Chapter 84: A Death, a 'Dillo, and a Doctor
The Sling Star shot me up to the giant chunk of amber I'd seen while approaching the galaxy, which was home to a checkpoint flag, Lumalee (great, all the confirmation I needed that a boss fight was on the horizon), and a Launch Star.
I headed for the checkpoint flag as Lumalee called out to me his usual chant of "Lumalee! Lumabop! Welcome to the – oh my."
I stopped and turned towards him. "What?"
Lumalee frowned. "Are you…are you okay?"
Oh great, so the Weirdness Plague had gotten to him too.
"Yes, I'm fine, but maybe you should go get yourself checked out," I suggested. "Every Luma I've interacted with lately has been acting weird, you included. I think there's something going around."
"Mario," Baby Luma said, "why don't we get a Life Mushroom from Lumalee here? You've got over 100 Star Bits. That's more than enough."
"Uh, because I don't need a Life Mushroom," I said. "Not to mention I think there's some sort of…Weirdness Plague, I'm calling it, going around the Luma population. The last thing I need is for it to make Lumalee turn into, I don't know, a Weird Mushroom instead of a Life Mushroom, and then I'm stuck fighting whatever boss is coming up here as a freakishly tall, lanky, high-jumping Waluigi knockoff."
"Then if he turns into a Weird Mushroom, just don't touch it," Baby Luma said.
Lumalee started floating farther away from us. "No, no, that's okay. Go on. I'm sure you'll do fine fighting this boss, Mario."
"Yeah, and then if he does turn into a Weird Mushroom, even if I don't touch it, I'm still out 30 Star Bits," I said to Baby Luma. "That's what I call a waste."
"What sort of cranky, stingy miser are you?" Baby Luma asked. "First you insult this fine gentleman by saying he's got a disease you don't even know for a fact exists, and now you won't even feed him a few Star Bits to make up for his hurt feelings."
Lumalee's eyes widened. "Really, Mario, it's okay. In fact, I think I'm contagious after all." He turned away from us and gave an exaggerated, clearly fake cough. "See? Contagious. Oh yeah, I'm really feeling it now. I'm definitely coming down with something. You'd better not get anywhere near me."
…Alright, this was officially too weird for me to even bother speculating about what was going on anymore.
"Fine," Baby Luma said. "Come on, Mario, let's go."
But as we made our way towards the Launch Star, Lumalee started hacking and spluttering. I turned around. Okay, these coughs didn't sound at all fake, unlike that other one. I took a step towards him. "Are you okay?"
He dropped his batons and flailed around in the air, coughing harder and harder. Then he started throwing up a bunch of Star Bit vomit.
Wait, so you're telling me Lumalees can eat Star Bits without transforming? I mean, I guess it makes sense that they have to eat something regularly to survive, but then what's so special about the Star Bits I feed them that they transform? Is transforming a conscious choice they make? Like, feeding Star Bits gives them a bunch of energy that they can either use to transform or expel in some other way like, I don't know, a really loud fart?
Lumalee continued throwing up, and as he did his eyes started turning deep red. And then his puke gradually changed from rainbow-colored to entirely blood-red.
Okay, something was definitely wrong.
I ran over as Lumalee clutched at his…not really throat, more like his chest, but whatever. But before I reached him, something happened that I'm not even entirely sure how to describe.
He inhaled and then threw up and coughed again, only this time he did it so forcefully that me…vomited himself inside out.
His top, bottom, back and sides seemed to fold in towards his mouth, and at first I thought it was just his lungs contracting as he expelled air or something. But then his head collapsed in, and his back started poking out through his mouth. His eyes swelled with terror, and then the rest of his body got sucked into his mouth and spat out inside-out. His deflated, inverted form fell to the ground with a faint thwack.
I came about an inch shy of throwing up myself after that happened. This was the sort of so-gory-it's-ridiculous death that would have me in stitches if it happened in a horror movie, but somehow when it was actually happening right in front of me it wasn't so funny.
"Ah, I think I know what's going on now," Baby Luma said. "This isn't a Weirdness Plague. This is…Lumalee Vomit Virus."
I was so dumbstruck that I couldn't even find it in me to respond for a good five seconds. "…What?"
"Lumalee Vomit Virus," Baby Luma repeated. "Not long before I landed in the Mushroom Kingdom, back when I was still with Mommy dearest-"
Well, that certainly had a different ring to it than "Mama."
