Luigi grumbled to himself as he sat on the porch of his house. Why did Mario keep snubbing him? First with Bowser's attack this morning, and now with this end of the world business. Luigi had been by Mario's side their whole lives, but Mario would rather work with Bowser than his own brother? It was ridiculous! Luigi could handle himself...couldn't he? Maybe not. Mario always knew what to do. If Mario didn't trust him, maybe he wasn't really cut out for this adventure.
Luigi rubbed his head as he dug at his scratch card. How did he even get suckered into buying one? The cashier at that gas station was quite the sweet talker to be fair. Luigi wasn't optimistic, but its not like he had anything else to do other than entertain the card. After scratching away the latex panel, Luigi revealed some bright blocky text.
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'VE WON!
CALL THIS NUMBER TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE!
(618) 939-9600
"What even is this-a prize?" Luigi said to himself, "This feels like-a the set-up to a scam."
Still, Luigi found it in himself to step back into his house and head for the landline. Through a window in the kitchen, he could watch as Yoshi snoozed the day away. At least someone could rest easy today. Luigi sighed as he punched the number into the phone and brought it to his ear.
"Hello!" The voice that came out of the phone spilled out like oil, but at the same time sparkled with a casual charm. "If you're calling this number, that means you won our scratch card sweepstakes! Ready to claim your prize?"
"Uh...sure," Luigi answered, "What, uh...what exactly is-a the prize?"
"I'm glad you asked, my friend! Today, you just won a house!"
"A house!?" Luigi nearly choked on his own saliva.
"Better than a house, actually! You're getting a mansion in a lovely little villa area!"
Luigi couldn't believe it! Winning a mansion! Even if it might've been due today, such a streak of luck was impossible to believe.
"Can we get a name for our lucky winner?" the voice at the end of the line asked.
"Luigi, sir. My name's Luigi-"
"Great, great. Well, Mr. Luigi, just show up at the mansion and present your name and we can get you settled right in at your new crib! The address is Strada General Traian Moșoiu 24, Bran 507025, Romania, we hope to see you here soon!"
"R-romania!? What do you-a mean Romania-!" Luigi asked. The voice at the end of the line hung up before Luigi could get a solid answer. Luigi stood by the landline in silence, unsure of how to feel. He couldn't really be disappointed - the mansion was free, with no loss to him. But should he be grateful? What was he supposed to do with a mansion in Romania? Just leaving the Mushroom Kingdom would be inconvenient, let alone packing his things and moving to the Balkans. Luigi would've never even considered moving to Romania if it weren't for this mansion! Maybe he'd stay there for a vacation if he had the money, but nothing else beyond that.
Wait...a vacation. Luigi felt he was onto something. Just because he owned a mansion, that didn't mean he had to live in it. Maybe he could have someone else live in it? Not just one someone else; many, even. He could turn it into an international hotel!
"That's it!" Luigi cried, "I've got it! I'll become-a rich! That'll show Mario I can handle myself!"
Luigi's body shook at the idea of making a name for himself. This wasn't going to be the Super Mario Mansion or even the Mario Bros. Mansion; it would just be Luigi's Mansion. Luigi could barely stand at the thought. Could he handle the reality? Luigi sat down and wiped his brow. He just needed to calm down was all, calm down and think things through. What should he do first, he thought. Maybe he'd call Daisy and break the good news before he left.
It was as he prepared what he'd say to her that Luigi realized the suspicious nature of his prize. Who just gives out a mansion? Sure, Luigi had to pay for the scratch card, but how many scratch cards would you have to sell to pull a profit when you're losing a mansion? There had to be a trick, right? But what would you get out of it? No one had asked Luigi for his credit card or anything. Luigi wasn't sure what to make of it - hopefully, someone else was. One penny pincher in particular came to Luigi's mind. Luigi nodded to himself in support and headed out the door; once he got the council of his acquaintance, Luigi was dead set on making this mansion his.
