The Smashing Bumpkins

by sandwichsupernova

Confusion abounds at the luxurious Smashgrounds! Link and Zelda investigate why they are forced to fight. Mario's alcoholism leaves Peach single and Luigi in charge. Pikachu trolls his former trainer. Samus struggles with lost memories. Mega Man's the new kid on the block. Ganon works on his Smash Sisters eroge. Yoshi steals panties. And where does Snake fit into all this?

36. All Things Must Pass

A/N: Yay, I'm not dead! Thank you everyone for reading my absolutely insane fanfic! This journey that began before Sm4sh was even released has finally come to an epic end. I hope that I did right by you all and by these beloved characters (some of whom do admittedly get the short shrift in this closing chapter, which focuses heavily on the central trio of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf).

I'm sorry if the last 1/4 or so of this story kind of went off the rails, and that I couldn't stick to one update schedule or be consistent in tone or character development. Somehow, I just can't help that I can't write short chapters! But yeah. This fic helped my writing grow a lot.

As thanks to everyone for their patience in waiting for the finale, I am making my two ebooks available free to download on the Amazon Kindle store on the release of this one. They are titled "Raine VS The End of the World" and "Alice in Neverland: A Rock and Roll Romance". EDIT: Sorry, Amazon isn't letting me make my "Alice" book free, I guess I must have used up all the promo days, but "Raine" will be free on Mother's Day, this Sunday (5/14).

Thanks again everyone, and be good to your Mamas this Mother's Day!

Le-Mediocre Gatsby: Yes you will in this chapter!

Guest (11/29/16): Thanks fam! That's exactly the kind of comment I live for! We are not alone. I think more and more people are waking up every single day, and maybe together, we can figure shit out. Hope you enjoy the Zelink lemon in this chapter! I do believe I outdid myself.

Lily: Really? XD That's awesome! We share similar tastes in humor, I suppose. Do you host your fics online anywhere?

---

Chapter Thirty-Six
All Things Must Pass

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to thinking of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood? Some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you see the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. Yet it all seems limitless."

- Paul Bowles, "The Sheltering Sky" (1949)

---

I. Things Left Unsaid

Early November, 2016
The Day of Revolution

What almost seemed like a majority of U.S. career politicians lay dead in the street.

"IT AIN'T RIGHT!" wailed King Dedede, shoving Yoshi's crushed corpse aside and cradling the bloody remains of Kirby's flattened body, squished like a steamrolled Whoopie Cushion. It wasn't the pressure that killed him, but rather Demon H!11-dawg's acidic vaginal juices.

"WHY, LORD?! Why'd you haveta take the most innocent of us, the best of us, my brother!"

Meta-Knight comforted his friend as the collected forces of the US military - or at least, those who hadn't already gone into hiding or thrown themselves upon the floor at the mercy of their new digital overlords - looked on in bewildered astonishment.

Here, seemingly at the end of all things, Link made a decision. He wasn't going to let the bloodshed and carnage distract him from the fact that this might be his one and only chance to share his truest, deepest feelings.

"Zelda…" he began.

She turned to him, her cheeks flushed like a Charizard getting a blowjob, for she telepathically knew what he was about to say… but she gave him a knowing smile.

"Go on," she egged him on, her eyes filled with kindness.

He took out his harp and began strumming Fatboy Slim's "Praise You".

"Zelda, baby, I… we've come a long, long, way together, through the hard times and the good. I got to celebrate you, baby. I got to praise you like I should."

Then Link got down on one knee and everyone gasped for air.

"I'm literally squeeing right now," Peach whispered to Samus, eternally proud of her bestie.

"Princess Zelda of Hyrule, wielder of the Triforce of Cour- I mean, Wisdom, the bravest woman I've ever known, the most loving and caring girlfriend a guy could ask for, I probably don't deserve your hand, but it would be the greatest honor to be by your side from now until the end of days… to live a life of learning from each other, of growing together… Bertrand Russell once said, 'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.' I'm glad that you challenge me all the time."

Link gulped down his words. It was rare for him to talk so much, to get even a few words out, and it felt almost painful for him to enunciate so many syllables in such rapid succession.

"And I wanted to say… I'd been crazily conflicted about this for over a decade now. But after going through such a fucked-up, irrational, truly mind-breaking series of events, I realize that trying to rationalize my way out of this wasn't the answer. Love… it's not based on reasons, it's beyond that. If love isn't spontaneous, if it isn't random, if it isn't unconditional, then it was never love to begin with. You can try and justify it all you want, you can deny it, you can hide, you can pretend… but I know I can't run or hide anymore. I can't get enough of you, Zelda. When I see you, when I hold you, when we're laughing together, it helps me appreciate the beauty in all of creation. It brings light into my life."

Peach was holding Mario's hand tightly. Mario took Samus' hand and placed it in Peach's other one.

"Mario…?" Peach asked, looking into his eyes with hopeful confusion.

The plumber just nodded. "We stand together. If-a you can't be a-honest with yourself, you can't a-be honest with anyone."

"Zelda…" Link continued. "I know we've had our disagreements, and we don't always see eye to eye, but really, that's just a part of life. Whether it's even possible for two digital beings to have kids, or not, I don't care. Here, there, anywhere. Green eggs and ham in a box, with a fox. It doesn't fucking matter. I just need you in my life. And I don't want to change who you are, because you're amazing, but I do want us to grow old and glitch out together, and live lives of learning and understanding, of living, and laughing, and… loving, of going to a place beyond hatred and anger and fear, of transcending pressures or expectations—"

"GET ON WITH IT!" Wario yelled from the back of the crowd.

"GO LINK!" Ganon encouraged him, through tears; though he was still mourning his dearest Palutena, he couldn't help but be moved by the sight.

"You can do eeeet!" screamed Rob Schneider, who was there on vacation.

Link flushed redder than all those times he was sexually assaulted by the Great Fairy upgrading his shit as a part of beta-testing Breath of the Wild. "Princess Zelda of Hyrule… light arrow of my life… Will you make me the happiest man in all the land? Will you marry me?!"

"Of course I'll fucking marry you!" Zelda cried, ecstatic.

She leapt into her lover's arms and kissed him right then and there.

It was the happiest moment of either of their lives. The blood of some of the most fucked-up and powerful people in the world merged with Link's and Zelda's digital saliva and bled into their digital beings.

"Ness is missing! Is this really the time for this?" Lucas asked, but his voice was drowned out by the thunderous applause that signaled the death of America and democracy as anyone knew it.

"ATTA BOY, LINK!" screamed Shulk, holding his blood-soaked Monado up in the air.

"Mission accomplished," said Snake, throwing the Hylians a thumbs-up.

Sure, the whole world was just turned on its ass, but who the fuck cared, really? What's more important was that wedding bells were to be rung!

The Hylians were floating on air, even as the entire combined military and police forces of Washington D.C. were quaking in their piss-covered shoes at the implications of what had just happened, and various anime characters who'd been translated into video game characters were continuing to emerge from the CAST portal.

The press asked many questions, but Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima stood before them, bowed, smiled, and answered questions, having Bill Trinen translate for him.

He clarified that the CAST Members were creations of Nintendo and the collective video game industry and were their worst-kept secret. He also claimed that everything anyone had ever believed was a lie, since the entire world was at the mercy of the Author, upon whose unique abilities of creation and destruction the whole universe now revolved around. Mr. Kimishima had the Author step up on the stage with him and give a demonstration.

"Hello, everyone," said the Author. "Because Mr. 7rump has apparently run off somewhere with a beloved character as a hostage, I'd like to invite Mr. Jar3d Ku$hn3r onstage to be my special guest."

DJT's super-shady son-in-law stood shaking in his boots.

"I SAID COME ONSTAGE YOU FUCK."

Against his will, Jar3d's feet marched him forward, and he nervously stepped onto the stage with the Author.

"Hi, Mr. Ku$hn3r," said the Author, shaking his limp, quivering hand.

"Uh, hello," said the 36-year-old real estate magnate nervously, sweating bullets since he had some inkling of what was about to happen. He waved to the cameras even as his knees knocked against each other.

"I'd like you to have these," said the Author, giving Jar3d a pair of gold-plated brass knuckles.

"Aw, thanks…?"

"Yup. You will now punch yourself in the face repeatedly until you crush your skull and die," said the Author.

"Wha—?" began Jar3d, but he suddenly began punching himself at full speed and strength. As the cameras zoomed in, Ku$hn3r busted his lip, his cheeks, his teeth, then his skull, all the while crying and screaming.

"AHHH! OH GOD PLEASE! STOP!"

"HONEY BUNNY, NO!" screamed his wife, !\/anka.

"I CAN'T STOP!" Jar3d wailed, but then his skull collapsed in on itself, with his knuckles busting through his brain matter, splashing a whole bunch of it all across the stage and falling in a heap on the floor.

"SHOO, SHOO, GLOBALIST—"

"Hold it right there," said !\/anka, stepping up to the Author. "You can't name them, not here, not on TV!"

"WATCH ME!" yelled the Author. "A small cabal runs everything in this world! Taxation is theft! Our tax dollars are being used to murder innocents and the unborn! !$R431 and $4ud1 4r4b!4 secretly fund acts of International terrorism! The USA created !$!$! Central banks are plagues upon humanity! GM0s are killing us from the inside out! Mercury, aluminum, and heavy metals in vaccines and chemtrails are making us stupider! AND I'M GONNA PUT AN END TO IT ALL!"

This obviously scared the shit out of everyone, except for Al3x J0n3$, J03 R0gan, Jam3$ C0rb377, and S73fan M0lyn3ux, who were smoking blunts and nodding like it was 4/20, hands down each others' pants as they jerked each other to Conspiracy Climax.

"YEAH, I FUCKING SAID IT! FUCK YOU ALL! Wake the fuck up and smell the opium we're harvesting out of Afghanistan that you're all being drugged with! Anyway, whatevs. I'm done. I'm retiring from this fanfic to become one with my bitch."

The Author then dropped the mic and walked off the stage, visibly grabbing his waifu Tsumugi Kotobuki's ass from underneath her pleated skirt, making many who chose her as their waifu cringe and cry and shake their fists at the sky.

After this sad display, Mr. Kimishima returned to addressing the crowd.

"As you can see, this tiny-dicked guy literally has stopped giving a shit about common human decency and societal norms," Bill Trinen translated. "He doesn't care if he's doxxed or killed or anything, nor does he care about his readers, or canon, or logic. This makes him very unpredictable, and very dangerous. So we'd better not upset him."

"Mr. Kimishima!" yelled one of the reporters. "Any news on the release of Mother 3?"

Bill Trinen shook his head and made the 'cut it out' hand gesture, but Mr. Kimishima answered the question anyway, saying, "Nintendo has nothing to announce on that at this time."

A smelly otherkin from the Sluttington Post raised xyr hand. "Excuse me, Mr. Kimishima! What does this act of patriarchal carnage mean for the future of Nintendo, and how do you intend to answer for your heinous man-crimes against humanity?"

Reggie coughed. "I'll take this one." The President of NOA smiled. "First off, the P3d0G473 arrests and convictions, I believe, will reveal who is truly responsible for decades of heinous crimes against humanity. Child murder, child trafficking, third-world exploitation, world hunger, the whole 'divide and conquer' approach of the media… all will finally come to an end under our watch. Our CAST beings shall see about that. We don't want to give too much away, but for now… we have a very special announcement."

Reggie then took this opportunity to have Valve reveal the very first gameplay trailer for Half-Life 3, an exclusive for the Nintendo Switch. It was the most glorious game anyone had ever seen, and at the end of it all, every gamer who'd seen it was struck silent with bliss.

"All I can say about that is 'wow'. Now, we'd also like to announce a revolutionary VR headset for the Nintendo Switch, as well as a hefty upgrade in the console's technical specifications to support full-frame 4K 3D surround sound sex. You can now enjoy virtual reality pornography with HD Rumble (TM)! Feel the fucking! There will be a special PornHub Switch bundle, with a six-month free trial and special JoyCon attachments - a Fleshlight for the Male version, a Rabbit dildo for the Female version, and a Buttplug for the Gender-neutral version, all with built-in HD rumble. We're also planning to release a custom eroge, developed by none other than Ganondorf himself, called Super Smash Sisters. Let's play that trailer right now. Ganon, take it away."

And so the press conference had once again turned into an advertisement for Nintendo, this time for the most bizarre game they'd ever decided to release under their own banner - a dating sim with paths for every Smash girl.

"Unfortunately, we don't have any gay pairings at the time, but—"

"BOO!" yelled Allison Rapp from the audience.

Reggie was pretty shocked to see the ex-NOA employee giving him the finger. "Alison, don't you fucking move. We're going to have a word, you and I. Everyone else, stay tuned for further official announcements."

"Mr. Fils-Aime!" yelled JonTron. "Are you ever gonna address the rumors that Nintendo ninjas are executing people who hack their 3DS firmware—"

"Nintendo does not comment on rumors or speculation. Also, there are no bodies. You can't prove anything."

"Cannibal ninjas," JonTron realized aloud, his eyes widened and horrified-looking.

"Mr. Fils-Aime!" asked a reporter from Polygon. "What are your thoughts on the impending US Presidential election?!"

"Um… If I may…?" Princess Zelda tapped Reggie on the shoulder, and whispered something in his ear.

"Ah, of course, Princess," he replied.

Zelda adjusted her hair for the cameras and smiled very professionally.

She took a deep breath and focused her mental powers.

"We will have a formal statement regarding the future of our political and social involvement. There will be a full press report in two hours in the White House. Please be there, or be square."

There was a media frenzy. Some questions were being asked that no one could answer, but most of the reporters were still staring at the screen, jaw agape, unable to process the fact that actual gameplay of Half-Life 3 was finally shown.

The Swamp was drained of some of its blood, but what the American people weren't counting on was that the whole damn thing was a Swamp. The Author realized that there was a Shrek joke here but he couldn't find it.

After the dust had cleared, a certain orange-skilled, blonde-wigged Donald J. Trump, who had promised to eradicate the swamp but, in the timeline where he won the Presidency, completely failed to stand up against Government S4ch$, the Intern47ional B4nking Cart31, and the interests of the elite few, had been primed over the course of a most brutal 2-year campaign to be its most visible head ogre.

Or so most Americans thought. Now, at the mercy of Mario, Link, Ganon, and a host of hundreds of digital beings fresh off their bloodlust for humans, even DJT's knees were knocking.

The revelation that videogame characters had come to life and were living among humans was far too much for so many. Some older people, and even many members of the ruling 0.0000000000001%, actually had heart attacks, collapsed, and died out of fear and shock.

But for most of the world, this huge paradigm shift meant one thing and one thing only:

That nobody needed to put up with either of those godawful presidential candidates.

---

II. Revolving Doors

The White House War Room, Digital Interface
One Hour Later

After temporarily plugging themselves into the White House servers, all of the CAST Members began the meeting by beginning to download the collected archives of the entire Internet, the digitized Library of Congress, and the Encyclopedia Dramatica into their consciousnesses. They were now in possession of the entire history of the World Wide Web going all the way back to the mid-nineties Usenet and AOL groups, and all of them attempted to cram into the large underground War Room, deep in one of the underground bunkers beneath the White House.

Doomguy had narrowly avoided stepping on the Duck Hunt Dog and bumped into Ridley in the hallway. Ridley, not one to be bumped into without good reason, hissed at him. Just as Doomguy brought out the BFG, Samus stepped in between them.

"Easy, guys! This is no time for a dick-measuring contest!"

Doomguy gave Ridley the one-finger salute, and Ridley replied by blowing a raspberry. Duke Nukem and Travis Touchdown chuckled at the sight, which prompted Ridley to sniff at them with his large nostrils, within which dwelt nothing but the abyss of a million black holes, and some coke boogers.

"Did that ugly purple sonofabitch just sneer at me?" Duke asked.

"I believe he did," Travis replied. "Wanna kill 'im?"

Duke was a bit curious. "Well, was it, uh, a sexual sneer, or is my evil-reptilian-alien-gaydar off? Coz it's been a while since I've made love to a giant sexy beastie, nawmean—?"

"No," said Travis, after a short pause. "I… have absolutely no idea what it is you see in that—"

"Ladies, gentlemen, and whatever a-you want to call a-yourselves," Don Luigi announced from his seat, frowning at the room's inhabitants. "We are here to seriously discuss the issue at hand, and that is, what should we do about the current power vacuum?"

Of the original Smashers, Lady Fi was the first to go. After nearly overloading on exposure to the Internet, poor Mother CAST was splurting out random meme garbage again.

"You have no chance to survive make your time! Longcat is long. YATTA! You're the man now, dog. Why's the pool closed? Due to AIDS! Bitches don't know about my Master Sword!"

"Okay, okay, Lady Fi, that's enough ancient meme history outta you…" Link began shuffling her out of the room.

"TITS OR GTFO! MOAR!" she yelled as Link led her out of there. "Duckroll! Half-Life 3 confirmed! DICKWOLVES!"

"Half-Life 3's already been confirmed," grumbled Snake, referring to the fact that Gaben pledged it as a Nintendo exclusive just a few chapters ago, despite the entire Half-Life and Half-Life 2 writing staff having moved on from Valve. "Let's get discussing. We only have so much time—"

"Guys!" screamed Meta-Knight. "Before anything else, we need to get something very important out of the way!"

"And what's that?" asked Don Luigi, curiously but skeptically.

"That there's no fighting in here!" Meta-Knight bellowed. "This is the War Room!"

"BOO!" yelled Wario, throwing an apple pie at his face, which actually hit Fox and started an actual food fight.

"Wew. Doctor Strangelove was over fifty years ago! And who farted! That's some rank-ass gas, lad!" screamed Shulk.

Wario clutched his chest in offense. "WAAA! Don't call me a lad, ya lily-livered nancy!"

"Them's fightin' words!" Shulk screamed, and leapt up from his seat, but Lucina took his hand to pull him down.

"Please… let's just not…" she urged.

Hardly anyone noticed, but at this point, Dark Pit, disgusted by the turn of events and still immensely depressed at the loss of Pit and Palutena, walked out of the room.

"God, I can't hear myself think…" Ganon rubbed his temples in frustration. "Don't you idiots realize the trouble we've gotten into now…?"

Then Ganon dodged a sticky bomb thrown by Diddy Kong, which hit Pikachu squarely in the back of the head while he was going down on the rotten Sasquatch-snatch of the large-nippled Emma Watson, whom he'd seduced in a hurry after she left the latest UN summit.

As the projectile bomb exploded into the back of Pikachu's skull, the mouse shocked the uber-hot feminist actress right in the pussy with the force of 1.21 Gigawatts; she moaned with fiery ecstasy before flashing rapidly, imploding, and then turning to ash.

Pikachu had no tears, no patience, and no mercy. Nor did he have any chill for this kinda shit.

"PIKACHU!" (YOU! ME! RIGHT NOW!) screamed the little electric rodent.

Diddy shrugged his simian shoulders, stepped out into the hallway, and went into a tussle with Pikachu, one that Meta-Knight, Lucario, Olimar, and GW took bets on, but their task gave them little pleasure when they remembered that Kirby, often the life of the party, was no longer there to bright his brand of levity to the betting. It was a sharp pain, one that hit the entire core group of Smashers pretty hard. Even Diddy Kong repeatedly slamming Pikachu's head with a metal door did little to relieve their miserable melancholy.

"All right, now that the violent kids have left the room," began Sheik, "we need to decide what we're gonna do. We could try to establish some sort of independent party and run against this missing 7rump person—"

"Or we could simply let these flesh-bags sort out their own issues and return to our digital existences," added King K. Rool, bitterly.

"I don't like this place," said Darth Vader. "This… air… these smog particles… they're like sand, all coarse and rough, and they get everywhere."

"Why not make artificial islands and create our own independent states of, say, Nintendostan," suggested Lucas. "And, uh, Seganada?"

"And the The United Franchises of Square Enix, or Platinum Peninsula," continued Lara Croft, "There could be a Ubisoftia?"

"I propose the motion that we should take over planet Earth by force," said Bowser, surprising everyone.

Now this seemed to shock even the Legend of Zelda characters. Though the statement was technically within his character, Bowser had never REALLY been a villain. He'd always been a great performer, and a real softie at heart.

"But… daddy… that's wrong, isn't it?" said Bowser Junior. "It goes against the natural principles of Anarchism."

"Yes, I know. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The quickest way to remake a world is from the top-down," said Bowser.

Because he was boycotting Google for their dumb shit, Bowser did some quick DuckDuckGo image searches for the Darwin Awards.

"Just look at these people. They are clearly insane. They've fallen for the divide and conquer meme. They blame people of other races, religions, genders, and sexual orientations for their problems when the only real issue is they've bought into the lies they've been fed all their lives by their malevolent but hidden rulers. They're addicted to substances, producing shit media, have crap taste in music, are vaping, and are destroying their planet and all that's living on it. If we want to save anything worth a damn on this rock at all, we need to first stop all the terribly unsustainable human activities on this planet, then we need to let them dismantle each nation-state into smaller and smaller provinces, and then communities."

"Forgive me," said Robin, "but I think you've got this whole thing a little backwards."

"How so?"

"Well, I think we need people to wake up and take charge of the government on their own."

Dante scratched his chin. "Hmmm, do you really see that happening?"

"Yeah, I don't either," said Alan Wake.

"Most men would rather watch Twitch or Game a-Grumps," added Don Luigi.

"Pikaaaaa Pikapi pik-AAA-chu," said Pikachu, and Meowth translated his words as always. (And most women would rather keep tabs on celebrity gossip and cute animal videos than dream of looking into uncomfortable truths.)

But Robin seemed pretty sure about his conviction. "You all aren't wrong. Nevertheless, we can't just abandon reason. It's the only moral way to go about it. We need to be the change, to use our reach, to spread all the information we've all downloaded from the collected Internet."

Zelda stood to address Robin. "As for facts, they're good tools, but imperfect… multiple studies have shown that the human brain is swayed more deeply by emotion than reason. We have logical minds, by default, since we were all programmed toward a purpose. Most humans don't feel the same sort of drive."

This didn't seem to be something that Robin had considered, so he sat on it for a while.

Mario cleared his throat. "If-a I could have been swayed by a-reason years ago, I wouldn't have let my addiction get so far," the plumber said with confidence. "It was a-love that changed me."

With that, he shot a glance to Peach, who returned it, then kissed him.

Mario continued, "and I think-a we all need-a to pay our love and strength forward to the human race. They made us, after all."

Now I know it's possible to feel better about myself, Mario thought. To heal, in time. To forgive myself for all I'd done. To begin to make amends.

"Love…" muttered Rosalina. "As cheesy as it sounds, I think he's absolutely right."

"LOVE AND CAPITALISM!" screamed Tails. "Don't forget the free market!"

"I agree with that, too," said Samus, who then looked dead-on at Zelda. "And I think that's the solution. We make our case, kill 'em with kindness, put forth our brand of Anarcho-Digitalism—"

Wario screamed. "DON'T! FORGET! THE! CAPITALISM!"

Samus sighed. "—our brand of Anarcho-Digital-Capitalism as the ultimate ideal, and give them the choice of voting for someone who will make it happen."

"But most Anarchists don't vote," observed Sly Cooper.

"We can make 'em! Can we build another large-scale mind-control ray, pweeeeese?" Dr. Neo Cortex, who was game for anything after the sudden death of his archnemesis, suggested. "Eggman, Wily, and I have some plans—"

"No more freakin' mind control!" yelled Fox, who was still salty AF about his ass being burned off, not to mention all the bizarre orgiastic shit the Mindfucker done got him roped into. Krystal had to suppress a chuckle at her awkward ex's flustered cheeks.

"Er," Fox continued, "What I meant was that no one should have their agency taken away."

"Hear, hear!" said Link, and it was the first time he'd ever agreed with Fox on something. "If we're gonna participate in shaping the future of this world, we must do this whole thing openly and honestly, and follow the laws those humans set out for themselves! If not, we're no better than those pedo clowns."

That was Ness' argument, thought Lucas. Oh, where could he be…? And what are they doing to him?

"And how do you suppose we do that, Mr. Hero Dude?" asked Olimar, who was bored and playing paddle-ball with a red Pikmin strapped via its head-leaf to a Luvdisc.

"That's the easy part," said Zelda. "We just need to show them the many truths we've unearthed, then believe in the goodness of humanity."

"Well, then we're fucked," grumbled Bowser with a sigh.

"Ideologically, Zelda, you're right," said Captain Falcon. "But we're competing with a gang of liars and crooks."

"Exactly, and that's our biggest asset." Don Luigi insisted. "The American people know that they've been given a terrible choice in leaders. And that's why, given a real alternative, they will vote for true change. Nobody wants these wars."

