Chapter 6 - Luigi’s Big Mistake

“Woah,” I gasped to myself. This was going to be easy; Waluigi had the gem?

“Who are you?” Waluigi asked, pointing at me. He had the same nasally voice he did as an adult.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at his neck.

“My dad gave it to me,” Waluigi said, looking at the chain. “He says it’s a “priceless family heirloom,” or whatever that is.”

“Can I see it-“ I began, but felt two hands clasp my sides and lift me up. It was Wario’s mother who did so.

“Are you Luigi?” she asked, staring intently at the little “L” patch on my shirt. “Yes, I bet you are, it’s feeding time for you.”

I tried viciously to get away, to get back to the playpen, because who knew when Waluigi was going to lose it… but of course, I wasn’t as strong as Wario’s mother and she whisked me off to the kitchen. Wario had been supplied with milk and cookies, Dad and Wario’s dad were talking about business, and my mom was opening a jar of baby food.

“Yes, that’s Luigi,” she said. “Thanks for fetching him.”

“Which one is older?” Wario’s mother asked.

“Mario is older by an hour and a half,” Mom said, setting me down in a high chair and tying a bib that read “Spit happens” around my neck. She took a spoonful of what looked very much like cat feces out of a jar and stuck it close to my nose. It smelled like cat feces almost as much as it looked like cat feces.

I jerked my head out of the way just before mom could stuff the food into my mouth.

“Honestly…” she sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Mario will eat anything, but Luigi is so picky…”

Looking at this food, I had every right to be picky. But mom caught me by surprise, she stuffed the spoon into my mouth.

I doubt I’ve ever tasted anything so gross, perhaps the bean juice I had last month or pitcher of lemonade Julie had once made was worse, but I spit the food out all over her.

“Do you just not like this kind?” she asked me, wiping the gloppy brown mush out of her eyes. I nodded as viciously as I could. She got up, ignoring the other adults’ laughing, and took a jar of apple sauce out of the pantry.

“How about this?” she asked. I reached out for it. I liked applesauce fine. She opened one little carton of it and set it down on the mini table in front of me, then turned her back and started looking for something. Wario’s mother was looking at me as though I was a magician pulling a horse out of a hat.

I dipped my finger in the applesauce and tasted it. It wasn’t as sweet as I normally have it… or will have it, actually. Mom stuck a spoonful of it into my mouth. I swallowed and tried to listen to what my dad was saying.

“And as you can see, profits have gone up incredibly since last June,” he said, pointing at a piece of paper. Wario’s dad was mumbling under his breath, stroking the pointy little beard at the tip of his chin. Mom stuck another spoonful of applesauce into my mouth.

“He’s a neat eater, isn’t he?” Wario’s mom said.

“Wish I could say the same for Mario,” Mom sighed. “See our wallpaper? That’s not wallpaper, that’s actually dried food that Mario has thrown.” I laughed.

“Yes, he thinks that’s funny,” mom said playfully, feeding me more applesauce.

“So do you think you’ll have any more children?” Wario’s mom asked.

“Yes, I’d like that a lot…” Mom said. I spit out the glob of applesauce in my mouth. She didn’t seem to notice. “Probably around the time Mario and Luigi are three, we’ll start trying to have a third baby, I’ve always liked the idea of a big family. It’s traditional to our culture, anyway. I’m the youngest in a family of seven.”

“Yep,” Wario’s mother said. “I know what you mean… only I’m the oldest in a family of six.”

“Ouch,” my mom laughed. “five little brothers and sisters? Little siblings are terrible, aren’t they?” She ruffled my hair and untied the bib around my neck.

“Down you go,” she said quickly, placing me on the floor.

While she wasn’t looking, I crawled as fast as I could back into the living room. Mario was chewing on a large rubber ball, Waluigi was drooling.

“Hey, you’re back,” Mario said.

“Can I see what’s around your neck?” I asked Waluigi.

“What…this again? I don’t know how to take it off,” he said, tugging at the chain.

I was starting to feel warm and sleepy. Waluigi tugged on the chain harder. It broke off his neck.

“Oops,” he said, dangling it from his hand. I couldn’t believe he was willing to give it to me! I climbed over the short fence and landed back in the playpen, and grabbed the wand.

“What’s that?” Mario asked, noticing it for the first time.

“A toy,” I said quickly. “Sorry, Waluigi- you’re going to grow up to hate me for this, but-“ I snatched the chain from his hand, forced the tiny dial on the side of the wand to move forward a large amount, and pressed the button in.

Mario started saying “What ar-“ but with a whirl of light I was being dragged away. How far, I didn’t know…

When the whirling and light stopped, I quickly shook my head and looked at my hands. I was still holding the time wand and chain in my left hand, but in my right, there was a glass of punch. My hands were large; I had gone enough into the future that I was an adult.

I realized that I was in the Mushroom Kingdom’s castle, only it was very crowded with tons of Toads and Mousers drinking soda and what looked suspiciously like wine. Mario was standing right in front of me, looking confused, waving his hand in my face.

“Hellooooooo,” he said.

“W…what! Oh, sorry,” I quickly retorted. “I was just… uh... thinking.” Mario laughed. “Good to see that’s a change,” he said. “Anyway, I’m going to go find Peach. I’ll see you later.”

He turned on his heel and left, and I saw a calendar on the wall of the castle, it was the month of May, and the days were marked off to the 31st. The year was 2008.

