Disclaimer:All characters, etc., are (c) Nintendo and not me. My brain might have made a dolphin giggle and accidently typed some Owl City lyrics in here too, and if so, they're not (c) me either.

Rated: Mostly for coarse language. There is also some violence, as well as general bedlam and shenanigans. And even though the "story" generally revolves around Pit trying to get Samus to fall in love with him, the most sexually explicit thing you can expect is Pit waxing melancholy because Pikachu is hotter than he is. So no worries there.

Author's Note: Well here it is at last, folks! The barely-awaited sequel to my first crack-fic monstrosity, Fluff and Circumstance or The Cult of "Ario".
So here's that ( s/5408149/1/Fluff_and_Circumstance_or_The_Cult_of_Ario) just in case you missed those festive festivities. And hey, in the very likely event that you really don't give a shit, a pretty satisfactory summary is sandwiched in with the second paragraph. So.

Oh goodness, what kind of mischeif and brouhaha will Fatty and the Kid cook up this time? Oh goodness, oh goodness indeed.

EDIT: I'd like to thank the beautiful and fantastic Mr. MessengerOfDreams for the book cover! He gave me, like, twelve of them, actually, or something. My point is that there were a bunch, and all of them were freaking sweet, and choosing one was not easy.

LOOK AT THAT SUCKER. LOOK AT IT! But not too closely. I can't guarantee what'll happen. Might be it'll rip your face off and glue it back on upside down. Hard to say.

I'll stop blathering eventually. Eventually is now.

Okay go.

FLUFF AND HAPPENSTANCE or ALL BY SPONTANEITY

Ike was vegging out one sweaty afternoon, squatting on his festively disgusting sofa that was covered so thickly in ketchup stains that it looked like the design of some psychotic and malcontent fashionista. He was watching Let's Make a Deal, rooting for the guy in the chicken suit, and wondering ever so often in a detached and indistinct way where the hell Pit was.

He didn't really care, but as always, whenever Pit wasn't plainly visible, Ike got a restless nervous feeling, and thought about how much, as the guy's roommate, he could be held accountable for legally. A few months earlier, Pit had arranged a Coalition Against Evil, and led a valiant and slightly terrifying holy crusade against Mario and his eggplant-garnering minions of Evil. Mario, expressly speaking, hadn't actually had any eggplant-garnering minions of Evil, but Ike had still almost blown up anyway, and frankly the whole experience had made him a little leery of Pit and his flaming bullshit. And so it was with great trepidation, when Pit came staggering back into their room several hours later, red-eyed and carrying a box of who-the-hell-knows under one arm, that Ike asked, "Where ya been, Pit?"

"Fatty!" Pit barked, snapping his fingers and gesturing for Ike to get his bum ass off their nasty couch. "You're gonna help me with somethin', mmkay?"

Ike swatted a rogue Cheetoh off his knee. With the level of dignity that can only follow an action such as this, he replied, "No."

"What do you mean, 'no'!" Pit's eyes widened at this startling startlment. He made a few manic whimpering sounds and then tossed his myyyyystery box to the floor. He straightened his back, fluffed the feathers on his wings for an effect of added indignation, and then scoffed openly at Ike, the little fun-sucking heathen chicken addict.

"I mean, I'm not freaking doingit. Whatever it is. Just, just no, Pit. No."

"That's a load 'a crap, Fatty!" Pit waggled a finger at him dangerously. "After all I been there for you, after all those times I stuck by your side, you're just gonna turn around and hit me with this now, huh? And I thought we were friends, Fatty!"

"Alright, Pit," Ike said exasperatedly, getting to his feet and brushing sticky orange corn-and-artificial-cheese-crap off his hands. "I got a couple points. First off: quit calling me Fatty. I will freaking kill you. And all those times you were there for me and stuck by my side? I spent every moment telling you to go the hell away, so they don't count. And we are not friends, Pit."

Pit just kinda stood there for a minute after Ike said that and was quiet. After a little while, he snapped out of it, shook his head, picked his myyyyystery box back up, and said, "Yeah, so anyway, I was figuring you could do this for me, huh? I need you to look through some of this crap—" and before Ike could say anything, Pit dumped the contents of his myyyyystery box in his lap, which was probably pretty hard to do since Ike was standing up. I guess he just must have kind of slung it at his legs, or something. I don't freaking know, I just write these things, nobody ever said I had to analyze the stupid physics too.