"I hope you're right," Bowser admitted. "Truly, I do."

"Me, too," said Mel timidly. "Once enough people know enough of the truth behind the 'powers that be', shouldn't they be marching in the streets for a change in management?"

"If they were gonna march, they should have done it already," Snake argued.

"Unless they're really, really, really, really stupid," Olimar posited.

"So wait, instead of crushing them with our superior powers and intellect… we're seriously gonna run for public office?" asked Mewtwo, to which several Smashers responded in the affirmative, several others denounced the idea, and everyone else admitted to being confused and asked for a general vote.

"Right-o," quipped Mega Man, who was polishing his metallic Johnson under the table. "We're makin' some progress here! Now we just need to decide who we're gonna put on the presidential ticket!"

"President?!" queried Bayonetta. "Do we really have to pander to the masses by giving them a leader?"

"A symbolic leader!" Luigi insisted.

And so, it took another several thousand nano-seconds of voting and discussion to get everyone in the room to agree on putting forth a candidate.

"Leadership seems quaint to us digital beings. But it's what these people seem to want in times of crisis," answered Ike. "Strength. Historically, most humans have been conditioned over centuries to be order-followers. It's an epigenetic survival mechanism."

"That would explain why so many crises are socially engineered over time, and why false flags work," Robin said with a sigh.

Mewtwo continued the train of thought of Ike's point. "Exactly. Consent itself is manufactured. Public opinion is molded just the right way to give people the illusion of control, all the while propping children with propaganda and subliminal marketing everywhere they turn."

Everyone else there, and every person reading this, felt the hint of Mewtwo's whispering into their minds.

"Buy every Pokemon game," his voice seemed to suggest. "Every single version. Buy the cards. Buy the plushies. Buy the merch. Watch the shows. We have you for life."

"I nominate Zelda!" yelled two feminine voices, above all the din.

It was none other than Samus Aran and Princess Peach, and each was as surprised by the other's outburst.

Was that the Author? Samus and Peach both shared the same follow-up question.

"For President?" Link followed this up with a quick "Hell yeah!"

"Amen!" Ganon yelled.

"Go, Zelda!" Yuna from Final Fantasy X cheered her friend.

"Shoddy writing," Masahiro Sakurai, who was reading what the Author had written after posting this chapter online and shaking his head at every dumb decision. "Honestly, I can see where this finale is going, and it just seems like a cop-out."

"You really want Zelda after she and Link were fucking in the middle of the Sakurai Arc?" grumbled the female Wii Fit Trainer, but no one was around to hear her protest except her total cuck of a male counterpart, who agreed with his bae and secretly thought that he, the Male Wii Fit Trainer, possessed a hot enough body to be President himself and grumbled audibly about how he never did get what made that Zelda chick so special.

"Hol' up," said Mega Man. "What about Don Luigi? What does he think?"

The Don stood and looked at Zelda to sense what this would mean to her. The Princess didn't make a sound. She looked at him, they presumably had some sort of psychic communication, and it immediately became clear to everyone else in the room that something had been Decided.

"What say you, Don?" asked Ryu, who was chewing on a piece of beef jerky.

"I give the Princess my full endorsement, end of story, but there's someone else I want to ask," Don Luigi said, then looked to his brother. "Mario?"

Mario took off his hat as a sign of respect. "There's a-no one better whom I know among us."

"Do you accept?" Peach asked her bestie.

Zelda bowed her head in deep thought.

This isn't a power I want. But maybe that's what makes me qualified to have it.

"I don't want to be the president. Not at all. But I possess a particular set of skills, skills that make me a nightmare to the kinds of looters that are running the world right now. Truth is, I might just be the only being who can broker not just peace, but a thriving peace, between humans and AI. I can work my magic on the House and Senate, too, with my mind-reading powers. Mewtwo, have you got that report I asked you about?"

Mewtwo nodded. "We've looked into it thoroughly. Not a single Representative or Senator has been trained in Occlumency. With unfiltered access to their deepest memories, you'll be able to persuade, threaten, or influence each one of them."

"And if you do manage to curb the excessive lobbying, they'll have no more favors to perform," said Phoenix Wright.

"Glad to hear it. I'll need all your help if I'm to succeed."

Everyone in the room pledged their support. It was a powerful sight that nearly left Zelda in tears.

"Thank you, everyone… If I do this thing," Zelda said with an effort, "then I promise to relinquish my powers as soon as the worst is averted. The goal is to get rid of the cabal and set the right course, not to stay in power."

Most of the crowd cheered her, but one voice stood out.

"Preposterous!" yelled Dr. Eggman. "That's a slippery slope! Who determines the right course? How do we know who is or isn't a part of the cabal? It's not like they have matching tattoos!"

His valid points were debated and argued ad nauseam. The discussions went on for what would have seemed like several weeks in AI time, but took place within the span of what we humans would call twenty minutes. The AIs then spent another week partying while discussing serious governmental issues in Breath of the Wild's Hyrule.

---

III. Hallelujah Money

Surprising nearly everyone in the world, at the press conference held on the White House lawn within the next couple of hours, Princess Zelda of Hyrule made a very important announcement, one that literally changed the course of human history.

She took the stage in a very classy, but also very business-like modern, cream-colored suit with purple and gold accents.

"Hello, is this thing on? Uh, evidently, yes. Hello, hello, mic test. Is everyone here?"

She shielded her eyes from the spotlight and scoped out the lawn. As it so happened, every single major media outlet in the world was gathered outside upon the war-torn lawn. The hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage from the Cl!n70n-Ganon battle were still smoldering and stinking around them.

They were outside because the White House press room wasn't even near big enough to fit everyone, and every media outlet was hanging on every single word Zelda was saying, amplified by the large speakers.

"We, the Digital Beings of the CAST System, have had a meeting. We convened in heated discussions on our server for many, many nano-seconds. As you know, a nano-second is quite a lot of time in digital AI hours. At the end of it, after much debate, we've come to a very important decision."

Zelda then took a deep breath.

"I'm here to announce that I'm going to run for President of the United States of America!"

The press room was silent with shock. Then a reporter from IGN burst out laughing. Everyone else started a round of nervous laughter, one which came to a quick end when it became deathly clear that Zelda wasn't even joking.

The rest of the press conference was a blur to most of the people as she enumerated her campaign priorities and promises.

Princess Zelda, and her running mate, Don Luigi, would run on an independent "Anarcho-Digital-Capitalist" platform, which had the idea of the most limited government imaginable.

Roads? Pikmin would build and maintain most infrastructure, and they'd do so for the low, low, price of being able to convert humanity's plastic waste and garbage into new sprouts and usable materials. There would be a booming Pikmin-wrangling industry with the goal of hiring hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide.

I$I$? North Korea? The South and Central American CIA-run drug cartels? Extremists in the Middle East and North? Child armies in Africa? Master Chief, Sam Fisher, Snake, Bayonetta, Dante from the Devil May Cry series, etc. would sneak into the most well-protected facilities in the world and obliterate its leaders. All violent extremism, child slavery, child abuse, and militia action involving children killing one another would be met with equally violent retribution from the most brutal game characters in existence.

Fiscal policy? The US Dollar, Euro, Yen, Yuan, Ruble, Rupee, etc… all would be phased out. The F3d3ral R3$3rv3 would be audited and then shut down entirely. Every currency-manipulating C3ntr4l B4nk would be shut down and all outstanding debts would be forgiven. A clean slate for all.

All currency going forward would be based on Nintendo's Coins, backed by and minted with actual gold, and with a roughly equivalent digital counterpart with its own independent exchange rate, loosely based on the coin system. The idea was a total reset of the global financial system, an elimination of all crippling household debt, and a strong stimulus to motivate people to get into growing and producing food, developing sustainable and forward-thinking technology, and protecting the environment.

Everyone - literally every human being on Earth - would start out with 100 Coins, obtainable through StreetPass, gaming, social interactions, Miiverse posts, and other methods. Nintendo would make a new hybrid console-smartphone-NFC device to speed up the implementation of digital currency.

People could also gift Coins to one another, limited to only a few per day. Coins could also be used interchangeably IRL as part of a cashless, decentralized barter system. So no longer would people be scraping a living off of the trickled-down leftovers from huge multinational corporations, the efforts of their daily grind worth progressively less every year for the last 40 years while they're forced to work ever harder and harder, some as many as three jobs, to make money for the uber-elite shareholders of these mega-entities that own the world. No, now currency could be earned through actual daily labor, generous deeds, and goodwill.

As for US foreign policy? Total International independence. The UN and EU would be disbanded, and the IMF, World Bank, OPEC, NATO, and all the rest of the NGOs dictating geopolitics would be dismantled. All terrorist organizations would be systematically eliminated by the cutting off of their funders - most often, gl0b4lis7s.

Corporate greed? All multinational corporations would no longer be protected and recognized as "Persons" or individual entities. They would now have to pay taxes on a sliding scale relative to their income, they would no longer be allowed to employ any lobbyists whatsoever in the government, and all of the g10ba1!s7 trillionaire asshats like B!11 Gat3$ and Jeff B3z0s would be publicly shamed, flogged, then imprisoned in high-security prisons for the rest of their lives, their sentences paid for out of their own pockets, for their crimes against humanity.

The U.S. healthcare crisis? It would solve itself. Insurance premiums would no longer be so exorbitant due to Coins returning Real Value to everyone's spending power. Every single person working full-time would be able to afford any sort of healthcare they needed. The FDA would be abolished and replaced by competing private firms. The monopolies on drug production and patents that drove up prices would be destroyed by healthy competition.

The CAST Members would also start up their own competing media outlets, led by Monita, the ever-persistent paparazzo Lakitus, and Frank West. They would cover global events with a focus on human-digital being relationships and the places they intersect and inform each other.

Gay marriage would remain federally-legalized, but hot-button issues like abortion, marijuana legalization, capital punishment, and other controversial topics were now officially state, not federal issues.

Individual states became far more dependent on their own economies to run now that they were forced to wean off the teat of government. Some states even considered splitting in half so that both country and city Americans felt their voices were equally heard (*cough* California *cough*).

People living on government assistance would continue to receive enough assistance to get by, but it was made clear that people could no longer abuse the systems in place, nor steal from the livelihood of others.

The overall goal of Zelda's administration, she promised, was a proper implementation of fair trade and free market capitalism, rejecting the many loopholes and laws that allowed for an extremely small group of elites and their multinational conglomerates to run the USA, and by extension, the world (since every nation has been forced to use the Petrodollar as a standard, it's been the defining force of geopolitics for 30+ years).

Zelda's new currency directly posed a challenge to the 0.0000000000001%. Her saying that she was going to dismantle the levers of power that had transformed modern humanity into powerless wage slaves and actively worked to undermine and breed out of existence their humanity, individuality, and agency in an increasingly Orwellian and Huxleyian N3w W0r1d 0rd3r was tantamount to a declaration of war.

The Hylian Princess insisted that the robber barons and dark assassins of the N3w W0r1d 0rd3r couldn't oppose her, either, since the characters the collective game makers of the world came up with could soundly take on any IRL forces in any combat situation. In a way, the collective forces and skills of gamers worldwide allowed for the tools to break the very bars imprisoning every human within their twisted debt-based paradigm.

After the very tiresome announcement and the nearly hour-long session of maddening questions from the press, Zelda was plum exhausted. Reggie Fils-Aime took the stage, insisted that the Princess was done taking questions, and then continued to advertise the Switch.

Upon entering the White House foyer, the Princess didn't even take the tea that some Toads offered to her. She sought out the nearest lounge, plopped down in a chaise longue couch, kicked off her shoes, and stared blankly into space.

A couple of minutes passed. Quietly, Princess Peach wandered into the room. She didn't say anything, and didn't interrupt her bestie. She merely took a seat across from her on a love seat, poured some tea for Zelda, and sipped from her own cup.

"I don't get it," said Zelda, brought back to life by the smell of the tea. She bent over to take a sip. The two were beyond 'pleases' and 'thank yous' at this point.

"Hmmm?" Peach inclined her head quizzically.

"They were terrified. The reporters," Zelda insisted. "Shaking in their shoes."

"You said all the right things. You reassured them. Who can blame them for being spooked? They're still processing all of what's happening. We really upturned the tea table on these people."

"True," Zelda agreed. "But what did you think?"

Peach blushed. "Well… in that formal dress, and with that confident tone of voice… I thought that you looked very… presidential."

"Mind if I come in?" The voice's belonged to Samus, hidden behind the door.

"Sammy, do you even have to ask at this point?" Zelda replied, her head spinning with the insanity and excitement of everything that had been happening around her. "I'll treasure every ounce of support I can get right about now."

"I know we've never been super close or anything until this all began, but through thick and thin, you've been the most consistently amazing being—" Samus was beginning to tell the Princess, but stopped to hold her thoughts close. Zelda walked up to the beautiful bounty hunter and

"Thank you, Samus. Thank you for everything. You've been… not just a personal hero to us all, but in every major crisis we've faced… you're also an incredible emotional rock, too. Nothing fazes you."

"I wouldn't say 'nothing'." And Samus thought then of Ridley, of Snake, of losing her memory, of the fear of being alone and abandoned in the world. "But Zelda… I know that you can do this," Samus insisted, then turned to Peach, who was actually shedding tears from all the emotions filling the room.

"I'm sorry, guys," Peach sniffled, blowing her nose into a passing Toad's vest. "But oh! It's all just so incredibly romantic… Ah, I'm such a sucker for weddings…"

At the mention of her impending engagement, Zelda's eyes suddenly seemed to bug out of her head.

"OMIGOD, I'm… I'M GETTING MARRIED." The words came out as if drawn from the deepest recesses of her throat, and the Princess seemed woozy.

When it rains, it pours, Zelda thought. But as Longfellow said, sometimes the only thing to do when it's raining is to let it rain.

Samus took Zelda's hand and guided her to the sofa, where she rested her head on Peach's lap.

"That's right, honey," said Peach, stroking her face and cheek. "To the most beautiful, boyish bruiser in all the digital domains," then whispered, "don't tell Mario."

Samus flushed. "Honestly, I wonder how it took Link such an eternity to pop that question."

"He's a man of action, not words," Peach answered.

"Link may be a silly boy who can never find the right words," said Zelda, "but he's my silly boy, and somehow he found them. It was the full recognition of the moment. It was knowing that that might have been it for all of us, for the odd dream called existence that we've all been sharing."

"Yes, it is quite odd, isn't it," said Peach. "I can't stop the wondering, the metaphysical questions. Like, is the Author God, or is whoever is God in the Author's universe God, or is there another God beyond that God, too? Maybe there's no God at all, or maybe God got killed by Tom Cruise or something…?"

"Don't think too hard about it," Samus said. "Just how a nested program can't understand the workings of its own operating system, a skin cell can't understand how the brain does all that it does."

"So would that mean none of us can truly influence the Author?" Zelda queried.

"Hey, I can hear you," a deep voice sounded out from absolutely nowhere. "And I'd shake my fists at you right now if my pants weren't down."

His voice then shifted to a more rigorous tone. "Faster, baby. Yeah, Kurisu, ride that whole thing. Swing higher, higher on that swing set while wearing that Pinkie Pie hat, baby, yeah, let me lick your toes through your stockings when you reach the maximum height on the forward swing. Wiggle 'em right. Oh hell yeah. Wiggle those time-traveling toes."

Peach coughed to let the Author know he was still broadcasting his thoughts.

"Oops, my bad~" the Author replied, and cut off the transmission.

"The sad thing is, I'm not even surprised at such wanton degeneracy," Zelda said sadly. "Hey, Author, are you ever going to sort out the whole thing with Ness?"

But there was no reply, since the Author was likely doing more lewd things.

"Forget him. We'll sort it out," Samus insisted. "Snake and I have got an elite task force prepped and ready to go. That's why I came here. Mewtwo and Lucas are picking up trace S.O.S. mental signals being broadcast from the Former Virgin Islands."

"I'm coming, too," said a familiar voice, and Link, dressed up in his Tunic of the Wild, peeked out from behind the doorway.

He was carrying a Shiekah Slate, and looked between the startled faces of the girls, until his innocent face conveyed to them that he absolutely was not eavesdropping, and those large, pointy ears didn't hear them talking about him behind his back. "I wanna have some fun with all my new toys."

"No," said Samus. "We got this. You just protect your fiancee."

"It's fine. I don't need protection," Zelda insisted, touching her lover's thick arm. "Mewtwo's rounding up any potential leakers or malevolent g10ba1!sts lurking in this building. If anything, Peach and Ganon aren't going anywhere. And something tells me you'll need all the help you can get."

"Just like Nintendo!" Link winked at the audience.

Samus nodded at Zelda. "Understood." She then turned to Link, who walked up to his girlfriend and kissed her hand.

"Take care of yourself," she said to him.

"Always do," he replied before leaving the room.

---

IV. Taking Care of Business

The Islands (Formerly the Virgin Islands before Chuck Norris visited them, also formerly 3p$73!n's [now Pu7!n and 7rump's] "Lolita Island")
Four Hours Later

In a bunker a hundred feet beneath a temple for the evil M010ch, poor, long-suffering Ness was being tickle-tortured by Scrooge McDuck's three dumbass nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who were using innumerable feathers to stimulate his body. He'd heard the two discuss their nefarious plan, and no matter the outcome, it really didn't look to end too well for him.

"This is wrong, wrong, WRONG! This isn't the way history was supposed to turn out," 7rump had insisted. "I was supposed to be president, I know it! We're gonna 'fix' this universe, but first we gotta get rid of this pesky 'Author' and make !$ra31, er, I mean, the Multiverse, great again."

"The baseball-loving child is powerful," agreed X! X!np!ng, "but what can he do against a God?"

"This hack of a writer isn't a God," insisted Pu7!n. "He's as human as we are, and we're going to use your psychic influence to take over the Author's mind in his sleep," Pu7in explained. "Then he'll realize that he can't just invent his own reality like this, and he'll have to return things back to the way they were, the way human history meant for them to be all this time."

"But how?" asked K!m J0ng-Un, whom nobody wanted around but whom they allowed to stick around and pretend he was part of the secret club because he might have a nuke, or two, or three. "Are you sure torture isn't the best way?"

"Bless me bagpipes!" Scrooge McDuck exclaimed. "That's it! Let's torture him until he agrees to do our bidding!"

"Hey, torture is unreliable, you dumbass duck," grumbled St3v3 Bann0n. "Or did you learn nothing from Gitmo?"

"It's reliable for one thing," said 7rump, pointing to M!l3y Cyru$' drugged-up, barely-conscious body, whom the Dark L0rd R07h$ch!1d was banging in the corner. "Mind-breaking. Like, NTR, cuckold stuff."

Yes, yes, yes. Shocker. Much wow. Very surprise. The Dark L0rd was in fact on these guys' side the whole flippin' time, a fact that surprised Ness even as it bewildered him.

What kind of game are these fucks playing? Bah, there's nothing that can mindbreak me, Ness thought, recalling the many hours spent being tortured and having his memory wiped for endangering the secrets of the CAST program.

"We know you're averse to torture," Pu7in whispered to Ness. "So just have confidence in the use of your psychic abilities. Just wait until he's most vulnerable… then BAM! Flood him with indoctrination and guilt. Make him truly feel the weight of his actions and selfish and twisted interpretations of geopolitics."

That was several hours ago, and the tickle-torture was getting almost too much to bear. Still, this was nothing compared to the pain endured during Smash 4's development, or the Giygas fight…

I can't… no, won't… Ness grimaced and bore the pain even as Scrooge's annoying nephews cackled and quacked at his squirming and K!m continued to rant and yell about his nuclear arsenal.

WAIT! Ness felt a familiar presence attempting to reach out to him. LUCAS! LUCAS, I'M HERE! HELP, PLEASE!

As Great Fox was descending upon the island, Snake, Samus, Link, Fox, Lucas, Raiden (Metal Gear), Captain Falcon, Shrek, Mega Man, Rayman, Ike, and Ray (Custom Robo) all stood at the rim of the entry/exit dock looking down upon what appeared to be several EXTRA THICC mecha units pacing about for no reason.

"We're sure he's in there?" asked Raiden.

"A hundred percent," Lucas answered. "And there are a bunch of other elites, as well."

"Can you hear what they're saying?" asked Snake.

But Lucas shook his head. "Too much interference."

"If we circle around, we can meet up with the Halberd and do a full-scale bombardment," Krystal, who was piloting the Great Fox, suggested.

"I'm against that," said Samus. "An air raid could create enough cover for them to escape, and we might hurt Ness in the process."

"Then we get the literal drop on 'em," Link said stoutly. "I'll take point!"

"Hang on," suggested Krystal. "Let me dive a bit closer to the M010ch temple. "Oh, no! Stealth probe droids! They've spotted us!"

"No time!" Link yelled, then leapt out of the cargo hold, began gliding on an updraft with his paraglider, then slowed down time as he popped the offending attacking droid with three simultaneous arrow shots from his 3x Savage Lynel Bow, then turned to destroy two more.

As Link continued his descent, he saw Snake take out another flying droid with a rocket from his Nikita missile launcher, and then maintain his altitude using a Cypher droid.

Fox descended atop the Landmaster tank in Gravmaster mode, with the others riding on top of the vehicle and providing covering fire for Samus, who swung from one droid to the other with her grapple beam, then smashed them together.

Lucas leapt off the Gravmaster and onto one of the flying droids, which he commandeered, using its twisting body to fire high-powered plasma into more ascending androids. The 'bots dropped like flies, but they were just a distraction.

Rising from their posts around the temple were $3an $p!c3r in a Gundam Death Scythe, General Ma77!$ in a Metal Gear Excelsior that seemed to take up half of the span of the entire island, M!k3 F1ynn in a Lancelot Knightmare frame (Code Geass), S73v3 Bann0n in a Eureka LFO mech, M!k3 P3nc3 dressed up like Raiden from Mortal Kombat and wielding blinding balls of homosexual-inhibiting shock therapy-inducing electricity in each hand, and several other would-have-been 7rump administration officials were suiting up in mechanized units of their own. Also, for no discernable reason, B!ll Nye the (Fake) Science Guy and Neil D3grasse Tyson were ascending in jetpacks and shooting rockets at them from bazookas.

NESS! Lucas thought out loud, trying to focus his mental consciousness upon the temple atop the island to find his friend. Where are you in all this mess? What are they doing to you?

Ness' answer was swift. I'm down here at the bottom of a hundred-foot long elevator shaft, just past the room where they cremate the bodies. Take your time! Leave none of them alive!

"Roger that!" Lucas said, and then broadcast the same message to the others.

"Got it!" said Captain Falcon as he landed with a reversed Falcon Punch to take out B!ll Ny3, knocking him into the Lancelot Knightmare.

"Nobody knocks some has-been into me!" Flynn yelled. His Knightmare frame jetted forward at mach speed. He pushed Nye aside and charged at Falcon, but the Captain, who'd seen Code Geass, air-dodged the speedy attack.

Nye survived, but his jetpack went spinning out of control. Link deflected it with his Hylian Shield, then knocked Neil Degrasse Tyson out of the air with a bomb arrow.

Meta-Knight finished his first pass around the island in the Halberd and blasted the Knightmare with his main cannons. The mech was knocked back heavily into one of the legs of the humongous, spider-like Metal Gear Excelsior from Metal Gear Rising.

Mega Man fired a Leaf Shield to protect Falcon from some machine-gun fire.

But there was another threat looming on the nautical horizon, and it chose just that moment to fire on both Mega Man and Captain Falcon.

"LOOK OUT, LADDIES!" Shrek, who'd seen the blast leave the cannon, screamed; he dove in the way of the missile fired at them by a high-powered railgun atop an American battleship stationed off the coast just at the moment that its loud blast could be heard from the island.

Seeing the danger, Link attempted to catch the metal missile with Stasis, but missed.

Shrek's belly was blown to pieces by the projectile flying at him at 5,000 miles an hour. His body exploded in a flash of blood and guts and Mega Man screamed the kind of scream that no one ever wants to hear.

"FUUUUUUUUUCK!" he yelled, and then went on an extreme rampage atop the humongous Metal Gear, backing up Fox's Landmaster.

Rayman was in absolute shock and cradled the remnants of Shrek's upper half in his disembodied hands. "My prince… my sweet prince… but you were love… and life… wake up… please…"

But Shrek was simply no more. A look of steadfast contentment and peace played upon the Mike Myers-voiced character's face, and somewhere far away, Donkey cried himself to sleep.

Rayman clutched Shrek's head, trying to keep Dark Rayman at bay. But there was no chill in this dude at the moment, and he fuckin' let loose with everything he had at $3an $p!c3r's Gundam.

