Hullo again, everyone! Sorry for the complete lack of updates on my other stories. Writer's block, y'see… And school… and X-mas… You get the idea. BUT, I have been working now and then on this piece of work. Yes, I realize the title is incredibly stoopid. Deal with it. It's slightly less insane than "Oh The Inhumanity!", but still has some of the same people, like JJ and Chrissy and me.

Chapter One:

Meet the Fighters

~~~

Congratulations, future All-star! You have been invited to participate in the fourth annual Super Smash Brothers Melee tournament! Taking place on September the first, 2003, in the Mushroom Kingdom, this tournament will feature famed heroes and villains from across the Nintendo galaxy- and we MEAN it when we say "galaxy"!! You will each be pitted against another competitor, and you will fight to gain the title of "All-Star Champion"!! Do you have what it takes?

Your transportation to the Mushroom Kingdom will vary depending on your location (a letter will be forwarded to you a week ahead of time) and arrives in the middle of July, which leave plenty of training time! Be prepared to see some familiar faces as well as newcomers; We have selected many new competitors this year, just like last time!

Good luck: HAL Laboratories

~~~

It was eleven o'clock p.m., and the moon shone brightly down on the darkened dock. Most people preferred to use more modern space travel, forgetting the traditional ways of voyaging over the sea. Consequently, there were only two figures at the appointed dock on the foggy night the boat was destined to arrive. One was leaning against a lamppost, tossing the crumpled invitation up and down, a set of large and heavy duffel bags by their side. The person was actually a woman, very tall and skinny, with medium-length blonde hair in a high ponytail and bangs that covered one of two metal gray eyes. A dark trenchcoat covered a black and red halter-top and dark pants, making her seem very ominous. But not nearly as ominous as the creature perched on one of the storage houses a few meters away from the beginning of the landing. It was a large, hunched over dragon with large wings that were neatly folded behind his back. The dim lamplight illuminated two sunken, glowing yellow eyes and a narrow head.

In silence, the two waited. Finally, the woman stuffed the crumpled paper in her trenchcoat pocket and sighed with impatience.

"It's late," she snapped sourly, "If I have to spend another minute waiting here with you I think I'll go ballistic."

"It'll be a pleasant change," the dragon shot back. "I'm no more happy about waiting here with you than you are."

The woman opened the letter again and reread it. "Cheesy as hell," she spat, and the dragon nodded, unseen. "Are you sure we don't have to keep these?" The dragon nodded again. The woman tossed her letter over her shoulder at the dragon. "Catch, Rid."

The Space Pirate General Ridley was all too willing to comply. With exceptional aim and precision, he shot a blast of molten energy at the paper. Within a second after the woman tossed it, the letter fell to the ground in the form of ashes. The woman was about to say something, but with a loud noise a large ship cut through the waters and stopped at the dock the two were waiting at. It seemed almost three miles long and almost a mile high, much like the Nautilus, but it was much wider. The All-Star was indeed a very large and agile ship.

A rail came down from the ship onto the wooden dock, and someone hurried down it excitedly. He was very short and plump, even by the woman's standards, with a red shirt and cap and blue overalls. His mustache twitched when he spoke in that strange Italian accent the woman always hated.

"Ah, Miss Samus Aran!" he said, "It's wonderful to see you again!"

Samus rolled her eyes. "Likewise, Mario, and…" She gestured to Ridley, who had flown down from the roof and was standing behind her, "…I don't believe you've met the Toothpick before? He's been invited too."

If possible, Ridley's glare became even more intense. Mario seemed to take this as a threat, and narrowed his eyes. Ridley just snorted and hovered up the ramp into the ship.

"I'll get your bags, Samus," Mario began, but Samus stopped him.

"No… Well… You can get the bags I leave behind, I expect the boat won't wait long…" Samus nodded, and picked up the two fullest and heaviest bags and perched them on her shoulders. "Got my suit in them, you see…" She nodded, and walked up the ramp as easily as if she was carrying nothing at all.

