Luigi wasn't sure how long he had been out for or what his captors had planned. All he knew was that someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on his face and caused his senses to suddenly reawaken.
It was gasping for air, at first. Swimming through consciousness as if he had truly drowned, clamouring to find his way back to full awareness.
A Shy Guy lowered the bucket, and resumed holding his spear; different from any of the workers, different from most of the Shy Guys he had come across. He possessed an imposing physique, but there was something awkward in the way he carried it, rigid as he kept guard.
Luigi tried to move his arms. His wrists rubbed against each other. Luigi discovered the reason for the pressure around his wrists. They had been restricted, tied to his back with a thick spool of rope.
The room reeked of opulence. Having no rope around his neck, Luigi could freely look around. An intricate pattern of red and gold spirals made up the walls, the ceiling equally ornate and separated into four squares with a chandelier each.
A succession of carpeted steps led to a throne, bright green and glimmering gold, evoking royalty in and of itself.
Despite it being wide enough to fit two human-sized people, Luigi did not jump to conclusions of who the throne belonged to. Wart owned the temple, but that and him ruling over a specific area of land were two separate ideas.
And times had changed. Perhaps Subcon had adopted the Mushroom Kingdoms model, one monarch for every-
"Hey."
Luigi flinched, and likely would have jumped out of his chair if he had the ability.
"Mamma mia." He reclined from the shock, cooling down. "Nancy, warn me next time you're gonna speak out of nowhere, alright?"
"I've got a plan. To get us out of here."
Heart thumping in his chest, Luigi watched the guard stare down at him, vague suspicion behind his faceless glare.
"We tell them the truth," Nancy continued. "That Krueger's on the loose and could be anywhere. The people here are in just as much risk as the people anywhere else. They'll believe us."
Luigi paused for a moment, the thought crossing his mind that he was being overly doubtful, then in hushed tones:
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because it's our only option," she said, filled with a cold truthfulness that both motivated and disheartened.
Her chair had been attached to Luigi's, a ring of rope around both pairs of rear legs. She whistled to the guard. Initially he feigned ignorance and pretended not to hear, but he decided to humour her and with plodding, heavy-duty boots walked over to Nancy
"Hi."
Positioned to face the other way, Luigi could not see the young girl as much as he could take her in through his ears. And, even without his eyes, it was not difficult to sense the artificial smile and false kindness.
"Want to know something?"
A pause. He had to assume the guard had nodded or showed some begrudging agreement.
"You are in a lot of danger right now. More than you can comprehend. So are we. The whole reason why my friend and I happened to stumble into your midsts in the first place is because of a man named Freddy Krueger…"
After that, Luigi zoned out for the most part. Although he did pick up on Nancy's referring to him as a friend, surprised she thought they were that close or close at all. Then again, that could have been part of her sweet talk toward the guard.
As Nancy went on with her explanation, Luigi could do little else and so took another look around the room. Still, nothing to suggest Wart's presence showed up. There were no murals or paintings of him like there had been on the walls before, no iconography that might be associated with a king other than general luxuriousness and the empty throne.
Someone entered.
The door had opened, then abruptly shut. Someone had to have entered, or else that meant the chill creeping along his neck was unwarranted, fear without a reason. If not a product of finally succumbing to the madness, then what? Who?
A large shadow flew across the room, black against red and gold. Luigi knew, or hoped, he was not so far gone to have his eyes deceive him. Not yet.
With Nancy unaware, the guard too busy brooding to notice much of anything, Luigi broke out in his usual fear response.
Or would have, had he been able to move. Instead he remained in place, essentially paralysed to whatever horrible whims this shadow had and wanted to enact.
It moved. The same spot the shadow had occupied before, it had disappeared from and when Luigi whipped his head to the side he only caught it as an out-of-focus blur. For the bulk it carried, the vague figure moved with a swiftness and had no problem darting in every direction. He followed, despite his helplessness to act, but while his mind would not rest, his eyes tired of batting back and forth
"Nancy?" Luigi called out, voice on the edge of panic.
"Kind of in the middle of something here," she hissed,
"Did you see that shadow?"
"Shadow?" Nancy pointed out of view. "You mean him?"
For the first time since entering, as far as he could remember, Luigi turned around to the fullest extent possible and twisted his back to an uncomfortable degree.
Nancy had her eyes on him too, the man on the throne. He still had the same pompous sneer on his face, turning up his snout even with them on the same level as him. The finest and rarest of silks made his robe, coloured blue and yellow, a contrast to the green bulk it had been draped over. The crown atop his head glimmered with a single rhinestone, its own light source.
"Wart." Luigi did not bother to hide his contempt.
"Wart?" Nancy had to ask, the odd one out. "The guy from the hieroglyphs, that's his name?"
