Chapter 2 Toadtown Slums
Something unpleasant gritted around Luigi's teeth. He planted his hands down, feeling the padding of his gloves skidding over imperfections. What did he feel?
He lifted his head a little and opened his eyes.
Everything was dark.
Your sunglasses are on, you idiot! cried a voice inside of his head. Manically, he replied to it. I wasn't wearing sunglasses; we were underground!
But sure enough, as he pulled off a glove and raised his hand, he tapped the wire frame of his shades. He pulled them down into his pocket.
He was lying on sand, though the dust didn't stretch far. He was dry, which was strange, after falling in the water. He discounted it to his waders, which he slugged off effortlessly.
The land was hot, and the sand was itchy. He shook it off of his jeans, and peeled off his baseball cap to brush a few traces from his hair.
Standing up, he got his first look around.
He was at the bay waters of an ugly city. Trash plastered the streets, and neon signs flashed odd shapes of moons and clouds around the alleyways.
The water he was in was an ugly, murky color, which he traced to the large green pipes dumping sewage water into the bay. Sludge and waste slopped out of the cylinder in massive, droopy blobs.
Why the hell am I clean? What is going on?
"Get up."
Luigi looked forward quickly. There was a boy before him. He looked about thirteen, but with his black sunglasses and white skullcap, it was hard to tell. He had on a thin black long-sleeved shirt, under a white vest and white pants. All of the white was the same, seeming to flow from his cap to his sneakers. Something was oddly… off about him.
He gave off the distinct impression of the future.
"Do you not understand English? Get up!"
"Whoa, little man. Hold your horses."
"What did you call me?"
"Little man?"
The boy puckered up his nose in disgust. His hand shot inside of his coat.
"S-Sorry!" shouted Luigi in alarm.
"Relax, asshole. I'm not gonna pull out a bob-omb or nothing."
"A what?"
"A bob-omb? … Do I gotta say everything twice to you? Effing Goomba…"
"What did you call me?"
"A Goomba. … Try it with me. Goom… BA."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Are you kidding me?" said the kid. Seeing the look of astonishment Luigi failed miserably at concealing, the boy shook his head.
Then he held out his hand.
"Toad Number A Hundred Twelve. Just H.T. for short."
"Luigi Mario," said Luigi, shaking H.T.'s hand tentatively. The boy pulled what looked like a large raisin from his shirt.
"Eat this," he said. It'll make you feel better."
"What is it?"
"Damn. You're really not from around here are you?"
"Who in hell taught you your manners?"
"Answer my question, Luigi."
"No. I'm not from around here. I'm from New York."
"Great. I don't care. I failed Geography, cause I don't know anywhere past Toad Town."
"Is that this place?"
"Yeah."
Luigi sat down, rubbing his hands across his face in anguish. H.T. handed him the weird object, gesturing once more for him to eat it.
"Dried shroom," he said. "Not nearly as filling as the real thing, but that's what you get for leaving it to sit."
"Thanks," said Luigi, scarfing it down quickly. It was a strange sensation, eating the mushroom. Something warm and wet seemed to splash around inside of him. It was as if his fatigue and pain were being washed away. His stomach flipped and returned with a feeling of fullness. Nothing he had ever eaten before could compare.
"What now?" he asked the kid.
"Well, it's almost night, which means the Koopa Troopers will be scouring the city before you know it." He paused, as if half-hoping that Luigi would show signs of understanding. Naturally, he was denied that.
"Is that like the police?" asked Luigi through the pause.
"Sure. Whatever you like. Maybe its like those harses you mentioned, or whatever you called them."
"Horses."
"Whoop-dee doo."
Mario sat up, still thoroughly soaked. But as his senses returned, he saw it was sweat and not sewer water. He could barely see past himself. Feeling around, he realized he was in a bed, however small it actually was.
Perhaps a cot?
But before he could think anymore, a flashlight entered the room and hit his head. The door molding was barely distinguishable with the sudden glare, and the inky silhouette of a short man filled the frame.
"You're awake," he said, lowering the beam. "Good."
Luigi entered the city, sprinting as fast as he could to stay up with the nimble H.T. Hundreds of automobiles shot by, growling furiously as the motorists inside rushed away from the streets of night.
Finally, after running for half an hour, H.T. stopped, diving behind a mound of cardboard boxes, and gesturing for Luigi to follow him. Through the cracks in the cardboard, they could make out a tall passing figure.
"That," warned H.T. in a very soft whisper, "is a Koopa Trooper." The being was tall and strong, with square shoulders, and long, scaly, yellow arms that swung like pendulums as he walked the streets. He had a long, pointed snout, and two slit nostrils like a lizard. Piercing red eyes, with long, cat-like pupils, were recessed in his scaly skull.
He had green body armor strapped around his back, and a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. His every foot step resounded as his long, sharp talons crunched on the tar roadways. Luigi shivered.
The beam of his light ran along the boxes, as if he knew the two were hiding there. His pupil dilated, almost disappearing into the crimson. Then they returned, as he ran the beam down the alley, past mounds of boxes, and the eventual stone wall, that blocked the flow of the alley from continuing to the next block.
Then the trooper turned around, and stuck its nose up, sniffing. It turned around, and looked back at the boxes, as if undergoing an internal war between its nose and its eyes.
H.T. put something in Luigi's hand. It was as small as a golfball: cold, round, and solid as a stone, but smooth and alive as a light bulb.
"When I say to, throw that at the Koopa as fast as you can."
"WHAT? Why?"
"Because it knows we're here."
"My name," said the man, in a calm, drawling, doctorate voice, "is Professor Edwin Gadd. You may just call me Professor. Not, of course, that it is likely we will be around much longer in such dire circumstances."
