AUTUMN DAYS

DISCLAIMER: Three hundred and forty-three.

Chapter 13

NOTE: The friendship workings between the smaller Pokemon was my idea as far as I know; I made it up for a story called '25' which I am supposed to hype. Uh… please read it. When it's done.

"Ig i pig ujip?" "So why exactly are we doing this?"
"Ik i pik uchip?" "Pichu, why are we doing this?"
"Because it's going to be fun!" said Pichu ecstatically.
"Yeah…" said Pikachu, "fun. Could you have the courtesy to tell us what exactly this, er, 'fun', involves?"
"No!" said Pichu. "It's a secret!"
"Ooh!" said Jigglypuff, clapping her hands and bobbing up and down. "I like secrets! Ooh… is it ten dollars?"
Pikachu shot Jigglypuff a weird look. "Pichu, perhaps you should ignore some, or preferably most of what Miss Pink Weirdo says."
"Why?"
Jigglypuff groaned and whispered to Pikachu. "Pikachu, I'm not a 'bad influence on Pichu' or whatever it is you claim I am! You're the one who taught him the 'Happy Cokepsi™ Song' which he sings all the time!"
"Yeah," retorted Pikachu, "but unlike you, I apologize! Did you ever even bother to feel regret for showing Pichu how to jump in front of traffic?"
"Hey, nobody was hurt!"
"Mario was hurt!"
"Out of context! That was three days later, and he was sleepwalking. Why don't you just shove your 'oh, look at me, I'm yellow so I'm better than that nasty old Jigglypuff' rhetoric up your – oh, wait, Pokemon don't have any-"
"EXCUSE ME!" bellowed Pichu, shocking the older two out of their pleasant conversation. "What are you two talking about?"
"Uh…" said Pikachu, "we're talking about… what good friends we are."
"Yeah," said Jigglypuff, nodding so violently she fell forward on her face, "we certainly weren't arguing."
"Oh," said Pichu. He breathed a sigh of relief.
For a moment, Pichu was worried that they were planning to sneak up on him and – pull his tail! – or even worse. Pichu knew that his two best friends in the whole world would never be nasty to each other – it was impossible! They were his two best friends in the whole world, after all!
Pikachu and Jigglypuff made throat-slitting motions at each other and hissed a lot.

"So the general idea," said Link, "is that there will be a bit of collateral damage to the house, but that was always going to have to happen. The point is that we'll be out."
"Unacceptable," said Marth, "there's a strong risk of danger to our lives."
Link, Fox, Mario, Samus and Marth sat around a table, having formed a 'war council' of sorts to plan the escape from the Mansion.
"I've thought it through," said Link calmly. And then, with a slight, threat in his voice, he added, "If you have any better suggestions…"
Fox caved in after about a tenth of a second. "I'm all for Link's idea of burning the leaves that are trapping us in."
"That's stupid," said Samus, "shut up." She threw a wall at him to make her point clear.
"What is-a your suggestion, then, Samus?" said-a Mario.
"I roll up into Morphing Ball and follow a convenient path through the leaves."
"We can't do that!" said Link.
"I know," said Samus, "bye." She dashed off faster than Young Link when he was high on sugar.
"They all died!" said Kirby. He spontaneously combusted.
"Well, that's a pity, isn't it?" said Link, who was getting a bit annoyed at this stage in the conversation.
"Here, have a cookie," said Fox, earning him a sword in the gut from Marth.
"Shut… up…" said Marth.
"Woah! Calm down, everyone," said Link. "Let's try to-"
"PANIC!" screamed Mario.

To their credit, Yoshi and Donkey Kong hadn't meant any harm when they snuck into Peach's room. All they had wanted to do was to kill her so as to spare the lives of… well, everyone else. Being around Peach makes you do stupid things like that.
Unfortunately, when they got inside, Peach wasn't there. She wasn't even half there!
"Yoshi yosh yoshi?" "Now what do we do?"
"I don't know," said Donkey Kong, scratching his head.
"Hi!" said Peach, entering her room. "Ooh! It's DK and… uh… Yishi? Yoshman? Uh… it's DK and that green thing!"
DK and Yoshi stared angrily at her.
"Do we kill her yet?" said Donkey Kong.
"Yosh yosh yoshi shi." "Let's just wait for a moment."
"Waiting sucks," said DK.
"Hey!" said Peach angrily. "Are you two plotting my extremely timely demise?"
"Yes," said DK, "your death will be very welcome to everyone in the entire universe. We all hate you, Peach, can't you understand?"
They advanced slowly upon Peach.
"May I run away?" said Peach politely.
"Yo." "No."
"Oh," said Peach.
"PANIC!" screamed Mario, running through the walls of the room. This distracted Donkey Kong and Yoshi for just long enough for Peach to grab a parasol, a sandwich and a gattling gun and make her escape.
"AFTER HER!" bellowed Donkey Kong. They stampeded out of the room, unfortunately crushing a panicked Mario in the process. On the other hand, perhaps it was a good thing – Mario might have… er… did… bad stuff, real bad stuff, to the mansion and to everyone else in it while in this panicked state. For example, he might have tried to save Peach.

