Luigi doesn't know where to start. It seems at some point the narrow confines of his life broke open, the walls fell down, and he was left standing in the chill of sudden fresh air, a thousand miles of sky above and below, distant horizons all around. The world is a bigger place than we ever imagine, He thinks. It is very popular to say "It's a small world," when meeting some chance acquaintance, perhaps an old friend in the midst of a foreign country. And perhaps Luigi began to think that way. That eventually, his life would become "focused" enough that he would keep meeting the same people again and again, and because they were all such a limited group, they could say to themselves, "It's a small world". (i.e. we keep meeting again and again.)

Two points diverge. (Again, Luigi doesn't know where to start.) Let's say first: these people meet again and again by some common agreement. Let's say a party, or a go-kart race. (Aren't we delightful people? We all just want to have a good, "fun" time, when we're not grasping for power and precious life.) The fact that millions, billions of other people are not involved here is conveniently ignored. Let's say: It's a small world because we, the people who love to play Mario Party (honest to god, it seriously got called that), met once every year and held a party together. We have begun to ignore other people outside of our circle.

Second point. (Is this even worth saying?) Pick a random book from the library or bookstore and crack it open. Truly random. Better, go to a section you'd normally never caress, like literary criticism or medieval theology or history for some obscure region or biography (god, biography, endless fucking biography) and open the book. And if it's a big book, or a particularly academic one, gaze numbingly at the list of names. Names names names. So many people have existed. So many people have existed! People who were important, in some little pocket! So many people were once famous, once the center of something. In their own little worlds, in their own little small worlds. Ozymandias.

Now less than perhaps fifty living people in the world remember them, remember that obscure name from that obscure history, the kings and queens of the little pockets.

In another hundred years, there will be maybe five living people that know those names.

Another hundred years after that, maybe two.

And another hundred years beyond—

Those names will be eaten up. Eaten, by Time, the beast that even the ancient gods feared.

Eaten. Om nom nom nom nom.

…Mmmm yummy.

It's a small world if you make it one. But it can be a terribly, terribly big world, too.

Vast Expanse

By Magikoopa981

Chapter One: Zero

Scene. Luigi bolts upright awake in a hospital bed, ripping hospital wires off like some Jason or Michael serial killer maniac monster waking up after their last spree. He practically flies upright off and out the bed before even considering if he is wearing anything. No, no he is not— he is buck naked, as they say.

Chilly here. This room is not as warm as one might expect for the care of a comatose patient.

Just at that moment a toad nurse comes through the door, carrying a clipboard. She sees Luigi standing there, face overgrown with hair (they haven't been shaving him? Or maybe they grew bored with it), standing in tense action, hands slightly extended forward, fingers curling a little, compulsively looking for the next thing to do (god, where is this energy coming from?) and naked member hanging, sleepy and unextended from years of sleep.

The toad nurse screams. But she doesn't drop the clipboard. Four years Luigi was lying flat as a board, and now here he is, sparking wild eyes. He looks like a cannibal looking for his next feast.

"What…" Luigi starts, but his voice is stupid croaky, and he breaks into coughing. "What… what…" Still, he is trying.

"Wait," The nurse remembers herself, her duties, "I'll get you some water." She considers. "And clothes."

"What… time…" Luigi stops. Wrong question. "What… year…?" Like a time traveler, he doesn't know what year it is. He just knows he's been asleep for a long time. "What year is it?"

"I'll be right back."

The nurse dips out. She forgets to shut the door behind her.

Luigi stands there, and finally becomes conscious of his nudity. He is naked. Not nude, not like a statue, but a human person with dignity, taught many moral rules, and not to mention the costume he used to wear with the hat and the overalls, but he is wearing nothing now. That will not do. We are an ashamed race, like the toads.

Would koopas be ashamed, if they didn't have shells?

Some time later, Luigi would consider it probably wasn't normal for hospital patients to be left naked in their beds. Something funny was going on. Dare we guess… Someone in the hospital was having fun with him?

