#001. Race to the Finish

Starring:
Ness
Yoshi
Captain Falcon
Samus


"Air travel!" Yoshi yelled.

"Land travel!" Ness shouted back.

The two were butting heads – or rather, Yoshi's giant sphere of a nose was squishing in what could be interpreted as an aggressive manner against Ness's forehead – as they stood on their tippy-toes and repeated, over and over again, which of the two mediums of traveling was what each genuinely believed to be the faster mode of transport.

"You're only saying air travel is faster because you have the fastest air speed in the game!" Ness growled, rising just an inch higher as he barely scrapped the inside of his shoes by the tip of his toenails.

"And you're only saying land travel is faster because – well, because you're stupid, that's why!" was the green dinosaur's retort.

"Well, you know there's only one way to settle this," Ness harrumphed as he stood back and crossed his arms over chest.

"Yeah," Yoshi agreed, eyes still angry as he, too, backed off.

"We're going to have the Ultimate Race to the Death as I steal Captain Falcon's Blue Falcon and you steal Samus's Gunship, and prove once and for all which of the two ways of travelling is faster!" Ness declared.

"Yeah, tot – wait, what?!" The anger in Yoshi's voice disappeared in a fraction of a second as he gazed at Ness with jaw dropped in perplexed disbelief. "What did you just say?"

"We're going to have the Ultimate Race to the Death around this mansion. First one to the Western Wing –"

"No, man, after that! Did you say we're stealing from Falcon and Samus?"

"Oh. Oh yeah. Should be a piece of cake – we just need to swipe their keys from them –"

"I'm not stealing shit, man! Do you want them to kill us or something?!"

This time it was Ness's turn to be confused as he frowned at Yoshi's vehement denial in what he clearly saw as an innocent theft. "Well, how else were you planning to prove which form of transport is the faster option?"

"Smoogling it." Yoshi answered the question in a voice that seemed to imply Ness had asked something more along the lines of whether he had a penis or a vagina between his own legs.

"Checking stuff on Smoogle is for people with vaginas between their legs," Ness simpered with a smirk as he closed his eyes and shook his head. "So is that it, Yoshi? Do you have a vagina between your legs?"

"I have a cloaca, you bigoted privatist," Yoshi said hotly. "Which, for your info, is –"

" – the reptile version of a vagina," Ness finished for Yoshi as he gazed mockingly at Yoshi's smooth white underbelly. "It must be true. I see nothing dangling there! Unless you have a picopenis, which is the same thing, really –"

"A cloaca –!" Yoshi tried to finish desperately.

"You have a picopenis? That's tragic," Ness drowned out as he stuffed his fingers into his ears. "It's OK, Yoshi, plenty of people survive with tiny dicks their whole life – I mean, they're always in the air all the time, so they don't really have much of a chance to use it anyway, if you see what I mean –"

"That's fucking it," Yoshi cried exasperatedly as he grabbed Ness by the collar and pulled him to the door. "It's on. I'll beat you so hard you'll become my own submissive little bitch and I'll make you suck my cloaca. I'll make you suck it hard until I don't need to lay eggs on my own no more!"

And with that threat of hardcore bestiality left hanging in Ness's room, the two made their descent to the communal hangar of the Smash Mansion.


The Hangar of the Smash Mansion was one of those facilities that weren't part of the main building. It was instead located toward the far right behind the mansion, separated due to the sheer size and number of vehicles, as well as the space needed in creating runways. The Star Fox crew's Arwings and Landmasters, a single Pork Bean Lucas had somehow managed to steal from the Pigmask Army, Meta Knight's Halberd – and, of course, Captain Falcon's Blue Falcon and Samus's Gunship. The fact that the latter two were stationed right next to each other also made it rather easy for Falcon to strike up a conversation with Samus, which, depending on which of the two you asked, was either a blessing of the ages or a cancerous curse.

"Hey, Samus," Captain Falcon said in his most bravado voice, throwing out his chest and stiffening his arms as Samus, decked out in her Zero Suit, walked past him.

"Falcon," she replied curtly without even looking at him, keeping her eyes trained on her ship in front of her.

