Every head turned in their direction. At first, they were puzzled--some even looked annoyed--but when they noticed the dirty, bloody ones who had gone missing, they were surprised. Marth glared at Ganondorf, who glared back. How he wanted to teach that piece of trash a lesson...but things had to be explained first.
A mixture of surprised cries rang from the gaping audience.
"What the--!?"
"Link! What happened to you!?!"
"Zelda! Are you alright?"
"I don't believe it...."
Master Hand appeared from his spot around the arena, clearly wondering what the commotion was. Marth had no idea when he actually saw the five of them standing there, because he said nothing at first. But after a small wait, muttering in a low voice but still loud enough for them to hear over the din, "You have finally found the missing ones?" Marth nodded, still glaring at Ganondorf.
Master Hand hovered into the middle of the arena. The three fighters--Kirby, Mewtwo, and Donkey Kong--had paused and were craning their necks to see what was going on (although Kirby had no neck and Mewtwo merely glanced out of the corners of his eyes with his body still facing the other two). "Stop the match!!!" He turned to the three finalists. "Return to the lobby and then rejoin us in the audience with the rest."
They pressed some buttons on the devices on their wrists and were soon warped off Final Destination. A few moments later, the Teleporter reopened in the stands, and the three of them walked out.
"Roy, Link, and Zelda have rejoined us," Master Hand announced. He turned to Marth and Samus. "Care to fill us in?"
"We don't have a whole lot of time," Marth explained quickly. "I had a sudden idea this morning, and Samus and I looked for them in an underground cave. They were there. They'd been there for days."
"Courtesy of him!!" Roy shouted, pointing at Ganondorf. All heads turned in Ganondorf's direction. He ignored them and shifted his glare from Marth to Roy. "He's the one responsible for all of the kidnappings and whatever else bad has happened while we've been gone!"
Master Hand turned slowly to Ganondorf. "Do you admit this is true?"
Ganondorf remained silent. Marth didn't wait for an answer. "We need everybody to leave the entire academy! This place is going to be rubble in a few minutes! He's sent Battlefield on a collision course with Final Destination!"
Few people seemed to understand, but Master Hand understood plenty. "We leave. Everybody, take no time to pack anything unless it is absolutely necessary. You will return to your old dimensions. If time is too short, we will all head to the Mushroom Kingdom. It is very regrettable, but necessary for survival. Unless we can stop this," he added, turning again to Ganondorf. "Tell us how this can be stopped."
"Very simple," Ganondorf replied, now glaring at Marth again. "I choose to stop it, and it stops."
"Then stop it," Master Hand commanded. Ganondorf didn't move. "Now."
"Do you think you can threaten me, great hand?" Ganondorf retorted, finally taking his eyes off of Marth. "Do you think you can defeat me? I have power even you know nothing of. I am not changing anything. And they--" Ganondorf tilted his head at the mass of people congregated near the Teleporter-- "aren't going anywhere."
"What, you want to take us all at once?" Falco snapped, stepping forward. "You really are insane, aren't you?"
"Insane?" Ganondorf responded. "No. And I'm not going to take you on all at once. I'd rather...sit back and enjoy the show."
He stood up and approached the invisible barrier protecting the stands. His hands glowed with dark power, and he reached through it as if it wasn't even there. He kicked off from the ground, using dark magic to propel himself forward, until he finally reached Final Destination. He turned to the people watching in the stands.
"Yes, will you come and fight or will you flee? Either way, as I see it, you die. Pick whichever death you prefer. It matters not to me."
"You want a fight?" Marth called. "Fine. Let me over there, and I'll show you what I've been waiting to give you for a long time."
Ganondorf seemed to consider it. Then, he raised his hand, and dark energy glowed from it, creating an orb of black. It began rotating, creating a vortex, almost like a vaccuum. Marth was lifted off his feet and started drifting towards the barrier. After he had gotten over the initial shock, he steeled himself to go through the barrier.
