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“So listen up, here’s what we’re gonna do; you five head all the way down to the barracks and start working your way up, while the four of you go down one floor and keep searching in that direction. Castle’s pretty sparse, so it shouldn’t take you too long. When you meet in the middle, rendezvous back here. ‘K?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nastasia watches the other two groups of formerly-Bowser’s minions march off towards the main staircase. She checks the hallway to make sure she remains unobserved by anybody with functioning brain cells, before she lets herself groan, folding inwards and pressing a finger to the bridge of her nose.
In what feels like a more common occurrence every day, there’s an emergency at the castle—though this one is arguably more extreme than food storage or crumbling infrastructure. Mr. L and Mimi had left. Not only had they left against direct orders, but they’d gone straight for Sammer’s Kingdom, which, by her and the Count’s calculations, was about to be annihilated from existence.
Dimentio, of all people, had been the one to tip her off, though he’d been frustratingly vague on the details, and had of course teleported off somewhere the moment she’d started asking questions. She’d have written it off as an attempt to scare her, but the facts lined up. And Nastasia knows she hadn’t relayed those orders in as professional a manner as she could’ve...but, she likes to think that explosion in the meeting room hadn’t warranted this level of disobedience.
Honestly, she’s not that surprised by Mimi leaving—she’s had to seriously consider getting that girl an actual chaperone. But L...
No. She’ll have time to troubleshoot after she finds him.
Nastasia and her guard (a couple of armored koopas, she doesn’t know what Bowser had called them) sweep the upper floors twice, checking all the living spaces and communal areas to no avail. She’s in the middle of a third pass when the others return similarly empty-handed, and she decides to start working downwards to make sure they didn’t miss anything, for the sake of her own sanity.
They’re traveling through an unreasonably long corridor connected to what used to be a dining hall when Nastasia’s sharp ears pick up a ringing sound and the patter of feet. She gestures for the search party to wait, and levitates herself just slightly off the ground so her heels don’t click as she heads for the end of the hall.
Sure enough, Mimi’s there—she looks slightly worse for wear, the kimono-styled dress Nastasia’s certain Mimi just bought singed in several places, scratches on her face, and one of her pigtails dangerously close to falling off her head. She glances left and right around the dining hall, then does her best to smooth her dress down and fix her hair.
Mimi turns and nearly runs directly into Nastasia. She lets out a shriek much more befitting of a demon than a small child, lurching backwards and throwing up her hands before realizing who exactly she’s run into.
“Uh...hi, Nassy!” Mimi gives a big, fake smile, locking her hands behind her back, the picture of innocence. “Were you lookin’ for me? I was juuuuust—”
“Don’t bother. Dimentio already told me.”
Mimi’s eyes widen, and the innocent look drops, along with her jaw. “Dimentio told you?” She balls her fists at her sides, face twisting in sudden rage, and Nastasia can hear gears grinding. “That big JERK! It was his stupid idea in the first place!”
So Dimentio had given them the idea. She’ll file that away for later. “Whoever’s idea it was, you still went along with it and defied a direct order...so...yeah, you’re still in big trouble.”
“But I got them!” Mimi points at her wayward pigtail. “I did! I stalled them for a super long time!”
“So...you defied a direct order and exhausted yourself, ‘K, jotting that down...”
“Uuuuugh.” Mimi groans and tilts her head back, throwing up her hands as if Grambi could possibly help her in this place. “If you’d have seen it you’d be super proud of me, but nooo...” She crosses her arms, glaring at the floor hard enough to burn a hole in it. Though, Nastasia notices a slight twitch in her lip, tension in her shoulders, her eyes darting off to one side. “...Didja find L at least? If I’m in trouble, he should be in double trouble.”
Nastasia digs her fingernails into her palms, trying to mask her sharp breath. “I thought he was with you.”
“W-well yeah he was.” Mimi tries and fails to make it sound casual—to Nastasia, her worry’s written as clearly on her face as her recent defeat. “But he decided he was too cool for a taxi and wanted to try out some...warp-drive thingy he was working on. He said he’d be right behind me.”
“So he’s still in Sammer’s Kingdom.”
“I—yyyyyyes? No?” Mimi makes a vague hand gesture. “I wanted to go rub it in his face that I’d already beaten up the heroes for him but...I couldn’t find him.”
“You couldn’t find him.” Nastasia’s voice rises more than she intends it to, and Mimi visibly flinches. Nastasia can’t bring herself to care about that over the sound of her rising heart rate. “And how close was the Void to consuming that world?”
Mimi opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, then shakes her head, scoffing. “...Whatever, he’s probably still here sulking because his warp drive blew up, or something!”
