Okay guys and gals, so sorry this took so long to publish. I've been trying to focus on 'YTFF' instead and, honestly, I'm drying up. :( I hope to go back to it one day, but for now, I'm gonna try focus on this instead. Hope you enjoy! :)

~Fire Temple (chanting version)- Zelda: Ocarina of Time ~

Dead arms reborn. A moustache that twitched. Eyes no longer tricked into dreaming they were devoured, a personality that no longer saw itself homeless outside the fat-

Mario sprung up from the dirt, and breathed. Though really he shouldn't be doing that. He couldn't. He was dead.

Wasn't he?

And it was odd, because so was Luigi. His dishevelled brother shouldn't be patting the dust off himself and climbing up to a stand like that, not at all. Not unless he was a zombie, of course.

Was he a zombie? No, his hand was too warm. He could feel it through his glove as Luigi pulled him up, the life that was dancing through the green plumber's meat-

Meat? Was that really what he just thought? Meat? That certainly sounded like a zombie-like thought, or whatever it was that runs through a zombie's head before it goes bashing down the village. Then, maybe he himself- the famous Mario, no less- was the zombie. He was dead, after all, and in a sense he was still living. But then, that would mean he'd be a threat to Luigi. He'd devour him, convert him. That's what zombies do. And neither of them would want that.

He yanked his hand away, lest his undead touch could infect. His arm didn't rip under the pressure, though the tissue was meant to be weak. He was scared that it would, but it didn't.

Scared.

Were zombies ever scared? Nah. They don't think, nor fear. They don't use the word 'nah' in internal monologues, either.

So he wasn't a zombie.

So he was alive.

And yet he had died.

"Young man, as stiff as my bones may be, my carcass is not yet to be utilised as your personal chair. Kindly get off of me!"

Mario's eyes shot down, startled, to see a cramped and confused Mayor Toadinbello underneath him. He apologetically leapt off the poor Toad he had tripped onto and offered to raise him up as Luigi had just done for him. The Toad was still mumbling obscenities as he straightened himself up against a muddy wall, the creaking of his bones managing to muffle the words enough.

The three of them had only just woken up- or were they resurrected?- so it took a minute of standing around side by side until one of them attempted to address their situation. Whatever it was.

Toadinbello was first.

"Hmm? I hope no-one minds me stating the obvious, but we seem to be in a trench."

He was right- the once-fruitful soil positively stank with decay. Pushed around, made to contain the bones and lost weapons within its corridors- it was a trench. Empty of soldiers, apparently, though Mario could imagine that not all of the debris to their left was simple material. A pool of unclear water trailed through it- maybe not all of it was water.

Luigi sighed. "At least that's obvious enough…"

"Though I am quite clueless as to why, why, why we happen to be in a trench at all, bearing in mind we were just underground a minute ago."

Nobody could answer, so Luigi awkwardly moved on. "Um… I know this is kinda gross, but did anyone else feel for a moment that they were… y'know…"

Mario mimed spinning in mid-air, crashing onto his backside as his eyes closed painfully to the world.

"Yeah, that."

Three nods.

"All of us, then," confirmed the mayor. "It was very realistic, whatever we just witnessed. Though I don't quite grasp how it was represented to me- odd things, an 'ED-boi' was mentioned, I recall? What lunacy is that!?"

"It doesn't make sense… No, wait, it doesn't make sense!" Ideas were starting to teem from Luigi's mind, and he was bursting with ways to bridge all that had happened thus far. He turned eagerly to his brother, hands clasping his shoulders. "Say, Mario, d'ya think this could be linked to time crumbling in on itself? Like how we got to this time in the first place?"

Mario looked thoughtful. None of them were experts in the nature of time, but when you acknowledged that so many things seemed to have gone haywire once a threat to history itself was announced...

He nodded, regretfully. Regretting that their time was short.

Toadinbello was visibly disturbed- his eyes became younger, uncertain, yet his skin crumpled up at the same time, exposing his full set of wrinkles.

"W-what are you saying? That without a functioning timeline... without order, the laws of nature become... meaningless? Is that the end of it, then? Just chaos?"

Mario glanced again at the slowly expanding pool behind him. The smell was uncomfortably familiar. He nodded.

