IT'S OVER 800~! Due to a homework mishap that involved me being a procrastinator, I'm not sure if I hit the 800 mark on reviews of the previous chapter or this one…either way, WOO-HOO!

Thanks to catsrae; I'm sort of scared of the Skyward Sword boss. The trials freak me out! ~ Thanks to OuranFruitsluvr; Yeah, I wish they'd kept the graphics from TP in SS…~ Thanks to SKTB; Sleep! ~ Thanks to Linira; You're very welcome. I'm glad your day was brightened. ~ Thanks to FullmetalWizard1995; Orochimaru and Ghirahim were twins separated at birth. This is my theory of awesomeness. ~ Thanks to Rachel Ray Wolf; TIGER AND BUNNY. More people need to watch that anime. It's the best thing in the world. ~ Thanks to Kyanite Archer; You can haz an account! Where do you live where you get mosquito bites in February? O.o Where I am all the bugs die off around September. I'm thinking about restarting Inkblot, actually. Stay tuned. :) ~ Thanks to TehGameBoy; Smosh FTW. I love those two. They make my day on a regular basis. ~ Thanks to SchwarzWeiss ZwillingsMonde; I used to be really good about updating. ;_; I don't know what happened to me… ~ Thanks to NiRvAnAaDvAnCiNg85; I heard that you get to design your own fighter in the new FE game…uber excited. ^_^ ~ Thanks to Tune4Toons; Oh my gosh it's sooo fun! You must play Skyward Sword! ~ Thanks to Dj-Nero; I'm glad you're happy. And I hope you enjoyed your carrot. ~ Thanks to musiccat19; Ni shou Hanyue? O0o Wo ai niiiii! Ni shi na guo ren? Long live the life of nerds. ~ Thanks to SgtPeppersLHCB; XD It seemed teenager-ish, yeah. ~ Thanks to TheOracleOfTime; Everybody thought I was dead…I'm sorry for freaking you out. ~ Thanks to Katie; WOOT. ~ Thanks to Piplupfan580; Marth is a silly person. ~ Thanks to Iwer_the_Poe-Hunter; Thank you so much. *ego swells* This site has done so much for my confidence…my gosh. XD ~ Thanks to redhazekj; I'm a person who calls everybody 'dude' as well. I KNOW THAT SONG FROM DOCTOR WHO TOO! XD Funny how that happens. It's totally not weird. :) ~ And thanks to HyperJuggernaut; I do put lots of emphasis on Marth's skills—I just think that practically, he'd have an advantage. XD They're all pretty equal, it just depends on who's using them.

So…I already did a Valentine's Day chapter focused on my main pairings, but Quincy/Nya and Pit/Angel got no love whatsoever. So I wrote about the two of them. :) Sorry if OCs aren't your cup of tea. It's mostly a filler chapter anyway. But I had fun, and I hope you enjoy reading.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, including the poem at the bottom. I ripped it off. Except for Oliver. He's mine. And Nya's mine too. :3

Please read, enjoy, and review!

Chapter 52: Single Awareness Day

Oliver reclined in his desk and ran a virus check on his computer. When it came up clean, he tapped a few keys and went through a complicated series of embedded links designed to fool any government monitoring, eventually arriving at his work email account. The psychiatrist scrolled through the unopened messages, mentally lamenting at the massive pile of paperwork that had piled up since he had last checked the inbox about three days ago. As he started tackling the most important items, he made a mental note to see if he could manage to get himself an assistant of some sort. Tax forms, at least, could be taken care of by a staffer.

The several psychological profile requests (mostly by Nintendo programmers who wanted to adhere to specific character's personalities in the next game installment) were a bit trickier, given that they were all technically confidential—not to mention that the profiles were essentially stacked in chaotic piles in various corners of Oliver's office, organized to a random system that someone had neglected to tell him.

He had never quite gotten around to reorganizing everything after Genevieve and her crew had torn through the room, grabbing anything they thought might be useful. Things had gotten mixed up between folders, large chunks of information had been lost, and given the craziness that had almost immediately followed, Oliver was mostly content to ignore the clutter as best as he could. Most of the information was stored in his mind anyway, and that was meticulously ordered.

