There weren't any hard calculations that could be referenced, but it was safe to say that the Mushroom Kingdom was a pretty big place. From the chilly permafrost of Iced Land in the north to the scorched sands of the Kalimari Desert to the south, and from the thick jungles of Yoshi's Island in the east to the blasted, lifeless cliffs of the Dark Land in the west, one could travel for years in the borderless territories of the Mushroom Kingdom and still never see all of it. Still, as different and distinct as all the Kingdom's many regions could be from one another, one could always count on some things remaining constant: the friendliness of the native Toads, the occasional bunch of floating bricks and ?-blocks, and most of all, warp pipes. Lots and lots of warp pipes.
 
Where'd they come from? Nobody in the Kingdom could really say. Mentioned even in the oldest historical texts on record, the Warp Pipe appeared to be as permanent a fixture in the history of the Mushroom Kingdom as the Toad people themselves. In modern times, they were a huge convenience, as Warp Pipes provided fast travel to what seemed like absolutely everywhere. It was even rumored that the wold-famous Mario Bros. themselves arrived in the Mushroom Kingdom through a warp pipe that connected the Mushroom Kingdom to a mysterious and legendary world called "Brooklyn."
 
Of course, pipe travel wasn't without its dangers. Disused pipes were a favorite rooting spot for all kinds of creatures, particularly Piranha Plants, but beyond that was the very real possibility of getting completely, hopelessly lost. Every Warp Pipe lead somewhere, and without a well-drawn map or a firm knowledge of pipe routes, it was very easy to find oneself warped ot a completley unknown destination. Furthermore, since not all pipes were guaranteed to spit their passengers out at ground level, the option of going back the way one came wasn't always guaranteed.
 
Still, there were situations in which taking a gamble on an unknown Warp Pipe was preferable to staying where one happened to be at the moment. And this was the situation in which Princess Peach, the perpetually-imperiled empress of the entire Mushroom Kingdom, currently found herself.
 
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WORLD ??? - Putrid Predicament!
 
Another Madcap Misadventure starring Peach, the Danger-Prone Princess
 
Presented by Shax, 6/1/2013
 
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The shouts from the hallway behind her told Peach that her estimate was just a bit off; she was sure she'd have at least five minutes before Bowser's dungeon guards realized she was no longer in her cell. She'd have to pick up the pace.
 
This wasn't a situation that was altogether unfamiliar to Peach; she'd practically lost count of the number of times the Koopa King had suddenly burst into her otherwise-idyllic life and spirited her away to the considerably less-than-idyllic Dark Land, where something, somewhere, always seemed to be exploding. And there she would sit- sometimes quite against her will, bound securely to a chair- and wait until Mario, responding to the ransom note Bowser invariably left at the scene of the princess-napping, to show up, kick Bowser's Koopa keister and set her free before Bowser could conclude whatever diabolical plan he'd concocted for the Princess.
 
Even after all these years, Peach still wasn't sure what Bowser wanted with her. Naturally, one would assume that Bowser wanted the Mushroom Kingdom itself, but he certainly had the forces and firepower to take it over anytime he wanted without having to abduct anybody. He'd never hinted that he was romantically interested in the Princess; indeed, he seemed to treat her with the same snarling brutishness as he treated everyone- even his own kids! And thankfully he'd never tried to force himself on her, even though goodness knows he'd had several opportunities.
 
In any case, Peach was usually satisfied to wait until Mario showed up. After all, he was much more accustomed to the adventurous athletics that were required to negotiate Bowser's death-trap of a castle, and in any case, she was usually locked in a strong steel cage suspended over a lava pool- a situation that afforded itself few chances of escape. This time, at least the accomodations had been nicer- with its plush, queen-sized bed, overstuffed chair and small library of reading material, in any other context her cell might actually pass for a three-star hotel room. Still, when her bone-headed dungeon guard (oh, she wasn't being mean- the guard was literally bone-headed, being a particularly ancient skeletal Dry Bones troopa) literally fell apart while serving her dinner, leaving her cell key within easy reach... well, sometimes, a Princess had to be proactive.
 
Escaping the cell was easy; she still had to escape the castle. And like the rest of Bowser's shambles of a castle, the dungeon was a veritable maze of dead-ends and sudden pits-
 
Peach skidded to a halt with a shriek as a thirty-foot square section of floor directly in front of her pink pumps crumbled and fell some fifty feet into a flowing river of magma. Case in point. Apparently, finding a way out of the dungeon was going to be a challenge.
 
