Chapter 66: House of the Not-Toad Brigade
And as I flew towards the galaxy, I saw that my expectations for it were way off, through no fault of my own. What I was approaching in no way screamed "FLIPSVILLE!" There were no Red-Blue Panels, no city setting, no ecumenopolis, just a bunch of planets that looked vaguely like buildings. The background was a strange, cloudy, purple-blue sky that I would've just passed off as the background color from World 4 as a whole carrying into this galaxy specifically, if not for the giant arrows pointing down that were overlaid against the background. So…was that telling me I needed to go down, where the color of the sky got darker purple? It didn't seem likely, given that there wasn't much of a vertical difference between the positions of any of the planets I could see.
The Starting Planet was the one from the galaxy icon: square-shaped with several rooms with white, wooden floors and wood-paneled walls, both lined in blue. I saw the Launch Star atop a small area at the center of the planet, but couldn't presently see how I would reach it, since the walls between all the rooms were too tall for me to, say, wall-jump off.
I landed on a raised platform in the front corner of the planet. In the L-shaped "room" in front of me were two crates, a springboard, two strange grates in the floor, an orange-and-yellow lizard creature with a row of purple spikes down its back, and-
Oh you've gotta be flipping kidding me.
Not-Hugh!
What the flip was the Not-Toad Brigade doing here?
A-duh, stupid question alert. They were here to kill me, obviously. The better question was why the universe felt the need to bring them back again.
Actually, no, a-duh, stupid question alert encore. It's just because the universe hates me.
Now, why the universe hates me, now that's the real question. One which, I have accepted, I will likely never get an answer to.
I ignored the Springboard to Nowhere and the crates, and headed for the weird lizard. Maybe getting rid of him would give me a way out of here. Let's see, I probably couldn't jump on him, on account of the spikes on his back, so maybe a Star-Spin would work.
Work it did not, as Star-Spinning the creature's head somehow made me lose a wedge of health, and sent me flying backwards towards Not-Hugh.
Not-Hugh pointed towards the lizard. "Ack! That thing's back looks so…pointy!"
Translation: "I'm gonna maul you to death on that thing's back!"
This made up my mind for me that, between him and the lizard, Not-Hugh was obviously the clear and present danger. The lizard was just walking back and forth over one of those grates in the floor, more or less minding his own business, but I had no reason to believe that Not-Hugh would do the same.
I kicked Not-Hugh in his…not really knees, since Toads hardly have any legs, but whatever was right above his feet. He flopped over on his stomach, and his mushroom head popped open from the impact. Huh. So that's how Bowser pulled off the bulbous look of their heads? They're balloons?
Not-Hugh got up and groaned, "Dang it, you blew my cover!" Only the voice modulator Bowser had obviously put in the costume had been busted by the faceplant, so the words came out halfway between the borderline ear-rape squeal of a Toad and the deep, dumb voice of a Goomba.
I Star-Spun Not-Hugh back towards the lizard, and he landed smack dab on the row of purple spikes on the creature's back. "OWWW!" Not-Hugh shouted in that bizarre Toad/Goomba voice. "CURSE YOU, MARIO!"
The lizard – I'm calling those things Hughkillers now – seemed not to notice, let alone mind, the fact that a Goomba had been skewered on its back, as it continued mindlessly wandering back and forth over the grate. Which got me to thinking…there was a second grate farther away that the Hughkiller wasn't wandering over. Maybe I had to go through that one and get to the underside of the planet, since judging by the galaxy icon and the view I'd gotten of the Starting Planet while approaching it, there was more stuff down there.
I headed over to the other grate, once again ignoring the Springboard to Nowhere, and investigated it. I tried Star-Spinning while atop the grate to see if that would flip it, since that had done the trick back in the Flip-Swap Galaxy. Flip the grate did not, but it did rattle. Okay, so at least that likely meant it could be flipped. Next I tried gripping the bars of the grate and yanking on it, but that also didn't work. Okay, now time for a ground-pound.
That did the trick. The grate flipped, and fortunately the gravity on the underside of the planet was reversed, something that I had only considered after it was too late to abort the ground-pound. All I could do at that point was hope this wasn't some sort of sick prank Bowser designed to get me to ground-pound through the grate and then just…fall.
