Chapter 48: Camping with the Toad Brigade
By the time that situation was resolved, the World 2 sun was setting. I considered cleaning out Lubba's room and making that into my new bedroom, but it had been a long day and I didn't feel like making it any longer. So instead I grabbed a bunch of towels from our storage closet and made myself an impromptu bed on the helm. Unfortunately, my attempts to get to sleep were thwarted by constantly hearing the rumble of that godforsaken Berry Planetoid's thruster directly overhead, since none of us had been able to figure out how to turn it off or even just move the planetoid back to where it had been before Lubba stole it.
So after two hours of lying awake wanting to scratch my ears out, I threw my bath sheet/quilt off me and marched to the steering wheel to make good on my promise to Banktoad about getting the Toad Brigade back from the Baby Blocks Galaxy. Besides, having them here would make cleaning out Lubba's room easier, and maybe they'd figure out how to solve the issue with the Berry Planetoid.
In World 1, the sun had just gone down about an hour before, so the sky still had some light to it, but just barely. Not that it would really matter much, since it looked like the Baby Blocks Galaxy only had that one planet that the entire level would probably take place inside. Well, that planet and the trash planet with the Gearmo, but that was beside the point.
And also, I was operating on the assumption the main planet had any sort of artificial lighting in it. It might not, for all I knew.
Aaaand my prospects for this level just got a lot dimmer.
I flew towards the planet and saw a few small lights atop the main planet illuminating the Toad Brigade's Starshroom. So they were still here. Good. Coming here wouldn't be a waste of time. It had occurred to me that the Toad Brigade might have somehow repaired the Starshroom and left this galaxy behind, yet not returned to Starship Mario either because of how things were left with Lubba.
I landed on the planet. Bartholomew saw me and ran over. "Mario!" he said. "You came back. I thought we'd never see you again."
"Did you have any luck at repairing the Starshroom yet?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "Everything's just bad, bad, and more bad. The Starshroom's quantum warp drive was completely wrecked when that cone fell through the bottom of the Starshroom, and basically the whole rest of the steering area was broken too. And there's no spare parts around here. There's a couple Starshrooms up there in orbit of the galaxy, but there's no way for us to get to them, and it doesn't look like there's any Toads on them. Granted they could be inside the planet, but we haven't gone in there. We don't want to go in there and not be able to get back to the Starshroom."
"I still haven't changed my pants," Jacques said. "Everything's all…dried and-"
"I DON'T NEED TO HEAR THIS!" I yelled. "Just get rid of your underpants and go commando, for crying out loud!"
"I don't have any underpants," Jacques said. "I'm commando all the time. That's the tragedy of it all."
"Mario, do you have any spare parts with you?" Daniel asked.
"No, but I need you guys back on the Starship," I said. "There's this sort of ongoing coup situation where Lubba keeps rising up against me and Yoshi and the other members of the Brigade, even though he appointed me captain, and we could use you to help reinforce us."
"The rest of the Brigade is in danger?" Blue cried. "We have to help them! C'mon, Mario, let's get back to the Starship now!"
"Well, we're not in any immediate danger back on the ship," I said. "But I figured while we're here, I might as well get the regular Power Star in the level, since last time I was here I got a Secret Star." Come to think of it, would they even come back to the Starship with me once we completed the level? I mean, Yoshi never does, but he's already back on the Starship. Maybe the universe would recognize that the Toad Brigade isn't simultaneously back on the Starship and would bring them back with me? I could hope. "So let's go."
"Hang on," Bartholomew said. "This might be harder for me. As I'm sure you remember from Super Mario 3D World, I can't jump."
"Yeah, I never really bought that, because I see Toads jump all the time, so why the heck can't you?"
"I think it's this heavy backpack I wear."
That didn't even physically make any sense. "What is in there that you supposedly can't jump?"
He listed, "Oh, my pickax, my other pickax, my Shiny Pickax, my Dull Pickax, four spare headlamps, some geodes I found on my travels, two mini backpacks, my lunch bag, a notebook where I document interesting findings, my pen, my backup pen, my other backup pen, the Starshroom Captain's Log, my Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D World Prima guides, and a bunch of other stuff."
…There is NO WAY that all of that fits in his TINY BACKPACK!
Smh.
"Whatever," I said. "Let's just go down this pipe and into the House of Antigravity, as I call it."
