Devil in Plain Sight

by CosmicKitten89

Ludwig knew that something was not right about the newest member of the Koopa family. The little brat has taken his title, his siblings' loyalty, and to add insult to injury his artistic masterpieces are being overshadowed by the brat's scribbly graffiti. Ludwig is determined to get to the bottom of this, to prove that there is more to his little 'brother' than meets the eye...

6. The Nightmare Begins

Chapter Five: The Nightmare Begins

"RISE AND SHINE LUDDY BUDDY!" Iggy greeted the blue ball of fuzz that lay collapsed, clutching the nozzle of the airbrush, by the dungeon wall that he painted last night.

Ludwig jerked awake, blinking his bleary, bloodshot eyes. He saw that Iggy was cleaning his glasses, apparently shocked by what he saw on the wall behind him.

"Oh my googly goodness, Ludwig... that doesn't look like steampunk..."

Ludwig turned around to view the wall behind him, to find that a great eyeball with a vibrant bloodred iris staring back at him.

Ludwig yelped and flew into Iggy's arms. Shaking, gritting his teeth, he saw that the eyeball was surrounded by what appeared to be fetal body parts, in various states of grotesque malformation. Amorphous scaly lumps with teeth, hair, too many or too few eyes or limbs, and umbilical cords dangling out, illustrated with breathtaking, eye-popping, three-dimensional detail.

"I... I do not recall painting this. I must have painted this in my sleep," Ludwig said once he had caught his breath and let go of Iggy. His face took on what Iggy recognized as that proud look he had whenever he was patting himself on the back. "Trompe-l'oeil, whilst somnambulating, no less. Not bad, not bad at all..."

"I-I-I blame it on that freaky tale about parasitic fetuses and fetiform tumors I told last night, oh I'm sorry Luddy, I didn't mean to give you nightmares..."

"OH! It's coming back to me... you did rouse me from a quite vivid dream, I would even say a nightmare, of sorts, but it had nothing to do with THIS... I dreamed of the existence of a collector's edition chess set whose black pieces were modeled after members of the Koopa troop. King Dad was the King of course..."

"SCHWEET! OOH ooh, what kind of piece was I? Huh? Did I get to be a horsey?"

"No, Iggy. You, and I, and the rest of our siblings were all absent. Except for... except for JUNIOR. HE got to be the Queen." Ludwig's face seethed with bloodshot rage, bordering on lunacy, as he said it. "QUEEN I tell you!" Ludwig seized Iggy by the arms and pulled him down to stare him in the face. "I can't let him be Queen!"

"ACK Luddy... let... go... urrrf... calm down, that was just a dream. B.J. a Queen, are you crazy? Cause that's crazy talk! Junior being Queen, listen to yourself, that's got some prrretty disturbing implications..."

"I shall consider ourselves quite blessed should the case turn out to be only THAT level of disturbing..."

"Urr, Ludwig? If I-I-I may ask, exactly what is it about B-B-Bowser J-J-juh-duh-duuurrr B.J. that, um well, you find so... threatening?"

"Did you not just listen to yourself, Ignatius? You could not even bring yourself to pronounce his name in full. You may deny it to yourself, but such denial is only a reaction to the truth you know at heart, what your own instincts are telling you - that you feel no less threatened than I do."

"Th...tha-thaaaat may be so, but...b-b-butbutbut I... I'm changing my attitude! And you should... should... Iiiiim just gonna attribute this little bout of paranoia to... tototo... ohohohoii, somebody got drunk on midnight oil last night, didn't he? FOR THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT IN A ROW!"

"But the midnight oil makes me feel so enlightened and fuzzy... "

"Come again LudLud?"

Ludwig's state of sleep deprivation was causing him to involuntarily utter his sleepy, confused thoughts out loud.

"Sleep fasting is good for the brain... every hour of sleep... every hour over a lifetime bleeds the brain cells a little bit..."

"Ludwig, snap out of that microsleep!"

"Oh. Did I say... you know, the brain... parts of the brain shut down and go to sleep when you're sleep deprived. This causes the parts of the brain that are still awake to work harder... Like Demosthenes and his mouthful of stones..."

"Ohohohohoooii, Lud Bud, ya know I'm as much of a diehard insomniac as the next mad scientist, buuuut even those of us that thrive on insomnia have to catch our forty or fifty winks sooner or later. Now now, you KNOW you got a problem when the CRAZY guy is telling you to get some shuteye."

Some rational part of Ludwig's brain that was still awake had to admit that Iggy was absolutely right. After all, he did say a few things that he would regret later if he could not excuse it as sleep-deprived irrationality.

