Chapter 81: Party Time

The Launch Star shot me to a much smaller planet. It was spherical except for several large mounds protruding from it, but the only noteworthy aspect of it was the Sling Star on the planet's underside. After deeming the planet otherwise useless, I got in the Sling Star, which shot me to the next planet. I figured the other one had just been your standard, run-of-the-mill, small pre-boss planet that I run into half the time for no apparent reason.

The next planet was also spherical, but was made of bricks that were mostly concealed by a thin layer of snow. Also present were two dead trees and a handful of larger snow mounds.

Suddenly, a shower of snow fell onto the planet from above. I looked up just in time to see the entire PLANET I'd just been on come plummeting towards me. What the flip?! I leapt aside at the last second and the smaller planet crashed onto the top of the one I was on now, where the bricks making up the planet were exposed. I turned back and saw-

Oh you've gotta be kidding me.

More snow slid off the front of the smaller planet, revealing that it had a face with two giant ice crystals for eyes, and a big, bulbous, RED NOSE. So was this the snow monster that Sidney had heard about? Moreover, was this Sorbetti, then? Probably. The name was a bit odd, since I didn't see any hints of sorbet anywhere on it. Then again, it wasn't really much more of a misnomer than Peewee Piranha, so whatever, I guess.

And I guess the one silver lining to having to somehow fight an entire planet was that there was now no way for those dang-blasted Star Bunnies to follow me here. In fact, not only would they not be able to follow me, but thanks to the snowstorm around the planet they were currently on, they wouldn't even know that they wouldn't be able to follow me until they'd already shot themselves out of the Launch Star.

Well, that's what you get for being jerks to me. Like they say, karma's a bitch.

But of course, for the time being, I had bigger problems, like the sentient planet that had just laughed and started to roll towards me.

I turned and ran, searching for a Rock Mushroom anywhere on the planet. But after scouring it over and over and over again, being chased the whole time by the seemingly immune-to-exhaustion Sorbetti, I came to the conclusion that there was no Rock Mushroom on the planet. What sort of garbage was this? Every previous time a boss mission has heavily involved use of a particular power-up, said power-up is also used during the boss battle itself!

I had to use the Spin-Drill to defeat Digga-Leg in the Spin-Dig Galaxy.

I had to use the Bee Mushroom to defeat Bugaboom in the Honeyhive Galaxy.

Heck, I had to use the Spring Mushroom to defeat Mecha-Bowser in the Toy Time Galaxy.

The only exception I've come across is Baron Burp in the Freezeflame Galaxy, but I'd say even that's debatable. I mean, I didn't use the Ice Flower to battle him, per se, but I needed it to get back up to the arena if he knocked me off it during our battle.

So, yeah. This was unprecedented.

Suddenly, I saw one of the Star Bunnies go shooting from the Launch Star on the snowstorm-y planet up into the air and then come plummeting back down. As I continued running, I looked up to see what happened to the Star Bunny. And, in a stroke of misfortune the likes of which could only befall me, the Star Bunny fell past the Sling Star, only to somehow get caught in the improbably large gravity well of the planet I was currently on and get sucked towards it. Oh come on, are you flippin' kidding me? This was ridiculous!

And more importantly, how the flip was I supposed to defeat Sorbetti? I'd expected that he (she? it? they?) would chase me for a while and then pull out some other move that would temporarily immobilize it, and then I would find some way to damage it during that time. But nope, Sorbetti just kept on rolling and rolling and (rolling on the river – not the time, Mario). Which meant one of two things. Either Bowser had finally created a boss that was unbeatable, or Sorbetti had some weakness that could be exploited even while it was rolling, like my face still being vulnerable to damage even when I was in my curled-up Rock Mushroom form.

Meanwhile, the Star Bunny landed across the planet from me. "Woah!" he chirped. "A double boss fight, boiyoing!"

I took that to mean that he was rudely calling me a boss as well.

I looked behind me and saw that Sorbetti had stopped following me; instead, it had changed course and was now bearing down on the Star Bunny, whose back was turned to the incoming danger. Welp, I sure wasn't gonna warn him.

The Star Bunny took his phone out of his pocket, dialed it, and held it up to his ear. "Hey, it's me," he said. "I told you Mario was full of it, boiyoing! There were no rabbit traps! I made it down the slide fine, and – AIIIIEEEEEEEEE!"

