The mansion was surrounded by a thick and gloomy forest that stretched for miles in every direction, a silent and sinister presence that loomed over it. The trees were tall and twisted, their branches reaching out like claws in the moonless night, and when nighttime rolled around it always seemed as if the forest was watching and waiting.

Boswer Jr., with Roy and Wendy in tow, decided it was fun idea to explore around the forest during this time for fun. They all came to an agreement that they achieved a new level of boredom from staying in the mansion all day and wanted to have some adventure. Junior's papa, of course, warned him not to venture too far away from the place so he wouldn't get lost near that forest, but his mischievousness, quite naturally, led him to the idea for the three to do the exact opposite.

Kids were going to be kids no matter what, after all.

The three had managed to remain undetectable as they snuck away into the woods surrounding the mansion's property. The leaves were dry and brittle, rustling softly in the faint breeze around. The ground was covered with fallen twigs, pine needles, and rotting leaves, a carpet of decay underneath their feet as they walked. The air was cold and damp, filled with the smell of earth and mold. After just looking around at the scenery of the night for some time, which proved to be as equally boring as being inside doing nothing, they eventually agreed to play a currently ongoing game of tag, with Bowser Jr. being it.

"Come on, you slowpokes! Catch me if you can!" Bowser Jr. taunted as he dashed through the trees.

"Oh, be quiet! We'll catch you soon enough!" Wendy shouted back as she chased after him. As she ran along, she quickly adjusted the pink bow on top of her head, which made her look cute but also fierce.

"Yeah, you're going down!" Roy added as he followed Wendy.

The three Koopalings ran through the forest, laughing and yelling back and forth, dodging the stray branches and rocks, jumping over the stream when they neared it. They had no idea where they were going or how far they were going to keep on running. In that particular moment, it seemed as if they only cared about having fun and beating each other at the game they were in the middle of playing.

Bowser Jr. continued running through the forest, feeling confident and smug. He was sure that he had left Wendy and Roy far behind, and that they would never catch him. He was having so much fun, that he did not pay attention to where he was going. He did not notice that the trees were getting sparser and the ground was getting softer. He did not notice that he was approaching a large and mysterious hole that opened up in the middle of the clearing.

He was about to run past it, when he suddenly saw it out of the corner of his eye. He gasped and brought himself to a halt, just inches away from the edge. He looked down and felt a shiver run down his spine. The hole was huge and deep, like a bottomless pit. He could not see anything inside, only darkness and silence. He wondered what was down there, and if there was any way out. He sighed with relief and said to himself, "Wow, that was close. I'm sure glad I saw that."

He turned around and saw Wendy and Roy catching up with him. They were panting and sweating, but they still had determined looks on their faces. Wendy teased him, "Hey, why did you stop running? Are you getting tired already?"

Bowser Jr. looked back at her with a truthful look on his face. "No way!" he replied. "I just saw something amazing. You have to see it for yourself. I'm serious!"

Roy snorted. "Yeah, right. You're just trying to admit that you had to take a breather."

Shaking his head, Junior insisted, "I'm serious!" He pointed at the hole, gesturing for the two to see what he was seeing. "Look!"

Wendy and Roy stopped running and came up to him. They looked at where he was pointing and also gasped in unison upon seeing the hole for themselves. Turns out Junior wasn't just trying to tease them. Falling repeatedly for some of his tricks in the past, it took them seeing this to actually be convinced and know he wasn't crying wolf about it.

They could not believe their eyes. The hole was unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was a dark and ominous void that seemed to swallow everything in its vicinity. It looked like a portal to another world.

The hole was circular and smooth, as if it had been cut out by a giant cookie cutter, and it had a depth unknown to any of the three. It had no walls or edges, only a sharp drop into nothingness. It had no light or sound, only a cold and eerie feeling. It had no life or movement, only a still and sinister presence.