Instead, I ended up in a room that looked like a lame-ass excuse for a kitchen. Hanging from the wall were a gigantic pan, towel, and two wooden utensils, and…that was it. There was nothing else remotely kitchen-y about the area, just a bunch more crates and Daniel's Goomba doppelganger.
I marched towards Not-Daniel to beat him into oblivion, then noticed something. I passed by the underside of the grate the Hughkiller was wandering over on the other side of the planet, and through the grate I saw a ground-pound symbol on the lizard's stomach. Aha, so that's how to take them down. I stopped and waited for the Hughkiller to pass back over the grate, keeping my eyes locked on Not-Daniel in the meantime, just to make sure he didn't go getting any ideas.
"Ooh! The soft bellies look so squishy!" Not-Daniel said.
Oh, yeah, don't think that double meaning went unnoticed, you creep. He probably wanted me to think I was talking about the Hughkillers and giving me a hint at how to defeat them, but I knew he was really talking about my stomach, and was probably planning to skewer me through the gut the first chance he got.
I made the "I'm watching you" gesture at him. "You're next."
The Hughkiller passed back over the grate, and I ground-pounded its stomach. I emerged on the other side of the planet. The Hughkiller, meanwhile, flew into the air and vaporized into a coin, while Not-Hugh came dislodged from the lizard's spikes during the flip and tumbled through the air, painting the walls with Goomba blood and guts.
At least I hoped it was blood and guts. I'd never seen the color of Goomba blood before, so for all I knew, Not-Hugh could've just as easily been having expelling a nasty case of the runs all over the place.
I flipped back to the far side of the planet….
…just in time to get clocked in the head with something heavy and metal.
What the fudge?!
I flopped onto the floor and looked up to see Not-Daniel holding the pan that had previously been hanging from the wall, which looked completely stupid since the thing was, like, twice as tall as he was. Then again, not much stupider than Bartholomew's Extendable 8-Foot Spear, so whatever, I guess.
So I guess the Not-Toad Brigade wasn't even trying for subtlety anymore, huh?
"I'm not next," Not-Daniel said. "You're next!"
He dashed towards me again with the pan, but I rolled aside and leapt to my feet…or rather tried to, but was knocked off-balance once more when I backed into a crate. What the flip was up with them? The damn things were all over the place in this "house," with no rhyme or reason to it! No doubt Bowser did that on purpose, to muck up any attempts on my part to fight back against the Not-Toad Brigade.
Not-Daniel stalked towards me and twirled the pan around. "Time for you to get critically panned!"
Oh my gosh, that had to be the worst battle cry I'd ever heard.
The Goomba swung the pan towards me, and I barely managed to duck under it. It smashed open the crates behind me, and a pair of Star Bits emerged. I kicked the pan from Not-Daniel's grasp, grabbed it in midair, and swung it into his head. The mushroom-head balloon exploded with a BANG! and Not-Daniel flopped over.
Before he could get back up, I ground-pounded my way through the nearest grate. I'm pretty sure Goombas can't ground-pound, so Not-Daniel couldn't follow me. It wasn't one of the two I'd gone through before, so hopefully it would lead me to a way off this planet.
Well, spoiler alert: it didn't.
I flipped through the grate only to immediately be hit by another Hughkiller. I flopped backwards…right next to Not-Jacques. Oh come on, this was ridiculous! Was the entire flippin' Not-Toad Brigade infesting this one planet? And great, in passing through the grate, I'd somehow lost my grip on the pan, and it hadn't come through with me.
There was no way out of the room I'd ended up in besides going back through the grate. And, looking through it, I could see Not-Daniel standing on the far side, ready to critically pan me.
Not-Jacques pointed to the top of the planet, where I'd seen the Launch Star while I was approaching the galaxy. "Is that our captain?! How did he get way up there…?"
I risked taking my eyes off him to look where he was pointing.
Son of a bitch.
Sure enough, at the top of the planet, was Not-Bartholomew. Great, so I'd probably have to fight my way past him if I wanted to get off this planet. And…who had I run into so far? Not-Hugh, Not-Daniel, Not-Jacques, and now Not-Bartholomew. That meant Not-Blue and Not-Banktoad (if he, in fact, existed, and wasn't the same as Not-Jacques, like I mentioned back in the Rightside Down Galaxy) were probably lurking elsewhere on the planet.
