"Stop it!" Luigi belted at the top of his lungs as he clutched his head with tense fingers. The thought was that if he deafened himself, then he drowned them out too. The voices.
But the ghosts kept on. Their faces were warped, shifting in shape and size, stretching like taffy to accommodate new features. One was a girl who resembled Adrienne Barbeau, though only vaguely if he were being totally honest with himself, and he mustered up the courage to tell her as much.
Other faces were less than human. The form of King Boo had given way to the fangs and snout of Bowser.
"Thought you could get away from me, did you?" He roared. Luigi clutched tighter.
"Know this, Luigi. I'll never stop trying to kidnap the Princess, ever. And you can try and stop me as many times as you want, but it won't make a lick of difference."
Luigi was not so numb that he had forgotten his sense of self-preservation. Pushed against the wall, he chose to walk away, inching to the left. More stumbling than walking, his feet as if made of lead, or the same thick cement that swallowed up Nancy.
As he inched along, a strand split off from the larger form of the ghost and gained its own life. The spirit, a faceless, wailing banshee, threw itself at him.
Still the other voices, his mother, his father, his bullies, Bowser, screaming in his mind.
He rolled out of harm's way, immediately regretting it, pressed by bumpy concrete. Luigi had been able to avoid this attempt – the ghost's shout served as a pre-emptive death knell, and he'd telegraphed an attack based on that, but that was more luck than intellect.
Luck was not a viable strategy for survival.
More offshoots launched themselves, lunging through the air like steel knives. There were so many wailing shouts, all from different directions. He glanced backwards at the door, still locked.
Fight or die; those were his two options.
He chose the former. Luigi turned around and with another ghost rushing his way ducked in the nick of time. It flew into the wall behind him and sort of exploded, loudly detonating a large chunk of brick. Having removed his hands from them Luigi's ears were greeted to the full fury of that and if he'd been disoriented before then he found having senses more confusing than helpful now.
Still in big bro's shadow, huh?
Never seen a ghost before?
What are you doin' with yourself?
We just want what's best for you…
The voices of his mother, his father, of Bowser, his bullies, echoing all across the dreamscape. Telegraphing would not be an option. Instead, Luigi relied on the one tool he still had up his arsenal; instinct.
Clawing hands reached out from the form of King Boo, wearing bracelets, a wedding ring, calluses in his father's case, razor fingernails in Bowser's. A single leap took him into the air and away from their grasp, and Luigi thought that would be a momentary reprieve. He'd land on the roof and have a few seconds, if that long, to plan his next course of action.
Rodney's hand appeared to have stopped just short of being in distance to grab him when Luigi chanced looking down. He might have sighed with relief, but breathing was not coming easily to him, a rare privilege.
The momentum continued carrying him up, even as another stretched-thin Boo made a break from the larger whole. Luigi's focus had been on the hand, and then afterwards landing on the roof, and without time to move realisation took the part of reacting.
The ghost— Adrienne Barbeau, or the girl from high school who looked an awful lot like a younger Adrienne Barbeau who he should have, definitely should have, asked to the dance— unleashed a startling cry. Luigi was blindsided anyway but the shock seemed to amplify the damage tenfold. Screaming vocal cords knocked him backwards, throwing him onto the roof.
An aching lump was what he landed as. Everything hurt. His back hurt from taking the brunt of the impact, the underside of his arms hurt from taking the rest, and he figured his legs must've hurt too. When he tried to prop himself up on the strength of his one good arm, they refused to cooperate.
Sweat covered his face like a thin layer of film. Another ghost ascended and appeared to be approaching the roof. Bruno, both his head and hands. That was what it took for Luigi's legs to work with him as opposed to against him, and he shuffled backwards. Away from Bruno and his taunting smile, away from the sloping end of the roof.
Too slow, again. A spectral arm wrapped around him, a numbing feeling comparable to taking an ice bath, slammed him to the ground. He groaned in a decidedly unmasculine manner, which was likely him groaning in any way at all.
He'd thought the banshee shout to be devastating. Now, Luigi couldn't so much as lift a finger. He ate concrete, his face pressing down.