He started flipping a pen absently in his left hand, twirling it in-between his fingers as he skimmed through a legal document. His phone suddenly ran, jerking him out of a daze. He snatched it up from its cradle, still twirling the pen.

"Hello? This is Nintendo Brawl, psychology department." He stopped, like he always did, just short of giving his own name. Let the person on the other end ask for it first. But the person didn't ask, she just laughed. The voice was melodic, and youthful. Oliver frowned, and the pen started to spin a bit faster in-between his fingers. He wanted to ask again, but at this point he didn't want to give out any more samples of his voice.

Apparently the woman on the other end didn't need any more than she already had. "Nice to hear you again," she said happily, with the air of someone talking to a long lost friend. "Long time no see, Jaden?"

"Who is this?" Oliver snapped, suddenly giving the phone his full attention. "There is no Jaden here. Could I redirect you to another department?"

"No, I think I've got the right one."

"Look, miss, my name isn't Jaden, so you've obviously got the wro—"

"What is your name then?" the woman challenged.

"…Gavin," he lied easily. "Gavin Brooks. You've got the wrong number. Let me give you the number to our help desk, they'll patch you through to whoever you need to talk to."

"You're twirling a pen, aren't you, Jaden?"

Oliver fumbled, and the pen dropped to the floor, dotting the wood with black ink. "…No. You've got the wrong number," he said quietly, and then hung up.

He started at the phone for a few minutes before dropping back onto his desk and falling into the chair with a muttered curse. After a moment, he cursed again and got up, kicking the desk as he ran both hands through his hair. The phone rang again, but he was already shrugging on a jacket over his shirt and walking out into the hallway, making his way towards the stadium to watch the Valentine's Day tournament.

xXx

"Slick," Pit chortled as an angry Quincy flung himself down in the seat next to him.

"Shut up!" the pokemon trainer cried, burying his head in his arms and resisting the urge to thwack Pit in his still-healing nose.

"Real smooth," Marth teased, clapping Quincy on the shoulder as he vaulted over the seat, a bag of caramel corn in his hand, his crown and two victory laurels perched on his head. "Letting Jigglypuff beat you like that."

"Stop it!" Quincy moaned, but the two other boys could tell that he was feeling a bit better. "It's not funny!" He lifted his head just in time to catch another replay of the moment where Squirtle had been chasing down a losing Jigglypuff, only to trip over its own feet and go rolling off the edge of the stage. "…Okay," he admitted grudgingly after a moment. "It's sort of funny."

"It was hysterical," Pit corrected. "But I'm sorry you lost."

"Here, have some," Marth said, offering Pit a handful of caramel corn and settling down to watch the Mario vs. Bowser fight.

Apparently, the organizers of the Valentine's Day tournament had been more than a little frustrated to learn that none of the popular pairings had changed over the course of a year. Repeating the same battle match-ups, they insisted, was beyond boring for the audience. And so, they had hatched a new plan. Instead of matching couples against one another, they would match rivals against one another, "competing" for their partner. The most obvious matches were Mario and Bowser over Peach, and Ganondorf and Link over Zelda (which was scheduled to be the finale). But the staffers had also gotten creative, and had come up with numerous other triangles to form, such as Zelda and Sheik over Link, or Quincy versus Jigglypuff over Pikachu. There was also a 'guns' fight, with Fox, Wolf, and Snake apparently fighting for Samus, a free-for-all with the four swordsmen thrown in just for fun, and a pair-up selected by the audience which had turned out to be Marth versus Ganondorf over Peach, which nobody really understood but everybody enjoyed. Someone in the stadium had ratted out the whole Roy/Ike/Sheik love triangle, so the two boys had been forced to fight, although it was obvious that Roy threw it. Sheik had also thrown her fight, but only Link, Ike, and Zelda had noticed. Wolf, Fox, Ike, Link, Roy, Ganondorf, and poor Quincy had all ended up losing not-on-purpose, some of them more than once. Mostly, it was crazy fun, with rivals getting to fight one another with no qualms whatsoever about going too far. Lots of showing-off, name-calling, taunting, teasing, hair-pulling, clawing—basically everything that wasn't normally allowed was allowed in the name of romance.

