A/N: Welcome back! Please read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own Super Mario, Harley Quinn, or any song lyrics that appear in this chapter.

"Wait, wait, wait, turn it up!" Waluigi nudged me and pointed to the dashboard controls for the spaceship's radio. "Turn up the volume!"

"Why?" I asked. "I'm kinda trying to focus on flying here." We'd passed over the Rock-Candy Mountains not long before, and were now cruising over a barren, rocky plain to the south of the mountain range. I figured if we were flying low, we stood a better chance of making it to Bowser's Castle undetected.

"Oh come on, what's there to focus on? There's nothing around!" Waluigi reached under my arm and cranked up the volume dial.

Upbeat, pop-sounding music poured from the spaceship's speakers. Against my will, I started bopping along to the tune. What can I say, it was catchy.

Waluigi eagerly pointed at the speakers. "Now pay attention here, listen to the lyrics."

Not knowing what he was getting so worked up about, I rolled my eyes and leaned a bit closer to the speakers:

Now he's thinkin' 'bout me every night, oh
Is it that sweet? I guess so
Say you can't sleep, baby, I know
That's that me espresso
Move it up, down, left, right, oh
Switch it up like Nintendo
Say you can't sleep, baby, I know
That's that me espresso

"HA!" Waluigi exclaimed, his nasal intonation slicing through the soothing music. He jabbed his finger at the speakers. "See? See? It's espresso, not expresso!"

I groaned and faced him. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're still going on about that?"

"Yes. Because you were wrong. Waluigi was right! Waah haha!"

Great, so he's a sore winner and he's one of those egomaniac jackfruits who insist on referring to themselves in the third person. Good to know.

Despite wanting to turn it off to spite Waluigi, I left the radio on as we sped over the rocky plains. I was enjoying the music too, and I wasn't gonna deprive myself of that.

"What's Nintendo?" I asked during the next chorus.

"What?" Waluigi asked. "You've never heard of Nintendo?"

"Nope."

"They're only the most well-known smartphone manufacturers in the world. They've got a new model that just came out a few months ago, the Switch. It's called a Switch because there's an extendable switchblade hidden in it. Like the ads say, 'It's perfect for communicating. Whether you need to communicate "Hi, Mom, how's it going?" or "Back the hell off, you shady creep, I'm armed."' The Switch is actually why I was in jail. I only tried to rob Toad Town Savings Bank so I'd have enough money to buy one."

"Aha!" I pointed at him. "So you are a criminal, then."

"No, I – waaah!" Waluigi pounded his fists up and down. "Look what you made me do!"

I snorted. "I didn't make you do anything."

"Yes you did, you got me talking. This is why I hate being interrogated by the cops. Once I start talking I can't stop, and they all know it. If I had a nickel for every time I've self-incriminated…waaaaah!"

Geez, this guy was just a big frigging baby.

As we continued speeding over the flat landscape, a few more songs followed. One of them, "Joke's on You," seemed vaguely familiar, like I recognized it from somewhere but couldn't explain how. After that was a commercial break, but I kept it on the station because the only other one the spaceship was picking up in this area was half static, half pro-Bowser propaganda that I refused to validate with my time. So I let the commercials play, but mostly tuned them out.

Instead I thought about how exactly we'd break Luigi out of Bowser's dungeon. I figured the Fun Gun wouldn't be enough to bust open the lock on his cell door. We'd have to either find a more effective weapon or somehow swipe the keys to the cells. The former would be easier, but the latter was probably what we'd end up dealing with.

"Huh," Waluigi said.

I turned to him. "What?"

He pointed to the radio. "That ad that was just on, something about a resort opening soon in the Rock-Candy Mountains, it was by Helen Gravely."

I furrowed my brow. Helen…Helen…why does that name sound familiar? Do I know a Helen? Of course I didn't know a Helen, I barely knew anyone here. So why did it seem like I did know her?

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Someone my brother Wario-"

Wario and Waluigi? Suuuure.

"-and I tried to rope into one of our pyramid schemes several years ago. She refused. I guess now she's become…successful or whatever anyway. Meanwhile I'm still just as poor as I was back then."

"You tried recruiting her for a pyramid scheme years ago and you remember her name?"

