It was a quiet night in the small town of Smashville. The shopping quadrant had closed and all three Nooks had returned home for a well-deserved dinner. The wind was low, allowing for a light rustle among Smashville's many trees. It was a quiet night indeed. Of course, that was all before the legendary heroes of Super Smash Brothers visited the café, after a long day of tournament matches. The SSB cast was known for their legendary skill on the battlefield and their absolutely insane actions off of it. So naturally, hell broke loose after that.
Princess Zelda of Hyrule sat at the counter, working through a specially ordered vanilla parfait topped with strawberry ice cream and chocolate fudge. The Princess of Destiny always ordered the same thing, not bothering to mess with the heavenly taste of dessert. She looked at her friend and fellow princess—Peach—and briefly watched her work through a mushroom-shaped cupcake. The princess of the Mushroom Kingdom was known to be quite energetic and eccentric at times, despite her quiet exterior. So Zelda wasn't all that surprised when Peach threw her fork on the counter and squealed, her voice reaching all the way to the ancient ruins of Skyloft. The other heroes at the cafe didn't even blink.
"Oh, you would not believe what Mario did at the castle last night!" Peach's voice barreled through her sentence at both high pitch and high velocity. Even the Blue Falcon would have been hard-pressed to keep up.
"Oh?" It was all Zelda offered on the subject.
"So do you remember when we had that new slide put in at the playground? You know, the one for our cute little Yoshi guys? Well, Mario decided to jump all over it! He jumped really low, and then he jumped really high, and then he jumped really low, and then really really high, and then he jumped so high I couldn't see him anymore, so I went closer to investigate, and then he came down right on top of my head!" Zelda merely raised an eyebrow, not sure whether she should be surprised that Peach's entire story spewed out as one whole sentence or that this was actually a topic of discussion.
"And you know, I wish Mario would just talk sometimes." Peach's voice continued at breakneck speeds. "I know he's never done that, but he jumps so much I don't really think he hears what I say. Only the middle of my sentence, you know? Because he's jumping at the beginning and end of it!"
"I understand." Zelda gave a nod. "Link doesn't talk much either. All he wants to do is roll on the ground all the time and go fishing." The magic princess gave a brief shrug. "That is not very manly, after all." Zelda's attention moved back to her parfait. She felt like she was onto something. A good relationship depended on three main aspects-trust, communication, and values. And, well, Link received a big round zero in the communications department. As for values, Zelda had always assumed Link meant well-but he had never spoken about it (or spoken at all). And then there was trust. Link had some good moments, like when he would actually clear a dungeon, but there were issues. Link would spend most of his time breaking her subjects' valuables or terrifying them with unnecessary displays of swordsmanship. Link alone counted for the majority of Hyrule's high crime rates. The more Zelda thought about it, the more convinced she was that Link was a sociopath. There definitely wasn't much dating material in the fairy boy.
Ganondorf, on the other hand... He was royalty. He had a career. He had ambition. He had a vision. And he had a huge army, for Hylia's sake. And Ganondorf was rich. The demon king was so rich his minions spewed Rupees when they died, and he could afford stashing large amounts of cash in chests all over the land. Ganondorf had clearly stated his intent and mission, and Zelda could trust he was always aiming to kidnap her. Heck, maybe she liked getting kidnapped. It would explain why it happened all the time.
"Those are the two princesses." Robin pointed over to the counter. Cloud's cobalt blue eyes followed the tactician's gesture and found a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. His eyes shifted to the person next to her—another young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. The mercenary furrowed his eyebrows, looking back at the space warrior he met just moments ago. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. He looked over at the guardian of the cosmos, who once again had blonde hair and blue eyes. Cloud was starting to notice a trend among the women of Smash.
"Hello boys, and welcome to Brewster's Cafe." The waitress had come to the table to take their orders. She thankfully had neither blonde hair nor blue eyes, in fact she wasn't even human. She was a walking white cat whose entire face changed with every expression. "My name is Blanca and I'll be taking care of you today. How are we doing?"
"Great thanks, we'll have a pizza." Robin was the first to speak up. Blanca looked back up from her notepad, visibly confused.
"Pizza?" She repeated. "This is a cafe. We don't serve pizza here." Robin sighed and crossed his arms.
"Have you ever been Falcon punched before?" He began. "When you're stunned? It is the most harrowing, gut-wrenching, embarrassing experience you could ever have in the history of the multiverse. So when it happens to you not once, but twice in the same day-you have a right to pizza as a consolation prize." Blanca sighed in defeat and left to order a pizza from somewhere else.
"So..." Cloud shifted in his seat. "What's this stun thing you were talking about?" Cloud had been with the Smashers for only two days, and he was still learning the ropes.
"Oh yeah." Robin said as he realized what Cloud was referring to. "That's a thing that happens when you've been blocking for too long. Master Hand and Crazy Hand aren't too keen on us stalling fights, so they stun us to keep us from blocking the whole time."
"It's stupid." Dark Pit spat. "They shouldn't be controlling us." Cloud looked over to the next table and watched a puffy, pink alien literally inhale its food. The plate was its dessert. And then the silverware. And then the table. The pink alien instantly transformed into the table it ate. He blinked in an attempt to process that information. Cloud looked back to the table and found that Captain Falcon had crossed his hands behind his head.
"I kinda want buffalo wings to go with that pizza." The racing captain mused.
