Sup!' I've had this idea for a while now. My brother and I have played Subspace Emissary for about a year now—finding ourselves with the dilemma the heroine of this story is first confronted with: Beating Subspace Emissary on Intense mode with a six-year old trailing behind. Like the heroine, I was stuck FOREVER on the part where Samus and Pikachu team up in order to get Samus's suit back. :D Being the writer I am, I wondered—HEY. What if there was some secret glitch in the game that sucked the players into it? What if they got turned into the characters—and have to beat the game or die trying? (Spoiler alert)—and so Me, My Brother, and Brawl came to be. :3 I really hope you read on and get as attached to these characters as much as I have.
-cough- Well. Without further ado—I present to you—!
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Me, My Bro, and Brawl.
Fleet of the Wind
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According to my English teacher, an older lady with a strange taste in hairstyles, every story has to have some sort of point to it.
The story has to have a purpose in life—whether to teach you, to entertain you, or something I haven't mentioned. My teacher would probably already be ticked off with my oh-so-creative title, and then telling her my 'purpose' or 'theme' to my story would no doubt either fail or seriously make my grade plummet. (good thing this isn't an English grade then, eh?)
Well, I guess you could call the purpose of my story as a warning.
Yes, that's right. A warning.
Now most of you are probably thinking, what? What the heck can a KID warn me about?
Well, you see—I'm not just warning you about one thing. I'm warning you about many things. The many unparallel lies hidden in a game, and the dangers. I'm trying to teach you about my mistakes, tell you what I did wrong so you won't make the same choices and end up where I did. So you won't end up dead—or worse. I feel like it's my responsibility, now that I've figured out all the tricks (most of them) and what mistakes I made (not that I know how to fix them) I have to warn you. Not doing so would mean that if you, or someone else, died because of the exact same thing I did—it would be my fault. Your blood would be on me. So I have to warn you, you see? If you know my story—there's a chance that it'll never happen again.
So here I go.
Hear my warning, my story, of what-the-heck happened to me, my brother, and brawl.
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Warning One.
Never play Subspace Emissary on Intense Mode.
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It was truly an epic battle. Simply by looking at it—you could tell that the heroes of the battle were growing desperate. Though their faces never changed, frozen (obviously by the sheer difficultly of it), as they fought against the impossible odds. Two heroes, however strong—against fifteen steel-plated machines of doom and despair—simply did not have the number advantage on their side. They were both heavily wounded, the smaller one more so than the other, and they were slowly losing ground against their enemies.
However, in a moment of unspoken inspiration—the smaller one launched itself from rapid physical attacks to a new sort of strategy. The rather mouse-like hero fled to the corner of the scree—er, battlefield, and flicked around with surprising quickness. Instantly, small little electric attacks began flooding towards the adversaries, accompanied with rapid, adorable sounding 'chu!'s filling the otherwise silent arena (side the clashing of metal, faint battle music, and cracks of a whip). The new approach seemed to work! The attacks drove the enemy backwards—despite their surge with outstretched arms. They would flinch as the attack reached them, and fall backwards slightly. With this momentary hesitation, the other hero, a tall woman with a lashing plasma whip, saw her chance and began darting forward and taking them out one at a time with a powerful smash each.
The battle began to smile down upon the point of view of the heroes. They had lost so, so many times before in this same hallway—so maybe, just maybe—their new strategy would finally give them something to celebrate about, a new victory! However, just as things seemed their brightest—the small mouse warrior changed gears with a startling quickness. It started to roll upon the ground, paws waving up in the air, chanting, 'Piiiiiikkaaaaa…' in a high-pitched voice. As adorable, however, this display was, the R.O.B's found this sudden change in their favor as the cute chanting of the hero did not bring down lighting, or thunder—and the front row ROB began to charge a powerful smash against the undefending, taunting, adorable, Pikachu.
Instantly—as if she had already known this tide change in the battle was too good to be true, the woman from the other side of the screen darted forward. If she could just make it in time, if she could launch herself through the enemies and save the little hero from its impending doom—maybe, just maybe—they could make it through this level hallway. A flash of blue and the warrior had launched herself into the air, before suddenly swooping down with a boot outstretched. The leg connected with the charging R.O.B. with a sickening 'crunch' and the R.O.B. went spiraling away and disappeared in a flash of blinding red light.
However grand the victory was at that moment, the recovering woman rose—unable to even leap away as the second R.O.B. behind his fallen comrade charged it's smash behind her and connected the punch (the other hero standing/rolling obliviously by) in a blinding speed and burst of white light.
"NO!" I screeched.
But yes. The smash connected, and like the twenty adversaries before her—Samus disappeared in a spiraling flash of red-light, Ironically, the remaining hero could be seen standing up on his tiny hind legs in a sudden switch of tactics—chirping cheerfully—and waving good-bye as the screen faded to black.