"Where are you off to on this lovely winter morning?" Falcon cut across Samus's direct path and leaned against the hood of his Blue Falcon, flexing his right arm purposefully as he continued to exemplify his chest muscles against the tightness of his suit. His eyes slipped, just for a second, down from Samus's face to her chest, but he immediately shot them back up before the offense could elicit a response. Good, he was improving. Maybe he wouldn't get a heel to his eye this time…

"Galactic Federation's measured some suspicious activity going on in Bryyo. They're fearing some kind of resurgence from scattered Space Pirates. Thought I might go over there and see what the hassle's all about." She glared lightly at Falcon, who continued to flash what he thought was his most winning smile. "So if you would please excuse me…"

"You know," Captain Falcon said slowly as he pulled himself up from the Blue Falcon and rose to his full height, "I will never understand why a girl like you would want to go out and put her life on the line when she can snuggle up and feel like the safest thing in the world with her head resting on the pillow of my fifteen inch biceps that promise super sexy times and absolute safety from whatever meanie alien might wanna gobble you up." He didn't exactly tower over her, but he was a noticeable head or two taller as he approached slowly, looking dominantly down into her eyes as he got within what people would call "awkward kissing distance" if the two were actually on a date. He pulled up his arms and struck a magnificent front double biceps pose to just show how much of a super sexy time he could offer. "If you get what I mean, eh, Samus?"

"Falcon, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times," Samus sighed, staring right back up at Falcon with a roll of her eyes. "No, Falcon. A million, billion, trillion fucking times no. I have absolutely no interest in –"

"What if Falcon's actually successful this time?" Yoshi whispered from behind several of the karts that the Mario Kart crew kept inside the Hangar. They were close enough to see clearly that Captain Falcon was making his umpteenth move in getting Samus to date him but far away enough so that neither party was at risk of being overheard. Ness shook his head and looked at Yoshi as though he was crazy. "This is Falcon we're talking about," he said simply. And that's all he needed to say.

"You know, maybe this isn't such a good idea," Yoshi muttered as he felt his stomach do a quick flip when his eyes ran over the cold, metallic exterior of Samus's Gunship. "I mean – it's Falcon and Samus we're stealing from here. They'll kill us if we're not already dead by the time we've blown everything up!"

"So basically what you're saying is that you have a vagina between your legs, you big green pussy."

"What is it," Yoshi snarled as he smacked Ness on the back of his head, "with you and vaginas between people's legs? Samus has a vagina between hers and she kicks ass, you sexist piece of crap!"

"So basically you're not denying that you have a vagina between your legs."

"I have a fucking cloaca."

"Vagina."

"Fuck you, man. If I fucking win this shit you are listening to what the fuck a cloaca is."

"Whatever, dude."

"– and I know most people here like to think of me as an aloof, cold-hearted bitch," Samus was finishing, eyes still glaring sternly into Falcon's, "but the truth is, Falcon, I'd really like to go by one day where I don't have to knock your fucking teeth in. So please, while I'm asking you nicely. Get out of my way."

Douglas Jay Falcon was not the slightest bit intimidated as he continued to flash that stupid smile, refusing to budge a single inch. Samus sighed again and was just about to zip out her Paralyzer when Falcon spoke up. "You know what, you're right. I really am getting sick of all this abuse from you." He pulled down the gloves of both hands, ensuring they fit tightly over his fingers as he scrunched them into a fist, before flashing a different kind of smile, the smile he always struck up before he punched the shit out of someone. "How about I knock your teeth in for a change?"

Samus was stunned, and all for the better. It was pleasantly surprising – no, ecstatically surprising that Falcon had said those words, for anything, anything, even the threat of violence that would render her toothless, was better than Falcon refusing her refusal and attempting to make out with her anyway. It showed progress, a real improvement in character, as Falcon was finally ready to call it quits and perhaps move on to set his sights on another woman; and though the act of male violence upon a woman would be frowned upon by nearly everyone else, Samus was more than willing to welcome it with open arms, for it represented a drastic shift from infatuation to physical hatred, a shift she had been longing for ever since the days of 64. She softened her fierce expression considerably as she felt a rush of gratitude and minor affection overcome her slightly, and opened her mouth to congratulate Falcon on his brave acceptance of the unfair ways of the world.

"Why Falcon, I –"

"I mean, I probably can't help but to knock out a molar or two, what with my super manly dick in your mou –"

"Oh, why must the universe be so cruel?" Samus sighed bitterly as she immediately kicked Falcon across the cheeks before proceeding to pound him down to the ground with a combination of her fists, heels, and Plasma Whip.

"Ah, there it is," Ness grinned as he watched the brutal maiming of Falcon take place for quite possibly the millionth time. "Well, that's our cue. You ready, you big pussy?"

"Cloaca."

"If calling it that makes you happy." And with a great pull of mental energy, Ness bent his knees slightly as circles of yellow light pulsated from his body. "PK Flash!" he uttered, and a throbbing burst of green light emerged from the top of his head, growing bigger and brighter as it made its slow arc to the scene of the rather one-sided scuffle.