"Wait, before we go, we've gotta give last rites to the Starshroom," Blue said.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"Yeah, it's a thing we do," Bartholomew said. "She was a member of the Brigade too, so if we're officially giving up on fixing her…she won't be with us anymore. Just…just give us a minute."
I walked around the top of the planet while the Toads took care of that. Once they were done, Daniel said, "Okay, now let's go down that pipe."
And so we did…ish. I went down first, then Blue, Jacques, and Daniel followed. Last came Bartholomew, who couldn't jump and instead tumbled headfirst down the pipe and landed right on my head. OW! He then got up, not even realizing and/or caring that he was standing on my back, and gasped. "Wow! I gotta write about this in my notebook! Let's see…went down a pipe…emerged inside some weird building made of what look to be baby blocks-"
At least someone else noticed that too.
"-there's a tall shaft, oh, a couple Paragoombas too…and at the bottom it looks like-"
"Get! Off! Me!" I said, trying to get him off me. To no avail, and after about a second of trying my back started creaking and it felt like it was about to snap in two from pushing against his weight. Man, he really is that heavy!
"Oh, sorry, sorry," he said, stepping off me.
Next we leapt down the shaft…only "fell like a rock" might be a better description of what Bartholomew did. And the first ledge we landed on was one I landed on last time, where Not-Bartholomew was waiting for us too. What the-? I killed this guy last time!
"It's me!" Bartholomew said. "What the heck is going on here?"
"Who's this guy?" Not-Bartholomew asked. "Someone pretending to be me? Well, buster, I'll have you knowing there is only one Captain Toad, and that Captain Toad is me!"
"Hold the flip up, you liar!" I snapped. "You are not Captain Toad; Captain Toad is the Toad that came down here with me and the rest of the Brigade just now. Because you're just a filthy Goomba, like you were last time. Tell me, what's your name, huh, loser?"
"Bartleby Toad," Not-Bartholomew said.
Man, again with an antiquated, starts-with-a-B name that is somehow still nothing like Bartholomew.
"No, my name's Bartholomew," Bartholomew said. "Who are you, really?"
"Uh…uh…." Not-Bartholomew suddenly shoved Bartholomew off the ledge. I kicked Not-Bartholomew in the face, and his head popped off, revealing yet another filthy Goomba.
"It's a Goomba!" Daniel said. "Let's kick his butt, guys!"
We made quick work of the Goomba and then leapt the rest of the way down the shaft. At the bottom, we found Not-Blue dragging Bartholomew towards that ground-pound switch. Well, if I wasn't certain that that switch was actually a booby trap before, I certainly was now. After getting rid of Not-Blue too, we got on the nearby Banandelion and were flung into a higher area.
All of us except Bartholomew, that is, who was hardly flung half the distance to that higher ledge before being weighed down by his Backpack of Improbable Weight. So the rest of us had to form a human/Toad chain to grab him and haul him up, which threatened to dislocate both my shoulders from the combination of hanging upside down and hauling what I estimated to be no less that 150 pounds onto the ledge.
Up ahead of us was that Mini-Leg thing again. "Stay here, Toads," I said. "I'll flip that switch at the end to reverse the gravity in this section. Then you can jump on that robot's underside."
As soon as I flipped the switch, all the Toads fell onto the ceiling…especially Bartholomew, who smacked onto the ceiling backpack-first and (I'm pretty sure) cracked the block he landed on. Then there was an area with a bunch of lifts and another area where I had to 1v1 a Prickly Piranha Plant because all the members of the Toad Brigade chickened out upon seeing it ahead of us. Then we used another Banandelion to head back to a normal-gravity area, complete with Bartholomew falling over thirty feet in less than a second. He's gotta part ways with that backpack, I'm serious. All his levels in Super Mario 3D World would've been ten times easier if he could jump, and I have to assume Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was more of the same.
Just before the Banandelion was a gap in the floor (ceiling…?) that led to the outside of the planet, and we could see that it was pitch dark outside. The only lights we had to go by inside the planet were recess lights in whatever currently constituted the "ceiling," depending on where we were. So when we reached the bottom of that area, Bartholomew said, "Okay, Brigade, we've made quite a bit of progress so far. Who wants to stop here for the night?"
