Brother's Loyalty

If I Was

The next room he found himself in was the rec room. All around him were exercise machines and equipment he'd never seen before. They were probably older models. In the center of the room were several punching bags and weights. And the dumbbell seemed to be bench-pressing itself.

That's a ghost, Luigi told himself.

But before he could investigate further, a blue ghost popped out from behind one of the cardio machines.

Luigi was upon the ghost before he could even attack, the image of Mario in that portrait burning deeply into his mind and giving him an adrenaline rush. He quickly sucked that ghost up, which yielded some coins and a gem, before taking a closer look at the bench-pressing dumbbell.

As it turns out, the one doing the bench-pressing was in fact a ghost. A rather buff ghost wearing a red tank top and purple pants, his blond hair styled in a flattop. Luigi whipped out the Game Boy horror and scanned the muscular ghost.

"Biff Atlas?" he asked.

"Yeah?" replied the ghost. "What's that to you?"

"It says here that you're a bodybuilder," said Luigi.

"Yup," said Biff, setting down the dumbbell and flexing his muscles, "and just look at this buffness! I'm huge!"

"No need to rub it in," said Luigi.

"What, are you jealous?" scoffed Biff.

"Well—kinda..." said Luigi as he looked Biff and his hot, rocking bod over.

"Thank you for your honesty," said Biff. "Now, enough talk. How'd you like to be my punching bag, weakling?"

Luigi glared. "I'm no weakling," he snapped, "and I can prove it."

Biff just laughed.

I don't need to be insulted by ghosts right now, thought Luigi.

But then—

Punching bag? Luigi's eyes swung back to the punching bags surrounding Biff. That's it!

He really needed to punch something, anyway.

Luigi strode up to one of the punching bags and gave it a good left jab, sending it swinging into Biff and knocking him backwards. The heavy bag then swung back, but Luigi evaded it just in time.

"You little..." growled Biff, raising his fists and charging at the plumber.

Dodging Biff's punches, Luigi darted to another punching bag and delivered a solid right hook, timing his punch so that this bag also sent Biff reeling.

"You're gonna regret that!" cried Biff as he started whirling around in a manner reminiscent of Luigi's Cyclone move in that Smash tournament.

However, Luigi stopped this tornado in its tracks by punching a third bag into him. This time, the blow was hard enough to expose Biff's heart.

"This is for calling me a weakling," Luigi said evenly before stunning Biff and beginning to vacuum away the arrogant ghost's HP.

But since Biff was so strong, Luigi naturally had trouble capturing him. He broke free several times, making Luigi repeat the whole punching bag rigmarole all over again. And Biff's swings became more precise, causing him to take a few hits. However, Luigi was so full of emotion, and so much was on his mind that it barely hurt him. Three tries later, the man in green succeeded in capturing Biff.