11Chapter 1: Mario's Idea
Luigi was awakened by the crashing sound of several pots and pans.
"What the hell…?" He mumbled. "Mario, what are you doing?" He rubbed his eyes and turned on his bedside light. Sure enough, Mario's bed was empty, the covers thrown back like someone had been in a panic.
Luigi groaned and got up out of his own bed. "Mario? What are you doing?" He repeated, this time louder. The sound of something shattering was the only response he got.
Luigi made his way out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. The light was on and the room was a mess- including Mario kneeling over a shattered vase, picking through the broken pieces. A hungry look was in his eyes, in fact, he looked absolutely mad, as if…
"Oh. Hey Weegee." Mario looked up at Luigi and then went back to work digging through the pieces.
"Mario, what are you doing?" Luigi groaned for a third time. All around the kitchen things were in a complete disarray: all of the cabinets were open, plates were on the floor, the sink was half full, a chair was knocked over, the table it was by was flipped over, the door of a closet that Luigi had once been trapped in was off of its hinges and there was even a scattering of silverware on the kitchen counter.
"Weegee, you gotta help me." Mario stood up and glanced around the room. "I've been-a trying to find that paper. You know that paper?"
"What paper?" Luigi asked. "A newspaper?"
"No, no…like that paper that you write on. Like, when you have an idea, and you want to remember it, and you write it down and stuff…" Mario gestured wildly.
"You mean, like…that notebook I keep on the table between our beds?" Luigi said flatly.
"Hey! That's it!" Mario grinned and slapped Luigi on the back. "Thanks bro, you're a lifesaver!" Mario whistled and walked back to the bedroom, leaving Luigi in the ruined kitchen.
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The next morning Luigi woke up later than usual. He had needed the extra sleep after having to clean up the kitchen last night. Wait a second…if he had overslept…
Luigi turned slowly towards Mario's bed. Yep, he was gone.
"Oh crap. Mario!?" Luigi called.
"I'm in here!" Mario responded cheerfully from the kitchen. Luigi's face turned pale. He's not making breakfast, is he?
"Mario, what are you doing?" Luigi said fearfully as he ran for the kitchen.
"I'm-a making breakfast!" Mario responded. There was a small explosion sound. "Oops."
"Mario—oh no." Luigi arrived in the kitchen just in time to see the microwave, stuffed full of metal, plastic, egg shells, ketchup, mushrooms, grapes, and a cup of water burst into flames.
"NOOO! THE NEW MICROWAVE! AAAAAAA!" Mario screamed.
"Mario…gragh!" Luigi held his head for a second and then rushed for the microwave. He quickly dug into the cupboards beneath it and pulled out a spare ice flower that had happened to be stored there. He shoved the thing into his mouth and then used its powers to freeze the microwave solid.
"AAAAAAAAAAAA!" Mario continued to scream at the same pitch.
"Mario! Mario!" Luigi shouted. He took a deep breath. "MARIO SHUT UP!" He resisted the urge to slap Mario across the face.
"AAAaaaaaaoooohhhh! Oh hey, you put it out, Weegee." Mario poked the giant slab of ice encasing the microwave. "Nice-a job. How'd you do that?"
"With an ice flower, Mario. The plant we've both used before." Luigi sighed. "Well, at least you're alright. Didn't I tell you never to try to make breakfast again?"
"But Weegee, it's twelve." Mario pointed at the clock hanging in the kitchen. "I was making lunch."
"Lunch? When I came in here you said you were making breakfast!"
"Oh. That's-a cause' I wasn't sure what time it was."
"But…but…" Luigi shook his head and turned his attention to the microwave. "And what even…?" Luigi gestured at the contents inside of the frozen microwave. "What is…what…?"
Mario looked up at Luigi innocently.
"Okay. Okay. Whatever." Luigi shrugged. He sighed. He was pretty hungry. "I think we might have some spare Poptarts. Are you hungry?"
"Oh yea." Mario nodded and ran over to the kitchen table to sit down. "Make-a me some Poptarts!"
"Alright." Luigi reached into the cupboard and found the Poptarts, of which there were exactly two packages left: both Mushroom flavor. Doesn't he ever get sick of mushrooms? Luigi wondered sourly. He looked for the toaster. "Hey Mario, where's the…" Luigi stopped in place. He slowly turned around and peered into the microwave.