"Hey Pit?" Angel's voice called over the loud-speaker. Bowser had just fallen off of the stage, and they were between fights, broadcasting highlights from the matches before and gearing up for the finale. "Where's my man Pit?"

"Girlfriend is calling," Quincy droned, his bad mood sweeping back in to claim him. "Go see what she wants."

Pit shot up in his seat to hover in the air. Immediately, several cameras zoomed in to focus on him, and a staffer tossed him a microphone.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"It's Valentine's Day, right?" Angel asked. She was just visible in the operations booth, wearing a red shirt that brought out the highlights in her hair.

Pit gestured around him at the mostly pink-and-red clad spectators. "Um, yeah?"

Angel's smile was visible even from the booth. "In the name of Valentine's Day, are you up for ice cream after the tournament?"

There was a unanimous uproar from the Pit-fangirl section of the stadium, where the young girls couldn't decide if they were screaming approval or death for the teenage commentator.

Pit's face had reddened, and he flitted backward a few feet in the air, obviously stunned. "…Y-yeah," he managed to stammer into the microphone after a few seconds. "I…I'd really like that."

Quincy muttered something obscene and whacked his head into the armrest of his seat. Marth shot him a concerned look, and Quincy shook his head as Pit floated back down into his seat, shifting his T-shirt so that his wings slid back inside the slits he had cut into the back.

"Hey Marth?" the angel asked breathlessly. "Did she just ask me out?"

"What do you think, Sherlock?" Marth said wryly. "Ice cream with a girl on Valentine's Day, come on. That's about the cutest way to be asked out in the world."

"I…I don't know what to think," Pit said dazedly. "I mean…it's startling, isn't it?"

"The first time, yeah," Marth said nonchalantly with a shrug.

Quincy was still glaring into his seat cushion, but Pit hardly seemed to take notice.

"Wow, I just got asked out," Pit said again, as if he couldn't believe it.

Quincy peeled his face up out of his elbow and managed to smile at his best friend. "You'd better get ready then, huh?"

"I have to get ready?" Pit yelped, his face flushing anew with confusion. "Marth! Help me! What the heck am I supposed to do? Do I have to do something? What if she asks me to kiss her—what do I do then? How do I do anything?"

Marth shrugged. "I'm trying to remember my first date, and I don't remember it being all that eventful. Just be yourself. If you don't want to kiss, she probably won't try. Just don't worry about anything and go for it."

Pit appeared to be on the verge of hyperventilation, and suddenly bolted for the exit. The two other brawlers heard him whoop as soon as he reached the hallway. Or it may have been a scream—the acoustics made it hard to tell.

"He's like that," Quincy said miserably. "As soon as Angel Fischer comes along, he turns into a total…I don't even know—teenager. Completely blows me off, like I'm not even there."

"Hormones," Marth said wisely. "I think it's endearing." He cracked a smile. "It's sort of funny to see him freaked out. Ah…I remember when Roy was like that."

Quincy scowled.

"Not to bug you or anything, but you're sort of like that too," Marth chided gently. "With Nya? The staffer? You go a bit tunnel-vision-y too, my friend."

The pokemon trainer scrunched his shoulders. "It's just a crush," he murmured. "Nothing's ever going to happen with us. She's older than me."

"So? Sam is older than me."

Quincy sighed. "Nah. I'm pretty sure Nya doesn't think of me in a romantic way at all. I mean, I think she likes me, and I think she doesn't mind hanging out, but she's probably way more interested in the older guys, like you."

"So I'm your rival in love now?" Marth said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"I didn't mean it like that," Quincy said unhappily. "I'm not jealous or anything, I'm just not…I don't want to get my hopes up."

"She got you a hat for Christmas, didn't she? I think that says something about you and her. She didn't get anybody else a Christmas present except for you, right? Don't you think that means she's more interested in you than any of the 'older guys?'"

