TALES OF THE WAY-STATION
4: Birds of a Feather
Dark Pit had a mouth full of mud. He groaned as he spit out a tuft of dirt and lawn. His arms were scraped and his wings were pointed upward, the quills catching a gentle breeze. He sat up, adjusted the golden laurels on his head and then stood up, brushing his dirtied front. He looked around himself at the open field and to a line of trees beyond.
Pit! Where was he? The last thing Dark Pit remembered….No… it as horrible! Was it all a dream? This wasn't Skyworld, nor was it Viridi's realm. The air didn't smell the same.
Dark Pit looked down a hill-slope to something that looked like an enormous manor-house in the distance. If Pit was anywhere, he'd probably be there if for no other reason than the probability of food being there. If nothing else, Dark Pit was sure he could beat some sort of information out of some rich jerk.
The raven-winged angel wandered down the road past tennis courts and swimming pools and some constructs that looked as technological as parts of the Aurum Hive. He saw lights like magic-spawn or holograms, suggestive of a variety of landscapes in the distance – washed out like watercolor. He found a door ajar in the mansion-type of building and entered it. Immediately, his ears were accosted by strange music – long, low and ominous.
"It sounds like one of those boss-battle buildups in one of Pit's games," Dark Pit groused. He was curious enough to trace the noise to an open room where a huge man was seated at an enormous pipe organ.
"Hey!" the small angel called, "Are you the owner of this place?"
The hulk of a man paused and turned around on his stool. By Hades he was ugly!
"Who are you?" the organist asked, "And… how dare you talk to me?"
"Eh," Dark Pit shrugged. "You sure hit every bump falling off the ugly wagon. I'm looking for my twin. Have you seen someone who looks like me but with white wings and a lot dorkier?"
"Heh, heh, heh," the man laughed. "Quite the spunk to speak in such a manner to Lord Ganondorf!"
"I don't care who you are! I just want to know if you've seen my stupid brother!"
"You must be a newcomer," Ganondorf said, rising from his seat. "Do not worry. If I see your brother, I will be sure to break his little wings. Now, begone!"
A dangerous glint flashed in Dark Pit's blood-red eyes. "You just said the wrong thing, pal!"
"Oh, ho, ho, does the little black hen want a fight?"
"Hey!" Pit said as he, Link and Lucina walked back to the Mansion grounds, "I think I might know you!"
"Hmm?" Link said. "Do you remember the last time you were here?"
Link had expressed to Pit that he thought he looked familiar. It had taken him a while to get his bearings, but a sudden memory from many years ago had flashed into his mind. Link was certain that Pit had made a brief visit to this place before. He had not recognized the angel at first, because it had been so long ago – perhaps even a lifetime ago – and Pit had made no indication of recognizing him. The Hylian thought that maybe he was dealing with another, similar-looking angel. As it is, if he was thinking of the same guy, Pit didn't seem to have any memory of this land.
"Huh? No!" Pit answered. "Aren't you Link, the Hero of Hyrule?"
"Yeah," Link answered. "Are you sure you don't remember meeting me?"
"I have all your games!" Pit chimed.
"Games?" Link questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah! The Legend of Zelda series! It's like, the best series ever except for mine."
"I don't think I understand."
"Awww," Pit groaned. "You're mortal, I guess… Mortals don't know about certain things." He looked to Lucina." Hey, I think I recognize you, too!"
"Really?" the princess asked.
"I mean… I never played your…um…world, but I think Lady Palutena has! Strategy games are a little too heavy for me but she showed me her game once."
"Well," Lucina said brightly, "My life-story did involve a lot of war… and strategy. I let Mother handle most of that part."
As they approached the housing complex, noises wafted in the air.
"Ooooh, man, it sounds like a dust-up," Link said, grabbing his sword and shield and forging on ahead.
"A dust-up?" Lucina asked, withdrawing Falchion, just in case.
"Hey! Wait!" Pit cried, running up behind.
"Sometimes, fights break out outside of the Stages," Link explained, "They can get pretty bad… people get hurt more than on the Stages, takes 'em longer to heal. Still, no one's gonna die, but fights like that are against the rules and should be broken up as soon as possible!"
A distinct scream echoed from the interior of the Mansion.
"That sounds like Pittoo!" Pit said.
"If that's him he sounds like he's in trouble!" Link gasped. They made haste.
