Chapter Eleven, Part One: Genesis

"Luigi?"

The seconds of silence were all Mario needed to be pushed into panic mode. He pushed counters of beakers and bottles out of the way, paying no attention as they clashed to the ground behind him. Polari let out a sharp cry of outrage and Daisy and Toad were calling his name, but he could barely hear all that above the blood rushing in his ears.

Paranoia? Maybe. Overreaction? Possibly. But many a time, paranoia of the tiniest sound or shadow had saved the fighter's life, and considering all the trials they had just gone through and the simple detail that they were, in fact, the Marios, Mario didn't feel that his fear was unwarranted.

He rushed into the main room to find Rosa groaning and struggling to her feet, bent unnaturally over the broken coffee table and Luigi face down just a few yards from her. Swearing under his breath, he wished that just for once his fighter's instincts had turned out dead wrong. He scanned the room, noting that the front door was gaping and ajar and had been splintered as if kicked in with a heavy boot. But whoever had attacked the two had not stuck around. After this assessment, he ran to his brother's side, inspecting him. Immediately, he noticed a small feathered shaft jutting from Luigi's back.

Rosa coughed. "It was an ambush….I was taken by surprise….I didn't get a good look at his face…"

Mario was relieved that the projectile did not appear to have pierced deep or injured anything life-threatening. After the initial shock, he found he was more annoyed than anything else. Had this tiny dart really been enough to fell and knock out Luigi? It had definitely been a mistake to ask Luigi for help; he would have been better off on his own.

Help? Hah! Some help Luigi had been. Their journey had lasted barely two days so far and Luigi had spent most of it unconscious.

Disgusted, Mario began to pull the shaft out of Luigi's body, just as Polari, Toad, and Daisy came out of the healing room to see what the commotion was all about.

"Oh no, Luigi!" cried Daisy, hastening to Luigi's side and laying a hand on his back.

"Don't worry," Mario said evenly, yanking the fletching of the dart. "It's nothing."

"Be careful!" Daisy winced, biting down on her knuckle as she watched the point begin to tear through Luigi's tender flesh.

"Rosa, what happened?" Polari demanded, grasping his hair in consternation as he looked from Luigi to the broken door and destroyed table.

"Ambush," she repeated breathlessly, scowling at how weak she looked in front of everyone. "They knocked me into the table and then shot Luigi. Said something about…one down, one to go?" Toad glanced at her sharply, but she had put her hand to her head, apparently exhausted. "Or something like that."

Mario finally succeeded in extracting the dart, although the barbed hook had taken quite a bit of Luigi's flesh with it. Daisy tore off a strip of her dress—it was so tattered by now that another rip hardly made much of a difference—and pressed it to the wound, admittedly shallow but still gruesome.

"Poor Luigi," she said quietly, sympathy keen in her voice.

Mario, on the other hand, was shaking in anger at his brother's weakness. The time they spent worrying over Luigi was time wasted that they otherwise could have spent on recovering and finally making progress on searching for Peach. At this rate, they'd never find her. Luigi was not supposed to be a setback to his goals, but an advantage benefiting him. He turned the little dart over in his hands, not noticing that Toad had turned stock still and rigid until Daisy asked, "Toad? What's wrong?"

Without a word, Toad snatched the dart from Mario's hands and examined it closely. Then he sniffed it. Mario, hardened as he was, felt sickened by the way Toad was handling the weapon, wet, red, and glistening from his brother's blood.

Suddenly Toad's face grew darkly morose and he looked at Mario with an expression that was awfully close to pity. Mario had a knee-jerk reaction to that look being directed his way and his stomach clenched automatically.

"What is it?" he asked Toad, the color draining from his face as he looked again down at Luigi, and suddenly the situation seemed less of a nuisance and more of a dire circumstance. Suddenly he noticed how unnaturally still Luigi was, how shallow his breath. Suddenly the wound on his back seemed like a gaping, monstrous hole rather than a reasonably benign scratch. He swallowed, knowing what Toad would say before the first words were uttered.

"There's a poison on this dart, Mario, a very strong one. I was trained to catch the smell….It's a very fast-acting venom; no matter how small that wound might be, only a drop into his bloodstream would be enough, and this dart was veritably slathered with the stuff. I'm sorry, but it's a miracle he's still breathing now…"

The words continued to assail him, but time seemed to stand still for the elder Mario as he held his dying brother in his arms. Two days. Two days was all the time it had taken for Mario to destroy his brother's life. He bitterly recalled how, only moments ago, he had been cursing his brother's weakness, condemning him as a liability. But now he remembered how Luigi had always stuck by his side, no matter how frightened he became or how useless he feared he would be. Despite their years of separation, Luigi had joined Mario on a quest that had seemed hopeless and perilous from the start. He had sacrificed his peace of mind, security, and even his dream—the motor shop—all for Mario. He had stood on the sidelines while Mario gathered glory and fame, happy to play the sidekick and be the less flashy defense to Mario's stunning offense. He had stayed in Mario's shadow in nearly every aspect of his life and not once had he complained.

But he had started to draw away from the life of adventure and political warring, making a name for himself outside of Mario. He had started a peaceful life, running the motor shop—and then Mario had returned and wrapped him up in those adventures once more. And for what? Mario's own selfish desire to rekindle what used to be, but what was long dead. He had put Luigi in danger, because he was afraid of being alone. He had been fine dumping Luigi when he had Peach, but now that Peach was gone, he had filled the void with his brother, just as a temporary replacement until he found Peach and could once again cast his brother aside.

