Disclaimer: I don't own Nintendo...yet.
Chapter 2: The Wheels on the Bus
It was the eagerly awaited morning of September 1st, and the thirty-some-odd people and non-people who had been invited to the tourney were pacing around, doing last-minute packing, and instructing their housekeepers about maintenance. There was, however, one girl who wasn't invited, and didn't even know this thing existed. Why am I writing about her, you ask? Keep your pants on, I'll get to it. This oblivious girl was currently in the nation of Johto, in the world known to most people as simply "The Pokémon World".
She was staying with her parents after spending a few weeks in the desert nation/territory of Orre to visit her grandparents. Rui, as she was called, was a pretty girl, not beautiful by most people's standards, but she turned a few heads occasionally. She had big blue eyes and flaming red hair which she kept in two short pigtails. This morning, she was the first one out of bed, and she was skimming the daily newspaper, The Goldenrod Times. She didn't normally look at the classifieds, but it was a good thing she did today, because she saw a "help wanted" ad that caught her attention. It said:
Cook/chef wanted. Must be able to cook halfway decent lunch food, at least. Free room and board in fancy mansion. Pays well. If interested, call 1-800-THE-HAND.
She looked over it, thinking. She had been a little bored, staying with her parents, and she could use the extra money. Rui ran upstairs to go talk to her parents about it. And rushed back down because she failed to notice the "Do Not Disturb" sign on their door.
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"OK, Jeigan. Are all my instructions clear?"
"For the tenth time, sir, YES!"
A young man stood in a room with a substantially older man who seemed to be on the verge of extremely high blood pressure. The young man seemed to be some sort of royalty; he was dressed in fancy-looking, dark blue clothes, with a blue silk cape emblazoned with his kingdom's seal. Even his hair was blue. The only thing that wasn't was his skin, and a tiara on his head. He claimed the tiara was somehow cursed and stuck like Super (super super super super ) Glue, but nobody believed him. The old man was dressed in not as fancy robes, and he appeared to be the tiara-wearing guy's second-in-command.
"Well, here they are again, in case you forgot: water the garden, feed the cat, dust from time to time...what am I forgetting...oh yeah, keep the economy in balance and protect the kingdom from terrorists and invading armies, too, alright?"
"Sigh...yes, prince Marth."
"Good. I'll see you in a year." Suddenly, a gaping black hole appeared right in front of them. After recovering from the shock, the blue-haired man said, "Well, that must be my 'means of transportation'. Bye bye!" And he stepped into the hole with his luggage in hand.
The old man watched him depart, and then left the room muttering something that sounded like: "Ooh, if I hadn't promised his dying father I'd take care of him..."
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The portal instantly whisked the liberally-colored Marth to a place that looked like a bus stop. At first, there was no one else there. Then, portals identical to the one he had taken appeared all over the place, with organisms of all shapes and sizes stepping out of them. There were several, but among the most notable were a short, pink, round thing, an elf dressed in a green thing that looked like a skirt, a littler elf dressed in a green thing that looked like a skirt, and a yellow mouse that occasionally gave off little electric sparks. "Hi." Marth whipped around, wondering who had greeted him. The greeter was a boy a little younger than him, with fiery, messy red hair.
"Hi," Marth responded. "I'm prince Marth of the kingdom of Altea," said Marth, introducing himself.
"Hey, you're that guy whose kingdom burned down or something, aren't you?" said the redhead.
"How kind of you to notice," Marth said sarcastically.
"Yeah, I know. By the way, my name's Roy of Pharae."
"Aren't they some kind of military dictatorship?"
"No, it's a principality, smart one."
"Do you know what that means?" Marth asked.
"Umm...it means...uhhh...that..."
"Ha ha! Put 'er there!" said Marth, extending his hand. Roy shook it and said, "I don't use toilet paper!" Marth tried not to laugh at Roy's immature joke. Despite Roy being a bit trying, Marth felt that this would be a good, albeit strange, friendship.
