A few seconds was all it took to transform his complacency into panic, the blades on Freddy's glove running in jagged circles through his mind. He wondered if this experience was Nancy's everyday life. Hours spent obsessing, both awake and fast asleep, stressing, worrying, a faraway voice whispering he's still out there. He'll find you.
Not ever far enough.
The storm rivalled biblical proportions. Gale force gusts threatened to blow Luigi's hat off, if the rumbling thunder did not zap it to ashes first. Not surprisingly, the driver pushed through in spite of it all, and Luigi, anticipating a strong reaction from the weather, grasped the carpet with both hands.
Sure enough, he was proven correct when the winds jerked them to the right. Luigi's hold guaranteed he did not fall off, though his heart did drop, while Nancy stayed in place and must have anchored herself beforehand.
"Who's Freddy?" The driver shouted amidst flashes of lightning. "This weather's crazy! Desert World hasn't been like this since forever!"
"When was the last time it rained?" Nancy yelled, her tone already anticipating a negative response.
"Three hundred years ago!"
Somehow this came as a shock to the system for Luigi, a blow to his heart that only left it more out of breath. As if the lightning, the lack of clarity when the cave imploded, they all ranked beneath this final confirmation from a serviceman caught in the crossfire.
As he processed his sinking hope, things got worse.
Another bolt of lightning flew down from on high, a jagged white outline on a deep blue sky. This one was aimed a lot closer.
The carpet was struck.
Luigi could taste his heart in his throat. Every nerve of his body tensed up, only further clarifying what little power he had against Freddy.
The bolt split the carpet into two pieces. Luigi slid down, the rain only speeding that process up, and it was not long before he was in the air and flailing for dear life because he was falling from the sky with no parachute or propeller suit to bail him out and please don't I don't wanna die just get it over with quickly please-
Nancy shrieked and would have ruptured her eardrums with the sound, had she been able to properly hear herself.
Nancy.
He'd forgotten about Nancy!
Luigi was beginning to feel not only soaked but very lightheaded, and still he made an effort to check the view everywhere but beneath him.
The Pidgit tried to direct what remained of his carpet and turn back. In the end, Freddy's magic proved stronger than his, and he was sent spiralling out of control until Luigi lost sight of him. No closure. No knowing he had died. Nothing.
In his vision, blurry as it was, he made out a figure, a blob of pink with a face and definitely brown hair. Nancy lost her composure for once and had her arms outstretched, pulling corners of the air.
"Nancy!" Luigi belted. Would his voice carry so far?
Did it have time to?
"Over here!" Nancy called back. Luigi would have breathed a sigh of relief, if doing so did not risk him falling unconscious.
"Take my hand!"
The ground was closing in. The trees were defined now, their tropical heads on proud display.
"No need! I think I might have something!"
"What?" Luigi hoped his incredulousness carried over in his scream.
"I picked this up while I was going through the cave! If it doesn't work, then-"
Nothing will, Luigi finished for himself.
He was close enough to identify the individual leaves on the cluster of trees before them, down to each raindrop that slithered down.
Nancy made a noise to suggest she had thrown something, performed some physical movement with her finding from the cave.
Luigi knew better than believing in blind hope, but did so anyway as he shut his eyes.
The chaos of the world around him seemed to fade anyway. No longer did the skies flood with rain, or the earth tremble to the power of with lightning bolts.
He may have found it comforting if this new place was not silent as a funeral.
His first port of call was opening his mouth. Asking the obvious question of location, Nancy enlightening him with her more up-to-date knowledge of Subcon.
Upon trying to speak, he erupted in a choking fit. He had gotten sand in his mouth, and trying to pronounce a few syllables before he realised meant the little grains had a field day sticking on the roof of his tongue too.
Luigi lifted his head off some kind of ground and instantly took to brushing and spitting out the beads of sand.
"Do you want to be any louder?" Nancy asked in a hissing whisper.
He took the hint and stopped. With his sole focus no longer on the sand he may or may not have swallowed, his interest turned to wherever Nancy had taken him and how she went about doing so in the first place.
A glance at the floor revealed, along with textured limestone, indicated she had made use of a potion. The entire beaker of fluid, no less, ensuring zero chance of a return trip.
