Chapter 16: Spikepecker Vendetta
I hurtled onto the edge of the island with the tree on it, from there plopping into the water and hitting my face on the stone pool bottom.
Ow, my back!
Ow, my face!
Ow, my…FINGER!
The tip of my middle finger was a mangled, bloody mess, thanks to that idiot SPIKY SPIKEPECKER! I grabbed my glove and shoved it back over my hand, hoping and praying that my wound didn't require medical attention. Should I just jump off the planet so I lose a life? Or just let Spiky Spikepecker fall on me again to do the job? Losing a life healed my fractured legs back in the Flip-Swap Galaxy, so it should do the same here.
But if I was gonna die, it would be on my terms, not Spiky Spikepecker's; I was gonna jump off the planet, not let him fall on me again.
Rather, I would've, if this internal monologue hadn't taken so long. Because in that time, Spiky Spikepecker had repositioned himself directly over me and dropped his spike right into my back.
TOO BAD!
I reappeared at the start of the planet, and I immediately took off my glove to investigate the state of my finger. Sure enough, it had healed. So no, this did not teach me the lesson Spiky Spikepecker had hoped it would. It did not teach me to be kinder to people or anything. No, it taught me that losing a life solves all my problems. But that Spiky Spikepecker, who was now flying around the big tree, had to pay. Dearly. Sadly, 'dearly' doesn't mean squat in these adventures, where I have very few means of dispatching my enemies.
Blue Toad was here again, but I ignored him and his strange ways. I blew past the first Spiky Spikepecker and ran right underneath the one flying around the tree. "Yoo-hoo, here I am!" I yelled at him. "And say hello to my little friend!" I flipped him The Bird again.
"You never learn, do you?" the arrogant bird squawked. "Well, time for you to get my spike jabbed into you again, then."
Oh, do try.
He hovered around over me again – I don't know why he didn't just drop right away, because it wasn't like I was moving and required precise targeting or anything. After about ten seconds of that, which I think he was doing just to rile me and thus make me more careless, he finally flipped upside-down and did a spikedive.
And in a case of the worst timing ever, at that moment, the automated voice blared forth once more, "PRISONER 498164, YOUR SENTENCE IS UP! GO FREE AND SERVE LORD BOWSER ONCE MORE UNTIL THE END OF YOUR DAYS!"
This distracted me for the nanosecond required for Spiky Spikepecker to spikedive onto my cap. I fell down and heard Spiky Spikepecker squawking triumphantly, then saw the second prison open and the vomit-colored Octoomba inside waddle out. Are they green because they need to hurl…two rocks at me, that is? Like, they ate too many rocks and they need to regurgitate one of them? That would make sense, and yet be one of the dumbest things I've – OW!
Spiky Spikepecker fell on my hat again, and I was once more down to one wedge of health. How does this keep happening?! How was a bird dealing me this much damage?! Conkdors never had. Crowbers never had. Heck, according to Yoshi, even Raphael the Raven never had. Then again, Paper Mario once claimed to me that he met Raphael the Raven on Lavalava Island and he was a good guy there, so one of them was clearly lying to me. My money's on Yoshi, given that the Yoshi from Super Mario World 2 was clearly not the Yoshi I knew from Super Mario World to Super Mario 64 (again, assuming he died after jumping off Peach's Castle). I know nothing about the Yoshi who was watching over me when I was a baby, so for all I know he could've been some liar. And while we're at it, he could've also been a drug addict, he could've been a serial killer, he could've been a Poochy trafficker, we'll never know.
Unfortunately, my mental pondering of what that Yoshi was really like gave Spiky Spikepecker another chance to fall on me.
TOO BAD!
Now I was IRAAAAAAAATE!
That Spiky Spikepecker had killed me TWICE!
TWICE!
When would it be enough for him? Probably never. It would never be enough. Like the song "Never Enough" from The Greatest Toadsman, that movie about P. Toad Barnum.
I ran past the first Spiky Spikepecker and right to the one floating near the tree. Third time pays for all, I guess. "Hey, you!" I called to him, flipping him off yet again, "Come at me, bro!"