Nastasia isn’t sure how long she has before she explodes, in frustration or anxiety or both. She raises a hand. “Guards?”
The two armored koopas come clanking out of the hallway, ttrundling over to stand behind her. Mimi glances between Nastasia and the koopas, grimacing.
Nastasia folds her arms, pointing loosely at the guards. “Yeah, so, how about you two take Mimi back up to her room and make sure she stays there, ‘K?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But—!”
The guards step forward to take places on either side of Mimi, nudging her forward, and she groans, giving Nastasia a pleading look. One would almost think that having her escorted by brainless mooks was part of her punishment, and Nastasia wouldn’t not do such a thing—but she needs to move, fast, and can’t be in two places at once like some of them.
The guards hurry Mimi past Nastasia towards the hallway, and she reluctantly starts walking with them, making sure Nastasia sees how displeased she is with this outcome. Though, once their backs are safely to each other...
“...just...let me know if you find that stupid dweeb, okay?”
Nastasia glances over her shoulder. Mimi still doesn’t look back, shoulders hunched defensively.
“...Yeah, sure thing.” It’s the least she can do for her.
Of course, with the search party having found no trace of Mr. L in the castle, the next logical place to look would be Sammer’s Kingdom itself.
At least none of her thralls will tell on her if Nastasia hesitates just a bit before leaving, half afraid of what she’ll find there.
What she finds is...nothing—a nothing cast in a brilliant white that immediately threatens to sear her sensitive eyes. She throws a hand over her face and waits to adjust to the light-that-isn’t-light, grateful for her glasses cutting off some of the worst of the glare-that-isn’t-glaring. When she’s finally able to look ahead again, the nothing stretches out infinitely before her, leaving her with a sickening sort of vertigo like she’s staring off a cliff. It’s completely blank, and completely unbroken save for a few pieces of rubble, and she’s certain she can see for miles, not that distance has any meaning here.
She’s seen a dead world before—Jaydes, they live in one, not that anyone other than herself and Blumiere know it. But in this case, not even a single building had been spared, and there isn’t even the Void in the sky to serve as a reminder that they were inside of it. This is...it’s like a world had never existed here in the first place. You could almost believe no world existed past this infinite nothing, the idea of color and life still remaining anywhere seeming like a wild dream.
Was this what would become of them, too?
What would he think if he saw?
Nastasia shakes her head to clear it, willing herself to focus on the problem at hand. She can sense there had been a dimensional disturbance here, recently, something that wasn’t the Void that had to have come after, and she needs to see if she can find any evidence. Nastasia checks her watch, mentally gives herself ten minutes, and starts walking into the nothing, the almost comically unnecessary party of minions following behind her.
Even the sound of her heels and their boots seems muffled and distant, the whiteness drawing unnervingly close as they walk. She catches sight of one of the green Koopas to her left glancing about and wringing his hands—it must be enough to terrify him on a subconscious level, and she can’t exactly blame him. It’s neither hot nor cold, the air stale and dead, but chills still race up and down her spine, and her pointed ears twitch to try and seek out any sort of sound, anything at all through the unnatural silence.
(...She even hesitantly tries clicking her tongue a couple of times. The sound doesn’t help her see any better.)
Her only landmarks are the occasional bits of debris, and her only indication that time is passing are the hands on her watch. The only good part about the wide expanse of emptiness is that she catches the speck on the horizon a good distance away, just before her ten minutes end. Nastasia picks up her pace a little more than strictly necessary, just relieved she has a way to know she isn’t going in circles.
Even with her weak eyes, she doesn’t have to get very close to realize that the speck is actually a pile of smoking wreckage. It’s much larger than the other bits and pieces of buildings scattered about, and visibly smoldering...but most importantly, unlike the other debris, it still has color, gray and brown and green.
It’s a relief, in a way—L hadn’t been caught up in the world’s destruction, otherwise Brobot’s remains wouldn’t still exist. But it brings up even more questions. How exactly had he intended to get out of here? Why was Brobot destroyed, had the heroes returned—why would they?
Nastasia’s so focused on the wreckage and her own endless streams of whys and hows that she doesn’t notice the small item on the ground until she kicks it.
She abruptly stops, her escorts nearly running into each other and her in the process. They’re still a ways off from the wreck, but the ground under their feet is scorched black. Nastasia kneels down and picks up the item to examine it.
Fabric, burned so badly it practically crumbles in her hands. Originally dark green in color. Nastasia carefully brushes away some of the soot to find a backwards L staring back at her.
