Chapter 76: Attack of the Flying Saucer
I respawned at the beginning of the Starting Planet and immediately studied my hands, which were in fact all healed. Good. After that Idook a minute to get my bearings. Last time I'd rushed into this planet too fast, without knowing what my objective was or taking time to come up with a plan to meet said objective. It looked like I would have to time my jumps up the sinking platforms to align with when a Chomp was passing by on the path up above, which should be fairly easy if I put my mind to it. Heck, my adventures were all about coordinating my timing so I didn't run into enemies. The fact that these particular enemies were huge and metal didn't change that. I looked around as I prepared to descend the slide to the main body of the planet, and-.
That flying saucer was closer.
There was no question about it, that thing was closer than it had been the first time I arrived on the Starting Planet. Great, so it was clearly making its way towards the rest of the galaxy. Now I just had to hope I could complete this mission and get the heck out of Dodge before it got here and unleashed whatever nonsense it was inevitably going to unleash.
I slid down the slope and made my way across the planet, ignoring the Gearmos' inane ramblings, and stopped at the base of the platforms. One Chomp was about to roll by, and as soon as it reached the point where the platforms met the Chomp path, I was going to start my jumping.
Aaaand...go!
I leapt onto the first platform, then the second, then gripped the edge of the Chomp path and hauled myself onto it. Then, just as the next Chomp was about to bear down on me, I backflipped over it and grabbed the galaxy's Comet Medal. From there it was a quick dash down the rest of the path to the switch, which I then spun.
As I expected, the block blocking (hehe) the Chomps' progress retracted into the floor, leaving them free to roll down the metal slide. As I had not expected but was also not surprised by given that nothing's ever simple for me, the platform blocking the Chomps from rolling onto the Chomp panel on the lower section of the planet did not vanish.
Then again, that platform looked a lot like the ones leading up to the Chomp path that descended when I stepped on them. Maybe I had to do the same down there, and then leap aside at the last second before the next inbound Chomp could mow me down.
Gosh, why the heck were Chomps being such a pain in my ass in this adventure? Between the Chibi Wanwan menacing me back in the Sky Station Galaxy, the regular Chomps in the Flip-Swap and Flipsville Galaxies, that stupid Silver Chomp in the Rolling Masterpiece Galaxy, and now all the Chomps infesting this galaxy...I swear, I have never encountered so many Chomps before on a single quest to defeat Bowser.
I slid down a slope leading from the switch back to the lower end of the planet and hopped on the platform as a Chomp crashed into it. Sure enough, it descended beneath my weight until it was level with the rest of the planet. Another Chomp rolled onto the lowered platform, and as soon as it did, I leapt off. The Chomp rolled back off the platform as it started to raise again, hilariously crushing an Octoomba in the process, and then...
...and then it, uh, it rolled into the Chomp Roll Hole.
But...how? That thing had been solid ground when I'd stood on it, yet now here the Chomp had clearly rolled into a hole. And it wasn't like there was a panel there that depressed when the Chomp rolled onto it or anything, it just sank into the planet like there had never been solid ground there.
Yeah, this was just plain stupid.
However, once the Chomp rolled into the hole, it exploded into a Launch Star, just like Star Balls explode into Power Stars when they roll into the pits at the end of their levels. Wait, so if that Chomp had a Launch Star in it, would it still have exploded into a Launch Star if I hadn't bothered doing any of this work and had just left it to crash into the wall at the end of the Chomp path?
That was the only explanation that made sense, which was the only proof I needed to know that no, that would not have happened, because apparently obeying the laws of physics went out of style at some point in the past few decades and I just didn't get the memo.
As I dashed over to the Launch Star, the pink Gearmo congratulated me. "Nice work!"
Okay, so maybe the reason the Gearmos wanted to get the Chomps rolling or however they put it was so I'd have a Launch Star to get to the next planet, and in that case I guess you could argue they were being helpful or whatever. But on the other hand, their method of being "helpful" was about as passive, borderline nonexistent, as they came, given that all they were doing was rolling around and shouting useless information about their jobs.
