Oh. My. Gosh. I AM SO SORRY THIS KEEPS HAPPENING! *facedesk of failure* My internet conked out, I nearly bombed my math final, I got sick (twice), my cat decided to bite my face, I cut my foot open, I joined stage crew, I got addicted to Tiger&Bunny (if you haven't watched that yet, WATCH IT NOW. It's on Hulu. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen), I got dragged into an argument that had the drama equivalent of a Spanish soap opera….Life's been insane lately. You have no idea how glad I've been to have this fic to sit down to work on whenever I've had a bad day. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to update due to lack of internet. Fortunately, I've got three chapters mostly written, which will hopefully be published in the next week or so. With that, I believe a ton of thanks are in order:
Thanks to STKB; Have I mentioned how much your review helped me out of the ditch? It was awesome. ~ Thanks to blooddrippedcupcake; Oliver is not an easy person to tease. He has a habit of retaliating. ~ Thanks to BoshiBasher555; YES. That is all. ~ Thanks to Sir StarlIl; XD Remind me that somebody needs to buy DQ for Ollie. ~ Thanks to NiRvAnAaDvAnCiNg95; GO IOWA! XD ~ Thanks to catsrae; I'm bad at consistency when it comes to updating. We're linked souls. ~ Thanks to TwiliRupee; Probably. Maybe it did blow up. XD ~ Thanks to Lunar Clockwork; Epic username. And Peach'll pop up soon. ~ Thanks to Kalyz Lowell; MAAARTH! Yes. XD I love him. ~ Thanks to Lord Lithos Maitreya; I think you mean Star Trek. :3 It's coming up in the new few chapters, don't worry. ~ Thanks to Foxpilot; Aaaahh…your review invigorated me, as per the usual. ^_^ ~ Thanks to OuranFruitsluvr; I finally got Skyward Sword. And it is awesome. XD ~ Thanks to Rachel Ray Wolf; I took your sadistic preferences into account. Pit gets busted up in this thing (and I know exactly what you mean XD). ~ Thanks to TheOracleOfTime; YEEESSS! I'm glad you're still with us. ~ Thanks to powdergame99; Thank you so much! WOOOOT! ~ Thanks to SchwarzWeiss ZwillingsMonde; Thank you so much. The punishment's going to pop up…in the third chapter after this, I think. Or maybe after the arc…I'm not sure. XD ~ Thanks to RawkHawk2.0; I agree. ~ Thanks to SgtPeppersLHCB; You had an experience like that? *jealous* ~ Thanks to FullmetalWizard1995; Thanks. I'm glad you were entertained. ~ Thanks to Sogo; Oh yes. Magic box, my friend. ~ Thanks to piplupfan580; Kids are awesome. ~ Thanks to seqka711; ELFQUEEEEST! I'm looking forward to seeing your drawing. ~ Thanks to Tune4Toons; Indeed I shall. ~ Thanks to TheGameBoy; Maybe I will, we'll see. ~ Thanks to DracoFreezeFlame; Ah, see, the brawl stadium is somewhere on the border, which is near Seattle, and the melee stadium was in Illinois, which is how they got to Iowa. Hope that clears things up. XD ~ Thanks to Excellion Arbiter; Looking forward to working with you. :) ~ Thanks to MEAM-neko n.n; There probably were some explosions… ~ Thanks to Hitomi Kogure; XD WooT! Fanart FTW! ~ Thanks to the ever wonderful angel; I still have yet to make Quince/Nya and Pit/Angel do a double-date. XD ~ Thanks to Brightvale Lucy; Thank you soooo much! I love the feedback. ~ Thanks to Nintendnerd; I always do that! Thank you so much. ^_^ ~ Thanks to Eclypse13; I have an OC named Eclipse…awkward….Thanks so much. ^_^ ~ Thanks to MusicRockerz; Smarthus makes the world go round. XD I love finding people who like the things I do! ~ And a final thanks to Linira; YESSS! Totally doing that.
