Veritas

(June 27, 9:58 a.m: Mario Circuit)

(It is a sunny, cloudless day when I arrive at the appointed time of my scheduled interview. The wind grazes my face as I take a seat underneath the fairway of the track, out of range of the wildly-speeding miniature karts. There is a groan from the crowd as a green shell collides into the back fender of one racer; I look up and see Mario, the timeless hero of the Mushroom Kingdom, smiling down at me, wearing his traditional red hat, overalls, and gloves.)

I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long.

Not at all; as a matter of fact, you're actually two minutes early. I'd really like to apologize for bringing you here on such short notice-

(Mario waves a hand carelessly, chuckling.)

It's no trouble. It's not as if we're busy around here, you know.

I understand that some of the Smashers weren't as willing to talk about their roles in the Subspace Affair as you were.

Well, I suppose that's to be expected, what with all we've been through. After all, the whole mess with Subspace wasn't exactly something you could just walk out of unscathed, regardless of which side you were on. I think it affected some people more personally than others.

In what way?

Well, the incident certainly disillusioned us to the fact that we weren't just going to sit on our behinds all day with occasional sparring every so often. It kind of alerted us to the fact that there was something else out there, and I guess it made us all a little more paranoid in the end.

Has it affected you deeply personally?

Not very. At least, not a lot compared to a couple others.

When you mentioned "which side" previously, are you saying that the Subspace incident was a completely bipolar conflict- that it was essentially a case of good versus evil?

No- no, of course not, not by a long shot. I suppose the whole thing really isn't as cut-and-dried as it seems, despite what most of us want to believe.

It's easy to portray most of the Smashers as good and Tabuu as evil, but there's so much more to consider. For one, I'd like to think that Tabuu was a maniac, a deranged being hell-bent on dragging the world as we knew it into Subspace. It'd make it so much simpler that way. But at the same time, a part of me wants to say 'What if we misunderstood him? What if he did it simply because he thought he was doing the right thing?' Could it be that he was a member of some other race that we don't know about- forced to do it against his will, like the R.O.B's?

There are at least twenty possible reasons for this, and for each of those reasons at least twenty more further explanations. We might never know, and we probably won't.

Can you recall when the Subspace Army first appeared?

Yes, the morning of June 19th. It's hard to believe all this took a little over a week, but time has a funny way of doing things. I was fighting in an event scheduled at the stadium against Kirby- Peach and Zelda were scheduled afterwards, so they were there as well.

I distinctly remember shaking Kirby's hand- or flipper, if you will- after the match, when I became aware that the sky had suddenly gone dark, and all of a sudden this huge ship, the Halberd, flew over the arena. Black things started spilling out of it, falling to the ground in thick streams. It wasn't like anything any of us had ever seen.

The Shadow Bugs.

Yes. As soon as they touched the ground, they began to concentrate together every pace or so, gathering into bigger blobs of whatever it was they're made of. Then they formed themselves into Primids, covering the entire field.

Despite our original fears, we- Kirby, Peach, Zelda and I- got rid of them without too much trouble, and we thought it was all over, though none of us knew what on earth had just happened. Imagine, black particles raining from the sky and reforming into bipedal enemies, intent on attacking us- it's not something that happens every day. We weren't so much scared of the Primids as we were of what could possibly happen next.

Then, all of a sudden, we saw this weird thing on a flying pedestal come out of the clouds...the Ancient Minister. He was carrying a large metallic sphere with an "X" marked on it- we didn't need to ask what it was even before it split apart and started counting itself down.

I ran forward with the intent of disarming the thing before it blew us to bits, but I remember blacking out all of a sudden, like I'd been hit head-on by a charging bull. I could feel myself flying through the sky as I lost consciousness.

Then what happened?

Well, I can't say how long I was out for, because I had no sense of time while unconscious. To be honest, though, being turned into a trophy is no different than falling asleep. There's no pain or great discomfort, really; you can just feel yourself going stiff before you relax all of a sudden. You're blissfully aware of anything around you, unable to feel any emotions or pain until you awaken.

I remained like this for a while, until I suddenly felt a hand touch my shoulder. There was this boy standing before me. He had brown hair, a white tunic, and wings on his back. There was a bow in his hands, and he said his name was Pit.

