Chapter 75: Baby Luma's Imaginary Friend

The following morning, I got up and headed down the hall to use the bathroom, then have breakfast and decide whether I was ready to man up and head back past the end of World 3 again…or, of course, I could just put it off one more day.

But when I arrived at the bathroom, I found the door locked, and the noises coming from inside sounded like someone had filled the tub with water and was splashing around in it like crazy.

I banged on the door. "What the flip is going on in there?"

Yoshi's voice came from the far side of the door, even more high-pitched and quavering than usual. "Oh. Uh, hi Mario, it's me in here. Um, no need to come in. Ev-everything's under control. I've got the situation handled."

"What situation?"

"That's, uh, nothing you need to concern yourself with. Just…just go on about your day, getting Power Stars, doing your thing."

"Well, in order to go on about my day, I need to use the bathroom, so let me in."

"Yeah, that's not gonna be happening anytime soon, I'm afraid. But I think there's a secondary bathroom in the opera house, so you can go use that one."

"I refuse to set foot in an opera house unless my life literally depends on it, and even then I'm not making any promises!"

"Then just go in the endless field. The grass in there is really tall, so even if Percy or any of the members of the Toad Brigade are in there too, they won't be able to see you."

"Alright, fine, but first I demand to be let into this bathroom to see what is going on in here that you clearly don't want me to see so bad."

"And as I said, I'm afraid that's not gonna be happening."

"…And why is that, pray tell?" Geez, getting a solid answer out of Yoshi was like pulling teeth.

"Well, you see, I went to use the bathroom this morning, and when I flushed the toilet, it got clogged. And I didn't want to keep flushing it repeatedly because we both know how things went the last time I tried that, but then I remembered that yesterday the Toad Brigade discovered that one of the upgrades Baby Luma gave the Starship was a self-plunging toilet. I noticed there was a switch on the side of the toilet labeled 'PLUNGE,' so I flipped that. And then this mechanical arm with a plunger on the end of it sprouted from the tank of the toilet and started plunging the toilet. Plunging it very, very forcefully, to the point where it was spraying toilet water and…other stuff…all over the bathroom. I took shelter in the shower since that's got a glass door now instead of just a shower curtain, but because I can't get back to the toilet to turn off the plunging mechanism without once again exposing myself to the aforementioned spray of toilet water and other stuff, uh, I'm basically besieged in the shower."

Oh. My. Gosh. Was there one upgrade Baby Luma made to the Starship that wasn't gonna somehow come back and bite us (read: ME!) in the ass? First redecorating my cabin, then the TV, and now this. At this point I was starting to doubt whether the prison was really as secure as it looked. This was practically a textbook case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I see no reason why we needed to have a self-plunging toilet; just give me an operational toilet and a standard, handheld plunger to replace the one that Sam took with him when he escaped Starship Mario during the big battle at the end of World 2, and I'm good to go.

"Alright, stay in the shower then," I said. "I'll send Bartholomew down in one of our hazmat suits-" Assuming we still have hazmat suits, that is. "-to smash down the door with his Extendable 7.5-Foot Hammer and turn off the toilet. But after this, your bathroom privileges are officially revoked. This is twice now you've clogged the toilet and then royally mucked things up while trying to unclog it."

"But then where am I supposed to use the bathroom?" Yoshi cried.

"I don't know. Take your own advice and go in the endless field. I'll even let you use the opera house bathroom if you want since, like I said, there's no way in hell I'm ever gonna use that one."

Before I went to get Bartholomew, I headed up the stairs to try to find the endless field. On the way I saw that a bunch more items had been added to the Toad Brigade's list of the new rooms in the Starship. I didn't even bother stopping to read them, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed "Giant, Talking Block of Cheese!" and "Room Full of Fireworks!"

Oh yay. Fireworks. Like that's not a big, fat, smoking Chekhov's Gun just waiting to go off and wreck the Starship all over again.

And what the flip was with this infatuation that everyone else seemingly had with talking cheese? First Bartholomew pestering me about alternate universes where cheese is alive after I got back from that fiasco at Junior's Fearsome Fleet, and now Baby Luma actually creating a talking block of cheese.

