Chapter 78: Fireworks in the Chompworks

"Dude, you don't know what you're talking about! Mike is not gonna pick Vivian! They have nothing in common! I don't know how Vivian even made it to the finale!"

"YOU ARE INCORRECT. I HAVE RUN OVER 20 MILLION PERMUTATIONS, AND IN 83.9% OF THEM, MIKE PICKS VIVIAN."

"They're clearly not meant for each other! Come on, Mike and Sheila have so much in common. They both love kittens, and fishing, and hiking. They went to that Imagine Dragoneels concert together a few weeks back! What common interests do Mike and Vivian have, huh?"

"I DID NOT SAY THEY WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER, I SIMPLY SAID THAT I BELIEVE MIKE WILL PICK HER. ADMITTEDLY, 97.5% OF THE PERMUTATIONS WHERE THEY END UP TOGETHER ALSO END IN THEM BREAKING UP WITHIN THREE MONTHS."

Four hours had passed since I'd decided I wasn't leaving the planet. And somehow in that time, Topmaniac and I had gone from trash-talking each other to bonding over our hatred of medicine commercials to trashing on each other's favorite TV shows to bonding over our shared guilty pleasure The Bachelor-toad to trashing each other's predictions for the finale on Monday night. And no matter how heated the trash-talk got, much to my frustration, Topmaniac stuck to his guns about not getting within my jumping range.

So basically, as he'd said, we were at an impasse.

"IN OTHER NEWS, I SAW A POLL YESTERDAY THAT SAID MELISSA IS CURRENTLY THE MOST POPULAR OPTION TO BE THE NEXT BACHELORETTE-TOAD."

"What? Wasn't she the one who had that full-on breakdown just because Linda called her a jerk, and then she tried to self-eliminate? And then when they wouldn't let her do that, she ate that Poison Mushroom so she'd be hospitalized for a few weeks and, for all intents and purposes, eliminated."

"YOU ARE CORRECT. IT WOULD APPEAR MOST FANS FEEL BAD FOR HER AND BELIEVE SHE DESERVES A SECOND CHANCE AT FINDING LOVE."

Alright, this stupid faux camaraderie had gone on long enough. Maybe we had one or two things in common, but Topmaniac was still my enemy, still just a machine, and most importantly, still the guy who'd tricked me with a nonexistent vagina laser. My first step had to be to find a way to get over to him without setting foot on the floor of the arena, where I'd be a sitting duck for his saw blades.

If only I had a Super Acorn on me, then I could just fly over and ground-pound on him from midair.

Heck, I would take a flippin' Spring Mushroom at this point, which under pretty much any other circumstances is one of my most-hated power-ups of all time. But here it would let me get close to Topmaniac, then jump high enough to avoid his saw blades and come down on top of him.

"Baby Luma, you got any thoughts?" I whispered. "I'm open to any suggestions you've got here."

"As a matter of fact, I do have an idea, but I need a bit more time for it to work," he replied. "Stall him a bit longer."

"What's your plan?"

"I'll explain it later. Just, when I tell you, jump down onto the lower platforms and run towards Topmaniac."

"Run towards-?" I caught myself and lowered my voice again. "Run towards him? Are you crazy? Run towards the guy with the saw blades that are gonna chop me to bits?"

"Trust me, it'll work."

"WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?"

"Baby Luma. He's not all that fond of my plan to eat him," I half-lied.

"AH. A LOVERS' SPAT?" Each of his eyes briefly pixelized into the word "ZING!" before returning to normal.

Okay, as much as I hate to admit it, I've been on the receiving end of some good zingers in my time. That was not a good zinger. In fact, I'm not even sure that met the minimum criteria to be considered a zinger in the first place. I mean, objectively, calling an argument between me and Baby Luma a "lovers' spat" could be a pretty clever insult, but only if we were arguing about something like what to watch on TV at night or whether one of us was pitching in enough around the Starship. You know, things that couples argue about all the time, not one of us fake-planning to eat the other.

Well, if Baby Luma said he needed more time, I guess I wasn't really in much of a position to argue. I did, after all, say I was open to "any suggestions." Alright, what else could I argue with Topmaniac about to waste time?

"Your spaceship looks stupid," I finally decided.

