Hundreds of years later...

As much as Mucho had once loved stargazing (once loved, regrettably- getting consumed by your greatest passion tends to kill any appreciation you may have for it), he wasn't too fond of the star gazing back at him. Which it was doing right now.

Well, yeah, it didn't have eyes as such. At least, none that the young Toad could perceive as he hovered in its darkness. Physically featureless, devoid of conscience, most likely... but it was impossible to shrug off the sensation of being observed, no matter how much he wanted to. And, oh, did he want to.

"Let's not leave you in want, little Toad. Let there be light."

No sooner had the command been uttered, that light flickered into existence and revealed to him another world. Flickered, not exploded; this new world was brighter, but not bright. If he could plough into the deepest, loneliest pit in the Mushroom Kingdom and brought but the warmth of a small pre-owned torch, that was how bright the place he was currently in would look. It wasn't a pit, though. More like a watch compared to a rock, actually.

Surrounding him, dull steel walls, four of them forming a cuboid chamber adorned with a cluster of screens and controls. So many buttons and levers... all grey of course. The only varieties were in the intensity of them, but at the very least there were about fifty shades of them. There was a sad deprivation of windows, yet beyond the room's sole hexagonal door, one could still hear the whispers of an angry breeze approaching the confused Toad. There was no sign of the man that had just spoken to him, but indubitably somebody had been working nearby. The single leather chair that was revolved towards the largest screen clarified this, but provoked more confusion than it settled. Who could find leisure in a place like this? What could they possibly be sitting down to watch on such a regular basis? Just one chair- just one authority in charge of all this?

This was a dream. Had to be. 'Just close your eyes, Mucho,' he thought, 'close them till your snooze melts away. Positive thoughts, positive thoughts...'

"Wake up, young Mucho. Wake up. Your long sleep will be given in due course; for now, your life is still of use to me."

Mucho's eyes burst open as if the newcomer's presence had ripped them open. A tall, dark figure was standing over him quite calmly. A black suit covered a symmetrical body that just radiated confidence from every well-toned muscle. The grey hair was smooth, short, a very formal style for a very organised man. It was hard to decipher in the darkness, but a content little smirk ripped through his chiselled face. A humourless joke that defied the charm that his character could so easily have mastered. In basic terms: in appearance he was a generic, camp meanie. But his hoar eyes… there was a reflection in them. Not just of Mucho, as he stared into them, but of… action. That was the word, action. Too much action to identify what sort of action, and about what, but that seemed the point. It was as if all things were swirling in them, perpetually… Mucho lowered his gaze.

"Huh… you… who are you..?"

"I am Operis. And you are Mucho."

Operis gestured that Mucho may rise from the steel floor, without really offering any assistance in doing so.

"W-wait..! How do you know my name..?"

"How should I not? My knowledge is transcendent, young Mucho. I see and know all. I do not crush one ant without having counted its days, nor the pitiful few you have remaining on your soul."

'God complex much?' Mucho intended to say. Instead, he started to add up the pieces. His pupils sprung out of his head upon the final piece. "Hold on… So, if I just died- I died, didn't I?- and you're so great, then… is this the Overthere? No offense, but you've let the place go a bit, haven't you? I mean, my bedroom would be a better afterlife than this. Yeah, why not send us all there? Especially the Toadettes, it's no afterlife without Toadettes. No afterdark, either…"

"You are not dead, young Mucho. Not yet. And I warn you not to criticise my home decor. You may soon become a part of it."

He spoke as if advising a young child, but the friendliness was just a mockery. It wasn't just the room's temperature that made him shiver.

"Are you frightened, little creature? Good. The more emotional, the better. But do excuse me for a moment..."

Nonchalantly, 'God' stepped towards a screen that was in operation, filled with... With...

The boy with the red cap on the screen's left side, Mucho could understand his existence well enough. Nothing surprising there. Reaching into his pockets, the boy took out and threw a sphere that was coloured equally with red and white. At first, the ball appeared reluctant to do anything but vibrate on the spot, but seconds later, Mucho's face contorted out of surprise. A creature had emerged! Out of a flash of red light, some sort of great yellow rat leapt onto the field, and was that electricity leaking out of its red cheeks?

Mucho would have questioned it, if not for the even stranger sight across from the two. Now, even though he had never encountered such a strange variety of rodent before, it was still somewhat recognisable in regards to its form. The other creature, on the other hand, was like an awkward pillar. One side was shorter than the other, and each side had impossibly flat outlines. The rest was even weirder; no eyes, mouth, or anything, seemed to characterise it, just disharmonious pixels that grated against each other in practically every degree.

