...No.

Just... no. Max couldn't understand it. What the hell! As far as Max was concerned, this made absolutely no sense. Oh, sure, he could have taken the "TV made a magic portal into Nintendo Land" route, but people who believe that usually eat the square pizza at school. With their face. Get where I'm going with this? IT'S A GAME. IT'S NOT REAL. How could this possibly be real?

Well, It was. All of it. Max just had only one idea how. This was surely a parallel universe that just happens to resemble perfectly a world where all his videogames come to life and coexist... ...but seriously, how? There had to be a more realistic explanation...

Max was no fool. He knew that folks like Mario weren't just born one day and decided to be famous. They were characters and ideas conceived by a Japanese kid named Shigeru Miyamoto who liked to explore his village a lot, then grew up and joined Nintendo. He'd established that this wasn't an elaborate joke at his expense, as from what he'd seen so far, that would take way too much time and effort. He wasn't hallucinating either...

...Well, Max eventually decided to just forget about all the oddity surrounding this, and just enjoy this world for what it was. Little did he know, one day, all of his questions would be answered.

"So, you knew Kevin?", asked Max of Mario, as a royal tailor prepared for them some elaborate formal costumes.

"Oh, yeah, yeah... good kid, a lot like you, except... he seemed a lot less experienced with da rest of da world, ya know? I mean, he knew some of it... anyways, after he left, we thought things were gonna get betta... we tried to convince ourselves we were a good place again... It just went downhill without him, though..."

Max was a little confused. "Wait, you mean... he's not here?"

Mario shook his head. "Nah, went back ta Earth about five yeas ago... probably went to see his Ma... I'll bet she's happy ta have him back!"

Max looked down at his feet, and decided not to talk about Kevin anymore. Instead, he took a trip around Toad Town, where people seemed just a little less fascinated by the Second Coming of their messiah, so to speak. Max enjoyed the quiet for a little bit, and went to take in the beauty of the flower-dotted fields and hills nearby. Finding a nice stone wall retaining a cut-out portion of the hill, he sat down in front of it and gazed at the new world around him. It was bright and sunny here, and while Max always thought he'd be creeped out by everything having eyes in this realm, it was actually kinda delightful.

"Robert… Mom…" He said to himself, trying to think of how he'd ever see them again. It was at this point Max realized he'd have to make new friends out of his favorite videogame characters. "Hope they don't turn out to be a bunch of elitist jerks or something… Mario seems nice enough, though. Who knows, maybe when I'm here I'll even get laid!" Max laughed to himself a little, then took a serious expression. "Seriously though… If I'm gonna be having all these adventures, I would like a little female companionship…"

"Ouch!", he heard someone say. It sounded like they fell.

Max looked around on the other side of the wall and saw a girl lying in the grass. Not a mushroom girl mind you, just an ordinary one. If she had been hurt, it was hard to tell, because she had on a huge green sweatshirt. She looked like she could almost live out of that thing (In the cutest way possible.) Max was a little stunned by her appearance: tomboyish, with her short blond hair and even shorter shorts, and something about that left Max speechless.

Max fumbled his words for a few seconds, and finally offered her a hand. "Are you okay?"

The girl got up by herself with amazing ease, and answered rather coldly "I'm fine."

"Oookay", Max said, as she began walking away. Desperate to get her attention, he then decided to introduce himself by calling out "I'm Max Walker!" When she didn't respond, he added "Captain N? You know?"

When he said this, she turned around, and angrily charged at Max, knocking him flat on his ass. Standing over him, she looked right down into his eyes with a stare that could have made his eyes jump out of his skull and run scrambling for safety. "You, sir, are NOT Captain N. Stop trying to BE Captain N, you will NOT replace him." and with that, she walked away, disappearing behind the hill.

"Geez, what was her problem?"

Mario soon stood over Max. "Hey, why ya lyin on da ground like a pizza pie gone bad? You're ruinin your tux, kid! Besides, plane's here, we gotta get you ta Hyrule!"

Max miraculously sprang up when Mario said Hyrule. "Right, well, let's get going!"

Mario took Max to an airstrip where they met a young man in a flight suit and helmet before boarding.

"uuuuhhh, welcome to the Songbird! This is Princess Zelda's special jet! I guess I should get you going! Right, well, uhhhhh... you all packed?"

Max had no luggage, and sat there staring at the pilot. "Are you serious?"

The Pilot jumped a little. "Oh! Right. Of course not. Sorry, sorry.. Well come on in!" This pilot was definitely kinda goofy, but maybe he was pretty smart deep down inside. After all, the princess of Hyrule trusted him with her jet.

"Oh, hey, uh, you wanna... y'know... sit up with me? I mean it's cool n all..." the pilot asked. Max shrugged and got up there with them. Roughly ten minutes after the plane took off, so did their bond.

"Dude, no way! I've had octorock and it tastes horrible! I don't care how hungry a guy is, he's not gonna eat one of those things."

"So, are you from Hyrule?", Max asked.

"Well, technically I was born in a little place just West of it, but yeah... I guess0 I've been livin there since I was a kid. Crazy place, Hyrule... it's the archaeology capitol of this whole planet Gaia, and therefore the site of a lot of war with the space pirates... ...and Ridley..."

"What about Ganon?" Max asked.

"Ganon?" The pilot looked at him confused for a moment, then back at what he was doing. "Ganon's dead. I walked into Hyrule, and a few weeks later I killed him."

Max stared at the pilot for a few moments. "Wait... take your helmet off..."

"uuhhhh, okay..." The pilot obliged, and took his helmet off. Underneath was a young man with very messy and scrambled brown hair. Some of it fell of the sides of his face and in front of his pointed ears. Some of it stood straight out in front like a bomb went off in it.

Link looked at Max. "What? I took it off!"

Max started laughing. "Nothing, it's okay..."