[Author's Notes] First real chapter up, and there's just about no chance of understanding this unless you read the prologue, so if you skipped that, hit the Back button right now. I'll wait. Done? Good. And now on to the explosive, electric, flaming, frozen, extremely well-muscled and generally not-the-type-of-thing-you-want-to-get-into-a-fight-with first chapter. Well, that's at least not a bad description of the characters. Oh, come on. Give me a break. Just read the thing, and review, if only to complain about bad jokes. Ja mata ne!
Not Exactly Unified
In all those places (except the last) there was a blazingly bright flash of darkness and everything turned inside out, only backwards.
Really.
When the effects subsided, a great many people were almost as confused as they were baffled. Unfortunately, the degree to which they were baffled was nothing compared to how much they ached. So many heroes… Let us begin with the Hylians.
Link staggered to his feet a few moments after waking up. Putting most of his weight on the Master Sword, he managed to get upright and stay there long enough to see what was around him. From there on in, shock kept him from falling over again.
The surrounding lands were covered in bright green grass, an unnatural green that looked right without feeling right. The clouds were round and fluffy, and the ground was a pleasant, sandy colour. Link had never been quite so unnerved in his life. Also, everything seemed just a little bit smaller than it should have been.
This thought and all others were immediately crushed by the awesome force that was his next realisation; namely that an astonishingly beautiful young woman that could really only be Zelda was lying on the ground in front of him. She groaned as consciousness -the good and the bad parts- returned to her.
"Where are we?" she asked, looking groggily at their surroundings. "Could this be the Sacred Realm?" Zelda turned to Link, and decided that no one with that look on their face could be listening to anyone. "Link?"
"Maybe you haven't noticed, princess," Link said, "but you're suddenly a lot older than I remember."
"So are you," she said, holding up a pocket mirror. Link stared at his older face in disbelief. "We were in the Temple of Time, remember. Perhaps one must be a certain age to enter the Sacred Realm."
"It doesn't look all that Sacred to me. I think maybe we should be going really soon before we find out what it did with Ganondolt," he suggested, and did his best to pull the princess down the path.
Link didn't have long to wait. At that moment, the King of Evil emerged from the minor foliage clad in his black armor, a menacing effect rather ruined by the small elvish boy in a green tunic that was both gripped by, and clinging upside down to, his arm. It was waving a short sword and hacking with absolutely no effect at the hard metal gauntlets.
"I will see to it that you have a particularly painful death, boy, for bringing me to this false-" and then he saw the Hero of Time.
"There's no way that I'll ever let you-" Young Link began, and then he saw Zelda. "Princess? Who's the pointy-eared guy?"
"What is-a this place?" demanded Mario. "This is-a not the Mushroom Kingdom."
"Any idiot can see that," Bowser growled. "But it is supposed to look like it, I would think. Not a trap; you aren't the type. Peach?"
"This green clashes with my dress. Can we get some decent plants over here, Toad? Hey, where's Toad?"
"Probably in-a your pocket," Luigi commented. "Why should-a we believe you didn't do this, Bowser?"
"Please. We don't need any tricks for a good battle. Our feud is an ancient game, one with rules and a very satisfying victory for both sides. Up until I lose."
"So maybe you're-a tired of-a losing," Dr Mario suggested.
"But that's not the point. Someone isn't playing by the rules here, and I intend to make that person suffer. Anyone who wants to come with me may feel free." Yoshi nodded after some consideration, but looked to see what Mario decided.
"Most-a words I 'ave ever heard-a him say at-a one time. Let's go, Yoshi. Princess?" Mario bowed to Peach and gestured for her to ride the dragon. Luigi was still uncertain.
"Work-a with Bowser?" repeated Luigi.
"We've-a done it before. Bowser knows what-a he is talking about."
"He is a villain, after all," Dr Mario agreed.
"Good-a point."
"Let's go then," said Luigi.
They set off to follow the Koopa King down the path, searching for this new enemy. Peach looked confused for a moment. She turned around in the saddle to look at the brothers.
"Is there someone extra here?" she asked.
"This isn't any planet I know, Fox."
