A/N: This is not meant to have any relation to my main series whatsoever. Thankfully. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take it seriously after this. This is what happens when my mind goes rogue.

You Went Down the Wrong Warp Pipe

Taking a leisurely stroll down a path he usually walked through on the outskirts of Mushroom City, Mario spotted a Warp Pipe hidden under the shadows of a high cliff. He could not remember seeing such a pipe there before. Though not feeling particularly adventurous, he was curious about where the pipe led to. And considering he could just turn back around if he got lost, Mario entertained the idea of going on a little detour. After mulling it over for a few moments, he made his decision.

Mario stepped onto the Warp Pipe and sank into its tubular chasm. The trip through the pathway felt familiar, but the destination did not at all register in Mario's memory. The Warp Pipe shot Mario out onto a flat, unknown field at sunrise. In front of him sat a stage with a plethora of music equipment, copious amounts of inactive lights scattered nearby, and a moose chomping on a bunch of pumpkins. No one else was around in the eerily silent field.

Without any prior warning, the entire world abruptly dissolved into a black void; leaving just Mario, the Warp Pipe, the stage and all its equipment, and the moose and his pumpkin meal. The moose stared at the plumber in red and blue as it continued chowing down. Mario flared a fireball in his hands with the impression that it would illuminate anything he could not see, but there was nothing in existence for his flame to reveal. Confused, Mario tossed his fireball straight down. He thought for sure it would splatter and disperse in front of him, but it did not. It just kept dropping further and further into the black nothingness until it exceeded Mario's range of vision.

"Oh, mamma mia," groaned Mario. "What could I possibly be standing on?"

The moose kept staring at Mario with a slightly cock-eyed gaze, taking his time chewing the pieces of pumpkin in his mouth. His chomping produced the only noise Mario could hear. When Mario decided to walk around, his steps made no sound, and he felt no ground at all under his feet. Yet, Mario did not fall.

Once Mario stopped moving, silence returned. The moose did not go for his pumpkins after swallowing what he had chewed up. For a long while, the moose just stared at Mario and did nothing. Just when Mario felt himself getting creeped out, the moose spoke to him.

"Answer this," the moose said. "Are you in love with a shooting star? That moves too fast for you to keep up with?"

"Huh?" Mario mumbled.

In an instant, bright rainbows stretched out from across the entire void in all directions. The rainbows melted into oozing colors that shifted and morphed into randomized assortments of shapes and sizes, all while music started pumping out from the stage's speakers. At 120 beats per minute, the instrumentals started off low and soft. But before long, the intensity ramped up.

Under the realm's dimming rainbow backdrop, Mario watched a marching band full of Shy Guys, koopas, and toads emerge from behind the stage alongside a slew of dancing flag bearing bears. The flag bearer bears came to the front and stepped in tandem with their rhythmic flag twirling routines.

Mario then heard clapping come from behind him. When he turned around, he saw a massive crowd of people gathering. The group consisted of just about every possible benign race Mario could identify. Soon, a large portion of the crowd brushed past him to huddle around the stage.

"Moist," the dancing bears chanted to the beat. "Moist... Moist... Moist... Moist..."

Mario clenched his jaw as he watched the bears dance, chant, and work their flags. "What..."

Bowser spun into the scene off of his shell in a pink and green tux with a jazz guitar in his hands. He riffed and breakdanced with ease on the stage. EDM lights flashed down on the jamming Koopa King and the dancing bear chorus.

"So soulful," Bowser sang, bobbing his head. "So soulful, I wanna flyyyyy..."

Luigi came up from the back of the stage, moonwalking to Bowser's side in a green-striped white suit with his hands on a matching fedora he tilted over his bowed face. While Bowser kept riffing to the music, Luigi stepped in place and made some vintage smooth moves smoother than that one Wario Ware game.

"The world ain't macaroni; I'm a blunt tool ready to ro-ckoooooout," Bowser sang. "I'm an all-star ready to break out – I'm ready to freak out! I'm ready to soooooar!"

A group of Piantas in tropical-styled shirts marched across the stage, chanting in tune to the instrumentals. "Onions have layers! Onions have layers! Onions have layers! Onions have layers!"

"Legalize it!" a teal Pianta yelled.

"Watch where ya goin', ya fool!" a white Pianta shouted upon bumping into Mario.

