castle located on Earth now, rather than just the one on Nummorro where he was originally based.  Apparently at some point -- probably after the whole "sealed away at Camp Shenandoah" thing? -- he decided to target Earth rather than Nummorro.

Dressing Dragon, having a chance to grab some lunch for Killer Kirby, grabbed Mom and flew toward Killa Castle. Dad chased after the dragon in his stinky car. Mashed Potato Monster decided to help Cranberry Creature. Just as Supernum was about to beat Cranberry Creature, Mashed Potato Monster showed up. Mashed Potato Monster was one of the toughest bad guys Killer Kirby had ever made. Every time Supernum hit him, a piece would break off and grow into a full-sized Mashed Potato Monster. And Cranberry Creature was helping him!

Apparently Cranberry Creature isn't anything special, as Supernum only seems to be having trouble with the Cranberry Creature/Mashed Potato Monster combination due to Mashed Potato Monster's ability to regenerate whole new Monsters from random chunks of potatoes that got knocked off by attacks.  Also, Eddie's dad is driving to Kihlah Castle.  Yep, these stories definitely seem to have Killer Kirby having a castle somewhere on Earth rather than just on Nummorro.

Supernum called for Julia Dragon, who had stopped chasing Lima Bean Leprauchan when she saw that Mashed Potato Monster was going to help Cranberry Creature. Julia Dragon roared as she charged at Mashed Potato Monster. Supernum could fight Cranberry Creature while Julia Dragon distracted Mashed Potato Monster. Soon Cranberry Creature was a pile of smushed cranberries. Then Supernum went back to Mashed Potato Monster only to discover that Julia Dragon was eating him! "Yum yum, try these mashed potatoes." said Julia Dragon, her mouth stuffed with potatoes. "Uhhh.. no thanks." said Supernum, nearly throwing up.

Yep, Cranberry Creature didn't last long -- he must have been the weakest of this group, as the story doesn't even feel the need to mention Supernum using some special technique or Num Gun setting to finish him off.  Also, the Julia Dragon has the unusual ability to eat yucky food despite not being one of the bad guys -- pretty much everyone else in these old stories was unable to eat yuckfood without getting sick, hence Supernum's reaction here.

Lima Bean Leprauchan and Dressing Dragon were the only bad guys left. But where were they? Supernum turned on his BadguyMapper and looked for them on the map. He found Dressing Dragon. He was flying away from Dad's car, which was so far past the speed limit that if the police weren't so scared of Dressing Dragon, they would've arrested Dad.

And here's another odd random gadget, the "BadguyMapper," which seems to be somewhat redundant with the Numnum Scanner mentioned earlier (unless the scanner just can't scan beyond a certain range or something, I guess.)

I think this might actually be the first of my stories to do the "one thing going in one place, meanwhile something else is going on somewhere else" thing, albeit very briefly.

Back at Eddie's house, the good guys couldn't find Lima Bean Leprauchan anywhere. Julia Dragon's well-developed dragon sense of smell picked up the smell of lima beans. She knew immediately that it was Lima Bean Leprauchan. Supernum jumped on her back and told her to follow the smell. They were soon deep in the woods behind Eddie's house, where Lima Bean Leprauchan's trap waited for two good guys. Click! Something had wrapped around Julia Dragon's front legs. "I'm in a trap!" roared Julia Dragon. Supernum got out and saw that it was not just one trap. Two tentacle traps had wrapped around Julia Dragon's front legs! Getting out his Num Army Knife,  he cut the tentacles, releasing Julia Dragon.

They couldn't find Lima Bean Leprechaun anywhere... even though they have a device that shows you exactly where the bad guys are?? Weird.

Anyway... apparently the Julia Dragon's sense of smell can pick up on the smell of lima beans from a looong way away even though Supernum's mapper for some reason wasn't able to find him anywhere.  And here's the appearance of another random gadget, which I'm pretty sure Nummy was mentioned as using in another story -- the "Num Army Knife," which is basically just a Numnum-themed version of a Swiss army knife.  Why he couldn't just use the regular ol' Numnum Sword to cut some tentacles, I'm not sure, but there it is.

Lima Bean Leprauchan jumped out from behind a tree. "Ha Ha Hee Hee! You slow wimps will never catch me!" he said. There was no way that they could. Everyone knows that dragons can spit fireballs, so Eddie gave the Sign Of The Numnum to Julia Dragon, who understood and spit three fireballs at Lima Bean Leprauchan. The Leprauchan dodged the first one, but he was fried to death by the other two. Now only Dressing Dragon remained, so Supernum got out a Num Warp and warped to Killa Castle, where they would wait for Dressing Dragon.

Apparently the Lima Bean Leprechaun is really fast, or something.  But not fast enough to dodge three fireballs in a row.  Also, Num Warps seem to be described as an object here ("Supernum got out a Num Warp...") rather than just portals that can send you to pretty much anywhere else instantly.  I'm not sure exactly how they were intended to work back then.