He would not leave his hat. She’d figured that out the hard way when Mimi had been working on his costume—the mere mention of getting rid of the hat had made him fly into an absolute fit, and so Mimi had been forced to keep it in some fashion, even though it was as good as putting a neon sign on his forehead. She hadn’t exactly brushed up against many of his memories while suppressing them, but she could only assume the hat was important to him on some deep psychological level she couldn’t just remove, like apparently the bond he has with his brother, or the idea that he’s part of a pair (really, it would be heartwarming if it weren’t so inconvenient.)
Nastasia looks around, but the only other thing that exists nearby besides the scorched floor is the wreckage itself, and so she hurries towards it, clutching the hat in one hand. The Brobot had taken an absolute beating, as had the ground under and around it, but its cockpit still seems mostly intact.
“Mr. L?” Nastasia calls out experimentally, “...For the record, yeah, you’re definitely getting written up for this stunt. But we’ve gotta get you back to the castle first. You here? Hello? I’m kinda running out of patience, here...” No response. She shakes her head, deciding to drag out her trump card. “I command you to answer me.”
Still nothing. Even if he was barely clinging to his last life, he should’ve been compelled to give some response. And she knows she’d be able to hear it, regardless of if it was just a pained groan from inside the wreck.
Nastasia whirls on the koopas. “You.” She points to one with a red shell. “Can you see anything inside the cockpit? The green thing on the top, with the window.”
The koopa stands on their toes, shielding their eyes with a hand. “No,” they respond flatly, then pause. “...Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
“I mean what’s in there.”
They point. “Spring.”
Spring...so he had managed to eject before the Brobot had collapsed. But then why the hat? Why the burns? How had his hat gotten so far away?
Nastasia lets out a long sigh, pressing the heel of her hand into her forehead. She’s been here longer than she intended already, and the place is really starting to get to her, making her think about things she’d rather not worry about. She’ll just have to report back to the Count with her failure for now, then check on her informant in Flipside to see if she can get a better idea of what in the name of the stars had happened here.
“What do you mean, they died?”
“They died. Mhm. Blew up.”
Nastasia glares into the Flipsider’s eyes and wills herself not to crush her glasses in her fist in frustration. Her informant—not that he knows he’s her informant, of course—is Otto, a young man on the ground floor of Flipside who’s a bit of a gossip, but well-liked, both things that make him an excellent choice for their eyes here. However, when she has somebody as zonked as Otto currently is, they can get...difficult to talk to—everything that comes to their mind is of equal importance, and so they tend to spit out a lot of stream-of-consciousness nonsense if she’s not directly guiding them. It can be an enormous effort to get them around to the actual point.
Nastasia hooks her glasses on her collar. Clearly, she’s going to be here for a while. “‘K. So did you see this happen, or...?”
Otto sways on his feet, locked upright by her power. Empty eyes tinged crimson blink rapidly back into her own. “N-no ma’am. No I didn’t. But—Fret said he heard it, started talking about how the end of his game is closer than he thinks and he needs to get on finishing his list or...something like that...”
“Where did Fret hear this.”
“Merlon’s house. Heroes go in, heroes don’t come out. Except Tippi, apparently she was really upset. But it’s okay, because they got better.”
“They...got better.”
“Yeah. Or at least Mario and Green Mario did, don’t know about everybody else...”
It takes Nastasia a moment to register that the second epithet could possibly have any meaning beyond trance-induced babbling—but when she does process it, her heart nearly stops.
It takes a massive force of will to keep her face neutral. “What do you mean, ‘Green Mario’.”
“Mario but...green...?”
Another zap, another box, another layer of imprisonment for his mind. His chin dips forward. Nastasia grips his arm. “Tell me everything you know about Green Mario.”
“...seems like a nice guy,” Otto mumbles, “...already knew about mushrooms healing HP, but still tipped me extra for the info...said his name was...Louie...Louisa...?”
“Luigi?” “That was it. Said he just came back from the Underwhere...doesn’t know how he got there. Oh, but they fixed the Pure Heart, it got busted when the world ended...”
Nastasia’s about to ask something else when she hears a whirring sound behind her. She glances over her shoulder to see the elevator descending from the first floor.
There’s a conveniently abandoned house on the ground floor of Flipside, and she had gotten used to getting these updates in the alleyway just behind it, but it’s still frustratingly close to said elevator. Not quite close enough to be seen from there unless one was actively looking, but she still grabs Otto and throws them both into the Other Dimension anyway.
“...and so then Mario says, serious as spaghetti, ‘I can’t-a go back-a to jaaaail!’”