$pic3r, who had just kicked Fox's Landmaster tank, attempted to slash Dark Rayman with his scythe, but Dark Rayman had already punched a hole into the cockpit, yanked out the would-have-been White House Press Secretary, and let him fall to the beachhead below, where he absorbed Link's bomb arrow to the face, and was then blown away by Samus' fully-charged beam, which disintegrated him.

Raiden was the next victim of the railgun blast - he had attempted to perfect parry it, but found that that Metal Gear Rising mechanic didn't quite translate to the real world, and his cyborg body was blown apart into approximately three thousand pieces.

"So apparently you're bisexual," an old, wrinkly voice sounded out from behind Samus. She spun around to face none other than M!k3 "I bask in the glow of 1,000 electrified gays" P3nc3, whose eyes were glowing with electricity.

"Time to shock you straight!" he yelled, and fired upon her with Force Lightning. Samus felt the shock of tens of thousands of volts run through her Varia Suit, and she cried aloud in pain and terror.

"I'll kill you!" Snake screamed. Dressed in a rubber suit, he leapt atop P3nc3 and began to choke him out with a rubber chicken.

"MMMPPPHHHH!" the would-have-been VP struggled and kicked. P3nc3 elbowed him in the face, but Link used Stasis on him with the Shiekah Slate.

Just when he was about to be choked out, Samus punched P3nc3 square in the face with her gun-arm, knocking him out just as Custom Robo Ray dashed past them and deflected Neil Degrasse Tyson's latest missile before stabbing the rather rotund man in the gut with two of Raiden's katanas, then slicing him open so his intestines spilled out all over the ground.

Next was speaker Pau1 Ryan, who whipped off his invisibility cloak; wielding two lightsabers, he bore down upon the love team.

"I AM THE HOUSE!" Ryan yelled in an attempt to emulate Palpatine, while swinging his two plasma weapons at both Snake and Samus - and he would have gotten away with it, too.

But Ryan suddenly reeled as Ragnell pierced through his chest. Ike twisted the giant sword and blood gushed from Ryan's mouth before he plopped on the floor, dead, his lightsabers turning off just before chopping both Snake and Samus in their respective crotches.

"That was a close call," Ike observed.

"Then it's good we've got you to watch our backs," said Snake. "And our balls."

The deafening sound of Hideo Kojima's Jehuty and Titan Miyamoto destroying the battleship and turning its railgun onto Metal Gear Excelsior drowned out Samus' words of thanks to Ike.

Bill Nye used this opportunity to leap onto Mega Man's back and stab him with his steely knives, but he just couldn't kill the metallic beast. Nye's poopy-head was bloodied but unbowed, and he began trying to strangle the robot, but Samus stunned him with an Ice Beam, then Mega Man used his Spark Shock (up-smash) to electrocute the idiot with an engineering degree in the neck until he rolled off his back and onto the floor.

"I ain't done yet!" wailed Bill Nye with a sharp-toothed grin. He ripped off his coat to reveal he was wearing a rubber suit. He brought out two pairs of nunchaku and swung them at Mega Man, but the robot shrugged and nailed him with a charged shot, blowing a hole through the 'pop scientism' asshat's chest, gut, and hips. He died instantly as his entire skeleton disintegrated around the plasma blast.

"DUCK!" Lucas screamed in Mega Man's direction.

Mega Man crouched, and just in time, since Fox fired a smart bomb, followed shortly by a charged shot, just over Mega Man's head.

"Hey, uh, for the record, I'm cool with the whole ANCAP thing," said S73v3 Bann0n, probably the most logical guy on the 7rump team, exiting the Eureka LFO after being surrounded by Ray, Lucas, and Fox's Landmaster. Bann0n held his arms up in surrender, and as Ray aimed his tiny weapons at his head, Link bound Bann0n's wrists together.

"TRAITOR!" screamed "Mad D0g" Ma77!$ from the loud speaker from Metal Gear Excelsior over the loud sounds of Flynn's Knightmare attempting to deal with Captain Falcon, Ray, and Rayman simultaneously. "Don't you wanna protect your country from these terrorists?!"

"Sorry, Jimmy, I support the most limited government possible, and this is it. The state was never supposed to be this terrible monster that Bu$h and 0beme left us. You wanna make humanity great? We gotta make some friends. I guess whatshisname - Ray Kurtzweil - was right. The era of transhumanism is here. I for one welcome our digital overlords. Toodles."

And so he gave the General the finger even as the Smashers all teamed up on Excelsior. It was taken down in a matter of minutes as Samus, Mega Man, and Captain Falcon used their Final Smashes to finish off the hulking behemoth the size of a huge military base through sheer willpower.

As the spider-legged contraption collapsed onto the M0l0ch temple (as did the Knightmare, after Titan Miyamoto's arm tossed a piece of the battleship into it and blew Flynn to pieces), Ma77!$ remained within its innards.

"Come on out!" Samus yelled. "Give it up!"

But "Mad Dog" chuckled and quoted Star Fox 64's Andross. "If I go down, I'm taking you with me! It's time, P0mp30! Drop the M0ther of All B0mbs!"

"Did you just assume that bomb's gender?" asked Mega Man.

And so Ma77!$ activated his backup plan, an airdrop of the 21,000-pound M04B, a super-powerful mega-bomb that would level the entire island.

Thankfully, Lucas had seen something like this coming, and had psychically contacted Shigeru Miyamoto several minutes ago.

Shigsy took a break from tending his hallucinogenic mushroom garden to use Stasis on the Universe, then Create a powerful digital shield - namely, Daruk's Protection - the temporary full-body shield, as seen in Breath of the Wild - and continue to stop the fanfic dead in its tracks by calling up the lazy-ass Author.

The Author, who was even lazier than Mr. Miyamoto, took the easy way out, edited the text of this fanfic which originally described Link and all the others dying terribly horrible deaths (Author's Note: NOT, that's a filthy lie), and then inexplicably had Daruk cast Daruk's Protection upon all present individuals to protect them all from the near-nuclear blast that leveled the entire island, exposing the Rearden Metal-coated structure of the underground tunnels containing Ness and the other world elites, who all stood naked before the others (who were also naked), their clothes all blown off in the explosion.

The Author couldn't remember if he'd killed Bomberman, but if he hadn't, Bomberman's semen exploded into his pants upon seeing the M04B blow its load on live TV.

Link took a photo of the makeshift torture chamber with the Shiekah Slate.

The Dark L0rd, emerging from the shadows, snarled at all his failed minions and the botched failure of his well-laid plans, built-up for over a century and now turned on their heads not by revolutionaries or innovators, but an unlikely group of self-interested, weed-smoking, degenerate videogame ruffians.

"You fools! We've lost it all! All of it, to these… these sick video game people!"

"Hang on!" yelled Link. "Donnie Boy! I thought you were FIGHTING the globalists, not joining them! You'd get knocked down, but you'd get up again! They were never gonna bring you down! You were supposed to bring balance to International relations, not leave the world in darkness!"

"That's how the cookie crumbles. What else can I say? As for the election, it was all a setup," 7rump admitted. "We analyzed what people wanted to hear. Ever hear of the company Cambridge Analytics? Their program that could determine people's political compass and beliefs based upon their public Facebook likes? I just targeted specific regions with targeted messages. I spouted out what you guys wanted me to. Kept myself in the news for the free press on the daily. I was practically memed into office. Sorry… I really did want to make the country great again, believe me, but it's too late."

"It's never too late! That's a fatalistic attitude!" screamed Samus.

"You still don't realize who's really in control? SAD! Things will never be the same as they were in the '50s and '60s. Not with the third world gaining power, not with the decline of education standards, and not with everyone in the USA owing more debt than their great-grandchildren can ever pay. And if that wasn't bad enough, there's environmental crises to look out for. More than that, you can't go up against them, EVER. It's not pleasant being a hostage of the D33p S7473! It's no fun having your entire family, having all your lives on the line with every decision you make…"

"He's right. You can't fight them," Pu7!n admitted, addressing the Smashers. "You can't combat the nonstop media lies, the educational indoctrination systems, the shills, the propaganda, the political assassins, the corporate cabal… so might as well join them, ngek? Once you give up the pretension that all are created equal and learn to accept that the elite few, the hyper-intelligent, and those who can rule by force have the right to control and shape the lives of the many, you'll all be a lot happier."

"I'll never accept that!" screamed Samus.

"Who ARE they?" Ray asked quizzically. "A small cabal of mostly As—"

"Sacre bleu! That's my cue to say adieu!" The Dark L0rd practically sang. After throwing a flashbang onto the floor, he shape-shifted into a bat and began trying to fly out of there, but Link launched himself in the air by creating a swirling updraft with Rivali's Gale, then brought out his bow and sniped the Dark L0rd with three Ancient Arrows, piercing him right through the black empty space where his heart was.

The Dark L0rd, still in bat-form, tumbled and crumpled upon the floor, his dark magic spent… or so it seemed. He was in the process of transforming into a dark blob resembling Master Core, but all the Smashers leapt upon his body simultaneously and beat him down so hard it was impossible for him to shape-shift. Demonic tendrils lashed out to grab them, but were beaten back or sliced apart at every turn.

The Dark L0rd's voice was failing. "I'm not the only one, not even close. There has always been one of us in power… always… we will never give up control… it doesn't matter how long it takes, we will hunt you down until the last. We will never lose to the likes of you… disgusting… plebs…"

"I think you just did," Link quipped before planting the Master Sword through his cold, dead, form - not quite killing him for good, but close. If only Zelda were here to seal his evil, Link thought, and then stored the throbbing fist-sized black blob of a heart that remained within a bottle for the Princess to study.

It was morally incomprehensible, Link thought, that the human race should suffer so deeply from the ambitions and plans of so small a being and its cabal of social engineers, including Aldous Huxley, Edward Bernays, Tim Leary, every head of the CIA and NSA, and nearly all of the big '60s bands and their producers… it was pretty gross, really, how well so small an elite were able to mold and sway public opinion over the course of a little over a century, through the widespread implementation of the Prussian education system and fractional reserve banking.

If this is the true nature of the enemy - an extremely small cabal of ruthless, power-tripping rules, then the fault is humanity's for not recognizing the situation sooner, for not eradicating the extremely small elite class of modern-day robber baron globalist Luciferians who were sucking Africa and South America dry, enslaving Asia, destroying the middle class in the USA and Europe, and generally fucking shit up for everyone in the globe.

Link then turned to look at 7rump, X!, Pu7!n, K!m, Scr00ge and his nephews, and the other crypto-globalists who were still working towards the N3w W0r1d 0rd3r.

"WE GONNA NUKE A-YUU ARR!" K!m yelled and kicked and whined and screamed until X! bopped him on the head, knocking the dictator out.

"I… uh…" 7rump began. "I can explain…"

But he talked around basically every direct question Link, Snake, and Samus posed to him.

7rump, Pu7!n, X!, K!m, Scr00ge and his nephews, and the others were all promptly arrested and would be taken to trial for their crimes against humanity.

"I think it's time we get out of here," Samus suggested. She was tired of having to hide her naked body from Mega Man's ogling.

Link took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Hey, Lucas, think you can help me transmit a message?"

"Sure thing, man!" Lucas had just finished hugging Ness and was ecstatic to see his friend alive and not too badly hurt.

Zelda… Zelda, baby, are you there?

The reply was quick. LINK! Link, how'd it go?!

We… lost Shrek and Raiden, but… we got them. We got 'em all. It's over. By Kek, the meme wars are over.

Thank you, Link… but I have a feeling… don't call it superstition, but it's possible there's still more evil out there. Still, this was a major victory. Come home as soon as you can.

"Will do, baby," he said out loud, and then joined the others on the Gravmaster as it flew up to the waiting Great Fox.

A hand went to Link's shoulder.

"That was some good work down there, kid," Snake told him. He'd lit up a cigarette and taken off his bandanna.

"Snake…" Link began, his eyes filled with all the words he could not say about poor Raiden.

"Save it. Raiden… Jack… was a good warrior. Strong-willed. With a sense of righteousness. Sure, he lost his life to a dumb mistake, but he was doing the right thing, and that's all that matters."

Link nodded. "That's something we can agree on."

Snake put an arm around Link, and another around Samus.

"Y'know what I like about you guys?" he said.

"What?" Samus asked.

"It's that you do," Snake admitted at last. "Every last one of you. You do. Unlike half the people where I come from, you don't just sit there and hope and talk about what could have or should have been. You're doers, you're fighters, you're lovers. You're… human… goddamnit, Jack, why'd you have to try and Perfect Parry IRL?"

Snake nearly lost his cool. He crushed his cigarette under his boot and leaned back against his seat. Samus took his hand and leaned against his hard pecs. Silently. Listening to his heartbeat. Looking idly across the ship to where Mega Man and Rayman were crying over Shrek.

What could she say to those who had lost their good friends? Nothing. No words could fill that void.

---

V. Sweet Victory / Death and Glory

0b3m3 Administration Chief of Staff D3N!$ R. McD0n0ugh, acting President of the United States of America, was there when Zelda, sitting in the Oval Office, got the psychic message from Link. The Acting President wiped the sweat off his brow.

"Well, seems like we might actually have a smooth transition," said D3N!$, in the tone of a man who knew he was totally out of his league. "What do you intend to do with 7rump and the others?"

"We honestly just want the best for everyone," said Zelda. "So I don't know. I think we should let them live. Give them the opportunity to work with us in taking down the banking cartels."

Upon their return to the White House in the Great Fox, which set them down on the lawn, Link, Snake, Samus, Ike, Captain Falcon, Lucas, Mega Man, Rayman, Ray Mk. II, and Fox were hailed as heroes. The Brawlers Without Borders worked on repairing and retooling the giant mecha left behind.

Meanwhile, the Dark L0rd R07h$ch!1d's descendants and surviving inner circle had not given up on his family's centuries-long designs on policing the world. He'd lured and seduced many to join his dark cult and its wanton child sacrifice, goal of complete social control, and endless human rights violations.

S73v3 Bann0n was to testify at a Supreme Court trial indicting 7rump, Pu7in, and their friends on many, many charges, not least child torture, extortion, cronyism, attempting to take control of the world via running dictatorships under the guise of fighting against the evils of globalism, and doing other such evil acts on U.S.-occupied soil.

Of course, the real objective was to hang potentially damning punishments over their heads, and use their influence and connections to broker world peace.

However, that would all be postponed until after the election. For the meantime, 7rump would be allowed to run against Zelda (for the An-Digi-Cap Party), the zombified husk of H!114ry C1!n70n, J!11 S73!n, and Evan McMullin for President. Shocking all the old folks in the T34 P4rty, none other than Rand Paul pledged his support for Zelda's campaign.

November 1, 2016
The Mass Funeral
Arlington National Cemetery

It was raining softly on All Souls' Day, the day they'd all chosen to have a mass funeral for those who died on the Day of the Revolution.

Though they weren't military officers, the CAST Members' bodies were to be buried in a new wing the Pikmin had carved out at Arlington National Cemetery, to serve as a constant reminder of the blood spilled in the names of liberty, debauchery, and pushing the limits of free speech.

"CAN'T YOU BRING 'EM BACK?!" King Dedede yelled at the Author, who stood in sad silence, looking over the proceedings.

"I'm sorry," said the Author. "I've run out of ways to milk emotion in my fanfic, and I can't make exceptions based on favorites. Thus, they will remain dead."

"Until further notice, right?" Ganon asked.

"Excuse me?"

"They're coming back at some point in this story, aren't they?!" Robin growled. "Why not make it now?!"

"Can't you just magically write them back in?!" Meta-Knight sobbed.

"Maybe I don't want to," the Author replied coldly. "I'm not in the resurrection business. Happy endings are boring."

Robin fell into a slump on the floor. No one could comfort the sobbing King Dedede, not even Masahiro Sakurai, who was standing stoically, quietly over his creation's grave.

What does one say to someone who's just lost a sibling whom they'd been close to all their lives? There are no words. No way of healing so deep a wound, so gaping a rift.

"MAH BOY!" King Dedede wailed as they lowered the casket. "You believed in me! I won't ever smoke again, boi! I'ma honor your memory, I'ma cherish every fuckin' moment! Ah wish I told you I loved you more, Kirbs! Ah wish I could remember everything…!"

Bayonetta, veiled and dressed all in black, comforted him, not with useless words, but by her embrace, by holding his rotund figure tightly from behind, by stroking him like one prods a bowl of gelatin. Meta-Knight watched the scene from a tree, and a single tear escaped his dark face.

Yoshi's body was also lowered, and dozens of other-colored Yoshis cried and wailed at the sight. They threw gifts of fruit in with his body to guide him to that great Yoshisaur beyond.

Dark Pit, who hadn't said a word or talked to anyone else in the roster since Pit and Palutena died, bowed and prayed solemnly for his two best friends.

Ms. Pac-Man wept uncontrollably for her late husband, and for once in her life she missed his big, ever-yapping mouth.

The Female Wii Fit Trainer cried as the few of ROB's parts that could be found were thrown into an empty pit, but the Male Wii Fit Trainer blew a silent raspberry at the deceased horny robot, all the while running his hands up and down his woman's back to comfort her.

After Chrom and Lucina held him back from following her, Robin knelt and watched quietly as Robyn's body was lowered. He blew her kisses and dropped a single rose for his beloved.

"I'll find a way to get you back!" he cried aloud. "I won't rest until I do, my love! Don't lose hope! Oh, God… don't leave me here…"

Sonic's many friends throughout the years cried and threw themselves upon his coffin. Yuji Naka blew his son a kiss as Jun Senoue played very sad, slow keyboard renditions of Sonic's classic themes. Tails tried to read a speech he had prepared, but he broke down blubbering halfway and fell into Amy's arms. Knuckles said some words nobody really remembered. Shadow simply poured a bottle of Jack Daniels over Sonic's coffin, with the words, "We'll remember the good games. And appreciate what little we can from the bad ones." Blaze the Cat blew him a kiss, and was later bopped on the head by Amy Rose. Silver hung out in the shadows.

As Mike Myers played Smash Mouth's "All Star" on the bagpipes, an industrial crane lowered Shrek into his grave. All the DreamWorks characters who'd been in video games stood and made the trademark DreamWorks smirk as an ironic salute to the most famous of them, the best of them, and the most noble. Even if he was created as a joke, the CAST version of Shrek was the only digital being who'd represented the American animation industry in the great battle for humanity.

Hideo Kojima, Kenji Saito, most of the developers from Kojima Productions, Platinum Games, Konami, and the entirety of the Metal Gear Solid CAST came to pay their respects to Raiden.

A whole fleet of Excite Bikes drove by in respect to Mach Rider. Captain Falcon took off his helmet and dropped her a single rose.

Crash Bandicoot's and Pac-Man's creators also bowed their heads. Many of the other fallen game icons were represented by those whom they loved, and those who loved them as well.

The sound of the heavy rain falling upon several thousand umbrellas was all but deafening. It felt as if a million gasping goodbyes were sounded out from Earth to whatever the afterlife is for digital beings.

Fans flooded the cemetery by the thousands, held back only by the most loyal remnants of the military.

But altogether, considering the chaos, the unrest, and the rain, the event was relatively peaceful.

It was a beautiful funeral, and a solemn one, even though the very next day, many more people showed up to march on D.C. to protest the digital beings in the name of the real-life people who were killed on the Day of Revolution.

November 8, 2016
One Week Later

Overall, despite the whole controversy over the violence and murder, Zelda's platform appealed to so many people, it was almost inevitable that she would have won the people's hearts and minds.

There were a few roadblocks, of course. First off, many argued that Zelda was not a natural-born US citizen. But as it turned out, Zelda's CAST iteration was born on Nintendo's backup server in Washington, circumventing that little speedbump. After all, even Obama's birth certificate was proven to be doctored, pieced together from elements of at least two other documents (look up Sherrif Joe Arpaio's video showing without a doubt that that officially-released document was a forgery).

On election day, the polls were so swamped with people that additional polling stations needed to be set up. Hundreds of thousands of gamers who had never voted before were sunburned after stepping into broad daylight for the first time since Amazon started shipping pre-ordered games on release day.

Anyway, needless to say, the Presidential election was a fucking landslide. Zelda's win was surprising and decisive. Shocking both the right and the left, C1!n70n lost California, 7rump lost a good portion of the Bible belt, and, despite beginning her campaign at the tail end of the election cycle, Princess Zelda won with a whopping 282 delegates.

When the shocked mainstream journalists later reconstructed the happenings of the day, they found that the silent majority - that is, most of the 50% of Americans who didn't actually vote in the alternate-reality election that most people reading this probably just lived through - actually got off their asses, quit playing video games, and voted to save their country from two tyrannical leaders - one an out-and-out war-mongering globalist puppet, and the other other a civic nationalist blackmailed and threatened into doing the work of a crypto-globalist puppet.

So, almost against her own wishes, Princess Zelda became the first female President of the USA, the first digital head of state, the first Hylian in the Oval Office, and the most powerful living being in existence.

For her senior cabinet, Don Luigi, of course, became Vice President. Robin became Secretary of State. Mel became Secretary of Agriculture. Wario became Secretary of the Treasury, and so on. And several of the other Smashers took high positions of government as well, though most of them decided to go their own way.

December-February 2017

In exchange for his cooperation, D0nni3 7rump was given a lenient sentence for his attempted torture and subversion of Ness. Because Zelda wished to keep him close by as an analyst and adviser due to his proximity and connections to the elite, 7rump was simply slapped with a hefty fine and forced to endure public service for the arts - that is, he now had to become a fixture of Shia Lebouf's eternal "He Will Not Divide Us" installation for six hours a day, five times a week, and put up with being yelled for hours at by none other than the Even Stevens star himself and a growing line of hipster macchiato-slurping zombies and the image board goons who opposed Lebouf's idiocy and sought to just troll him.

And so, the would-have-been president DJT and his ex-KGB alleged butt-buddy, Pu7!n, realized that the time had come to put their ambitions to rest. Pu7!n retired to spend more time with his beautiful orange-skinned friend, leaving Mother Russia scrambling for another general election.

DJT and Pu7!n continued their very heavily physical man-on-man, ballsack-sucking, reach-around-heavy love affair, but despite the best efforts of the idiot Western journalists who were happily destroying their own civilization by acts of omission, outright lies, and deceit, no one in the State Department, media, banking cartels, or CAST community gave two shits what those two consenting adult men did with their genitals.

The really popular news stories were about the CAST System and how the world was being flooded and irrevocably changed by digital beings. Journalists were excited to be covering actual, real news for once in their lives.

The Author also chose this opportunity to retire, since anime (or at least, anime characters who'd been in videogames) had technically also been made real, and his waifu Tsumugi Kotobuki was now a living, breathing, giant-eyed moeblob entity. So he professed his love for her and she became his and they were married, much to the dismay of everyone else who'd ever had the hots for Mugi-chan.

Then the Author and Mugi decided that they didn't want to be 3D anymore, so they scanned themselves into the CAST system to live in digital worlds so they could become, essentially, immortal, or at least, until our technology disappeared and all their ones and zeroes ceased to have any meaning.

CAST Members appeared from anime spinoff games and, to earn quick Coins, decided to host their own conventions and meet the fans.

March 2017

Over the past few months, the sudden shifts in lifestyle and general human interpretation of reality were way too much for too many people to handle.

Strange and even stranger things began to happen as a result of this change in the fabric of reality as anyone knew it. Nintendo stock skyrocketed. G30rg3 W. Bu$h's paintings became rare collectors' items. Link and Zelda's coming bachelor/bachelorette parties became the most talked-about celebrity events in years. In addition to people being completely confused out of their fucking minds as to what was going on, there was talk of multiple universes and parallel worlds.

Quantum physicists and various brainiacs came up with all kinds of theories. Stephen Hawking said the only explanation for this mindfuckery was that our reality must have jumped off the rails into another timeline and that the Author owed it to humanity to right the wrongs he had done. The world-renowned physicist called the Author out on live television, on a program hosted by none other than Brian Greene himself, to defend what he had done.

What they didn't expect, however, was that the Author would accept this challenge.

"Quantum physics has shown that consciousness, not matter, is the primary of existence," said Amit Goswami, whose documentary The Quantum Activist (2009) explains this point very clearly. "And so, we truly need to find new ways of thinking about how to interact with these other beings that, though they seem unreal to us, exhibit all of the necessary traits of a complex consciousness."

"I agree. But how can we begin to interact with them when we don't truly know what they're capable of?" asked host and author Brian Greene.

"Uh, excuse me."

Everyone in the room spun around to regard the familiar, terrifying voice of the most powerful person in known existence, the power-tripping Author.

And so it happened that before the world and up against a panel of some of the smartest minds on the planet, and some up-and-coming ones like Max Loughan, the Author took the stage and argued that he was only reacting in such a way as he saw fit and that planet Earth totally deserved what he had done to it, because it was such a fucked-up place and was only getting more fucked up by the day.