Not that the ghosts cared. Or gave him any time to recover. Another hand coiled around, twisting to secure his leg, belonging to Bowser as indicated by the spiked cuff on the wrist. Luigi found himself lifted into the air, filled with a rush equal parts panic and adrenaline, then dispatched, clanging into the metal railing.
Luigi's entire being had been set alight with soreness from top to bottom. The idea had seemed a struggle before, but now he couldn't dream of something he had taken for granted for so many years. Moving.
All the while, the ghost neared. An amalgamation of heads all bunched together like a freak science experiment, multiple pairs of arms extending out from his side. They were nearing, drifting closer, while he waited for the inevitable.
An inevitability Luigi wasn't keen on letting happen, no matter how slow to recover his body wanted to be.
With his functioning hand he grasped the railing behind him and used his hold on that to slide upwards until he was on his feet. Feet attached to legs that carried an unprecedented burden, that being to keep him standing up, but he bore with it. He could do little else.
The ghost cluster had gotten close enough to where if King Boo chose to shift his mass, one of those spectral arms could shoot into his chest and go right through his heart. Luigi acknowledged this truth internally, though his words told a different story.
"I'm not afraid of you," he said, even as his legs quaked and he lacked any sort of defence against a follow-up attack.
Except for one option he'd thus far neglected. The Fire Flower. Problem was, he had no way of reaching it.
"Oh I doubt that," Bowser sneered. Cold air blew out of his nostrils as opposed to fiery rage. "You're a coward, Green 'Stache. Always have been, always will be. Or are you shaking for some other reason?"
The hyperactive vibrations from the torso and below became more apparent to Luigi. Still, he kept up the facade all the same, even if a ghost could see right through it.
Rodney and Bruno shot out a hand on either side, the former's weapon of choice on the left, the latter's on the right. Anticipating that Rodney would be quicker on the draw, Luigi flung himself to the left as if out of a window.
As opposed to shooting through Luigi, the hand ended up blitzing the ground where seconds ago he stood. Another hand, his crush's from the bangles and coloured bands it wore. That he'd proved he could do so made jumping feel easier this time around, even if the ache persisted. Jumping high into the air. The imitation of his mother summoned up a ghostly pan and he dodged a potential blow by pulling his stomach in so tight that it cramped.
Yes, Luigi was fighting back, getting into a groove, though he would never give himself so much credit. Considering his lack of offensive options, Luigi folded himself, curling up in a mobile ball.
"Get back here, coward!" Bowser, hissing.
"We're not finished with you yet, son!" His dad, the usual authoritative posturing.
Luigi folded out at the absolute peak of his jump, so far up he would've seen Nancy as a blip on his radar if he bothered to look down. King Boo lacked the mass to stretch to reach him without absorbing the identities. This, rather than please Luigi, made him anxious for when he could.
He descended after some considerable hang time, huffing, landing on one hand.
The one Freddy had broken.
A jolt of lightning travelled through each finger and short-circuited his brain for long enough to where he tumbled as opposed to falling with any modicum of grace. Luigi ended up on his side. He made an attempt to lift up, off the strength of the good hand, only to topple over. Laying flat on his stomach. Pain, so much of it. Nowhere, everywhere.
He hoped Nancy wasn't watching him now.
Looming over his shoulder, much smaller but far more daunting than any moon, King Boo had crept up. Six faces and selves in all, humans (and the one giant turtle) uncannily moulded from his essence, with the collective gaze of a dozen eyes fixed on him.
He looked at it: This horrible monstrosity, and continued doing so out of a perverse fascination. Here was Bowser, right in front of him, while the real Bowser was really asleep or plotting another scheme to sic his Koopa Troop on the Kingdom. And on the other side, faux Barbeau could still be seventeen or eighteen. As opposed to closer to his age, accomplished, a string of successes under her belt. The world's way of telling him oh yeah, you screwed up. Big time.
Even as the fabric of his mind began to unravel, the yarns bit by bit pulled apart, he continued looking.
The Bowser spirit indicated by the overgrown fangs and the huge snout, his nostrils like two black holes, broke off from the pack. A banshee shriek from its maw disturbed Luigi enough for him to quietly scream and roll onto his back.