Sure enough, crammed way into the back behind a pile of metal shavings was a crumpled and destroyed toaster.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Luigi shook his head and made his way over to the table, carrying the Poptarts with him.
"Oh boy!" Mario clapped his hands together.
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A few minutes later Luigi finished his Poptarts. Mario was almost halfway done with his first.
"Mario, stop eating your Poptart like a rabbit." Luigi complained.
"Why?" Mario said rebelliously.
"Uh…" Luigi stopped. "Well…never mind I guess." Maybe he was too hard on his brother sometimes.
The two sat in silence for a moment, save for Mario making rabbit noises.
"Say, Mario…" Luigi grasped for a conversation topic. "You…uh…what was that you needed the paper for last night? You had that amazing idea and you needed to write it down, right?"
Mario dropped his Poptart. "Oh yea!" He said excitedly. He ran for the bedroom.
Mario came back four minutes later frowning. "Hey Weegee, I think the warp pipe to the bathroom has disappeared again. I couldn't find it."
"Uh…" Luigi paused. "You don't get to the bathroom by warp pipe. It's right over there." Luigi pointed to a nearby door.
Mario stared at the door, then turned back to Luigi, stared at the door again, and then turned back the way he had come from the bedroom. "But…then…what-a was…?" Mario held his head in his hands. He dropped his arms and shook his head. "Ah well." He sat down again.
"So what was your idea?" Luigi said as patiently as he could.
"Oh yea! I forgot about that!" Mario got up and ran back towards the bedroom. He came back quickly this time with the notepad. "Let's-a see…oh yea, I forgot before I could write it down."
Luigi face-palmed for a solid six seconds.
"Hey, but it's-a okay." Mario put the notepad down. "Right before I got into bed again I thought of a better idea!"
Luigi raised an eyebrow sarcastically. "An idea better than the one you'd forgotten about?"
"That's-a right!" Mario grinned. "It's genius! Listen closely!"
"Yeah, I'm listening." Luigi sighed in an incredibly bored tone. He was used to his brother by now: after all of this build-up it was just going to be something minor and pointless.
"I'm-a gonna open my own hotel!" Mario sprang from his seat, the force of his half-jump knocking it several feet away. "I'm-a gonna run the Mushroom Kingdom…no, the WORLD's…BEST hotel! And everyone is gonna want to stay there!"
Luigi's jaw dropped. "What? Why?" Where the heck had this idea come from? Wait…wait…oh no…
"Weegee, remember when we-a went to all those-a Koopa Hotels? Bowser had kidnapped the Princess again and we had to find her if we could!" Mario arched his back valiantly. "And we did!"
"Mario, that was…" Luigi groaned. He had never found a way to tell Mario about what had REALLY happened that day. They had foolishly eaten lotsa spaghetti which had been sprinkled with bad mushrooms by Bowser in an attempt to stop the Mario Bros. from saving the Princess. Heavily confused and under a mysterious influence, they still managed to do it, much to Bowser's furious anger.
"And I remember thinkin' 'gee, these hotels are really something'. But they were EVIL hotels Weegee! We gotta make a GOOD hotel!" Mario waved his hands in the air. "And I'm-a gonna call it MARIO HOTEL!"
Even after all these years Luigi still couldn't decide if his brother was very stupid or somewhat insane.
"Yup. So that's-a what we're gonna do." Mario sat back down with an assured smile on his face. Luigi stared at him and tried to decide where to begin.
"Mario…where…okay, first of all…where are we going to put this hotel? And how are we going to buy it? You spent all of our coins on that stupid plunger collection."
"No-a problem." Mario waved a hand in the air nonchalantly. "We already have a hotel. Your mansion."
"My…my what?" Luigi paled.
"You don't-a remember Weegee? I got turned into a very sexy painting by King Boo and then you rescued me with the power of housecleaning!"
"Sexy…? Housecleaning…?" Luigi groaned.
"Yea. So you don't use that mansion at all…we can turn it into a hotel!" Mario jumped up again. "It will be the best hotel in the WHOLE WORLD and EVERYONE WILL STAY THERE and…"
"Yeah yeah I get it." Luigi got up and began walking for the door.
"Weeeeeegeeeee where are you going?" Mario whined like a needy baby.
