Super Mario Sunset
Disclaimer: Nintendo owns Mario, not me
Chapter 1- The one in which Mario is in jail
Mario was the happy-go-lucky hero of the Mushroom Kingdom. He was the plump plumber who hopped across its verdant hills stomping any villain who came across him. His valor and humility shined brighter than any gold star he collected and they served as gold standards for the rest of us to live up to.
But as he sat alone in the dirty, dark jail cell, the feelings he had were not so squeaky clean. Outside the bars were the warm sands and glistening waves of Isle Delfino. It was a tropical paradise, a heaven. Whatever it was, it was more than what its inhabitants, the Piantas deserved.
"Ungrateful, grass skirt-wearing, candy-colored blobs..." muttered Mario.
They were the ones who had locked him away in this hole. Apparently, a Mario imposter had been going around vandalizing the island with graffiti made of strange, aggressive paint sludge with properties no one yet understood. These island-dwellers, ignorant of Mario's true nature, naturally locked him away while his trial was pending.
And poor Peach. The whole point of this trip was for her and Mario to take a much-earned vacation, together, away from the madness and kidnappings of their still-beloved Mushroom Kingdom. The fact that she too now had to endure this ordeal only exasperated the feelings of anger and resentment twisting up inside those red-and-blue overalls right now. Fed up, Mario grabbed his hat, through it on the ground, and stomped it with his foot as if it were a minion of Bowser's.
"If I only had a fire flower," he thought "I would-a burn this whole place down to-a the ground."
Suddenly, the door opened and light streamed into the darkness, followed by a Delfino police officer.
"Mario?" the officer asked.
"It's-a me," Mario replied.
"It's time for your trial," said the officer.
Mario looked at his hat lying wrinkled on the ground. The misshapen "M" stared back at him in a most uncomforting way. Mario then picked it up, placed it back on his head, and walked out the door.
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
As Mario stepped off the airplane, accompanied Princess Peach, back onto the soil of his beloved Mushroom Kingdom, something bizarre yet familiar arose in him. It was the same, horrible, negative feelings he had experience sitting in that rotten Delfino jail cell. The fight over was over now. Bowser and Bowser Jr.'s plot had been exposed. Mario had been exonerated, the shine sprites had returned to Delfino and Peach had been saved. Mario had even found a new companion in F.L.U.D.D., the robotic liquidizing device he had used to combat the pollution. But something was still not right. Perhaps he was still coping. During the flight he had suffered vivid, violent nightmares of every enemy he had encountered.
"Be careful lest ye become," was a particularly haunting line that had come from the spectre of Wart.
"Are you okay Mario?" asked Peach, tapping him on the shoulder.
"Indeed my boy. You appear to be quite shaken," added Peach's elderly steward Toadsworth.
"I'm-a fine," said Mario, "It's just, I don't understand how they could've done that to me. Put me in jail. I mean, it's-a me, Mario."
"The Piantas already apologized. Let it go Mario," said Peach.
"It was a simple misunderstanding son. No need for hard feelings," said Toadsworth.
"I guess," said Mario.
At that moment, if you were an insect beneath Mario's heel, you would've noticed a piece of the foreign sludge Mario thought he had eradicated on Isle Delfino slither off his shoe and up his pant leg.
At that moment Mario scowled.
It seemed as if everything was finally back to normal and peace had returned but although Mario may have been home, the truth was, for Mario and everyone around him, things were about to change forever.