The third door I tried led to the endless field, which…did in fact look endless. The sun was either just rising or just setting; I would think rising, given that it was morning, but then again, Baby Luma's modifications to the Starship had already thrown all the rules of physics to the wind, so why not chuck the rules of time into the shredder too? The stalks of grass filling the expanse were a few feet tall and swayed in a slight wind.

Baby Luma floated from under my cap. "Woah, this is cool. It looks so…so peaceful."

I shivered. Sure, it looked peaceful, but the fact that it was possibly endless was nothing short of unsettling. Like, liminal space-type unsettling.

I beckoned Baby Luma back under my cap. "Come on, get under there. I can't go to the bathroom if there's someone looking."

Baby Luma sighed and hopped back under my cap.

I headed a short distance into the grass so I could be sure that, if any of the Starship's denizens wandered into the field, I'd have more than enough time to pull my pants up before they could make their way over to me.

After relieving myself, I pulled my pants back up and headed back towards the door. And that was when I noticed two things that certainly did nothing to ease my growing paranoia about this place. One, the stalks of grass were blowing in a wind, but I didn't feel any wind blowing against me. And two, the sun hadn't moved at all in the few minutes I'd been in the field; it was still hovering half-above, half-below the horizon.

Suddenly, I heard a faint rustling coming from far behind me. I turned around just in time to see some distant, dark shape duck below the grass.

Somehow, despite having just emptied both my bladder and bowels, I immediately wet – and came within a hair's width of crapping – my pants. I rushed back through the door, slammed it shut behind me, and ran back to my room. If Baby Luma had been merciful, I'd find several spare changes of pants in my new dresser.

Much to my surprise, there were in fact several changes of pants, shirts, overalls, socks, underwear, and caps waiting for me in my dresser. Huh. I had not gotten my hopes up I'd get this lucky, given that the motto of my life might as well be "If [Event A] will be beneficial to you, then the exact opposite of it will happen."

I changed my pants and shoved the old pair into the Warp Pipe in my bedroom wall labeled "LAUNDRY CHUTE," then headed down the hall towards the stairs up to the helm. I found Bartholomew, Jacques, and Daniel eating breakfast at a picnic table at the back of the helm. I assumed that was another upgrade of Baby Luma's doing, but had no idea where it had come from, given that it sure as heck wasn't there the previous night.

Bartholomew put down the mug he was sipping. "Morning, Mario!" he called. "How'd you sleep? Aren't the new beds Baby Luma made us so comfortable?"

"I slept like a baby," Jacques said. "Literally. I woke up in a fetal position sucking my thumb."

"I was trying to nurse on the corner of my pillow when I woke up," Daniel volunteered.

Okay, yeah, way TMI. I just gave them all a collective curt nod and headed over to the steering wheel. I'd originally been planning on having breakfast before I left for the morning, but I didn't want them to mistake that for an invitation to share more weird, personal details about themselves.

"Oh, Mario, before you leave, I've got a Prankster Comet update for you," Bartholomew said. "According to the Prankster Detector, the comet over the Hightail Falls Galaxy is gone, but now there's one in orbit of the Cloudy Court Galaxy again."

I gave a loud groan as I steered the Starship away from the Flipsville Galaxy. "Yeah, and tell that Prankster Comet that there is no flippin' way I'm heading back to that galaxy and its Spiky Spikepeckers and warp fields and illiterate bobbleheads. In fact, I would sooner head back to that Backrooms-reject Liminal Field of Eternal Twilight upstairs than go to the Cloudy Court Galaxy again!"

"Oh, you mean the endless field?" Daniel asked. "Yeah, it looks kinda spooky at first, but it's not so bad. Willy's pretty nice."

Even though I knew I did not want to hear the answer to this question, I had to ask, "Who the heck is Willy? That Whittle who stuffed me in a garbage bag and tried to hand me over to Bowser last week?"

"No, not that Willy. This is someone else. He's the guy who lives in the endless field."

"Someone lives in there?" Bartholomew asked.

"Yeah. I was exploring in there last night and I met him. He told me he knows lots of cosmic secrets, and I could ask him any one question of my choice. I asked him the secret to eternal happiness, and he told me I can achieve it by jamming my thumbs into my eyeballs. I think I'm gonna try it after breakfast."

