Chapter 60: Monkeyshines

I grabbed the Cloud Flower refill atop the cliff, then used a swing to get to a giant treetop above me. Up there were yet another Piranha Plant, two more Cloud Flowers, and, finally, Bartholomew.

"Bartholomew!" I called. "The Brigade sent me to bring you back to the Starship. Where's the Power Star?"

He gasped and shuddered. "Oh, man is it c-c-cold on this mountaintop tonight. Some…monkey with sunglasses challenged me…hurff…to a race! You go instead…. I should be…in better shape…hurff! This captain business is going to be-"

Okay, this en medias res spiel had gone on long enough.

"What the flip are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Blue didn't really tell me much back at the Starship about what was going on here."

"Sorry," he said. "I've just got a care of…of the jitters, that's all. So we came back here and grappled up to the top of the Starting Planet, right? And then there was that pit up ahead, and as we were getting ready to cross it, this monkey with sunglasses came out of nowhere, grabbed me, and headed into some secret cave in the mountains. And in there he had one of those warp boxes that have been in some of your other adventures, and used it to teleport to this planet. Then when we got here he was like, 'So, you're some sort of explorer, huh? Well, let's race to the Power Star!' And he headed across those clouds there." He pointed to a group of clouds heading towards a small mountain. "But I tried stepping on one and it collapsed under me. And I didn't want to head back to the Starship empty-handed with the Power Star this close, but…I couldn't really go any further either."

I pointed to the Cloud Flower nearby. "You could've grabbed this. It lets you walk on clouds."

"Really? Huh. I thought that was just some strange sort of flora."

Oh my gosh. What, does he know about everything except actually useful stuff?

"Come on, grab the Cloud Flower," I said. I still had two clouds left to make before I'd need a refill; hopefully our five collective clouds would be enough to get both of us over to the Power Star.

Bartholomew grabbed the Power Star, and suddenly his mushroom head poofed into a giant cloud. "Woah, that felt weird," he said. "It's like my head suddenly got a lot lighter."

"Well, it's a cloud now, so yeah, that makes sense."

He reached up, his arm barely reaching the bottom of the cloud. "Hey, would you look at that, my head is a cloud. It's been so long since that last happened that I forgot what that feels like."

…I wasn't even gonna ask.

We leapt across the path of clouds leading to the Power Star, and only had to use one of my clouds, to get onto the mountaintop the Power Star was on. And standing atop the mountain was the blue monkey.

Just like Blue had said, he had sunglasses and Iggy's hairstyle…and his hair was the exact same color as Iggy's, and his glasses were basically the same shade of pink as Roy's.

Just like I said before. Koopalings.

"Whoa! It's you. Good work getting up here," the monkey said to Bartholomew. "They call me The Chimp. Seems like you may be a worthy high-climbing rival. Take this Power Star! We'll talk later…."

Okay, my fragile ego was not gonna take this blasphemy sitting down.

"Excuse me, but Bartholomew wouldn't have even made it up here if not for me telling him that Cloud Flowers can be used to walk on clouds," I said. "So if you're gonna praise someone, praise me."

"Mario, let me have my moment…," Bartholomew said.

"And also, Chimp, didn't you say that you would race Bartholomew to the Power Star? So why are you just giving it to him freely now? What did you, use it to wipe your butt or something?"

"No. I was just gonna throw the race so he'd win it. I want to be rid of this Power Star, yo!"

"Why?"

"Because I stole it from that messed-up Flaptack family a while back and took it up here to my mountaintop hideaway, man. But now those Flaptacks keep harassing me and trying to get it back. At first it was just this guy Frank, but then his best friend got in on it, and his wife, and his shrink, and some other Flaptack he's sleeping with on the side. It's bonkers, man. Bonkers. I just want them to leave me alone." He did a backflip, clapped, and voila, there was a Power Star.

"How the heck did you do that?" I asked.

"The mystical teachings of Penguru, bro. Once you learn how to harness your inner zen, you can do all sorts o' sick tricks."

Ugh. Penguru. "Can you maybe get me a bunch of other Power Stars? Like, right now?"

"Sorry, dude. I gotta actually get the Power Star first – like, physically grab it – and then send it away to the Conjuration Zone. Then I can access it any time I want, yo. What, you thought I could just make a Power Star out of thin air?"

I wasn't exactly getting my hopes up, but it would've been nice to hear anyway.

"Well, uh, thanks, I guess," I said. "C'mon, Bartholomew, let's get back to the Starship."

"See ya around," The Chimp said.

