Yay! Someone actually reviewed!

RIVolleyball214: Thanks so much for reviewing my fic! I read the first chapter of your story - Luigi working with Flavio and Mario married with Peach? Sounds interesting...

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Mario was rushing through another area of the Junglestream forest, brown shoes clicking against the green leaves beneath his toes as he ran on and on. The others rushed after him, a multicoloured mass of yellow, green, gold, pink, and silver. They were running because... Well… It had been Luigi's idea. Shortly before he'd recovered from the bout of crazy insanirt induced by the Yoshi syrup, that is. Actually, it was a race, and the crafty red-clad plumber knew he was winning.

"Ha ha! Gotcha!" Daisy cried suddenly, her yellow summer skirt flashing as she caught up from behind him and took the lead. Mario powered up his legs and charged after her, but the princess of Sarasaland was in no way about to give up. Until, of course, Luigi and Peach joined their power and raced way ahead of him.

Mario groaned aloud as he skidded to a halt, but it didn't matter to him. The real Mario only got mad when he didn't succeed in saving Peach from Bowser. Or so he would have, except that, up to date, he had always managed to get her back from the evil Koopa King. Anyway-as it was-aside from joking around, he had another reason to skid to a halt. A giant forest opened up below the ridged plateau they were standing on, its leafy heights spanning a length of approximately a hundred and two acres. Mario stopped just in time to prevent himself from toppling from the cliff and into the foliage. Which, judging by the canopy of greenness, wouldn't actually have hurt that much.

"Careful-If you fall you'll-a get hurt." Luigi, unlike his older brother, slid to a smooth stop right behind Mario. "I never a-knew there was a forest on-a Junglestream-did you?"

"Oh," muttered Mario, his moustache quivering; he was thinking about what it would be like to fall from the plateau. "I never a-knew, no. You a-think it would hurt if I-a fell?"

"Well, yeah," a voice came from behind them, and both brothers whipped around to see Daisy rustling from the trees. Her yellow skirt was dotted with leaves and her hair had come loose from its normal curly ensemble. Her silver summer tiara had snagged on a bramble; it was showing, knotted thorns reaching up from a hole in her pocket, where she had stored it. "You thought that if you fell there'd be miles and miles of leaves to aid you in your quest downward?"

"Er-" began Mario, but Luigi intervened, laughing and slapping him across the shoulder.

"It's-a OK, we already-a know," he laughed with a gigantic grin. Mario recovered his spirits quickly and laughed along with his brother, until another rustling of bushes told them the last of their mismatched party had arrived.

"What's the deal with the clothes, Peach?" Daisy asked as a very rumpled, very annoyed princess of the Mushroom Kingdom crawled out from the bushes, muttering about annoying Cheep Cheeps. "You were all right about getting dirty in Mario Party and Mario Tennis."

"Well, I guess I don't like mud and Junglestream Island palm trees, Dai," Peach grumbled, wiping grime of the front of her fuchsia mini-skirt. She adjusted her own crown, perched atop her sea of golden locks, and straightened the front of her blouse. "But maybe I should enjoy it more," she added wistfully as her eyes coasted the horizon.

"Well, you're-a going to have-a to," Luigi contradicted; everyone turned to stare at him. "This-a definitely isn't a-going to be our-a last adventure." With that, he hopped down from the cliff with the greatest of ease-and, surprisingly, without a painful landing. No wonder Luigi's a better jumper than me, Mario thought to himself with a small grin.

Peach swung down to the forest with a vine, shimmying with all her princess-y grace. Before grabbing one of the whippy green tendrils herself, Daisy turned to Mario. "Hey, I just thought of something. Why are the games always named after you?"

"I don't know. Ask Shigeru Miyamoto and the translators that that, not me," Mario replied as he jumped to the island depths (and succeeded in breaking his ankle for the third time in two months).

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"Waaaaaahhh!"

With that annoyingly-clichéd cry, a shelled, amber figure flung through the forest foliage and landed with a thump in a clump of leaves ahead of Mario. The red-clad plumber bent down and turned the creature over, revealing the none-too-mysterious face of his friend Parakarry, the Paratroopa.

"Thanks, Mario. I needed that." Parakarry adjusted the thick brown goggles he always wore before clambering to his feet, his feathery white wings flapping slightly in the wind. He was the local avian postman of Dry Dry Outpost and could usually be seen flapping around the small mice-filled merchant town. Except, of course, where he-and a bunch of other allies-had joined Mario in what was known as his Paper Mario adventure. Parakarry was faithful, too; as he came jogging over after his elder brother, Luigi wondered why the Paratroopa had landed in the Yoshi Island Forest.

"You all-a right, Par?" Luigi asked he adjusted his thick-lensed goggles, straightened his brown helmet and alighted on a low-jutting branch of a nearby maple.

"I'm fine," Parakarry assured Luigi; he perched himself easily in the crook made by two branches of an oak tree to prove his point. "I heard you guys were visitng here, so I decided to drop by with my great-uncle Porgal." He glanced up at the forest canopy casually, cocking his head to the side and leading the others' gazes up with him.

Peach had arrived, side by side with Daisy. Now the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom extended one delicate white-gloved hand upward, pointing to a copper-coloured figure breaking through the thick green leaves. "Is that him?"

Parakarry was up in a flash, squealing. "Is he all right?" he cried as Porgal crashed through the thick, foresty underbrush.

The wise old Porgal rose gracefully up on his booted feet, cocking his head to the side with a dazzling smile and roguish wink. "That I am, great-nephew dearest."

Parakarry's scaled skin reddened; nevertheless, he managed to keep his cool and hopped into a pile of leaves behind him, letting the wind stir his feathery wings before sitting down with Porgal. The two Paratroopas made small talk with the Shroomian guests to Yoshi Island; Porgal, as it turned out, came from a region far from the Dry Dry Desert.

"Where?" Mario asked. "If-a you came from a-somewhere else, that-a doesn't explain why-a Parakarry isa the mail-Troopa for Dry Dry Oupost."

Parakarry gave a mischievous wink, slapping his great-uncle across his veined orangey-brown shoulder blades. The two airborne Troopas slapped wings together. "Rogueport."

At this point, the others all stared around at each other, whispering excitedly. Rogueport was a mysterious city visited by only one of them in living memory - Mario been there once with his friend Goombella. It was rumoured to be very mysterious, but Mario had shrugged it off then as if it had been nothing.

Now, his blue eyes lit up and he excitedly tugged on the tip of one of Porgal's wings. "It's been a while since I've last seen the place," he said, his eyes shining with a mysterious, annoying little thing known as adventure. "Come back to the tribe home with us," the plumber continued, steering the aged Paratroopa onto his feet and to the direction of the leafy mud-lined home of Yoshi's. "Lila will get you two rested and fed and then you can tell us about it."

And so it was an excited party that led the mail-Troopa and his great-uncle to the tribe home, and into another adventure.