A/N: I do not own Super Mario.

Chapter 22: Yoshi Eats What I Strongly Suspect Is a Ghost Pepper

When I woke up the following morning, I rolled over and felt something squish under the side of my head. What the-? I sat up to turn on the lamp, but my hand found empty air. Unfortunately, since I had prepared to put some of my weight against the lamp, I became unbalanced and fell right out of bed.

I landed with the most unexpected sound of a splash, and I felt something sticky all over my hands now. What the heck was this?! My mind flashed through a million undesirable possibilities, all of them involving some sort of solid or liquid waste that had somehow ended up all over my room.

Or…was this even my room? Maybe Bowser suddenly teleported me into his most disgusting dungeon cell, and took my bed with me for some reason. Maybe to throw me off? Or, more likely, because his teleportation beam was sloppy and accidentally grabbed my bed too. But then again, wouldn't Bowser's most disgusting dungeon cell be reserved for Peach? I mean, I don't know for sure, but that would be a very repugnant, Bowser-like thing to do.

I crawled around in the dark, looking for a way out of the dungeon, when I felt my lamp lying on the floor. I grabbed its knob and turned it on.

Nope, I was still in my room. Only my room looked as though a tornado had hit it.

All my furniture was overturned, with the contents of said furniture strewn all over the floor. The '?' block comforter on my bed had been ripped apart, and there were….

Oh no he didn't.

There was STAR BIT VOMIT! all over everything in my room. And in addition, mounds of space junk heaped everywhere. I then noticed that one pile of space junk near me had power-up marshmallows in it, no doubt from when I dumped my breakfast down Starship Mario's ear, so I have to wonder exactly how long Lubba's been sitting on this little passive-aggressive plot. I mean, seriously – what the flip did I ever do to him? I didn't ASK to come here! I would've much preferred going back to the Comet Observatory, thank you very much!

35. – 37. Trashes my room.

I know that technically that should've only counted for one grievance, and maybe I'll come back and amend this at a later date, but given the severity of this grievance, I think it warrants more than just the standard "one point." And actually, I'm being generous, given that I should be going after him separately for each individual possession of mine that he damaged.

Now that I knew I was still on Starship Mario, I walked to the cabin door, ready to punch Lubba right in the nuts. I opened the door, and found him floating right there.

"Well hiya cap'n! How'd you sleep?" he asked mockingly. "Oh my, what happened to you?"

"You trashed my room!" I yelled.

He looked into my room and said, "I didn't do that. Although we did hit some pretty bad space turbulence last night, so maybe that did it."

Space turbulence my ass! First off, I don't even think that exists; and second, even if it did, it wouldn't manifest VOMIT AND SPACE JUNK all over my room!

Punching was too good for this guy. I kicked him in the crotch, then stormed down the hall to the shower (I finally found the bathroom after several days on the Starship). Twenty minutes later, I emerged wearing a patchwork of clothes.

You see, last night I hadn't even bothered taking off my normal clothes before getting in bed, so my cap, shirt, overalls, purple pants, magenta gloves, and boots had all gotten Star Bit vomit all over them. So in lieu of all of them, I wore the shoes that went with my tux; my pale rose socks; spaceship pajama bottoms; my pajama top, with loose strings hanging from the sleeve where I had ripped off the stuffed Yoshi; and for my cap, a pair of my tighty-whities that I sloppily colored red with an entire tube of my cinnamon toothpaste.

I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

Baby Luma sure thought so, and he chewed me out for "imprisoning" him under the same underwear I'd wet in the Flip-Swap Galaxy, which apparently still reeked of ammonia. Personally I didn't buy that, given that all I could smell of them was cinnamon, but whatever. Also, I had a slight problem with the fact that Baby Luma was getting mad at me for this, but had no words for Lubba, who had vomited on the cap he was sleeping under last night.

I walked up to the helm and found that Lubba was absent for once, but his presence was still felt in the form of a note tacked to the steering wheel:

You should be ashamed of yourself for kicking me.

I didn't trash your room; I have never been anything but welcoming to you.

I expect you to apologize to me when you return later today.

– Lubba

Hmm…I already put "Liar!" on my grievance list…lemme just chop off the "!" and count it as a separate entry.