Suddenly, Not-Jacques kicked me in the back, sending me flying right onto the Hughkiller. Great, now I was down to one wedge of health, with potential death lurking around me on all sides.
Not-Jacques leapt after me, and I quickly got up and Star-Spun him away. He arced past the edge of the planet and, in some completely absurd twist of gravity, appeared to change trajectory at the last second and be gravitationally pulled to the far side of the planet. Are you flippin' kidding me? Great, so now I'd have to deal with both of those Goomba impostors on the far side of the planet.
"Come on, Mario, get back over here," Not-Daniel (I'm assuming it was him, based on the second half of his taunt) said. "You're gonna get panned worse than Cats!"
Okay, the other stuff I could take, but that was just uncalled for.
But maybe I could use this to my advantage. All Goombas have a severe inferiority complex, until the second they succeed at something, in which case they then get overconfident and throw good judgment to the wind.
So, time to act.
I shrank back and fake-blubbered. "W-w-worse than Cats? But…but I loved Cats!"
Ugh. That literally hurt me to say.
The Hughkiller passed over the grate again, and Not-Daniel edged closer to it on the far side. "Ha! You're even lamer than I thought! Now get over here so I can put you out of your misery!"
I bent down so I could see the far side of the grate under the Hughkiller. Not-Daniel had stepped onto it, and he probably couldn't see me with the Hughkiller in the way. As the lizard started to move off the grate, I leapt and ground-pounded. I passed right behind the lizard's tail, and hit the grate right below where Not-Daniel was. The grate flipped around and admitted me to the topside of the planet, while also flipping Not-Daniel into the air and sending his frying pan clattering away. The Goomba flew into a row of glass jars on a shelf, then tumbled to the floor. Oh, okay, so there was more kitchen-y stuff in the room that just the four items hanging on the wall. Still hardly enough to be called a real "kitchen" in my opinion, but then again, I'm not a chef, I'm a plumber.
Not-Jacques shouted and shoved me back into another crate, then kicked me in the crotch. OW!
"What did we ever do to you, you jerk?" Not-Jacques demanded.
Uh…how about try to trick me into jumping on a ground-pound switch rigged with explosives, make veiled threats about dismembering or impaling me, and worst of all, comparing me to that abomination Cats.
I grabbed Not-Jacques under the arms and lifted him up, then dropkicked him into a crate in the corner, which exploded into two Star Bits.
But then Not-Daniel swung the pan into the back of my head, knocking me to my knees. I looked around, desperate for anything I could use as a weapon against him. Somehow I suspected that, even though hitting me with a pan wasn't a standard method of attack, I couldn't take much more of this before I lost my final wedge of health.
My gaze fell on the shattered remains of one of the jars I'd sent Not-Daniel flying into. I could probably lunge towards it before Not-Daniel hit me with the pan again…hopefully.
"Eat pan!" he said.
At the last second, I leapt forward and gripped the largest piece of the jar, which was jagged and comprised about half of the former jar. As I swung it up towards Not-Daniel, I happened to see that the label read "KAMEK'S HOMESTYLE APPLESAUCE."
…Okay, usually Bowser-associated companies and products usually make sense (e.g. Chain Chomp Racing Chains, Iggy's Glass, Morton Construction, etc.), but what in the ever-loving flip did Kamek have to do with homestyle applesauce?
I swung the serrated end of the jar into Not-Daniel's chest4, tearing holes in the Toad suit. The pan dropped from his grasp; I dashed over and picked it up before he could, then tripped him with it and brought the handle down right on his crotch. HA! How you like that…actually, it was Not-Jacques who kicked me down there, but who cares, they're all the same to me.
I dashed towards the final grate in the kitchen; that had to be the way out of here, since none of the other grates led to an exit. Not-Jacques crawled to his feet, but I swung the pan into his face to preempt an attack, then tossed the pan aside and flipped through the grate.
Through nothing but sheer, dumb luck, I flipped through the grate just as another Hughkiller was passing over it, not about to pass over it like happened last time. He flipped into the air and turned into a coin, which I grabbed.