I wasn't sure what to make of him, but I described the story of the Shadow Bugs and the Primids to him, everything that had happened. It just so turned out he'd seen the exact same thing- what were the odds that these things, whatever they were, would attack both land and air at the same time?

Not good.

At that point, we knew virtually nothing. We didn't know the identity of our enemy- just that there was someone, or something, summoning these Shadow Bugs across the world, transforming them into Primids. We didn't know anything besides that, but we knew that the people below us were in grave danger. We knew we had to get to the ground, so we had to fight our way through Skyworld.

And you encountered other manifestations of the Shadow Bugs, besides the Primids?

I didn't know they were composed of the Shadow Bugs themselves- remember, I was in an unfamiliar territory, and I had no reason to believe the things we saw along the way were from the same vein as the Primids. But yes, to answer your question, the other enemies we saw- the Jyks, the Bytans, the Mites, and all those other monsters with names I can't recall right now- they were all part of the Subspace Army, though we didn't find that out until later.

You then saw the Ancient Minister.

Correct, and he had another one of those bombs with him. I still haven't figured out how we managed to miss him. (Laughs ruefully.)

There's something I'd like you to clarify.

Go ahead.

In Super Smash Brothers, fighters fight in a prescribed arena- but the Subspace Incident did not take place in any one arena. Instead, it was spread across the "world" of Smash Bros. as a whole- a world with a lake, a forest, a sky, and so much more. Could you possibly explain this?

It's interesting that you should bring that up. Remember, the rules of Super Smash Brothers as you and I know them change to some extent outside the arena.

You tend to think of our environment as a universe, but in reality it is much more than that- it is actually a megaverse, a location in space where several wholly different universes converged upon one another. This is the secret of Smash Brothers- how fighters with completely different physical structures, molecular biologies, and different life stories, can duel one another.

The world that we are currently in right now is neither genuine nor fake. This Mario Circuit is a replica, so to speak, of the Mario Circuit that exists in the Mushroom Kingdom, but it is built upon a different set of rules. It is built as a battle arena, not a go-kart racing strip.

Look around you. You'll notice the track is laid differently, the item boxes and launchpads are non-existent, and the cars nothing more than autopiloted bots designed to ride the exact same lines on the track at regular intervals. It is the same with other so-called landmarks of other worlds- the Hyrule Temple, Corneria in the Lylat System. They are essentially meant to be the same, but in reality they are very different.

You haven't completely answered my question. How do you explain the existence of different worlds outside the arenas that Smash Bros. normally takes place in?

(Mario rubs the back of his hand against his eyes, looking up into the clear sky.)

I can't be completely sure. Even as a Smasher, I'm not completely familiar with this world- embarrassing, I know. I could tell you all the species of mushrooms in the Mushroom Kingdom and the species of every unit in Bowser's Koopa army, but as to this world I cannot say.

My best guess, and remember that this is only a theory, is that when two universes collide, the areas directly affected by the collision- in other words, the place where they have crashed together- become scrambled together in some way, their environments becoming fused, almost as one. Think of it this way: if a red car and green car are involved in a collision, the red car will have flecks of green paint on it and vice versa.

It's not the best comparison I can think of, but I hope you get the general idea.

Anyway, my point is that after all these universes have collided with one another at one point- the point we're standing at right now- bits and pieces of these universes must have leaked out, in a manner of speaking, and formed this entire area. For all I know, the lake, the forest, the zoo- they're all detached bits of other worlds, converged in one spot. Where exactly they came from, I don't know. What matters is that they're here.

And this may be even more farfetched, but I think this is how the principle of those bombs work- they're not actual explosives, just fragments of the universe known as Subspace. The bombs are just parts of the universe of Subspace itself, ready to consume anything within its radius- really, in effect just replacing parts of our universe with parts of another.

(I remain silent for some time, absorbing this information as Mario chuckles.)

Oh, don't act so surprised. You'd be surprised how much time we have on our hands between fights.

(I nod and get up from my seat underneath the fairway. Mario's smile remains on his face as we shake hands, his grip surprisingly strong. I see him walk calmly across the track, the Shy Guy-driven karts zipping harmlessly past him, before he disappears into the other side of the stage.)