Part 17: Sidemoon edisnoom moon side moonside noomedis

Part 15: Sidemoon edisnoom moon side moonside noomedis

It was...different. To say the least.



: "What."



: "Oh my."

The world had turned jet black, like the darkest night you could imagine, without streetlights or stars or a moon to illuminate it. Instead, everything seemed to be traced by neon bars of bright, eye-gouging colors. Red, green, yellow, orange, blue were all thrown together with no obvious rhyme or reason. What in the world was this place?

: "Jeff, am I hallucinating?"

: "Your pupils are normal. Besides, if you're hallucinating then so am I."

I looked at Jeff and saw the neon zig-zags reflected back at me from his glasses.

Taking a few deep breaths to steady myself, I looked around. This looked like the café from Fourside, viewed through a lens of madness. People sat nursing coffees and drinks like there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen here.

: "This looks a lot like the café. What could have happened to Fourside to make it go all...crazy like this?"

At that, the bleary-eyed man sitting at the nearest table scoffed.



: "Moonside? What the heck is Moonside?"

Man: "What isn't Moonside?"

: "This is all so strange."



: "I feel like my brain is getting pulled in all different directions here. It's hard to explain."

: "Let's get outta here..."

I poked around behind the counter, but there was nothing to be had but the bright green outlines of wine bottles and such. There was no portal back; whatever we had done, it was one-way.

: "Great. Let's get out of this café at least."



Outside was no different. Everything was still an inky black, rimmed by neon lights. Walking in this place was like walking on air. I couldn't see the ground ahead of me, so I simply had to trust that I wasn't stepping into an abyss every time I put my foot down. More people were milling about, with vacant looks on their faces.



: "This place is giving me a headache."



: "I believe that. Uh, do you know how we can get out of here?



: "Um, thanks."

Shapes were moving around in the darkness. I was starting to get a little uneasy. Distracted by the movement in the distance, neither one of us noticed when a fire hydrant on the corner opened its eyes and glared angrily at us. We took notice when it blasted us with a powerful stream of icy water, of course.

: "Aaack!"

: "Fire plug! Aaaaah!"



We were knocked over by the force of the blast and tumbled over, still being pounded by an unrelenting stream of water. The bizarre Moonsidians around us were laughing.

I launched a psychic-rocking attack and blasted the fire hydrant into the air. The water erupted from the hole like a fountain, and the Moonsidians started applauding. Dripping and shivering, we continued wandering the streets of Moonside. I still hadn't decided whether Moonside was Fourside transformed into something, or a different place altogether.



: "I don't even have anything to say to that."

: "Look, it's the dinosaur museum we went to when we first got to Fourside."



: "Um..."





The scientist grinned broadly and gazed ahead. We backed nervously out of the museum and bumped into something hovering in mid-air.



: "It's...a clock?"

: "It's melting."

: "I saw a painting like this once, actually."

Suddenly the hands of the clock stopped moving and I found myself unable to move. I could see Jeff out of the corner of my now-immobilized eye and he too was frozen in place, his mouth open as if he was about to say something. The clock hovered there for a moment, looking pleased with itself, before it started swooping around like a bat, smacking into us. It headbutted me in the stomach a few times before swooping over to Jeff, where it knocked his glasses off with a series of blows to the face. I was wondering how long this was going to last as the clock battered my shins. Finally, bruised and annoyed, we were able to move. Once time was no longer frozen, the clock went down easily to a bat swing to its face, and it lay there melting into a gooey puddle.

: "Jeez. What a pain."

: "That's for sure...This place defies all scientific logic!"





: "I think there's our answer. Mani Mani is here, somewhere."

: "That's that statue, right?"

: "Yeah. In Happy-Happy Village it caused some pretty severe crazy in the people. They were all painting everything blue and the leader kidnapped Paula for a human sacrifice. Pokey was in on it, too. He tried to say Mani Mani had clouded his mind, but it was a lie."

: "So we need to find this Mani Mani, and then we might be able to turn this place back to normal?"

: "I'm hoping that's the case."

