A/N: Welcome to the longest single post I've ever made on FFN - these three chapters together total 13,239 words. Maybe make yourself a bowl of popcorn first; you'll be sitting there a little while.

Before I get into these chapters, I just want to explain something up-front quickly because a major event in these chapters, as you'll know once you get to it, has absolutely no basis in SMG2, but is based on a pretty deep-cut bit of trivia you might not be aware of.

In the Chompworks Galaxy, if you stand on the Starting Planet and use the first-person POV and look out into space at the right angle (I think it's roughly "southwest" of the Chomp-shaped planet full of lava), there's a small, circular object floating way out in the distance. I first read about this on Mariowiki several years ago, and back then no one knew what it was, it was just referred to as an unidentified object that resembled a UFO. Since then, though, the article has been updated, as someone figured out that the object is actually one of the circular panels found throughout the galaxy that Chomps have to land on to make things happen.

Floating out in the middle of nowhere.

For no apparent reason.

So you'd probably think I would take this and run with it since it seems like the sort of absurd thing I'd dream up on my own for this fanfic being dropped right into my lap, but nope. As far as the fanfic is concerned, that object is not a Chomp panel but rather a UFO owned by…well, you'll have to wait and see. Spoilers, and all that.

Anyway, please read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own Super Mario.

Chapter 74: Bigger on the Inside

Upon arriving back on Starship Mario, I saw that I now had 33 Power Stars and still 15 Comet Medals. Still seven more Power Stars to go to unlock that Star Barrier at the end of World 4. It was past midday already, so I decided I would not be going out adventuring again for the remainder of the day. I'd already gotten two Power Stars so far today, that was enough. Besides, there was still the small matter to attend to of yanking on Banktoad's head to make sure he wasn't a Goomba imposter.

"Oh, hey Mario," Bartholomew said, trotting over from the back of the helm. "The Brigade and I have been acquainting ourselves with the Starship's upgrades while you were out, and wow, did Baby Luma put a lot of cool stuff in this ship. There's a soda fountain belowdecks, and a Star Bit Juice fountain, and a self-plunging toilet, and a-"

"Yeah, that's great, tell me later," I said. "Where's Banktoad?"

"Last I saw, he was down in the new rec room, adding the lyrics to the Toad Brigade Happy Work Song to the karaoke machine."

Oh yay, just what I needed: increased chances of having run-ins with that stupid song going forward. And for that matter, what the flip was the point of karaoke-ing along to a song that's only ever sung a cappellato begin with?

"Oh, and there's more," Bartholomew said. "Just before you got back, the Prankster Detector picked up a new Prankster Comet signature over the Hightail Falls Galaxy."

Well, at least it wasn't orbiting the Cloudy Court Galaxy yet again, but the Hightail Falls Galaxy wasn't much better, seeing as how I still had no intentions yet of heading back past the end of World 3. And yes, I know my stalling about this whole World 3 thing is getting slightly ridiculous at this point, especially given that the incident with Sam and the Purpleforce Council proved that staying away from the end of World 3 isn't much of a protection from multiversal shenanigans, but…you know what, I don't have to explain myself!

I turned to leave, but then remembered about the Extendable 7.5-Foot Hammer. I grabbed it from my pocket and turned to Bartholomew. "Hey, heads up," I said as I tossed it to him.

He caught it. "What's this?"

"An Extendable 7.5-Foot Hammer I pilfered off your Goomba doppelganger. Do with it what you will." Before he could reply, I headed down the stairs into the Starship's interior. Where the heck was this rec room? When I'd headed belowdecks to get the Co-Star Luma and hand him over to the Piantas before we left the The Village Galaxy, and then to make sure the washer worked before heading off to the Flipsville Galaxy, the Starship's interior had looked the same as it always had. Granted, I'd only had to go about halfway down the main hallway to get to the closet where the Co-Star Luma had previously been trapped, but how was there even space for a rec room in the Starship? It wasn't all that big, and between the cabins, bathroom, laundry room, engine room, kitchen, and storage closets, I highly doubted there was enough open space left in the Starship's interior for Baby Luma to create a rec room.