Mario felt his entire body go cold with sorrow and self-loathing. He had known that Luigi wasn't a fighter, but he had sought him out on this quest anyway. And now he had killed him. He, Mario, he had killed Luigi. It might as well have been his hands shooting the dart into his brother's back because he had killed him all the same.

It was all his fault, all his fault.

Already, he could feel Luigi's heartbeats slowing and he held Luigi's body close to him, trying in vain to share his body heat with Luigi's stiffening limbs, growing colder and colder to the touch by the second.

A miracle, Toad had said. It was a miracle that Luigi had hung on this long. Mario wondered if there was any part of Luigi that was conscious, if he really was holding on, even though it must be so very cold, and so very dark, and so very silent, and so very alone… How could Mario have ever thought that his little brother wasn't brave? Hanging on any longer than necessary was possibly the bravest thing anyone had ever done. Thank you, little brother, he thought, and then, he did the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life. He let go. You can go now; you don't have to hang on for me anymore. I'll be okay. Too late, the horrible thought occurred to him that even now, even for this, he was granting Luigi permission. He felt sick.

The word "miracle" echoed through his mind again. He remembered his parents' remarkable survival; the priest had loudly proclaimed that that was indeed a miracle, proof of God's overwhelming love and mercy, and Mario had felt important, protected, loved. His parents had lived, even though no other parents did. He had grown to know his mother's laughing, chocolate-brown eyes that lit up whenever she saw him and her bouncy, matching curls that she let him play with. He had admired his father's deep, teasing voice, those strong, gentle hands that frequently lifted him off the ground, and that shock of straw-colored hair that he would shake like a dog when it was wet, often sprinkling a shrieking, laughing Mario.

Yes, God had looked kindly on Mario's family and Mario's family alone, for while other parents took their last breaths as their children took their first, and the other kids were assigned to some random, unrelated couple, Mario got to keep both his parents. Perhaps he had even begun to believe, sacrilegious and arrogant though the childish thought might have been, that God simply loved him better than all the other children.

And then, when Mario was five years old, his parents began to have deep, serious conversations. Most of the time they were muttered behind closed doors, just outside Mario's earshot, but once in a while he did pick up snippets: "try again," "second chance," "baby." One day, his parents had sat him down, and Mario had been certain he was about to get the scolding of his life, certain that he had finally been caught surreptitiously throwing out his vegetables, but no punishment came. Only hesitant eagerness and muted joy and careful assurances.

They had been seeing several physicians and scientists…specialists, they said. People who had been tracking their case since day one—the day of Mario's birth. There were a few naysayers who predicted that the strain of a second child would topple whatever tenuous quirk had allowed them to defy nature and that nature would ravage them with a vengeance should they try to press their chances with a second shot, but most predicted favorably. Since it seemed that they could help further the population, didn't they owe it to the world? And anyway, they would love another child to care for, and wouldn't he love to have a little brother or sister?

Mario was so relieved that he hadn't been found out that he agreed more or less without thinking about it, and his mind was already wandering to cartoons he wanted to watch by the time his father began to seriously speak to him about the possibility that they might not come back. But of course they would come back, Mario thought dismissively. They had God on their side, after all.

As an adult looking back on that moment, Mario had no doubt that had he adamantly refused, his parents would have heeded his wishes, and they would still be alive. Luigi wouldn't have lived at all, but then again, at least he wouldn't have existed, only for Mario to kill him. But his thoughtlessness and overconfidence had cost his parents' their lives.

In fact, just a few days before his mother had gone into labor, she and his father had called him over again. They looked ragged and gaunt. The color had gone from his mother's lips and the sparkle had left his father's eyes; they looked as if their bodies were getting ready to shut down. They looked like other kids' parents right before a baby was delivered, but Mario knew that they were just feeling a bit under the weather and would soon bounce right back into good health.

That's why he thought it was so silly when they told him to remember that they loved him no matter what, and to always remember them happy and healthy, and to love his new little sibling even if—

Even if…what? he had asked, rolling his eyes. Don't be ridiculous. You'll be fine, and can I go back to playing now?

Then the day came. His mother's water broke, and in Arrow City General she delivered a strong, healthy baby boy before her heart gave out. Her husband succumbed to the illness and joined his wife in death shortly thereafter.

Luigi was born on the same day that Mario stopped believing in God.

But now, in the present day, Mario looked down at Luigi and begged anyone who was listening for another miracle. He knew he didn't deserve one, but please…please…

Desperation overtook him and he did something that his logical brain knew would be totally ineffective against the poison coursing through the younger Mario's veins, but he did it anyway.

Please, God. I'm sorry I ever doubted You. I know You work in mysterious ways. You allowed me time with my parents, and I thank You so much for that, but then You had to take them back. But in their place You gave me another little miracle—Luigi—who is better than I could have ever dreamed. I trust You, but please, God, he's just a kid. Please don't take him yet. If You have to take someone, take me, I beg You.

Feeling like an idiot, Mario sighed, frustrated that there was nothing he could do to actually save Luigi.

And then, unbelievably, Luigi's flesh grew warm again in Mario's arms. His heartbeat strengthened and picked up its sluggish pace.

"Luigi?" Mario asked, his voice trembling with emotion. He was quiet, as if his voice could break the spell. He leaned over Luigi, watching his face for any sign of life, hardly daring to believe what was happening. But his hopes were skyrocketing, despite his logical attempts to temper them lest they be dashed.

Luigi's nose twitched and then his eyes fluttered open. "M-Mario?" he moaned. Then he turned his face toward the floor and threw up.