Chapter Text
“No, Luddy, you have to turn here.” Wendy tells her older brother, pointing at the alley on the screen. “That’s where the teleporter is.”
“Why isn’t it on the map?” Ludwig scrunches his nose up, but he turns where Wendy had pointed. “Ugh, this place is gross.”
There’s absolute silence as Ludwig makes his way to the glowing circle on the ground, but before he reaches it, something jumps out at him and he shrieks.
Wendy and Lemmy burst into giggles on each side of him, Roy and Morton are roaring with laughter in the corner. Ludwig frantically pushes buttons to get the thing off of him.
“What happened?” Larry looks up from his spot on the floor, colored pencil in hand.
Junior raises his head and blinks over at them. Iggy doesn’t even flinch, too busy tinkering with his new invention.
“Creature got him.” Roy tells his younger brother, wiping his eye under his glasses. “Shit was funny.”
“It was not !” Ludwig hisses, scales flaring. He finally throws the thing off and staggers to the teleporter, health dangerously low. “You guys are awful .”
“Don’t be such a loser, Luddy.” Wendy clicks her beak. “It’s a rite of passage.”
“Yeah, Lud,” Roy claps his shoulder. “Everyone else has gone through the same thing. Lem nearly threw the remote.”
“I did.” The smaller Koopa nods. “Scared the scales right off me.”
“Where do I go now?” Ludwig asks as the screen finally loads in at the new location. “Do I go to the exclamation point on the map?”
“That’s where the next main storyline quest thing is, yeah.” Roy tells him, leaning over the back of the couch to point at the screen. “But there’s some side quests here if you want to do those first.”
Morton grunts. “There’s a side quest for that one character you liked at the beginning of the game here.”
“Where?”
“Down the road and to the right in that big Saloon looking thing.” Wendy says, pulling her claw file from her bag. “He’ll be behind the counter at the taps.”
“Alright,” Roy says, standing from his hunched position over the back of the couch and raising his arms above his head. “I’ve gotta piss, I’ll be back.”
“I have to go too!” Junior pipes up, setting his crayons down. “Wait for me, Roy.”
“Hurry up, Pipsqueak.” Roy snorts, stomping toward the door. “Won’t wait forever.”
Junior whines for him to “give him a second to put his drawing up” and Roy stops outside the door, crossing his arms over his plastron. A few seconds later, Junior rushes out looking around for Roy.
“I thought you left.” The younger boy accuses.
“I said I wasn’t waiting forever, Squirt. Let’s go.” He ushers Junior ahead with a hand on his shell and follows after him.
The two of them make it to the bathroom. After they’re done with their business, Junior tugs on Roy’s hand.
“I want to see dad.”
“Dad’s busy.” Roy grunts, herding Junior out of the bathroom.
“I want to see dad!” Junior stomps his foot and refuses to go any farther.
Roy moves his glasses to pinch the spot on his beak between his eyes. “Fine, whatever. Just don’t throw a tantrum. Let’s go check his office, he’s usually in there.”
Junior cheers and rushes down the hall to Bowser’s office.
“Wait for me, J. Dad might be busy, don’t barge in.”
His younger brother glances over his shoulder and pouts. “He won’t care.”
“Just knock first.” Roy rolls his eyes.
Junior huffs but knocks on the door. “Dad! Come draw with me!”
The two of them wait there for a few seconds, but there’s no response. Junior’s eyebrows pull together. “Dad?” He grabs the doorknob and pushes the door open. The office is empty.
“Hmm, if he’s not here, he’s probably in the war room with the generals.” Roy scratches the underside of his chin. “Let’s go, Squirt.”
Junior closes the door to their father’s office and bounces off down the hall again. They pass the throne room on their way to the war room and Roy catches a glimpse of yellow and green from the corner of his eye. When he turns to look, he takes a second to register what exactly it is he’s looking at.
His father is currently leading Luigi through the throne room with an arm around the human’s waist. Luigi’s face is tilted up to look at his father and his cheeks are a bright red. Roy blinks as his father leans down to whisper something into Luigi’s ear that makes the man turn a brighter red and duck his head down to hide it.
“Roy, what are you waiting for?” Junior calls out to him from the other end of the hall.
Luigi turns his head just as Roy ducks behind the wall.
“Did you see that?” He hears Luigi ask his father.
“See what?”
There’s a stretch of silence before Luigi hums. “N othing. I just thought I saw something.”
Roy listens to them leave, his father’s ground shaking steps getting less and less prominent the farther away he gets. Once he can no longer hear them or feel the ground shaking, he follows Junior, who’s disappeared into their father’s war room.
“What took you so long?” Junior asks him when he steps into the room. “Whatever. Dad’s not in here.”
“He’s probably busy.” Roy tells his younger brother.
Junior pouts and crosses his arms. “He said he’d come draw with me.”
Roy sighs and ruffles his younger brother's hair. “You know how busy dad is, Squirt. We can try finding him again after dinner.”
Junior “hmph”s and his eyes narrow. “I’m not gonna share my pencils with him.”
“I’m sure that’ll just break his heart. Let’s go find the others, J. I want to know how far Lud got in the game.”
The younger Koopa huffs but makes his way out of the war room anyway. Roy tries his best not to snort at his brother stomping his way down the hall, but he can’t quite keep it in. Junior sends him a sharp glare over his shoulder.
“Stop laughing.”
Roy holds up his hands in placation. “Sorry, Bud. I wasn’t making fun of you.”
Junior looks at him for a little longer before he turns back. His stomping increases in speed until he reaches the door to their activity room and pushes it open.
“That was a long bathroom break.” Lemmy teases. “Did you fall in?”
“Junior wanted to see dad, but he wasn’t in his office or the war room.” Roy tells him.
