Earthbound – Day 48

–Day 48–

After getting the hint yesterday, we head back to Summers for a quick revisit to the Museum. Just like last time, the guard originally starts to send us away, claiming the second floor is being remodeled. But after seeing Poo, he quickly changes his attitude. Poo unfortunately has to hand over the gem his is carrying before the guard will let us check out the next room.

Inside, they do have a rather large stone slab with Hieroglyphs written on it. The guard starts bragging about what a great experience this must be for us. He also mentions that a rich kid, no doubt Porky again, came by recently and also took pictures of the Hieroglyphs. So these must be very important to us, but more importantly, how is Porky always one step ahead of us? We have a party of four and we’re struggling along. How is he alone getting by as well as he is? He was useless when he was in our party back at the beginning of the game.

Anyway, I would love to take a look at the Hieroglyph now, but before we can, we see why the second floor was locked off to visitors. It’s not because they were remodeling, it was because a few of their exhibits weren’t quite happy to remain dead. Two sarcophagi converge on us as we cross the room and we are forced into battle with the Shattered Man. He isn’t very strong, but that’s not the point. Museum exhibits shouldn’t be attacking the guests like that.

Now that those things are taken care of, Poo can finally read the Hieroglyphs for us. Translated it says “To fight against the invaders, we built this pyramid fortress. However, our efforts were futile, and we lost. Nonetheless, our pyramid was protected by the gods of Scarabia. The invaders from the heavens will be reborn every millennium and will attack again. Even now, the invaders hide beyond space and time and build their evil stronghold. A place out of time is beyond the Dark, and is even farther beyond the Lost Underworld. The Deep Darkness is shrouded, it is without light. Only one with the Hawk Eye can pierce the dark. The Sphinx now watches over everything, waiting for the coming of a truly brave hero.”

After that, there is a weird number pattern which must be the sequence to the buttons in front of the Sphinx. That should be easy enough to remember. You basically just draw a star. Now that we have the button sequence, we should be able to enter the pyramid without any trouble.

However, we might not be heading back to Scarabia so soon. Just as we attempt to leave the Museum, the phone on the front counter starts ringing. The receptionist is for some reason nowhere to be seen, so we take it upon ourselves to answer the phone for them. It’s Mr. Spoon calling from the Fourside Dinosaur Museum. Apparently he has found something “extraordinary” and words simply won’t do it justice. So I guess we’ll have to head back to Fourside first to see what he found.

Upon our return to the Fourside Museum, Mr. Spoon has indeed found something extraordinary, but he’s not willing to just SHOW it to us right away. He wants something in return first. In his case, he wants an autograph from the singer Venus over at the Topolla Theater. Specifically, he wants her autograph on an eraser. Or anything really, even toilet paper, as long as it’s really her autograph.

This should be an easy task to accomplish. We’re already allowed back stage, and she knows we’re friends with the Runaway Brothers. I just didn’t really expect what she would end up autographing for us. She autographed a Banana Peel. Who does that? Who would want an autograph on a banana peel? Whatever, at least Ness got a nice kiss out of the deal.

True to his word, Mr. Spoon shows us something extraordinary once we give him the Autographed Banana Peel. It would seem there is a bright light shining up from below a manhole in the next room. When Mr. Spoon went down to examine the source, he apparently saw a huge monster rat down there.

So suddenly the whole party is mucking around down in the sewers, just disgusting. Unsurprisingly, the whole area is full of monsters, mostly Stinky Ghosts disguised as garbage cans. These guys aren’t very much trouble, but on rare occasion they can possess a party member with a mini-ghost. Of course even that is really more of a minor annoyance than it is an actual threat to the party.

As minor of an annoyance as it is, we really should go and get it cured. Plus we should really check out the mall and see if we can finally get Poo equipped with SOMETHING. Unfortunately, there is still nothing he can use. In fact, the act of equipping him with anything actually drastically reduced his stats. Maybe he’s just one of those character types that are just better when they’re barehanded.

Either way we have a very stinky adventure ahead of us. So be sure to join us next time as we exterminate the giant rats living in the sewers of Fourside!