Later that day, Luigi arrived at the home of this money grubber in question. It was run down beyond belief, with paint peeling off of the sides and vegetation growing through every nook and cranny. He would've assumed he was at the wrong place if it weren't for the yellow chopper parked in front of the garage, the seat still glistening with ass sweat. Luigi ambled up to the front door and gave it a gentle knock. The rotten door fell out of the doorway.
"Ah, Luigi, come right in."
Luigi was beckoned into the mildew smelling living room by a rotund guido man; the one and only Wario. Wario sat back on his torn leather couch, lounging in a yellow grease stained shirt and matching purple overalls. He had heavy baggy eyes, and a moustache sharper than a razor. His beefy hands gripped an Xbox One controller nearly to the point of shattering as he stared into his tv. The walls of the house were yellowed and speckled with mold, and the wooden floors were beginning to sink in various places.
"Good to see you, Luigi," Wario continued, not turning away from his game, "though it might've been better if you came after my business hours."
"Business hours?" Luigi asked, "You're-a working right now?"
"Yeah, I'm a game developer."
"Ooh! Did you-a make this game?"
"No, no, this is Fortnite. I'm just playing so I can get better at making my own games. It's called background research; I'm learning."
Luigi couldn't quite keep up with Wario's game, but when Wario threw his controller onto the ground, he could figure that it didn't go well.
"See, Luigi? Just now, I learned to never play on a team." Wario grabbed the headset on his ears and clutched the mic. "What's the matter, faggot, can't handle a 1v5? Fucking trash."
"What-a happened?"
"This little kid on my team lost the match for us. It's bullshit."
"What were-a you doing?"
"Oh, I died two minutes into the match, but it wasn't my fault. My internet was slow." Wario pressed the headset into his ear as he tried to stifle a laugh. "Hah! This kid's trying to tell me his dad owns Nintendo! Everyone knows Bowser owns Nintendo. Watch this, Luigi, I'm gonna tell him to hang himself, it's gonna be a real kneeslapper-"
In the blink of an eye, however, Wario's grin dropped into a grimace of terror.
"Fuck, it's actually Bowser!"
Wario shot up from his couch, picked up his Xbox One, and broke it in half over his knee.
"Phew," Wario said as he dropped his two new Xbox 0.5's onto the floor, "Now that that's over with, do you wanna take a seat, my guy?"
Wario gestured his beanpole buddy over to his torn up couch, the cushion still glistening with ass sweat.
"I'm-a gonna pass," Luigi replied, "Wario, I-a need your help. Waluigi's too, if he's-a here."
"Why would he be here?"
"I figured you two-a lived together since you're brothers."
"He's not my brother."
"He's-a not?"
"No, dude, I just needed a partner for that one tennis game years back and he just kinda showed up. Guy's been following me around for years since."
"Oh. Well, I'm here more so for-a you anyway."
"Aw, Luigi, you touch an old man's heart. Tell me what I can do for you."
Wario kicked back onto his couch, pulling a garlic bulb from his pocket and biting into it raw. Luigi didn't move from his awkward position in the doorway.
"Well, I just-a won some competition, and I figured you might be able to help me figure out whether or not it was a scam."
"Might?" Wario pulled back a cushion of the couch, revealing a mound of jewels and gold. "No one can outscam the king of con artists. I made all of this just today by bottling my dish water and telling people I got it from Pokimane's bathtub. What's the sitch?"
"Well you see, I-a won this mansion-"
"It's a scam."
"You didn't even let me-a finish!"
"Luigi, you've fallen for this, like, two or three times now."
"I know, but this one seems legit! I got the address, and it's not in the middle of-a the woods this time! It's in Romania, near these villas!"
"Oh geez. And how exactly did you win this mansion?"
"From a scratch card I bought at the gas station."
Wario stood up from the couch, put his hands together, and pursed his lips.
"Luigi, buddy, you're really not making this easy."
Luigi sighed, propping his head against the wall. Of course it was a scam, it should've been obvious. The thought of becoming his own person was just too tantalizing for rational thought.
"So, I guess I shouldn't-a go, then."
"Hmm? Oh, no, we're going."
"What? But you just-a said it was a scam."
