"I don't think this is a good idea anymore, Ness," Yoshi whispered nervously.
"You can't change you mind now," Ness whispered back furiously as he shot his dinosaur friend a piercing glare. "We're already in the Item Vault! Besides, this was all your idea!"
"I know, I know! It's just that – well, we're stealing, aren't we? And Master Hand'll definitely notice that some of the Pokéballs are missing!"
"It's just twelve Pokéballs out of several hundreds, Yoshi. He's not going to notice a thing. And we're not stealing – we're going to return them once we've had our battle!"
"I'm going out with Greninja tomorrow," Yoshi pouted as they walked down the long, dark corridors of the Item Vault. "I need my beauty sleep."
"Well, I'm not going back now. We'll take the Pokémon today and battle tomorrow, after your little date with Greninja. Then you can get your stupid beauty sleep."
Yoshi sighed, knowing that however much he protested would be futile in swaying Ness's mind, and resolved to continue walking down the corridor. As it was midnight, the entire vault was plunged in pitch black, but the two had come prepared: Ness kept an orb of PK Fire in his hand while Yoshi brought a bag of Bulb Berries, allowing him to shine a splendid glamor of gold upon ingestion. They stopped in front of the door that read "Pokéballs", and the dinosaur turned to Ness and gave him a taunting smirk. "Well, whatever then. Prepare to get your ass handed to you come tomorrow."
"Are you forgetting who won the last three matches in a row?" Ness scoffed as he pressed down on the door handle.
"I'm telling you, man – battling on the 3DS and battling in real life are two totally different things. You'll see when I 6-0 your shitty ass team – or maybe you won't, you'll probably be crying too much from getting owned too hard."
The door shut as Ness opened his mouth to snap back a reply, and at the exact same instant the entrance to the Item Vault opened to reveal Captain Falcon and Samus, the latter wielding a flashlight in her hand. The fact that there were four visitors to the vault was a rare occasion indeed, for the only time anyone ever went down to it was to do a stock check, which was never conducted in the first minute of midnight, the time at which the two bounty hunters arrived at the vault.
"Falcon," Samus was snarling as she walked quickly down the corridors which Ness and Yoshi had tread only minutes before, "for the last. Fucking. Time. This is not supposed to be a date. Stop. Fucking. Asking!"
"But of course it has to be a date!" Captain Falcon whined as he tried to throw himself in front of Samus's path to block her from progressing further into the vault. "You said it yourself! Douglas Jay Falcon you are coming down to the Item Vault sharp at 12 a.m. to get back my Paralyzer. I remember those words exactly! You can't just tell me that this is not a date!"
"Tell me, what part of any of those words makes it sound like I'm going on a date with you?"
"Oh, come on – you just want us to be alone when we make out passionately under the stars! You don't have to be such a tsundere, Samus – don't you understand that a woman is a woman, and will always need the arms of a man to keep her back straight and grope her boobs – I mean, to enamor her heart with affectionate manliness that promise super sexy fun times in bed?"
He succeeded in putting himself in front of her, just as they she was about to reach the door that led to the Pokéballs, and Samus almost felt as if she could explode from the asinine logic of Falcon that remained forever infuriating no matter how many times she was subjected to it.
"Listen up, Douglas Jay Falcon," she glowered in a low voice, though she did not run the risk of being overheard – the Item Vault was located in the Central Wing of the mansion, far away from the residential areas of the Eastern Wing, "the only reason why I made you come down here with me is because it was you who knocked my Paralyzer out of my hands when you tried to hug me during our match today and caused it to drop into that Gulpin's mouth. I wouldn't have called you down here if Master Hand wasn't such an unreasonable bastard and allowed me to take it when the match was over, but as he's only allowing it when the next match starts on Saturday…" The feelings of anger channeled towards Falcon momentarily switched their course and instead directed themselves towards the idiotic hand that made her life such an inconvenient hassle, and then she sighed, remembering who she was talking to. "I'm saying this again for the last time, Falcon. You're only here to help me find that Gulpin and make him retch out that Paralyzer. Make me repeat myself again and I'll be using my fists to get my message across instead of words."
And with that icy warning Samus stormed past the misogynistic racer, who turned around and stayed still for a second or two to appreciate the wonders of the bouncing flesh of her ass that strutted proudly in her Zero Suit.
"Always loved a spicy girl," Falcon whistled lowly before proceeding to dash forward and catch up with Samus as she placed her hand on the handle that would open the door to the Pokéball room.
During that time, Ness and Yoshi had been busy gathering the Pokémon they wanted for their battles. They had spent the last five minutes strolling along the shelves that lined the long walls of the room, each plank housing all the Pokéballs arranged in an alphabetical fashion. These Pokéballs contained Pokémon not only limited to the ones that appeared in all the Smash Bros. game, but also had the Pokémons that appeared in the backgrounds of the Pokémon-themed stages.
"Dibs on Lugia," Ness had said the moment they began their search.
"No legendaries allowed!" Yoshi had replied fiercely from the other shelf.