"This way- I think I heard something!" Somewhere down the corridor behind her, but still distressingly close-by, she heard several Koopa Troopas break into a run.
 
With no other apparent options, Peach backed up a few steps, dashed towards the steaming lava vent, and leaped.
 
Anyone observing would've thought it was suicide- the gap was far too wide for anyone to leap without the aid of a Raccoon Leaf or Cape Feather. The Princess, however, was a celebrated long-jumper thanks to a knack she'd developed for being able to float in midair for short distances- short, but long enough for her to safely traverse the chasm, landing on the far side with a delicate click of her heels.
 
She glanced back just in time to see her pursuers burst into view and cut their pursuit before it carried them over the edge. One of the Koopas, clad in a pointed iron Koopatrol helmet, barked to his subordinates: "There she is! Somebody call for the Paratroopas- don't let her get away!"
 
Peach grinned at the frustrated Troopas and blew them a kiss, then resumed fleeing.
 
The rest of the dungeon seemed to be on more stable footing, though she did have to tiptoe around a couple of snoozing Thwomps, taking care not to wake them up as she passed as quietly as she could beneath them. Still, it didn't feel like she was getting anywhere, and wasn't even sure she was headed in the right direction- during this particular kidnapping, Bowser had seen fit to shove her inside a large burlap sack, and she hadn't been let out until he unceremoniously dumped her inside the cell she'd just escaped, so all this territory was completely unfamiliar. Still, there had to be a way out somewhere....
 
She rounded a corner to find herself confronted by an entire squad of Koopa Troopas, who were just as surprised to see her.
 
Naturally- her flight WOULD take her right into the guards' barracks, wouldn't it?
 
The Princess and the Troopas stared at each other for a shocked second. Suddenly, a door opened to Peach's left, and a Troopa clad only in a fluffy white towel entered the hallway. "Whoever's got the shower next, it's all-" He grunted as Peach shoved him out of the way and dashed into the Koopa lavatory, slamming the door shut and throwing all her admittedly meager weight against it.
 
The Troopas began pounding furiously. Peach wasn't going to be able to hold it against the combined force of eight Koopa Troopas for very long; she needed options. Unfortunately, the spartan military washroom wasn't providing many- a couple of latrines she really didn't want to get anywhere near, a row of filthy sinks, an open shower... wait, a shower! That was just the thing!
 
More to the point, the grated circle of a Warp Pipe that made up the shower's drain! Luckily, Bowser had cheaped out on plumbing- no telling where that pipe was dumping the shower runoff, but Peach was willing to take her chances.
 
The Troopas had begun a coordinated effort to break the door open, two at a time, throwing their shoulders into it every couple of seconds. Peach waited until just after one such assault, then dashed into the shower. When the next team of Troopas charged the door, it opened easily, dumping the doorbusters onto the hard bricks of the bathroom floor.
 
The be-toweled Troopa- apparently, the squad leader- leaped over his comrades and pointed an arresting finger at Peach. "Hold it right there, Princess! I don't know how you got out of your cell, but we're putting you right back in it!"
 
"Sorry, boys," she replied, "But I've got another castle to be in!"
 
Hoping she'd seen Mario do the stunt enough times to pull it off herself, Peach jumped high into the air, flipped, and landed hard, bottom-first, on the shower grate. It tilted just enough to allow her ersatz butt-stomp to carry her into the depths of the pipe and out of the castle.
 
----
 
It seemed like Peach had been sliding through the slick, slimy interior of the pipe for hours when the light of the exit appeared, a pinprick of milky yellow light that grew larger and brighter as she drew speedily closer. Suddenly, the Princess rocketed out of the pipe's end and into a thick tangle of tree limbs and vines, which slowed her speed gradually until she splashed (again, bottom-first) into a thick, greasy pool of muck with an unceremonious "spluck."
 
As the world slowly stopped spinning around her, Peach began to take stock of her place in it. It seemed she had successfully escaped not only the dungeon of Castle Koopa, but the entire Dark Land itself; though the sky was invisible through the thick, towering canopy of trees, vines and moss far above her head, enough light filtered through to tell her she was no longer under the permanent cloud of volcanic ash that gave the Dark Land its name. Still, it wasn't clear if her new location was an improvement or more of a lateral movement; she'd traded the ruined hellscape of Dark Land for an overgrown marshland of green and gold, bedded as far as the eye could see in a foot-deep bog of black, muddy earth.
 
