Fanfic / Larry's Adventure

Larry's Adventure is the first of a trilogy of fanfics written by P.T. Piranha, originally for the now-defunct Koopaling fansite Lemmy’s Land. A slightly edited version can be found on his Deviantart account here, but the original can still be read on Lemmy's Land itself (just be warned that the site will force you to download the midis that play music on the site’s pages due to formatting issues, which isn't harmful so much as it is annoying).

When the story begins, Larry Koopa is summoned to Dark Land, where he's hit with some terrible news: Smithy has returned, and he's murdered Bowser as revenge for defeating him years ago. Larry hopes to defeat him in order to avenge the death of his father, but he realizes that he can’t do it alone. With Kamek by his side, he assembles a slowly-growing ragtag gang of goofballs and weirdos to fight the mechanical menace. However, things might not be as simple as they seem, as far bigger threats than Smithy are lurking in the background...

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Tropes included in the story:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Luvbi was very much a Non-Action Girl in canon, but here she takes advantage of her status as a living Pure Heart by firing off powerful laser beams. She can also use the other Pure Hearts as weapons in battle as well.
  • Chef Torte, who goes from disgruntled chef in canon to a swordsman who's adept in lightsaber combat. And with Darth Maul's hard-to-master dual-bladed lightsaber, no less!
• Adaptational Nice Guy: While a treacherous sociopath in canon, Zant here shows genuine loyalty and love towards his sister, the Shadow Queen. When she's defeated, he furiously vows to avenge her.
• Adaptational Villainy: While already evil, Kamek was a loyal henchman who would never try to murder Bowser or orchestrate a bunch of world-ending events for the sake of becoming the most powerful person in the universe.
• Adaptational Wimp: Most of the Smithy Gang are a lot weaker than they are in Super Mario RPG, and go down without much (or in the case of Yaridovich, any) of a fight. Mack and Smithy at least get proper battles, but even Smithy gets taken down fairly easily.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: P.T. to Daisy. To get her to let him borrow her cruise ship, he pesters her until she hits her breaking point and allows it so she can get him to stop bugging her.
• Artistic License – Law: Played for laughs when Larry, Kamek, and P.T. are arrested the second they step foot on Isle Delfino. Despite haven't committed any crimes they're arrested merely for being associated with Bowser, who had caused trouble there in the past. The conviction never holds any weight, and once they escape the cops go from hostile to friendly the second they clarify their reason for visiting.
• Arc Villain: Smithy in the opening arc, the mysterious hooded figure in the Star Rod arc, the Shadow Queen and Zant in the Twilit arc, the four-man ensemble of Zant, Mr. Dark, Razorbeard, and Andre in the Rayman arc, and Kamek in the final arc.
• Argument of Contradictions: Luvbi specializes in these, and can keep petty and childish arguments going for hours.
• Author Avatar: P.T. Piranha is not only the creator of this series, but a major character in this fic.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: This is the way Larry and friends free the victims of the Shadow Queen's Twilit magic.
• Big Bad: Smithy appears to be this, and then the Shadow Queen and Zant. But in truth, the real villain was Kamek all along, who orchestrated the events of the fic so he could obtain godlike power.
• Big Damn Heroes: After failing to save Mallow, Larry and the gang come to the rescue right when Smithy's preparing to kill Geno.
• Big Good: Grodus turns out to be this, after a misunderstanding leads to him fighting the heroes. He's been trying to prevent an even bigger threat than the Shadow Queen from terrorizing the multiverse, and actively helps the gang when they accidentally empower it by killing her.
• The Big Guy: Petey Piranha, who often uses his size and strength to solve problems the gang run into.
• Boss Rush: The literary equivalent to this trope happens at the very end of the story, where Larry's team is pitted up against a bunch of the true villain's brainwashed henchmen in rapid-fire fight scenes, each of which is a boss/important character in the games they hail from.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: People who are directly affected by the Shadow Queen's Twilit powers are converted into her brainwashed, hostile servants. This also applies to those under the thrall of Floro Sprouts, which make an appearance in the final arc.
