Chapter Text
If you told Ashley ten years ago that she’d grow up to become a musician, she would’ve told you to go away before she hexed you. She liked singing, sure, but she was a Witch, first and foremost. Now, as a student at Diamond City Academy, she’s gone all in on becoming a Punk Rock witch; and nothing has made that clearer than the magic guitar, she now carries instead of a wand.
Ashley doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s started learning music, because she hopes to one day form a band with Penny, and her other musically inclined friends. Penny in particular was a huge inspiration for Ashley, showing her she could still be a witch, while also pursuing new passions.
It wasn’t easy, but to be fair, College is never easy. However, two things made the struggle worth it, for her. One, she was learning how to play music, and incorporate it into her magical skillset. The other thing was making some new friends outside of the WarioWare circle.
She didn’t feel as obligated to socialize with them, as she did with her coworkers, which made the times they did hang out feel more like a choice. The fact she was choosing to spend time with them anyway, and was liked enough to not push them away felt like a great success on her part.
Ashley had been invited by Penny to join her friends for a space tour on her twin sister’s newly completed ship. Ashley’s been to plenty of gatherings with her WarioWare coworkers, from dance parties to potlucks but never a trip to space. The idea of going was surprisingly exciting, so Ashley started getting ready.
At her dresser, Ashley put on a red jacket with pink accents on the cuffs and hem, alongside some black stockings and red shoes. Then, she put on some red wristbands, red eyed skull hairpins, red headphones, and her gold tiara. All of it matched well with the black miniskirt she was already wearing, and her white feather shaped guitar, completing the punk rock look she’s going for.
As she inspected herself in the mirror, her best friend Red the Imp came in to check on her. “Hey Ashley. Where are you going today?” He asked in his usual chipper tone.
”Penny invited me on a trip to space. Seemed like a nice way to spend the weekend.” Ashley answered.
”Sounds exciting. Can I come along?” Red asked politely.
Ashley shrugged nonchalantly. “Sure, why not?”
“Alright. I’ll get ready” Red said in gratitude, before leaving to do just that.
After Red left, Ashley took a moment to check herself out in the mirror, once more. She made a couple adjustments to her hairpins, then headed to the foyer, to leave with Red.
Anna’s Lab
Ashley flew to Anna’s Lab, on her broomstick, and landed at the front door. Upon landing, the broomstick transformed back into Red, and followed Ashley.
The lab was a metallic, wrench shaped lab, that sat on top of a tall plateau. The metallic walls were decorated with artwork of wrenches and cars, indicating the lab’s main purpose as a garage for vehicle manufacturing. It was split up into two visible levels.
Ashley rang the doorbell, and waited, until Penny’s twin sister Anna, answered the door.
She looks nearly identical to Penny, save the green eyes, dark brown hair, decorated with pink flowers, and more Ghostbusters esque outfit.
“Hey Ashley. I’m glad you could make it” she says, while adjusting her cream colored lab coat. “Come on in. I’ll show you where my ship is.”
Ashley and Red followed Anna to an elevator, which they rode down to the hangar. Within the hangar, rested a bus-like spaceship, prepped for takeoff.
As Ashley and Anna walked towards the space bus, Anna took a bit of time to talk about how she made it. “I got the idea for this ship from that space taxi your friends use. I thought it would be cool if I had something similar, so I took an unused bus, and modified it.”
Anna nervously adjusted her orange gloves, and looked at Ashley to make sure she was listening. Ashley had her usual bored expression, but seemed to be paying attention, so Anna continued. “It was tough, but I used some Internet guides to help me figure out the tricky parts.”
When Ashley heard that Internet guides were involved, she instantly became more worried. As helpful as they may be, it indicated a lack of understanding on what made the machine tick. “Do you know how it works?” Ashley asked.
“Yeah” Anna reassured her. “I tested it out with Penny beforehand. You have nothing to worry about… hopefully.”
Ashley and Red exchanged concerned looks with each other. ‘It better not blow up on us’ they mutually thought.
Just then, a friendly girl with short red hair, a pink dress and grey boots approached them.
“Hi Ashley!” she shouted, giddily.
“Oh. Hello, Coco” Ashley replied. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Are you kidding? A trip to space is too exciting to pass up.” Cocomin giggled before asking, “What brought you here Ashley?”
Ashley put on the most bored face she could manage. “I was invited by a friend. That’s all.”
“I bet you’re just as excited as I am.” Coco suggested.