"Are we there yet?" said Pichu.
"You're leading," said Jigglypuff.
"Oh," said Pichu. "Are we there yet?"
"No, we are not," said a harassed Pikachu.
"Oh." Pichu thought about that for a moment, scanned his surroundings, and came to a conclusion. "Yes, we're there!"
"Oh, goody," said Pikachu sarcastically.
"Oh, goody," said Jigglypuff sincerely.
"So where are we?" said Pikachu.
"Look around you!" said Pichu excitedly.
The two larger Pokemon looked, and they were amazed; the room which Pichu had led them to was crammed with all kinds of foodstuffs! Apples, birdseed, cake, dodo meat, endorphins, flowerpots – every single kind of food that they could imagine was here, and in vast quantities at that!
"This is Master Hand's secret food store!" exclaimed Pikachu sincerely.
"This is Master Hand's secret food store!" exclaimed Jigglypuff sarcastically.
"It's amazing, isn't it, guys?" said Pichu. "And we can keep it all for ourselves!"
"That seems a bit dishonest," said Pikachu, "maybe we should tell the others."
"That seems a bit dishonest," said Jigglypuff, "but whatever you say, Pichu!"
Pichu was so happy that his friends were excited too – and they were being so nice to each other like always! Ha… as if his two best friends in the whole wide universe could ever disagree…
"Let's eat!" he said.
Pikachu sighed in resignation; Jigglypuff in ecstasy.
They feasted.

"Okay," said Link, "Mario, I understand that you're a little bit… panicked, but there are nice ways we can deal with it… no, you don't have to kill every person who could potentially slit your throat…"
"Yes-a, I do," said Mario weakly.
"Okay…" said Link, wondering to himself if he was the only person left in the entire mansion who still had kept those last furtive threads of sanity.
"THE KATTS ARE COMING!" screamed Falco, running past, Young Link viciously biting his tail.
Link concluded that he probably was the only sane person left. This realisation shocked him so much that he set his head on fire, and then ran around, screaming in shock, pulling out his hair.

"There she is!" yelled DK.
Yoshi made an amazing dive across the dining room, tongue outstretched, but missed Peach by the width of a Waddle Dee brain.
"I like water polo!" screamed Peach insincerely as she tried to fend of her pursuers with her parasol.
"Yoshi?" "What?"
DK sighed in frustration. "It's pure nonsense. Ignore it." They continued to pursue Peach.
From the other end of the dining room, Kirby watched this spectacle. While those three ran around in circles, he snuck up to the dining table and grabbed the gigantic pot of fish and carrot stew that was supposed to be lunch.
"Mmm…" said Kirby, "…food of some form…"
"Hey!" shouted Fox from the kitchen. "Is someone stealing lunch in there?"
"Uh… no," said Kirby, pausing mid-bite.
Fox stormed in, his suspicions roused. "I'm not so sure," he said.
Fox looked at the table and was horrified to see that their lunch had been taken! But fortunately for Kirby, before Fox could see him, Peach whacked him in the head with a turnip, knocking him out cold.
"Randomness tastes bittersweet," said Kirby poetically.
"Oh, how touching," said Samus, "let's marry." She smiled nervously.
Kirby's eyes widened and he tried to work out if he could reach the exit in time…

"So we're agreed that we don't tell the others about this?" said Pikachu.
"About what?" said Jigglypuff.
"It's okay, silly," said Pichu, "we already know about the food, we can discuss it among ourselves, right?"
"What food?" said Jigglypuff.
"The food," said Pikachu, "that is right in front of your face."
Jigglypuff looked carefully. "Oh, oh! I see! That's food that I was eating?"
While the two older Pokemon discussed important things like this, Pichu ate his way through a giant sugar cube twice his size. "Aah…" he said in contentment.
"You know," said Pikachu, "this stuff could last the three of us for months… I have an idea."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" said Jigglypuff.
"I can't read minds," said Pikachu.
"Well, I can," boasted Jigglypuff.
"Prove it," said Pikachu.
"Are you thinking… of how clever I am?"
"No."
"Oh."
"My idea," said Pikachu, "is that we hibernate, for lack of a better word, here, for a few months, while the others find help, escape, or starve to death."
"Or set themselves on fire," added Pichu sagely.
"Or set themselves on fire," agreed Pikachu bemusedly. "So perhaps we could-"
"NOOO!" screamed Jigglypuff.
"What?" said Pikachu.
"I'm scared of fire," said Jigglypuff.
"Which is why we're hibernating," said Pikachu, "to escape everyone else's stupidity. Although…" he muttered something under his breath which may or may not have mentioned the relation between Jigglypuff and stupidity.
"You two are such good friends!" said Pichu incorrectly.