But that was one of those mysteries he would not get an answer to. Such is life.

Here was an answer he would get: He had been in a coma for four years.

Fast-forward now. Fast-forward two years. Six years since Luigi entered his coma, made the choice that began his coma. Two years since he woke up.

(He did not choose the coma, but he took the violent action that put himself to sleep.)

Unintended consequences. Such is life. And this was for the better in the end, yes? The original intention was death. Luigi was spared. He was too strong. He is too strong to die, whether by the attempt of a koopa, or by his own hand. Luigi is too strong. He is strong enough to be beaten with a baseball bat about the head (metaphorically, it is the same feeling), he is strong enough to be kicked down one hundred flights of stairs, and he will not die. Like the germs that can survive on the moon.

Now he is blathering. He is trying to recount what all happened. What was important. What is important? He wants to record.

What is important now? A newfound love of life, one supposes. A new obsession. An obsession: to become a great storyteller.

His last moments in his coma were swamped with dreams. Very strange dreams. Extremely strange. Strange even for a resident of the Mushroom Kingdom (ha!), not strange in the sense of a surrealistic artist's hallucinatory vision (Dali could have painted mushrooms instead of clocks?) but strange psychologically. The vision of a burning compulsion, a burning purpose, some grail that captures and directs a life to one single direction. A flaming meteorite come crashing down from heavens and stars and angels and aliens and smash crash fuck flash into Luigi's consciousness, conscience, and pretty damn well deep into his unconscious (if that's not where it even came from anyway, now is this Unconscious above or below us? Oh hell) so that it became a whole center of his being (not "the center"? "A center?") and made for the pivoting of his life.

It was not three days after he had flung out of his hospital bed, peter flailing, that he stated his mission out loud.

"I am going to become an internationally known writer."

Good luck with that one, Immediately said the one voice in his head that contradicted everything. Who do you think you are?

"It doesn't matter who I think I am. I'm going to do it. Or die trying. I'm just going to do it."

Even if you think you're very smart, art is a lottery.

"It doesn't matter." Luigi had a wild look in his eyes. He was staring into a bathroom mirror, freshly shaven from the hospital. His eyes were wide, and he was honest-to-god talking to himself. He was talking to the negative voice in his head. "It doesn't matter. This is what I'm going to do. Now I start."

He felt an insane energy rushing throughout him. It was like some life force had arisen to counter the death force that had haunted his body previously. The life force had come screaming out of the sky (or wherever, maybe out of his heart, if you're feeling cute) and was animating him in parodic reverse of his previous condition. Now he had a goal, like it was nailed to his forehead. (Nailed 95 Theses, but combine all of them to one, one thesis: Get your books published goddamn it, publish the books, tell the stories, publish your books, run run run run run do it do it do it do it DO IT DO IT DO IT TELL THE FUCKING STORIES AAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

One imagines this will end in some sort of destruction, perhaps a spontaneous combustion. Luigi bursting into brilliant flames, not thunder. Yoshi jokes as much over drinks. Luigi says he doesn't care, he has a mission now. It must be completed.

"Alright alright, chill." Yoshi stares at him a moment. "You look like you're going to eat this countertop."

"Writing is what I was born to do," Luigi takes a deep breath. He stares at his beer. He lets out a breath. "I know I might sound strange. I am sane. I am fine. Just… I have one goal now. One purpose. Everything I do is aiming towards that purpose. It's the reason I was born. I think I knew that before, but I didn't have the courage to truly give everything else up. I thought… I wanted to be "impressive" like Mario, impressive like a hero or doctor. I wanted to save a princess. Haha. Or I thought maybe money really is everything, and I should be trying to make money. But I couldn't commit to that, because I knew it wasn't my path, and I was stuck between two stools. It's very uncomfortable being stuck between two stools, with no place to sit." Luigi chuckled. "I feel a lot better now. I've embraced my mission. I have stories to tell. I'm better at telling stories than anything else. It's my purpose on this planet."

"What are you talking about?" Yoshi said lightly (not accusatively), "You've done lots of things. You saved Queen Peach too. When she was a princess."