Shocked, I blankly stared at the now loading TV screen from my spot on the cushioned bed. The Wii controller and nunchuck vibrated in a completely late fashion, but I ignored it—continuing to gape. God. We had been so close! What was this, the twenty third time we had died so close to the end of the level? (Or what I had thought was the end)—With a faint glare, I glanced over my shoulder at my little bro, who was staring at me with wide, green eyes from behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
"I thought I told you to spam, Bruce!" I gasped, shocked by how close we had been—shocked by how close victory had been and how it had slipped between my fingers by his lack of knowledge that taunting did not give damage. Maybe I wouldn't have been ticked off at him if it weren't for what came next. After all, he was only six years old. My sister, only twelve, had ditched me for her iPod and Pad upstairs—and god knows my parents don't have time to play an entertaining Wii game. So, not wanting to be alone to play, I was stuck with a six-year old for beating Sub-Space Emissary on Intense mode. Bruce, being my said brother, could hardly figure out how to make the little Pikachu on the screen to run and jump—much less beat intense mode R.O.B.'s. Plus, he was a little hard to be mad at with his brown curls and leather bomber jacket. But then—but then—
"I didn't die this time?" He asked, looking at me, eyes wide—completely ignoring my outburst. It would've been an innocent question, if it weren't for the fact that a little smirk that started to flicker off and on his face.
"No," I replied sharply—huffing a stray blond curl out of my eyes. I stared straight ahead; stiff, back to the TV screen, biting back a crushing, 'it's a first' remark. The TV animated two frozen statues, Zero-Suit and the little Pikachu, falling through the black backdrop and clattering onto an invisible floor. A booming voice (I winced and quickly reached for the TV remote) then asked if we wished to,
"CONTINUE?"
I ignored it, instead reaching over to a pale sheet of paper littered with pencil marks on the bed next to me. I lifted it, with a slight scowl, off the decorated floral bedsheets and onto my lap. Briefly, I took a moment to count up the scattered tallies, muttering faintly the numbers under my breath, while Bruce babbled to himself (Something about Fox and Falco or something like that) assuming I was listening.
Well. Whadda' know? It really had been twenty-three times that Bruce and I had passed through these halls. And failed. I stared blankly at the screen—wondering if I should really just change the fricken' level of the game and move on with it. I mean, the game wasn't all the difficult—even at this level. When my friend, Esther, had introduced it to me a year or two ago—I had picked it up pretty fast. Dodging became easy enough, and I quickly learned tactics with my main, Sheik. I had dimly surfed around the multi-player modes—blissfully unaware of anything else until a few months back. Then, I had stumbled upon single-player mode—and most importantly, Subspace Emissary. I loved everything about it—the plot, the challenge, the characters—and with a cocky gleam in my eyes, I had selected Intense mode being proud of my abilities.
It was easy enough at the start—but it was challenging at other times. The difficulty factor rose by at least ten when I recruited Bruce to play with me (feeling lonely playing by myself). He was hooked as fast as I was, staring starry-eyed up at his hero character such as Pit and Fox, but he took a serious blow on my lives. Sometimes, he would randomly run off the screen to cost me a life. Most of the time, when all but one life (my own) was gone—I could do perfectly fine. But at other times, an extra life would have been very useful, and my progress through the game was slowed.
Now when I reached the level upon Zero-Suit-Samus's alliance with Pikachu—it was becoming the most difficult challenge for me yet. There was this one hallway where a particular swarm of R.O.B's left Bruce and I breathless (and live…less). We simply could not beat it. Sure, I could've changed the level, but my pride didn't allow it. Sure, I could've asked Bruce to sit back for a few minutes and let me take over, but we were in this together—and I was the most stubborn person to date.
One more time, I thought blearily, my brow furrowing. One more round, and then I'll change the level to very-hard. It's practically the same as Intense, right?
And my finger, unknowing of the fate I was sealing myself, pressed the middle A. button.
Bruce cheered, giggling, and I cracked a small smile as the two trophies stood magically up and flew up into the sky. Within seconds—my possessed Wii was rather fast—familiar strange electronica music started blaring—two figures popping up on the metal arena and animating slightly in attack stances. Sighing, but perking myself up with a shake of my dirty-blond curls, I rolled my shoulders and tilted the nunchuck slightly to the left—zero-suit instantly following my commands.
"Wrong way, Bruce," I said patiently, eyebrows rising slightly and my head tilting to the left in a half exasperated half amused expression. Instantly, the oversized Pikachu on the screen darted over to where Samus was slowly jogging, hovering only a few feet behind. Heh. You'd think that after twenty-four times of failure and restarting at the same exact spot—he'd of picked up the direction in which we went—
Wait a second.