Indeed, a rather nasty brawl had broken out between Ganondorf and the stranger with black wings. The ruckus had caused several of the Mansion's residents to pile into the large music-room where Ganondorf had been practicing his art.
"Hmm," Robin said, sizing up the boy with the wings, noting his jumps and dodges as he swiped at Ganondorf with his dual-swords. She turned to Rob, who'd come up behind her. "I'd put two sacks of gold bullion on the little guy."
"I don't know," Rob sighed. "This is Ganondorf. He definitely has a size and muscle advantage on the newbie, plus, I don't think the boy knows what he's doing. I'll raise you three sacks."
"Hey! The Robins are brokering bets!" Toon Link shouted. "A purple rupee on the new guy!" he insisted, placing said object into Robin's open hand.
"Gotta go with the ol' porker," Falco said, passing currency into Rob's hands to manage.
Pikachu ran up, his cheek-pouches sparking. He made a Ganondorf-like scowl and pointed toward the huge man as he proffered an empty Master Ball.
Mario punched upward, causing some golden coins to materialize into existence. "I'll a' take the feather-duster!"
Soon, a large number of people had made wagers of varying values upon the fight. Dark Pit and Ganondorf, for their part, ignored them all. Ganondorf had seen this happen time and time again – if an unofficial fight happened, someone inevitably called out a bet and became an impromptu bookie as everyone pledged portions of the various currencies and valuable items they'd brought to the Stages from their worlds. The monies all had different trading rates in Smash City – the town outside of the Mansion grounds. Dark Pit, of course, was too focused on having a good fight to care about the hooting crowd.
Lucina entered the room just as Robin was calling out in cheer for Dark Pit and encouraging people to place their bets.
"Mother!" Lucina yelped as she witnessed this behavior.
Link came up behind. Before he had the chance to act as "police" to even try to break things up, Dark Pit stabbed Ganondorf right in his lingering wound-scar from the Sword of the Sages. The sorcerer screamed as he immediately formed into a large, stiff trophy. Dark Pit stepped back, dumbfounded. "What in the Underworld just happened?" he asked.
"Pay up," Robin said to Rob as he unhappily handed over his portion of "the pot" to her. She, in turn, divided up winnings with everyone else who'd bet on Dark Pit for the win.
"Gambling on something like this, Mother?" Lucina scolded, appalled.
"Oh, it happens all the time, dear," Robin answered. "Look! Now we have a lot of money to go dress shopping."
Rob was shying into the shadows, pressed against a wall, eyeing Lucina warily.
"Oh, Rob!" the young woman said when he caught her eye. "I see you're feeling better."
"Yeah," he said softly, with a shy nod.
"That's great! I've been wanting to meet you!"
"I still have a bit of a sniffle, but I suppose we can talk somewhere quieter."
Meanwhile, Link was sticking out his tongue at the statue of Ganondorf. Dark Pit had grabbed a marker out of Jigglypuff's hand and had proceeded to begin drawing on the trophy. Link found a pen in one of his pouches and followed suit. Upon the helpless man went a silly curled "bandito" mustache as well as a drawing of a pig on his forehead. Link drew a little picture of the Master Sword on his chest with "Sword goes here" written with an arrow toward the man's prominent scar. Dark Pit doodled a few more interesting images and words.
Link was beginning to like the kid already.
Doctor Mario – Mario's "cousin" from another universe and one of the resident medics – wandered in, ready to treat any injuries incurred from the off-stage fight.
"I don't think the winged boy has anything more than a few scuffs and scrapes," Robin said.
"Oh, Ganondorf is a' gonna wake up angry," the doctor lamented. "He looks like he'll probably only be out a day. If he knows what Link is a' doin', the poor kid's gonna get broken in half again."
He glanced back at what Dark Pit was drawing.
"Oh, Mamma-Mia… is that what I think it is?"
"Well, he's quite the little artist, isn't he?" Robin said, "At least when it comes to things that neither I nor Lucina have!"
"It looks a little diseased," Rob added. "And is that supposed to be a line of liquid going into Ganondorf's mouth?"
"Is the left cheek of the face a proper placement for that kind of thing?" Lucina openly asked.
Pit came barreling in, finally having caught up and pushed through the crowd. "Pittoo!" he cried.
"Pit?" Dark Pit asked, dropping his marker and turning at his voice.