Well, as it turned out, I only needed to go about ten feet beyond the laundry room I'd retrieved the Co-Star Luma from to come across the first major change to the Starship's layout. On the left side of the hallway were flights of stairs heading both up and down, and tacked to the wall next to each stairwell was a sheet of paper. I walked closer to the papers and saw that the words "Toad Brigade Official Stationery" were printed in the lower right-hand corner of each sheet. Scrawled on the rest of the first sheet, next to the stairs going down, was:

WHAT WE'VE FOUND DOWN HERE (SO FAR!):

Soda and Star Bit Juice Fountains!

Pillow Fort Room!

Garage Full of Sports Cars!

Actual Prison!

WTF? Had Baby Luma seriously created all this? HOW? There was no way all this could possibly fit inside the Starship! I turned around and looked at the other sheet to see what nonsense was scrawled on there:

WHAT WE'VE FOUND UP HERE (SO FAR!):

Rec Room!

Sauna!

Paintball Range!

Endless(?) Field!

…

Okay, so Baby Luma had somehow given the Starship a TARDIS makeover.

Good.

Good, good.

The physical improbability of all of this wasn't going to bother me at all.

Nosiree Bob, it would not.

Nope. Not this guy.

I headed up the stairs and stopped when I reached the top. The hallway branched off to either side from there, and I wasn't sure which way to go. The last thing I wanted was to get lost in this possibly infinite Starship.

Then I heard a Toad's voice come from the hall to my right. "Welcome, everyone, to Banktoad Live! For you, my adoring fans, I'll be performing all my greatest hits, including the Toad Brigade Happy Work Song!"

I gritted my teeth and walked in the direction of the noise, hoping I'd be able to get there and interrupt his performance before he started singing that godawful tune.

For once, the universe was on my side, and I did indeed get there quickly enough.

Stepping into the Rec Room was like stepping into some psyched-out LSD trip. The walls, floors, and ceiling were all black with neon images constantly scrolling across them – various power-ups, me, Luigi, Yoshi, Lumas, Star Bits, etc. As well as, for some reason, Bowser's emblem and a bunch of other Koopa Troop-related symbols, so…yeah, whatever. In one corner was a huge, curved TV that had to have measured at least 80 inches; near it were a bunch of arcade machines, including that game Jumpman that's loosely based on my adventures.

And in the corner opposite the TV was a small, raised area with a microphone at the front, where Banktoad was standing. He turned when he saw me enter the room. "Oh, hey Mario. Check out this sweet Rec Room we found. Baby Luma really went all-out fixing up this place."

I swear I could feel Baby Luma blushing under my cap.

"So what brings you down here?" Banktoad continued as I started across the room, activating glowing red pixels with each footfall. "Wanna sing karaoke with me? I know you're not a big fan of the Toad Brigade Happy Work Song, but that's not the only song programmed in here. There's also 'Baby Sushi' and 'The Song That Never Ends' and-"

I think it really says something that I hated the Toad Brigade Happy Work Song even more than those abominations. But seriously, this was the music that Baby Luma preprogrammed into our karaoke machine?

Sigh.

By then I'd reached Banktoad, and I proceeded to push him to the floor, pin him down, and yank on his head.

"OW!" he shouted between tugs. "Mario…what…are…you doing?"

Hmm. Nope. His head wasn't budging. So either Bowser had put a lot more effort into Not-Banktoad's costume than the costumes for the other members of the Not-Toad Brigade, or this really was Banktoad.

…I was leaning towards the latter option but not to the exclusion of the former, given that it seemed like a typical Bowser-type mistake for him to blow like 90% of his budget for the Not-Toad Brigade making one costume foolproof, then afterwards realize how little money he had left and have to cut corners with the other five costumes because he could only devote 2% of his original budget to each of them.

I got off Banktoad and knelt on the floor with my arms held up. "Sorry. This last mission I was on just made me aware that I've never encountered a Goomba doppelganger of you along with the Goomba doppelgangers of the rest of the Toad Brigade, so I just had to come back here and make sure you weren't the Goomba doppelganger, and the real you was trapped in Bowser's dungeon or something – what the heck?!"

Banktoad suddenly tackled me and yanked on my head. His small stature made it easy to swat him off me, and then I sat up and glared at him. "What the flip was that?"

"I was making sure you weren't a Goomba doppelganger," Banktoad retorted. "What did you expect me to do? You come in here and attack me out of nowhere, with or without a decent explanation for doing so, and I'm gonna be suspicious."

