Chapter Text
Kamek opened his eyes, already frowning.
He turned around.
Four guilty faces avoided his eye contact.
Great.
He could already feel the headache coming.
“What is the meaning of this?”, he questioned, glaring at each of the children in turn.
Wendy shuffled from one foot to the other.
Ludwig stuffed his hands into his pockets, pointedly looking away.
Roy had his arms crossed and followed his glance from one sibling to the next, looking like he’d much rather be anywhere else but here.
And Iggy bounced back and forth from his toes to the balls of his feet, wand still glowing, a big grin on his face.
Of course.
He sighed.
“Iggy, my amazingly talented, young master, how often have I told you to not summon me on a whim?!”
Iggy’s grin widened and the boy saluted mockingly.
“About a hundred times sir, Kamek sir.”
The magikoopa raised one hand to massage his already pounding head.
“Will someone please tell me what is going on?”
Ludwig nudged Wendy forwards, who turned around to send him a rude gesture that Kamek pretended not to notice.
She opened her mouth, no doubt ready to unleash her frustration in typical Wendy-way onto her brother, when Kamek cut her off.
“Preferably now, my young lady.”, he narrowed his eyes at her. “And make it quick.”
Wendy turned around to face him and gulped.
Then she took a deep breath, seemingly realizing there was no getting out of this without telling the truth and well, talking to him in general.
They had summoned him for a reason.
Hopefully.
“J-Junior, erm, kinda, well- he kinda d-d-disappeared?”, Wendy mumbled, pulled her shoulders up as high as they could, and avoided his eyes. “A-and we have no idea, uhm, where he i-is or why and-“
“Look. We had a meeting. Where we talked about- some stuff. And Junior may have.. misunderstood some things?”, Ludwig cut in, and crossed his arms. “We’re not sure, but he’s been missing ever since the day after and neither Iggy nor my magic can find him.”
Iggy nodded along, more focused than Kamek had ever seen him in any of his lessons. “He went poof and now he’s gone.”
Kamek forced himself to remain calm.
They meant well, he knew that. They were good kids, they just wanted to help.
Even though they really needed to work on the how.
“Kamek, we’re worried he went to get Dad, all by himself. Cause we talked about giving Dad a few more days and uh, he might’ve misunderstood that and figured we, uhm, wouldn’t save him at all?”
He nodded along, rubbed his forehead with one hand, counted all the way to a hundred and back to zero again in his head.
Then he sighed.
Why did it always have to be him that had to clean up these messes?
“I know.”
Four sets of confused eyes turned to him.
“What do you mean ‘you know’?”
“Exactly what I said, my boy.”, Kamek repeated. “That I know that already.”
It was always a little fascinating to him, to see how quick childish faces could break out in anger.
“You knew where Junior was and you didn’t tell us?!”, Ludwig replied, looking not only angry but actually also a little hurt.
Kamek glared at him over his glasses.
He really didn’t have time for this nonsense.
“What do you mean you only noticed he’s gone two days after he left?”, he countered hotly, before he sighed, calming down a little. “I had it under control. I am with him and watching over him. You don’t need to worry about Junior. He is about to bring your father home though, so maybe you should go clean up your rooms. Or something. Be productive. Leave the worrying to me.”
Ludwig uncrossed his arms, disbelief in his face, while Iggy didn’t waste a single breath, already sprinting away, cackling manically, no doubt remembering the state of Lemmy and his shared room.
“DAD’S COMING HOME! DAD’S COMING HOME!”, he called out in a singsong voice, until it echoed from the walls around them.
Kamek spent a few moments just looking after him, trying to think back to a time he had been this laid back and relaxed.
Only to come up empty. Even when he had been a hatchling, Kammy had always breathed down his neck. There had never been any real peace with her around.
“Is he really coming home?”, Roy asked then, and the magikoopa nodded, glancing back to the slightly older boy.
“Well, we certainly plan to bring him home. As long as everything goes according to plan, you’ll have him back in about three days.”
The boy nodded, gently clapped Wendy on the shoulder, turned around and left.
Wendy, though obviously calmed down by the news of her youngest brother being save and accounted for, was still looking rather nervous.
