"Drops of rain, why don't they slide down windows in straight lines?" Luigi thought to himself. It had been a while since he was taken out of his room and fought with anyone in the Smash Stadium. The unfriendly confines of his grey room displayed scars carved into the walls showing how many days it has been since he was let out. All he had were a cheap old clunker of a TV full of shallow optimism.
Luigi found more comfort in watching the crows flee from a garbage can to avoid the bearded raven. The moldy door which was thought to be locked from outside had squealed when someone dared to open it. Luigi turned over only to see that it was Ike, the blood seemed drained from his face. Luigi didn't remember Ike being that pale or that wide eyed.
"Uhm..." Ike murmured, "We're supposed to team up and fight Fox and Peach, but..." his head swung around as he stepped inside.
"What happened here? You look so tired and there's fuzz growing on the walls!"
"It's a nothing unusual, Ike. It just sucks to be me, that's all." The green plumber's voice had gotten hoarse from respiratory illness and a sore throat. He sounded almost like that raven he saw two minutes ago and resembled a fallen man.
"Are you sure you can fight? I mean, just look at yourself!"
Luigi ignored Ike's concern, hopping off the bed and hobbling out the door armed with only his inner demons. The swordsman gaped as he could not think of anything else to say, gave up and followed Luigi out the door. Fans crowded the hallway, they also gaped at Luigi's disgruntled look and slunk toward the walls.
"Look alive," Ike whispered, "you're scaring them."
"Okey dokey pokey, Ike." Luigi stiffened his posture, however it did not convince anyone he was any better now. He stunk, had an oily beard, and jaundiced eyes.
During the fight, nobody dared touch him directly for fear he could have some kind of disease. In the later half, Ike held onto Luigi and used him as a shield. Peach begged for the fight to be called off, as this was unethical and against her values. After a moment of silence, Ike threw Luigi behind him resulting in Fox gaining 40% damage for a total of 156%. The fight overall was thought to be a boring joke in the opinion of the audience, who were hoping the buzzer would sound to end it early.
"They're booing us," Luigi lamented, "I'm awfully sorry, Ike."
"Get off of me!" Fox shoved Luigi off of him, stood up and brushed himself off.
"I think this is our worst performance yet." Peach's innocent voice was nearly muted by the excess amount of verbal abuse from the audience.
The moment was shattered by the brief noise of glass shattering, and the audience went from grumpy to happy in a mere minute. Fox, Peach and Ike looked at each other as clueless as someone put in a round room who was told to sit in the corner. Then Ike looked the other way and saw Luigi glowing with an eerie aura. Its glow got stronger for every demon Luigi had infested himself with.
"Luigi...? How...?"
"You didn't a watch the ball. You never expected a tired plumber to have a knack for this kind of thing." Luigi's left eye drifted its gaze away from himself.
Peach and Fox opposed him with a fierce stance, though Peach didn't want to hurt Luigi any further. Ike stood dumbfound, he hadn't seen someone react to smash balls this way. He hoped it was the last he'll ever see of it.
"Of course nobody expects anything from the king of second bananas!" Luigi unleashed his negative zone, it draped the entire stage, even consuming the screaming audience. They got more than their money's worth for sure. Luigi's jaw had dislocated itself from all the laughing that erupted from him, every minute a ghost escaped his throat and slithered around until it found someone to constrict. Ike, Peach and Fox were cornered at the edge as these ghosts taunted them with goofy grins. Ike slashed at them in vain, it didn't work, they were immortalized in smoke.
"If only we knew, if only we cared!" Peach screamed.
"How were we supposed to know?" Fox groaned.
"I think you guys need more guts! I don't care, I'm going in!" Ike growled, rushing through the laughing smoke demons, ready to slice up his partner.
Luigi's power grew weaker with every ghost escaping from him, and Ike had to stop it before it was too late. He closed his eyes as he swung his sword, a clean shot. Too clean. He opened his eyes only to find Luigi wasn't there, something else knocked him over. The negative zone shrivelled a bit before it began to shrink back into the unconscious plumber's heart slowly. Ike hurried to Luigi's side, where he was soon crowded with Fox and Peach as well.
"Did you see what happened?" Ike questioned the two.
"He was hit by a blindingly fast arrow, it seemed." Fox spoke almost voicelessly.
"Was Link in the crowd or something?" Peach squeaked, looking around for any sign of Link or Pit's presence, "no, it appears they aren't here."
Just when the negative zone was nearly absorbed, a shadowy arrow knocked the plumber's body again, the impact rolled him a few feet further.
"Look!" Fox shook Ike's shoulder, "up there! That's no arrow!" The shadow sped up towards the ceiling and faded before it could be identified.
Paramedics hurried onto the stage carrying various medical equipment not known to the fighters. Doctor Mario stepped all over them to get a hold of Luigi's wrist. His eyes focused up and down a non-existent object before he came to a conclusion.
"He's a gone! No breathing, no heartbeat whatsoever. Or as the machine tells you, a long beep, zippo, nothing, just a calm flat line."
The fighters flinched as if hit by a shock wave. Peach's eyes began to harbour some genuine warm tears. Ike looked back up where the shadow disappeared. Then he confronted part of the audience with an angry countenance, looking for signs of who did it.
"Show yourself, coward! You'll get no sympathy from me!" His voice echoed. The audience members had fallen silent. Some people became sullen, they weren't Luigi's fans, but they still cared.
"Who would kill off our poor, innocent-"
"Save it for later!" Fox interrupted Peach, who held Luigi's shell of a body and shut his empty eyes. The paramedics plucked Luigi from Peach's hold and laid him on a stretcher before laying on a thin blanket.
They hauled him away, their faces blank from being desensitized to carrying people to their last resting place. Much later, Ike had called out Link and Pit to get answers.
"A flat line? That's a weird way of describing it," The angel had his cheek in the palm of his hand.
"Sorry Ike, I wasn't there. It really wasn't any of us." Link spoke. He rarely did and never explained why.
"Fine, you two don't have any answers. I'll just go back to the scene of the crime and look for clues." Ike's bitterness surprised the two archers who shrugged simultaneously in agreement.
"We'll come with you." Link gestured.
"Fine," had his back turned to them, "come along. Remember, this is serious!" He gave a cold look at them over his shoulder.
The air stood still as the three of them entered. It looked like how it did during the incident, except Pit had found some blood spatter towards the edge. Beside that spatter was a note which wasn't there before.
"Hey guys, look at this!"
"Why didn't I see that before, when the incident happened?" Ike slapped his forehead.
The note read "His demons are gone, so is his soul. It was too absorbed in the negative energy he carried with him. Better off good and dead than evil and alive, don't you say?"