Since the simple days of the kidnappings of Princess Peach and the Mario Bros. coming to her rescue, things have changed quite dramatically. The continued contact with Earth has caused a radical transformation in the technology that was available during those times. Once primarily a medieval culture with pikes, full mail armor and bullet bill cannons, now a culture highly sophisticated and capable of space flight all within a span of a little more than 20 years. It is quite amazing how far every kingdom upon the Mushroom World has progressed, save for the Yoshi isles, a culture more preferable to traditional practices and the old ways of life.

But most of the rest of the world has moved on from those days. Modern technology like cars, planes and especially the internet has managed to snake its way across the world, forever changing the lives of each of its inhabitants. Perhaps the kingdom most changed by this technology was the Koopa Kingdom, being more open to this kind of change. The Koopa Kingdom's transformation was primarily in part due to not only Bowser's willing desires to make this happen, but mostly due to his 7 children, the "Koopalings" as they are often called.

As Iggy Koopa walked down one of the numerous hallways of Koopa Castle, he reflected back on the years of growth and death the Empire had in endure in order to arrive at its current state. Mostly, he was responsible for much of the bioengineering that has taken place to many of the Empire's troops and for developing radical new medicines to cure many ailments and injuries. He developed and hosted a number of things that would take hours to even write down on a pad of paper on in a Koopasoft Word document. But today was the kind of day when an important event takes precedence and all the major accomplishments of the past once again come back to the light.

Iggy was mostly thinking about how he played a large part in the redesigning of Koopa Castle. In many ways, it was so large that it could be termed a monstrosity in its own right. He was part of the castle planning commission along with his oldest sibling Ludwig Von Koopa and a host of other Koopa engineers from across the land. The task had been to build the grandest and most powerful castle that had even been constructed in the history of that race. Any reason or intention for such a power Iggy never understood beyond the boundless ego of his father, the so-called omnipotent King Bowser Koopa, but despite that he was very proud of his part. For the castle itself sprawled up over 50 floors into the sky, making it the largest and by far the tallest structure of its time. Iggy played a large part in engineering the structural capacity and the overall layout of the major industrial components, such as the insulation, piping, wiring and such. But the greatest parts of the new Koopa Castle, only recently 100% completed, were its 9 sprawling towers that rose up to 1,700 ft into the air. These immense structures were built for each of the Koopalings, including King Bowser's latest edition to the family, Bowser Jr. 8 towers were all placed in circular formation around the leading circumference of the castle, which was square by its own merits. The 9th tower, exclusively made for King Bowser himself, was placed in the center and was the largest and tallest of them all, climbing to a magnificent height of 2,350 ft into the air. It should be told that little news of the activities in that tower come into public notice, let alone to any of his offspring, and so it should be for many would not want to know.

Iggy Koopa certainly did not want to know. And yet as he walked past the countless windows that flanked him to his left, he could only wonder of the strange and odd activities that his majesty has been going through lately. Ever since the Koopalings got older (using human measurements of growth, into their early and mid 20's) and their responsibilities have increased, King Bowser seemed to have changed himself. The weekly dinners, where the entirety of the family would sit down at the same table for dinner to talk and discuss their latest activities, were being canceled recently, first with seemingly good intentions but later with ridiculous and hard to believe statements. The phrase "I'm out trying to capture Peach again" has now been used far too many times to hold any more merit, and there had been recent sightings of Peach within the castle walls themselves. Normally, Bowser would announce her arrival to his family, but that has not happened lately and more than a few people were beginning to suspect that he was not announcing this on purpose.

For what intention, Iggy did not know. All he knew was that the great move was today. Since the castle and its towers were completed, all of the Koopalings were permitted to move their belongings and personal possessions into their newly created towers. As a result, throughout most of the levels, there was a great coming and going with Koopa Troopas hauling great carts of goods and suitcases, anxiously wanting to hit the next elevator stop. Combining the so-called strategic planning of his siblings into one corrugated mess was the inevitable result and after having a taste of this earlier, Iggy decided to rest his worries about his chemistry equipment and try to enjoy what he helped create.

He rounded a corner and continued his rather slow pace, buried deeply within his thoughts. But he still noticed the smell of newly dried cement, a smell that seemed to permeate throughout the castle. It kept him at least somewhat focused on his material objectives, despite the fact that he wanted to simply unpack all of his belongings and get all of this over with. It had been a long time coming, and now Iggy was ready to throw in the towel and take a long rest.