…Okay, this had gotten too weird for me to even know where to start figuring out what was going on; I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Let's see, at that point Starship Mario was pretty much equidistant from the The Village Galaxy and the Chompworks Galaxy. I refused to head back to the former locale, so, despite my prior refusal to even consider going there, Chompworks Galaxy it was.

As the Starship flew towards the galaxy, I turned around. "Oh, and Bartholomew, Yoshi clogged the toilet downstairs, which is now trying to plunge itself and making a mess all over the bathroom. I can't get in since Yoshi locked the door, but see if you can break it down with your hammer and then shut off the toilet."

"Why can't Yoshi do it if he's already in there?" Bartholomew asked.

"Because he's hunkered down in the shower trying to not get toilet water all over him. You might want to put on one of our hazmat suits, I hear it's pretty bad in there." And then, at the last second, I added, "And make sure Daniel doesn't blind himself or anything while I'm gone." Then I flew off the helm towards the Chompworks Galaxy.

"Alright, Baby Luma," I said as I was flying towards the galaxy, "the TV and the opera house and the bedroom are one thing, but would you care to tell me why there's some creepy monster hanging out in that endless field and telling Daniel to gouge out his eyes?"

"The TV and the opera house I get, but what don't you like about your bedroom?" Baby Luma asked.

"Just answer the question, please."

Baby Luma sighed. "He said his name was Willy…I think that creature in the Starship is my imaginary friend."

Oh you have got to be flippin' kidding me. "So what you're telling me is that when you fixed Starship Mario, your Power Star wish inadvertently or intentionally brought your bloodthirsty imaginary friend Willy to life?"

"More or less, I guess. I didn't want this to happen, though. Willy and I had a falling out when I was younger, and he hasn't visited me since then."

This story just kept getting stupider and stupider. "What do you mean, 'younger'? You're still a baby."

"Yeah, but I'm eight years old. I was born during the Second Big Bang that happened when the Lumas reset the universe after your galactic quest back in 2007. We Lumas just age very slowly."

Well, I guess if nothing else, that fits with the story Bowser told me back at his Lava Lair about having gone to college with Lubba 200-plus years ago.

Baby Luma continued, "Willy and I were friends several years ago. He always came to me in my dreams and told me he could make anything I wanted come true. But once he realized that the only thing I really wanted was a never-ending bottle of formula, he said, and I quote, 'Such power, yet so little ambition…what a waste.' And after that I never saw Willy again."

I didn't think it was possible to have a fight with an imaginary friend, because wasn't the whole point of having one just so you'd have someone who would always agree with you?

Then again, maybe this was just a Luma thing. Whatever.

"But even before that final time I saw Willy, there were other times where he'd say…strange things," Baby Luma said.

"Like telling Daniel to jab out his eyes?"

"Pretty much."

"Well, when we get back to the Starship, you're heading up to the endless field and telling Willy that he can get lost."

"I'm not sure it works like that. Last time he left me, and-"

"Oh my gosh, no he didn't; he's not real! Him leaving was probably just the manifestation of you realizing you didn't need an imaginary friend anymore and – I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, you figure it out!"

The only available mission in the Chompworks Galaxy was titled "Where the Chomps Are Made of Gold." Wait a second…why did this sound all too familiar? Chomp…gold…aha! "The Golden Chomp," that Secret Star from the Gusty Garden Galaxy in my first galactic adventure! So was this just gonna be a repeat of that mission or something? One could hope, but then again, I somehow doubted it since it seemed distinctly unlikely that a galaxy that was home to just a single Golden Chomp would be named the Chompworks Galaxy.

As I approached the Starting Planet, I saw that I was correct; there was more than just one Chomp in the galaxy. The planet that I assumed, given my trajectory, was the Starting Planet, featured a string of Chomps emerging from a cannon and then pointlessly crashing into a block at the far end of the path they rolled down, as well as a larger section below the path. Another planet featured several Chomps rolling around two giant gears with a screw running through them; what purpose said planet served was another matter entirely, given that there didn't appear to be any solid, non-Chomp-occupied ground on it where I could land. And to top it all off, behind all the other planets was a giant, circular one filled with lava that vaguely resembled a Chomp.

I landed on a platform connected to the rest of the Starting Planet by a short slide and looked around the galaxy some more. I couldn't see too many planets; in addition to the aforementioned three, there were two other ones I couldn't make out too many details of, and that was-.

Huh.