A gold Pianta walked over to Mario with a big green bong. "I got a 'Warp Pipe' filled up with some loud, my boy!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mario asked. He did not get his answer before he saw Waluigi strut up to him with his usual smugness about him.

"What did the five fingers say to the face?!" Waluigi asked.

"Huh?" Mario said.

Waluigi whipped his right arm across his body, striking his palm hard into Mario's head. "SMACK!"

"Yo – did he just walk up slowly? And smack him?" a nearby Shy Guy asked. "OOOOOOHHHHHHHH!"

"OOOOOOHHHHHHHH!" some bystanders hollered.

"Why did you do that?!" Mario snapped.

"Because your hat's jacked up!" Waluigi replied. "You got it set to 'M' for 'meh' when it should be set to 'W' for 'WAH!' "

Sonic the Hedgehog grabbed the group's attention when he sped to a stop next to them. "That tornado's carrying a car!"

"How'd you get here?" Mario asked. Neither Sonic nor anyone else there responded, for their focus soon went to the tornado in the distance behind the stage. It did in fact carry a car in its rotation. Multiple cars.

Peach stepped onto the stage in a red, pink, and brown suit, bowing powerful staccato bass notes off of her cello. Her patterns became more dynamic the more she played, and she soon had her cello dominating the theme echoing all around. Donkey Kong rose up from underneath the stage with a disco jacket and a headset that featured a tinted eye visor, his strut to the front proud and swaggering.

"If he shoots ya, it's gonna hurt," Donkey Kong sang. He and Bowser then joined their voices together. "CG...coconut gun. CG...coconut gun. CG...coconut gun. Mmm...coconut gun."

"If he shoots your stars, it's gonna hurt! It's the CG – coconut gun!" the bears sang. "If he shoots your stars, it'll fire in spurts! Hit the left, right, and left – the left! And right and left!"

The audience stepped to the bears' singing, their dancing spirited and ecstatic. Unfortunately, someone caught a toad dabbing towards the back. Security guards promptly beat him to near-death and dragged him away.

Toadette shuffled around behind Bowser and stood next to Peach's cello, tap dancing with great speed and precision. The stage lights fluttered along with her steps, and Bowser followed her movements with the strums of his guitar.

At the sight of Toadette's mad tap dancing, the Piantas broke out in chorus. "She's quick! And nimble, and quick, and nimble, and quick, and nimble, and quick, and nimble- She's quick! And nimble, and quick, and nimble, and quick, and nimble, and quick, and nimble-"

Mario felt a tapping on his back. When he turned, he saw a young koopa wave at him. "Hiya, I'm Sed!" the koopa said.

"Hi there!" Mario replied. "I'm Mario."

"Oh, I know who you are!" said Sed.

"You do?" Mario asked.

"Yeah," Sed said. "My friend actually wanted me to come up to you and get you to come talk to her real quick."

Mario raised an eyebrow. "She wants to talk to me?"

"That's what she said!" said Sed.

Sed led Mario to a table where a stunning woman in a mono-red suit sat and fiddled with her indigo hat. As soon as he saw her face, Mario recognized her right away. Once she saw him next to her, she lit up with surprise.

"Pauline!" Mario hollered. "I haven't seen you in forever!"

"Oh, you actually came over!" Pauline replied. "Wonderful. Just...I never actually thought you ever wanted to see me again."

"I didn't know you were here," Mario said. "In fact, where are we even?"

"Excuse my COARSE and vulgar word selection," Waluigi said, walking up to the table with a Bob-omb in hand. "But you bunch of Kooky Cookies need to help me out."

"Help you?" said Mario. "You just smacked me in the face!"

"That was my hand talking to you," said Waluigi. "I needed to grab your attention. Now listen – you see that moose in front of the stage?"

Ironically enough, the moose from earlier still stood in front of the stage where Bowser, DK, Luigi, Peach, Toadette, and all of the marching band and dancing flag bearer bears performed. He had resumed eating his pumpkins while the surreal, colorful party transpired around him.

"Yeah, I see the moose," Mario said.

Waluigi grinned and held up his Bob-omb. "Good, because we need to give this to him."

"Why?" asked Mario.