A blush formed on Ashley’s face, breaking her bored facade. “No I’m not.”
“That just means she’s really excited” Red points out.
“Hey” Ashley said in annoyance, before getting cut off.
“Race you to the ship!” Coco shouted, before climbing aboard, and taking a seat towards the front. Ashley climbed aboard after her, and looked around the Space Bus’s interior. It’s not long, before she notices someone’s missing.
“Where’s Penny?” Ashley asked, while looking around.
Anna nervously adjusted her brownish-orange lab gloves before answering. “Penny got sick this morning, and can’t come along.”
“That’s a shame” Ashley sulks, showing a fair bit of disappointment on her face.
“Um, it’s ok” Anna awkwardly tried reassuring Ashley. “She can come along on the next trip.”
“She better.”
Anna sat in the driver’s seat, to prepare for blastoff. Ashley and Red, meanwhile, took a seat towards the back. Not out of any malice, but to escape the bickering of two other passengers.
Claudia, the girl with a blonde ponytail, and wearing a black dress, bow tie, and stockings, was holding a ray gun, while Vanessa, the girl with an orange bobcut, and wearing a short blue dress, and flats, was demanding she get rid of it.
“Claudia, for the last time, nobody’s going to attack us. Now get that blaster off the bus, before you zap someone!” Vanessa shouted.
“Like I keep saying, you never know when something might attack us, and I need my ray gun, so I can blast it.” Claudia retorted.
Just then, Anna spoke through the ship’s PA system getting the girls to quiet down. “This is your pilot speaking. We’re about to blast off, so, uh, please buckle your seatbelts.” The other girls did as they were told, and put on their seatbelts.
Then, Ashley heard the engine roaring to life, as the wings heard deployed, and the hangar door, built into the cliff face of the plateau opened. Once the door is fully open, the ship accelerates towards the exit, and lifts off into the sky.
Ashley looked out the window, and saw the bustling Diamond City get smaller, as the ship got higher into the sky. Before long, the blue sky gave way to the darkness of outer space, as the ship escaped the planet’s atmosphere. Everyone started to feel themselves float, only held in by their seatbelts.
Outer Space
The girls were immediately taken aback by the scenic, space view of Earth. “Wow. Earth looks beautiful from up here.” Cocomin pointed out.
Ashley looked down to the Earth, and took it all in. An awed smile formed on her face.“It.. does”
She briefly wondered why she hadn’t gone on a space trip sooner. She knew Orbulon wouldn’t mind taking his coworkers for a ride, and she knew Dribble and Spitz regularly made intergalactic fares. ‘Not like it matters. I’m on a trip now’ she figured.
Claudia, meanwhile, was looking around for alien threats. Vanessa tried in vain to get her to put the ray gun down. “Come on Claudia. Even if we do find aliens, I’d rather trade with them, than fight.”
“I’m not trading with some stinking aliens. I’m gonna fight them, and prove that Earthlings are superior.” Claudia retorted with barely concealed excitement.
Vanessa groaned. ”You’re going to break a window, and get us sucked into Space.”
Anna was very pleased with how the flight was going so far. Take off went pretty smoothly, the view from space was amazing, and best of all, she did it without needing Penny’s help. Feeling confident, Anna flew the space bus away from Earth, aiming to fly to the moon next.
As the ship approached, the other girls had stopped what they were doing to take a look for themselves. From up close, the Moon looked absolutely massive, and left them with a similar sense of awe to when they left the Earth. But that wouldn’t last long.
First they felt the ship rattle. Then, before Anna could check the issue, the ship started to spin uncontrollably, to the shock of everyone onboard.
“What is going on up there?!” Vanessa asks in concern.
”I don’t know, but I lost control of the ship!” Anna shouted back, in a panic.
”What?!” Red and Vanessa shouted in unison.
”We must’ve been sabotaged by an alien! Where is it?!” Claudia frantically looked around the bus for the perceived threat.
”Not everything has to be caused by aliens!” Vanessa shouted back. “Besides, what would they want with us?” Vanessa shouted back.
”Who cares?! They’re sabotaging us, and I have to find them!”
As Vanessa and Claudia continued their discussion, Ashley, kept sitting in quiet annoyance. “I had a feeling something like this would happen” she mumbled.
