Chapter Text
Luigi’s been aboard Boswer’s airship before – never as a welcomed guest, but aboard it nonetheless. He and Mario have always gotten the same treatment – open hostility that makes Luigi want to faint for the first few minutes with a side of cold, noisy winds.
Today’s been no exception.
Only yesterday did Toad tell Mario and Luigi the news – Peach had been kidnapped again. As they understand it, she’s already at Bowser’s kingdom.
Luigi wonders if it’s bad that part of him is looking forward to seeing the kingdom with his own eyes. From what Mario tells him, the makeover it got last year is really something to see – ornate decorations amongst a sea of gold, green, and red buildings and a sky that he could only describe as rainbow-colored. He says the kingdom screams Bowser as much as any of his castles in the past have, but in a completely different way.
It makes for an interesting mental image.
For now though, Luigi reminds himself that the only image that should be in his head is an image of a defeated Bowser and he and Mario leaving this airship together and in one piece.
They’ve been fighting Bowser for the past ten or so minutes. Bowser has switched up his strategy, but it’s nothing that holds him and Mario back from counterattacking for long. Everything’s been going well for them so far, or as well as it ever does. Mario and Luigi have Bowser backed towards one of the edges of the airship, with only the endless abyss of clouds to catch him should he fall off the rails.
Mario’s about to tell him to surrender, but is interrupted, not by Bowser or a minion of his, but by nature itself.
Wind has been a detriment to their adventures in the past. Luigi’s pretty sure Mario has a permanent vendetta against it after getting knocked off of the beams in Ricco Harbor three times in a row on what was supposed to be his vacation there.
This wind is far different from the stubborn gusts they’ve faced every so often, but not in an artificial way. It feels harsher, stronger.
No, what this is is closer to a storm.
Bowser’s airship starts drifting, turning hard and then turning again somehow even harder.
When they make it out of this, Luigi imagines that the airship’s pilot will be in for a fire ball to their body from their boss.
The ship, at the mercy of a merciless, wild wind, continues pushing and pulling from the gusts that are only growing by the second.
Luigi feels like he’s on a triangle beaten by an overly-caffeinated death metal drummer.
It’s Bowser who falls first, the victim of a particularly rough shove of the ship.
Mario and Luigi are speechless, unable to move for a second if, for no other reason, than out of their own shock.
Then they start to run.
There are beams and crevices on the ship that Luigi reasons they can cling to and take shelter in until this storm quite literally blows over.
They try to stay close, just as they always have. However, Mario makes it to safety just a hair before Luigi.
As it turns out, that one hair makes all the difference.
Luigi can’t grab onto the same beam Mario is holding, though not for lack of trying on either of the brothers’ parts. Luigi and Mario are left clasping hands as Luigi attempts to pull himself the rest of the way, but then the wind strikes once more.
The ship takes its hardest hit yet, practically turning on its side.
It’s too much for Luigi to hold on.
Neither he nor Mario have a moment to understand what’s going on before Luigi is pulled from Mario’s grasp.
Mario screams Luigi’s name in a way Luigi’s never heard before, a cry of pure anguish and loss. It’s as if Mario’s soul is thrust out of his body through that one sound. His expression is even worse.
Luigi can wrap his head around only that sound and sight as the overwhelming reality of his situation hits him – he’s bound for the ground, but it’s a ground he knows nothing of, whether it exists or not, or even if he’ll get there alive at all.
It’s a sensation that creates a cacophony in his insides as he falls to the unknown fathoms below the world that he knows so well.