The crossover

The Mushroom Kingdom was having a rare moment of peace, which naturally meant Mario was about to ruin it. In the center of the Castle’s main foyer, Mario was currently attempting to see how many raw spaghetti noodles he could shove into his nose while balancing a bucket of extra-greasy fried chicken on his head.

"Mario, for the love of God, stop! You’re getting grease on the carpet!" SMG4 shouted, waving his arms frantically as he emerged from the computer room.

Meggy sighed, leaning against a pillar. "It’s been twenty minutes, Four. He’s in the zone. There’s no stopping him until he either chokes or runs out of carbs."

"Mamma mia," Mario muffled through a nose full of pasta. "Look at me! I’m a-the Italian unicorn!"

Before Tari could offer him a napkin or Bob could suggest a way to monetize the stupidity, the air in the center of the room began to ripple. It wasn't the usual colorful swirl of a warp pipe or the glitchy mess of a Garry’s Mod error. It was an obsidian-black void, crackling with purple static that smelled faintly of ozone and burnt oil.

The suction was instantaneous.

"Waaaah! My chicken!" Mario yelled as the bucket was ripped from his head and swallowed by the darkness.

"Mario!" Meggy lunged forward, grabbing his hand. SMG4 and Bob grabbed her waist, forming a desperate human—and whatever Bob was—chain.

"Hold on, fatass!" SMG4 grunted, his feet sliding across the floor. "Don't let go!"

Mario, however, wasn't looking at his friends. He was looking at a stray piece of chicken that had fallen near the edge of the portal. "No! My drumstick!"

He reached out with his free hand, leaning further into the vacuum. The force was too much. With a sound like a giant vacuum cleaner hitting a rug, the portal flared. Mario’s hand slipped from Meggy’s grip.

"Oof!" Mario let out a pathetic whimper as he was sucked into the void. A second later, the portal snapped shut, leaving the foyer in a deafening, grease-stained silence.

Mario tumbled through a kaleidoscope of binary code and darkness before slamming face-first into something hard, cold, and very, very metallic.

"Ooh... my head," Mario groaned, peeling himself off the ground. He stood up, shaking his head like a wet dog, and blinked.

He wasn't in the Mushroom Kingdom anymore. The sky above was a deep, bruised purple, choked with thick clouds that blocked out any hint of a sun. Massive, skeletal skyscrapers made of twisted girders and rusted plates loomed over him like frozen giants. Snow was falling, but it wasn't the soft, white powder of Cool, Cool Mountain. It was grey, ash-like, and bitingly cold.

"Is this-a Ohio?" Mario whispered, looking around at the ruins.

He wandered down a street lined with the husks of ancient cars. Everywhere he looked, there were skeletons—not Koopa Troopa skeletons, but human ones, frozen in poses of eternal terror. Mario, being Mario, simply stepped over a ribcage and poked a nearby vending machine.

"Hey! You got any spaghetti in there?" He punched the glass. It shattered, but only a puff of dust and a dead mechanical spider fell out. "Cheapskate."

High above, perched on the jagged edge of a collapsed bridge, two yellow lights flickered to life. They weren't stars. They were digital eyes, glowing with a predatory hunger.

"Target identified," a feminine, melodic voice whispered, echoing with a slight electronic buzz. "Species... unknown. It looks like a biological, but it’s shaped like a trash can."

"V, wait," a more cautious male voice replied. "Look at the way it moves. It’s... erratic. Could be a trap set by the workers."

"A trap that smells like old cheese and tomato sauce?" the first drone, V, giggled. Her tail, tipped with a glowing syringe of nanite acid, lashed behind her like a scorpion’s. "I'm going in. I want to see if it squeaks when I poke it."

Mario was currently busy trying to eat a piece of frozen scrap metal he thought was a giant cracker. He heard a faint *whirr* of wings above him but ignored it, assuming it was just a very loud pigeon.

Suddenly, the air pressure changed. A heavy weight slammed into Mario’s back, pinning him face-down into the snow.

"Gotcha!"

Mario felt sharp, metallic claws digging into his overalls. He groaned, muffled by the ground. "Hey! Watch the suit! This is-a designer!"

He was flipped over with effortless strength. Mario blinked, his vision clearing to see a drone crouching over him. She was sleek, white-plated, and wore a dark pilot’s jacket. Instead of a face, a black screen displayed a pair of wide, glowing yellow eyes—currently shaped into mischievous semi-circles. Her silver hair caught the dim light of the frozen wasteland.

"Well, aren't you a weird little thing," V said, tilting her head. She retracted one of her claws, replaced it with a sleek hand, and poked Mario’s round nose.

*Honk.*

The sound echoed through the silent street. V froze. Her digital eyes widened, blinking rapidly.

Mario, completely unfazed by the fact that a killing machine was pinning him down, just stared back. "Oh! You’re a toaster! Do you have-a the bread inside?"

V blinked again. A small digital blush—two slanted lines of yellow—appeared on her visor. She had spent her entire existence hunting terrified, screaming Worker Drones. She had never encountered anything that reacted to a death-tackle with a request for toast.

"I... what?" V muttered, her grip loosening slightly. "I'm a Disassembly Drone. I'm supposed to turn you into a red smudge on the pavement."