Just then, a bus pulled in, confirming Marth's original suspicion about this being a bus station. However, this bus was not a school bus, which is what everyone there subconsciously expected. This bus was painted a dark shade of red, with a black emblem on it that had two perpendicular lines intersecting just left of the center. The doors opened, making the familiar hissing sound, revealing something that no one expected. The inside seemed normal enough, but the driver was a giant white glove. "Good day everyone," it said, bringing everybody a little closer to going into shock. "It's good to see some familiar faces, and some not-so-familiar faces here."
"Hi there, Master Hand," said a short man in red. Marth assumed this was the famous, world-renowned, Mario.
"Benvenuto, Mario. Anyway, for those of you who don't already know me, I am Master Hand, and welcome to the 2nd not-really-annual-but-it-sounds-better Super Smash Brothers Tournament! Da da da dum! In this next year, you will all be both friends and enemies as you compete for the title of Greatest Warrior in the Galaxy! Da da da dum! So, hop on board the Hand Express, and we'll go to the Smash Mansion!"
There were several murmurs among the crowd about mansions, hands, and craziness. There was also an air of reluctance among everybody to be the first to get on the bus.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," said a female voice. "It's perfectly fine. Here, I'll go." The voice had come from what looked like a red robot at first glance, but Marth overheard someone whispering that there was really a girl (and a hot one at that) under all that armor. She stepped aboard the "Hand Express" and walked along the narrow aisle to a seat near the back.
"I guess it's okay, then," said a blue, spiky, hedgehog-like creature, and walked onto the bus. Everyone else followed suit.
Marth found a seat near the middle of the bus, and Roy sat next to him. After much deliberation on who got to sit by the window (Marth ended up sitting in the aisle), Marth saw the bigger elf in green sit in the seat across from him, along with a girl who looked like an elf also, but was wearing a pink dress. Marth quickly realized he was staring and quickly turned away. After the bus had driven a couple miles, he decided to make polite conversation. "Hello, there. I see you have taken up the ways of the sword as well," said Marth, as he himself was quite a skilled swordsman, and the elf had a sword in a scabbard, too.
"Yeah, but only on Wednesdays," said the elf.
"Um...yeah. I'm Marth."
"Good to meet you. I'm Link, and this is Zelda, who I get to rescue on a regular basis from that loser over there, Ganondorf," he gestured to a dark man sitting in front of him.
"Oh, come on, Link," Zelda said, "that hardly ever happens anymore. I've kicked Ganon's sorry ass a fair number of times myself."
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Link said sarcastically but lovingly, and gave Zelda a kiss on the cheek.
"I take it you two are...together," Marth said.
"Gee, what tipped you off?"
"Lucky guess?"
"Smashers, could I have your attention please," Master Hand said over the bus's intercom. "I forgot to tell you that, in addition to all of you, there will also be two ladies who will cook and clean up minor messes, but this does not mean that you don't need to clean up after yourselves. We had a bit of an incident last time, which is why I hired them." A few heads turned to the guilty-looking yellow rodent. "That will be all. You may resume talking."
Marth turned to Link. "What happened last time?" asked Marth, since Link seemed like he had been there for the previous tournament.
"Heh. Well, let's just say that Pikachu had one too many bowls of 'Fiber-O's'," Link laughed. "Needless to say, there was quite a stink in more ways than one."
Marth laughed quietly to himself. He tried to listen to some of the others' conversations to see what sort of people they were. Some of the snatches he heard were:
"So, how long have you two known each other?"
"...That's not very sanitary, y'know..."
"Hey, Fox, watch what I can do with my finger!"
"My, that's an awfully large sword you got there."
"...Like cheddar, and bleu, and Monterey Jack, and provolone, and Venezuelan beaver..."
Marth stopped listening to the dialogue in fear that he would go insane if he heard any more. Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to ignore Roy singing quite badly to "Love Me Do", and anticipating what kind of things he would encounter tomorrow.
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Okay, so you didn't get to meet all or even most of the Smashers. But you will soon, trust me! Review while you wait, per favore!