Mugman slappled a pamphlet on the table in front of Cuphead who was finishing a Dirk Dangerous puzzle.
"Huh?" Cuphead exclaimed confuseldly. He picked up the piece of paper and inspected the cover.
Brand New rides at the Fair!
Enter the magical Funhouse and solve puzzles to progress through the rooms!
Ride on the new and improved Ultracoaster
And feast on our selection of new treats
"What are you waiting for?" Mugman asked, "Let's go!"
"But my Puz..." Cuphead began before Mugman grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out the door.
"Seriously!" Cuphead complained as Mugman dragged him along the road, "it's not like those rides are going anywhere soon. Why can't i just finish my puzzle."
"We need to leave now so we can... ummmmm... beat the queues. Yea, we need to get there early so we don't get stuck in a huge queue."
Cuphead pondered Mugman's response for a second before shrugging.
"Fair enough," He said and let Mugman continue to drag him down the road.
***
Cuphead and Mugman arrived at the entrance to the fair and were immediately greeted by an absurdly long queue.
"So much for getting here early." Cuphead said, " At this rate we'll be in queues 'till sundown."
The two waited in the queue for what seemed like forever so by the time it was the cups' turn to enter the fair Mugman was dragging a sleeping Cuphead behind him.
"Day passes for two please," Mugman requested, his enthusiasm undaunted by the wait.
The ticket man gave him two paper tickets and sent them on their way. Cuphead soon caught the scent of carnival food and woke up.
"I smell num nums," Cuphead said getting to his feet, "Where should we go first!"
"The Funhouse," Mugman answered definitively, "We'll go to the Funhouse first."
"Why the Funhouse?" Cuphead asked.
"Not sure," Mugman replied ,"I just want to."
Cuphead eyed his brother suspiciously, Mugman usually spent half the time trying to choose which ride to go on.
. Soon he spotted the Funhouse which strangely had no queue. Upon closer inspection, there was a sign on the veiled entrance that read NO ENTRY, UNDER MAINTENANCE.
Without a second glance, Mugman pushed the sign to the side and walked into the funhouse.
"Wait wait wait wait," Cuphead said, "what happened to being the lawful one?"
"I don't know." Mugman replied, "i just really wanted to go in the Funhouse."
Mugman looked around the dark circus tent, scanning the interior. Once the two had walked into the middle of the room, an incandescent bulb flickered on illuminating the room with a warm glow. On top of that a record player spontaneously began to play some carnival music.
"WOO!" Cuphead exclaimed, "we've got this whole place to ourselves!"
The room looked like a large children's-soft-play, with brightly coloured foam cubes and random cushioned structures dotted round the room.
"Remember Cuphead," Mugman said, "the aim of the game is to progress through challenges to get to the next wacky room."
Mugman looked over at his brother to make sure he was listening but he was on the other side of the room Jumping from soft structure to soft structure.
"CUPHEAD!" Mugamn shouted, "Stop messing about, we have a puzzle to solve!"
"Well you can solve the puzzle if you want," Cuphead said, balancing on top of a stack of foam cubes," I'm gonna actually have some fun in this funhouse."
Mugman then continued to search the room, looking for any kind of way to get to the next room while Cuphead continued to play with the foam cubes.
*click*
Mugman turned towards the sound and saw his brother standing, holding a foam cube, poking a brightly coloured spot on one of the sides.
"CONGRATULATIONS!" boomed a voice," You have passed the first test!
The Cups wheeled around to see, where there had once been an ordinary wall, a giant face, that was staring right at them.
"Who are you?" Cuphead asked.
"Me?" the wall face replied, "i'm just one of the many that keep this Funhouse running and happy. Isn't that right guys."
In reply, a roar of joyous whoops and cheers erupted from all around them.
"Now continue on your quest," said the wall face, "and most importantly, have fun."
With that final statement, the face melted back into the wall, its eyes becoming abstract colourful patterns in the paint and its mouth becoming a door that wasn't there before.
"Well that was easy enough," Mugman remarked, "now the next challenge will be harder so i need you to concentrate and..."
"Eb eb eb eb ," Cuphead interrupted (I know that looked weird but just sounded it out.)," the only reason we found that one was from my goofing off."
"That was just your stupendous luck!" Mugman exclaimed," it's not good to just depend on luck. I hope you remember what happened when you bet our lives on a game of chance and lost Now let's go through that door already."