Yeah, so anyway, Ike was standing there, and his lap was full of Pit's myyyyystery crap, and he was looking pretty pissed off, but before he could start screaming, Pit managed to cut him off with his cheese-grater-across-the-forehead angel voice. "—and I need you to analyze this crap, and then you can come back and tell me what she's doing."

Ike stopped trying to brush myyyyystery crap off his legs long enough to give Pit a WTF look. "Tell you what who's doing?"

For once, Pit looked uncomfortable. His emotions were normally in the family of violent paranoia, so the stark difference of this moment caught Ike off guard. Pit shifted his squirrelly feet and grumbled, "Nobody."

"Nobody," Ike said flatly.

"…yeah."

"You want me to look at this stuff, and then tell you from that what nobody's been doing."

Pit shifty-eyed.

Ike bent down and violently snatched one of the myyyyystery items off the floor (by now they had all been un-stuck from his lap and had spontaneously arranged themselves by increasing size). It was a photograph, and his eyes widened when he saw who it was of.

He thrust the picture at his idiot roommate and flailed it. "Samus Aran!" he choked, "You want me to help you stalk Samus Aran!"

"Damnit, Fatty!" Pit stomped his foot, like a four year old throwing a tantrum because he wants to go home and watch Spongebob. "How the heck did you guess?"

Ike stared at him.

Pit was unfazed. "You see Fatty, this is why I need you to do my analyzing and thus n' such. Yer a wizard, Fatty. You're like, freaking Voldemort. You hath Telekinesis."

"Pit," Ike snapped, balling up the photo and bouncing it off his chest, "Even if any of that remotely had made any sense, there is no way in hell I'm helping you stalk Samus Aran."

"Oh, I'm not trying to stalk her," Pit said matter-of-factly as he tossed Ike a dismissive hand gesture.

"Then what the heck?"

Pit shifty-eyed and drummed his fingertips against one another. "I'm in love."

Ike vomited.

Pit gave him a minute to wipe off his chin, and then he continued. "Yeah, I'm so in love with her. And she's in love with me too Fatty, you'll see. She's just kinda stupid and she doesn't know it yet."

Ike projectile vomited.

"You know, Fatty," Pit said with a sigh, wringing bile out of his toga, "Sometimes I get the feeling that you don't take me very seriously."

Ike thought about vomiting again, but his esophagus was getting kind of sore and he decided against it.

"Well then!" Pit announced in the world's most awesome transition, "Now that that's out of the way, I guess we'd better head down to the theater."

"Oh God," said Ike, as a horrible, cackling fear shoved its fist through his chest and started squeezing his innards like one of those stress-relief eye ball popping dolls. "You don't wanna try and kill somebody again, do you?"

"Oh, Ike," Pit laughed in a lackadaisical way, "Of course I wanna kill somebody! I'm just not 100% on who yet, and hey, even if I was, it's not like I'd be rushin' off to try it again in the theater, huh? Twice in the same place is just bad style, Fatty. You gotta give me some cred."

Maybe Ike had a befuddled expression plastered across his cheesepuff-dusted face. Maybe Pit just wanted to taint the air a little more with his disgusting, screeching, prepubescent angel voice. Either way, he continued, "We're goin' to the theater because Master Hand has announced that he will be announcing an announcement, following the announcement of the announcement to be announced, which is what he had just announced, so he still has something left to announce."

Ike took a good twenty minutes to try and process that, gave up, and spat, "We live the most circular, formulaic lives of any video game characters in existence. What the hell could Master Handpossibly want to tell us that could have any impact on our lives whatsoever?"

"I dunno, Fatty," Pit said, bopping up and down with impatience, "But your random italics are blowin' ma mind, and I think we'd better get down there before you have the chance to go droppin' any more, ya hear?"