"Well, you do have a point there, just... just pointing out it was you who woke me from my much-needed slumber in the first place."

"And for that I PROFUSELY apologize, Ludwig-sama. But you reeeeally should be asleep in your bed, not passed out after painting a giant red eye, let this be a lesson to you, not to drink red eyes so close to bedtime GEEHEEHEEheehee..."

Iggy wrapped his arms around Ludwig in an attempt to lift him. "Gonna carry you off to beddie-bye, here we go now, upsy-daisy... OOF... DANG IT you're massive... M...maybe you should request diet anchovies next time..."

With difficulty, Iggy managed to carry Ludwig all the way to his bedroom and tuck him in. "Yuppers, that's just what the doctor ordered is a good, long rest! Let me tell you, if I miss a single power nap out of my Uberman polyphasic sleep schedule, I become positively PSYCHOTIC!"

"And that, Iggy, is why you are on medication. Speaking of which..."

Iggy covered Ludwig's face with a pillow. "LADADADADADADA I THINK RUDOWIGGU-SAMA NEEDS A PIPING HOT CUP OF CAFFEINE FREE LAVENDER CHAMOMILE TEA!"

"Ach I hate Lavender..."

"HAhaha, no you don't silly! Why, you simply ADORE her..."

"I hate chamomile. That princess gives me hay fever."

"HAHA sure she does. I'll be riiight back with your tisane Luddi-Pie!"

By the time Iggy had returned with the herbal tea, Ludwig had already passed out into stage 3 slumber.

Iggy observed his brother mumbling in his sleep, twitching his claws, his brow furrowed tight. Even while sleeping, his mind never took a rest.

"Ohohoh, Ludwig-senpai, your delta waves are a battlefield, aren't they..."

...

"Where's Ludwig?" Bowser asked after the Koopalings were summoned to the breakfast table.

"I'm honestly surprised you no... oh... oh he's still asleep. He hasn't had a good night's sleep in AGES, and so I talked him into catching some Zzz's because he was just babbling, man, it was CRAZY TALK!"

The other Koopalings chuckled. Iggy was one to talk.

Bowser Jr. was eating a short stack of chocolate pancakes with a smiley face on it. It looked just like something from a photograph off the kids' menu of a breakfast restaurant, the type of thing Lemmy always ordered. It was smothered with half-melted chocolate chips and chocolate syrup and chocolate flavored whipped cream, but not a single drop of it landed on Junior's bib.

Bowser wiped Junior's face himself after he was finished. "All right, now we're gonna brush your teeth! See, I got you this special sparkly blue toothpaste for kids and this musical toothbrush to make teeth brushing time fun!"

Iggy waited outside the bathroom. In spite of the jealous pang he felt at the special treatment Junior was getting, he was eager to be the first to fully introduce himself and show off his lab and things.

"Hiya Junior! I'm Iggy, remember me from last night?"

"Yeah I remember!" said Junior, in a nasally little boys' voice that some might find cute and others might find obnoxious. "You're the one who is supposed to be a genius, aren't you?"

Golly gee, what a change from the tongue-tied little guy he was last night! "W-well, if I do say so myself, hahahahahaaaa..." Iggy twiddled his hair and posed bashfully.

"Prove it."

"WITH PLEASURE! Follow me!"

Iggy ran off to the dungeons, turning around every few seconds to allow Junior to catch up once he realized that Junior's legs were much shorter and he had a hard time keeping up.

"HEEEheeheeheehee... Welcome to my labOratOry!"

Iggy wore his most mad-science-y lab coat and assumed the most mad-science-y gestures as he greeted Bowser Junior into his lab. The younger Koopa oohed and aahed as he turned his head back and forth to get a look at all the wonders. There was a desk in the corner with Iggy's computer, and a desk covered with graph paper and blueprints and notebook paper scribbled with math problems next to a shelf carrying assorted science and math textbooks, and a table covered with chemistry equipment, and a table covered with petri dishes full of fungal and bacterial cultures and microscopes, and a table covered with animal cages and potted plants including Piranha plants, and a table covered with finished, functioning inventions, and a table covered with tools and torn apart junk, and shelves that carried vials and Erlenmeyer flasks full of colorful chemical fluids and cabinets that promised to contain even more. There was something that looked like a giant lava lamp next to the cabinets that contained what looked like a fetal clone of Iggy; one could only guess whether it was a grotesque lava lamp or an in vitro cloning tank or something that dually functions as both. The wall was decorated with space pictures and fanservice-y anime posters and the obligatory periodic table.

"GREEHEEHEEHEEhee and this is just MY side of the lab! Luddy's has even more stuff, I mean, well, his inventions aren't as good as MINE are, but he's got some good coffee and all the best darn candies."