So...jury's still out on this one.
My flight to the next planet took me right past that colossal screw with the two gears around it, allowing me a closer look at it and confirming my suspicion that there was nowhere I could possibly land on it. In that case maybe it was just one of those pointless background planets like those giant cacti floating around in the background of the Dusty Dune Galaxy in my first galactic adventure. My flight also allowed me to see that the Chomps rolling around on the gears were gigantic, much bigger than they'd looked from the Starting Planet, so who knows, maybe Bowser ordered a bunch of giant Chomps for this galaxy, then realized he had nowhere to put them, and just decided to stick them on some weird, pointless, barely-a-planet that he thought looked cool but also had no real purpose for.
In other news, the flying saucer was continuing to get closer, so yeah, yay me.
The next planet I landed on was square-shaped and consisted of several platforms floating in a vat of lava.. The platforms I landed on featured a Checkpoint Flag and two Gearmos, and were connected to a narrow path leading to a Chomp Cannon at the far end of the planet. Off to the sides of the path were three smaller platforms, each inhabited by-.
Oh COME ON!
Each inhabited by a pair of those gosh dang ever-loving mother-ducking CHIBI WANWAN. The two on the closest platform were revolving around a coin, while on the two more distant platforms they were circling a Warp Pipe and a Launch Star, respectively. And judging by the amount of time it took each Chomp to emerge from the Cannon, there was no way I'd be able to make it down the path to the Launch Star all in one go. I'd have to jump off onto at least one of the other Chibi Wanwan-inhabited platforms, wait for a Chomp to pass, then keep going.
But first, I wanted to see what happened when a Chomp reached the end of the path, given that the pink Gearmo on my platform was right in its way.
Said Gearmo suddenly jolted me out of my thoughts (and almost gave me a heart attack to boot) by screaming, "BRING IT ON! Gimme your worst!"
I walked around the side of the Gearmo and spread my arms. "What the flip, dude? Who the hell are you talking to?"
The blue Gearmo, who was behind the pink one, beckoned me away from the end of the path. "Stay back. The metal always flies all over the place."
"What metal?"
"The Chomp's metal. The Chomps all explode when they crash into him." He pointed to the pink Gearmo.
I stepped back and raised an eyebrow. "So tell him to move."
"He won't listen. He-." The Gearmo was cut off as the Chomp crashed into his comrade, bursting apart into a bunch of Star Bits. The Gearmo shook his head and continued, "He won't listen to anyone anymore. He just sits there all the ti-."
"BRING IT ON! Gimme your worst!" the pink Gearmo repeated.
Steam hissed from the blue Gearmo's head for a second. "Sprocket-blasted interruptions!"
As far as substitute curse words go, that one wasn't half-bad.
The blue Gearmo continued, "He's been like this for weeks, ever since his entire family was massacred by wild Chomps while they were on vacation."
What the-? "Since when do Gearmos have families?"
More steam erupted from the Gearmo's head. "What's that supposed to mean? Of course we have families. What exactly are you implying?"
Another Chomp crashed into the blue Gearmo.
"Nothing, it's just that…you're robots. How the heck do you, you know, reproduce?"
"The same way you fleshy folk do. We just do it by sticking a hose into a socket instead of sticking a-"
I waved my hands in front of my face and cut him off. "Okay, okay, geez, I get the point! Sorry I asked."
I waited for the next Chomp to crash into the blue Gearmo, then started running down the path. As the next Chomp neared me, I leapt aside onto the second side platform, the one with the Warp Pipe. I pressed myself into the corner, as far away from those two accursed Chibi Wanwan as I could possibly get. And since I could see a way off the planet in the form of the Launch Star hovering over the next side platform, I decided I would not see what was down the Warp Pipe. At the very least, if I later learned there was a Secret Star hiding in this galaxy, I'd know right where to look for it.