"Because that thing stole my pumpkins, ya hear?!" yelled Waluigi. "He's a thief! This is payback time! It's still Waluigi time, but it's DEFINITELY PAYBACK TIME!"

"Mario," Pauline said. "I wanted to talk to you, but if you're going to leave me again, then that's it. When you walk away, you won't hear me say, 'Please! Oh baby! Don't go!' Simple and clean as that."

"I'm not going anywhere," said Mario. "Waluigi, I'm not helping you bomb a moose in the middle of a large crowd!"

Waluigi groaned. "Loser."

"Did you guys know that the moon is shrinking by three feet per century?" Toad said, trotting up to the table with Wario and an extra large pizza.

"Oh, rad!" said Sed. "What kind of pizza is that?"

"Price is two coins for a slice, shorty!" said Wario.

"That's pretty cheap," muttered Pauline.

"Yeah, it is cheap!" said Wario. "This thing cost twenty-four!"

"That's not what I meant," said Pauline.

"That's a lot to have to shell out for some pizza," said Mario.

"HA! Shell," said Sed.

"It's because it's got stuffed crust," said Toad.

"Ooh," Pauline, Waluigi, and Sed said in unison. "Stuffed crust..."

"I'll stuff you all in the crust!" Wario snapped. "You better be grateful I paid for this this time!"

"This time?" Mario said. "Just where am I?"

"Huh? You mean you don't know?" Toad asked. "What drugs are you on?"

Mario stared at Toad, his eyes blinking numerous times in rapid succession. "What drugs is this whole place on?! There's a cow floating upside-down under a house!"

Sure enough, there was a cow floating upside-down under a house high in the sky. No explanation was given for that or for the adjacent Warp Pipes that did not attach to anything and just randomly cut off as if weightless and incomplete.

"Oh, that? I dunno," Toad said with a shrug.

"Oh boy, this is too much," said Mario. "You know what – where's the exit?"

Pauline reached out a hand to Mario. "Please, oh baby! Don't go!"

"I just wanna go home!" Mario snapped. "This place is crazy! I don't even know how I got here! Nothing's making any sense!"

The crowd up front gasped in raucous applause and threw money and flowers at a now bare-chested Luigi breakdancing alongside Bowser doing mad guitar riffs. When Luigi tossed his fedora into the crowd, tons of women – human, koopa, toad, Pianta, or otherwise – broke out into a rush to chase down the spinning hat's curving trajectory and trampled whoever got in their way. The moment the hat touched the ground somewhere, a massive pile-up developed on top of it. Donkey Kong flipped another identical fedora to Luigi for him to put on.

"IT SMELLS LIKE HIM!" a voice called out from under the pile of women.

"GIMME some-uh dat dere pizza!" King Dedede snapped at Toad, flipping open the box and taking a slice.

"HEY! I called dibs on the first piece!" Wario yelled.

"I don't care!" King Dedede replied. "I'm tryna get me some before that little pink thing gets here and inhales it all again! Oh-hey! Is this stuffed crust?"

"Mmm," Pauline, Waluigi, Toad, and Sed said in unison. "Stuffed crust..."

"Yo, I heard 'stuffed crust!' " Sonic called out as he rushed to the table.

"I oughta stuff you in some crust!" Dedede snapped. "Scram, ya moocher!"

Sonic swiped a piece from the pizza box and took off in a hurried dash. He ran away so fast, his feet pounded on the molecules of air and lifted him into the sky.

"SON OF A-" Dedede started to say. "Oh, he better not come around here no more! I'll kick that food-hogging hedgehog to the curb!"

"I think the more alarming thing was that he ran on air," said Pauline. "Also – Mario, you should be with me. Peach is a witch."

Mario scratched his head. "Huh?"

"Ooh, relationship drama!" Waluigi replied. "This oughta be good."

Before Waluigi took a seat in a chair, he chucked his Bob-omb behind his back. When he reached for a piece of pizza, the Bob-omb he tossed hit an Albatoss in midair and exploded over the area. The explosion not only added to the morphing rainbow sky and pulsating stage lights; it also blasted bits of roasted bird meat in all directions.

"What good is this?" Wario snapped at the green-tunic clad Link now standing beside Dedede. "These gems don't work here! Why didn't you go exchange them at a bank for gold coins?"

Link shrugged and grunted.

"So not only do you want me to go order another pizza, but you're giving me rupees to pay?" asked Wario.