Soon Dressing Dragon came flying by with Dad's speeding car behind him. Dad threw a spare tire at Dressing Dragon, who dropped Mom. The car's brakes screeched as Dad tried to stop. Finally Dad stopped the car. But Mom was falling out of the air and away from Dressing Dragon. Supernum caught Mom just before she hit the ground and put her in the back seat of Dad's car. Then he went after Dressing Dragon while Julia Dragon guarded the car. Dressing Dragon suddenly noticed that his lunch was no longer between his claws. He flew toward Dad, ready to eat him, but Supernum grabbed Dressing Dragon's tail and pulled hard. "YOW!" roared Dressing Dragon as he knocked off Supernum.

Eddie's dad is apparently capable of driving at high speeds and flinging a spare tire out the window (high enough to clobber a flying dragon, and with enough force that it'd make said dragon drop the one he was carrying!) at the same time.  Though apparently he's not strong enough to actually fight Dressing Dragon, that's still pretty impressive considering that most regular ol' humans wouldn't be able to do anything against any of these monsters.

Just when Dad was only inches from being Dressing Dragon's dinner, Julia Dragon bit into Dressing Dragon's leg. "Mmmmm! You taste good, Dressing Dragon!" she said. Dad ran for the car, got in, and slammed the door. Dressing Dragon was really mad at Julia Dragon for messing up his meal. But since Julia Dragon was equal in size to Dressing Dragon, eating Julia Dragon would be impossible. Several tail whacks later, Dressing Dragon was nearly dead. Then Killer Kirby showed up, towering over Supernum, Julia Dragon, Dressing Dragon, and Dad's car.

Apparently eating food-based monsters was a defining feature of the Julia Dragon in these old stories -- first eating Mashed Potato Monster and now chomping on the Dressing Dragon's leg.  She's also apparently a good bit stronger than said food-based dragon, as all it took to nearly kill him was a few tail thwacks.

 "Dressing Dragon!" he said, "Why does it look like you need HELP? You are supposed to be a bad guy! You were supposed to EAT THOSE GOOD GUYS!" Then Killer Kirby yelled "KILLA!" and a zzzt shot out of his Shicker. Dressing Dragon began to grow. Soon he was the same size as Killer Kirby. "Ha Ha! Try to beat my Dressing Dragon now!" said Killer Kirby "EAT GOOD GUY!" roared the Dressing Dragon as he stomped toward Supernum. "Uh oh.." said Julia Dragon. "Well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall." said Supernum, getting out his Numnum Sword. He tied a rope to the sword and tied the other end to Killer Kirby. Then he threw the sword at Dressing Dragon and used the rope to climb up toward the Dragon's head.

And of course, since I watched a lot of Power Rangers back when I was writing these stories, Killer Kirby now has the ability to enlarge his monsters to humongous sizes.  And finally the Numnum Sword makes an appearance... even if it is just as a makeshift grappling hook to climb up onto a giant food-dragon's back.  On the topic of size-changing, Killer Kirby himself seems pretty inconsistent in these old stories -- I usually described him as being twenty feet tall even back then, but when writing it seems like I wasn't entirely sure how big that was... so sometimes he seems to be much bigger than that.

And speaking of Killer Kirby, his lines here are... really dumb, looking back.  Not sure what the heck I was thinking when I wrote this.

Then he got out his Num Gun and programmed it for "Dragon Destruction", the anti-dragon setting. Julia Dragon bit Dressing Dragon on the toe to distract him and Supernum blasted the Dragon with his gun. At first, the Dragon shrank. Then Dressing Dragon melted into a mushy blob and exploded. "AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGG!" said Killer Kirby. "MY BAD GUY!" he yelled as he went back into the castle. He tripped when the sword-rope stuck into a wall. The castle came crumbling down as Dad's car drove home with a Dragon, a Num, and a lot of dressing.

And now the anti-(critter type) settings on the Num Gun, as previously mentioned in The Numnum Club, finally make a return appearance! Apparently they're pretty effective, as one shot from the "Dragon Destruction" setting not only reverts Dressing Dragon to his usual size but causes him to melt and explode into a giant pile of dressing.

Which is the same thing as stuffing, which had its own monster earlier (Stuffing Stinko)... so apparently that must've been Killer Kirby's favorite Thanksgiving-y food. XD

And here's Killer Kirby accidentally destroying his own castle by tripping.  Yep.  It's no wonder nobody ever wanted to get in a fight with this guy considering how much destruction he can cause entirely by accident.  I'm not sure why he always just went right back into his castle at the end of these stories rather than attacking (though in most stories other than this one, the good guys don't actually end up at the castle where he is so the question doesn't come up), but I guess in this one at least he could've been heading back in to prepare for a fight, then the tripping and castle-destroying happened so Supernum and company were able to escape while he was distracted.

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- Supernum Meets Commander Keen

This one is the first of these old stories to have a very clear timeline to it -- it definitely takes places after the end of The Search for the Red Num, as the story starts with a mention of the clay Killer Kirby that would serve as the "remote control" for the trap he was being held in after being sealed away by the Red Num's power previously.  Along with The Numnum Club (which seems to take place in the gap between the two stories, though this definitely wasn't intentional at the time I wrote it since it's the oldest of the three!), it sort of comes together as a sort of trilogy.  This is the third of the "Killer Kirby gets sealed away" trilogy, which of course involves...

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.