So before Ike had the chance to go dropping any more mind-blowing random italics, he and Pit had shimmied on down to the theater, nearly drowning amid the undulating masses of Brawlerdom. Nobody ever went to the freaking theater, unless it was part of a super-secret mission to destroy Agents of the Eggplants, and so the unwashed masses had slowly developed a sinister curiosity for the place, sort of like a cyst that should have been popped four or five months ago. Master Hand knew this, and since he also knew that nobody gave Bowser's ripe red left ass cheek about anything he had to say, he had decided to call the meeting in this exotic place as opposed to a clearly mundane alternative, such as Planet Zebes or the moon. Now they would all show up anyway, whether they cared or not, drawn like fruit flies to a decaying zebra carcass. Master Hand was probably about ten times smarter than all the Brawlers put together. That's especially pathetic when you remember that he's just a giant floating hand and doesn't even have a skull in which to stash his brain.

Ike elbowed four or five Shy Guys in the head and shlopped himself down into a seat. Pit took one next to him and immediately started fidgeting and stretching his wings and crossing his legs like he had to pee and asking Ike when it was gonna start and could he please have money for popcorn and why did the old woman behind them smell like radiator fluid. Ike had been about six seconds away from strangling him, but then Pit scrambled up his sleeve and squatted on his head, and this took Ike so by surprise that he forgot all about it.

"Pit, what the hell are you doing!"

"Reconnaissance, O-fatty-con," Pit replied matter-of-factly. He leaned out over the cusp of Ike's head, and Ike had to flail his arms to keep from toppling over. "This is the best excuse in the history of history of history to do some serious scopin' for my mission, and if you think Imma just let it blow by for the sake of something as worthless as not making you look like an idiot, then you got another thing coming."

"Pit, what mission?" Ike clapped his hands around the psychotic little angel's wrists and wrenched him off his head. "You're not even making sense within your own crazy little world anymore!"

Pit pushed his lower lip out and scowled at him. "Dangit Fatty, I was just talking about it twenty minutes ago! Samus!"

Ike sighed. "Right, right, you're stalking her, I forgot."

"I'm not stalkingher! I'm just trying to learn everything about her that I could ever possibly know, but without talking to her and without her knowing! That is totally freaking different than stalking somebody! Now quit saying that, Fatty; I'm sick of your crap!"

Ike considered responding to that, but before he could string the words together, Pit clobbered him in the head and pointed a shaking finger towards the other side of the auditorium.

"Fatty," Pit said hoarsely, "lookit, lookit…"

Samus was talking animatedly to someone, and once she sat, the two of them could see that the person it had been was Pikachu.

"AAAAARGH!" Pit screamed and began yanking on his hair, "That dirty little RAT!"

Ike forced him back into his seat and kept a hand pressed into his chest, with the indistinct hope that fewer people would stare at them if Pit was sitting down.

Pit began hiccupping and sobbing quietly into his upturned palms. "Oh, why didn't I tell her sooner," he moaned, "We could have been so happy together, and now she's gone and I'll never know!"

"What is the matter with you!" Ike snapped, retracting his hand before Pit could dribble snot onto it.

For whatever reason, that comment snapped Pit out of it instantly. "You know what, Fatty?" he said with as much courage as his broken heart could muster, "I don't have to bugger with this crap!"

Ike was just happy he wasn't leaking snot on things anymore. "Yeah, that's right, Pit," he said, not really listening.

"Pikachu isn't really the right one for her! Being the first one doesn't make you the right one, huh?"

"Yeah, Pit, yeah."

"And, yeah, I guess Pikachu is really smokin' hot," he admitted reluctantly, stealing another glance at the ripped rodent, with his sleek blonde fur that whispered gently in the breeze, his features that looked as if they had been sculpted by the fingers of God (or at least Ken Sugimori), his eyes that sparkled with the disbelief of watching as ten million fireflies lit up the world as I fell asleep. "There's no way I could ever compare to that," he added sadly.

"Yeah, Pit, yeah."

"But you know what?" Pit said, starting to sound plucky again, "I'm still better for Samus than that rat is, and she's still gonna be happier with me than she could ever be with Pikachu. Sexy yellow rat body or no."

Ike's mind had snapped back upon hearing the word "sex." "Wait, dude," he began, "Did you just seriously say 'Sexy yellow rat body'?"

Before Ike and Pit even had the chance to begin that fascinating discussion, however, Master Hand finally floated out over the stage.

He was greeted by deafening booing, a hail of blunt objects being lobbed at him from all angles, and the sound of a pitchfork being sharpened against a whetstone.