I stopped, er, Samus stopped dead. Pikachu went running right on past her—to the point of where a beam of white light emerged and he was back at zero-suit's side in a flash of player-2 magic. Seeming to have gotten the point, Bruce looked up from the screen to stare curiously at me. I was really too shocked to process his question, as a brilliant epiphany had struck me, no—not struck—clobbered me in the face. What if—what if—I gaped—we were supposed to loose in that battle with the ROB's? What if—I quickly titled the nunchuck to the left—we were supposed to go to the left instead of to the right? After all, we had appeared in this hallway through a door (I think)—what was stopping me from going the other direction?
I quickly found my answer as I reached the end of the corridor. Samus stared blankly into a wall—the hallway taking a dramatic 90 degree turn directly upwards. Frowning, I launched her into her recovery—a wild flick of Samus's whip, combined with two, precise double jumps—and did not even begin to see the start of a ledge for her to catch onto. Oh. Well. I guess that explains why I can't go right. In rejection, I started to turn back in the direction we had come. It didn't take long, however, to remind myself what laid in that direction—an impossible battle that I would no doubt loose to again. Sighing, I titled the nunchuck, and again faced the wall with the seemingly impossible jump.
Bruce fooled around on the screen, Pikachu attempting a small and rather pathetic attempt at a wall jump. Rather amused, I grinned at him, catching his eye. "Here. Let me show you. Watch my hands," I instructed, making sure the kid was actually watching how I used the nunchuck before beginning. Zero-Suit leaped upward in a neat tuck summersault, before bouncing off the wall closest to her right. She made it a little ways up, but like I had experienced before—her wall jumps started to degrade, hardly pushing her up another foot or so as I went on. An intense level factor—the gamemakers were forcing you to use her up-B I suppose.
"How can you do that?" Bruce asked, with the beginning of a sulk mixed with the awe in his voice. I ignored him, actually thinking that maybe I could get up this wall now. The wall jump was rather pathetic now, and realizing I was about to slip downwards and end all my hard work—I launched Samus as high as I could, before unleashing her plasma whip for her recovery.
I've seen it. I've seen the whip, and where the tip of it ends—I know that while it's one of the better recoveries—it does not go as high as it did that fateful day. The Samus on the screen froze, suspended in time. Loud whirling sounds filled the air, and the first prickle of uncertainty started to trickle through my head. All of a sudden, Samus shot upwards at impossible speeds—tethered to the plasma whip and flying upwards. The sound changed from a whirling to something that resembled the sound of when a fish attached to your line starts to pull away and unravels all of your line. That sound. But instead of falling downwards—I was shooting upwards.
I dropped my Wii controller, staring in something that resembled horror at the screen. Pikachu was pulled upwards in a flash of white light, appearing momentarily beside Samus in mid-air, before he began to fall downwards and his damage flew upwards by the bucketful. Still, the woman flew upwards—a determined expression I had never seen before lining her face. Bruce's character appeared again, and that's pretty much when I figured out things were getting strange. No way could Samus's recovery be this long! I scrambled for my Wii controller, thinking about shutting the game off—or at least pausing it—and just as I reached it—Samus reached the top of the cliff.
I gaped, frozen, watching Samus hang precariously over the edge of the metal—finally, something kicked on inside of me, and I lunged forward to grab the controller and haul Samus up onto the solid ground. A tinkling sound had filled the air, and Pikachu appeared at her side (I just now realized he had still been falling), with damage at a hundred and twenty-three from the sheer length of the wanting to press my luck with this marvelous glitch, I shot Samus forward down the corridor at a sprint, Bruce taking the hint and racing after me.
Maybe a smart person, a person knowledgeable in the symptoms of a possessed Wii, would've stopped there. Turned off the game and returned to fight the impossible odds of the R.O.B's. But hey—I was me! No way was I going to let a little freaky glitch slow me down on the way to victory!
"How'd you do that?" Bruce asked with eyes wide and Pikachu momentarily pausing on the screen.
Releasing my hand from the nunchuck, I stopped—a wise look on my face. I dropped the controller into my lap—forming a one with my finger and draping my other free hand around his shoulder. "Honestly, Bruce?" I said, smile flickering across my lips. "I have no idea."
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It was easy after that. Almost too easy.
We strutted down the long, empty corridor without the slightest encounter of ROB's, or Primid. It was almost unsettling. There were no boxes, or items, or turns in the hallway in the slightest. I figured, you know, there would be some sort of boss-battle or golden door to end the level at the end. When there was a lull in the screen, it meant either a boss-battle or a golden door, simple enough—it was brawl logic.
Stupid brawl logic.
We reached the end of the hallway after thirty or forty unsettling empty seconds. Zero-suit and Pikachu emptied into a small square room after slipping down a small, no larger than Pikachu himself, ledge. Ooh, a change in scenery—how exciting. I huffed a blond curl out of my eyes, glancing irritably, with a slight edge of paranoia, around the room.