"-she was investigating some new illness she called 'Lumalee Vomit Virus.' Because, see, in most Lumas, it just made them sort of cantankerous and rude for a while, but in Lumalees, it made them, as she said, 'vomit until they died.' I never really knew what she meant by that, but I guess now we do."
Well, if nothing else, that did relieve the momentary fear I'd had that Baby Luma was going to suffer the same fate as Lumalee here. But either way, I still wanted to have Percy look at him when we got back to Starship Mario. And more immediately, I wanted to get away from Lumalee's corpse, which was still grossing me the flip out.
I snagged the checkpoint flag and leapt in the Launch Star above the planetoid. From there we flew towards the giant metal birdfeeder planet. I swear to God, if I was gonna have to fight a giant bird here….
I landed on the planet, and for a few seconds everything was still. Then the planet started trembling, and a giant spiky ball rolled around the side of it. Despite the fact that the planet had been entirely empty when I was flying towards it.
Uh-huh. Sure, sure. No problems there, nope, none at all.
And then the spiky ball unrolled into…a giant armadillo.
Wait, what? Was this what the mission's title was talking about. Rollodillo…maybe it wasn't "roll" and "peccadillo," maybe it was "roll" and "armadillo." Yeah, now that made a bit more sense.
Rollodillo warbled and charged towards me. I saw that there was a Rock Mushroom nearby, so I figured I'd have to somehow use the power-up to defeat the giant armadillo. Probably to roll into him somewhere. Like his face, since pretty much every other surface on his body was heavily armored.
I ran to the side of Rollodillo and grabbed the Rock Mushroom. And as I did, I saw that there was another potential target on the opposite end of his body: his butt, which was also unprotected. Not to mention a bit bulbous, which when it comes to bosses, pretty much screams, "Hit me here! This is my Achilles heel!"
So as Rollodillo continued charging in a straight line away from me (not sure what the heck he thought he was chasing after, but it made targeting him easier), I circled around behind him. And once I was lined up directly with his rear end, I curled into a rock and rolled towards him. Ideally I would've wanted to get closer to him before turning into a rock so I was bashing my nose against the planet's metal surface for as little time as possible, but for all I knew, every second I wasted running after him instead of rolling would be the same second he would regain his seemingly lost eyesight and realize I wasn't in front of him.
Suffice to say, rolling towards him was rather painful, and hitting him wasn't that much better. Because while his butt wasn't a particularly firm surface to crash into, as soon as I hit him, he FARTED right on me! The massive explosion of gas blasted me backwards about a quarter of the way around the planet. Rollodillo, meanwhile, flipped into the air before landing sprawled on his stomach. Then he got to his feet, warbled, and charged towards me again.
I, on the other hand, was just recovering from getting farted on, and groaned when I saw Rollodillo rushing towards me again. I crawled aside, mistakenly thinking dealing the second blow against him would be as simple as the first one.
Nnnoooooope.
Instead, this time, when he was still quite a distance away from me, he curled back into a spiky ball and barreled right towards me. "Oh come on!" I shouted. I scrambled to my feet and tried to leap aside in time, but was a split second too late. Rollodillo rammed into me, flinging me backwards and making me lose my Rock Mushroom. Rollodillo emerged from his rolling form and seemed to laugh before charging towards me again.
I ran to the side and grabbed a spare Rock Mushroom and coin. Then Rollodillo curled up and rolled towards me again. I long-jumped out of the way as he sped by behind me, kicking up sparks from the planet's surface. Rollodillo continued rolling around the planet, making a complete rotation until he was once more bearing down on me. I leapt aside again. And this time, as he rolled past, he emerged from his rolled-up form and landed sprawled on his stomach, dazed.
With his butt facing towards me.
You'd better not fart on me this time.
But evidently even that simple courtesy was too much to ask for, because fart on me again me did. Come on, why the flip was this happening to me? It didn't happen with Peewee Piranha whenever I hit him in the rear end. Hitting Sorbetti in the nose didn't make it sneeze at me. So what the heck was this guy's deal?
By the time I got back up, Rollodillo was already rushing towards me again. I dodged him as he rolled past me, but this time he then emerged from his rolling form, turned around to face me, and rolled towards me again. Well, this was new. I long-jumped aside again, missing him by a hair's width. This time after he passed me, he landed on his stomach again. I rolled into his butt a third time, he farted on me, rinse and repeat.
And I thought that would be the end of the boss battle, but nope, it wasn't. Instead he got up, warbled again, let off a bunch of steam, and charged me again. Oh great, so he was one of those fairly infrequent 4-or-more hit bosses.