Oh my gosh. Would you believe I had two and a half pages of review to tramp through? That was incredible. Several things: (a) OH MY GOSH THIS STORY HAS 97 FAVES. THAT IS RIDICULOUSNESS I LOVE YOU ALLLLLL! (b) AAAAAAAGH! IT'S BEEN OVER A YEAR SINCE THIS CRAZINESS BEGAN. WHERE THE HECK DOES THE TIME GO!
Seriously now, I am so thankful for the opportunity to mature as a writer through this story. These teenagers have alternately mirrored my life or allowed for a miraculous escape from it. Not to mention that the support I've gotten for it is unparalled by anything else I've ever written. It's been an indescribable ride, and I'm so glad to have shared the ups-and-downs of it all with so many awesome people. Hopefully it will continue for a long time yet, ne?
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me; including all of the songs and video game references (Skyward Sword is amazing).
Without further ado, please read, enjoy, and review!
xXx
Chapter 51: Strings
"Hey Sheik," Marth called across the arena, swinging his sword in a wide arc to hold back a charging Bowser. When she didn't even pause, he shouted louder. "Sheik!"
"I'm sort of busy at the moment!" she barked back, flipping into the air over Kirby's head and sending a flurry of needles its way, forcing it back into a defensive position. She whirled back around and flicked an extra needle in Marth's direction. He spun and swatted it out of the air. Annoyed, she snapped, "What is it, princess?"
The crowd had somehow managed to pick up Sheik's last sentence through some luckily placed microphone and all laughed in unison, causing Marth to scowl. He took out his frustration by slamming a two-handed strike into Bowser's side, finally flinging the giant beast off of the platform. They were playing a timed match, so Bowser would undoubtedly be back up onto the stage in a few minutes. A point did pop up beside Marth's name on the scoreboard though. The crowd roared, and Marth ducked under Sheik's leg and managed to jab Kirby on his next swing. They were playing an endurance tournament, with the winner of each group of four advancing to the next round. This was the second round.
"And Kirby's hit again! Marth's been doing exceptionally well in this round!" Angel shouted over the loudspeaker system. "Come on—he's a scrawny kid! You can take him, Bowser! Go go go!"
"What is it?" Sheik asked again, tumbling out of the way as Bowser launched himself back into the fray.
"So I was playing Skyward Sword," the Altean said calmly, pirouetting to avoid Kirby's kick and leaping to avoid the oncoming hammer swing. He backtracked, both literally and rhetorically, skipping backwards a few steps and throwing up his sword to block a second barrage of needles. ("That takes skill, I'll give the drunkard that," Angel admitted.) "I know you're not in it—no need to glare at me like that."
"I wasn't worried about that," Sheik replied, sidestepping Bowser's sweeping hand. "I was just wondering why we're having this conversation now, in the middle of a fight. That's all."
"Ah." Marth leapt up into the air and sliced at Bowser's back, knocking the giant thing aside. The crowd roared approval. Kirby immediately engaged the downed Bowser, leaving Marth face to face with Sheik, momentarily undistracted. "Because the idea just occurred to me," he said, his voice still remarkably steady and light despite the fact that they were six minutes into the ten-minute fight and he was now ducking and weaving in-between Sheik's flailing limbs, trying to find an opening for a sword slash. "You are aware that your harp is in Skyward Sword, right?"
"That's where it originated, yeah," Sheik answered, avoiding the wide slash and countering with a kick, which also missed. "Dude, you've only had the game for a month. How far are you?"
"Truthfully, I'm stuck at the first trial. Link's stamina in the game is wretched. I think Ganondorf can run for longer periods of time than he can. But I'm specifically interested in your harp."
"What about it?"
Marth dodged a flying Kirby, and subsequentially was unable to block Sheik's next kick.
"YES!" Angel crowed, punching the air up in the operations booth.