I hoped not for a while. I mean, maybe he was legit an enemy of the Koopa Troop, but that chillax-laidback-surfer voice of his was starting to grate on my nerves. Though I was still certain he had some sort of connection to the Koopalings.

Anyway, Bartholomew and I grabbed the Power Star, and both of us arrived back at Starship Mario. Oh good, I was hoping he would come back with me; I was a bit worried he wouldn't, given that Yoshi never comes back to the Starship with me when I finish a mission with him. Then again, that's probably because of that split screen thing where he's simultaneously in whatever galaxy I'm in and on the Starship; there couldn't be two Yoshis on the Starship. I mean, technically there could, and I wouldn't exactly complain about that happening either, since two Yoshis would be more manpower to put down future uprisings with. Maybe two simultaneously-existing versions of Yoshi couldn't meet each other or the whole universe would unravel or something, who knows?

"Captain!" Jacques said as the Toad Brigade rushed over to us. "Oh, Captain, are you okay? What did that monkey do to you?"

"Gave us a Power Star, actually," Bartholomew said. "I guess he doesn't like Bowser either."

Well, now I had 12 Comet Medals and 28 Power Stars, enough to get past the Star Barrier in World 3. But there was no way I was going into a showdown with Bowser Jr. on a sleep-deprived brain, so I decided to head back to bed for a few hours before heading back to World 3.

When I got up for the second time that day, I had breakfast, then headed up to the helm and steered Starship Mario into World 3. The Star Barrier at the start of the world vanished as I flew Starship Mario towards it, opening a path to the Warp Pipe. I flew the Starship straight towards the Warp Pipe, wondering what it would feel like to go through such a huge one.

It really didn't feel like anything, and I suspect the Warp Pipe was really just a shunpike in disguise, because it felt the same as when the Toad Brigade and I went through the Cosmic Cove Shunpike and crashed in the Baby Blocks Galaxy. The Starship's surroundings faded away, and were replaced by Bowser Jr.'s castle looming before us. I flew the Starship over to it to see what the galaxy was called.

Bowser Jr.'s Fearsome Fleet.

Oh great, this reeked of a pathetic reboot of that pest's Airship Armada from my first galactic adventure. Only now he was upping the ante by labeling it "Fearsome." Ooh, I'm terrified.

As I flew out the helm hole, I noticed what looked like some strange purple sparks flaring around the galaxy. What was Junior up to now, dark magic or something? Was Kamek training him in the arcane ways of Magikoopas? Either that or this had something to do with Star Bunny and those purple flames he vanished into. Or maybe it was like that "hole to Hell" the Toad Brigade had supposedly found in the Freezeflame Galaxy's auroras.

Not sure which was the least of the three evils. Probably Junior, since him wielding magic would probably just be a larger-scale version of all those Toads who try doing some badass move with a nunchuk and just end up smacking themselves in the balls.

Anyway, the galaxy's first and only mission was titled "Bowser Jr.'s Mighty Megahammer."

Oh no, what the flip was Megahammer gonna be? A giant Hammer Bro.? How flippin' big were the hammers I was getting pelted with gonna be?

…Did I have to complete this galaxy to get to World 4? Would it hurt to go back to the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy and ask The Chimp again to magic me up a bunch more Power Stars so I could just jump ahead to Bowser's final lair?

Well, it couldn't hurt, but deep down I knew it would just be a waste of time.

Sigh.

So I selected the mission, and as I flew towards the galaxy, I noticed – what the flip? This galaxy was orbiting the Mushroom Planet, just like the Fiery Flotilla was! How were two completely different galaxies, in two completely different worlds, orbiting the exact same planet?! I'm assuming that Warp Pipe/shunpike had something to do with it and took me back to a hidden area of World 1 or something (like the Warp Pipe in Donut Plains from Super Mario World that took me to the Valley of Bowser), but then why was the background behind the Fearsome Fleet's icon the same as it was in the rest of World 3 and not the blue skies of World 1? And why was it visible from everywhere else on the World 3 map?

Once again, nothing about this made a flippin' lick of sense.

And for that matter, if two of Bowser's bases were in orbit of the Mushroom Planet, why hadn't the Interim Princess ordered them blown out of the sky yet? Then again, who was I kidding? Toadette was the Interim Princess; given the "head-in-the-sand" attitude that most of Toadkind has, she probably hadn't even noticed them in the sky, or else had just brushed them off as strange-looking comets or something.

Okay, I know you're probably getting sick of my internal monologues at this point. I'll just get on with it.

