"Hello everybody, thanks for coming!" Professor E. Gadd greeted his small audience one Mushroom Kingdom day. He had called a surprise 'assembly' outside of Peach's castle that morning and for some reason, the whole gang had shown up.
"Why on earth did we all show up?" Waluigi asked.
"I don't know, Luigi just told me we were getting free burgers," Mario said, standing there looking bored.
"Not burgers, toast," Luigi corrected.
"Toast?!" Wario asked. "Can someone please tell me what's the point of this stupid meeting?"
"Hey, if you didn't want to come then you shouldn't have," Daisy told him with a toss of her head.
"I already said, I don't know why we came!" Waluigi hollered.
"For good storytelling's sake?" Suggested Peach.
"Alright, settle down," E. Gadd told them. "The reason I called you all here today is to give you a pre-preview of my newest invention before I show it to the general public!"
"Oh boy," Wario rolled his eyes. "I'm so excited. Is it as stupid as that walking television from last time?"
"O-or dangerous like your time machine?" Luigi asked quivering.
"No, no. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a revolutionary useful kitchen appliance! Behold, I give to you the Mega Toaster 300!" With that the professor ripped off the old sheet from the pile of machinery that stood beside him. Everybody stopped and stared.
"Uhh...what does it do?" Yoshi was the first one to speak.
It looked basically like a giant spring-loaded toaster with some levers and a catapult on the ends. "Why, it makes giant toast, my reptilian friend!" E. Gadd replied. "And hurls it up into the air, so the finished product can land on a tarp or other such giant plate 20 feet away. As you can imagine, it's very strong."
"Oh yeah, strong like this?" Wario asked, flexing his muscles. Everyone looked at him, either annoyed or unimpressed.
Waluigi snorted. "I bet not even. It probably can't even lift me." And then, to prove his point, he started climbing on top of it.
"Wait!" E. Gadd cried. "You weigh much less than a giant toast and I must warn you it's not very prudent to-"
Too late. Waluigi had already climbed on top and randomly started pulling levers. Right at that moment his hand found the 'launch' button and-
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh..............." His voice faded away into nothing as he catapulted so far up into the sky that nobody could hear him anymore. For a second nobody spoke. Even the birds in the tanooki tree had stopped singing.
Finally E. Gadd scratched his head. "Ahh...that's...what I was talking about."
"Do you think he's okay?" Peach wanted to know, peering up at the sky.
"I'm more concerned about where he's gonna land," Mario commented, trying to look passive by leaning against an invisible wall.
"I was hoping he never would land," Daisy said.
"With any luck, he won't," Yoshi muttered under his breath.
Wario wasn't listening. "Aw man, that looks like fun! I gotta do that!" And with that he ran on to the contraption, smashed his huge seat where Waluigi had been, and pulled the lever before anyone could react. Next second he was gone too, nothing more than a missile sailing straight overhead faster than if propelled by the Wario Waft.
Yoshi chuckled. "Alright, I'm starting to like this thing!"
"Maybe we should name it, The Goon Chuckster," Mario said, envisioning it. "People would pay good coins for that!"
E. Gadd face palmed. "Okay, new idea. I'll shoot myself up there to find and give them a proper scolding while anyone who wishes can feel free to follow me."
"Shoot yourself up there?" Mario asked in surprise, getting off his fake wall. "But that's...high thrill!"
"You think I can't handle thrills, sonny? Well, those boys are never comin' down without intervention, and I for one want to see what's the holdup!"
"Don't we all," Mario said under his breath as he followed the professor.
"Woah! If ya'll are going, so are we!" Daisy said.
Mario turned to his brother expectantly. "Luigi?"
"Umm...I don't know...doesn't it look dangerous?" He asked nervously.
"Nah, it's probably fine," Mario said unconcerned. "The professor made it so while it probably will put your life at risk, it shouldn't actually kill you."
"Oh...right," Luigi said, climbing carefully up next to him.
"Yoshi? You coming?" Mario asked as the princesses climbed aboard.
The dinosaur sighed. "I'm going to regret this..."