Mario walked over to the other bags and, with a little difficulty, lifted them off the ground and jogged up the ramp after the bounty hunter. After the last passenger entered, the metal ramp withdrew into the ship, which promptly left port and vanished into the fog.

~~~

Ridley had stopped inside the entrance hallway, and looked around, surprised. "It's big," he said casually as Samus and Mario entered behind him.

"Big" was an understatement. Three each of Ridley and the Koopa King Bowser could walk shoulder to shoulder down the hall, and they wouldn't brush against the walls, and three Ganondorf's could stand on each other's shoulders and not bump against the ceiling.

"Duh," Samus pushed past her rival and set the bags down. "You and Bowser are the biggest ones here, of course it'd have to be big. Not to mention that there are frequent brawls in the halls, and there are twenty-something of us…"

"Thirty-something," Mario corrected her.

Samus turned around "Thirty?" She repeated.

"Yeah," Mario looked at a piece of paper in his pocket. "HAL sent this to us, 'cause, you know, we're hosting the tournament and all…" He looked at the paper closely. "Including the twenty-five competitors from the last few tournaments, we're including four new Nintendo characters, and seven from the outside world."

Samus snorted. "So we've got non-Nintendo characters competing?" She asked skeptically. "I don't know…"

Mario changed the subject. "Now, Samus, you know where everything is… Your room is in its usual place."

Samus winked and took the two bags Mario was holding, leaving him behind to give Ridley a tour of the main rooms. As she walked down the stairwell and down the hallways that her room was in, a high-pitched voice from a doorway behind her called out: "Samus."

Samus turned around, which was a difficult task because of her bags. Standing in the middle of the hall was a young girl in a pink dress and blonde hair, staring at her with large eyes. It took a few moments for Samus to recognize her, because she had only seen the girl on one occasion.

"Hey there, Paula," Samus nodded. "You're competing this year?"

Paula nodded. "I got an invitation a month ago. Originally, I didn't want to come, but Ness convinced me." She turned toward the open door. "Hey, everyone, Samus is here."

"About time!!" Another blonde in a pink dress stuck her head out the window. Unlike Paula, she had a crown on her head and was much older. "What took you, Samus?" she asked, "Everyone else is here!"

"Everyone, Peach?" Samus asked. "Are all thirty-something people crammed in that room?"

Peach scowled, "I meant all the girls," she retorted. "Me, Paula, Zelda, Katt, and Krystal. You're the last one to arrive."

She jumped out of the room and grabbed Samus's arm. "Come on, join us!"

Samus felt herself gulp. "No… Really, it's okay," She stammered, "I should put my bags away-"

But Peach had already dragged Samus through the doorway, and upon their entrance, someone shrieked and pounced on Samus, locking her in an extremely tight grip, and her vision was buried under a mass of blue fur.

"Samus you made it!!" A blue female fox with shimmering green eyes shouted happily. "Katt and I were so worried you wouldn't come!! It would have been so boring!! I'm so glad you're finally here!!"

"Oh come on," out of the corner of Samus's vision, she saw a pink cat shout over the noise of the television. Her silver hair, which was usually up in a ponytail, was hanging damply in front of her face and she had a white bathrobe on. "I'm not that boring…"

"And stop acting like a valley girl, Krystal. You're scaring me," a girl about Peach's age, who also had blonde hair and blue eyes spoke up. She could have been Peach's twin except her hair was straighter, and she wore a less frilly, lighter pink dress and a tiara.

Samus pried Krystal off of her and dumped her bags on the floor. Peach giggled excitedly. Paula sighed, returned to a rose red, plush chair and immersed herself in a large book.

"Nice to see you again, Zelda, Katt…" Samus nodded at the two, "But I should go ahead and put my bags in my room…"

"I know where it is," Paula spoke up. "It's across from mine. Your room doesn't have anyone in it, either."

"So we don't have roommates?" Samus asked, frowning slightly.

"No, we will," Paula replied. "But they're not coming on this boat."

"Well…" Samus picked up her bags. "I think after I put these up, I'll try to find some of the guys."

"Most of them will be in the lounge," Paula replied as she followed Samus out of the room. When Samus looked at her oddly, she hastily added, "That's where they were when I saw them last."

"Paula, I know you're psychic, but you're beginning to scare me…" Samus looked at her companion and unlocked the door on the right side of the end of the hall.

The room was exactly as Samus remembered it. The rooms were fashioned to meet the inhabitant or inhabitants' requirements. Each of the rooms on the boat as well as in the castle had two queen-sized beds, plush lounge chairs, a writing desk, a large window with a window seat, two dressers and mirrors, and a door leading to a luxuriously furnished bathroom. In Samus's room, there was, as there had always been, a tall and wide cylindrical storage tank for her Varia Suit, which the quickly assembled from inside her bags and placed it in the cylinder. She had always had her own room, which didn't really bother her; she didn't spend much time in it anyways. After unloading the other two bags and putting the clothes into one of the dressers, she began to change into a large t-shirt and plaid pajama pants.

"You're going out in your pajamas?" Paula gawked.

Samus looked up. "Nobody cares. It's like one big happy family when you're an All-Star, Paula," she smiled, although her words were sarcastic, "Nobody really cares about what you wear around them."

"Captain Falcon might," Paula interjected.

"Ness told you about him, then?" Samus's eyes narrowed as she sat on one of the beds and struggled to put on an old pair of boots.

"He sounds rather annoying," Paula scowled as well, then laughed as she looked at Samus. "You look so weird!! You're wearing pajama pants and boots?"

"O-kay…" Samus cocked her head. "That was way too much like something Peach would say…" She took her hair out of its braid and pulled it back with a large blue headband. "Come on, let's go say hi."

