* * * *CHAPTER 3* * * *
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, apart from a couple of things.
After their talk with Merlon, the two brothers had immediately gone to Toad Town Café to eat lunch, unwilling to make the long walk back home. The food had been excellent and Mario had been unusually friendly all day, continually offering to help Luigi with various trivial things. He even offered to wash the dishes, something he normally wouldn't have done even if the continued existence of spaghetti depended on it.
But despite how peaceful the day turned out, Luigi couldn't relax for a second. He knew the exact reason for Mario's odd behaviour; he was scared. Scared that the shadow-creature would return and attack his brother while he wasn't around to help. However, neither of them mentioned it until later that evening, at about 8PM, whereupon Mario threw himself down on the couch and lazily stretched out an arm for the television remote.
'C'mon!' he called out to Luigi, who was currently in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. 'There's some good stuff on.'
He waited until his brother abandoned the sink and came to sit beside him on the couch, propped up by several layers of cushions and looking as grim as he had all day.
'What's up?' he asked guardedly. It wasn't normal for Mario to invite him to watch television together. He always did that by himself, while Luigi sat in his room and read books, or the newspaper. But then again, his brother had been acting funny ever since they left the fortuneteller's house that morning.
Mario sighed and gave up all pretence of being normal, tossing the remote aside and sitting up straighter. There was a gleam of something in his eyes which Luigi didn't entirely like the look of.
'Listen, bro,' he began. 'About what Merlon said earlier –' Luigi quickly lifted a gloved hand, forestalling whatever he'd been about to say.
'If this is more nonsense about me not leaving the house alone, would you mind saving it for tomorrow? We've already been over this.'
'But Luigiiii,' said Mario in a very whiny voice which he probably didn't even notice he was using. 'That guy – he's like an evil version of you! Imagine how powerful he could be! And Merlon seemed scared of him too – come on, Merlon! Besides –'
'He can't hurt me!' Luigi snapped, getting mildly annoyed with his older brother's over-protectiveness.
'Merlon said he can't kill you,' Mario corrected him, raising a finger for silence. 'He could still hurt you, or try to make you do stuff. He's part of you, remember? If he's more powerful, don't you think he could control you somehow?'
Luigi pondered over this statement for a minute or two. It did make sense (surprisingly, considering Mario had said it) but for some reason it didn't alarm him quite as much as it ought to have done. 'You can't be sure of that,' he protested. 'And anyway, what if he really is dangerous? I'll have to get rid of him –'
'No,' corrected Mario again, firmly putting a hand on his brother's shoulder. 'We'll get rid of him together.' Luigi groaned.
'He might be able to kill you,' he pointed out. 'But he can't kill me. It makes more sense if I deal with him alone.' There was more to it than that, but he wasn't prepared to admit the whole truth. He actually wanted to confront his mysterious shadow face-to-face, with nobody else around. The figure's appearance on Peach's Castle roof felt like it'd been a personal challenge aimed at him. But how could he defeat it, when they were connected in such a way?
'Luigi, you're gonna get into serious trouble if you insist on doing this by yourself,' said Mario. And for once, he didn't look like he was messing around or just trying to annoy his little brother. His expression was solemn and, when Luigi met his gaze, he saw no trace of amusement in those blue eyes.
'...We'll discuss this tomorrow,' he said reluctantly, averting his gaze. 'It's late, and the shadow isn't coming after us tonight.' He swiftly got off the comfortable couch and headed in the direction of his room, wishing he could sleep right there and then.
'How can you be sure of that?' Mario protested, scrambling awkwardly to his feet in an effort to give pursuit.
Luigi paused momentarily, standing in the bedroom, then stuck his head around the doorway to reply: 'I'd know if he was nearby, trust me.' And before his brother could even open his mouth to argue further, he was gone.
Mario cocked his head and listened attentively for perhaps two minutes, but there was no more sound other than a slight creak of bedsprings as Luigi threw himself down on the mattress. After that, silence.
He let out a great sigh and lunged for the television remote lying abandoned on the floor. There actually wasn't anything he wanted to watch, but he wasn't tired either. Thoughts of what Merlon had said were distracting him too effectively from sleep.
Luigi hardly got any rest that night.
It wasn't because he didn't sleep; on the contrary, once he hit his bed he only got a few minutes to sulk before drifting off. Immediately, all thoughts of Mario's odd behaviour and the new rift that'd been formed between them were erased from his mind. He didn't even know his own identity anymore.
He was back in that strange, shadowy place, with a thick fog of darkness pressing against him from all sides. Except this time he wasn't blinded. He could see the gleam of silvery-white eyes everywhere, surrounding him. Each eye held a reflection of himself, subtly changed, rippling as if in a pond.
Unlike in his last dream, he remained mostly lucid and was able to understand more of what was happening. The eyes swirled and contorted in various shapes, sometimes vanishing from sight entirely. It was confusing and he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, until one particular pair of glowing orbs began to approach quickly, growing larger and larger. Suddenly there were right in front of his own eyes and he could see his distorted reflection in their surfaces.
But things were different now. It was late in the night and there was no Mario to jolt him awake. Smiling, he stepped forwards, completely fearless. The shape of himself shining through the silvery eyes didn't move with him, and when he got closer he was able to get a better look.