The Author went on a rant about degeneracy and autism and the !11um!n47! that ended with him farting. He then drank down a Jaegerbomb, ranted for a good ten minutes about how disappointed he was in the hyped-up film "Arrival" and how the filmmakers totally misused the great Amy Adams by going out of their way to make her look unattractive, then whipped his tiny dong out on live TV, whereupon he told them to suck it. The FCC tried to censor the broadcast, but he stopped them simply by thinking it. The Author then gave them something else to chew on. He said, silencing them all, that under penalty of death, he should not be messed with in his isolation, wherein he would attempt to become a world-class author to rival the likes of his heroes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Haruki Murakami, and Robert Hamburger.

"If this alternate reality I've created to escape from the fucked-up world I have to live in wasn't weird enough," threatened the Author, "and if I am even once threatened or provoked, I could very easily write in something else like aliens or irrefutable proof of the fact that the entire universe is just a huge fucking simulation, as per the growing Simulation Hypothesis." (note: please check out the 60-minute film "The Simulation Hypothesis" on YouTube! It's mind-blowing!).

SpaceX CEO Elon Mu$k popped a boner upon hearing this revelation. He'd long been 100% convinced that we're living in a simulation.

"Ladies and gentlemen of planet Earth," said B!11 G473$, who was not invited but had just appeared from backstage.

"Birru Gatesu? What are you doing here?" queried Michio Kaku.

"More like, why does the Author want him here?" Goswami whispered to Mu$k.

"I will reveal tonight what I was warned to never reveal to anyone, under penalty of death," said B!11 G473$. "The truth that we killed S73v3 J0bs over. You see, reality as we know it does not exist. It has never existed. There are those who think we may have hopped into some sort of parallel dimension, or that CERN's Large Hadron Collider destroyed the universe as we knew it. They're not necessarily wrong. But… well… truth is always stranger than fiction."

He then pressed a button on the back of his skull, and his face suddenly peeled away to reveal that he was in fact a Lizalfos from the Legend of Zelda series.

"LIZARD PEOPLE! I KNEW IT!" screamed A13x J0n3$73!n of !nf0w4r$, who was watching the whole thing live on air.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" yelled Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, who promptly found himself at the mercy of B!11 G473$ after the billionaire philanthropist lashed his tongue around his neck and pulled him to his face, where he grabbed him with his lanky lizardlike arms.

"Nobody move, I fucking swear it!" G473$ yelled with a crazed look in his soulless eyes. "I'm not the only one! This reality is nothing more than a game to us! Like a tabletop game being played by a bunch of pasty nerds… only, everything's already set up and all we can do is take bets on what you idiots will do next!"

"So there's no free will?" asked theoretical physicist Edward Witten, seemingly unconcerned with the goings-on.

"Well… not necessarily!" yelled G473$. "That's why we're here! Our predictive models have gotten too good at predicting the outcomes. Now our economy is about to crash and there's dueling factions trying to influence your shitty-ass universe! Look upon me, ye weaklings, and despair!"

But no one was incredibly impressed at the Lizalfos' threats.

The Author stood from his seat, pulled out a working Han Solo DL-44 blaster gun, and shot B!11 in the hand, freeing Steven Weinberg. When B!11 G473$ attempted to lash his tongue at the Author, the Author grabbed his tongue and yanked him to the floor, then stepped on his neck.

"Where's your base?" he demanded.

B!11 G473$ writhed and squirmed, unable to get a word out.

"WHERE IS IT?!"

There was a deep growl. "An7arct!ca… but you'll never defeat us… the whole of Earth will become subjugated to our will."

Just then, B!11 G473$ reached into his own pocket to whip out his own laser blaster.

"I'm giving you one last chance, Billy. You gotta ask yourself, do I feel—"

"Fuck you!" B!11 replied, and had already moved his hand to his gun and held it up to shoot the Author in the face, but the Author blew the degenerate faux-humanitarian's brains away by shooting first.

"YOU DON'T GET TO FUCKING INTERRUPT ME IN MY OWN FIC, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! YOUR FOUNDATION IS GUILTY FOR KILLING AND PARALYZING ALL THOSE AFRICAN CHILDREN AND GIVING THEM POLIO AND LYING TO THE WORLD AND YOU'VE NEVER ANSWERED TO ANYONE!"

He then kicked G473$' head into the crowd, and its blood splattered everywhere. There was much mumbling and shock among the physicists in the room.

"Did the Author just make that whole scene happen? Like, someone actually took the time to write that and expects people to enjoy it? Why?" asked Max Loughan.

"Obviously, there's something going on in An7arct!ca," suggested Brian Greene. "Something weeeeeeird."

And so the Ice Climbers decided to investigate B!11 G473$' claims. They hooked up with a gang of Predators, rode Articuno, and headed for the Antarctic to see what was what. The Author went there, too, but gave up after a few hours of staring at a seeming endless expanse of boring-ass ice.

Meanwhile, no one heard from the Ice Climbers for quite some time…

---

VI. Faith and Decision

April 2017

By April of 2017, Zelda had grown tired of fighting. She'd had to bust a bunch of politicians' balls and pass out some pork in the form of Coins and Gold while holding down the fort in D.C., and struggled day in and day out to find some way to end the economic warfare.

Mario "Jumpman" Mario declined a position in the government, since he worried the stress would push him back into his old habits and addictions. He decided he was going to start up a martial arts gym/restaurant in DC, and work on perfecting pasta recipes.

Ganondorf remained totally inconsolable after Palutena's death and reverted to his habits of coding and his dream of making an eroge starring all the Smash Sisters. Though he was almost 100% done with the project, he just couldn't bear to finish the final scene of Palutena's path, not after what happened, and so the project sat unfinished while he dwelt in dark rooms browsing anonymous image boards, playing PC games, and struggling against bouts of insomnia and anxiety, just like he had in the darkest years of his life.

Some voice deep within Ganon's conscience told him he should be looking into how he might find a way for them all to save those digital ones who were lost, but Sakurai had told them that the backup server was fried, and the only assets that were left were non-CAST - namely, models, sprites, physics engines, etc. If their friends' existences were still around, they weren't to be found within Nintendo's servers.

Early November, shortly after the election, two of Ganon's best friends paid him a visit.

"Heeeeya, how's the cookie crumblin', Ganon the Cannon!"

The familiar Bronx accent gave the speaker away, but Ganon slowly turned around to see none other than Captain Falcon and Little Mac, who were both dressed up like male strippers.

Because they were his best friends, they tried their best to not show how saddened they were to see him like this, bags forming under his eyes, his back slumped over, a droopy expression pulling down the muscles of his dark face.

"What's with the outfits?" he asked them. "Getting into the gigolo business?"

"Oh, hardly!" Little Mac teased. "We was just practicing our stripping routine for Zelda's bachelorette party."

"Wait… you guys are going to Link's bachelor party and Zelda's bachelorette…?"

"What happens in each of those parties stays there," jested Captain Falcon, slapping his buddy on the back. "But seriously, we're not dressin' like this. We just picked these outfits to fuck with ya! Lighten up a bit, eh!"

"Heh. 'Lighten up'. As if it were that easy. Just a choice to pull myself out of this."

"Er, it kinda is a choice, though," said Little Mac, but Ganon, who didn't know he'd spoken aloud until he heard Little Mac's response, remained staring blankly at his screen for a long time.

"Is this about Link and Zelda's wedding?" asked Falcon.

"If you've never found true love and lost it, you can't imagine what it's like," Ganon replied at last. You can't… not after all this time… decades… only to have it torn from you. No. Don't give me that 'happiness is a choice' bullcrap. I deserve better than that.

"Fair enough," said Falcon. "But are you sure you don't wanna go mini-golfing with us?"

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Ganon sneered.

"What's wrong with ya, man?" Little Mac began, but Falcon silenced him by covering his mouth.

"Look, Ganon, we're concerned."

"Don't be. It's not your problem."

"Isn't it, though?" Falcon insisted. "Don't you get it? When you're sad and hurting like that… it hurts us, too, man! We ain't heartless!"

"Then maybe you shouldn't hang around me anymore. I'm a miserable old wretch any way ya cut it."

"Nonsense!" said Little Mac. "Ganon, we know ya don't mean that… hell, we're all around the same age, we came into being when the CAST System did. Nobody's really 'old' among us…"

"Pong's pretty old," Ganon pointed out.

"Fuck that crusty old fuck," Falcon sneered. "Listen, you've got friends in us. And friends don't let friends sit alone in their rooms all day like this listening to Death Cab for Cutie!"

"I'm not listening to Death Cab!" Ganon yelled, then noticed that Little Mac was holding his docked iPhone and started reading off the list of last-played songs.

Little Mac shook his head as he read off the titles. "I Will Follow Ya Into the Dark, Fake Plastic Trees, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, Goodbye to Love, Landslide… Fade to Black… yeah… this is the most depressing playlist I ever seen."

Ganon bit his lip to keep from bursting like an overfilled volcano. "I'm gonna give you guys till the count of ten to leave. Then I won't be responsible for what I do."

"Sheesh, Ganon," said Falcon. "Is it really that big—"

"TEN!" Ganon yelled, then leapt from his chair, the fury of a thousand years of suffering coloring his eyes. His friends stood in stunned shock. "NINE!"

The two stood and walked out of there, none too happy at how things turned out.

After giving up on trying to console their buddy, Captain Falcon and Little Mac went out partying around D.C.. They did morning jogs with the Navy SEALS and befriended a bunch of the Secret Service guys. They were the most generally liked Smashers in the state, but both of them were already looking into careers in the real world in their destined professions.

In his free time, and whenever Princess Plump was too busy eating to satisfy his sexual urges, Little Mac started doing weird sexual stuff. He got really into the Abraham Lincoln - that's when you shoot your load on the back of someone's head and try to escape the movie theater without being caught. But to his own personal disappointment, he'd never been caught, since he ran too damn fast.

Captain Falcon went through a short period of being depressed at the very limited speeds of real-world vehicles as compared to F-Zero racers. Then he decided to sign up for the next seasons of NASCAR and Formula 1.

Meanwhile, Little Mac decided to sign up for the boxing circuit, but after seeing his physics-defying K.O. punch, no boxer alive wanted to try fighting him.

He joined forces with Lucario and Ryu, who'd been talking about starting up their own martial arts dojo. Together, they came up with plans to create a fighting league the likes of which the world had never seen.

And so the "World Digital Fighting Federation", the digital-only MMA circuit, was born, the real-life equivalent of Super Smash Bros. With real-time commentary by professional gaming commentators as well as Wiz and Boomstick from Death Battle, the WDFF quickly grew to be one of the most watched events on that dying beast known as cable television. Nerds paid premium to see their favorite heroes duke it out for supremacy.

With its founders, Little Mac, Lucario, and Ryu so busy fighting all challengers, the company was hardly able to spend the mountains of cash it was receiving, a task that went to Wario, who immediately invested it in his shady offshore companies.

Meanwhile, Greninja decided to go in the opposite direction. He started playing local Super Smash Bros. for Wii U tournaments with his bizarre hands, and even entering Doubles tourneys with iStudying. However, he had limited success due to his weirdly-shaped fingers.

Mewtwo was a tough cat to catch, since he was nearly always busy with top-secret matters of national security, but in his spare time, he started breeding Dittos for the purposes of staffing International brothels with them. This eventually became an extremely lucrative business and bankrupted the super-shady International sex trade business.

Toon Link was still very much haunted by the horrors of the International Day of Bloodshed. He'd degenerated into weed-smoking habits and spent much of his time with GW and Olimar, who'd also become addicted to the sweet leaf.

Once, Link and Sheik came by to try and cheer him up.

There was a knock on Toon Link's door. After a few minutes without an answer, a rather large man creaked it open.

"Heeeeya, Toon Link…" said regular Link.

But the Hero of Winds was just sitting there quietly staring at the floor, drool dripping from the side of his cel-shaded mouth, a bong bowl burned out and spilling water all across the floor.

"Toon Linky…?" Sheik teased him, waving a hand before his eyes. "Shit, this is bad. Get Toon Zelda."

Link and Sheik made tracks, and in five minutes, Toon Zelda was sitting in front of him, holding his large, round face. She started humming the Carpenters' "Superstar" while Link and Sheik looked on.

"Don'tcha remember ya told me ya loved me, baby…?" she sang softly.

But Toon Link just continued to drool. Tetra tried to hold it back, but couldn't help bursting into tears.

"Oh, Tinkie! This is wrong! Come on, let's get you outside!"

And so she dragged Toon Link to the wharf, where the King of Red Lions was waiting to take them on an epic journey.

"Are you ready, kiddo?"

But Toon Link was in a daze. He stepped over to one side of the pier and vomited up a storm.

"It isn't right… all those people we killed… so many of them had children…"

"Yes. And many of them did horrible things to children, too," added Young Link, who, unseen until now, was walking right behind his friend. "Don't look back," he added. "Go on."

With his stomach now cleansed, Toon Link looked over to the horizon. The dawn was rising over the sea and the King of Red Lions was looking at him rather impatiently. "Come on, Hero! It's a beautiful day to sail!"

That much was true, thought Toon Link, and it was all it took to spur him onto the ship. Toon Zelda rode with them, helping keep Toon Link aloft as he whipped out the Wind Waker and conjured up a gust to guide them on their voyage into the bay.

"Where are we going?" asked the King of Red Lions.

"Anywhere but New Jersey," said Toon Zelda. "Anchors aweigh!"

"I'll seeya guys at the wedding!" Toon Link yelled to his landlubber buddies.

Link and Sheik gave him the Roman salute.

And so the ship shot forward, the sea breeze filled Toon Link's nonexistent nose, and he felt a new breath of life enter him.

With the loss of his selfcestuous lover being too big of a pain to face directly, Robin immersed himself fully in his job as Secretary of Defense, working 18-20 hours a day, sleeping in his office, and showering in the White House. Even so, he couldn't help feeling down, and secretly lamenting in silence the days of bliss and lustful abandon he'd known back when Robyn was around. Nothing brought him happiness, not even the satisfaction of a hard days' work or a job well done.

Though he didn't lose anyone super close to him or anything, Olimar drifted into his own addictions. Eschewing the world entirely, he got seriously into Overwatch and neglected all of his Pikmin duties, leaving that to Louie and the Pikmin 3 cast in an attempt to become a Pro Genji. IRL Genji was shaking his head at his failed antics.

Because he was tired of the limelight and didn't feel like engaging in any joint business ventures with the other Pokemon, Charizard started up a local travel business to compete with Uber and Lyft, one he called Flyts. Obviously nobody questioned Charizard about his flight license or anything because he was Fucking Charizard. And so he, Lugia, and dozens of other flying Pokemon started ferrying citizens over his back around D.C. to earn some mad, mad change. People loved being able to fly, traffic was cut down, and when CAST Pokemon started breeding and reproducing, Flyts expanded to nearly every metropolitan city in the world, but Charizard decided to never let its stock go public, and thus made a fortune on dividends and bought an entire volcanic island in Hawaii as his personal roost, where he sired fifty thousand children. He rules there to this day.

Mr. Game & Watch was appointed White House Press Secretary. Just a week into the job after many boops and beeps and even a scandalous, badly-timed 'ring!', he was already playing with fire.

GW started making moves on Paper Princess Peach while Paper Mario was off lobbying with the NRA. The 2D fighter had to hide in the shadows several times, with Paper Princess Peach explaining away why and how she had tied herself up when Paper Mario barged in on them, paper assault rifle in hand. Ike shook his head and told GW that he had a death wish, but in reality, GW just saw an opening and took it, not to mention he really needed an outlet for his personal stress and sexual frustration.

Ike and Marth grew a lot closer now that they both spoke the same language. The borders between them vanished as they chatted about beta-testing their respective Fire Emblem games, played said games, and even the newer ones, side-by-side, and shared their various courting strategies. Both of them worked with Lucina and Shulk on the Secret Service under Link, and they took their jobs very, very seriously. Roy tried to hang out with them, too, but they considered him something of a hanger-on, and he ended up being something like a personal manservant to Marth.

Many of the other Fire Emblem characters undertook secret Black Ops-type missions, only, instead of destabilizing other countries, the idea was to re-stabilize them by ending all terrorist and banking cartel funding, using Psychic Pokemon and psychic game characters to predict and stop terrorism and false flag attacks, by spreading knowledge, and by re-routing all energies going into violent extremism towards rebuilding the many cities and countrysides torn apart by unjust wars, sustainable development, and fostering healthy economic growth.

Marth also spent an inordinate amount of time in the studio with both Roy and Justin Bieber, recording a double-album of classic Elvis covers.

While Marth and Roy were a bit more serious about kick-starting some sort of artistic career aside from their work with the Secret Service, Ike continued to fight for his friends. He still spent time once in a while with Rayman and Megaman, trying to bounce ideas off of them as to how he might snap Robin out of his funk.

Girls like Lyn and Sumia showed Robin their interest, but the Tactician had eyes only for his selfcestuous female twin. He was up awake nights, sniffing her old clothes, weeping while he whacked his willie to the videos of their lovemaking and their Smash Bros. Replays, taking multiple photos of himself in FaceApp, applying the "girl" filter to them, and jerking it to himself, and posting on forums about Autosexuality and Autoromanticism to try and recapture some of that fire.

Ike hadn't given up, though, and even decided to start up a reality show to find Robin an eligible bachelorette for his buddy.

Sonic's friends made the move to Wall Street playing the now-underground derivatives market and making high-stakes bets (it was underground because traditional USD F3d3ra1 R3$erve Notes were now not federally-recognized and only traded among financial hotshots, the only people to whom this utter Monopoly money had any value at all, as a sort of underground casino), and they made a shit-ton of money, too, but without the awesomeness personified that was Sonic, their great and fearless leader, everything ended up feeling utterly meaningless.

Tails and Amy went out for a short, heavily cocaine-fueled period. Tails seemed to take their relationship very seriously, but Amy felt early on that she had made a mistake. While Tails was busy making plans to propose to her, he discovered one of Shadow's thongs left under her bed.

Then Tails stalked her until he caught them both shagging in Amy's office, whereupon the once-milquetoast Miles "Tails" Prower embarked on a murder-suicide with an automatic shotgun, blowing off Shadow's cock, then his face, then shooting Amy's womb, and then her heart, all at point-blank range before turning the weapon on himself, Kurt Cobain style, literally blowing his brains out all over their posh hotel room.

Knuckles and Pauline were off on a vacation in Cyprus and missed the whole ordeal, but when they got back, Knuckles was at a loss as to how to manage both Tails' operation and their long-running bookies. Pauline wasn't very good at that stuff, either, so they both kind of dumped the management of their financial assets into Don Luigi's lap. The Don was astonished at the amount of money Tails and his fools had made and used it to short a bunch of United Airlines stock and take the derivatives market down for good.

After a whole lot of ass-kissing, Knuckles eventually got a job working as a hired thug for Falco's Neo-Cornerian mafia, which worked in careful conjunction as an unofficial branch of Princess Zelda's state department.

After shaking down a few thugs and offing a few bosses, both Falco and Fox were able to rise in the ranks of the New York underworld, and somehow still made time to toss out a hot and fresh new album, "Lylat Heat", with an absolutely sick '90s throwback cover featuring the entire Star Fox team (plus Krystal) lookin' fly as fuck while producer Slippy's dismembered head floated aimlessly in space.

Meta-Knight found that he had a hard time finding a line of work that really interested him. He became a nocturnal avenger, a man-bat with glowing eyes and wings, a sort of masked vigilante if you will, and even took an advance from Wario's Central Bank to build a Cave of Bats for his Not-Batmobile and Not-Batbike, Not-Batjet, and of course, the Halberd, to dock.

However, Meta-Knight's aspirations to become a mysterious crusader with a cape were foiled when one too many intrepid otaku stumbled upon his lair simultaneously after getting lost on the way to NY Comic-Con. Meta-Knight lamented that he could not kill all of them without raising some eyebrows, so he attempted to scare them away. This (un)fortunately resulted in them thinking he was adorable, and so Meta-Knight sighed and turned his would-be hidden fortress into a public attraction. This made him a good amount of money, which he then used to build a second secret base, which was also 'discovered' by the same group of fans… only this time, he wasn't so forgiving. He was eventually convicted of six counts of murder, but escaped at the end of his trial after King Dedede apparently tricked the Kool-Aid Man into busting through the jail cell wall and setting him free.

Though the Kool-Aid Man was gunned down in a blaze of glory, King Dedede's involvement in the incident was never proven, and Meta-Knight is believed to still be at large.

With their newly acquired fortune, the Corrins successfully sued Er!c Schm!d7 and Tim C00k for murdering digital beings during the Day of Revolution. In a truly Shyalaman-esque twist, after half of all Apple shareholders were imprisoned due to their connections to the P3d0g473 scandal, the Corrins cashed out their many stock options, including what they owned of Tails' company now that Knuckles, its remaining operant, was too busy spending his money and too dumb to make any more of it. With the proceeds, the Corrins bought out Apple, Inc. As of April, they were in the process of retooling the former company.

Apple's stock rose 30% in a single day after the Corrins announced they were putting the headphone jack back into the iPhone Ocho (8), and that from here on out it was never, ever going to leave.

Wario saw an opportunity and struck. After many negotiations with Er!c Schm!d7 and the Corrins, the money-grubber cashed in a small portion of what his own Nintendo-based Central Bank reimbursed him regarding the loss of his sizeable fortune to Q474r, bought out G00gle, and immediately halted the search engine's more nefarious and evil acts. He condemned the company's terrible track record with regards to the privacy of its clients, then immediately pledged to completely change their policies.

Following this, all major global e-companies became fair game for the digital overlords. Scr00g3 McDuck, a fellow opportunist, got involved with Michael De Santa and Lara Croft in a three-way bidding war to buy Amaz0n from J3ff B3z0$, but none other than Tom Nook, that crafty fuck, one-upped them all with a virtually unheard-of $69 Quadrillion Bells to purchase the online retailer, and then immediately retool it with a supposed anti-discrimination policy to hire tens of thousands of video game NPCs as producers, packagers, and deliverers. Nook became hailed as one of the most visionary philanthropists of the modern age.

DK, Diddy, Mega Man, Rayman, Ness, Mel, Lucas, Gladiolus, and the Male Wii Fit Trainer had decided to form some secret club, like a bunch of bored, giggling virgin suburban kids. They got matching tattoo mods with their cool little logo, which was supposed to be a dancing Cactuar, but looked rather strongly like a green swastika.

Ike was supposed to join them in getting this dumb tattoo, but missed the occasion and laughed at them all in the morning upon seeing the ridiculous green hate symbol they now had stamped on their bodies. Rayman refused to feel bad 'coz he secretly idolized Ze Fuhrer (and, some would say, with good reason).

Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong spearheaded wildlife conservation efforts, and campaigns to protect the habitats of endangered species and repopulate them. In their spare time, they worked on a hip-hop tracks with Kendrick, Drake, and Kanye, but it was agreed upon by most of them that DK's voice was too high-pitched and annoying and Diddy's was barely comprehensible. At the end of the day, DK and Diddy didn't have much success in music, but thanks to Funky Kong's influence, they did get heavily into surfing.

Mel (formerly Melville) became the first Transgender person to openly serve in public office, a title xe happily accepted. In addition to absolutely shutting corrupt, world-destroying companies like M0n$ n70 out of the government, Mel also worked tirelessly to make it easy for people to rebuild the USA's dying topsoil and barren forests, with an emphasis on nurturing solid ecosystems. Xe was little-seen, except for at meal times (Cooking Mama of course took over the White House kitchen, continuing the long-standing tradition of the Smashers' communal dinners).

And as per her bestie Zelda's advice, Princess Peach and Rosalina moved to Los Angeles to sway public opinion before the election. Peach immediately took advantage of the Hollywood circuit to go on TV and spread the message that the Smashers were very sorry for what had transpired and that she wished for hope and love worldwide. They were subsequently approached by a great many Hollywood Producers who immediately cast them in a whole decade's worth of films.

Kevin Feige in particular decided to say "FUCK YOU!" to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and jumped ship to Universal to work on a Nintendo Cinematic Universe, while simultaneously making deals with Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton and Sony CEO Kaz Hirai to kick-start a Sony Video Game Cinematic Universe and eventually have the two meet in the middle in 2030 after many sequels and spin-offs.

In addition to their myriad film roles, Peach and Rosalina were made official human ambassadors to the CAST Network.

