Wee! This chapter was so much fun to write. However, I had to split it in two, otherwise it would be too long to read and review comfortably. Enjoy!
The Kastle Koopa laboratory was just as creepy as you think it was, and you're right; once you're in there there's no way out. Intruders caught trespassing into Bowser's fortress would rather starve in the dungeons or be thrown into the pit of ravenous Chomps than becoming one of the oldest Koopa prince's guinea pigs. Not that they had a choice… And thanks to their invaluable "contributions", Ludwig had managed to develop cures for many diseases, such as restless tail syndrome and kooperculosis, and finally, after years of research and exhausting studies, discovered what color blood was.
His most extensive and ambitious project lay before him, and was unfortunately wedged between the less objective thoughts of Ludwig's mind and the plethora of letters on the table before him. Knowing it would cloud his judgment even further; Ludwig von Koopa still opened them one by one. In many of them Iggy was merely jotting down the business of his day, in others his "pen pal" took over and gave vivid descriptions of the things typical to it; death and violence, and of course, the stolen heart and soiled rose. Some of these pages were complete with graphic illustrations. He frowned at the one where a Koopa had been completely cut open and disemboweled.
Ludwig did not believe that Iggy had a split personality, however. If there was any kind of psychological rupture it as to Iggy's sense of reality. While Ludwig was hardly the picture of mental health himself, he had for a very long time known just how ill his brother was. Lemmy had also sensed it, but he was convinced he could talk Iggy out of his bouts of psychotic fury. This had come at an awful price – Lemmy's right eye was still so lazy that looking at any object too close up rendered him completely cockeyed. Mama Koopa had been the only one able to calm him down.
"Please, Kooky," it read, "Please tell King Dad I won't be bad ever again. If only he'll let me come home I'll be good and not a burden I swear."
Ludwig folded it back up, but another postcard fell out from the stack. "Ludwig, why aren't you writing back? I'm here all alone all day, and something to read would be of immense comfort. Please write back soon, I'm Iggy and you can write things, I know."
This letter was in the wrong pile. Iggy had written it while he recovered from his suicide attempt at the Institute's observation ward. He had to spend two weeks there to establish a diagnosis. Ludwig had, in secrecy, searched his father's desk to find the papers from Freaky Fred's. Koopa, Ignatius Hop had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Ludwig did not find this conclusion satisfactory. Yes, it did explain Iggy's delusions and his disturbed thought and speech patterns, but not necessarily his violent fantasies, and this diagnosis certainly did not justify the appalling amount of drugs he had been prescribed.
Ludwig had hacked his way into the Institute's patient database; to his surprise the sensitive information was rather poorly guarded. The result of Iggy's blood work was not promising. While his mineral and vitamin levels were steadily rising he was still iron deficient. Iggy had only been at the Institute for four weeks, so Ludwig decided not to take action just yet.
Lemmy came into the lab snacking on a piece of butter toast.
"Toast in the middle of the night?" Ludwig said, puzzled. Lemmy raised an eyebrow.
"It's 9.30 am, Kooky. King Dad made scrambled eggs. I had to give Roy a knuckle-rubbing to the head to get some of it. I doubt they saved anything for you."
Ludwig rubbed a whole night of hard work out of his eyes. He saw himself reflected in an instrument pan. He was pale and his eyes had dark circles, just like Iggy's. Lemmy was just three years younger than him, and that's not much for a Dragon Koopa as they don't even enter their teens until they're 25 human years. The tiny Koopaling was healthy and playful while Ludwig tried to remember if he himself had ever enjoyed playing around for fun.
"How's he doing?" Lemmy asked as he opened the letters that were addressed to him.
"Not much has changed since yesterday." Ludwig put on the electric kettle and poked around in a tea tin for either a bag of instant soup or cocoa.
"Is that your breakfast?" Lemmy said as his brother sat down. "That's not very good for your kidneys, you know. Too much salt and sugar."
Ludwig von Koopa just stirred his tomato soup with croutons and sipped it. "You sound just like your mother."
Mama Koopa was not Ludwig's mother. Ludwig could scarcely remember the woman who bore him, and died when he was very little. For a while it had only been Bowser and Ludwig, until Bowser was advised by his mother, who was a stubborn, stern Koopa woman, to find a new wife.
Mama Koopa came from an old noble family from Sea Side. If she opposed the arranged marriage it wasn't worth the effort as she was rather young when she came to live at Kastle Koopa. Ludwig remembered meeting her for the first time. He had bit her hand and laughed. He was glad she never told his brothers about that. He knew that she would want nothing more than be a mother to him, but didn't force anything.
Thinking about Mama Koopa made Lemmy smile with sad eyes. "We were right to send Iggy away to the hospital, right?" He sounded quite guilty.
"He opened an artery on himself, so yes, unless we had gotten him to the emergency room he would have died. If you mean the Institute you'd still be right."
Lemmy nodded. "It's just that… We all agreed, but none of us have ever been so far away from home this long."
"He held a pair of scissors to our baby sister's forehead. He put your head through a wall. He shoved…"
"Don't you dare blame him for that!" Lemmy interrupted, and the conviction in his squeaky voice made it just as frightening as one of Bowser's roars. "He can't help it."
Ludwig bit into his lower snout. "I'm not saying he can. But I'm the oldest Koopaling. King Dad reprimands me if one you get hurt."