"ONLY BECAUSE OF THE RUINOUS STATE IT IS CURRENTLY IN. ONCE I HAVE DESTROYED YOU, I SHALL RESTORE IT TO ITS FORMER GLORY. THEN I SHALL HEAD TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET AND DESTROY THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM WITH AN ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT. THIS ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT SHALL BE LARGER THAN ANY OTHER ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT THAT HAS EVER BEEN CONDUCTED. IN FACT, THIS ORBITAL-"

"Stop. Saying. 'Orbital bombardment!'"

Topmaniac narrowed his eyes. "I WILL NOT STOP SAYING 'ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT.' ESPECIALLY NOW THAT I KNOW IT AGGRAVATES YOU WHEN I SAY 'ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT.' I HAVE NEVER CONDUCTED AN ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT BEFORE, BUT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A DREAM OF MINE TO CONDUCT AN ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT. I HAVE SEEN MANY ORBITAL…."

"Baby Luma, please tell me you're almost ready," I whispered.

"Just a couple more minutes," he replied.

"Care to tell me what your plan is while this doofus is distracted listening to himself talk?"

"Fine. You know the Power Star energy I absorbed yesterday to fix Starship Mario?"

"Yes…?"

"Well, even after I used it, there were small traces of the Power Star's energy left inside me. You know like how even when batteries are supposedly dead, there's still a teeny tiny bit of charge left in them?"

No.

Baby Luma continued, "It's kinda like that. But the tiny bit of Power Star energy left in me was diffused throughout all my atoms, spread too thin for me to harness and do anything with. I could either wait for that remaining energy to gradually fade away on its own, or condense the fragments of energy within me into one clump that I could then use. Like how when you're finished eating a snack, there's usually a bunch of crumbs left over. And you don't bother eating all the tiny crumbs, but if you could shove all the crumbs together into one…crumb-clump, that would be large enough to be worth eating."

This explanation had gotten so ridiculous that I think it had somehow made a full circuit back around to being logical. "So you're saying your plan is to clump all these bits of energy together and then…do what with them?"

"Get close to Topmaniac and fire an energy blast at him. I should have enough energy to pull that off, and if I do it at close range, it should be strong enough to knock him backwards into the lava, which should destroy him."

"I really not liking all the shoulds I'm hearing in that sentence."

"Look, I've never done this before, okay? Get off my case. Come on, just another minute or so and I should be good to go."

"…ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT. IN FACT, THE ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT THAT I ORBITALLY BOMBARD THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM WITH WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE LARGEST ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ORBITAL BOMBARDMENTS!" Topmaniac continued vaingloriously ranting. "COME ON, MARIO. TELL ME SOME OTHER WORDS YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR OVER AND OVER!"

"How about 'I love Mario'?" I said.

"HA. NICE TRY, BUT YOU'RE NOT GETTING ME TO SAY THAT. YOU PROBABLY HAVE A HIDDEN CAMERA SOMEWHERE ON YOU THAT WOULD BE RECORDING IT, RIGHT?"

"Okay, Mario, now," Baby Luma whispered. "Get down there and run towards him. I'll do the rest."

I sighed. "I sure hope you know what you're doing." Then I leapt off the platforms and landed in the arena. "Come on, Topmaniac, I'm right here! Come and get me, I dare you!" After briefly hesitating, I took off running towards the psycho robot.

"FOOLISH MARIO, YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!" Topmaniac said. Then he leveled his saw blades at me, started spinning them faster, and skaroided towards me again.

And just as we were about to collide and I thought for a second that Baby Luma was just trying to get me killed, a beam of yellow energy shot towards Topmaniac from just above my head. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before the beam collided with him with a distorted metallic screech. Topmaniac flew backwards (literally flew, he got a good five feet of air) straight through the rails that led to the Chomp hole, then splashed into the lava.

Meanwhile, Baby Luma started smacking me on the head repeatedly. "Ow!" I cried. "What the heck, dude?"

"Sorry," he said. "That blast caught your hair on fire. I'm just patting it out. Oh, and…." He floated in front of me and held up a shredded scrap of blackened fabric. "…this is all that's left of your cap."

Great. Looks like I'd be buying yet another new Super Mario costume.