After the next Chomp rolled past, I leapt back onto the path, then off it again onto the last Chibi Wanwan platform. I leapt over the miniature Chomps and into the Launch Star.
The next planet involved steering a Chomp over several Red-Blue Panels into another one of those Physically Impossible Chomp Holes…as well as another Octoomba getting mowed down by said Chomp. First the two on the Starting Planet, now the one here? Had these Octoombas offended Bowser or something, and him stationing them in the Chompworks Galaxy was just a sneaky way of ordering them to be executed?
The Launch Star from that planet, in turn, shot me to the final planet, the lava-filled one shaped like a Chomp. And on the way there, I once more saw that the UFO was drawing closer and closer. I still couldn't make out any details about it other than its grey-and-red coloration, but at this point I could tell that it, like the pointless screw-and-gear planets, was a heck of a lot bigger than it had originally looked. Heck, it was probably almost as big as the Chomp-shaped planet itself, which was already pretty massive by the standards of other planets I come across on my galactic adventures (actual, scientifically recognized planets like the Mushroom Planet notwithstanding).
After I landed on the Chomp-shaped planet, I snagged a Checkpoint Flag and climbed a few platforms, at which point I could get a better view of the planet's layout. It consisted of a single path of platforms that led over a smaller section of the planet than I'd expected I'd have to traverse, ending at…a ramp leading into the lava? What the heck was I supposed to do here?
Wait a second, something was happening.
A series of lava plumes erupted across the planet, lining a path towards the ramp. And slowly, a Golden Chomp emerged from the lava and rolled up the ramp.
Oh, right, right, I'd already kinda forgotten that the level had promised me a Golden Chomp.
The Golden Chomp suddenly made a 90-degree turn and started rolling down the rest of the path…right towards an elevated platform blocking its path. Wait, was this planet seriously gonna be this easy? An inanimate platform was going to shatter the Golden Chomp for me and give me the Power Star? Man, this had to be the dumbest level design Bowser had ever thought up.
Well, I was half-right.
The platform did shatter the Golden Chomp, but not into a Power Star. No indeed, just into a spray of metal that splashed into the lake of lava. And a few seconds later, another Golden Chomp surfaced and rolled onto the ramp.
But – what? No, the Golden Chomp in my first galactic adventure shattered as soon as I broke it with the Rainbow Star, so why the heck didn't this platform do the trick?
I've just gotta say: there is a particular level of absurdity that I expect and, for the most part, accept will occur in my adventures. But this godforsaken place was just taking that and dialing it up to 11. In fact, I seriously suspected that Bowser's primary objective when creating this galaxy was to drive me over the edge and finally, to quote the song "Numb Little Mandibug," "snap my psyche like a twig."
Alright, maybe Golden Chomps only exploded into Power Stars when they were broken apart with a Rainbow Star. It sounded completely ridiculous, but I guess if you want to win an illogical game, you gotta play by illogical rules. I didn't see a Rainbow Star anywhere on the planet, but I did see a Blue Switch nearby. And given that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what those things did, maybe this one would make a Rainbow Star appear, and then I'd have to speed run my way across the planet to break apart the Golden Chomp before my powers wore off.
I ground-pounded the Blue Switch, but instead of summoning a Rainbow Star, all it did was make a platform rise to the right of the platform, which led to another one lower down, almost level with the lava. Okay, not sure what purpose that was meant to serve when I could've just long-jumped down to the lower platform, but whatever. I leapt onto the lower platform, and saw-.
Oh for crying out flippin' loud.
Smack dab in the center of the platform was another Chomp hole, with a set of metal rails leading towards it. And – HA! Between the Chomp hole and the end of the rails, just waiting to get crushed, was yet another Octoomba. Man, either these four Octoombas had really P.O.'ed Bowser, or he just secretly hated Octoombas in general.