I really had no idea what this room was supposed to be. The floors were brown wood and the lower half of the walls was deep green wood, while the top half was covered with white wallpaper. Hanging from the wall next to me were four pegs, one of them with a sun hat big enough for me to take a nap in hanging from it. Across the room was an Octoomba on an out-of-place blue block, and another Hughkiller patrolling another pair of grates. Also present was a teleporter in the corner of the room, but I wasn't wasting my time on that.
The Octoomba saw me and spat a rock at me, but it was easy to dodge. I jumped on the Octoomba to get another coin and restore my full health. Next I went through the closer grate, and didn't find Not-Blue or Not-Banktoad, as I had feared, but instead the galaxy's Comet Medal. Whatever comet would be visiting this galaxy, I just hoped the Not-Toad Brigade wouldn't be present during the mission. If not for their antics, this level would've been pretty easy so far. Not to mention the fact that they were seemingly getting more vicious with each encounter, so I was rather worried about what I'd be up against next time I ran into them.
Also, I noticed that when I switched to the underside of the planet, the arrows in the galaxy's background reversed too, so now they were pointing up. Okay, so I guess they hadn't been telling me I had to go down, they were just indicating which direction gravity was currently working in. Like a larger-scale version of the gravity arrows from the Rightside Down Galaxy.
I returned to the topside of the planet, taking out the room's second Hughkiller as I did. Then I headed over to the final grate in that room and flipped through it. I ended up in what looked like, keeping with the house theme of the planet, a dreary, unfinished basement. Like the sort of basement a serial killer keeps the corpses of his victims locked up in. But the basement's only inhabitant, other than me, was another Octoomba, who was very much alive. I mean, I guess a bunch of bodies could've been buried behind the stone walls lining the area….
Stay focused, Mario, stop creeping yourself out.
I Star-Spun the Octoomba into oblivion, and then leapt down/up/whatever the giant shaft he had been pathetically attempting to guard. And through the grate I had landed on, I could see the Launch Star. So…this was it? I knew Not-Bartholomew was waiting for me on the far side, but where was Not-Blue? Had I somehow missed him? Had he been hiding in one of the crates I hadn't bothered opening, just waiting for me to open it and then punch me in the nose or something? If that was the case, I wasn't complaining. And it looked like, if I ground-pounded the grate right in the center, on the far side I might land directly in the Launch Star, without giving Not-Bartholomew a chance to attack me.
I ground-pounded on the grate, but a fraction of a second before I flew into the Launch Star, I was smacked aside by something. I flew into the low wall bordering the square area atop the planet. Come on, why the flip was the universe making it so damn hard just to get off this one flippin' planet?!
Standing before me was Not-Bartholomew, wielding what looked like a massive circus mallet. "Behold," he said, "my Extendable 7.5-Foot Hammer."
Oh my gosh, was there one thing about these guys that wasn't just a lame rip-off of the actual Toad Brigade? And the extendable spear was pretty lame to begin with, so that was really saying something.
Not-Bartholomew swung the hammer towards me again, but at the last second, it retracted to no more than two feet long. "Huh," Not-Bartholomew said. "I guess Bowser didn't get all the kinks in this thing worked out…."
Before he could work out the kinks himself, I got in the Launch Star and flew away. I didn't really care about having some big, climactic battle with him, and if Bowser's faulty tech gave me an easy out, I wasn't gonna complain about that. At least I'd gotten away from that mess of a planet; the rest of the galaxy couldn't exactly be much worse.
And now, knowing the universe's sick sense of humor, of course it would be determined to prove me wrong.
The next planet looked like some sort of condo complex with white walls and an orange roof, with another basement-like area beneath it. Well, whatever madness awaited me here, at least I'd gotten four out of the five (maybe six) members of the Not-Toad Brigade out of the way on the Starting Planet.
I snagged a checkpoint flag at the start of the planet, and saw that in front of me was a short dirt path bordering one of the areas of the "condo building," and halfway down it was another grate.
And at the far end of the path was a giant dispenser that immediately loaded a Chomp in it. Oh come on, so instead of Not-Toads, this planet was gonna be infested with Chomps, right? What did I tell you? Sick sense of humor.
