#Do I have to make everything about Dimigi? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lizadale · 5 years ago

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more dimigi fic!

we’re reversing a little to right after the dream arc (so before Dimentio gets the letter). the dominant mood of this arc is “what the heck are feelings and what am i supposed to do with them”

part 1 of adjustment arc uwu

[]

You spend two more days in the castle on Nastasia’s insistence to make sure you do not relapse. Luigi drifts away from you for most of it, also on her insistence, to see if you can handle yourself without him. It is a challenge at first, but you are not the type to shy away from the test—being able to control your magic is an absolute must. You drop a couple things when you pull them toward you, but you do not fail to catch them before they break, and it is a testament to your progress.

Along with more power than you quite know what to do with yet, you discover some interesting things about the limiters.

First, there is the bizarre revelation that suddenly walking isn’t the least bit of a challenge. You didn’t even wrap your ankles—there is no need to. It does not hurt now, you do not get the impression that it will later, and you are not the only one who notices this.

“It’s because those…” Luigi furrows his brow in consideration, pointing alternately at your neck and left wrist. “…those things are off, right? The bracelet thingies. Merlon was trying to explain that to me, but most of it went over my head.”

It is strange to walk beside him in the corridor for a myriad of reasons. You are reminded how much taller he is than you when you are on your feet, and even though it does not necessarily bother you, you are not used to having to look up instead of down.

“It shouldn’t have had any effect on my body,” you tell him, but it is really the only explanation that makes sense. You do not know how else you suddenly have improved physical equilibrium, why your muscles no longer protest when you use them.

“He thinks you messed something up when they went on,” he says.

You stop walking abruptly and give him an incredulous look. “You think I put these on willingly?”

His expression pinches. “You didn’t? Someone…someone did that to you?” You appreciate, at least, that he looks horrified about it.

“Correct.” If you had all of your power available, you would not have needed to manipulate the heroes to do your bidding in the first place—what a stupid concept, limiting your own magic! “Why would I do such a thing to myself? What a foolish notion. Who in their right mind would—?”

“Merlon’s got one,” Luigi says, tapping his right wrist. “Right here. It doesn’t look like yours, but it blocks some of his magic. Apparently, it’s a common Ancient practice. Something about having too much magic out of your reserves interfering with daily life? He offered one to me, but I don’t have channels so I didn’t think it would help…”

You don’t know which makes you more nauseous—the fact that the limiting bands are considered a ‘practice’ or the thought of Luigi wearing one.

“It makes more sense knowing you didn’t do it yourself,” he continues, blissfully unaware of your discomfort. “’Cause you don’t usually screw things like that up. Merlon implied that they were put on incorrectly and so they don’t discriminate between your body and magic. They just block everything.”

That…explains a lot, actually. Being able to move without losing balance and falling flat on your face isn’t the only thing you have noticed since waking up from your semi-coma—all of your senses seem a little more acute. One of the first things you realized after opening your eyes is that the world looked brighter and sounded louder than you remembered, but you couldn’t imagine why that would be so you had let it go. It would make sense that the limiting job was botched so badly since the procedure was not done with care.

“So,” says Luigi, looking at you a little anxiously while you process this revelation, “do you want me to…take the others off?”

“No,” you say, surprising yourself. You cannot, absolutely cannot do this calibration bullshit again. It is awful. And when he brought up the concept that Ancients do this to themselves, you have started considering why.

The magic in Ancients, especially of those who are of purer lineage, is highly dense, and it is hard to control if it is not being used constantly. This wouldn’t have been a problem in earlier society, in which magic was used for everything. Since you’ve never heard of the practice before, you assume that it is something more recent, long after the fall of civilization when Ancients started to mix more with other races. In modern society, using that much magic would be more of a hinderance than anything—that’s probably why they started sealing themselves.

You will keep the other two on for now. It is less polarizing now that you have the option to take them off. Now that you have a choice. Until your life regains a solid direction, you are not sure what you’d do with the extra energy anyway.

And you are somewhat enjoying being able to move in the way you can. You feel like you have very few weaknesses right now—the biggest weakness being the one walking by your side up the stairs. You’ll have to sort out how you feel about keeping that one later.