Sorbetti mowed down the Star Bunny from behind, knocking the phone out of his grasp. And as Sorbetti continued rolling, I saw the blue tips of the Star Bunny's ears just barely sticking out from Sorbetti's snowy surface.

"Sidney! Sidney, you okay, buddy?" one of the other Star Bunnies called through the phone. "Oh man, he shouted, and…and did you hear that crunch? I think he got caught in a rabbit trap!"

"Boiyoing! No way I'm going down that slide now," one of the other Star Bunnies said.

Huh. It would seem that Sorbetti had actually done me a favor. Now no doubt the other Star Bunnies would remember Sidney as a cautionary tale about the dangers of rabbit traps, like that one guy in every horror movie who's like, "tHeRe'S nO [monster/killer/whatever] hErE!" only to immediately get killed by the [monster/killer/whatever].

Well, now that my Star Bunny problems had seemingly been taken care of, I could fully devote my mental faculties to finding a way to stop Sorbetti, who was now chasing me again. And like I'd been thinking before Sidney landed and distracted me, maybe there was a weak spot on Sorbetti that I could hit even while it was chasing me.

Now that I thought about it, the monster's nose certainly looked like it had some give to it….

I slightly adjusted the direction I was running so that Sorbetti was rolling forwards after me, then waited for it to be at the point in rolling when its nose was descending towards me. And then I stopped and Star-Spun that big red nose with all my might.

Sorbetti flipped backwards and crashed to the ground. But almost immediately, it started rolling towards me again. Seriously? No short reprieve? No explosion of Star Bits? Well, that was unexpected.

But Sorbetti stupidly rolled towards me the exact same way it had been rolling before, with its nose heading right towards me. And so I promptly Star-Spun its nose a second time, flinging it backwards again.

This time it came rolling towards me faster with angry steam blasting from it. No, no, you don't get to get mad at me now! That was the second time I hit your nose; that one's shame on you.

Aaaand once again Sorbetti was rolling towards me nose-first.

So, once again, I Star-Spun its nose. Sorbetti flew back and crashed to the ground again, but this time it stayed down, groaning. Then it exploded into a Power Star.

Wait, seriously? That was it? Dang, this might just have been the easiest boss fight ever. And here I was getting a bit worried that the easiness of the fight so far meant there would be a second phase to it. Like back in my first galactic adventure when I thought I'd defeated Bouldergeist initially, only for him to reassemble sporting a pair of arms. For all I knew, Sorbetti could've had a second form where, I don't know, a pair of ice pellet-shooting machine guns popped out of its sides or something.

Sorbetti exploding also released Sidney, who flipped through the air and landed with a whumph on a nearby pile of snow. He gave a weak groan and tried to prop himself up, only to fall back down right away. I spied his phone several yards away, its screen cracked and some of its electronic "innards" spilling out into the snow. Someone had clearly crushed it during the battle, but I had no idea if it was me or Sorbetti. Either way, seeing as how he had no way to contact the other Star Bunnies and tell them what had really happened, and would be stranded here once I left, I had no doubt that campfire stories about rabbit traps would now become a mainstay among Star Bunnies.

And on that note, I grabbed the Power Star to complete the mission.

But as I returned to Starship Mario, I got tangled up in something when I was several feet from the helm and ended up tumbling to the ground with my arms and legs partly restrained. What the flip? The first thought my mind went to was that Lubba had somehow returned, taken over the Starship, and set up some sort of net to trap me in when I inevitably returned. And accordingly, I was about to start shouting for reinforcements, but then I noticed what I had gotten tangled in.

Party streamers.

And all over the helm were bunches of balloons, more streamers, confetti, presents and what looked like the brutalized remains of a pinata under the pine tree, and a few picnic tables where Yoshi, Percy, and the Toad Brigade were eating a cake shaped like a purple mushroom head.

Seriously?

I was off getting Power Stars for them, and they were lounging around having a party?

"What the heck is this?" I asked.

Bartholomew turned towards me. "Oh, hey Mario. We wanted to tell you, but you were already gone by the time we got up to set all this up. It's Hugh's birthday today, so we're throwing him a party."

Well, that explained all the decorations, and the color of the cake. But seriously? Hugh gets streamers and balloons and a pinata and a veritable Mount Wario of presents, and meanwhile all I got for my birthday was a dead Scaredy Rat?

