Hello, readers of FanFiction! I am I Am A Toad (that sounds very strange), and this is my first FanFiction! Yay! So, now that that's out of the way, let's a-go!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to any of Nintendo's characters. That is because Nintendo owns them.

Chapter I: Professor Elvin Gadd's Amazing Discovery

Elvin Gadd was getting close to something huge – he could feel it. Ever since he had gotten wind of the existence of other universes, other dimensions parallel to his own, he had worked tirelessly to decipher their mysteries. But it was not as easy as he had first imagined, for there existed a place between dimensions – which was where the towns of Flipside and Flopside were built. And so for four months he had searched; gathering clues, collecting data, slowly unraveling the mysteries of time and space. Finally, his work was about to pay off.

Two weeks before, E. Gadd had been stuck. He seemed to be missing one key piece of the puzzle, but he couldn't figure out what. Then, by a stroke of pure luck, he had found that piece. It had happened on one of those rare occasions when he ventured out of his bunker in Evershade Valley to go grocery shopping. As he walked out of the store, Mario had suddenly appeared in front of him, and he remembered how his young assistant/ghost-hunter/temporary slave Luigi had told him how Mario could travel to the second dimension. Inter-dimensional travel, he had thought. Of course!

Then, it was simply a matter of convincing Mario to come to his lab, and then tracking the distortions he made when he switched to 2D, and back to 3D again. Finally, all he had to do was chart different possibilities for an algorithm to travel to the fourth dimension – time.

Unfortunately, most of those algorithms had failed, resulting in a lot of disappointment and even more explosions. Now, E. Gadd had one equation left – and he was confident it would work. He had to be, or else all of his toil would go to waste. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the professor entered the last algorithm into his machine, which was designed to travel into time itself – assuming it didn't blow up, spontaneously combust, or start belching rainbows like the previous fifty-seven portals.

The portal began to hum, and an ethereal green light began to manifest in the center. It got louder and louder, and the light got brighter and brighter, and the machine louder still, and the light even brighter, and... it stopped. Elvin sighed. Deep in his heart, he'd suspected as much. He turned around and waited for the inevitable detonation.

Suddenly, an unseen, noiseless force knocked him to the floor. Groaning, the professor pulled himself back up. Something was odd about that explosion... he thought as he turned to look at what he expected to be a pile of charred and melted metal. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of his portal – still exactly the same, except now, in the middle, there was a swirling, otherworldly green vortex.

"Holy mother of..." he gasped. "Eureka! It worked! The algorithm – it worked! I've done it! I've discovered time itself!"

The reckless part of E. Gadd wanted to explore the world beyond the portal, but the logical part of him knew that it was dangerous. Still, his reckless side gave in, and he leaned into the spiral. "What the..." he muttered.

The professor did not know what he had been expecting, but it was certainly not this. The portal was an island in a seemingly endless black void. Throughout the void, there were long chains of numbers – ones and zeroes. Attempting to get a closer look, E. Gadd leaned farther still into the portal. Unfortunately, in doing so, he caused his glasses to plummet into the abyss.

Just then, a new string of numbers erupted into existence right in front of him, and he tumbled back into his own world. However, not wanting to lose such a valuable specimen, he grabbed the chain and pulled it back with him. After he got a new pair of glasses, he whirled around to find that the amount of numbers had nearly tripled in the time he wasn't looking. "Incredible..." he breathed. "Absolutely incredible."

Upon closer inspection, he found that not only was the string expanding at a rapid rate, but its appearance also changed if he got closer to it. It didn't take him long to realize that he was witnessing his immediate past – him losing his glasses, him getting new ones – as if it were a movie. In fact, each ten numbers or so seemed to represent a frame of the movie – hence the string's swift growth.

An idea began to form in E. Gadd's head. An idea so horrible and yet so amazing, he couldn't help but test it out. He found the frame that represented him losing his glasses – close to the beginning of the set – and altered it. He didn't exactly know how, but he changed a couple of zeroes to ones and vice versa, and the frame changed. A moment later, another pair of glasses flickered in front of him before succumbing to gravity and falling onto the floor.

Suddenly, it dawned on the professor: he had changed time. Which meant, the fourth dimension contained everything that ever was and would be. Which meant, he had time in his bunker. Which, in turn, meant that eventually his bunker, and soon all of Evershade Valley, would be filled with the stuff. Which meant that he had to get it out of there now.

Briskly, he found the end of the chain, and shoved it back through the portal. Forty-seven minutes later, he had the last of it out. "Whew," he wheezed. "I haven't gotten that much exercise since before the Shroob invasion!" With that, he collapsed onto his couch and fell asleep. Not once did he think about the repercussions of his actions.

As E. Gadd dozed, something else awoke from its slumber. It glanced up at the swirling green portal far above it and grinned a malicious grin. Soon it would be free. Soon it would have its revenge.

…And that's Chapter 1! Be sure to read and review!

'Til next time,

~I Am A Toad