It’s a bit distorted, but there can be no doubt. Nastasia puts her glasses back on and peeks around the side of the house, craning her neck to try and catch a better look at the warped figures in normal space. Sure enough, she catches glimpses of red and green and blue and iridescent—Mario and Luigi and Tippi, likely heading for the Flopside passageway.
“When was Mario in jail,” she hears Tippi ask. Mario groans audibly, making some kind of hand movement she suspects is him pulling his hat over his face.
“Wanna tell her, bro? Go on, tell her.” Luigi elbows him. “Tell her about the vacation you didn’t invite me on, go ahead.”
“Luigiiiiii.”
“Come oooooon don’t be shy.”
Luigi’s energy is very clearly forced, but from what she can tell, the two barely have a scratch on them. For Luigi, it’s as if nothing had happened at all.
Nastasia simply watches as they carry on chatting, practically staring holes into their backs (or, sides, it’s difficult to tell from here and she’s not immune to the disorientation and headaches from staying in this place too long). She waits until she hears Mario flip into the Other Dimension to bring herself and the still-dazed Otto out of it, thenh turns to him.
“‘K, listen. You’re gonna find out what happened to Mario and the heroes in Sammer’s Kingdom. You’re gonna find out about those explosions. And you’re gonna find out everything you can about Luigi and his trip to the Underwhere, especially if he starts acting weird, talking about headaches, amnesia, et cetera et cetera. And that’s gonna be on top of your job of tracking what they’re doing about the Pure Hearts. Got all that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Great. You’re dismissed.”
Nastasia turns him away from her and snaps her fingers. The magic imprisoning him shatters, and Nastasia quickly returns to the Other Dimension before he can completely come to. He’ll be fine, of course—despite what some people seem to believe, she’s usually quite careful about her power, and tries not to break anything if she can at all help it. He’ll just be a little disoriented, then brush it off and carry on with his day with a couple of his priorities switched around, that’s all.
He’s almost lucky, she thinks as he shakes his head and walks off. He doesn’t have to consciously deal with any of this, anymore. Meanwhile, it feels like she'll never get a break...
Mimi doesn’t take the news well. Of course, she tries to brush it off as nothing, but she’s clearly feeling a lot of emotions, and Nastasia decides to leave her punishment at room confinement for the moment (Nastasia’s not going soft, she tells herself, and she certainly isn’t doing it because the end is drawing ever nearer and Mimi doesn’t deserve to be treated quite so harshly while her demise looms, she’s not attached there’s no point in getting attached that wasn’t her job—)
She gives the Count an update and then foregoes dinner, taking an apple back to her office to nibble on while she works on a spreadsheet. The others claim her work looks painfully boring, or that it’d be a lot easier if she delegated or used technology—but sorting things into boxes, looking at patterns and figuring out what’s missing, it had always been comforting to her, something she could control. She doesn’t trust machines nearly enough to let them do it for her, and besides, the work is usually enough to keep her mind off of other things.
Usually, but not recently. Not at all recently.
So, she tries to sort through what she knows. Dimentio had encouraged Mimi and Mr. L to leave the castle against direct orders. Mimi had jumped at the chance, but L shouldn’t have been able to defy a direct order from her—why and how had this been different? Did this have something to do with the fact that something clinging to him had outright prevented her from completely suppressing him like the rest of the castle staff? Some...burning-cold-dark-sick-familiar magic she couldn’t touch that would inevitably break through, and so she would only be able to control him if she instead convinced him he belonged here? Or was it the prophecy itself? Was there a little asterisk and footnote clarifying that the man in green could not be compelled in his choice? Why wouldn’t Blumiere have told her, why doesn’t he ever tell her anything—
“Oh, Nastasia!”
The insufferable sing-song makes her flinch, and she takes a particularly large chunk out of her apple to avoid answering immediately. He’s the last thing she wants to deal with right now.
“Such violence against an innocent fruit! It is like a vampire tearing into a neck!”
She’d sure like to do that to his nonexistent neck, all right. Nastasia reluctantly turns her chair to face the grinning jester hovering in her doorway, making sure her impatience is obvious. “What do you want, Dimentio?”
Dimentio props his disembodied hands flat in front of his chin, tilting his head to one side. His mask keeps smiling, but his voice drips with false concern. “I simply wanted to ask about the status of our dear friend Mr. L. He didn’t join us for dinner tonight, and you do know how he feels about good food. Has he fallen ill, or is he having troubles of the brobotic variety?”
“Mr. L’s temporarily withdrawn from our organization. Yeah, he’ll be working independently for a while.”
“He left?” Dimentio covers his mouth. “Oh, my. Such disloyalty.”