Marth tumbled backwards, and was immediately kicked across the stage by Bowser. The crowd shouted for Sheik to finish it—Marth was the only one of the three who hadn't fallen yet—and she gladly obliged, flying high up into the air and coming down just as Marth tried an aerial recovery move—which turned out to be a bad idea on his part. He went flying hard into the safety net and had a long fall to the bottom. When he appeared at the top of the stage a few minutes later, he appeared to be injured, and while he leapt back into the fight with his same enthusiasm, his conversation was restricted to the usual hissed curse words and grunts. Angel had noticed, and stopped making fun of him.
By the time the fight had ended, Marth had lost the first place to Sheik, who would continue to the finals. He disappeared immediately afterwards, so she didn't get a chance to ask him why he had been interested in the harp. Truth be told, she had never thought much of it. It was just a harp to her. It had been a shock when the old timeline had been uncovered and it was revealed that her harp was actually much more significant that it appeared.
In the end, Link had stolen the final fight, much to the approval of the crowd. Sheik had come in third overall, after Snake, who had gotten his hands on a smash ball and had essentially massacred everybody else in the last two minutes of the fight, moving from fourth place all the way up to second. Snake's brilliant comeback and Pit's injury in the first round (he had gotten hit in the face with a baseball bat and had to be taken to the infirmary) were the highlights of the tournament.
Ike was waiting by the door when Sheik came out from the locker room, and ruffled her hair affectionately by way of greeting.
"Why're you so cozy all of a sudden?" she asked, grabbing his hands as he moved away.
"I can't help it," Ike said with a grin. "You're so little and cute."
She twisted his wrist.
"Agh! Bad choice of words!" he remedied hastily, pulling his hand out of hers. "You're big and scary and a formidable opponent—I dare not touch you again for fear of losing my hand."
"Heck yes," Sheik said, tossing her bangs out of her eyes. But then she hugged him, and was happy when he hugged her back. "By the way…"
"Hm?" Ike asked, his voice muffled by her sweatshirt sleeve.
"Don't read anything into this, it's nothing weird. Do you know where Marth went? He started to ask me something in the arena, but he never told me what it was about."
Ike, to his credit, didn't even bat an eye. He glanced up at the ceiling, and then snapped his fingers as he remembered. "Last I saw, he was in the infirmary. Something with his shoulder."
"Jeezum, not him too. Pit was bad enough. Is he okay?"
"He'll be fine," Ike shrugged nonchalantly. "It's not his dominant arm. But the doctors will be freaking out—you know how they get. He's probably still stuck in there; if you want to go spring him, I'm sure he'd be happy."
"Awesome, thanks," Sheik said as she disengaged from Ike and started off down the hallway.
"Hey Sheik?"
She turned on her heel, a questioning expression on her face.
"You ever see the Matrix?" Ike asked. "It's by the Wachowski brothers. The same guys who did V for Vendetta."
"Never seen it," Sheik said dully. "It's supposedly epic though, right?"
"I rented it," Ike said smugly. "Want to watch it tonight, koala? The plot's pretty mind-blowing."
"I'm game if you are," Sheik agreed. "Catch you later."
"Girl, I'm already caught," Ike laughed as she ran off down the hallway. "See you later."
xXx
"Come to mock me in my pitiful state?" Marth grumbled when Sheik poked her head into the infirmary. He wasn't in a cot, but was instead sitting on a bench against the wall, dressed in civilian clothing, and generally looking miserable. His headphones were hanging around his neck and blaring what sounded like dubstep. "Your lovely kick dislocated my shoulder, thanks a bleepin' bunch."
"Did they pop it back in?"
"Yep," the Altean said, popping the 'p.' "And it sucked. It still hurts. I've been encouraged not to try anything fancy with my left arm for a while. I'm assuming you're here about the harp, right?"
"Yeah," Sheik said, leaning up against the railing of an uninhabited cot. "What was with that?"
"Alright, so I was playing Skyward Sword, right? And I get your magic harp-y thing because Zelda chucked it to me rather than just letting me kill the Orochimaru-wannabe Ghirham—"
"You're making no sense. I have no idea who these people are."