I really hated that I couldn't even find a logical reason to be mad at him for doing that, because I knew full well that I would've done the exact same thing in his place.

"Alright, fine," I said, getting up. "We're even now, and we both know that we're each who we say we are.

"Cool," Banktoad said. "So in that case, you wanna stick around and sing some karaoke?"

"No thank you, I've got other things to attend to right now." I really didn't, but I didn't care to stick around there any longer either.

Actually no, wait, I did have something else to attend to...namely, inspecting the prison the Toad Brigade claimed to have found inside the Starship to see if it lived up to my expectations of what a "prison" should be, in the event that Lubba and co. orchestrated a jailbreak from the Prison of Unknown Quality in the The Village Galaxy and returned to harass me once more, then had to be locked up on the Starship again.

I headed back down the stairs to the main level of the Starship's interior, then down the second flight of stairs to the...sub-level, I guess. While I was busy in the Rec Room, one member of the Toad Brigade had apparently made his way back to the signs on the wall and added "Funny Portal!" to the "WHAT WE'VE FOUND DOWN HERE (SO FAR!):" list.

...I decided I didn't even want to know what "Funny Portal!" meant, and that since whoever found said portal had made it back to the stairs alive to report said portal's existence, it clearly wasn't a problem, at least for the time being. But knowing my luck, there was a pretty significant chance that that status could change on a moment's notice.

I headed down the stairs and, once again, had no idea which direction to go. Would it have killed the Toad Brigade to put more instructions on those sheets of paper than just which set of stairs you had to take to reach each room? Geez, we were gonna have to create a whole flippin' numbering system or something for all these rooms.

I tok a chance and went to the right, since that had also taken me in the right direction when I was looking for the Rec Room. The first room off the hall was presumably the pillow fort room that the list had mentioned, a huge, circular room with a cushioned floor and three giant pillow forts that somehow managed to stay upright despite the uneven ground. Next was the garage, which contained dozens (if not hundreds) of souped-up hot rods. Upon looking at them I had a horrible sinking feeling in my gut that 1) at least one of them would eventually get wrecked in one of the many battles that take place on Starship Mario; and/or 2) one or more of said battles would somehow devolve into a car chase throughout the Starship that the hot rods would be involved in...which might very well be the cause of them getting wrecked.

The next set of doors, which were ornate and wooden, opened into what looked like an opera house (ugh; looked like I could pretty safely say I'd never willingly be opening those doors again). But seeing as how "Opera House!" wasn't on the Toad Brigade's list, I assumed they hadn't made it this far down the right hall yet, so the prison had to be down the left hall. So I backtracked past the pillow fort room, garage, and stairs leading up to the main level, and opened the second door, figuring the first one probably led to the fountains since they were listed before the prison on the sheet of paper.

I was correct. My first indicator was the keychain hanging from a peg next to the heavy metal door. I inserted the lone key on it into the door and turned. The door opened, revealing a long hall lit only by sporadic orange lights, with more solid metal doors branching off it to either side. I unlocked a couple of them with the same key and was pleased to discover that each door led to an 8x8 cell made of solid metal – walls, floor, ceiling, everything. Good; I'd been worried that either the doors or walls of the cells would be made of either bars, which I had no doubt that squishy-bodied, boneless creatures like the Lumas I frequently ended up imprisoning would be able to squeeze through or potentially wrench loose and use to dig their way through the walls if they were made of anything other than more metal.

After walking down the prison hall for probably five minutes, I still hadn't found an end to it, so I decided to just head back. And at that point, I decided I was done with the universe for the day and would be heading back to my room and watching The Punishroom on the TV I sure as heck hooped Baby Luma had created when he fixed the Starship. Let's see, the last time I'd watched The Punishroom was two nights earlier, on the eve of Sam's Purpleforce attack. Which meant last night would've been a Hallmushroom Christmas movies night, but given that we were stuck in the technologically backwards The Village Galaxy, we ended up not watching any TV, which meant the rotation skipped over Baby Luma and defaulted back to me. Good, it was my night to control the TV anyway; I wouldn't have to make up some excuse for violating my agreement with Baby Luma. Because even if it had been his night to control the TV, there was no way in hell I was gonna let the first thing I watched after going without TV for two days be one of those stupid holiday rom-coms.

I opened the room to my room and almost screamed in frustration.

