There was walking towards us, with a slow and studied gait, a giant of a man. He was about six and a half feet tall, and with broad shoulders and suitably matching bulging muscles. His broad face looked thoughtful, and he looked more of a thinker than Rodin's chin-on-hand guy can ever look. He was clad in an immaculate grey business suit, down to the last knife-sharp creases on his trousers and mirror-shiny black leather shoes. Rather incongruously, on his head was perched, at a rather jaunty angle, a white Panama hat with a black band. In one of his "dustbin-lid-sized" hands (to borrow a turn of phrase from the inimitable Ms. Rowling) he carried what seemed to be an unbelievably small pair of Ray-Bans. His melon sized face split into an amiable grin as he saw me, and for a fraction of a second, I thought I saw a glimmer of ferocity, and heard a deep-throated growl when he caught sight of my Guide. This, however, was gone in an instant, and there he was, as big as a house and grinning from ear to ear.

What made my mouth hang open in surprise was none of this. The "giantness" of the man was really nothing - I had seen much weirder things here. Nor was it the incongruity of the huge man's dress, his business-suit-with-Panama-hat get up notwithstanding. It was not the size of his hands, a fact accentuated by the smallness of the Aviators in them. It wasn't the fact that he smiled at me like at an old friend. It wasn't even the quickly hidden ferocity or the growl - both of which were nowhere in evidence now. What made my mouth hang open was a flash that hit me the moment I saw him. And after that flash, nothing else happened - it was gone, and I was left standing with my mouth open, and I did not even know why. Try as I might, I couldn't remember what it was.

The giant had reached us by then, and he held out his hand for me to shake. As I took it, he looked me in the eye and I found myself looking into the deepest brown eyes I had ever seen. You cannot call me acrophobic by any stretch of anybody's imagination, but I felt dizzy looking into those eyes - it was like looking into the Well of Infinite Wisdom.

As I racked my brain to recall what the flash was, he told me, "Don't worry. You'll get it, sooner or later." And with it he flashed me a brilliant smile, a smile whose brilliance toothpaste advertisers would have gladly killed to have featured on their productions.

With that he turned to my Guide. "I see that you're still at it. You'll never tire of it, will you?" he asked her with a sneer. Or as near a sneer that his features would allow.

She turned to him with a smile that was equal to his in brilliance. I couldn't help thinking that if someone got these two to model for a toothpaste ad, he or she could make a lot of money.

"Well, some of us do what we have to do better than others," she said, the smile on her face mocking, yet with a hint of caution.

"Be that as it may, some of us do take more pleasure in pulling..." began the giant.

"We do not have time for small talk right now. We should be getting along now," my Guide cut him off.

"Time? Not have 'time'?" I asked. This was crazy, especially after all that talk about being pan-dimensional and beyond time. "I thought you pan-dimensional creatures could do whatever you want and time did not mean anything to you."

A sudden spluttering at my side made me turn. The giant was holding his sides, and his entire body was quaking with mirth, and he couldn't speak for laughing. "Pppan... pan-dimensional? Told you she was pan-dimensional, did she?" he spluttered

As I looked around, not knowing what to do or say, my Guide said "Well, that doesn't really matter, does it?" As she said it, I could sense a fierceness in her that seemed to communicate itself to the Giant as well.

He shut up with a muttered "Whatever you say."

Turning to me, she said "Time is within our control, and you need not worry about its intricacies. We have an interdimensional temporal alignment coming up - which means we will not have to use up too much Backspace resources. The Master does not like wasting valuable resources." With that she flashed a look at the Giant, who was about to say something, but changed his mind at her glance.

"Okay, here it comes. Ready..." As she said this, I could see a huge cloud-like mass before us. It hung before us, slowly smoking and hissing softly. At the centre of the cloud, a small black dot appeared, and it gradually grew in size till it was about twenty feet across. Inside I could make out a dark space, with millions of stars shining fiercely. I guessed we would go into it holding hands. We would be flung through spaces in dimensions I could never comprehend and we would spin around like crazy in approximately half the dimensions that existed before appearing safely wherever we were supposed to. Just like in the cartoons. I just hoped I wouldn't throw up with all that spinning.

"Certainly not," said my Guide. "There will be no spinning or throwing up. We will have to wait till the transport arrives."

And arrive it did. Suddenly, without warning, from one side of the black opening there shot out what looked like a small yellow boat. It was rather battered, and it had a small cabin on it. It careened wildly around the garden before coming to a halt just in front of the cloud. As I stood there wondering what to do, my Guide clambered on board and tried to open the door to the cabin. It seemed to be stuck and she had to shove rather hard before it opened. She went in, motioning for us to follow.

The Giant seemed to be resigned to what was going on and shook his head slowly before clambering up himself. I was following him, hoisting myself up on deck when it happened. The flash, the one that had so cruelly abandoned me when I first set eyes on the giant, returned. And it was so stunning that I almost lost my grip and fell off the boat. I knew where I had seen the giant before. I could recognise him. In fact, I even knew his name!

"Bowser!" I yelled.

He turned to me with a broad smile. "Told you you'd get it!" he said.