Dark magic had covered him and was now making him glow with a black aura. He slipped through the barrier just as Ganondorf had--as if it wasn't even there--and soon came to a stop, floating on the other side of the arena. The dark magic was released, and he dropped onto his feet.
"I've always enjoyed a little one-on-one battle," Ganondorf said, smirking. "First that pest, Link, and now a new thorn in my flesh. As a matter of fact, I can't even remember your name. How am I supposed to tell the people I will rule very shortly about the blue-haired fool who challenged the King of Evil?"
"Then perhaps I should enlighten you," Marth said, holding his sword outstretched in front of him in a challenging manner. "Marth, Prince of Altea. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
"They are all so very foolish," Ganondorf muttered, his smirk growing wider. "Do not think you can run," Ganondorf announced loudly to the crowd in the stands, who had not left in favor of seeing what would happen next. "I think you will find that there will be some enemies of yours there to greet you, and they shall ensure that not a one of you makes it to safety."
Marth looked at Samus, Roy, Link, and Zelda. All of them were staring at him with wide eyes.
"You help everybody else with the Wire Frames," he called to them. "Watch over them. Alright?"
Samus nodded. She gave one last look at Marth, then swept to the front of the crowd and started giving orders. Link reluctantly followed her and aided her in helping the escaping fighters. Roy and Zelda remained behind.
"You will be okay, right, Marth?" he asked.
No, he wouldn't. He knew he was going to his death and that battling Ganondorf may be meaningless after all. But he was going to make sure that evil like him never escaped into the world again, and he didn't want his last memory of Roy to be of a scared and worried boy. "Yes," he answered, forcing the word out. "But it doesn't matter. Make sure everybody gets out okay, and it won't matter what happened to me. Just so long as he--" Marth glanced at Ganondorf-- "doesn't get away. Now go. Help your friends."
Roy looked like he wanted to say something else, but nodded like Samus had and headed for the Teleporter, which was mostly clear from the fighters. Zelda and Mewtwo remained, one watching the scene with a look of terror in her eyes and the other staring hard at the two of them as if trying to think of a solution.
"I have always enjoyed one-on-one," Ganondorf repeated, "so let's make sure that we are not interrupted."
At an unspoken command, a giant bubble appeared around the arena. Marth couldn't see out of it very well; everything was oddly distorted and twisted, like a reflection in a pool of water. He knew the barrier would prevent anybody from entering or leaving, as if anybody could have made it over to the floating arena anyway.
"It's just us, kid," Ganondorf said, his arms crossed. "Just the two of us. You'll be receiving no help on this one."
"How did you do it all?" Marth asked. "The kidnappings, the planning...how'd you do it?"
"As much as I'd love to start fighting," Ganondorf said, "I can't resist spilling the beans to someone. Just too tempting.
"I didn't much appreciate being called into an entirely new dimension. I escaped from the prison that stupid girl, Zelda, sealed me into a little earlier than I expected, but as such, I was weak. I was almost nothing. My power was gone. I was exhausted, barely able to even survive. I knew I couldn't attempt anything...big...for a long time. Several years, at least. But then that invitation to the Super Smash Bros. arrived, and my curiosity got the better of me. What was I to do, anyway, barely clinging on to life? So I accepted the invitation.
"At first, I hated every moment of it. I was in the midst of pests. I was right in the middle of a group of clumsy, unskilled heroes who had somehow managed to save their own dimensions from danger of some sort. And then imagine my surprise to learn that...that boy and Zelda were also there. I was furious. Weak and without power, thrown into a den of beasts ready to slaughter me, my situation looked hopeless.
"But I discovered something shortly after arriving in this dimension. My power was returning. I was rejuvenated. Something about this place, its very air, seemed to give me strength. I realized that at the current rate my power was returning to me, I might be able to attempt something, well...big. Like I said before. And how I wanted revenge on those two children for making a fool out of me and ruining every plan I had laid out...." His face had turned into an expression of complete hatred.
