Chapter 1 Undercover

Under Mario's lead, Brother Jue and Xiao Tan hurriedly passed through a large warehouse-like room. Along the way, a lit desk lamp appeared every so often. Looking up, one could see... many toys standing on the surrounding shelves as well. It seemed the Classic faction was quite strong. In a sense, it could indeed be called an army.

When Feng Bujue opened the shoebox lid earlier, he thought the sky above was pitch black, but that wasn't the case. Directly above them was naturally the ceiling of the supermarket's first floor. However... because he and Xiao Tan had both been shrunk to about seven centimeters tall, and the desk lamp's light was shining downwards at an angle, they couldn't see the "distant" ceiling when they looked up; they could only see blackness.

Several minutes later, Mario led them to a huge door. Of course, "huge" was only relative...

"Uh... are we going out?" Feng Bujue asked from behind Mario. "There's no way to squeeze through the crack in the door, and we can't exactly push it open..." Although he wasn't sure how strong the toys in this script were, he didn't think this five-centimeter-tall Mario toy could push open a door meant for normal humans.

Xiao Tan then made another obviously unreliable guess: "Maybe there's a mouse hole nearby or something?"

"Looks like you really aren't spies," Mario said, adjusting his hat. "Just a couple of clueless idiots." As he spoke, he walked to the edge of the door crack and took out a pipe wrench from his overalls pocket. He knocked on the door panel three times, paused for two seconds, and then knocked twice more.

Then, Mario took a few steps back, as if waiting for something.

Before long, a strange black shadow moved over from the door crack.

This black shadow looked like a sticker. From the side, it was just a line, but from the front, it was a black figure with a large nose.

"Mr. Game & Watch?" Feng Bujue actually recognized this silhouette-like 2D character.

"Who are these two? New arrivals?" Mr. Game & Watch ignored Feng Bujue and casually chatted with Mario.

"Optimus Prime ordered them to be the vanguard tonight," Mario replied.

"Ha..." Mr. Game & Watch chuckled dryly. "Good luck to you." With that, he went back into the door crack.

About a minute later, some movement came from above—the sound of the doorknob turning.

At the same time, they could vaguely hear someone shouting from the other side of the door, "Rotation fixed, ready to push!"

"Step back, newbies," Mario immediately told the two players, gesturing for them to retreat.

Eee...

Accompanied by the sound of the hinges slowly turning, the huge door panel slowly moved towards Brother Jue and the others.

Feng Bujue and Xiao Tan both tilted their heads and peered into the crack, wanting to see what exactly was pushing the door from the other side. In their imagination, it would at least be a bulky toy more than fifty centimeters tall and weighing over three kilograms.

Unexpectedly, all that appeared before them was a plastic thing less than ten centimeters tall.

"Look at these little guys," Bowser (the first video game villain with an independent image, Mario's arch-nemesis) stopped pushing the door and stood there, saying, "With that small size, a fart from me could blow them over."

Feng Bujue didn't mind Bowser's rude words and simply asked, "How did you push this door?"

"I pushed it with my claws, using the strength of my waist and legs," Bowser replied in his thick, passionate voice. "But you two better not try to imitate me."

"Alright, you might not even see them after tonight," Mario said to Bowser, then waved his hand, signaling the players to follow.

Feng Bujue looked at Xiao Tan, shrugged, and the two continued to follow Mario through the door that Bowser had pushed open (actually, only a few centimeters, but that little gap was enough for them to pass through).

"Alright, from here on out, it's neutral territory," Mario explained to the two behind him. "Our sphere of influence is mainly in the southeast corner. We control the sports brands, kitchenware, and half of the food department." He pointed. "Tonight's battle will still take place in the frozen food section."

The players looked in the direction Mario was pointing, and the distant scenery... looked like a dark canyon. They could only see some vague, tall outlines and had no idea what it would be like up close.

"As you can see, we can't arrange too many lights in this larger area outside," Mario continued. "The night security guards patrol every three hours, and if we move too many lights out here, we might not have time to turn them all off, which could cause big trouble. Therefore, battles are usually held near the frozen food shelves, where there are lights on twenty-four hours a day." He suddenly turned around. "Do you two have any glowing parts?"

Xiao Tan hesitated for a few seconds and directly turned on the light on his miner's hat.

Feng Bujue then took out his flashlight. "I have one too."