~~~

"Maybe they're still fighting…" Peach said worriedly as the girls walked towards the doors to the lounge. There were loud voices and even louder music.

"What do you mean?" Samus paused. "Who's fighting?"

"Fox and Falco and Wolf…" Krystal sighed distastefully. "They've been fighting about something ever since we got here…"

"Just a few hours, then," Zelda shrugged, and opened the doors.

The fighting had indeed settled down, and the fighters seemed to have gone on to pursue separate activities. The reddish brown fox and the blue falcon were sitting in front of a large entertainment system playing Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, and the gray wolf with the eyepatch had joined the table of the group that was affectionately called "The Ring O' Evil", because it contained Bowser, a Koopa with a spiked shell, Ganondorf, a dark-skinned wizard with reddish hair, and Mewtwo, a catlike psychic Pokémon. And now it seemed to have added Wolf, as well as…

"Hey, Sam…" Zelda pointed at one of the new arrivals at that table. "Isn't that Ridley? Isn't it?" She pursued when Samus didn't say anything, "Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it?"

"Oh, shut up." Samus mumbled and walked over to the entertainment system, Krystal and Katt following. Paula looked around and spotted a black-haired boy in a baseball cap and a striped shirt playing checkers with a pink puffball. Zelda saw a blonde-haired teenager in a green tunic looking disappointedly at a younger version of him as they came out of another room, and walked over to comfort him.

"And finally, she arrives!!" Fox said as Samus arrived, and spread his arms in a "ta-da!" pose. "Samus Aran, fashionably late as usual!"

"Fashionably, indeed…" Katt raised an eyebrow as she sat comfortably next to Falco. "You look like you're from Texas."

"Shut up," Samus repeated. "Fox, Falco, isn't this restricted to Nintendo-made games only?"

"Who asked you, gamer purist?" Falco retorted hotly. "Besides, it's on Gamecube, isn't it?!"

"It was originally on Dreamcast," Katt cut in.

"Who asked you?!" Falco asked.

"So what? I can add my opinion if I want to!!" Katt shot back. "Don't bite my head off just because Fox is beating you miserably!!"

"Shut up!! I can beat him any time I want to!!"

"Betcha can't!"

"Oh yeah?!"

"Yeah!!"

"OH YEAH?!

"YEAH!!"

"YOU'RE ASKING FOR IT, BAKA NEKO!!"

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!?!"

"YOU HEARD ME!!!"

"I'LL BEAT YOUR ASS!!!"

"BRING IT ON!!!"

Katt and Falco, both red in the face from yelling, turned on their heels and stomped through the two doors at the end of the room. Krystal sat on the edge of a nearby DDR machine, a soda in her hands.

"Those two," she huffed, "They've been fighting even before we got on this ship."

