A/N: I do not own Super Mario.
Chapter 27: Revenge of the Fake Toad Brigade
"Toads, turn the Starshroom around now!" I ordered.
"You got it, Mario," Bartholomew said, scrambling inside the ship. But as soon as he went to turn the Starshroom around, the ship stalled in midair.
Oh NO! Not that gosh dang flippin' forcefield again! But…what? We obviously didn't have any trouble getting inside the forcefield, but we couldn't get back out now? Come on, this was in no way fair!
"Toad Brigade, you know what to do," Bartholomew said. "Unload the septic tank!"
Oh gosh. If this was anyone other than Lubba (or maybe Bowser) on Starship Mario, I'd feel bad for them.
Green Toad opened a compartment under the controls and grabbed a giant hose. The other Toads opened the window, and Green Toad snaked the hose out the window. Starship Mario grew ever closer. Bartholomew ran over to the controls again and flipped a few switches.
And the septic tank hose went berserk.
All sorts of waste I didn't even want to imagine blasted from it straight at Starship Mario, spraying all over the helm and Lubba.
"AAAAH!" Lubba screamed. "WHAT IS THIS STUFF?!"
Really? He couldn't tell by the stench alone?
"RED LUMA, ATTACK!" Lubba yelled.
Red Luma? Who the heck was Red Luma?
Suddenly, the Luma I've called Polari clone since he got burned by my meteor clothes flew from Starship Mario's nose, holding the Starship's fire hose. He then shot the hose at the Starshroom full-blast. It flew just to the side of our septic stream and flew in the Starshroom's window, slowly flooding it. Oh great! Now we were trapped and the Starshroom was inevitably gonna start short-circuiting any second. We had to get out of there.
42. Tries to drown his captain.
"Bartholomew, fly us up and out the helm hole again!" I said.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd stop calling me Bartholomew," he said.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd never told me your name was Bartholomew!"
"Don't blame me; blame my parents."
"My full name's Daniel D. Danieltoad," Yellow Toad said dejectedly, hanging his head. "I give you one guess what the 'D' stands for."
"I'm proud of my name!" Green Toad said. "Baron Jacques Francois de la Quatraime Neveltoad."
…I don't think I've ever heard one person have so many names.
Bartholomew grabbed the controls amid water blasting him right in the side and steered the Starshroom up and over the helm.
I turned to Blue Toad (not the frog one!) and asked, "So, what's your name?"
"Blue Toad," he said gloomily.
"No, your real name."
"That is my real name. My parents just named me Blue Toad. They didn't even bother to give me a middle name."
Wow. That's lazy.
The Starshroom scraped along the sides of the helm hole, but we were still taking on water thanks to the abnormally good aim of that dang Polari clone. Suddenly, he shifted the aim of the hose so it wasn't blasting through the window anymore, but shooting straight at the underside of the Starshroom. A second later, a loud bang ensued.
"What the heck was that?" I asked.
"He must've blown out our thruster!" Jacques said. "We're going down!"
How?! I've been on countless Starshrooms, and not one of them has ever had a thruster on the underside! I wasn't even gonna bother asking, because I have never once been satisfied by an explanation given by a Toad.
"Oh no," Bartholomew said.
"What now?" I asked. Like this wasn't bad already! "That we're gonna crash-land in the Cosmic Cove Galaxy, because that sure looks like where we're headed!"
"No, we're gonna get sucked in by the Cosmic Cove Shunpike!"
Oh, give me a break! These stupid shunpikes again? Moreover, they actually exist? I thought they were just something the Toads made up to mask how they actually made it past the first Star Barrier in World 1, since for some reason, they didn't want to reveal to me how they actually went about it.
"Where's this shunpike gonna take us, then?" I demanded.
"We never take this shunpike in this direction," Daniel said. "It shoots us out right on a collision course with the main planet in the Rightside Down Galaxy."
Oh, COME ON! Not the Baby Blocks Galaxy! I wanted to avoid going there!
As we hurtled towards the Cosmic Cove Galaxy, the space around us suddenly became distorted and warped. The rust-orange sky of World 2 swirled together with the light blue sky of World 1, and Polari clone's water blast vanished. Then we emerged from the funnel and were headed for a planet made of – you guessed it – giant baby blocks. Most of the blocks formed a simple tower or castle atop the largest block, which was a rectangular prism and had red and blue arrows on its sides.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Bartholomew yelled, trying to sound smart and pompous.