"No, Mario was better." Luigi looked at his drink with a more bitter expression than he meant to, "I mean. I was backup. That was Mario's thing. But I want to be the best. I want to be the best at something. And there's nothing else I'm as good at as telling stories."

"I mean," Yoshi cocked his head, "I've never read anything you've written, but… Do you really have that much to tell? You're not that old, you know. Some people say a person doesn't have enough to write about until they're at least forty…"

"Hemingway published 'The Sun Also Rises' when he was twenty-seven."

"Are you Hemingway?"

"No." He felt very fierce for a moment, "I am Luigi."

There is a pause.

"And whatever you think, just watch." Luigi clasped his hands. "This is a spiritual thing. It's already decided. Just watch me, and see what happens next. This is beyond both of us."

Another pause.

Yoshi cleared his throat.

"By the way, did you mean Herringway?"

Luigi had given himself a deadline. It was actually set shortly before he fell into his coma. A seven-year goal: to publish at least two novels by the end of the next seven years, and be making a living income from selling the books alone. It was a strategy he had picked up from an old self-help book called "Think and Grow Rich", that said if you picked any goal, precisely defined, and remembered it daily (with feeling!), you would be certain to attain the goal.

Luigi had picked this goal, and then a year later, had fallen into the coma. Better to say he had directly caused the coma, even while keeping this goal in mind, all the while not clearly believing in it, but reciting it. And then he had decided he had had enough, and tried to leave the world. Fell into the coma. Slept for four years. That goal, that prayer, had returned again and again in his sleep, indistinctly, randomly: By the end of seven years, I, Luigi Mario, will be making 100,000 coins a year in salary by writing, publishing, and selling at least two novels.

Perhaps that was the prayer that shocked him awake, and when he flung himself out of bed, it had become a living force in him, and what animated him. Somehow, that mantra had become his central force. And now it returned to him every day, and he thought of it every day.

By the end of seven years, I, Luigi Mario, will be making 100,000 coins a year in salary by writing, publishing, and selling at least two novels.

Repeat, repeat. Every day, every day. Channel the energy. Don't forget. What gets measured, gets managed. Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…

Everything feels so scattered, one moment strangely disconnected from the next. But this goal remains the same, moment after moment. If every action can be somehow directed towards this, if every step taken can be justified in light of this, the entire life can glow. The entire life—

And as he lost real care about the other aspects of his life (if his old depression had not already eaten up those feelings, in truth), his dedication and focus on the goal increased, becoming dementedly huge in sight. So huge that even to look out from the top of a mountain onto a plain below, a vast—He refuses to say it, you can't say the title early, back off—sight, it was small compared to the vision in the sky, the vision of Luigi's Will, the thing that crammed up his mind, the Idea: I am going to become a writer, I am going to sell my books, I am going to Be Someone, I will Live My Passion, I will Follow My Dreams, I will Not Give Up, I Will, I Will, I Will, I Will—

And sometimes he sleepwalks, waking up in the middle of the night, out of bed, heading for the door of his room, trying to escape some strange hotel that was only in his dreaming head. And maybe he drinks more too, drinks more than he did before the coma. Two, three beers a day. Or three shots. It's a rule, a limit, but it still scares him a little— that his body very happily has settled into this tradition, three drinks a day, something to make the evening easier—

"...Make your way slicker."

—Ugh, he shudders. He shudders at the edges of his memory.

This is the story of success, of a madman who wouldn't give up— if not for physical, future success, already hallucinated present success. The past, the bleary, lethargic, depressed, ugly, stupid, confused past— come to some new fruition. This is the story of a radical movement, a shift. The shift from Zero, from nothingness, to something, to One.

Tossed up a vertical ascent, where do you land—?

Out of a hospital bed, heaving and gasping for air, eyes wide, newly born, will I have another life after all—?

/Author's Notes/: This is technically a follow-up to Verdant Twilight and Vertical Ascent, but you shouldn't need to read those to follow this story.