So, in keeping with the logic (or lack thereof) this galaxy had demonstrated to me so far, here was my prediction: I had to somehow get that Golden Chomp all the way across the planet to the Chomp hole, and somehow, the Chomp hole would magically make the Golden Chomp explode into a Power Star that would not appear if the Chomp were destroyed through any other means.
Then again, there was another Blue Switch nearby, so maybe this one would make a Rainbow Star appear.
It did not; all it did was raise another platform farther ahead. But at least this one served a clear purpose because I deduced that said platform, if activated at the exact right moment, once the Golden Chomp was already on it, would prevent the Chomp from crashing into another platform, and instead allow it access to the rails that led to the Chomp hole.
Quickly scanning the rest of the planet, I determined that the only two other obstacles in the Golden Chomp's way were two platforms that I assumed were of the "stand-on-them-to-lower-them" variety. At least I hoped they were; they didn't look exactly like the ones earlier in the level that had worked that way, and if I had to do something else to get them out of the way, I couldn't tell what.
Suddenly, the entire planet started rumbling. Lava sloshed back and forth at the edges of the lowest platforms and splattered against the sides of the taller ones. I almost fell over before regaining my balance. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, a deafening horn blared behind me, like a deeper, longer version of the horn on Bowser Jr.'s airship in my first galactic adventure.
I covered my ears and turned around just in time to see the flying saucer round the side of the planet.
Well, my final estimate of its size was pretty accurate; the thing had to be at least 400 feet in diameter, which seemed pretty close to the size of the flying saucer that Bowser used back in 2007. But upon closer inspection, that and the inherent shape of a flying saucer was pretty much where the similarities between the two ended. Rather than the three glowing hemispherical laser fixtures that the other flying saucer had possessed, this one had a single, much larger semispherical structure protruding from its underside, with multiple giant turrets protruding from its exterior. The blood-red perimeter of the flat, disc-shaped portion of the ship was lined with three rows of massive spikes rotating in alternating directions. Built into the wide, low, curved section on top of the disc were two huge, yellow-tinted windshields that resembled triangular eyes. The silver parts of the ship were also riddled with large patches of rust, which gave me some hope that maybe it wasn't going to be as big of a threat as it had initially looked.
Something about the ship looked vaguely familiar, but with that ridiculously loud horn threatening to make my eardrums explode, I couldn't concentrate enough to figure out why.
The flying saucer flew over the planet, and then just...stopped. The horn went silent and the lava on the planet settled down again. I looked up at the flying saucer. It was just hovering in place, like it was watching me or waiting for me to make the first move or something. Or maybe it was just in really bad condition, as indicated by the rust adorning it, and was physically incapable of executing the planet-annihilating carpet-bombing I'd feared it was about to unleash when I saw how heavily its underside was armed.
Well, with no clear way to deal with the spaceship right now, or even figure out what it wanted with me, I figured my best course of action was to continue focusing on the Golden Chomps as though there weren't a giant shadow of death hanging over the entire planet.
I used a pair of long-jumps to skip over actually traversing pretty much the entire path, reaching the platforms the Golden Chomps rolled onto in under five seconds. Just as I landed, another one was emerging from the lava. I quickly leapt onto the first platform in its way, and it descended beneath me. Fortunately, it stopped lowering when it was level with the rest of the platforms, instead of continuing to drop all the way into the lava. That could have been problematic, but was a possibility I hadn't even thought of previously, given that I was kinda distracted by the, ahem, the giant flying saucer.
While I was over there, I also noticed that there were rails leading all along the pathway the Golden Chomp would have to follow, which certainly explained the bizarre right-angle turn I'd seen all the Chomps make as they rolled out of the lava. I'd just assumed Golden Chomps somehow had the ability to turn at will.