He leads you two floors above the medical ward and down a painting-adorned corridor that opens up into an enormous library.

“No doors?” you ask incredulously.

The purpose of you asking to come here is not for pleasure reading, but to see if there are any books specifically that might solve your Chaos Heart problem. It is a stretch, at best. If there are books on magic in here, as Luigi says—and what you may be looking for most likely falls under the category of forbidden magic, no less—then standard procedure would be to hide them from the public, so you are confused as to why just anyone can walk in here.

“There’s a restricted section,” he says, pointing.

You wander toward the corner he’s indicating, a small section rife with dust and obviously underused. There are only three shelves, but they still stretch impressively from floor to ceiling.

“Wait!” he shouts. “Don’t—”

You walk face-first into a force-field of sorts, staggering back. It is not painful, only incredibly solid. You take a moment to admire the care with which it was created, that the magic is woven thin enough to not be noticeable but with strong enough threads to effectively keep you out. Regrettable that it will have to come down.

“Nononono,” says Luigi, shoving you away from the barrier the second you flex your fingers in preparation. “You wanna set off every alarm in the building? Just…”

He slides past you, through where you hit your nose seconds prior, like the barrier doesn’t even exist for him. You realize belatedly that it probably doesn’t. He stretches his arm through the invisible veil toward you and wiggles his fingers, indicating that you take his hand.

“Not sure if this’ll work, but I think it will?” he says. “Peach said I had to quote: ‘invite you in,’ so…”

“Why have you not simply brought me books from this section?” you ask, taking his hand anyway. You step slowly over the threshold and meet no resistance.

Luigi slides up against one of the shelves to let you through and then plops onto the floor with his back to it. “The books in here can’t leave the barrier, even if someone with access tries to carry them.”

Ah. So you will have to do your research within this stifling bubble, which is why he is making himself comfortable. No matter, you have worked in smaller spaces before.

You do not find anything of incredible help here, maybe a few passages about relics that you memorize for reference (since you cannot take the books out nor bring anything in to take notes, you merely have to trust that you will remember the important parts). These books are ridiculously tame compared to others you have found in your travels. It is a shame that the Tribe of Darkness was destroyed; you would have to look no further than the taboo books your lunatic foster mother stocked in her library. You wish you had ignored her threats and read them.

As it is, however, you are running out of ideas and time. Luigi seems okay for now, but you are unsure how long that will last. Even if the Chaos Heart has been slowed, it will not stop. It will continue to drain him until he is dry.

You squint down at the book in your hand. There are a couple volumes that explore magical fusion, but none of them mention such a case between a dark artifact and a living person. You wonder if the Dark Prognosticus would have had some insight, had you found it. The sections of the book regarding “the Man in Green” indicated that Luigi would have perished in the ordeal of hosting the Chaos Heart, but it is difficult to determine whether that was because the Chaos Heart would kill him as it is now, or simply because the world was ending anyway.

Sighing, you shove the book back in its place. Luigi is dozing against one of the shelves still; you gently nudge his leg with your foot until he stirs.

“Find anything?” he yawns.

“Nothing of interest. Is there another library?”

He drags himself to his feet. “Not in town, but I’ll ask the princess,” he says, starting to move out of the section. You dally for a moment in contemplation before you realize it may be a bad idea for you to let him leave the enchanted space without you. He walks backwards out of the barrier and gives you a curious look of anticipation.

“Wait—” You step forward a little too late, and half a second later you are already being ejected at a staggering velocity from the alcove and into Luigi’s waiting arms. He stops you securely against his chest, the force of the impact only causing him to skid back a couple feet on his heels. He whoops victoriously, like he’s in the middle of a baseball field and you are the potential homerun he has shut down to clench the game.

“Oh, my god!” he laughs, “I didn’t think it was going to launch you, that’s amazing!”

“Asshole,” you sniff once you recover from the initial shock, swinging your legs over his arm. He lets you readjust until you’re suitably being cradled, and then he exits the library and heads back downstairs as if it is perfectly acceptable behavior that he carry you like a fresh bride around the castle. You try and fail to not marvel at the casual feeling of it, and that it does not spark the instinct within you to flee.

