fandomweekly | [#054 - Amnesty] a dance unfinished (Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey)

Theme Prompt: #054 - Time Travel (Amnesty 28)
Title: a dance unfinished
Fandom: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey (ft. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga) -
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (Somewhat vague allusions to burn/corrosive injuries, equally vague allusions to body horror and the rammifications of time travel)
Word Count: 999 words
Author's Note: Yahoo, here I go again with the experimental time stuff and Fawful! This time, an AU time travel butchering of the end of Bowser's Inside Story. Also, I hid a Kingdom Hearts reference in here. I do what I want on that front. (Sidenote I did not wanna do a cliffy but I guess I have to. Darn you, word limit 😭)
(Today's Slay the Princess OST inspiration: here)

Summary: A ten-year-old Fawful is thrown across time and has to face the abject horror of the Dark Star up close and personal - up to and including doubts about his convictions regarding his future evil plans.

--

Dark, swirling winds..

That’s what Fawful, ten years old and half-terrified, sees when his eyes snap open at the sound of distant thunder and the impact of lightning, at the smell of fading ashes and bright fire breath. His legs are shaking when he stands, realizing with a start that Midbus isn’t here and yet is, from the lingering freezing temperature and the panicked, frozen and barely-breathing boar-alligator hybrid sat next to him.

Fawful knows somehow, in some way, the Cobalt Star’s lingering power still indeed lingers - something must have agitated the energy of the cursed thing to summon him here, but .. The Midbus in front of him, resembling what the smaller boar said in his proper time and place to be a more matured sort for his kind, that’s at least ten years in age - Midbus said he was five in his time, so this other Midbus has to be ten, thus it has to be -

Another loud thud alerts him, so he travels through the now half-unfamiliar halls of Peach’s Castle, transformed for a second time to his eyes. The halls are colored with darkness, with the haunting echo of his premonitions, making him shiver under his aging favorite cloak from Cackletta. Finally, he manages to make it to the rooftop of Peach’s Castle, after a concerted effort against the intense rain and dark mists along the paths he does know, only to stare up in shock that the darkness is spreading FROM the rooftop area, seeing it swirl and with some of Bowser’s Minions swallowed up and being tossed around by the same darkness.

Fawful finds himself surprised at the utter silence, like … he is in the eye of the storm, no longer quite hearing Bowser’s fierce fighting, but just seeing it in motion from afar despite the darkness. He can’t hear Bowser’s words, but he can kind of read the lips of the Koopa monarch enough to quickly realize part of the situation - something about feeling a familiar tug at the stomach, something else about the Cobalt Star.

Bowser.. knows about the Cobalt Star too?

That’s not something Fawful would have expected, least of all when the eyes of Bowser’s opponent becomes visible and he recognizes with a start his very own eye colors. Gold in the left eye of the Bowser copy.. Magenta in the right, the copy laughing as if he’s lost his entire mind. Bowser himself loses a fang as he misjudges a blow, grunting in an audible sense as Fawful approaches the fight, clutching his gauntlet, the last magical item he has from the witch that raised him.

“ – FINE, IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME, I’LL PLAY IT HOWEVER YOU LIKE, CHUMP!”

Suddenly, a torrent of air sucks inwards at Bowser, and at the very same moment, something leaves the false Bowser, that much Fawful can see. The false Bowser does the same, and the competing winds as well as the massive superstorm rips the hood off of Fawful’s tiny head altogether, his heart hammering in his chest. Reflexively he sucks in a breath, and the something that left the false Bowser leaps away, red and black and simplified.

(You. Free me.)

The power of time lets him understand. But just this alone makes him even more terrified, regretting following the sounds of battle, because Fawful recognizes his own voice in the center of madness in the tiny thing’s gaze.

(You’re the only way.)

“No, I AM NOT!”

Fawful.. is not entirely familiar with the rules and law of time itself. After all, he broke such rules just by stepping through the time hole twice over, which was to him a few months before the third violation.

On one hand, his scant research of the Dark Star as it is now has told the boy it’s really not a good idea to grab half of the damn thing after it’s already taken a vessel. But he still does it, and despite the immolation that ensues in both his hands to do so while exerting both magical fire and lightning, he continues.

The false Bowser begins screaming in agony, but that seems to be enough for the real Bowser to start wailing on the dark creature. With an explosion, Fawful and his apparent future self are sent flying backwards into one of the bits of the wall surrounding the rooftop, and the more solid of the two Fawfuls feels as if he’s going to pass out completely, left breathless from being thrown backwards.

(You are.. Weightless and alone.. suspended in the gravity … of an idea too great for you to hold..)

“..Damn you.”

Fawful focuses everything he can put once more into the only light spell he knows, squeezing his eyes shut and blinding the very surprised Bowser. He’s surprised by the feeling of something helping the spell along - while he can’t see the source, it feels too familiar not to be the indirect cause of Cackletta’s decision to steal the Beanstar, the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Fawful may be completely unfamiliar to the laws of time, but at this point, he accepts his other self needs to go. So what if it means Cackletta won’t ever come back? The plan was a failure, or at least it will be, and he has to accept that.

– A healing spell, with a damaging twist to the corrupted. An emergency spell Cackletta once taught Fawful. Only given the name of “Salvation”, it was a spell supposedly from another world altogether, or so Cackletta said after teaching him.

“Don’t you dare use this unless you have to, alright?” –

Fawful’s surprised only his future self is struck down, though with all his energy spent, he collapses on his side, his hands still in complete agony from just the mere contact with what he thinks was just the Dark Star’s very culmination, the corrosive effect quite painful even with one of his hands protected.

Everything goes black before he can say anything else.