"But the question was how. I knew that I couldn't simply barge into their rooms and kill them. Surrounded by so many other little friends to bail them out, it would be like kissing death. So I kept my word. I had promised I would never do anything bad or evil. I had to. There was no alternative. It would have been quite easy to kill them in a matter of seconds. I almost couldn't resist temptation a few times...but it's lucky for me that I did. I didn't have a plan, so I started developing one. For them to be that close but not to seize the opportunity in front of me would be stupid. So for awhile, I spent my time in the library. This didn't seem too out of place, as I preferred solitude anyway. But it wasn't until recently that I stumbled upon the book that gave me the whole idea."
Marth wanted to call him a monster. He wanted to tell him how absolutely horrible and monstrous he was, talking about murdering a couple of innocent people like he was doing it over tea. But the story enthralled him, and though he knew he was probably wasting his time which he could be spending to kill Ganondorf, he decided to stay his sword hand for a just a few more minutes.
"I had been spending an awful lot of time in the library--the entire time I've been here, in fact--and never found anything. I was discouraged when I picked up that book, and I flipped through the pages expecting to see nothing. But then some secrets were revealed to me, such as the vulnerability of the floating heap of metal we're standing on now." Ganondorf tapped the arena with his foot twice to emphasize his point. "All these secrets, but I didn't know what to make of them. Like a puzzle where you have all the pieces, but you don't know where to start. But eventually...I started with the first piece.
"Battlefield could be sent into Final Destination to make it explode. The balls of energy keeping these arenas afloat are based on a sort of magical energy. I tapped into it with my own energy and commanded Battlefield to change its course and to lock onto Final Destination. I knew this from before, but what good was it? Hope that Link and Zelda were battling on this arena? And again, I waited. I've waited a long time for this, you see, and I will not see it fail.
"A few weeks later, Master Hand announced the Ultimate Tournament. I did some digging and discovered that the last match was on Final Destination. It was all perfect. Too good to be true. Every hero, every person who could stop me, was gathered in one spot. I could kill them all at once, and then there would be no one left to stop me!"
Marth could see the insane glint in his eyes. Only a lunatic could say something like that. "That is absolutely not true," he said, glaring at Ganondorf. "Someone else would come along, and you know it. You would be stopped, regardless."
"With the Teleporter destroyed and me with more knowledge and power than I've ever had? Unlikely. But that's naturally too much for a mind like yours to understand. So, continuing my explanation before you interrupted--you did want to hear it, did you not?--all I had to do was wait. Wait until the last round. To make it seem less suspicious, I entered myself. I intentionally lost halfway through to that hairy brute, Donkey Kong, so that I wasn't on Final Destination myself when the time came. I would be too pressed for time, changing Battlefield and getting ready at the same time, and much harder to leave quietly. None of you noticed how I paused and let him hit me with several obvious moves? I could have beaten him in a second, but knew it would be foolish to do so. It was humiliating, but necessary."
"What about the stolen weapons?" Marth asked. "What were you intending to do with those?"
"Really? Nothing," Ganondorf replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "Nothing at the moment, anyway. If the whole place really was going to be buried in rubble, I supposed I had better take some treasures with me. Falco's weapons went first--they interested me the most. I could learn how they worked with technology so far beyond our own. I admit it was rather funny, watching the idiot fuming about his lost items," he added, smirking. The urge to lunge at him spiked, but he suppressed it enough to make it look like a small twitch. "The night I stole them didn't go as well as I had planned. I crept down the stairs when everybody else had gone to bed. I checked in the kitchen, but there was nobody there. I felt a little...cocky then. As secret as I had to be, I couldn't help but leave a mark. So I decided to sneak into the kitchen and steal something to eat. I got clumsy and knocked a pot off the counter. I didn't think much about it until you came sticking your nose in."
"I never saw anyone there," Marth said slowly. "I checked thoroughly. I thought it was Kirby."
