On the tenth day of their camp, Peach exited her tent and was met by the famed southern sunshine. It was a different kind of feeling, the sun on the skin, in The Great Plains. The Mushroom Kingdom and Hyrule's weather was more consistent, but in the southern portion of the realm, the weather resembled Sarasaland more: constantly hot and dry. Yet, somehow, it felt more rejuvenating.
Outside of her tent, she saw Luigi conversing with several others—Samus, Malon, Lucina and Robin. As they talked, Peach approached them but felt a tug on her arm. Quickly, she turned and saw Pit. "What is it?" Peach asked, seemingly offended by the rude gesture.
Pit's voice was hushed, which confused Peach, "Your Majesty, the war may almost be over, but there is still something else you must worry about… You know, after the war."
"That is…?" Peach responded, still slightly stand-offish.
"Her," Pit dipped his head slightly, looking at Lucina. When Peach turned, she saw Lucina with one hand on the top of her pommel, relaxed, "The Hand of the King's negligence can be of potential concern in the future."
Peach faced Pit once again, still confused by his vagueness, "Negligence of what?"
"Of her destiny," sighed Pit, "And, because she refuses to believe and follow it, the Great Fairy will punish the rest of us."
"These… consequences you speak off, have you had them verified by something that is quantifiable?" Peach questioned, looking at the Toads playing with the dirt and rocks beneath their feet direct behind Pit.
"The Great Fairy is—"
"A religious belief, nothing more," Peach interrupted Pit, annoyance in her voice, "Now, I do not know what your beliefs are, and I do not care what you believe in. But, to say that one person's negligence of something abstract can lead of punishments currently incomprehensible is a bit far-fetched."
With that final comment, Peach turned and walked towards the others. Pit just stood in the same spot and shook his head. As Peach continued her walk, Pit sighed, "I fear that your ignorance will lead to wide-spread suffering, Princess."
Peach came up behind Luigi and nodded. Luigi bowed his head, greeting the Princess slightly informally, as did Malon, Link and Samus. Curiously, Peach posed a question, "Have any of you spoken with Pit recently?"
"Why do you ask?" Lucina asked in reply.
Shrugging, the Princess answered, "He just spouted some nonsense to me… But, I'm sure it's nothing."
"Most likely," Roy casually interjected, "Anybody from the Steel Fox Brotherhood is a religious nut nowadays…"
"Religious? In what ways?" Samus spoke up, uncrossing her arms momentarily.
"Something about the Great Fairy," Roy shrugged almost carelessly, "As long as they stay in fighting shape and help us, then I won't say anything to offend them…"
For a second, it looked like Lucina became concerned and slightly stressed. Quickly, however, she looked away, as if to hide her face from the others. "Regardless, they aren't easily offended," Robin said, ignorant of Lucina.
"My Lady-Hand, are you alright?" Peach asked, noticing this, "You seem—"
"Princess!" somebody called from behind Peach. Suddenly, everybody's attention had shifted to the voice that came from behind the group of them. Peach turned, along with her council, and saw Marth standing next to a woman, almost as tall as Samus, wearing a baby-blue dress: it was Marth's Queen-Consort, Rosalina.
"I guess this had to happen at some point," Samus sighed, feeling the tension of the air become thin.
Without speaking, Luigi and Peach began to approach Rosalina and Marth. Behind her, she heard Malon ask the group of people who that woman was. And, in response, none-other than the Silent Knight responded, "Traitor."
When they finally reached the Royal Couple, Luigi spoke up first, "Rosalina… It's been awhile…"
"Yes, I know," Rosalina said with a nod of her head. She tried to smile, but Luigi and Peach did not return it, so the Queen returned to looking at the ground or somewhere behind the two of them.
"Excuse me, Your Grace, but why did you think it appropriate to arrange this?" Luigi asked, not trying to hide the hatred in his voice in the slightest.