They didn't even know what hit them. Samus felt a little strange… Almost as if a Metroid had latched itself to her head, draining her of her life energy and nearly stripping her of any ability to think rationally as she began to punch and kick blindly into the air. Captain Falcon just could not stop crying as he sobbed his poor super manly eyes out, as though the weight of all delayed sadness from the countless rejections had finally caught up to him in an explosion of light and was now wearing at the fluids of his eyes. He kneeled on the ground, slamming his right fist onto the floor and screaming repeatedly, "Why! Why! Why!"

"Now!" Ness shouted, leaping from his cover. Yoshi hesitated, a war raging inside him as his mind debated whether or not it really was worth risking theft, grievous injuries, and heavy collateral damage all at once just to prove that he did not have a vagina between his legs. Then his cloaca scolded him, screaming at him for even considering allowing the injustice of ignorance towards reptilian reproductive and digestive organs to continue, and Yoshi felt his legs spring into action as he, too, jumped from behind the karts to rush towards the two dazed bounty hunters.

"Ha!" Ness shouted with glee as he swiped Falcon's Driver Card (NOT CANON) from his pocket. He held it against the black hood of the Blue Falcon, which had been incorporated with some futuristic scanning device. It was sometime in the year 2560 (or even later) where Captain Falcon came from, after all, and the black pane of the glass that covered the cockpit and the pilot tube emitted brief lines of green upon its surface as it confirmed the identity encoded in the card. Then, with barely a squeak, the hood opened up to offer to Ness a sleek, leather plush of a seat, albeit much too long for his small, thirteen-year old body as he jumped right in.

"Hurry up!" he cried to Yoshi. The dinosaur had taken much longer to find Samus's equally hyper-futuristic Energy Key thingy (ONCE AGAIN, NOT CANON), and at present was flutter jumping his way up to the top of Samus's Gunship. He slammed the unlocking crystal of energy into the circular hatch, which then proceeded to open immediately and swallow Yoshi into the body of the Gunship.

He did not know what to do, at first. He sat down on the central chair of her cockpit, watching with awe as the interior of the windshield turned into an HUD. A myriad of foreign shapes and symbols greeted him, each flashing a different color as they waited for the command of his fingers. He was just about to touch something when he heard the Blue Falcon roar to life and saw it streak past the Gunship.

"Cheater!" Yoshi cried. Doubly unfortunate was the fact that Ness had slammed right into Captain Falcon and Samus, sending both flying high into the air, before one of the bounty hunters landed with a splat against the exterior windshield of the Gunship.

"You!" Samus screamed as she snapped out of it. Her squished face contorted into that of the wildest rage when she saw that someone was in her spaceship.

"Gah!" With a terrified shriek Yoshi began pressing the buttons on the HUD at random. By a bizarre stroke of luck, the combination he had pressed was just the right ones to start up the Gunship. The four thrusters at the bottom of the Gunship began spitting high-velocity bursts of flame and then he was off, smashing the desperately hanging Samus into a wall, a Landmaster, and the Halberd, before she finally let go. It was a wonder how she managed to hang on despite being bodily crushed three grand times, a fact made only clearer by the huge dents that Yoshi had made in all three of them.

"Arrrgh!" Samus growled a groan of pain as she fell to the concrete floor on her back. She ignored the multiple areas of her body screaming of agony, agony, agony as she tried to get up, but the gods of slapstick comedy were not yet done with her, as Captain Falcon fell from the ceiling and crushed her under the weight of his super manly sexy body.

It was then that Samus decided to take a second to catch her breath. The last time she had flown into uncontrollable rage, she had to take a hefty amount from her Smash Bank account to pay for the reconstruction of half of the Mansion. She inhaled deeply, exhaled in a dragged, forceful kind of way. She repeated the procedure about fifteen times for a full minute, and when she finally felt ready enough to tackle the latest problem in her hectic life in a calm, organized fashion, she gently shook the dazed Captain by his shoulder.

"Falcon," she called out, still fighting to keep her voice under control, "snap out of it." Then she took a better look at him and realized that he wasn't actually unconscious, but rather had been taking advantage of the recent circumstances to motorboat her boobs, doing so in an inconspicuous way so as to not alert her out of the immersion of her calming exercises.

Samus was ready to get into action after four more minutes of breathing in and out.