Merlon has wandered back onto the castle grounds at some point, and you are livid that he is the one who catches you off-guard while Luigi is toting you across the courtyard, relaxed and vulnerable and domestic. You flail and tumble rather gracelessly out of his arms, despite Luigi’s best efforts to soothe your panic, and you are nearly swallowed by your disgust at causing the spectacle.

Merlon seems less than disturbed at coming across your shameful PDA and more distracted by your presence in general. “Does the sun not bother you?” he asks, focused on your mostly bare arms.

You shake the static from your head and smack Luigi’s hands away irritably when he tries to help you up off the grass. “It does not,” you return disdainfully. Your mood is immediately dampened by his appearance. You knew that he’d been around, since Luigi mentioned talking to him once, but you were hoping to never run into him before you recovered fully. Merlon maintains the annoying tendency to only antagonize you when you are not at full power.

He looks astonished at the revelation that you are free to roam outside in the sunlight with your skin so scandalously exposed to its rays. “Imagine my envy!” says Merlon.

You do not have to imagine. Maybe you are the one sitting on the ground with grass stains on your pantlegs, but his appearance is far more absurd dressed in his robes and cloak, hood pulled snugly over his head in broad daylight. The sun in the Mushroom Kingdom is warmer and more powerful than what you’ve experienced in most other dimensions; he is standing in the shade cast by one of the castle towers, but he must still be suffocating.

“How are you two?” he asks.

You squint. Merlon is a Guide, and while it is custom for his title to patrol activity hub areas such as this castle, you do not believe he normally makes a habit of it. “Have you a real question, or are you merely sightseeing?”

Luigi firmly grips one of your shoulders, his method of either warning you to watch your tone or to convince you to relax, or perhaps a mix of both. You decide it isn’t worth the trouble of shrugging him off this time, and you cannot help the smug satisfaction that is Merlon seeing the Moon so obviously supporting of you.

Merlon inclines his head. “Forgive me. I do, if you will humor me. I wish to know who sealed you.”

This is not a difficult question, but you are not quite sure what he is intending to do with the answer. There is a chance he might just want to know so he can mark the perpetrator as a person of interest, which is laughable. There is also a change he might want to have you resealed to ensure his personal peace of mind, in which case you will not be sticking around to give him the opportunity.

“He is deceased,” you say, analyzing your options for dodging the question. Luigi’s hand remains solid and warm against your shoulder, and you think maybe he is actually doing a fair job at allaying your decision on the matter, because you add: “Marquess Cenere.”

Merlon’s shoulders jump a little. “M—the Grand Marquess of the Tribe of Darkness?” he exclaims. “Count Bleck’s father? Why?”

“Fear,” you tell him simply.

“Bleck’s father?” Luigi echoes in disbelief. “What?”

It occurs to you that you never disclosed your relationship with Blumiere prior to him taking up the Prognosticus with Luigi. A story for another time, perhaps (hopefully, that time is ‘never’).

“What were you doing in the Tribe of Darkness?” presses Merlon warily. “They are reclusive. Surely they would not have allowed…”

“I was found and brought in,” you say, growing bored. It seems Merlon does not have a reason exceeding pure curiosity in asking you questions, so the conversation is no longer of interest. “Sealing me was a bargaining chip. It was the only way to convince him to keep me alive.”

Merlon looks like he is running calculations in his head, and you are not a fan. “Found,” he repeats. “Found? You— What generation are you? Who are your parents?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did you receive that eye wound?”

“I do not remember.”

He looks frustrated. “Do you know how old you are?”

You chew on this for a moment. You suppose that is not giving away too much; and now you are curious as to why Merlon is acting the way he is, like he has just stumbled upon an incredible discovery. “A breath over three-thousand, I believe.”

“What?” Luigi exclaims urgently, distracting you from the shock on Merlon’s face. “You’re what?”

“I have told you that before,” you say offhandedly.

“I—I didn’t think you were being serious?”

“I am always serious.”

He gives you a sincerely doubtful look, and you feel the corners of your mouth twitch.

Merlon continues to study you for a moment, but his questions blessedly stop. He curtly bids you farewell, indicating that if either of you have any issues you should visit his house (pointless, you think, since he is hardly ever inside it), and then starts to hurry out of the courtyard. You watch him suspiciously.