King Marth, unlike the Queen next to him, stood proudly and confidently, "This alliance is to be carried out after the war as well. Rosalina may be known as many things in your Kingdom, but she is still my Queen. Because you already knew that she was on my side now, I figured that it'd be in both our best-interest to… Have you two speak face to face."
"With all due respect, Your Grace," Peach began, also speaking with the same hints of malice as Luigi, "Rosalina is still a traitor in the Mushroom Kingdom. If anything, she should be relieved of any and all of her titles, returned to my Kingdom, and tried for treason."
"Princess," Rosalina said, looking up at Peach and Luigi now. Both of them looked directly at Rosalina, who continued, "What I did was questionable, but you cannot possibly understand my reasoning as to why I did it. I had nothing in the Mushroom Kingdom. I never have. But, I was able to rise above my station: I was a Smash Brother. A status that you took for granted because you already had everything you could ever want. After that was taken away from me, I was nothing again."
"Then you sold yourself away to an Evil King," Peach quickly responded, clinching her fist.
"I ran away to seize the opportunity I saw," Rosalina corrected elegantly, "Do not let honor cloud your judgement, Your Majesty: I had an opportunity to rise in the ranks of society, so I took it."
Peach slowly approached Rosalina, getting into her face. Before Luigi pulled her away, she said, "But at what cost? You left the Mushroom Kingdom, the people helped you get that invitation to be a Smash Brother for a power-hungry monster. You're nothing but a spineless traitor."
"Princess, that's enough," Luigi stopped her. Once he got Peach out of Rosalina's face, the Hand of the Princess looked at the King, "Your Grace, we will still honor our alliance in the decades to come. We may not agree with… Some of your council, but we can still live peacefully with one-another."
"For our people," Marth muttered with a nod of his head.
After they were a comfortable distance away from the King and Queen, Luigi looked at Peach, who still looked agitated. He took a breath and said, "We must get ready to go, Princess. The march towards the Capital begins in a few hours."
It must have been close to a fortnight since the disaster of The Plain, as King Ganon called it. Immediately after receiving word of Mewtwo's death, the King ordered the fortifications of the city; it seemed each gate was manned with King's Guard and the few thousand left from the Koopa-Gerudo army. Cloud stood atop a parapet at the north gate of the city, witnessing many Gerudo and Koopas stacking sacks of flour along the walls for the archers. Under the cooler late-afternoon heat, Cloud turned his attention away from the fortifications momentarily. Looking down towards the castle, Cloud saw many of the citizens of the city in the street, arguing with the white-clad members of the King's Guard. What they argued about, Cloud did not know nor care: all he saw was a city on the verge of collapse.
"Sir, they number in the hundreds of thousands!" a Gerudo said while climbing the same parapet that Cloud stood on, "How could a few hundred King's Guard members stand a chance?"
Cloud shook his head, seeing the waning confidence in his troops, "That's simply not true. They number closer to thirty thousand, maybe forty…" Cloud tried to reassure. However, it was a fruitless endeavor: for one, he did not actually know the number of the combined forces of the Toads, Hylians, and Marth's army; secondly, he knew that, unless they could gain more men and munitions, the city would fall within four hours.
The heat from the sun maybe Cloud sit down temporarily. As he reached for his water capsule at his waist, he heard somebody shouting the direction of the southeast gate. It was inaudible at first, but the voice soon shocked Cloud's ears, "LORD KIRBY HAS RETURNED! LORD KIRBY AND HIS MEN HAVE RETURNED!"
Cloud turned to one of his men and said, "Take the parapet. I'll go run word to the King."
As fast as he could run, Cloud made way for the castle. After several minutes of running through the empty city streets, Cloud turned towards the gates of the castle. He sprinted through the courtyard and entered the castle. Upon entering the dimly-lit Great Hall, he saw the King slouching in his chair with an intense, terrifying demeanor about him.
"Your Grace, Lord Kirby is alive!" Cloud panted, almost going down to his knee in recovery, "He and his three thousand men wait at the gates to the city. They wish to join our defenses."
