Mushroom Kingdom Virus

Today had been a very odd day. Odd was putting it lightly. This was like a horror movie taking place in the often peaceful side of the Mushroom Kingdom as Princess Peach had become a horrible monster. What had happened to her? Was this the unknown virus she had received this very day? Better yet, could the kingdom's greatest heroes, the Mario Brothers, possibly stop this?

"How could this happen?" Mario asked still in shock, "This can't be the real princess, can it?"

"If it wasn't her, she'd still be in her room," Toad said, "And seeing as her room's destroyed, we got a pretty good view and she's definitely not in it or anywhere else in the castle."

This was a big predicament. Would Mario really bring himself to fight his one true love? For all he knew, the solution to this problem might have been… death.

Alas, there were far more lives at stake right now and one was hardly worth the 150 that were in the castle, let alone the minimum 5000 good people that lived in these parts of the kingdom.

And even those in the areas Bowser ruled over would be victims, and despite being bad, Mario felt that even they didn't deserve death… just a simple trip to the hospital would suffice.

He knew what he had to do.

"Alright, we'll fight," he said with a look of confidence, "First, we'll see if we can return her to normal with a little bit of force. If it fails, we may have to…"

But he couldn't bear to let out his next words. Luigi held a hand on the plumber's shoulder and nodded in understanding.

"Let's do this!" Mario shouted as Luigi's eyes widened and he replied, "Wait… you were serious?"

"Yes," Mario said as Luigi laughed and said, "Well, good luck out there."

Mario narrowed his eyes and said, "You're helping," as Luigi crouched and started to tremble while backing off slowly only for Toad to stop him in his tracks.

"Surely the great Luigi will help his brother out," he stated with a smile as Luigi looked over at Mario who blinked at him.

Luigi then broke out into tears as Mario sighed and said, "Alright, I'll fight her myself… regardless of how much this is gonna hurt me."

Peach continued to beat the toads senseless when she saw someone else running towards her. If this was the usual Peach, she'd have recognized Mario right away, but seeing as she was possessed by whatever was causing this, Mario was a stranger to her.

She whipped out her tentacles at the plumber who simply did what he did best. Remember when I said he was complementing his agility and jumping ability? I wasn't kidding.

The plumber dodged all 20 tentacles with ease, taking the time to showboat like he seemed to enjoy doing even without an audience, performing acrobatics and even tying all of them together in various knots that would even be hard to do on most ropes but possible at the very least. Then he winced seconds before landing a kick to the princess' face.

What had he done? Mario knew this was the right thing to do, but it still hurt him. He had planted his foot into Peach's skull. Had it been his fist, he would have felt her flesh, and that would have made the feeling much worse. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but regret this action despite knowing he had to.

To make the situation worse, it seemed as if Peach had not even felt the blow. The kick was very hard for sure, but for some reason, she didn't seem to notice he'd done it in the first place.

That was until her eyes turned red. She glared at Mario with a look of anger.

"Princess, stop!!" Mario spat, but his words could not reach the princess as she untied her tentacles and wrapped them around him.

As the grip on Mario got tighter and tighter, the plumber's face started to turn blue. Then it went from blue to purple and from purple to green. He was about to suffocate as Toad leapt in and held his hands over the princess' eyes making her subconsciously throw Mario some of the castle remains. Sure, it had dealt quite a bit of pain to him, but he was still able to stand… well, it would take a minute or so to shake the pain to his head off.

Toad clutched as long as he could onto Peach's head but then realized the rashness of this action when she picked him off with one of her tentacles and hurled him into a wall, knocking him out for good.

Seeing this happening, Luigi had no choice now. He had to help. But he was too frightened to go out there. Then he spotted it, a floating block.

'Please let it be something I can use,' he thought to himself as he leapt up, ramming his fist into it.

Fortunately for him, a small leaf had emerged. Now, one would think a leaf wouldn't be able to help against an opponent such as this, but this was no ordinary leaf.

Luigi grabs onto the leaf's tip and shouted, "MARIO!!!" as the plumber in red looked over at him.