I untangled myself from the streamer. "Where'd you get all this stuff?"

"From the Party Supplies Room," Daniel said.

Oh. Well, that explains it. Of course they got all this from the Party Supplies Room. Why, where else would they get all this from?

Daniel pointed above me. "Hey, what's Baby Luma doing?"

I looked up. The Power Star I'd returned with had been floating towards the chimney, which all the Power Stars I collect fly down to enter the Starship's engine. But the Power Star was frozen above the chimney, with Baby Luma extending an appendage towards it. Then turned around and floated back towards Baby Luma. And just like had happened in the The Village Galaxy, golden tendrils of energy flowed from the Power Star towards Baby Luma. "Ah, that's it…," he chuckled. "That's it…."

"Is he powering himself up to do some sort of super-cool party trick for me?" Hugh asked.

I was wondering the exact same thing, but Baby Luma ignored Hugh. Instead, once the Power Star was fully depleted, he simply hopped back under my cap.

"Um, no, no, no." I took my cap off. "What the heck was that about? What are you planning to use that energy for?" Whatever was going on with Baby Luma just kept getting more and more suspicious.

"Nothing," Baby Luma said. "I just want to have it in me. Is that such a problem for you that you've gotta make a big stink about it?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, it is, because you're pressed right against my head, and you're…pulsating and very hot-"

"Woah, Mario, are you seriously hitting on me? Come on, you know I'm underage."

What? "Ugh!" I gagged. "No, not hot like that. Hot like you're a cell phone that's been left in the sun and is about to spontaneously combust right on top of my head."

I could almost feel Baby Luma roll his eyes. "I'll be fine. Geez, M-Cap, stop being such a worrywart."

Um….

Okay, first of all, M-Cap? I don't think anyone in the history of my entire life has ever called me "M-Cap" before.

And second, worrywart? That's one of those words that you vaguely know in the back of your mind exists, but never really think about because nobody ever says them.

"How did you even do that?" I asked Baby Luma. "Didn't you have to meditate or something for several hours last time to be able to asorb a Power Star's energy?"

"I did. Overnight. While I was sleeping."

Okay, so this wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, then. He'd been planning to do this since last night.

Whatever.

Hugh cut off a piece of cake, slid it onto a paper plate, and held it out to me. "You want some cake, Mario?"

"Uh…sure." This isn't Lubba offering you cake, it's Hugh. That means it's probably not poisoned. I sat at one of the picnic tables next to Yoshi and took a bit of the cake. Hmm. Red velvet. Not my favorite flavor, and a bit runny, but it wasn't bad.

"You sure got this party set up pretty fast," I remarked.

"We were down in the Party Supplies Room getting these decorations together when you left," Bartholomew said. "Working together, this didn't take long to set up. Then after that we brought Hugh up here. He wanted to do the pinata first, and then after that we sat down to have some cake, and then you got back. I mean, you were gone over an hour."

I was? Damn, how much time had I wasted running from Sorbetti on the boss planet?

"You should've seen Hugh attacking that pinata," Percy quacked. "Even once it was on the ground, he just kept whacking it and whacking it and whacking it. It was like watching Negan kill Glenn on The Walking Dead, but with chocolates and lollipops instead of brains."

Well, that was certainly a visual. Certainly not the most appetizing visual when I was eating a mushy red cake that was literally shaped like someone's head, but whatever.

"Penguins watch The Walking Dead?" Jacques asked. "Wow. I've never seen you guys tune into anything edgier than a home renovation show."

Percy gave a snort-quack. "That's all the Coach's doing. He doesn't like us watching anything that he says could 'encourage violent tendencies.'" He made air quotes with his flippers. "I say that's a load of QUACK and I'm gonna watch what I want."

After we finished eating the cake, Hugh opened his presents, most of which the Toad Brigade admitted were items they'd stumbled across in the other new rooms on Starship Mario. The first one was a Nintendo Switch, which I guess is a newly released smartphone model that derives its name from the fact that it's got an extendable switchblade hidden inside it.

"Lubba and his cronies'll never see it coming if they ever decide to set foot back on this ship," Daniel said after presenting Hugh with the gift. "Wait…foot? Appendage?Is they ever set appendage back on this ship? That doesn't sound right…."

I shoved the next present towards Hugh to shut Daniel up.