"Pittoo! You're okay! I was worried! I woke up in a field with the guy in green and the woman in blue trying to help me! I don't know how we got separated or where we are… and I can't raise Lady Palutena on the com-link, but… you're here and you're alright!"
Dark Pit gently regarded him, his eyes soft and sad. He walked calmly up to him. "Yeah," I'm aright," he said.
Before Pit could tackle him in a hug, Pittoo punched him right in the nose and laid him out on the floor.
"What?" Pit asked, sniffing up his slightly bloodied nose. "What did you do that for?"
"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?" Dark Pit roared.
"Huh? I didn't mean to! I don't even know where we are!"
Dark Pit began panting. "You… the battle! Thanatos struck you and…I was holding you and you… and you…"
The boy heard a gentle, lulling music behind him. That pink puffball-thing he'd taken the marker from was singing some kind of very soothing song. The black-winged angel felt suddenly very sleepy. He crumpled to the floor and doubled over, shielding himself with his wings as he began to softly snore.
"Thank you, Jiggly," Link said as he picked the young man up. "Pit, we'll go to one of the spare rooms. You are both owed an explanation. He'll be alright. He's just going to rest for a little while.
"Right," Pit said, wiping his nose as he stood up and followed Link.
Lucina followed Rob to his room, named, to her discomfort, "The Dragon's Den." Many of the people here had given personalized names to their quarters. She stayed in "The Robin's Roost" with her mother. Link's place, which he kept alone because his young counterpart preferred to room in a collective chambers with some of the other child-fighters who were his best friends – was called "The Temple of Time." Link explained that it had to do with him once having taken "a really long nap" in sacred place by that name back in his home-world. Rob explained that his quarters-name was "kind of self-deprecating," but was chosen because it sounded more "badass" than the name he'd first thought of – "The Warren." He wished to come across as a formidable fighter. Robin was planning to join them, but she was called away by Master Hand to an official match – and probably also to explain initiating the technically-illegal gambling earlier, not that Master Hand had ever done anything to anyone more than light scolding for that activity.
"You really should have named this place The Warren," Lucina commented upon entering Rob's living room. She noted the various figurines and sculptures that were on the shelves – the bookends and the fireplace mantle-pieces. Rabbits: there were, everywhere, figures of rabbits.
Rob picked one up off of a writing-desk. "Well this one isn't actually a rabbit. You'll probably see this guy on one of the stages based off Mr. Mario's world. This is a Nabbit. Oh, and this one here is from one of the worlds that Link's lived in – a young man in a disguise who goes by the name of Ravio."
"Still… bunnies everywhere. It's a rather interesting kind of thing for a man to collect. It's cute, like an old lady and her cat figurines."
"There are stranger things to collect," Rob said, sniffling softly into a handkerchief, dealing with the remnants of his recent infirmity. "One of the Mii-Fighters from the city who hangs around here sometimes collects animal skulls."
Lucina contemplated a little brown juvenile rabbit and set it back on the mantle of the cold fireplace.
"It's a reminder of my family," Rob explained. "Panne exists in your world, correct?"
"Um… yes. The Last Taguel, until she had a child."
"In my universe, I married her. We had a boy named Yarne who took after her and a little girl who had more of my human features named Morgan. She could still transform, though."
"Yarne exists in my world," Lucina replied. "Though he was a single-litter. In my universe, Morgan is a boy and is… well, he's my little brother."
"So I have been told," Rob said, "Your mother and I are very close – like a brother and sister. She's told me a lot of how things turned out in your realms."
"Mother hasn't told me much about you at all, um… Sir Robin?"
Rob got down upon his knees before Lucina and gently took both of her hands in his. The man looked up at her with a look in his eyes that Lucina could only think of as "pure grief."
"Sir Robin, what are you doing?"
"Th-thank you…" Rob began, his voice shaking. "Thank you, Lucina! I know that I'm not thanking the right version of you, but I can thank you on her behalf right now."
"For what?"
"Thank you for killing me, Lucina. Thank you for freeing me."
Lucina recoiled and almost tripped into the fireplace. "Rob?"
Rob shrunk back. He sat in the chair at his desk – similarly strewn with paperwork as her Mother's was. "I had no wish to frighten you, Lucina," he said. "I'm sorry. This is coming out all wrong." He rested his elbow on the desk's top and his forehead in his palm and looked miserable.
"It's okay!" Lucina offered. She sat down in an armchair. "I just want to know why you are acting so strangely around me. I've noticed those looks of fear you've been giving me and I want to get to the bottom of it. And this 'killing you' business?"