"Should've known somethin' smelled off."
"Lovely to see you again too, Luigi."
Wart adjusted the robe draped in front of him with a dramatic unfurling. Obscured previously, the pendant around his neck became visible.
"All these years and you haven't changed one bit," Luigi growled, "Locking us up for no good reason."
"You haven't exactly averted from type." Wart smiled, a sight that made him sick to his stomach. "Trespassing on my property. In my realm."
"It won't be your realm soon." Something caught in Nancy's throat. She swallowed. "Not if you keep us here."
Wart and Luigi both turned their heads, the latter less so. Following slightly after, the guard nodded in her direction, saying she should go on while saying nothing at all.
"Freddy Krueger," Nancy explained, once it became clear that they were waiting for her. "The new man on campus. He's taking over and we're trying to stop him."
"Yeah. So could ya be a dear and get us out of this rope?"
Wart hummed in overemphasised thought as he lazily played with the chain attached to his pendant, the gold constantly clinking. Luigi held his breath, out of irritation, because he knew the moment he opened his mouth it would jeopardise all of Nancy's goodwill towards the guard.
"Need you both be reminded of who has wronged whom? I am under no obligation to assist a pair of scoundrels who break and enter as they see fit."
"Please." Nancy's voice swelled with desperation. "He can vouch for us."
Wart squinted at the guard, who, by Luigi's observation, had hardly moved in the last half hour or so.
"Is what the young lady says true?"
In a series of lumbering footsteps, the guard made his way over to beside Wart's throne. The two spoke, words shrouded in whispers, before a conclusion was reached.
"He has told me much. But, in truth, I've known about this Krueger character. Have for a while, actually." Wart eyed Nancy from across the room with something less innocent than his noble appearance suggested. Still, she did not shirk, her gaze similarly unbreaking.
"Then you know how powerful he is. Look, it's not guaranteed or anything, and I don't think even then that we'll stand a good chance, but if we have your power on our side we might be able to overwhelm him."
She paused, attention drawn to the pendant. "Beat him that way."
"The brute force approach," Luigi interjected, cutting off Wart who now scowled at him as a result.
Nancy looked over and shot him a quirked smile. "Right."
Wart took some time to process everything. Far too long. Subcon had never been in a more dire state. The circumstances needed brevity, decisions made on the quick and in earnest.
"You wish for my assistance and all the resources I have at my disposal."
"Well, you'd be in control of them, and yes. That robot I saw some of them building could help too."
By now, he was dragging out their execution for his own perverse amusement and Luigi could not be convinced otherwise. Wart made a point of crossing his legs, of coughing to clear his throat. It made his blood boil.
"I'm not sure," he said after forever.
One by one, Wart tapped his fingers on one of the arms of the throne.
"There's only one problem. Other than me not getting anything in return for this." His tone of voice suggested a joke, though Wart's face was still.
"No one out here in these boonies knows who Freddy Krueger is."
"Well don't you think they ought to know?" Nancy asked, with thinly veiled, rising irritation.
While not as vocal, happier to listen in than to participate, Luigi understood Wart's reasoning. It made sense to keep the masses unaware, however many remained, consolidate his defences while he had the chance.
It made sense. Not that that made it moral or right.
"Oh, alright."
Wart needed only to clap his hands together and the guard had gotten to work on removing that bothersome rope. Nancy was untied first, then he was freed. Luigi mouthed a thank you to the guard, who still remained a wall of a human.
"Come along." Wart got off of his throne again, and this time turned around with his robe creating a very expensive trail behind him. "There's something I want to show you both."
He seemed to be heading for a brick wall. Luigi looked at Nancy who was no more enlightened, shrugging with equal confusion.
Wart brought his pendant closer to the wall, strangely solemn. Following a series of sparkles, he materialized a door and walked through it with the assumption that Luigi and Nancy would follow. He did not look back.
"You look surprised," Nancy said, reading him like an open book. "I thought you two had history."
"That's one way to put it. He was no wizard when we kicked his keister all over Subcon, that's for sure."
Something's changed about him, he thought. For better or worse, Luigi wished he knew, but there was no time to judge. Nancy led the way, and he followed, not entirely certain.
From beyond the door, Wart's footsteps echoed in a manner that suggested a wide, open space. When Luigi walked through, behind Nancy and the guard, there was a change in colour from the regal reds of a throne room to drab grey, cold stone without feeling. The door had disappeared once Nancy entered fully, somehow sealed behind a wall with no trace of its presence. It was some magic trick. Luigi wondered what other magic tricks the former king had up his sleeve as he stepped down in a spiralling motion, following the snakelike structure of the staircase.
Enough time had been wasted for Luigi to think the staircase would prove much of the same. In reality, it went on for a few minutes before the tail came to an abrupt stop and as did Wart.