"Once again, you underestimate the powers of darkness," Ganondorf sighed. "I cloaked myself and hid away in a corner. Had you turned on the lights and looked a little closer, you might have noticed something out of place and discovered me." Ganondorf seemed to consider something for a moment. "If you had, you'd have been the first to mysteriously disappear. And then I likely would be far, far away, not even standing and having this conversation with you. But back to the subject at hand, which we seem to be constantly wandering off of, once you had left, I crept out of the kitchen and hurried toward the bird's room. He was sound asleep. I probably could have tipped his bed upside down and he wouldn't have felt a thing, lucky for me. Stealing his weapons was an easy matter.
"I was planning my next burglary over the days. At night, I would always sneak out into the library and try to learn more, see if I could refine my plan. And one night, I encountered a little trouble."
"The night you kidnapped Roy," Marth concluded.
"Kidnapping was never on my to-do list," Ganondorf muttered, scowling. "I was stealing as much as I could get away with. Other than that, it was an easy wait until the final battle. But your stupid little friend seemed to decide he wanted to take a nighttime stroll...through the library. At first, I thought it was you again, pestering me yet again. I kept silent, hoping he wouldn't come up the stairs or notice anything out of place. Unfortunately, he did come up the stairs, and he did notice something out of place. He passed by the row I was hiding in and asked me what I was doing. He didn't seem to think it was me at first, but he became suspicious when I didn't say or do anything. It took him a few moments, but he finally worked it out, and that was when I attacked. I had the element of surprise on my side, so he went down quietly and easily. I bound and gagged him and immediately started looking for a place to hide him. It was...very hard. Very frustrating, knowing that your time and options were limited. Nowhere in the building would do, so I searched for a spot outside. After a long time--I don't know how long, but it felt like a couple of hours at least--I found what looked like a cave. I followed it through and discovered that it led under the building. There was even an exit into the academy itself. It was perfect. I could hide him safe and sound without worrying about him creating noises or alerting anybody, and I could reach him easily.
"It was really going downhill from there. The missing weapons were one thing; a missing person was another. People were really starting to worry, starting to get suspicious. Such as you, for starters. I decided to sneak into the library to be by myself and read up on some more history when I heard low voices. Curious, I crept over to the table you, Link, and Samus were sitting at. I cloaked myself once more and listened in. You put together a little search party, correct?" Marth didn't answer the question. "It doesn't matter. Now I was especially cautious. Not one, but three annoying people onto my trail, and one of them my worst enemy, although you certainly are competing with him. I had to be even more careful and plan my next theft carefully."
Marth thought for a bit. "Samus's things?"
"I was also fascinated by her Power Suit. I could possibly use it to help further my goals, and just to make sure Samus was even worse off, I took her Zero Suit, too. That was harder. I had to wait until she left her room for a long time, snooping around just like you, before I went in and stole it. It's difficult, trying to carry something that large through the halls without being spotted. Luckily, nobody saw me, so I managed to carry it down to the basement and sneak it into the caves."
Marth made a mental note of the location. If, by some miracle, I can survive this, he thought. And stop the catastrophe.
"That same day, I learned that, after the third round, Link was heading off somewhere outside the academy. This worried me. Did he know of the cave? I knew I had to follow him and make sure he didn't do anything that might, well, cause some trouble. I then discovered that he was taking Zelda with him. I had no idea why, but I followed them anyway."
"He was just going on a walk with her," Marth stated flatly.
"I didn't know or care entirely what the reason was. I just had to tail them. They stopped near the pond and started talking to one another. I thought I was well hidden, but apparently not hidden enough. Zelda noticed something in the woods, and I had no choice but to leap out and attack Link. What would they think, seeing their worst enemy watching them from the shadows? I knocked Link down by surprise and started on Zelda, but the boy has more in him than I gave him for. He got back up and started attacking me, stubborn fool that he is. And as I remember seeing you, once again, traveling with them up to a certain point, I wondered if you'd be coming back. I had to end it quickly."