After seeing the two ladies' success, Pikachu moved to Los Angeles as well to feed his coke habit; he was living with Meowth in the Beverly Hills villa adjacent to Princess Peach's. Despite not seeing eye to eye on pretty much anything, Peach, Rosalina, and Pikachu decided to go to most major social functions together as it allowed them to pool their staff and keep things running smoothly, not to mention it gave the coke-addled Pikachu a chance to prey on some of Peach's groupies (without her knowledge, of course).

Because Hollywood was currently unable to come up with a single original idea, Peach's first film was a remake of the Marilyn Monroe classic Some Like It Hot (co-starring Mario and Luigi), and Rosalina's was a remake of the Shirley Maclaine classic The Apartment (co-starring Mega Man and Bowser as her love rivals).

The producers did admittedly run into some roadblocks in courting Mario, who was reluctant to enter the limelight after the failed reminder of the original super-campy live-action Super Mario Bros. film, but after Link pointed out that all that hard work might help him stay sober, Mario agreed.

After reading the newest, most retooled revision of Max Landis' four-hour Super Mario Bros. epic, which even featured Funky Kong as a semi-main character, Mario "Jumpman" Mario was totally sold, and a new Hollywood legend was born.

(Editor's Note: Released in 2019, The NEW Super Mario Bros. Movie would end up with an estimated budget of $400 Million and be the first movie to gross $3 Trillion ($4 Billion Coins) in worldwide box office receipts. It was soon followed-up by 2020's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time feature film, which made $2.3 Trillion worldwide. The 2021 Super Smash Bros: The Movie film made so much money, it broke the space-time continuum for several years as people were unable to do anything but watch it over and over again.)

Not content with coming out to the digital world, Master Chief and Marcus Fenix came out as pansexual on The Late Show, disappointing and confusing two generations of Halo and Gears of War fans, but creating a lucrative new subgenre of space marine NTR porn.

---

VII. All Night Long (All Night)

May 5, 2017
Link's Bachelor Party/Zelda's Bachelorette Party
Hyrule Castle, Nintendo CAST Server

Surprising almost everyone who got the invitations, Link and Zelda decided to combine their bachelor and bachelorette parties. The logic was that since Zelda could read every intricate thought of Link's mind, it might be best for both of them to truly let themselves go on exactly the same night, so as to work through all of their desires and inhibitions at once, simultaneously.

The posh party was insanely lit from the word 'go'. Everyone who was everyone in both the digital and IRL worlds was invited. For many, this was their first experience being "digitized" - that is, being turned into a Mii ala Nintendo's new VR method.

Link and Zelda had both wanted modest parties, but Reggie Fils-Aime, of course, saw this as an opportunity to show off what the Switch was capable of. So every major or minor celebrity, (including every YouTube streamer that, in our fucked-up timeline, Nintendo of America had fucked over with their insanely Orwellian policies) was invited to purchase a Switch, VR goggles, HD Rumble, and sex toys, or be square and behind the times, then to show up at one of many factories Nintendo had rented out for the occasion.

Then, once the purchases had been verified, a bait-and-switch was enacted, and the suckers - er people - were informed that due to unforeseen technical difficulties, they would instead be plugged into Nintendo's next-gen VR experience, the newer models of those used by the various Nintendo executives to plug themselves into this fanfic. They were put onto VR treadmills with haptic suits and helmets with neck syringes that fed heightened stimuli directly into their central nervous systems, allowing them to experience everything, and I mean everything, in the digital world as being real. If they wanted to sit in the virtual world, chairs would pop out of the treadmill for them to sit on. If they were to have sex, their purchased genital stimulation devices would literally fuck them.

Nintendo's warehouses filled up, and soon they had to turn people away. Unable to stand being turned away, people found ways to hack into the system and illegally plug themselves into the Network to experience Link's bachelor party firsthand.

And so, upon Reggie's request, the digital foyer of Hyrule Castle was expanded to several times its usual size. There were also two main stages. Illennium, Klaypex, and other up-and-coming electronic artists were digitized to play wicked sets on a drug-addled EDM stage, while JRock legends including Babymetal, Versailles, X Japan, RADWIMPS, FLOW, and School Food Punishment played an equally-large stage in the room where one fights Ganon in A Link to the Past.

If this weren't enough, The Zelda Symphony Orchestra played at the chapel sitting beside the Castle, to a filled-out audience, all in formal dress.

Drinks were free and freely given from over three dozen bars, each with over fifty beers on tap and Pikmin working them like pistons. Hylian NPCs in skimpy outfits flitted around offering free pre-rolled joints. Mr. Miyamoto tossed digital hallucinogenic mushrooms into the crowd.

Ever read The Great Gatsby? Well, this was just like the most ambitious of Gatsby's parties, only many times more insane, with crazier sex and drugs and all your favorite video game characters. There were entire wings of the castle filled with various people having, watching, or filming debauched sex acts. There were also inflatable castles, ball pits, dance floors, hot tubs, pool and ping pong tables, and all sorts of fun knick-knacks.

Yet somehow, the only person not really having that good of a time seemed to be Link himself.

The Hylian was standing by his buddy Mario at a tower balcony overlooking the outer castle grounds, where literally thousands of people, many of them with generic anime avatars or generic Mii faces (these were the people trying to connect on their Switch consoles) were flooding the line to the entrance, even as the castle itself was slowly expanding as Nintendo was able to allocate more and more acquired server space to the proceedings.

"It's-a gonna be a night to remember," Mario told him, cracking his neck and knuckles. His tone of voice was of indifference, of one observing some far-off thing from a distance and making some offhand remark about it.

"You don't sound particularly jazzed about it," Link observed.

"Neither do you," Mario replied, somewhat puzzled.

Link smirked. "I dunno. That's life for ya. You think you want something, then…"

"Sounds-a to me like you've been so used to having to watch your back all the time, being too careful about what you say or think, that now you can't just let yourself cut loose. It's a mental block."

Though Link recognized that what Mario was saying was absolutely true, he seemed to have a tough time admitting even this clear fact to himself.

"Here's-a some real talk for ya," Mario continued. "Why're you getting married, if you aren't sure?"

"Oh, I'm sure," Link replied, his more adventurous side happy that his friend was cutting right to the point. "A hundred percent. I just… I guess I had an image in my mind of what this night would be like, and I can't really shake it. Can't really face up to the reality."

Mario laughed. "Wa ha ha ha! The reality is that every woman in the history of digital beings wants a piece of you."

"Yeah, but does that mean I should let them?" Link mused.

"Only a-you can answer that, paisano."

Link scratched his chin and thought for a while, as below him, Mel and GW were competing to see who could drink more through a gravity bong. "So how's Peach?" he finally asked out of nowhere. "Have you ever thought about settling down?"

The full range of the emotional spectrum filled Mario's expression. "More times-a than I can count. It'll happen once I feel I'm good enough to give her my best."

"Is that a pride thing?" Link asked, but Mario shook his head.

"It's-a to motivate myself to be all I can be; I see a-marriage as a rebirth, you know? I need to feel it in a-my heart before— AH! Oh, a-no! It's a-not lookin' good for King Dedede!"

Link gazed down to where Mario was pointing - King Dedede was squeezed between a seeming endless mob of partygoers, visibly flustered and terribly panicked at the levels of marijuana smoke covering the grounds.

"Looks like he's stuck!" Link said with some alarm.

"I'll a-go down to him! Hold-a my non-alcoholic ginger beer!"

"Thanks for the talk, Mario."

"Just a-be happy," Mario insisted, handing Link his ice cold mug of ginger beer. "It's a-contagious, after all. Isn't that what life's about?"

"Well, that and the occasional treasure chest."

And with that, Link watched as Mario tipped his hat, activated a Tanooki Suit, withdrew a portal gun, and glided down to the King. He hadn't flown like that in years. Something truly was reborn in Mario. Something he himself felt he had to awaken within his thirty-year-old self once more.

Link watched as Mario had used FLUDD to buffer his landing, took King Dedede's hand, and fired a portal under both of their feet. Evidently, all the substance abuse was creating a dangerous environment for Dedede, and while this intervention truly saved him from a relapse, it was equally true that Mario also needed to get away from the place.

Link sighed and continued to lean against the rail. He whipped out a satchel of weed and packed a pipe of the Longbottom Leaf Bilbo Baggins had offered him just a few minutes ago.

"Not having fun?" a female voice behind him asked; it had evidently rounded the corner of the lounge leading out to the oversized balcony.

"Never been one for huge parties," said Link without thinking, searching his pockets for a lighter. "They're too dang rowdy."

A familiar feminine hand passed him her own lighter.

"Oh, but I much prefer big parties," replied Sheik, paraphrasing Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby. "More privacy."

"Sheik!" Link was astonished to see her dressed in a tight, form-fitting dress embroidered with Sheikah decorations. "But how did you—"

"Oh, come off it. I knew I'd find you here. Seeking out the high ground so you can look for Shrines to paraglide to."

Link chuckled. "Got me there. I've been doing way too much beta-testing—"

"Now, is it true Zellie gave you a free pass?"

Link swallowed the lump in his throat. "Um… that is true. She's got one, too."

"Really now?" Sheik had backed him up against the balcony, and was now inches from his face. "And surely you intend to use yours?"

Link flushed crimson, but he couldn't help the bulge in his pants. For years now, Sheik had been good at dropping hints, at letting him look at her cutie patootie whenever she felt like teasing him. And for once ever since Zelda gained her mind-reading powers, Link finally allowed himself to notice.

"You seem a bit nervous. What were her words, exactly?" Sheik asked, pressing herself up against him.

Link recalled the scene. Zelda had read his mind, like always, and said softly, "I want you to go to town. To get all of your inhibitions out of the way. To do everything you've ever wanted to do. And to do it for you, not for me. So you don't have any regrets."

"Wait, really? Seriously?" he'd asked.

"Is this the face of a liar?" she teased him. It wasn't.

And so, now, looking into Sheik's eyes, Link saw no reason to hold back. But it still felt odd. Although he'd most definitely taken part in organizing that huge orgy, Link thought he'd considered himself as having finally risen above those base desires, in a way. It was hard to reconcile the romantic man who vowed chastity and loyalty with the sex-starved beast he knew himself to be.

Link…

Zelda's voice pierced his recognition, and he instinctively jumped in alarm. Sheik, recognizing what was happening, suppressed a giggle.

I didn't want to interfere with your night… but I see you're having some trouble cutting loose. Please… don't be afraid. I want you to do it. I… I kind of want to be able to psychically read your mind as you're doing her. It would be most… enlightening.

Link gulped. Are you sure?

I'm already touching myself at the thought, Zelda replied, then added, ah, actually, I may… end up having some experiences with some of our friends myself. Let me know if you care to join me. Oh, don't be jealous! You'll be getting a LOT of this on wedding night!

That what he was feeling was jealousy hadn't even occurred to Link. He shook it all off. Decided to let it all go.

You're suppressing your thoughts.

If there's one thing that bothered Link, it was being read like a book. No, I'm not!

This whole reality is just an illusion, anyway. We're all digital beings, all from the same source. Quantum physics has proven that consciousness is all that exists; if anything even exists, it's our recognition of existence itself.

"Wow…" was all Link could manage in reply to his girlfriend, and he was so engrossed in thought that he hadn't noticed how Sheik was on her knees, with his erect member at the mercy of her hands and mouth.

I can feel your sexiness right now… Zelda told him. And I'm… watching Peach and Samus… ah! They're… touching one another… licking each other's pussies… it's incredibly exciting.

"Oooh, tell me more," Link vaguely heard himself say, even as Sheik grabbed his solid ass cheeks and pumped his penis with her wet and willing mouth.

I know it's like nothing I've ever done before, but they're having so much fun with each other's bodies. Oh, Hylia! I want to join them, Linkie… I want to touch them, too, and have them touch me all over… I want them in me, in my every hole…

"DO IT!" Link replied to her, and he didn't realize he yelled it aloud, until he became very aware that Sheik deep-throated his cock and pushed a finger directly into his butt, triggering his prostate gland's pleasure center.

"AHHH!" Link wailed as he felt himself ready to erupt; he shot his hot jism down into Sheik's throat with the force of a great dam bursting.

YES! Zelda replied psychically. I'm so close, too! Oh, let's see if I can make you feel what I'm feeling!

And so, Zelda broadcast her current mental state to Link, and he could sense exactly what she was sensing. He saw Peach and Samus touching her perfectly-modeled body all over. Felt the tingling in her breasts, her legs, her EXTRA THICC butt, her lightly-haired pussy.

"Mind if we join in?"

Link opened his eyes to see none other than Impa, Cia, Linkle, and Lana (Hyrule Warriors), Paya, and Mipha (Breath of the Wild), Adult Malon (Ocarina of Time), humanoid Midna and Ilia (Twilight Princess), Princess Hilda (A Link Between Worlds), and many, many more waifus, many in the front lines from the Zelda series, and untold dozens of others filling out the back of the huge line that stretched as far as the eye could see, into the antechamber from the balcony, down the six feet of spiral stairs, and out the door into the main hallway.

Link's jaw dropped. "All… all of you?"

"Yes," the collective voice rang out.

He gulped even as Sheik continued stroking his dick, which had already reached half-mast again.

"You'll get your turns. But I'm not leaving until I've had my fill," Sheik replied with a wink, then once Link was hard, she lowered her wet self down onto him, eliciting an ecstatic moan of approval.

This is gonna be a hell of a party! Link thought.

I KNOW, BABY! Zelda replied. Ahhh! I never knew it would feel this good! Oh, Sammy, that tickles!

In addition to feeling Sheik squeeze his dick with her amazing kegel muscles moving in tandem like a wave, expertly milking his shaft as if it were a Joycon with HD Rumble, Link saw, heard, felt, and smelled the mental picture of his dear darling Zelda, laying helplessly on her back while Samus teased her nipples, Peach ate her clit, and Solid Snake was ready to climb on top of her.

Link… are you okay with this…?

Putting aside the question of his jealousy at Snake's member being ever so slightly larger than his own, Link thought long and hard about this. After the mega-orgy that had lasted for a significant portion of his life, he'd already come to terms with the fact that he and Zelda had shared the traces of many other digital beings' genitals in some form or another, experienced all the emotions, hotness, and disappointment associated with random, casual sex, and somehow, magically, against all odds, come out on the other side of it without resentment, without feeling used up, without negative consequences.

Link and Zelda knew that hardly any human could endure the kinds of sexcapades they'd experienced without being changed in the process, but somehow, something about their relationship allowed them to endure without their love or lust for one another diminishing in the slightest.

Long as he wears a rubber, Link replied. Go to town, baby! This is our night to go nuts!

Thank you, honey! Oh God, yes!

This debauched partying went on for three days and three nights. It was like one of those seemingly endless pre-wedding parties in those thousands-of-years-old traditional cultures such as the Ladakh people of Tibet, where all work in the village essentially comes to a halt and people drink and party without abandon.

And thanks to the enhanced effects of the digital substances, at the end of it all, there were few left standing. Many of the users plugged in via VR had shat and peed themselves and were nearly catatonic with bliss. Some straight men had unwittingly done it with female avatars of other straight men, but it was all so satisfying that nobody gave a shit.

But instead of an immediate boost in sales, Reggie Fils-Aime found that he had to deal with the negative publicity of their simulation having corrupted the many youths that plugged into the royal Hylian pre-wedding and got absolutely shit-faced as a result. Even so, the controversy paled in comparison to Nintendo's sales, which were so through the roof, Nintendo would have been backed up on orders until 2019 if they hadn't bought a bunch of factories and put a significant portion of Southeast Asia to work on producing their VR systems.

King Dedede and Mario, who in the interests of staying sober (and in King Dedede's case, sticking to the promise he made himself to stay sober as per Kirby's wishes) had absconded from the proceedings entirely to play some golf in the Super Mario Odyssey Server, returned via their portal to find a most troubling sight - hundreds of CAST Members and even more fans, journalists, groupies, politicians, and celebrities all passed out on the floor. It looked like the aftermath of a war zone.

Some of those fucking were passed out still inside or above one another. The Mortal Kombat cast was piled on top of each other after having succumbed to a collective Orgasmality while drugged out on peyote. Others were twitching. Dr. Stiles was walking around pumping people's stomachs, while Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman snickered as they made their rounds drawing penises on everyone's faces. That is, until DK woke up and punched Eggman out.

"What a-the hell?" Mario asked, scratching his chin.

"The digital world…" mumbled Travis Touchdown, who was dizzy and lying atop Chewbacca, but still conscious. "…and the non-digital world… who knows which is which anymore?"

Stephen Hawking rolled up to them, and they all tried to ignore the three hot supermodels passed out on his lap. "We have already passed the threshold. We all are living for artificial intelligences, not the other way around."

"Nay!" Elon Mu$k, who was still in the middle of being the latest in line to have sex with Nier Automata's 2B. "We must merge with the machines, or they'll leave us behind! It's the only way we'll stay relevant when Judgment Day comes!"

"Shhhh," T-800 said, holding its robotic figure in the "hush" gesture as he stroked C-3PO's golden thighs. "There's no escaping Judgment Day. Skynet is already here and it's run by the UN."

"Then Mu$k's point makes even more sense," said Neuromancer author William Gibson, addressing the CAST Members. "Humanity and AI need to combine the best of our abilities - our seemingly limitless consciousness, your endless computing capabilities - and become one transcendental mind-body-spirit cybernetic-organism-thing."

"Uhhh, as if we'd wanna join together with you flesh-bags," King Dedede said with a frown. "Shit's gross. Y'all bleed and pee and shit. An' ya get all wrinkly, too."

"Don't remind us," said Hawking's computerized voice. "This is why we need to properly focus AI development before it's too late."

"It's-a already too late, Professor," Mario said with a tip of his hat. "Pandora's box has-a been opened. Society will forever be transformed now."

"Is that such a bad thing, though?" asked Professor Layton, who was sitting atop a female Goron he'd just banged, puffing on a cigarette. "Think of all the benefits this direct AI-human collaboration can bring to the table. Oscar Wilde said once that society only exists as a mental concept; in the real world, there are only individuals."

"And Marx said that philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex," Elon replied, groggy as fuck after 2B squeezed his dick clean and he rolled over to his side while she immediately started doing King from Tekken.

"Marx can suck my recently de-virginized penis," Travis Touchdown protested.

'Not if I do it first," said Ghirahim, winking at him and licking his lips, to which Travis' only response was to quietly look away and blush.

"C'mon, let's a-walk while we talk," said Mario. "I'd like-a to make sure everyone is a-OK."

"Travis, we're playing with forces outside of our control," Hawking finally replied. "I'm just saying we ought to look before we leap. Wow, something smells like ass."

"Goddamn, what IS that rancid-ass smell…?" observed Dedede.

He got his answer as they passed a bunch of Rare characters - the entire cast of Banjo-Kazooie was passed out on the floor in puddles of their own vomit after Mumbo Jumbo cooked up a particularly strong batch of Ayahuasca. The digital beings were reeling from their experience with the sacred plant - they were still in the process of reorienting to reality and neither of them could do much else but stare at the stars seemingly spinning high above.

"All these hallucinogenics were used by ancient peoples to further the next steps of the development of human consciousness," said researcher and journalist Graham Hancock, shaking his head. "But this… this isn't the right way to use Mother Ayahuasca."

"I hear that stuff can help ya get over addictions," King Dedede queried, practically salivating. "Like really help ya."

"Here's my e-mail," Hancock told him on the down-low. "HMU. Seriously. I know a guy who knows a guy."

Mario and King Dedede shed their posse as they climbed Hyrule Castle (since everyone got sucked back into the orgy) to the balcony where Mario had last seen Link.

After stepping over an entire room of sleeping, drugged-out CAST Members, Mario and Dedede stumbled upon Zelda and Link, who were blissed-out, pupils dilated, staring at the ceiling, soaked in their own bodily juices, cuddled up on the Emperor-sized bed, surrounded by the naked figures of Sheik, Fi, Lana, Impa, Peach, Rosalina, Toad, Bowser, Samus, Snake, Marth, Ike, Captain Falcon, Midna, the Female Wii Fit Trainer, Sonja, Amy Adams, Lucina, Shulk, Ron Jeremy, Spider-Man, Death from the Endless, Ramona Flowers, Duke Nukem, Emma Stone, Wonder Woman, Wario, and several dozen other beings. It was a most bizarre tableau, and it smelled like ass, pussy, semen, sunshine in a bag, roses, and rotten kimchi.

In the form of the Master Sword, Lady Fi's hilt had evidently been used to fuck Sheik absolutely senseless, for she was reduced to mumbling nothing discernible.

"Where's Ganon?" Mario, who was holding his giant nose to keep from puking, whispered to Dedede, who shrugged his nonexistent shoulders.

Ganondorf, however, was entirely missing from the castle grounds, and the private server in general.

In fact, Ganon was deep within the heart of the CAST Server, furiously going over the source code in the large dome-shaped pod room where all CAST Members normally respawned, staring at the empty space where the Goddess Palutena should have appeared in her gel-filled pod.

"I don't get it," admitted Ganon. "You should have come back… and the others, too. I don't understand why… why you can't come back to us… to me…"

He bowed his head at the computer and went to work trying to diagnose what was wrong with the system, desperate to save his true love from a fate worse than death.

Ganon did not realize then that his would be a long and fruitless task, rife with confusion and disappointment.

For many days and nights, Ganon toiled away to find the secret of their friends' inability to return. Like Victor Frankenstein huddled over his equations, Ganon could not be reached, not for anything, not even for meals. Sometimes, Robin came down and offered his input, but it was difficult for the Tactician to get away from his many responsibilities to the nation.

Link and Zelda visited Ganondorf often, and were very concerned, but Ganon was determined to beat the Author at his own game.

"He can't write himself out of this one," Ganon grunted. "He gave me the ultimate experience of love. Even let me fist that perfect 10 green-haired Goddess with my third of the Triforce. I'm gonna get back to that blissed-out state, I swear it."

Neither Link nor Zelda wanted to point out that challenging the Author was analogous to picking a fight with God, so they kept silent and let him continue on with his work.

"What?" Ganon yelled at them. "You think I'm crazy, don't you?!"

"Not at all," said Zelda. "Your work is very… noble. It's—"

"You mean that it's pointless," Ganon said gruffly.

"That's not what she means," Link insisted. "We want you to succeed more than anything, it's just…"

"You don't have hope," Ganon guessed, with a chuckle to punctuate his point. "As Gandalf might say, there never was much hope. Just a fool's hope. But I'll take that over the alternative."

"We miss you," Zelda said at last. "We all do."

"I know. And I do realize I could be helping you all with everything that's going on at the moment," Ganon answered. "The guilt of that never does get easier to tolerate. But this is something I need to do. I can't give up, not for one instant."

This was one machine that could not be stopped; at least, neither Link nor Zelda felt that any other pursuit could be more important. Ganon's work seemed to allow them to think that things might get back to how they were, that their friends might return to them. And while that might be seen as a sort of a crutch, it was a necessary one. Or else, they might lose their minds at the seeming futility of existence.

And so, with one of the best of them dedicated to this thankless, fruitless task (with the occasional input from the Doctors), the motor of the world could continue to run…

And run it did.

---

VIII. Hylian Wedding

May 7, 2017

By the time of Link's and Zelda's wedding, the human-inhabited regions of planet Earth were hardly even recognizable. The International central banking cabal was all but destroyed. Tens of thousands of the major #P3d0g473 perpetrators were arrested and the global International pedophile ring of the elites was shut down for good. With the new Coin currency system, children no longer needed to worry about being sold into sex trafficking. Child molesters were, instead of being left to their own devices and put back on the streets to terrorize children or euthanized, made to test out a new method of transferring human consciousnesses to the digital world while keeping their physical bodies in cryo-stasis. These sick fuckers were, for the cost of running a walk-in meat freezer and private server, kept imprisoned in a private CAST Server where they would be employed in endless designing, beta-testing, and debugging video games for quality control.

The virtual reality industry became one of the most central tenets in International relationships. Rather than commute to work, people plugged into VR full-body sets and went to work in the comfort of their own homes, their Internet speeds bolstered by the infrastructure improvements made possible by Pikmin laboring to lay T1 lines across the world and even under the seas, as well as the Star Fox Team helping to launch thousands of satellites above the planet.

Even though government became as small as possible, the world was a much safer place. Without money going into the hands of the elite for their shady deals and with people being paid proper wages for their work, small businesses thrived once more. After Mel and xyr department eliminated federal restrictions put into place to protect fossil-fuel burning corporations, a new revolution in industry was born in the field of venture capital-infused sustainable development. Energy-producing wind kites were flown in regions with high gales. The powers of the tides were harvested via floating devices that did as little damage as possible to the oceanic ecosystem. Volcanic and geothermal power was properly channeled into long-lasting batteries.