Jacques, Daniel, and Blue leapt on top of him and yanked on the controls as well to try to make us miss the planet, but this was unsuccessful. We crashed right into the conical top of the tower and fell onto the giant block. The Toads and I landed on the Starshroom's ceiling, sprawled in several…compromising positions, to say the least.
Then the cone crashed through the upwards-pointing bottom of the Starshroom, shattering the central controls and coming about two inches shy of tearing Daniel a new butt crack.
"I messed myself," Jacques whimpered.
I was the first to stand up, and I popped open the window of the Starshroom. "Mario, where are you going?" Bartholomew called.
"To try to find a way out of here," I said. "Feel free to follow me or stay here and help Jacques change his pants."
"I don't have spare pants," Jacques said. "That's the tragedy of it all."
He's an explorer and he doesn't keep a spare change of pants on him at all times? Geesh.
I landed on the ground next to the Starshroom. There wasn't much around to see; just the rest of the tower's remains and some smaller blocks floating in the sky around the large block. Uh…where the heck was I supposed to go from here? I walked around the back of the tower, but still didn't find a Launch Star or any other apparent way to another planet. It looked like a planet where I'd probably fall off if I tried to walk on its sides, so I didn't even attempt that. The only place left to go was atop the tower. But I couldn't even get up there, not even with a triple-jump-wall-jump-spin-jump.
"Uh, Mario," Bartholomew, Jacques, Daniel, or Blue called (they all sound the same), "there's a Warp Pipe on the top of this cone here. Well…now that it's upside-down, it's sorta the bottom, but…."
What?! I walked over to the cone, and, lo and behold, there was a pipe just above the bottom of the Starshroom. Well, there wasn't any other apparent way off this planet, so what the heck? I stepped underneath the Warp Pipe and jumped up into it, getting sucked in.
I emerged from the ceiling in some sort of large, wooden, whimsical-looking area with sketches of clouds and fairy tale castles on the walls. See? What did I tell you? Baby blocks, and baby drawings since only ignorant kids believe in fairy tales. I collected some nearby Star Bits and then descended a few steps. Across a large gap patrolled by a pair of Paragoombas (not again…) was a '?' block, which I ignored because in my 3D adventures, those things have a long, undignified history of being useless.
I instead jumped down to a lower ledge and – what the heck? Bartholomew was down there! But Bartholomew was outside! Wait a minute…this was that fake Toad Brigade I encountered in the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy!
"My brigade is down there!" Not-Bartholomew said, pointing off the ledge to the bottom of the area.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Wh-what do you mean? My name's Captain Toad."
"No, your real first name."
"My real first name is Captain."
"LIAR!" I shoved Not-Bartholomew into the wall, and his head popped off, revealing a Goomba inside, as I expected. I jumped on the Goomba, and that was that. But if that was true, that his "Brigade" was down there, that obviously meant I'd have to contend with more fake Toads up ahead. Great.
I jumped down again, landing with a thud next to another Paragoomba. Geez, what was with the high concentration of Paragoombas around here? It was getting ridiculous!
Another jump down landed me between a Banandelion…and Not-Blue and a ground-pound switch. Not-Blue saw me and pointed to the switch. "This switch…. Hmm…."
Now, usually when I give my ranting monologues I keep them internal, because while whoever I'm around is aggravating me to no end, they're not inherently evil, and I don't want word of me yelling at them somehow getting back to Peach and then she raises my insurance rates or something in revenge. But seeing as how my run-in with Not-Bartholomew had proven that these Toads were in fact impostors, I decided to doff my mental gag and spew a torrent of verbal sewage at Not-Blue.
"No, you moron, I am not, under any circumstances, getting on that switch. And do you want to know why, because I'll tell you why. First off, your legs are clearly not broken, as you're standing upright, so why don't you walk over there and pound on the switch yourself, you filthy Goomba? I'll tell you why! Because you know that hidden under that switch is an explosive that, as soon as I motion-activate it, will detonate and give me, for all intents and purposes, a hemicorporectomy! I am not getting on there, you impostor, and if you had an ounce of intelligence about you, you'd have at least put a pizza on the switch or something to entice me over to it!"
After a few seconds of silence, Not-Blue squeaked out, "The proper saying is, 'for all intensive purposes.'"
Well, for a Goomba, he sure had all the same misguided beliefs as a Toad! "NO! IT! ISN'T!" I screamed.