Mario walked over, leaned closer, and looked. "You actually have such precise components..." He eyed the two suspiciously. "Then what's the power source? A spring? A pull ring? Or do you have lithium batteries hidden in your bellies?"

"Uh... solar power..." Feng Bujue's ability to spout nonsense was second to none. "Our shells are made of a special material. They can accumulate energy when exposed to sunlight."

"Oh, I know, like the solar-powered game peripheral for the GBA (Nintendo's infamous peripheral, released with the GBA game *Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand*. Players could only play the GBA in direct sunlight during the day in order to replenish ammunition for the in-game character)," Mario replied.

"Yes, that's the one," Feng Bujue agreed, seizing the opportunity.

"So it's not some amazing device after all," Mario seemed to believe him and immediately turned around, leading the two forward.

After passing through a relatively dark area, they arrived in a space surrounded on three sides by miscellaneous boxes.

The floor here was covered with a Nintendo rug (another infamous peripheral, but it can be considered the ancestor of the dance pad). In the corner, there was a lit flashlight (normal size). On the rug stood twenty or thirty Nintendo-exclusive or related characters. Most of them were plastic toys, with only a very few having metal and electronic components.

"Who-are-these-two-guys?" The one who said this was a robot-shaped toy. Every word it uttered was in the first tone.

"Eh? Are you WALL-E (the fictional robot character created by Pixar)?" Xiao Tan asked, looking at him.

Indeed, this robot looked very similar to WALL-E, but his color was grayish-white instead of yellow and black. Another difference was that WALL-E had treads on both sides of his chassis, but this robot's chassis seemed only able to keep him "standing."

"You-die-now!" The robot suddenly lost it. Even though it had no moving parts, it jumped up and somehow pulled out a spinning top-like thing, throwing it at Xiao Tan.

This robot was slightly larger than the players, so the spinning top it threw looked about the size of an umbrella to Xiao Tan. But he saw the plastic spinning top flying at high speed, its edge approaching like a circular saw, and it looked like it was about to cut Xiao Tan in half.

Hiss—poof—

After two strange sounds, a tall and sturdy figure flashed past, catching the spinning top with one hand and standing in front of the two players.

"Ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo..." Donkey Kong, who first appeared in the 1981 arcade game *Donkey Kong*, intercepted the attack for Xiao Tan, tugging at the red tie hanging around his neck with one hand, gesturing with the other, and finally pounding his chest a few times with both fists. "Goo... hoo... glug..."

Feng Bujue looked at the scene before him with a pained expression, thinking, "At least this method of communication is more advanced than Ultraman's..."

"Listen, kid, you're forgiven this time because you didn't know the rules," a humanoid toy wearing golden mechanical armor, an orange-red helmet, and an impact cannon on his right arm said to Xiao Tan. "R.O.B. hates it when people mention that name in front of him. You better remember that." The voice under the helmet was clearly a woman's. It seemed that the one speaking was the legendary strongest bounty hunter in the universe, Samus Aran (the protagonist of the *Metroid* series, the earliest female protagonist in video game history).

"Heh... heh... sorry." Watching the fear value on the menu soar and then gradually fall back, Xiao Tan apologized with a face full of cold sweat, although he didn't even know what he had done wrong.

"So it's R.O.B. (one of Nintendo's most infamous peripherals, comparable to the Speedboard)..." Feng Bujue's mouth twitched twice. "I was wondering why he looked so familiar."

"Alright, ignore these two newbies," Mario said, looking at the two. "They haven't gained Optimus Prime's trust yet, and they might not even survive tonight's battle." He raised his voice. "Let's get down to business and assign our respective combat missions."

…………

On the other side, the Novel faction.

In a "fortress" made of tablet computers and mechanical parts, hundreds of... well-made figurines, perfectly assembled models, electronic remote-controlled pets, and so on were neatly lined up by category.

Saber (Artoria Pendragon), Bayonetta (in a combat leather suit), and Saeko Busujima (in her school uniform with a sword) stood in the center on a platform slightly higher than the surrounding area.

Behind them stood a giant figurine thirty centimeters tall...

His feet rested on a black circular skull base, around which was a circle of wavy, frozen ice traces. He was covered in black armor, with a faint blue cold light shining through.

He was the limited edition Lich King Arthas figurine, with a pre-sale price of $350.

"Travelers from another world..." The voice under the helmet was like the sound of death, and his pupil-less light eyes stared at Si Yu and Bei Ling below the platform. "I will temporarily entrust my army to you. I hope... you will not disappoint me."