"Helen Arbinger Gravely isn't a name you forget easily."

"Hmm. Good point. Doubt I'm gonna be able to forget your name anytime soon either."

"Yeah – hey!"

I laughed and turned back to the controls. But…damn it, now this was gonna bug me. Who did I know who was named Helen? I don't think anyone back in Gotham, or in the group of people Wade and the others had saved from the universes Shuma-Gorath destroyed. There definitely wasn't a Helen in the group of people Kamek summoned from across the multiverse. Had I maybe just heard another Toad call out to someone named Helen in passing? Maybe.

Gravely, though. That was an…interesting last name, to say the least. And given the obnoxiously on-the-nose naming conventions that people in this universe seemed to love so much, I wasn't sure how I felt about the name either. "Gravely" sounded a bit too ominous for my liking.

Then again, maybe it just meant she was very serious and stern all the time. And either way, a resort opening soon in the Rock-Candy Mountains didn't seem like it concerned me all that much.

As we continued south, the foreboding landscape became even more ominous. The sky became more overcast and started to look like it was filled with more smoke than clouds. Jagged rock formations burst up from the otherwise flat landscape, and tiny rivulets of lava bubbled up from the ground and trickled between scorched stones. The streams of lava became longer and wider the farther we traveled. Geysers of lava intermittently spurted forth from the largest of them, sometimes thirty feet or more into the air. Between that and the ever-enlarging spires of rock, I was forced to slow the ship so I could safely navigate between all the obstacles. It was either that or fly significantly higher, which I didn't really want to risk doing.

Soon after, a low range of mountains became visible on the southern horizon. And in a low valley between two peaks, it seemed like there was an orange glow shining up from the ground and reflecting off the clouds and smoke choking the sky.

That has to be where Bowser's Castle is.

The lava flows breaking up the landscape continued to grow wider until they were nothing short of rivers. The geysers erupting from them became more common, and…other things started appearing in the rivers too. I couldn't be sure exactly what they were, but they weren't shaped like the plumes. They looked like giant, rounded creatures with gaping mouths rising up from the rivers before sinking back under…underlava, I guess? Certainly not underwater. And they were either completely covered in lava, or were made of it.

I pointed to one of the things when it rose from the lava. "Have you ever seen one of those before?"

Waluigi leaned over the controls. "Oh, yeah. Magmaarghs."

"What?"

"Magmaarghs. They're one of Bowser's more recent creations. Well, sort of. They look like they're base off these other creatures called Blarggs that he had working for him back in the '90s, but no one's seen one of them in a couple decades. But then a few years ago these Magmaarghs started showing up, along with a bunch of other related creatures. Like Magmaws, and Sandmaarghs, and Charvaarghs. If you ask me, at this point, it's an obsession."

Fittingly, at that moment, a song came on that the DJ identified as a new release titled "Obsessed."

Sadly, as we got even closer to the mountains, the radio station fizzled out and was gradually replaced by even more Bowser propaganda. I tried scanning for any alternatives. We were now picking up a bunch more stations than we did last time I tried changing stations, but every single one of them was Bowser-oriented. This was ridiculous.

"Well, looks like we're officially inside the Media Bubble now," Waluigi remarked. "Anyone who's been near Bowser's Castle and returned to tell about it has said that once you get close enough, all media from the outside world is cut off. Only stuff that Bowser approves gets airtime within the Bubble."

I turned off the radio. "Well that sucks."

Several minutes later, we reached the mountain range to the south. It wasn't particularly long, as the points where it faded away into foothills to the east and west were both visible. But now that I was closer, more peaks were visible in the distance beyond the ones closest to us, so the mountains likely extended farther south than I'd expected. Lava was even more prevalent here, flowing down the mountainsides in wide channels. At least here there didn't seem to be any geysers or Magmaarghs erupting from the lava, so I felt comfortable flying slightly faster for the time being.

And as we crested the top of the ridge in front of us, I got my first glimpse of Bowser's Castle.