Cuphead grabbed a foam cube in each hand before following his brother through the door and into the next room. The room seemed to consist entirely of a large tube that seemed to continue forever. Mugman stepped onto the metal surface of the tube and was startled when it began to slowly but steadily rotate.
"Oh, i've seen this one!" Cuphead exclaimed," it's called a "barrel of fun". It just spins and spins like this."
Cuphead bolted into the tunnel and began to play about, throwing the foam blocks around, running up the walls and sliding about. Mugman on the other hand was pondering how to escape this section. He looked down the seemingly infinite tunnel and thought to himself that the exit must be down there.
Mugman turned and began to walk down the tunnel. He managed to go about 10 metres before he saw a brightly coloured foam cube fly past his head. He turned around and was hit full in the face with a foam block.
"HAHAHAHA!" Cuphead laughed, "the look on your face!"
Mugman smiled slyly at his brother and then picked up the foam block that lay at his feet and flung it at his brother. The cube bounced off Cuphead's forehead, pupils pinballing his pupils around his eyes. Cuphead blinked and shook his head, shaking off the daze.
"oh you've done it now buddy ol' boy!" Cuphead exclaimed, grabbing his brightly coloured ammunition. Mugman also reached back and grabbed the other cubic weapon.
The battle that ensued was of biblical proportions. Foam munitions flew through the air like heralds of doom, smiting the recipient with pain unimaginable.
Mugman flung one such soft cube and his brother, but the shot flew high, hitting the roof of the tube and...
Sticking to it?
The two brothers looked up at the cube that was inexplicably stuck to the ceiling. The cube began to sink into the ceiling and then slowly morphed into a large eye. The parts of the tube around where the cube was stuck began to warp and wave until they formed the rest of a face.
"Ya see!" Cuphead shouted, "the only reason we solved that puzzle was because we weren't both working!"
It was only at that moment did Mugman realise that he had gotten completely distracted and wasn't searching for the way out properly. He was about to refute that claim when the face interrupted.
"Your brother speaks the truth." it said, "this is the Funhouse. Therefore you can only beat it by having fun!"
"Pfft yeah right," Mugman dismissed ,"being methodical is always superior to doing it the Cuphead way!"
"How about this," Cuphed suggested, "in the next room you have all the fun and I'll do all the boring stuff and see where that gets me!"
"It would be my pleasure," Mugman said, sure that he would win.
"Well whatever floats your boat i guess," The wall face said, "onto the next challenge,"
The entire tube began to warp and bent itself into new forms like it was wet clay being moulded. it changed colour, shape and texture, morphing into a brand new room . The Cups floated on the spot as the world flowed and moved around them, occasionally spotting disembodied eyes staring back at them from the mess of colours.
The new room began to take shape as a slide room. Polished wooden slides crossed the room in every direction and every space, like some kind of MC Escher painting. As well as the slides there were multiple spinning disks dotted around the place, either suspended in the air by some unseen force or randomly slapped on the walls, ceiling and floor.
"That is not normal!" Mugman remarked.
"Not Normal is my middle name," Cuphead replied, "now let's see who's method is better. GO!"
Mugman, who was itching to try out the paradoxical slides, grabbed a burlap mat that was conveniently placed on the floor and jumped onto the first slide he saw.
Cuphead on the other hand hunched himself over, shaped his eyes into ovals and straightened his straw. He then pinched his nose and then tried to blow out it, causing his nose to expand.
The end result was that Cuphead looked like a red version of Mugman.
"Well I better get boringly searching the boring wall for some reason and hope it gets me out of this house meant for fun but I won't have fun because I'm Mugman." Cuphead said, mocking Mugman and began to search the wall.
***
Mugman shot down the slides at top speed, whenever he reached the bottom of one slide, the whole world seemed to rotate around him, gravity and all, Positioning him at the top of another side. It was a constant ride that defied a decent amount of physical laws.
Mugman whooped for joy, as he slid around the room, his eyes watering from the wind. Cuphead watched in envy as his brother zoomed in and out of vision, screaming with delight.
"Aw banana oil!" Cuphead yelled. He then rebent his straw, shrunk his nose, and re-shaped his eyes. Then Cuphead, who was back looking like his old self, grabbed a burlap mat and jumped on one of the slides.