Kamek turned to her, bit his tongue to not comment on the fact that Ludwig was still here, offering the same silent support he used to offer the only girl in the group before he got so old and the mood swings started.
“I just told you to leave the worrying to me, my lady.”, he pulled her out of her thoughts, gently to not frighten her again. “What else is running through your head, Wendy?”
She sighed, looked to the side, caught Ludwig’s glance and the barely perceivably shake of his head.
They seemed to hold a full conversation with that one look, and at the end, Wendy sighed again, but let her shoulders relax, finally.
“What about Luigi?”, she asked then, hesitantly.
Kamek blinked, confused. “The human?”
Both children nodded, though one more, well, he wouldn’t call it enthusiastic, but no other word in his vast vocabulary seemed to really fit the way Wendy answered that question.
Then he remembered something and narrowed his eyes.
“How do you know that name?”
Oh.
Oh, they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Kamek could see it in their faces, in the silent panic that spread in them, the knowledge that they now had to dig their own grave.
“Well? Out with it.”, he pressed, when neither made any motion to answer. “Because the only way you two can know about that is you either snooped through my things or.. you left the cas-“
A warning went off in his head.
The shrill shriek of a siren blaring.
Junior was in danger.
He cut himself off mid-word and turned around, pulled out the mirror and placed the spell, watching intently while the glass changed colors and shapes, warping and changing until he could recognize the colors of the Mushroom Kingdom’s castle.
That little brat!
Junior had started the attack!
There was Mario, shaking his head, getting up on unsteady feet, a Yoshi at his side.
And Luigi, pinned to the wall by a table, blood streaming down his nose and the left side of his face from a deep cut in his cheek, yelling something Kamek couldn’t understand.
He cursed.
Shook the mirror to end the spell.
Turned around, ready to get back and save the hatchling before he would get the sternest, most furious talking to he had ever received.
“Kamek?”
He whirled around, glared at Wendy.
“I will bring your brother back. And I will bring your father back. And maybe, if I feel generous, I’ll even bring the human.”, he announced, quickly hid the mirror under his robes. “And then I will take a vacation for at least the next three months. Make sure that nobody breaks any more rules while I’m gone or I swear by all the stars in the galaxy, I will burn this Kingdom to the ground. Am I understood?”
For a moment, both Ludwig and Wendy just stood there, staring at him, with an open mouth and wide-open eyes.
“Am. I. Understood?!”, Kamek repeated with a hiss, magic already reaching out to teleport himself back to Junior’s ship.
Wendy flinched, and nodded quickly, gulping.
And yes, Kamek felt bad about that, and he would beat himself up over it later, when the whole thing was over and done with, but he just knew how Wendy was- how both of them were, even though Ludwig tried to hide it most of the time nowadays.
“Look, I promise I will talk to you once both your brother and father are back on the ship. It will take a bit, but in about a few hours, I will contact you with your brother by my side, alright?”
If he didn’t end this conversation quickly, they would never let him go alone, determined to help and defend their brothers as they were.
Ludwig glared at him, he could feel it even when the boy turned around to follow Wendy, who had whirled around and was now running in the direction of their rooms.
“You better.”
He nodded.
“I will.”
He just had to save Junior first.
Piece of cake.
..
Four hours later, and Ludwig decided that Kamek was a dirty liar, and also that he would let Iggy and Roy go all out the next time they tried to slime the magikoopa’s rooms.
..
Six hours later, and he had to leave the room because Wendy’s constant pacing and muttering was driving him over the edge and he couldn’t start a fight with a child and especially not a girl- even if it was his stupid sister.
..
Eight hours, and Ludwig was sitting in the corner, nursing the bruise on his cheek and decided to let Wendy pace as much as she wanted to. Wasn’t his problem if General stupid ran herself into the ground.
..
“Think we should go after him?”
“I’m pretty sure Kamek will actually kill us if we do.”
Ludwig glanced at their sister, who was sitting at the window, glaring at the clock that kept ticking and ticking, no matter how much they both wanted it to stop.
“Well, we can’t really sit around and continue doing nothing, can we?”
Wendy grimaced, hands balled to fists. “Kamek said to give-“
“Dude, that was ten hours ago! It’s almost morning!”
