Disclaimer: All characters/franchises property of Nintendo.

Author's Note: I've played very few video games to utter completion, and only select video games at that. What interests me about Super Smash Bros are the characters. And of all the Nintendo games, I'm most familiar w/ the Legend of Zelda. I won't know all that many canonical details, and I've embarrassingly never played Metroid or Fire Emblem... I will compile particular Zelda universes (mostly Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess), but it's better to simply receive the setting as it comes rather than expecting a particular world. Sorry if you're a stickler about technicalities.

I was inspired to write something after reading Byoshi's fic: The Eulogy and the Unsung Hero. It's pretty awesome! Check it out: www . fanfiction s/ 5453506/ 1/ The-Eulogy-and-the-Unsung-Hero

Anyways, I hope you can enjoy this! Please review! I'd love to know what you think. I welcome constructive criticism—what did I do right? What can I do better? Or even just a hello! Also, I could use a critical beta…

Prologue: The Rip Opens

When Mewtwo destroyed the generator, he had expected a few, fiery pops. Some puffs of smoke. But the gusts of orange and yellow that erupted through Team Rocket's Silph Laboratory had sent the tanks into a gurgling, steaming spray. The walls evaporated; the chemical stocks fizzled into gray-brown plumes. It was a humbling, hypnotic sight. Unfortunately, the blaze had caused the inside of his protective bubble to grow uncomfortably warm. Mewtwo stayed just long enough to watch Giovanni's eyes boil, his face ooze off of his cheekbones. "Friends indeed," spat the Pokémon. Then he was gone.

His feet warped onto the basement floor. Normally, he would have been greeted by security—dozens of humans armed with stunners and tranquilizers—but they were busy running for their lives. The building groaned. Some lights flickered, others burst. Rare Pokémon cried and paced in their cages. With a wave of his hand, the bars slid open and the beasts sprang down the aisle. Wings, fins, and tails jostled him. However, Mewtwo was still, a pillar amongst the exodus. The panicked crowd was missing someone.

At the end warehouse rose an enormous door. A thick frost crawled up its steel face. The blinking side panel showed that the temperature in the room beyond was already rising, no doubt due to the lack of power. Mewtwo stepped back and raised his arms. His rounded fingers clenched. A dent appeared in the center of the door. Mewtwo furrowed his brow; the dent widened, crumpled inwards. Mewtwo threw his back into it. The thick metal ripped away, crunching down the aisle before stopping dead and ugly.

Panting, Mewtwo peered inside. A thawing iceberg glinted in the darkness. A massive, pink eye stared at him, and Mewtwo still felt a prickle run down his tubed neck. His own irises glowed a bright violet, and the ice began to pool into a large puddle. Mewtwo lifted himself off the ground to avoid the growing stream.

Palkia slumped to the ground. Mewtwo reached inside its mind and prodded gently. The massive creature blinked once, twice, its dilated pupils adjusting to the light.

"My sincerest apologies." Mewtwo bowed his head.

Palkia's roar rattled the walls. It remembered him now. He'd led Team Rocket to its nest, lured it into complacency while they set up their traps and readied their strongest Pokémon. Metwo had dragged Palkia to the ground, paralyzed it with a psychic gravitational pull, so the men could have their way. Palkia lumbered onto its haunches. With a scream, white-hot steam burst from its mouth.

Mewtwo teleported to the side. Though such a predictable attack could not touch him, the leftover miasma clogged in his lungs. The surge itself had rendered a cavernous hole in the warehouse. Now the storm of hungry flames was in plain view. Palkia screamed again, shoulders shaking.

"Hurry! Escape!" Mewtwo said. He ducked a torrent of blue-green flame; then, fountains of water, each one more volumous than the last. Palkia swung its head in a lumbering arc, trying to follow the smaller Pokémon as it teleported from place to place. As Mewtwo zig-zagged between its legs and flew circles around its head, Palkia twisted around too far and too quickly, stumbling into a heap. A growl rumbled in its chest, but it did not rise.

Mewtwo blinked away the smoke. The flames were billowing into giant forked tongues, getting ready to consume them. Casting aside all precautions, Mewtwo landed on the tip of Palkia's claw. It was bone hard, and triple Mewtwo's size. A single swipe could split his soft, fleshy body.

"This tiny place is unworthy of you. The vastness of space calls!" Mewtwo traced the pink stripe along the creature's arm, and it sprang to life with a glow. Palkia's eyes snapped open again. It lurched upwards and, with all its strength, ripped its claw through air.

Mewtwo's blood stilled. A thousand universes twinkled before him. Despite the swirling ashes and rising heat, he could only watch as Palkia dug its claws into the rip and split it wider. Space glimmered with a dark luminosity. Mewtwo had never seen anything so black and so beautiful.

Palkia swung a giant foot into the chasm. While the exhausted Pokémon could hardly keep itself upright, once through the rip it floated gracefully as a small bird. Mewtwo quashed the twinge of envy in his chest. No, it was not his home. As the warehouse crumbled around him, he realized he was newly displaced. Nowhere to go.

