By Teela Yoshi
Lemmy and Iggy looked to one another; each dirty and bearing small scrapes. Lemmy could see the exhaustion in his brother’s face; Iggy, the nervousness. It was beginning to get colder as well and the two brothers huddled closer to one another at the base of a tree.
Lemmy could feel Iggy’s tears falling on his arm; he tried to speak but found that no words came. He half-heartedly expected as such and embraced his brother in attempt to convey the words. Iggy continued crying and Lemmy felt a small tear well up in one of his own eyes as well. What was there to say where there wasn’t a thing to be heard?
As Lemmy’s ball rolled away, Iggy reached up and grabbed onto it. He tried to say something but also came to the realization that there was no sound to be heard and began to sob even more. He wanted more than anything light, something warm…
Even Lemmy’s body was cold, his shell even colder, a panting corpse shaking from fear and exhaustion. It was as though the ground was sucking the energy right out of them…
Iggy finally stopped crying. His brother
wasn’t going to get any warmer, and he didn’t have any more tears to shed.
His body was numb, filled with an emptiness that was reaching its maximum,
a hunger that had simply quit because it had had its way with his own internal
emotions. There was nothing more to say; they felt each other go limp against
the base of the tree, leaning into one another but not really taking anything
from it, because there was nothing at all to feel anymore but the flourishing
nothingness.
Chapter Five: Sharpening Sight
A large, turtle-looking wolf barreled through— literally— the deformed, decayed Ludwig that had been ambling along the corridor. His jaws tore through the soft tissue, and immediately the creature melted into a rainbow-colored liquid. Some of it seemed to attempt clinging to Manacle’s thick fur coat, but a strange force around him propelled it off, as though an invisible umbrella were protecting him.
His thoughts raced—
rainbow rainbow blood and saliva—
there’s a force here and I just—
I…?
Immediately his fur retreated and a dazed Koopa stood unprotected in the middle of the dark corridor.
_
Somewhere else, ambling through the darkness of one of the highest corridors in the castle, Nightmare Dieheart turned his head sharply. He felt his own narvak child’s distress… It had simply been keeping guard when some…one? had attacked it. Nightmare himself couldn’t get a clear reading on it.
What was going on here? He attempted to reach his mind (stretch) and grab (slip!) a hold of a strange aura standing curiously in the corridor. It was like looking through a cracked kaleidoscope that had been smeared with mud or peering through a blurred photograph. He couldn’t see the creature responsible for this.
He smiled. That was fine. It had a train of thought, and where there was consciousness, there was exploit.
_
Back in the basement of Kastle Koopa, Ludwig looked up and nodded to the rest of his party. Then he shook his head.
“What is it, Ludwig?” Teela asked, reading the exhaustion on his face.
“I don’t want this again.”
“What?”
“Another strange… occurrence.”
There was silence. Karma burst into laughter. Everyone but iJason joined in, because by now they had learned the truth: The world in which they lived was one in which there was no clear definition of “normal”.
“But seriously now, what is it we should do? I mean, obviously some strange things are going on.” Teela threw the obvious on the table.
“We-ell, I think…” Karma looked to everyone’s faces, “we should go explore the surroundings.”
Because what else could they do?
“Let’s see if we can find the others,” Teela said.
They began up the stairs, Teela letting everyone else go first into the main entrance room. She peered back down into the basement as she came up the rest of the staircase, so sure that there would be a darkness coming to drag her back down.
Teela was the last to emerge. They had
expected to come into a main entrance hall, but were slightly taken aback
to find that was not the case. The ground beneath them was cold, hard,
and there were torches upon the smooth stone walls. Somewhere far off,
water and—
Manacle stood even farther off. He had watched as the walls around him melted, meshed, and became this large labyrinth of darkness and cave walls. He knew he was in a cave because this was how the nightmare always started off and there would be (wolves, tearing, slashing, and-) darkness. He took a deep breath and grunted angrily.
He had never heard of Bowser’s castle being so otherworldly. He didn’t know what to do. He stood in the darkness and, one careful step at a time, followed the path with his hand on the wall. He was an unfocused Koopa with a slight case of ADD, but a hard-worker nonetheless. The job had to get done, of course!
_
Light…
That’s all Iggy had ever wanted out of his life. He had wanted to see, and there were his glasses. He had wanted his brother to live, a blood donation being nothing, but he somehow awoke under the operating lights himself…
Light. To him, it was a symbol of success; he had wanted to win the first place ribbon for the comedy acting performance, but when Lemmy had won, Iggy had not been upset.
Because more than anything, he just wanted his twin brother safe and happy. It was his brother, after all, and he would never have another one. One day he wouldn’t be living with his brother, this he knew well, but he would always, always want the best for Lemmy…
Light.
