It was 1993, and personally I couldn't think like could be any better. But there was always an element of fright. I knew Bowser was alive, but I didn't know where he was, and I knew he could strike at any moment.

To help take my mind off of it, I took up painting, and I was pretty good at it. I guess I'm kind of spoiled. I live in a huge castle and have a life of luxury and don't even work. Though I guess occasionally having to save the world might count as a job.

It was late August, Luigi and Yoshi were visiting when it happened. Toad had gotten the news, it seemed that Wario had somehow escaped from the woods we left him in less than a year ago. Somebody, for reasons god only knows, had left an old one man propelled bomb plane in the middle of the forest, and Wario had taken it. He was now flying over major cities, dropping cannons.

We got there as soon as we could, but we didn't really much of a chance against him. We did however, manage to lure him back into the forest, and Toad, enlisting the help of a wood fairy he knew lived there, stopped him. After that we put a confusion spell on him and relocated him to another forest on the other side of the country to stop something like this from happening again. All in all, it only took a day.

At around the same time I also heard that Mario Land was opening 7 themed hotels to try to attract tourist. And get this; it was called Hotel Mario (must have been reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally hard to come up with that!) And so I to go to seven different openings for these hotels, and each time I had to sit for hours to sign autographs. Than a had to shoot a stupid commercial. I hate being famous.

An uneventful month passed when the moment I was dreading for two years happened, Bowser finally made his first move. And this time it was nothing like before. I was going to visit Mama for the weekend, and I got into the warp pipe like I have hundreds of times, and I got out expecting to be in front of her house, but I wasn't. I was face to face with King Bowser Koopa.

I nearly my pants, but I couldn't let him see my fear. I looked at my surroundings. I was in a dark room, like a dungeon, Bowser was standing there in all his menacing glory, smiling, around him I saw his 7 children, and dozens of koopas, goombas, and all his evil minions.

"Ah, Mario, at last you have arrived," he said in a sly voice.

"Bowser! Where am I? Tell me right now!" I screamed. Laughter erupted all around me.

"Oh Mario. So long you've played the hero, and now you are the victim. You don't know how much I wish to tear you apart limb from limb, but today is your lucky day. I need you alive…for now."

"Damn you! What are planning to do! Don't think you can hold me here! I was destined to stop you!"

"Shut the hell up Mario. While you may be an egomaniac, I remember that prophecy stated quite clearly that two brothers were going to stop me. I don't see Luigi around here, do you? Now the rest of you, GET OUT!"

One by one, the monsters left the room, leaving me alone with him. But I wasn't afraid. I'd faced Bowser plenty of times, and I always came out on top. That's when I realized I was small. But I had eaten a Mushroom that morning, and hadn't been hurt. Bowser was standing inches from me, I couldn't breathe. I saw his claw come lunging towards me, and I went flying to the other side of the room into a brick wall.

Oh my God, that was painful. I think the back of my head was cracked open, and blood was gushing out of my nose. I didn't understand; hits like that never usually hurt me this much. Bowser jumped across the room and landed right on top of me. I struggled to get him off me. It was like I had lost all the strength that Luigi and me had whenever we were in the Mushroom Kingdom, or Dinosaur Land, Sarasaland, or Sub-con. Where were we?

"Bowser, I don't know what you think you're doing, but you will not get away with this! Just wait and say, my friends will come!"

"Oh, I don't think that'll be a problem, considering I've blocked all warp pipe use between the Mushroom World and Earth."

"Earth…we're on Earth!"

"Oh yes, you see I wanted to bring my poor suffering minions to a great dimension like the Mushroom World, but you stopped that twice, than I tried to go to a second rate dimension like Dinosaur Land, and you stopped that two, so here I am in this dump called Earth, which is still much better than our world."

"So you want to take over Earth, huh?"

"Want, no. Have is more like it. As we speak, my minions are on every inch of the world, disposing of the annoying population. And we're in my recently built castle in Antarctica."

"And why the hell have you brought me here!"

"Oh you see, while we do have control of the planet, I don't really think that's enough. I want to do some 'reconfiguring' like I did in the Mushroom World. Want to make more suitable for us. Get rid of all those pesky buildings and trees. And as it is I don't have that much power. As you remember, I kidnapped your beloved Princess Toadstool to use the magic inside her to rule over the kingdom. And you may not know this, but you two have a lot of magic inside of you that you don't know how to use. But I do. That's why I brought you here, to kill two birds with one stone, I'm going to use you to complete my plan, and now you won't be able to stop me. Now you're going to stay in here while I use the magic inside you to do my work, until it all runs out, at which point you will die, but it won't matter anymore! MUAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

No, no! This couldn't be happening. I was trapped. Bowser was on top of me, and I didn't have my strength. I couldn't escape, and nobody could come and rescue me. It was over, Bowser had won, and I was going to die.