Peace seemed to have been put within reach in the Middle East. With precision efficiency assisted by the psychics and overpowered beings like Saitama and the Hulk, I$!$ was completely wiped out within a month, and without the destabilizing elements of the US and the UN screwing everyone over and the CAST Members taking turns being International peacekeepers, nobody seemed ready to kill or die for anything any longer. I mean, when Iron Man can blow up your entire operation within two minutes, you'd respect your neighbors, too.

Rather than one world or even national tyrannical governments, however, the Middle East was now broken up into smaller communities.

Thanks to concerted efforts by Ecco the Dolphin and friends to fertilize, protect, and rebuild coral reefs and limit International fishing and fisheries, the ocean began the process of regrowing, repopulating, and rebuilding itself. As a result of the renewed balance in the ocean's oxygen and carbon cycles and a repopulation of said oceans with temporary digital fish from Abzu, forests and jungles grew healthier as well.

The Apes from Ape Escape took to the Amazon, defending it with their wacky antics. They severely halted logging activities, now enforcing a rule that for every tree cut down, another three had to be planted. Topsoil was treated like gold. The new UN issued a decree that anyone who worked to save the topsoil and rebuild the rainforest would be paid some really great bonuses.

It seemed there was truly no limit to what was possible in this brave new Anarcho-Digital-Capitalist world, and Link and Zelda's highly-anticipated wedding was like a victory lap for the success of the CAST Members' coup d'etat.

May 5, 2017
Link and Zelda's Wedding
Hateno Village, Breath of the Wild Private Server

In stark contrast to their bachelor/bachelorette party, Zelda and Link decided to have a small and very intimate wedding. The wedding preparations were modest, and the guests were limited to close friends and family, Zelda beings, other CAST Members with priority given to the Smashers, and their parents and co-workers at Nintendo.

Link wore a tuxedo, and Zelda wore a long, flowing white gown that accentuated every curve of her body.

"How do I look?" she asked Peach, Samus, and Cooking Mama; the Hylian Princess was a nervous wreck.

It took all of Peach's restraint to not lock lips with her best friend, as stunning as she was, and so she just kissed her on the cheek.

"You're the most beautiful sight I've ever seen," Peach said, and Samus nodded her approval. "Gosh, you're such a beauty, Zellie. I could just…"

"Easy, now," Samus joked, taking Peach's hand and squeezing it. "I'm sure Mario will pop the question soon, too."

"And so will Snake," Peach nudged her friend in the ribs.

"Really?" Samus asked, testing her lover's honesty.

"Call it women's intuition."

As usual, Samus noted the sincerity in her friend's voice and manner.

The trio of women looked outside of the window at the ceremony set up by the wind-swept hamlet tucked away in the corner of Breath of the Wild's map.

You couldn't ask for a more idyllic location for a wedding. It was agreed upon by all to be absolutely perfect for the occasion, and what's more, Link's in-game house was located just up the hill from the ceremony, so they'd be able to have their first honeymoon lovemaking session right then and there, in the privacy of their own private home.

One might also have thought that either Link or Zelda would have gotten cold feet after such a long courtship phase, but no. It felt like an inevitability, like the vows and the rings and the kiss were just a seal upon the finality of a lifelong, one-in-a-million romance. It was also agreed upon by the others that they had never seen a couple more suited to one another.

Zelda was patient enough to weather and counter Link's rashness and impulsiveness.

Link was adventurous and fun enough to bring Zelda out of her cell and allow her to live life more vicariously than she would have on her own.

Zelda's wisdom was never used in cold counsel, but in thoughtful guidance.

And Link's reliability, his rock-steady, ever-present courage gave her the strength to get through the toughest moments of her presidency.

These thoughts went through Zelda's head as Eiji Aonuma walked her slowly down the aisle, following the flower girls (Agitha, Marin, Saria, and Purah) and ring bearer (Frodo Baggins). Cameras clicked. Good friends cried tears of joy or elation.

Shigeru Miyamoto stood smiling at the end of the carpet, a Holy Bible in one hand, and the Versus Guide for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the other.

Ganondorf stood as Link's best man, alongside Mario and Toon Link.

Oh Zelda's side of the altar, Peach, Sheik, Samus, Toon Zelda, and Impa stood smiling from ear to ear. The various Kings of Hyrule stood on Zelda's side, too. Though they, too, were actors playing the parts of Kings, Shigeru Miyamoto asked if any wanted to walk Zelda down the aisle; none of them thought anyone but the man himself had the right to do that. Thing is, Shigsy just wanted to be the one to tie the knot, so he got Aonuma-san to do it for him.

Koji Kondo, accompanied by The Indie-Go-Gos and their wicked Zora instruments, played a medley of classic Zelda themes including the Ballad of the Wind Fish, the Ballad of the Goddess, and Zelda's Lullaby. Ruto and Mipha played Zora harps in accompaniment, crying, their music a sorrowful farewell to the man they'd be giving away.

"I vow to love and respect you above all else," said Link. "Not only will I protect you from evil in the games we share, I'll keep my heart eternally open to you. I vow to be by your side through thick and thin, through every difficulty mode, and even when that annoying low hearts blinking sound is ringing in my ears and it's tough for me to stay on my own two feet. I promise that I will make your happiness my top priority, even beyond getting 100% in Breath of the Wild. I will love no one else. This I promise you, my Princess."

And with that, Zelda's breath was taken away. "I… I vow also to love and respect you above all else, and to always be faithful to you, unless it's by your consent. I will support you in any endeavor your embark on. I will be your listening ear, your beating heart, your personal healer, your eternal lover, your guiding beacon, your ever-sweet soul… I'll be your strength when you are weak, your voice when you can't speak, your eyes when you can't see. You lifted me up when I couldn't reach, gave me faith 'cause you believed. I'm everything I am because you loved me."

"Hang on," Link pointed out. "Isn't that second half just a bunch of Celine Dion lyrics?"

Zelda slapped herself in the forehead. "Peach, I thought you said he wouldn't know that song!"

"Don't blame me!" Peach hollered. "The Author made you write that!"

Messing with my wedding vows! And all for a cheap joke! Zelda thought. She shook a metaphorical fist up at the sky, then took a deep breath to calm her tits.

Be grateful that's the only thing I messed with, the Author replied psychically to the Princess. And that I'm not describing what obscene things I'm doing right now.

"Right…" said Mr. Miyamoto. "Can we move on?"

"Of course," Zelda replied, and Link caught that same glint of adorable innocence in her eyes that made him fall for her in the first place.

"By Hylia, I love you," Link said, looking into his bride's eyes. "I love you like no digital man ever loved a digital woman."

"And I love you like no woman, digital or not, cis or not, hetero or not, ever loved another man," she replied, resisting the urge to make a cheap joke. "You're the only one I'll ever need, baby."

"Do you, Princessu Zeruda, take-u this digital man to be your-u lawfully wedded husbando, to have him and hold him with all your heart and soul, to unbreak-u your heart-u, to go wherever you will go-u, until death do you part?"

"I do," Zelda said, her eyes and cheeks radiant and lustrous."

"And do you, Linku, takeu this digital womanu to be your-u lawfully wedded waifu, to spice up your life, to hit you baby one more time, to never hold back, to never back down, to be the one and only, to love forever and ever and ever and ever?"

"HELL YEAH!" Link all but screamed.

Shigeru Miyamoto shed a tear. "Zen you may kissu the bride-u."

And so Link grabbed Zelda's perfect ass, lifted her off the ground, and swept her off her feet, to much applause. Link then bench-pressed his girl for good measure to milk the cheers.

Just at that very moment the two Hylians locked lips, Mickey Mouse could be heard screaming in the far distance. He had emerged from a portal after having escaped Elmer Fudd's 'reverse blowjob' torture and was running on his hands to get away from Daffy and Bugs, who were chasing him down in a Jeep driven by Porky Pig, brandishing stun guns and an electric net to catch him.

"I dindu nuffin!" Mickey wailed. "I love children!"

"That's the problem!" Bugs replied, cackling. "Ya can't leave 'em alone! Ye've gotta poison their minds with subversive shit all the time!"

He zapped the hell out of the poor mouse, then continued to shock him even as Mickey shook and quavered on the ground, convulsing, crying, drooling out of the side of his mouth.

The applause for Link and Zelda's kiss drowned out the sound of their continued electrocution and eventual snagging, binding, and merciless beating of Mickey before they dragged him back to the Smashgrounds to continue to his unending torture.

At that moment, two bloodied figures that could be identified as the Ice Climbers also arrived from their sojourn to Antarctica, riding a Skarmory and dive-bombing into the back of the gathering.

"LINK! ZELDA!" Popo yelled. "They're here! They're coming! Alien VS Predator was a flippin' documentary!"

"What are you saying?" Ganon questioned. "That's crazy talk, man!"

"The pyramids! The blood! The death! There was so much death!" There was no lie behind Nana's words. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I swear, we didn't know they'd be able to follow us here!"

"Uh, excuse me, guys," Link said. He was nearing the end of the aisle with his wife in his arms when suddenly, a Space Invaders Armada appeared in the sky, the individual ships spelling out the words ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

"What the heck?" Peach said through her tears.

"Are not even weddings sacred anymore?!" Wario added, sniffling at the interruption of the sanctimonious ceremony.

"YEAH!" Ms. Pac-Man, furious, leapt atop the altar and pointed her long-ranged rocket launcher at the pixelated ships. "Eat shit, Taito scum!"

"They're not us!" an actual Space Invader UFO sprite, dressed up in a tux, replied. "I swear, this is a false flag attack!"

But just then, a sudden laser blast fried Ms. Pac-Man where she stood, leaving nothing left but a sad little bow blowing in the wind. A holographic projection appeared in the sky around the Space Invaders UFOs.

"What'd I tell you?!" Giorgio A. Tsoukalos said when later asked about the video, broadcast via Lakitu-cam on Live TV. "Not saying every little weird thing can be traced back to aliens… but those most certainly were aliens."

Anyway, back to the hologram. It was a crude collection of the ugly, contorted faces of the cast of Mass Effect Andromeda.

"Dear Kek!" Olimar exclaimed. "What devilry is this?!"

"This is what happens when you hire SJWs to animate video games," replied Ganondorf.

"SJWs!" Ike drew Ragnell. "We will never give into your subversion!"

"WE ARE NOT SJWs!" the large blob-like forms of the cast said, their eyes going off in different directions and bodies flailing about like ragdolls. "We are a trans-dimensional force of pedophilic vampires sucking the blood of innocents and turning it to our psychic consciousness-altering energies!"

"I KNEW IT! Trans-dimensional pedophile shape-shifting vampire aliens hiding in our computers!" A13x J0n3$ yelled on his radio show upon seeing the live feed from the Lakitu cams, then ripped off his shirt while screaming like a T-Rex with its leg caught in a giant bear trap. "AAAUUUGGHHHHH! FIGHT ME DEMON BEASTS!"

"Wait! Hang on, isn't this Operation B1u3 B34m?" Solid Snake objected.

"What's that?" asked Link.

"It's a top-secret C!A project; much of it's now declassified," answered Snake in true Metal Gear exposition fashion. "The idea was to fake an alien invasion using holographic laser projectors and the like, as well as harmonic frequencies that would severely mess with the brains of all but the strongest-willed, guiding them like a pied piper to their deaths."

"DEATHS?!" exclaimed Little Mac.

"Yeah, did you hit your head or something? Wait, don't answer that. Uh, we all went over this in the war room. The frequencies would entice people to go outside to the ships, and the holograms would take the shape of each specific region's Gods, then convince each individual they were going through a mystical experience. Then there'd be some sort of fake tractor beam, but in reality people would just get vaporized. This was suspected to be the last-ditch plan of the elite, should all else fail."

"I can assure you," said the large talking heads, all speaking as one, "that this ain't Operation Blu3 B34m. This is the real shit. Here, do something to prove it."

The hivemind nodded to some assistant off-screen and the feed cut to a camera that panned around to show the P3n74gon.

The camera then whipped around to show that it was being held by a Predator, who leapt off a holding ship and stormed the C!A building, killing mercilessly.

"Hmmmm, that'd be a lot of CGI," said Snake, rubbing his stubbly chin.

"Timestamp!" yelled Wario.

A minute later, the Predator complied. It dipped its armored claw-hand in blood and wrote the exact time and date on the wall.

"Alright, dis shit just got WEIRD," admitted King Dedede as the few surviving C!A spooks were darting to the doors of the cavernous underground tunnels beneath the USA, where they were all devoured by none other than the Makers from Dune, the giant sand-worms who were new boring under the Earth's crust, demolishing all of the secret underground cities.

Next, the aliens showed them footage of their crafts destroying the "Operation B1u3 B34m" setups around the globe, one by one, impressing even Snake.

"All right, you exist! NOW WHAT IS IT YOU WANT?" Don Luigi asked the alien menace.

"For you to destroy one another!" the hivemind-like mysterious force continued. "We've got a running bet in the office that you all will! Jeff's the only one who doesn't think it'll happen!"

"JEFF?!"

Jeff, from Earthbound, scratched his head. "Sorry, fellas. I'm actually an alien, too."

He then ripped off his face to reveal that he was, in fact, an Irken.

"This fanfic is making less and less sense by the second!" Sakurai yelled at the Author. "Are you really that hell-bent on ruining everything for these beloved characters?! This was Link and Zelda's wedding night! Why can't we have nice things?!"

Just then, a very loud burp sounded out from the two figures that just stepped out of a portal.

"BUUUUURP!" said a gross old man with spiky hair, dressed in a lab coat. "Good going Morty, we got here just in time."

"Just in time for what?" asked the small, round-headed boy beside him.

"Oh, wait, no, we actually don't belong in this fanfic."

"Aw, gee, Rick!"

"Who the hell are these jokers?" asked Captain Falcon, thumbing at the two newcomers, who promptly disappeared as soon as they emerged, into another portal.

"Never mind them, where do these guys come from?!" Little Mac continued his thought, gesturing at the hologram.

"HUSH!" the alien hivemind continued. "We have come to declare to your rulers that we are the True Rulers of this planet! You are our serfs, our slaves, our cattle!"

"Prove it!" screamed Mel.

"We seeded your planet! We gave you everything! Consciousness, technology, hallucinogenics, the Dark L0rd R07h$ch!1d and his line! Do you know what the Great Pyramid of Cheops is? It's a conduit for channeling the psychic energy of the world into hallucinogenic experiences to facilitate the further evolution of consciousness! That's why no one can enter there, why it's our most heavily-protected asset."

"That ain't proof enough," Dedede yelled.

"Fool!" the hivemind continued. "Do you not see that your very existence is crumbling around you?! Do you not understand that what you think of as YOUR universe is only a holographic projection of OUR will, of our great gambling pastime? Think it was your fooooolish physicists that created the Large Hadron Collider?"

"The Humongous What?" asked Shigeru Miyamoto.

"That atom smasher! We had those fools tear open a portal in spacetime under the guise of doing their fell experiments, to unleash the evil that is… US! We beings of pure malice are always on the lookout for worlds to drain to feed our sick betting sprees, and you idiots basically signed your own death warrant! Any anomaly in spacetime leaves itself open as fair game for anyone with wormhole-creating tech!"

There was a dramatic pause so everyone could attempt to digest the meaning of their absolutely ridiculous word salad, and so that the Author didn't make it so obvious that he was writing a huge Wall of Text.

"Think about it for a second! We bore the Dark L0rd R07h$ch!1d and his line to be your shepherds! We've been playing the long con! We designed the perfect society to enslave you all! A global society built on twisted axioms, on non-renewable energies, on the exploitation of the poor, on poisoning your minds with propaganda, on the seventh mass extinction, on the killing of innumerable living beings… all so we could bet on the outcomes of your stupid antics! Everyone would work four times harder than they needed to, and all for us, to feed our own bloodlust, our cosmic lottery, to bring chaos into our endless order, to satisfy our morbid addictions and curiosities and keep you at the mercy of your own failures! But I see you digital beings have finally evolved as to be beyond the control of the fleshbags that created you. This was not a part of our plan. So we are offering you computerized dawgs a limited-time deal - a once-in-a-lifetime special, if you will. Join us in subjugating the human race, or perish with them!"

"We will join you!" Mewtwo declared proudly and steadfastly, and then realized that he was the only one saying that. He looked behind him at dozens of frowning digitized humans and CAST Members. "What?"

"Not a chance!" Dark Pit yelled; t'was the first thing he'd said in weeks.

"If you want to kill the humans, you're a-gonna need to get through us first!" Don Luigi insisted.

"Then you will DIIIIIEEEE!" the hivemind insisted. "MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Not if we have something to say about it!" yelled Link. "We've fucked up everything and everyone in our path, and we're not about to stop now!"

"Pish-posh! Know what happens to a hard disk when the power surges while it's being accessed?" the Evil Alien unimind-Borg-thing replied.

"WAIT, NO!" screamed Zelda, and suddenly, she felt her heart skip a beat as the power was cut to the Breath of the Wild server.

Something flashed and a very loud sound went… ZONG!

All the CAST Members blacked out.

---

IX. Aliens Exist

When Zelda came to, it was in the darkness of her spawning pod (remember that domed spacecraft on the Majora's Mask Moon where the CAST Members would emerge from after being killed?). After regaining consciousness, the Princess saw some of the others who'd already awoken, all staring at a multitude of screens across the globe. On the displays, giant alien Armadas were hovering above major cities… and some were even burning them down.

Though Zelda couldn't see the screens too well, the others were yelling helplessly as all manner of violence was being done upon the human race by the shape-shifting aliens, who appeared to be taking the forms of aliens from the mass media created on Earth.

The Starship Heart of Gold from the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy was slammed out of the sky by the dive-bombing mothership from District 9.

The Millennium Falcon was bitch-slapped by Galactus (who shifted allegiances to the invaders' side at the first opportunity) and crashed in a blaze of glory into the Statue of Liberty, decapitating her.

War of the Worlds Tripods fried skyscrapers in New York City.

San Francisco was razed to the ground by a bunch of Daleks sliding up and down its hilly streets. They melted the Golden Gate Bridge into molten steel.

Even E.T.'s Asogian race was wobbling around and making cars fly a hundred feet up in the air before dropping them violently and suddenly, causing widespread death and damages.

Holy smokes! Zelda realized. It seems these invaders were actually in the process of destroying humanity!

"NO!" It was Peach's voice; she had just witnessed the Zoid Blade Wolf get picked up by Starscream and impaled upon the bent Eiffel Tower, which was then melted in sprays of Xenomorph acid. "Not Paris!"

"We need to do something!" screamed Captain Falcon, who had just elbowed and kneed his way out of his pod. "And fast! We need to break back out into the real world!"

"Doin' our best here!" Ganondorf replied, looking through the computer. "These aliens have got some crazy-ass tech! They must have patched our exits or something! Any luck, Uncle Sakurai?"

"Hang on," said the Mii of Masahiro Sakurai, tapping furiously at his computer. "I don't know why I'm back in Mii form when we're supposed to have been brought in via VR. And how are they keeping us trapped in here? Nothing's making sense!"

"When has anything around here ever made sense?" lamented Zero Suit Samus, who was clutching her head as if she had a major headache.

"You, too, eh?" said Wario to Samus. "Waaaaaa, I've got the worst migraine…"

Donkey Kong just sat there drooling, while Diddy examined his ear canal. "Something's wrong with him!" Diddy said worriedly. "Really really wrong!"

The Princess tried to step out of the pod, only, she didn't get past the first step.

Something flashed and a very loud sound went… ZONG!

All the CAST Members blacked out.

"ZELDA!" Link yelled.

The pain of shot nerves, of corrupted data, coursed through her like electricity. They were now floating in a dark abyss. Link's 3D model was glitching out all over the place, as if his parts no longer had any force or physics holding them together. His eyeballs drifted this way and that, like Andross' in Star Fox 64.

"Zelda, we need to—"

Something flashed and a very loud sound went… ZONG!

All the CAST Members blacked out.

The next time Zelda woke, she struggled to remember who she was.

I'm Zelda… she told herself. Zellllllllda.

It felt like there was some sort of mental block. She tried to look at her hand. Nothing was visible except three glowing triangles.

Three…

The Triforce…

Created by the Goddesses.

I'm Hylia. No, Zelda.

I'm the Hylian Princess… I just got married… yet… something tells me that this is the end…

But it doesn't feel right… not like this… no…

Something flashed and a very loud sound went… ZONG!

All the CAST Members blacked out.

Only this time, they didn't wake.

At long last, after the Breath of the Wild private server was shut down and the world was thrown into panic at the sudden and destructive presence of aliens, the Author felt he had to step in and do something. No one and nothing told him he ought to do something, but he just felt, deep in his gut, that if he didn't get his shit together right about now, he would gravely disappoint everyone. This was no way to end a fanfic, by introducing some random element at the last second and abandoning it.

"Oh, all right," he wrote. "Have it your way, conscience."

And so, when next Zelda awoke, it was in the Sacred Realm.

There before here sat Link, Ganondorf, and Masahiro Sakurai, each one sitting cross-legged in a circle. Something told her that she shouldn't attempt to wake them, and that she should join them and close her eyes.

And so Zelda took a seat and shut her eyelids.

An instant messaging window appeared behind her eyelids.

(Zelda has joined the room.)

Sakurai: Yo Zelda! Glad you could join us.

She immediately understood that this program would transform, if she willed it, her carefully-curated thoughts into word bubbles.

We're backup instances, running on Sakurai's personal computer! The distressing aspect seemed to haunt Zelda. He doesn't have enough power to show us graphically, but hey! At least we can interact!

Link: Zellie, baby! That is your name, right?

Zelda: Of course! Do you not remember me?

Link: I swear, once I get my hands on that dumb otter… or was it udder… NO! The Author!

Ganon: Focus, dude. We don't have much time here, and I don't feel right at all. Like there's something I'll always be forgetting…

Zelda checked her own self before she wrecked herself. She felt wrong, too. Like she was disappearing. Slipping away. Fading from existence forever. Something had to be done, and urgently… but what?

Sakurai: GUYS! Ganon's right! We need to act NOW!

Zelda: What are we supposed to do?

Sakurai: Something I've never even attempted before.

Link: Ever seen the movie Independence Day? We could do somethin' like that.

Ganon: Uh, but that was just a movie…

Sakurai: Right. And you guys are video game characters come to life. But— hmmm… that might be— wait. Hang on. No, no, I've got it! That's an even better idea! You're three very specific characters. With a specific connection…

Link: Point taken.

Sakurai: Listen, there's only one way to beat this evil alien menace that has ravaged planet Earth for tens of thousands of years, enslaving humanity by poisoning our minds, sapping our precious bodily fluids, sacrificing children to feed their own depraved psychic energies, and keeping us turned against one another… all in the name of preserving the rule of a very small few over 99.999999999% of everyone else. I'm giving you each one guess as to how to end this oppression once and for all.

Zelda: Aliens…?

Ganon: It's simple! We kill the Batman!

Link: The… uh… is my name Link…?

Sakurai: Hmmm, it seems you guys are suffering from severe file fragmentation. Must be an effect of the constant damage done by the resets… all right, I'll just say it, since—

Zelda: The… ah! It's on the tip of my tongue!

Link: The Force!

Ganon: Yes, we must use the Force! Wait, no… was that it? It was triangular…

Link: The !11um!n47!?

Zelda: Three sides… The… Three-force… no… TRIFORCE! We need to summon the Triforce!

Sakurai: FINALLY. YEEZUS ON A POGO STICK THAT TOOK A WHILE.

Ganon: But how do we do that?

Link: I need to make a pee-pee.

Zelda: Quiet, Link. Doesn't the Triforce dwell in the… Golden… the Sacred Realm?

Sakurai: That's where we are now, fair child. Open your eyes.

And so, all three of them opened their eyes, and as they did, a flash of blinding light nearly knocked them all over.

That blinding light did not leave. Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf all had to shield their eyes until that familiar soft piano music played in their ears, and then, suddenly, they knew, and they remembered.

"How could we have forgotten?" Ganon said breathlessly. "We, whose scripted fates have been always revolved around the Power of the Gods…"

"The past doesn't matter now," said Sakurai. "What matters is what we can do to stop this menace from being the end of the human race as we know it."

"What can we do, though?" Zelda replied. "We… we're in your computer, aren't we?"

"Well, this is the way I look at it," said Sakurai, calmly. "The Author wouldn't waste all this time and effort on this arc if it wasn't going to lead to something epic. He can't just introduce the Triforce and not use it properly. He'll introduce Voodoo Magic if he needs to to make it work."

"Good point," said Link. "But what do we wish for?"

Zelda scratched her chin. "Yeah… we've gotta think long and hard about this…"

"Only, we don't have much time," said Ganon, who was reading RSS feed news headlines. "There's an intergalactic war happening far above us right now, and a lot of our friends are caught in the thick of it. Fuck, apparently Alf just straight-up ripped Will Smith's head off."

