Back again with another chapter. Still no mansion action just yet, but the next chapter will have it. And a thank you to the story's first review! Hopefully more will come.
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Luigi walked through the door back into the lab. He had been training for the past half-hour and called it quits for now. Gadd appear through another door next to Luigi (coming from his window look-out). Luigi had mastered the trick of going from Poltergust and to his flashlight and back. He really did not even need to think about switching all too much anymore.
"Good show there, Luigi!" Gadd said, patting Luigi on the leg as he was a bit too short to reach his back.
"After the first five ghosts it became easy," Luigi gloated as he fixed his belt, "So where are we going to go now before the mansion?"
"Haha, before we go anywhere, why not put those training ghosts back into their lair?" Gadd said pointing his thumb to a vent next to the door Luigi came out of.
"Errr… What do I do?" Luigi raised an eyebrow and scratched his head.
"Just put the Poltergust 3000's nozzle right on it and the vent will take care of the rest" Gadd replied.
"Alright, let's see here…" Luigi shoved the nozzle on the vent as Gadd said and the vacuum started up without Luigi actually doing anything. Soon, lumps where going through the chord of the Poltergust 3000 and Luigi could hear faint cries of joy from the other side of the wall. The vacuum then shut off after fifteen or so bulges of ghost energy past through it.
"Done and done," Luigi patted his hands together and put them on his hips.
An orange glow came from the training room door and slowly past through it. Frank then solidified into his ghost self and floated in front of Luigi and E. Gadd. He did his classical wave and then went around the room cleaning things, with his tongue.
"Is Frank your maid or something?" Luigi looked over at Gadd with a puzzled face.
"Ah yes, he happened to be a special ghost I captured years back from a graveyard. People were complaining about some odd noises and screams coming from there; I was sent to investigate. I found the orange fool scaring people paying respect to their loved ones. Though, he wasn't really scaring them, he was just curious at the site of people liking the dead. He just came up to people and floated there, which scared everybody," Gadd laughed to himself, "I didn't even have to rid him of evil, as he was good as can be already! Not too mention he has a Swiffer© like tongue that can make anything spotless. Though, screams were reported even when the graveyard was closed off," Gadd trailed off scratching his chin.
"So, what was the cause of them?" Luigi quivered.
"Ah I'm sure they were nothing other than stooges jumping the morgue's fence!"
'I hope…' the tallest one in the room thought.
"Back to that break thing," Gadd said interrupting Luigi's thoughts, "Why not pay a visit to my gallery to cool down?"
"Seems good," Luigi replied happily, knowing he would get some R&R.
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Luigi and the professor walked into a nearby door (as everything is close by underground) and went into the gallery. Luigi was stunned to see two enormous angel statues in the middle of the room. He then titled his head and saw what seemed like hundreds of picture frames across the walls. Upon closer inspection, not a single one contained an image.
"Hey, how come you have all these picture frames, but no pictures?" Luigi turned to E. Gadd.
"Well, that's another issue that junk heap mansion caused. Someone, more like something, came in here and let loose all my paintings!"
"Some let them loose?..." Luigi was again confused by something the old geezer said.
"Ah yes, these leads to the story of another one of my great inventions!" Gadd said with a smile that slowly turned into a frown, "In another nearby room down here, my machine called the Ghost Portraitficationizer turns any soul into a flat painting! All those empty frames used to be filled with them, caught from different places around the world; some families, some guards, some toys. It was a great collection but one of the ghosts I caught had friends. The ghost was called Boolusloos, a conglomeration of 20 or so Boos! Other Boos snuck down here and used my machine in reverse to get Boolusloos and the rest of spooks out and they formed the mansion! So what good used to bad, bad used to good, eh?" Gadd cocked a smile over to Luigi.
"…Yeah. So what's with these angel statues?"
"Hahaha, just don't touch them."
Luigi waltz around the room quietly, gazing upon empty frame after empty frame, realizing how many ghosts must have been here before. He then walked through a door at the end of a small hallway on the north end of the room. Luigi came to a room filled with gold, chests, jewelry, and one big empty golden frame. The light reflecting off of all the shiny stuff was almost blinding. Luigi guessed that a kind of super ghost or something used to be here. Though, the room, dispite being full of the geezer's gold, didn't interest him (stealing wasn't his thing) so he walked right out of the room. As Luigi walked out, he saw E. Gadd telling Frank the ghost something. Luigi was almost near the spot of conversation, but Frank floated back into the lab's hub.
Luigi noticed Frank looked a bit disheartened and asked Gadd about it, "Hey, what's up with Frank?"
"O nothing, nothing at all," the old fart giggled.
"Err… ok?" was all Luigi could respond with.
"You done lookin' around this ghost town?" Gadd asked the taller as he put his hands on his hips.
'Haha…' "Yes, I guess I'm ready for the big time," Luigi said, looking serious.
"Alright then, let's go back into the lab and I'll brief you again on what we've got to do."
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"So, you've got the Poltergust 3000/flashlight, correct?"
Two thoughts later Luigi replied, "Check."
"Gameboy Horror?"
Luigi looked at his left hand, "Check."
"Overcome fear of ghosts entirely?"
"I'll get back to you on that…"
"Well I'd say you are good to go, boy. Hows' about you trek inside that mansion now?"
Luigi gulped, knowing he was about to go into dangerous territory, "Ok, I'm ready. Let's do this."
They both made their way outside above ground. Luigi said a final goodbye and started walking up the trail to the large place. Gadd waved to him as he walked and went inside his lab a few moments later. Passing by the same blue flames and seeing the same recent graves put some fear back into Luigi, but he fought through it.
He made it up the same four stairs he walked the first time, all creeking a back-breaking noise. He finally made it to the small elephant-like door, noticing the skull again in the center of the two. He looked away from that evil head and concentrated on the door. Grabbing the rusting metal, he twisted it and peered inside. He shined his flashlight in and seeing no one, he went inside.