"Listen up, Falcon," she barked as Captain Falcon looked back with an engorged lip, puffed-up cheeks, and a swollen right eye that manifested itself by blacking out the shine of the triangle on the right side of his visor. "Our mission now is to reclaim our respective vehicles and ensure that the perpetrators are dealt with… Severely." She emphasized this nastily with a crackle of her Plasma Whip. "I've already confirmed the identity of the thief who made off with my Gunship. It's Yoshi. He's going on a trip, in my favorite rocket ship –"

"Zooming through the skies, Little ~" Captain Falcon suddenly sang, before Samus punched him across the face, causing a brief fountain of spit to fly out from his mouth as she shouted, "This is serious, Douglas Jay Falcon! Now you go out there with me and get my ship back! This is all your fault – if you just faced facts and understood that you and I are never going to be together, then Yoshi would never have been able to steal my ship in the first place! So get a move on, buster!"

The only thing that was made immediately clear to Captain Falcon as he readjusted his helmet was that Samus needed his help. And if there was one thing he knew more than anything else, it was that the first sign of a budding romance was when a woman asked you for help. Without a moment of hesitation he stood tall and proud, straightened up his chin, and saluted his trademark salute. "Yes, ma'am!" he cried with earnest determination, and before Samus could even blink he was out of there, legs turning into a system of rapidly pumping pistons, forcing Samus to literally eat the dust he kicked up as she tried desperately to catch up.


"Wooooooooooooo hoooooooooooooo!" Ness screamed with jubilant glee as he pushed the Blue Falcon into full throttle. All the things outside that he could barely see were blurring into stretched objects to form a contorted scenery of abstract shapelessness, until he hit a particularly deep patch of snow and all he could see then was nothing but white.

Chortling, Ness turned on the "wipers for snow" button. The glass dome that housed him safely in the Blue Falcon began to heat itself to a warm-enough temperature, and the snow melted away like a liquid curtain –

– to reveal the hard, brick wall of the Smash Mansion, standing immutably in place as Ness, too late, reached his hands for the steering wheel.

"Oh shit –"


"Two more cards guys!" Toon Link announced as he climbed off the step ladder, brushing the sweat from his forehead as he did. There were cheers and applause from his friends, Lucas and Vill (male Villager), from below, though the movement was somewhat restrained in order to prevent any accidents that might demolish the towering house of cards they had been building in the Dining Hall the past four hours. Toon handed the last two cards to Vill and pointed to the very top of the castle, which now waited for a single triangle to tip off its peak. "You know what to do, Vill," Toon Link said as he patted Vill on the shoulder. Vill nodded, took the cards from Toon's hands, and began floating up with his balloons, carefully controlling his ascent so as not to disturb a single card. Toon and Lucas looked up with bated breaths, the former's hands locked together to form a praying fist, the latter brushing a tear from his eye.

"Think we'll get the one million Smash dollars award for Nintendo's biggest card castle now?" Lucas asked, fighting to keep his voice from quivering.

"Without a doubt," Toon Link breathed as he readied his Picto Box. The two boys watched Villager extend his arms, cards held perfectly still in his hands, slowly advancing towards the flat top of the incomplete castle –

CRRRAAAASSSSHHHH!

It was over in a flash. The next thing Toon Link and Lucas knew, they were watching the back of the Blue Falcon as it streaked past them like a bullet. It turned over tables and crashed through another wall leading up to the Bathrooms, leaving a blasted hole much like the one behind them. Cards fluttered down like raining feathers over the two boys' speechless forms, which continued to remain petrified even as their friend fell with a splat face-first onto the table they were building the house of cards on, a result of his balloons being popped by a speeding mad man.


"Ahhhh," Mario sighed as he stepped into the heat and the steam issuing from the torrent of water spraying from the showerhead. Nothing like a good old, hot shower to stave the cold of winter away, isn't there? Mario felt a tune escape his lips and before he knew it, he was humming the tune of the original Super Mario Bros. in a surprisingly good baritone voice, as warmth cascaded over his naked body in the privacy of –

CRRRAAAASSSSHHHH!

Gone was the water, gone was the steam, gone was the heat. Mario could only feel confusion and discomfort and cold as his entire body pressed against the glass of the Blue Falcon, his naked form exposed proudly for the little boy inside to admire.

"Oh my delicate little eyes!" Ness screamed as he immediately cupped his sockets and looked away. Luckily, the round handle of a lever was acting as an effective censor bar, saving the readers from the finer details of Mario's penis, a quality that would have otherwise lent this story an 'M' rating. Gagging, Ness jabbed the button to activate the wipers. At the same time, the Blue Falcon crashed through another wall, back into the wintery cold of the outdoors. The result was that Mario was swept away from the windshield at a velocity exceeding that of a freight train, sending him tumbling into a world of arctic cold and frostbite.

"Awhahahahaha!" Ness heard him scream even as the distance between them grew at an exponential rate.

