Hello again, gents. Did you actually thought i was going to cut Toadsworth from the story so anticlimactically? Hell no! On the contrary, now he's gonna be the one under the spotlight. More on the story in general...well, it's certainly going to be more action-oriented and bat-shit insane than The Astral Connection(basically an excuse to share a fraction of what the inside of an active washing machine i have instead of a brain has come up with over the years of looking outside the windows instead of, you know, focus on whatever lesson i had at the moment)and almost everyone who got left behind will probably be featured. Going back to this story, this is a, you guessed it, a sidestory going in parallel on what's happening in Everbright. But there will be almost no correlation between the two, so if you haven't read it, there's no need to worry. Obviously i DO NOT OWN any of Mario characters or locations and they are all property of Nintendo, that should go without saying, right?

Alright, i've been blabbering long enough with this, let's just start.

Prologue: Back at Home

The night sky was more clear than ever the day Toadsworth was supposed to come back from the Everbright Kingdom. It passed less than a week when, together with the he cares so much about, he departed for the funeral of a royal of some kind. Not that any of that mattered all that much to Toadette, the court engineer, who was assigned to recieve the elder toad in the moment of his return, along with a bunch of other unimportant Toads, so much so that she never bothered to remember their names. All of them were waiting on the rooftop of Princess Peach's castle getting just a tad bit tired of staying there, as the temperature was getting too low for the likings of everyone present.

"The princess...didn't let him pilot the thing by himself, right?"

"Pff, as if. There's should be a professionist with him...I think. I wasn't present during the all assignment thing-Woah, wait a sec!" The female Toad was gazing into the distance with her pair of binoculars, finally seeing who they wanted to see for like twenty minutes now.

"It's him! Everyone, in position!"

The toads arranged in a line in front of the landing spot on which Toadsworth, the instant the hot-air balloon touched the ground, he slumped on it, hugging it like it didn't see his native land in centuries.

"WELCOME BACK, MASTER TOADSWORTH!"

"Oh, you just warmed the heart of this frail old man. You really shoudn't have."

"What took you so long, master? My snot was about to become frozen solid."

"We have experienced some wind of turbolence coming from north, nothing major, but it surely delayed our arrival. But enough trivialities, i've some urgent news to share, down at the throne room to be precise." The elder toad didn't want to waste anymore time, so he quickly made way for the ground floor and the rest of them followed him just as fast.

"I'm aware speaking of matters of such importance so abruptly may rightfully confuse most of you, but my weariness has reached critical level and i now require a long amount of rest before fully commiting to my new duties. And what could those be, you may ask? It's actually much more straight-forward that i'm making it sound...our princess will be absent for a long while and i will be your new king unti her return."

A row of open mouths followed that statement , so ludicrous it was. Even more so is Toadsworth just casually making his way to his room immediately afterwards. Of course, Toadette had no intention of letting him walk away so easily.

"Wait, what the hell does that mean? Come back and explain things!"

In the middle of the night, in anyone's water...

A battleship is navigating quietly under the light of a beautiful crescent moon, shining on a giant snowflake on white sail. As an alone, bipedal blue whale was sleeping on the edge of the boat, a little blue penguin with white and green striped trousers tried to get his attention.

"Captain, do you have a moment?"

"(yawns)Well, now that i'm awake i guess i do have a moment to spare." He rubbed his eyes for a bit before letting the subordinate proceed.

"S-sorry about that. It's really nothing important, just wanted to check how you were doing on behalf of the crew."

"Your shifty eyes make it hard to believe. What did you really wanted to ask?" The penguin became even more nervous than before.

"Er...(Oh man, how can i put this?)the others were expressing thier...perplexion about Admiral Screech's decision of attacking the Mushroom Kingdom of all damn places."

"(ugh)Look, i'm not exactly thrilled of the idea either, but his decisions are final. And from my position, i can't do anything about it anyway."

"Still, maybe we can opt for a...back-handed mention of our disapproval?" The gigantic cetacean let out a heavy sigh at the stress of his underling and instead proposed a less mind-bending compromise.

"How about this? Me and Liutenant Fisk will make sure he doesn't push you around too much, but promise you'll make your part and try not to get on his nerves, okay?"

"(snort)Easier said than done with his bad attitude...Ahem, don't tell him i said that. He's more than able to feed me to the Sushis just for a simple jab against him."

"My lips are more closed than a treasure chest."

"Phew, dodget a bullet there. Well, i better go back to the hold before the entire crew starts looking for me." The penguin was going on his way only to stand still for a second to look back at the captain.

"Thanks for the reassurance, by the way. I...really needed that."

Now alone once again with his thoughts and unable to go back to sleep, the whale decided he would spend the rest of the night looking at the horizon, eagerly awaiting the arrival.

"Sometimes you just gotta tell people what they want to hear. Me, on the other hand, i can barely contain myself at the thought of meeting you...Mario."

A.N: I hope this was a good way to start things up, to me it seemed like it was, except for using "Toad" one milion freaking times, that is. I think i'll use the Mushroom Kingdom that was in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, not the most creative or interesting one to use but...ehi, boring but practical, as they say. Also, who guesses correctly about which group the villains are a part of, has another chance to win a cookie. With that being said, thank you for reading and i'll see you in the next one.