As soon as the Chomp rolled onto the platform I was standing on, I leapt off it and ran over to the next platform to wait for it there, ignoring the Goombeetles in I passed just because I wanted to see them get mowed down by the Golden Chomp too. Rather, I planned to ignore them, until two of the three nearby started attacking me and I was forced to Star-Spin them into the lava. The Chomp, meanwhile, continued down the rails, which extended out from the path and made a U-turn before curving back towards me.
The one Goombeetle remaining in the Silver Chomp's path was obliterated with an oh-so-satisfying crunch before the Chomp rolled onto the platform I was lowering. From there, I long-jumped back towards the second Blue Switch, the one that I'd need to use to make sure the Chomp didn't prematurely shatter. The Chomp continued rolling down the path the long way, making another U-turn on a short section of the path that climbed vertically up a wall of lava for no apparent reason – I mean, it didn't make the path any harder to traverse or add to the Chomp aesthetic of the planet or anything, so I had no idea what purpose it was supposed to serve.
Finally, the Golden Chomp headed towards the platform I had to raise, squashing another Goombeetle into oblivion in the process. I ground-pounded the Blue Switch as soon as the Golden Chomp rolled onto the platform, raising it up. The Golden Chomp rolled onto the rails leading down to the Chomp hole, flattening the Octoomba next to the hole right before it rolled in.
And it was at that exact moment that the UFO decided to go and screw everything up.
A circular hole suddenly opened in its underside, and a beam of golden light descended from it to the planet, right over the Chomp hole. At the same time, the Golden Chomp rolled into the hole and exploded into a Power Star, as I'd expected. But as I went to grab the Power Star, I bounced off the cylindrical beam of light the flying saucer was emitting. What the-? Oh come on, was this seriously flippin' happening? I was so close, and now I was being denied a Power Star by whatever idiot was flying this UFO?
Then a faint whirring came from the spaceship, and the Power Star started levitating towards it. I lunged for it again, only to once more be repelled by the beam of light.
With nothing better to try, I simply shouted, "HEY! THAT'S MY POWER STAR!"
Whoever was in the flying saucer either didn't hear me, or heard me and didn't care – my money was on the latter.
It didn't take the Power Star long to reach the UFO, and once it entered it the hole in the underside closed again. So…what, was I seriously expected to find a way to chase the Power Star up into the flying saucer now? Well, gee, that was gonna be pretty hard, seeing as how I had no way to reach the ship from the planet's surface, and I highly doubted the ship's captain would be considerate enough to beam me up too and make it easier for me to get the Power Star back.
Flashes of bright yellow light suddenly came from the top of the spaceship – probably through the windshields I'd seen before. Then the hemisphere on the underside of the ship folded back into several petal-shaped panels, and – oh great. Coming from inside the UFO was an all-too-familiar musical arrangement: that ominous theme that played in my first galactic adventure on boss planets before the actual boss battle started. I know it was in the background on King Kaliente's planet in the Good Egg Galaxy…I think it played somewhere else too, but I couldn't remember where.
Wait, so did that mean there was gonna be a boss battle in this level? No, no, no! I was supposed to just break open the Golden Chomp and BOOM, that's it, Power Star acquired. Who the fudge was I gonna have to fight here, a giant Chomp? Or was it gonna be a rematch against King Kaliente? I remember my Super Mario Galaxy Prima Guide mentioning something about King Kaliente already having been resurrected in World 5 of my first galactic adventure…but since I got enough Power Stars to head to the center of the universe without having to fight him there, I guess technically he's maybe still alive? Unless the Lumas wiped him from existence when they reset the universe, but given that they decided to bring back Bowser himself for whatever stupid reason when they pulled that particular magic trick, I doubt they were like, "Oh, hey, let's resurrect the biggest pain in Mario's ass ever, but y'know what, let's leave this weird octopus guy dead, I don't really like him." So it did seem possible I'd be pitted against King Kaliente here. After all, the planet was mostly lava, and I fought him in a pit of lava back in the Good Egg Galaxy. And then maybe that was why I kept running into all those Octoombas throughout this level, because the king of all the Octo-something-or-another creatures was waiting for me at the end of the level.
