90 Years Later

Prologue

It was a Monday when this story started; Professor Elvin Gadd, or E. Gadd as he was known around the Mushroom Kingdom, found it was time to find a new location for his studies about cosmology, all that after his humble lab was destroyed a couple of years prior due an incident with a volcano and two babies.

Quite difficult to believe, but yet it did happened. Life takes strange turns, and a year after he moved his research to the woods, where no luminic contamination could be found, the professor found himself in the middle of a problem; he found due an impossibility of a cosmic string dilatation, a building that wasn't supposed to exist materialized in the middle of the forest, next to his laboratory.

It was an old mansion, with an architectonical style that he wasn't familiar with. He couldn't understood the reason on why the mansion appeared, but his curiosity was far greater and he went inside with some of his assistants. As soon they were inside, they were mesmerized by the beauty of the mansion, but also they were spooked that the mansion seemed to be empty.

A feminine voice came out of nowhere; telling them to leave as soon as possible; but the professor told his crew to ignore it, and keep finding evidence about the mansion's origins.

Some of the rooms had portraits of people, they were around only on certain specific rooms, they looked as if they were a family that lived there a long time ago. After a small exploration, they found the mansion was divided in four areas. Area one being the foyer, as well the first floor facilities; Area two was mostly of the living area located on the second floor. The third Area was the basement and the fourth Area was the attic.

In every area, they found portraits of the 23 inhabitants of the mansion, even the dog had a small portrait near the kitchen, where they found on the backyard his old rustic doggy house. The professor was fascinated, because he thought that the mansion could represent that other worlds besides the Mushroom Kingdoms existed, far away from the known galaxy and universe.

His assistants were less thrilled, one of them even thought about calling the Mushroom Kingdom Police Force, but the professor asked him to keep the investigation they were doing under wraps, as he wasn't keen of risking anything he achieved after they denied to continue founding his research after the destruction of his previous lab; so he told his assistants - If someone from Mushroom University or the Palace asked about how the exploration of the solar system was developing.? They had to say, just fine and give any bogus reports. -

Two of his assistants quit on the following week; they weren't keen of exploring the mansion due some encounter with activity they couldn't explain. A week after the mansion appeared, the investigation team found a ghost, it wasn't a Boo, but a clairvoyant.

She appeared to be crying, and then a big Boo appeared to devoured her. All of them where scared about the apparition, before they tried to escape, the doors of the mansion closed, and they were trapped on the lobby. The same Boo that appeared in front of them as a vision, was there and it proceed to separate into fifteen smaller Boo's who took an effort to systematically kill the professor assistants, one by one.

Every single one of the Toads, turned into a ghost bounded to the mansion. The professor escaped barely, while listening to the laughter of the ghosts. He thought, about a small machine that he used many years ago to capture a Boo named Boolosus that he captured and turned into a painting, he thought that maybe some other Boo's learned the gestalt behavior and did the same as Boolosus a decade before.

When he reached his lab, he realized the painting wasn't there and everything else was destroyed. He started to fear for his life when he saw his invention, the Poltergust completely destroyed, and next to it was Bowser.

He fall on the floor and tried to reach for the emergency exit but Bowser teleported in front of him, effectively blocking the exist and any form of escape. The situation turned into a bizarre scenario, because the professor realized that the monster couldn't be the King of the Koopas, as he was dead; fear turned into him, when his head fall on the floor and the flesh of his inner body was hollow.

- Shit. Said the professor. When a specter emerged from the inside of the corpse. It was the King of the Boo's; a force that even the plumbers from the Kingdom couldn't defeat.

The ghost licked the professor, paralyzing him due the toxins in his saliva. Without saying a word, he eventually popped out from a pocket dimension the plumber named Mario, he was unconscious. The professor only look as he couldn't do anything while the ghost turned Mario into a painting; after he did that, all the other portraits that he saw on the mansion appeared to be floating around the King, and they turned into ghosts.

The professor thought he was going to be killed without knowing the reason, while all the ghost floated directly to him, but the spectral ambushed disappeared out in the thin air. The only one remaining was the King, who was face to face with the scientist.

- You took 15 of mine, ten years ago. Now I will take one of yours, that is important to the world. The specter also vanished without leaving a trace along the corpse of the King of the Koopas.

Professor Gadd, jumped right away to his telephone to call Luigi; but he didn't got any answer, not knowing the other plumber was on his way but due a different motif, as he thought he won a mansion in a contest he never participated in.

Before the ghost hunt, all of those portrait ghost with the exception of four, where humans. They were living in another world and by a mere accident of destiny, they turned victims of a macabre game that was aimed to resurrect the embodiment of all evils.