Once upon a time, there was a child who loved Nintendo, and they took their toys of famous characters and pretended to make them fight epic battles.

Once upon a later time, there was a kid who, after having some trouble with her more structured fanfiction, decided to take whatever drifted through her head and turn it into a fic, even if it was strange. In fact, she hoped it was.

Yes, of course that second one's me. I can't guarantee any of the following is true, but I sure did think of it at some point or another. Though I suppose if you're reading it, that automatically makes it that bit much more real.

Now enough first-person stuff. Let's have a strange-ish story.

It's move-in day for the second season of the fourth gathering of Super Smash Brothers. Yes, the second season. After the humans decided to choose and include downloadable content for the game version of the tournaments, the Crazy and Master Hands took it upon themselves to invite said fighters to come in for the real version and host the whole affair all over again.

That had been an exciting time for everyone. Previous fighters were the among the first to be called back into battle, and people were ecstatic to hear they were coming back home, so to speak. Then new fighters had rolled in, some of them having heard whispers of famed warriors from other worlds being asked to partake in a secret fighting festival—a place where combat was equal parts sport and play. Only some, though. Others… well. Bless them.

"You're sure you're going to be all right, darling?" Corrin's older foster sister Camilla asked for the fifth time.

Corrin sighed, but smiled. "Yes, big sister. I'm sure."

"Even though you've literally never heard of these Smash Brothers before?" their younger blood brother Takumi said, placing another bag by his sibling's side.

"Well, it can't be all bad, can it?" Corrin asked. "If Chrom said it was an honor to be invited, then it must be."

"Remember that his wife and daughter were the ones invited, not him," said Ryoma, the oldest blood brother. "He may have a limited impression of this."

"Apparently he gets into the battlefield for one of their ultimate attacks," Corrin said.

"Still, be careful," Ryoma replied.

"And remember: We are all your family. You can call on any of us if you need help," added oldest foster brother Xander.

"But you're gonna do great!" chirped younger foster sister Elise, hugging her older sibling again. "Do your best! And have fun! Oh! And see if and when we can all visit each other!"

"Good luck o-out there," added shy Sakura, the younger blood sister.

"Corrin has the devil's own luck," said younger foster brother Leo. "They'll be fine, Princess."

"They'll do great!" older blood sister Hinoka declared. "We'll be cheering all the way. So will Azura. "

"Thank you," said Corrin. "All of you." Though Corrin continued to smile as their sisters swarmed them for one last big hug, they couldn't help but feel a bit of a pang of sadness. Of all the people at home, Azura… Azura was the most special. Though she wasn't a sibling in either blood or bond, they still loved her dearly.

But the thought broke off when Corrin spotted a little yellow creature running by their doorway, clutching a bottle tightly.

There went Pikachu, finally having accosted some ketchup from the initial shipment of supplies for the Smash Mansion.

There are so many Pikachu across all the worlds. This one comes from Saffron City in Kanto, where the first Smash Brothers tournament happened to have an arena. Of course, they were a Pichu then. And once upon a time, the Pikachu fighting in that first tournament had suddenly fallen from the very top of a building, slamming onto the ground right in front of them.

You can see where that went.

Yes, they were friends ever since, and he himself gave then-Pichu their invitation to Melee, the second iteration of Super Smash Brothers, and then-Pichu became the smallest, most accidentally self-harming fighter the place had yet seen. But that Pikachu had a Trainer and a journey to eventually get back to, so when Brawl came around, he had to decline his invitation.

The Hands were in a bit of a bind, then. Pikachu was one of the Original Eight—a freaking staple! To even delay his appearance in Smash Brothers was lunacy!

Then-Pichu then realized if they evolved, they could act as Pikachu in Pikachu's stead. It was a Crazy idea, just like the type of idea Crazy Hand would usually come up with, but then Master Hand decided it was so Crazy that it might just work.

It did. There hasn't been any explicit statements about Pikachu being replaced by a successor, but people definitely speculate. The Hands let them. It's actually pretty good for buzz and business.

But Pikachu didn't really care if people knew who they once were or not. They had been able to get away with asking for little packets of ketchup from restaurants around Saffron between Smash tourneys, but they'd been aching to have an entire bottle of their own, to just guzzle down or to have a little sip here, a little sip there.

