Ah...the Mushroom Kingdom...a place of such sweet grace...where the butterflies fly...and the Goombas are squashed...in elegance...

RIIIING!!

Mario let the alarm clock ring another time before slowly taking the hammer off of his bedside table and smashing it to pieces. He brushed the broken pieces of metal and wires into a pile on the other side of the table the clock had once sat on, where the pieces fell into a million other smashed bits of metal.

"You know, Mario," Luigi said groggily from the upper bunk, "you don't have to use an alarm clock. It's better for the both of us and it saves us money."

"Having an alarm clock is fun. That pile over there is my pride and joy."

Luigi muttered a few words nobody understood and was snoring again within a few seconds. Mario put his hammer away and put his legs over the bed, letting his eyes adjust to the light. When he was used to it, he took a shower, brushed his teeth, and shook Luigi awake.

"Will you stop it, Mario!? It's six in the morning!"

Mario checked his watch, then said, "Had you actually looked at the time, you'd discover that it's actually 10:00. And I mean PM."

Without lifting his head, Luigi snatched Mario's watch off and looked at the watch. "Nice try, bro," he said, handing the watch back to him and showing him that it clearly stated 10:00 AM.

"Just get up!" Mario shouted.

To make a very, very, very long story short, Mario eventually got Luigi up (it was now 11:30 AM). Luigi took his own shower and brushed his own teeth (who else's teeth would he brush?), then sat down with Mario in front of their house.

"Remember what day it is today, Weege?" Mario asked, calling Luigi by his nickname.

"Monday."

"Besides that."

"It's a sunny day."

"We had plans for something, Weege."

"To stay in bed all day."

"Shut up. Everybody has to get up sometime. We're going to a friend's place as some sort of a field trip. Who is it?"

"Peach. Who else?"

"Is your memory honestly that bad? He's an elderly man..."

"Toadsworth."

"You're not even trying, Luigi. He makes lots of machines..."

Luigi thought for a bit, then threw his hands up (no, he did not puke them). "Fine. I can think of nothing similar. Prof. Gadd."

"So you were intentionally messing with me?" Luigi nodded. "Well, whatever. Yes, we are going to Elvin's place. See what the good professor's up to. Pack a snack, Luigi, 'cause we're leaving in a few minutes."

Mario and Luigi stood in front of a small, shabby place that served as the professor's home. Mario was about to knock when he heard an unfinished, "Oh--," before an explosion shook the house. Mario hesitated, eyeing the smoke pouring out around the crevices of the door, then knocked three times.

After a few coughs, the door opened, letting more smoke empty out. Prof. Gadd rubbed his glasses to clear them, then glanced up at the pair. "Luigi!" he exclaimed happily. "And Mario! Nice to see you again! Come on i--whoops, hang on." After wandering back inside, turning on a machine, and having the smoke quickly get sucked into the machine, the small professor came back out again. "Sorry, not nice to bring guests into a smoky house. NOW you may come on in."

Mario glanced around to make sure nothing else was going to explode, then slipped inside. Luigi followed suit. Mario looked around at all the whacky devices the professor now had littered around the place. He saw a hamster in a cage that was connected to a bright-red machine.

"That," Prof. Gadd explained happily, "is a recent invention. The hamster runs on the wheel, which powers a machine that creates tar."

"Tar?"

"I'll change it to something like jawbreakers soon, but that's for a later time."

Luigi walked over to a large machine in the middle of the floor that was probably being worked on when the Mario Brothers had entered in. "What's this?"

"I was working on that when you two came in. Far from finished and has a few flaws, which should explain all the smoke a few seconds ago. It is a very basic time machine."

Mario could tell Luigi was thinking about where he would want to go.

"But," Prof. Gadd continued, "it only works when you inject your DNA into this little slot over here--" He motioned over to a hole on the side of the machine-- "and even then, it can only transport you to the time and location of a relative, however distant, up to three generations ago. And furthermore, it can only hold five DNA samples at a time." He sighed. "It needs work, but I feel that once I am finished, it will be quite the work of art!"

Mario nodded. He looked around the place more and noticed a piece of paper on a wall. When he looked closer, he realized it was a family tree of Elvin Gadd's (E. Gadd's) family. He scanned his eyes over it briefly, but one name caught his eye. Einstein. E. Gadd was Einstein's distant second nephew-in-law, if that was even real. Mario had no idea how they were related, since he had no idea how family tree charts worked all that much.

"I have already had my own DNA injected," E. Gadd continued to explain. "I've always wanted to meet a few of my relatives. And then I--"

As Mario relaxed and listened to the professor, he leaned against the time machine and accidentally pushed a lever. Light burst out of the machine, and Mario whirled around, his hand accidentally hitting a button that said "Elvin Gadd" on it, then tripping and hitting his head against the button that said "Albert Einstein." Unable to get up in time, Mario's luck totally ended when his molecules dissolved and transported to another time.