Yoshi already had four Pokéballs, stashed away safely in his secondary stomach (an organ all Yoshis had for storing ingested things); Ness had three. The psychic youngster was looking at the 'M' section, thinking of getting a Metagross for his team, when the orb of PK Fire extinguished itself – it required constant concentration as its fuel, concentration which Ness had taken away in thinking about which Pokémon he should get next. He was just about to light another ball in his hand when with a sudden slam that sounded like a gun shot the door opened.
The fact that the boys were not allowed to be in the vault was perhaps the biggest reason for their extreme, startled reaction – Yoshi let out a shriek as he imagined images of a wrathful Master Hand flying towards him in a fist of rage, while Ness dropped his Pokéballs and jolted his hand from the shelf. In doing so he accidentally knocked a random Pokéball off, making the number of dropped Pokéballs equal to four as they plummeted to the floor.
"Yoshi?" cried a familiarly feminine voice. "What the hell are you doing here?"
In the lone source of light that was Yoshi's body, Ness and Yoshi could see that it was not some demonic apparition or, worse, a furious Master Hand that was at the doorway, but the mismatched duo of Captain Falcon and Samus. Before either of them could breathe a sigh of relief, however, or come up with a hasty excuse as to why they were here, a different, second source of light began flooding the room, accompanied by the familiar sound of an opening Pokéball.
Four pairs of eyes turned to where the light was pouring from. Of the four Pokéballs that Ness had dropped, only one had landed in such a way that its button was pressed against the hardness of the floor, releasing a single silhouette of what looked like a blobby water droplet into the air –
Manaphy hovered above, rubbing her eyes with her swishy arms. She gazed down, sleepy and confused, at the quartet of Smashers, all of whom stared back silently with mouths wide open. She looked around, growing even more confused as she realized that she was in a battlefield that she had never before been released in. Then it hit Manaphy, as she absorbed the sight of the countless Pokéballs resting on the shelves: her release from the Pokéball was not to make use of her service, but to free her from the eternal slumbers of the confines of the Pokéball, that the non-Pokémons that stood underneath her were the pacifists she had always dreamed would come and free her from this everlasting hell of using, again and again, the singular move she was called upon to use when she was released onto the battlefields.
She was, in other words, free.
A smile was forming on the Manaphy's face now. Oh, how she had dreamed for this moment! To return to the homely waters of the sea that was her rightful birthplace, to once again frolic in the waves and swim through the currents and feel the gentle sea breeze and taste the sublime salt of the ocean! She did a happy little backflip in the air, uttering "Manaphy! Manaphy!" of joy, and was just about to rush forth ecstatically and thank her saviors when she heard the words:
"What are you doing? Catch it! Get it back into the Pokéball!"
The Manaphy stopped instantly. She did not understand the language of the non-Pokémons all too well, but there were two sounds that she had learned to detest ever since the moment of her capture: "Catch", and "Pokéball". Immediately she floated up, up, up, until her head was bumping against the ceiling, putting herself as far away from the non-Pokémons as possible as she shuddered in a rush of betrayed understanding: That they were not here to save her, that her sudden release was all but an unexpected accident. She looked down, once again, at the monsters below her, their glow of kindness turning quickly to that of a haze of malicious intent, as the biggest, burliest one of them rushed forward, grabbed a ball from the floor, and threw it up at her –
She swerved away, hearing the clunk of the ball as it hit the part of the ceiling where she was moments before, and understood what she had to do. She stretched a wide smile as she bathed in the delicious irony of using what her capturers had forced her to learn against them. It would damage them all permanently, allowing her to make her great escape with a final note of cold revenge as she left them all to struggle with the prodigious problems of stripped identities. Quickly now, before they could aim another shot – she directed the magical energy required for the spell into her antennae. They began to move, quivering slightly at first, and then evolving into more rapid, more desperate gyrations as they shook with the force that was exclusive to the biology of the magical water within her species. A blush-colored bubble of soothing light expanded from the ends of her antennae, which were beginning to glow a brighter pink themselves. Down below, she could hear desperate yells and pleas as the monsters realized what it was that she was doing, and her grin could only widen as she exulted in their despair.
The boundary of the bubble seeped over the last individual, and the Manaphy stiffened its antennae so that they formed the shape of a U. The round balls at the tip of each antenna were glowing a bright hot pink now, and with a final surge of power the Manaphy burst the souls of Ness, Yoshi, Captain Falcon, and Samus from their bodies. The empty shells sank to their knees or hit the ground, temporarily devoid of any life as the extracted spirits took the shape of magenta, spinning, pulsating hearts. They streamed forth into the air, held temporarily in place as Manaphy decided which heart should go into whom. Then, her decision made, the hearts shot back down, each taking a different trajectory from the one it followed last, until each sunk into the corporeal body of its new master.
Her discarnate surgery complete, the Manaphy giggled and flew out of the open door, casting not a single look at the intangible destruction she had carved.
A/N: Bonus Internet cookie to anyone who can guess who will go into who!