Link nodded. "Yes."

"What anxiety are you suffering from?" muttered Wario. "At some point, you're gonna have to do more than make sounds and give one-word answers to people."

"I know," mumbled Link.

King Dedede slapped Link on the back and burst out in laughter. "Not very courageous of ya, ain't it?"

"Just come back to New Donk City with me," Pauline said to Mario. "Forget about all that nonsense in the Mushroom Kingdom. Don't you miss me?"

"Why- what- where'd all this come from?" asked Mario. "Is now really a good time to talk about this?"

"You won't return my calls," said Pauline.

"I get busy!" Mario said.

The gold Pianta from earlier with the big "Warp Pipe" tapped Mario on the back. "You sure you don't want some sticky icky icky?"

"What – no! No," said Mario. "I'm not – no."

"Man, I thought you'd be into the gange, my boy," the Pianta replied. He glanced at Link. "You want some of this?"

Link's gaze shifted between the people around him and the "Warp Pipe" the Pianta held. Eventually, Link shrugged and took the "Warp Pipe" from him. Everyone there watched Link inhale over and over, breath after breath. By the time he had finished, smoke flowed out in heavy puffs from his mouth and nose both.

"See, man?" the Pianta said to Mario. "You need to lighten up and get loose."

"Mario, I bet I'd be better up on that stage than Peach is right now," said Pauline.

"Woman, what is your problem?!" Mario snapped in distress.

Pauline shrugged and played with her hat. "Just saying."

"ARE YOU WITH US TONIGHT FROM MOONVIEW CITY!" Bowser roared into his microphone.

A large section of the crowd answered with ear-pounding noise. The music switched to a club beat more intensive with intricate groove tones and bass. Unfortunately, someone caught a koopa up front trying to whip and nae nae. Security guards promptly beat him to near-death and dragged him away.

Mario took a deep breath and readjusted his hat. "Okay, I need to find the exit. I don't care about anything else anymore. Somebody please tell me how I can get out of this place."

"I knew you had commitment issues," Pauline mumbled, looking away.

"That wasn't a backhand at you!" said Mario.

Link wrapped an arm around Mario's shoulders and shoved the "Warp Pipe" from the gold Pianta in his face. "Dude, you seriously gotta try this! I feel awesome!"

Mario pushed Link and the "Warp Pipe" away. "No! I'm not trying anything! Just tell me where the exit is."

"You want to leave?" the moose from earlier said from behind Mario's back.

"Yes, I do!" Mario replied. "Please, how do I get back to where I came from?"

"NOW I GOT YOU!" Waluigi screamed. He lunged at the moose and grappled with his antlers for about two seconds before the moose whipped his head and slung Waluigi all the way to the back of the massive crowd.

"Get bodied," the moose flatly said. "Now then, if you want to leave, you can either try to find the Warp Pipe that got you here somewhere in the crowd of people, try to go out the Warp Pipe at the front of this realm that would most likely take you somewhere other than where you came from, try the Warp Pipe on the other side of the perfume department connected to this place, or you can click your heels together three times and say 'There's no place like home.' Really, the last option would be the easiest."

Mario raised an eyebrow. "Would that even work?"

"I don't see why it wouldn't," said the moose. "But what do I know? I'm a talking moose. And you're the one talking to a talking moose."

"Well, I always hate going in the perfume department," said Mario. "I don't know where the 'front' to this place would be, and I don't like my chances of finding any pipe with all of these people around."

"I got a pipe for ya," Link said, giggling like crazy as he held up the gold Pianta's "Warp Pipe."

Mario frowned and grunted. "I'm gonna feel pretty stupid about this..."

Closing his eyes, Mario clicked his heels three times. Each time he did, he said, "There's no place like home." At the conclusion of the third clicking of his heels together and saying the special phrase, he opened his eyes and found that nothing had changed.

"I can not believe I fell for that," Mario muttered.

"I didn't say it would work," the moose replied. "I just said that it was the easiest thing to do and that I don't see why it wouldn't work."

"Come on, Mario," Pauline said. "If you really want to leave, why don't you just do what you're best at? Just jump, man!"

"Just jump?" said Mario.

"Yeah!" Pauline shouted, leaping from her seat. "Jump up in the air! Jump up, don't be scared! Jump up super high! High up in the sky!"