"Falco, for the last time, we didn't crash. For one thing, there would be a lot more bits around, partially Arwing and partially us."
"Okay, fine." He made a sweeping gesture with both blue-feathered wings. "What is this place?"
"My own personal hell? Trapped in primary-colour land with only you to talk to? And where's my gun?"
"In its holster. In that tree that looks sort of like a yew. Third branch from the top." With the legendary sight of a raptor, Falco scanned the horizon, or as close as he could get. "There's something like a hill over there; if there's anything like civilisation here, I'll be able to see it."
Feeling much better with a trigger close to hand, Fox snapped the charge over to the fresh backup cell in a traditional lock 'n' load motion. "Sounds like something to do. Falco, I'm really disoriented, out of my cockpit, and have been placed on a very strange world by someone who is keeping me from my job. I feel like shooting something."
"I know the first rule is 'get to high ground'," Roy began.
"But you're smart enough to know that means we can be seen from anywhere. Don't worry about it. We're surrounded by water anyway," Marth pointed out. "We're probably safe as we can be in the circumstances."
They waited, and thought, and tried to figure out where they could be.
"Damn," Marth decided after several minutes.
"Yeah," Roy agreed.
They were still waiting and trying to think of a plan when a figure in purple and red climbed the last few stairs that circled the strangely cylindrical hill they waited on.
"All right, what's going on here?" demanded Captain Falcon. "I should be crispy pea-meal bacon right now and instead I'm in some kindergarten painting. What did you do?"
"Squire?" suggested Marth to Roy.
"One that hasn't figured out the purpose of armor?" offered Roy, but Marth had already turned toward Captain Falcon.
"I could ask you the same question, but somehow I don't think you'd be any help. I'm Marth, Prince of Altea and descendant of the hero Anri. This is Roy, leader of the Altean Knights."
"Hey," Roy said with a small wave.
"I'm Captain Falcon, greatest F-Zero racer and bounty hunter the galaxy has ever seen. You boys had better watch yourself around me."
"You think you want to take on a plate-mailed knight when you have no sword and appear to have tried to make armor out of... some kind of paint, maybe?" asked Roy.
"I think I could beat you 'armored' pansies into the ground," Captain Falcon replied as though speaking to a kid who didn't understand English too well yet.
"Like the flower?" asked Roy, slightly confused by Falcon's remark. Falcon drew his gun and shot Roy in the arm. He almost seemed surprised that it was at a low setting.
"Ow! What the hell?" yelped Roy, clutching at his arm.
"Not a squire, then. Must be a wizard of some kind," said Marth, rising to his feet. "I wasn't going to bother before, but you attack one of my Knights and I get angry."
Captain Falcon set the blaster to full power and fired a shot at Marth, who moved like he was in a strobe light and -with a sound like a winged bolt of lightning- deflected the bolt off of Falchion.
"What the-" Captain Falcon began, and aimed another shot at Marth, but at that moment the gun was blasted out of his hand. It arced almost gracefully through the air and dropped into the water, where it sank instantly.
Cap didn't notice this too much, even though it was an important loss, because the figure who had shot the weapon was now stepping between them.
"You'll live to regret that," Captain Falcon warned.
"Only if those two are more than I can handle," Samus replied. "As it is, I don't like people getting inexplicably ventilated. Now can anyone tell me what's going on?"
Marth started to explain that they didn't know either, but before he was more than a few words in a pair of short people in parkas climbed over the edge of the hill.
"Not a bad climb," said Popo as he helped Nana over the top. "No ice, no buzzard, just a flat-"
"That guy over there looks worse than a buzzard," said Nana, noticing the others before her brother. "More sadistic, too."
"Hmm. You may be right. Weird people, though. Freakishly tall."
"Your sword hand itching, Marth?" asked Roy.
"Nope."
"For the last time, I don't know where your trainer is," said a new voice.
"Pika, pika pikachu!"
"That's strange. It is now," Marth corrected himself. The Pokémon group rounded the final curve of the stairs and found themselves in the middle of a war that hadn't started yet. There was silence for a moment.