The Princess rose to her feet and immediately sank up to her ankles in the swampy marsh. She pulled a foot free of the muck, only to find that her shoe didn't come out with it- just a bare foot clad only in a formerly-white, now-ruined muddy stocking. "Just as well," she thought, "this place really doesn't appear to be high-heel friendly." Pulling her other foot free (and surrendering another shoe to the bog), Peach began fleeing her landing site as quickly as she could. Hiking her badly-torn dress up above her knees, she found that progress was much easier if she moved quickly. Taking a moment to glance over her shoulder, she found that all evidence of her rough landing had already been smoothed over by the muck, and the fluid earth soon closed over each of her footsteps, eliminating all trace of her passing. That should make any pursuit a lot more difficult.
 
"Now to find a way out of here," Peach mused.
 
The scenery was largely the same wherever she looked; thickly-wooded, teeming with plant life, and perpetually stuck in a humid golden haze. Aside from the mossy pipe she'd emerged from, which really wasn't as far away as her aching bottom suggested it was, there were no other landmarks in sight.
 
"Well, I guess one direction's as good as another!" And with that, she put the pipe behind her and resumed wading through the marsh.
 
Or, more precisely, she attempted to resume wading. Several steps in, her right foot found something in the marsh's depths- squishier than the marsh bottom she'd been wading in, and stickier. It caught hold of her foot and held fast, causing her momentum to send her face-first into the mud. Lifting herself back up to her hands and knees, she spat out a mouthful of crud, followed by some decidedly unladylike raspberries as she tried to get rid of the foul taste in her mouth as quickly as possible. Getting back to her feet, she wiped the mud from her eyes to find that the entire front of her dress was ruined- well, what remained of it, anyway, after her dramatic entrance.
 
Peach attempted to jerk her foot free of whatever had caught it, only to find that it was stuck fast in the mud. She tried to reseat her left foot to try and gain a little more leverage, but something appeared to have a firm hold on that foot as well. A cool clamminess, tangibly different from the swamp itself, seemed to be creeping its way up each foot, past her heel to her ankle.
 
The Princess bent over and began digging at the mud, hoping to find and dislodge the root or rock or whatever had ensnared her. She could feel something, but it was... odd, definitely not what she was expecting, and definitely too soft to be anything that could have such a strong hold on her. Scooping a couple more handfuls of rapidly-refilling muck away, she finally exposed her right ankle, only to find it buried in something round and fibrous.
 
She had brushed just enough of the mud off of the foreign object to expose a flash of bright yellow when a similar object suddenly burst forth from the muck and ensnared her left hand, catching it in a strong, unyielding grip. A second yellow bulb swiftly slithered in on a thorny tendril from over her shoulder to catch her right wrist, and Peach suddenly realized what had happened:
 
She had unwittingly wandered into a cluster of Putrid Piranha Plants.
 
Native to humid, swampy biomes, the Putrid Piranha was a tropical offshoot of the common Piranha Plant, instantly recognizable by its yellow-with-red-spots flower coloration. Like all Piranha Plants, the Putrid Piranha was carnivorous, but on top of the thorn-rimmed flower all Piranha Plants used to consume food, the Putrid Piranha was also poisonous, secreting an analgesic neurotoxin to stun their prey- typically smaller creatures like Goombas, Buzzy Beetles, and the occasional unlucky Swooper, though larger clusters could take on larger prey like Koopa Troopas or Shyguys.
 
Or Princesses, apparently.
 
Peach watched in stunned horror as her wrists and calves disappeared into the greedy Putrid Piranhas, emerging as distinct bulges in their thorny stems. The plants quickly worked their way up her extremities, naturally lubricated by the toxin secreted by the plants' dazzling flower- and by the tiny purple tooth-like thorns that lined it, just visible past the flower's bright-green rim.
 
"Let... GO... of me!" Peach grunted as she thrashed wildly, trying to free at least one of her arms from the plants. Around her, the bog began to roil as dozens of stems churned the surface; more Putrid Piranha bulbs began to break the surface. This was turning bad very quickly- usually, a nest of Putrid Piranhas this thick meant that there was a much larger main plant nearby.
 
Peach was jerked backwards suddenly as something tugged at the remains of her filthy dress. her unseen assailant shook the garment (and, by extension, its occupant) violently until the damp pink satin tore free across the chest with a loud rip, exposing the Princess' breasts and everything below to the swampy air.
 