The old Toad looked ready to burst, and neither of the plumbers could blame him. A mayor was meant to have power- where was the power in watching over your people, only watching while they rotted and shrank? He had no control over their most basic needs, what could he possibly hope to do when even nature's own sanity was beginning to rot?

He could die with everyone else. The only option. What a bountiful reign.

He felt a warm rush of air behind him all of a sudden- the sea of those he was elected to defend, swimming towards him, soul by soul.

"Mayor, look out!"

And then he realised that it wasn't the dead he could feel, it was death, sweeping up behind him. It was the rush of heat, the heat from an explosion.

They were under attack.

"Quick! Run for it!" yelled Luigi, just the once. They darted along the uneven path, Luigi taking the lead. His hand dragged Toadinbello's own, squeezing it more tightly with every crash of energy they passed. The older Italian distanced himself from them to distract their foe- foes? There were two figures floating after them, maybe three, unless his vision was beginning to blur. Another two orbs of light crashed down near his feet, both he managed to flip over in time. But not away from the enemies, towards them. He jumped off one wall, the next- and kicked.

His shoe collided- not with flesh, but with glass. The person he attacked squawked in surprise, a tinge of pain too as a shard scraped their eye. Now that Mario that blinked the dust out of his eyes, he could conclude upon two things. One being that, yes, it was three of them, all cloaked in blue though only two now wearing any glasses.

The other thing was that he knew what they were.

They were more ferocious than the fifteen-spells-per-minute variety he had encountered in his own time, however. It wasn't time to attempt any full-combat yet, especially not when he was tired or unequipped. Jumping and sidestepping over every successive blast, he made his way along the trench towards his retreating friends. They turned a corner and vanished, just as another streak of magic toasted the ground where men once laid.

Two of their raging assailants were still wearing their murky specs, yet none of them could see anything unusual at all about the trench wall on their right. Nothing like, for instance, the clot of green stone so deeply embedded within it; no, not at all. They just flew by it, the one now rendered blind actually crashing just inches away from it. And yet still they didn't pause to investigate, not even turning back as they hovered along their new path into the far distance.

Had they noticed, though, maybe they would have found its dark green skin to be strange against the dull brown mud and the drying red stains. Out of place, really. It probably would have taken them a minimum of a second to analyse it, less than half of this time to press it down like the button it was. Then they could have watched as a green warp pipe quickly emerged out of the ground, and chortled menacingly, murderously. Had they pressed it.

Thankfully, what they had missed, Toadinbello had not. And now, as he and the two brothers crawled down the pipe into the shelter below, the trio were literally gushing with relief. A tinge of fatigue, too.

Luigi smiled warmly at the old man before him, genuine gratitude illuminating his eyes.

"Mamma mia, another second and we'd have been toasted crostinis! Quick thinking, mayor!"

The gold-capped Toad chuckled in the dark as his breath continued to return to him.

"Ah, it was more a coincidence than anything, Luigi. I recall seeing one of these mechanisms once before. An old friend of mine- very rich- had something very similar in place to stash away most of his wealth. That button would've been just as meaningless to me as it had been to you, were it not for my friend."

"Well, however you knew, thanks for getting us out of the frying pan!" He just hoped that the bottom of this slope wouldn't turn out to be the fire.

Luigi coughed, dismissing the thought. "So, is everyone alright?" They checked themselves over: aside from a mild sprain in the Toad's right knee, the trio were relatively none the worse. "Those meanies out there," he asked, "who were they?"

Mario began to speak, but was cut off by the elderly Toad.

"Magikoopas," he spat, "rogues. Foul sorcerers that have betrayed everything we value. They, gentlemen, are the enemy!"

Mario frowned- surely this war was meant to be against those shadowy Gnasher creatures instead?

Toadinbello shook his head mournfully. "Gnashers, Magikoopas, both are united in their persecution of us. Though, one could say it was the latter that was to blame for the whole thing... The Gnashers wouldn't even be around right now, were it not for them."

"Time."

The single unexpected word echoed through the pipe. Everyone jumped, Mario at the rear almost clanging his head against the cold metal inches above him. He shuffled closer to the rightward curve of the tube, allowing his head to twist back at the unknown speaker behind him. The supporting candlelight wasn't much, but it just barely touched upon the short figure that followed.