Meanwhile, Mugman was having so much fun he didn't notice that the slide he was on was heading directly into the wall. At the last second he realised that he was on a collision course and braced himself for impact but he passed through the wall as if it was made of smoke.
"So that's where the door is," Cuphead said to himself, watching from an adjacent slide. He leant hard to the right, making the burlap mat swerve and careen off the slide. For a moment the mat hung in the air before it fell and landed on a slide below him.
The wall that Mugman had passed through was just above the end point of that slide, so once Cuphead neared the wall he jumped up off the mat and through the fake wall.
***
Cuphead landed facefirst pile of pillows.
"I thought you'd appreciate me putting those there," Mugman said, "the floor is a lot less soft."
"Uhg!" Cuphead groaned, lifting his head up and looking around, "what is this place?"
Aside from the wall he can just come through, the entire room was made of mirrors. He got to his feet and looked straight at a mirror but the reflection wasn't a frontal view of himself, it showed a distant side view of him.
"You are now in the mirror maze," boomed a voice from the ceiling. The cups were used to it by this point and weren't surprised when they looked up and saw a face in the ceiling, "but, unlike other Mirrors, these mirrors don't show reflections as they are, they alter them."
"So is it our job to navigate the maze?" Mugman asked
"Yes," the face said, "there is an exit on the other side of the maze. Good luck and have fun."
With that statement the face melted back into the ceiling. The two cups looked around for the entrance of the maze. They eventually found it, only because there was an arrow pointing towards it on the floor, otherwise, it blended perfectly with the jagged wall of mirrors.
The two brothers stepped into the maze. Cuphead took a few steps forward before turning round to say something to his brother, but to his surprise Mugman was gone.
"MUGMAN!!!!" he screamed, "WHERE ARE YOU!!!!"
"Oh, did i forget to mention that," said the face in the ceiling that had reappeared, "the very nature of space and matter are warped in this place. Walls move, reflections lie and one step can be a mile. Just for you information."
The face then melted back into the ceiling.
"Uh oh," Cuphead said.
***
Mugman watched as his brother disappeared in front of him. He wasn't too surprised, he knew this place was crazy but he didn't expect it to be this crazy. He scanned the area around him, to see if his brother was close. It was better if he didn't know what was going on.
As no sign of Cuphead was found Mugman reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to be some sort of mallet, with a metal handle and a large cylinder at the end of it. Coming out of one of the cylinder's faces was a wire that connected up to a suspicious looking box.
"I hope Mr Giager's tinker toy works," Mugman whispered to himself as he waved the strange gadget around in the air. The thing began to make a clicking sound at seemingly random intervals. He continued to wave the instrument around, holding it near the mirrors, waving it over the floor but whatever he was trying to accomplish evidently didn't happen as he began to walk through the mirrored maze, waving the clicking thingamabob at everything and anything he saw along the way.
***
Cuphead wandered aimlessly through the shifting corridors of confusion, with no real method just walking and seeing where that took him. He was unnerved by the disappearance of his brother but according to the mysterious face in the ceiling he was just in a different part of the maze
He knew the secret to beat the maze was to have fun but he wasn't quite sure how to do so with his brother missing, while being trapped in a physics defying maze that actively thwarted his every move.
***
Mugman continued through the maze with his clicking doohickie. The further he went, the more frequent the clicks became. He continued to wave the device all over the corridor, listening carefully to the clicks as he went.
He held it up to one of the mirror walls as the device suddenly began to click rapidly. He jumped backwards in surprise and then tested it again, holding the gadget close to the same spot and sure enough it began to click rapidly once again.
Mugman stepped back from the mirror, took a deep breath and then punched it with all his might. The mirror shattered.
On the other side were loads of brightly coloured eyes, embedded in some rainbow, flesh like substance. The eyes sunk back into the rainbow flesh once they saw that the mirror had been broken, like cave creatures retreating from the light.
Mugman took a deep breath and stuck his hands into the flesh. He split the surface of his and parted the gelatinous substance to reveal a web of what looked like veins (also colourful) all in an elaborate web and all coalesced into a large mass that looked like some kind of heart. Mugman reached his hand towards the heart that was beating rhythmically. He grabbed two hands in it and tore a hole in it.
Black blood spouted from the mutilated organ. Mugman reached into the large wound he had just inflicted and pulled out a small glass jar. He wiped the jet black blood off it, revealing a purple substance in the jar and a label that read "Jolly Jam" wrapped around it. Mugman slotted it into his pocket.