Of all the days to go bra-less! Most of her extensive collection were in the castle laundry at this particular moment; ironic, considering that the matching silky pink panties and garter belt she was wearing had, like the rest of her ensemble, been ruined by the bog past the point of salvageability. Though at the moment, Peach's modesty was the furthest thing from her mind, as the largest Piranha Plant of any variety she'd ever seen slowly circled around from behind her, the ruins of her dress still dangling from its mouth.
 
Peach screamed and redoubled her efforts to escape as her assailant leered at her as creepily as a vegetable could. Struggle as she might, she just couldn't seem to pull free from the plants- her left arm was engulfed up to the elbow, as her right nearly was, and both knees were firmly lodged in the Putrid Piranhas' bulbous flowers. Her shoulder-length gloves were absorbing a majority of the poison from the plants on her arms, which was slowing the numbing effect of the neurotoxin somewhat, but her sheer, torn stockings weren't doing nearly as good a job; she could already feel her lower legs tingling, as if she'd been sitting cross-legged for too long.
 
Suddenly, she realized that the top of her head was tingling, as well. Through her periphery, she caught a glimpse of vivid green. The rim of another Putrid Piranha flower that had caught onto her cranium, no doubt, forming a sort of gaudy-but-extremely-deadly hat.
 
One of the buds hovering around the gruesome display stuck out its bright blue tongue, dripping with poison, and licked at Peach's butt. She jumped with a startled squeak, arching her back to try and escape the plant's probing tongue, which was apparently exactly what the plants wanted her to do- they siezed, suddenly, locking her into a thrusting-forward pose as the main Putrid Pirana closed in, opening its massive mouth.
 
"Here we go- this is it," thought the despairing Princess. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating the mighty mammoth bite that would put an end to her futile struggle. The skin of her bare torso pimpled in nervous anticipation, and she inhaled sharply through her teeth as she felt the first touch of... something against her right hip. She opened her eyes to find the main Piranha's massive blue tongue licking slowly up her right side, coating it from her thigh (which was just visible above the greedy plant that held her right leg fast) to armpit in its thick, poisonous saliva. The plant withdrew its tongue and swiveled smoothly to regard her face-on, giving her another long, steady lick up her entire front. Meanwhile, the smaller plants continued their individual assualts; as the larger plant coated Peach's torso in its thick, numbing saliva, her upper arms and thighs disappeared into the thorned stems of the individual plants; gloves and boots fit for a Koopa queen.
 
Meanwhile, the Plant attached to the top of her head began working its way down, forcing the poor Princess' head into its own stem. As it gulped down past Peach's eyes, blocking her sight, the other plants shifted, lifting her out of the muck to lie suspended horizontally in midair. She felt other plants start closing in, tenderly licking at the still-exposed areas of her body, leaving tingling spots wherever their tongues touched. She squealed in the seconds before the plant closed over her mouth as one particularly aggressive plant siezed her right breast in its flower, clamping down hard on the soft mound and holding it with its teeth as it coated her tender pink nipple in poison.
 
It might have felt kind of nice if the larger plant's saliva hadn't already deadened most of her frontal skin's sensation.
 
Through the soft buzzing that was starting to cloud the Princess' thoughts- both from the toxin and from the diminishing air in the Putrid Piranha's stem- she realized that none of the plants engulfing her extremities could progress much further. She appeared to be caught in a five-way tug-of-war, waiting for the main Putrid Piranha to swoop in and decide the contest with one final bite. The plants on her arms had bumped into her armpits in an attempt to swallow her shoulders to their fullest, and the plants on her legs, in an attempt to consume every bit of available limb, were inadvertently but insistently nuzzling an area of her body that was still alarmingly sensitive through the meager clothing covering it, despite the thick coating of toxin dripping from her torso. Between this sensation and the plant suckling firmly at her right breast, she felt herself flushing with a heat that defied the cool, clammy plants that had swallowed her, and made the steamy jungle seem arctic by comparison.
 
Princess Peach realized she probably wasn't going to make it and that her gruesome end would probably remain a secret of the swamp forever; Mario would beat Bowser only to find that there was no princess waiting, and nobody would ever know where she had disappeared to. But in light of those dreadful facts, at the moment, at least the experience wasn't ENTIRELY awful...
 