"Good luck getting that." Dark Pit scoffed. "Cafes don't make buffalo wings, and I think we cost the waitress enough trouble insisting on pizza."
"I could make them." The racer felt confident in his culinary abilities. His response gave Robin a smirk.
"You seriously think you could make buffalo wings from scratch before the pizza gets here?" The tactician was sure it was undeniably, irrevocably, absolutely impossible.
"Yeah." Captain Falcon's response was nonchalant. "I could get out there and find myself a buffalo, fry it in the Blue Falcon's propellers, and then put the sauce on. Easy."
"Okay, that wouldn't work." Robin interjected.
"Why not?"
"Because buffalo wings aren't made of buffalo, you idiot."
"Shut up." The embarrassed captain mumbled. Cloud should have known Captain Falcon was bluffing. After all, he once boasted that he shot his arch-nemesis in the face. Through his own face. Judging that the racer was still alive, Cloud decided that was a lie.
"Not to mention that the Blue Falcon's propellers wouldn't fry anything." Dark Pit added. "They would just burn it to charcoal." Cloud turned to find Blanca moving towards their table holding a pizza box above her head.
"Pizza's here." He spoke. Robin whipped his head around.
"Pizza?" Robin spoke the heavenly word. His eyes lit up when he saw the box. Blanca set it down on the table and opened it up to show a full cheese pizza. It stayed like that for about five milliseconds. After that it looked like a tornado had blown through. The four had gotten down to the last few slices when Robin spoke up.
"You know," he began. "Have you ever had the sense that you're being...watched? Like, almost all the time?" Captain Falcon put his beer down and thought about it.
"Yeah, actually." He replied. "Every time I'm racing I get this feeling like there's eyes trained on my back. It's really disconcerting."
"And almost every time I step onto a battlefield, I feel like I've done this a million times before." Robin added, his face scrunched up in consternation. "Like... Deja vu."
"It's a simple explanation." Dark Pit retorted, as if his friends were idiots. "You've died on that map a million times and can't manage to do it alive."
"You've died a million times?" Cloud repeated. "Why is Dark Pit always so...dark?"
"Look who's talking." Captain Falcon replied back. Cloud had already started working up a reputation for being excessively moody.
"But maybe Dark Pit's onto something." Robin thought out loud. "What if it's not just a feeling, and we are being watched? But what if it's more than that? What if these beings are controlling us? What if our lives and our actions are predetermined?" The group sat in silence for a moment, contemplating Robin's proposal. They decided to let out a collective and dismissive "nah" and turned back to the pizza box. They realized with a jolt of horror that there was only one slice left. They cautiously looked at each other, and then back at the slice. They looked back at each other, and at the slice again. There was a tense heartbeat, and then the four exploded into an all-out brawl for rights to the last slice of pizza.
It was approximately four in the morning, and most of the heroes had finally returned home to catch some sleep. Only Cloud and a handful of other heroes were still in Brewster's Cafe when Link walked in. Robin and Dark Pit had told him of Link's muteness, but Cloud still thought it was polite to mention a brief "hi." Link only acknowledged Cloud with a sharp nod as he sat down at one of the tables. Cloud's attention moved back to his drink.
"All the world's a stage." A new voice began. Cloud looked up at the heroes sitting at the counter, but they looked just as confused as he did. "And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." Cloud's astonished eyes fell on the green-garbed warrior and his jaw dropped. Did Link just... talk?
"A famous playwright once wrote that." The young man kept musing, as if his speech was perfectly normal. Zelda made it about two sentences into Link's speech before fainting. "And by writing it he made it so." Link stood up from his table and began to pace around the cafe. "But it begs the question-what world is the stage? Who wrote the play? Do these characters get to improvise, or are we left to the whims of a creator that we never knew?" Link paused and looked up at the cafe's ceiling. "And when the play's over, what happens to the actors? Do we just disappear? Vanish?" Link went back to pacing, but stopped once more to look at the Triforce of Courage brand on his left hand. "And what is this destiny thing? Do we get to decide our own fate with our own actions, or is everything we say and do predetermined before our birth? Do any of us have any say in our future?" The other heroes were stunned. This was the largest amount of words they heard out of Link in... forever.
"There's an old saying that's been going around." Link continued. "Let's say I'm a passenger on a boat. I can get up, go get a drink, take a walk around the deck, or just sit in my cabin. Nevertheless, I still can't change the course of the ship. But yet again, there hasn't been anything I've done in my life that I've disagreed with. At the end of the day, I still choose to do what I do. So my actions are still ultimately my own. After all, I'm talking-aren't I?" With that, the champion of Hyrule turned and left the cafe-leaving the dumbstruck heroes to pick their jaws off the floor. After their brains tried to process what had happened, one finally spoke up.
"Well, that was weird."
Zelda woke up to a growingly familiar setting—a spherical room with ornate diamonds on the floor. She sat up to find she was in a mahogany bed, wrapped in white silk sheets. The only lighting was a small, melting candle by the bedside table.
"Hello, sweetheart." A deep, familiar voice spoke from the darkness. Zelda instantly knew who it was—Ganondorf. Normally Zelda would be secretly happy to see him, but…Link just talked. After that revelation, Ganondorf didn't seem like the hot stuff he once was. Not at all. She definitely asked for the wrong prince.