Chapter 14: Blue Toad's Strange Tale

The following morning, I got up to find my laundry basket in my room with my clothes neatly folded inside it. But when I got up to inspect them, I screamed. By some miracle, the burn marks all over them had mostly been washed out by Lubba's laundry detergent, which I was skeptical of given that it's 82% Star Bits. Who knew they had cleaning properties to them. But still, awaiting me in the laundry basket was a nightmare. My white socks and gloves had turned PINK because the red from my shirt and cap bled into them in the washer.

26 (Redux). Doesn't separate darks from lights.

Then again, I guess that's what happens when the only article of clothing you own is a pair of blue pants. And upon closer inspection, my formerly blue pants now appeared to have a slightly purplish hue to them.

I think Lubba did this on purpose….

But anyway, no way in hell was I spending another day lounging around this dump, contemplating what to do given the status of my clothes. So I did some spur-of-the-moment contemplating instead. Option A for clothes was the pink gloves and socks/purple pants combo. Option B was my burned, drenched, fruit-gut-splattered tux, which I really should wash too. And Option C was my pajamas, which embarrassingly had a stuffed Yoshi sewn to the right sleeve.

Dang. This was stupid (excuse my French) because, given the high number of speech-capable creatures I run into, I ran the risk of someone sarcastically praising my attire no matter which option I went with. Option A could have someone calling me a girl (outcome: I give them a knuckle sandwich). Option B could have someone saying I look "sharp" like Lubba did (outcome: I give them a knuckle sandwich). And Option C could have someone calling me a baby (outcome: I kick them in the nuts).

Well, Option C is out because, on the off chance someone takes me to court for assault, I'm pretty sure kicking someone in the balls carries a heftier sentence than punching them in the mouth.

So…A or B.

Well, no damage has been done to the tux that can't be undone by a good washing (overseen by ME) and the burn marks are barely even visible, given that it's black to begin with. I can't risk worse harm coming to it, so…AARGH! Pink gloves and socks/purple pants it is.

So I put on my clothes and headed up to the helm. It was only 5:30A.M., so I hoped I'd have beat Lubba up there. But there he already was. For crying out loud, the World 1 sun wasn't even up yet! Is this why he's always sleepy? Because he gets up at this ungodly hour every day?

However, it wasn't all bad. The early hour worked in my favor – I hoped Lubba might not notice my clothes in the dim light. Better yet, the little light there was was pinkish-orange, so maybe he'd think the color of my clothes was a trick of the light. I nonchalantly walked up to the helm, where Lubba greeted we, "Hiya, cap'n. Listen, about yesterday-"

And then I came to a horrifying realization: Lubba had washed and folded my laundry, so of course he knew about my pink clothes. And he was up here staking me out, waiting for me to show up. That jerk!

I rushed to the helm, eager to get out of there, but Lubba immediately entered Mario-Mocking Mode. "Oh MAN!" he laughed. "The colors BLED?! Your gloves and socks are PINK now?!"

27. Laughs at his superiors.

28. Plays stupid, which quite frankly he doesn't even have to play, because he inherently is.

I ground my teeth and put Starship Mario in reverse, then rapidly halted. Inertia took my side and flung Lubba into the pine tree, which had mysteriously respawned overnight after being burned to a crisp yesterday. Did Lubba order a new pine tree through UPS (Universal Postal Service) or something?

As Lubba landed in the tree with a muffled thud, I laughed, "Pine tree! You're coming into pine tree!"

Before Lubba could free himself and offer a retaliatory movie reference, I made my second spur-of-the-moment decision of the morning and decided to head to the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy. I'm gonna have to get through there sooner or later to get to the next Star Barrier anyway. Besides, this'll be the seventh Power Star I need to open said Star Barrier. Kill two Crowbers with one stone. After that was the castle galaxy, and then I would be out of this garbage dump called World 1. Hopefully to never return. Never to finish the Yoshi Star Galaxy or explore the Baby Blocks Galaxy.

So I headed to the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy and saw that the first and only mission was titled "Search for the Toad Brigade Captain." Well – wait, what?! Why am I searching for the Toad Brigade Captain – he and his Starshroom have been traveling with Starship Mario for the past several days. Few days? Argh, my sense of time gets all messed up by these adventures – they've been with us since whatever day it was I completed "Digga-Leg's Planet." And for that matter, nobody that I have ever met calls him "The Toad Brigade Captain." Yes, that's technically his title, but everyone just calls him Captain Toad.

Once I selected the mission, I found myself hurtling towards a huge planet floating in the sky, with grassy-peaked mountains at the back of it. I landed on a small island above a shallow lake…or maybe pool, since it had a stone bottom and borders. Standing nearby was…what in the flip?!

Blue Toad!

How did Blue Toad beat me here? He should've been back on Starship Mario! Unless…this was a Goomba impostor of Blue Toad like the fake Toads that infiltrated the Star Festival! I ran over to him, ready to Star-Spin him into oblivion, when he said, "We have located the Power Star. Our new captain is homing in on it!"