"Focus, Ness," the hijacking youngster whispered to himself as the Blue Falcon shakily landed back onto the runway outside. "You just gotta get to the West Wing before Yoshi does. No more crashing through the Mansion – if Master Hand gets a hold of you –"

Shaking his head, Ness kept a firm grip on the wheel, determined to prove once and for all that travelling on land was far superior to travelling in the air.


Yoshi was in a similar predicament, for the Gunship offered completely alien controls from the simplistic kart driving techniques he was used to. He tried desperately to fly the Gunship in a different direction, pressing buttons at random. From outside, one could see the Gunship fly in a repetitive trajectory as though it was following the path of a sinusoidal wave. Then it deployed an orange parachute, released a horde of Metroids from its bottom, and spewed brown exhaust gas that spelled the words "Other M sucks shit", all before it crashed through the upper walls of the mansion.

CRRRAAAASSSSHHHH!

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" Yoshi cursed as the rubbles of brick and wood bounced off the windshield. Once the dust had cleared, Yoshi was momentarily surprised that he had crashed through the topmost floor of the Eastern Wing, which was where his room was. By a second chance of luck, he somehow managed to navigate the Gunship through the just-wide-enough space of the corridor instead of crashing through the rooms of the various residents, though this did not stop Zelda and Wiiliam (male Wii Fit Trainer) from having the shock of their lives as the Gunship barely grazed their frozen bodies.

"Why would Samus fly her Gunship through here?!" Wiiliam cried, once he had finally found his tongue.

"I don't think it was Samus in there," Zelda muttered in a faint voice, one hand clutching her chest. "She always was very responsible with how she flew her Gunship."

"Then who else could it have been?"

"I don't know." Zelda shook her head, the color slowly returning to her pale face. "I don't know." She stared intently at the back of the Gunship as it did a somersault and crashed through to the lower floors. "But whoever it was, it kind of looked like he had a vagina between his legs."


It was a guilty, secret pleasure of Master Hand to give himself weekly manicures on Saturdays. He would lock himself in his right-handed study, take out his collection of nail polishes from his super secret right-handed vault, and sit himself in his right-handed couch as he lavishly painted the area where his nails would be if he wasn't actually a giant right glove. He would then get up, admire his handiwork in his right-handed mirror, and then wash off the chemicals with his right-handed sink, his form to be white for the remainder of the week until the next Saturday.

This Saturday was no different. Master Hand lied on his giant right-handed couch, lost in his own blissful little right-handed world as he painted his thumb a richly lavender pink, an act he was absolutely sure would remain his dirty little secret for the rest of his life, when suddenly –

CRRRAAAASSSSHHHH!

"Eeeeek!" Master Hand shrieked as he got up instantly, knocking over several bottles of nail polish as he did so. The colors spewed together to form a rainbow pool of shimmering colors as he thrashed around on the ground, which was his go-to instinctual move when he felt physically threatened. When he realized he was not under attack, he slowly got up, and, to his horror, noticed the mess of the nail polish on the floor, starkly visible for whoever was inside the Gunship (and he had a very good idea who it was) to see.

The Gunship even seemed to take its time to absorb the details of the scene, hovering there slowly as its front faced the calamity of Master Hand's embarrassing secret-sorry-no-longer-a-secret. Then it turned to Master Hand, as though gloating in the light of this new information, before it turned around and speeded away, taking a huge chunk of Master Hand's wall and his ego along with it.

Of course, what had actually happened was that Yoshi was desperately trying to figure out how to get the hell out of Master Hand's study before the hand came and brutally smashed the Gunship apart. In the dinosaur's panicked haste he didn't even realize that Master Hand had been taking part in such feminine activity that severely undermined the macho image of a manly right hand he had been building up for years. He was just glad that he had escaped the whole ordeal unscathed, and was back outside, finally getting an inkling of how to control the starship as he made his way to the West Wing, where the predetermined finish line was.

"Focus, Yoshi," the hijacking dinosaur whispered to himself. "You just gotta get to the West Wing before Ness does. No more crashing through the Mansion – if Master Hand gets a hold of you –"

Shaking his head, Yoshi kept a firm grip on the control wheel, determined to prove once and for all that travelling in the air was far superior to travelling on land… And that he did not have a vagina between his legs.


"You're the second fastest character in the entire game, Falcon," Samus was bellowing as she turned her head around, "so why on Zebes are you running slower than me?!"