Suddenly, Ganon's face lit up with hope. He stood up from his chair and smiled a devilish grin, "Excellent. Grant them permission to the city at once." As Cloud turned away, the King sighed in a momentary relaxation, "Perhaps it is not too late…"
Being too tired to return to the defenses of the city, Cloud sent one of the Gerudo stationed in the castle down to meet with the Little Lord. The Gerudo ran towards the gates of the city and shouted, "Open the gate! Open the gate!"
As the gate rose, Kirby entered the city. On his head was his signature green hat and at his side was his sword. With Kirby, several of his soldiers entered the city, calmly greeting the King's Guard silently. While the King's Guard was happy to see Kirby's army, and relieved that they had reinforcements, it seemed that Lord Kirby did not return that joy. Instead, he brooded while looking in the direction of the castle. Unfortunately for him, it was a route that he knew too well.
"My Lord, you do not know how good it is to—"
Without a moment of hesitation, Kirby drew his sword and stuck it into the Koopa who spoke. As the Koopa hit the dirt, Kirby's soldiers attacked; all around Kirby, the King's Guard soldiers fell hard to the dirt. Those atop the gate panicked and frozen in shock, but they were soon dealt with by Kirby's archers. When those guards around the gate were dead, Kirby spun his sword.
"Destroy everything," he ordered with no remorse in his voice.
Looking down from the balcony from which he stood, Cloud saw a small fire start at the gate where Kirby's army entered the city. Shocked, Cloud drew back. Near that, another building burst into flames, and soon the shouts and screams of his men, and citizens of the city, filled the streets. As more fires started, Cloud froze: he knew Kirby did not come to the city to quickly defect, but he had no idea that Kirby was capable of destruction of this magnitude.
In the streets, several Waddle Dees raided shops, homes and markets. Kirby witnessed his soldiers burn several buildings, kill the King's Guard members in the streets, and he even knew that some civilians would be caught in the crossfire. However, Kirby did not care, for he had one goal in mind. He began walking towards the castle as a Waddle Dee threw one of the vendors down in the middle of the street and executed him. Directly behind that, another Waddle Dee threw a Gerudo from a second-floor window, and she broke through a cart of burning fruit. The chaos around Kirby mirrored the violence during the Sack of Mushroom City, an event that haunted him directly after the Wedding. However, he was unfazed by all of this.
Up the street, a few Waddle Dees took out a Gerudo member who had just took down one of Kirby's men. She fought valiantly but was quickly put down with a few stabs of a spear. The same Waddle Dee tossed a torch to Kirby, who threw it through the window of a blacksmith's shop. As the smith burned, a few King's Guard appeared from the flames that seemed to engulf the streets of the Capital. They clashed the Waddle Dees and Kirby. However, Kirby's soldiers took the brunt of the damage, protecting their lord.
A charging Gerudo tried to knock off Kirby from his path, but the Little Lord dodged the swing of an axe and slashed his enemy. Nobody was stepping between him and the castle. Suddenly, around the Little Lord, what seemed like purple embers and debris began to rain down from the sky. It looked like it was coming from the castle…
Cloud ran down the hall, witnessing the last few King's Guard soldiers preparing to go out into the streets. Once those final few, who had been in the reserves, were killed, nobody would be left. As Cloud himself tried to think of what to do next, he saw a Gerudo running away from the throne room. However, she was not going to join her companions like the others: she was deserting the city.
Grabbing a hold of her arm, Cloud stopped her and shouted, "Where are you going!? The city falls to traitors and invaders, and you run!?"
The Gerudo shook free of Cloud and snapped back, "With all due respect, Sir Cloud, you do not know what King Ganon is capable of! If you did, you would abandon this hell-hole as well!"
"Do not desert your post!" Cloud roared but to no avail. The Gerudo was quickly gone. Suddenly, the castle begun shaking violently, throwing Cloud to the ground. Once it stopped, Cloud jumped to his feet and saw some purple embers dancing in the air, as if a massive bonfire burned inside the castle. And, when Cloud looked towards the throne room, the embers increased in number.
