Chapter 38: Revelations

Next I rounded another edge of the planet, preparing to find something like the entire side of the planet full of Carpetmunchers chewing through firebar-traversing Snake Blocks while Hammer Bros., Bowser Statues, and, once again, Kamek, all tried to pulverize me.

Instead I found a checkpoint, another meteorite, and another giant gate, this time with three locks on it.

Well, what I learned from that is that pessimism pays off. Expect the worst and you will be given something much better than what you expected.

But…wait a sec, was I supposed to hit all three locks simultaneously? Okay, so I had to aim for the dead center of the door then. I took aim and only hit one of the locks. I started to panic, worrying I wouldn't be able to progress now, but then another meteorite erupted through the dirt beneath me and floated in midair.

Oh, okay. Infinite arsenal.

Smashing apart the locks didn't take long since I knew what to do now, and when the gate opened, it led to….

…nowhere.

Just a view of the red-and-black background of the galaxy. Nevertheless, another purple vortex came from the gates, caught me in it, and suctioned me through.

Suddenly, a pair of planets materialized into view before me. One was shaped like a medal or something, with a circular area attached to a star-ish-shaped area. And the other one was a giant throne occupied by – you guessed it – planet-sized Bowser. I landed on the former planet.

Bowser surveyed me for a few seconds before launching into a dumb, boring spiel. "Bwahaha! You showed up! Look at you, running around like a little flea on a puny planetoid. Know what isn't puny? My massive new power…. The power to flatten you like a space pancake!"

Geez, and I thought Bowser's past speeches were lame. I don't think a bad-guy speech could get more conceited and on-the-nose than that was. "Oh, you're puny, you puny puny! You know what isn't puny, you puny puny? My power to squash you into something even punier than a puny puny!"

Bowser opened his big, dumb mouth to talk again, but I yelled, "Hold the flip up! I've come to bargain!"

"Ooh, what do you want to do, Mario? Plead for your life? Yeah right!"

"You idiot, I said 'bargain,' not 'plead'! Up on Starship Mario right now I have Lubba, several Lumas, and a Star Bunny held hostage. I will be willing to hand them over to you if, in exchange, you give me both Peach and The Murk!"

"Like I'll ever give up Peach; she still hasn't finished baking me that planet-sized cake I want for my birthday! And who the heck is The Murk?"

Oh, so now he was playing dumb.

"That samurai who attacked me in your incompetent, cowardly son's Fiery Flotilla. The one who killed Frosty the-"

Bowser breathed a giant stream of fire. "NOBODY INSULTS MY SON BUT ME! And I didn't send that samurai. Junior told me all about him mysteriously crashing in the galaxy and hilariously bashing you in the balls with his sword. But I didn't send him. You seriously think I would lie to you, Mario? Come now; I may be a dishonorable scumbag, but I am not a liar!"

No joke; he literally said all of that.

"I can't give you The Murk, and I'm not giving you Peach. I could care less about a Star Bunny, a bunch of generic Lumas, and that idiot Lubba. In fact, if you survive this battle with me, I'll take some comfort in the fact that you have to put up with their company!"

Not that I really cared, but…. "When the heck did you meet Lubba?"

"Oh, back when I was studying at Koopa College. There was this whole study abroad program that my mom encouraged me to join, so I ended up going to outer space and studying at the Lumacademy. There, I met this moron named Lubba who thought disrupting class with his farts was funny; actually enjoyed Penguru's stupid, dumbass philosophy lectures; and didn't even know that hygiene was a thing!"

How old is Lubba if he and Bowser were in school together? And for that matter, how old is Penguru if he was lecturing when the 275-year-old Bowser was in college? And for that matter, why was Penguru lecturing there when, as one Penguin on my previous galactic adventure once told me, Penguins and Lumas are sworn enemies?!

"And what's worse, I had to share a dorm with the loser, for crying out loud!" Bowser continued. "Eventually I got fed up and defaced his entire half of the dorm. But it didn't take them long to figure out I was responsible, and I got kicked out of both the Lumacademy and Koopa College without even a bachelor's degree.

"Anyway, after that, I came back to the Mushroom Planet and realized that, ironically, I had learned more from getting kicked out than from my year-and-a-half in college. I had learned I liked being mean! So I decided to look for a job where I just got paid to be mean, and I eventually settled on politician!"

Wait…was Bowser telling me that LUBBA was the reason he was evil?!

49. Made Bowser evil.

Gosh dang it, if Lubba had never been so idiotic in college, my life since then would've been a hell of a lot easier!

Bowser continued relaying his surprisingly relatable backstory, "A few years later, I was elected mayor of Koopa City, then governor of Koopanecticut, and then finally a Senator to Koopa Congress."