I quickly leapt on the Goomba, causing his Toad head to pop off and allowing me to turn him into a coin. Good; I was able to put an end to that fight quickly. I feared for every second that dragged on, the chances of me getting thrown onto the explosives-laden switch would exponentially increase.
Since there was no way in hell I was touching that switch, I turned to the only other object nearby: the Banandelion. I remember these things. After my first galactic adventure, a bunch of the members of the BOMKS were arrested after getting into a fistfight over whether these things should be called Banandelions or Fling Flowers. I personally prefer the latter since I see no resemblance to a banana in these things, but whatever.
I wound my way up the Banandelion and was launched to a higher area. The background was blue with down-facing arrows, which meant the gravity was normal. It did seem a bit strange, though, that the down-gravity in this area was being flaunted like this when in the previous area it wasn't.
Ahead of me the floor dropped a bit and…oh great! Hopping around down there was a mini Digga-Leg! Granted, his colors were all off, but the two-legged, hopping, spike-headed thing down there bore an unmistakable similarity to Digga-Leg. Come to think of it, he also bore a similarity to the ever-obnoxious Flophoppers from Super Mario 3D Land, but not flipping upside-down with every step. This meant the spikey part of his head was eternally pointed up…at me. So much for jumping on the pest. Dodging him it was.
I leapt over Mini-Leg and landed on an elevated area on the far side of his domain. In front of me now was a Goomba (not even bothering to disguise himself) and a switch. And then a guardrail and a black hole on the far side of it. I jumped on the Goomba, then, seeing nothing else to do, flipped the switch.
Gravity suddenly flipped upside-down, and the background accordingly switched from blue to red. Wooooaaaah! I forgot how disorienting gravity changes are. It was strange…it always makes me feel like I have to puke, but then I flip upside-down and I almost feel like I have to use the bathroom instead.
Hey, I never said it makes any sense.
But I then noticed that behind me, Mini-Leg had flipped upside-down too. And now his non-spiky underside was pointed up.
JUMPING TIME!
I long-jumped onto Mini-Leg and ground-pounded on him, getting a coin. And then I saw that jutting from the ceiling was a Warp Pipe.
Should I…?
Shouldn't I…?
Curiosity killed the Cat Goomba….
Oh, fine, what the heck? I jumped down the pipe and emerged in a dimly lit room. Oh no, not one of these underground rooms again; these places are always so gosh dang boring. Inside this room was a Fire Flower at the center of an "X" of crates.
Not crates. I've been wary of them ever since "Kamella's Airship Attack" from my first galactic adventure. One of the airships there had a crate on it that I spun into, thinking it would give me a coin or Star Bits or something. How wrong I was, as the crate actually contained God knows how many kilos of Koop-caine powder, which me spinning into the crate released into the air. Long story short, I ended up horrendously high for the remainder of the mission and lost…not really sure how many lives, but I think it was a lot.
So I grabbed the Fire Flower and (after dismissing a message notifying me that I had become Fire Mario, which was BLATANTLY OBVIOUS!) walked back to the Warp Pipe. I slung a fireball across the room, knowing that I had a speedy escape ready to go if the crate I burned exploded into a cloud of white dust.
Anyway, nothing of the variety was to be found in the crates, thankfully. Not that anything particularly useful was in them, either: three coins, a 1-Up Mushroom, and another Warp Pipe, this time orange. Lemme guess: the orange Warp Pipe was gonna skip me to the next world like the hidden orange pipes did in Super Mario 3D World, which would prove completely useless. Though, in hindsight, if I'd known this was here, I would've come to this galaxy instead of going to the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy. Then I could've skipped past Spiky Spikepecker mangling my middle finger, getting embarrassingly defeated by The Murk, breaking my back, and fighting Gobblegut. And it would've saved me all the other torture I was subjected to in the Spin-Dig and Flip-Swap Galaxies trying to get seven Power Stars for no reason. Go figure.
Well, even if all the Warp Pipe would do was get me out of this stupid galaxy, then down it I would go. Granted, I'd probably reappear on Starship Mario with Lubba…or maybe not. I mean, for some reason, getting the Cosmic Cove's Power Star took me back to the Starshroom. Probably since that was where I'd started the mission from. Oh gosh, if this pipe took me back to the Starshroom, I'd be stuck in this galaxy forever; that ship was hopelessly wrecked.
Well, all I knew for certain was that if I stayed right here forever, I'd definitely never escape. So across the room I walked and down the Warp Pipe I leapt.