"What in the hell are you-a talking about?"
"I, too, Mr. Mario Mario, come from New York City. You see, considering the number of useless scares aroused in the old rundown buildings of that city, I assumed I could make my profits in the ghost industry. I would hunt down 'poltergeists' and perform 'exorcisms,' and by the time I was thirty, I presumed I would be rich enough to retire. Well, it turns out that specters don't pay all that well, so with only a degree in paranormal studies, I had little choice but to go on with my sad career.
"For forty-seven years, I made my living studying the scams and con artists with their flim-flam costumes and absurd haunted houses that were presumed real. After all that experience, I went onto the theatrical industry, making elaborate costumes and creepy sets, more real than all that computer-generated crap they pretend is scary. I could turn a seven-year old, lollipop-sucking, lovable boy, into a fire demon with the tongue of a serpent. And best of all, it was at such a low cost, I'd let him wash it off in the tub.
"I had fun making my monsters for about a decade, before I got a government call, asking me to do an examination -- like the old days -- on an alleged haunting in the sewers. That was when I encountered a mushroom, only five days ago, that stuck me right where I am here."
"I was in those same damn-a sewers!" Mario exclaimed. "If it-a weren't for those-a gases it-a spits, I'd-a still be down there working."
"Strange those spores," remarked Professor Gadd. "I've riddled over them, and wondered if they're not some elaborate hallucinogen. The only problem is that the only comestibles in this city are those mushrooms. To survive, you need to consume them; meaning if they are the cause, we're trapped in this nightmare forever."
"I don't-a believe you. If it's-a just a trick, why-a can't we just eat something else? Maybe a desk is-a really lasagna. I-a could-a go for some lasagna right now, in fact."
"I'm afraid I only have these mushrooms and the rest of my story to give you. Here, eat up." As Edwin sat down by the bed, he handed a tray of shriveled mushrooms to Mario, leaning back in the flashlight's illumination.
For the first time, Mario got a look at him.
He was about five feet tall and still lanky, while closer to bald than any person Mario had ever seen with hair. He had on a white overcoat that reached down to his knees. His large eighties-glasses magnified his eyes twice over, making him seem older than he was.
"The-a rest of your story…" added Mario.
"Ah, yes," sighed the Professor. "Well, unfortunately, be it an effect of the mushrooms or not; there are real ghosts here."
"Boo," said Mario."
"Not… funny…" said the professor, turning an angry red. "As ridiculous as it may seem to you," he said, suddenly making himself sound much more important than Mario, "They call themselves Boos. They're huge, and ragged, like torn sheets draped over an enormous-"
"Like-a that," stuttered Mario, suddenly pointing a pudgy, trembling finger behind Gadd.
"Why yes," said the Professor stumbling backwards in terror. "I would say that's about right."
"Hey, asswipe!" shouted H.T., jumping up from the cardboard boxes. "How many times you gotta sniff the air before you realize that ain't gas you smell. Yeah, that's right! We're right here. So stop wasting my time walking in circles, and LUIGI! NOW!"
Luigi launched the ball with insane force, and just made out what it was in time. It was a black bomb with a lit fuse, and painted on the front was a white smiling face, grinning as its tiny wheel spun in the air.
The minute it hit the Trooper, it exploded like a mini atom bomb, with a tall mushroom cloud bursting into the air, and bits of pieces of the Koopa scattering into ashes. He was nothing but obliterated dust, already trailing away across the street with the light breeze.
"Nice throw," said H.T. proudly.
"Nice bomb."
"Bob-omb."
"You named it Bob?"
"Shut up."
"Why couldn't we call it a George-omb, or Frank-omb, or better still, a Luigi-omb?"
"You want one in your pillow tonight?" seethed H.T.
"So bob-omb's what they call 'em, huh?"
"Thank you."
"Professor Gadd, watch out!" The boo opened its eyes, where tongues of flame leaped out of its ragged, twisted shape. Long, bloodied fangs dripped down from its mouth like stalactites, and its jaw kept snapping about as it dived crazily for the professor.
"Eat Poltergust," cried the Professor.
"Gadd, that's a vacuum!" Mario cried.
But as the Professor powered up the switch, a chain of light swirled out like dust, and wrapped like chains around the large, floating monster. Mario stared, wide-eyed, as the weird substance tugged the Boo down into the machine, puffing a tiny cloud of smoke as the system shut down.
"What-a… What-a was-a that?" Mario asked, shaking.
"The Poltergust 3000," smiled the crazy man with swelling pride. I'm going to make a business out of these if we ever get back. E. Gadd Industries will rule the market, and what, pray tell, is so funny?"
"Your-a name-a. Edwin Gadd: E. Gadd. Oh, that's a good one."
"I've lived a long life," remarked E. Gadd bitingly. "Would you that I let the Boo back out?"
"Okay. So maybe it's-a not as funny as I thought-a."
"Leading us to a stone wall?"
"Do you have to ask so many questions?"
"I'm just curious."
"I can see that," he remarked curtly.They walked a little further down the alley, pausing as H.T. took one last look around andsaid,"You know… Not everything is quite what it seems."
With that mysterious conclusion, H.T. walked up to the wall, turned left and vanished. Luigi was left alone in the alley, accompanied solely by the flickering neon moon on the wall beside him.
"Are you coming?" came H.T.'s voice from across the wall.
"Excuse me?" Luigi began walking to the wall, only to see, just as he came very close, that it was two walls. The closer had a gap, small enough just to fit comfortably through. The wall behind was a little bigger and lain so exactly, that from a distance, the gap in the first wall was invisible.
Turning left, in the small, hidden back alley, they approached the brick face of a building. A red door seemed to fade into the mortar.
"Welcome home," said H.T.