Quincy drew his knees up to his chest. "I know I'm being childish," he said dully. "But I'm not expecting anything from this Valentine's Day. It'll be just like the others. The holiday is only celebrated by people with something to celebrate. Everybody else just hunkers down and waits for the day to be over."

Marth rapped the pokemon trainer upside the head, knocking off his baseball cap into his lap. "You're being an idiot," the Altean said sharply. "You're fourteen, kid. It's normal for a fourteen-year-old boy not to have a girlfriend. It's normal for a fourteen-year-old boy to only have a crush. And hey, she doesn't openly despise you. Rejoice, kiddo! You're living the good life! Enjoy the moment! Do something crazy!" Marth shoved another mouthful of popcorn into his mouth. "And most of all, stop being such a downer. You're ruining my Valentine's Day buzz."

Quincy was about to respond when Samus sashayed her way through the same door that Pit had just run out of and stuck her head over Marth's seat.

"Heya," she quipped.

"Heya yourself," Marth replied, offering her up the mostly-empty popcorn bag. She grinned and rested her elbows on his shoulders, letting the pink ribbon in her hair brush against his cheek. They looked so casually…together. Relaxed. Perfect.

Quincy couldn't take it anymore. With a quiet snarl, he got up from his seat and stomped out of the stadium, leaving the roar of the crowd behind him.

It used to be so perfect. It used to be so easy. It didn't use to matter that all of the older kids were starting to dabble in the opposite sex. It was fine, and it didn't matter that Quincy had never had a girlfriend or (until recently) had barely been aware of the other gender, because Pit was equally oblivious with him. Pit was the one with charisma, Pit was the one accepted into the 'cool crowd.' Without Pit, Quincy was an outsider. He didn't have a link to the older kids the way Pit did.

He hated that he was mad at his best friend for being happy. He should be happy that Pit found a girl who liked him. Why couldn't he just be content with that?

xXx

"I can't believe you don't like chocolate ice cream!" Pit cried, throwing his hands into the air. "What's wrong with you?"

Angel laughed happily and licked her vanilla cone. "I don't know," she admitted. "I just don't like it." She paused. "I don't like coconut either."

Pit made a face. "Coconut is sort of nasty, not going to argue with you there."

"Your turn—truth or lie."

"Um…" Pit tried to think of something that would work. "…I saw Samus' underwear once."

"Lie!" Angel shouted, almost upsetting Pit's sundae as she slammed her palms down on the booth table. "That's got to be a lie!"

"Nope," Pit said smugly. "Totally true."

"Nu-uh."

"Yep."

"I've seen the boys' underwear before," Angel said shyly, taking a bite out of her sugar cone and accidentally getting ice cream on her nose. Pit offered her a napkin and was already shaking his head. "Lie. Such lies."

"I was on laundry duty before I was taken into broadcasting," Angel countered. "Wario wears monogrammed purple briefs."

"Everybody knows that," Pit rolled his eyes.

"Link has a pair of Batman boxers."

Pit snorted ice cream up his nose. "Seriously?"

"Seriously!" Angel laughed. "Sexy stuff."

Pit gagged down the chocolate syrup he had nearly choked on and finally succeeded in swallowing. "Okay, my turn."

The two of them were sitting alone in a corner of the cafeteria, after the tournament. Everybody was sort of worn out from the entire thing—usually tournaments that were less centered on points and more centered on performance were actually much more tiring than ones simply based on winning. It was just the two of them, and Pit was having a much easier time of things than he had hoped he would. Marth had obviously psyched him out—the girl thing really wasn't that hard.

"I once got shocked by lightning."

"True."

Pit nodded. "That was an easy one. Your turn."

"My favorite band is Passion Pit…?"

Pit blinked twice. "That sounds…erotic."

"It's not!" Angel insisted, her face flashing red. "It's weird, but not gross! Come on, who do you think I am?"

"I think you're cute."

Both of them started, Angel for obvious reasons, Pit because he hadn't actually meant to say that. He meant to volunteer another piece of information about himself, and that had come out instead.

There was a long silence, and then Angel looked down at her lap and said questioningly, "…True?"

Pit struggled for something that didn't sound cheesy, but then remembered what Marth had said about just going with it and said the first thing to pop into his head. "Happy Valentine's Day."