Suddenly, all at once, every single mirror shattered, revealing thousands of eyes staring at Mugman and various other random body parts that were hidden behind the mirrors, like mouths or tentacles.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" Boomed a voice that came from a thousand mouths ,"WE HAD NO QUARREL! WE JUST WANTED TO BRING JOY TO MY CORNER OF THE WORLD, BUT YOU HAD TO COME AND RUIN IT. YOU RIPPED OPEN OUR BEATING HEART AND STOLE THE ONE THING WE HOLD DEAR, AND NOW, WE WILL MAKE SURE YOU'RE NEVER BEATS AGAIN!"
The walls began to close causing the corridors to shrink as they are enveloped in the meaty mass of miscellaneous organs.
Mugman looked around panickedly. He didn't have an escape plan.
***
Cuphead Jumped out of his shoes when the mirrors all smashed, revealing the walls to be alive. He heard the booming threats echo around him and rightly assumed that it was probably a good time to get out of there.
"This better not be Mugman's fault," Cuphead said to himself.
He looked around the place for a way out and noticed how the body parts in the wall included noses. He walked up to one of them and used it and placed his foot on top of it. He then used it as a stepping stone, using it to haul himself out of the fleshy corridors.
As an afterthought he hopped back down into the shattered mirror maze and picked up a shard of mirror, assuming it would end up useful, and then climbed back out and jogged across the top of the maze walls.
Cuphead looked around and saw that all of the eyes through the fleshy room, all seemed to be looking directly at a single location.
"Well i can't not check that out" Cuphead thought and he ran over to the focal point, "plus i still need to find Mugsy."
***
Mugman frantically tried to scrabble up the wall but the place seemed to anticipate his move, withdrawing anything that could be a foothold back into the walls and making sure the surface of all surrounding things are as smooth and possible. He jumped as high as he could, trying to grab onto the top of the fleshy walls but they were all too high.
He watched, horrified as the corridor he was in slowly but surely began to shrink. The exit was already blocked. He spun in panicked circles, hoping to magically see an exit that wasn't there before but unsurprisingly, none manifested themselves.
"Need a hand?"
Mugman looked up to see his brother standing on the top of the wall, holding his hand down for his brother to grab. Mugman jumped up and grabbed his hand and was then hauled to the surface.
"Thank you!" Mugman said with a sigh of relief "now we better get out of here before being enveloped by this Lovecraftian Funhouse."
"Agreed,"
The two sprinted at top speed. The room did have a visible end but it seemed miles away. The maze was now no more, now just a floor made of limbs and organic tissue. Hands, tongue and tentacles reached out to try and halt the cups' escape.
The brothers were thoroughly out of breath when they neared the edge of the eldritch-room-being they noticed the flesh directly where they were heading began to warp and foam...
Turning into a face.
"YOU FOOLS!!!" the face in the wall boomed, "WE ARE THE FUNHOUSE! WE'VE BEEN HERE LONGER THAN YOU AND WE'LL BE HERE LONG AFTER! YOU ARE BUT A..."
As the face jabbered on with its monologue Cuphead noticed that he could see the outside world through its mouth. He had to find a way to get through this being's mouth to escape. He then remembered that he was still holding the shard of glass. Cuphead hefted the sard and flung it with all his might at the face.
The glass shard flew through the air and buried itself in the eye of the wall face. It opened its mouth and screamed, along with all the other thousands of mouths that were in various places around the room. As the face was screaming Cuphead grabbed his brother and dived through the mouth of the face, landing in a heap on the dirt path of the fair.
"That," Mugman said ,"was too close."
***
Cuphead and Mugman walked home, back to the cottage. Mugman was still soaked in black liquid which he said was squirted on him by the Funhouse.
"So you're telling me," Cupehad said, "that you did not do anything that might have provoked the Funhouse into turning into a monster."
"For the hundredth time, yes," Mugman replied,"I did nothing. Would I lie to you?"
"Probably. But how do you explain all those eyes looking at you? They wouldn't do that without a reason."
"I don't know," Mugman answered ,"maybe I accidentally offended it. All i know it i didn't do anything. I promise."
"Fair enough," Cuphead accepted ,"I'll spray you down with the hose once we get back, we don't want Elder Kettel to get suspicious because of that black goop."
And with that the screen does an iris out, focussing on Mugman.
(Mugman be acting kinda sus.)