Luigi was far behind his older brother as they ran after Bowser's flying airship. If they could only get their hands on a magic feather, they could fly onto it, but no time; they had to catch up to grab a hold of its anchor before it took off too high in the sky. Mario was always a faster runner than Luigi, and he fell behind. Though Luigi's acrobatic skills were such that Mario could only dream of, it would be of no use until Luigi first made it to the anchor. Mario made it to the anchor, leapt on the chain rope, and climbed aboard just in time for the airship to gain enough speed to take off into the air. Luigi was left behind. This did not happen often, but it wasn't the first time that Luigi fell short. Mario would have to save the day on his own again.
It was always awkward for Luigi concerning this. Mario saved the day often, that is, he often had to thwart Bowser's scheme single-handedly, but not for want of any help. Rather, something always kept Luigi behind. Mario never brought it up, never accused Luigi of slacking, nor changed his attitude toward his beloved younger brother at all, as a matter of fact. Luigi helped out whenever possible and "whenever it counted"; he had saved Mario and Mario had saved him, this is the nature of long term heroes, protectors of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Luigi stood on the silent plain on the outskirts of the Mushroom Kingdom border, unmoving, staring at the dot flying through the air away from them, determined to weave something to say, something different this time for when Mario arrived. Luigi was not going to let this situation slip quietly into history like he always did. Mario thought something, he knew it, and Luigi thought Mario thought he could not say anything for fear of hurting Luigi's feelings. He was stronger than he thought Mario thought he was. He hoped he could make Mario know how much more strong he was without seeming desperate, apologetic, or even that he appeared to care too much what his brother though of him, so many things, all barriers preventing him from speaking candidly with his own kin. But it's probably the same way with all family.
Luigi looked over at a nearby pipe and realized he could at least be there when the flying dreadnought docked at Bowser's keep. He knew the way, and he jumped into the pipe. Bowser's minions were given permission to drive one of his airships, so their caper must have been something important. During the middle of last night, they docked in the forest behind Peach's castle and snuck into the storage facility. With skillful magic given to them by Bowser's magikoopas, they were able to drowse the short mushroom-headed guards and steal magical relics from Peach's collection. However, their greed would become their downfall. Apparently after they made their way back to the airship with their assigned relic, they went back for more riches for themselves, and there they were caught. Royal mages employed by the castle gave chase, and there the chase started when Mario and Luigi were contacted during the magical fray. Bowser must really have wanted whatever it was he assigned his koopas to steal because he gave them some impressive contraband magics, enough to fend off royal mages.
Luigi was gliding from one pipe to the next, intimately familiar with the system of pipes like a map in his head. Occasionally, some of the more mischievous pipes altered their direction, but even these were known to Mario and Luigi. However, while he was sliding on his rear from a pipe downward, he hit solid. His feet planted onto something metal, and indeed, this pipe was a dead end -either that or another pipe crossed right through this one. The downward slide was not too steep, and after gaining momentary bearing form the surprise and the slight shock to his feet, Luigi began climbing back up the pipe to enter the pipe hallway above him. He was confused; this pipe was supposed to lead toward Bowser's keep, or at least in its general direction. Just then Luigi felt a vibration of the metal pipe around him, and afterward, a monstrous crash that rattled his head and sent him flying through the pipe and out into the convoluted twisted system of pipes around him. Though the pipe system was not so dense everywhere, he was in a particular "hub" of twisted pipes that connected most other pipes that led all around the kingdom; Luigi never saw it from the ouside before. Under the ground he could see the earth was torn away and the pipes exposed; pieces of wood and metal were flying all over. Fire, debris and sand seared Luigi as he tumbled form the blast. The airship that Mario boarded had crashed right into the hub. The engine exploded, and the treasures were scattered if not destroyed within its vast blast radius. Luigi hit solid metal, a pile of pipe and cannon material from the ship was his bed that night.