"I call it Missingno." It took Mucho a second to realise that was Operis speaking. "I deemed that it sounded apposite for a creature that does not belong in that world, and it suits my sentiments. I will be 'missing no' part of this puny world once it has perished."

Mucho didn't laugh. "Perish? What?"

"Missingno is a glitch in the world, a fatal one at that. It is in the naïve trainer's interest to catch it, and beyond his experience to know that his world will be corrupted with this. One of my favourite means of annihilating worlds, I admit, letting themselves do it. Almost decided to do likewise with your own world, but things do change, I'm sure you appreciate. But that's besides the point. What do you think?"

Operis inclined his head to view Mucho's reaction, but the young Toad had vanished. Behind where he had been standing, the door was elevated high above the floor.

"Hmm. I really should keep the doors closed when I have guests around," he mused. "Of course, as I had hoped that this one would flee..." He smiled. The door descended behind him as he walked to where he knew his next victim would be. He hoped he wouldn't get there too early. He didn't want to stop the fun.

Maybe this place doesn't have an exit. Or maybe it did, but only a technogeek like Operis could access it. Maybe he wasn't the only one; maybe there were others here like Operis. Or maybe they were worse. Maybe they were just behind the next door, waiting for him, or maybe the darkness he was just in had stolen him out of life. Maybe it was playing with him, letting him believe he was alive, and he was more dead than the deepest game over could ever leave him...

...or maybe this internal monologue was getting him nowhere! But Mucho couldn't stop himself; every corridor he had dashed through after escaping from Operis looked almost exactly identical to its predecessor as it did with its successor. Either Operis liked to convey the sense of infinite gloom and fear, or he was running low on budget. And the former made much more sense, because it was working.

Another door, another day- at least, it felt like he had been running around in this building that long. The door raised upon his presence, and again Mucho wondered why he was allowed to get this far. This time, surprising him, the room he entered was much more unique than the rest he'd been in. Much larger, too. He peered around the dark chamber. The sound of his timid steps reverberated around the room. A sudden flash of bright light caught his eye…

Screens. Lined up on the wall, hundreds of thousands of screens…Row upon row, reaching up to the roof and beyond. Was there a roof? Whether there was one or not, he certainly couldn't see it.

In one, he could see a young boy talking to a perky yellow dog as he sat behind his desk in what looked like a town hall. In another, a blonde swordsman in a green tunic was warding off a horde of pirate ships as his train sped along the tracks. In yet another, a yellow creature ploughed through a maze, devouring any ghost or pellet in his path. It was like every possible idea in the universe was being visualised in this bleak chamber.

"Ah, there you are, young Mucho. For a moment there, I entertained the thought you killed yourself. Please don't. You wouldn't satisfy the thrill of it."

Operis strolled into the room right after him, as if he were attending a meeting that he had noted down on his personal calendar and notebook. Like everything was going according to schedule. The door clunked behind him.

Mucho put on a brave face, half expecting it would be his last face. "Get away. Just, leave me alone. If you don't give a toss about those in the Kingdom, then it's up to me. And don't threaten me, either. I can be determined when I want to."

If he had anticipated a reaction from Operis, he would have been disappointed. The imposing figure just closed the distance, waiting patiently a few metres away. The Toad decided to change tack.

"These images, what are they?"

Operis smiled. "Worlds, young Mucho. Worlds." He walked across to a screen far away from Mucho, a few feet off the ground. "Would you care to look?"

Reluctant to do as he was told, Mucho let curiosity guide him. He shuffled his way next to the screen, peeking cautiously at what it showed. From what he could make of it, a moustached man flying a plane was launching projectiles at a... UFO? It seemed somehow... familiar...

Of course! That pilot was Mario! And this battle, surely he'd heard about it before? Yeah, that alien had kidnapped a Princess Dandelion or something like that, and Mario went to her aid. But that was all ages ago, surely. Nobody had seen that alien for years now...

"Every other screen around you exhibits the same thing- realities. Each one, within my influence." Spoken in the same tone one may use to state they can turn on a lightbulb.

"So, what do they have to do with you? Do you, like, stop them from being thrown out of whack, or something?"

Maybe it was the light bouncing off his eyes, but Mucho could have sworn they were glistening with the irony. "I do not just regulate the worlds, as you suppose I do. No, order in these foolish worlds? These are the centres of chaos, and chaos shall I regulate. I have dominion over all worlds, even yours. My tiniest impulse, Mucho, and entire civilisations are overwritten. The most prominent of worlds, down to the most obscure realities…"

"...and you take a lowly Toad like me. Why not the Princess, why not someone important?"

"Ah yes, the lovely Princess Peach. Yes, I had sought to abduct the Princess and hold her prisoner to ensure Mario would not dare oppose my plans. Regrettably, I could afford only the power for one warphole, and it just seemed I was unlucky with my timing. The Princess was in, it seems, another castle. Hence, I soon must resort to more… extreme, methods."