"Yeah, it is," Wario said as he pulled out a crowbar from beneath the couch, "but you said you bought a scratch card. Whoever's scamming you owes you money, so we're gonna go to this address you got, beat this guy to death, and then take all the money he scammed from you and anyone else - splitting it, of course. I'm sure he sold quite a few of those cards."
"Wario, we don't have to do any of that. It only-a cost me a dollar-"
"Well sure, we don't have to do anything." Wario shuffled over and put his hand on Luigi's shoulder. "But the people who only do what they have to are just survivors. The people who go above and beyond are the thrivers. Do you wanna survive, Luigi? Or do you wanna thrive?"
"I...I-a want to thrive!" Luigi replied, peeling his head off of the sticky yellow wall as he straightened his stance.
"There you go, Luigi. Now then, where did you say this house was?"
"Oh, it's-a in Romania, I think the address was-oh Mama Mia! I forgot! We can't-a get to the other world anymore!"
"Why not?"
"I-a don't really understand what's going on, but Mario's-a fighting this wizard, and he-a broke all of the warp pipes out of this world. Now we're all-a stuck here."
"Just the warp pipes are broken?"
"Well, yeah, but-a how else can you get to the other world?"
Wario peeled open one of the cushions to his couch, pulling out a clunky orange helmet with a remote taped to the side. Wario slapped on the helmet, ripped off the remote, and began punching in some numbers.
"What did you say the address was, Luigi?" Wario asked.
"Somewhere in Bran, Romania. Why? What's-a that helmet for-?"
Before Luigi could finish, Wario grabbed him by the shoulder and the two blinked out of existence, instantly dropping onto a dirt road. Luigi shot up to his feet and looked around, finding himself in a dense nighttime forest.
"What? Where are we?" Luigi asked.
"Somewhere in Bran, Romania, just like you said," Wario answered.
"But how did we-a get here?"
"My Telmet." Wario gave his helmet a pat. "Made this interuniversal bad boy to get on TV. Literally, to travel to the universe those TV shows took place in."
"You made that!?"
"Yeah, bro, I've got a Master's in electronic engineering."
"Well that would've been-a pretty helpful when Mario was trying to get to Brooklyn."
"Eh, I'm sure he's not going too far out of his way to get there."
And so Luigi and Wario spent the next two days wandering around Romania until they happened to stumble upon Strada General Traian Moșoiu 24, Bran 507025, Romania. Up until this moment, Luigi had feared he'd let his mind run too wild. Looking up at the mansion standing over him, however, he quickly realized his mind hadn't run wild enough. Alabaster walls seemed to wrap around Luigi and Wario on all sides, beckoning the two towards its arching maw. The mansion watched over the two with eyes of stained glass, gated with fluttering tracery. Just like the phone guy had said, over villas lingered in the area, but Luigi's mansion dwarfed all of them. The residence was draped by a garden with plants Luigi'd never even seen, complete with an empty marble gazebo.
"Wario," Luigi said as his legs began to tremble, "I'm-a getting a bad feeling from this."
"Well yeah, you should be," Wario replied, "we already established that it's a fucking scam. Just chill out and we'll take care of this."
So Luigi and Wario began to step down the lantern lit walkway. As they drew closer, the door creaked open, and a glint of life shimmered from the mansion's depths.
"Luigi!" Wario stopped Luigi by his shoulder, whispering into his ear. "Stay outside for a second while I head in. The way these haunted mansions always work is by having the doors lock from the outside and then shutting them on you when you walk in. If the door shuts on me, unlock it and let me out."
Luigi nodded as the front door swung open. The man who stood before them was thin and pale, almost to an unhealthy degree. Still, the man managed to flash the duo a smarmy grin. He waved his arms around in the air as he greeted them, as if he didn't know what to do with them.
"Well hey there!" the man said, "Are you here for the sweepstakes?"
The man's voice was unmistakable as the same voice from the phone. Wario turned to face Luigi. Luigi remained silent, kicking around a rock with his feet. Wario prodded a response from the plumber with a nudge to the ribs.
"Uh, yes," Luigi answered, wiping sweat from his forehead, "I'm-a Luigi."
