BACK TO ONE-SHOTS! Where nothing dies! Woot. To top it off, I hit 450 reviews, right on the nose. That never happens. XD Thank you all so much!

First thanks goes to Lord Lithos Maitreya; Yay! You answered all the questions! Ganondork's just evil. Nuff said. ~ Thanks to RawkHawk2.0; Ike has been rejected. XD Roy/Sheik FTW (maybe). ~ Thanks to MusicGamer; Yep. One shots are back in all of their one-shot-y goodness. XD ~ Thanks to piplupfan580; LOTS of Star Wars references. XD ~ Thanks to Sogo; ….*cough* I have no comment. BAH! I need to work on the desk, don't I? ~ Thanks to DarkBloodPhoenix; Sheik lives! And there will be much foolishness. Don't you worry. ~ Thanks to introtothepanic; Whoop, thanks for being on typo-alert. XD I'm so bad at catching them. ~ Thanks to Sir StarIlI; XD Don't you hate it when you get interrupted during something intense? I'm glad the translations were okay! *sigh of relief* ~ Thanks to GameGuy12; Dude…that is the awesomest pun ever. Marth Vader…LOL. ~ Thanks to EggplantWitch; Wow…this is turning into something like a webcomic, isn't it? Or a sitcom…XD ~ Thanks to redhazelKJ; We can be messed up girls together. I love violence. Thanks for submitting to the contest! (woot!) ~ Thanks to LinkPlaidTunic; …I never actually plan more than a chapter or two in advance (procrastinators FTW!), so I'm sorry to say that I have next to no idea what's coming next (that's half the fun of writing this thing!) XD ~ Thanks to MessengerOfDreams; YAY! I'm so glad you like Ollie. I feel like all the work that's gone into developing him has paid off. ~ Thanks to AcolyteOfAzura; *0* YES! There's going to be a pet arc now. Ike's totally getting a hamster. ~ Thanks to Skye-Moonknight7913; Yay! Thank you so much. ~ Thanks to Diagon the Uber Lord of Lawlz; Man, I remember the good ol' days when I just had one or two reviews to reply to. XD ~ Thanks to RaymondTHEspriter; Ooh, yes. Pit/Angel+Quince/Nya double date. That'll be fun…Thanks for the idea! ~ Thanks to anomynous; Bulbapedia. Nice. XD Black might make an appearance at some point, but I need to come up with a reason for him being there… ~ Thanks to angel; My work here is done. (jk, jk) Thank you so much! ~ HUGE thank you to LatteCurlz; Yay! You caught up! Thank you for everything, and I'm glad you enjoy. :) ~ Thanks to Toxic Ink; Cool username, BTW. Gah, I'm so terrible with typos. I'm sorry. *bows* But I'm glad you're enjoying nonetheless. ~ And our lucky 450th review goes to Foxpilot, who has been here since the very beginning; XD I just read a lot of mysteries. And thanks again for the advice. :) Yay! Another Ollie fan (kinda…)!

WOOOOT! *coughs* Anyway…About…65% of the stuff in this chapter is some Star Wars reference. This is what happens when someone requests a chapter involving Beam-Swords. I go all out. (mwahaha) Fellow Star Wars geeks, please enjoy. Non-Star-Wars geeks, I hope you get some of the jokes anyway. XD

Disclaimer: SSBB/SSBM does not belong to me. And all the Star Wars lines/references belong to George Lucas and his buddies. And I apologize again for Link's rude comments about Marth's sexuality (Link has a potty mouth, doesn't he?).

Please read, enjoy, and review!

Chapter 37: Beam-Swords

"Go go go!" Quincy bellowed, red in the face beneath his trademark baseball cap as he shouted at his Ivysaur, who was struggling to pick up the fourth blue laser sword that had dropped from the ceiling. "Come on! You can beat Marth—you got it!"

"Hah, as if!" Marth called out breathlessly as he sheathed Falchion to devote his full attention to his own beam-sword, which he now swung two-handedly at Link, driving the Hylian backwards. It had been somebody's idea of a joke to suddenly let four of the lightsaber-esque swords drop from the ceiling and switch from the usual Final Destination music to the Star Wars theme. The three other brawlers—Marth, Link, and Pit—were all having an excellent time, but considering that Ivysaur didn't have opposable thumbs, it was having a much harder time of things.