"I'm going shopping." Luigi said simply. "We're basically out of food."
"Even Poptarts?" Mario whimpered.
"Even Poptarts." Luigi sighed.
"Oh no." Mario whispered.
"Anyway…I'm going to be out for the next few hours. I expect you to behave while I'm gone." Luigi shook his finger at Mario. "I don't want to find any cultists in the house again."
"I promise it'll never happen again." Mario said innocently.
"Alright. Good. Ciao." Luigi waved goodbye and headed out, taking an empty tool bag with him. He made sure there were some coins with him before he jumped into the warp pipe that was right outside.
Luigi hopped out again in Toad Town, landing right in the middle of a road. He was immediately attacked with a roaring honking sound.
"WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING MUSHROOM BREATH!" Someone screamed, barely swerving out of Luigi's way.
"Mama mia!" Luigi yelled, falling backwards and out of the road. It appeared that a new highway had been built right through the center of Toad Town. "What-a the he…"
"Luigi! Are you okay?!" Luigi turned at the sweet sound of the familiar voice.
Princess Daisy hurriedly walked over from a nearby shop, moving creatively so that she didn't trip on her high heels. She reached a gentle, gloved hand down to help Luigi up.
"Oh, thank you Daisy." Luigi reached for Daisy's hand.
"Jinx!" Daisy swiped her hand away at the last second, leaving leaning Luigi to fall over onto the grimy sidewalk. She burst into laughter. "Gahahahahaha you always fall for that one Louie!"
"Thanks Daisy." Luigi muttered through a mouthful of dirt.
"Awright, awright, for real's this time." Daisy stuck her hand out again. Luigi reached carefully for it, managing to find its strong and warm grip this time. He stood up and Daisy helped brush the dirt off of his shoulders.
"Daisy, what is going on?" Luigi wondered, jerking his head towards the busy highway that came near the warp pipe.
"What is going on? Where've you been for the last couple a' days?"
"Taking care of my brother." Luigi leaned up against a wall. "He got a little sick and I couldn't leave him without him throwing a tantrum."
"DON'T LEAN AGAINST THAT WALL." Someone screamed from a window. Luigi hastily got off of the wall.
"Ah yeah, I see how it is." Daisy nodded. "That brother of yours is really something special, huh?"
"Yeah…" Luigi sighed.
"Say, why don't we talk?" Daisy began walking. "I was just heading downtown here for some coffee. Wanna join me?"
"Of course." Luigi said all too quickly. He blushed and turned away, but it seemed that Daisy had been distracted by something in a store window at the moment anyway.
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"A highway?" Luigi asked, stirring some sugar into his coffee.
"Yep, between Mushroom City and Chai." Daisy gulped down a cringe-worthy portion of her boiling hot drink. "Automobiles have been getting so popular recently…and Peach and I figured that it'd be good for our kingdoms to be a little more connected."
"So it's being driven right through the center of Toad Town?" Luigi looked out of the café window where there was a direct view of the road.
"It's not that much different from how it was before, eh?" Daisy shrugged. "The brick road's just getting replaced with asphalt."
"I don't know…this, uh, asphalt's… kind of nasty stuff…"
"You're kind of nasty stuff!" Daisy laughed. She reached into her dress and pulled out three chili peppers which she dropped into her coffee.
"Whatever…" Luigi mumbled.
"Are you mad about almost getting run over?" Daisy asked. "I can get the warp pipe moved over a bit so that you don't jump out into the road again."
"That would be helpful." Luigi said understatedly. He happened to take a look at his watch. "What the…?"
"What is it?" Daisy roughly grabbed Luigi's arm to see the watch.
"H-hey!" Luigi wrested out of her grip. "It's…really late." It was already 5 PM. "I basically told Mario I would be back by three…shoot, I gotta go."
"Oh…really?" A hint of something crept into Daisy's voice, but it vanished quickly. "Alright…well…yes, I suppose I need to get back to my kingdom soon." Daisy stood up dramatically. "My people need me!"
I could've sworn I was only here for a half-hour at most…yet it's already been five hours. What the heck happened? Luigi pointlessly tapped his watch a few times.
"See ya Louie!" Daisy was already running out the door.