So outside they ran to find a quiet spot to gorge themselves on the condiment, completely veering away from the other Smashers and their entourages of friends and family and well-wishers and their boxes and barrels and boxes and boxes and bags and boxes and to the side of the mansion, finally sitting their butt down and flipping open the cap ravenously. They tilted their head back and squeezed. Nothing came. Pikachu looked at the lid and realized this was one of those "sealed for freshness and protection" bottles and groaned and twisted the cap off completely and placing it on his short fat leg before picking and picking and picking at the edge of the seal, trying to get that little gap they needed to just—rip!

"Ye-he-hes!" Pikachu cheered, almost tilting the bottle back as it was before realizing the cap was still off. But before they reached for it, they ran a tiny finger along the edge of the bottle and stuck it in their mouth, slurping the sample off. The sweet tomato taste awakened a thrilling joy, and Pikachu sighed and hummed in contentment.

Then they screwed the cap back on and tilted their head and the bottle back and squeezed lightly and filled their mouth as much as they comfortably could before pausing to savor and swallow. Pikachu sighed again and knocked back for a second mouthful. But when they prepared for the third, they heard a little high voice shout "DEDEDEDEDEDEDE!" and they stopped.

They looked. In the distance, there was Kirby, just having landed on the head of King Dedede in enthusiastic greeting.

Pikachu stood right up. Don't misunderstand: Kirby was great. He was one of the Original Eight, part of the Forever Twelve! But Kirby was known to have the single biggest appetite among the Smashers. And there Pikachu had been sitting with a bottle of ketchup. That they wanted for themself. So they had to relocate.

Pikachu took their bottle and ran all the way around to the back of the mansion. After making sure the coast was absolutely clear, they sat their butt back down and resumed guzzling. A third, fourth, fifth mouthful, with little sign of stopping. Maybe.

No, no, they thought, they were getting a little full, so maybe one more and save the rest for later. Though they'd have to mark it somehow so nobody else would take it.

They'd ask someone else for a pen that'd show up on plastic, they thought as they took in their final mouthful.

"Hi!"

Pikachu almost shouted, but opening up their throat to make noise almost choked them, and they coughed once, sending spare ketchup splatting over their face and onto the ground in front of them.

They swallowed what was left, rubbed the splatted ketchup from their eyes, and looked at Kirby.

Pikachu didn't know what to say, so they went with "I thought you were inside."

Kirby shook his head. "Not yet. I saw you earlier and wanted to say hi, but when I looked up, you'd vanished!"

Oh. So the whole thing had been pointless. Pikachu continued to look Kirby in the eye and slowly licked their lips before swallowing what they got there.

"Are you gonna finish that?" Kirby said.

There it was. "Not today." That much was true.

"Can I have some?"

Pikachu looked at the smear of ketchup still on their arm and then at the mostly empty bottle, watching the remaining bits slowly slide down. Feeling his stomach slowly bloat and seeing Kirby's earnest-as-ever face, they decided, okay, sure, they'd share after all.

"Sure. Just waterfall it, yeah?" they said, handing over the ketchup.

Kirby squeezed a fair amount into his mouth as Pikachu licked the remaining ketchup off their arm, then cleaned off the rest of their face and licked that off, and bent down and around a little to catch whatever had landed elsewhere, even on the grass; they didn't mind. They'd eaten plenty off the ground.

Kirby had actually left some when he closed the cap and handed it back. Pikachu then thought to ask, "Hey, you can write, right?"

"Yeah. People still ask how I grab the pencil, but yeah, I can. Why?"

"Could you label this for me before I stick it in the fridge? My fingers are too short to do it myself."

"Okay."

"So you still don't know how you do it?"

"Nope!"

"Does the pencil just kind of… stay?"

"I… guess…?"

"Huh."

Pikachu paused and looked out to the horizon, where the main arena would be once the thing was ready to start.

They belched. "'Scuse me."

"It's all right with me," Kirby said.

Pikachu then allowed themself to flop backwards. "I should practice writing."

So, um.

Well, I've known for a long time that I wanted to write a Super Smash Brothers fic again, since it was my first real fandom and where I really got into writing as a whole. Sure didn't think it'd be like this, though, even as recently as an hour ago.

So like I said, I don't really know what this is about, other than the Smashers doing stuff. Which is like a lot of other fics, really, but I'd just begun rereading Gravity's Rainbow, which is known, among other things, for its absolute absurdity, both in its events and in its prose. That, too, is something I'd wanted to play around with for a while, though I can't quite say I'm polished in either humor or absurdity. But, hey, these are some good training grounds, maybe. So as a nod to that, this... thing is named S., which is a direct nod to Pynchon's first novel, titled V..

And yeah, I am referring to both Corrin and Pikachu with the singular "they". It's about time I did some stuff with non-binary characters.