"Thank you very much," he showed gratitude to the mushroom man. The creature gave Mario a nod.
As he stepped outside, he noticed a small panic that was spreading throughout the entire town. Mushrooms whispering in eachother's ears, going wide-eyed, running and shrieking, "God save us!" Oblivious to the problem, Mario decided to announce his return to the Princess and marched into the magnificent palace. However, he nearly trampled over Toadsworth, who had just been exiting.
"Thank the Gods!" Toadsworth exclaimed, in relief upon seeing the red plumber. In a quieter voice, he repeated, "thank the Gods..."
"What's happening, Toadsy?" Mario interrogated in a rough voice.
"The Princess has been kidnapped, Mario Mario!" Toadsworth shouted in Mario's face. The old man dropped his arms. "I woke up this morning at the usual time, and was frustrated when the Princess wasn't out of bed after 12 A.M., so I knocked on her door to no response...when I opened it, she was gone."
Mario softened his tone. "Are you sure she didn't run away, or something?"
"That's the worst part," Toadsworth answered grimly, "the note."
"Show me."
Toadsworth pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Mario. "You see, it's from a dictator of a land not too far from ours, Koopaland."
"I remember learning a little about that," Mario remembered back to when Peach was teaching him on the geography of this world.
Mario Mario unfolded the wrinkled, light-brown sheet paper and read the fading text inscribed:
"PEACH IS MINE GIVEING BACK FOR OWNERSHIP Of MUSHROOM KINGDUM ~BOWSER KOOPA" "Damn."
"If you read the back, he adds that if not given the deed within a week, the princess will die."
Mario viewed the back of the paper, as if to confirm Toadsworth's words, and shoved it back to him.
"I have a brother to wake up."
Luigi Mario awoke after a truly horrid nightmare. Before I go through with the common cliché of men believing previous events to be mere dreams and then realizing the sad, utter truth, let us just understand that Luigi was affected by this trope.
So you could imagine his surprise when being pushed awake to see his brother and a mushroom man.
Yes, a mushroom man-it was all true.
"Luigi, meet Toad. He's a new friend of mine."
Luigi studied the little person, trying to assure himself these were but hallucinations caused by a severe injury. But the militantly-built young...thing looked pretty realistic, and he certainly didn't feel any severe injury. He decided to sleep some more, which was a nice way to imply he passed out yet again, in a timespan of 1 minutes, 4 seconds.
"Your brother's kind of a wimp," Toad admitted.
"Yeah," Mario chuckled, "he is."
Mario and Toad, son of Toadsworth, had met after the former was alerted of the princess kidnapping situation. As Mario and Luigi Mario journeyed on their quest to save the Princess, Toad would be joining them, as he had studied the creatures and land in all the "Earth" and knew their greatest weaknesses. Toad was taller than most of the residents of Mushroom Kingdom, at a whopping 4 and a half feet. He also had quite a bit more muscle than others. Strapped on his back was a miniature version of what we call "katanas". He also had a knife strapped into his boot.
"So you're the resident badass?" Mario had asked him when they first met.
"Basically," was Toad's short reply.
"Then welcome to the team," Mario grinned and walked away.