Bowser pressed his leg into my stomach, and I screamed out in pain, while he laughed. He grabbed me by the hair and pressed me against the wall, and with his other hand smacked me across the face. It was than I saw the shackles on the wall. He locked on each of my arms and legs.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I screamed shacking trying to break free. "YOU CAN'T KEEP ME HERE! LET ME GO! LET ME GOOOOOOOO!" But it was of no use. Bowser raised his hands in the air, and started saying something in a language I didn't understand. A blue light appeared around him, and it felt like my heart had stopped for one second, but then I was back to normal.

"It has begun," said Bowser, and with one last smile, he turned and left the room.

It was horrible being trapped here. Peach had been captured by them 3 times, she never once complained about it. She must have been so brave and strong. Everyday, Bowser or some other Koopa would come in and use me as punching bag. For the first few days I struggled to escape, but than I just got to weak.

3 months had passed by so slowly. I couldn't take it anymore! I was losing my mind. Everyday I got weaker as more and more magic was sucked out of me. I hadn't seen the light of day for so long. The beatings just got more and more painful. It was like every bone in my body had been broken. My clothes were ripped and covered in blood; my face had been practically demolished, it unrecognizable. All I had to eat was one mushroom they fed me once a week, but it didn't have any effects since I was on Earth. I had lost so much weight, and it top it all off I was freezing cold. A stone castle in the South Pole can get pretty damn chilly. It didn't seem to affect any of the koopas though. The only source of heat or life I had was a small torch on the other side of the room.

I was going to die soon; I could feel it. And a part of me wanted to die. At least if I died I wouldn't have to go through this anymore. It was early morning; at least I thought it was. I had lost count of the days, but I had just woken up. I tried not to sleep for as long as I could bear it, until I just got too exhausted to stay up. I had been sleeping a lot more recently, and let me assure you being chained to a wall is not a comfortable sleeping position. I heard the door open, expecting some koopa to come in and start roughing me up. But it wasn't it. It was the last people on Earth I thought I'd ever see, a rescue party consisting of Luigi, Daisy, and Yoshi.

"Luig…what, how…" I couldn't really talk very well at the moment.

"Oh my God! Mario!" he gasped looking at the state I was in. The three of them gathered around me, all looking like they were about to cry. I was crying too, but from joy.

"What you doing ere…" I struggled to say.

"Rescuing you of course," said Yoshi.

"Bu how, Bowser block all the pipe to mushroom word."

"Hello Mario, we don't live in the Mushroom World, me and Daisy live in Sarasaland and Yoshi lives in Dinosaur Land."

"You mean…" I said trying to smile the best I could.

"Toad got in contact with us psychically since the pipes to our dimensions were closed too," said Luigi. "It was a week after though. When you never came back that weekend they got worried, and Toad tried using the pipe system, and it wasn't working. So he tried to sense where you were, he found you on Earth, but couldn't get further than that. He also was able to sense Bowser was close by, and he guessed the rest. After he told us we all got together and opened a pipe to Earth. We came out in Rome. We had no idea where on Earth you were though, so it was like a global version of Hide-And-Go-Seek. We opened pipes all over the world trying to find you. Daisy used her small psychic power to help with the search, otherwise who knows how long it would have been. We've also been playing hero helping people from koopas and stuff."

"Thank you Luigi! I can never repay you! You have no idea what they did to me…"

"Believe me, I know," said Daisy. "Remember Tatanga."

Luigi opened the shackles and I fell to the ground. My arms felt so limp from being held in the same position for so long, my legs were too weak to stand up, My knees collapsed but Luigi caught me. I hugged him. Tears were rolling from my cheeks. I hugged Daisy and Yoshi too. I'd save each of their lives at one point or another, and now they'd saved mine. But the smile vanished from my face immediately.

"What's the matter Mario," asked Luigi. "We've saved, now the spell Bowser cast has been lifted, the Earth is back to normal. C'mon we got to get going, now that the spell is broken this castle might collapse at any moment. You wouldn't believe how easy was to get here. There was hardly any security, thank God, we don't have extra lives here, we just had to get pass 3 of the Koopa Kids. We killed them but who knows, those guys are always coming back from the grave…Mario, what's the matter!"

