Yoshi is in the kitchen.

Not having much to haul with him from Yoshi's Island to the Smash Mansion, his move was quick. And he immediately decided that he'd do something nice for the others, especially the newcomers and the younger ones who were just a little more likely to be overwhelmed.

Food, Yoshi decided quickly, was always a good way to make people feel more at home.

The kitchen's well-equipped, but what's currently in the fridge doesn't mesh with his imagination right away: water, juices, milk, butter, which he takes because he'll probably end up needing to slick something, cold cuts, garlic?—oh geez, Wario's already been here—cheeses, vegetables—he takes some of those, actually, everyone could stand to eat more vegetables, even him. But there's a surprising lack of eggs in there.

But Yoshi's more concerned for the others regarding eggs than he is about himself.

Then he gets an idea—he'll make a giant omelette. Surely that'll feed the newcomers and the returning fighters who weren't around last season and then some!

A giant omelette, of course, requires a lot of eggs. Or a single big egg.

Yoshi hesitates. He could push one out right then—he really could—but would that throw people off, especially the newcomers? Maybe. Unless they never know.

He glances around, making sure no one's there. There's plenty of distant chatter, definitely, and heavy footsteps and thumps of boxes and their contents and boxes and people flopping on beds just for a second, but no one close enough to make him worry.

So he pauses and breathes and squats and, from the front of his stomach, pushes. He literally feels the egg forming, then crowning, then—POP!

A Yoshi egg comparable to that of an ostrich wobbles upright on the floor.

As he begins to crack the egg with the end of a fork, he briefly thinks how unfortunate it'd be if learning to lay an egg at will weren't such an important milestone in a Yoshi's life. Had he pushed the wrong way, he could easily have shat right on the floor and only maybe have an egg to show for it. And that would've put a damper on cooking, on appetites, on everything to do with the kitchen. But it was more or less the Yoshi equivalent of, say, a human toddler's potty training. Not so much aiming for a toilet bowl, but more of how to get the right thing to come out.

By then, Yoshi can open up the egg by hand, and, shoving potty thoughts aside, he pours the entire thing—a yolk big as a ball and runny, runny, eternally running whites—into a clear bowl, almost filling it up completely.

Once he's gotten all he can out of the egg, he crushes the shell to discreetly throw it away and realizes there's no pan big enough to cook the omelette he wants to make. So he searches lower cabinets and finds a griddle plate to put on top of the stove instead.

There are finally nearby noises while he turns on the burners and starts beating the egg. A second after he starts hearing it, he realizes that it's actually the excited scramble of paws against hardwood followed directly by the slapping of flippers.

Hunter and Ducky, the Duck Hunt duo, slip into view and Ducky jumps back, wings flapping, when Hunter doubles back to run into the kitchen, immediately rearing up to put his paws on Yoshi.

"Hello!" Yoshi greets. Hunter doesn't let up while Ducky takes her place at his side, but at least he stays there while Yoshi pours beaten egg onto the griddle so they at least start to cook.

Finally, Yoshi can turn to Hunter and give him the pettings he so clearly wanted. His tongue sticks out at least a little the whole time. Once he's got Hunter on his back, Ducky taps her head against Yoshi's arm, asking the same. Yoshi immediately strokes her back, then scratches a little right by her wings, against the spot that makes her fluff her feathers. Everyone knows those spots. Well—except the newcomers, but they'll learn quickly. Everyone did in Melee, everyone did in Brawl, and everyone did in the first season of this tourney.

Yoshi pauses to break some of the vegetables by hand and finds the duo pacing around his feet, pausing when Hunter sniffs the fridge briefly. Probably the garlic. Did that even need to be refrigerated, or was Wario being himself?

Yoshi remembers. Some regions like their omelettes with ketchup. He forgets where or even when he heard this, but he sure can imagine why. Sort of. He's not quite sure if he's knowingly eaten eggs, so the thought of that flavor eludes him.

He grabs the fridge handle and waits for Hunter to back up before opening it and finding… no ketchup.

Yoshi makes a questioning hum. He'd slipped in earlier to grab an apple off one of the counters and he could have sworn he'd glimpsed ketchup another counter, ready to use or store. He shrugged. It wasn't like it was an egg.