• Butt-Monkey: Kamek in the Rayman arc, where P.T. constantly shows him up, humiliates him, and hurts him during their antics with the Rabbids.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: When P.T. isn't being outright stupid, he's generally an eccentric weirdo who's out of touch with reality, childish, and prone to fighting in cartoony reality-breaking ways. The same goes for Torpedo Ted, who's generally more eccentric than stupid.
• Contrived Coincidence: The Mayor of Rose Town just happens to have a cannon he can use to blast Larry and the gang to Nimbus Land. Ditto for P.T. somehow knowing that they can't go from Dark Land to Nimbus Land due to the road being closed, despite him never setting foot near either kingdom beforehand. In the author's notes on the Deviantart reupload, he makes it clear that he isn’t happy about how conveniently things happen in hindsight.
  • There's also the fact that for some reason, killing Smithy twice in an RPG battle will trigger the end of the world for no real reason other than that the plot must go on. Same with the Time Holes conveniently manifesting for the heroes during the Star Rod arc, and always after the2 piece of the rod they're looking for is destroyed. It's a constant source of annoyance for the author, who also regrets them in hindsight.
• Crossover Relatives: The Shadow Queen and Zant are siblings here, and Bogmire is the nephew of the former. Try not to think too hard about how that works.
  • Cortez and Mumbo Jumbo are also revealed to be grandfather and grandson during the Grunty Industries fight.
• Dark Is Evil: The Shadow Queen, who now has power over Twilit magic along with her bog-standard shadow magic.
• Dark Is Not Evil: While a shadowy ghost/Eldritch Abomination, Bogmire is firmly on the side of good.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Axem Purple, a robotic warrior made out of metal who uses an axe made of metal, has powers that allow him to turn himself and his axe into metal. The author caught on to this, which is why he'd quietly retcon his powers into electric magic in the sequel instead.
• Dirty Cop: Isle Delfino's police show shades of this, with them arresting Larry, Kamek, and P.T. for no real reason. When they defeat a super powerful policeman to win their freedom, the police try to keep them in jail anyway, before Larry gets them to change their minds.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Smithy gets taken down a mere 5 chapters in, but there's still plenty of story to go beyond that.
• A Dog Named "Dog": One of the characters that joins the party later in the fic is a Shayde named Shade. This is subverted once he leaves the Underwhere though, since he assumes his true form of a blue Shy Guy.
• Dragons Are Demonic: Hooktail, Gloomtail, and Bonetail were already dangerous in canon. Here, that applies to them even moreso since they’ve been converted into Twilit beasts. Then there’s GIGA KAMEK, Kamek's monstrous empowered form that resembles a black version of Wracktail.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Both Bowser and Mallow are killed with little fanfare, and offscreen at that. Geno fares a little better since he actually shows up and gets to fight for a bit, but even then his death at the Shadow Queen's hands is ridiculously abrupt.
• Dwindling Party: At the end of the Twilit Arc, Larry's party is slowly converted into hostile Twilit monsters, though the Shadow Queen and Zant's defeats quickly restore them back to normal. The same happens in the final arc, where the heroes are slowly eliminated one by one before Larry faces off with the true villain: Kamek.
• Eaten Alive: How Petey Piranha likes to transport his friends, which they hate. It's also his favorite way of getting rid of threats the gang faces.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • DAD is a benevolent one. He's the Mario universe's equivalent to the Biblical God, and is as powerful as you'd expect. He appears to many species as one of their own, but his true form is that of a big ball of light.
  • The Shadow Queen, much like she was in The Thousand Year Door. She's gotten a hell of an upgrade though: along with casting the world in shadow just from existing, she also turns it into a Twilit hellscape and effortlessly kills Geno while destroying his obscenely powerful Geno Whirl attack.
• Emoticon: Sometimes used in lieu of dialogue to show characters reacting to things.
• Evil Costume Switch: When The Reveal happens, Kamek’s shown to have ditched his usual blue robes for red ones.
• Exposition Cut: Happens when Larry recruits Petey Piranha and gets him up to speed with everything that's happened so far.
• Fat Comic Relief: Gourmet Guy. When villains are defeated but allowed to live by the narrator, they're said to have fallen from a huge height before landing safely on his blubbery body.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: Once Kamek has been defeated, the heroes go their separate ways and are on surprisingly good terms with one another, despite their constant bickering.