Umm…okay, my brain is about to explode with conflicting theories about what the heck that statement meant. Either:

1) he really is a Goomba who made up the stupidest lie ever.

2) this is some sort of offshoot Toad Brigade whose Blue Toad just happens to wear glasses too.

3) more monkeyshines are afoot.

"What do you mean, 'new captain'?" I asked.

"Well, the Captain, he's our new captain," Blue Toad said.

"Who's the original captain, because I only thought there was one captain."

"Oh, no, no," Blue Toad said. "You see, the original captain, the one who helped you in your last space journey-" Okay, I would say "helped me" is an exaggeration, borderline lie. "-he got fired from the Princess's Royal Guard back in 2009 for failing in his duties to keep her safe from Bowser in the future. He was stripped of his headlamp, and the Princess launched it out the cannon at her castle, declaring that one day a truly worthy Toad would find it and become the new Captain of the Toad Brigade and her Royal Guard. Nobody found the headlamp until 2013, and he became the Captain Toad in Super Mario 3D World and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Then that Captain was fired in 2014 for being useless when Bowser tried kidnapping the Princess-"

Quick intermission here.

Last year, I was heading to Peach's Castle in March, to officially ring in spring at the annual opening of Peach Gardens to the public. So I was shocked to find her already being kidnapped (since that doesn't usually happen until mid-May), and even more so when I saw that she was apparently being kidnapped by herself. Only "herself" in this situation turned out to be a gender-swapped version of Bowser, courtesy of the stupid Koopa using a Super Crown on himself. But this monumentally backfired in his face, as without all his usual strength and size, me, Peach, and Toadsworth (Toadsworth! The guy's practically blind!) were able to kick his female version's butt in a matter of minutes. I initially named female Bowser "Peachser," which, for some reason, the media soon abandoned in favor of "Bowsette." This made absolutely no sense because "Peachser" stuck to the "Peach-" prefix that was used when Toadette turned into Peachette.

After that, Peach made it illegal for anyone in the Mushroom Kingdom to use a Super Crown without her authorization. And soon afterwards, "Warioette" (who basically looked like Buzz's girlfriend in Toad Alone) and "Waluigiette" (seriously, what made the "-ette" suffix catch on?) were arrested for violating that decree.

Back to the story.

"-and so the Princess launched his headlamp out of her cannon again. Then a few months later, last summer, another Toad found the headlamp, and he's been Captain Toad since then."

This was the biggest load of Dorrie turds I'd ever heard. "Okay, so if there's been a new Captain since 2014, where was he when Bowser attacked last week?"

"Oh, tsk, tsk," Blue Toad lamented. "A tragic tale it is. You see, several weeks ago, he sustained a testicular hernia while trying to yank a turnip out of the ground. He was almost finished recovering when Bowser attacked, and as soon as he could, Captain Toad assembled us and we set out after Bowser. But we only got to the Spin-Dig Galaxy before we met up with you, Mario."

"Okay, well how did you get to this planet before me?"

"We came here this morning before you got up," Blue Toad said. "We wanted to get the Power Star and get back to the Starship before you got up to surprise you and prove that we're just as competent as you at collecting Power Stars. But I guess we didn't get started early enough."

…Logically, everything he's said stacks up, but – wait a minute, why hadn't I thought of this yet? "If you set out from the Mushroom Kingdom too, how the heck did you get to the Spin-Dig Galaxy before me, when you couldn't possibly have collected three Power Stars to open the Star Barrier?"

"Oh, we took a shunpike around the Star Barrier."

They took a – what?! How the heck are there shunpikes around Star Barriers?! "Where was it?"

"Where's the fun in me telling you? It's more fun to find stuff like this yourself," Blue Toad said.

Okay, I'm convinced that this is a real Toad now, because Toads are the only beings in the universe who think that putting in work to discover something is fun. If this were a non-Toad, I would've either been told where the shunpike was, or else gotten punched in the face if this was an incognito Bowser minion.

Why do I waste my time defending these guys? No, seriously. If not for my intervention, here's how every single one of Bowser's attacks would no doubt go down. His fleet of airships attacks. All the Toads panic and barricade themselves indoors. The Koopa Troop storms Toad Town and captures Peach. Bowser takes over and sets up his new world order…or maybe just kidnaps Peach, since, as I believe I've previously pointed out, all his Peach-kidnapping schemes seem to lack a real endgame. The end.

All thanks to me, the Mushroom Kingdom has been saved too many times to count, but do I ever get any thanks for it? No. The only store that's ever even offered me some sort of hero's discount is Toadette's Boutique, where I DON'T EVEN FLIPPIN' SHOP! The only other time I've been publicly recognized as a figure of importance was when Kong Kollege asked me to be the commencement speaker for Diddy and Dixie Kong's graduating class, which I promptly declined because all Kongs are my enemies.

So yeah. My life sucks.

A/N: The incident mentioned above with Bowsette will be described in my upcoming tie-in one-shot "Bowsette: The 2014 Annual Kidnapping of Peach."