It was still a couple miles away, but was in fact the source of the lights in the sky. The structure was made of dark stone with numerous towers that looked to be ringed with spikes towards their tops. In the center of the castle was a giant dome with even more spikes protruding from it, reminding me of Bowser's shell. And it looked like the side of the castle facing to the right from my view – presumably the front – had a giant mouth carved into it. The entire castle was also surrounded by a lava moat, with more molten creatures parading around it. And it seemed like there may have been some sort of spotlights beneath the lava, because the glow in the sky was clearly coming from the moat, and I've never heard of lava glowing on its own. More mountainous ridges and formations rose up to the sides of and behind the castle, but between it and the ship was a wide plain filled with pits of lava crisscrossed by narrow rock bridges. This must be the lava fields I'd seen on the map Gadd gave me. I abruptly stopped the ship and lowered it onto the castle-facing slope of the ridge we'd just flown over.

"What are you doing?" Waluigi pointed ahead. "Look, that's the castle there. We're nowhere near it."

I gestured to the lava fields. "Do you see anywhere in there that we can set her down? We're making the rest of the trip on foot."

Waluigi groaned. "You do realize that means we're also gonna have to make it back here with Luigi on foot? Possibly being chased by the Koopa Troop, if they find out about this little mission of ours."

"Well then, we'll just make sure no one finds out." But even as I said it, my prior thoughts about probably having to steal a set of keys to break Luigi out came back to me. And said keys would undoubtedly be guarded.

The spaceship shuddered as it touched down, and I opened the cockpit so we could climb out. I locked the ship again behind us and surveyed the lava fields. Various lava creatures that I figured were the Magamaarghs and their various relatives that Waluigi had mentioned in the ship leapt from the molten pools, sometimes over the paths leading towards the castle. Some were just small fiery spheres, but most of them were much bigger. Some of those were fairly nondescript blobs, but one variety looked like massive crocodiles made of lava.

Damn, this world was just weird.

I made my way down the rocky, uneven slope to the edge of the lava fields, followed by Waluigi, and surveyed the paths across. I couldn't see them from beginning to end, but it looked like there were enough of them, and they intersected frequently enough, that even if we hit a dead end, we wouldn't have to backtrack too far to find an alternate path. And looking at the molten creatures intermittently emerging from the lava, it seemed like they only crossed the stone pathways in a few specific locations. As long as we were slow and methodical, I figured we'd be safe from them.

Unless, of course, their behavior changed when they sensed there was potential prey (i.e. me) around. Which seemed like an entirely reasonable possibility.

"Alright, Waluigi, follow my lead," I said, starting across one of the paths. "If we're nice and careful here, we should be fine."

Waluigi sighed and followed me. After a short while of silence, he asked, "So how is it that you live in the Mushroom Kingdom but you know so little about it? Heck, I didn't think there was anyone left in the world who didn't know who I was."

"Well, it's pretty simple, actually," I said. "I'm from a parallel universe." I stopped and held up my hand for Waluigi to do the same. A second later, one of those lava crocodiles leapt across the path in front of us. Once it had passed, we continued walking.

"Wait, you're serious?" Waluigi asked. "Is your universe cool?"

"Define 'cool.' We've got a bunch of superheroes – there's Superman, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Black Canary, you name it – lots of big yet interchangeably dismal cities, and the occasional alien invasion or kaiju starfish attack. And it's not a question of 'is,' it's a question of 'was.' My universe got destroyed by an octopus, believe it or not, and that's really what kicked off the chain of events that ended in me arriving here."

"Huh. My brother and I once opened a portal to another universe. It only stayed open for a couple seconds, but it was still cool."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? You? The same 'you and your brother' who put together pyramid schemes managed to open a portal to another universe?"

"Well, more or less. See, a few years ago, we headed to a tag sale being put on by this old, eccentric inventor dude. E. Gadd."

"Wait, what? His tag sale? I thought no one knew where he lived." Had this guy known all along while I was wasting time pretending to be King Boo and meeting up with the professor in the woods in the middle of the night?

"Oh, you're right. No one does. No, he lugged all his crap down to the Toad Town Civic Center and held the tag sale there. That guy is ridiculously paranoid about anyone knowing where he lives. In fact, after the tag sale, this one Toad tried following him and was livestreaming the whole thing. He ended up losing Gadd, getting caught in some sort of spacetime loop in the woods, and reappearing on the opposite side of the Mushroom Kingdom five days later."