"Amazing! Why don't you come inside? I'll show you around your new crib."
The man turned around and began strolling into the mansion. Wario turned to Luigi and nodded before following suit. As Wario slunk after the man, Luigi watched Wario retrieve his crowbar from his overalls. Just as Wario wound back his arm, the front door slammed shut, seemingly all on its own. Luigi jumped at the slam. His teeth were chattering now, nearly too loud to think over. Luigi could see the lock Wario was talking about on the outer door knob, but the sheer presence of the ghostly door struck a chord deep in Luigi's being.
A firm bonk rang out from inside the mansion. Luigi tried peering through the windows to investigate, but they all seemed to lead to different rooms each time he looked at them. With no other options, Luigi pried his feet from the ground and stepped forward to unlock the door.
"Wario! Wario!" Luigi called as he began to open the door, "Are-a you-!?"
"Nah, nah, nah, I'm not done yet," Wario replied, holding the door back from the inside.
"W-what?"
"I said I'm not done with this guy yet! Just gimme a sec."
"O...okey dokey."
Luigi shut the door. Two more bonks came from the mansion. Wario opened the door a crack.
"Hmm," Wario said, "...one more."
Wario shut the door again and another bonk was heard.
"Okay, we're good." Wario threw open the door, and Luigi shuffled in. The interior of the mansion was made of a polished mahogany wood, and the floors were lined with velvet carpets. Various candles and incenses inside the mansion wafted warmth around the room. The whole aesthetic was quite appealing, barring the unconscious phone man leaking blood onto the floor.
"Gee, Wario, you-a didn't go easy on him," Luigi said.
"Better him than me." Wario bent down and began digging through the man's pockets. "You know what they say; in this world, it's milk or be milked."
"I don't think anyone-a says that."
Luigi looked around the room, with a fresh curtain catching his eye. Luigi yanked the curtain down and folded it into a makeshift sash. With his sash, he bent down next to Wario, wrapping the man's injured head with the sash.
"Luigi," Wario groaned, "this guy just tried dragging you into some sort of scheme, we don't even know what. Why are you helping him out?"
"It's-a the right thing to do," Luigi answered, "Besides, however suspicious this-a whole thing may be, we-a technically don't know that this was a scam."
"No, it was totally a scam," the man answered. Luigi jumped to his feet with a shriek, and Wario rolled the man over. Curiously, the man was still fast asleep.
"What?" Luigi said, taking a step back, "I-is he...a ghost?" As Luigi stepped back, he felt something musty and clothy skim his back.
"No, he's not," the man's voice replied, "but I am!"
Luigi and Wario whipped around, finding the source of the voice behind them. The fabric tickling Luigi's back was the tail end of a tattered cloak. It reeked of rotting flesh, and it hung in the air by the shoulders of a skeletal figure. Luigi and Wario both felt their hearts stop, as if their bodies had no choice but to die beneath the weight of the phantom's presence. They knew it to be true; the spectre was Death, and he had come for the both of them.
"Eek!" Luigi screamed as he bolted for the door. A scythe appeared in Death's hand, and with one swing, he commanded the door to slam shut. His swing blew out every candle, and the only lights left in the room were the flames flickering in his eye sockets.
"Oh, Luigi, we're fucked!" Wario said, "We're so fucked! This is the end! The end of the only Wario bro and the second best half of the Mario bros!"
But Luigi kept running. He battered into the door with his hip, and the door swung right open.
"What!?" Wario exclaimed, his massive blocky chin dropping to the floor.
"I was-a fiddling with that outside." Luigi pointed to the rock he was kicking around, now lodged in the doorway. "Before I came in, I-a kicked it into the doorway so that we-a couldn't get locked in again. Let's-a go, Wario!"
Wario scuttled after Luigi into the night, while Death remained hovering in the air.
"Ah, clever little guy," Death said to himself as he waved his scythe again. The earth beneath the mansion cracked, crying out in pain as it began to shake. Luigi tripped next to the gazebo, falling over onto his big squishy nose.
"Get up, Luigi!" Wario egged on, "We gotta-!"