Many moons ago, when he made his first and only visit to Subcon, Luigi had encountered many an artefact of magic. Portals fashioned after the faces of birds, stars granting their users immunity to all forms of harm, King Wart's pendant, and its uncanny ability to place all of Subcon under a spell of command.
Another of those artefacts had been potions, much like the one Nancy had thrown, conjuring up a door that opened a gap between time and space.
Luigi wasn't sure how all of the logistics worked. He was, however, eternally grateful it had worked at all.
He got to his feet, surprised he did not stumble or falter in the process. Nancy had already started venturing in deeper, taking light footsteps across the floor made of the same aging stone as the walls. Luigi followed and, taking after the example she had set, kept his balance perfect and made sure the squeak of his shoes remained a whisper.
Embers of sparks from the torches lined in rows were the only help in saving him from blindness, with the slicing apart of Nancy's lantern. Luigi could not help but muse to himself she was a little too quiet, a little too good at sneaking around as a walking shadow.
Not far ahead, the path diverted and made a sharp turn. The wall on the right blocked his view and the light flooding in was not any brighter or darker than the light he had passed so far.
"Anything up there," Luigi asked, his voice quiet and urgent.
Nancy spun around and shushed him with a finger over her mouth. Not quiet enough, apparently.
He had to wait until he rounded the corner himself. It was a tight enough passage but Luigi thought if even half of another person tried to pass through, then it would become cramped.
Turning the corner revealed little he did not already know or could have inferred, save for symbols carved into the walls. As opposed to the pharaohs of his earth, the hieroglyphs instead represented King Wart on a flat line he interpreted as a throne, four Shy Guys tending to him and aiming their fans in his direction.
Luigi rolled his eyes. He passed more hieroglyphs, all monuments to Wart in some way, either worshipping him or representing his cruelty towards those who defied his rule.
"He must be the one who owns the place," Nancy commented absently.
That, or someone's really, really got a thing for the old toad, Luigi mused in private. He knew better than to speak out loud, especially with Nancy so deep in focus as she led him along.
She stopped. He came to an equally sudden halt, not right behind Nancy but close to where he could leap out and blindside an oncoming threat.
Luigi had been about to ask the question of what, but Nancy rose her hand and gestured to something he could not see, around another bend. Light splashed against her face, gleaming yellow, almost severe.
He caught up and stood at her side. The path came to an end at their feet, and for the first time since meeting Nancy and Freddy, he found himself clueless about the goings-on of Subcon.
It was part excavation site, part industrial factory. A giant space had been cleared in some section of the temple and the sandy ground looked fresh, as if it had been unearthed only recently. There must have been at least fifty bulbs hanging from the ceiling, in the form of rows of string lights strewn across.
About half as many Shy Guys toiled below. Each one wore a visor and either worked on the conveyor belt or kept one giant, metal eye over those who did.
Nancy leaned forward to observe, the top half of her body past the barrier of the path's end.
"What are they doing?"
It was such a long way down to the bottom that Luigi had to squint in order to have a clear vision. The vaguely pink pieces on the conveyor belt solidified and became distinct objects.
One part was a metal arm, with a pincer attached in the place of fingers. A red triangular piece also moved along, bolts already punched through.
Half of the bow.
"Building something," Luigi said.
A supervised Shy Guy fused two pink, cylindrical halves together, a fizzle of sparks flying in bright yellow and blue colours as he welded them together.
The enlarged snout.
"Some kind of robotic Birdo," he said quietly, despite the heavy machinery and Shy Guys shouting at each other. The voices were high and impassioned, but not speaking their native tongue, Luigi could not pin this as a source of joy just yet.
"What for?"
That's exactly what I'm gonna figure out, Luigi said in his mind, hiding his thoughts as she broadcasted hers. He had a chance. He could sneak down there, ask them a few questions, and possibly narrow Freddy's location. At the very least it would net him and Nancy the inside scoop on their Birdo in the making.
"I hope they don't mind us taking a closer look." Nancy smiled with wry amusement. She turned to her left. "Know what I mean?"
Nancy began to blink as if her eyelids were broken shutters when thin air replaced Luigi.
She was mildly bewildered.
If only in the moment before she glanced down. Luigi was on a steady descent down a hill of sand, likely shovelled to one side at some point with the act of clearing it neglected.