I stood frozen. "Bowser…"

"Don't worry about Bowser, we'll deal with him later, what we got to do now is get you home to safety…"

"BOWSER!" I screamed and pointed towards the door. The three of them turned around and saw Bowser standing in the doorway, looking furious.

"No! NO! You will not foil me again! I refuse! With the magic inside of the four of you combined I'll create a spell so powerful nobody will ever break it! THEN I WILL KILL YOU ALL IN THE MOST BRUTAL WAY POSSIBLE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

He breathed fire into the air, it was a good thing it was made out of stone or else the whole room would have caught on fire. Grabbing on to me, Luigi and everyone else dodged to get out of the way of the flames. Luigi left me safely lying down in the corner, Daisy and Yoshi stood over protecting me. What was he doing, Luigi couldn't take on Bowser by himself, even when he had he powers.

Bowser charged towards him, Luigi however ducked down and slid beneath his legs. Wow! Bowser turned around annoyed and swung his fist toward him, Luigi dodged it. His claws came so close to him, he jumped back! He was amazing! He obviously didn't have his powers; he wasn't hitting Bowser, just dodging every move that he made. I couldn't believe. I always thought Luigi was weaker than me, and here he was doing something that could never do. I mean; he had never really fought Bowser. It always ended up between King Koopa and me in the end because Luigi had died shortly before or during each fight. Luigi zigzagged across the room confusing him, than he'd run around in circles. Bowser swung he tail, and Luigi ducked just in time so that it would miss him. Still, I didn't know what he was doing; did he plan on just avoiding him forever? Then I realized. They had a plan.

"NOW!" screamed Luigi. And within a second Yoshi had grabbed me and he and Daisy were running towards the door. Bowser turned around and jumped through the air landing right in front of Yoshi. He put me down immediately, and Daisy stood over me protecting me. They cared so much about keeping me save; I couldn't believe it.

Yoshi ran across the room, apparently trying to keep distance from Bowser. That's when he shot his tongue towards Bowser. His tongue stretched out several feet hitting Bowser with incredible force. He kept hitting him again and again and again. While he was doing this Luigi crept up behind me, picked me up and dashed for the door. As soon as Bowser saw this, he grabbed onto Yoshi tongue, spinning him around in the air by it, and sending him flying towards the wall. Luigi stopped and turned around to see what happened, big mistake. Bowser turned to face us, took a huge breathe in, the way he does when he's about to breathe fire out, but suddenly Daisy jumped up from behind him, grabbed his neck and tackled him to the ground. But this didn't work for long; Bowser got up and used his claws to scratch Daisy across the face. She was knocked down, blood pouring from the wounds.

"Daisy!" Luigi screamed. He put me down and I watched him awe-struck.

"Luigi, heads up!" yelled Yoshi. He pulled something out of nowhere like he always does; it was some sort of weapon; like a gun, only bigger. He tossed it and Luigi caught it.

"WHAT IS THAT?" Bowser demanded.

"Just a little toy I picked up here on Earth. Latest from the US Army." He fired, I couldn't really see what happened from where I was, but a lot of smoke came, and Bowser was sent flying to the other side of the room. There was a whole in his stomach.

"No! You can't kill me! OH NO! I WILL RETURN! AND WILL GET MY VENGEANCE ON ALL OF YOU!" He snapped his fingers and he was gone.

"Oh crap! Not again! This is the fourth time he's gotten away from us!" screamed Luigi.

"Luigi," I said softly, "You were amazing…" He smiled.

We left the castle, Luigi carrying me. There was a warp pipe out front, and the last thing I saw before we left was the castle tumbling down.

We came back outside of Peach's Castle. The four of us came in; Peach was standing by the door, as if she were expecting us.

"MARIO! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!" she yelled. She ran across the room and grabbed me. She was crying, so was I. I kissed her; I wanted to kiss for so long. "Oh Mario, you have no idea how worried I've been, I missed you so much."

"I missed you too Peach, it was horrible. I love you so much."

"I love you too."

Thanks to some great magic from Toad, I was completely healed and back to normal. He also was able to get rid of all the remaining koopas on Earth and put them back in their own dimension, revive all those who had been killed, and erase all of the people's memories of the events.
So everything was ok for now, but our troubles were far from over. Bowser was more pissed off than I had ever seen, and who knew what he might do next.