And somewhere in his mind, Iggy knew that Lemmy was cold, that he had mentally drifted off farther than Iggy, beyond the line of thought and into the world of insane mental babbling and anguish, the zone of disbelief, an unconscious withdrawing…
He was gone. Iggy could feel it, and only one thing would bring him back: Light.
But only of a special variety. He didn’t know what to do though! He tried to mentally reach for Lemmy— they often reached for one another, Iggy knew that they had a slight psychic connection, even if they never talked about it— but could not sense the Koopaling. This scared him and he—
tumbled can’t feel him can’t understand—
steadied himself on the fact that his brother needed him. It had always been Iggy who needed Lemmy, Lemmy the star, Lemmy the better of the two, but Lemmy was always stronger and he—
needed me.
Iggy’s mind babbled but once again he forced it into a quiet seclusion. He fell into a meditative state and let his mind wander, calmly, over what his options were. There were none. He accepted this and decided to look deeper, for deeper answers, for an instinct.
Light— within his mind he could feel a switch. He groped, managed to grab, and yanked it, falling into blackness.
The world was high— he was above it all, flying over everything, but could see nothing. It appeared in false colors, and he closed his eyes, letting his mind reach over the land over the— creatures— people, over the– monsters— castle.
He could sense a falseness within the castle, and strange beasts looming within rooms, strange presences that, under a different light, he may have recognized, but now were engulfed in a strange shading of the heart and mind, a loss of soul.
And he saw Lemmy, a lucid, ghostly version of him, being swept towards the castle, where, as his mind switched into a different lens (the amazing mental kaleidoscope!) a strange, pulsating hole came into view. The energy was being sucked right out of Lemmy. Iggy panicked, and felt his mind—
tumble, darkness sweeping in, but no, he had to fight it didn’t know enough yet—
stumble but regain balance. He noticed a strange glowing around himself, a field of gold mottled with a black cloud, the gold slowly fading. He could feel that the gold was losing, but constantly regenerating— his aura.
He gave and never asked for anything in return, and was capable of giving even long after it seemed he had nothing to give. His energy and life force seemed to work the same way; he always found some way to find more, find some way to keep going. There was always a way… He knew it… There had to be a way to be able to protect Lemmy.
Of course there was, he told himself. He just had to believe.
Belief. Yes, because the moment the thought sprang into mind, he felt his mind open, expand, and morph into a new shape… He had become like clay, just for a moment, and found that he was able to reshape himself. Iggy had hoped as he felt himself being drawn even farther inwards.
There was hope. He delved deeper, into a new reality.
_
None of them could tell, that Teela knew well. She was constantly falling into a state of subconsciousness, attempting some way to break the seals that had been mentally placed upon her. There was no way to break them; she had tried everything she could, but somehow he had prevented her from thinking straight. She couldn’t even find the means to realize this, to somehow express it.
Teela was practically living in a delusion of her own mind, walking around her thoughts covered in smoke and mirrors, capable of only the obvious. There would be no way for her to come up with new ideas, and most certainly not a way to express to Karma that something was wrong with her.
After all, how does one know something is wrong when everything feel… just fine?
_
Mario, Princess Peach, and Luigi had been walking around the town for several hours, had gotten some ice cream, and even had time to see a Mushroom flick. The issue at hand had not really gone away, however…
“It’s been several hours,” Mario said as they arrived at the castle gates.
Princess Peach looked blankly to the sun as it sank beyond the horizon of Mushroom houses. Luigi looked to his feet. Mario looked into Princess Peach’s lost gaze.
“Let’s wait until tomorrow morning… Is that all right? I mean, he is a very… special… Koopa, so says the head of our defense. I have faith in his choosing… I think we should give Manacle D. Koopa a little bit more time,” Princess Peach said. She glanced to Mario. He nodded.
“I understand your decision, Princess. I guess we will get going for the night. Is it all right for us to arrive promptly in the morning to see what’s going on?”
“That’s fine. G’night, guys.” Princess Peach curtsied as the two Brothers bowed. They left, and all the way back, Luigi had little to say to Mario, no matter how much he tried to get Luigi’s mind off of the matter.
“Do you want to stay at my place tonight?” Mario offered.
“No, that’s all right. Thanks.” Luigi gave a half-hearted smile and waved to Mario, quickly hurrying off to his own home.
Older brothers liked to monitor. He knew Mario would not agree with his thoughts, and couldn’t have him getting in the way then. Luigi fell into a deep, contemplative thought as he sped through warp pipes miles underground.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, he told himself. Luigi had a plan.
To Be Continued...
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