Before Wario could finish, the other villas next door sunk into the ground. They were gone before he could even turn to watch them go, like some rodent had yanked them away. A wave of dust rolled over them, blocking out the light of the lanterns. The sky rang with the sounds of stone shattering and gears turning. Wario stumbled around with his arms outstretched, while Luigi curled up to withstand the tremors.
Eventually, though, the mansion's cries did calm down. Luigi peeled his eyelids open. Wario was nowhere to be seen, and the sky had turned crimson.
"Wario?" Luigi asked as he rose to his feet, "Wario, where are-?"
But when Luigi looked ahead, all of the breath he had left was sucked from his lungs. A gargantuan castle had torn out of the earth, carrying Luigi and the gazebo with it; from the chunk of stone the gazebo rested on, he couldn't even see the ground anymore. Its architecture was all wrong, with towers and observatories like Luigi's hanging off of the sides, strung together with a cobweb of stone. Wicked horns topped the whole affair, billowing out swarms of bats. When Luigi finally mustered the strength to look down, he saw the mansion on a lower balcony of the castle. The once domineering residence now looked like a pimple on the castle's visage.
"Luigi!?" Wario called out from the mansion below, "Luigiiiiiiiii!?"
"Wario!" Luigi answered, "Wario, I'm-a here!"
Just then, Death appeared behind Luigi in a cloud of smoke.
"Hey there, little guy," Death said, reaching a bony hand out to Luigi, "maybe don't stand so close to the edge. Or else you might-"
Luigi fainted at the sight of the spectre, his body running cold as it tumbled over the edge.
"...shit."
Wario looked up to heed Luigi's call, only to see the plumber hurtling towards the ground. Wario made a mad dash for the edge of the balcony. With his tiny Italian arms reaching out as far as they could, he snatched Luigi from the air and laid him down on the balcony. Death manifested over the edge a few seconds later, staring directly up with a mattress in his arms.
"I got him! I got him! I-" Death turned his head to the side to see Luigi had already landed. "...I would've got him."
"Okay, asshole," Wario yelled as Luigi began to regain consciousness, "tell us what's going on over here before I fucking kill you!"
"I'm literally dead."
"Then I'll kill you again!"
"For the record, my yellow ball of sunshine, you didn't have to be involved. My master is only after Luigi."
"Really? Does that mean I can leave?"
"What!?" Luigi exclaimed.
"Sure thing!" Death waved his scythe, and a door appeared before Wario. "Enter this door and it'll take you right back to your house!"
"Well, it's been fun, buddy," Wario said as he tipped his cap to the plumber, "but I've got money to make and laws to break. Hope you get out soon!"
Wario scuttled through the door, which Death promptly shut. Death then counted down to three on his fingers. Once the time was up, he opened the door, allowing Wario to run back to the castle in a panic. Gunfire and screaming could be heard behind the door before Death waved it back out of existence.
"That wasn't my house!" Wario said, "That was Somalia!"
"Hah!" Death's ribs rattled and quaked as he burst into laughter. "You should've seen the look on your face, thinking I'd just let you leave!"
"But I thought your master only wanted Luigi!"
"Correct. This is for my own amusement."
Wario tried to tackle Death, but the wraith held Wario at bay with his scythe.
"You motherfucker!" Wario screamed, "You let me out of here, or I'm gonna turn you into a fucking broth!"
"Watch your tone with me, tough guy. The Count wants Luigi unharmed, but he didn't say anything about Luigi's greasy Ron Jeremy looking uncle, or whoever you're supposed to be."
Death then looked over Wario, turning his attention to the quivering plumber behind him.
"Luigi," Death said, "I've got shit to attend to. I'm sure you'll end up where you need to be eventually. If you need me, I'll be in the big clock tower by the back sanctum."
"And what about me!?" Wario asked.
"We're gonna let Luigi out eventually. If you wanna go home so bad, just ask your 'buddy' to lead the way."
And with that, Death vanished into a cloud of smoke. Wario turned to face his aforementioned buddy, who was glaring him down with folded arms.
