Days passed. Roy did not come back.

Which, of course, naturally meant that, without a shadow of a doubt, something bad had happened to Roy. Nobody moped for two days straight. Not even if they just lost at a tournament.

Marth definitely suspected foul play. And more than that, probably a betrayal from one of the fighters right inside the school. After all, the only people inside the Linking Dimension were the fighters, Master Hand, and Crazy Hand (who Master Hand seemed to want to keep away at all costs for some reason).

He had given up looking for him after a search everywhere in the Linking Dimension turned up nothing. Roy had not gotten himself killed somehow--Marth shuddered at the thought--and there was a very unlikely chance that he had gotten lost. All fighters were given specific instructions on how to return to the academy if they got lost. There were even signs planted here and there and everywhere across the dimension. Nobody could stay lost for two days.

And it all made sense, of course: There was a crime committed before Roy's disappearance which showed the presence of some twisted mind. Roy had gotten captured. Whether he found out too much or if there was another reason behind it, he didn't know. But Roy was not coming back on his own.

Marth had dropped the whole missing weapons thing. He was no longer looking for weapons or even a missing person; he was looking for a kidnapper and a thief. The person behind the mess, not the mess itself. You can clean up a messy room, but if somebody keeps making it messy at the same speed you're cleaning it, you'll get nowhere. The person had to be stopped first. And from that person Marth could gain the information he needed on the "mess."

There were twenty-four fighters inside the academy. That was a lot of possibly guilty people. Marth knew, of course, that he hadn't done anything, so that lowered it to twenty-three. Still a high number.

Marth sat in a chair in the kitchen. It was evening at the end of the second day of Roy's disappearance. He was the only one in the kitchen, which helped because he could think better. He had already tried the cooks' room again, looking for clues he might have missed, like shoeprints or anything that could be traced to another person. He came up with nothing. He supposed it didn't help that Peach was constantly cleaning every room in the academy before the academy's automatic cleaning system did the job for her. In fact, Master Hand had neglected the system in favor of Peach.

How many crime scenes are there? Marth wondered. One: The kitchen. I've already checked there. Two: Roy's room. Was he taken in the night, or did he wander off somewhere? Three: Falco's room. Marth grimaced. I'll have to get around Falco himself first. I'd better start at scene two.

Marth stood up and walked out of the kitchen. His goal was Roy's room. He had to find anything; a sign of a struggle, a shoeprint, a piece of the kidnapper's clothing...anything. He hurried his pace up the stairs and turned into Roy's room.

The room had been left virtually untouched since Roy's disappearance. The bedsheets were still crumpled up on the bed. Marth analyzed them carefully. If Roy had been struggling when he was taken, the bedsheets would be much more of a mess. Unless, of course, the kidnapper was smart and made the bedsheets look natural. From the looks of it, he wasn't carefully lifted from the bed, either, because the bedsheets would probably be less of a mess. Somewhere in the middle. Roy got out of bed himself.

Which opened up another possibility: Roy may have gone somewhere else when he was taken. Late at night, he wouldn't be up for any of the stadium games. The best bets were in the kitchen for a snack, in the library to calm down, in the lobby to relax, and outside for some fresh air. More places on Marth's to-do list. At least he was making progress.

He still hadn't checked Falco's room. He hoped Falco was in a good mood today. It would make things easier. He checked around Roy's room for any stains, pieces of clothing, signs of a struggle...he found nothing. Feeling as though he was being too nosy, he pushed the feeling aside and checked his shelves and drawers to see if anything else was stolen. He didn't know what Roy had, so he figured it was pretty useless.

He did, however, find that the Sword of Seals was gone. Was it just a souvenir from the crime? Or had there been another purpose for it? He decided to think about it later and check Falco's room.

"Hey, Marth. Find anything?"

So Falco wasn't in the mood to argue. That made things easier. He was lounging on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

"About your weapons, no. But I did come in here to search for more clues. Our perpetrator was here, you know."

Falco sighed and stared at the ceiling again. "Go ahead. I already checked, though. I don't think it takes much work to pick up an item and carry it somewhere else. You don't even need to touch anything besides the items themselves."

"What about footprints?"

"Checked."

"Stains?"

"Besides that mysterious green thing growing in the corner of my room, checked."

"Anything else stolen?"

"Checked that, too. Just my weapons."

The perpetrator was clever. And also out with a mission in mind. Whoever was committing the crimes was not doing them for the thrill of being naughty. There was a plan in mind, Marth was sure of it. The weapons meant something. Falco's weapons, Roy's sword....

Instinctually, Marth reached for Falchion. It was still there. He wondered if it would be there the next day.

"Keep checking, then," Marth said, then left the room.

I need a search party, he thought. One person couldn't do the job well enough. He thought of the possible people he could get to check. Link, perhaps. He had a growing friendship with Samus. He also wanted it to be secret. They could have certain codes or something if one of them were caught. It could work. The idea grew on him, and he went to Link's room.

"I want you to come down to the library with me," he said. Before Link could say anything else, he went to Samus's room and said the same thing. He hurried downstairs to the library, found a table at the very back of the room, and waited the few seconds for the other two to make it.