"The force is strong in this one!" Marth teased, his lightsaber creating blue arcs that seemed to linger in the air long after he finished a strike. Link retreated behind his shield, and eventually ducked out behind it for a moment to strike at Ivysaur, who was still struggling. The pokemon went flying, and Quincy winced.

"Get back up!" he shouted. Ivysaur gave him an 'are-you-serious?' look, and remained flopped on the ground. Quincy rolled his eyes and switched it out for Squirtle, which at least would have better luck with the lightsaber.

"Heya trainer," came a voice from behind Quincy. He turned around to see Nya leaning out over the rail.

"Hey!" he said eagerly, turning away from the fight as a broad smile split his face. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," Nya said, twisting a dirty rag around in her hands. "Just cleaning, you know?" She flipped the rag over her shoulder. "With everything that happened here lately, they want this place as clean as ever. You know they replaced the carpet where the announcer died? …They couldn't get the blood out."

Quincy noticed the slightly hollow tone that had entered Nya's voice, and he gave her a concerned look. "Don't think about it too much," he told her forcefully.

Nya clenched the rag in-between her hands. "How are you so calm?" she demanded suddenly. "How are all of you so calm? You almost died! You were all betrayed, so how can you…?"

Her gaze drifted over to the stage, where Marth was cackling like a madman as he slashed at Pit's back when the angel turned around to shoot an arrow at Link. As it turned out, both attacks missed, and Link stumbled his way back into the fight, knocking aside a klutzy Squirtle with almost no effort at all. All three boys were laughing and quoting Star Wars at one another, completely oblivious to the fact that Quincy was no longer participating.

"How can you be so…normal?" Nya asked breathlessly. "I mean, no offense or anything, but I can't even walk down the hallway where the announcer was killed, but I saw Zelda walking down it just the other day without any reaction at all, and she nearly died there! I don't get it!"

"I guess…because we're used to it?" Quincy guessed. In all honesty, he had never really thought about it. He—and apparently everyone else as well—had just accepted things as a fact of life and moved on. It had never really occurred to him to think otherwise.

"Scared?" Marth panted as he flipped off of Link, whom he had just tackled and relieved of his lightsaber. With two glowing swords in his hands now, he advanced on the Hylain, a huge grin on his face as he recited, "Fear is the path to the dark side, young Link! Fear leads to anger! Anger leads to hate! Hate leads to suffering!"

Link bellowed something profane, which caused Pit to leap onto his back and start tugging at his hat with cries of "IT'S A TRAAAP!"

Quincy smirked, longing to join in on the fun, but he suspected that if he tried to personally get involved, all he'd end up with would be a bloody nose. Better to leave the actual combat to the pokemon. He turned back to Nya, who still looked troubled.

"Well, what would we do otherwise?" he questioned. "Be scared? It's better just to accept things and move on. If you think too much about it, then you never get over it, right?"

Nya frowned. "…That sounds nice and all," she said slowly. "But…I don't know." She twisted the rag in-between her hands. "That just seems sad, to me."

"Really?" Quincy asked. "I don't see it that way."

"Aren't you a little short to be a storm trooper?" Link was complaining as he peeled Pit off of his back.

"I'm not a storm trooper!" Pit shouted indignantly. "I'm Admiral Ackbar! What's wrong with you? Don't you know your cultural references?"

"Watch your mouth, kid, or you'll find yourself floating home," Link growled. "Into the garbage chute, flyboy!" He grabbed hold of Pit's arm and flung him over his shoulder, bouncing him off of the stage. It was only due to the angel's wings that he managed to avoid dropping into the safety net.

Marth grabbed hold of one of his lightsabers with both hands and swung it at Link's head like a baseball bat. "Link!" he shouted as the Hylian went flying. "I am your father!"

"Who's my other daddy, Marth Vader?" Link retorted as he landed on his hands and rolled back to his feet.

Quincy burst into astonished laughter at that, and for a few moments found himself completely oblivious to Nya's unhappy mood. When he turned around and saw that she still looked upset, he frowned. "What's up, Nya?"