"This really can't be good," Kirby said. Immediately he regretted drawing the attention to himself (since everyone turned to see who had spoken), and prepared to jump over the edge of the grass-topped pipe that was the 'hill'. Unfortunately, that space was filled with rapidly rising Yoshi. Peach slipped out of the saddle once Yoshi landed, brushing dust off her dress.
The Mario Brothers (all three of them) and Bowser also reached the summit, via several routes. It was starting to get crowded on the pipe top, and like any compressed substance the baffled heroes were preparing to decompress with explosive force. There were various whisperings milling about aggressively.
"Okay, we've got enough people to colonize a small planet here; does someone know what's happened?" demanded Samus.
"I'm just about ready to break something if I don't get some answers," said Bowser, glaring at the clustered heroes and villains. "Surely there can't be more than two such gatherings of ignorance in the world, and we've already identified Mario and Luigi."
"What are we talking about here?" asked Fox.
"I've got a guess: who knows what's going on?"
"You're smarter than you look, Falco."
The pipe-hill shook tremendously, almost knocking off some of the people on the edges. A pointy-eared young woman who would have had 'Princess' written down the middle if you cut her in half (as Ganondorf would prefer) materialised at the edge in a shower of green sparks. She was staring over the edge, and didn't notice the crowd behind her.
"Puffballs and talking foxes and bloody elves!" screamed Samus. "What the hell is going on?!" Zelda turned around, startled.
"Oh, very well. Bring them up."
Over the edge of the pipe floated Ganondorf and the two Links, so locked in a life-or-death struggle that they didn't even notice the hovering for a few moments. They were followed by a huge ape and a little kid trying to fend him off with a bat. The combatants were placed on the surface and found that they couldn't move their feet enough to get close and attack.
"I wouldn't bother with anything of that sort, anyway," said the voice when they struggled to free themselves. "In any case, I believe you are looking for answers, aren't you? I have them all."
"All right, where are we?" demanded Marth.
"Who died and made you ruler?" snapped Bowser.
"My father," Marth replied, puzzled.
"While this is quite enjoyable, I must insist that you stay quiet for now. I will ask and answer all questions for you.
"Firstly, you are currently in My Mushroom Kingdom. I have brought you here from your respective parallel and perpendicular dimensions to what I will call, for the sake of simplicity, the real world. This place is a subsection of the transversal dimension, which connects all parallel and perpendicular existences. You yourselves are all manifest here, in various forms, on a planet called Earth. Not that it matters. What does matter is that right now, you are in my part of the universe, and I control all."
"This does not bode well," Ganondorf muttered, aware that there were worse things in existence than he, and entirely unwilling to meet any of them.
"Shut up. Furthermore, I have brought you here for my own purposes, and I don't expect any of you shall ever return. On the plus side, you won't be around to be homesick. I'm not going to be subtle here: I fully expect all of you to die within the next few days. Although, of course, there's always the possibility that you could find your way out and into My Kongo Jungle…"
"Yeah, and we're really likely to go there now that you've hinted at it," Samus snarled. "You're really going for this not-subtle approach."
"It can't be that bad. I live in the Kongo Jungle," DK said.
"And we live-a in the real-a Mushroom Kingdom, but this isn't it."
"I'm telling the truth- you have a better chance of survival there than here. Of course, if you want, you could live off berries for the rest of your lives. Oh, wait, there aren't enough. And you'd still be dead, eventually. I win no matter what."
"So why not kill us now?" asked Kirby, defiantly.
"Shutupshutupshutupshutup!" hissed Roy.
"Alas, you have named the one thing I cannot do. Warp space? All very well. Halt time? To a degree. But killing you would cause something of a power feedback that… why am I telling you, anyway? I'm starting to sound like the secret villain who tells the hero about his world-destroying bomb and the deactivation sequence right before turning on the kill-o-matic…" The voice sighed, wearily, and then it was gone.
The sky began to darken as the sun reached the horizon. The heroes and villains looked around uncertainly, not much less confused than they were before.