Palkia drifted, limbs akimbo as it relished the weightlessness of space. Then, with ominous slowness, it drifted around to face Mewtwo. The bi-pedal Pokémon felt his insides freeze. He tensed, ready to teleport, but the rip was faster. A roaring wind seized him, sucking him into the glittering sea of space. He tumbled over and under, limbs flailing so violently that they threatened to break. The air whooshed from his flattened lungs. Galaxies spiraled around him, their lights flaring and clashing together as if they fought to outdo each other. Or perhaps it was his bruised brain bouncing in his cranium.

A cold claw seized him. Mewtwo dangled like a corpse, his oversized head lolling. With a victorious cry, the giant Pokémon cut another rip and soared into another part of the universe.

Samus sighed.

Apparently, she hadn't been completely thorough during her last raid. A handful of space pirates had escaped the aim of her arm cannon and had tracked her to Mute City, where they'd found her gunship docked at a lonely repairs station in the sketchy Outer Ring. Samus had been in hurry and hadn't checked the mechanics herself. It was the first and would be the last time, she cursed, as her ship puttered through the stars at the speed of a one-legged pedestrian. The pirates, weaving around her in their sleek twin-fighters, did loop-de-loops in between shots. Samus thanked that armor upgrade, else her ship would already be sporting several holes.

Her comm-link beeped. They were trying to radio, probably to mock the Great Samus Aran—the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter, feared by man and alien alike—for her failure to check her oil. Samus was tempted to jump in her Varia Suit, open the hatch, and start firing, but she just kept her hands on the trigger and waited. As it tended to be, one of the pirates got too cocky and swerved in front of her. A quick blast from her ports turned him into a shower of light, his dust scattering to, one day, help form a new star.

The pirates ceased their jesting. They flew outwards, getting ready to focus their fire and finish her. Samus crushed a can of old rations, really wishing that she'd had the foresight to avoid this nuisance. At least the Varia would have enough power to get her back to Mute City. A quick input on the control board opened the chamber to her suit. Her face reflected on its newly polished plating.

Then her back hit the floor, legs rolling up and over as she pitched into a lopsided somersault. The lights went out as a huge jolt rocked through her ship. All she could see through the viewport was a pearly, white mass. Her ship jolted again as its nose knocked into… whatever it was. As she began drifting farther away, the mass took shape—some sort of space-dwelling animal. However, those usually lived in deep space, far from intergalactic hubbubs like Mute City. And this one seemed to have emerged from nowhere.

The pirates had started firing in panic, their blasts pinging against the animal's armor. Its huge neck lunged outwards, and it took a bite out of the closest pirate ship. Bits of metal floated about as the fighter was shredded like a toy airplane. The animal's tail swatted another fighter into the universe beyond.

Samus' ship had started drifted towards the thing again. Though she tried to steer it away, the recent thrashing had messed with her controls. Her jaw slackened as she floated down the thing's snout. The animal seemed to be looking back at her, almost becoming cross-eyed in the process. Finally, perhaps deeming her as harmless scrap, it raced forward and away, the gunship glancing wildly off its body.

Samus tried to latch onto something. Anything! Her hand found the leg of her Varia. Summoning all her strength, Samus pulled herself upright and wrapped her limbs around the suit. She screamed the activation code, but the wrenching and groaning of the gunship overpowered her voice. The deck was flooded with light too soft for fluorescents. The shadows of clouds rushed by her. Samus reached around and punched in the manual code. At last, the suit flared to life: it dissembled, its pieces leaping forward to clamp around her. Samus fell into free fall, her ship plummeting. When had she entered a gravitational field? She'd wonder more about that later—the wild tumbling was making it hard for her grapple hook to latch onto the escape pod door.

For a second, the ship gained a hint of stability. Samus could see straight out the viewport as they scraped the peak of a mountain. A horrid whistling sound gave her a surge of desperation. As she tumbled around again, the escape pod flashed in her sight. Her grapple hook flew true and, after being whipped about, she reeled herself in. She yanked herself into the pod and keyed the ejection code.

She tensed for that explosive pop, the rush of the shuttle rocketing through the air. Yet all Samus could feel was the continual plunge.

Damn those pirates!

She hit the eject again. Nothing. The pod's window panel showed a verdant, blurry earth. She hit the eject again. Still nothing. Ahead, a white mass—its gleaming spires reaching upwards—grew more and more enormous with each pound of Samus' crazed heart. Her ship was tearing through the last of the air, plunging like an earth-bound bullet. Samus tucked into the morph ball.

And felt nothing more.

A/N: Who exactly is going to be in this fic? … Shhh, that's a secret. Else, it wouldn't be as fun! :D

Again, please review. Like all writers, I love reviews…

This fanfic is really for me to practice my writing, so it'd be wonderful if I could have feedback!