His sister turned around to glare sharply at Roy, who held up his hands in surrender.
Idiot.
You don’t call Wendy ‘dude’.
“I don’t even know what we could do at this point.”
“We go after them?”, Morton grumbled from the other side of the room, Larry at his side, playing with his fingers.
“Which bring us back to my question-“, Roy started only to be cut off by Wendy.
“And my answer.”
“So what?”, Iggy exploded suddenly, and Ludwig turned around to see the younger koopa had gotten up and was now pacing the room impatiently instead of Wendy. “We’re back to just sitting here while everybody else does something?”
Ludwig shrugged when Iggy’s glare met him. “Gotta convince princess scaredy pants over there.”
A grin came over his face.
“Iggy, I swear if you call me princess scaredy pants right now, I will make you regret everything that happened between you opening your eyes as a hatchling and right now, got it?”
The grin vanished again.
“We could, uhm..” Six heads turned to Larry, who was still playing around with Morton’s fingers. “.. talk to the human?”
“Why?”
They didn’t need some human to fix their problems for them. Fuck that. He was basically an adult already. They could do the fixing themselves.
Larry shrugged, took a deep breath, and let Morton’s hand fall into the older boy’s lap. “Maybe he can help. Or he could tell us what happened to Kamek and Junior at least. Maybe? Plus, you said he was nice when he was here?”
“He was nice. Listened to all my ramblings and ideas. Even answered me!”, Iggy agreed quickly, one hand raised to his chin like Kamek sometimes did whenever he was deep in thought. “He also seemed to know a lot about, well, everything, to be honest. He answered all the questions we gave him.”
Ludwig grimaced.
He wasn’t a big fan of that plan. Especially since it meant leaving the castle again. When he told the others though, Iggy threw his arms in the air dramatically.
“Well, what else do you want us to do then? Cause I’m not gonna sit here and do nothing while everybody else keeps disappearing on us!”
“Iggy!”, Lemmy cut in, quietly, and his twin flinched, blinked, and smiled apologetically.
He went back to their shared beanbag and plopped down, right behind Lemmy, bouncing his legs to get rid of his nervous energy.
Wendy sighed then, and she wiped her hand down her face.
“Larry has a point. Luigi would help us. With the way Dad describes him? No chance he’ll just send us away again.”
Ludwig whirled around to glare at her. Traitor.
She shrugged in turn. “What do you want me to say? We can’t stay here and do nothing, Iggy and Roy have a point.”
The two glanced at each other, slightly confused. Wendy never took anyone’s side, always claiming a lady didn’t get involved in petty things like that.
“And you said you want to do something too. So yeah, we’re going. Unless you have a better plan?”
“Well, I kind of didn’t expect you to agree to do anything until we heard from Kamek..”
She shrugged, got up to stretch and walked over to the table on the side of the room.
“It’s been hours, like Roy said. Don’t you think it’s time we do something about the fact that half of our family disappeared?”
And yeah, if she put it like that..
Ludwig frowned. But Dad would be really pissed if he found out they’d left the castle- twice even!
Ignoring him, Wendy bent down to rummage in the hidden cabinet at the side of the table.
“We just got to figure out-“, then she cheered and popped up again, holding a few pieces of paper. “how we’re gonna do that.”
“And if we wanna bring Dad too or leave him with the human for juuust a bit longer.”, Iggy threw in, a downright shit-eating grin on his face, while he skipped towards the table.
Then Roy got up next, walked over to Wendy, and the others followed one by one.
“I mean, I think at this point we kind of have to.”, he muttered, the same grin on his face as Iggy’s. “But Dad never said we can’t kidnap any stray plumbers, did he?”
Ludwig groaned.
But he came closer too, reading over the information on the papers.
Troop numbers, stations, rations, patrols of the Mushroom Kingdom..
“Kamek will kill us if he ever figures out we have this.”
Wendy shrugged and grinned menacingly, and Ludwig would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little afraid of her right now.
“So he’ll leave us alone until then. Got it.”, she answered sharpy, and pointed at the papers. “Are you going to help us or not?”
Ludwig rolled his eyes.
Honestly, as if she even had to ask.
“Let’s get those idiots back.”