Part I


"It's cold!" Yoshi bawled as he struggled through the snow. It was five feet deep, and every step Yoshi took resulted in the snow swallowing him all the way up to his leg. Lucario, being Lucario, was able to nimbly walk on the snow without sinking and had already put quite a distance between himself and Yoshi.

'Silence, you silly dinosaur.' Lucario's telepathic voice chided Yoshi in the confines of his skull. 'Today it is our shift to procure the necessary supplies for the wellbeing of the Smash Mansion, and it would be much more bearable if you could shut up for just five minutes.'

"Easy for you to say! You're not the one with snow in his boots!" Yoshi shivered as a draft of cold pierced his hide. "And you have fur! All I have are scales – and I'm cold-blooded!"

'Do not blame it on me then! Blame it on your ancestors! Why weren't they clever enough to evolve fur or the ability to control body heat? Sheer stupidity, as demonstrated by your immaturity and predilections for whining!'

"My ancestors were not stupid," Yoshi said, affronted, "and neither am I." There was a short pause. "What does 'predilections' mean?"

Lucario ignored him, instead choosing to avoid a particularly deep patch of snow that he could sense with his Aura. For a while there was silence, except for the sifting of snow and Yoshi's annoyed grunts. Then the silhouette of the TnT Mall materialized through the thin mist cast by the weather, and Lucario felt his paws touching the jagged asphalt of the snow-cleared roads that led up to the entrance. Finally… At least Yoshi would be less likely to complain now.

Yoshi had seen it too. With a big whoop, he bounded forward, driven by the sight, however indistinct, of his destination. "Hallelujah!" he cried, as he jumped six feet into the air. "Finally, I can – Oop!"

Lucario turned. Yoshi, that idiot, had jumped right into the deep patch of snow that Lucario had so carefully avoided, and now only the great green sphere of his nose was visible as it shook violently and desperately.

Lucario sighed as he made his way over. Today, he decided, was going to be a long day.


"FOOD!"

The shoppers turned as the green dinosaur further announced his presence with a visual cue of an impressive jump onto the green Welcome mat. Behind him walked in a blue bipedal canine with the look of an embarrassment similar to that of one delivered by the hands of an overbearing child.

'Quiet, you fool! You are a Smasher! Maintain some dignity!'

"Right… Dignity." Yoshi rubbed the back of his head. What was dignity again…? Ah, who cared? If it can't be eaten, it wasn't important. The warm, delicious air of the mall was beginning to cure the numbness of his cold, and in turn the sharp pains of his stomach ripped at him as it growled for food, food, food. Not dignity. Unless, of course, it could be eaten. Can it be eaten?

"Can it be eaten?" Yoshi asked.

'What?'

"Okay, listen," Yoshi said as Lucario grabbed a cart. "I'm really, really, hungry, and I can't do anything on an empty stomach. So… How about you go get everything we need, and I join you when I'm all full and ready?"

'What?'

"Okie dokie, see you later!" And before the Pokémon could grab him, he was off, swiftly making his way through the crowd of shoppers that engulfed him before Lucario could so much as lift a hair.

'Yoshi!' Lucario bellowed, attempting to direct his telepathy at the dinosaur's mind. 'Yoshi! Get back here this instant!'

There was no reply. Frustrated, Lucario threw a furious glance at the wave of shoppers. No… It wasn't worth it. Teeth clenched, Lucario wheeled his cart to the grocery section as an annoyed, elderly Koopa with a green shell clicked her tongue in impatience for Lucario to move away from the carts.

'That dinosaur is dead when I get a hold of him!'


"Sorry!" Yoshi cried as he crashed into a small Villager, who shrieked as she fell to the ground. Yoshi helped her to her feet before running off again. "Didn't mean to!" he said back as a final form of apology, as the Villager, disgruntled, began smoothing her green-pink dress.

Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants everywhere! Which to choose…? Earthbounded Steakhouse, The Iced Eggplant, Mamamia Mushrooms... Yoshi checked his belly for money (the way he did it was to sift around the contents of his secondary stomach, which was the organ responsible for storing ingested things, as opposed to the primary stomach, which digested whatever came its way. By constricting the highly sensitive muscles of his secondary stomach, Yoshi could identify whatever he had stored inside him). Five bucks. Not enough for the big stuff. "Fast food it is, then!" Yoshi said cheerfully as he turned to LittleMacDonalds. "Luckily, I'm not picky, or else – whoa!"

Yoshi slipped. The floor, as it turned out, was slippery from the catastrophic mixture of spilled Chu Jelly, pulped Maxim Tomatoes, and Liquefied Plasma. Yoshi skidded, arms flailing for balance, and slid all the way to the descending steps of a stairway. For one glorious second Yoshi stopped, one leg high in the air while the other balanced precariously on the very edge of the step. A false sense of inertia gushed momentary relief into Yoshi –

–And then he was tumbling straight down, arms and legs flying, shocked that gravity had betrayed him. He hurtled downwards, a green blur of a wheel, before smashing nosefirst onto the thick, unforgiving surface of some solid hurt, and his stomach crashed hard on the cold tiled floor.

There was the shock of pain, and then there was the body-ripping agony of it.

"Fucking hell, Sakurai," Yoshi mumbled. "I thought you said you would remove tripping from Smash Bros."

For quite a while Yoshi lied in a fetal position on the ground, wallowing in a mixture of self-pity and hatred at the world. As the pain dissipated – pain was, after all, nothing new in the world of Nintendo – Yoshi grew aware of his surroundings. Or rather, he grew aware of the lack of it. He looked up and around himself. Where…? The ominous thing was that there was only darkness all around him. Yoshi turned around and saw a small rectangle of light. The shoppers were bustling around as if nothing had happened. Nobody looked into to see where the clumsy dinosaur had fallen into. For all that appeared, there hadn't even been a clumsy dinosaur at all. Yoshi frowned as he got up to his feet. Where…? Nowhere, that was where. It seemed as if he had fallen into some obscure… Hiding place was what came into Yoshi's mind, but was that really an appropriate term for something in a mall?

Yoshi was making his way to the small rectangle of light when it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't checked what he had crashed into. His left foot was on the first step when he hesitated. Something told him it was a bad idea. Something told him to walk up and never look back. But insatiable curiosity always wins, and Yoshi turned around slowly.

It was a shop. Yoshi could see the nose imprint he had made on the display glass, which displayed nothing at all, nothing but impenetrable darkness. Yoshi walked forward and looked in. He could make out nothing. He turned to his right, and saw the metal eye of a doorknob staring back at him. Yoshi seized it and turned. He was half-hoping that it wouldn't budge. He was hoping that the shop would be locked from his intrusive presence. It wasn't. There was a click, then a groan as the door yawned open. The shop was open, and Yoshi was its first customer of the day.

Where…? Yoshi turned around again. The small rectangle of light was slightly to the right of his vision now. All it would take would be a small step backward, a slight turn of the body, and a run up the stairs to rejoin comfort and presence. But at the same time, all it would take would be a small step forward, a slight push of the body, and a few careful steps into the maws of darkness for an offensively boring day to be turned into the next best adventure since Yoshi's Island.

It was decided then. Yoshi took a tentative step into the shop and felt the walls next to the doorway for some kind of switch. There wasn't one. Frowning, Yoshi took one more step, extending his arm out further, and in doing so he was now completely in the shop. With sudden force the door slammed behind Yoshi. The small shriek and the jump of shock were greeted by a sudden lighting of candles that balanced on dishes jutting from the walls. The eerie welcome of light, however, was lost on Yoshi, who immediately wrapped both hands around the doorknob and wrenched with his entire body.