"So you pulled a cheap and dirty move and threatened to kill Zelda," Marth finished.
"Yes. It worked. He stopped attacking immediately. He didn't even move or try to block me when I knocked him unconscious. I bound and gagged them as well, and fortunately, Zelda didn't put up too much of a fuss, probably fearing for her beloved hero. He made a very stupid choice. He should have let her die and killed his worst enemy, then told everyone what had happened."
"I'm not even going to try to explain it to you," Marth muttered through his teeth. "That'd be too much for you to understand."
"It matters not. They joined Roy underneath the academy, and I hustled back before anybody realized anything was up. On the way back to my room, I passed by you and realized what a pain you'd be. I needed to get rid of you. Making you disappear was going to be tough, though. You can't just burst out and attack; you need an opportunity. And that opportunity came when you decided to spend a little time in Multi-Man Melee.
"I have full control of the Wire Frames now. The cores keeping them together, keeping them alive, are connected to the core of energy in Battlefield. So all I needed to do was tap into it a bit early and tell the Wire Frames to obey me and me only. I watched you in the Multi-Man Melee room. After a bit of tinkering, I managed to disable your Home Bracelet and the blast lines, so you couldn't escape and you couldn't return peacefully. Then I toyed with the system a little more and turned the Wire Frames into their Cruel mode. I left you, certain you would die. But somehow, you escaped. I don't quite know how and I don't particularly care now, either. But I failed my chance then, and I was boiling.
"I decided to play it low for awhile. I had caused so many strange things to happen that it would be dangerous now to attempt something else. Awhile later, however, I received some truly joyous news; you had caught the criminal. So you thought, anyway. You thought you were all safe again. You honestly believed Bowser was smart enough to commit such crimes?" He sneered, staring Marth intently in the eyes. "But I was off the hook again, so I decided to continue my thefts. I stole Fox's weapons, as they were slightly different from Falco's. At that time, it was too late for you to discover who was really behind it all. I thought I had done it.
"The day came--today, in fact. Today was the day I was going to kill all of the people who could oppose me in one blow. I stayed down in the cave to set up Wire Frames as guards just in case an idiot such as yourself would ever find them at the last second. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing." Ganondorf's proud smirk had turned into a scowl of complete hatred. "In the middle of setting things up, your little friend Samus discovered us. I couldn't let her get away with the information or tell whoever was on the other end of that device--you, I assume--anything, so I fought her. And I won. My power has truly returned to me. She became a fourth prisoner, and I set off towards Battlefield. Nobody was even in the building. They'd all gotten seats early for the final battle. I altered the course of Battlefield, then went back down and joined the rest in the stands, pretending like I was just as interested to see the battle.
"And then you meddled one last time. You stopped the match, the four prisoners with you. That forced me to change my plan quite a bit. Your friends are now fighting a horde of Wire Frames, including that giant one you somehow found a way past, and you...you are fighting me. Are you happy now? You've heard the whole story. What are you going to do with this knowledge?" He paused. His smirk had returned. Marth honestly had no idea what he was going to do; could Battlefield be stopped? Could Ganondorf be defeated? And could he even escape the arena he was on? The bubble-like barrier was as thick as it had been went it had started, and how was he supposed to make it back to the stands anyway?
"It doesn't matter anymore," Marth said. "So long as a creature as terrible as yourself is destroyed, never to cause trouble again, I'll be fine. You have no heart."
"What does one even need a heart for besides to pump blood?" Ganondorf asked. "Everybody seems to think love helps. It doesn't. Had love not gotten in the way of Link's decisions, I might be defeated, you'd be enjoying the tournament celebration like you should be, and everything would be back to normal."
"You're only proving how insane and twisted you are," Marth growled, his voice trembling with rage. "It doesn't even bother you? It doesn't bother you to watch others in pain? It doesn't bother you to watch things get destroyed and ruined?"
"Not a bit."
Marth had heard enough. Sword raised, he leapt at Ganondorf and took the first swing.