On The Road To Ruin, Or Possibly Kongo Jungle
Kirby was a creature of habit. Most of his habits included vacuuming up any food within reach and falling asleep in battle. But another was waking up in time to see the sun rise every morning, just in case it had become edible during the night.
Now he sat at the edge of the pipetower, waiting in the paleness before dawn, and watching the orange woman try to teach the monkey technique.
"Okay, that's good, but if you curve your hand just a little, you'll have a better chance of not breaking anything. You see, the bone structure-"
"Just an ape," DK interjected.
"Right. Try it again."
Fox rolled over in his uneasy sleep. Kirby reached out instinctively and shoved him back before he rolled right over the edge.
"This just won't work," said Samus, eventually. In the time it took for DK to try one of the complicated techniques he was supposed to be learning, Samus had tied his feet together with the Grappling Beam and was now sitting on his head.
"Sorry," said DK, looking up at the bounty hunter.
"It's not your fault," she assured him. "I'm not thinking right. I need to teach in a different way. You're smart for an ape, I can tell you that much, but…"
"I know, I know. Don't think I don't know most people are a lot smarter than me," said DK, wearily. "Hey, what's spandex boy want?" Samus turned to see Captain Falcon coming up behind them, grinning in a rather repulsive way.
"Hi there. I see you're trying to show this monkey a bit of skill. Maybe later you could show me something too," he suggested, his grin grating on Samus a little more every moment.
"I thought you and I had a sort of you-stay-away-from-me-I-don't-waste-you agreement," said Samus. To his credit, this didn't shake Cap in the least.
"Well, maybe yesterday just started out wrong. And last night I had this dream-" Suddenly aware of where he was going with this, Samus spun around and delivered a textbook crescent kick to Cap's helmeted head. It turned him around and lay him flat out on the ground.
A foot planted firmly on the small of his back, Samus leaned over and said "You say one thing about liking girls with spirit and I fire a missile right up-"
"Hey, cool down," said DK. Samus let out a deep breath and realised he was right. Even Falcon might be necessary if they were going to get out of here, and just because he was a jerk didn't mean he deserved flames. If you took away someone's right to be a jerk, well… everyone was boring.
"All right, get back with the others," she said, and let the racer back up.
"No need; they're on their way," DK pointed out. And indeed, from the top of the pipetower the entire contingent of heroes was coming down to ground level.
"I just want to know why there are two Marios," said Peach.
"And what's up with the old and normal versions of me?" asked Young Link.
"Who says you're the normal one?"
"I really can't explain it," said Mewtwo. "This is beyond me."
"I'd suggest that whatever magic this common enemy of ours wields is imperfect. Surely he wouldn't want more of us to deal with?" said Ganondorf.
"Actually, the more of us he gets, the more he can destroy. And remember, he doesn't think we're going to live much longer," said Fox.
"I've always liked life-or-death challenges," Falco commented.
"So if he is trying to get more of us, then he must have used some inherent power in the situation when we were pulled out of our own worlds," Zelda suggested.
"Whatever that means, yes," said Link.
"The princess raises a good point. You, Links, were in the middle of some time-warp when you were pulled in. Our enemy must have used that time-warp to catch you at two different ages, allowing him to destroy two timelines of one hero at once," said Mewtwo. "He did mention multiple dimensions, after all."
"And you believed him?" said Fox.
"How else do you explain the elves, puffballs, talking animals, talking animals with magical powers, and those two midgets in parkas?" said Yoshi. "Oh, and the dragon."
"You're a dragon?" repeated Ganondorf with disbelief.
"Yes," said Yoshi, bristling a little, or at least trying to.
"Volvagia would die of shame," said the King of Evil, shaking his head.
"What about Volvagia?" demanded Zelda.
"What? I happen to know the name of an ancient dragon of evil and suddenly you're accusing me of plotting to unleash it upon the Gorons?" snapped Ganondorf. He glared at her for a moment, then slapped his forehead. "I have to learn to stop doing that."
"As incredibly fascinating as all of this is, or would be to people who gave a damn, what are we going to do next?" asked Marth. "I happen to have left my kingdom in a little bit of a war situation and I'd like to get back fast!"
The other heroes, facing similar cases, and the villains, being the causes of those cases, readily agreed and began considering the problem they faced, namely trying to get from one universe to another. It wasn't one that came up in day-to-day princessing, mountain climbing, freeing a kingdom or F-Zero racing, so a lot of them were left out, but that wasn't going to stop them. Heroes rarely consider absolute impossibility to be more than an annoying delay.
"That voice said that we'd do better in My Kongo Jungle or some such place, didn't it?" asked Jigglypuff.
"Nothing that looks like a mutant gum bubble should be able to talk," said Young Link.
"But if this is-a 'My' Mushroom-a Kingdom…" said Mario, hesitantly.
"Then I don't wanna think about what the Kongo Jungle's going to be like, and I live there," DK told them fervently.
"It's at least a step, right? Nothing's ever easy for humans, but even the slightest opening is going to end up leading to the way home. You learn these things in the adventuring business," Link assured the others. Mario, Pikachu, Luigi, Ness, and Samus all nodded their solemn agreement.
"No place as tropical as a jungle is going to be anywhere near this geological atrocity," said Mewtwo, glaring at the unreal plants that surrounded them. "We're looking for an interdimensional fissure, I expect."
"A what?" asked Kirby.
"A hole that leads from one place to another without actually going anywhere," Fox explained.
"Still got nothing," growled Bowser, shaking his huge head.