The teenage girl sighed, her brown eyes unreadable. "I just don't get. You guys were so shaken up by the Genevieve thing, but here you've gone right back to normal just like that." She snapped her fingers to illustrate the suddenness of the change. "What's so different?"

"Well, that was much longer, you know?" Quincy pointed out. "I mean, we were scared for weeks when Genevieve was here. We didn't know who was going to be next. But here, it was only one day. And none of us really were that concerned. We knew that we were going to figure it out eventually, so we were all hopeful. …Did that make sense?" He smiled as he looked up at Nya, who nodded slowly. "When Genevieve was here, we thought things were never going to get back to normal, but three days ago, when the attacks happened, we all knew that we were going to get things back to normal. I mean, sure, we were all worried and all, but we were determined. So when everything ended happily, that's why we were able to bounce back so fast, I think. Nobody was seriously hurt this time. It was intense, but we were all confident that we'd get out of it."

Nya nodded again. "…That makes a bit of sense, I guess."

"I sense great fear in you—You have hate, you have anger…but you don't use them," Link bellowed at Marth as he forced the Altean backwards with a series of quick slashes and jabs with the Master-sword, seeing as Marth still held Link's beam-sword.

"Who needs anger when you have mad skills?" Marth shouted back.

"Your overconfidence is your weakness," Link laughed as Marth suddenly went on the offensive and he quickly shifted his stance to guard better.

"You know, the ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent," the Altean prince countered.

Pit suddenly swooped over the stage, zooming up as high as the safety net would allow before folding his wings and dropping like a stone. His beam-sword powered up right as he unfurled his wings, and he managed to hit Marth with a glancing blow to the shoulder before landing. "This party's over!" he quoted before lashing out with both feet in Link's direction.

Quincy was startled to hear Nya's quiet giggle sound behind him. He turned back to face her, breaking into a grin himself when he noticed that her face was, once again, serene and happy.

"I get it now," she laughed.

Quincy belatedly returned his attention to Squirtle, who had wisely stayed out of the main fight and was standing in the corner, looking confused. Quincy told it to get back into the fight, and then looked back up at Nya, who smiled warmly at him.

"I get it," she repeated with a soft laugh. "I'm sorry. I was completely wrong."

"Wrong about what?" Quincy asked.

"I thought…" Nya said softly. "Oh man, you're going to hate me…But I thought…that maybe you guys were able to snap back so fast because somebody died. With the Genevieve thing, she's still out there now, isn't she? So, I thought that you were all happy because he died. And…I don't know. I just thought that, since you all seem to be so used to death and all that…that maybe you thought that the announcer's death was the best way to solve things."

"I'm not used to death," Quincy said quietly. "And just because the others are doesn't mean that they like it. There was probably a better way for things to end, but we'll never know now."

Nya nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, I know," she said hurriedly. "I just didn't know the reason for it, so I came up with one myself. And I was wrong." She beamed. "And I'm really happy to be wrong, Quincy. I get it now."

Quincy smiled up at her from the stage, marveling at the way she was able to casually lean on the railing of the stadium and talk to him like this. In his opinion, Nya's ability to ask people about something that was bothering her, even if she wasn't sure she would like the answer, was something that made her very brave.

"I mean," Nya said wryly. "There probably was a diplomatic solution to everything, but—"

"Nya," Quincy sighed. "This is Brawl. We don't do diplomatic solutions here." He smirked as he tipped his hat back from his eyes. "We do aggressive negotiations."

xXx

"Twice the pride, double the fall!" Pit screeched at Link, who was backpedaling fast.

"Hey Marth!" Link shouted desperately. "I figured out who my other daddy is! It's got to be Ike, right?"

Marth, who had been swatting aside Squirtle's pathetic attempts to swing the light saber at him as he watched Nya and Quincy's shameless flirting, turned around at that, a fire igniting in his eyes. He leapt after Link, who grabbed Pit by the tunic and hauled him into the path of Marth's sword.

The angelic meatshield went skittering across the stage and plunged off of the edge once again, only to flit nimbly back to the stage.