This time he rolled back and forth three times before finally running out of steam, and thankfully that was the last time I had to hit him. Once I did, he flopped on his back atop the planet, then exploded into a Power Star. From there, I wasted no time grabbing the Power Star to complete this ridiculous mission.
When I arrived back on Starship Mario (whose helm was now mostly devoid of party decorations except for some lingering balloons and the box of fireworks that had been unwisely left right under the pine tree), I saw that I now had 36 Power Stars and 17 Comet Medals.
"Alright, Baby Luma," I said as soon as we landed, "come on. I'm gonna have Percy take a look at you to make sure there's-"
"Ah, ah, ah, hold that thought." Baby Luma floated after the Power Star, which was drifting towards the chimney, and froze it in midair. Oh come on, was he seriously doing this again?
"Come on, Ba – Luma," I said, catching myself before I finished saying "Baby." "Just let the Power Star go."
"Mmm…nope." Baby Luma pulled the Power Star towards him and started draining it into himself. Part of me wanted to try intervening, but on the other hand I had no idea what I was dealing with here. I didn't want to risk that I'd end up botching the process and leaving Baby Luma, like, paralyzed or something.
So I just stood back and watched while he absorbed the Power Star's energy. And this time, when he was done, a faint golden glow was visible through his skin. Probably because now he had two Power Stars' worth of energy floating around inside him instead of just one.
When he was done, he smacked his lips and said, "Ah, that's the stuff." He turned back to me. "Now, what were you saying?"
I pointed to the stairs leading belowdecks. "You. Percy. Doctor. Now."
Baby Luma snorted. "For what?"
"Because I'm concerned about you and I think you might have Lumalee Vomit Virus!" Oh my gosh, it was practically torture to say something that stupid-sounding.
"So what? I told you, it's only deadly in Lumalees. Even if I do have it, it's not gonna hurt me and it's not gonna make you sick."
"Would you please just humor me and go visit Percy? Please?"
Baby Luma rolled his eyes. "Fine, if it'll make you stop nagging me." He floated down the stairs next to the helm, and I followed him. "Where even is Percy?" he chirped.
"I have no idea." See, as much as I liked the Starship now having a proper prison, this was what I hated about Baby Luma overhauling the place: now it was gonna be practically impossible to find anyone easily. Before there were only, like, ten rooms they could've been in; now there were forty-seven and counting, if the Toad Brigade's list was to be believed.
Then I saw something small and rectangular waddling down the hall towards me.
Oh yay. It was Cheesy McCheeseface.
"Hey!" I called out to him, seeing no one else around. "Hey, have you seen Percy anywhere?"
Cheesy stopped and looked up at me. "Percy?" he squealed.
"Yeah. The penguin. He's, like, yay high." I held my hand a few feet off the ground. "Have you seen him?"
"Not since the party," Cheesy said.
Then Hugh rounded a bend in the hall. "Cheesy?" he called. "Cheesy, where are – there you are!" He saw Cheesy and ran towards him. "Don't run off like that again. You scared me, little fella." He picked up Cheesy and hugged him.
"Hey Hugh, have you seen Percy?" I asked, trying to ignore the fact that he was hugging a frigging block of cheese because I didn't trust myself to not fire off some snark about it if I gave it too much thought.
"Oh, yeah," Hugh said. "I saw him a little while ago. He said he was headed downstairs to finish getting the infirmary up and running. Go down the stairs, turn right, and then make the…fourth left? Fourth or fifth left, one of those."
"Thanks." I turned and headed down the stairs to the lower level, then turned right. Through the fourth doorway to the left, I saw Percy in a sterile-white room, unrolling paper over an exam table. I knocked on the door and entered. "Percy, do you have a minute?"
He turned towards me. "Oh, hey Mario. Sure. What do you think of Doctor Percy's One-Stop Medical Center?" He patted the exam table. "This is an exam table, dentist's chair, cot, and surgery table all in one! Isn't that neat?"
Yeah, not really sure how I felt about the concept of regular checkups, cavity-fillings, and appendectomies all being performed on the exact same surface, but whatever. I lifted my cap and pointed to Baby Luma. "I want you to just check him out. He's been acting strange lately, and I think he's sick."
"Oh, sure, sure." Percy waved Baby Luma over to the exam table. "Mario, why don't you wait outside? This won't take long."
"No, I'd rather stay, if it's all the same to you," I said.