Luigi threw the leaf at him. Due to how leaves generally didn't go far if one threw them, it stopped a mere few inches from where he had thrown it making the younger brother feel pretty stupid.

Nevertheless, Mario ran over to it hopping over Peach's violent attack on him and grabbed hold of it. Suddenly, a light shined from the leaf as Mario was covered in a puff of smoke.

Within this puff of smoke, something amazing was happening. The leaf ripped up into separate pieces. The two smallest one placed themselves atop Mario's hat as they transformed into brown raccoon ears while the remaining fragments combined together and transformed into a striped tail. As the smoke cleared, Mario did a heroic pose shouting, "HERE WE GO!!" and his raccoon form was revealed to the public.

Some of you are probably wondering how a raccoon form would help the plumber. This'll be revealed shortly.

Peach whipped more tentacles at him as he dodged them with more ease than usual. Thanks to the raccoon DNA merging with him, he was a lot more nimble and agile. After a good running start, he leapt towards Peach and amazingly, he started to fly while the tail fluttered up and down. Unlike real raccoons, Mario's raccoon tail allowed him to fly. Finally, after flying past all the tentacles trying to catch him, his flight was almost over for it was limited, so he finished off the pursuit by spinning his body 360 degrees and slamming his tail hard against her face.

Peach's eyes started to burn with even more fury now as her arms became tentacles and snagged the plumber. The pain caused by her squeezing him made the raccoon power vanish as Mario was now helpless.

The plumber sniffed as tears ran down his face. His one true love was going to kill him.

"PEACH, STOP THIS!!!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, and amazingly, this caused the princess to loosen her grip so he could breathe.

"Princess, even since I met you, I have had so many feelings I hadn't felt before," he said through tears, "I love you, Peach."

For a split second, you could see a tear running down the woman's face before her eyes turned red again and she started suffocating him again. Just as Mario was about to take his last breath, a bright light came from nowhere and circled around him flashing brightly and blinding everyone in the area briefly. As the light vanished, Mario was gone.

"Mario?" Luigi let out as he looked around and called out, "Mario!"

He looked around some more and spat, "MARIO!" but alas, Mario was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone?

The toads were scared stiff now as their only protection was gone and the princess resumed pinning them up against the walls. Something strange happened as the tentacles pressed against them. The tentacles started to make a pumping noise as it looked like something was being sucked into them like a tube.

As the toads' faces started to wrinkle, Luigi knew what was happening. She was sucking the life out of them.

With the only one who could stand up to her gone, Luigi had no choice. He had to help.

Luigi leapt towards Peach and planted his foot hard into her face before she could even realize he was there. See, Luigi was not only faster than Mario, he could also jump higher. What he lacked in physical strength he made up for with skill. Some believed he was better than Mario, but his fear prevented him from mastering his abilities completely.

Upon hitting Peach in the face, his determined look became one of fear as the princess' eyes turned red once more and he was sent reeling into a yellow block. As he tried to get out of the daze he'd been put in, he bumped into the block again, which had turned brown and an odd suit fell on him covering him in a cloud of smoke.

Like with Mario's raccoon form, something amazing was happening in this cloud. For some reason, a koopa wearing a helmet and a silver shell known as a hammer brother was walking through this cloud. Luigi, by instinct, jumped on it forcing it out of its shell and now Luigi had it on. Then a pair of shoulder pads and knee pads appears as he stood tall and proud, the smoke clearing to reveal Hammer Luigi. (I based this idea of transformation sequences off of the Kirby anime)

The toads who hadn't had their energy sucked dry, which was actually quite a lot seeing as Peach only had 22 tentacles now, cheered as Luigi whipped out a hammer and launched it at Peach's face. Unlike Mario, he had no romantic interest in Peach, and right now he was too scared to show any judgment.

Sadly, his fear had taken a turn for worse when he realized he had caused Peach's nose to start bleeding. He yelped out in fear as she whipped her tentacles at him.

Luckily, a hammer brother's shell was the second-strongest shell among the koopas, so when Luigi tucked himself under the shell and helmet, the tentacles with nothing to him. Did that mean he was safe? Not quite for the tentacles then surrounded themselves around him cutting off his air intake.