"Wait, here?" I did a double take. "Right here, where we are now? In the middle of the level? Any sort of bad guy could come along and ambush us in the night, and after dark, I'm getting serious liminal space vibes from this place. I think we'd be safer if we keep our guard up and just keep going."
"Mario, up ahead is a slide; no bad guys are gonna come up that," Bartholomew protested. "And if they were to sneak up on us from behind, they'd have to shinny up that Banandelion. Which I don't think Goombas or that weird hopping robot back there are capable of doing, and they're the only enemies we've encountered so far. Daniel, the Insta-Campfire, if you will."
What the heck was an Insta-Campfire? "Are you sure setting up a campfire here is a good idea?" I asked. "Everything around us is made of wood. If you're not careful, the whole galaxy is gonna burn down, with us in it."
"No, Mario, not that sort of campfire; an Insta-Campfire. Observe."
Daniel opened Bartholomew's backpack and rummaged around inside, finally grabbing some folded plastic object and a lightbulb. He unfolded it and then started blowing into a hole on its underside. Over the next ten minutes, the object slowly took shape into an inflatable, truncated cone painted like a campfire. In the top of it was an empty slot that Daniel then inserted the lightbulb into, and the "campfire" blazed forth in unparalleled incandescence.
In the meantime, Bartholomew took – I am not exaggerating – SIX! MINUTES! to empty everything in his backpack (which also included what looked to be a lone arrow sans a bow to shoot it from, and some other inflatable thing), and then somehow unfolded the backpack into the largest sleeping bag I'd ever seen. "Behold," he said dramatically, "the ToadBag!"
The ToadBag, as he called it, had six mini sleeping bags in it. The six sleeping bags were divided into two rows of three, and the bottoms of the two rows were stitched together at the middle seam of the ToadBag.
"Well, this works out well," Blue said. "Normally Hugh and Banktoad are here, but since they're back on Starship Mario, that leaves two slots in the ToadBag empty. You can go in one of them, Mario."
"Yeah, except these slots are Toad-sized, and I'm a human," I said. "And…wait a minute, is Banktoad's real name Banktoad?"
"His parents were even crueler than mine. At least with a name like Blue, you can still go into whatever profession you want. With a name like Banktoad, your life's work is pretty much laid out for you from birth."
"And Mailtoad's name is Hugh?"
"Hugh Jacktoad, yes."
What the-?
"The Hugh Jacktoad?" I asked. "The guy who plays Wolverine in the X-Toads movies?"
"No, silly, not that Hugh Jacktoad. Jacktoad is a very common last name, you know."
No. No, I did not know that, but whatever.
Somehow I managed to squeeze my lower half into the Toad-sized slot in the sleeping bag, which only left the Berry Planetoid-lite issue of the buzzing fluorescent light directly overhead. It also didn't help that right behind our campsite was a large hole leading to the space outside the planet, which was bringing in cold drafts; also, the Insta-Campfire shed little to no heat, and the ToadBag itself wasn't all that warm. Then again, that might've just been because barely half my body fit into it.
And in the morning, things got even worse. I must've fallen asleep at some point overnight, because I awoke to find Daniel folding up the Insta-Campfire, and Jacques inflating the other inflatable thing from Bartholomew's backpack, which turned out to be – I am not kidding you – an inflatable TOILET!
"Okay, guys, if you need to use the bathroom before we set out for the day, do it now," Bartholomew said.
"That thing had better be one use only and then it gets thrown in that black hole behind us or something," I said.
"One use? That would be a waste. No, see this?" He grabbed something from the pile of objects he had taken out of his backpack. It was a circular chart divided into five sections, with a spinning arrow at the center of the chart. "We use this to determine which of us gets Potty Patrol." He spun it. "Blue, you're on Potty Patrol today!"
"And do I even want to know what that is?"
"See those straps on the front of the toilet? Basically he has to haul the toilet around like a backpack until our mission is over and we get to a designated Inflatapotty Emptying Zone."
…I could have gone to my grave content without ever knowing that.
Even though I could have gone to the bathroom, I declined to use the "Inflatapotty," seeing as how Jacques had used it right before me, and I knew all too well what had been sitting inside his pants for the past three-plus days.
And on that happy note, Bartholomew folded up the ToadBag, stuffed all his belongings back in it, and we set out again.