This chapter is late because of school, but I'll try my best to make up for that. Also warning to anybody that doesn't like spiders or blood. Time for reviews!
Magifoofa-Mimi might or might not be in this chapter depending on if you consider the corrupted form of a character the same as that the original character.
Space Dimentio-I promise you that crying in a ditch is exactly what Luigu wants to do right now, but he can't do it right now. He'll get to it when he's not at risk of getting killed.
Guest-You can pretty much expect this story to get gross at this rate. Blood is pretty much a necessity for every chapter.
Opal-Like I told the guest, expect many future chapters to get disgusting. I'd recommend not eating before reading this story.
DISCLAIMER: I still don't own Super Paper Mario.
The long trek through the barrens eventually brought Luigi to a patch of white nothingness, which in turn led to a marsh with long and spindly flora. The water was filthy to the point of being mud; it made navigation that much more terrible. He continued moving out of necessity and fear as the events he had endured thus far began to sink in. All times prior, he had been too overwhelmed by fight or flight response to consider what had happened in such a short while, and the mucking about he was doing provided enough time to actually think.
All he wanted at this point was someplace calm to collect his thoughts and evaluate how horrible everything had become since he hid away. Unfortunately, the building he found did not provide that sort of calm.
The Pure Heart silently hummed as Luigi got closer to an old mansion. The sight brought back memories he'd feel better off forgetting as he recollected the number of stories he read growing up that seemed to depict every feasible thing that could go wrong in a withered building like the one before him. There was another Pure Heart inside the building, however, and he needed it. Whatever was going on inside would likely get worse if he put it off, so Luigi held fast what little courage he had to delve inside.
A rusted plaque with "Merlee's Mansion" engraved on it was bolted next to the front door. Luigi creaked open the entrance after reading the plaque to see a bloodied lobby. The red trailed deeper into the mansion like the bodies had been dragged. Violently dragged. Luigi held his breath as he stepped over the blood and headed further inside. Most of the exits had collapsed upon themselves, leaving him in darkness and relying on his hearing. The carpeting on the hardwood floor muffled the sound of his footsteps, decreasing the risk of being hear, but increasing the risk of being snuck up on.
The sounds of a crying child echoed from somewhere. Luigi paused and held his breath again.
Nothing. He continued on. Perhaps if he was lucky he would find 'Merlee', or whoever else owned the mansion.
He saw a light ahead with the following room being lobby-like; flight of stairs led to a floor above on Luigi's left, while the right had a flight going down. The overhang of the upper floor had black masses hanging from underneath, unmoving. One of the masses was cracked open with the remains of a horned, dog-like monstrosity spilling out.
Luigi looked away, feeling a wave of nausea hit him. The masses were obviously holding food for a nearby monster. He heard a canine-sounding growl emit from the foot of the right staircase. Scared, Luigi scaled the left flight of stairs to distance himself. The child's cries echoed once more. It seemed to come from the same level he was on.
The chances of the source being a monster or a normal child were evenly split, but Luigi had to take the chance.
"Hello?" Luigi whimpered. The cries became louder. Luigi quietly followed the source to a locked door. A large enough hole was broken through for Luigi to spot a young girl cradling herself on the floor of a bedroom. He couldn't see her face, but could tell that the girl was in bad condition by her black tattered dress and the messy display of her pigtails. Luigi turned the doorknob, finding it to be quite loose, and entered the room. Oddly, the opposite side of the door was missing a doorknob, and the hole in the door was too high up for the girl to reach through and open the door from the other side; someone had gone to great lengths to trap this child. But why?
Luigi tip-toed to the child until he was a couple feet away from the green-skinned girl.
"Are you hurt?" He asked, crouching down.
The crying stopped. The girl's back was still turned to him. Her head cracked as it shifted to stare halfway at the plumber, filling him with dread and regret as a black pit looking him in the eyes. The child's green skin looked rough and metallic, a trail of rust moving from the eye to the bottom of the cheek while an uncanny smile formed from her mouth.
A couple of teardrops hit the carpet before she stared at him fully, a hand shifting from around her legs to the floor. A mixture of rust and blood began to shed in the place of tears as each individual hair on the child's head frantically spasmed like millions of spider legs. The sounds of playful laughter echoed the room.
Luigi fell backwards. Panically crawling. Clambering up. Running.
The child gave chase with thousands more legs skittering in the place of normal, human-esc legs. Blindly, Luigi jumped from down a floor. Pain coursing through his legs. Struggling back up, he found it painful to run, enough to make his eyesight blur.
Each step meant more pain and less vision. He blindly ran for cover. His hearing, though muffled could still hear the corrupted chasing behind. He stumbled into a new room, the floor sounding like tile or stone instead of hardwood. He tripped, falling back on the ground. Luigi inched near the wall, his vision clearing up. He slide into a closet or pantry, pushing the door closed as he crawled to the back of the confined room and passed out from the pain.
Will Luigi wake up in the darkness of the pantry, or the darkness of a spider's silk? Who knows! Goodbyyyyyye~