“Ah—hold a moment,” you call.

The shaman pauses, half turning back.

“Is there a Keeper or a Recorder amongst you?” You hate, hate to ask Merlon of all people for assistance. But you do not have time to wander aimlessly around the kingdom looking for information you have a very slim chance of finding—so what you need to know right away is if your search will be futile, so you can concentrate on another strategy.

“No,” says Merlon. “Are you seeking a denser library?” You nod. “We have a Merle who lives in the home of our previous Keeper, Merlar. I am not sure if it will be of any use to you, but it would not hurt to pay him a visit. I will alert him for company.”

Merlon leaves the grounds, and you spend the next couple hours back in the castle. You would like to find your way to this Merle as soon as possible, but there are some things you need to take care of first: the most pressing of which is to send the rest of Team Bleck back to Flopside before their lives are disrupted any further.

You would be lying if you said you weren’t postponing the matter. It is not a stretch to say that every time you open your mouth to suggest you take them back home, you find a different topic to bring up, but you cannot put it off forever.

“Is there somewhere you would rather go?” you ask them. Luigi has floated away from you again while you do this, apparently thinking you need the ‘coping space.’ (You honestly cannot tell if you are more or less comfortable without him present.)

It has occurred to you that Mimi, Nastasia and O’Chunks were technically stranded after the Void closed. Count Bleck brought them many dimensions away from their original homes by using the Dark Prognosticus to alter space, and with him gone the only way they have to return is through you now. It is the least you can offer them.

You know from frequently sneaking reads in Mimi’s diary that she is perfectly content to never go back ‘home’ again, as her origins seem even less pleasant than yours. But you do not know much about Nastasia and O’Chunks, what they left behind or who they may be missing.

They decline your offer, and so you will probably never find out.

“We just got settled in,” says O’Chunks, “an’ I ‘ave work an’ all now. Welderberg’s gonnae scold me proper fer missin’ as many days already.”

“You should have asked for me to send you back earlier.”

“You an’ what magic?”

Fair. Even now that you can use magic, you are a little hesitant with it. A small part of you is afraid that you are going to overshoot your mark and send them farther than the intended target.

“Ya gonna stay in touch this time so we know you’re not dead?” asks Mimi.

“No promises,” you tell her.

She stares at you for a moment, and then lifts her arms up and apart, her expression questioning.

“…What?”

“She’s askin’ fer a hug, ye loon,” snorts O’Chunks. “Are ye that daft?”

“Oh,” you say blankly. “Hm.”

“Step one,” clarifies Nastasia, “you land. Step two—”

“I do—NOT need a tutorial!” you snap, face coloring.

You lower yourself onto the tile floor, and the second you land Mimi has stepped into your personal space and dragged you into a sloppy embrace. She is not terribly shorter than you, but she has to stand on tiptoe to get her arms around your shoulders, and her grip is unsettlingly strong. (You forget sometimes how monstrous in nature Mimi is.) Your face is lost somewhere in one of her pigtails, and you pat her on the back awkwardly to indicate that you would like to breathe at some point.

“Missed you,” she says close to your ear, uncharacteristically solemn. “Come visit, you jerk.”

You hear yourself make a choking noise that is not entirely due to physical discomfort.

Then the moment passes, and she bounces away blithely back into line with the other two. It takes you a few seconds to recover.

They need to return, but you are still uneasy about moving them yet. You have been using magic again, but it has only been on yourself thus far, and only minimally. Teleporting yourself versus other people are two entirely different challenges. You have a constant spatial awareness of yourself; warping a separate body—three, no less—into a space as far away as Flopside might be beyond you right now. Given that you are still shaky with it, you cannot seem to focus enough to confidently attempt it.

So instead you focus on something else, snap your fingers, and dump Luigi unceremoniously upon the entry hall floor a split-second later. You blink, surprised not only by how easy it was to blindly pluck him from two floors above you but also by the fact that he is half-naked.

Mimi cackles in surprise, “Golly, Gigi, maybe put a shirt on?”

