(June 30, 3:47 p.m: Frigate Orpheon)

(The cold stare of machinery greets me as I step onto the stage, my footsteps unnaturally loud against the gently oscillating platform. Frames of light dart across me as I quickly become disoriented in the stage's depth. Steadying myself, I hear a robotic noise and see Samus Aran, the intergalactic bounty hunter famous for her neverending battle against the Metroids.)

I'm surprised you managed to find the place.

I won't pretend getting here was easy.

(Samus laughs.) Getting here is half the fun.

Now, from what I heard, I understand you'd like to interview me for a project you're working on.

Yes, a history of the Subspace Affair.

(Again, Samus laughs, but this time it is somewhat caustic.)

A history of the Subspace War? Who the hell'd be interested in something like that? If you know the Subspace War like I did, you'd wet yourself and scream holy hell before running off in the opposite direction. Trust me. It's not something anyone needs to know about.

Regardless, it is a part of history that needs to be chronicled. Do we leave out the countless genocides and crimes against life from our history books just because no one wants to remember them?

Slow down, tiger. Don't get all philosophical with me unless you want to find out firsthand just how much I've fine-tuned my arm cannons this morning.

On the other hand, I wouldn't classify the Subspace War as a genocide or a crime against life, far from it. In fact, compared to some of the things you Terrans have gotten up to, this was a joke. No one died, or was murdered, or got dismembered for some freak-ass biological weapon project. It was just an unfortunate happening.

Unfortunate happening? You said yourself that if I knew the Subspace War like you did-

That doesn't mean I want to relive it every night. There are plenty of things in this universe worse than death. You Terrans get it off easy.

Do you think the Subspace Affair could have become a full-blown crime against life of sorts if things hadn't turned out the way they had?

I doubt it, unless you want to call the extinction of thirty-something Smashers a crime against life. We aren't the only things in the megaverse, you know.

But it's entirely possible that Tabuu could possibly have used Subspace Bombs to threaten areas outside of the Smash Brothers universe and endanger the lives of those living in those areas, if he hadn't been stopped.

Maybe. It's not something I try to think about at night.

You continuously refer to the event as the 'Subspace War', even though others refer to it as the 'Subspace Affair'. Can you explain?

All right, first of all, I don't give a Chozo's ass about whether you call it the Subspace Affair, Incident, or whatever. You can call it the Subspace Ballet Dance for all I care.

I grew up in a world where every battle was a war, where every second put you in fear of your life. This wasn't any different. There were real enemies, things that wouldn't hesitate at dragging you down.

(She purses her lips in distaste, a gesture I can see despite her helmet.)

Bowser. Ganondorf. Wario. Ridley. Assholes like those. Those were the enemy. Those were what we faced.

And Tabuu? Do you consider him a member of the opposite side as well?

Tabuu. Heh. Don't even get me started on that blue freak. For all I care, he's some intergalactic anomaly whose mission was to cover everything with Subspace Bombs.

Some say that he was misunderstood, that he might have just been doing this for the sake of others. Well, I say screw that. I'm not a compassionate person, never have been and never will be, no matter how much I, or others, tell me otherwise.

Take it from me. You can't show compassion when others haven't shown you any. It just doesn't work that way.

(She scowls behind her helmet, her eyes narrowing)

So what was your role in the Subspace Affair- so to speak?

If I'd had my way, it would have been nil.

I had been in the area because I didn't have my Power Suit on at the time, which is kind of inconvenient since surviving for more than five minutes is difficult without it. Anyway, there was this island base with some sort of laboratory built on it. I decided to scope out the area; perhaps see if I could recover the suit in one piece.

Did you have a fight scheduled? I'd assume that your Power Suit would regenerate itself before a fight regardless of whether it was on or not.

Perhaps you don't understand that the rules inside an arena are different than the outside. Hasn't anyone told you that?

But...

Look, it's as simple as this. I can take off my Power Suit and jump in the lava on the bottom of the Norfair stage, and five minutes later I'll be walking out of the arena without so much as a scorch mark. But outside the arena, it doesn't work like that. If you lose something outside the fight- it usually stays lost.

Does that mean...that you could possibly die outside the arena?