Suddenly, a flash of yellow light came from the space below, to the left of, and far beyond the Chomp-shaped lava planet. It faded away quickly, but I noticed some distant, barely visible object in the space where the flash had come from. It looked circular and grey, with dark red edges.

Wait a minute, was it a flying saucer?

Was it the flying saucer – the one that tore Peach's Castle out of the ground in my first galactic adventure? Its color scheme was a bit different, but aside from that, it sure looked like it. And if so, what the heck was it doing floating in space near the Chompworks Galaxy of all places? Shouldn't it have been at one of Bowser's lairs?

On one hand, it looked like it was definitely too far away to be a proper "part" of the galaxy, and was probably just stationed near it for some reason, so maybe I didn't need to worry about it. Or, better yet, maybe it was abandoned.

On the other hand, there was that clear flash of light from it right after I landed in the galaxy, which was sort of unnerving.

I headed down the slope to the main body of the planet, where there were two Octoombas and three Gearmos waiting for me. Yay.

"Another day in the Chompworks!" a yellow Gearmo prattled on. "Let's get those Chomps down here!"

What, you mean the Chomps crashing into that block on the higher part of the planet? Well then, it would appear there's a slight design flaw in this place that you three overlooked.

"If ya got time to talk, then ya got time to keep the Chomps rolling!" a green Geamo snapped.

So…these three Gearmos worked here? Is that it?

I know I've addressed this point before, but seeing as how this is probably the most damning evidence I've come across so far, I'm gonna say it again: are Gearmos supposed to be good guys or not? I get the sense that I'm "expected" to view them as friendly or helpful or something, but then they go around withholding Power Stars from me and now apparently aiding in the creation of Chomps. Granted, they were doing a pretty ass-backwards job of it, given the obvious obstruction in the Chomps' path that they didn't seem to notice, but still, this was ridiculous.

I headed over to a circular panel with an image of a Chomp on it to see if there was anything special about it. But as soon as I walked onto it, the third Gearmo, a pink one, promptly screamed at me, "I'm in charge of keeping the area around this hole clear! Move along!"

WTF, dude? "What hole?" I asked.

The Gearmo pointed at the panel I was standing on. "This hole. The hole the Chomps roll into. We call it the Chomp Roll Hole!"

Of course you call it the Chomp Roll Hole, because the entire universe is apparently allergic to inventing proper nouns that don't grate on every nerve ending in my body!

Also, was it just me or did "Chomp Roll Hole" sound more like something a Whittle would say than a Gearmo? And then somehow pass off as a complete sentence.

Anyway, if the Chomps were supposed to roll into the hole (it's not a hole!), then maybe what I had to do was find a way to get them down to the bottom section of the planet. I started looking around more closely, and quickly noticed a few things.

First, there were a couple platforms leading up to the path the Chomps were rolling down. Second, floating above said path was a Comet Medal that, judging by its height, would probably require a well-timed backflip over a Chomp to obtain. Third, next to the block hindering the Chomps' progress was a switch that I probably had to flip. And fourth, on the far side of the block was a curved, metal path not unlike the ones I've ridden Star Balls down before, which led to the lower section of the planet. I figured flipping the switch would probably make the block vanish, along with the two shorter raised platforms on the bottom half of the planet, one of which would prevent the Chomps from rolling onto the Chomp Panel.

Yes, I was calling it the Chomp Panel. I refused to refer to it by the Stupid Other Name the Gearmos had given it.

I climbed up the two platforms to the Chomp path, but as soon as I stepped on the first one, it started to descend. I quickly jumped onto the second one, which also started to lower under my weight. Frantically, I leapt for the Chomp path and grabbed on with my fingertips...

...but said act might have been a bit poorly timed, as no sooner did I grab the edge of the path than the next Chomp rolled by, crushing my fingertips beneath it.

OWWWWW!

I dropped back off the path as the Chomp continued rolling, barking its stupid, mocking bark at me. The platform I fell onto slowly lowered, but I had bigger concerns for the time being, like the fact that the ends of eight of my ten fingers had been flattened to no more than one-sixteenth of an inch thick.

Forget it, I wasn't even gonna bother trying to finish the level in this state. I knew from previous levels that if I got injured and then threw myself off the planet, I'd respawn uninjured. So throw myself off the planet I did.

TOO BAD!