I landed on the Starting Planet and, scanning what lay ahead of me, immediately noticed two things. First, those gosh dang FIZZLITS were here again! And second, so was a Yoshi egg. Well, at least I wouldn't be alone in this place that was already looking to be a nightmare, and if I was riding Yoshi, I couldn't get peed on by the Fizzlits either. So there was that.

I crossed a pair of lifts, dodged the two Fizzlits that were hopping around (as well as some Bullet Bills), and broke Yoshi's egg open. "Oh, hey Mario," he said. "Oh great, what the heck is this place?"

"A Bowser Jr. base," I said.

Yoshi sighed. "Not a castle. I hate castles."

"You don't get to say that. You've never even been in one before."

"That's right. And based on what I've read about them in those Prima Guides the BOMKS puts out, I had no intentions of ever going in one."

"So what, it's okay for me to go in castles, but you're too good to go in them?"

"Mario, I'm not having this discussion with you again."

I don't think we've ever had that discussion. The first time I ever brought it up he said, "Mario, I'm not having this discussion with you." And every time since then he's just tacked an "again" on the end.

Whatever.

I hopped on Yoshi's back. Let's see…the only way to advance was through a path being blocked by a giant glass cage like the ones Yoshi broke open with Spinies in the Yoshi Star Galaxy. Well, there were no Spinies present, and the Bullet Bills that were there for some reason refused to home in on me like they always did in my first galactic adventure. And if they wouldn't follow me, then I couldn't get them to fly over to the cage and break it.

"Any thought here, Yoshi?" I asked.

"Well, I could try eating a Bullet Bill and shooting it back out at the shield," he said. "Just a thought."

"That's not gonna help us, you're just gonna get your head blown off!"

"Well, we don't really have any other options, and there's gotta be some way through, so maybe I'm meant to eat the Bullet Bill."

"Yeah, or maybe Bowser finally got smart and made a level impossible!"

"Mario." Yoshi turned his head to face me. "If Bowser was really that smart, don't you think he would've done that by now?"

True. He's 275; I don't think he's getting much smarter at this point than he already is.

"Alright, fine, give it a try," I said.

As another Bullet Bill was shot towards us, Yoshi reached out his tongue and grabbed it. The Bullet Bill, somehow, got stored in his mouth, while his head began flashing orange with smoke pouring out of his nostrils.

I got the distinct sense that if he didn't get rid of the Bullet Bill soon, I'd be ordering yet another new Mario suit upon arriving back at Starship Mario.

"Yoshi, shoot it!" I shouted.

He turned and fired the Bullet Bill at the shield. It smashed open as the Bullet Bill hit it, and Yoshi panted. "Oh man," he said. "That was hot. Like, eating a whole container of cinnamon at once hot. I don't think holding onto one of those things too long is a good idea."

On the far side of the cage was another area with two gosh dang Fizzlits hopping around, and a lever-activated lift. Yep, this was looking more and more like a high-tech upgrade of Junior's Airship Armada.

Yoshi and I leapt around the Fizzlits and towards the lever. But just like with the Power Star crystal back in the Yoshi Star Galaxy, before I could Star-Spin into the lever to activate it, Yoshi banged into it with his head. Okay, whatever, dude. You want to concuss yourself, that's your problem.

We leapt onto the lift before it pulled away, and only then did I notice what lay ahead. The path the lift took was partially blocked by several Mines, not to mention several Undergrunt Gunners sitting off to the side, manning a series of floating pods with Bullet Bill cannons on the front.

Cripes.

As soon as the lift headed out, the first Undergrunt Gunner took notice and shot a Bullet Bill that immediately locked onto me and Yoshi. Oh, but now they home in on me, now that it's inconvenient for me.

Yoshi ate the Bullet Bill, and I said, "Try to shoot it back at the Undergrunt Gunner. Maybe you can blow up that pod-thing he's in."

Yoshi shot the Bullet Bill back at the pod, but by that time it had launched a second Bullet Bill at us, as had the next pod. Suddenly, something exploded behind us, flinging me off Yoshi. Oh great, one of those Mines I'd forgotten about. I sat up as Yoshi ran around the lift like crazy. Dude, what is your problem? I just got knocked off you, and I'm pretty sure I took the full brunt of the Mine attack; it didn't even hit you!

One of the Bullet Bills swooped past me and Yoshi and circled back for another attack, while the other one continued straight towards me. I scrambled to my feet and ran towards Yoshi. The two Bullet Bills converged on us from opposite sides, while the second Undergrunt Gunner launched yet another one at us. This was unreal!

I swung onto Yoshi's back, and we flutter-jumped into the air just in time to dodge the two closer Bullet Bills. But even as the third one drew closer, a THIRD Undergrunt shot yet ANOTHER Bullet Bill at us! Was Junior trying to kill me before he even got to fight me?