"I might be super high right now," Link said between laughs.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Bowser boomed through his microphone. "Now comes our rendition for Maple Treeway! With accompanying FIREWORRRRRRRRRRRRKS!"

The announcement and change in tone and rhythm of those playing on the stage and the marching band off the sides of the stage sent the crowd into the loudest frenzy yet. Unfortunately, someone caught a not-so-shy Shy Guy to the right of the stage trying to "crank dat." Security guards promptly beat him to near-death and dragged him away.

"Oh yeah, here we go!" Bowser yelled, wailing on his guitar.

Peach plucked and strummed the baddest bass tunes Mario had ever heard in his life, and Luigi busted out some suave and even suggestive dance moves that riled up the crowd even more. Toadette cut off her tap dancing and got her trumpet ready. Donkey Kong moved to the drum kit by Peach to add onto the marching band's drums. Half of the flag bearing bears disbanded to ready the fireworks.

"Just jump, huh?" Mario said. "Okay. I'll try that. I just don't know how that could get me out of here."

"Just do it," said Pauline. "I believe in you."

Mario smiled and nodded. While the musical performance on stage continued, he crouched and focused all of his power through every muscle and joint in his lower body and arms. He put so much into his concentration that he unintentionally let some flames and sparks loose that flickered around his feet. Nothing could distract him; not even the Hammer Bro next to him doing "The Floss" or the security guards that promptly beat the Hammer Bro to near-death and dragged him away.

And then, it happened. The instant before the fireworks went off, Mario jumped. And he jumped high. Super high. Sky high, like that one planet in Milky Way Wishes. Pauline, Wario, Toad, Sed, Link, King Dedede, the gold Pianta, and the pumpkin-eating moose watched Mario soar far overhead into the rainbow-filled air above them; all of them awestruck at the sight.

Mario himself could not believe that he had not stopped accelerating, but he just went with it. The fireworks flying alongside him exploded at various random points, highlighting his legendary ascent. He passed even the floating cow, disconnected Warp Pipes, and the hovering house. Soon, he went far enough to the point where the land he had took off from faded away into nothingness.

Then everything was black again. Mario could still feel himself rising, but he had no idea where he was going. From what he could tell, he was stuck in a void. Yet, his ascent did not slow.

Twinkling bits of neon specks then fluttered into view. The world around Mario soon opened up into a spatial setting of cosmic proportions. Mario glanced in every direction and saw stars, planets, moons, asteroids, galaxies, and blackness filling all the space in between.

He let his now weightless body float in a slow twirl as he progressed through the expanse. When his head came back around, he saw four powerful, glowing entities – a toad, a Boo, a Goomba, and a koopa – all hovering together in a row in a seated, trance-like state. None of them reacted when Mario neared them, but they acknowledged his presence.

"The imaginary can become real," the koopa said.

"Absolute nonsense happens everywhere in the world, and often without any explanation," the Goomba said.

"Sometimes in enlightenment, you can not see what you can only see in the dark," said the Boo.

"Stop limiting yourself to what you know," said the toad. "Dive head-first into the unknown."

The next instant, Mario felt his body accelerate once more. He sped away from the four entities and hurtled through the cosmos surrounding him until he reached a point where everything blurred with his exponentially increasing velocity. Before long, he found himself now in a white void.

His speed slowed to nothing, and he could finally set his feet down – on what, he did not know though. At this point, he was completely lost. He trotted in just about every direction he could, losing track of where he had started from in the process. Out of breath and with no idea where to go, Mario stood in place and panted as he tried in vain to spot anything other than white.

For several moments, he found nothing. But then seemingly out of nowhere, he saw a crown sitting on whatever the ground was. The tall, four-pointed gold crown had a slick shine to it, and it possessed crimson rubies at the base of each of its long points. For some reason, Mario had a feeling that he had seen such a crown before. However, he failed to recall just where he recognized it from.

The playful laugh he then heard from a deep but feminine voice echoing throughout the void put Mario on edge and prompted him to flare a burst of fire in his right hand. Again, he glanced all around him. He found no source for the laughter he had heard. His eyes then went back to the crown that sat not too far in front of him.