Marth lifted his headphones up to his head and started playing with the volume. "Fine. The point is, I have this harp now in the game, and it sounds epic. But the Wii mechanism doesn't actually let you play it; all you're doing is swinging the remote back and forth. It's annoying. I want to learn how to actually play it. First I thought to ask Link, but he's from the Twilight Princess era of Hyrule, so he wouldn't know. You're the only one who'd actually know how to do it. And then I remembered that Ike gave you a harp for Christmas…"
"Harpsichord. Difference."
"Whatever. The point is, I want to learn. Would you be willing to teach me?"
"Sorry, don't think so," Sheik sighed.
"Come on. I taught you to dance."
"It's not that. A: a harpsichord is different than a harp. I'd need a harp to teach you."
"One is being brought. Was there a B?"
Sheik blinked, thrown off subject by his statement. "What?"
Marth shrugged nonchalantly, and then winced and rubbed at his shoulder. "You know how the Nintys get when we're hurt. They'll get anything you want, short of the world on a platter. I asked for a functioning harp like the one in Skyward Sword."
"You're really serious about this," Sheik commented. "Why?"
He paused before replying, and when he did reply, he did so with a question of his own. "Why do you enjoy playing the harp? You seemed so excited when Ike gave the harpsichord to you."
"It wasn't a scarf," Sheik said neutrally.
"We both know that's not it," Marth snapped, blue eyes flashing. "I didn't give you a scarf, and you weren't happy. And while I suppose you would have been happy with anything Ike gave you, you seemed particularly ecstatic about this. Why? Come on; indulge the boy with the broken arm."
"I'm starting to wish I had really broken it," Sheik said, resisting the urge to thwack Marth's forehead. "It reminded me of home, okay? I liked having a piece of Hyrule with me."
"Me too, but with Altea, obviously, not Hyrule." Marth nodded, pleased that he had been correct. "I remember minstrels at court playing the harp." He lifted his headphones pointedly. "And I enjoy listening to music from home, and thought it would be neat if I learned how to create some of my own. Like you."
"You're listening to dubstep," Sheik felt the need to point out.
"There's some good music on Earth as well," he acquiesced with a grin. Apparently he was starting to feel more like himself.
"Don't know if I'd call that music," she said dryly.
"Please. It beats rap."
"Touché."
At that moment, Oliver Stoelhart walked into the infirmary, carrying a harp and a clipboard under his arm. He smiled to himself when he saw Sheik leaning up against the cot, as if something had just made sense.
"How's the arm?" the psychiatrist asked, clapping Marth's uninjured shoulder. "You look much better."
"Sir, why are you the one giving Marth the harp?" Sheik asked, honestly confused. "I thought that would just be a job for some random staffer."
"It usually would be, but I was the only one who remembered where this thing was," Stoelhart said with a carefree smile. "Not to mention I wanted to make sure his shoulder was staying where I put it. Occasionally it pops back out after a bit, but it seems to be staying." Again, he smiled. "I'm not very good at that kind of thing."
"I've dislocated my shoulder before," Marth said peevishly. "It's never popped back out."
"Wait, what?" Sheik blurted, waving a hand in-between the two of them. "You put his shoulder back in? You're a psychiatrist."
"I know basic first aid." Oliver looked surprised that she hadn't known this, although it was hardly a common fact. "Besides, the majority of the doctors were busy with Pit. You know the poor kid's nose is broken? I suppose this should teach him not to walk into the path of a baseball bat again, especially when Ganondorf is holding it." He pulled a sympathetic face, and then shrugged in an 'oh well' sort of way. "But anyway, most of them were occupied, and it seemed wrong to leave Marth in pain when I could fix it."
Shiek shot an incredulous look in Marth's direction, but he was industriously avoiding eye contact and holding his hands out for the harp in a gesture of 'gimmie.' Oliver passed it over to him, and the Altean plucked a few strings idly, and then leaned back up against the wall, favoring his shoulder, and said "Shoo. You're not conductive to my learning environment."
Sheik plopped herself down on the edge of the bench, still giving Marth an unbelieving look as Oliver rolled his eyes and left. Marth continued to pluck at the strings, managing through pure trial and error to string together the notes of 'happy birthday.'