He looked down through the windows to his left and saw the endless caravans of Koopa Troopa's marching across the many castle precipices many floors below. Many of them didn't work for more than 10 coins a day and Iggy wondered how Bowser ever managed to not only create such a concept with overwhelming approval, but how he managed to maintain such a concept without open scorn. It was well known in the inner circles that King Bowser very much disproved his 4th son Prince Iggy and neither tended to cooperate in most matters. Therefore, Iggy decided to just leave it as an afterthought, as he knew that he wouldn't be the one who would reform that system.

At length, there were a few shouts heard far below. Iggy looked and saw that he had been spotted. Well, considering his bright green mohawk and prominent round glasses, he shouldn't have been too terribly hard to spot in the first place. Returning back to reality for a moment, he promptly moved away from the window and continued on his trek towards his tower. He had enough publicity for one day.

Eventually, he reached the entrance to his tower and breathed a sigh of relief. His moment of relaxation did not last long however as he remembered he needed to pick up ancient Koopa manuscripts that were found in the Mushroom Kingdom recently. Being an obsessed archeologist in his free time, he knew he could not pass up a find such as this. A find like this usually came from one of the time periods when the Koopa Kingdom spread the globe. He walked inside and headed towards his warp pipe room.

Somewhere within the Mushroom Fields sat two bored mushrooms next to a warp pipe.

"What's taking him so long, Toad?" asked one officer, straightening his uniform.

"I don't know," Toad said lethargically, "All I know is that Bowser is remodeling his Keep for the hundredth millionth time, so his minions are probably working overtime. I'm not surprised this one is running late."

"And why didn't we just keep these things anyway?" the officer asked, eyeing the pile of manuscripts. "Who knows? Maybe we could use them against Bowser someday!"

"We have orders from high up to turn these over to Bowser as soon as possible. Besides, we can barely decipher what they say!"

The officer simply furrowed his eyebrows but said nothing else.

Moments later, Iggy emerged from the warp pipe and looked around, but saw nothing but green grass in every direction. "Mushrooms are always late," he mumbled to himself.

"No no, you're the one who's late!" came a voice, and Iggy looked down to find two mushrooms staring back at him. "Hey wait a minute, you look familiar! But I can't put my finger on it…"

"Iggy Koopa," Iggy proclaimed, adjusting his glasses.

Toad still looked confused. Then his face brightened up suddenly. "Oh yeah, you're that Koopa who took over…what was that place…Giant Land!"

Iggy thought for a second. "Oh yeah, Giant Land. That was almost 20 years ago, Toad. But anyway," he said, getting impatient, "The manuscripts."

"Yeah yeah," he muttered as the officer handed them over to Iggy. "We really don't know what it's about, other than the spheres representing-" The officer elbowed him in the stomach before he could finish. Iggy watched on with confusion as he heard rapid whispering, but he could only make out the word "protocol."

"Well anyways," Toad began again, "Hopefully you'll be able to decipher them."

"We'll see." Iggy commented as he went back into the Warp pipe.

"What was that for?" Toad shouted.

"Standard protocol, sir." Remarked the officer casually. They walked towards a bush, which contained a warp pipe. "I was ordered to…protect you."

"I can protect my self, you know." Toad was clearly getting angrier. The officer put a hand into his pocket.

"Looks like you cannot. Fortunately, the system was designed to protect you." With that, the officer jumped into a warp pipe before Toad could complain. Toad shook his head as he looked back at the warp pipe they were waiting at just a few moments ago. "It wasn't THAT bad..."

He closed his eyes for a moment to think about what just happened.

"Not good enough."

His eyes shot straight open to suddenly find himself within a high class restaurant, showered with sunlight from high-rise windows that overlooked the greater part of Mushroom City. Toad's gaze eventually made their way to the occupant of the chair opposite of him, who donned blue overalls, a red shirt and a hat of the same color.

"Mario-"

"Toad, listen," began Mario, putting his fork of Linguini down. "We all have a job to do. We all have our personal desires in this world. But you already have a world where everything can come true. All of your wildest dreams are fulfilled, everyone getting what they want, and yet," Mario paused as he slurped up his linguini. Toad put his head in his hand. "You always break the rules. And I'm sure you know the penalty for breaking the rules. I've been nice to you, Toad. You're one of my best friends, which is why I've been letting you go. But I cannot keep doing this forever." Mario paused again as he took another loud slurp of linguini. "Tell me, why do you do this?"

Toad continued to stare out the window at the commoners below. "Because I feel bad for them."

Mario looked at Toad with a grim face. "Then you are walking a very fine line. Just try to take care of yourself, OK?"

Toad simply nodded as he was surrounded by a beam of blue light and disappeared.