• Flat Character: Axem Purple doesn't have much going on for him aside from being a friendly Axem Ranger. He lacks the eccentricities of P.T., Shade, Torpedo Ted, and Petey Piranha, the sneakiness and competence of Kamek, and the occasional jerkishness of Luvbi, Larry, and King Boo. As a result he doesn't really stand out from the cast. That is, at least, until the sequel, where he's the main character.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The ridiculously buff and monstrous police officer that Larry and the gang fight? He's named Sprinkles.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: While Bonechill had a cold, sadistic personality in Super Paper Mario as well as motivation that came from being the Satan to Grambi's god, here he's little more than a rampaging brute causing death and destruction for no reason, with his only dialogue revolving around wanting to kill the heroes for getting in his way.
• God Is Good: DAD is a benevolent and just god who helps Larry and friends with their quest. He isn't above scolding them for their stupidity, however.
• Green Thumb: Larry, as per Lemmy’s Land lore which has him pegged as a gardening fiend. While he may not have plant powers, he has control over many plant minions such as Petey Piranha.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: P.T. uses King Boo as a makeshift flail against Grodus, while also punching off parts of his face to use as projectiles. Later, he uses the attack "Sword of the Lemmy" which is just him fighting by using an annoyed Lemmy Koopa as a living sword.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: King Boo and Petey Piranha, who are best friends and roommates.
• Humanoid Abomination: Zant. While he looks like a creepy Twili, he's the brother of the Shadow Queen, and manages to revive himself by having his helmet attach itself to Grodus' discarded body and assimilate it into his being.
• Identical Grandson: In this fic, Petey Piranha's grandfather was the Petey that Mario, Luigi, and their baby selves fought during Partners in Time.
• Idiot Hero: P.T.'s about as smart as a sack of hammers, with his idiocy often causing trouble for his "friends".
  • Shade gives P.T. some serious competition in the moron department. For starters, he's in the Underwhere because he stole from the poor and gave to the rich in life. Not because he was a cruel asshole, but because he somehow misremembered Robin Hood's deeds of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Larry can be abrasive and self-centered, but despite being a villain he's got a good heart at the end of the day.
• Large Ham: Not only is Torpedo Ted "A TORPEDO!", but he's also very bombastic and silly in general.
• Level Ate: Chip Tower, kinda. It's a giant Pringles can filled with Pringles chips as well as the typical architecture you tend to find in ancient desert ruins.
• Literal-Minded: Sarcasm always goes over P.T.'s head, much to the exasperation of those he interacts with.
• The Load: Downplayed with P.T. who's a competent fighter, but also the source of a lot of grief for the gang since his stupidity tends to get them into trouble.
• Manchild: P.T., whose antics are incredibly childish when they aren't hilariously stupid.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Larry introduces himself like this when he confronts Smithy, his father's murderer.
• Mythology Gag: Much like in Super Mario RPG, Bowyer causes trouble by raining petrifying arrows down on Rose Town.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: Tutankoopa is the villain of Chapter 9, though not by choice. The Shadow Queen brainwashed him into becoming one of her Twilit servants.
• No Fourth Wall: The fourth wall may as well not exist, due to just about every character being aware of the medium they're in as well as their squabbles with the narrator.
• Nominal Hero: King Boo, compared to the other heroes. While a few of them are villain protagonists, they at least have sympathetic motives for going on their quest or are genuine heroes in their own right. King Boo only joins the party so he can kill whoever killed Bowser, since he owed him money and can't pay him back since he's dead now.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Bowser's ghost appears to Larry during the final battle in order to give him a Starman he can use to defeat Kamek.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The gang's described as liberating a number of places from Twilit versions of powerful villains, some as dangerous as Princess Shroob and Tatanga. We're never shown this, however, likely since it would be an insane amount of padding.
• One-Winged Angel: At the climax of the story, Kamek becomes a monstrously powerful black dragon called GIGA KAMEK. Once he starts losing, he powers up even further and turns back into his base form, but wearing black robes and empowered to the level of a god.
• Protagonist Title: As you'd expect, Larry Koopa is the hero of this fic.