"Well," said Marth, demonstrating his occasional astonishing ability to say exactly the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time in the worst possible way (moderately cheerfully, in this case). "We'd better set up a camp or something." Then he rubbed his hands together (no one knows why anyone does this; the perpetrators seem to believe that they are somehow improving morale and creating an urge to do heavy lifting by this motion).
Bowser turned, slowly, and gave Marth a venomous, withering glare.
"And you think we're going to listen to you, do you?"
"Yeah," said Cap Falcon, "I'm getting tired of being ordered around."
"Shut up, you slimy excuse for a bounty hunter. I doubt you could think hard enough to survive here on your own anyway," Samus muttered.
"Oh, so I suppose you're saying there's something wrong with mercenaries, huh?" demanded Falco, ruffling his feathers.
"Actually, I am-" a bounty hunter, she meant to continue, but Falco thought he had his answer and didn't like it much. He expressed this through the subtle and cunning method of a full-body tackle.
"Pikachu!" screamed the thunder mouse, who had been caught under Samus as she fell, and he struck them both with lightning, as well as several bystanders. Then everything went to hell very quickly and efficiently.
Ness had been disoriented enough for his own tastes when he had been dropped into some sort of cartoonish world and run into and angry monkey. Being picked up and used as a bludgeon by said monkey was not his idea of improvement. Zapping DK with psychic power, he slipped from the ape's grasp and attempted to get out of the fray. It was impossible to clear a path for more than a second or two, so Ness settled for smacking anything that got near him with his bat.
Link, in the meantime, was sharing guard duty of Zelda with his younger self, sword clanging off of armor, scales, and some of the oddest forms of shields he had ever seen. Behind them, Zelda was watching the battle with increasing anger.
"Stop it!" she yelled, but it was lost in the rage of battle. "I… SAID…" Power flowed through her, and light exploded in all directions. The wave blasted outward and knocked over the combatants, as well as causing some very impressive lighting effects. "STOP IT!"
"I hate to sound cliché," said Zelda, once she had everyone's attention and the ground had stopped shaking, "but we won't survive long with everyone at everyone else's throats. Here and now, we either split up and hope we're all strong enough to make it on our own, or we travel as one. Personally, I think that any villain –I'm not talking to you, Ganondorf, sit down and shut up- can be beaten if you find their weakness. So unless someone has a better plan, let's find out what that weakness is and get the hell back to our own worlds."
The fighters thought this over a bit. "I suppose," Bowser admitted, "she does raise a good point. Very well. Let us return to the Mushroom Kingdom together, Mario. Until that time I set aside our feud."
"This princess is right- Pichu, that means no frying," said Mewtwo.
"Bite me," Pichu suggested.
"You can speak English?"
"I doubt it. Never really tried before, I suppose."
"More likely it's related to being here instead of home," said Pikachu.
"Okay, so who's the leader?" asked Falco, sceptically.
"Sure as hell not him," said Samus, jerking her thumb at Cap Falcon.
"No one," called Popo from everyone else's waist height. "There are only a couple dozen of us; we decide by consensus." A chorus of agreement went up, ranging from 'Perfect' to 'Good plan' to 'Ah, why the heck not?'
In the silence of the night, with all the Smash Bros encircling a fire, Samus was bandaging her arm when she noticed the monkey apparently brooding over something as he stared into the flames.
"What's up?"
"Just wondering what's happening to Diddy and Daisy without me," he muttered. "Are they okay? What if K Rool…"
"Well, one more reason to get out of here soon, I guess. Although I doubt anything at all will happen without us. Probably some sort of time stasis, or else he'd get temporal instabilities when-"
"Hey, I'm just an ape, okay?"
"Right." Samus' gaze took in the rest of the warriors, most of whom were lost in their thoughts. When she glanced at Marth he quickly looked away, winning the Samus Aran Most Well-Failed Attempt At Nonchalance Award. Within the privacy of her helmet, Samus laughed a bit, very quietly.
"You're a pretty good fighter," she commented. "Strong, fast- but not much technique. I could teach you a bit."
"Really?" asked DK. "Thanks. When can we start?"
"What's the absolute minimum amount of sleep you can function with?"
"Six or seven hours, I guess."
"I'll wake you up in five."