"Oh no…" Cloud muttered. Quickly, he ran towards the throne room, brushing any of the embers off as he ran by. Eventually, he reached the Great Hall where the throne sat: though it looked as it always had when he was in there earlier, spots on the walls were covered in dark purple, almost black, coating. Some even looked like it cracked with magma or fire. On the throne sat the King, clinching his fist.
"Damn that traitor! I let him aid my enemies under my nose the whole time…" the King muttered, seemingly flinching every few seconds. It seemed that he was losing himself, for his eyes glowed orange, and Cloud could feel the energy in the room become hysteric. The harder Ganon clinched his fist, the more the King's own mind began collapsing. Cloud tried to take a step towards the King, but the room shook again.
"Sir Cloud!" the King belted, standing up from the coveted Throne of Smash, "You've come to see the show?"
"Your Grace, stop this!" Cloud shouted, getting his balance. The pillars next to Cloud slowly cracked, then the same purple color filled those cracks. Cloud made his way down the stairs slowly as the vibration of the room became more violent. When he looked up from the ground, Cloud saw his King float into the air. Now, it seemed that he illuminated a mixture of white and purple, but his eyes were completely orange. Without any sudden movement, Cloud reached across his body to the handle of his sword.
"It seems that nobody in this realm thinks me to be a worthy King," Ganon shouted, his voice deep and angry. Slowly, it became more and more monstrous, "If my advisors don't die in battle, they betray me… Everyone I ever trusted wishes to see me dead! Well, if I cannot be King, nobody else will!"
The King lowered himself onto the ground and brought his fist in front of his body. As his fist began glowing, and the Triforce appearing on the front of his hand, Cloud drew his sword. He dashed for the King, who turned his palm out towards the door to the courtyard. The King screamed as Cloud stuck his sword through his back, tearing through Ganon's chest. Cloud did not move again until his saw the illumination of light around Ganon wither away. Cloud discarded the blade, then the King bent to a knee, doubling over with both hands over his chest. As the Little Lord entered the hall, he saw Ganon's final breath as Cloud stood over the fallen King, sword still in hand.
At the front of the army were Peach, Luigi, Samus, Link, Marth, Lucina, and Roy. They had lead the two armies towards Smashville. Although they were a few hours off schedule, they planned to set up camp then take the city the following day. However, as they came atop one of the hills, and saw Smashville for the first time, Marth noticed something peculiar: the city was ablaze, and the castle nearly destroyed. Just as they all exchange looks of confusion, the sun began to set.
"Your Grace, what is this?" Roy asked, shocked, "The city is destroyed…"
Looking directly behind himself, Marth locked eyes with Robin, who sat on a horse next to Malon. "Keep the men at ease."
Robin nodded. Those at the front rode towards the city, feeling the heat of the burnt city intensify the closer they were. Eventually, they were at the north gate, which itself looked like it had not been touched. When inside, they immediately felt an uneasy, eerie mood about the city, like it had just been through absolute hell a few hours earlier. Around them were the fallen troops of the King's Guard littering the street. And, in the air, the same purple debris rained down. As Luigi looked around, he saw fires and smoke in the distance, but this area was covered in ashes.
"Your Grace, who did this?" Lucina asked, aghast, looking at the burned surroundings. Just as she spoke, Luigi bent down to inspect the body of a fallen Koopa.
"I have no idea," Marth muttered in horror, "A coup, maybe?"
"No, Your Grace," Luigi said immediately. He came back to his feet as the others looked at him, giving the Hand of the Princess their undivided attention, "This Koopa was killed by Sarasa Steel."
This revelation baffled King Marth, evident from the look on his face, "Sarasa Steel? The only Sarasa Steel blades in the Realm are mine, Lucina's, Roy's, Mario's, and, formerly, Ike's."
"Well, I believe Zelda had a Sarasa Steel dagger," Peach nodded, "And King Ganon had one forged when he took the throne."