• Psycho Electro: Twilit Lakithunder. He gets better once Petey beats the curse out of him.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Axem Rangers, who bicker and whine just as much as they did in canon.
• Random Events Plot: This fic can easily be described as "Stuff Happens: The Story". The plot first focuses on avenging Bowser's death, but jumps all over the place in no time, quickly shifting gears from braving a giant Pringles can in order to find the Star Rod, fighting the Shadow Queen and Zant, going on adventures in Rayman's world...
• Running Gag: Torpedo Ted announcing "I'M A TORPEDO!"
• Sailor Earth: Axem Purple, who's an additional Axem Ranger that didn't exist in Super Mario RPG.
• Script Fic: The entire fic is written like this, which was commonplace with "Fun Fiction" on Lemmy's Land.
• Self-Disposing Villain: The Pringles King proves to be a genuine challenge for Larry and co. to overcome. That is, until he accidentally equips a Double Pain badge that causes their damage output to skyrocket and quickly kill him.
• Shout-Out:
  • The prologue is named after the first Series of Unfortunate Events book: The Bad Beginning.
  • P.T.'s first scene has him quote the in-universe blooper reel from the Veggietales Movie.
  • To get past the guards at Mallow's palace, Larry’s gang acts out the "Union" scene from Shrek 2 word for word, with them even citing the movie by name when P.T. wonders how they came up with it.
  • Chip Tower is flat-out stated to be a giant Pringles can, and the hazards that lie within include a sea of Pringles chips and statues of Julius Pringle himself acting as the guardians of the tower.
  • P.T. fights with some of Link's weaponry, such as the Fire Rod and the Switchhook.
  • The second story arc is basically a retelling of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, with the fractured Star Rod serving as the equivalent to the broken Twilight Mirror. Zant himself is even an Arc Villain!
  • The Thwomp Statue of Schwonk Fortress uses the Minute Rice gag from Neglected Mario Characters as a (mostly) joke answer in his quiz questions.
  • While fighting Twilit Blizzeta and Jojora, P.T. reveals that he's versed in the Fist of the Nosehair from Bobobo.
  • Kamek casts Lumos against Grodus during the fight against him.
  • The final arc is full of these: there's a dogfight where the heroes and villains pilot Arwings and Wolfens, Chef Torte uses a spatula version of Darth Maul’s lightsaber, Jojora casts a Blizzaga spell, and Cooking Mama pops up to drop her catchphrase of "Wow! Even better than mama!"
• Sinister Sentient Sun: The gang fight an Angry Sun during their trek through Twilit Desert Land. But it's no ordinary Angry Sun: it's a Twilit Angry Sun. It's still easily dealt with though, courtesy of a water spell from Kamek.
• The Smart Guy: While P.T. and Shade are the only truly dumb members of the party, Kamek's the brains of the operation, and is often the quickest to work out solutions to the problems they run into.
• Soul Power: King Boo's got a limited version of this. He can possess his enemies in order to get an edge in combat, but he otherwise fights with spiked bombs and slot machines.
• Take That!: When Larry and friends agree to lie in order to get past Nimbus Land's guards, they're reprimanded by "Baby Show Characters". They waste no time in telling them to shut up.
• Terrible Trio: Mr. Dark, Razorbeard, and Andre, the main villains of the first three Rayman games work together to menace the heroes during the Rayman arc.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: A weird example happens in the RPG battles that happen throughout the series, which are written in the style of video games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy rather than proper action scenes.
• The Unintelligible: The Rabbids, who can only communicate in screams of "DAAAAAAAAAAH!"
• Weaksauce Weakness: Hooktail's weak to crickets once again. However, she doesn't merely get sick and weaker when she hears them chirping. She explodes when Axem Purple throws one at her.
• Weapon Specialization: Axes for Axem Purple, as the name would imply. The same goes for the Axem Rangers as a whole.
• White Sheep: Bogmire is this among his overwhelmingly evil family members, which is what leads to him betraying the Shadow Queen, his aunt.
• You Just Had to Say It: Larry does this to himself after asking how things could get worse when he's forced to ride a barrel down a tumultuous river, with a Cheep Chomp attacking him as a result.