It did seem a bit strange to throw the Chomp theme that had been present throughout the entire galaxy so far completely out the window for the boss battle, but then again, what the heck did the Cyclone Stone have to do with the rest of the Beach Bowl Galaxy? What the heck did the Secret Star in the Sea Slide Galaxy that was basically a repeat of the Hurry-Scurry Galaxy have to do with the rest of the galaxy's beach theme? What the heck did "Gusty Garden's Gravity Scramble" have to do with anything else in that galaxy?
What can I say, Bowser wasn't exactly known for sticking the landing when designing outer-space levels.
So this only left the question of where King Kaliente was. Was he waiting for me in the lava? Or was he up on the flying saucer for some reason? Was he, like, at death's door, hooked up on a bunch of life support or something, and he needed the Power Star to rejuvenate him so he could come fight me?
Suddenly, another, larger hatch opened in the UFO's underside, above the unfolded hemisphere, and some large object plummeted straight towards me. I lunged to the side to avoid it, and it landed behind me in a crash of metal on metal. Well, whatever it was, I figured it wasn't King Kaliente, given that noise.
I turned around and saw-.
Okay, I had no clue what I was even looking at.
It was some sort of huge, circular machine that looked…somewhat like a smaller version of the flying saucer, I guess? Its main body was about twenty feet wide, with the same rough shape as the UFO and spikes around its perimeter, but that was where the similarities ended. Interspersed between the spinning spikes were four mechanical arms that each ended in a whirring saw blade positioned at a 45-degree angle to the contraption's main disc. The disc and blades were each black with dark red edges, while the blades' teeth and the larger teeth between the mechanical arms glowed bright orange.
Then a pair of glowing red, triangular eyes flared to life on top of the machine. A deep, disembodied voice came from the direction of the machine. "HELLO, MARIO. AFTER ALL THIS TIME, WE MEET AGAIN."
"Um…?" I spread my arms. "Dude, who the heck are you?"
The thing's triangular eyes briefly pixelized into fireballs before returning to their triangular shape. "YOU RECOGNIZE ME NOT? FOOL! IT IS I, YOUR FORMER ADVERSARY, WHO HAS RETURNED TO AVENGE MY PREVIOUS DEFEAT AT YOUR HANDS: TOPMANIAC!"
Wait…what? What in all the furball, garbage-noodled, chicken-scratch nonsense was this? Topmaniac? That stupid guy from the…something-or-another galaxy in my first galactic adventure? I can't even remember where I fought him; he had, like, the least-memorable boss battle from that entire adventure.
Ahh, and that's why the spaceship looked familiar: because it looked like the original body Topmaniac had last time I fought him.
"Oh, you," I said. "Didn't recognize you at first; it's been such a long time. Where'd we have our first fight, the…the Space Junk Galaxy, right?"
"NO! I WAS IN THE-!"
"Wait, that's right, it was in the Toy Time Galaxy. Because you and the Topmen, you're just bigger versions of the tops that kids play with."
This might sound like trash talk, but I was legitimately trying to remember where my first battle with this doofus had gone down.
"NO! WE FOUGHT IN THE BATTLEROCK GALAXY!"
"The…?" Okay, now I was completely lost, because I didn't even remember a place by that name. "The what?"
"THE BATTLEROCK GALAXY! IT WAS IN WORLD 2!"
Okay, lemme go through World 2: the Space Junk Galaxy I remembered, the Hurry-Scurry Galaxy I remembered, the Rolling Green Galaxy I remembered, the Sling Pod Galaxy I remembered, Bowser's Lava Reactor I remembered, but…. "Not ringing any bells."
"IT WAS THE GALAXY THAT HAD THE BATTLEROCK IN IT!"
Yeah, no duh.
"IT HAD LOTS OF CANNONS AND ELECTRICITY!"
Do you have any idea how many levels that sentence could be describing?