"That still doesn't add up," Lucina responded, "One of them is dead and the other is the man sitting on the Throne of Smash."
"There is another," Samus said, staring at the ground in disbelief, "Ganon had another one made… For Lord Kirby…"
Quickly, they made their way through the destruction of the city in the direction of the castle. It seemed that the series of burnt buildings and burning buildings never ended. On occasion, there would be a few fallen civilians alongside the King's Guards that lay on the street. As they got closer to the castle, Link felt the Master Sword become energized in a way he had not felt in years. He stopped walking, prompting the others to stop as well. When he drew the sword, it began glowing. And, when it began glowing, the Triforce appeared on the front of Link's hand. Link spun his sword and sprinted towards the castle, causing the others to call him back in confusion.
When the Silent Knight reached the courtyard, he quickly entered the Great Hall and, at the sight inside, gasped. The others soon followed him inside and were shocked at the sight as well: sprawled out on the floor in front of them was Ganon. It was not until they saw the wound that they knew he was dead.
Link put the Master Sword away and closed his eyes. Peach and Lucina tried to get his attention back, but he seemingly spaced out and fell to a knee. Luigi, however, had his sights fixed on something else now, along with King Marth, Samus, and Roy. There, in front of them, was Kirby sitting on the Throne of Smash. On the steps in front of him was Cloud Strife, still in the midst of tearing his white cape off his armor in disgust.
"Your Grace," Kirby greeted. He hopped off the throne and walked down to the King and his council. After he descended the steps, he bowed as formally as he could. The King bid him to rise, still processing what he had just seen.
"Lord Kirby, were you not ordered into exile?" Roy asked, confused.
Sighing, Kirby responded, "Well, yes I was. But, I saw an opportunity: Ganon trusted me with his life. If I could get to the city before your army, I knew that I could end all of this."
"Your valor outweighs your honor, Lord Kirby," Luigi spoke up, angrily, "We had a plan to storm and sack the castle, not the city. You killed hundreds of civilians, if not thousands with those fires your men caused. You've leveled an entire city."
"In the name of our King; in the name of winning the throne back from a tyrant," Kirby corrected, turning towards Luigi, "You must know that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink; how am I supposed to control the actions of every single one of my men during a time of war?"
Aggressively, Luigi stepped towards Kirby, "Is that what you told yourself during the Sack of Mushroom City? As families were ripped apart, lives destroyed, innocent people taken from this world, is that the little thing you told yourself to keep your sanity?"
"My Lords, please!" King Marth's voice boomed. Luigi and Kirby gave each other some space and turned towards the King, "We just got out of a war; another one is the last thing the realm needs… Lord Kirby, you've directly disobeyed my order and cut your sentence for your crimes short…"
Peach and Lucina looked away from Link momentarily and at the situation unfolding mere feet away from them. Seeing a tough decision, King Marth sighed and straightened up, "But, I would be remiss if I ignored your actions that, ultimately, ended the war…"
Offended, Luigi spoke up, "Your Grace—!"
"My Lord-Hand, though Kirby has done many despicable things, he still sacrificed a great deal for my cause," the King responded with a heavy sigh, "Dreamland sits in complete disarray, as does Hyrule, but… We already have a plan for Hyrule."
"This is unbelievable," Peach interjected, disgust in her voice, "We followed through with our end of the truce! And now you tell us that you cannot?!"
"I never said that," the King said, "Link's first child will still be the first king of a new Hylian empire, and the Mushroom Lands will be a kingdom again—"
"We made a deal to march on the Capital with you if Lord Kirby is punished for his crimes!" Peach snapped, getting next to Luigi, "Well, here we are! It's your turn!"
"I have no choice but to pardon him, Princess," the King said, looking at Kirby, "He ended the war."
Disappointed and angry, Luigi turned towards the courtyard and began to walk away. Following suit, Peach and Samus joined him. The King was about to say something, but Lucina stopped him, "Don't…" she advised, also slightly disappointed, "You've already said too much."