He rode the wave, instead of the other way around, at first. Physically Luigi passed for having the makings of a teenage skateboarder on the thinner side, and his keeping balance served as further proof. Even as more dust blew up in front, around, behind, his speed only continued to climb. By the time Nancy was cognizant enough to reach out, not only did she fail in that regard, but said hand and a good portion of her sweater ended up covered in sand instead.
Luigi thought he had a good grip on things; a surety in his stance, the steadiness of an even balance. One or two Shy Guys with visors on had turned their stare on him with their blank, one-eyed faces.
If it had been there before, then the friction he was generating had devolved into a horrible sensation now, one that set his feet alight and burned the rubber off his soles. Luigi would not have been surprised if a blazing trail followed in his wake. But then, he would have to be capable of seeing in the first place.
Pulled forward, out of control of his own momentum, Luigi was launched and made to fly. Except he had no wings to glide out of harm's way and flailed around in the air.
Somewhat salvaging the fall, he landed on his hands and knees. A huddle of Shy Guys, drawn away from more important duties, formed a huddle.
They had come to congratulate, was his belief, and so Luigi bowed in a fake sort of showboating gesture. Subcon had changed, after all: No longer were the Mario brothers public enemy number one, and most of the Shy Guys he played games of football and tennis against had been, despite airing on the quiet side, stand-up individuals for the most part.
When he looked at them again, his real joy turned to feigned happiness. For whatever reason he could not shake the sense that, like with Nancy, more existed to this group of Shy Guys than what appeared on the surface. It was a hostile air surrounding them, rather than one of mystery, Luigi reading confrontation in their movement.
Or a complete lack of movement.
"Hey, guys. What's going on? What's the haps?"
There was no response. Not one Shy Guy so much as grunted at him. For once, Luigi found himself not being the most awkward person in the room.
Another Shy Guy, not part of the main crowd, picked up an object from a toolbox. Luigi's view of the object was obscured by another Shy Guy, wearing an apron over his robe and with the same one-eyed visor over his mask.
Nancy was…still watching from a higher ground? He could only hope she had stayed put. Her safety was hers and hers alone to worry about now.
In the predicament he found - no, placed himself in, the only appropriate response seemed to be one of amusement, pretend everything was alright. And so Luigi chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck and finding sweat had accumulated there.
"Maybe there's a misunderstanding."
The huddle closed in, all moving as one. He smiled for his life.
"Any of you guys speak English? Gee, you probably don't understand a word I'm saying, huh?"
Luigi purposefully dimmed his bright demeanour, opening his eyes.
The Shy Guy who picked up the object held a blowtorch as if it were a gun, the nozzle fashioned after a genuine pistol and just short of prodding him in the chest.
He stepped back, wishing the smile would disappear, but it was frozen and glued to an otherwise panicked portrait of horror.
Two sharp points pricked him in the back and Luigi gasped, coming to a jolted halt. He felt the weight of their breath, how close they were and how much deeper they could go.
The less brave among the crowd, those who preferred voyeurism over active participation, jeered and chanted the same message all together, a hivemind in unison.
"Guys," Luigi gasped, suddenly finding himself with shortness of breath and a dry mouth. "This isn't funny anymore."
Either they failed to hear him or had chosen ignorance. Still, two spears and a blowtorch kept him a trapped man and locked in place.
His only hope, his one salvation, was in Nancy.
Nancy! He would have clicked his fingers if they were not at risk of being burned off. Yes, smart and resourceful Nancy, she could find a way out, reason with the unconsolable, but if he could just see her he would know for certain they-
"Luigi!" Nancy shouted at the top of her lungs, followed by grunting and a struggle.
Luigi considered the consequences, turned his head regardless.
"Hey! Get your hands off me!"
There were two more Shy Guys, one on either side and both pulling her in opposite directions. Nancy moved incongruously, alternating her sway and which one she fought against yielding to.
There was a battle. Nancy's problem. She never learned not to pick fights she had no business winning.
One of the Shy Guys yelled commands to the others and they began to walk in perfect step. The spears grazing Luigi prodded him harder, as if somehow he failed to understand the message, or they thrived off his fear and provoked squeaks of terror from him for the fun of it.
With no choice otherwise, railroaded, Luigi followed them as they headed deeper into the temple.
His only consolation, however bleak a hope it was, was in Freddy not checking the aftermath of his weather blitz. Perhaps he was under the impression he had won, Subcon his to rule.
Perhaps.