The three Koopalings stared at the hole in awe and curiosity. It was Roy, though, who was the first to break their silence just then. "Wow, that looks cool. Maybe there's something awesome at the bottom I oughta check out." He didn't bother to finish the rest of his thoughts aloud, and he ran towards the edge of the hole, ready to leap into the unknown. "Stand back, guys. I'm going in!"

His plan was foiled before he could even put them into action as Wendy pulled him back "Are you crazy?" she asked him, the tone of her voice sounding as if she were the most sensical one in the group at the moment. "You don't have any idea what that thing is and you're just gonna hurl yourself into it. Do you have any idea what could happen to you?"

Roy shrugged her words off. "No, but that's the fun part. Don't you want to find out?"

Wendy facepalmed and shook her head. With a sigh, she replied, "Not really, and I'm not sure if you should either. That hole could be a trap set by someone who wants to get rid of us. Or maybe something's-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Roy interrupted, completing disregarding her concerns. "You're no fun. You never want to live a little, bein' all scared and stuff."

"I'm not scared; I'm being smart about things. I don't want to die or disappear all because Roy over here thought it'd be a wise idea to go and-"

Bowser Jr. interrupted them and said, "Guys, enough with the arguing. We were here to have fun, remember? Let's not waste our time fighting over this hole. Let's just figure out a way we can see how far down it goes without throwing ourselves into danger."

Wendy and Roy looked over at each other and then back at him and asked him, "How are we going to do that?"

Bowser Jr. smiled and said, "Easy. We just need to find something in the forest to throw down into it and listen for it to hit the ground with a thump or something."

The two thought about it for a few seconds and agreed that it was a good idea on his part. They decided then and there that the three of them would start to look for something suitable to throw into the hole.

They searched the forest for a moment before Wendy return with a rock that fit in her palm, waving what she had discovered. "This should work," she said as she walked up to Junior and handed it to him. "But just to be on the safe side, you're gonna throw it into there."

With a snicker, Roy quipped, "I told ya she was scared of it."

"You shush," snapped Wendy before returning her attention back to the hole they discovered.

"This should do it." Junior took the rock in his hand and threw it in with all his might.

The three Koopalings took a couple baby steps back and listened quietly for anything. Several seconds went by and there was no sound heard by any of them. Nothing but the sound of the wind as it breezed through or the sound of a dried fallen leaf crunching underfoot. They waited a couple more seconds than usual, only to hear no thud that would serve as an indication that the rock had fallen to the bottom of the hole. At that point, the three of them were just looking over at each other, shaking their heads with mouths hanging open in utter shock.

"Uh, that's not normal," Wendy said matter-of-factly.

"Now hang on a moment," Roy chimed in. "Maybe we just used too small of something to know."

"Maybe your right, Roy," returned Junior before coming up with another better idea. "Let's grab a bigger rock and see what happens."

The Koopalings managed to set their eyes on just what they were looking for, a rock that was much larger and heavier that was resting a tree not too far away from where they found the first little one. It proved a little too heavy for even tough-looking Roy to carry and Junior gave him a hand as they worked together and threw it into the hole.

Just like the first time, they were going to wait for some sort of sigh that there was such thing as a lowest point to this unknown hollow pit they found. Junior was counting the seconds in his head the way his father told him how to see how far away a storm was when there was lightning and thunder.

One Koopa Troopa...

Two Koopa Troopa...

Three Koopa Troopa...

The three waited ten seconds longer than they probably should have before the bewilderment returned for at least two of them. Roy, however, somehow seemed unfazed by this and was even more curious than he already was.

He started to take several steps back before turning around and jumping up and down. "You know what? I'm just gonna find out for myself. I'm not waiting!"

"Roy, wait!" Junior and Wendy shouted at the same time, both reacting on impulse as they saw him, thinking of himself as some tough daredevil in his mind, about to run up and do a cannonball dive into the hole as if there were a deep swimming pool waiting at the end.

