Enter: The Wireframes
Apparently not disturbed by the odds -though really anything that didn't mind foliage in neon green and millions of flowers with tiny happy faces at their cores would have to be inhuman anyway- the male and female-shaped warriors moved with perfect ease and calm, predators on their home turf.
The wireframes waded with fear into a crowd of warriors from across the multiverse, and most of them soon found out why this was. Mario wound up and delivered a good old Mushroom Kingdom uppercut to the male, the kind of punch that would drop a demigod at the least.
"Mama Mia!" he shouted, falling back and rubbing his battered and perhaps broken hand. The wires felt like steel, and were as unshakeable as Princess Peach's belief that pink went with everything. The wireframe advanced on Mario, dealing out a jab-hook-longarm combination that sent the hero of the real Kingdom to the ground in a little private world of hurt.
Fox unleashed a volley of kicks against the thing's side, managing to beat the hell out of his boot and not even shaking the warrior. Meanwhile, the wireframes themselves were wreaking havoc. The female had quickly located Falco again, picking him up by the beak and winging the bird over her shoulder. It was nearly interrupted by a punch from DK, but it dodged the first swing and then was too fast to bother with the rest. DK whirled through the air groaning "Oh, not this one again," and then came crashing back down to earth some distance away, taking Roy down with him.
Ganondorf had more or less entered into a duel with the male, except that it paused to fight off any other attacks from the heroes as well. Ganondorf threw two high punches and then swept around with a low kick. The wireframe leaned out of both punches, caught Peach's arm coming around in a wicked slap and threw her down, leapt over the kick, and smashed Pikachu out of the fight for a while.
It looked to Ness as though the simple overwhelming odds in favour of the heroes were taking an effect on the female wireframe. She didn't seem to be taking any damage, but having Pichu on one leg, Popo on the other, Ness hanging onto her arms and Nana on her shoulders flailing with her hammer was definitely slowing down the rate at which she could take down the others.
Ganondorf attempted another attack routine, one that he had only ever seen Nabooru manage to avoid injury from. The wireframe took a moment while it was sideways in midair to drive its fist into Marth's midsection, and then landed and went on the offensive.
It was as though their roles had been reversed, so quickly was Ganondorf in retreat and the wireframe advancing. Ganondorf was still a master of hand-to-hand combat, and wasn't hit too badly, but he was a little bit slower on the uptake of some things than was good for him.
So shocked by the sudden switch of roles, Ganondorf spun and landed a solid kick on Link's chest, sending the newly-titled Hero of Time sprawling in the dust. "Sorry!" Ganondorf yelped, cringing like a society lady who has just put the last cup on a stack of dishes and then watched it topple, spilling the remains of something au gratin all over a Persian rug. He was the King of Evil, but that didn't make him one-dimensional.
The male wireframe took the opportunity to attempt to put his arm through Ganondorf's head by way of his ear. This didn't work, Gerudos being a sturdy people, but it did send him into the land of dreams, and when he woke up later, he rambled for hours about thousands of Kirby-like pixies.
"Hey!" a voice shouted, and a primary-yellow rock bounced off its head. The wireframe turned and then everything went bright blue, because Samus had brought her Grapple Beam back online. Having locked onto its head successfully, the bounty hunter swung madly, whirling the wireframe around like a tetherball and smashing it into whatever hard objects presented themselves.
"Get out of the way, I can't hit it!" Fox shouted, his blaster levelled.
"If I move, we're both going to regret it!" Ness replied, still using all of his strength and a good deal of psychic power to keep the female wireframe's arms immobile.
"I don't get it!" Captain Falcon raged. "No matter how hard we hit them, they don't slow down!"
Zelda looked over at Samus, who appeared to be competing for the medal in judo and rhythmic gymnastics at the same time. "Then maybe what we should be doing is hitting it with the only thing we know of that's just as hard."
"Ganondorf's head?" suggested Young Link.
"I don't see you helping out," Mewtwo snapped.
"What?! He's a bad guy!" Young Link protested.
"But he's on our side," Zelda admitted. "For now. And what I meant was the other wireframe."
"Lost," Young Link said, a blank look on his face.
"Oh, why am I bothering with talking anyway? Princessing ruins your ability to act," Zelda grumbled, heading for the Chozo-armored woman.
"Um… oh, what's her name… Hey! Samus! I think these two should get to know each other better!"
"I don't think I can be that accurate from this distance!" the bounty hunter warned, still swinging.
"Then aim for me!" Yoshi called, leaping on top of a large boulder by the path's side.
"I've never liked cruelty to animals," Samus muttered, but decided she couldn't delay. With one final twist, she sent the wireframe orbiting around her, then -fizzle- deactivated the beam. It spun through the air, straight for Yoshi, but the dragon had indeed thought ahead, and caught it with his tongue. Yoshi himself spun once, swinging the wireframe around again and closer toward the female, but still off.
Young Link leapt into the action, hookshot at the ready, and performed a third relay. He was much closer, and this time the wireframe torpedo was headed right on target. Those smaller heroes trying to keep the female subdued saw the male coming and leapt for safety, but that just meant it was able to duck in time, coming up again like a malicious yo-yo and taking out Luigi with a low kick as he dove for its ankles.
The complicated part, and one no one had considered, was Dr Mario. He had been standing slightly out of the way, hoping that at some point soon there would be a vital need for humourously large pills, and not getting smoten in the meantime. But when the female ducked, a ballistic wireframe was right on course for him, and he did the only thing that made sense… of a kind… which was to swing his cape-like coat at it.