Lucina bit her lip, remembering the moment she met her mother with a sword in a field awash in a golden sunset. It was after she's seen her mother become temporarily brainwashed – or body-puppeted – or something – leading to the loss of the divine treasure – the Fire Emblem. Lucina had fears of losing an even greater treasure and of all the elements of her darkened future falling into place. She did not want to kill Mother, but she felt like she was backed into a corner and absolutely had to. That was a unique kind of pain: Feeling it necessary to kill someone you actually truly love. Mother made it worse, of course, by trying to make it better – she didn't continue to fight or fuss. Instead, she'd tried to speak words of comfort to her. Lucina was not used to killing anyone or anything that accepted their fate. Her enemies were always armed and were always enemies. They didn't stand with their eyes closed, face tilted to the last of the sun's warming rays offering her a perfect shot of their neck or their heart.
In the end, she was glad she'd "chickened out." Father of course, had come just in time to save them both.
No one had breathed a word of this incident to Morgan.
"I am not sure how I died in the end," Rob explained with a sigh, "but I always assumed it had to be you. I suppose Cynthia was a possibility. She was your sister in my universe, but I can't see that girl doing much but tripping over her own shadow. You see, you were the last bearer of Falchion and the… the only one left who could beseech Naga…"
That's when the name above the chamber-door became apparent to Lucina. She jumped up out of her seat.
"You became Grima?"
She was tempted to draw her sword but refrained, reminding herself silently of the place they were in and more so of her mother's apparent trust of this man. There had to be more to the story.
Rob gave her the saddest nod in all the known universes. "I… I suppose that things may have happened as they did in Robin's universe," he said slowly. "Perhaps another me killed me – but I like to think it was you. I think you deserved to make the fatal strike more than anyone. I also think that if I killed me, that my spirit would have fused with that other self somehow. I don't have any evidence of this, it's just a hunch."
"You…became…Grima."
"I am sorry. It happened in just a moment, too. I was… I was being puppeted… by Validar and…unlike your mother, no one had foreseen things for me. I had no warning when he used my body and my magic to kill Chrom. Chrom…told me to run with his dying breath, but I could not. I was just frozen in place. It was then that the voices and the darkness that had been pulsing in my skull just took over. My heart was weak… seeing my best friend… lying there… Everything had been lost. It was that window that awakened that terrible dragon-soul. As for the rest of me, I was trapped in a dark place. I could sense nothing and feel nothing and yet I was aware of the nothing." Rob sighed deeply. "I had little moments of other kinds of awareness, all too brief. I'd try to fight back when I smelled something familiar or heard a familiar voice. I'm pretty sure that the last voice I heard was yours. After that, I woke up here and was told by Master Hand that he and Naga had 'retrieved' me. I really don't know what to make of it all."
Lucina had the look of someone on-alert. "With you here… is there any chance of Grima coming here?"
"I don't think so," Rob said with a shake of his head. "The Hands keep Ganondorf here –and he's one of the chief agents of evil in the Links' worlds, but he carries only a fragment of an ur-evil force. I'm pretty sure that I am some kind of "base-soul" – only the human part. Here. Look."
Rob carefully unwrapped both of his hands of their magic-channeling gloves.
"Clean," Lucina said, her voice taking on a hint of relief. "They're clean... there's no mark on the right. Your hand is like Mother's – free of the brand."
"Yep. So, I think I'm going to be okay. I thought you should know the truth. I regret not having the courage to bring it to you sooner."
"It's alright," Lucina said. "My father never thought it was Mother's fault that she had a proneness to being hijacked by things due to her blood. We were able to change fate together. Provided that you are really the spirit of the human, Rob, then… I suppose you are here to gain some kind of peace."
"That's what Robin says," Rob said with a gentle smile. His expression then immediately soured. "I do not have memory problems to her extent. There are a lot of things about my life that I remember and some memories I long to wash away."
"Mother wants to regain all she can. She says that one should be courageous in facing the truth."
"I do not know what happened to my children," Rob said, "but one memory I ache to erase is my knowledge of the flavor of Panne's blood against my jagged dragon-teeth."
Lucina, shaking from a small amount of fear at the prospect of getting close to someone who had, for a time, at least partially been Grima, swallowed a lump in her throat, walked over to Rob, reached out for him and hugged him.
To Be Continued…