Bowser Junior spied a box of Chomp biscuits. "Hey you have a pet Chain Chomp?"

"Aaaahhh yes, yes I do, buuuut I haven't seen him in a while... that baka runs off whenever I forget to feed him. He's probably munching and crunching on the Dry Bones. Y'know, those dudes that are like walking skeletons that don't die... we got a few of them guarding the bowels of this castle."

Junior nodded and then he saw the colorful chemicals. "OOOOH these are pretty! What do these do?"

"AAAHAAAHaaah, those are just for show. That one's red number forty, that blue stuff is copper sulfate, the green stuff is chlorophyll, that pink one is phenolphthalein which y'know turns pink as an indicator of a basic pH, and the yellow stuff is... uurrmm weeelll sometimes I get too wrapped up in my inventing to take a hike up to the little Iggy's room... but that's between you and me. Now, if you reeeally wanna see some SCIENCE, I know of a project we can make that's both fun and kiddie safe..."

Iggy got out a giant tub of green Play-doh and began sculpting a volcano out of it. "Now now, this stuff looks yummy to eat, and it's made of flour and salt so it kinda tastes edible too, buuuut I wouldn't recommend having it as a snack unless it was an emergency and there was nothing else to eat 'cause it contains boric acid which is pretty yucky. Now we're going to make a volcano here. Weeelll not a real volcano, I mean I could rev up the plasma lamp and melt some iron and nickel to make REAL lava, and I could even show you this trick where I can dip my hand in it without burning my hand off GAAAAHAHAHAHAA... buuut you're just a kid and using acetic acid and bicarbonate of soda to make carbon dioxide bubbles is a lot safer and more fun for kids."

Iggy handed Junior a little chalkboard and some chalk. "Here, you can figure out the chemical formula while I do the pouring. I'll even add some red number 40 so it will be the same color as real lava!"

Iggy first poured the vinegar, then he poured some baking soda into a tiny egg-shaped gizmo he made. He stuffed the gizmo down the volcano and sealed over the mouth of the crater with more play-doh.

"Oopsie, almost forgot our goggles..." Iggy pulled his goggles over his glasses and handed Junior a pair that he gave to Lemmy whenever they did experiments together.

"GEEHEEHEE Lemmy used to love this when he was little... actually, he still does and he still is little GAHAHA..." Iggy got out a remote with a red button on it. "You can neeever predict exactly when a volcano is going to ERUPT!"

Iggy pushed the button, which caused the gizmo to release the baking soda into the vinegar inside the volcano, and all at once it reacted and blew out the top, spurting bits of red fizz and green play-doh everywhere.

Iggy laughed like a maniac. "GAHAHAhahahahaaaa... sooo, howd'ya like it, B.J.?"

B.J. wiped the green and red goop off his face to reveal a frown.

"That was LAME! I wanna see some REAL science, not science for babies!"

"B-bu-but Junior, baby brother dear, that WAS real science... didn't you figure out the chemical formula? How many moles of CO2 do you get for each mole of acetic acid and each mole of sodium bicarbonate, and what are the other products in the reaction and how many moles of those? I'm teaching you STOICHIOMETRY Junior, that's not baby stuff, babies don't... even most adults don't know how to even spell that!"

"Well that's BORING!" Junior folded his arms. "I wanna see you build something COOL like a shrink ray or a time machine or a robot!"

"Ohhh? Well teeheeheehaahaa why didn't you say so? I've got plenty of stuff like that just lying around..."

"Hey, how do I know you even built any of this stuff, huh?" Junior asked. "How do I know that you didn't just buy this stuff or steal it from a REAL scientist or use magic to make it?"

"AH? You doubt MY abilities? Ahaha, ever the skeptic! Good thinking, Junior I suppose I DO owe you a demonstration..."

"I DARE you to build a robot right in front of me right now!" said Junior.

"Ohohoooii, challenge accepted. Tell you what, I'll build you a robot out of this here trash can and whatever's in it! Nothing else, but my own two hands, and my blood, sweat, and tears. And maybe saliva and boogers."

Iggy dumped out the metal trash can that was under the table with all the junk on it. Apart from the obvious rusted, twisted, melted, and broken nuts and bolts and other scraps of metal, there were several pairs of broken earbuds, a laptop charger that had split open, cracked plastic wheels, burnt out LEDs, a couple of broken circuit boards, empty energy drink cans, an empty pizza box crawling with a few dead maggots, a used-up paint pen, some dead batteries, an SIM card from a previous phone plan, and a rotting pineapple swarming with fruit flies.