The answer became clear to Samus during the brief instance she caught Falcon looking down to where her gluteus maximus was before he quickly shot his eyes back up and put on a front of being out of breath. "Hoh my God!" he gasped as he bent his back slightly and clutched his knees with his hands. "I'm out of breath already! I'm impressed, Samus. You sure as hell are way fitter than me, stamina-wise. OK, I gave you a compliment, which Mario said will always work. Now will you go on a date with me?"

Samus let out a nasty snarl and skidded to a halt, spraying the pavement with snow as she turned her entire body around to face Falcon.

"I'm just going to let you know that the chances of my dating anyone who proves himself to be physically weaker than me is about as small as a Metroid's asshole. Now, I'm not sure about you, but –"

She did not need to say any more. Captain Falcon was ahead of her before she could even finish the beginning syllable of the next word, now forcing her to literally eat the snow he was spraying behind him. He was so quick that he didn't even notice that he was stampeding through a line of Koopalings, who had all gathered outside to play a game of Clown Car Hopscotch. The result was a spectacular showing of eight, mostly-round bodies flying vertically through the air, with each Koopaling letting out screams of pain before every single one of them fell head-first back onto the pavement.

"I am so fucking sorry for that!" Samus yelled back as she ran past their flailing bodies, though evidently not sorry enough to stop and repair the carnage. "Here – buy yourselves all an ice cream or something –" she threw a platinum Smash coin behind her, but quite unfortunately Bowser Jr. just happened to stick his head out from underneath the Clown Car, and was greeted with a metal to the left eye.

Samus heard the screeches of ensuing pain and gritted her teeth, willing herself to ignore her own little destruction that she had so unwillingly inflicted.

"Yoshi, you are so going to die for this!"


It was about that time when the race came to its conclusion. Just as the nose of the Blue Falcon edged past the evergreen tree at the Western Wing of the Smash Mansion which Ness and Yoshi had decided would be the finishing point, the Gunship crash-landed right on top of the Blue Falcon. There was an explosion of snow and fire, of noise and light, and when the dust finally settled and everything came to a standstill, those who happened to be looking would see the Blue Falcon, perfectly intact, and the Gunship, now with its entire top half ripped cleanly off.

The door to the Blue Falcon flung open, revealing Ness, whose pupils were orbiting within his eyes. He shook his head and looked to Yoshi, who was just snapping out of his own confusion. The moment the two locked eyes…

"I got here first!" both cried.

"You did not!" they screamed in unison again.

"Bull-fucking-shit!" was their simultaneous answer.

"Listen, you prehistoric imbecile," Ness roared as he unbuckled his seat belt, "it's obvious that travelling on land is way faster than travelling through the air! It was a close race, but I got here first, fair and square!"

"Fair and square my ass!" Yoshi scoffed as he spat out a chalkboard and a chalk from his secondary stomach. "You started earlier, you stupid cheat, so the fact that I still won you shows that travelling aerially is way better than travelling on land! Now you listen to what a cloaca is –" he threatened as he began to draw a rather detailed anatomy of the male Yoshi "– or I swear, if you tell me I have a vagina between my legs ever again –!"

"NESS! YOSHI!"

The two clammed up immediately and turned, slowly, horrified, at the source of their shouted names. Falcon was skidding to a halt before them, striking yet another one of his fancy manly super sexy poses as he stretched his arms in a forty-five degree angle, like the time in the Subspace Emissary when he jumped out of his Blue Falcon to Falcon Punch the giant R.O.B. and ended up ploughing through Olimar's Pikmins.

He surveyed the scene before him. He looked at Ness and Yoshi gazing back at him, sensing the fear of holy punishment in their eyes. He studied the wrecked-beyond-fixing Gunship, now lying as a heap of halved metal before him, and was just about to scream at Yoshi to hopefully make a good impression of himself when Samus arrived. Then his eyes caught sight of his Blue Falcon and his jaws dropped.

"It – it – it –" Captain Falcon stuttered as he pointed to his cherished racecar. "It – it –" He gulped and tried again. "It – did she win? Did she win the Gunship?"

Ness realized what was going on, that the pride of a racer was battling with the infatuated desires of a lowly man. Quickly he shot a warning look to Yoshi to stay quiet before he nodded in response.

"With – without a single scratch?" Falcon whispered.

"Yeah – yes," Ness croaked, casting a quick glance at the sides of the racecar to ensure that the Blue Falcon really was in the pristine condition he claimed it to be.