"So, I'm assuming you have next to no musical knowledge?" she asked after realizing that Marth would not be willing to elaborate on the previous subject. "So if I start giving you specific string names, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, right?"
"Please, I had to learn how to play some sort of instrument as a child," Marth chided, now trying to pluck out what sounded like the Glascow Love Theme. His fingers were incorrectly positioned on the strings, but Sheik decided not to point this out right away. "Unfortunately," he said as he stumbled across another wrong note. "The instrument I chose to learn was not a harp. So yes. No string names."
Sheik rolled her eyes and wrenched the lyre from him, expertly playing through a minor chord. "Fine, we'll work with what we've got. You'll just have to guesstimate where the right string should be, seeing as if I waste time with a bunch of notes, we'll get nowhere."
"I'm down with that," Marth agreed easily, shifting his position a little on the bench. "Show me what I'm doing wrong. I want to learn how to play your Ballad of the Goddess."
"I don't know the song," Sheik admitted, shaking her bangs from her face again. "I'm not from Skyward Sword, idiot. We've been through this."
"I think it's Zelda's lullaby backwards," Marth deadpanned, stealing the harp back and crudely strumming out the basic melody.
"So Zelda's lullaby was basically the Ballad of the Goddess but rearranged by a dyslexic person?"
"…I guess. Can you play it?"
Sheik scowled. "Ye of little faith! Of course I can play it. I can play anything you want me to."
"Skrillex," Marth challenged. Sheik paused, and then managed to strum out something that actually vaguely resembled one of the remixes. Marth blinked, and then laughed, falling back onto the bench, cradling his injured shoulder as he chuckled. Sheik looked down at him, torn between wanting to smack him with the harp in her hands and wanting to laugh with him.
Just as she was about to do the former, he grinned disarmingly at her and said, "Guess I picked the right girl to teach me, right?"
Sheik sighed. Now she couldn't hit him. Not when he was being decent. Instead, she dropped the harp on his stomach and snapped her fingers impatiently. "Come on, prince-boy. I've got things to do. Let's get going already."
"Of course," Marth nodded, changing gears immediately and settling into a cross-legged position. "Now I want you to correct me if I'm doing anything wrong. Where do you want me to start?"
xXx
Pit blinked up into hospital lights and winced as somebody loomed into his vision. The angel raised a hand to shield his eyes, and the figure's face split into a grin.
"You're okay?" the person asked.
"I think so…" Pit said slowly, raising himself up onto his elbows and squinting down at his tunic, which was spattered with blood near the neckline. After staring at that for a few moments and realizing that he didn't know how it had gotten there, he looked up at the person standing over the cot, who turned out to be Quincy. "Jeez….What the heck happened, Quince?"
"You walked into a baseball bat," the pokemon trainer explained with a giggle. "Held by Ganondorf. I think Link described the incident as 'spectacular.' Lots of blood, lots of paramedics—according to the other guys, the same thing happened to Ike about year ago though, so don't feel too bad about it."
"I feel like my face was run over by a cement truck," Pit confessed, sagging back against the pillows. "…How does it look?"
"It looks like you've got a broken nose," Quincy said bluntly. "Which is okay, since you do. The doctors set it and say it's going to be okay, but apparently you're going to need to wear a dorky head-mask whenever you brawl for a few weeks."
Pit probed his face cautiously and yelped when his hand brushed against a piece of plastic across the bridge of his nose and triggered a rush of pain. Quincy smacked his hand away urgently. "Don't do that!"
"So who won the tournament then?" Pit asked simply to change the subject, swinging his legs over the side of the gurney and attempting to stand. He made it about three-quarters of the way across the room before stumbling. He staggered and caught himself on the wall, bashing one of his wings against the metal railing. He whirled around to look at Quincy. "What's wrong with me?"