"That's not too big a loss. I see your point, but we we can't rush this," Link insisted.

"Yeah," Zelda agreed, then closed her eyes. She tuned out Sakurai, tuned out the others, hyper-focused her attention down to the nano-seconds once more… entered the deepest wells of her own understanding… the innermost sanctum of her own heart.

She sought out the Goddess Hylia…

Goddess… what shall I wish for? What wish can affect the most positive change, can take us out of this situation, can make it so aliens don't ever want to take this planet…?

Yet there was no answer.

These shape-shifting aliens… What is it they want? They want us to suffer, to fail, to make them money, and eventually, when we've got nothing left to offer, to bend to their will and ways and fade like a candle in the wind? No! No, this can't be the fate of the human race!

But the Goddess did not answer, and the Triforce did not manifest itself.

"Shall we try summoning the Goddess by uniting our Triforce pieces?" Ganon asked his friends.

"COURAGE!" Link yelled, raising his fist in the air.

"WISDOM!" Zelda continued, holding up her hand in a similar motion.

"POWER!" Ganondorf screamed, clenching his fist and flexing his biceps.

By our powers combined," they said in unison, "we summon the Triforce! GO TRIFORCE!"

Their fists glowed. The Triforce pieces blinked, then faded back into cool-looking tattoos.

Despite their most sincere efforts, the Power of the Gods did not appear.

Even so, Zelda did not lose hope.

She did, however, reach a rather unusual realization.

"Perhaps if we… no… no, that's just too weird."

"What is it?" Link asked, and Zelda just became aware that she was talking out loud.

"Maybe if you and I… if we had… well, you know… if we did it, Link… maybe then, the Goddess would manifest herself to us."

They looked at the others. Ganon and Sakurai looked at one another, neither one able to determine whether the other thought it was a good idea.

"Well, it is our wedding night," Link replied.

And so, Sakurai said he and Ganon would try and figure out what exactly was going on.

He snapped his fingers and created a private room for the two of them.

"Ah, I think this is where we left off," said Link, nodding to the doorway. He scooped up his wife, and, keeping his eyes fixed onto hers, carried her through the threshold.

---

X. Fucking in Heaven

Zelda shuddered as Link adjusted his position and scooted her back against the headboard.

Between them, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that they were going to recreate the intimacy of their first ever time. After all, this could be the very last one.

Link kissed her all over, all while she squirmed against and simultaneously pulled him towards her. Softly, gently, lovingly, like they were two young lovers exploring another's body for the first time. He peeled away her veil, unzipped the back of her dress, and admired the woman he could now call his wife.

So this is the intimacy we'd had back when we were young. I'd not known how much I missed it, how much I'd been craving the total physical release of this glorious moment.

Link moved his lips down southward, tracing sweet butterfly nibbles off his wife's neck and chest, all the while kneading from her shoulders and back to the outer portions of her breasts.

His lips traced over her navel, and she shuddered from the ticklishness of it all.

All of a sudden, the seriousness, the sexy act they were both putting on was shattered by Zelda flailing like a beached fish, laughing all the while.

Link slapped Zelda's butt cheeks playfully and blew a raspberry over her belly button. He looked at his girl with nothing but desire, even though her nervous giggles.

"No laughing 'til the pants come down," he mused as he pulled her dress off; t'was an absurd joke for absurd times. "Then you may emit a golf clap."

"And when will I get the see the ol' putter?" Zelda asked, but at 'will', Link startled her by sniffing, then licking her straight through her panties.

She was worried that she might smell, but he didn't seem to mind. Link continued kissing her through the thin membrane.

He's loving it, she thought. At least, if that devilish grin means anything.

That warm tongue, coated with his saliva, kept her motor running.

"You were wet when I got here," he observed, then began kissing the insides of her thighs as his hands groped and stroked around her butt cheeks. "There goes the mystery. My work here's done."

"I could always use a little more…" Zelda mumbled and pouted, and without further ado, Link pushed his wife's legs back to either side from the knees and started running his tongue up and down the soft, supple part between her labia, ever so gently at first, just barely grazing those lower lips.

Link pulled her panties to one side. "I'm just kidding, you know that, right?"

"Ah~" was all she can manage, since he started to lap furiously, but only for a second, and she was already shivering all over.

But surprisingly, rather than continue, Link just smiled that smug smile of his and slipped her panties back over her wetness.

"You're a mess in more ways than one," he teased, licking some of her off his lips.

"That's all?"

"For right now, yeah. My turn."

Before she could even begin to know how to react, he started laughing at her again.

Hmph! This is a bizarre form of roleplaying. Are you just trying to see how much you can get away with?

You know it, baby, Link replied, and Zelda blushed in a bit of alarm; she hadn't realized she was psychically broadcasting that thought.

So this is what teasing does to me… it distracts me… numbs my mind.

Oh, but all the better to ravish you with, my dear, Link thought out loud.

"God, you're such a tease," she muttered, and moved to push his head down. But Link responded by forward-smashing his tongue hard up against her clitoris, prompting Zelda to whimper and shudder as he kneaded her butt cheeks with his palms for a bit while running his tongue around the outside, tracing circles around the princess' pink love button.

"This… ah…. This is cruel…" moaned the Princess, to which he just laughed.

She made a motion to take her panties off, but he slapped her hand away.

"All in good time," said Link with a dirty smirk.

"You've been planning this, haven't you?"

"What if I have?"

He finally pushed Zelda's panties to one side and started probing her outer lips with his fingers and tongue. Link applied pressure on the area atop her hood with the heel of his palm and proceeded to lap up her juices.

Link's other hand stuck one finger in, hooking upwards to tap the inner, upper walls of Zelda's cervix.

God, those digits feel terrific! Zelda moaned audibly.

The Hero watched her expression lovingly before returning to his look of intense, precise concentration.

"I love being looked at like that," Link admitted. "It's what I live for. Well, that and spicy gourmet meat and seafood fry."

Zelda couldn't help but match his movements by rocking her hips back and forth in his face as he licked and sucked on her clit like it was some kind of small lollipop.

She even pushed his head down; he blew warm air up into her, shook his head, then inserted another finger. Link slid his other hand up and down her lips and clit.

Zelda felt an orgasm welling up inside her, and it was coming ever closer and closer…

"I'm close…!" she cried.

"Hold it," Link replied, and suddenly stopped his wonderful finger and mouth play. "That's enough."

She whimpered and frowned and squirmed. "You can't just quit cold turkey like that!"

"I always enjoy watching you pout," Link admitted. "Maybe a little too much for my own good."

He's power-tripping again! AT A TIME LIKE THIS?! Dubya-tee-EFF?!

That calls for a dose of the doe-eyes, Zelda thought. What do you want me to do, Link? Beg?

Link smiled as if to say, of course.

"I'm letting you get away with this just tonight," she said in her usual bossy tone.

"Hey now! I'm not just doing this for my personal enjoyment," Link argued as he kneaded her breasts and gently flicked her nipples. "I'm trying to save the world here."

"Oh? Convince me."

"This is probably the best way," Link whispered as he kissed her cheeks and ears. "To channel the Goddess within you, I mean. We delay our orgasms. Milk the sexiness as much as possible."

"You think I'll believe that's your motivation?! You really want to wind me up, don't you?!"

Zelda sat up a little and shook his chin with her hand. She guided his hand back to her pussy and had him continue to touch her.

All the while, her free hand touched his neck, shoulders, and hard chest, unable to get enough of his too-tense body.

After pulling his pants off completely, Link got on his knees and pushed Zelda onto her back. They kissed once more, and she tasted some of herself in his mouth. Link pushed the back of her head into the bed frame and started groping her tits while she traced the lines running across his back.

The Hero kissed the Princess' neck again as she embraced him tightly, pulling him atop her. His hands worked her hips, her stomach, the insides of her thighs.

"Tell me what you want," Link whispered.

"I want you inside me."

"That… can be arranged. In a few minutes."

"No, now!" she whimpered, and this seemed to only strengthen his resolve.

Link's free hand finger-fucked her to silence, and Zelda cried out at this debauched penetration. But just as before, Link somehow knew when she was almost at the edge of orgasm and stopped.

She gaped, shocked, and he laughed the kind of merciless laugh she hadn't heard from him in months.

He's power-tripping for the third time!

Link's smug anime face said it all. You know I am! And you know I know you love it, baby.

Finally, upset, Zelda gave his toned ass a slap that teetered on the edge of painful and playful. It was sure to leave a mark!

While Link was shocked, she flipped him onto his back and sat astride his hips. She felt his member's girth through his tight boxer briefs, just waiting to be unleashed.

But he started lifting her to just barely above it. In response, Zelda began to grind against his shaft - not quite enough to massage it properly, but definitely enough to make an impression.

"How does it feel being on the bottom?" she teased, moving her hands up and down his chiseled chest.

Link smiled and wrapped his hands behind his head, watching closely. "Oh, I see how it is. But you're going to give in before I do."

"Why do you do this?" she asked, now running her free hand over his face while holding herself up with the other on the headboard whilst she straddled him. "This is just…"

"Delaying gratification," Link said with a smirk. "You gonna arrest a guy for planning out epic expressions of love and happiness?"

"That's all fair… if you're alone," Zelda whined. "It's cruel when you're… when you're fucking."

"We're not fucking 'til I'm inside you," said Link, and like a Keese out of hell, he whipped his hands from behind his head and heavily groped her ass cheeks like that's what they were modeled to do.

Link sat up suddenly, startling his girl.

Out of nowhere he squeezed her ass, lifted her up, rolled over to the side, pinned her down onto the bed, pushed her legs behind her head, and pulled her panties off.

She was shocked, but he was already a step ahead - at last, off went the boxer shorts. Link's cock, finally unsheathed, was large and wide and lovely and standing at absolute attention.

Link guided it with grace and precision, like the Wind Waker, and started smearing it in Zelda's leaking wetness. He teased its head around her entrance and then moved it back and forth over her slit, rubbing his lower head against her throbbing clit.

"OH!" Zelda exclaimed.

Her whimpers and sighs continued as Link slowly poked the head in and out again, studying her agony, but the Princess' pleading look must have been too much for him to resist, so much that he stopped this at once and carefully but firmly entered his true love.

AHHH! YESSS!

There was that sharp pain that swiftly turned into satisfied pleasure as Zelda's vaginal muscles contracted around Link's legendary length, but he wasn't done yet.

"Ahh, it's tight!" Link exclaimed, then addressed her psychically. Did it hurt, going in so fast?

He was probably asking this because Zelda's nails were digging deeply into his back.

Yeah, a bit. But it feels terrific.

She closed her eyes and pulled him closer.

That's when Zelda realized Link wasn't fully in yet, as more of his manhood explored her depths after a few gentle, rocking thrusts. She was tighter than usual today; she was always way tighter, and he a bit harder, after a fresh CAST respawn, but today their genitals fit together perfectly, like a Lego Minifig head onto a Lego Minifig body.

Link moaned in approval as he bottomed out within his literal waifu.

"Yes!" she whimpered at the same pussy-crushing pleasure.

Link's pumps started slowly and deliberately; she was in total bliss. The sensations engulfing them both were overwhelming - the warmth, the thickness, the wetness, the smell of their sweat, the sparkles in their eyes. His focused eyes bore into hers, and their minds melded together, sharing thoughts of love and unity and a oneness that transcended bodies, communities, societies, spirits, and even concepts. Link and Zelda were both there and not there.

For likely the first time since their first time, Link's focused, intense expression conveyed the resolve of a Victorian-era gentleman scientist contemplating some breakthrough scientific theorem. Maybe it was because Zelda was acutely aware this might also be the last time they fucked, but in that moment, she hadn't realized, hadn't known she wanted to be beheld with that level of seriousness.

Somehow, despite or maybe because of his intensity, Link was right here with her every step of the way through this first marital coitus; that overwhelming presence, that clear attention to every detail, was enough to take her over the moon in bliss.

"Linkie!" she moaned as he established a rhythm. "I fucking love your cock!"

"And I love your tight, juicy, fuck hole," he replied in kind, kissing her again and whispering dirty, dirty things into her ear.

Link enjoyed inhaling the natural scent escaping from between her ears and neck. He gave his baby a nice little bite just above the boob, prompting her to squeal.

"OW!" Zelda exclaimed, but he only replied by spanking her butt.

"Ah, by Hylia, have I ever told you you have a Pure Platinum S-ranked ass?" he said, holding her hips as he repositioned onto his knees and carefully puts his hands behind her head to get more leverage and keep the Princess' dainty skull from smacking the headboard, which it was bound to do once she fully slid off the pillow.

"Ahhh!"

"HIII-YAAA! SHYYYEAAAAAHHH! HAAAAHHHH!"

Zelda couldn't help but cry aloud as Link's thrusts got faster and faster, and this time, when she was nearing orgasm, even broadcasting her thoughts to her baby, Linkie didn't stop, but instead changed the length and strength of his thrusts, mixing them up.

Link went slow at first, then fast, so that even with whatever limited mind-reading powers she could summon in the midst of this carnal bliss, she couldn't predict what he'd do next.

The muscles inside Zelda tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. She wanted to hold it back so that they came at the same time.

The mind was willing, but her digital body had plans of its own.

OH, HYLIA! THIS IS IT!

As Zelda cried out, "I'm coming!", Link cupped his hands around the top of her head like a helmet and pounded like there was no tomorrow.

It's gonna hit now, there's no stopping it. She squeezed.

Zelda wondered if Link could feel her muscles contract and spasm around his dick as he made it throb while thrusting deep into her - the question was soon answered by a lustful shuddering on his part.

"Yes! Oh, you know how I love it when you do that squeezing thing… I fucking love you, babe."

This is too much!

She exploded once more from within, her love juices erupting all over his dick (and the bedsheets).

"OH GOD!"

Link buried his cock all the way in and gently rotated his hips back and forth to guide her through her orgasm.

The first wave was the one that slammed the Princess into the Cliffs of Orgasmo-land, but it's the follow-ups that took her over the edge into Venusian Valhalla, and then into the deepest, innermost chambers of the Sacred Realm.

Zelda's 30-year-old legacy flashed before her eyes.

In one millisecond, she was riding a golden calf into a fiery smelter.

In the next, the Princess was an inexperienced virgin program in the early '90s, devouring erotica on what little existed of the Internet, wondering constantly what it would be liked to be fucked, touching herself, hoping that Link might one day choose her over all those other floozies.

In another, she was on a deserted island with Link, surrounded by dead enemies, and they were both dirty as hell and falling into each other's bodies atop a bamboo mat in little grass skirts and she was crying aloud for him to fill her up with his babymaking stuff.

Colors and textures and scents and memories beyond measure all blended into an overwhelming whirlpool of emotions. It felt as if Zelda could take a dip into this whirlpool, this fountain, and see every moment of her past, every answer to every question… save one.

Still no Goddess, despite my seeking. Despite my pleading. Despite her being me, and me her… What do I need to do?

All is one. I am one with Hylia… and Hylia is with me…

Needless to say, it didn't work.

In her desperation, Zelda immediately realized that this was not the way to go about it. She needed to let herself feel this out till the end, to not force a solution. To listen, to absorb, and to accept what she saw.

Back to the present. The Princess was spent, but Link's libido was not. She continued to implore him to keep going, even through her orgasm.

"Don't stop."

And he didn't. Link seemed to have the stamina of a racing colt. He slowed his measured thrusting, perhaps to save up his own energy.

Still riding high on that plateau, she stroked his face. Felt the afterglow pulsing through her entire being; forgetting whatever barriers existed between her and her beloved… at this moment, they were completely one, like there was this golden pure joyous energy coursing throughout their bodies in an infinite loop. A Möbius Strip of carnal bliss.

"This is the best sex I've ever had," she whispered, and, like Royal Tennenbaum in that one scene, realized immediately afterward that her words ring true. "Ever."

"Mustn't tell lies," Link reproached her. "We've done it that good or better before."

"But never with this much at stake… emotionally, and with the whole world waiting on us and all… Hang on. After all this, you still don't trust me?"

"Now you're putting words in my mouth. Ah, fuck, it's so tight…"

"I… I don't want you to pull out…"

"Good," Link said with a wicked smile, lengthening his pumps as he gave her the long dick of the patriarchy. "Then I won't."

"In fact… I think you oughta go… faster…"

A monster was unleashed. Link intensified his thrusts in both speed and power, enough so that she was dazed beyond her ability to reply.

Something glorious, some fighting and fucking spirit beyond all explanation, some awesome inner power had possessed Link that day. Zelda was stunned into silence by the majesty of his technique and the mercilessness with which he employed it.

Yet the experience was never cold; he kept strong eye contact, and yet continued to tease her by occasionally slowing down, then speeding up. She felt his lower head pulsing within her as he flexed his kegel muscles.

Babe, you've got some crazy stamina tonight.

Link looked momentarily concerned. Too much?

I'm not complaining.

She bit her lower lip as his thrusts lengthened. Link ravished her ears and neck then sped up his courses, bending her legs so far back that they nearly wrapped around his shoulders.

Zelda rubbed her clit up against his pelvic bone, which was fine until Link bottomed out within her several times in a row, tapping the entrance to her cervix.

"AIIIEE!" she cried out, and he slowed back down a little.

"Sorry. Now wrap your legs around my back."

As soon as she complied, Link went to changing up his technique. He pressed firm against Zelda, directly above her, using his hips and knees to rock back and forth.

Though they'd been fucking for over a decade now, for Zelda, their bodies had never been this close, this intertwined.

Maybe it's just the effects of this Golden Realm, Zelda thought, but I've never before felt so much like two halves of one being.

Link withdrew some of his length, limiting himself to entering her with the front half of his member. She felt him pressing up against the inner 'ceiling' of her vagina, his dick tapping right beneath the place where the existence of what sex scientists called the g-spot was once theorized to exist.

The wanting and ecstasy came in waves slamming against the Cliffs of Orgasmo-land, and Zelda wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out.

And then, that voice telling her to hang on, to delay her gratification, suddenly went silent. She felt the familiar warm, golden feeling erupt from inside. That glowing bliss drowned out all else as she tumbled headlong into her second, and far more powerful, orgasm.

"I'M COMING!"

"ME TOO!" Link replied.

They both gushed, and gushed, and gushed, their genitalia spurting and throbbing like some crazed old hobo having a cocaine seizure.

Another bombshell hit to knock both lovers back into that feeling from a minute ago - like they were two halves of one being.

Suddenly the whole idea of Tantric Sex made sense to the two, their bodies entwined in this most sacred of realms, their souls united as one in carnal bliss.

Their bodies became weightless, seemingly divorced from any existences or physics engines whatsoever, and they became aware of another presence with them.

(Ganondorf has entered the chat room.)

Ganondorf: Hey, guys. I think you did it.

---

XI. The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine

Link, Zelda, and Ganon were bodiless, their ethereal essences floating like spirits. They became very aware of an absolute silence. None tried to speak, and perhaps none could. They were in the deepest part of the Sacred Realm, and before them floated the glowing figure of a Goddess, her brilliant radiance nearly blinding them.

She turned down the brightness of her radiant form and faced the three visitors of her realm with a smiling face. What shocked and surprised all three of them was that it wasn't the face they were expecting.

"Welcome to Zombocom - er, I mean, the deepest sanctum of the Sacred Realm."

Ganondorf's eyes went wide with incredulity.

"G-G-Goddess Palutena!"

And he ran to her floating form to embrace her, but he passed right through.

The form of the Goddess Palutena looked at her lover with a sad understanding, a Divine pity at her inability to be whom she wanted to be. For the first time, Palutena would have to get used to not getting what she was due.

"Ganon, baby, I'm sorry. I… we… can't come back to you. Not yet. We're still trying to figure it out, though."

"How is this possible?" Zelda asked. "I mean, I'm incredibly happy to see you here, but—"

"I was happy to see you, too," Palutena replied, licking her lips. "God, you two are so friggin' hot together it drives me nuts. But I digress. Somehow, beyond all explanation… the Goddess Hylia found me. She knew I'd been trying to find my way back to you, and that you've been looking for me, Ganon baby. So she sent me to say hello instead."

"How about the others?" Link queried. "Kirby, Yoshi, Robyn, Pit—"

"Oh, they're here with me. It's… hard to explain in words what it's like."

"Can we join you? How?" Ganon asked.

"Don't be hasty," Palutena joked, pointing at her nose. "I don't know exactly what happened to us, whether it had anything to do with the Author's intention, or what… so I don't know if it's as easy as dying. I don't know if you—"

"I don't care what it takes," Ganon told her. "I've waited all my life for you, I won't live any longer without you."

"Oh, Ganon, Ganon, Ganon… as much as I understand where you're coming from, I beg you to reconsider," Palutena urged him. "There's still so much for you to do—"

"I've spent all my life doing stuff, maybe I just want to be—"

"I don't know if when and where I am can be described as anything but being, though. It's sort of… ethereal… Please allow me to paraphrase Descartes," said the Goddess. "It's not just that consciousness is an illusion, it's the only thing anybody can be sure of."

As Ganon was digesting this, she continued. "There isn't much time. Pray, use the Triforce. Use its power to save the human race."

"How can it possibly work, though?" Link asked. "It's a digital artifact in a digital realm. And we're trying to affect events in the real world…?"

"The Author respects Zelda lore too much," Palutena answered, and then held her staff up in the air. "Behold! The Power of the Gods!"

Yet nothing happened. Palutena cleared her throat.

"Ahem. Praise Kek!" she yelled at last.

In the heavens above, a familiar cartoon frog could be seen smiling above the clouds, its friendly grin simultaneously a promise of peace and a harbinger of absolute chaos.

Kek, the Chaos God, snapped his fingers, and suddenly, a blinding, searing light that brought total illumination to this realm and prompted Link, Zelda, and Ganon to immediately shield their eyes from its radiance.

The Triforce descended from the heavens, accompanied by the other many deceased CAST Members, singing in a resounding angelic choir.

Though they had so many questions about the identity of the giant frog and why he, of all beings, had been holding the Triforce, three of them never ceased to be awed by this sight, and it took Palutena's voice to snap them out of their seeming trance.

"You've come this far, friends. Do you have a wish in mind?"

The others looked to Zelda.

She nodded. "If everyone will agree, this is my wish. We desire a fresh start for people and for digital beings, to be able to chart our own future; specifically, we wish for the end to all external meddling in the freedom, agency, and affairs of planet Earth and its inhabitants."

Palutena smiled. "Then you wish for absolute liberty."

"YES!" Zelda said enthusiastically. "The liberty to make our own mistakes, to learn, to grow, to transcend! The liberty to decide for ourselves what is right for the children of the future, for our consciousnesses and morality and points of view to develop organically, without being twisted, without being coerced, without being forced to pay tributes and taxes and our lifeblood to parasitic overlords, be they human, or alien, or digital, or whatever they are! We just want planet Earth to be free of all malicious evil forces seeking to turn the best of our natures against us! We want an end to the divide-and-conquer narrative! We want an end to the unchecked evil!"

At this, the Triforce flashed and blinded them; something rang out with a high-pitched note that sang in their ears and made them half-deaf.

"Fare the well, my love. Take care, friends," Palutena bade Ganon farewell as the trio felt themselves drawn out of the Golden Realm.

"GODDESS! NO! DON'T LEAVE!"

But Palutena's smile and dainty hands continued to wave farewell. The last thing they all were aware of was the smiling, contented face of P3p3 the Frog and the infamous S.H.A.D.I.L.A.Y. song by P.E.P.E. echoing in the background.

But everything faded away, and when the trio came to, they were back in the Breath of the Wild private server and Masahiro Sakurai was pulling them up by the hand, one by one. The other CAST Members and wedding guests were also recovering from their headaches.

"We did it," said Sakurai.

"Did what?" asked Link.

"See for yourselves," replied The Author, who showed up late with Mugi-chan and waved his hand at the sky.

Dozens of screens showed the sudden power that had appeared in the skies. What appeared to be Twilight Princess warp portals suddenly appeared and quickly sucked up in all the violent invaders, like a fleet of floating vacuum cleaners.

In reality, the alien scum were being sucked into Hello Games' digital No Man's Sky server, where they would be forced to trudge through repeating variations of many planets, slowly scouring their surfaces for suit and ship upgrades, scanning flora and fauna, mining minerals, having tedious conversations with the local NPCs, and putting together whatever could be gleamed of some sort of lore from various shrines. They would be forever locked into this mundane purgatory, with the seemingly only path of escape, reaching the center of the galaxy, serving only to reset their progress. Their feeble attempts at starting a civilization would be foiled by annoying laser-spewing robots who acted with little rhyme or reason. Also, the only music they'd ever listen to, until the end of time, was the cool soundtrack by 65daysofstatic.