It was him, but a rather different version of him. Its clothing was mostly black; no green shirt or blue overalls. What he'd originally taken for a black scarf was actually a dark-green bandanna wrapped around its neck. There were other, more subtle changes in the reflection's design as well. And its eyes – they were white, as if blind, just like the multitudes of larger eyes surrounding him in the void. They were also partially covered by some sort of black mask.
It was the figure from the roof.
He smiled. Despite his knowledge of the creature and what it might be capable of doing, he felt no fear. Rather, he felt vaguely like he'd just bumped into a long-lost but well-loved relative whom he hadn't seen in many, many years. It was the sensation of familiarity that drew him closer and made him stretch out a hand to touch the reflection.
After what seemed to be a moment of hesitation, the reflection's hand also lifted as if to reach out for him.
Then, suddenly, the entire world shattered and broke apart into thousands upon millions of tiny fragments, sending Luigi flying with it. He made a frantic grab for the dark version of himself, but it had disappeared. Then there was nothing other than the bizarre sensation of falling down a long, vertical tunnel, exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
He jerked upright with a start; the room was still in semidarkness. Glancing across at his little digital clock, he groaned upon seeing it was only 5.30AM. Mario's face was floating somewhere in front of him, upside-down and wearing a half-bemused, half-concerned expression. It seemed to take him an unreasonably long time to realise that his brother was hanging over the edge of his bed to look at him (they'd had bunk beds for a few years now and Mario had always insisted on taking the upper one).
'What's going on?' he mumbled, wondering if he was still dreaming. 'By the Stars, Mario, if you'd just waited one more minute...'
'You were talking in your sleep again,' replied the older plumber in a sharp and serious tone, one he'd never used before. 'It's worrying me.'
'I was dreaming, obviously! Why did you have to wake me up?'
'Luigi, this is ridiculous! All I could hear was you muttering about shadows and reflections and someone who looked like you...' His upside-down face suddenly disappeared and Luigi heard a muffled curse as he grabbed onto something to keep himself from falling off the bed. Mario continued talking without trying to lean over again. 'Something's wrong. Really wrong.'
There was silence for a long while. Luigi gazed out into the darkened room, eyes wandering from the window, the closet, the blue-carpeted floor, and back up again. It was growing lighter in here, slowly but steadily, and soon he'd be able to see the sunrise through the thin curtains.
At first both brothers assumed the other had fallen asleep. But then Luigi spoke up and Mario shifted on his own bed to listen. 'D'you... do you think this means the shadow is getting closer?' he asked, voice low and unsure.
'You know more about the thing than I do, bro,' Mario responded. 'You said it yourself, that you could tell when it was close, or whatever.'
'That was before. I'm not so certain now.'
'Well, Merlon's probably right about it not being able to hurt you. You're safe, right?'
'But other people aren't.' Luigi's tone was barely louder than a whisper and sounded tremulous, as if voicing his thoughts took a lot of effort. 'It could find me, and if you're with me then it might do something to you. Maybe it could even... you know.'
'Kill me?' Mario, who'd faced death so many times in the past while rescuing princesses from evil kings, could say it without so much as a quiver. 'You could be right, Luigi. But even so, I'm not gonna leave you. Because I know you. And I'm sure you'd do just about anything to protect the kingdom.'
'Hmm.' The younger brother considered this for a while. It helped to keep his mind off the strange dream he'd had, even if it was such a grim prospect to contemplate.
'You're saying you're more worried about me hurting myself than the shadow doing something to me?' he said after a few minutes.
He heard a light thump above him as Mario brought a fist, or possibly a foot, down hard on his own bed. 'I'm not saying you're suicidal, Luigi,' he eventually replied, just as his brother was beginning to grow uneasy in the continued silence. 'But you care way too much about the people of this kingdom, like me and Peach and all the Toads. I'm...' There was another, shorter pause. 'I'm afraid you might sacrifice yourself to destroy this shadow thing, if you think it's necessary.'
He tried to inject lightness into his tone, not wanting his little brother to realise just how afraid he was, but Luigi seemed to guess the truth anyway.
'It wouldn't be fair to place one life above everyone else's,' he protested.
'I don't care,' said Mario, rather more bluntly than he intended. 'There's another way to get rid of this guy without killing anyone. We just have to figure it out. OK?'
'There might not...' Luigi broke off and sighed slightly. He knew there was no point trying to change Mario's mind once it was made up. It was better to simply agree with him, even if he was wrong.
'We'll try everything else first,' he said, which wasn't entirely what his brother wanted to hear.
'Right...' Mario rolled over in his bed, causing the ancient springs to creak noisily in warning. 'Let's get some more sleep. There's another tennis game at 8.30.' But he didn't sound like he cared much about the game.
Luigi muttered assent and gazed at the underside of the upper bunk, waiting until Mario's snoring indicated that he was asleep. When all was still, he finally rolled over and closed his eyes, hoping for another hour or two of rest.
To his relief, he didn't dream.
A/N: So, you can probably guess who the 'evil shadow' is by now. (or you can just look at the story's character list). Note that I haven't played Super Paper Mario, and he's is an individual character here, not just a brainwashed version of Luigi.
Anyway, feel free to review!