The library was one of the places he wanted to check. He scanned the rows of bookshelves, looking for something. He couldn't see much from a wooden table, but he hoped to find something. A book on the ground. Maybe a hidden message from Roy inside. If he was really under attack, he wouldn't have time to write a message, though. But he still hoped for signs of a scuffle.

Link and Samus walked down to the table and sat down. Marth was still amazed at how tall Samus was; she towered over the other women in the academy and was almost taller than Marth himself. Ganondorf and Donkey Kong had some competition. (Of course, in the width department, she was in a class by herself.)

"Well," Samus said, "I take it from the fact that we're at the very back of the library in the farthest corner that you want this meeting to be secret."

"Kind of," Marth said. He lowered his voice to a murmur. "I found some more clues about Roy's disappearance. Well, not clues, exactly, but possible arrows that might point us in the right direction. I checked in his room. I thought by the looks of it, he may have gone somewhere else when he got captured. His bedsheets weren't neat enough for him to have been lifted carefully in his sleep, and if there was a scuffle, the bedsheets would be messier and the room would likely be a wreck."

"What if it was a smart criminal?" Link asked. "He could have put everything back."

"There would probably be something he missed," Marth countered. "Scuffed-up mark on the carpet. Maybe blood if there was violence involved. Something small knocked off the shelf. I checked, and there was nothing there."

Marth stood up in preparation for pacing around. Samus reached across the table and pulled him back down.

"It's not going to be that much of a secret if we're getting up and walking all around the library," she said. "And for all we know, it wasn't a man who did it. A woman might have done it as well."

"I know, I'm just using 'he' as an example," Marth mumbled.

"And have you ever considered that nobody took Roy at all?" she continued. "Maybe he took the weapons and fled from guilt or because he thought he was close to getting discovered."

Marth thought about it. The bedsheets were as if Roy had simply gotten up and walked out of bed. Also, only his Sword of Seals was missing. The one thing he absolutely couldn't leave behind if he left.

"But why would he take the weapons?" Marth asked. He felt the urge to get up and pace around again but resisted it. "Roy's our friend. He's one of the good guys. It wouldn't make sense for him to commit a crime out of the blue and then run."

It was a possibility, though. An unlikely one, and one that couldn't be true, but the thought lingered in Marth's mind.

"I still don't think that's likely," Marth said. "Maybe it's true, but if that's the case, then, like Falco said, he could always just get some more weapons back in his dimension, and if Roy really is guilty, then maybe we shouldn't worry about him leaving." He tried to push the thought away and focus on another subject. "I think someone took him, and let's focus on that for now. I think he went somewhere else and then got captured. The library was one of the places I was planning on checking."

"Maybe he went to the kitchen to get some coffee," Link suggested. "We all know he likes it, and at one in the morning or whenever he got up, it would seem appropriate."

Marth nodded. "Still bummed about losing and unable to sleep...makes sense. But anyway, let's form a search team. Just the three of us. In secret."

"Aren't we already looking?" Link asked.

"It's more than that," he continued. "We could have a set of codes or something. If one of us got captured, we could leave a code. Or leave a hint for a secret meeting. In fact, it might be a good thing if one of us got captured. Then we could point the others in the right direction."

Link frowned. "I don't think a code's going to do much good if you're unconscious."

"That's why we have to work it out. But we could do undercover work and all sorts of things. It would be a lot more effective than just looking around rooms and asking basic questions."

Samus grinned. "I can do sneaking around. Did I ever tell you about the time I head to infiltrate a Space Pirate mother ship without my Power Suit?"

"No. But let's save that for later. What should we call ourselves?"

A handful of names were thrown around. The Seekers. The Searchlights. Eventually, they settled on Trackers. They weren't necessarily "tracking" anything, but Link said it sounded spy-like and that it fit the group. So Trackers it was.

"I'll come to you guys whenever there's going to be another meeting," Marth said. "But in the meantime, do what you can to see who's the culprit behind all this. And from now on, let's call the person we're looking for Mastermind. It feels appropriate to give our target a name." Marth grinned. "Okay. Meeting adjourned."

Marth wanted to stay and look around the library. The other two got up and left, apparently heading for other destinations and searching for clues. Marth thought about the meeting. He thought it went over well. Three beat one, that was for sure.

Who could be the culprit...or Mastermind? Roy wasn't it. That much was certain. It couldn't be him. How many sinister people were at the academy? Bowser and Ganondorf. The first two people that came to mind when he thought of evil acts. They seemed too big and power-reliant to go for sneaky acts, though. They'd much rather blow everything up to get what they wanted rather than to sneak around at night. Who was good at sneaking?

Marth remembered what Samus said. "I can do sneaking around." Was Samus Mastermind? Of course not. Like Roy, Samus was a friend. What evil motive would she have?

Nonetheless, Marth decided to keep an eye on her. He got up and began looking around the library. He wandered through the rows, looking for a book on the floor, a torn page, a lopsided book, or anything out of place. It wasn't until the second floor when he found a book lying on the floor in the Super Smash Bros. section, where Master Hand wrote down histories and biographies for the fighters, past and present, and catalogued discoveries and the past of the Linking Dimension. He bent down, picked the book up, and looked at the title. The Linking Dimension. He opened it up and flipped through the pages quickly.

I'll come back to this and read it later, he decided. He set the book back on the shelf and walked out of the library to go check in some of the other rooms.