"SHUT THE HELL UP," Master Hand boomed. The Brawlers obliged. Except for Fox, who couldn't stop himself from throwing one last cheese wedge. It ricocheted off Master Hand and pegged Link in the eye.

"ALRIGHT," Master Hand said evenly, apparently figuring that this was as subdued as his audience was likely to get. "I'VE GOT GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYBODY."

The Pokémon Trainer screamed, "Shove it up your butt!" The rest of the room erupted in a cacophony of approval. Fox threw another cheese wedge. I'm not really sure why he walks around with so many cheese wedges. We should ask the Mythbusters.

Master Hand loosed a bolt of electricity from his pointer. Pokémon Trainer was reduced to a pile of ash. It's super effective!

"I HAVE NO BUTT INTO WHICH THIS GOOD NEWS COULD BE SHOVED. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID."

"Get ON WITH IT!" roared Lucario, waggling his little Lucario fists with fury.

Master Hand charred Lucario and continued, "ALRIGHT FINE! THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT TOMORROW IS THE OFFICIAL START OF NEXT SEASON'S TOURNAMENT."

The Brawlers all shrieked as if their flesh was being cooked, which I guess was fitting for Pokémon Trainer and Lucario. Fox threw another cheese wedge. He does it when he approves, he does it when he disapproves. I think he has a dependency.

Master Hand's ire finally bubbled over. He chucked a lightning bolt at Fox, who ducked, and it hit Olimar instead. "ENOUGH!" he boomed, "WE GO THROUGH THIS EVERY DAMN SEASON! DOING THIS IS YOUR FREAKING JOB, AND YOU WILL SUCK IT UP AND DEAL WITH IT!"

Master Hand pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his knuckles and glanced down at his notes. "MATCHES TOMORROW ARE TOON LINK VS. PIKACHU, DIDDY KONG VS. R.O.B., AND," he squinted his eyes (?), "IKE VS. SAMUS."

Pit nearly had a coronary. "Fatty! Fatty!" he gasped, reaching over and grabbing Ike roughly by the front of the tunic, "Fatty, did you hear that?"

Ike had heard it, but the difference was that he actually was having a coronary. Oh goodness, oh goodness, he'd just spent six months doing nothing but sitting around and eating cheesepuffs and now he had to actually go try and kill somebody again. Oh goodness.

Pit had Ike's tunic bunched up in both of his sweaty little angel mitts, shaking him, eyes glistening with an insanity that could never come from watching any number of fireflies, even if they were lighting up an entire universe, and even if I wasn't just falling asleep but slipping into a coma. Ok, srsly, no moar OwlCity, I promise. "Fatty! Fatty!" Pit stammered at him, a bead of drool slipping out of his lips. "This is the best thing that has ever happened ever! Ever!"

Ike vomited on him, but Pit still didn't go away. That was when Ike knew his goose was cooked. Or chicken fried, in his case.

The Brawlers were all trickling out of the auditorium now, grumbling amongst themselves with a general flavor of anticlimax and despondency. Because Pit was generally renowned for being out of his dripping mind; and also because he currently stank like bile from Ike's vomit festival; the crowd parted before him like the seas before Moses. He took off running for his room like a deranged wallaby, dragging Ike along behind him by his pudgy wrist.

"Pit…wh-what the…hell…?"

"We gotta plan, Fatty!" Pit roared at him, "You're meeting Samus! Tomorrow! We've got to make sure you say and do just the right things so she falls in love with me!"

Pit thundered up a stairwell, and Ike's head knocked into every step.

"This is the sort of perfect, beautiful, serendipitous opportunity that romantics like me lie awake at night and pine for! I couldn't have hoped for a more magical way to impress her, for a more profound and caring gesture of my good graces and sympathies!"

Ike plucked a loose tooth out of his jaw and flicked it to the side.