We were standing in front of the bright red neon approximation of the Monotoli building, but couldn't seem to get to the front door. It was as if an invisible wall was blocking us.

: "What the heck is going on here?"

: "I think our problem is expecting anything to work out logically. Um, why don't we try going around the other way?

A jovial man in a sea captain's hat was blocking the way.



: "Don't even think about getting past me, cause you aren't with a guy whose eyebrows are connected and who also has a gold tooth."

: "Why would I ever question that? C'mon, Jeff, we have to start looking for a gold-toothed unibrowed man."

: "Makes sense to me."





The dim fields of Moonside, barely illuminated by the glowing outlines of the dull green trees, were inhabited by strange men counting backwards and hovering paintings.

It was as we explored these fields that we encountered someone who looked a lot like Pokey's bodyguards from the Monotoli building earlier.



: "Hey, wait a minute-"

Before I could finish, we had been transported in a flash to the hospital.

: "Oh, I guess he meant that literally."

: "Huh."

The layout of Moonside seemed to be completely different from Fourside, so as we left the hospital, it dawned on us that we had no idea where we were.

: "Well, this is just great. Where are we?"

: "There's the hotel over there."

: "I thought it was over there before we got sent to the hospital just now."

: "Well, I don't know. I think this place is frying my brain."

We continued exploring. It seemed that every other person in Moonside was eager to send us zipping around crazily, and before we knew it, we were hopelessly lost. On top of it all, we were no closer to finding a person with a gold tooth and one eyebrow.

Finally, we ended up in what looked like a completely closed room with an agitated-looking man.



: "If you need something, talk to my partner. He's right over there...see?"

: "Um, where? There's nobody else in here."

Suddenly a voice came out of the darkness beside me, and I jumped a good foot in the air.

: "Can you see me?"

: "Gaah! Who...What?"

: "Can you seeeeee meeeee?"

: "N-no...Who said that?"

: "Heh, heh...you can, huh? You've become a real Moonsidian, haven't you?"

: "What?"

: "Ness...Remember? 'No is Yes, and Yes is No.' So, you just said you could see him."

: "Right, right..."



With that, we were once again zipped away into the darkness. We found ourselves in a neon lit hotel room. As we made for the door, the voice of the invisible man spoke up again.



: "There's something interesting about you, so I'm going to follow you."

: "Awesome."

The bellboy in the hotel lobby read to us the headline of the 'Moonside Press'...





And every few feet our invisible companion piped up.



Gold tooth? Hmm. Now we were getting somewhere. But would we be able to get past the sea captain with an invisible gold toothed man?

: "Uh, hey, you don't happen to have connected eyebrows, do you?"

: "Wa-hey, yeah, I do! Don't they rock, all connected like that?!"

: "Yeah, they uh, sure rock."



Several irritating minutes later, we once again stood before the sea captain at the Monotoli building.



: "How about we ditch these kids and go get something to drink?!"

: "You got it, pal!"



They walked off, leaving the path to the Mani Mani statue unobstructed.

: "Finally."



There, at the door to the neon red Monotoli building, was the Mani Mani statue, glittering ominously, a pale glow emanating from it. In front of it, a pale, frazzled-looking old man was kneeling as if in prayer to the ominous statue. As we took a step forward, he seemed to snap out of his reverie and turned to us, terrified and wild-eyed.



Then he bolted into the darkness.

: "That was odd."

: "We'll worry about him later. Let's send this statue to the scrap yard first!"

Boss Battle: Evil Mani Mani
Vimeo

Google Video / Backup



: "What in the..."



: "Moonside...It's gone. The statue's broken. The illusion has been destroyed."

: "All right! We did it! We've gotta get back to Monotoli. I'm sure the statue led him to kidnap Paula. Now that it's gone he'll probably give her back."

: "What about Pokey? His bodyguards'll pummel us if we go back to Monotoli's building."

He was right. What we needed was some way to get back in Montoli's building without Pokey getting suspicious. What we needed was a reason to be invited up there...somehow.

Next time: Ness meditates with monkeys and beats up robots! Don't miss it!