11: The Smash Ballot


"This was a mistake." The Ancient Minister thought, completely despaired, or, as worried as a robot could be.

When the Smash Ballot was announced, it had the best intentions. The Smash fans are an excitable bunch, and what better way to keep the hype up than to accept more people into the tournament? No, even better - give them the opportunity to choose who gets accepted! That'll keep people happy! Ah, democracy, truly, nothing could go wrong.

Or so he thought.

It had been a few weeks after the ballot was announced. The castle was in a buzz, with Mewtwo due to arrive to his old home shortly and Lucas to come later; the Pokemon dorm was most especially in a joyous mood, with the Pokemon dorm mates putting together a new room for the artificial Pokemon. As for the ballot, there was a voting booth set up in the cafeteria, for the Smashers to vote in.

Or at least, there used to be.

The Ancient Minister had been looking at fighter records that fateful morning when one of the Primid workers burst in, out of breath. "Sir, there's a problem."

"There always is." He had to point out, not looking away from the paperwork before him.

"No, there's a fight going on!"

"Yes."

"It isn't a sanctioned one!"

"Okay." All of this wasn't really new.

"But it's over the ballot!"

But that was.

"The ballot?" The robotic leader looked away from his work. The Primid succeeded in grabbing his attention.

"Yes sir! Some of the fighters were arguing over who would be a better candidate and it broke out into a fight!"

Wanting to see this for himself, a morbid curiosity guiding him, he followed the Primid to the cafeteria.

It was chaos. Well, the concept of chaos wasn't new to him - but the reason for it made it maddening.

Several fighters were in the middle of the spacious room, duking it out, while the others watched, either spectating or cheering people on. Tables were flipped over and food was splattered on the ground. Some bits of food were even on the brawling fighters; evidently, the fight started out as a food fight but it clearly escalated from there.

Diddy Kong was on top of Wario, who was sprawled out on the floor, slapping the man in the face. "My family member Dixie's perfect! She deserves to be in Smash!" He ook'd.

"She's a loser! Wah!" With surprising swiftness, Wario threw the monkey off of him. "Now Waluigi, that's a bro that deserves to be in Smash!"

"What does Waluigi do?"

"Nothing - but Smash will give him something, it's perfect for him!" Wario cackled. The Ancient Minister couldn't decide what shocked him more: the two fighting over Dixie Kong and Waluigi or Wario actually showing that he cares for somebody other than himself.

As Wario and Diddy Kong lunged for each other, the Ancient Minister rotated and saw that there was a legit sword fight going on between Link and Marth.

"We don't need Roy back in Smash!" Link declared, sword clashing against Marth's.

"Yes we do - if we have Dr. Mario for some reason, Roy can come back too!" Marth growled.

"We don't need clones here! There's already a clone swordswoman anyway!"

Suddenly, a few bystanders were piping up. Lucina stepped up, glaring at the green-clothed hero. "Are you implying that I don't belong here?" She snapped.

Dr. Mario walked next to her, also wearing a cold glare. "Do you think the same of me?"

And then: "You've dishonored my fellow clones, Link!" Ganondorf, towering over them, rose a fist. "I mean, I already want to beat you up already, you know, mortal enemy or whatever - but now my wrath toward you has increased twice fold! Clone Club, we must annihilate!"

Before anything could escalate any further and potentially lead to the destruction of the cafeteria, the Ancient Minister floated above everyone and shouted, "Stop!" All fighting ceased, with everybody in the room looking up at him. "You're all acting like children!"

"I did nothing wrong!" protested Ness, who was one of the few people seated at a table and actually eating their food.

"Okay, you're all acting like animals!"

"Huh?" Diddy Kong screeched. Donkey Kong and the Pokemon were looking at the Ancient Minister, a little hurt.

"...Just stop fighting, all of you." He sighed. He then asked, "Where is the ballot box?"

The Ancient Minister ended up finding it knocked over in the middle of the hallway outside, somehow having been blasted there during the fighting.

After that incident, the Smash ballot box was moved to the fifth floor of the castle next to the Ancient Minister's office so that it could be better monitored. Though Smashers still squabbled on voting, not being within the proximity of said ballot box greatly decreased the chances of escalation. Must be a psychological thing. On security monitors, the Ancient Minister watched as Smashers came and went, inserting their votes; there were repeat visitors, but the Ancient Minister found it reasonable as long as they literally weren't stuffing the box with votes.

And so that's how he got into his current situation.

"Is this you?" The Ancient Minister showed the person sitting across from his video footage of somebody sneaking around the ballot box at 3 in the morning, literally stuffing the box with votes.

"It's not-a me!" Mario, the most unexpected perpetrator of cheating, pleaded.

"Mario, I can see you wearing your hat in the video." The leader pointed at the red clothes the figure was wearing, on top of the M on the cap.

"I was-a framed!"

"Uh-huh."

"Sir! It actually wasn't Mario!" A Primid burst in, several photographs tucked under their arms.

"Wait what."

"These images show that at the time of the crime, Mario was watching movies with Peach and Bowser in their dorm!" And thus, the Primid shows just that.

"Oh. Mario, I'm sorry."

Mario crossed his arms, looking a bit peeved off. Then, something occurred to the plumber. "Wait, what-a about my brother? He missed-a out on movie night!"

"About that…." the Primid stammered.

A few minutes later, Luigi is now sitting next to an outraged Mario, looking down to the floor, feeling ashamed. The Ancient Minister could only shake his head and regret about how it all went wrong.

"Luigi, how could-a you?"

"Bro, you don't-a understand…"

"You wore-a my clothes and framed-a me!"

"Um, I know this isn't-a the place for it, but your clothes are-a bit big, maybe you should-a go on a die-"

"Luigi!"

As the two brothers start arguing over Mario's body image, the Ancient Minister begins looking through the ballot box, wondering who Luigi could have been voting for to be desperate to resort to these tactics.

The Ancient Minister sees that all of the votes that Luigi had stuffed into the box all say "Daisy".

The Ancient Minister sighed yet again, deeply regretting the ballot being set up in the first place. It's obvious that voters may have strong biases and go to any means to get who they want accepted - and the leader's sure that Luigi wouldn't be the only person attempting this. Maybe he should just invite Inklings into the tournament and pretend that the ballot mattered - democracy sure as hell isn't working.