Lucas buried his face in his arms. He had been beaten, and his partner Ness was forever gone.
Lucas didn't know what happened. He remembered rolling to avoid Mario, smacking him in the face with a baseball bat, when Snake's C4 had exploded. And he couldn't remember anything else.
"Lucas," said a voice.
Lucas stood up and turned around.
The Pokémon Trainer held out a hand. "What's wrong, Lucas?"
Lucas allowed the nameless trainer to help him up, but merely shook his head.
"It's time for the next battle," said the Pokémon Trainer. "I heard about Ness. I'm sorry, but this is no time for grief. We have a match against Luigi and Lucario."
Lucas nodded, but kept grieving in his mind.
The Trainer let his Charizard out. Charizard roared and stretched its wings.
Lucas looked down, but the Charizard put a claw on his shoulder. Lucas looked up to see Charizard smiling at him.
The Pokémon Trainer winked from his safe haven behind the stage.
A pipe appeared on the left side of the stage. Luigi popped out, as he always did, but there was something odd about Luigi. His cap was hanging over his eyes, something that almost never happened.
Lucario teleported onto the stage in a blue beam, and closed his eyes, as he always did, but there was something odd about him too. The four black aura sensors on his head did not lift. Lucario's head drooped, like Lucas.
Lucas looked at Charizard questioningly. The great dragon merely shrugged.
"GO!" cried the voice that always began the match.
But Luigi merely sat down, cross-legged, and buried his face in his hands, as Lucas had just done not a minute ago.
Lucario opened his eyes. "I sense… sadness…" said he, albeit without moving his mouth.
Lucas copied Luigi. He wasn't sure why Luigi was disturbed, but he knew that Luigi had always been overshadowed by Mario, and nobody ever asked Luigi about his problems. Likewise, being overshadowed by Ness, nobody ever asked Lucas about his problems, except the Pokémon Trainer, and maybe Meta Knight and Kirby.
Then he suddenly realized: Ness had beaten Mario before he himself had been defeated. Even though Luigi never seemed to care about Mario, they were still brothers.
With a sudden jolt, Lucas realized that the two minutes were already almost up.
"Time," said the voice, and Lucas's world froze, in preparation for the next battle.