"You suffered a serious head injury," Quincy recited, repeating what the doctors had told him. "You're going to be a bit disorientated for a while. Also, you could aggravate the injury if you get whacked in the head again, hence your headgear." The pokemon trainer grinned as if he were enjoying himself. "You look pretty bad," he admitted. "Girls dig that, apparently. Link won the tournament, to answer your question earlier, but Snake came really close."
Pit blinked, trying to dislodge the fuzzy film that was clouding his vision. "Did I get a concussion?"
"Um, duh."
Pit nodded shakily and started maneuvering his way back to the cot. After catching himself on the edge, he forced a smile and asked, "What time is it?"
Quincy shrugged. "Late. You missed lunch."
"It's three-twenty," Dr. Stoelhart said as he came through the pneumatic doors, tucking a cell phone into his pocket. "How're you feeling, kid? Any memory issues that you're immediately aware of, or are you just sort of disorientated?"
"I think just disoriented. I feel okay," Pit said, leaning the majority of his weight up against the cot. He laughed weakly. "It would be me."
"Have the boys told you that Ike did the exact same thing earlier this year?" Oliver asked. Pit nodded, and Oliver pulled the phone back out of his pocket to glance at something on the screen. He pulled a face, and turned partially away as he answered the call, speaking in what sounded like Japanese. Quincy raised an eyebrow, but Pit was still too dazed to really be curious.
"Um, Doctor…?" he hazarded in Stoelhart's direction. "I have a potential brain issue."
"Mata denwa shimasu, gomenasai," Oliver said curtly into the phone, cutting off the conversation before snapping it shut and turning to face Pit again, his green eyes sparking. "What's up?"
Pit stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around, but it didn't change anything. "…Do you hear music…? Or is it just me?"
Oliver laughed, and Quincy looked relieved as he explained, "No, it's not just you. The teenagers have been jamming out with this antique harp all afternoon."
"Oh," Pit sighed. "Because it's not very good."
"You should have heard them when it was just Marth and Sheik. Now that the other kids have joined in, they've gotten much more…raucous."
The angel pulled an incredulous face. "…What are they singing…?" he asked after a minute.
"…The Proclaimers, I believe," Oliver said, his voice tinged with a note of incredulity as well as he looked curiously at the infirmary doors. "It's a Scottish band."
"That'd explain the cheesy accents," Quincy said thoughtfully.
Pit winced, and grabbed at his forehead. "Sorry," he said apologetically when Oliver and Quincy each grabbed one of his shoulders and stopped him from collapsing completely. "I just have a killer headache. Can I go to bed? Like in my room? Where it's dark?"
"Of course," the psychiatrist said soothingly and began steering Pit towards the door. "We'll get you off to bed."
As they walked towards the exit, the music started becoming more coherent. It was enthusiastic and blaring and—oddly enough—recognizable. Pit and company limped out through the pneumatic doors to see Marth and Sheik and perhaps four other teenagers dancing around in the hallway, belting out the lines to 'I Would Walk 500 Miles' in completely fake Scottish accents, occasionally linking arms or throwing one another into the air, all of them red-faced and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Marth was strumming the strings on his new harp and was somehow making it sound remarkably like a guitar, Sheik had found a cowbell from who-knows-where and was clanging that for lack of a cymbal, and the others were stomping their feet and clapping rhythmically to substitute in for the drums.
Oliver burst out laughing as the teenagers burst into the chorus and broke out with the back-and-forth 'da-da da da!'s, and then yelped "No!" and tried to pull away as Link and Roy both grabbed him by the shirt collar and tugged him into the mayhem. He staggered out of the circle and swatted away further attempt to draw him back in, yanking down on his shirt and shouting "Pit's got a headache!"
"Is he okay?" Samus asked as she linked elbows with Ike and twirled in a circle.
"He needs quiet!" Oliver insisted.
"Says the guy shouting at us," Roy sang smugly.
Oliver threw his hands in the air and spun back around, caught the longing look on Quincy's face, rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the musical chaos behind him. "Go for it, I'll take care of the kid."
Quincy beamed, clapped his friend apologetically, and dashed off into the group.