“He said he would draw with me!” Junior frowns. “I’m not going to make him a drawing anymore.”
“I’m sure he’s busy, Junior.” Iggy drawls, his head buried inside whatever he’s building. “You can always ask Gramps to talk to Pops if you’re that upset about it.”
“Kamek is busy trying to figure out that spell he found. You know how he gets when he’s doing magic stuff.” Junior shakes his head. “It’s whatever.”
“You can come draw with me, J!” Larry calls from his spot on the floor.
“‘Kay.” He flops down on the floor next to Larry and grabs a piece of paper the other Koopa holds out to him.
Roy leans back up against the couch. “Luigi is here.” He tells Wendy and Ludwig.
The two of them turn to him, matching expressions of confusion and disbelief on their faces.
“What’s he doing here?” Wendy asks him, blowing dust off her claws.
“Dunno. Dad was showing him around.”
Ludwig turns his attention back to the game and hums. “It’s not unusual.” He says. “He’s been around pretty often this past month.”
“I haven’t seen him.” Roy scoffs. “Seemed like the two of them were flirting. Dad leaned down to say something to him and he turned all red. You know what I’m talking about.”
Wendy makes a noise of agreement, digging through her bag for claw polish. “He does turn red an awful lot around daddy .”
“Are you talking about Mr. Luigi?” Lemmy butts in. “I’ve seen him hanging around dad the past couple weeks. Seems like they’re dating.”
Roy makes a rumbling noise in his throat and scratches the back of his neck. “Well, whatever he and dad are doing, he saw me. Didn’t say anything to dad though. If they’re trying to hide it, they’re not doing a very good job at it.”
Wendy snorts. “You can say that again.”
The four of them fall into silence after that, Roy and Lemmy watching Ludwig play the game and Wendy softly humming to herself as she paints her claws. Roy absently notes that she’s going for a deep wine red color this time. It looks nice.
It’s about an hour later, when Larry and Junior have gotten bored of drawing and crawl over to come sit on the floor in front of the couch, that their father pokes his head into their activity room.
“Here you all are.” He says, pushing the door open. “I’ve been looking for you for the past ten minutes.”
“We’ve been here for hours, papa.” Larry calls from where he’s laying on his plastron, watching Ludwig’s character root through bushes.
Wendy glances up at him from where she’s filing Lemmy’s claws and purses her lips. “You’re not going to make us go study are you?”
Dad scoffs, a cloud of smoke puffing out of his nostrils. “It’s saturday, you know the weekends are for relaxing.”
“Is that what you and Luigi were doing earlier?” She mutters under her breath, turning back to Lemmy’s claws. Ludwig and Lemmy both snort. Roy poorly covers his laugh with a cough.
“Hmm?”
“Nothing daddy.” Wendy replies brightly.
He squints at her, but doesn’t say anything else. “Is this the game I heard you guys talking about the other day?”
“Yeah,” Morton nods, frowning as he undoes a section of his crochet sheep. “It’s Lud’s turn.”
Their father makes his way into the room to lean against the back of the couch. “Looks like fun. Who’s got next turn?”
Ludwig and Roy lock eyes and share a knowing smirk with each other.
“You can go next, dad.” Ludwig says as he saves his progress and backs out to the loading screen.
Wendy and Lemmy snicker quietly to Ludwig’s left, seemingly catching on to his plan.
“It’s not hard, is it?” Dad asks, taking the controller from Ludwig. It’s almost laughably small in his hands. He clicks his beak and waves a hand over the controller. It’s engulfed in a red smoke for a few seconds before it disappears and the remote is much larger. “That’s better.”
“Nah, it’s not difficult.” Roy tells his dad, slipping his glasses up. “Once you get done with the opening sequence, you’re going to want to go to the teleporter in the alley off to the side of the building you come out of. That’ll get you to the actual game.”
“Doesn’t sound too difficult.”
The seven of them — Iggy is too absorbed in his invention to care, really — watch their father complete the opening sequence and make his way into the alley.
“This is easy.” Dad says, a hint of boasting in his voice. His character gets closer to the teleporter and Roy can almost feel his siblings vibrating in unrestrained glee for what is about to happen next. Their father opens his mouth — surely to brag some more about how well he’s doing — when the creature tackles his character on the screen and whatever it was that he was about to say is cut off by a choking noise and a cloud of black smoke.
Lemmy falls off the couch with how hard he’s laughing, landing next to Larry and Junior’s giggling forms on the floor. Wendy is snickering behind her hand and Ludwig and Roy are slapping their fathers shell as he coughs up more smoke. Morton’s shoulders are shaking so hard he has to set his crochet hooks down on the table or risk ruining his creation. Roy’s sure he can even hear a snort of amusement come from Iggy’s direction, but he hasn’t looked over at them since dad opened the door earlier.
“What the fuck was that?” Dad asks once he’s able to speak again, there’s a faint wisp of smoke still leaking from between his teeth.
“Ooooo, papa said a bad word!” Larry gasps through his giggles.
“That’s what you get for not drawing with me earlier!” Junior smirks, crossing his arms.
“It’s a rite of passage daddy.” Wendy says, patting their fathers arm. “Don’t worry, everyone else went through the same thing.”
“This game is awful.” Dad scowls at the “You Died” message on the screen. “I didn’t know there were going to be zombies.”
“You had a good run, dad.” Ludwig consoles him. “Do you want to go again?”
Their dad growls, puffing out a little flame. “I’m going to kill that thing.”
“You're ready for it now,” Lemmy climbs back onto the couch and holds out his hand so Wendy can finish painting his claws. They’re a light blue. “You just need to make sure you push the buttons fast enough, or you’re going to die again.”
“Bring it on.”