With the ghost above him he found himself thrust into action. Thrust into action just the same as he'd been with trying to save Wart, with rescuing Nancy from the cement, with all of this Subcon business from the beginning up until now. Oh, how badly he wished to be back home and among familiarity…but those comforts would have to wait for later.
A captive in his own body, he stared up at King Boo– the host, the original. The largest pair of eyes by far.
King boo as a product of Freddy's imagination.
It's just a dream. It isn't real.
The line Luigi told himself contained a different kind of power than in the last few unspoken utterances. What he'd been expecting to happen before, and what it certainly felt like, all self-deprecation aside, was for the ghost Medusa to forever seize his gaze. Instead of turning to stone the destruction would be immediate. Its gaze, their gaze, would reduce him to ash.
If he believed it. If he hated himself so much that some small part of him wanted it to happen.
Realising this, Luigi got. Faced King Boo head-on, staring past the eyes and into the soul. He swallowed to clear his throat, and then:
"Mom, Dad, I'm sorry I couldn't make you proud. I'm not sorry I couldn't make you happy, though, got nothin' to apologise for on that front. I do good for myself, and the people around me, and that should be enough."
Their faces seemed to crinkle up, folding inwardly with lines far more severe than ordinary old age. Luigi wrenched the image out of his head, hoped it wouldn't ever come back up, and turned to Bruno and Rodney.
"You two, I'm very sorry. Sorry for you guys, 'cause you were horrible and you must've hated yourselves about as much as you hated me. I don't think I ever liked who you really were. That was my brother."
They hissed, Bruno and Rodney, like burgers set to sizzle over a hot flame. Only there weren't any vapours coming from them. Another head atop the hydra weakened, he set his focus on the last target. The only one there who was not human, though similar in that he had more of an effect on his life than he wanted to believe or could admit to another soul.
"Bowser," Luigi spat, an acidic tongue. "You can send in all the Goombas and Koopas you want, deploy an entire fleet o' Doomships, whatever. Doesn't matter. Long as heroes like me are still around, the Mushroom Kingdom will never belong to the likes of you.
He took a step back. He then took several more steps. Luigi breathed, a deep breath unsure of itself. But perhaps that was okay. Perhaps that was life, existing in constant flux.
No response from the ghost in any way, shape, or form. It continued moving, bobbing above where feet existed for most life, but independently of him. Numb. Either that, or ignorant on purpose.
He kept on waiting. It must have been a minute. Or anywhere from one to five. Too long in any case before he, before she, before they reacted.
King Boo said nothing, did nothing. Luigi had hoped for a more triumphant finish, a victory worth raving to Nancy about, but he could also leave when the going was good, before Freddy decided to summon up another ghost from his past. The one from the present grunted, seeming to be coming to terms with its non-existence.
The heads shrieked, making noises that sounded like the word grotesque. Cracks travelled up Bowser's horns until there were more of those than solid bone and they cracked entirely. His parents, already elderly, gained about eighty years worth of aging in eight seconds. Withering, leather-like skin that clung to supposed skulls, cheekbones jutting out like flagpoles. And then they began to wither, shrivelling and one by one folding in on themselves until they were nothing.
"I ain't scared o' you," Luigi said, steady as he stood up. "Well, maybe I am. Just a little. But that's fine."
It did not hurt him to look at the ghost as much as he thought it would, as much as it had before. They continued to deplete in number, each screaming before eating up their own mouth until they were just one. One with an anger that had climbed up from the depths of hell, brute forcing its way through the fire.
While King Boo's expression once may have reduced him to an ashen pile, it appeared to have the reverse effect now. In that it was King Boo doing the burning instead, a gaping wound in his core that spread out in a destructive rush. He grunted. Pressed its hands over the hole, but that only made it grow faster.
His eyes shaking, he looked down at Luigi, a gesture that failed to make him appear any less weak.
"What have you done to me!" He hissed, tongue too big for a halfway missing mouth.
Luigi walked past King Boo, the Medusa, more hole than ghost now. A trail of hissing smoke emanated from the wound. He contemplated smiling.
King Boo reached for him. The hand passed through.
What have you done to meeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Luigi reached the end of his contemplation, smiling.