Several hours later…

"Hum de dum," Luigi entertained himself by applying random notes to these sounds. "Hum de dum, de dum hum, hum hum de dum dum de dum."

"Luigi, you've been doing that for the past four hours... Stop. Now." Mario narrowed his eyes threateningly, his orange hands forming an orange fireball.

"Gee, the weather's nice out today!" Luigi burst out. "And boy, was it lucky for us those construction guys left these bright, orange cones out here or what? Why, we're practically invisible next to these! It's perfect camouflage!" he patted one of the vibrantly colored, plastic cones.

Mario sighed, rolling his eyes, "Oh yeah, nobody's going to notice a couple of orange colored guys pretending to be traffic cones."

"I knew you'd agree!" Luigi's eyes shone with happiness. He glanced over his shoulder for no reason in particular, and saw… "GASP!" he ducked behind a traffic cone, pulling Mario with him, "It's the purple shy-guy!"

And so it was. Still wearing his yellow, polka-dotted party hat with its plate of piping-hot spaghetti and meatballs balanced on top, the shy-guy came walking down the street.

Mario and Luigi held perfectly still as the purple shy-guy passed by their hiding place. He was so close, they could have reached out an grabbed one of the mondo-sized meatballs from the plate balanced on his hat. The spaghetti smelled incredibly delicious.

He's so close, but we still don't know what he's doing! Ack! The suspense! It's tearing apart my very being! I can feel it… tearing… Luigi was in the midst of going insane, well, more insane, as the purple shy-guy walked by, when he suddenly noticed that Mario was about to do the worst possible thing that could ever be done when working undercover as a traffic cone. Mario was about to sneeze.

"Ah…" Mario closed his eyes and inhaled.

"NO!" Luigi screamed, clapping both hands over Mario's mouth and nose.

The purple shy-guy stopped.

Oh no! I just blew our cover! Luigi thought, holding as still as possible, hands still over Mario's mouth and nose.

The purple shy-guy slo-o-owly turned to face them. He looked directly at Luigi.

Luigi looked directly at the purple shy-guy.

The purple shy-guy cocked his head to the side, steadying the plate of spaghetti with one hand. "?" he squeaked questioningly and walked right up to Luigi, not quite sure what he was looking at.

Luigi didn't move. He didn't think. He didn't breathe.

The purple shy-guy stared at him for an immeasurable length of time (half a minute). Then, suddenly, and without warning, he took one of his little, purple hands, and gave Luigi a good hard poke, right in the middle of his big, tomato-shaped nose. The poke lasted several seconds, in which, to Luigi, it felt like his nose had been stuffed back into his head. Then, satisfied, the purple shy-guy turned and continued on his merry little way.

As soon as he was a good distance away, Mario threw Luigi's hands off his face, gasping for air, "What are you trying to do! Suffocate me!"

"Owie…" Luigi was too busy rubbing his slightly red-orange colored nose to hear.

Mario's anger was washed instantly away by his brother's pain. "… you okay, bro?"

"Yeah…" Luigi sniffed, "It didn't hurt, I just… I just… I just… he POKED me!"

Mario fished a Band-aid out of his overall pocket, "Here you go. This ought to fix things up."

Luigi carefully applied the bandage to his nose, and was cheered instantly, "Thanks, Mario! You're the best brother ever!"

"That's me." Mario put an arm around his admiring sibling, "Now, let's go home and get something to eat! All this detective-ing has made me pretty hungry."

Luigi turned back to look for the purple shy-guy, "Wait, we might still be able to catch him!"

"He's long gone by now, weege." Mario shook his head.

Luigi caught a glimpse of the purple shy-guy as he disappeared around the corner, "No he's not! We can still catch up! Come on! We've got to go after him!"

He grabbed Mario's sleeve and rocketed after the purple shy-guy.