"And it's all by spontaneity!" Pit continued to gush, as if he were a sickening passage from some low-brow teen romance novel wherein the main vampiric love interest is described in nauseatingly infinitesimal detail, but whose deeper qualities are frustratingly never explored; much to the reader's chagrin; until they realize, later, and with a flash of epiphany, that the reason such qualities are lacking in the text is because such qualities are lacking in the characters themselves, and that the point of it all isn't simply to showcase base drives, but to illustrate that such plebian fantasies are in themselves the means that blind us to the true and staggering breadth of these sacred emotions, the brilliantly vast and enchanting world simply snuffed and squandered in the name of carnal instinct and instant gratification; they have a happiness, yes, but that happiness is merely a paltry and whimpering substitute, merely the semblance of true joy, a joy which is barred from them forever, merely by the shocking incomplexity of their own hearts and moral lowness.

And yes, Mr. Ed, that thar is how 'zactly Pit did gush.

Anyway.

"You gotta work with me, Fatty!" Pit continued (but not gushingly; I ain't writing that crap again), "Or else you might as well just rip my heart out and throw it on the ground and stomp on it, because an opportunity this fantastically perfect is never gonna swing by ever again!"

"Pit," Ike spat, before his mouth could fill with blood again, "You do realize that I'm the one who's going to be fighting her tomorrow, right?"

Pit stopped for a moment and glared at him. "Well, I don't see what that's got to do with anything, Fatty. You're still my friend, and what are friends for if not to force your crushes to fall in love with you?"

"Pit," said Ike, "We are not friends."

This minor little detail had never struck Pit before as being particularly relevant, and now was no exception. "Or whatchu tryin' to say, Fatty, huh," Pit continued, scrunching his face into what he hoped was a dangerous, intimidating look, "Is it that you want Samus for yourself? You're trying to sabotage my romantic escapade so you can have her all to yourself? Is that what's going on here, you sick, sick little sickopathic sicko?"

Ike considered telling Pit that he didn't need to sabotage any of his romantic plans because he was sure that Pit would sabotage them himself, but then something much more relevant to his Ike's narrow interests caught his eye and he stopped and gasped and pointed. "Look Pit!" he cried, "It's a pumpkin!"

"Fatty, that is clearly not a pumpkin," Pit said with a gusty sigh after he glanced at the source of Ike's fascination with as little energy expended as possible. "It's a bomb. And quit changing the subject; don't you know there are more important things going on right now than whether or not the alien object sitting in our hallway is a bomb or a pumpkin?"

"It is a pumpkin!" Ike snapped, bending down next to said orange ball o' festive harvest time spookiness.

"No! It's a bomb!"

"It's a pumpkin!"

"It's a bomb!"

"Pit, it's a freaking pumpkin! Don't you even know what a pumpkin is?"

"Oh I know what a pumpkin is, Fatty," Pit nodded solemnly, narrowing his squirrely bastard angel eyes, "In fact, I have such a rock-solid pumpkin understanding that I can tell you straight up that pumpkins don't have chunks of metal sticking out of them. And since that thing does have a hunk of metal sticking out of it, it can't be a pumpkin, and logic demands that it must instead be the pumpkin's closest natural relative. Which is the bomb."

Ike stared at him.

"It's basic biology, Fatty. Not my fault you spent your high school career fantasizing about chicken instead of learning science."

Ike was fully prepared to stare at Pit for as long as this awkward moment deemed necessary, but then the pumpkin (or bomb) caught his eye again, so he stared at that instead.

"Wait a minute!" Ike exclaimed as his little science-deprived Ike brain began spinning at maximum overdrive, "It's got a knife stuck in it!"

Pit scoffed. "Fatty, what did I just freaking say!"

Ike reached out and spun the pumpkin so its opposite side faced out. Written on it in sloppy black sharpie was:

IKE

Ike's face went white.

Pit shrugged. "Maybe they meant a different 'Ike'!" he said cheerfully.

"Pit, it's on our welcome mat."

This point might not have been as convincing if Pit had not earlier decorated said welcome mat with his own black sharpie:

THIS IS THE WELCOME MAT OF PIT AND FATTY. IF YOU HAVE PREPARED A THREATENING PUMPKIN FOR EITHER OF US, PLEASE LEAVE IT UPON THIS WELCOME MAT SO WE CAN BE SURE THAT YOU MEANT IT FOR US AND NOT A DIFFERENT PIT/FATTY. THANK YOU.

Pit rubbed his chin in a pensive sort of way. "I still think I was too vague."

Ike took him by the shoulders and shook with gusto. "No, Pit, you don't get it!" He said frantically, "Somebody wants to kill me!"