Chapter Text
The letter was stamped and sealed and addressed by hand. A thick jagged scrawl that matched the writing on the letter itself. Everything was spelled right and evenly spaced, a fact which shouldn't have been surprising but that Luigi still turned over and over in his mind as he made the walk to the Koopa Kingdom.
Bowser had big hands, fingers that ended in claws. It made sense his writing would look a bit… savage.
(Was that prejudiced? It was probably prejudiced.)
Luigi had spent the last day and a half thinking a lot about the handwriting, and the paper, and the envelope, and the stamp. Anything to stop thinking about the actual words.
Luigi,
Come to my castle by noon in two days. Are you a hero or aren't you?
- Bowser
That was it. Two sentences, two names, a deadline, and zero information.
It was a trap, right? It had to be. A challenge that Bowser somehow thought Luigi was dumb enough to fall for.
But it was too obviously a trap to be a trap. And what did that mean, "are you a hero or aren't you?" Was he asking for help? From Luigi?
Luigi went to bed last night determined not to go. He woke up early and decided to go after all. He changed his mind while walking his dog, and changed it again while nervously picking at breakfast.
He turned around four times on the walk to the Koopa Kingdom. Thanks to a couple handy pipes and a lot of experience, Luigi knew a path to the castle that should take less than twenty minutes. With his indecision it took close to an hour. The sun was nearly straight overhead as he trudged along the road to the foreboding castle in the distance.
Despite how many times he'd been here he'd never paid much attention to the land around it. Unlike the Mushroom Kingdom there weren't many houses too close to the castle - within the blast zone. But outside the radius of potential falling masonry and fire breath, the land was dotted with houses and businesses.
Quite a few of the koopas looked at Luigi strangely as he walked by, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd visited for non-rescue purposes. But never alone. Never, ever alone.
It wasn't all that different from the Mushroom Kingdom, really. The climate wasn't as mild, but today was a nice spring day. It would have been a nice walk if it wasn't for… everything.
He didn't remember the wildlife that well, but he was pretty sure there'd never been anything as cute as the pink puffballs snuffling around in the brush. They reminded Luigi of rabbits until he noticed the feet. He'd seen those before, during one of his unfortunate solo adventures. They were harmless.
Still, they didn't seem to fit in here. No shells, no spikes, not even fire breath.
Once again, Luigi forced himself to focus on the task at hand. One foot in front of the other. If he changed his mind now the word would get back to Bowser and he couldn't stand that much embarrassment.
The castle rose in front of him, tall, spiky, and imposing.
As he reached the edge of the moat (filled with lava, of course) Luigi began to question his steps again. The drawbridge was down, should he just walk in? He had that letter, crumpled and slightly damp with nervous sweat, tucked into his chest pocket.
Just as Luigi was considering taking it out, a yellow head peered over the wall. Luigi, awkwardly, raised a hand in greeting.
“Holy crap he actually came,” the koopa trooper said.
“I told you!” another voice said, beyond the parapet.
“You were right, we should have taken bets.”
“Yeah!”
Luigi decided that meant he was expected, and walked inside the courtyard.
A few goombas were scurrying around, a few shy guys carrying mops or pails, quite a few troopers standing at attention or pretending to march. Luigi was pretty sure there wouldn't usually be this many people here, but most of them were at least trying to pretend not to stare.
This is a trap, the ever-present voice in the back of Luigi's mind said. This is a trap and you're going to die and Mario will be all alone and he'll probably be better off without you.
Luigi was still a half-dozen steps away from the stone stairs leading up to the castle entrance (what did you call those? They probably had a name) when the massive doors burst open and there stood Bowser. Tall. Spiky. Imposing.
“Holy crap you actually came,” he said.
This is a trap!
Luigi cleared his throat and said, weakly, “You asked me to.”
“Yeah but I didn't think you were dumb enough to do it.” Bowser shrugged. “Well, get in here, I'll show you the problem.”
Ignoring his pounding heart and sweating palms, Luigi ascended the stairs. There was a problem that needed showing, that was a good sign, right? That meant he'd been asked here for a reason. It couldn't be a trap or they'd just grab him now, and-
Luigi had to jump out of the way of Bowser's tail when he suddenly turned around. A flicker of flame escaped between his teeth, but his eyes were looking over Luigi's head, out into the courtyard.
“And all of you get back to work!” he roared.
The gawkers scattered like startled pigeons.
Luigi followed Bowser down the wide halls of the castle. He didn’t think he’d been here since the last time it was rebuilt, but Bowser’s taste hadn’t changed. Mario said that once when he was here it had been a completely different style of building… but the decor was the same as ever. Red. Black. Spikes.
Then again, Luigi tended to buy everything in green. He probably couldn’t judge.
They went upstairs, to a room with a broken handle that Luigi wondered about for a second, until Bowser opened the door so hard it bounced against the wall. There’d been a crack. The shattered handle bore signs of masonry dust.