"...but, then, why did you take me? What do I have to do with anything?"

It didn't seem like Operis would answer at first, too preoccupied with his cold adjustments of the machinery to dote upon flesh and blood. When he did answer, though, he pronounced it with such great contentment.

"Your family."

Mucho's gaze was blank. Operis laughed. More time to taunt the poor mortal, then...

"You are one of a long line of descendants, young Mucho, do you realise? Life never rests, and change never halts; yet, there is one key element that binds you with them. You have seen the stars. The Conceptual Stars. The very building blocks of everything that you know of in the Mushroom Kingdom. They do not act like bricks or planks of wood, however; they form realities from the thoughts that are invested in them. Once, someone would have reflected in themselves before these stars, and thought… Perhaps, 'if only there existed a vast, populated world, where the most ordinary of brothers led the most extraordinary of adventures... two everyday plumbers, jumping through the palms of danger. Heroes by very nature, friends when death dies away...' And thus, your world began.

"Life is regulated by their power, not mine. Yet, every 100 years, they require that world's essence to be presented before them. Held by a designated host; somebody whose essence had been present 100 years before, who in turn required a bond with the person before that. You, as with all your other ancestors that were awake for the 'renewal of the stars', as it is called, were born to carry within you a code. This code characterizes your reality in every time, and ensures the Conceptual Stars know what concept they are regulating. In other words, you are a sticky note for them- 'don't forget to renew this world.'

He couldn't quite fathom why such an intelligent god would be so crackbrained as to impart such revolutionary details to a stranger like him. Probably reads Genesis to all his 'guests', Mucho considered. Not that he wouldn't engage with this. "But, if we're 'sticky notes', then what would've happened if we didn't... 'stick'? If I never came here, would my universe just, y'know, be forgotten?"

"Impossible. Reality twists itself and agonises with the slightest rule it breaks, just to tease the code towards these stars as needed. It dares to contradict even nature for its own benefit- the fact could be that Bloopers choked your last breaths away in a frozen sea whilst hundreds of Poison Mushrooms ravaged your system. The effect would be you live. I should know. I've tried." A matter of fact emphasis on 'tried'.

Silence again. Operis liked being questioned, liked it too much. Mucho had the urge to disappoint the git and leave matters at that, but this couldn't compete with his urge to realise the mysteries that plagued him so.

"...why does this matter to you. What could you possibly want from all this?"

The Toad braced himself for another round of being looked down at and 'enlightened'. Instead, Operis' face expressed a more solemn note to him. He was frowning towards Mucho, but not really at him. Clearly it wasn't all 'fun and games.' He shoved his right hand into his pocket, grabbing at something.

"I need your code, young Mucho. That which is part of you, and part of your world. Once I take this code, the code that has enhanced with the centuries of stargazing, I shall know all of how it gives the foundation for all life in your world and enables 'time' to have meaning in it. And then, I shall undo it. Every last moment."

Mucho knew nothing about the time continuum and 'Conceptual Stars', he had only wanted to be a happy little spectator, that was all. But he grasped very well what Operis meant, and even more how he felt about this lunatic.

"What, no, you can't! I'll never be a traitor to my world! To my friends, my family, none of them! What madman are you?! It's creeps like you my father defends the Castle against- tries to, at least- and I'll be darned if you think you're gonna make me let anyone-"

Pain. It was pain that silenced him, pain and more. Inside him, there was something… or nothing…

"Sorry about your argument."

…memories were passing before him. His mum as she held him in her arms, the day he joined the stargazing society, the first time he spoke to Peach and thought, 'wow!' But he never met Peach, that never happened, and these other sights he was recalling, he couldn't be recalling. His world, not his eyes...

"Rather circular fights, aren't they? Circular like life."

...no. He couldn't have. This wasn't right. Those stars, he must have just fallen asleep under them. This has to be a nightmare, it has to be...

"Me, I rather the full stop."

And Operis' blade was wrenched out of his flesh. The soul followed. Darkness returned, and this time, there would be no light.

Hello again everyone! Sorry about the huge delay, but when exams come your way... :-/

I think having to stop for a few weeks sorta threw me off with my writing, and getting Animal Crossing- New Leaf recently didn't really help me avoid distractions (God, that series is addictive...) But anyhow, having published this chapter, hopefully I'll be getting more pumped to continue, so thank you for waiting for me! :-)

Oh, and you may notice that the age rating of this story has increased. I think the ending here would be stretching K+ a good deal! I couldn't resist, I had Operis' final words in this chapter planned for quite a while, and I couldn't resist getting an outlet for the idea!