CHAPTER TWO: DAISY'S
DOWNFALL
Mario and Luigi parted the crowd. An angry Daisy was
standing near Wario, who was holding one of the creepy
portraits.
"Alright, what happened here?" Mario
demanded.
"Stupid Wario tried to scare me," Daisy
responded. "He was using one of those freakish paintings as a
mask."
"I was just having some fun!" Wario pleaded.
Grumbling and muttering under their breath, everyone started to walk
away from the dining room. Wario, left standing there alone, sighed
and tossed the painting onto the floor before heading upstairs.
A few hours later, all of the sleeping arrangements had been made. For there was only room for four people on the beds, ten of them were forced to sleep on the floor, Daisy being one of them.
Daisy
was tossing and turning under her uncomfortable blanket. She kept
turning over her pillow, and eventually abandoned her sheets
altogether. Waking up hot and sweaty, she squinted at the grandfather
clock on the opposite wall. It was nearly three in the morning.
Ugh,
this is terrible, she thought. She looked over at Mario and
Peach, sharing a bed a few feet away. Luigi, Shy Guy, Donkey Kong and
Diddy were also on the floor, but all sound asleep. I just need a
glass of water, she decided as she quietly lifted herself and
crept over to the door.
She silently tiptoed down the winding stairs in her yellow nightgown, willing herself not to trip. She eventually found herself at the bottom and made her way to the kitchen.
The first thing she noticed was a half-eaten plate of
pasta on the counter. Disregarding Mario's forgetfulness, she
approached the sink carefully and filled herself a glass of water,
then immediately downed it in one gulp. Setting the glass in the
sink, she eyed an object resting behind the faucet that definitely
should not have been there: Wario's hat. She lifted it up. Underneath
the hat was a dull knife.
What the heck are these doing here?
she thought. Ah, well. I'll interrogate Wario in the morning.
At that, she left the kitchen and entered the dining room.
Something else caught her interest, which was the gory painting Wario
had scared her with. She shuddered and turned it over so she wouldn't
have to look at it. Then it happened.
Daisy was overcome with pain, it felt as if her head was splitting open. She collapsed on the floor. It took every ounce of her effort to turn her head and find that the painting she had just turned over was face-up again. She screamed bloody murder, hoping someone would come downstairs and help her, but it was too late. That painting was the last thing she saw.
Luigi was at the front of the crowd that was heading downstairs in response to Daisy's scream. He skidded to a halt in the dining room and spotted her unconscious body sprawled upon the floor. Tearing up, he tried to find a heartbeat, a pulse--there was nothing. Her skin was ice cold. Luigi crawled over to the painting that lay on the floor, it almost gave the presence of a seemingly innocent child who had just stolen a cookie.
Mario sat next to the body and
dug his face into his hands. Bowser, the indifferent one--he appeared
almost kind next to the Wario Bros, who loved the excitement of
Daisy's death. Luigi gathered himself and ran to the double doors. He
had to escape this place, before someone else died. He would never
forgive himself if he lost his dear brother, or Princess Peach. He
even despised the thought of Bowser's death on his hands. But the
doors wouldn't open. They were locked in, there was no way out. There
were no windows on this floor. Luigi panicked.
"There's no
way out!" he screamed, his voice cracking. Those not grieving
their loss now realized the danger they were in. Luigi counted the
people in the room. There was Mario, Peach, Wario, Waluigi, Bowser,
Bowser Jr, Yoshi, Toad, Donkey Kong, Diddy, and himself. Someone was
missing, though--but who? Luigi counted again. He still came up
short. Could the missing person be behind Daisy's death?