38. Liar.

39. Tries to make me feel sorry for him.

Well, feel sorry for him I would not! I crumpled up the note and prepared to stuff it in my pocket to dispose of it somewhere on my next journey. But in crumpling it up, I saw the type of paper it was written on: the kind that on the back says "SAVE THE YOSHIS! RECYCLE ME!" and has a picture of an adorable baby Yoshi. So I merely threw it in the recycling. Lubba knows my weaknesses, I guess.

Anyway, where to go today…. Sky Station. Yoshi Star. Fluffy Bluff. Baby Blocks. Fiery Flotilla. Shop Class. And then there were the two galaxies I'd unlocked by completing "The Puzzling Picture Block": Boulder Bowl and Hightail Falls. Those were the rock-themed and waterfall-themed ones I'd seen from the start of World 2. So…Boulder Bowl looked decidedly stupid (excuse my French). Which left Hightail Falls, because all the other galaxies I'd ruled out as soon as I thought of them.

So I headed to the Hightail Falls Galaxy, and I saw that the only mission was titled "Hot-Stepping Dash Pepper." WT-? Peppers can't step, so what the flying turds is "hot-stepping" supposed to mean? Is "stepping" some sort of strange intensifier that has the same meaning as if you said, "Man, that's a hot-ass pepper!"? So, in other words, "REALLY REALLY HOT Dash Pepper." Oh no…is this a Ghost Pepper? Is this some strange new power-up that's basically a Ghost Pepper, and Bowser just came up with some ridiculous alternate name for it?

Wouldn't be the first time. I've heard Bowser call tinsel "drippy silver garland," a vacuum a "dirt sucker-upper…er," and an airplane an "airship with wings." Then there's Bowser Jr., who calls cars "vroom-vroom machines," and Wendy, who punched me right in the mouth when I told her that a hair dryer was not called a "hot-air microphone."

As I flew towards the galaxy, I saw that the entire thing appeared to be at the center of a ring of gigantic waterfalls. It sorta looked like the Torus from Mission Impossible: Toad Nation, but a lot stranger. I landed on a wooden platform connected to a larger area by a rope bridge. Jeez, what's with all the wood in this world? The Shop Class Galaxy, now here. What next, is the castle here gonna be made of wood and inexplicably not set ablaze by the lava in it? No stranger, I guess, than Bowser's Castle in Mario Kart 7, where lava plumes were blasting underwater.

Hovering over the far end of the rope bridge was another Paragoomba. Ugh. Here comes the Paragoomba Incident floating into my mind again. I Star-Spun the pest off the bridge and continued on.

Next were three things: another Paragoomba, a Yoshi egg, and another gosh dang wooden bobblehead. The bobblehead said, "Climb fast!" Well, at least this wasn't a sentence fragment. Ahead of me was a tall, tall, tall, steep slope. So I just had to run fast to climb it? Then what purpose did Yoshi serve? Looking up the slope, I saw another bobblehead standing next to a red, glowing pepper. Was that the Dash Pepper? Obviously I had to climb the slope to eat it. So I tried climbing the slope but couldn't get to the pepper before I slid back down. What the heck? Oh, wait a second. I probably had to use Yoshi to flutter-jump up to the pepper, then quickly dismount him and grab the pepper. Then that would probably help me run fast up the slope, just like people always run around fast screaming after they eat a Ghost Pepper. And then tomorrow morning I'm gonna have a miserable case of the runs.

So I slid back down the slope to the Yoshi egg and hatched Yoshi. Then I ran Yoshi back up the slope, and as we started to slide down it, we flutter-jumped. I was about to dismount Yoshi when he suddenly reached out his tongue and grabbed the pepper. No! Yoshi, you fool, that thing was mine to eat!

Suddenly, Yoshi turned a bright red. Oh great, was he about to belch fire like Red Yoshis did in Super Mario World?

Actually, no, he basically farted fire. We rocketed up the slope, but then I started having trouble controlling Yoshi. At the top of the slope, we reached another flat area surrounded by guardrails, and then I completely lost control of Yoshi. He ran into the side of the area and started slamming his crotch into the metal guardrail. Gosh, Yoshi, show your privates some respect.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" he warbled in pain. Well, this was your fault, dude. You decided to abuse yourself in this way.

Several seconds later, the Dash Pepper's effects wore off and Yoshi stopped moving. I steered him over to a lower slope that led to a Launch Star, and Yoshi was able to flutter-jump up this slope without needing a Dash Pepper. He hobbled (that's what you get, dude) over to the Launch Star, and then we got in to fly to the next planet.