Meanwhile, high in the outer reaches of space, Rosalina was in her bedroom. The Comet Observatory floated peacefully in a clearing of stars, stopped while the lumas recharged some star power and picked up a few new lumas. She was enjoying a quiet moment of reading in her bedroom when a call came to her from outside.
"Mama! Company's here!"
Surprised, she put down her book and jumped up, threw aside the curtain and swung around the bedroom corner right into a luma.
He giggled in an innocent way. "They're in the library."
"What company? Who's here?" Rosalina asked in confusion and alarm.
The luma tried to shrug but found that his shoulders weren't really cut out for it. "You're gonna have to go and see."
Still completely wondering as to who could possibly be in the observatory, she hurried to the library she loved. She had just figured it out before she made it there: who could it possibly be but-
"Huh?" Rosalina stopped in the doorway in surprise and bewilderment. Well, she had been partially right...it wasn't Mario or his whole crew, this time it was simply...the troublemakers.
Wario sat in her reading chair telling a small group of gathered lumas a story by mouth (Rosalina could tell he was making it up as he went along) and Waluigi was swinging around on a ladder, laughing like a dork and grabbing random books and flinging them off the shelves and across the room. A few lumas floating around seemed to be making a game of dodging them.
"...And so then I told Mario, 'If you're gonna get in my face, you'd better be ready to back it up!" Wario was saying to his listeners. "And that little dude didn't know what hit him. Next thing you know he's crying in circles and blubbering like a baby about how I wasn't playing fair when all that gold was rightfully mine! And so he went crying to his mommy while I, Super Wario, claimed the treasure and saved the kingdom of Atlantis singlehandedly! The end," he finished with great gusto to the clapping lumas.
"Wow," one of them sighed in admiration, "that was amazing!"
Rosalina gave a nervous laugh as she floated over to join them. "Oh, come now, you know he's just joking," she told him. "Well, ahem...I-it's nice to see you, but may I ask what exactly you're doing here?" She asked Wario politely. "And...how did you get here?"
Waluigi, overhearing, paused in his crazy ladder tricks and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I dunno," he said.
Then he and the lumas started going nuts again to her dismay. Then a stray book went flying and hit her on the head.
Trying to swallow her anger and frustration, she smiled. "Yes, well...do you all mind...this my library, and-
"Oh, this is your library?" Wario asked stupidly. "I thought it was Chiko's over here." He pointed to one of the yellow lumas floating there.
Rosalina couldn't keep in her dreadful groan. "Where's Polari?" She asked, looking like she wanted to throw up.
"Right here, my lady," answered the black luma, suddenly at her side. "Good news. The others have arrived."
"Good?" She asked.
Together the two of them raced around to the front platform and there, once again, she saw...a pile of people. Familiar people, at least most of them...Yoshi, Princess Peach and Daisy, Luigi, mounded together on the ground along with an old man. At first she was confused until she saw Mario crawling out from under them all.
"Mama Mia, I haven't been on a trip like that since Sunshine," he said, holding his spinning head. Then he looked around. "Hey, the Comet Observatory!"
"Huh?" Daisy asked, lifting herself off the ground.
"Oh, how wonderful!" Peach gasped, standing up to look at the surroundings. "I love this place!"
"Well, call me a frosted donut," E. Gadd said, sitting up and brushing himself off. "Where on earth are we?"
"We're not on earth, Frosted Donut," Mario answered as he scoped around. The place seemed pretty quiet and empty. "This here is the successor to the NASA space station."
Luigi face palmed at his brother's embarrassing comments, then helped the professor to his feet. "We have friends here," he told him. "It's cool."
"So you all happen to know a magical land in the sky which happens to be reached by my toaster," E. Gadd said. "Because really, why not?"
"We've been to this place before," Luigi assured him. "And it's not the one where babies come from, either."
"Oh boy, you all know what this means," Yoshi groaned.
Before he could clarify, Rosalina and Polari came rushing over. "Oh, thank goodness! Hello, you all. What a pleasant surprise! Your, uh...friends are in my library."
"Figures," Mario said, turning to the group. "Professor, this is our friend, Rosalina."
"Hello, I'm Professor E. Gadd," he said, shaking her hand. "So you run a space station, huh."
"That's right," she replied. "I suppose you're also a friend of these guys?"
"Oh, yes. They never mentioned you or this amazing ship, though...however do you power it?"
"Would you like to see? I can take you to the top levels," Rosalina offered.
"Oh, that would be stupendous," the professor replied. Luigi silently groaned as the two began to head off. "You all can come if you'd like," Rosalina called, "but if not, Mario, do you think you could go to the library and keep an eye on your friends?"
"Okay," he said. They stood there for a moment in silence as the two took a lift. Then a slight but sudden quake rocked the ship. The group looked at each other. "Let's a-go," Mario said.

When Mario and co. stepped into the library, it looked like the garbage after a storm. Books were thrown absolutely everywhere, making the shelves look more picked through than a free bin at a garage sale. A few lumas were lying around on the ground as if they were near death, and some furniture had been knocked over and trashed. It had Wario and Waluigi written all over it.
"Oh, we're too late!" wailed Peach, putting her head in her hands. Mario crouched down by one of the lumas.
"Hey little guy, what happened?"
"The...guests," he squeaked.
Mario stood up and turned to the group. "Okee dokey, Yoshi, Luigi and I will track the goons down. Do you think you could take care of things here?" He asked Daisy. Peach was already picking up books from the ground.
"I guess," she replied. "Hurry, before Rosalina gets back."
"Right guys, let's a-go...again!" The three dashed from the room.
Peach couldn't help chuckling when they were out the door. "Such enthusiasm," she admired. "Except...now this means we'll have to pick up the furniture ourselves."

