Unwritten: Diary of a Lean Green Plumber

Starry-Eyed Surprise

7 September 2002

Smash Mansion

Dear Diary,

Have I ever told you about the—contest—that's been brewing between me and Pikachu? The issue at stake—our side-special moves. More specifically, the originality of my side special move. One fine day, Pikachu was nice enough to point out the similarities between my Green Missile and his Skull Bash. But the Green Missile was unlike Skull Bash—Pikachu uses electricity to propel myself forward, and I use—my own power. Unfortunately, Pikachu persisted and began to accuse me of copying his move. Slowly but surely, other Smashers found themselves dragged into the conflict, and Dorf merely sided with Pikachu just so he could dump on me more. Thankfully, Pikachu still had standards and called him out in pika-speak when his methods got too extreme for him, but still.

Pikachu and Pichu passed around petitions regarding my lovely Green Missile. They put up posters vilifying me. I couldn't even pass them by in the halls without them hurling insults at me. Today, it finally got too much. Pikachu had decided on the juvenile tactic of taping a piece of paper which read "Shame the Copycat" onto my back. As a result of that sign, I was verbally and physically harassed by complete strangers who decided to do what a piece of paper told them to, because why not? I'm just Player Two—it's not like anyone would care. I discovered the sign when I passed by a mirror and—well—I reached my limit.

When I confronted Pikachu to call him out on his childishness, I tried to be calm. I tried to reason with him. But he just kept making flippant comments until—he said that I was just a Mario clone, and the only thing original about me was that I wore green and carried around a vacuum cleaner. That was a low blow. Forgive me, but I just—lost it.

I made my displeasure known with a punch to the stomach. In response, Pikachu headbutted me, and then we really started going at it, brawling right there, in that room. We were obviously breaking the rules, but we didn't care anymore. We wanted to destroy each other. So we just kept trading punches until two Wireframes happened upon us, broke up the fight and escorted us to Master Hand's office.

MH didn't penalize us, but he ushered us into a room, placed a few bottles of spirits on ice on the table and left us there. After imbibing a bit, Pikachu and I loosened up, apologized and talked things out. I told him how upsetting and immature his behavior was, and he told me that he honestly thought the Green Missile was a carbon copy of Skull Bash. Over a few more shots, I helped him see that our side-specials were similar, but overall different. We agreed that it was a petty thing to feud over, and by the time MH checked on us, a shaky peace had existed between us—and we were sufficiently drunk, too.

Pikachu's just lucky that Mario's still on vacation.

On the lighter side of things, today was Jas's first day of school. Jas suffered from a little bit of separation anxiety, but Jake's presence helped alleviate it. The anxiety was worse on the parents' side, as Jules periodically called me with rattled nerves and Jackie did the same, just needing someone to talk to. But in the end, it turned out okay. Jas had been bathed for the first time in the pool of knowledge, grown closer to her current friends and even made some new friends. There was Tiffany, Dave, Zoe, Kaleigh and Ralph, to name a few. I know this because Jas herself called me after her post-school nap.