Upon hearing the same voice start moaning, Mario tightened his stance and amplified the heat behind his conjured flame. Yet, he still could not find a potential source to the voice wherever he looked. The voice seemed too distant and distorted to have come from the crown, but there was nothing else there that could have produced it.

Shortly after the first moan, a second moan sounded off. The second moan sounded more subdued and even somewhat pain-driven. If anything jumped at him, he knew he was ready to retaliate. Problem was, he felt something ready to attack him when he could not even identify or detect anyone else there.

Mario stayed on high alert and waited for a while, but no extra sounds came. Only his breathing, the fire in his hand, and his shifting feet produced noise. The gold crown stayed inanimate and silent.

The next time Mario turned around and glanced in the direction opposite of the crown, he saw a singular Warp Pipe. The very sight of it made him flinch with surprise, for he had not heard it appear. It just popped up without any warning. If he had not turned around, he would not have known it was there. He felt his heart pounding in anticipation of a surprise attack and made sure he shifted himself around in every direction he could so no one would catch him off guard. At no point did he see anything else other than the crown and the Warp Pipe.

Mario had no idea what to do next. The Warp Pipe seemed to be the only way to proceed anywhere, let alone return home. With the utmost caution and attentiveness, he eased towards the large green pipe. He stayed utterly serious and intense all the way to the Warp Pipe and did not drop his guard or disband the flames surrounding his right hand until he had reached the pipe. Nothing burst out of the Warp Pipe, and Mario had not picked up on any other development in his current realm. The gold crown still existed in the same spot where Mario had originally sighted it.

Mario waited by the Warp Pipe for a little while. Nothing happened. Finally, Mario took a deep breath and relaxed himself. Once he dispelled his fire, he leapt into the Warp Pipe and sank inside. The realm stayed silent and inanimate, but the Warp Pipe sunk into the void's "ground" just seconds after Mario entered it.

Mario leapt out of the other end of the Warp Pipe to a welcome surprise. He landed on the same path in the Mushroom City Outskirts that he had initially diverted from, right by the high cliff with the hidden Warp Pipe. He felt a wealth of relief fill him over returning from the bizarre and surreal detour he had went on. However, the pleasant feelings dulled when he noticed that the Warp Pipe under the cliff had vanished altogether.

Mario relayed everything to Luigi in the kitchen of their home later that evening. Luigi listened to it all as he handled a pot of stew, but he ended up laughing more than he did take anything Mario said seriously.

"There is no way any of that could have happened, bro," Luigi said between chuckles.

"I swear to you, it did," said Mario. "If you were there, you would've seen it all, and you would've been too scared to even move! Actually, you were there! Up on the stage! Doing all that dancing! And since when do you wear suits and fedoras?!"

"I've been here all day," said Luigi. "Don't you know how long it takes to cook beans?"

"I thought you were making stew, not chili."

"I can put beans in a stew. I'm the chef here, not you."

"Okay, well, if it really wasn't you, that guy up there really did look like you. Same for Peach, and Bowser, and Donkey Kong, and Toadette, and Pauline, and everyone else that was there!"

"No, I'd be too nervous to go on a stage and do all of that. And I certainly don't have any fangirls. You're the popular one, bro. And Bowser playing guitar and singing? Come on."

"I saw and heard it all. You can't tell me that I didn't!"

Luigi laughed. "I'll give ya DK and the drums. But bro, I think you work too much. Maybe you should take the time off we have now to just relax and not try to look for trouble. The less we have to deal with, the better. That's what I say."

Mario sighed. "With as much that goes on in the world, we gotta stay alert, and...oh whatever. I'm tired. I think I'm gonna go clean myself up and turn in early tonight."

"That sounds good," said Luigi. "I think we're both still pretty stressed out from our last trip."

Mario nodded and headed for the door out of the kitchen. "Yeah, probably. I still say that all that stuff that happened today with that pipe actually happened."

Luigi smiled but gave no response. He kept his focus on tending to his stew and let Mario leave the room. Mario shook his head with a disgruntled expression as he climbed the stairs.

Once he heard Mario upstairs, Luigi's smile faded. His face turned stoic and overall emotionless. After he finished turning over his stew, he set all his equipment down and grabbed his phone. He then pulled up a specific contact and dialed the number.

"Hey, Peach?" Luigi said. "Yeah... Yeah, listen. Tell the others that we need a new spot."