"It's like magic, okay?" Ness offered, frowning.
"Ohhhh," said several of the low-tech-world heroes, nodding.
"We'll know it when we see it, type of thing?" suggested Nana.
"Or we won't recognise it, but that'll be the same thing, going backwards," said Popo, looking pleased with himself. Samus shook her head sadly, adjusted her visor to what she guessed would be the best wavelengths, and headed off down a sickeningly happy sandy path. The others followed, though Bowser took the time to scorch some of the flowers, especially those in Plague Yellow and Unnatural Pink.
They walked in silence for a time, until it started to become uncomfortable. Well, uncomfortable for some. In truth, both Links were used to solo adventuring (which was quiet except for the shrieks of pain), the Ice Climbers tended not to talk much while travelling from one point to another (in case the 'another' suddenly became, rather than a ledge, the ground far below) and many of the others simply weren't talkative, instead getting easily lost in their thoughts.
Marth, however, was nervous, and when he was nervous, all his usual leadership skills got nervous too, and went out for long therapeutic massages and let their assistants, who usually stayed in the Don't Act Like This department, watch the metaphorical store for a while.
"Hey, how about a marching song?" he suggested.
Among the disbelieving stares Bowser rumbled, "You come from another world, so I'll forgive you. But I don't suppose any wizards or whatever you've got have ever mentioned the Koopa Kingdom to you, from some kind of interdimensional scrying or whatever jargon you use?"
"No…" Marth replied, with the strong feeling that he didn't like this direction.
"Ah. Well, then, keep in mind, if you're ever there, that marching songs within my realm are punishable by scorpion pit."
"Really?" said Marth, suddenly manically cheerful, because he had just noticed that Bowser had biceps the size of his torso and exceptionally large claws.
"It's worse for mime artists," Bowser went on, possibly just to avoid the suggestion of anything else that could be perpetrated to pass the time. (Unknown to him, Popo and Nana were making a pact at that moment to hammer each other unconscious if anyone did try a folk song.) "They're taken out into the middle of the desert inside a huge sock, and we let them go. Hah! As if they could make it."
"You-a do know those-a huge socks protect-a you from-a those black snappers-" Luigi said, or tried to, but Mario stomped on his foot and they held a brief, meaningful discussion in Italian.
Marth, who was still having visions involving claws and scorpions, walked on in mute terror.
"You're so violent," Peach said to Bowser, highly disapproving. "Scorpions! Really!"
"What do you do to offenders in your Kingdom, Princess? Make them wear clashing outfits for a month? Or maybe sauté them? I've always wondered what those little mushroom-headed things taste like, do you know?" asked the king.
"That's absolutely disgusting!" Peach said, because she had wondered once or twice herself.
"I really am quite curious. Do you have cells, or do you make them work in the kitchens? Personally, I'd go for the kitchen duty, it would add a certain level of extra terror. Being a talking ingredient would probably lead to constant fear of being part of the next stew," Bowser went on.
"Ever heard of turtle soup?" Samus muttered, because she was getting tired of it all.
"So my question-" Roy began.
"No one cares!" several of the others snapped in unison.
"-is what exactly this voice-" he went on, and Marth snapped back into reality.
The prince of Altea whirled around, knowing what his right-hand knight was like in these situations. "Don't let him finish!" And there was the kind of tone in Marth's voice that comes from being true royalty, one that made it easier to rise from the dead than disobey.
Roy's face took on a perturbed look as several of the heroes gave in and turned to rush him. "-thinks is so dangerous – ow, that was my foot- that we're all going to be – get off – dead in a matter of days," he finished, climbing out of the crush of warriors looking for an emotional release. Aside from Marth, who had simply slapped a hand over his eyes and was apparently praying to the gods that he be struck by lightning, everyone was slowly edging away. With a kind of inevitability, Roy turned around.
Bowser stood there with his head reared back, a wearing a look of extreme concentration, and faintly glowing white. None of them knew what he was doing, but they would soon enough. For now, it was enough for Roy that heroes don't die unless it's the required bitter motivation for a child, sibling, or friend to take up the quest.
Roy ducked, and the very instant Bowser began to swing forward, another shape swung down from an overhanging tree, landing an amazing kick in the dragon-turtle's solar plexus that sent him rolling backwards.
"What the heck is that?" Pichu demanded. It was human, more or less. It just didn't have most of the things that make a human a human. For one thing, it was entirely made up of a grid of energetic purple lines that wrapped around into the shape of a tall woman, though in this case a distinct lack of clothes served to unnerve the male contingent of heroes more than they would have expected.
The only other features of it were a strange cross-marked red circle where its face should have been and a sort of cut-down skeleton made up of glowing pink bars that connected its limbs to the single red heart at its core.
Some things, though, are bone-deep. "Hi there, I'm Falco Lombardi," said the StarFox pilot, adjusting his flight jacket to look, in his opinion, more attractive.
'She' replied by just barely leaping into the air, lashing out sideways with a lightning-fast kick that launched Falco backwards into a cluster of heroes, and landing again perfectly without even disturbing the dust.
"Haven't I told you about saying things like 'what's so dangerous'?" murmured Marth, watching the wireframe.
"Not recently," Roy replied, also locked onto it.
It turned, glared at them with nothing but a red insignia and still beating Bowser on all but his worst days, and snapped its fingers. Out of the sky dropped another wireframe, this one 'male' and not looking like it was the playful one either.
Then they charged, and a melee began.
[Author's Notes] Next chapter'll be up soon, I guarantee it. Make it faster by pressing 'review'. It works, really.