As the adage goes, 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer'!
But.. What if, despite yourself, the enemy was too close? When the Mushroom Kingdom to Dark Land Peace Pact is insidiously broken, the stakes become so high that everyone's secret...
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Luigi groggily leaned up in bed and stretched, awake early. Mario had materialized in the opposite side as he expected, tucked under the covers, and snoring. The sleep mask snuggly strapped to his hairy face was supposed to make him sleep soundly so that at 6 AM he wouldn't immediately be lucid enough to slap the alarm silent. Just as Luigi rose, Mario's basic Yoshimobile rung, the unknown caller id rattling his bones. Besides the odd hour, Mario's number was used for emergencies sometimes.
He jumped to Mario's bed, shaking him violently. "Brother, wake up!"
'You have one new message.' *Beep*
Mario's eyelids slowly opened as the voicemail began to play:
"Hey loser, wake up call from: 'You Know Who'!" ~Loud orchestral music was in the background of the gravelly voice. "Friendly reminder for ya: we gotta win, or the Special Cup's gonna be incomplete! That's a problem, because my castles in that cup. Alright? Oh, and I got another surprise when I show up. Bwa ha ha!"
Mario shuddered, bumping Luigi off as he scrambled out of bed, searching for the the black phone on the black table.
"-Lastly.. What's the recipe for that Couples Cake again?... The one you can't eat alone?" *Mumbling heard*"- Gramps, no this ain't-" *mumbling * "Gotta go. Keep that touchscreen smokin'!"
*Beep* 'End of message. You have no new messages.'
"Looking for this?" Luigi effortlessly located the phone and dropped it in his brother's lap. "Better check that 'stranger' out."
Mario yawned, avoiding eye contact. "Let's consider it spam."
"Then what do we consider this?" Luigi reached over and tugged on the neon green medical bracelet showing under the long sleeve of Mario's red pajamas.
He snapped it off, sheepishly. "After the race I was locking everything down then Rainbow Road fell!"
Luigi gave a start. "Mario, at terminal velocity it could take out a city way larger than Toad Town!"
"No worries." Mario slapped him playfully. "Only a portion, and it's handled. It was Bowser's fault anyway, but.."
Luigi exasperatedly left. Mario anticipated that reaction, albeit after he saw the astronomical bill from that short hospital visit, waived of course because of who he was, or- He gulped. Right. He had to discuss his rival's immodest proposal with him.
...
"What is that thing?"
Luigi settled on a memory foam seat cushion. "One of your gifts. Found it underneath your sealed in box copy of Wind Waker."
"-I have that?" Mario dragged an iron chair over, seating himself on the other side of the kitchen table.
Their little wooden cottage was warm and cozy already from the morning sun. Birds chirped outside and grass in the yard was covered in dew. The kitchen was frequently their place to chat and the only clear area. From being the sole heroes of an entire kingdom, sometimes other ones too, they had a multitude of gifts hoarding them out of their home, or at least Mario did in particular. While it was a problem they saw years in advance, it snuck up on them somehow anyway, and now they were in the acceptance phase, stagnant and complacent, sandwiched innocuously in a suburb West of downtown Toad Town, because the spectacle of moving wasn't worth it. Mario was often out and about , not his way of ignoring the problem he assured people, but Luigi knew otherwise. He chose to be a homebody, creating paths that didn't create avalanches, and using the hazardous home base to wind down, relax. It just happened that it allowed him to be privy to the letters addressed to the brothers. Or the phone.