Not necessarily. There were times between fights where I got bored and went outside the arena to scout. You know, do a little reconnaissance, that sort of thing- it's critical if you're in the bounty hunter business.

In the arena, you can't feel pain, even if someone smacks you five times in a row with a hammer or something. But...outside of it, you can feel pain. You can bleed.

Let me put it this way. On one of my little trips, I found myself climbing a mountain- a huge mountain, with ice slopes and all that fun crap- and I slipped halfway up. I must have bashed myself on at least ten rocks before hitting bottom.

To be completely in mind-blowing pain, your body mangled and broken, but not yet dead- frankly, that's one of the creepiest things you can possibly imagine. I could taste my own blood, feel my bones shifting as I moved. But somehow, I wasn't dying. I felt like I was hanging from a thread, so close but not quite. It was a while before I found the strength to walk again, but I still lived.

My guess is that some of the rules that apply in the arena stretch out to the outside world or something, I don't know. I mean, we're Smashers. We don't know as much about this place as we'd like. Hell, we didn't even know what our own world was made of before Subspace started coming in.

If I exist in this world, then I can't die as well?

(Samus levels her arm cannon at me.)

Want to find out?

Never mind. Can you return to the Subspace Affair?

Right. I was scoping out the island without a Power Suit, and there were just a lot of R.O.B sentries around, firing lasers at me nonstop. Not that they were hard to deal with, though.

Anyway, I broke into this room and there was this little yellow thing floating in a green tank. I could see that whoever was behind this had attached wires to its cheeks, and electricity was flowing through said wires. Either they were trying to barbecue it, or they were using it as a power source.

Pikachu.

Yeah, that was its name. I could never figure out why it kept making those goddamn "pika-pi" noises.

Then what happened?

Well, to make a really long story short, I guess we just blew up a lot of R.O.B's...and then we got the Power Suit. Or rather, I should say retrieved the Power Suit. It was being guarded by a couple of replicas.

Replicas of the Power Suit?

You've done your homework.

I didn't find out about the existence of the Shadow Bugs until later, but that's what they were. That certainly explained why they were a dark purple color, for one thing.

Anyway, soon after that, Ridley decided to swoop in and have a cup of tea- so I tried giving him a taste of galvanized plasma. (She shrugs ruefully.) Bad idea.

(Samus gazes up into the endless ceiling of Frigate Orpheon.)

You ever find out what it feels like to ride the edge of a wall at 40 meters per second?

(I shake my head.)

So the rat-thing, Pikachu, essentially saved my life...called down this huge bolt of lightning and fried Ridley's purple ass right down the middle. After that...well, it's a long story. I don't want to bore you, honestly.

Then we saw R.O.B's carrying these huge metal spheres with 'X's on them...well, as they say, curiosity killed the cat.

The building you infiltrated was the Subspace Bomb Factory.

Right. I'd never seen a Subspace Bomb before that moment, but it's a universal fact that whenever you see a machine with a timer going down, it's usually not a good thing.

And as if that weren't bad enough, there were literally hundreds of Subspace Bombs in that factory, all ready to activate on a hair-trigger. You think one going off is bad, try a thousand. Two thousand R.O.B's, lined up to deliver the final blow right in front of Ganondorf's disgusting face.

I don't care what others say about Ganondorf, that he reformed, that he saw the light- all I know is he tried to kill everyone in that room when he ordered the bombs detonated, and for all I knew he might possibly have succeeded.

We- and by we I mean me, Pikachu, Captains Falcon and Olimar, and the two monkeys, were practically pissing ourselves trying to disarm the bombs, although I guess it was futile- I mean there were a thousand bombs in there. You try disarming just one.

But the Ancient Minister tried to override the command.

He was a R.O.B, a machine. Machines don't disobey orders. They are created to serve, to do what they are told and nothing more. They're tangled nets of wires connected to a motherboard, transmitting electrical signals behind the facade of a plastic casing.

Robots can't feel emotion.

(She kneels, touching the stage.)

The Ancient Minister tried to save them, hundreds of R.O.B's, created for nothing more than the purpose to serve another...

A machine trying to stop other machines from being destroyed needlessly...trying to save them from a fate they never deserved...

(Samus does not continue. Her body shivers slightly as she kneels, apparently unaware of my presence.

It is unclear whether she is crying or not.)