Meanwhile, Cocomin had her arms raised in the air, enjoying the spin, and completely unaware of the danger they were all in. Then she noticed something in the distance. “Gals, do you see that?” Coco pointed towards a giant yellow-green worm, with cartoonish black dots for eyes and a gaping maw.
“That’s a wormhole!” Anna shouts in response.
“So that’s the alien who’s attacking us!” Claudia assumed. She tried in vain to aim her blaster at the creature, but everything was spinning too fast for her to get a clear shot at it.
Anna tried, once again to fly the ship out of the Wormhole’s way, but it was in vain. “I can’t get out of the way! Brace for impact!” she shouted to her passengers. The girls screamed, as the ship was barreled into the wormhole’s mouth.
The Wormhole’s interior is an abstract void of ever changing bright colors. One moment, the void is bright red and green. The next, it’s by light blue, with white dots, zooming by in a tunnel shape.
For a moment, everyone forgot about panicking, as the abstract void had them all too enthralled. In this moment of calm, Vanessa took time to think about her dreams.
’If we get out of here, I’m going to trade my Rainbear Coin to the first alien I see. Then I’ll trade whatever I get to another alien. Then I’ll keep trading on and on, until I’m a cosmic straw millionaire.’ Vanessa looked at a gold coin she brought on the bus. It depicted a cartoonish bear mascot with a rainbow tint, on tooth sides.
Cocomin, meanwhile was having an insane thought of her own. ‘If I eat something in here, does that make the food double eaten? Only one way to find out.’ She pulled out a turnip, and began eating it.
In this moment of calm, Anna was finally able to focus enough to run diagnostics on the ship. The screen shows a graphic of the fuel tank, with a leak coming out from the bottom left side of the ship.
”The fuel tank is leaking” she announced over the intercom. “To stop the spinning, we have to plug up the leak.”
”Got it.” Ashley stood up confidently, and started looking for the engine. She didn’t search long, before the black void of the wormhole’s rear began to approach.
The wormhole farted them out rather violently, causing the ship to enter a tailspin, as it began to crash land on an Earth-like planet. Panic starts up all over again, as Anna tries desperately to get the ship under control.
“We’re done for!” Red shouts in panic.
”I’m gonna be sick!” Cocomin yells.
”Why didn’t I wait for Penny?!” Anna cries. “She’d know what to do!”
Fortunately, Ashley was rarely fazed by stressful situations, so she picked up her white, feather shaped guitar, with a skull at the top, and strummed a note. “Marubber-kaja” she chanted, covering everyone, the spacebus, and the engine, in protective rubber jelly.
”Leak’s plugged” she announced to everyone.
Those words, plus the protection spell, gave Anna the confidence she needed to get the ship out of its spin. However, with so much fuel lost, and part of the ship damaged, she couldn’t prevent the imminent crash landing.
The ship crash landed in a grassy field, near a big white castle with four spires, and a red roof. Nobody is seriously injured, thanks to Ashley’s spell, but many of them are still frazzled.
Anna hyperventilates, visibly shaken, due to the recent crash. ‘This is all my fault’ she thought to herself. ‘I should’ve known the ship wasn’t ready. If it wasn’t for Ashley, we would’ve died.’
Her thoughts are interrupted by Vanessa. “We’re going to take a look outside. Want to join us?”
Anna considers it for a bit then answers. “Go on, without me. I still need to catch my breath.”
”We’ll be back in a bit then.” Vanessa exited the bus with the other girls.
The first thing the girls noticed upon exiting is the state of the ship. The space bus’s thrusters are damaged, and even with Ashley’s spell, one of the wings broke off.
Next, Ashley took in her surroundings, and noticed how strange, yet familiar they look. The grassy fields, mushroom colored mountains, and white castle all reminded Ashley of those Mario games 9-Volt and 18-Volt love playing.
Just then, Ashley saw two people running towards her group, from the castle. Claudia readied her blaster, but waited to fire, at Vanessa’s suggestion. Cocomin, meanwhile, tried to get a better look at them.
Just a minute later, the two figures got close enough for everyone to get a good look. The two figures are instantly recognizable from their mustaches, overalls, and color coded clothes. One red, and one green. The two figures in front of them, are Mario and Luigi. That wormhole sent them to Mario’s World.
As Claudia lowered her ray gun, Ashley thought about everything that just happened. They had just gone to space, got jettisoned into a wormhole, and somehow ended up in the Mushroom Kingdom, from one of 9-Volt’s video games. Ashley didn’t know why, but she could tell this was going to be a long trip.