Luigi woke up late in the afternoon, half-buried in wood, metal, and earth. Heaving a pile of junk off him, he stood to see the extent of the damage and assess exactly what happened. He saw the airship, nose first in the ground, splintered, and the bow sticking diagonally out of the ground. The pipes below him were destroyed, likely their ability to transport people quickly disrupted, ad there were glowing rocks, too. Rocks glowed white light as if enchanted, and the appearance of glitter was scattered everywhere. Luigi noticed the glittery material was more prevalent from the inside of one particular pipe and investigated; maybe a magical relic was broken.
His suspicions were right. Inside the pipe was a broken window frame, or at least what looked like one. It was embedded to the inside of the pipe and to what looked like a celestial flowing cloth. Luigi's first thought was that this was a painting, and the canvas was ripped, but to his closer inspection, he realized this cloth was the source of the glitter. The cloth appeared to be made of no other material he could think of, and as he inspected the delicate edges, he could see they were slowly deteriorating with the wind, fraying off into glittery bits that the wind carried away. He grabbed the cloth and could not feel it. He pinched each side of the cloth to grab it, but only felt his own fingers touch. This was definitely magic cloth, one of the stolen relics perhaps. Given the koopa's preparation and afittments, a very important one.
Luigi let go, and, like ghost cloth, the material floated back, hardly affected by gravity. Luigi tried to see if this painting displayed any images, and when he shifted around to see what fragment he could catch, he saw his red overall clad brother crouching for cover on a burning airship.
Luigi was horrified. Was this a depiction of the past? A magic mirror? He instinctively reached out his hand and touched the painting, and his hand went through. Although he was wearing a glove, he felt something different on the other side of this magic window, and his brother was on the other side, no doubt. Luigi remembered the deterioration of the cloth, and knew that if he did nothing, this cloth could totally deteriorate, permanently destroying his window to Mario, and perhaps even the other world. Luigi wanted to take off running to the Mushroom Kingdom to warn the others of the situation and get a proper assessment. The world on the other side might be dangerous or even worse, it might be a trap to lure him. Luigi didn't have time to think. He dove in.
It was an awkward squeeze, not dramatic. Luigi leapt off his feet and plunged in. He thought he would be fed through, but it was as if he just threw himself on the ground. Where he landed, however, was a whole new world. Luigi was sitting on his bottom on the street of a large, bustling city. He tried to look for his point of entry; this place was chaotic, and he wanted to be sure he knew how to get back home. He saw nothing. He looked on the ground where he landed and saw what looked like a piece of paper on the ground; the other side displayed the twisted pipes and wreckage of Bowser's airship, the glittery edges fading quickly away. The window to his own world was about the as big around as his waist now, and he knew he would not have enough time to rescue his brother and return. He could jump back and never see his brother again, or he could say goodbye to the Mushroom Kingdom and the life he knew so well. He thought about Peach, Daisy, Bowser, Mario and then he stood there for several minutes, staring at the magic window shrink into nothing.
After his initial shock, the noise of his surroundings died down, or at least he grew accustomed to the noise. People were chattering, there was the sound of children yelling and playing off in the distance. Luigi spotted a shop, and instinctively thought he was in a bazaar in the desert, but this world was too big for an oasis. Luigi's first steps out of the dirty alley he landed in were tenative; he was bumped by a man in a hurry. Luigi stumbled aside as the caped man glided past him wihout a word. Luigi saw him clutching something in his hand, it was glowing, or perhaps his hands were glowing holding an item as if lit up by magic. In light of what he has seen these past couple days, magic was on his mind. Is this a world of magic?. There was a crowd of people talking and arguing; apparently he was in a market of a country larger even than the Mushroom Kingdom. Peach's opulent castle ended abruptly where the rest of the kingdom sprawled out flatly with normal housing, but this one extended into the sky. There was no castle in sight, just miles and miles of buildings, all of comparable size, except for an occasional spire he could see just barely beyond his horizon of view. He looked at the crowd more closely and walked toward the thick of the people gathered around a few stands. He saw what looked like odd produce and other strange relics laid out on tables, but the people horrified Luigi the most. They were so tall and thin, and some of them were monstrous looking. Luigi decided he might be in the future of the Mushroom Kingdom where overdevelopment and mixing among mushrooms, humans, and koopas resulted into many hybrids, but this didn't explain some of these people he saw. Some were gigantic monsters even larger than Bowser, and others had blue skin; some were small imps that looked like twisted humans, and the more he saw the stranger things he encountered, he wanted to leave, go to a clearing of forest, to a pipe, something familiar. Luigi ran down the street fast as he could, searching for the end of this loud, tall city. He bumped into people, shoved them out of the way--he didn't care--and finally rammed into a tall human clad in armor. Luigi shoved away, but the human grabbed him by the back of the overalls and brought Luigi to face him. The man spoke in a foreign language, and Luigi tried to eek out, "I don't know what you are saying," when he calmed a little.
