The Final Boss
The brothers and Hanuman sprinted across the bridge the monkeys had built. Some of the bricks began to crumble the moment they were stepped on, but others were solid.
"Did you not write Rama's name on all the bricks?" Hanuman scolded the monkey army. "All the bricks with Rama's name on them are blessed to be strong, but all the unmarked bricks will crumble under any pressure!"
Luckily, the temporary bricks did not make up a large portion of the bridge, and the army was able to cross safely. As they arrived at the castle, the giant doors opened, and an army of ghosts, goombas, and koopas swarmed, ready to begin the fight. The sky got dark, and the enemies crashed forward.
Lakshmana ran up to one of the ghosts and tried to jump on its head.
"OWWW!" Lakshmana screamed as the ghost repelled him. His health being reduced by the encounter with the ghost, Lakshmana shrunk back down to his normal size. "It looks like we can't smash them like goombas. That really hurt!"
The monkey warriors advanced and were initially successful in attacking their non-ghost enemies. But then, a giant ghost with a crown ascended from the castle and attacked the army and the brothers! Rama was injured and lost his suit of fire, but Lakshmana was killed and disappeared into the sea. As Rama mourned for his brother, Lakshmana suddenly reappeared from the water.
"I have another life left! It looks like collecting those coins yesterday was a good idea," Lakshmana declared to Rama. "Now let's get back into the battle!" Lakshmana then jumped into the bottom of a floating box and two fire flowers popped out. They were just like the one the piranha plant from World 1 had given Rama!
Both brothers took a flower and they gained the fire ability that came with them. Lakshmana struck out to have his revenge against the king of the ghosts, but he could not hit the target. The ghost seemed to float away as every one of Lakshmana's shots sailed wide of the mark! But then Rama happened to make eye contact with the ghost, and the ghost hid its eyes behind its small hands and went motionless.
"I think the ghosts stop and hide whenever we look at them!" Rama exclaimed. "Fire your shot now, brother!"
Lakshmana then shot a stream of flames at the big king ghost, and the ghost disintegrated in a cloud of smoke. The brothers then instructed the monkey army to make direct eye contact with the ghosts. One by one, Lakshmana and Rama went around lighting the ghosts ablaze with their flame suits. The ghost army was in great peril.
"They found the weakness in my ghost army!" Ravana wailed. "There will be no more of this nonsense. It is time for me to take matters into my own hands."
Ravana advanced upon the brothers and breathed fire directly onto Lakshmana. Lakshmana lost his fire suit and retreated to avoid further damage. Rama got a few hits in with his fire darts, but it barely affected Ravana. Then Ravana blasted Lakshmana with more fire.
"That's what you get for killing my ghost prince!" Ravana screeched. Lakshmana was down to his small size now and lay flickering on the ground.
"I'm going to go get help!" Hanuman proclaimed, and before anyone could stop him, he launched himself to the mountain range near the shore from whence they came. Hanuman found there a large supply of green monkey candy - known for only growing on that mountain and for granting extra lives. He scooped up a bag of candy and jumped back in a flash.
As Ravana breathed another blast of fire toward Lakshmana, Hanuman arrived and threw a candy into Lakshmana's mouth. As he got hit with the fire his body disappeared, but then he reappeared next to Hanuman.
"Another life for me! Thanks, Hanuman, you saved me!" Lakshmana exclaimed.
That left Rama to face Ravana one on one. Rama overwhelmed Ravana with fire from his fire suit, but the battle never looked like it would end. Ravana was getting pushed back and his scaly armored skin was becoming charred, but he kept breathing fire and Rama kept dodging it.
Then Rama slid under Ravana as Ravana jumped and breathed fire. As he slid, he shot fire behind Ravana's armor, and Ravana fell to the ground motionless. Rama was victorious!
The storm clouds parted and Ravana's army scattered, fleeing after their king had been defeated. Rama and Lakshmana ran inside the castle and freed Sita from the cage. With the brothers safely reunited with their princess, Hanuman shook each of their hands in congratulation.
"Thanks for playing!" Hanuman said. "You will always be welcome in the Monkey Kingdom!"
Author's Note
This is the final level of Super Ramayana Bros.! In this story, I start with the bridge crossing and the instability of some of the bricks. Temporary bricks are a common situation in Mario games, but according to Indian legend, the bricks on this particular bridge need to have Rama's name on them for them to stay (more information on that can be found at the course site). So for our story, the monkeys in their haste left some stones unnamed and this resulted in temporary bricks on the bridge in the Super Ramayana world.
Next, our brave heroes encounter ghosts and standard enemies. Since the standard enemies are easy to defeat by a novice Mario player, I had the monkeys attack them. But ghosts in Mario are different - you can't kill them with body contact like many other monsters. Instead you have to awkwardly avoid them, or kill them with fire. Also, in the Mario games, the ghosts cannot move if you are facing them,, and if you face them they hide peek-a-boo style - this is why the ghosts cover their eyes and stop moving in this story. Additionally, King Boo represents Indrajit, Ravana's prince that gives Rama and Lakshmana a lot of trouble at the start of the battle. Like in the Ramayana, Lakshmana does get injured, but is restored to power and then kills Indrajit.
The killing of Indrajit inspires Ravana to action and he kills Lakshmana again, both in this story and in the Ramayana. But Hanuman saves the day by going to get a mountain of herbs (and in this story green monkey candy, which is supposed to represent the green "1 UP" mushroom in the Mario games) and healing Lakshmana and the monkey army. Since the monkey army played a smaller role in our Super Ramayana story, I left that last part out.
Finally, we have the showdown between Rama (Mario) and Ravana (Bowser). Fighting Bowser in the final stages of a Mario game is really hard; normally in order to win you need to either inflict a ton of damage, or hit Bowser's weak point three times. In this case, I opted to go with "inflict a lot of damage and then hit Bowser once" because I thought that flowed with the story better.
Ultimately, the brothers are victorious, and they reunite with Sita. In the Ramayana, there's still drama left to unfold, but for the sake of our video game we will pretend as if the heroes live happily ever after.
I want to thank everyone for reading this far in my storybook. It has been a blast writing about the Ramayana from the perspective of Super Mario Bros. Your feedback has been useful in making these stories better, so thank you for your help!
Bibliography
PDE Ramayana: Ramayana Online: Public Domain Edition
Specifically, the stories of Indrajit, Hanuman and the Mountain, Battle of Rama and Ravana from Nivedita and Ravana and Lakshmana from Mackenzie