"Luigi, my compadre!" Wario said with a smile, wrapping his arm around Luigi's shoulders, "I would never leave you in some spooky mansion to die, why would you even suggest that?"
"I-a haven't said that yet," Luigi grumbled.
"Good, because it wouldn't've been true. I was only leaving so that I could go get help to get you out of here! We're in this together, my friend! My buddy! My buddy chum pal friend! Now let's get out of here!"
"...You're a real piece of work, Wario."
As Luigi rose back to his feet. He gave a cursory glance along the edge of the mansion's territory.
"Looks-a like there's-a no way to get down from-a here," Luigi thought aloud.
"Maybe we can get into the castle by going through the mansion," Wario said, scratching his blocky chin, "I can't believe this 'Count' guy slapped an entire fucking mansion on the side of his castle just for a cheap trick."
Luigi's legs turned to jelly once again at the thought of the castle's master.
"If-a that reaper was just our greeting party," Luigi said, "then I wonder what-a kind of monster runs the place."
Death warped into the throne room of the castle, searching for his master. Candles were lit and the blue cushion of the throne looked worn in, and yet the room was as vacant as could be.
"Drac?" Death called out, "Hey, Drac? Where are you?"
But no one answered. Death put a phalange to his frontal bone as he puzzled to himself. Eventually, the answer came to him, and he warped out of the throne room. The room he reappeared in was a vast golden space, lined with books and far out diagrams on both of its floors - entire lifetimes must have been spent recording all of that information. The room was filled with mystical machinery mankind had never seen before. Pistons pumped. Coils sparked. Flasks bubbled with mysterious scinitllating liquids. Even Death, with all the magic he knew, couldn't tell you how most of the devices in the room worked. The only tool he could name off the top of his head was the massive telescope in the back, with the lens reaching higher than the railing on the library's second floor. Death spotted a man cloaked in black standing behind the telescope.
"Hey, Drac!" Death said as he hovered over to his master, "You got a minute?"
Count Dracula looked over at the spectre. His skin didn't have a drop of color to spare, and neither did the locks of hair scattered wildly around his head. When he opened his mouth to speak, two fangs poked out from behind his lips.
"Sure." Dracula's voice was raspy and strained, as if speaking a single word took every fiber of strength in his being. When Death was side by side with the count, the former could see that the latter had a marble urn in one hand and a little feather duster in the other.
"Just wanted to let you know we got Luigi."
"I see. I'll inform Dimentio the next time I run into him."
"Cool. Alright, I'm gonna go hang out in the clock tower if you need me-"
Right as Death was about to warp away, a faint beeping began to echo around the room. Death looked down, and saw that Dracula's Villainoct transceiver was resting on a counter extending from the wall, beeping away. Dracula noticed Death staring at the device.
"Leave it," Dracula said, "As you can see, I am preoccupied."
"Are you sure? Might be important," Death said, to no response, "...I could clean her off for you while you take care of your stuff."
"Hmm...I suppose I do have other business to take care of." Dracula handed the urn and the duster to Death before walking off. "Put her back on that counter when you're finished."
"You got it, boss." Death looked up at the telescope towering over the both of them. "I take it Lisa liked this thing back in the day."
Dracula stopped, his back kept towards the telescope.
"Out of all of our possessions, that was her favorite. I never understood why. It's so simple, even a child could figure it out. Either way, though, I know that that's where she would want to rest."
Dracula raised a hand into the air as his body burst into flames.
"I'm heading out now, Death. Keep things under control here."
"Wait, Drac!" Death called.
"What?"
"Do you know where the Cheez Doodles are?"
"You put them in the pantry above the kitchen sink."
"Oh yeah!" Death vanished, quickly reappearing with a bag of Cheez Doodles under his arm. Dracula stared the spectre down with lifeless eyes. "What?"
"You're going to get cheese dust on my wife."
"Well I'll be dusting her off anyway, won't I?"
Dracula glared at Death in silence before disappearing in a pillar of fire. Death set the urn down on the counter and ripped open the Cheez Doodles.
"You just wait right there, Lisa, Death needs a snack break...I wonder how Drac would be doing right now if you were still here."