Inside looked like… an office, maybe? Or a library? Or a combination of the two.
A study, Luigi remembered from one of those historical romances Mario liked to watch. In a castle or a big fancy house, a room like this would be called a study.
“Here’s a couple of the little bastards.” Bowser whisked a purple cloth off a rectangular object, revealing a fish tank containing four of the pink fluffy creatures Luigi had seen on his walk. “Oh for crying out- They multiplied!”
“Animals do tend to do that.”
"I was gone for an hour.” Bowser scowled at the creatures, who didn’t seem particularly bothered by their imprisonment. They were puttering around on their two hairless feet, occasionally chomping at the glass walls. Despite the sharp teeth, they were pretty cute.
“Oh!” Luigi realized. “I have seen these before!”
Bowser rounded on him, and Luigi shrunk back automatically. “Where?”
“Um, uh, E- Evershade Valley? In th- the mountains around it, I guess. But they were, um, purple. Before.”
Bowser growled and slammed his fist on the table. A couple of the fuzzballs toppled over, but didn’t look distressed.
“Could be a different breed?” Luigi suggested.
“How’d they get here?” he demanded.
“I, um, I don’t-”
"If they belong in the mountains why do they keep eating everything?”
The Koopa Kingdom did have a lot of mountains, Luigi thought. When he and Mario had to come here they spent almost as much time in caves as on the surface.
“They’re eating… everything?” Luigi said. He hadn’t noticed the purple fuzzballs being all that hungry.
Bowser nodded, folding his arms and tapping a claw in irritation against his scales. “Eve-ry-thing. It’s a good thing it was between planting seasons or we’d be completely screwed. But they’re still getting into houses, getting into gardens, getting into damn storage facilities.”
“An invasive species…” Luigi said thoughtfully.
“A what?” Bowser said.
Luigi wasn’t sure if that wasn’t a term in this world, or if Bowser just hadn’t heard it before. “It’s, um, when an animal that doesn't normally live in a certain area, gets introduced to that area, and is so good at surviving there that it completely screws up the ecosystem for everything else. The animals that belong there can’t compete.”
Bowser’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Luigi for some reason. “I think I know what you mean.”
“You just have to kill them. Wipe them all out, it’s the only way.”
“You think that wasn’t my first idea?” Bowser snarled. “We tried poison, didn’t work. We tried burning ‘em, it just made ‘em pop out more of themselves.”
“Like reverse gremlins,” Luigi blurted out.
Bowser gave him a confused look. “What?”
Idiot! The voice in the back of Luigi’s mind said. Of course he doesn’t know what those are! Now you sound crazy! “Uh, things from where I used to live. They multiplied when you got them wet.”
“Bastards,” Bowser muttered. “How’d you kill ‘em?”
“Um. Fire.”
He snorted. A puff of smoke came out with it. “Can’t drown these things. They’re all fur, they just float.”
For some reason, Luigi was inordinately pleased that Bowser had followed his train of thought. If gremlins multiplied with water and died from fire, then since fuzzballs multiplied with fire they ought to die from water. But no such luck.
And anyway, gremlins were fictional.
“How did you kill ‘em when you saw ‘em in that valley?”
“I didn’t,” Luigi said. “There wasn’t any reason to.”
Bowser growled under his breath. “Well,” he said, “you think you can?”
Suddenly it sunk in that this was why Luigi was here. This was why Bowser had written to him. He wanted him to save the kingdom from… fluffy pink locusts.
“Ten coins an hour,” Luigi said, almost on auto-pilot. It had been a long time since he had to negotiate a job – longer than he liked to think about – but the skills never left.
Bowser loomed over him. “What?” he asked, his tone heavy.
“And the consultation today will be thirty.”
“What?”
“Okay, twenty-five,” Luigi said. “Friend prices.”
Bowser’s hand grabbed the front of Luigi’s overalls and he had a split second to brace himself before he was hoisted into the air. “What are you playing at?” Bowser roared in his face.
“N- nothing! It’s- This is a job!”
“You think I’m paying you for this? Isn’t this what you do?”
“It’s pest control!” Luigi wheezed. “You don’t need a hero for this!”
He was shaken, slightly, just enough that he felt his hat slip down over one ear. “Well I’m sure as hell not paying you by the hour! You’ll just drag it out and bleed me dry!”
“I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here!”
Bowser dropped him. Not more than a couple feet, but Luigi knew (from experience) that the impact would leave a bruise. He didn’t bother to stand up until he’d straightened his hat and taken a breath, and when he did Bowser was scowling into the fish tank.
“Why did you come, then?” Bowser said, without looking at him.
“You asked,” Luigi said.
“That’s it?”
It wasn’t like Luigi was going to tell him the truth. That the ever-present voice in his mind was particularly loud this week, and he’d somehow gotten it into his head that if he could be a hero by himself it would prove to everyone (including himself) that he wasn’t a coward and a loser. The other times didn’t count, because he hadn’t had a choice. This time he was walking into danger on his own two feet, and that mattered, somehow.