Then again, this was the same craven who sicced his giant pet snake, dragon, whatever on me at the Fiery Flotilla instead of fighting me mano a mano. Of course he was trying to kill me this early in the level.

Yoshi and I sidestepped another Mine, and Yoshi ate one of the inbound Bullet Bills. His head had barely started glowing orange before he spat it back out at the other approaching one. They collided in midair and both exploded. Yay; two birds – rather, Bills – with one stone.

Coming up now were two Mines and – I am not kidding – another Undergrunt Gunner. See, this was unnerving. Back in my first galactic adventure these guys were sort-of bosses (except, according to my Super Mario Galaxy Prima Guide, the one in the Deep Dark Galaxy). But the ones in the Gold Leaf and Toy Time Galaxies were both guarding Power Stars. And now here they were just…there, like now they were gonna be standard, run-of-the-mill bad guys. And if that was the case, what other bosses from my first galactic adventure were going to show up again here like it was no big deal? Was I gonna have to fight my way through a horde of Dino Piranhas at one point or something? Was there gonna be an underwater level full of Kingfin clones?

Yeah, I'm paranoid. I've never denied it.

Yoshi and I leapt over the two Mines, and up ahead the lift slid underneath another one I'd have to activate that looked like it would be heading down a path perpendicular to the one the first one had taken. Down that way there were only two more Undergrunt Gunners, as well as another batch of Mines.

Meanwhile, two more Bullet Bills homing in on me and Yoshi hit the pair of mines, and all four objects exploded, with one coin resulting from each Bullet Bill-Mine collision. Huh. So they could destroy each other. Guess I'd have to utilize that interesting feature to make my way through the second lift ride. I grabbed the coins, then Yoshi and I jumped onto the second lift.

Yoshi and I ran around another puddle of Fizzlit urine towards the lever to activate the second lift. Yoshi slammed his head into it, then we leapt back onto the lift before it pulled away.

And then who decided to accompany us on our lift ride at the last second but the puddle of urine.

NOOOOOOOO! WHY?!

"Uh oh," Yoshi said. "Uh, stay away, you…thing, you."

The Fizzlit hopped to the center of the lift and melted right then and there, taking up about 50% of the available footing on the lift. Gee, that was convenient.

The Undergrunt Gunners, meanwhile, shot a pair of Bullet Bills at us. Dodging the first Mine wasn't a big deal since it passed right over the space Urine was rudely occupying, but the next three Mines formed a horizontal path across the lift and would be harder to dodge.

The Fizzlit reverted to his gelatinous, purple form, and Yoshi went to eat him. I grabbed his mouth and clamped it shut at the last second. "What the heck are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm gonna eat that pest," Yoshi said as the Fizzlit hopped to the far corner of the lift and melted again.

"No you are not because that thing is made of urine and you do not eat urine it's disgusting – OW!"

My run-on thought was interrupted as a Bullet Bill slammed into my back, flinging me off Yoshi. I landed on….

EEWWWW! YUUUUCK!

THE FIZZLIT!

I got up and swung my limbs all over like a madman, taking less than a second to trip myself and fall over again. The second Bullet Bill slammed into one of the three Mines up ahead, but two more had already been shot from behind us…and, I just then noticed, two more were bearing down on us from stationary cannons to the sides of another glass cage.

This level was a flippin' nightmare! And that was an insult to regular nightmares!

I ran over to Yoshi and leapt back on him, then quickly had him eat a Bullet Bill that was about a second away from hitting us. Another one slammed into the second of the three Mines, while Yoshi shot the first Bullet Bill at another incoming one. That left only one more to deal with. Yoshi ate that one as well, then released it straight into the glass cage blocking out path. It exploded, revealing that on the far side was a Sling Star, and then a black hole that the lift would vanish into. We got into the Sling Star, then flew to the next planet, leaving the Fizzlit on the lift to get sucked up by the black hole. Good riddance.

And the next planet had another lift next to it. Yay.

But the path the Sling Star shot us in launched us high into the air, giving me a good look at what lay around us as well. In the distance beyond the upcoming planet was another glass cage that was presumably in the path of the lift, and then it looked like another small planet was on the far side of the cage. Above and behind both of them was a large, ring-shaped planet with several huge thrusters on its underside. Seeing as how I couldn't see any further planets, I assumed that was the boss's planet. Seemed like a strange-looking place for a fight with a giant Hammer Bro. to take place…. Of course, it was entirely possible that I was wrong and the fight wasn't gonna be with a giant – what the flip am I saying, I'm always right.