Does everything to do with Koopas have to have "Koopa" in the name?! And also, since when the heck did the Koopa Kingdom have a Congress? I assumed it had always been an autocracy.

"From there, there was really no other political mountain to climb than becoming president of Koopamerica, which I ran for and won in a landslide after exposing my opponent as a Poochy trafficker. And then, after becoming president, my followers and I overthrew the legislative and judicial branches of government, imprisoning anyone who opposed my rule and setting up a beautiful dictatorship in its place. And for the past 202 years, I have ruled the Lava Lands with an iron fist."

Okay, now I was completely confused, because back in Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, I got the impression that Bowser was originally of aristocratic descent. And also, which I can't believe I didn't realize sooner, if he was a baby at the same time that Luigi and I were babies, how was he suddenly almost 275 now? Unless someone else traveled back in time and fudged up the timeline or something and created the new story Bowser just told me. But if that was the case, then why the heck did I still remember the original timeline from Partners in Time?

I think time-travel is, by definition, confusing. Like, you open up the dictionary to "time-travel," and it reads:

Time-travel: adj. confusing

Syn.: befuddling, nonsensical, perplexing

Ant.: clear, lucid, sensical

"Man, I'm sorry," I found myself saying. "Lubba's really the worst."

Ugh; what was I SAYING?! "Sorry"?! I never even say "sorry" to Luigi, and now there I was saying it to Bowser?

Bowser sniffled. Man, this was getting weeeeeeeird. "No one's ever validated my hatred of Lubba before. They're always like, 'You were overreacting. Everyone farts during their college classes as a joke!' But you…you get it. I think I need to go…work through this. You want the Grand Star? Here, take it. My master plan has moved on to the next phase anyway. Tough luck, Mario!"

With that, he spat out the Grand Star at me, shrunk, and then vanished. The Grand Star smashed right into me, knocking me over backwards, before settling in the air directly over the center of the circular area of the planet I was on. Usually I'd've been horrified at having Bowser's saliva all over me, but honestly I welcomed it after that…bizarre exchange between us. Granted, I was still fairly disgusted, because now my TUX had saliva all over it….

Seriously, why does the universe hate my tux?

I then remembered that awesome move I had tried and failed to do after defeating Gobblegut at the end of World 1. What was it…triple jump, Star-Spin, ground-pound, right?

I triple-jumped.

I Star-Spun.

I ground-pounded….

…and yet again, I flippin' missed the Grand Star. WHY?! Why did this keep happening to me?!

And yet again, when I tried to reset to attempt my Epic Jump of Epic Epicness again, I got too close to the Grand Star and triggered the "You got a Grand Star!" cutscene.

So once again I flew back to Starship Mario, and another portal opened up before me, this time presumably heading to World 3. And to my surprise, Lubba wasn't waiting to capture me again when I got back.

"Where's Lubba?" I asked Yoshi, who was waiting for me on the helm.

"He and the Lumas and that potty-mouthed Star Bunny got away," Yoshi said.

"Got away"?

Yoshi continued, "Now, don't shoot the messenger here; I know how stupid this sounds. But they retreated to that little planetoid orbiting the Starship, the one with all the berries on it. Well, it turns out, that was actually a spaceship in disguise, and they activated this giant thruster on the underside. Then they flew it right out the helm hole and…who knows where they went after that?"

"And worse still, we're out a plunger now because nobody got it off Star Bunny," Banktoad said.

"I can overlook a missing plunger as long as they're all gone now," I said.

"So what happened to your plan?" Mailtoad asked.

"Bowser refused to give up Peach, but then we had this…weird talk where he told me his backstory or something."

"I thought you already knew his backstory," Yoshi said.

"Yeah, so did I."

"Well, even if that didn't work, let's get going through that portal!" Banktoad encouraged. "Either way, you're one Grand Star closer to getting Peach back."

"Well, let's get going then, I guess," I said. I stepped onto the helm, grabbed the steering wheel, and flew Starship Mario through the portal to World 3.

A/N: So when I was writing this chapter, I got the idea for Bowser's absurd backstory with Lubba and his rise to power, and only once I had written that did I remember that he had actually been seen as a baby in other games, and was a baby at the same time as Mario and Luigi. But by that point I liked the new backstory too much to abandon it. So in the next batch of chapters I post, I'll include another interlude from Junior's perspective that tells which backstory is real, and why the fictional one was made up. Until then, as usual, please R&R – also, I'd love to hear which Bowser backstory you prefer!

Next up: "The Flotacious Blimp Fruit," another Paragoomba Incident, and salary cuts in the Koopa Troop!