It was the other Toad- the one the mayor had shown them, locked away in the lower levels of Toad Town. From what Mario could decipher in his eyes, he seemed to have calmed down somewhat since their previous encounter with him.

Maybe a bit too calm. Mario thought about the zombies again.

His brother, unable to see behind him, shakily demanded to know who had just spoken. When Mario filled him in, he could almost feel Luigi's tension ebb away into the ether.

"Oh, you're here too!" exclaimed Luigi. "Sorry if we abandoned you, we didn't see you-"

"Time," interrupted Mucho, "time is broken."

Luigi stared at him. Or, at least that was what he would have done. "How do you know?"

"I've seen him. The one who did it. He who broke time with a blade."

The conversation froze. Nobody knew quite how to respond to such a matter-of-fact statement. In any case, Luigi could now see a brighter end to the tunnel, and the silence almost felt natural as they crawled out one-by-one to investigate their new setting.

The time-travelling plumbers were almost disappointed with what they saw- the entrance looked almost exactly like the one they found below the Letmia Inn. Dull, drabby surfaces... and no reception. For now. This time, however, the hint of life was much greater than before. Indistinguishable voices could be heard coming from every open doorway, of which- excluding the entrance- there were five. Vibrations could be felt under their feet, caused by the ceaseless marching that almost defined the scene.

It was a dugout- a huge one. The size impressed. The interior design (or lack of) did not.

Longing for the elegant shades of orange Daisy had woven around her room, Luigi stared wistfully into the distance. His eyes transcended history itself, all for a feeling that the years could not diminish.

"Time is broken," repeated Mucho in a mechanical tone. Regurgitating a script he couldn't feel- that's how Luigi thought it sounded. Mario didn't look very vocal at the moment, nor did the mayor, so it seemed once again it was up to Luigi to talk to the weirdos...

"Can you tell us, um-"

"Mucho."

"Ah, thanks." He smiled encouragingly at him. "Can you tell us, Mucho, who is this big bad you saw?"

"His name… is Operis."

Luigi scratched his chin in thought, slightly surprised at the subtle beard he could feel growing on it."'Operis', huh? Ever heard of him, Mario?" Mario grunted a negative. "Ah, well, he shouldn't be that much trouble anyhow. I mean, Operis? Sounds like a rubbish original character that someone beyond the screen dreamt up in an hour. We can take him, right, bro?"

But his bro wasn't listening. He was too busy watching as a dozen Koopa soldiers swarmed into the foyer with their firearms steadily raised, never directing their aim anywhere but at them as they closed them off in a semicircle. Three guns pointed between each pair of eyes, and they stayed that way.

"Waaaaahhhhhh!" Luigi zoomed away in a flash, and before Mario knew it he could feel his timid brother's hands patting his back and pushing him forwards. "Bro, it's all yours!"

"Stay where you are!" commanded a new voice.

Mario peered closely at the shadow-covered figure that was marching from westernmost corridor, and jolted back in shock. It was a Clubba, a creature which he had met the likes of several times in his travels. But this one was shockingly unique. True, it still retained most of the basic features of its kind- green skin, spiked mace, small black shell over the long tail, and so on- except for one major difference. This Clubba was pure muscle, with not a pebble of fat on him at all. There were muscles bulging out in every area, even areas Mario never guessed had existed. Roughly speaking, this one looked just as broad as the stereotypical Clubba, but twice as tall- easily taller than Luigi.

He imagined the brawny Clubba standing around in a gym recording adverts for some new brand of protein powder, but quickly blanched when the mental image of him in a tight-fitting black thong came to mind and blinded his soul.

... there was Bowser-wrong, and then there was... that...

The Clubba pushed through to the centre of his group, staring down each of Mario's friends in turn. Even the mayor seemed slightly fazed by his proportions - clearly Clubbas like this were rare even in this time.

Luigi looked beyond fazed- having a mental breakdown seemed more accurate. His every detail was one of fear, and Mario worried for him.

Luigi caught the concerned look that lingered on Mario's face, and inwardly, he smirked. That look must have meant he'd appeared to be completely terrified, and that was good. He wasn't at all terrified- he was cunning. Covered away behind his brother and his mask of faintheartedness, nobody would suspect a thing. He'd be the picture of innocence, up until the very moment he was ready to pounce...

"State your names and identities," bellowed the fit old Clubba, "all of you!"