He gathered himself on one side of him, Nancy positioning herself on his right. The guard watched their backs.
"Nice place." Nancy shifted on the spot as she looked around, hands on hips.
"Yeah. Very middle ages."
The guard coughed. Neither Wart nor Nancy laughed. Luigi thought it was funny, and saw it as a win that way.
"Well," Luigi sighed playfully, "let's get goi-"
Luigi stepped forward and felt something touch his face.
Shrieking, he tried to force it away, smacking the air with his eyes closed and unwilling to open.
"Get it off! Get it off!"
Luigi heard Wart's groaning as he continued in vain. There was a fizzle in the air, and then a rush as if he had almost been slapped across the face. Almost.
When he opened his eyes, no longer existing at the seat of his overalls, the threat had been diminished. Before him was the unmoving body of a spider, large as life, with an uncanny resemblance to a Sniffit although one of the lenses on the mask had cracked.
He pressed a hand to his chest and exhaled, glad, feeling he could breathe again.
Wart rolled his eyes, a faint glow on the pendant. "Get ahold of yourself."
Nancy gave Luigi a good-natured pat on the back, though he struggled to decipher if that was genuine sympathy in her smile or mocking.
What Wart wanted to show Luigi and Nancy, after a few paces and the rounding of a dark corner, turned out to be something he remembered very well from his last visit to Subcon.
They were immediately greeted by the Dream Machine; the centrepiece of the room, its only feature. Toad had dubbed it the Dream Machine back then - there very well may have been an official name for it, one King Wart had chosen himself. What its function was, beyond producing monsters and looking like a toddler's plaything, gaudy and pink and armed with more buttons and levers than a piano had keys, Luigi had never figured out. Neither had the rest of the group.
"This"—Wart indicated the machine with a sweeping gesture—"is where the magic happens."
Nancy gave Luigi a look that to him suggested something along the lines of get a load of this guy.
"I press the right buttons, and out come the monsters."
"So do they," she held back, suddenly juvenile, " uhh, procreate naturally?"
Wart did not respond.
The Dream Machine was silent.
"I think maybe you need to turn a couple hundred o' those switches the other way, Wart. Thing's off," Luigi said.
Looking back, Wart briefly analysed Luigi, scrutinizing, squinting, before he checked the truth for himself.
Wart proved to have a hell of a lot better understanding of dream technology than Luigi, not surprisingly, because he glided over specific notches and focused on pulling select levers. How anyone understood the Dream Machine, Luigi would never know, a clock attached for no discernible reason.
The time read 19: 81. Wart arched a brow, the confidence on his lips thinning, but otherwise appeared unbothered.
But that was how it started. With little things being off, things you could ignore and pass off as oddities of life.
Luigi blinked twice. The time read as normal.
"Off indeed." Wart appeared more sceptical, but not to the extent of Luigi whose eyes had glazed over and were glued to the machine. "Guard! If you wouldn't mind."
Wart stepped back from the Dream Machine to allow the guard to stalk forward. Luigi thought it was something he would simply never be comfortable with, Shy Guys and their silence, ally or not.
A sudden force seemed to overcome the guard and he stopped just short of making contact. Turning to Wart, he shook his head, with the sense of grave importance that only served to make Luigi more volatile than he was already. To look at his hand and find it trembling would not be a surprise.
A whistling came from the machine, like the hiss of a showerhead moments after activation. Except without the pleasurable sensation of running water following after.
Each funnel that protruded from the Dream Machine, five in total, made noises that were the reverse of nails on a chalkboard. Horrible not because it was grating or several decibels too loud, but because it started with no explanation and only continued to build as it went on. It was deep, resonant on a level that shook Luigi to his core, and he was not sure whether it was his imagination or reality to thank for his likening it to someone being strangled. If strangulation of the human kind involved hands around the throat, then this was someone gripping each funnel by the base, trying to wring out the most ungodly frequency possible.
Luigi, his heart rising in his chest, spun around. The door had not been locked, or altered in any way. Nothing about the room had changed. Not its scent. Not its layout. And yet there was still the noise, a disturbance to normality that caused even Wart to be silent and introspective.
A line crawled down Nancy's throat, a gulp, turning into a gasp where she turned to the guard for…solace? Knowing she was not alone in her fear?
Luigi knew now that in his heart of hearts they were not safe, and now each funnel sang its own warped tune, blending together into an ear-rattling cacophony, louder and louder, until, until…
Luigi cowered, covering his ears, afraid he would break if the Dream Machine did not first.
There was a silence in the room, save for his breathing, Nancy's, and the guard thrusting his spear at the machine.
And that was when the Dream Machine buckled under the strength of its newfound cargo and finally, mercifully, burst.