The bed, the carpet, the curtains (which made absolutely no sense because there's no windows on the Starship, so I had no idea what the heck this "window" in my room was looking out on), everything, was Super Mario-print. And by Super Mario-print, I mean that cheerful image of me jumping and smiling with one fist raised, the other arm extended behind me…you know the one, it's on every product in the Mushroom Kingdom that bears my likeness.

The problem with it is that that's nothing like my actual personality, and I've been unsuccessfully trying for years to leave behind that happy-go-lucky image of me that has never been accurate, even back in 1985 when I set out to rescue Peach for the first time.

I headed over to the window and saw that it provided me a view of the space outside the Starship. How it did that was another question entirely because, as I previously mentioned, there's no flippin' way that the window was built into an exterior wall of the Starship, so whatever.

I flopped down on my red-and-white sheets, grabbed the conveniently placed TV remote off the nightstand, and turned on the TV. The screen came on and displayed what looked to be the title card for a movie named Mistletoe Melody.

I give you one guess what sort of movie it was.

"Ooh, Mistletoe Melody," Baby Luma chirped. "I love this movie."

"Yeah, well, too bad we're not watching it," I said.

"Uh, yes we are. It's my turn. Two nights ago we watched your…repulsively violent show-"

It's not worth it, Mario, it's not worth it.

"-and last night we didn't watch anything. So now it's my turn."

"But-"

"Mario, this is the same thing we did after you flipped Starship Mario upside-down and we were without TV for a night. If there's a night where we don't watch anything, that doesn't count towards either of us."

"But-"

"If you had a problem with this arrangement, you should've said something about it back then. But you didn't, so now this is our precedent."

I gritted my teeth. "Yeah, well, I hereby override the precedent and create a new one: nights without TV don't count." With that, I pressed the button on the remote to change the channel, but nothing happened. I pressed it again. And again. And again. All that changed was the title card fading away and being replaced by a view of the snowy town that I'm convinced Hallmushroom Channel reuses for every single one of their Christmas movies.

I narrowed my eyes and lifted my cap. "Baby Luma? Care to explain why the remote you created is not changing the channel on the TV you also created?"

Baby Luma floated down from my head. "I don't know. I didn't know I created any of this stuff. All I wished for was for Starship Mario to be fixed and made so it would be a nice place for us to live. And…I guess maybe the magic of the Power Star read a bunch of subconscious thoughts, maybe some I never even knew I had, when it was doing its thing. I mean, I've never had the thought that I wanted a Rec Room, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, 'How was my life ever complete without this thing'? So…maybe it turned my love of Hallmushroom Christmas movies into…." He vaguely waved towards the TV.

"…into a TV that only plays Hallmushroom Christmas movies," I finished. I guess his theory did seem plausible. I highly doubted that he'd had the time to think of every specific new thing that had been added to Starship Mario in the brief time he was juiced up on that Power Star, so "magical B.S." did seem like the best explanation for the time being.

Of course that also meant that Baby Luma had consciously or subconsciously always wanted to have his own personal opera house, which was just flat-out sad to say the least.

Baby Luma shrugged. "Well, maybe this is for the best. After all, now it forces you to be fair and honor our original agreement."

I spluttered and gestured wildly to the TV. "How is any of this fair? The TV won't play anything but your movies; now I'm not going to get to watch The Punishroom at all!"

"This might be good for you. Now instead of watching some vigilante blow away a bunch of criminals for a few hours every other night, you can watch heartwarming tales of two unlikely soulmates coming together and finding true love. Maybe it'll help…mellow you out. Maybe the reason you're so aggressive all the time is because of the TV you watch."

What the flip sort of psychobabble garbage was that? "My personality has nothing to do with the TV I watch; this is what I've always been like since before I even started watching TV. All throughout the photo albums of me as a baby there's pictures of me punching anyone who dared to play peek-a-boo with me, flipping off anyone who tried to feed me vegetables, smashing Luigi's loud, obnoxious, blinky, beepy toys, you name it."

Baby Luma just stared at me. "Well, this is apparently the way it is now. I don't know what else to say."

I groaned and buried my head between two of the pillows on my bed. Hopefully I'd be able to fall asleep quickly and spend several hours letting my brain recover from this nonsense before being inevitably subjected to more of it tomorrow.