Paper Mario - Folded Chaos

| Chapter 2 - A Folded Dungeon |

                                  -<••••••••••>-

               The air whizzed past Mario as he fell. The once polished, white stone slowly turned into musty, grey rocks. Mario knew where he was heading: the castle dungeon. He'd been there a few times before, but he knew that Peach rarely used it for anything other than storage. But before he could process anything else that just happened, he hit solid ground, somehow managing to land on his feet before stumbling to the floor.

              "Mario!? You're here too?" Mario glanced up, still slightly disoriented from the fall. In front of him stood — Bowser's minions? 'What are they doing here?' Mario thought to himself, not really paying attention to what they were saying to him. "This is such a good waiting lounge!" Remarked a Koopa Troopa with honest excitement "A huge upgrade from the last festival I attended." Mario, finally noticing that they were speaking to him, got to his feet. "Oh, you haven't seen Master Bowser around, have ya? It ain't like him to ditch us at a public event." Mario shook his head, aware that that last part was a complete lie. "Huh? You haven't seen him either? Where could he be? It's kind of hard to miss the big fellow." The minions then turned and started chatting among themselves.

              "Mario!" Mario turned around. There stood a young Goomba soldier. "I-I'm a b-big fan!" He stuttered. "Even if we fought a-and I got stomped, It would be a huge honor!" Mario, already used to this kind of stardom and admiration, gave the kid a smile and a thumbs up. "EEEK! This is all so e-exciting!First I see the Princess a-and now you! Ooh what am I going to see next? A toad? Please tell me it's a toad!" Mario turned away from the young fan, slightly rolling his eyes as he did, and turned towards the door. Maybe the door was unlocked and they could just leave. But before he could even get near the door, he heard something. Click. Then, the door knob moved. Someone was opening the door.

               In walked 3 — shy guys? They were definitely shy guys, but something seemed very off about them. Their eyes seemed unnerving blank, even for a shy guy, and their clothes took on a very folded-like appearance. "CoMe wiTh Us..." one of them droned out. Excited to finally be doing something, all of the minions rushed out. Mario, still very wary of what was going on, started to slowly follow behind until — "NoT yOu..." Mario came to a halt. The young Goomba kid then rushed back into the doorway "Don't worry, Mario I'll say hi to the toads for you!" and the door creaked shut. Mario stood there in deep thought for a moment just staring at the door. 'What is going on here?" His thinking, however, was interrupted by a small voice.

                 "Mario...?" The voice echoed around the room. "Is that your name?" Mario, slightly startled by the random voice suddenly speaking to him, frantically looked around the room to find the source but to no avail. Giving up trying to find the source of the small voice, he decided to answer it, giving it an affirmative noise as a response. The voice then quickly spoke once again. "I-I need your help! I'm in a very strange place and I'm scared a-and I — please just help me!" The voice was quite panicked and whoever it belonged to really seemed like they needed help. Mario felt pity for whoever the voice belonged to, but he had no way to help. So instead, he decided to ignore the voice. He picked up some random hammer that was lying around and started smashing some random boxes, hoping to find a hole in the wall to crawl through.

               Finally, after smashing quite a few boxes, Mario discovered a large hole that he could easily crawl through and escape. He took one step through the hole, ready to make a dash for it until — "Please...please don't leave me..." the voice quietly pleaded. Mario turned around. After thinking for a bit about his options, he decided that he had time to help whoever this was. Perhaps they might have some valuable information about his current situation. Walking back into the main part of the room, he started to look for clues on how to help whoever this was out of their predicament.