"Oh, I see…" Samus grinned, and waltzed over to the nearby bar, taking a pre-made frappuchino from the refrigerator, then walked over to watch Katt and Falco fighting on the television screens.

The door to the lounge flew open with a bang, making Peach jump and knocking Wolf off his perch on the table.

"Have no fear," a man in a blue bodysuit and red helmet cheered. "Captain Falcon is here!!"

"AAAH!!!" Samus screamed mockingly.

Falcon laughed, swiped a beer from the bar, and stood by Samus, watching the monitors. "Got in another fight again?" he asked.

"Hmm," Samus nodded.

"Are you alone again this year?" Captain Falcon asked again.

"I wish," Samus replied flatly, wishing she had at least brought her arm cannon with her. "But you are, aren't you?" Was it her imagination, or was he standing WAY too close to her?

BONK!!

It didn't matter, because a three-toed foot slammed down on Falcon's back, knocking him to the floor. Ridley rested his arm on his knee, and cupped his head with his hand. "What's up, doc?"

"Not funny," Samus frowned.

Katt and Falco walked out of the room, arguing again, but stopped dead when they saw what was going on. The Ring O' Evil had erupted into cheers, and even Zelda was trying to hide a laugh. Falcon struggled out from under Ridley's foot and stood up quickly.

"Who the hell are you?" He scowled.

"Don't you know?" Ridley grinned. "I'm Ridley. I came here with Sam," he jerked his head over to Samus, who hid a scowl.

"You're one of the new fighters, then, aren't you?" Capt. Falcon raised an eyebrow. "And you came with… Samus…" A look of false realization dawned on his face.

"Uh…" Samus held up her hands. "I think there's a misunderstanding."

"And here I thought I would be the first!" Falcon clutched his head with his hands.

"…First?" Ridley and Samus looked at each other. "…………………EW!! NO WAY!!"

"Should we help them?" Fox asked, concerned.

"Forget it," Krystal threw her empty cup into the trash. "He's on a roll."

"Then you did this!!" Falcon began to shout, "And that, too!! And oh my sweet God, you did the other thing!!"

"THAT'S DISGUSTING!!" Samus shouted.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?!" Ridley screeched, "WITH SOMEONE AS FLAT AS SHE IS?!" The comment earned him a hard kick in the shin. (And even if you're a hardcore space dragon, a kick in the shin with combat boots is the kind that hurts the most)

Falcon suddenly regained his senses and pointed at Ridley. "You'll PAY for that!!" He challenged, and ran out of the lounge.

"I don't think I've ever been more disturbed in my life," Samus said monotonously.

"What do you expect?" Falco chuckled. "He's an idiot."

Samus looked at Falco. "You're no better."

Falco smiled and bowed low to the ground.

The clock chimed twelve, and the activity in the room began to slow down. Katt joined Krystal in a DDR match, but they got bored halfway through and left for their rooms. Ridley joined the Ring O' Evil, who were still snickering. Fox and Falco finished a few versus matches in Star Fox 64 and left the room yawning. Paula left with the pink puffball, Kirby, and the boy in the striped shirt, Ness, the three of them arguing about the outcome of the checkers game. Zelda left with the taller blonde boy, Link, who was carrying the smaller boy, a sleeping Young Link, on his back. Samus flipped her hair over her shoulders in an uncharacteristic fashion and walking out of the lounge.

"You owe me one, Lady," Ridley sneered from the corner table.

Samus bristled, clenched her fists, and turned to glare at Ridley before stalking out, slamming the door behind her. Her bad mood continued as she lurked down the halls, looking forward to a hot bath and a good night's sleep. Maybe in the morning she would go into the training room and take out some stress on whichever poor sucker messed with her that day.

But as she turned the key to her door, she heard a buzzing noise, as if a loud fly was hovering a few feet away. She quickly turned around, and scanned the hallway, but saw nothing.

"What…?" She shrugged, and slowly walked into her room, locking the door from the inside for the night.

Didn't I tell ya? What a stupid way to end this thing! …Oh…? I didn't tell you? Oh, well I'm telling you now. What a stupid way to end this thing! Hope you keep reading, 'cause this gets better and funnier by the day!! I think…

~ M