Iggy made a battery out of the pineapple and energy drink cans, and a transformer out of the neodymium magnets he salvaged from the earbuds so that it would produce AC current. He ran the current through the broken laptop charger, causing sparks to fly from where it was split open, and he held the paint pen in front of it to burn the remainder of its fumes to make a crude welding torch. He fixed the LEDs using wire from the broken earbuds as filaments to make them into incandescent light bulbs. He repaired the circuit boards, replacing the paint pen with bits of cardboard pizza box and the pineapple battery with crushed maggots and fruit flies and even sweat and tears, which he produced using battery acid fumes to make his eyes water. He built circuits and motors out of earbud wires and earbud magnets as needed, using a strong glue he made out of battery acid mixed with his own snot to attach everything. He made a place to insert the SIM card, which he hacked into and reprogrammed to make a brain for the robot, and using papier-mache made out of cardboard and his own saliva, along with a magnet and a thumbtack and a chunk of plastic he made a crude miniature phonograph to record beeping sounds for the robot to make. He made a gyroscope out of the plastic table that was included with the pizza in the pizza box.

In less than an hour the robot was finished. It moved about on wheels, twisting its head around and making beeping noises. Iggy had spray painted it with metallic colors as a finishing touch.

"There you go! One robot, MacGyver'd out of the contents of one trash can! If that isn't proof of my schweet, schweet hi-technical genius then I don't know what to tell you..."

"You cheated! You didn't get the spray paint out of the trash can!"

"Oooi, boy... the spray paint was just for decoration. Everything about the robot that is relevant to its FUNCTION, from its locomotion to its artificial intelligence was built out of the freaking GARBAGE!"

"And you knew what was in that trash can too, didn't you?"

"Kiiiinda... but does that REALLY take away from this FEAT that I have just accomplished? REALLY? Think about it. Think about what I JUST DID for a moment. I literally spun straw into freaking GOLD here... I-I-I meant figuratively, but I would need a particle accelerator and a whole lotta energy to do it literally... Aaand now before it breaks and you tell me it's a piece of junk, let me tell you that this is the best I could do given what I had to work with, and with that said the copper filaments will burn out soon and the battery won't last long and I didn't find quite enough silicon in that trash can to make a solar panel so it's going to run out unless you charge it. This was made just for novelty value and the thrill and challenge of making the best you can make out of limited resources, but if you want I can use my full resources to make something a little more bleeding edge..."

"Nah this is great! Thanks Iggy! Come with me robo buddy!"

The robot followed B.J. as he exited the lab.

"HEY HEY HEY WAIT A MINUTE! Who said that YOU could have this robot?"

"B-bu-bu-bu-but... you-you mean my robo buddy's not a gift?"

"Hrrrmm, you know what, I'm just gonna let you have him, as a welcome to the family gift!"

"Thanks Iggy!" Bowser Junior hugged Iggy, who hugged him back tenderly. Junior then took off with his new robot.

Sweet kid, thought Iggy, needs to learn not to act so spoilt rotten though. But then he is only a tot...

"Pappa look what I made!"

Iggy peeked outside the lab. He wouldn't... would he?

"Wow. This is amazing, son."

"Uh huh. And I built it out of nothing but worthless junk that I got out of the trash, you know like that MacGyver guy on TV! Nothing else but blood, and sweat and tears and my own two hands."

"Really? Wow, I've never seen Kooky or what's that other freak with the glasses... Iggy make anything like this!"

Iggy's jaw dropped. He breathed on his glasses and gave them a quick wipe and still couldn't quite believe what he saw - the robot was speaking, flying, changing size, showing holograms, all stuff he had not designed it to do. Iggy's brow bent with fury as he saw exactly what Junior used to make his bespectacled brother's invention perform such scientifically improbable tricks - that paintbrush. He was holding it behind his back, fingers crossed of course since he was lying, but it was glowing with the same shadowy aura as the robot itself, clearly possessed with supernatural and not merely scientific powers.

Iggy began foaming at the mouth like a rabid mammal. How... how dare this twerp steal the credit for MY creation, and not only that but magically enhance it and claim that THAT was merely a product of trashcan tinkering as well!

Iggy's first impulse was to chase Junior down, screaming, and beat his ass into submission until, crying, the little brat confessed the truth. But that impulse was suppressed by sudden memory of his fear instinct - Bowser would roast him alive if he attempted that on his new favorite child.

His new favorite.

Maybe Ludwig's sleep-deprived blabber wasn't so off-the-wall after all... no, no no Junior is just a child. He doesn't know better. Who knows what his previous home environment was like? Besides, haven't the rest of us Koopalings all gone through this phase? How many such bald-faced lies did Larry tell when he was that age?

But he sure grew out of that, didn't he?