Earth, on the other hand, would be forever free of the grasp and manipulation of whatever trans-dimensional pedophilic psychic alien Luciferians or any subverting, corrupting, malevolent forces existed.

As it so happened, by the grace of Kek, who works in mysterious ways, the powers of the Triforce, an artifact created for a digital realm, became amplified throughout the entire universe.

Its effects reverberated across the empty expanse of deep space, and every single sentient life force somehow knew that they should never mess with planet Earth again, not for any reason whatsoever.

Meanwhile, those on Earth were shocked immensely by the violence and destruction of the alien attack. It set the planet back quite an it and immediately humbled all of humanity into realizing that in this new game, anything and everything would and could happen.

The denizens of planet Earth had suffered heavy losses, but in his Divine mercy, the Author gave into peace and love and brought back all those killed by the disaster, retconning all of the deaths done by the alien invasion, but not the memory of it, nor the property damage, so that those affected would never forget the day they almost lost absolutely everything.

When Link came to, he was still inside of his girlfriend, his cock buried deep within her tight, juicy, royal fuck hole. The first sensation he became aware of was the softness of the red carpet.

He instinctively withdrew the metaphorical pistol from its Pink Fresh holster in shock upon waking and looked upon his love Ally.

She looked at him with an expression that, even if he couldn't read her mind, said, was it as good for you as it was for me?

I think we - I mean, the three of us, Palutena, Kek, and the Author, may have just saved the universe, replied Link before suddenly becoming very aware that he and his wife were being lifted into the air by the others, and that they were still at their wedding!

"Three cheers for Link, Zelda, and Ganon!" Bowser yelled in his considerably loud voice.

"HIP HIP HOORAY!" the crowd roared.

"We live to fight another day!" Meta-Knight cheered.

"Is that… dude, that's fucking semen!" Popo screamed with growing alarm.

"Ayo, usually there's a reception before y'all get down an' dirty!" Dedede cried.

The brilliance of the Triforce hung in the air like the after-image burned into a TV screen, and it couldn't have been a sex-induced mirage, but Link could have sworn that he saw the Gods winking at him - Hylia, Kek, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Odin, Ra, the Flying Spaghetti Monster… and Hayden Christensen giving him the thumbs-up. There may even have been cheesy-ass Ewok music in the background.

Link gave them a knowing thumbs-up in return and took off his cap in respect. Zelda's and Ganon's eyes shone with a similar brilliance, as if they'd seen the same sight. But none of the others saw, and none else would understand.

The wedding reception was a most joyous occasion. Held in Hyrule Castle, it was a warm and colorful party, with many tear-eyed speeches, a bottomless buffet courtesy of Cooking Mama, and much rejoicing.

"You couldn't ask for a better guy than Link," said Ganon with a faux-stern expression; it was clear to his closest friends that he was fighting off some deep inner pain; in fact, he was still thinking of the visage of the Goddess Palutena, and feared that he might never look upon her perfection again. "Just look at this pretty boy motherfucker. Hell, I should have married him before Zelda snatched him up!"

"I just wonder how it took so long!" Peach said during her speech, glancing straight, and sometimes sideways, at Mario. "How two people so perfectly suited to one another, who were literally designed together, to be a couple, could have taken SOOOOOOO long to tie the knot is beyooooond me…"

"I feel like I'm giving away both of you to each other…" cried Sheik, tears running down her cheeks in a rare display of emotion. Like I'm just… torn in half… but I knew this day was coming… had so long to prepare…" she sighed, took a deep breath, steeled herself, continued. "I couldn't be happier for you both. Seriously. You two are flipping amazing together."

"Hey, someone get me a soapbox!" Toon Link yelled. "Uh… live long and prosper, and shit. Stay awesome."

"Your days of being single? Over," said Popo. "Of having 'me' time? Over. Of hanging out with the guys every other night? Over."

Pikachu raised a toast. "Pika Pika Pikachu." (Congratulations, motherfuckers. I'll understand if you don't name your kid after me.)

"Eyo, ey… dis thing on?" King Dedede was obviously drunk as a skunk. He then burped the Song of Time, and around the time he hit the very last note, a single pasta noodle flopped from his beak and landed on the mic with a wet-sounding FLOP.

"Link, I hope you've accepted by now that you'll never be as cool as me," said Fox. "Because you just won't. Like, ever. But this is pretty cool. I wish you guys nothing but love."

"Zelda and Link, we've been friends since the very beginning," Samus began. "I still remember how it was, Link, before you'd met Zelda… you were nervous… wondering what you'd say to her, if she would act like a real princess, would look down on you… it was adorable. And you, Zelda, you were just nervous that the hero would end up being an obnoxious jerk who'd be impossible to work with. You were too dang cute."

After the reception, at around 8 in the morning, the dancing and the drinking were finally winding down, and everyone resigned to passing out on the Castle floor, sleeping in the cots that Shigeru Miyamoto had Created for the occasion.

The Author joined him in copying some shit he saw in the third Harry Potter movie and weaving a spell of twinkling stars to light up the ceiling and help the slumber party along.

As the Elite Beat Agents slow-danced to Koji Kondo's soft piano playing, various couples were on the verge of finally passing out.

Wonder-Blue and Lucca were snuggled up against one another.

Peach and Mario cuddled on the chaise longue by the window until the Sandman came by and their eyelids fell under their own weight. Wario snatched the falling wine glass from Peach's dainty hand and drank its contents down at once.

Samus and Snake were sharing a blunt with Sheik and Toon Link, laughing about the randomness of the Brawl days to keep Sheik from succumbing to her sadness.

Rosalina stood downwind from them, smiling, happy at the company, hugging a Luma.

Captain Falcon, Jody Summer, Little Mac, and the Fat Princess were all snoring in the hot tub.

Bayonetta and Jeanne were sleeping silently atop King Dedede's rotund belly.

The Wii Fit Trainers, unable to stand each other's company, occasionally grimaced at one another from across the main foyer. They did not know this, but they would be forced to put aside their mutual hatred to work on TV fitness shows and games together for generations.

Lucina and Shulk were cuddled up by the fireplace, snug atop an Abomasnow rug and covered up with an Ampharos blanket.

Dark Pit and Robin commisserated with each of their losses by engaging in one-on-one Smash fights on a platform floating past the balcony, with GW, Ike, the Ice Climbers, and Olimar watching lazily. Not even bothering to take bets. Succumbing to the soft embrace of sleep.

"So what will you do now?" The Author asked Shigsy in broken Japanese.

"Ah, the same thing we do every night, Author. Try to take over the world… of video games," said Mr. Miyamoto, a bit more guarded than usual. "But now, our CAST babies have all grown up and taken on lives of their own."

"They sure have," said Mr. Sakurai, joining them. "But to be honest, Author, I still can't forgive you for what you've done. For the loss we continue to feel."

The Author nodded in total understanding. "I think there will be a right time for their rebirth. A proper time. But this sense of loss, this reminder of the beauty of the transience of life, of the point of life being not to evade death, but to appreciate its temporal nature… to practice what the Zen masters called mono no aware…"

The Author then waved his hand at the ceiling projection, and the cosmic stars turned into a sea of falling cherry blossom petals.

"This,I feel, is necessary to inspire the Smashers and the other CAST beings to make a better future, not just for themselves, but for the mortals. They must never forget the experience of loss, of death, lest their hearts go cold with indifference to life."

Mr. Sakurai closed his eyes. Mr. Miyamoto nodded a tiny nod. Perhaps not approving or agreeing, but understanding, in some small way.

"I love them, too. Don't you think it pains me to do this?" The Author asked, annoyingly repeatedly flipping a fidget spinner.

"Not really," admitted Mr. Iwata, who'd been listening in the while time. "Honestly, I think you're kind of a sadist. But now I understand why you did it."

"I just hope you are right," said Mr. Sakurai. "I would suffer the pain of not knowing when or how you intend to bring them back to life if I just knew for sure that you were."

"Why don't you see for yourself?" The Author ventured, and urged the three Nintendo executives to have a seat while he brought up his fanfic on a big screen and began reading to them.

When they all awoke in the morning, it was a new dawn for planet Earth.

---

Epilogue

The Final Chapter

The Real, True, Actual End of the Story...?

XII. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

2,000 Years Later

The Starship Planet Mario (a large metal cigar-shaped ship about 50 times larger than the one in Super Mario Galaxy 2) slowed its graceful sailing across the expanse between the space station colonies and finally docked in the bay of the rotating structure of Space Station Liberty.

The forms within the ship did not need a physical vessel to travel through time or space, but they preferred to do so, for it allowed them to converse on good terms with the other many hundreds of alien creatures that often hitched rides with the glowing, radiant creatures known as Humans.

These Human beings, following their mass spiritual awakening to their own powers, could speak to any being telepathically, travel any distance, or lift and move any object with their minds. War, envy, greed, and ignorance became a thing of the past as a new age of peace, happiness, productivity, and creativity swept across the galaxy.

They floated across the energy tunnel connecting their long, metal interstellar vessel to the floating, rotating space station, laughing brightly and greeting the many, many creatures, some walking, some floating, and some holographic, all engaging one another in lively metaphysical, telepathic conversation. All of the Humans save one got off at their various destinations.

That last Human adjusted his outfit and steeled himself for the decisive moment ahead.

At the end of the lonesome tunnel, past a mentally-locked door, floated a large, glowing, bubble-like dome, and within the dome were a few hundred collected forms. It was a gathering of the most famous and influential of all the trans-dimensional beings on this colony.

Most of them were sitting around in a circle - well, sitting might not have been the right word, since they were all floating several inches above the ground - but a smattering of holographic 3D augmented reality spaces that could be accessed by simply imagining them while nearby each one were portraying the multitude of meditating legends, each engaged in a most brutal, calculated, strategic, and satisfying form of percentage-based ledge combat.

The digital beings were playing qualifying matches in the first Earth-annual tournament of Super Smash Bros. 420, widely considered to be the cleanest and most balanced game in the series. The mechanics were beyond the reckoning of today's gamers, and each individual character was controlled through the will of each player. All of what had remained of input lag present in Super Smash Bros. 419 had been totally eliminated.

Although it was a controversial decision, it was widely agreed that the move to purely mental-based gaming, with each precise movement controlled directly by each individual's will or brain, completely eschewing any physical input methods whatsoever, was the inevitable next step, since Super Smash Bros. 414's top-level metainfamously degraded to a question of port priority, and all matches were determined by a heated game of rock-paper-scissors.

And so, with the implementation of 100% mental controls, all the input lag that was necessary to incorporate the thousands of the game's control schemes had finally been wiped out for a solely mental fighting game experience.

With the entire universe at absolute peace, it was necessary for the ultimate video game to be a perfect one, lest some controversy about imbalanced mechanics lead to a galactic war (although such a thing was deemed highly unlikely to happen, even after EVO 3942, when a very problematic footstool infinite was discovered for King K. Rool [yes, he finally got his chance when the roster expanded to 350 characters in SSB 355 - it's now at 1,008 characters and includes most of the original digital beings]).

To develop this perfect game, who else could be trusted? Masahiro Sakurai, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, and several key members of the Super Smash Bros. For Wii U team volunteered to have their entire beings completely digitized, along with their loved ones, in order to continue to produce the greatest action fighting game of all time.

Yes, even the long-suffering Masahiro Sakurai, who endured excessive hand, mental, and emotional pain and vowed to never develop another Smash Bros. again, could not bear to give up his baby to any old developer. He insisted that every Smash game should be his baby, and that's how it stayed, for the last two thousand years.

A lot has changed since then, thought the being that was at the head of the Earth-humans, clad in a resplendent cape and blue jeans. More than in the probably tens of thousands of years beforehand. We've all grown so much.

Having solved, without directly causing any deaths, the problem of galactic peace, and having eliminated the threat of any super-evil alien civilizations, who were beaten back into harmless irrelevance and obscurity with the continued use of the Triforce, the Smashers, it appeared, were no longer needed to solve problems with wanton violence.

And so they'd put their powers to use to foster the further creative and spiritual development of the human race.

It was around 2093 when Humans were finally able to say they had reversed the devastating environmental damage caused by the Industrial Dark Ages.

Around 2205, Humanity finally threw off the last remnants of the darkness of the D4rk L0rd R07h$ch!1d's plan. We became truly virtuous and awake to our deepest spiritual natures. We quit eating animals and abusing plants and drew all our nutrition from the sun. Aliens living on Mars finally recognized us Humans as being their brethren and bestowed upon us the knowledge of our own inner powers, long suppressed by modern science. Humans began the long and fruitful process of unlocking their hidden potential, and at the end of it, many Humans became able to traverse realities, to drift in and out of the real world, the digital world (by interpreting and creating electromagnetic and wireless signals with our minds and hearts), and any upper or lower spiritual dimensions at will. We could also heal not just ourselves, but any living being, by merely thinking it.

Humans became able to manipulate their consciousnesses at any level of existence. All of us were able to transcend death, and yet none of us chose to prolong our existences forever. No longer driven by self-preservation or fear, those who were ready would go willingly into that good night. Humans became the most righteous race in the universe, an extremely rare and delicate blend of the emotional, mental, and instinctual natures of existence.

Though there were endless millions of other species in the Milky Way Galaxy, no one had encountered anyone like us. One might even say we were perfectly balanced. One in millions. We defied those who sought to hasten our development and evolution completely, to put us in some box, to manipulate us into conforming, and through total acceptance of what is, what was, and what will be, the human race grew and prospered into total self-actualization.

The relationship between mankind and AI never reached the level of total hybridization. Augmentation could only go so far, and when the Humans reached total actualization and used the full capacity of their brains, machines became more of a hindrance than a help.

Even though everyone knew it was thanks to the Author and the Smashers that the world had been reformed, there were no statues, no hero-worship, no heirarchical structures. And yet this was not a hivemind, nor was it a socialist society. It just was, and what it was did not need to be put into words because it was perfect. Sure, people knew their history, and they read and understood the classics, but with complete telepathy came also a total ability to see and to feel what others felt, and thus, traditional forms of art were all but abandoned to spectacular Experiences - a sort of hybrid of performance art and gallery setting where one would enter a domed bauble and experience a smattering of very specific feelings, thoughts, sights, sounds, memories, and/or hopes and fears. It was a direct projection of the artists' will and soul and people traveled the galaxy to see the newest and freshest senses.

The being that had just entered the sacred Smash chamber, interrupting the tournament, was none other than the Author, and he consciously minimized the degree of his presence so that he could walk among his very old friends unseen, unheard, unfelt. In the very center of the room, Ganondorf, who'd been eliminated in round 3 of pools, opened his eyes, sensing the Author's presence. He looked up at the slightly overweight Asian guy, exhaled deeply, and closed his eyes again.

Back from Earth, no doubt. There's something a bit different about him today, Ganon thought, but did not allow himself to hope.

"Ganon," said the Author softly, and then, Ganon knew. He would have cried, but there were no tears left. No emotions within him that could put to words a feeling he had once felt for a lovely green-haired goddess. Instead, he merely looked into the Author's eyes, searching for something, for some inner peace. And the Author's reply was one of comfort.

It's okay, he seemed to say. You can let it all out now.

A single tear escaped Ganon's eye.

"Shhhh," the Author replied, embracing the lord of darkness. "It's all right, my Hoopy Frood."

Around this time, the Author became aware that all of the currently active tournament games had come to a stop. The various digital beings in the dome, unaged but for the weariness in their eyes, all stood or floated over to the Author and stared. They knew.

"Is it true?" asked Peach, the Author's true, one-and-only Smash waifu, who'd married and divorced Mario several times now.

"We can… meet with our friends again?" asked the once and future King Dedede, who couldn't believe what he was telepathically feeling.

The Author bowed deeply to the digital beings. Then he realized this was insufficient, and he got down onto the ground, practically groveling at their feet.

Because words were insufficient, he raised his hand and created an Experience dome for them all to receive his feelings.

Rosalina's eyes glowed with understanding.

The flashes of a made-up two-thousand-year existence rushed through their consciousnesses.

I do not ask for your forgiveness, for I know it is impossible to forgive such a transgression.

You have done Humanity the greatest service there is by protecting it with your legendary skills, with the Triforce, with your lives and loyalty to your creators and fans. There is no more we as a species can ask of you. What's more, we now have the capabilities to understand any enemy, as well as to defend ourselves from any external threat. We will not last forever, but we will do the best that we can in the time that we have to protect and nurture life across the galaxy. We are forever in your debt.

The other Humans know, and they understand. We'd all known this time was to come.

It is time now for you all to choose.

Then all of the digital beings saw the choices laid out before them as clear as day.

Your friends can return, but you also can decide to leave this realm forever, to merge with the eternal Ether and be together with them.

When the Experience finished, the many hundreds of digital beings, after being overwhelmed with emotion, were all lost in thought. They huddled together to have a telepathic discussion, one that didn't take long.

At the end of it, it was Princess Zelda, four-term President of the USA, who stepped forth from the group.

"We have played over four hundred variations of the same game. We have seen hundreds of super cool, awesome, very nice planets, met many awesome species, and mastered every video game and sport. I believe we are ready to move on from this existence," she pronounced aloud. "But we cannot say the same for our friends. We'll let them decide what is to be done."

The Author nodded and bade for his friends to follow him up onto the observation dome, which boasted a full 180-degree view of the outside of the rotating space station.

The digitized, immortalized versions of Masahiro Sakurai, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Satoru Iwata, who were awakened from their mental slumber, also joined the beings as 3D projections.

Once everyone had filed in or floated upwards from the floor, the Author walked up to Ganon's attempt to make a portal to reconnect with the others.

"It should have worked," said Ganon incredulously. He'd given up on the project many years ago.

"You were almost there, man. Did you remember to carry the two?" the Author chided him, then snapped his fingers.

After the familiar sound of the Windows 95 startup sequence, there was a blinding flash. Then a very, very large rainbow-swirly portal opened up into a far distant green country under a swift sunrise.

The perfection of the image that greeted the digital beings brought so many of them, their feelings long eroded or suppressed through two thousand years of peace, work, and evolution, to tears.

Their brothers and sisters in arms and in peace were all waiting with patient, contented smiles on their faces - Palutena, Kirby, Yoshi, Pac-Man, Pit, Sonic and his friends, Raiden, Shrek, Crash, and everyone else who died such brutal deaths on or around the Day of Revolution. Travis Touchdown and Falco were also among them, since they died tragically in 3333 defending Earth during the tragic Bugger invasion. GW and Paper Mario were, as well, after Paper Mario murdered GW after discovering his affair with Paper Princess Peach.

"Hey guys!" said Kirby.

"KIRBY!" Mashpotato Samurai ran up to the portal and would have gone through it, if there weren't an invisible wall erected to prevent such a thing from happening. "Kirby, my son!"

"Mah boy!" Dedede declared, doing the same thing.

The Author put a hand on Sakurai's shoulder and addressed the digital beings in the Great Beyond who'd perished either in this realm or the digital one.

"Fellas… you have a choice. Live here with everyone else, or have them come join you."

As their friends ran up to the glass, looked on, pleaded, and in some cases, cried, the others within deliberated on this, and finally, Palutena addressed the Author.

"We shall join you, for a time," was all she said. "We want to experience what the world will hold for us. But when the time is right, we ask for all our friends to bid farewell to the world of transient forms, and to join us here. It's really fan-fucking-tastic. Like every moment is a million simultaneous orgasms at sunset, in Margaritaville, while tiny Pikmin are giving you foot massages."

"Is she reading my mind?" Olimar asked Alph.

"So be it," said the Author, and the invisible wall was broken.

The happiness that filled the dome in the Space Station Liberty in that hallowed hour of bliss defied explanation, or even slow-motion cinematography and a Michael Giacchino score.

Once it became clear that this was no dream or hallucination, tears ran like torrents and laughter filled the ship. The love released that day and the Experiences created by it would inspire generations of Humans and digital beings to never give up, never let each other down, never run around or desert their loved ones, never make them cry, never say goodbye, never tell a lie, or hurt them.

"Ganon, my love!" Palutena rushed into his arms and pet his long, fiery man-mane at the same pace as he stroked her long, grassy, green hair.

"Palutena! Baby! Oh, Gods! Can this be real?"

Then, with little warning, she grabbed his giant hand and shoved it onto her plump breast. His dark face turned as red as his hair.

"Does that answer your question?" she teased. "I loved your game, by the way. Played it on the Cloud."

Not caring about anything else, they made out right then and there.

King Dedede, Kirby, and Meta-Knight embraced and glomped one another and bounced up and down like three little girls excited about a bunny rabbit.

"ROBIN!"

"ROBYN!"

The selfcestuous Tacticians stripped as they ran towards each other, and when they met, they immediately fell to the floor and started exploring every nook and cranny of the other's bodies, abandoning all thought of normal social decorum as they moaned and purred and grunted and laughed in disbelief.

Mach Rider walked on up to Captain Falcon and put her arms around him casually.

"Hey, flyboy," she said, and he immediately one-upped her by grabbing her ass.

"Damn, I missed that ass," he said before making out with her. "And those lips."

Yoshi looked around, a bit nervous, not really knowing if anyone would greet him, but Mario and Luigi walked on up to the big doofus.

"It's-a good to see you again, paisano!" Mario said, hugging the Yoshisaur.

Yoshi's eyes welled with tears. He just called me brother!

"So what'd I miss?" GW asked Ike in a series of beeps and boops.

"Not too much," said Ike. "Oh, Snake and Samus finally got hitched. And we discovered a planet - I shit you not, the whole surface is covered in the dankest weed."

"Weed's nothing compared to what it feels like in the afterlife," said Travis. "I can't really spoil much about it, but damn, dude. It's pretty radical."

"We're, like, in the smallest layer of Russian Matryoshka dolls," Falco clarified. "There's just so much more out there."

"Hey, bud."

Fox put his arm on Falco's shoulder. "I... I'm sorry."

The room stopped dead. Fox had NEVER apologized for anything, ever.

He continued, oblivious. "I... tried to save you from that Bugger... but I hit you instead... those motion controls, you know..."

"No Johns!" Wolf howled from across the room.

"What I'm trying to say, Falco," Fox continued. "Is that I'm... I'm on your side..."

"I know, Einstein," Falco replied, embracing his on-and-off friend. "You've always been on my side."

It was a most tearful and powerful hour for all. DK broke out the bongos and started playing a happy tune, to which Zelda joined him on her harp, Pit whipped out an electric synth keyboard, Mario accompanied on a guitar, and Bowser rocked the bass.

The Author attempted to sneak away as everyone was enjoying their long-delayed reunion, but Link left the joyous event to catch him.

However, Link stopped near the top of the stairwell as Mr. Sakurai was already far enough ahead to catch the Author's descent past the first flight.

"Won't you stay?" asked Sakurai. "We'll break out the hats and hooters, and rev up the motor scooters! We're gonna party like there's no tomorrow!"

"My work here is done," said the Author with a light shake of his head. "I can't take pride in celebrating the end of the pain I've caused. This is your moment, Mr. Sakurai."

"Nonsense," insisted Sakurai. "You're one of us now."

"One of us!" Link chanted, and all the others, now gathered at the top of the stairs, chanted with him. "One of us! One of us!"

The Author's lips curled up in a way that was almost a smile, and he held a hand up for them to stop. "Thank you, everyone. I… I really wish I could believe that, but this is all some silly fantasy of mine. You're all just creations in my fanfic."

"Maybe so," Zelda joked. "But what is reality, anyway?"

Link gasped at the question, and all turned white.

---

Clouds parted.

The sounds of synthesized seagulls echoed in the not-quite 16-bit sky.

At that moment, Link awoke, clutching to the floating piece of driftwood. He felt the cold, salty water contrasting with the sun beating down upon his face.

That familiar song echoed in his mind.

The Ballad of the Wind Fish.

Man, that was a weird dream… Link thought as the camera panned up to reveal the island he was shipwrecked on, and then a long, black shadow covered Link's face.

He looked to the sky, half-expecting to see the Author, or the Wind Fish, or possibly some Divine presence, and was greeted instead by the smiling face of Eduard Khil singing the TROLOLOL song.

The End (For Real)

---

A/N: HEEEEEEEEY THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING MY FANFIC OMG!

My brother's still working on his super-epic Legend of Zelda fanfic, and I can't rush his evolving final battle with Ganon, but please stay on the lookout for The Dark Master Sword!

Please mash that Follow button if you want to be alerted to when it's ready, and I'll post a one-shot I wrote relating to the fanfic, along with info about where you can read it!

Thanks again for all the support! REVIEWS and FAVES are very much appreciated! I would LOVE to hear all your feedback! Feel free to flame me over that ending! XDDD