"That sounds-a boring," Mario said, sitting up as she moved off him. He patted her on the head like she was a stray dog. "You need a hobby. Have you tried-a professional wrestling? Or maybe arson?"

V stared at her hand, then at the strange, red-clad man. There was something about his complete lack of fear—or perhaps his complete lack of brain cells—that flickered a strange circuit in her programming. He was small, round, and remarkably soft-looking. Most things in this world were sharp and cold. This creature was like a sentient marshmallow in a hat.

"You're... coming with me," V decided, her voice dropping into a tone that was half-command and half-possessive purr. She grabbed Mario by the scruff of his neck. "I'm keeping you. You're my new pet."

"Ooh! Does the pet get snacks?" Mario asked, his eyes lighting up.

"Sure, whatever," V said, her wings snapping out from her back with a metallic *clack*.

Before Mario could ask for a pizza, V took off. Mario let out a long, high-pitched "Wahoooooo!" as they soared into the dark sky. From a distance, another drone—a boy with a pilot's hat and a worried expression—watched them go.

"V! Wait! We’re supposed to report new lifeforms, not kidnap them!" N shouted, extending his own wings to follow.

V didn't listen. She adjusted her grip on Mario, pulling him closer to her chest plates to shield him from the biting wind. She didn't quite understand why she was doing it. Maybe it was the way he didn't scream. Maybe it was the way he smelled like a kitchen. Or maybe, in a world of endless slaughter and cold metal, she just wanted something that felt like a joke.

They landed a few minutes later at the "Spire"—a massive, terrifying mountain made entirely of the corpses of Worker Drones. To anyone else, it was a monument to genocide. To Mario, it looked like a very uncomfortable playground.

V dropped him onto a pile of discarded torsos. Mario bounced once and landed on his feet. "Mama mia! This place needs a maid. And maybe a rug."

"Stay put," V commanded, landing gracefully beside him. She retracted her wings and stepped closer, her yellow eyes scanning him from head to toe. "If you try to run, I’ll cut your legs off. But if you stay... I might find you some of that 'bread' you wanted."

Mario looked around, his attention already drifting. He spotted a shiny, discarded head nearby and picked it up. "Hey, look! A bowling ball!"

He proceeded to aim the head at a stack of ribcages, mimicking a bowling motion. "Strike!"

V watched him, a strange sensation humming in her chest core. She was used to things that ran away. She was used to things that begged. This... this idiot was just playing. It was fascinating. It was adorable in a way that made her want to sharpen her blades and kill anything that might try to take him away.

"Hey, Toaster-Lady!" Mario called out, pointing toward the dark entrance of the spire. "Is there a bathroom in here? Mario has to go really bad after that portal ride."

V crossed her arms, a smirk playing on her visor. "We don't have bathrooms, Meat-Thing. We're robots."

Mario’s face fell into a look of pure, unadulterated horror. "No... no toilets? What kind of hell is this?!"

He turned and began to run toward a dark corner of the spire, sobbing dramatically. "I want to go home! I want my spaghetti! I want a porcelain throne!"

"Hey! Get back here!" V shouted, her wings flaring again. She lunged, catching him around the waist and lifting him off the ground.

Mario kicked his legs frantically. "Let me go! I need to find a bush! A tree! A very large rock!"

"There are no bushes here, you moron!" V laughed, finding his distress strangely endearing. She pinned him against a wall of scrap metal, her face inches from his. "You're stuck with me now. And honestly? I think I like you better when you're screaming."

Mario stopped kicking and looked at her. He blinked twice. "You have-a very pretty eyes. They look like lemons."

The digital blush on V’s face flared bright yellow. She stammered for a second, her predatory persona slipping. "I— lemons? What are lemons?"

"They're-a yellow and sour! Like your personality!" Mario grinned, completely unaware of the danger he was in.

V stared at him for a long beat. Then, she leaned in and nipped his ear with her metallic teeth—not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make a point.

"You're weird," she whispered. "I'm definitely keeping you."

"Can I have a hat like yours?" Mario asked, pointing at her head.

V sighed, her tail twitching with a mix of annoyance and genuine affection. "We'll see. Now shut up and help me sort these heads. I want to see if we can find one that looks like you."

"Ooh! A scavenger hunt!" Mario clapped his hands.

As the two of them sat amidst the ruins of a dead civilization—one a psychopathic murder machine and the other a remarkably stupid plumber—a strange bond began to form. Mario didn't know where he was, and V didn't know why she cared, but for the first time in a long time, the frozen wasteland of Copper-9 didn't feel quite so cold.

Far above, N landed on a nearby ledge, watching the scene with a confused tilt of his head. "Is... is she playing house with a human? I should probably tell J. Or... maybe I'll just see if he has any more of those 'lemon' jokes."

Down below, Mario had already forgotten about the lack of toilets and was currently trying to use a robotic arm as a back-scratcher. V watched him with a protective glint in her eyes, already planning how she would dismantle anyone—drone or otherwise—who dared to touch her new favorite toy.

The Mushroom Kingdom was a long way away, but Mario was doing what he did best: making everything someone else’s problem.