The plant at her breast withdrew suddenly, and moments later, she heard a thick rustling through the stem of the plant attached to her head. Even as warm as the rest of her body seemed, she was still alarmed by the intense heat that flashed suddenly to her right, and as the plant engulfing her head abruptly spat her back out, the first thing she heard upon her re-entry into the world was a massive reptilian roar, followed shortly by an equally titanic vegetable one. Something blazed brightly to her right, and she blinked her eyes open to find that the main Putrid Piranha was completely aflame, flailing in its attempts to extinguish itself just as hard as Peach had done in its grip earlier.
 
Still struggling to make sense of what was happening around her as she gasped air into her aching lungs, the answer became immediately
evident as two massive scaled paws reached out and grabbed hold of her right leg- and the plant still encasing it- and lifted with all its might, pulling the plant free from the muck at its roots. The world resumed focus, and Peach found that Bowser, the King of the Koopa himself, was using his dinosauric might to free Peach from the weeds surrounding her. She marveled for a handful of seconds, then turned away with a wince as the Koopa king grasped the Piranha around her right arm by the lips and tore it off her limb as if it were made of paper. The remaining plants began loosening their grip on Peach's left arm and leg, but not quickly enough for Bowser's liking, as he dispatched them with as much ease as their siblings. In what seemed like an instant, Bowser had the still-numb Princess slung over his broad reptilian shoulder, and breathing another gout of fire into the flailing face of the giant Piranha Plant, he crashed back through the jungle, carrying Peach to safety.
 
"You little moron! What did you think you were doing!?" Peach's captor-cum-rescuer growled at her as he stomped through the swamp. "Who jumps down a warp pipe without knowing where it'll dump 'em out?! You woulda gotten yourself killed if I hadn't come after you!"
 
Peach attempted to reply in her defense, but between the stress of her narrowly-escaped fate, the enveloping warmth of the marsh, and the lingering effects of the Putrid Piranha's neurotoxin, dozing off seemed to be a better idea at the moment.
 
----
 
She awoke to find herself back where she started- in the dungeon of the Koopa King.
 
Nestled under the surprisingly comfortable covers of her cell's bed, Peach abruptly realized that, while she was clean of all the residual mud and filth of the swamp, beneath the cotton covers she was also completely nude. She gasped and sat up in the bed, blushing and covering herself with the sheet.
 
"Sorry about that, Princess," said Bowser, seated on a stool at her bedside, thumbing through a comically-tiny-by-comparison copy of Don Quixo-T of La Mushroom. "We had to give you a scrub-down to get all the plant's poison off you. Don't worry- I had a couple of my Koopa maids do the dirty work. No funny business," he said, closing the book and raising a claw in salute. "Koopa's honor."
 
"Koopas don't HAVE any honor," Peach replied out of habit, before she could stop herself.
 
Bowser chuckled. "Yeah, you got me there. But I figured you'd been through enough today, I could cut you a break." He stood, and the stool creaked in wooden appreciation as the weight was lifted off of it.
 
Peach blushed, only partially due to embarrassment. "Th... thank you, Bowser. If you hadn't come along..."
 
Bowser waved her off. "Let's skip that part. I'll keep it secret if you will; after all, I got a reputation to maintain." He patted a box that sat on the small table in the center of the cell, next to a big mushroom salad and a roasted leg of Ostro that made Peach's stomach rumble as soon as she saw it. "You probably don't wanna be under-dressed for Mario's big entrance, so I had some of my sneakier Troopas stop by your castle and pick up some spare clothes for you. We, uh, pretty much had to burn what you were wearing before- didn't think you'd mind."
 
"Ugh, no- as it is, I don't think I'll ever get that smell out of my head." Peach stood, holding the bedsheet firmly against her body, and crossed the room to the table. Bowser looked away; Peach wasn't sure if Koopas could blush, but she could swear she saw some pink in those giant cheeks. She stood on the tips of her toes and planted a chaste kiss on one of them.
 
"Agh, knock it off!" Bowser growled, wiping at his cheek. Yeah, there was definitely some red, there.
 
"Guess you're not such a bad guy, are you?" said Peach, with a giggle.
 
"You kidding? I'm the WORST guy! I'm mean, cruel, rude and all-around nasty, and don't you forget it!" He stomped off towards the door and, opening it, glanced back over his shoulder at the Princess. "But I'm not a MONSTER. Now sit tight- I gotta go get things ready for your boyfriend. My Troopas tell me he's only an hour or two away, and I got a lotta things to set on fire before he gets here!" He left the cell, closing the heavy iron door behind him with a loud, locking click.