Now frozen in fear, Luigi watches the bob-omb step closer to him. Peach turns around, seeing her green friend terrified. She rushes over, parasol in hand, and smacks the Bob-omb away, causing it to collide with a nearby fly guy.

Peach offers him a hand up and he accepts it. Around them, the enemies just kept on coming.

"There's too many of them! We can't fight them all," Peach said, batting off a stack of Goombas.

"We need to go! We're almost to the portal. Run!" Dreambert advised.

Peach and Luigi gladly took this advice and bolted towards the portal, jumping on or over any enemy that stood in their path.

Not too long later, they stopped right outside the portal. Its multicolored swirls were both relieving and mesmerizing to look at. Luigi offered to jump in first. Bending his legs, he jumped to the portal, his head hitting on something before he fell to the ground.

Dreambert flew over to him, the look on his face clearly showed he had forgotten about something. "Oh my," he began, "I may have forgotten that you... can't actually leave..." he smiled sheepishly.

"What?! You're saying we spent all this time looking for him and we can't even get him out of here?" Peach nearly shouted. Dreambert pursed his lips and nodded, floating back about a foot.

Peach wasn't about to take that as an answer. She was determined to get Luigi out of this dream. Grabbing him by the wrist, Peach jumped to the portal, she made it through, but her arm was snagged partway through.

Now halfway out of the portal, Peach held Luigi's hands trying to pull him through. An invisible barrier was preventing him from doing so. The pressure of being forced through this pressed hard against his hands. Luigi gritted his teeth in pain.

"Peach!" Dreambert shouted, "Stop! This isn't going to work!" Peach ignored his shouts, she was determined to wake her friend up.

Mario looked up, confused. Seeing Peach dangling from the portal made him think something was going on. His first instinct was to jump up, hold her by the waist, and pull her down. It didn't work. He planted his feet onto the bed and continued to pull, despite not knowing what was going on.

Back in the dream world, Dreambert noticed the pain that Luigi felt was only increased, more pressure was being forced upon him. That was until a loud crack could be heard throughout both worlds. Luigi suddenly jolted into the portal, not through the portal, just into it. He, Mario, and Peach were thrown off guard. Dreambert, on the other hand, knew what was coming next. His eyes widened as he poofed out of existence from the dream world.

Not even a second later, the dream portal exploded, throwing Mario and Peach across the small room.

Luigi's eyes snapped open, him shooting up from the bed. He looked around confused, trying to figure out what had just happened, as his rapid breathing began to slow. His temporary look of confusion faded to a relieved smile. Mario sat up, rubbing his head from the recent blast, looked up to his brother, returning the look. Peach sat up next, dizzied. She blinked her eyes as her vision slowly returned to her. Looking up to the bed, she squinted, a green blur looking down to her. Her vision returned, it was nothing more than her friend smiling at her. A smile formed on her face as well.

Luigi was awake.

~~~~~

The first thing Mr. L wanted to do was to escape his lousy getup. Having finally freed himself from Luigi's mind, he was in similar clothes to his green dopplegänger. He headed back to Mario and Luigi's house. He may not have ever stepped foot in the real world, but he certainly knew his way around.

Upon arriving, he went straight for the closet, knowing full well that Luigi never bothered to throw out what he was looking for. Tucked in the corner of his closet was a small blue box labeled 'costumes'. Mr. L rolled his eyes as he took off the lid and removed a pink dress from the top of the old pile of clothes. Underneath that, was a pitch-black jumpsuit neatly folded with a similar cap to his own, this one with a black emblem and mirrored 'L', placed neatly on top of it.

He smiled maliciously as he took them out of the box. He looked at his new attire and laughed to himself, "Guess who's back!"