Mario turned to Toadinbello for support, but the elderly mayor already seemed to be taking the initiative. He stepped between the two groups, looking straight at the Clubba.

"Sir, I am Mayor Toadinbello of Toad Town," he declared. "Put down your weapons, I know and trust these people."

The brawny Clubba lowered its spiked mace almost instantly, a sheepish grin gracing his chiseled face. The armed Koopas behind him quickly followed suit. Mario was confused at first about why they would take Toadinbello at his word without any proof having been offered, until he realised how uncommon a gold-capped Toad was even in his own time. It probably served like a crown of sorts, reassuring the public that whoever wore it was a Toad of high status- in this case, a mayor.

"Mayor? Oh, forgive me, I've not been up to scratch with politics recently, just killin'." The Clubba's grin widened, though not necessarily out of mirth.

Luigi pounced.

"Major Clubs at your service, sir. Sorry about my rudeness-"

Luigi's eyes widened with realisation, moments before he tried to shift off-target. He managed to cancel his attack in time- and inadvertently smacked hard into the wall before him instead. One Koopa turned in his direction briefly, just to pick his nose, but that was all the attention he would get as his nose skidded down to the floor.

"-your arrival was just unexpected, truth be told. If I may ask, what are you all doing here, here in the burial grounds as us fighters call 'em?"

"Well, we…" Toadinbello trailed off- where to begin..? After a short hesitation, he went straight to the point. "Major Clubs, you may be able to help us. My colleagues here are on a mission of national security, the failure of which may devastate us all. I cannot go in-depth here, but suffice it to say you would be doing your kingdom a great honour by helping them to get to their destination."

The major's expression conveyed no emotion. "Hmm. What destination?"

"What destination? What destination! (What destination..?) Why, er…"

"The forest," Mucho intoned.

The Clubba ruminated over this very quickly, and finally his posture seemed to relax. "Ahh, gotcha. That's not too far away, and I guess our opposition at present is just a mosquito on the chin… Sure, I'll give ya four of my best men to escort you. Let me just find them…"

While Mario had no doubt about how useful the four soldiers he had in mind would be on their journey, whether he or Luigi had the strength to progress on immediately was questionable. Aside from slips of unconsciousness- death in one case- and one interrupted sleep, they hadn't rested properly since they were in the Mushroom Kingdom of the present day. He decided to stop the major mid-stride and raise the issue with him.

The Clubba rubbed his red cap patronisingly, completely oblivious to Mario's discomfort at such an intimate gesture. "Tuckered out, are you?" He laughed. "Well, there shouldn't be much action around in the next few days, so I suppose you'll be fine sleeping around here for the night." With that, he wished them all a pleasant rest and quickly dispersed among with the rest of his men. Off to be the shade for the rest of his men.

One of the Koopa soldiers that had held them at gunpoint stayed behind and offered to show them the sleeping quarters they would be free to use. He guided them down a intricate complex of lacklustre corridors, each one just as utilitarian and wide as the last. Many varieties of lifeforms were marching by or talking along them, mostly in pairs but with the occasional quartet. Luigi could recognise some of them- Hammer Bros., Snifits, Gloombas (the latter of which, he acknowledged, seemed to be larger in number than the regular Goombas)- but he cursed Mario for the adventures he had been denied access to when the names of creatures he had never once encountered simply rolled off Mario's tongue like a fountain of knowledge.

After a dozen or so turns, the polite Koopa that had escorted them stopped between two separate doors. These rooms turned out to be the only two with vacancies. Mario, the mayor and Mucho took the left room which, as according to the shared design of every other room, featured two bunk beds and very little besides. Luigi politely declined and opted for the other, lying that he wanted to write in his diary in privacy. When he closed the door to his room behind him, he couldn't help but burst out in a medley of giggles. Peace, at last... and no need to worry about his brother's snoring..!

There was one other thing he was hoping to get, and he made sure he was quick to receive it. Still laughing to himself, he clambered up the rungs onto the top bunk of the nearest bed, feeling on top of the world.

'Well,' thought Luigi, 'that's another wish sorted, I guess! Next on my list, I'm-a gonna have to pester Mario about that little chowder incident I keep hearing about... I've still no clue how Wendy Koopa's meant to fit in with it all, I gotta say...'

