This was one of the most epic dreams I've had in a while. Too bad I had to wake up to hear that I should get cracking on my summer homework.
It all started when me and my friends visited a mall at nighttime. There was some kind of event going on where people were setting up booths and selling stuff. We checked out different booths. I went to one where this lady was selling pottery. There was this distinctly colored blue-and-purple clay jar whose colors made it seem to almost glow, and I really liked it. I saw the lady selling this stuff explain one of her other creations to another bystander. It was a miniature house of some kind, and she said it had magical effects. I thought, Witchcraft? I asked her if there was anything magical about this jar, and she said no, but I didn't want to take my chances, so I put it back.
We were about to leave the mall, but I could see some kind of commotion going on in the parking lot, with police cars with flashing lights and everything. Another real-life friend I shall call A (not to be confused with the A who appeared in my dreams on December 31st and January 2nd) turned toward me and said, "Follow me." I obeyed. It seemed like my brother was here too, but I can't exactly remember. Me and possibly my brother followed her up some stairs and into a room in the mall, which was now beginning to look less like a mall and more like some kind of odd, dream-like building. She opened a door cleverly concealed to look like it was part of the wall, and we entered a room that contained a stage, lit by only a few lights situated on that stage. We climbed onto the stage, and she removed another board on the wall on its left side to lead us into yet another secret room.
It was dark as well, and looked like a very small bedroom, with brown wooden walls, a dark magenta carpet, and a bed with a gold-colored sheet that took up nearly 3/4ths of the room. A kneeled down next to the front-left corner of the bed and pulled up the corner of the sheet, revealing a golden container with a combination lock. "Solve this," she told me. I was shocked. I said something like, "I don't think I want to do this." We then heard commotion from one of the rooms outside - apparently the police had chased us here. I asked, "Did you think I'd want to break into this safe once you revealed it to me?" I can't remember what she said, but some weird dreamy images came up, like a small glass window in cement, that was supposed to be us escaping from the mall or whatever it was now.
Once we got outside, it turned into day, and the chase spontaneously turned into me sitting in some kind of car watching the police officers trying to shoot down an escaping penguin running along some railroad tracks up a peninsula I visited on vacation a few weeks back. For whatever reason. They shot it several times, but it kept on going. I thought, Didn't that hurt?, giving absolutely no thought to the fact that it should've been DEAD a long time ago. Eventually, it got away, and I stopped. I walked back in the direction I came a few paces, and there were some characters I think were from Shrek standing on a back patio-esque deck. Below and in front of this deck was a creature that looked something like a cross between a miniature Jabba the Hutt and a pile of applesauce. It said something, but I either I can't remember what it was, or I just didn't understand it.
The chase somehow expanded, and my friends returned. We were running around a maze being chased by who-knows-what characters. The maze seemed to have themes; I saw a red water tower at one point, a forest, and a castle. It was all in a particular art style, like it was one of those search-and-find children's books. Oh, and it had turned into night again, with the sky just being pure black like you'd expect from that illustration style.
Sometime during this whole maze chase, I dropped into a SMB2-esque jar with a blue background. The walls and floor were made of the orange bricks from the SMA4 Ghost House tileset. It was no longer me, but seemed to be me playing a video game more along the lines of Super Mario Bros. 3. There was a horizontal pipe sticking out of the left side with some blocks in front of it. I (or rather, Mario) removed these blocks, intending to go in the pipe, but a ton of Needlenoses (from Yoshi's Island) shot out of it, and I was hit by one, lost a life, and got a Game Over.
Mario appeared on some kind of map screen. This was apparently all part of a video game, and its map screen was something of a cross between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World - flat, SMB3-like landmasses and graphics, but paths like SMW. Mario was standing on the southern part of a large green island at the left side of the large map - not the left side of the screen, as this map was very large and bigger than the screen in all directions. I tried finding that level again so I could see what was in that pipe. I entered a level near my initial position, and it was a similar "jar", except the background was like the SMA4 Ghost House as well. I knew that wasn't what I was looking for, so I exited the level and tried looking in some other locations. A pipe on the map screen took me to another island with a small group of twisting, vertically oriented paths. I tried going in a few more pipes and checking out more levels, but I couldn't find the one I was looking for.
Then I woke up. I remembered this dream pretty well. Plot structure-wise, it's nothing unusual for me, although the plot itself and what I saw in the dream was pretty memorable. A would never take advantage of me to steal money...well, she wouldn't steal money, period. We're not close friends or anything, but I know her better than that. :P