Surprise! I got the chapter done early!

I'll be responding to reviews up here as well, assuming I don't have news. All questions are accepted, especially one pertaining to the story's canon.

Agent66: Ok, so you brought up some pretty good questions, both of which I'm happy to answer since I may never get these explained in the actual story(unless I get lucky). Yes, Super Dimentio, aka the combined entities of Dimentio and Luigi, did in fact reboot the universe. What I didn't mention is that the reboot worked up to a certain point where the reboot had a sort of error. This "error", in terms of a timeline, happened a few short weeks prior to when the first Paper Mario would have begun. As such, the entities themselves were placed back into the loop as the goal was to prevent "Super Dimentio" from destroying the universe and they are back in a time where the Chaos Heart, and by extension Super Dimentio, should not yet exist. Except, for some reason, the Chaos Heart does still exist, it is in a situation where it didn't previously exist before, and it wants to destroy, so it destroys, albeit with unexpected results. The Collisions are a result of the Error that caused an "alternate" end of the worlds where the worlds would slowly decay as opposed to being consumed.

tl;dr- Super Dimentio reset the universe from scratch, history went exactly as it did before until the universe goes "screw it" and destroys itself prior to Paper Mario because the Chaos Heart is a jerk. Chaos Heart forces worlds to collide, now everything is dying, every is terrible.

And now the Disclaimer

I do not own Super Paper Mario or any other game of the Mario franchise. These games belong to Nintendo and should be acknowledged as their property. Please support the official release of these properties.

He waited, nothing happened. Nothing attacked him. Nothing approached him. Slowly, he opened his eyes and immediately regretted doing so.

It was Mario, but something was terribly wrong. He was leaning on the frame of the door and breathing unevenly. The hand carrying his hammer was violently shaking while the other hand clutched the side of his head. His eyes, barely open enough to see, drifted to Luigi as he faintly whispered his brother's name, "Lu-i-gi". He collapsed on the floor.

Luigi examined his sibling for injuries, there were deep gashes in the chest and the side of the head Mario was holding was becoming drenched in blood, there wasn't near enough water to clean the wounds nor any bandaged to wrap around them. The little brother bolted to the opposite side of the house and grabbed a number of old rags and shirts, ripped them in strips, and tied them around the wounds to stop the bleeding. Then, with a good amount of his strength, he picked up his brother and held him over his back.

He ran, and ran, and ran. The emptiness of his stomach, the dryness in his throat, the weight on his back, they were nothing compared to the desperation to find help for his kin. He vaguely knew where he was going, the world around him was unrecognizable compared to when he'd last seen it. Where there had at least been small patches of pale green grass, there was only dust, the color that had struggled to linger was practically nonexistent, the mightiest of trees were decayed skeletons among a meadow of weeds and twigs.

He dashed through the ruins of what was once Toad Town, keeping an eye out for hostiles. Somewhere in the northwestern area, that's where he needed to go. He loosely followed the trail exiting that section of town, formerly known as Goomba Road, as he maneuvered through a series of shortcuts in the woods. Finally, he saw it, the entrance to the Goomba Village. A number of wooden fences with an untold number of nails and splinters jutting out, linked to a single gate.

They had found the Goomba Village by accident while scouting for survivors and were quickly kicked out by the family that lived there. The father seemed to be the head of the village, so all he had to do was ask him for help, seemed simple enough. The family was hostile, but Mario had said they were willing to assist with any medical needs. Luigi halted at the foot of the gate and knocked at it three times with his boot. He waited. He knocked again. He waited.

"Who is it?!" Cried out a gruff voice. The gate opened, revealing the voice's owner, a small, brown mushroom with stubby feet and a messy, black mustache. This was Goompapa, the head of the Goomba Village and loving father of two. He looked up to the green plumber, his thin eyebrows twitched as he spotted Mario on his sibling's back. The goomba stayed rooted to his spot and examined his patient from afar while Luigi explained his predicament. Two pairs of eyes, belonging to Goompapa's two children, appeared behind him.

He continued to scan Mario, he almost seemed willing to accept, but then his eyes stayed fixed in one place.

"No."

"What?" Confusion spread on Luigi's face.

"We don't need a corrupted freak in here, not after the three we've already had to put down."

Corrupted? Corrupted, corrupted, corrupted. The word ringed in his head; how was his brother-?

He followed Goompapa's line of sight...to his brother's right glove; it had been dangling from the side. What was wrong with his hand? The fingertips. The fingertips were slightly pointed and slight stained with red. The material of the glove's tips looked ready to tear from the point. He shifted his weight to free his right arm; he grabbed the glove, and pulled.

Claws. His brother's hands were becoming claws, they were mutated. It only takes a single mutation.

"He's a lost cause Green Man, might as well burn him before it's too late." Goompapa was looking back at Luigi's eyes. "We've already had to put down Mom, Dad, and the Innkeeper. I don't think the kids need to see another soul succumb to the madness."

"Hasn't anyone been trying to fix it? The corruption?"

"Not as far as I'm aware of, any that tried must've fallen to it themselves before they could do anything." The peering eyes looked sorrowfully at the brothers, knowing there was nothing they could do to change their father's mind.

"I should go now." Luigi whimpered in defeat. "Sorry to have bothered you."

He turned around and trudged back in the direction he came from, Goompapa watched for a minute before finally closing the gate.

"Luigi..." Mario groaned. They were halfway home when Mario was able to become semi-conscious. The bleeding had long since stopped by then, but the rags were soaked with the red fluids and needed to be changed or at least cleaned.

"Luigi," he said again, "you did what you could." Luigi said nothing; his mind was swarming with thoughts. What now? Where will they go? Would they just stay in the house forever?

"You should just leave me here, Luigi." Luigi halted. Did Mario really just say that? Was he really admitting defeat? Both parties remained silent the rest of the way there.

Sweet Grambi this took a while to write, and I was already partially done with this chapter when I posted the last one.

Again, I appreciate any reviews and questions.

Craving to see what's in store but can't wait for this dang story to update? Lucky for you, I also have a blog full of character concepts and ideas within this story just waiting to be used. I even take art requests! Just go to Tumblr and look for the blog "paper-mario-reboot", you can't miss it!

And with that, Adios.