This proved more useful than he expected. The wireframe reversed momentum instantly, suddenly rocketing into the female's back. The sound was like the world's first electric cymbal.
Very, very slowly, and with some staggering, both the wireframes got back up. To Samus' surprise, she saw that she had actually done some damage by bashing the male around on the landscape, but the biggest dent was very clearly in the female's back, and she didn't look happy about it. The red heart-cores in both of them were pulsing from dark to their former glow and down again.
Those heroes still standing were gaining certain glints in their eyes that meant bad things were about to happen to bad people.
Peach was the first to reach the connection that if a solid beating was what was needed, she would be involved, and produced her old combat frying pan, the one she had kept ever since that mess with the seven stars and a huge sword. Despite not being crafted in any ancient mine by dwarves who had had visions in the night or out of the horseshoes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it was as hard as diamond, if diamond could have been tempered.
"How dare you strike my Mario!" she screamed, beating the male about the head. She was about to be attacked from behind by the female, except that at that moment a spotted egg dropped in from above and exploded, sending the inhuman woman flying. Yoshi wound up another, but never threw it. Luigi had just managed to shake off the stars exploding in his brain and got to his feet. An Italian battle cry echoed across the unnaturally green fields, and Luigi grabbed the female by the wrists, spinning around until he at last let go, and the wireframes crashed together for the second time.
Bowser stumbled up beside Zelda. "Where have you been?" she demanded.
"That orange armoured psychopath hit me with one of those wiry things."
"Other way around. She hit it with you," Zelda corrected.
"Doesn't feel like that," Bowser rumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. Suddenly a recent memory flashed into Zelda's mind, and she turned on the king.
"Right before those wireframes turned up, you were glowing," Zelda stated quickly. "You remember? It looked like you were about to hit that guy, Roy, but you were just glowing for some reason. What was that?"
"I… don't really know," Bowser admitted. "I was just sort of… gathering strength, I suppose. I've never glowed before, mind you. It just seemed like the right thing to do."
"Do it again," Zelda commanded, and the force of royalty was in her voice, too.
"I'll try," Bowser growled, and he stomped over toward the battle while Zelda went to check on the injured heroes.
Peach was continuing to meet all the male's thrashing needs for the next few millennia, but she was tiring, and couldn't help noticing that it was having much effect any more, as though it was getting used to it. She swung one more time, and a hand reached up, catching the frying pan. Peach looked shocked, and ran for it, hiding behind the first large obstacle available. The wireframe got to its feet and came toward her, but as it looked up, it noticed that the obstacle was, in fact, a monstrous Koopa King preparing to unleash terrible wrath upon it.
Growling in satisfaction, Bowser's hard skull and horns crashed down into the wireframe, and its form cracked. The sheer force sent it flying up and away, breaking apart as it went, until it vanished in a mere sparkle among the too-cheerfully fluffy clouds.
A true Smash attack? That shouldn't be possible! I made certain! There were no miscalculations! You do not have this power! the voice raged, still without source.
"Tell that to your minion, assuming it doesn't hit the sun first!" Zelda shot back gleefully.
Bah! This is not possible. It was a fluke. And I am not concerned. The rest of you don't know how to do it, and well… Bowser is about to die. It laughed and faded away again.
"What?" asked Bowser, confused. Then the female wireframe's kick landed on his skull, sending him sprawling to the ground, unconscious. It was battered and dented, but still it stood, and clearly intended to finish the job.
To hell with that. Mario was a hero.
His hand probably was broken, and Bowser was his enemy. These were the two facts that he most carefully avoided thinking about as he stood up and approached the remaining wireframe.
"You have-a got-a two choices," he told it. "You can-a run, or you can-a burn." He didn't know why burning came to mind, but it sounded right. In more ways than one, really. There was fire in his mind and his spirit…
The wireframe glanced at him only briefly, decided a broken plumber was not a threat, and drew back an arm. The wires separated and then twisted together again, this time in the shape of a spear.
Mario, knowing this wasn't going to do a thing, but that he had to do it anyway, drew back his injured fist, swung forward, and at the last moment, on pure instinct, opened the punch into some kind of palm strike.
He never connected. From his hand came a burst of intense fire that caught the wireframe and blasted it like a cannon shot. In deep silence, there was a flare of light from the blast that cast the tree-lined path into shadows and redness, and when it was over the female wireframe was sailing down the road. After a few seconds in the air, the frame came apart, and the heart-core exploded in a rushing return of sound.
A shock wave rolled down past the heroes, and where the wireframe had been, a ring of shadow and lightning encircled a window into another land, casting the cartoon-like forest into stormy darkness.
"Ah. That'd be one of those holes in the world, right enough," said Pikachu.
Most of the heroes were silent, but the sound of a zipper brought them back to reality. Dr Mario had produced a large medical bag from… well, no one really knew where, but he was kneeling beside Link and putting on a stethoscope.
He noticed their stares. "It's-a pretty," he admitted. "But-a I am better with-a fevers than-a anything starting with-a 'quantum'. I think-a he'll be okay," he told Zelda. She sighed.
"I think I liked it better when I knew what in Hyrule was going on for more than five minutes at a time," she mumbled, and went to see if she could help the doctor.
[Author's Notes] Well, it looks like fate is on their side, or perhaps the Lady (Prachett readers know who I mean), but either way the Smash Bros might have a chance. Review if you want to find out what happens next. And if you don't. The important part is the button-pushing.