“Cut that out. I know you’re the one who told him to leave.”
“Told him? I merely made a suggestion.” Dimentio puts a hand to where his heart would be. “Of course, I’m sure you’re aware of how strongly he can respond to suggestions...”
Nastasia narrows her eyes, glad he can’t see past her glasses. Of course. "Yeah, no, don't try to play stupid with me, 'K?"
"Play stupid? I would never dream of it."
"Not buying it. You know what he is...was."
Dimentio throws his hands up in a gesture of surrender, seemingly unbothered by her figuring him out. If anything, his smile widens. "Ah ha ha ha...it's true. You've caught me, like a grubby toddler with chocolate-covered fingers! Yes, I've been aware of his...condition from the start. I am surprised you didn't make him a mindless drone like the others, it seems as if that would've been simpler for everyone."
"Complications.” She turns away from him, pointedly staring at her spreadsheet. “You can go now."
"I can," he agrees, making no move whatsoever to do so, and in fact floating further into her office. "But now that that metaphorical fuzzy is out of the metaphorical bag, I did want to propose something."
"What?"
"As you know, I am quite adept at magic—the old Ancient tradition, in fact." His eyes stay upturned, but narrow into mere curved lines. "I'd be more than happy to tutor you!~"
"Tutor? I don't need a tutor."
"Oh? But wasn't your spell too weak to bind his will? After all, he disobeyed a direct order with hardly any prompting...”
Nastasia wills herself not to respond, not to react, not to feel her face warm and her blood pressure rise. He’s just fishing for a reaction, and she knows it. He’s just decided he likes to see her tied up in knots, for whatever reason. She can’t give him the satisfaction.
Dimentio taps his chin with a finger. “And you don't seem to have much other magic to speak of...strange for a Darkling, I thought you lot prided yourselves to a fault on your prowess in that regard. Wasn’t that the entire reasoning behind the ‘hermits sequestering themselves in the woods’ routine?"
“Leave.”
“And so she cruelly rejects my generous offer, like a cat turning up its nose at the expensive wet food it loved just yesterday.” Dimentio tsk tsks. ”Well, I’ll not let myself be discouraged by this rejection. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me. Ciao!”
There’s a familiar chime and soft ripple in space. Nastasia waits exactly ten seconds before stiffly standing from her chair, walking to her office door, slamming it shut, and locking it—not that a lock would stop anybody besides O’Chunks (not even him if he was determined enough to forego politeness and break a couple of hinges), but she liked to pretend she had some power here.
Nastasia had had a bad feeling about Dimentio from the very beginning. Both of them had, but the Prognosticus spoke of him, and so they’d had to take him on. He wasn’t entirely nasty all the time, especially not to the others, but Nastasia could only guess that her initial suspicion had started their working relationship on the wrong foot and it had only gone downhill from there. As it is, it’s impossible to tell whether his insults are simply his warped view of friendly teasing or if he actually despises her, not that she’s ever been good at telling.
But his jabs are always the most painful when they’re right. Nastasia sighs, pressing her hand into the door and leaning all of her weight into it, letting her head drop and her glasses slip dangerously down her nose. It’s true—somehow, her powers hadn’t been enough to stop L from disobeying her. She’d been responsible for him, and his loss was entirely her own fault. For all she knows, it’ll be impossible to fulfil the Dark Prognosticus without the “man in green” on their side, and she’d just ruined everything.
It will but it will not, why does he keep them somewhere safe, to gloat or because it’s his sick idea of caring, they huddle in unnatural green and everything is lost—
Nastasia grunts and puts her fingers to her temples to try and rub away the oncoming headache. She shuffles back over to her desk and slumps into her chair, not bothering to readjust her glasses.
Moping won’t do anything about Luigi now, nor will mulling over Dimentio’s other insinuation—he doesn’t know anything about her, and she knows if she starts trying to think about the past she won’t be able to get herself out of that spiral. The fact of the matter is that she’d failed, here in the present, and now she’ll have to work twice as hard to make up for it. Now more than ever as they near the end, she needs to stay focused and stay on task, no more of the unfortunate outbursts that have seemingly been happening more and more often lately.
(No more indulging those...feelings she’d been getting. She doesn’t have strong magic, or at least, not any that should count. She can’t know what’s coming. She refuses.)
Just mark him off as a loss, a failed experiment come too late to teach her anything useful. Cross that bridge when she comes to it. Look forward into the future (into the nothing) and try to get them there as smoothly and in as few pieces as possible.
That’s her job. That’s her only job. Nothing and no one else has ever mattered.