Hunter scrambles away from the fridge—definitely the garlic. Yoshi's going to have to ask about that, if he remembers. Dogs definitely aren't supposed to have it. Ness, having a dog himself back home, had been adamant about what the Duck Hunt duo could and couldn't eat, even more so than the guy who dropped them off at the Mansion to begin with, and most everyone had made sure to take it to heart.

Yoshi grabs two stalks of asparagus in his hand and realizes that he could give them each a little, as a treat. So he breaks off the heads, pulls one apart, and then kneels to offer it.

Ducky is quick to nibble at the shreds while Hunter sniffs once and chomps his down. He's done first, and he sits and licks his lips and nose while Ducky finishes hers.

Then there's a sound, like a little boy running down one of the other halls, and the duo scramble out to meet that, no doubt hoping that it's one of the kids.

Hunter lets Ducky get on his back before running again, knowing he'd accidentally leave his best friend in the dust if he went ahead.

They've been absolutely wired all day. People were coming in and out and virtually everyone wanted to pet them and say hello! They'd recently come out of one of the newcomer's rooms, the one with the huge family. They'd definitely gotten loved on there. Hunter and Ducky definitely liked them already. But really, they liked everyone. There was so much to like. Even when they'd first come to meet everyone, everyone doted on them as if they'd known each other forever.

Just when Hunter turned to go up the staircase, there by the hat rack where Hunter's leash and Ducky's harness hung was Ness with his little group of friends and a new boy with yellow hair.

"Hey, it's the Duck Hunt Duo!" called Paula, Ness' friend in the pink dress. Everyone turned and Hunter wasted no time in going over there to sit and let his tongue loll a bit and let Ducky climb onto his shoulders for easier petting.

Then a white dog face emerged from behind Ness and thrust its nose towards Hunter's—Ness' dog, King. And then there was a new brown dog face from behind him, and though his tongue was lolling, too, he hung back a little with the new boy.

"That's Lucas," said Ness, or was he projecting the thought into Hunter and Ducky's minds? It didn't matter. This was what let Ness understand them better than literally anyone else. "He was around for Brawl, but stayed home during the first season. He's here now. His dog Boney's only here to see him off. You guys can say hello if you want."

So Hunter got up and approached Boney and they sniffed and sniffed and sniffed.

"(Hi!)" said Boney.

"(Hello!)" said Hunter.

"(Please take care of my human while he's here!)"

"(Okay! I can do that!)"

"(How long have you known Ducky?)"

"(Forever! She's like my best friend and little sister all rolled into one!)"

"(Can she speak dog?)"

"(No, but we learned to understand each other!)"

"(I know what you mean! Animals can all talk to each other if only they try!)"

Having established that, Ducky asked, "(Ness said you weren't staying, though? You two look like you could make a great team!)"

"(We are!)" Boney declared. "(But Lucas was invited by himself, and he took it! But I'll be okay! I have plenty of humans to love!)"

The dogs paused to listen to Ness tell his and Lucas' friends a brief story. "Ducky is Hunter's nickname for her, actually. If I didn't notice that, I would have almost named her Call—like a duck call."

Lucas' tall pink-haired friend spoke up "How do you almost name something?"

"I mean I considered it until Mega Man mentioned a rumor he'd heard about a rising new hero named Beck, who happens to have a sister named Call. At least, he thinks they're siblings. Reminded him of his own family, he said."

Hunter realized that he needed to go outside. He turned his head toward Ducky and let out a low ruff. Ducky flew up and took both Hunter's leash and her own very small harness, leash perpetually attached, in her bill.

She laid them down in front of Hunter and he picked up her harness to let her slip in as much as she could. This was the hard part. With no thumbs to work with, they would struggle to clasp the harness, to attach the leash. They kept trying every single time, at least until someone came by and did it for them. And, well, everyone was still right there.

"There you go," Ness declared. "So you wanna go outside?"

Hunter took the end of Ducky's leash in his mouth, and she did the same with his. The front double doors of the Mansion were still propped wide open for the mass move, and the Princess Peach and a line of Toads all carried a smallish box each through. The duo walked over and waited patiently for the line to end, but the Toads decided instead to shift to go through the space of only one door to allow them to slip by.

Leashes still in mouths, they trotted over to the nearest stretch of grass. Hunter didn't even bother to sniff out a spot before curling his butt, not realizing in his need that one or two people's first view of them would be of them, a dog and a duck, walking each other, with the dog faced away from everyone else, pooping.