"A spacetime loop? What, like 'No Through Road'?"

"Like what?"

I sighed. "Never mind. Carry on."

"Anyway, Wario and I were forced to help set up the tag sale as part of the community service we got slapped with for vandalizing Peach's Castle a couple weeks earlier. But as we were setting stuff up, we did a bit of snooping through Gadd's stuff to see if there was anything interesting in there. We found a blueprint for this contraption called a Trans-Universal Portalmaker stuffed in a box full of appliance instruction manuals – appliances that weren't even at the tag sale, for that matter. It didn't have a price tag on it, so I don't think Gadd even realized it was in there. I stole the blueprint, and later Wario and I tried to build the machine. But we must've done something wrong, because it the portal only opened for a few seconds before the Portalmaker shorted out and self-destructed."

I hopped across a foot-wide gap between the path we were on and an adjacent one. "Were you able to make out anything about that universe before the portal closed?"

"There were a bunch of cheese people walking around. Like, their bodies and limbs were all different-sized sticks of string cheese. It looked like all the buildings were made of cheese too, but I wasn't able to make that out for certain before the portal shut."

"Cheese people?"

"Cheese people. I couldn't believe it either."

I vaguely wondered if the cheese people universe was one that had been destroyed by Shuma-Gorath. Probably not, since Wade, Sylvie, and Loki had saved eight people from each universe that got wiped out, and I didn't recall seeing cheese people back at the Citadel at the End of Time when all of the survivors were assembled there. Then again, there had been hundreds of beings present then, and eight cheese people could have easily gone under my radar. Or maybe that universe contained more life than just cheese people, and none of them had happened to be among the eight beings that Wade and co. saved.

Rambling over. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

The rest of the trip across the lava fields progressed mostly in silence, but the heat simmering off the lava became more and more unbearable as we continued. On the one hand my leather suit was fairly breathable, so it could've been worse. But on the other hand, being wrapped in leather made me almost feel like I was a roasting pig. I fanned myself but that did little to help; pretty soon I was drenched with sweat, my hair sticking to the back of my neck.

I turned around towards Waluigi. "How are you – oh come on!"

His orange jumpsuit was gone, and all he was wearing was a pair of boxers adorned with inverted yellow L's all over them. He glanced down at himself. "What? I was getting hot. What was I supposed to do?"

"Suck it up like I'm doing."

"Whatever. Just stay behind me. I don't really want to be looking at all…that right in front of me."

When we reached the far side of the lava fields, we were right in front of a series of rock formations below the north wall of Bowser's Castle. This close, I could see that the spikes around the towers were white and stuck out from black, metal bands, and the dome atop the center of the castle was dark green. Above the rock formations was the moat, with more lava creatures constantly floating down it.

I sat down with my back to one of the spires of rock, where I'd hopefully be sheltered from any prying eyes watching from the towers. I took out the maps and studied the location of the entrance to the secret passage. We'd just left the lava fields, which put us somewhere at the top edge of the map. Waluigi sat next to me as I glanced around us to try to figure out where we were based on the shape of the rock formations around us. There was one not far to our right that was shaped a bit like a question mark. I glanced down at the map and, after looking around for a few seconds, found the same formation on the map. Which put us slightly northeast of the secret entrance to the dungeons.

I rolled the maps back up and put them back in their tube. I turned in the direction we needed to go and blindly beckoned for Waluigi to follow me. We made several turns between the rock spires, zigzagging back and forth closer to the foundations of Bowser's Castle.

Then, as we made one final turn, I saw the entrance to the secret passage. It was only about two feet wide, not much more than a crack in the stone, but it was clearly the passage. I pointed to it. "There it is," I whispered. "Good thing you're as lanky as you are. I think we'll both just barely be able to make it through."

"Good," Waluigi said. "Lead the way."

I bent down and squeezed through the gap in the stone. The passage was pitch-black, except for a small patch of dim, diffused light just inside the entrance. Most of that light was blocked out for a few seconds as Waluigi grunted and clambered into the passage behind me. "I can't see a thing in here," he said.

I patted the wall with my hand to feel my way forward. "Come on, let's go," I whispered. "This way."