The man appeared annoyed, and he raised his voice and tone, speaking another arcane phrase Luigi could not answer. His fear rising again, the thought glanced his mind not to speak again because it appeared that might annoy the soldier further, but in spite of this Luigi sputtered more rambling phrases. "Tell me where I am," was the only sentence that resulted from a clear thought in Luigi's sputterings.
The man's brow furrowed into a scowl. Luigi could hear the clanking of other soldiers approaching, They were dressed like this guy, clad in silvery metal with a flowing blue cape. The man began talking slowly to Luigi, who did not respond. Instead, he felt the grip on his collar loosen and took the opportunity to break free; he stumbled and pushed the solider in an attempt to run far away. The man's gripp then immediately tightened again, and Luigi instinctively, and full of fear, attampted to blast a fireball. He was in a horribly awkward position, and his hand only glowed a hot green as his hand flailed toward the guard's face; it was abruptly defended. The man grabbed the offending arm, and his arm was held behind his back before his fingers cooled. The man suddenly released Luigi as the three men arrived, and with a moment of hesitation, he tried to take off running. Luigi tripped, his legs just failed from underneath him, and the soldiers, numbering three, were speaking in unison. Their tone was monotonous and sustained, as if they enjoyed every world they spoke, but also also that they were bored. Luigi could not get up; he looked back and saw the soldiers pointing their spears at him, the tips glowing blue, and Luigi couldn't move. He felt like a giant invisible hand was holding him down and felt a slight undertone of shame, as if this hand was his father's, and he was being a bad boy. He lay there, trying to break free, waiting for the spears to piece his belly and kill him, but eventually, when the men were done, Luigi--limp and frozen, like a posable puppet--was easily picked up by one of the soldiers with the blue skin he'd seen on other people before, and Luigi's own legs walked willingly with him.
Luigi spent the rest of the day in a cell reflecting on his crime. Luigi did not have to get himself arrested to know that the armored man was a law enforcer or some sort, and his mistaken flailing attempt to free himself constituted assult. The phrase, "assaulting a law enforcement officer" made Luigi's stomach tingle to the brink of nausea. The cell was quite clean, he shared his cell with one of the small imps he saw in the market--or at least one that looked like him (he couldn't tell). The imp was a couple inches shorter than Luigi himself, and had green skin with a pointed nose and ears. His eyes were large and arms and legs bony. He was clad in tattered red and brown clothing. Luigi sat on his spotless metal bench and stared at the wall; the "goblin" as Luigi would refer to him, just stared at him. The goblin finally broke their silence when Luigi glanced at him for perhaps the eighth time to see if he was still being stared at. The goblin spoke in the same nonsensical language the soldiers spoke and Luigi decided not to attempt to reply. He was beginning to suspect that his language or perhaps voice was inherently offensive to these beings. After a few moments of painstaking silence, it occurred to him that silence might be just as offensive, and this creature was different from the humans and the blue-skinned man, which Luigi began to refer to as an "alien". Luigi said, "I don't speak your language…" He was about to continue, but the nonplussed look on the goblin's face had a suggestion that Luigi was indeed in deep trouble if he could not even speak the language of this world.