Luigi’s face goes beet red and he scrambles backward until he is up against your legs, hurriedly triple-checking that his pants are on correctly. “I was about to get in the shower, you jackass!” he shouts at you. “You can’t just—you can’t just do that!”

“I need you to cancel my static,” you say.

“Are you even listening? What if I had already been in the shower?”

“Then I suppose you would have to do it wet.”

“Oh my god, Dimentio,” he huffs. Then you nearly jump out of your skin when he reaches up one of your pant legs and grabs you by the calf. You smack the back of his head, and he merely turns and gives you a cross look. “Get on with it,” he says pointedly.

Mimi is laughing again, and for all Luigi is blocking all the unnecessary background noise as requested, you have a hard time concentrating over it. After a moment of trying, the mental image of the top of Flopside’s tower becomes a little crisper, and you send Team Bleck away with a stiff flourish. They vanish before you mean them to, really, so you’re left standing there faintly panicked for a moment before determining that you didn’t do anything wrong.

“You didn’t snap your fingers yet,” Luigi observes in confusion.

You didn’t. They were gone before you got to do it. You would almost believe it was someone else who whisked them away, except you feel your magic touch down and release on solid ground in the correct dimension. However—

Luigi looks up and must notice you squinting with your left eye into empty space, because he starts to get anxious. “Um…did you mean to…?”

“I missed,” you say, clicking your tongue.

“You what?”

“I missed,” you repeat. “They landed in Flipside instead.” You squint a little more. Flipside and Flopside reside in a type of dimension known as a crossroad—it was intentionally created to be a hotspot for interdimensional travel. As such, it is incredibly easy for someone with your class of magic to access from nearly anywhere in the multiverse. You firmly believe that if that particular area hadn’t been your destination, you would have entirely missed your target. (You never told them where exactly you were sending them; at the very most they will be a little confused.)

Luigi physically relaxes, his grip on you loosening, but remains wary. “Oh, good, I thought you meant ‘I missed’ as in ‘Oops, they’re all in outer space now.’”

“I probably shouldn’t be doing that yet,” you admit.

“You brought me down here with no problem,” he says.

“You’ve still got traces of my mana in you. It is almost the same as moving myself. Also: might you get your hand out of my pants?”

He stares at you for a long moment, not moving, and you feel cold realization drop into your gut when you replay what you just said in your mind. Even though he’d asked you multiple times, you still have yet to tell him how much you gave up to resuscitate him.

“What d’you mean, I’ve got your ma—?”

“Ciao,” you say hurriedly, and shoot him somewhere else. You’re not entirely sure where he goes, just that it’s hopefully far enough away that you’ll have time to recover before he finds you again.

You were aiming for the library, but you most certainly overshot your mark again, because you don’t feel your magic connect to anything except thin air. Instead, you hear a distant yell, cut off a few seconds later by a loud splash.

Yes, you should definitely stop teleporting people until you reteach yourself how to do it. You suppose Luigi will at least make a suitable guinea pig, though; he has proven to be rather sturdy (not to mention ridiculously patient) thus far. You are already a little giddy that you were able to move him while he was still touching you—normally, attempting to teleport someone making contact with your body in any way would result in you either having to move with them, or neither of you being able to move at all. Additional experiments may be necessary to determine whether it was a fluke or if you’ve really dumped that particular limitation.

There comes the crisp click of heels that heralds Princess Peach’s arrival through the main doors of the castle, and she stops a couple feet away from you. She looks a tad less than amused. “Dimentio,” she says, “why is Luigi in the moat?”

“I am unsure,” you tell her, struggling to keep your expression relaxed. “He told me he was going to take a shower, not a bath.”

“DIMENTIO!” you hear Luigi bellow from somewhere outside, and you fear you may have just snapped what remained of his saintly patience over your knee like a brittle twig.

Peach was perhaps wondering whether you’ve just outright attacked Luigi, and if she should be fighting you because of it—you can tell by the way she shifted a little guardedly when Luigi yelled. She is quickly put at ease, however, when you utter a hasty “Oh shit!” and teleport yourself onto the castle roof to buy yourself some time. Her melodic laughter rings along the entry hall as you vanish.