Angel looked at him with wide eyes, and then looked down at her ice cream cone and smiled. Pit felt his own mouth quirk into a grin as well. The girl thing was easy. Except…

"You're not going to kiss me now, are you?" he blurted, once again without thinking.

Angel rolled her eyes and crumpled up her napkin to throw at his face. "Not now you idiot! Way to ruin the moment!"

xXx

Quincy didn't have anything to do. He found himself walking around the hallways with Pikachu bobbing along beside him, just like the old days. He had forgotten how much he appreciated the mouse-pokemon's company. Pikachu—unlike everybody else—wasn't interested in romantic relationships. It was content to just pad around after a trainer.

He had met Nya when he was walking with Pikachu.

"—RGH!" Quincy savagely kicked a garbage can, knocking it over and spilling its contents (mostly paper) out across the floor. He glared at the mess for a minute before thinking of the poor staffer who would have to clean it up and resignedly crouching to the ground and placing all of the paper back into the waste basket.

Pikachu snuffled at his hand curiously, squeaking in a questioning tone.

"I'm okay," Quincy reassured it dully. "I'm okay." He reached out to pet the pokemon's head, and then stopped. A phrase had just tumbled into his mind, a piece of poetry. It was cheesy, and stupid, but….

"Do something crazy."

xXx

Oliver Stoelhart's phone was unplugged. He was busy; engaged in a staring match with the photograph on his bookshelf. It was of a young woman, seventeen years old in the picture, although she would be twenty-six years old now. Her hair was ivory colored, her eyes a very pale shade of blue. When he had known her, he had called her Est. Est Benignus. Latin for "is kind."

…She had called him Jaden.

He gave up, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on his hands. "Happy Valentine's Day, love," he said quietly.

There was a quiet knock on his door, and Quincy stuck his head in. "Are you busy?" he asked.

Oliver shook his head. "What's up, kid?"

"I need your help," Quincy admitted. "I'm about to do something very stupid."

Oliver smiled. "How can I help?"

xXx

Nya raised an eyebrow as she went to lie down in her bed. There was a piece of paper on her bed. Further examination revealed that it was a poem, written on the back of a program for the Valentine's Day tournament. It was entitled 'Valentine,' and read:

"Torchics are red, Mudkips are blue. If you were a pokemon, I'd choose you.

"You're more fun than Yellow or the Japanese-only Green, I know that you and I together would make the perfect team.

"Worth more than medals made out of Silver and gold, I'd drop to one knee and give you a Crystal, were I so bold.

"So much more precious than a Ruby or Sapphire, the look of your Emerald"—and here there was a note: I know your eyes are brown. Bear with me, I know it's cheesy—"eyes is all I require.

"Like the process of refining Diamonds and Pearls just more industrious, my love burns as bright as the sheen of Platinum, except more illustrious.

"My feelings are as clear as Black and White, and I know deep down that I chose right.

"Except, unlike a trainer battle, I keep getting rejected"—another note: You haven't rejected me, not really. I just think you're out of my league. Regardless…

"But all I can say to you is: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED."

-Quincy

xXx

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. Is everything you knew about Oliver a lie? Was the woman on the phone his long-lost lover? Or somebody else who knows him as Jaden? Is Jaden his real name, or is Oliver? Or are neither real? Mwahaha. Random Oliver fact of the day: he was engaged when he was eighteen-years-old, but never married.

I know the poem is wince-worthy, but hey. I wrote this thing in forty minutes (there was some confusion—the poem was not written by me. I got it off of "" (yes, such a place exists.)), cut me some slack.

This essentially summarizes my Valentine's Day experience this year. I honestly didn't get anything good, except for a LoZ related Valentine from a fellow girl-geek, which was nice, but not really…I dunno. But then somebody gave me a virtual bouquet of roses, and my day was made. I love the people on this site—you're all amazingly nice. Thank you so much everyone. ^.^

Next chapter will either be the hide-and-seek that I've been saying I would do for a month, or the beginning of the arc. Not sure which at this point. XD

In the meantime, tell somebody you love them and please review!