The two of them grabbed him at the same time and yanked him back as hard as they could, and he hit the ground with a thud before he lifted himself back up. As this happened, however, the hot magenta sunglasses that he wore no matter what time of day it was slipped off his face and, in the unluckiest way possible, teetered near the edge of the pit before falling straight into it.

Unable to grab them in time before they met this fate, Roy outstretched his hand and watched with a very distraught look on his face. Without those over his eyes, he just didn't feel like the same Koopa that he was wearing them. "My shades!" he cried out.

"Yeah, better that fall into whatever this thing is and not come back than you do," returned Wendy sensibly. "And besides, Roy, don't you have, like, literally a billion of that same pair back at the mansion? Don't be so dramatic."

"But those out of all of them were my favorite-" he started to protest in reply, only for his words to be cut off by the sound of something that didn't feel right to him. "Uh, what's that? Tell me you guys both heard that too..."

None of them seemed to be sure of what it was, but they agreed in the back of their minds that it sounded like it was coming from in the hole. The faint noise ringing around in the silence sounded like something was breathing slowly but heavily, followed by the lowest guttural growl before a rustling noise was heard. This alone was enough to make the three forget what they were just saying, making them shiver in the shells in that moment.

The three of them remained close together when they heard this, but once they didn't hear anything else, Junior was brave enough to start stepping forward. He began to peak ahead to see what could have disturbed the stillness just then with that uncanny noise. "I mean," he started to whisper back to them, "I-I don't think I see-"

Without any warning, they suddenly heard what resembled a high-pitched shriek, followed by a repeated flickering racket whose source was clearly from somewhere deep in the pit. They ran several steps back the very instant they heard this, just as they started to see something bolting upward to the surface from the cavity in the ground the way lava emerged from a volcano.

Tiny slivers of that large and hefty rock they had thrown in were what was flying up into the air, followed by pieces of something purplish-red that were once Roy's favorite shades. The debris from these things that had been thrown in there and were being returned to the surface scattered around them like hot ash from a firework. Whatever was down there, whatever had made all that uncanny noise they heard prior, had done this and was clearly capable of taking whatever had fallen in its path and ferally turning it into tiny bits and pieces.

"Aaaaah!" shouted Junior and Wendy when they saw this.

Roy also had a very horrified reaction to the whole scenario, but for a reason that was entirely different from what the two were thinking. He hit the earthy forest floor and looked as if he were about to tear up as he remained on his knees with a petrified look on his face. "Cut down in their prime," he said, still upset about losing that measly pair of sunglasses. He overdramatically lowered his head as if he was in mourning over the loss of a life-long friend, seeming to completely disregard the scariness of whatever was in the hole or the fact that Wendy was right in how he could replace those glasses with one of many identical pairs he owned. "Why?"

"Now you know why you shouldn't just throw caution to the wind like that, Roy?" Wendy asked him, still ensuring that her point from before was made clear with her tone still sassy but having definite fearfulness to it.

"Um, guys?" Junior said to the both of them, his words beginning to stammer a bit as he too was beginning to become fearful of what happened they were to just keep standing there. "I'm not feeling up for playing tag in this forest anymore. Why don't we just go on back to the mansion and maybe play some video games?"

Wendy didn't have to think twice about the proposition, immediately nodding her head in response to it. Perhaps playing one of the games on the console they had back in the mansion would be what all three of them needed to get their minds off this and instead focused on beating each other's high scores. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea."

Roy was picking himself up off the ground, wiping the dirt off him before looking back over at the other two Koopas. "Me too," he added. "Let's head back..."

"And remember, guys, we can't tell Papa or anyone else about this," Junior informed them as they turned their backs to their discovery and left it behind them, slowly but cautiously making their way back to the mansion down the same path they came.

The three Koopalings, however, had left that spot at the very moment that movement arose from it, and with a shriek emerged a skeletal claw that was the size of the hole. It flailed around and pawed at the ground as if it were searching for anything it could take back with it to the abode it resided in, eventually disappearing back to where it came with no one there to see its emergence.