"No, I'd rather you leave," Baby Luma said.
"And I would rather stay."
"Mario, it's okay," Percy said. "I'm not gonna hurt him-"
Honestly, at this point, Percy wasn't the one I was concerned about doing the hurting.
"-and he did tell you to leave. If he doesn't want you here, legally, I can't do anything while you're in the room."
"…What?" I exclaimed. "What sort of garbage is that? Didn't I send one of the Toads to be there while you stitched up Baby Luma-"
"Luma!" Baby Luma shouted, making both me and Percy flinch.
I huffed. "While you stitched up Luma last weekend?"
"Well, yes, but back then I was only operating as, like, an unofficial medical assistant. Now I'm an actual doctor with my own practice, so I need to play by the rules or I could have my medical license revoked."
I spread my arms. "What medical license? You said all you know is what the Coach taught you."
Percy held up a lanyard hanging around his neck. "This one. There's a medical license-printer in the cabinet over there."
…
"Alright, let me know when the checkup's over," I said, leaving and shutting the door behind me.
After fifteen glacial minutes, the door finally opened again and Baby Luma floated out. "Well?" I asked. "What's the verdict?"
"What can I say?" Percy replied. "He's healthy as a horse."
"Really?" I asked. "Are you serious? There's no Lumalee Vomit Virus in him? What about those two Power Stars he scarfed down? Are they doing anything to him?"
Percy quacked. "Well, see, I'm not at liberty to discuss any particulars of Luma's checkup with you unless he signs a HIPAA waiver granting me that permission, so for now I'll leave him to fill you in." With that he turned and walked back into the room.
After carefully scanning the room to make sure none of its mirrors were positioned in such a way that he could see me, I flipped him off behind his back and then left with Baby Luma.
"So, do you care to tell me about your visit with Percy?" I asked Baby Luma.
"Nope," he said.
Figured as much.
On that note, I decided I was done adventuring for the day. It was about 12:30P.M. in World 2 by then, which meant in World 4 it was around 2:30P.M. Yep, I could justify that. I'd gotten two Power Stars today; that was enough for me.
The rest of the day passed without much incident, except for Baby Luma's repeated attempts to try to convince me to go get another Power Star. Hugh set off about half of his fireworks that evening and only accidentally set himself on fire once, which was far fewer times than I'd expected. And shortly after that, I headed down to my cabin and turned in for the night.
I switched on my TV, and inwardly groaned when I saw that it was showing one of Baby Luma's Hallmushroom Christmas movies. Great, I forgot it was his night to control the TV.
"Wait, what? Where's The Punishroom?" Baby Luma asked.
I slowly turned towards him. "You…you want to watch The Punishroom?"
Baby Luma shrugged. "What can I say? It's grown on me."
"Well, I'm pretty sure when you fixed the Starship last week, you made it so the TV alternates between Christmas movies and The Punishroom each night. So we're only in this boat because of you."
"Oh. Well, screw dat." Baby Luma clapped his appendages together, and a flash of golden light filled the room. When it faded again, lo and behold, what was playing on the TV but The Punishroom. "Don't really want to be going around wasting my Power Star powers, but I don't want to be watching these sappy Christmas movies every other night anymore either. And given how much time you waste that you could be using to find more Power Stars, who knows how many nights that would end up being?"
I frowned and narrowed my eyes. "It's bedtime. Go to sleep."
Baby Luma floated next to my bed, and we both watched TV for a while. But eventually Baby Luma started faintly snoring. After that I waited at least another half-hour before I shut off the TV, crawled out of bed, and crept across my room. I eased open the door, looked both ways to make sure the cast was clear, and then headed down the hall.
If Percy wouldn't tell me what he'd learned from Baby Luma's checkup, then I was gonna find it out myself.
A/N: Just a quick reminder that on August 25th, as I've done for the past couple years, I'll bee posting the Annual Special, which will consist of a few short stories from around the MGTU that help to set up the major arcs I have planned for the coming year. I'm hoping to also have the next chapter of "Harley's Angels" up before then to conclude its first arc, but no promises. Then after August 25th, I'll be switching to focusing on the upcoming, horror-themed, not-MGTU Mario fanfic I plan to post throughout October, titled "Super Mario World Dark." I might post a little bit of MGTU content in that time, but I'm planning to get back to it full-time in November.
Next up in the Annual Special: a music lesson yields unexpected consequences, a new threat arrives in the Mushroom Kingdom, and the rumors of rabbit traps spread!