"You think you will win again?" the bird chirped. "Have the past two times you provoked me taught you nothi-?"
"Shut up and attack me alr – OW!"
Oh, he attacked me all right, while I was in mid-sentence, which is just what I would do if I could when Bowser's in the middle of one of his stupid evil speeches. This time, instead of thinking about how long it would take him to fall on me again, or why these new Octoombas are green, or whether the Yoshi who saved Baby Me was a criminal, I stayed focused on that annoying bird. Finally, he dropped towards me, and I leapt aside just in time, then jumped on his underside.
Ha HA! SUCK IT!
After that, it was a quick trip back up the now-vacant prisons, past the green Puketoomba (top that, BOMKS!), and across to the treetop this time. Sure enough, there was a Sling Star…and Yellow Toad? What was Yellow Toad doing here? What, is the whole Fake Toad Brigade in this galaxy?
Yellow Toad sleep-talked, "Captain…. Zzz…. Dizzzappeared…. Zzz…. Coins…. Coinzzz…."
What the heck was he rambling on about? Okay, Captain, whatever. That sorta makes sense; it fits with the steaming load of B.S. Blue Toad fed me. Even if these were Goombas in disguise, at least they finally learned to get their story straight before trying to dupe me. A few years ago, a trio of Goombas came to me, claiming they were defecting from the Koopa Troop. I was suspicious to begin with, so I interrogated each of them separately about the reason the three were defecting. One said it was because they were tired of cleaning Bowser's bathrooms, the second said it was because they were sick of hearing Scaredy Rats running around in the walls of Bowser's Castle at night, and the third said it was because Bowser had stopped giving them dental benefits with their insurance. What exactly "dental benefits" constitute when you only have two teeth, I have no idea. But these Goombas were clearly idiots, because if they had even the slightest bit of intelligence, all three would have claimed they saw the error of their ways, which has been what the few and far between legit defectors from the Koopa Troop have said. And so I promptly stomped on all three Goombas.
Back to Yellow Toad, why the heck was he mumbling about coins? Coins are useless on my galactic adventures! This was ridiculous. It was halfway between Toad-level ridiculous and Bowser-level ridiculous, so I was still unsure whether the Toads here were disguised Goombas or not.
I got in the Sling Star and shot onto the cloud, where I found….
FUDGE!
A HUNRGY LUMA!
So, what, this was a Secret Star, I assume? I didn't think there would be Secret Stars in this game, given that they hadn't appeared yet. Then again, there wasn't a non-"Rescue Luigi!" one in my first galactic adventure until the Space Junk Galaxy in World 2, so…yeah. I guess this was technically early for one to appear.
So if I didn't have enough Star Bits to feed this greedy butthead, I'd have to settle for getting the regular Power Star, which would undoubtedly involve going into the mountains and risking a Spine Coaster encounter.
In front of the Luma, there was also another '?' Coin. I grabbed it, and forty coins appeared atop the cloud, in four rows of ten. More coins? Was the endgame here to get more Star Bits to feed the Hungry Luma like in the underground room? Wait a minute…the Hungry Luma wasn't waving batons with Star Bits on them, he was waving batons with coins on them! Does he eat coins? Do coins finally have a purpose, even if it's just to feed greedy buttheads? Come to think of it, why do Hungry Lumas never eat the stuff on their batons, be it Star Bits or now coins? I mean, it wouldn't help me out too much in terms of how much I have to cough up, but still….
I collected the forty coins, for a total of 105, then approached the Hungry Luma. He immediately started ranting, "I'm so hungry! Will you give me 100 coins? They taste soooo good!"
Star Bits are one thing on account of how I can't personally attest to their flavor, but really? Coins taste good to this guy? He likes the taste of metal? Ugh. What a weirdo. But at least he wasn't being as demanding as other Hungry Lumas, who take one look at me and are all like, "Hey you yeah you I see you there gimme Star Bits bitch!"
The Hungry Luma continued, "If I eat 100 coins, I might transform!"