It didn’t. Logically, he knew that. Logically he knew that he didn’t have to prove anything to anybody. But the voice didn’t care.
“That’s it,” Luigi said.
“I’m not paying you,” Bowser said, firmly.
“Then I walk.”
Bowser turned his head and locked eyes with Luigi. It was almost painful, but Luigi forced himself to stare back.
This was a job. He was a contractor. He was not going to be the one to back down. Not on this.
“We… can… work something out,” Bowser said at last, jaw stiff. Luigi allowed himself to breathe and was a little surprised he wasn’t panting from exertion.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know!” Bowser threw his hands up in the air, that moment of quiet menace thrown out along with it. “I’ll owe you, how’s that?”
“Not good enough. How do I know you’ll follow through?”
“Ha! You don’t.” Bowser grinned, then scowled, as if just realizing he’d undermined his own point. “You want it in writing or something?”
“I want everything in writing,” Luigi said. “And I want…” What did he want? Aside from going home. What could Bowser possibly give him that would be worth all this hassle? “I… want… control.”
Bowser’s bushy eyebrows rose. “You what?”
“I mean over my life,” Luigi said, and then shook his head. That didn’t sound any better. “I mean I want to not have to drop everything because you decided to attack the Mushroom Kingdom. Again.”
“I’m not giving up on everything I’ve-”
“Once,” Luigi said. He held up one finger. “You know what a rain check is?”
Bowser narrowed his eyes. “Like at ball games?”
“Yes. I want a rain check for one of your kidnapping plots. You show up, I say ‘not today,’ and- and that’s it. You have to listen.”
“No,” Bowser said, flatly.
“Not for good!” Luigi said, already aware he was losing ground. Don’t negotiate, not for this, stand firm. “For a… a month.”
“And give you a month to prepare? Fat chance.”
Luigi smiled. “So you admit it’s a lost cause if we have prior warning?”
“Hell no!” Bowser roared. “I’ll beat you and any army you can put together!”
“So we’ve got a deal?”
“Deal!”
Bowser grabbed his outstretched hand and shook it, once, yanking so hard that Luigi nearly stumbled. His grip tightened for just a second before he let go, and Bowser leaned down into Luigi’s personal space to fix him with another piercing glare.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you just did.”
“You still fell for it,” Luigi said. It was the little brother in him, he couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried.
“I’m watching you, greenie.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow? Same time?”
“Fine.”
The feeling of triumph lasted for almost a full minute. Luigi hadn't even reached the staircase before the size of the hallway and the faint stench of molten rock reminded him of where he was and what he'd agreed to. He wasn't even escaping, he'd have to come back.
He forced himself to walk instead of run, kept his eyes forward and ignored the stares of everyone around him. Out of the castle. Out of the courtyard. Across the moat, trusting that there weren't trap doors or anything to drop him into flaming death.
“Hey!” Bowser's voice shouted from behind him, and this time Luigi couldn't stop a full-body flinch.
He turned, slowly, and looked back over his shoulder. Bowser was standing on the top step, yelling at Luigi from across the courtyard instead of catching up to talk to him like a normal person.
“You don't get paid if you don't get rid of all of them!”
“I know that!” Luigi exclaimed.
“I'm just sayin'!”
“That's standard!”
“Shouldn't take you long if you know so damn much then!”
“It won't!” Luigi said, more out of spite than confidence, and turned and started walking before Bowser could get the last word.
Not that he didn't try. He shouted something else that Luigi couldn't quite make out, so Luigi ignored it. He made it another three steps before it occurred to him that Bowser was, technically, his boss right now. Whatever he said may have been important.
But Luigi couldn't go back and ask him. Especially not after he'd kept walking. And now he was even further... and even further...
Dammit, this was going to haunt him all night.
He made it back home, to his little house in the woods, with his ghost dog that still, to be honest, scared him. But this morning he hadn't been sure he'd be making it back at all, much less with a job lined up.
The job was what he needed to focus on. Pest control wasn’t the Mario Brothers business, but contractors talked and Luigi had learned a thing or two just growing up in a big city. Bowser had said they’d tried poison, but what kinds? Luigi hadn’t noticed any major changes to the vegetation on his walk in or out of the kingdom, which meant despite Bowser’s emphasis the fuzzballs weren’t eating everything. They had preferences.
Maybe, Luigi thought, patting his poulterpup’s head, they had weaknesses. Chocolate killed dogs, fire killed gremlins, what killed fuzzballs?
“Getting morbid,” Luigi muttered to himself. But already he knew it wasn’t going to get better from here. If different poisons didn’t work he might have to design traps.
With all the planning and packing for tomorrow (including lunch because he certainly wasn’t trusting Bowser to feed him) Luigi made it all the way to bedtime before the little voice popped up again.
What if he’s mad at you? What if he hates you?
Wondering why he cared, Luigi pulled the covers over his head and tried to fall asleep.