A/N: I enjoy doing video games, but I don't think Mario is my style. Also, don't expect to see many more first person stories. You have no idea how hard it was to keep saying "I" instead of "Mario".
Jump. Jump. A goomba's coming! Jump. Squash! The goomba is crushed beneath my feet. Ah... It feels so good. I keep running on. I jump up onto the top of a pipe. I duck and I'm sucked down into the pipe. Inside the pipe is a secret area.
I see a ledge filled with coins and jump onto it. I gather up the coins and jump off of the ledge. Further into the room, there is a surprise box. I hit it with my head and feel it move up under the force of my hat. From it grows a fire flower. This is natural seeing how I have already grown larger. I jump onto the box and eat the fire flower. The flower tastes of ash and smoke. My body is momentarily wreathed in flames and when the flames die down, I am a being of red and white.
I go back to the entrance and jump back up through the pipe. I expect to see the world as I left it, green meadows, the skies filled with clouds, goombas in the distance waiting to attack me. But this is not what I see.
Instead I see a world as wreathed in fire as I was when I ate the fire flower. But this time, the fires do not die down. The pipes have been broken and are covered in black burn marks, the sky is filled with ash, and the goombas march in waves. The only thing that has remained as I left it is the pipe I am standing on.
"Peach!" I cry out, remembering who I'm supposed to protect.
I run to the palace. I find it broken and covered in scorch marks, just like everything else. I run inside to find the castle completely deserted except for one small body lying on the ground. I run over to the body to discover that it is Toad.
"Toad!" I yell.
Toad turns toward me and opens his previously closed eyes. He does not look at all well. He is covered in scorch marks and has a nasty wound in his stomach.
"Mario," he says weakly. "You're back."
"Back?" I ask. "I was here ten minutes ago."
"Mario, you were gone for a year."
"What?" I cry out. "That's impossible! Where's Peach?"
"Sorry Mario, but the princess is in another castle."
Toad begins to close his eyes, blood seeps out of his wound.
"Hey! C'mon buddy, stay with me here."
"Unh"
Toad rolls over. He is no longer breathing. Tears pour out of my eyes. But what was he talking about? I haven't been gone a year. I've only been gone a few minutes. What's happened?
I stand up and walk out the door. This has to be Bowser's fault. I have to get to him and save Peach. Then I'm going to find out what's happened.
I don't have time to waste, so instead of going through all of the goomba infested areas in the kingdom, I'm going to use the emergency warpzone. This was the warpzone that the kingdom's scientists artificially created. It could only be used once, but this was an emergency situation. So I rushed back to his house and jumped into the pipe. When he jumped into the pipe and thought, "Bowser's castle, Bowser's castle, Bowser's castle."
When I resurface, I'm outside of Bowser's castle. This appears to be the only place that isn't horribly burned and smashed. I walk to the door and kick it. I still have fire powers and I'm safe in the knowledge that if Bowser is waiting behind the door I can roast him.
The door bursts open at the force of my foot smashing against it. The main room is deserted. I go down to the room in which Bowser and I had our first fight. The bridge is up, but Bowser is nowhere to be seen. I cross the bridge and head over to the dungeon where Bowser first kept Peach. Inside, I see Bowser standing in front of Peach, who is rambling.
I jump down. Bowser turns around.
"Ah, Mario, what a surprise."
"I knew he'd come! I knew it!" cried Peach. She was a mess. Her hair was tangled and matted, and she had shadows under her eyes.
"Quiet you!" Bowser shouted at her. "So Mario, where have you been. You can't just desert the kingdom you're supposed to protect for a year and expect everything to be exactly as you left it."
"What are you talking about?" I shout at Bowser. "I've been gone for an hour at the most."
"Stop making excuses Mario and accept that you failed."
"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about!"
I was getting really pissed at Bowser, so I threw a fireball straight at him. Bowser clearly wasn't expecting this and flew backwards. He hit the wall and disintegrated.
"Mario! You're back!" Peach cried and flew into my arms and hugged me hard.
"Look Peach," I held Peach by the shoulders at arm length. "What are you all talking about? I've only been gone for an hour!"
"Mario, I know that it's hard to accept, but you've been gone for a year." Peach said in a caring voice.
"That's not possible!" I cry out. "All I did was go to the castle, hang with you and Toad for a little while, squash some goombas, and go down a pipe. When I came out of the pipe, everything was on fire."
"A pipe you say..." said Peach.
"Yeah," I said. "Why, is it important?"
"It might be." she said. "Come on, you've got to see somebody."
She took me outside Bowser's castle and we walked all the way to the kingdom's historian/scientist's house. We enter the house without knocking and storm in on the historian/scientist napping on a book. We shake him awake and he wakes up confused.
"Ha? What? Where?"
"Harold," Peach says. "We need to talk to you.
"So, you went into a portal, and when you came out, a year had passed."
"That's pretty much the problem." I reply.
"I think I know what this pipe is." said Harold. "Can you take me to it?"
I was able to spot the pipe because it was the only thing in the kingdom without scorch marks on it. We went into the pipe and had a look around.
"Yep." said Harold. "This is definitely it.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Haven't you heard the legend Mario?" Peach asked.
"No, what legend?
"The legend of the Time Pipe." said Harold. "Legend has it that there is a pipe that if you go in it, when you come out, you could be in any time period in history."
"So you're saying that when we leave this pipe, we'll be another year in the future?"
"Not necessarily Mario." Peach replied. "We could end up at any point in history. We could end up at a time before any of us were born."
"But don't worry, I've got a plan." said Harold. "After all, I'm not just a historian, I'm also a scientist."
Several hours later, after using his emergency science kit, Harold had a small bomb attached to the floor.
"So you're going to send me back to my time by blowing up the Time Pipe? But won't we be killed in the blast?"
"Nope!" said Harold. "Because of the Time Vortex that is integrated into this pipe, the updraft from said Time Vortex will shoot us all back to our respective times."
"But won't that mean that you two will cease to exist?" I said with concern.
"No, we'll just be put in an alternate universe in which you disappear for a year but return to save us in the end. So when you're all ready, I'll detonate the bomb."
"I'm ready." I said.
"Same here." said Peach.
"Okay then." Harold took the detonator. "Three. Two. One!"
His hand squeezed down on the button. The entire room exploded. I felt myself being shot up. I was surrounded by a bright light.
I resurfaced from the pipe. I was covered in scorch marks from the explosion, but I didn't mind. I was just happy to see the grass green once more I rushed over to Peach's castle and burst into the main room.
"Hey Mario!" Toad called out. "What's up? Did you forget something? You were just here ten minutes ago!"
I sighed with relief.
"I'm fine Toad, I just came to check on you and Peach.
"We're fine Mario. You better get back to killing goombas."
"Hehe. Yeah, I guess I should. Well, see ya!"
I walked out the door again with a smile on my face. The world was back to normal. And the only thing that was different was a slightly scorched pipe.