“Crap,” I mumbled to myself. “Too far… how do I work this thing…”

I turned the knob a little, the clock’s hands moved only a little bit.

“LUIGI! THERE YOU ARE!”

I turned around and made eye contact with Julie, only she looked different- an almost 18 year old Julie. She hadn’t changed much since she was fourteen; her hair was longer, a tad darker, and she looked more like a full-grown woman, but that’s about it. She still had the same long eyelashes, same curly crimson hair, and was only a fraction of an inch taller than the 14 year old Julie I knew.

“Isn’t it GREAT?” she squealed quickly, standing on her toes. “I’m going to COLLEGE, man, I can’t believe it! It was SO nice of Princess Peach to throw a graduation party for me and Lauren… wow, in a month I’ll be old enough to vote!”

“This is your graduation party?” I asked her, not realizing what I just said. Julie looked disappointed.

“Oh… you must have had some of my iced tea, as well… all the people who had some of my iced tea lost their short term memory… I guess I put too much iodine in it.”

“You put iodine in your iced tea?” I asked, shocked.

“You’re not supposed to?” Julie asked. Some things never change… Julie was still a horrible cook. Julie sighed.

“Yeah, and I burnt the granola bars that I whipped up, too… funny thing is, I didn’t even BAKE them, I just burn everything… I burn toast, milk, cereal, brownies…” she droned off. “How will I ever survive the college life…”

“Do what I did in high school,” I laughed. “Win the lottery and then go to restaurants.”

“You won the lottery?!” Julie asked.

“Nah,” I laughed. “I think I’m going to try one of those brownies over there… they look good…” I approached the table. They looked okay, but smelled like cat feces.

“I baked them too!” Julie said happily.

I didn’t touch the brownies.

“What am I doing…” I said to myself. I turned the knob on the wand a little farther and pressed the button in.

With another strangely quick whirl of light I was in a dark, secluded room. In the reflection of the highly polished floor, I looked like a pre-teen.

“How does this thing work,” I yelled in frustration. I turned the wand over. A paragraph I hadn’t noticed, written in tiny writing, read:


Silver time WAND-Used by the ancient peoples of the Mushroom Kingdom to travel in time. Users of this wand will be united with their bodies of the past or future as God has planned it, yet will keep their minds of the time they came from. Yet there is caution to be heeded; anything that happened to them in the past will happen to them again; and if their future is disrupted, it will not matter; it will always turn out the same in the end.

I leaned on a nearby large statue of a Majikoopa and read the inscription a few times. What did it mean by “What happened to them in the past will happen again?”

I pushed a second button on the side of the wand. A hologram shot up above it.

“Woah,” I said, holding the wand so the hologram was upright. It was projecting a little code- it read:

“October1120046:23:12AMFebruary2319815:12:33PMMay19200812:07:13:PMJuly3199110:58:23AM”

It took me a second to work out what this said… it seemed like all the times I had set the wand to go to. October 11, 2004, February 23, 1981, May 31, 2008, and now must be July 3, 1996 at just before eleven in the morning.

And then it hit me- I don’t know what it was- but something slammed into the back of my head, it felt like someone had chucked a hammer at me. I whipped around, rubbing top of my neck. Nothing was behind me. But what startled me was that there was no bruise or knot where I had just been hit… if a hammer or similar blunt object had hit me, I probably would be unconscious right now.

“What the-“ I mumbled. I stared at my hand, I was holding a funny-looking silver stick with a gold chain around it. Why did I have this… what was it?

I examined the stick. It looked a little like a wand… sort of, there was a clock in the middle. There was a soft “click” behind me, I turned around, two women had landed, and both of them had hair very like clowns; one had bobby blue hair, the other had green hair that reached down to her feet. They both looked like fairies.
“Um…” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Can I… help you ladies?”

“Where do you come from?” the green woman asked. She was only as tall as I was, and the blue haired woman was even shorter.

“Uh…” I said, putting my finger to my mouth thoughtfully. I couldn’t think right now, that hit must have dazed me… I couldn’t remember the name of my home… The blue woman approached me.

“This chain…” she said, pulling at the one wrapped around the wand. It had a startlingly blue gem attached to it. “This looks like a family heirloom. What do you remember about your family?”

“My family… um…” I said. Why couldn’t I remember?

The woman in green sighed. “Yes, another one. How do you feel, boy?”

“Confused,” I said with a shrug. “You mean physically?” She nodded.

“Great,” I said, shrugging again.

“Unbelievable,” the woman in blue gasped. “Nobody has made it through here since that other teenage boy two years ago…”

“Come with me,” the woman in green said, and clutched my arm.

“Hey-“ I said, jerking out of her grasp. “Um… I can find my own way home… thanks.”

“Where is your home?” the woman in blue asked.

“I… I don’t know… I can’t remember,” I said quietly. “I’m just not in my right mind now, I’ll remember soon.” I took a few steps towards the wall.

“What…” I said, turning around to face them again. “Do you know what’s wrong with me, or something?”

They both nodded. “That statue… did you touch it?”

“Maybe,” I said. That, I couldn’t remember, either.

“That statue is programmed to eliminate anyone who bothers it,” the woman in blue said kindly. “I’m… honestly amazed you aren’t dead…”

What soothing words, I thought.

“… but it appears to have done some damage to you, you seem to have lost every bit of your long-term memory…”

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