Link and Marth engaged one another again, with Pit sighing and resigning himself to taking on Squirtle. Within a few seconds, the pokemon was squirming in the safety net, and Pit quickly followed; finally knocked off of the stage when Link succeeded in smacking Marth's second lightsaber out of his hand and it unexpectedly bounced up into Pit's face.

"You don't know the power of the dark side!" Marth Vader crowed, flipping up into the air to slash at Link's back.

"Your thoughts betray you, Father," Link quoted back. "I'll never turn to the dark side!"

Marth noticed after a few more strikes what Link was trying to do. With his attacks, the Hylian was slowly turning the fight around; switching their positions so that Marth was closer to the edge than Link, instead of the other way around.

"Hah," he burst out when he realized what Link was doing. "You should be mindful of the future, my young padawan, but not at the expense of the moment!"

"Wha—?"

Before Link even had time to blink, Marth had flipped his lightsaber into his left hand, and pulled out Falchion with his right. In another second, the Altean had ducked under Link's raised arm and brought both swords up in a sort of X-shape across Link's neck.

Marth—with a ridiculously smug grin on his face—shook his navy bangs out of his eyes as he said coolly, "If you cannot be turned, you will be destroyed." He took a step forward, and Link's eyes widened as he realized that he was about to lose his balance.

"Young fool," Marth grinned, giving Link the final shove to send the Hylian tumbling over the stage's edge. "Only now do you understand. Your feeble skills are no match for the dark side."

xXx

"I'm just saying, you should stick with your role," Link was complaining as he and the three other teenagers walked out of the locker room. "I was obviously Luke, and you were supposed to be Darth Vader, but you kept switching from Vader to the Emperor, and I swear you had a Jinn quote in there too."

"Yeah?" Marth sighed tiredly, tugging at the collar of his damp T-shirt that he had changed into after his shower. "Well Pit went from quoting Admiral Ackbar to Mace Windu to Count Dooku himself." Pit smiled proudly. "If that's not switching around I don't know what is. Besides, you yourself quoted Leia at least once."

"Did not."

"Did too," Marth explained. "The stormtrooper line was from Leia to Luke!"

"It was not," Link said hotly. "You're just mad because I know about your scandalous relationship with Ike."

"And you're mad because you're an elf and I kicked your butt."

"Play nice!" Pit sang as he danced his way down the hallway in pursuit of dinner. Quincy broke into a sprint to catch up, while the two older teenagers hung back, still playfully arguing with each other.

Just as the argument was about to turn a little less playful, Samus came out into the hallway and smacked into Marth's shoulder.

"Jeez, I'm sor—oh, it's you two," she said, her face going from apologetic to disapproving in a second. "You know that you nearly made Sheik and Snake nearly wet themselves they were laughing so hard at you guys? Not to mention that Ike almost broke the TV when you made that comment, Link…"

"Snake watches Star Wars?" Link and Marth asked in perfect unison.

"Of course he watches Star Wars," Samus said dismissively. "He's way more out there than you'd think. Unlike some guys,"—she prodded Marth's shoulder—"Snake hasn't lived his whole life in a protective bubble of royalty."

Marth snatched at her hand before she could retrieve it and used it to tug her into a hug. "That wasn't very nice," he teased.

"Ew, Marth, you're all wet," Samus blurted and instinctively tried to twist away.

"That's what she said," Link couldn't help saying quietly.

Marth's smile was completely fake as he reached over to whack the Hylian over the head. "May the force be with you!" he said cheerily. "Now on your way—we are not the droids you're looking for."

Link rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say. I'll leave you two lovebirds to it. See you at dinner."

Samus' eyes flashed as she looked up at Marth. "I thought Jedi knights weren't allowed to love. Isn't that why Anakin got into trouble?"

"A, I'm not a Jedi," Marth said quietly. "And B, concerning the Jedi: Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion—which could be defined as unconditional love—is essential to a Jedi's life. So you might say that Jedi are encouraged to love."

"Okay," Samus said thoughtfully. "So if you aren't a Jedi, then what are you?"

"Yours."

Samus pulled a grimace, scarcely able to believe that Marth had been able to say that with a straight face. "Please," she groaned. "No cheesy lines right before dinner. I'll lose my appetite."

She tried to twist out of his arms, but he tightened his grip and stopped her.