Slowly Captain Falcon's face stretched into a wide smile as the racer within executed its finishing punches to the helpless, testosterone-driven manly man. Then, once the latter was finally beaten to a pulp, the true blue racer finally rushed forward with both hands out to high-five Ness. "YES!" he said in his famous Captain Falcon-y trademark voice. "Way to do the Blue Falcon proud! You're a real good racer, Ness – you might even be almost as good as me one day –"

"Thanks Falcon," Ness grinned as he held up his palms to receive the high-five. They slapped palms, exchanged gloating cheers, and to top it all off, Falcon turned to Yoshi and smirked, "Well, I guess this proves that he has a vagina between his legs, doesn't it?"

"WHAT?" Yoshi cried, nearly screamed, hardly believing the audacious words he was hearing. Ness doubled over in laughter as Falcon adopted a more impartial position to address them both. "Man, I really do have to thank the two of you, come to think of it. Because of you guys, I actually managed to motorboat Samus's boobs! And you know what they say – the way to a woman's heart is through motorboating her boobs! I'll be getting that date in no time!"

"Nice one, Falcon!" Ness cheered, somewhat confused by what Falcon had just said but not willing to risk questioning it. They were getting off incredibly lightly, and now the only thing that remained was to get away before the she-devil herself made her pernicious appearance. "Uh, now, if you don't mind, Yoshi and I probably really should –"

"NESS! YOSHI!"

Too late. The two clammed up immediately and turned, slowly, horrified, at the source of their shouted names. Samus was still quite a fair distance away, but she was close enough to see the irreparable damage done to her Gunship. For a second the world seemed to have split itself into two as Samus's eyes bulged with disbelief and a terrifying wrath rivaling that of an enraged god. Then, with deliberately slow motions to emphasize the very death which they were about to suffer in a few seconds, she took out her Plasma Whip and slowly uncoiled the rope of burning energy, her lips twisting into a demonic sickle of a smile. Even Captain Falcon let out a squeak of terror as he slowly stepped aside, recognizing, for once in his life, that this was not the right time to be asking Samus out on a date.

"Yoshi?" Ness asked, who snapped out of the petrification of horror first.

"Ye – yeah?" came the dinosaur's stuttering reply.

"Do – does your ship have an eject button?"

"Th – think so."

The two cast a quick glance at each other, understanding what they had to do. They both took a deep breath, closed their eyes, and slammed their hands down onto the respective buttons.

"NO!" Samus screamed shrilly as with triumphant booiiingggs! the two perpetrators were launched sky-high into the clouds. In a frenzied state of furious insanity she pointed her Paralyzer up into the sky and fired, fired, fired, though the bursts of electrifying energy only travelled a bare few inches before fizzling out of existence. The bodies of the two were fast becoming minute specks in the sky, and as Captain Falcon saluted while wiping a tear from his eye, Samus was screaming, "Get back down here you mangy Hornoads before I go up there myself and cut your throats –"

"CAPTAIN FALCON! SAMUS!"

The two clammed up immediately and turned, slowly, horrified, at the source of their shouted names. Before them was an angry mob of Smashers, led by none other than Master Hand himself. "Oh – oh shit," Samus muttered feebly as she realized what they must be here for. Captain Falcon could only stare in confusion, wondering why anyone could ever think they were the cause of whatever disaster Ness and Yoshi had incurred, as Samus raised up both arms and tried her best to say in a smooth, innocent way: "H – hey! Listen, guys – it's – it's not what you think it is –"

"He ruined our million-dollar card castle!" Toon Link screamed, struggling to hold back his tears as he pointed his Wind Waker at Captain Falcon's face while Lucas sobbed behind him and Vill simply smiled in that maniac detached way of his.

"Just a-look at me!" Mario wailed, still naked as he covered his ding-dong with his hands. No one actually did as he said to do.

"There's a Gunship-shaped dent in my Landmaster!" Fox yelped, glaring straight into Samus's increasingly faltering face.

"As there is in my Halberd," glowered Meta Knight, as he, too, pierced Samus with his perturbing yellow eyes.

"You think that's bad?" Master Hand shrieked as he pointed a condemning finger that was also painted a glittery purple straight at Samus. "She just exposed to the entire world that I like to manicure my fingers! My reputation as the manliest right hand that the world of Nintendo has ever known is ruined!"

"You paint your nails?!" several members of the crowd cried out in surprise.

"Don't pretend like you didn't know! I know Samus told every one of you!"

"You think that's bad?!" Bowser shouted as he marched up to the crowd with his band of injured children trailing pathetically behind him. "That Captain Falcon dipshit just physically abused all eight of my children! Just look at Junior's eye!"

"Oh yeah, child abuse is not OK," Master Hand said mechanically.

"Yes, child abuse is not a joke," Meta Knight affirmed, equally mechanically.

"Child abuse is never funny," Mario emphasized in a voice that sounded as though it could come from R.O.B.