"Where do you think they went?" Luigi asked when the trio emerged into the starry outside. In answer was a loud crash followed by screams of laughter from the bedroom. Mario sighed.
"Guess," he said, and they ran for it.
Inside the normally quiet place of rest it was like a wild little girls' slumber party. Lumas dancing to Don't Stop Believing were bumping into others having pillow fights with every stray object they could get ahold of, sometimes including each other. Waluigi was egging everyone on in the midst of it all, using a gleeful Wario as a pillow. Smashed star bits were strewn all over the carpet and bed, which had already been jumped on so much it looked like Mario's did when he had a restless night. And let me tell you that is really awful. Grounded to your room awful.
"Oh my gosh!" Yoshi cried when the three walked in. "HOW do you manage to do it?"
Waluigi, in mid jump off the bed over a cowering luma, froze. "I dunno," he said. Then he landed just after the frightened luma had scrambled out of the way. Unfortunately, he didn't miss the big canopy over the bed, which caught his foot and was torn down on top of him with a big bad riiiip.
Mario gave the boom box a glare and it stopped playing. Then he slowly started to come forward, drawing out each heavy footfall.
Luigi shuddered. "Oh, he's going Bowser," he murmured to Yoshi.
Mario at last stopped right in front of the pile of limbs and lumas. He grabbed the canopy and yanked it off with the most no-nonsense of attitudes.
Before he could do a thing a pillow hit him, hard, on the back of the head.
Someone might as well have rung a gong. Mario whirled around angrily. "Luigi! How could you dare do that when I'm having a serious chewing-outing moment! I know it was you, so don't even try to deny it!"
"It wasn't me! I know how you feel about pillow fights!" Luigi tried to deny it.
"And I know how you feel about getting hit in the head!" With that Mario snatched the nearest pillow and hurled it at his brother's head.
"Ooooh," everyone in the room murmured dramatically.
Next instant the two were on the floor in the canopy trying to bend each other's arms backwards like there was a hospital next door.
"Guys! Take it easy!" Yoshi cried. "I don't think there's a hospital next door!"
Just then Peach and Daisy arrived. "We got everything cleaned up, but-"
Peach broke off. "What's going on?!"
"Hey! Guys!" Daisy shouted. "Knock it off before-"
Too late. Rosalina appeared in the doorway, already looking tightly wound and holding a torn book. Peach took a deep breath.
"I'm so sorry about your book, Rosalina," she said, frowning at Wario and Waluigi. But Rosalina was too busy looking around her now trashed bedroom. Finally she stopped on Mario and Luigi, who were wrestling without avail on the floor. They looked more like they were playing a serious game of Twister than anything else.
"Not you guys too!" She cried. Mario's head knocked against the floor and Luigi scrambled up.
"We didn't do any of this!" He quickly defended himself. Mario stood up looking drowsy and nodded.
Then E. Gadd poked his head in the doorway. "Oh boy, someone's going to get the boot," he said in an embarrassingly obvious way.

Outside Peach's castle, Blue Toad was busy clipping the rose bushes when he spotted a strange machine sitting near the gate. Being the toad he is, he walked closer to investigate. "Hmm..."
Just then Toad walked up. "Hey, Blue Toad! What's going on?"
"I found this weird machine, and I don't know what it does," he replied.
"Maybe it's a sauna," Toad suggested.
"It must be a gift for the princess! It fell from the sky, sent to us by the sauna gods," Blue Toad reasoned. "Go get the princess!"
At that moment Wario and Waluigi came randomly plummeting down from the sky and landed harshly right on top of the machine. By some miracle it stayed together.
"Uggh, who spit in her breakfast?" Wario groaned.
"Probably you," Waluigi replied from underneath him. "Please move, you're rupturing my spleen."
"You're not Princess Peach, you're Princess Wario," Toad said when Wario crashed right in his face. "You must be the garbage of the sauna gods."
"Toad, what are you talking about?" Asked Peach with a laugh as she walked over with the rest of her friends. They had just landed on a sparkling blue comet. After dropping them gently on the ground, it took off.
"I think Rosalina took it rather well," Luigi panted.
"Yeah, considering you started that fight by throwing a pillow at me!" Mario growled.
"Mario, you know I didn't throw that pillow!"
"Yeah, well then who did?"
"Princess!" Toad interrupted. "Look at this sauna that came for you!"
Peach shook her head. "That's not a sauna, it's..."
As if on cue the toaster suddenly squeaked and collapsed. Pieces of it flew almost everywhere. E. Gadd screamed. Peach gasped.
Wario and Waluigi were lost in the wreckage.
"Good riddance," Yoshi said.

Heh heh heh...yep, that was a weird one. I knew a sequel to the Comet Observatory idiocy was coming because it just had so much potential...
I can't seem to help the references. For those who may not know, Professor E. Gadd is the eccentric inventor from Luigi's Mansion. The time machine is from Partners in Time, and the Tanooki Tree is from Super Mario 3D Land. The Wario Waft is one of his signature 'moves' ;). (On a side note, Chiko is Luma's Japanese name.) Luigi talking about the place where babies come from is referencing the events of the Yoshi's Island games. And maybe Mario's comment about wanting to know what the holdup was is a callback to Luigi's Mansion as well (nerd alert). Lastly, his Sunshine comment refers to a certain island in that game you can only reach by firing yourself out of a cannon. It's a real fast trip.
Uggh that got long...anyway, don't forget to vote and comment if you liked, and await the next chapter! Until next time,
Daisy

(If you are wondering who really threw the pillow...you're going to have to come up with your own theory. Because believe me, I can't figure out who did it.)

Don't stop believin'!

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