They were quiet as they sorted the letters. "Ludwig, why won't you just write him? If you'd just write a thought or two on what's up in the world these days you'd make him super happy."
"No, I would be adding fuel to the fire." Ludwig sealed the cardboard box, stuffed with letters, before putting it away in a locker. "King Dad has forbidden it," he lied, and Lemmy saw right through it.
"I don't believe you. King Dad says we Koopalings have to always make sure we can reach each other. Why are you being so weird about it anyway?"
Ludwig rolled his eyes; it was Roy who was easy to inveigle, not Lemmy. "Fine, if you're so convinced it'll make Iggy feel better, why don't you write him?"
The tiniest Koopaling raised the brow of his healthy eye. "Because it's you he wants to hear from." He thought about all the times he had told an upset and nyctophobic Iggy to please sleep in his own bed.
"Iggy, Ludwig and I are just inches away from you." Lemmy sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "Go to bed," he added, trying to sound stern.
"No, don't make me be alone," Iggy begged. He was still so little he had to wear a blanket sleeper that his mother had knitted him. "I'll be quiet if you let me sleep next to you."
Lemmy had pity on him. He knew that he should probably encourage Iggy to develop a measure of independence as getting his own room had rocked his world. He had probably believed he was going to sleep in the hatchling crib in Mama Koopa and King Dad's bed chamber forever. But there's no such thing as forever. He had to give that up when Roy got sick with the Toad flu. Lemmy had also come down with this at the same time as Roy, but recovered a lot faster because he was a good little Koopa and took his medicine like he was told.
Iggy stopped shivering the moment he was picked up. He curled up while Lemmy removed his glasses. "Lemmy?" he asked as the blanket was tucked around him. "What happens when we die?"
Lemmy was old enough to have had Roy ask him the same thing. But he didn't ask what happened afterwards; he just wanted to know what the word meant. Iggy was very bright for his age and already capable of complex abstract thoughts.
"I don't know," he answered, just longing to go back to sleep. He had a spelling test the next day and just had to remember that the word "bee" didn't have an "N" in it. It goes without saying that Lemmy struggled in Koopergarten. "I've never died before."
"Really?" Iggy's vision was foggy without his glasses, for which he tried to compensate by widening his eyes, a habit which gave him his trademark dazed expression. "But you've done everything else, right?"
Lemmy was perhaps the second oldest of the Koopalings, however, he was quite naïve. "I don't think so. I don't have my own castle, or anything. And I haven't been to the library alone yet."
"You have more toys than me." Iggy pointed out.
"That's because I've had more birthdays than you." Lemmy planted his head on the pillow. Iggy was still not satisfied with his brother's answers. Something else was weighing heavily on his very young mind.
"Are you a robot?" He asked, frowning. "Is that a wire?" He pointed at a prominent vein on Lemmy's wrist.
"What?" Lemmy burst into a giggle, which only seemed to antagonize Iggy. "Why would you ask me that?"
"I knew it!" Little Iggy sat up. "Mama and King Dad knew the real Lemmy would die from being sick!" He was pointing his tiny, delicate claw at Lemmy, who was still confused. "Kooky built a robot lookalike so I wouldn't cry when Lemmy died!"
Lemmy was still just a little Koopa himself, but a lot of his childlike imagination had lost territory to the ability of edifying and not to mention feasible ideas. Iggy's brain however was developing both at the same time, which must have been exhausting for someone as highly strung as him.
"Iggy, it's me. I'm the real Lemmy." The Koopaling sat up and approached Iggy, who was panting.
"No," Iggy whispered. "You killed him when he got better. You wanted his toys all for yourself. And now you want mine, too." Tears welled up in his large eyes. "You are a mean robot. I'm telling!"
It was the very first time Lemmy had witnessed that something wasn't quite right with his brother. Seeing Iggy lose touch with reality frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
"Iggy, I'm not a robot, I promise." Lemmy tried to pull the comforter off his brother, who was now hiding under it, trembling like a leaf. "I didn't die. The doctor gave me medicine that helped. You saw me taking it. It tasted terrible, but it made me better."
Iggy was still shaking, and audibly gnashing his teeth.
"Please, let me have some blanket. I can't sleep if I'm cold."
The Koopaling underneath whimpered for a while, but decided to come out. "I didn't know robots could get cold."
"They can't," Lemmy said curtly without adding a "you nimrod". "Iggy, we have to sleep now, it's almost nine pm!"
He quickly found his pillow, but Iggy sat wide awake for a while, counting his brother's breaths. After a while he got too tired to count anymore, besides, he didn't know any numbers beyond twenty. That would come later, so he began making up funny words instead.
One of the upsides to being completely mad is that one rarely is bored.
Now, Lemmy watched as Ludwig prepare for a new day by putting on his latex gloves and lab coat. He decided to write Iggy the best letter in the whole world.
"Iggy, this is Lemmy. I miss you a lot but King Dad says to me that you're sick and that sick Koopas need to be in the hospital. King Dad misses you too and he really likes your drawings. I fed your hissers and ant farm and given your birdeater a massage. I think he's dead. I love you Iggy, from Lemmy."
After he had mailed it, it was his time to put on his work gear. Iggy used to assist Ludwig in projects that required small or at least slender hands; Kooky's were neither. Now that Iggy was gone Lemmy had been trusted with his old tasks.
Lemmy thought back on everything Ludwig had been through for his newest and most difficult project to become possible. It was quite a fascinating tale, you know...
Really, really fascinating!