"Goodbye, Princess Daisy!" Luigi called. He wished that he had felt all of the time that he had spent. Had he been in a daze or something? Whatever, he had to focus on shopping. He needed to get back to the house as quickly as possible.
+O+O+O+O+O+O+O+O+
"Okay, I'm all done with shopping; hopefully Mario hasn't done anything too crazy while I've been gone." Luigi said to himself.
Luigi jumped out of the warp pipe to find the house gone, replaced with a hole in the ground.
"GodDAMMIT!" Luigi shouted, a rare moment of completely losing his temper. He dropped his tool bag on the ground which had the groceries in it. Something inside cracked, presumably the eggs.
"Hey Weegee." Mario, covered with dirt, crawled out of the hole. "I couldn't find the treasure."
"What the hell Mario!?" Luigi seethed. "Where is our house?!"
"Oh boy." Mario turned back to look at the hole. "Oh yeah…that's a pretty crazy story bro. You won't believe what happened…"
Luigi took several deep breaths and managed to halfway compose himself. "Okay…what happened?"
"Well…it all started a few weeks ago…" Mario began.
"NO IT %$# DIDN'T!" Luigi screamed. "THIS WAS NOT HOW THE HOUSE WAS WHEN I LEFT IT A FEW HOURS AGO!"
"Mama mia. Never mind then." Mario folded his hands.
"Wait…wait…what about my…" Luigi ran forward and jumped into the pit. "My…my…" He scrambled around where the secret basement of the house would've been. My diary…Luigi thought.
"I didn't-a find the treasure but I did find this weird book." Mario flipped through some pages. "This is-a weird Weegee. I think-a this book has been watching us! It even-a calls me stupid!"
"Gahhh….!" Luigi jumped back out of the hole.
"No book, you are the stupid-a one!" Mario threw the book on the ground and began to stomp on it.
"Stop, stop!" Luigi pushed Mario away and scrambled for the book. He grabbed it and brought it to his chest.
"Weegee! What are you-a doing? That book has insulted my honor!" Mario took a battle stance. "I must-a defend my honor."
"Please just shut up Mario." Luigi groaned. He hastily stuffed the book into his tool bag. "I don't know what the hell happened but it's too cold out here to talk. We need to go back to Toad Town. It looks like we're going to have to rent a hotel room for the foreseeable future."
"Rent?" Mario cocked his head questioningly. "Why would we need to rent-a hotel room Weegee? We have-a hotel."
"What? We…?" Luigi stopped. He had completely forgotten about Mario's nonsense earlier that day. Mario went through so many stupid ideas and thoughts every day that Luigi usually made sure to forget about them, just as Mario did. The fact that he was still thinking of something from earlier in the day was almost unheard of.
"We must-a set off on a quest for You-a Mansion!" Mario pointed a finger straight up in the air in a declaratory fashion.
"Ughh…Mario…look…"
"WEEGEE! No ifs, ands, or vegetables! We must pack our bags and go!" Mario glanced down at the tool bag. "And it-a appears that our bags are all ready! We depart!"
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Luigi's Mansion: Luigi hadn't been to it for a year- ever since he had cleared it of ghosts. The place was dingy, nasty, and would cost way too much to clean up, so it simply wasn't worth the investment. Luigi had tried to sell it to some intrepid businessman, but no one would come near the place…it was rumored to still be haunted. Soon enough, the rumor ended up being true as small, weak ghosts began to re-infest the place.
It had only taken a few hours to reach the house using a warp pipe system. Luigi dropped the bag in front of the front door and facepalmed for a moment. He couldn't believe he was honestly coming back here.
"Just-a think, Weegee." Mario stepped back a few feet and took in the whole mansion. "Someday…this will be-a big, bustling hotel. Everyone will-a come here…every-a room will be filled…we will have-a parties and balls and-a lotsa ice cream."
"Whatever Mario." Luigi sighed.
"Tonight we sleep!" Mario clapped his hands together. "But tomorrow the work begins! We-a clean this place up and begin our climb to making the fat-a stacks!"
"Right, right, whatever." Luigi sighed. "Let's just try to find some beds that aren't moldy."
"Oh boy!" Mario ran inside like it was Christmas morning. Luigi followed slowly, thinking of Halloween night.
Mario had never been so focused on an idea before, other than rescuing Princess Peach. This whole situation reeked of being a recipe for disaster.