"Open, open, open, open, open!" Yoshi screamed as he pulled at the door with all his might. The door remained stubbornly shut. Yoshi was as it for quite a while, attempting to win a battle he knew he would lose. Eventually, panic, recognizing the gravity of the situation, made partial way for rationality, and Yoshi jumped from the door. Keys… A key, that's what he needed. Yeah, this was nothing new. A locked door could always be opened by a key… Yoshi whipped around and looked around. Columns of shelves greeted him, well-constructed planks of wood that held dust-shrouded crystal balls, jeweled figurines that had lost their sheens, fragile-looking vases with faded symbols, titleless spines of forgotten books…

"But no key!" Yoshi cried desperately as he scanned the shelves. He ran past a wall of dolls that had scar-like seams etched across their faces and limbs, wore ragged and soiled clothes, and stared at him from behind glassed glossy eyes. Yoshi searched desperately as he walked along the third of fourth aisle. Pale pearls and sinister silvers, and a cup that was bleeding a thick, brown liquid. Rational panic was losing its control over Yoshi's sanity as flecks of fear oozed into his brain. His eyes were screaming for keys, keys, any key. Yoshi reached the end of the third aisle, and a sense of infinite helplessness seized him. Yoshi closed his eyes and mustered the last of his hopes. 'It's here,' he thought, as he took a deep breath of stale air and decaying dust. 'It has to be.' He opened his eyes, and began walking the last aisle.

There were menacing tools of iron, steel, and murder, and there were forks and knives of gleaming sharpness, and then –

Yoshi stopped. A sphere of red light – jarring in the parchment glow of the candles – mesmerized his eyes. It glowed softly and humbly, a soothing source of almost friendly light. Yoshi approached, and saw that it wasn't just a sphere. It was an apple, the kind with a slightly bumped bottom so that it was able to balance on its own. It continued to shimmer comfortingly, and a shroud of calmness suddenly engulfed every facet of his emotions, so that all fear was stifled, all panic extinguished. His stomach growled, softly at first, then growing louder and louder as it realized its call for hunger was no longer to be drowned out.

The apple… He wanted – no, he needed to eat it.

Slowly, gently, Yoshi wrapped his hand around the apple and brought it to his mouth. It was cold, ice-cold, and the tiniest of shivers ran down his spine as he caressed its waxy smooth body. But what did it matter? It could be as cold as where the Ice Climbers came from, for all Yoshi cared. He wanted to eat it. To eat it was right, to eat it was good. To eat it was right to eat it was good. To eatit was right toeatit wasgood eatrightit good eatrighteatgoodeateatgoodeateateateateateateateateateateateateaeateateateateatmeeatmeeatmeatmeeatmeatmeeatmeeatme eat me.

Eat me.

Eat me.

Eat me.

It was in a split second of sudden recall and release from controlled thinking that Yoshi was able to emerge the victor. The pernicious spirit was careless, too confident for its own good. It released its hold the moment it felt its shell slide down the constricted muscles of an esophagus. It thought it had won, it thought it was finally over, it thought it was finally beginning. It thought it had found a host, at last, after an infinite amount of years sealed in the body of a fruit. It thought it was victorious.

It was wrong.

Yoshi had two advantages. One, he was quick-witted, and a single second of relinquished control was just enough to turn the battle in his favor. Two, he had the benefit of being a Yoshi, and that was where Lucario was wrong: His ancestors were not stupid. They were clever, they were practical, and above all, they had evolved to survive extraordinary situations involving a devil hell-bent on taking over their bodies.

Thousands of nerves fired signals, causing the muscles of his esophagus to widen just a little bit. The path to his primary stomach closed, and a flap leading to his secondary stomach opened. The apple tumbled into the latter, the organ responsible for storing ingested things, as opposed to digesting whatever came its way.

Yoshi gasped. He teetered backwards, slamming his back and his head against the wall of the room. At the exact same instant every single light was extinguished as a sharp click! of an unlocked mechanism shot through the silence of the room. Yoshi got up immediately. There was a time for rest, a time for recovering his bearings, but there was also a time for, simply put, getting the fuck out of there, and Yoshi was not so far gone to not know where his priorities lied.

He ran, ran like hell, stirring behind him clouds of dust. He ran through the darkness, navigating his way not by sight, but by fear and instinct. His hand found the doorknob, and twisted it violently. The door burst open and Yoshi, like a bird liberated from its cage, flew out back into the world of light, leaving the eclipsed room of sinister horror in the darkness of its own existence.