I waited for the Chomp to roll down the whole length of the path and crash into the side of the slightly raised area I was on, then dashed to the middle of the path and ground-pounded on the grate. Just as I vanished to the far side of the planet, another Chomp loaded in the dispenser. On the bottom of the planet, I ended up in another serial killer basement area, this one completely uninhabited, unless perhaps someone was trapped inside the crate in the corner. But seeing as how that "someone" could easily have been Not-Blue, I left the crate alone and headed for the second grate in the small area. I ground-pounded through the grate….
…only to immediately be mowed down by another Chomp.
Oh come on! What was it with these grates and me immediately getting hit out of nowhere by some jackass as soon as I flip through them?
I sprawled to the side of the path the Chomp rolled down. This area was between two other sections of the building, and at the end of the path was a pit with a Life Mushroom in it. Well, I would not be passing up this particular Life Mushroom, seeing as how I'd already been brought to the brink of death once in this galaxy by some lousy Goombas, who are without a doubt the most incompetent members of the Koopa Troop. There was one time a few years back when Bowser sent a trio of Goombas to break into me and Luigi's house…maybe to steal something, maybe to kidnap us, maybe to kill us, I really have no idea. Well, our burglar alarm went off as soon as the Goombas entered the house. One of the Goombas was scared off by it, and I found him two days later still cowering in fear behind one of our shrubs. The other two spent no less than five minutes smashing the burglar alarm to smithereens, which I filmed them doing before getting around to jumping on them and putting an end to the botched home invasion. I mean, seriously, those two idiots from Toad Alone could've done a better job than the Goombas did.
I Star-Spun an Octoomba who was also next to the path, then ran down the path as another Chomp spawned behind me. But as I reached the end of the path, I saw that also connecting to the pit was a perpendicular path, with another Chomp already rolling towards me down it. I stepped to the side of the pit, waited for both Chomps to fall into it and crash apart, then grabbed the Life Mushroom. I waited for another Chomp to roll from the second dispenser into the pit, then long-jumped down the path and flipped through the grate in it, back to the underside of the planet.
And you're not gonna believe what happened next. Or maybe you will at this point. I don't know.
The grate happened to be RIGHT IN FRONT of yet another gosh dang Chomp dispenser on the underside of the planet. I flipped through it RIGHT as another Chomp was emerging from the dispenser, and the metallic menace ran me over. Come on, why the flip did this keep happening to me here?
And for that matter, why were there so many Chomps here? I was expecting a lot of them in World 4, but not here, I expected this nonsense to come in that galaxy farther ahead with the Chomp for its icon. I'd also expected that I'd be able to sidestep that place and instead head to the beach galaxy, then straight to Bowser's base.
Stupid Chomps. I've always hated them.
Up ahead, the Chomp crashed into one coming from the opposing direction, and near that Chomp dispenser was the Launch Star to get away from the Chomp Condos of Horror.
I crossed a small, wider area where the two Chomps had collided, and collected a bunch of Star Bits and took care of an Octoomba while I waited for another Chomp to emerge from the dispenser ahead of me. Once it did and was about to collided with the Chomp coming from behind me, I long-jumped towards the Launch Star, got in it, and flew away from that accursed place.
After that was a none-too-noteworthy planet featuring another small house, a Hughkiller, and an Octoomba. That in turn led to a series of small, square panels with grates in them that traveled along tracks between several giant spiky blocks. This finally led to another planet with two more Hughkillers, a Launch Star, and the seemingly contractually obligated one Octoomba per planet in this galaxy. Actually, no, the Starting Planet had two. I'm chalking that up to one too many Octoombas getting shipped to this galaxy, and the Koopas who designed the place just going, "What the hell?" Which begged the question of which Octoomba from the Starting Planet was originally meant to go there: the one on the pointlessly random blue block, or the one that was somehow supposed to singlehandedly guard the giant shaft in the center of the planet?
Sorry. As I've said before, my mind wanders a lot.
Anyway, I got in the Launch Star, and it shot me to…AHA! A…hahaha! A STARSHROOM, and who was on it, I ask you? NOT-BLUE! Told you I'd be running into him here!
Strangely, accompanying him on the Starshroom was Lumalee, so either Lumalee had no idea this Toad was a phony, or Lumalee was also a phony. I was leaning towards the latter, so I promptly ignored both of them, and instead got in the Launch Star atop the Starshroom.
"According to my investigation-," Not-Blue started, and after that I couldn't hear what other nonsense he had to say.