"I meant it," he said, his voice entirely serious now. "I told you, didn't I? Aishite imasu."

"You weren't serious," Samus said forcefully. "Everything's a game to you here. Besides, you're already engaged."

"Cadea and I are not engaged. We're betrothed, and there's a difference. Come on, would I joke about something like this? You honestly think I'd lead you on if I wasn't serious?"

Samus turned to face him, letting her arm slide off of his right shoulder. This was the shoulder that the doctors had thought he would never be able to use again. But here he was, holding her with it.

"Face it, bounty-hunter, you're just my type," Marth said softly. "Fearless, inventive…and cold, in a way."

"I'm not cold."

Marth laughed. "It's not like I'm asking you to marry me tomorrow. Just…maybe someday."

"I don't like to think about 'maybe someday's.'"

"Okay," he said gamely. "Then just think about today. Do you like me today?"

"I think you must've hit your head or something. You're being weird."

Marth sighed, giving up. "Fine. Whatever. I can't blame you if you aren't ready to accept my awesomeness yet." He let go of her waist, but then slung an arm around her shoulder as he struck out again towards the cafeteria.

"Dream on, Marth," Samus rolled her eyes. But she couldn't bring herself to push his arm off of her shoulder.

xXx

"Ah…long live the stupid couple," Link chuckled as Marth and a red-faced Samus finally made their way into the dining hall.

"I think they're cute," Sheik announced as she took a sip from her soda.

Ike—who had remained silent for the majority of the afternoon due to the fact that the only Star Wars lines he knew were 'May the Force be with you' and 'Luke, I am your father'—suddenly spoke up. "It's actually better if they aren't officially together."

"Why's that?" Zelda asked hurriedly, wanting to finish up the conversation before Marth and Samus came within earshot.

"Because, they like playing with each other," Ike said knowledgably. "They're both too stubborn to really just admit their feelings like that. Marth doesn't like to talk about love or feelings or anything like that, and Samus…Well, I haven't known her for as long as you guys have…but I'm not sure that she really puts much stock in love at all. I think they both prefer the game they're playing. They'd probably get bored if they actually became a real couple."

Roy shot a sideways look at Ike. "Wow," he said. "You really have your intelligent moments, don't you?"

"Don't we all?" Ike answered.

"And besides," Link said as Marth and Samus reached their booth and squeezed into it, confused expressions on their faces as they tried and failed to pick up the thread of the conversation. "Maybe everything will change someday. I mean, after all, you can't stop change any more than you can stop the sun from setting."

Everyone at the table save for Marth and Samus smiled and nodded knowingly.

"…Is this something I should know about?" Marth finally asked.

"Yeah," Sheik said drolly. "You should know. But we can't tell you."

"Why not?" Marth asked innocently.

"It's just something you've got to figure out for yourself," Sheik said with a grin.

xXx

Sooo…slight issue. It's not another hiatus, but it is a vacation. I'm gone until the weekend after next, and I seriously doubt that I'm going to get another chapter up before then, so you'll have to wait a week for more Gamey goodness. Sorry about that. I have too many relatives—I have to visit them all.

AN: Believe it or not, initially I didn't mean for there to be anything serious going on in this chapter. It was basically just supposed to be the guys goofing off with lightsabers, but then I realized that I hadn't written about Nya in awhile, and so I stuck her in there and she and Quincy managed to get into a deep conversation, and then Samus somehow snuck in there as well and dragged Marth off the deep end as well. …I swear these guys have a mind of their own.

Lined up for the next chapter are various ideas involving LatteCurlz request of a challenge/race-type thing, something involving fireworks, or maybe something exploring a bit of Oliver's past now that I finally have worked out his backstory (did you know that if you google 'Oliver Stoelhart,' this fic is the only thing that pops up? Woot! And my mother says I'm unoriginal. HAH!). As of now, I have no idea which I'm going to feel in the mood to write when I come back, and I get the feeling that I owe someone a request chapter that I keep forgetting about…Did I owe RawkHawk2.0 a request? D:?

MoD's Contest For Those We've Left Behind is still open, but not for much longer! So hurry up with those submissions.

And with that, I humbly bid you all adieu as I go over the river and through the woods to grandma's house for a week. Please review!