It was utterly empty.
No boxes, no doors, no enemies, no animation, no buttons, no keys—nada. Zip. Zero. All of our work had been for nothing. I must not have remembered how we ended up in that corridor with all those ROB's properly. We must've started here, then went down that corridor—killing the entire enemy in the process—(but didn't enemy respawn once you died?) and fell down the tube. It was a glitch I got back up here again; we really were supposed to battle all those ROBs.
Life sucked.
"C'mon, Bruce," I sighed, too disappointed to be angry. I tilted the nunchuck back the way we came. "There's nothing here."
Bruce, being the rebellious little boy he was, ignored me and ran straight into the wall on the other side of the room. Instinctively I followed him—he had been damaged enough in the climb up here—he didn't need any more damage points! Luckily, or unluckily, for me, as soon as I reached the other side of the room—a door appeared in the classic 'Psht'fwh!' sound. Biting back unrestrained sobs of joy—I stared with a grin at the appearing door.
And then the grin dropped off my face.
The door was black. It was that simple. I, not knowing what the evil-smasher door was yet, would not have been able to tell you if it was one of those. In short, as I reflected on it later, it wasn't. It was black, sure, but it lacked the evil purple ooze (Only brawl can make purple look evil!). Instead, where the cracks of the wooden door were—were unrestrained beams of shining white light. I assumed it was another glitch of some sort. One glitch only leads to another, right? Still, I hesitated entering the door for some unnamed reason. Maybe it was my instincts, as awesome as they are, screaming at me to turn around and not look back.
But despite the hairs standing up on the back of my neck—I moved Samus in front of the door—and flicked the nunchuck upwards.
And then the screen went black.
I stared numbly in shock at the screen, in disbelief. The lamp beside the bed had also flickered out, leaving us in nearly complete darkness. It was night outside, my parents were out so it was my job to be a babysitter to my younger siblings, (some babysitter I turned out to be)—which explained why the room was in complete darkness. But. Freaking. Seriously? I raged inwardly. The SECOND I find a way out of this level, we lose power? MY TIMING IS—
That's when the Wii controllers started to shake.
They vibrated violently, I dropping my own controller almost instantly at the sheer shock. It hung from my wrist, the adjustable thread that I don't remember putting on keeping it close. The normal neon blue lights flashed angrily, alternating in seemingly random patterns and no doubt illuminating my absolutely terrified face. I struggled with the latch on the controller, wanting this thing freaking OFF of me, now—but either because my hands were as weak as water, or the thing had grown an invisible lock—the latch did not budge. Now certain I was paralyzed by fear, I glanced sharply over at my little bro who stared back at me with watery eyes.
"Brittney?"
BOOOOOOOOOM!
I gasped, lurching forward, hands clutching desperately onto the floral bedsheets of my parents bed—hand pushing out and bracing myself on the wooden posts of the bed, head lurching downwards for a moment before looking bravely up into a new source of light and…
…power. I gaped, my hair whipping around my face and towards this new suction of a seemingly vortex that had appeared in place of the television screen. There was no other way to describe it. It was a whirlpool of swirling colors, slowly expanding outside its 2D realm of the plastic screen, forming into a flat dome that expanded outwards and coaxed me forward with suction unlike anything I had ever felt. I mean, my hair was in pain—nearly being dragged out of its roots by the sheer force of what I called vortex.
Gritting my teeth, I lunged outwards and grabbed a firm arm around my brother's shoulder—wrapping it around his torso in what could have been called a sleepers-hold but I was too panicked to care. He was now openly bawling, something I had to struggle not to give into myself. I honestly thought we were going to die; that my Wii was coming back to life to slay me for all those times I had neglected it. Or, that was the most logical explanation I could come up with in my fear-ridden brain at the moment, but I had more important things to worry about than motive. I launched myself off the bed with my little bro, struggling with my bare-feet on the white slick carpet to dart in the direction of the door. I figured, if I could get far enough away from the vortex I might be able to save us.
Items were whipping around us in the air, I narrowly avoided the same door in which I was trying to get out, as it flew off its hinges and went flying into the ever expanding vortex. Watching my life flash before my eyes, I hulled Bruce across my shoulders and fought against the impossible drag into the now open door. Sheets from the bed tangled with my feet, I having to bunny hopping awkwardly in order to move forward.
Unfortunately, bunny hopping while trying to prevent yourself from being sucked into a gigantic vortex of inexplicable doom does deter well with my already poor balance skills. My lungs found themselves suddenly empty as I slammed into the carpet, one ear ringing as it said hello to the floor. I blearily tried to sit up, heard something whistle by my ear, felt the undeniable pull of the vortex—and managed a miniscule widening of my eyes before something small slammed into the back of my head and the world went black.