Oliver waited until he and Pit had rounded the corner before scooping up the small boy into his arms, walking briskly down the hallway and smiling to himself as the sound dissipated the further away they got from the infirmary.
"I'm sure Quincy wasn't trying to ditch you," he said down to Pit, who was half-out-of-things again and staring glassily up at the ceiling.
"I know," the angel said fuzzily. "If my nose weren't busted and my brain not swollen, I'd join in too."
"If I didn't have to ferry you to your room, maybe I would too," Oliver replied, kicking open the unlatched door to Pit's bedroom as his hands were full.
"Sorry," Pit whimpered as the psychiatrist set him down gently onto the mattress.
"It's fine," Oliver said with a smile, helping Pit snuggle underneath the covers. "I don't mind. Just focus on resting for awhile, okay?"
"'Kay," Pit echoed softly, burrowing into his pillow as Oliver Stoelhart flicked off the light switch and left the room, latching the door behind him.
xXx
"But I would walk five-hundred miles, and I would walk five-hundred more—just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door…!"
"Dada da da!" Marth hollered, spinning around and raking his fingertips across the stings of his makeshift guitar.
"Dada da da!" everybody else echoed.
"Dada da da!"
"Dada da da!" came the echo.
"Dada dum dada dum dada dum dada da da da! Dada da da! Dada da da! Dada dum dada dum dada dum dada da da da…! "
It was spontaneous—nobody knew why they had started singing. It was loud and obnoxious—nobody besides Zelda and maybe Sheik could really claim to be any sort of decent singer. It was improvised—none of the instruments were genuine. But it was still somehow beautiful. It was still musical. It was still unbelievably fun.
Spontaneity was part of the package when you lived in the Brawl stadium. Everybody lived for moments like these.
xXx
Oliver Stoelhart was walking back to his office by himself, hands stuffed into the pockets of his slacks. It had been a good day—profits from the tournament were at an all-time high. Pit seemed to be alright, despite taking a large chunk of wood to the face. The teenagers were entertaining themselves in a non-destructive way. Nobody had tried to kill anybody today. But that shard of sadness was still there, as it always would be.
Ike and Sheik came waltzing around the corner—apparently the little jam session had ended—Ike holding a DVD case, Sheik holding a bowl of popcorn. They brushed past Oliver without comment, and he shrugged to himself as they continued off down the hallway. Under his breath, the psychiatrist hummed the finals verse to the song they had been singing.
"When I'm lonely, yes I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's lonely without you. When I'm dreaming, well I know I'm gonna dream, I'll be dreaming about the time when I'm with you."
xXx
AN: So this chapter was essentially a culmination of everything flying through my head for the past week or so…XD Plus Oliver gushiness because after…what…I don't even know when he first popped up in here X_x…After however long he's been around, I FINALLY figured out the nitpicky details of his backstory. Woot. But he's been trained in first-aid. :) And don't worry, he's still planning revenge on the boys, he just hasn't gotten around to it. Being a psychiatrist and the only sensible adult in the whole building is a busy job. XD
The song they were playing in the end was originally supposed to just be Sheik and Marth, and it was supposed to be something you could realistically play on a harp, but then I got the 500 Miles thing stuck in my head for three days straight and thought 'what the heck.' As I said, this chapter was completely random.
Fanart—several of you promised me, and I'm looking forward to it. ^.^ I also have a poll up that I would appreciate anybody with three seconds of spare time checking out—it's just to see if anybody'd be interested in being involved with a contest I'm thinking about starting up.
Next chapter is hide-and-seek. Then I'm either going to squeeze a chapter about amusement parks (Marth's afraid of heeeeiiights~!) in there or jump straight into the arc. The arc is planned to work sort of like the last one, with two chapters beforehand (currently titled "roadtrips" and "hotels") setting the stage for the actual plot. However it shakes out, it'll be fun. Think 'Iron Man,' is all I'm saying.
WOOT. I missed updating this thing. XD
Please review! Words do not describe how happy reviews make me!