While this was going on, Topmaniac had been shouting something at me from the lava that I wasn't paying all that much attention to, given the more pressing issue of being on fire. It was probably some stupid, cliché bad-guy "you haven't seen the last of me, I'll get you Mario and your little Luma too" monologue. The last part of him to sink below the surface was one of his saw arms. After that, a few bubbles on the surface of the lava were all that indicated he had ever been there. Then the Power Star that I should've gotten, like, four and a half hours ago flew from the lava and hovered above the platform where it had been before the Top-Mothership abducted it. And before the ship could abduct this Power Star and insert it into some backup body or something that the Topmen had made for Topmaniac, I leapt up to grab the Power Star and completed the mission.

Arriving back on Starship Mario, my Power Star and Comet Medal totals now numbered at 34 and 16, respectively. Neither the Toad Brigade nor Yoshi nor Percy were up on the helm, so they were probably belowdecks. Hopefully Bartholomew had gotten the situation in the bathroom taken care of, but I wasn't getting my hopes up.

"Alright, Baby Luma," I said. "I've got a couple things to attend to. While I take care of them, you head down to the Endless Field and go tell off your imaginary friend or whatever it is you have to do to get him to go away."

"You really don't want Willy here?" he said.

"No, I don't want Willy here! That guy creeps me out!"

Baby Luma sighed. "Alright, fine, I'll go tell him to leave." With that, he floated into the Starship's interior.

Meanwhile, first things first, I followed him belowdecks and started calling for the members of the Toad Brigade one by one. "Bartholomew! Jacques! Daniel! Blue! Hugh! Banktoad! Where are you?"

A few seconds later, Bartholomew came running down the hall towards me. "Oh hey Mario, what's up?" he asked. "I got the situation in the bathroom all squared away. I don't think we should let that toilet plunge itself again. It clearly has no idea what it's doing. Anyway, after that, the rest of the Brigade and I were looking through some of the other rooms Baby Luma created and we found–"

"Have you come across any weapons in any of these rooms?" I interrupted. "You know, of the exploding variety? The larger the better."

Bartholomew rubbed his chin. "Hmm. No weapons, but a bunch of fireworks. Why, what do you need them for?"

That's right, now I remembered I'd seen "Room Full of Fireworks!" on the list of new rooms in the stairwell that morning. And at least using up some of them now would mean there were less of them sitting around the Starship just waiting to go off and wreck the place.

I opened the door to a nearby closet and took out a large garbage bag. "Show me where they are."

Five minutes later, we'd lugged a significant portion of the Starship's fireworks stash onto the helm. "Hey, can I come with you?" Bartholomew asked. "I bet this is gonna look awesome, and I'd hate to miss it."

"Alright, fine," I said. "Grab on." I gripped his hand and hit the "FLY TO THIS GALAXY" button on the dashboard, catapulting me, Bartholomew, and the bag of fireworks back towards the Chompworks Galaxy.

Now I just had to hope that in the ten minutes or so I'd been gone, the Top-Mothership hadn't left the galaxy. Because if it was still there, I was gonna make damn well sure I didn't have to go the rest of this adventure constantly looking over my shoulder to see if this flying saucer was coming after me.

Bartholomew, the fireworks, and I landed on the Starting Planet, and much to my relief, I saw that the Top-Mothership was still hovering above the Chomp-shaped planet.

"Wow!" Bartholomew gasped. "This place looks awesome!"

Okay, the two of us clearly have very different definitions of "awesome."

I opened the bag and pointed towards the Top-Mothership. "Set up all the fireworks so they're shooting in that direction. We want to blow that flying saucer out of the sky."

"Are you sure?" Bartholomew asked. "It looks kinda cool. Don't you wanna try maybe commandeering it instead?"

"No, I do not want to try that. Now get the fireworks set up."

Suddenly, a low rumbling came from the direction of the Top-Mothership. I looked up to see that, slowly but surely, it was moving.

"Quickly!" I urged. "We don't have much more time!"

We got the array of giant fireworks from Starship Mario set up and aimed at the Top-Mothership, which was still, thankfully, moving quite slowly. I then lit one of the matches I'd also taken from the fireworks room and lit all the fireworks' fuses in quick succession. A few seconds later, the fuses burned down, and with one shrill whistle after another, the fireworks took off, spiraling towards the Top-Mothership.