Teleporting is still a terrible idea. Anyone who thinks differently may consult the myriad of bruises on your arms and legs from when Luigi tackled you off the rooftop hours earlier; you instinctively tried to teleport away to avoid you both falling to your deaths, but you somehow wound up flipping instead, sending you both tumbling over each other down a jutting crag in an unfamiliar dimension. It took you nearly thirty minutes to find your way back to the Mushroom Kingdom, and Luigi refused to stop laughing at you the entire time. You hate him.

Anyway, because your magic is obviously not behaving, Luigi is attempting to coax you onto a motorbike, of all things. Apparently this bike had been occupying most of his time while he was on hiatus from ruining your life, and he’d been working on upgrading the engine and paint job in between bouts of getting pickpocketed by Mimi and getting thrown across the castle grounds by a stir-crazy O’Chunks (You are sorely disappointed you missed that. You do, after all, enjoy a good chunking.). The fact that he has been, as he put it: “making it street safe” sends a clear warning that you should be no where near this thing. You have heard stories from Daisy about racing tournaments, the shenanigans involved, and the property damage caused.

“Okay,” he says, knocking down the kickstand and balancing the bike against one leg. “C’mon.”

You step forward automatically when he prompts you, and then stop abruptly when you realize that it is automatic, staring at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

You open your mouth to speak and close it again when you realize you have no idea how to articulate how lost you suddenly feel. He looks at you for a moment, and you are taken by the urge to not meet his eyes, so you don’t.

“Oh,” he says, voice small. “Oh. I. Um.”

You clench and unclench your fists in frustration. “Give me—a moment,” you force out, glaring at your shoes.

“No, I—I just,” he stammers. “I’m sorry, I made an assumption… What, uh—”

You have had a handful of near-death experiences in the past several months. There is a great deal of mutual trauma you have yet to even realize, neither of you have said a word regarding the Chaos Heart’s most recent attack, and here you are standing in front of Mushroom Castle trying to decide why the hell Luigi is trying to take you back home with him like you belong there.

Your brain does not come with a cruise control feature. Unlike Luigi, whose direction in life seems to be widely determined by the flow of events around him, you spend a great deal of time analyzing the current before deciding the best way to run against it without getting killed. Right now, you’re realizing a bit too late that you’ve already been caught up in his natural rhythm, and there is a voice in the back of your head telling you that you’re inherently in grave danger because of it but you don’t know why.

The exact opposite is happening to Luigi, you think. He has suddenly become aware that he’s been pulling you along behind him, and now he doesn’t know what to do with the idea of you suddenly putting on the brakes. You are not sure how you feel about Luigi so easily absorbing your presence into his life, and neither, obviously, is he.

He takes a deep breath. “Listen—” he starts.

“It is fine,” you decide aloud after a sizeable spell of deliberation, and you force your legs to move.

“No,” he says, “it’s not. You don’t have to—you don’t have to stay with me.” You purposefully drop yourself onto the bit of seating he’s left for you before you lose too much of your nerve to do so. He twists the handlebars nervously as you settle in.

“Would you rather me not?”

He’s quiet for a beat. “I want you to stay,” he says, more earnest than any man should have a right to be. “But—”

“Then drive,” you order.

He hesitates a moment longer, conflicted. “If you’re not comfortable—”

Oh, you are beyond uncomfortable. You need desperately to not have this conversation right now. Maybe ever, if you can get away with it.

“Do I strike you as one of considerate character?” you ask, lifting your feet from the ground and curling your hands around his waist so you don’t fall off. “You have something I want. I have not given up on it.”

“You’re taking an awful long route to get to it,” he points out, and you are relieved to hear his confusion.

“I do not criticize your methods,” you say defensively (even though you do, all the time). Experimentally, you let your arms circle loosely around him, and deem his responding warmth to be enjoyable enough to keep them there. You lean forward and turn your face so that your cheek is smushed up against his back. “If I kill you here, at least five people will immediately notice and come for my head. So: drive.”

“Oh,” he says, finally relaxing. “Am I taking you home so you can privately murder me?”

“Yes. You will absolutely not expect it.”

“For some reason, that makes me feel better.”

You have no idea how to interpret that admission.

[]

#my writing #dimigi au

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