Mario and Luigi: The Star Spirit Children

Crystal Palace Crawl

Scaling Shiver Mountain, Mario and Co. made it to the Crystal Palace. Knowing Merlar's words of Bowser's men taking over the palace, the heroes kept their guard up. Braving the harsh falling snow, they quickly went inside the palace. Could they save the final Star Spirit at last?

Once inside, they took a minute to look at their surroundings. It looked like they were in the palace foyer, with a glass wall dividing the room in half. There were also two switches in front of red doors. But the doors were locked, and the glass wall made them start with the bottom half.

Going through the bottom door, they found an empty room, with a red X on the floor. Mario was puzzled by this.

"What could it mean?" Goombario asked.

"Don't know," Mario replied, "We may have to come back here later."

Going into the next room, it had a few Swoopulas that tried to drain their blood, like a vampire. Luckily, Parakarry and Bow took care of them before they could attack with Air Raids and Fan Smacks.

In the next room, Bombette had to blow the wall to get in, was a chest with a blue key inside. The decuplet was slightly confused because of this as they were expecting a red key.

"A blue key?" Luigi wondered taking the key, "Wasn't the doors red?"

"We might've missed something in the foyer," Kooper suggested.

Back at the foyer, Mario ground-pounded the red switch and it turned blue. It also made the red doors turn blue as well. Luigi then unlocked the blue doors and they went into the next room.

The glass wall extended in the room from the blue door. But then, Bow and Lakilester spotted duplicates of Mario and Luigi on the other side. Once the crack was blown up, the duplicates were gone.

"Please tell me you guys saw Mario and Luigi but not the rest of us in the mirror," Bow said to the group.

"Could just be our reflections," Mario said.

"Bro, Bow has a point," Luigi said, "If we only saw us and not our friends. Something funny's going on, and not in a good way."

"I thought I was just seeing things," said Lakilester.

In the next room, there was an opening in the glass wall, that made it look like a mirror. Going through the cracked wall, they came smack-faced into the duplicates of the Mario Bros.

"Wah! Mamma mia! Mario and Luigi are here!" the second Mario said.

"Whoa! We'd better fight them!" the second Luigi declared.

The duplicates turned into Duplighosts and got the drop on Mario and Luigi. But they manage to overthrow them with their hammers and new boots. After that, they went into the foyer appearing on the other side.

In the upper room, there was no glass wall, and fortunately, no Dulpighosts either. But Mario did spot a wooden floorboard and ground-pounded it and fell into a small room. He used a nearby spring to go back up and back to the foyer.

Back at the room on the way to the blue key, the red X was gone and a hole took its place. Bombette blew another crack in a wall, but this time four more Bombettes appeared after she finished. At that moment, the group was shocked by this.

"What? Who are all of you?! You're all trying to look like me!" the first Bombette cried, "You guys... Don't tell me that you can't tell which one's the real Bombette! You can tell, right?"

"Hey, I heard that! You're spreading lies, you imposter! I'm the real Bombette!" the second Bombette replied.

"Oh, no, no!" the third Bombette retorted, "Guys. Look carefully at me and you'll know. I'm the real Bombette. It can only be me. These others are all liars."