"Maybe we can talk about this sensibly," pleaded Link.
"Must-a kill," stressed Mario.
"Maybe we can't," admitted Link.
Mario picked up a mushroom and tried to club Link to death with it. Luckily (or unluckily, depending how you see it), Mario failed in this task.
Link force-fed Mario a few sleeping pills, and then everything was just fine and dandy once again.
Falco frowned. "But I-"
"It's a birdie!" screamed Young Link.
The chase continued.

"Teh winnar iz joo," said Ness.
"i m teh winnar!" proclaimed Mewtwo.
They picked up their paintball guns and continued once again.

"So anyway," said Pikachu, "are we all agreed on this?"
"Yes," said Pichu sincerely.
"Yes," said Jigglypuff onomatopoeically.
(A brief side note: what Jigglypuff said was onomatopoeic because it aptly described what she had said, unlike a line which stated exactly what she didn't say, which probably wouldn't have qualified for that, and it's thirty-five past ten at night and I really should be getting to bed but I haven't updated for a month and I suddenly feel apprehensive about using any non alphanumeric keys such as punctuation and random dollar signs but I guess I should type properly so, yes, I'm using grammatical constructs again, and do I feel good about it or what?)
"I sense that a large and completely irrelevant sidenote just passed us by," said Pikachu confusedly.
"I sense it too," said Jigglypuff, who thought that this was completely normal.
"I sense the end of the world," said Pichu jokingly, because he didn't know any better (one really has to pity him).
"Shut up, you ball of puff," said Pikachu.
"Shut up, you ugly yellow rat," said Jigglypuff. "With a trisyllabic name," she added so not as to offend Pichu.
"You two are such good friends," said Pichu, "which is only natural because you're both my best friends in the entire world!"
"It's two-thousand-and-five! At least, so says my graphical text editor (MSWord)," said Theau Thor, who really should have gone to sleep about three hours beforehand, but really wanted to get as much of this chapter done as possible.

"HELP ME!" screamed Kirby.
"MARRY ME!" screamed Samus.
Kirby stopped. "Wait. Samus doesn't randomly chase people…"
Samus had caught up to him and grabbed him passionately.
"So," said Kirby, "you can't be Samus…"
"No, he isn't," said Samus, stepping into view.
"Drat," said the impostor, "I've been found. This was completely unexpected. Completely. Unexpected."
"So who is he?" said Kirby.
"I have no idea," said Samus.
"Perhaps I can answer that," said someone else.
"Who are you?" they gasped.
"It would help if you looked," said Ness in a pained voice. "It's only me, Ness."
Kirby ate a small room, then said, "So Ness, are you here to tell us who has been posing as Samus?"
"It's very simple," said Ness. "I was playing paintball with Mewtwo when suddenly I sensed someone in emotional danger. I quickly ran down here, and tried to read the mind of the impostor."
"So who is it?" said Kirby.
"Shut up," said Ness, "I'm trying to be dramatic. Now, anyway, I couldn't, because the impostor was wearing a tinfoil hat-"
"-so that's how I can ensure privacy," muttered Samus.
"-coated with radioactive helium, which was really disgusting, so I didn't want to read that person's mind."
"Oh," said Samus.
"Wait!" said Kirby. "Helium doesn't have a radioactive isotope abundant enough to-"
"Stop it!" said Ness. "Anyway… I know who it is."
"How?" said Kirby.
"Uh…" Unable to think of how he could continue his bluff, Ness pulled off the impostor's helmet. It was-
"Yowser! It's Bowser!" gasped everyone.
"Uh… I knew that," said Ness in what he hoped was a convincing tone.
"Curses," said Bowser, "I was hoping to wed Kirby in order to stop the latter-day socialists from stealing my cocoa supplies."
"Whew," said Kirby, knowing that disaster was averted, for him at least.
Bowser narrowed his eyes, stared at Ness, and snarled, "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids and your stupid dog-"
"I am not a dog!" said Popo.
"Oh," said Bowser.

"This sucks," said Theau Thor, "I'm stopping."