"IT HAD THE SECRET STAR WHERE YOU HAD TO BLOW UP GARBAGE FOR A GEARMO!"
Wait, what? That was the Battlerock Galaxy? That boring one where basically everything took place in or around that giant asteroid floating in deep space? Seriously? That was where I fought Topmaniac?
Huh.
"Oh, okay, now I remember," I said. "It's just…that place was so bland, you know? I guess I, like, subconsciously blocked it out of my mind or something after I completed it."
Topmaniac's eyes turned into fireballs again. "YOU DARE DISRESPECT THE BATTLEROCK GALAXY? I WAS PERSONALLY PLACED IN CHARGE OF DESIGNING THAT GALAXY!"
Oh geez, here we go.
"YOU HAVE INSULTED ME FOR THE LAST TIME, MARIO! AND NOW, FOR THAT, YOU SHALL DIE!"
"Wait, hold up," I said. "Before you go about killing me or whatever, I really want to know how the heck you're even still alive. Because I destroyed you last time we fought. So…how the heck are you back?" I'd come to terms long ago with the fact that I would never get a clear answer as to how Bowser has kept cheating death over and over again throughout the years, but maybe I could get a clear answer here.
"YOU DIDN'T DESTROY ME IN THE BATTLEROCK GALAXY, YOU MERELY DESTROYED THAT PHYSICAL FORM, NOT THE CHAIN OF ONES AND ZEROES THAT YOU MIGHT CALL MY 'SOUL.' AS SOON AS IT WAS GONE, MY CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFERRED INTO A SECOND FORM, ONE THAT I WAS PREPARED TO USE TO FIGHT YOU IN THE DREADNOUGHT GALAXY. BUT THEN YOU NEVER SHOWED UP THERE!"
Oh right, now that he mentioned it, I remember reading about that place in my Super Mario Galaxy Prima Guide. Well, it's not my fault that Bowser made it so I could get enough Power Stars to reach the center of the universe and defeat him without ever setting foot in World 6.
Topmaniac continued his rant. "THEN I WAS DESTROYED AND REBORN DURING THE SECOND BIG BANG, BUT WITHOUT A PHYSICAL BODY, EXISTING ONLY AS AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TRAPPED WITHIN MY TOP-MOTHERSHIP, WHICH THOSE PETTY LUMAS LEFT IN A PITIFUL STATE WHEN THEY RESTORED THE COSMOS."
How was it that I had never once heard the incident back in 2007 referred to as the "Second Big Bang" before, and now both Baby Luma and Topmaniac had called it that in the span of a single day?
"OVER THE YEARS, MY TOPMEN CREATED THIS NEW PHYSICAL BODY FOR ME, BUT WITHOUT THE ENERGY OF A POWER STAR, THERE WAS NO WAY TO POWER IT. WE HAD NO WAY TO ACCESS THE POWER STAR CONCEALED WITHIN THE GOLDEN CHOMP WITHOUT YOUR UNWITTING ASSISTANCE, AS TOPMEN CANNOT JUMP AND GROUND-POUND ON THAT BLUE SWITCH AS YOU HAD TO DO. AND THE TOP-MOTHERSHIP WAS TOO LOW ON FUEL TO ALLOW US TO TRAVEL ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE TO COLLECT ANOTHER POWER STAR INSTEAD.
"SO I THANK YOU, MARIO. FOR WITHOUT YOU, MY FULL RESTORATION WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE. AND NOW, YOU SHALL SUFFER THE FULL WRATH OF…TOPMANIAC!"
Well, at least, if nothing else, this confirmed that there wasn't supposed to be a boss battle at the end of this level, because the whole flying saucer-Topmaniac thing was starting to feel really, really shoehorned in, even by Bowser's standards.
But on the other hand, it was still a boss battle I'd have to deal with, so that wasn't really much of a comfort.
A/N: Next up: duel with Topmaniac and Mario finally heads back to World 3!