"This is gonna look so cool," Bartholomew said. "I wish I had my explorer's camera with me, but that was in my backpack when I lost it in the Rightside Down Galaxy."

I flinched, but I don't think Bartholomew noticed. At least I hope he didn't notice.

The fireworks all flew smack-dab into the Top-Mothership, except for one that flew way off-kilter and blew off part of one of those pointless screw-and-gear planets. The Top-Mothership exploded in a series of blasts of red, green, blue, yellow, pink, orange, purple, white, teal, and (for some reason) black fireworks, and plummeted towards the Chomp-shaped planet. The resulting CRASH was audible even from the Starting Planet and displaced a bunch of lava straight over the sides of the planet. The Top-Mothership, meanwhile, slowly sank into the lava. Mission accomplished.

And on that note, Bartholomew and I returned to Starship Mario.

Upon getting back there, my first order of business was steering the Starship away from the Chompworks Galaxy, which it was directly beneath. In my plan to blow up the Top-Mothership, I hadn't accounted for all the lava that splashed out of the Chomp-shaped planet, and the last thing I needed was said lava falling right onto Starship Mario like had happened with the Star Ball back at the Rolling Masterpiece Galaxy.

"That was a lot of fun, Mario," Bartholomew said. "We should blow up spaceships together more often. It's been a long time since I've blown up a spaceship, and even longer since I've blown one up with someone else. I forgot how much fun it is."

Wasn't even gonna ask.

"Is Daniel still in possession of both his eyes?" I asked.

"What? Oh, yeah. After we finished breakfast, he remembered that the new season of Doctor Boo premiered last night, and he decided that sitting down and watching that was all the happiness he needed in his life. Well, I'd better go check in with the rest of the Brigade, see how cleaning the bathroom is going. See you later, Mario!" He turned and headed back belowdecks.

Well, hopefully the new season of Doctor Boo would keep Daniel content for now (however that works, since all that show does for me is give me a flippin' headache), and Baby Luma would exorcise Willy from the Endless Field before he could share any more demented, potentially deadly, life advice with the Starship's other inhabitants.

I mean, I know I give Penguru a lot of crap, but at least the stupidity he dishes out isn't gonna do anything worse than waste a few hours of your life.

Next up, once I felt I'd put sufficient distance between the Starship and the Chompworks Galaxy, I lifted off the panel on top of the Starship's dashboard and took out the phone inside. Oh great, I'd forgotten, this was that dumb…what had Lubba called it, a rotary phone? The one with that wheel-thing with all the numbers on it. I know last time I'd tried getting it to work by pressing on the numbers, but that hadn't worked, so what had he told me to do? Did I have to spin the wheel to each number? I think that was it.

That was in fact what I had to do, and so I dialed 1-800-758-6237, me and Luigi's number. I wasn't waiting until I got back home to smash that Topmaniac-infested computer, I was gonna call Luigi and have him do it for me.

Only Luigi didn't pick up, and so I was subjected to listening to the greeting message Luigi had recorded several years ago for us:

"Hello! You've reached the Mario Bros. of Mario Bros. Plumbing. Unfortunately, we are not able to answer your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep, and we'll be sure to get back to you in a timely manner. Have a nice day."

Objectively there's nothing wrong with the message, but I hate it because Luigi created it to replace the greeting message I'd already recorded and thought was way more clever, just because I couple customers started whining about it and calling it rude:

"Hey, you've reached Mario Bros. Plumbing. We aren't here right now, so leave a message. Or don't, whatever, I don't give a-." Then the beep would play, making it sound like my next word had been bleeped out. I thought it was pretty funny, but apparently the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom has absolutely no sense of humor.

"Hey, Luigi," I said after the beep sounded. "Uh, listen, when you get this, I'm gonna need you to smash our computer. It's been infected with a virus that's basically letting one of Bowser's minions spy on everything we do on there. Oh, and when I get back, you're gonna tell me what you really did with that 'TOPM . exe' file a few years ago. Bye."