Will transform or might transform? Because I don't want this to end in him giving a pathetic burp and saying, "Oops, guess I didn't transform. Better luck next time." Then again, that wouldn't exactly be a waste of coins, since I can't really use them anywhere else in space. Although, there weren't coin-eating Hungry Lumas in my first galactic adventure, so maybe this is a harbinger of more future uses for coins.
Decisions, decisions.
Eventually, I decided to feed the 100 coins to the Hungry Luma. I would imagine a bunch of metal flying into his mouth at high speeds would be incredibly painful, but if it was, the Hungry Luma had a pretty solid poker face about it. Once all the coins were in his mouth, he said, "That's the stuff! I'm so full! Wow…. I think I'm going to…." I covered my ears. "…TRANSFOOOOORM!"
The Hungry Luma suddenly flew away over the treetops and turned into some triangular, tower-shaped planet that looked strangely like Peach's Castle. I got in the pink Launch Star the Hungry Luma left behind and flew to the planet. But as I did, the sky strangely turned pink. What the heck? This never happened with Secret Stars before – the sky around the planet the Hungry Luma created was never pink! I guess this technically makes more sense, like how the sky around the Mushroom Planet is blue, but still, now's sort of a strange time for things like this to start making sense.
Waiting for me was a Cloud Flower, which I grabbed and used to ascend a couple of wooden blocks on the side of the tower. To the side of the second one was a window, which caught me off-guard despite it not being uncommon for towers to have windows. I had to satisfy my curiosity about who the heck lived inside a planet that used to be a Hungry Luma, so I created a cloud under the window and knocked on it. "Anyone home?" I asked.
I was greeted by a Goomba. "Oh. Mario," he said. "If I weren't trapped behind this glass, I'd give you a right good biting in the face!"
Why couldn't he just say, "I'll bite you in the face?"
"What the heck are you doing inside a Hungry Luma planet?" I asked.
"The two cells in the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy were occupied by Frank the Flaptack and Eli the Elite Octoomba, so Bowser imprisoned me for accidentally biting his finger by shoving me down that Hungry Luma's throat."
So…those flying, blue turds are called Flaptacks? And the green Octoombas are Elite Octoombas? Yeah, sorry, I'm sticking with calling them Spiky Spikepeckers and Puketoombas. I retorted, "Well, I hope you – WAAAAUUUGH!"
The cloud under me vaporized, hurling me back to the base of the planet. Dang it, and I was in the middle of a great retort! Does the universe have no respect for me and my mastery of the fine art of insulting?
The Goomba called down to me, "Ouch. That looks like it hurt."
It did, but thankfully I didn't lose a wedge of health like I did for some idiotic reason back in Super Mario 64 when I suffered a long, hard fall. Not that I'd ever let that stupid Goomba know it hurt. For that matter, who the heck knew Bowser's minions had names like Frank and Eli? I thought they all just had production numbers or something, and when Bowser was addressing one, he'd be like, "KOOPA NUMBER 35734578343784, GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE!"
I climbed back up the wooden blocks, and then heard the Goomba taunting me, "You're gonna fall again…." Okay, this was ridiculously low. I only fell the first time because I was taking the time to talk to him, a mistake I would not be making a second time. I continued up the planet, but apparently so did the Goomba, because I always saw him peeking out from a nearby window, spewing out some verbal sewage like, "Fall, fall, fall!" or, "Guywho'sgonnafallsayswhat!"
For someone who's so persistent at insulting me, he seemed to lack any sense of how to properly insult someone. The subject of the insults can only be explicitly stated once in the string of insults. So in this case, he could only say the word "fall" once, preferably in "Guywho'sgonnafallsayswhat!" since that was the only insult he slung that didn't royally suck.
Long story short, I made it to the top of the planet and got the Power Star, which I attribute mainly to Goomba's pathetic insults not doing squat to distract me. Had it been someone with my level of intelligence and skill insulting me, I'd like to think there's no way I would have made it to the Power Star.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it! As usual, please leave a review! Next up: an unexpected arrival on Starship Mario and "Gobblegut's Aching Belly."
Happy Thanksgiving!