A/N: This is my first fanfiction ever, or more precisely, first one that I don't want to print and then rip to tiny pieces, even when it is only oneshot. I am still learning English, so if you find some twisted constructions or another mistakes, please, let me know in your review...

I would like to thank Verran, the amazing writer who took the time to help me with correcting my mistakes.


Sunrise.

"Even if you are alone, you wage war with yourself."

Dejan Stojanovic

A tiny edge of the flaming sun appeared on the horizon and washed the landscape in warm gold light. Everything looked different, otherworldly in this part of the day… But the lean man in green, sitting on the warp pipe leading to this middle-of-nowhere, didn't even notice the beauty of the upcoming sunrise.

He sat stooped on the top of the pipe, dangling his feet, and his fingers were clawed into the smooth green surface. It was just an ordinary warp pipe, a flawless tube without any seam or defects, a traveling device not made by human hand. They all looked exactly the same.

"Like the pipe that brought us here," the sudden thought came into Luigi's mind. It was a pity nobody could remember it. Not even his brother. Like somebody erased that event from the history of the Mushroom Kingdom and replaced it with the false memories.

Erased

But he, Luigi, stayed untouched… forgotten, as he always was.

Luigi sighed, tired eyes underlined by black circles, looking at the ground. He didn't sleep well this night. Actually, he hadn't slept well any night since they saved all the worlds from the everything-consuming black void, that's why he kept returning to this god-forgotten empty land.

Sometimes, he had a nightmare. It was always the same dream, returning to him like wrongly thrown boomerang that knocks you to the ground. Mario and the Princess told him what happened to him when they all fought Count Bleck in the distant dimension, but in his dream, those events messed up in the ultimate show of blood and pain…

…and the purple and yellow colored jester was the only spectator, clapping his hands and laughing amusedly on his seat.

Ah ha ha ha ha…

In this dream, he was amused too, pleased by the things he had done to them, blood-drunk in the whirl of brobotic destruction… He, Mr. L, was pleased. It wasn't the dream itself that scared him the most. It was that feeling he had when he woke in the middle of the night with his mouth wide open in a voiceless scream of horror. Feeling that something - or someone – inside him was still enjoying the scene he just saw. Those rare moments in between dreaming and being awake, when he felt a fragile connection to an alien, mischievous mind buried deeply in his consciousness, that terrified him to death.

That's why he came here tonight.

There were also some nights when the sleep just refused to come at all after he closed his eyes and left him completely and hopelessly awake, staring at the darkened underside of his brother's bunk and listening to his quiet snoring. Luigi knew Mario wouldn't help him. His big bro Mario. He was surely sleeping like a baby in his top bunk right now.

Luigi slid his finger over the smooth surface of the warp pipe and glanced at the trees, rustling in the sudden blow of the morning wind.

Sometimes he envied that aura of fool's luck that surrounded his brother whenever he went, always willing to help and always succeeding, like the little red machine of miracles. There was so much that he just didn't seem to notice. Like the circles under Luigi's eyes and the fear of Princess Peach and another witch hunt, still ongoing in the streets of the Toad Town… Luigi didn't know if his brother couldn't understand it, or he simply ignored everything that wouldn't fit in his happy life. It was his burden to carry all the dark thoughts and hidden fears, carry enough of them for both…

Idiot's luck.

The plumber in green looked at the fiery sky. Almost the whole sun had already risen from between the distant black eyed, absurdly high mountains…

"I should go home," he thought, "before Mario wakes up and finds my empty bed."

Not that it would matter.

Luigi took a last deep breath of cold air and stood up on the edge of the green pipe he had come here though. He bounced from the surface in one big jump, and for the short, barely noticeable moment he almost hoped that this time on the other side…

…there would wait that calming blackness of ended games.

And the leaves rustled in the morning wind…


A/N: I can't help myself but say it: The Ultimate Show is name of the final battle theme in Super Paper Mario. Ironic.