Hugh's other gifts included a box of fireworks labeled "Pyrotechnic Poochy-Palooza" that he claimed he'd wanted for as long as he could remember, a miniature block of sentient cheese that he named "Cheesy McCheeseFace" (and that I predicted would take no time at all to aggravate the crap out of me), and a vacuum cleaner that somehow sucks everything it picks up into a stabilized black hole inside it.

And after that, the festivities slowly wound down. Hugh ran off to play with Cheesy McCheeseFace, vowing to return once the sun had gone down to set off some of his fireworks. The other members of the Brigade started cleaning up from the party, a task that I was initially willing to help with until they started singing the Toad Brigade Happy Work Song, at which point I noped the hell out.

At that point, in World 3, it was about 12:30P.M. Too early for me to justify taking the rest of the rest of the day off from Power Star hunting, so I figured I might as well decide where to go next. I stepped back up to the steering wheel and surveyed my options in World 3 once more.

The first thing I noticed was that that gosh dang flip-darned whirly-bird garbage-munching Prankster Comet that Bartholomew kept nagging me about was once again orbiting the Cloudy Court Galaxy…but, just like at the Yoshi Star Galaxy, seeing the color of the comet did nothing to help me figure out what the mission entailed. Because this comet was maroon, another color that never showed up in my first galactic adventure. Gosh dang it, were any of the Prankster Comets this time around gonna be ones I'd dealt with before?

Well, let's see. Back in the Yoshi Star Galaxy, I'd figured that comet being orange might mean it was a combination of the red Speedy Comets and the yellow Fast Foe Comets. And…I mean, I was kinda right? Like, I was on a timer, and the foes…they weren't speedy, but they were the focal point of the mission in that I had to defeat all of them to get the Power Star. So…what could I deduce about this comet in the same way?

(Just to clarify, I still had no intentions of ever heading back to the Cloudy Court Galaxy, but I thought it couldn't hurt to get a prediction ready for when I inevitably ran into this type of comet again in some other galaxy down the road.)

Well, of all the Prankster Comet colors I came across in my first galactic adventure, this one was closest to, again, the red Speedy Comets. So this was probably some other sort of timed mission, but with a twist. The color also reminded me a bit of that weird, oily-looking background behind Bowser's Dark Matter Plant, so maybe that was it. A speed run with a bunch of dark matter randomly inserted throughout the level.

Yeah, no thank you. Homicidal Spiky Spikepeckers, warp fields, and illiterate bobbleheads were already more than enough nonsense to be putting up with in a single level, thank you very much.

But that still left the question of where to go next, since my opinions on the other galaxies in World 3 were still just as blasé as they had been before. Well, maybe in that case it was time to head back even further to World 2 and survey my options there.

Suffice to say they were not much more satisfying.

There was the Shop Class Galaxy, which was apparently hiding a Secret Star somewhere in it, but I didn't even remember enough about that place to start theorizing about where said Secret Star was, nor care enough about that place to go and look for it. The Hightail Falls, Wild Glide, and Cosmological Corvette-or-whatever-the-flip-its-name-is Galaxies were completed, as was Bowser's Lava Lair. Which left the exceedingly boring-looking Boulder Bowl Galaxy as the only viable candidate for my next mission.

So, yay. I guess that was where I was heading next.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapters! I don't want to give anything away for now, but remember the rabbit traps. Mario's lie about them is gonna have some very unexpected consequences in the coming installments that will also spill over into the events of "Harley's Angels"….

So now for my announcement: over the next month or so, I'm planning to post another batch of "MGT" chapters and one (maybe two, if the writing gods are with me) more chapters of "Harley's Angels," leading up to the 3rd anniversary special on August 25th. After that I'll be switching gears to work on a Mario horror fanfic for Halloween. I don't have a title worked out for it yet, but it will be set during the events of Super Mario World in an alternate timeline from the main MGTU. I've always felt there was something vaguely unsettling about SMW that I can't quite put my finger on (for the record, I've felt this way since I was like five or six, long before I fell down the rabbit hole of horror-themed SMW ROM hacks like Mario Game's Death Valley or Coronation Day), so I'm hoping to expand on that here. I'm also currently planning on the format consisting of journal entries where Mario records his experiences, but I haven't firmly decided on that yet. Either way, I hope you'll check it out once I start posting it! :)

Next up: "Rock and Rollodillo"!