"But we beat up children on a regular basis –" Captain Falcon began.

"SILENCE!" Master Hand roared, shaking snow off the roofs of the houses within a fifty mile radius. "Falcon, Samus, for destroying Toon Link's, Lucas's, and Vill's card castle, for forcing Mario out naked in the snow, for causing irreparable damage to Fox's Landmaster, Meta Knight's Halberd, and various sections of the Smash Mansion, for physically abusing children which is never funny, and, most heinous of all, for exposing to the entire world my dirty little secret of painting my nails –!"

"Man, someone needs to get his morals straight," Bowser grumbled, but otherwise remained silent as he put the bandage back over his sniffing son's eye.

"– I condemn you both to a month-long ban of all facilities in the Western Wing, to give a million Smash dollars each to Toon Link, Lucas, and Vill, to buy Mario brand new clothes for the next six months, to pay for all damages done to the Landmaster and the Halberd, to always let yourself get beaten up by Bowser's children whenever you face them in the upcoming tournament, to buy me the ultra expensive limited edition Gracie's giraffe-themed nail polish on SmashBay, and, starting from right now –" he snapped his fingers, which was the cue for his brother, Crazy Hand, to throw a huge pile of bricks and cementing material and other construction tools down to where they were all gathered "– rebuild all the parts of the Smash Mansion you destroyed, this very instant!"

"But please, Master Hand!" Samus pleaded, getting down onto her knees and scrunching her fists together. "Please – please believe me – us, but it wasn't us two who –!"

"Multiply everything I just said by two," Master Hand interrupted loudly.

"No – you have to listen –"

"Three!"

That shut Samus up as she immediately got up and joined Falcon in picking up the bricks and the cement mix and what-not. Falcon, who quite honestly was used to such punishment, only shrugged in a defeatist manner, still reveling in gratefulness towards the two for giving him – what he thought anyway – a now decent chance of striking it big with Samus. Words couldn't express just how much Samus felt like exploding from the prodigious injustice of it all and hurl everything she was holding at the merciless judges who watched them trudge by with malicious glee. But she kept her cool. She kept her cool, as she learned to do in the face of her many battles against the detestable Space Pirates. This, she figured, was exactly that – just another battle against those detestable Space Pirates, a silent war of the minds where the strategy to winning was to take the hits and retaliate even harder for the finishing blow. She looked up to the sky where Ness and Yoshi had flown off to, that little imp and the green Ridley, and imagined terrible, terrible things that seemed to imply that child and dinosaur abuse were actually pretty OK.


Ness and Yoshi had heard everything. They had landed on the roof of the Smash Mansion, and had watched, with increasingly different reactions, as the crowd accused Falcon and Samus with what they did not do.

"Awesome." Ness was laughing, holding his sides as he heard the finality with which Master Hand delivered his punishments. "I can't believe this. We get away scot-free, and Captain Falcon and Samus are the ones who are going to take our punishments instead. Can you believe it? Man, this has got to be best day of my life!"

"What are you talking about?" Yoshi groaned as he glared, with pure terror, at Ness. "Don't you realize that the moment she sees us, Samus is going to kill us? We're doomed! I knew it – I fucking told you stealing from them would be a bad idea!"

"Hey, Yoshi!" Ness walked over and patted the dinosaur on the back, who looked as though he was about to burst into tears as he sat down dejectedly with head hanging low. "Relax, man! We just need to spend most of our time in the West Wing from now on – you heard about their ban! They can't go in there for at least three months, and by then I'll bet you that Samus would have lost her steam. Everyone does, eventually."

Yoshi still looked as though he was about to release the dam of his tear ducts, however, and Ness frowned slightly as he realized his words had failed to bring cheer to his friend. The frown quickly turned into a smile, however, as Ness thought of an elegant solution to it all. "Hey, I know! You wanna go get some ice cream? My treat today."

Yoshi was just about to scream out loud how the hell ice cream could ever help in a time like this when his stomach rumbled. He looked down, rubbed it for a while with his hand, and then, without looking back up, muttered, "Ice – ice cream sounds kind of nice."

And so, the brief schism in their everlasting friendship repaired, the two made their way to the hatch that would bring them down from the roof back into the mansion. As the sun set over the still-intact Blue Falcon and wrecked-beyond-belief Gunship, they struck up the concluding conversation to the argument that started it all.

"So do you at least admit that I won and that travelling by air is way faster than travelling by land?"

"It's a tie. I'm only going to give you that much."

"Will you at least listen to what a cloaca actually is?"

"Didn't you say it's the reptilian version of a vagina?"

"Fuck you, man."


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