A yawn suddenly pushed at his lips, and he struggled to hold it in. It surprised him how quickly his body adjusted to the fact he was about to sleep, when less than an hour ago it was pumping adrenaline around him like... like whatever he could make a good comparison with if his mind wasn't so busy shutting down. He yawned again.

Another yawn. It wasn't him this time.

There was a young Toad- early twenties?- walking right into the middle of the room, casually ignoring the gaping Italian that was leaning out at him from the bed. He was perceptibly sulking, scratching away the green of his relatively fresh army uniform while muttering unintelligibly to himself. Luigi resolved to not make any sort of comment- everyone had their personal demons to deal with, after all, and this guy didn't seem like the type that would appreciate a knight in shining armour trying to slash them away for him.

What Luigi didn't count on was the Toad grabbing the pine ladder of his bunk bed and reaching up to join him.

"Err, hello?" said Luigi. "Sorry, I thought somebody said this room wasn't in use by anybody..." The Toad kept climbing as if he couldn't hear a thing. "The bottom bunk's free, you know..."

The Toad had reached the top before he had even stopped talking, and proceeded to lie down on top of the auburn bedsheet with all his clothes kept tightly on, just like Luigi was at that moment. Both were in a foetal position, though the Toad wasn't cowering against the wall.

"Look, er... I'm-a Luigi, and I, um, don't really swing that way, man. I like... girls... I mean, I've got a princess back home to be thinking of, y'know? ... well, actually, I guess, really, she'd want to see something like this, she seems that type that'd try to cheer us on and- oh, please just get out!"

If anything, the boyish Toad seemed to wriggle himself even closer. Luigi smothered his sighs in his army-green pillow, feeling more tired than he could ever recall. First Wilder Smush, now this... The people of this time were more flexible with their perspectives than he had imagined.

"Look," he sighed, "if you're gonna be so territorial about this, then fine, I'll go and be the bigger man. (Goodbye, top bunk..!)"

Luigi moved to sit up, sending a piercing glare the Toad's way. If they were kart racing right then... oh, he'd show him territorial... He lunged over his unwelcome bedmate as he reached for the ladder to climb down, but his balance suddenly shifted and he found himself falling onto the stubborn Toad's warm body.

Falling into the ghostly Toad's cold body.

'What..?'

He had landed through him. There was no sensation of cotton under his chest, no inhale-exhale motion pushing him gently up and down.

He had landed through him. He wasn't real. He, he was-

"A g-g-g-ghost!" screamed Luigi. He could hear the panic in his voice, except he didn't have a voice. Suddenly his vocal cords had abandoned him, just as immaterial as his companion which had paralysed him. Nothing in his body was working, not even his ability to sense his surroundings. The Toad- who was named Toadkay, though Luigi couldn't tell how he came to learn this- had taken him to a land without land, where pain and relief were anomalies to exist, where good and evil amounted to just puppies and eggs.

'P-puppies and... eggs? Why am I thinking about that?' wondered Luigi. They were guests in his mind- paying the rent but refusing to stay. He was learning. He was forgetting. Thinking of every other thing and more, including his past. Some words he had heard...

'Do you understand it? The souls we had feared had fallen into the Minus World… just jumped back in, as if 'continues' just grew on trees!'

'...and, they were not alone. Within these walls, there have been sightings of… ghosts.'

The mayor. Ghosts. Like those two children near Peach's Castle, running around in circles...

Toadkay. Luigi was feeling something. He was feeling his life. Noticing every shake as the web of time on which he hung began to crumble.

He had dreams that night. Birth. Confusion. He walked, he spoke- 'dada', much to his mom's chagrin. School, friends. More than friends. No more friends. Emptiness. Empty heart, empty rifle. Then bullets in the rifle. Bullets out of the rifle, reload. Then bullets everywhere. In him.

Finally, a man. Comfort. A stranger, but comfort. Kind words.

And 'see you later.' Then back to 'dada'.

He dreamt of his ghostly bunkmate that night, suffocating under their life. Their screams of being born and never born, dying and staying dead, over and over until the tiles of history cracked underneath his feet. The light and the dark tumbled down with him, until the first and only moment when they weren't.

He wasn't dreaming.

So, um, if this doesn't make any sense, I'm afraid you're nowhere near high enough. MARIJUANA, MAAAAAAAAANNNNNN