Next, I headed down to my room and ordered a new Super Mario cap (apparently they're sold separately, so I didn't have to buy a whole new suit this time), as well as a sheet of Kevlar to attach to the inside of the cap.

After I'd gotten all that done, Baby Luma still wasn't back yet, but there was no way in heck I was heading up to the Endless Field to check in on him. So instead, I headed up to the helm and contemplated where to go to collect my next Power Star.

But then I remembered that, even once Baby Luma finished evicting his imaginary friend, I still didn't have a cap. Which, granted, wasn't that big a deal, seeing as how my past several non-Kevlar-lined caps offered pretty much zero cranial protection either, but there's something that feels inherently ridiculous about walking around with a Luma sitting on my head not covered by a cap. Not to mention, it seemed like I would basically be tempting fate to go out on another mission capless what I was so close to having another Kevlar-lined cap in my possession.

And I had spent a lot of time in the Chompworks Galaxy during the stalemate with Topmaniac….

Fine, I'd call it a day and put off adventuring for Power Stars again until tomorrow.

At that moment, Baby Luma came flying towards me. I crossed my arms. "About time you're back. What the heck were you doing down there?"

Baby Luma appeared confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean in the time you were gone, Bartholomew and I headed back to the Chompworks Galaxy and blew up Topmaniac's ship, I called Luigi, and I ordered myself a new cap. I mean, come on, how long can it possibly take to get rid of someone who's not even real – are your eyes yellow?"

"Huh? I don't know. Maybe. Probably just a side effect of that energy beam I hit Topmaniac with."

"You sure? Because I've got enough problems as is without having to be worried about you potentially giving me hepatitis."

"You do know Lumas can't get hepatitis, right?"

… I'm just gonna assume that was some other piece of Luma lore that Rosalina told me during my first galactic adventure, but I completely forgot about.

Anyway, after that, I had a quick dinner before retiring to my cabin for the evening. "Alright, Baby Luma," I said as I flopped on my bed and closed my eyes. "Watch your Hallmushroom Christmas movies or whatever. I'm going to bed."

"Ugh," Baby Luma said.

Did he just say "Ugh" about watching Hallmushroom Christmas movies? I opened my eyes and sat straight up. "What did you say?"

Baby Luma glanced from me, to the TV, then back again. "Oh. Right. Christmas movies. I wasn't really listening to what you were saying, and for a second I thought it was the old TV and it was your night to watch your thing. But, yay! Christmas movies!"

I narrowed my eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Stop mother-henning me!" Baby Luma snapped, picking up the remote. "Fine, I'll turn on the TV if you want me to so bad."

…

Okay, I officially had no idea how the flip the conversation had gotten turned around like this. Maybe everything would be clearer in the morning.

I closed my eyes again as Baby Luma turned on the TV. And, to my surprise, the room became filled not with sappy, romantic Christmas music, but with the sound of gunfire. I opened my eyes again, not daring to get my hopes up….

…and somehow, in a stroke of good luck the likes of which has never happened to me before, there was the Punishroom on the TV screen, gunning down a bunch of lowlife criminals.

What the-?

How the-?

"The Punishroom?" Baby Luma said in disbelief. "Ugh. Gag me. I'm not watching this stupid show." He put on a pouty face and floated under my bed.

Man, what the heck crawled up his butt and died? I thought he'd agreed that he wasn't gonna bitch and moan about watching The Punishroom every other night.

Which still left the question of why the TV wasn't playing those godawful Christmas movies like it was last night.

Unless….

Unless Baby Luma's subconscious changes to the TV had made it so that it alternated playing his movies one night, my show the next night, rinse and repeat, to preserve the pattern we'd established. Which kinda P.O.'ed me because I knew full well that if I'd been given the power to reconfigure the TV to my liking, subconsciously or otherwise, I would have made it so it played what I wanted to watch every night, regardless of any prior agreement.

I hated knowing that someone else had more of a sense of justice and fairness than me. I don't know why I hated it because most of the time I don't really care if I'm being just or fair or not, but I did.

But sitting and watching a few episodes of The Punishroom quickly pushed aside those unpleasant thoughts, and my day ended on a thoroughly good note for once. Which I took as nothing short of a confirmation that the next day was going to somehow be even worse than this one.