'Who knows how long this will last?' he thought to himself.

At this very moment, Kamek was ready to cast his sleep spell on the kingdom, but upon arriving, he was shocked by what he saw. He saw a huge tentacle monster ravaging the castle.

From where he was, he could not tell that it was Peach, but he felt obligated to let Bowser know that some other being was trying to take his job.

As he flew off towards the castle, he noticed that Bowser was already headed for the castle. He flew using what was known as the Clown Copter. Basically, it was shaped like a bowl as Bowser sat in it and as the name implied, it had a clown face on it and a propeller on the bottom.

"Kamek, I trust you got the job done," he said as Kamek shook his head and explained, "There's a big monster trying to kidnap the princess!"

"WHAT!?" Bowser retorted with anger in his eyes, "I'll teach him to march in on my territory!"

Bowser's copter went to full gear and charged towards the monstrosity. Upon seeing it, Bowser didn't care how threatening this beast looked. He was determined to stop it. Only he was allowed to kidnap the princess and he would be sure that it stayed that way.

Alas, his tragic flaw was this strange ability he had to get in over his head, and this was no exception as he rammed the ship into the monster's midsection. Upon closer look, his wide widened when he saw Peach's body attached to all these tentacles and thought, 'It can't be…'

The princess released her grip on Luigi giving him a chance to catch his breath as she tore apart the clown copter and beat Bowser senseless with the other 20 tentacles.

"Is that…?"

"Yes," Luigi said responding to Bowser's words, "No one knows what happened, but Peach caught an unknown illness this morning and now she's become this horrible thing."

There was no way. Much like Mario, Bowser was crushed. The woman he loved with all his heart was a horrifying monster. He could not stand for this. Unlike Mario, he didn't care for others, just Peach, so he could not bring himself to fight back.

"What can we do?" he sniffed as Luigi looked at Bowser. If he wasn't afraid of Peach's current form, he wouldn't have even suggested this, but right now he needed all the help he could get.

"Help us," he said, "Maybe if we deal enough damage, this beast will disappear and the princess will return to normal."

Bowser's look of sadness turned to one of confidence as he said, "Of course, I knew that."

Luigi rolled his eyes and slapped his forehead as he suggested, "You should call in the koopas to help us."

"No way!" Bowser snapped, "I'm gonna do this myself! You're not allowed to help!"

And so Bowser curled up into his shell and started to spin towards Peach. But before he could do a thing, the tentacles wrapped around his shell picking him up. Sure, the spikes pierced holes into the ones surrounding the top of his shell, but for some reason, this monster didn't feel any pain, so all this really did was fuel Peach's anger.

With a quick thrust of her tentacles, the princess hurled Bowser hard into some rubble as for the first time ever his shell broke.

Luigi stared in horror, jaw dropped, as Bowser's shell shattered to pieces and he was "naked" for the first time ever. Though it was slightly amusing to see Bowser with orange skin and a pair of underwear on, the fact that Peach was able to break his shell to pieces frightened the young plumber.

As Peach advanced on Luigi he started throwing more hammers, but he was too rash and they were easily knocked to the side.

Then Luigi remembered a great power that the hammer suit held. (I made this up, by the way) He focused hard as he whipped out another hammer. This one grew to 10 times the size it was when he took it out. Luigi furiously hurled it towards Peach, but due to his lack of physical strength, it didn't go far, but it had managed to cause and earthquake and it also flattened 3 of the tentacles blowing them open as a green goo spilled out.

"That was easy," Luigi said, but was horrified when the tentacles regenerated.

Regardless of his fear, Luigi couldn't stop thinking about one thing during all of this. Where had Mario gone?

We now take you to Mario who was sound asleep now. His eyes had finally opened around this time and he found himself in what looked like a laboratory. He looked out the window and had no idea what he was looking at. The world outside was dark and dank… even more so than Bowser's kingdom.

'Where am I?' he thought to himself. What was this strange world he was in?