For as long as Fox could remember, the majority of champions didn't bother keeping up with any news outside the complex. Many of them had found a second life here that kept them separated from their more hectic pasts. Newspapers were rare, only consumed by a select few on rare occasions. One of these had been Marth, who could bother himself with reading now and then about what was going on in the city and perhaps across the planet and beyond if he had the time and interest. Mario would also be vaguely aware of anything going on just outside the complex's walls. Outside those few members, their only exposure to the outside world was when Hand allocated free time in their schedules every couple of weeks to go on excursions into the city or to the forests and fields just beyond its limits.

Nowadays, every time he walked into the dining room there was a loose paper hanging around. Hand had attempted to restrict how many were being delivered to the complex each day to prevent everyone from getting depressed by the negative coverage, but that just meant champions were spending more time on their phones reading the news instead of browsing videos on social media and messaging each other.

Today, he was unsurprised to see a small group crowded around Marth, who had secured the lone physical copy of Laurissa News that morning. He looked irked at the swarm but didn't say anything to them. After all, they were just as anxious as he was to see what had been written this time. Fox glanced at it. Nothing of major note today.

On the other side of the room, Lucina was holding the newspaper from Corneria News. She was surrounded by a few usual suspects in Link, Leaf, and Palutena. Zelda, Fox figured, must already be discussing something with Hand. There were no fights for the next few days, so it was all training and rest on their schedules.

Fox made for the Corneria News group, but he froze when Lucina noticed him, slapped the paper down, and shot him a stony look. "What the hell did you tell Kaitlin about us?" she shouted at him across the dining room. Several other champions nearby stopped in the middle of their breakfast to stare.

Ever since agreeing to try and work with Lucina better, he had made a habit of being sure he hadn't done anything wrong before claiming innocence. Sometimes Lucina wasn't particularly clear about what she was accusing him of, so outright denying everything just led to angry confusion. Still, even after racking his brain for a few seconds, he couldn't imagine what he had done this time.

"Say what?" he replied, befuddled.

Link was trying to hide a smirk as Lucina snapped the paper around and held it up for Fox to read. He walked over to them and she shoved it into his face so that his eyes were practically touching one of the headlines in the sports section.

Relationship Growing Pains

Fox, Lucina struggle to mix styles

"Okay?" He pushed the paper away from his face. "So we had a rough start and Kaitlin thought it was worth writing something about. Better that than another article talking about how screwed the company is."

Lucina pushed it back. "Read it," she demanded icily.

Fox grabbed the paper and began to peruse it. The further he got, the more he understood Lucina's temper. He had expected an analysis of their first two matches together, perhaps with some anecdotes about how they fought alone versus together. That was, to put it plainly, not remotely close to what Kaitlin had written.

Among the dozens of teams thrown together for the new doubles format, the one most interesting, not for its relative success or failure, but for the characters involved, is the duo of Fox and Lucina. Certainly, their first match against the powerhouse team of Mario and Roy could be categorized as an abject failure, but what has been more interesting is the dynamic developing between the two.

As a member of the Big Eight, it would be natural to assume Fox would take the leadership position, and he did in their first fight. However, in the second Fox played a far more passive support role, leaving Lucina to be the vanguard. It's rather notable that Fox, a prolific close-range fighter, opted for this.

Of course, this is assuming he was the one to make that decision. After their first match, in a not-so-subtleLucina was reportedly irritated with Fox, even going as far as to not train with him on the grounds. Some strategies proposed by Fox have been met with resistance from Lucina, believing that he is not trusting enough in her abilities. Other sources have said that, for a time, she actively avoided Fox while on the complex. With their approach to the second fight being so different, it is not unreasonable to suggest Lucina may have demanded some kind of concession from Fox as to how they play and refused to cooperate until then.

Fox is also known by some of the other champions to be a lone trainer, and it has played into his difficulties with trying to work with Lucina. Without much experience working with other champions on the training grounds, it may be proving to be partly Fox's fault that he has been unable to establish a connection with his greener partner. If he has been unable to attend to Lucina's style, it will be hard to establish himself as the leader of the duo.

With how their first match ended, an unwise lending of a stock from Fox to Lucina that ultimately lead to their defeat, Lucina may be looking to prove herself once again on the field. Perhaps she doesn't trust him after their first match, or she could be feeling guilty about taking the extra stock. Either way, it will be worth watching how they develop in future matches.

Fox could only raise his eyebrows, blink a few times, and try to gently lay the paper down until Lucina snatched it away. He glanced over at Link, who was pointedly looking at the wall with his hand on his chin and covering his mouth.

"I don't know where she got all that, but it wasn't me," he leveled with her. She glared at him for a few seconds before concluding that he had no reason to lie about this.

"This makes me sound like a complete brat," she grumbled, reading through Kaitlin's words again. "What did I ever do to her?"

"Uh-huh, and what part do you think makes you sound like that?" asked Fox, daring her to name any of the completely true things Kaitlin wrote. She threw him a narrow look.

Fox folded his arms and looked at the ground. There was something about this article beyond its rendition of Lucina that was bothering Fox. For some reason, that reason being so far beyond his imagination it was probably sitting over on the planet Corneria, Kaitlin had locked onto them as an object of interest. Her comment back on the training grounds when she saw Lucina storm away from him made sense now. Being a friendly acquaintance of hers didn't come with any special protection from her journalism, and she was plenty proficient at digging up whatever she wanted. Including…

Fox looked back up at Lucina, who was still complaining to Link without realizing he was doing a poor job at concealing his enjoyment of the drama caused by Kaitlin's work. "Hey, can we head out to the training grounds for a bit?"

"Seriously? Right now?"

Fox's face twitched. Even if he wasn't intending on taking her out there to practice, he was a little irked that she had so quickly resisted any call to go train. They still needed it more than any other pair. "It's just something I want to talk over."

"And you can't do that here? Inside? Where it's warm?"

"Alternatively, I could go find Kaitlin-."

"Oh my gosh, fine."

Lucina trudged after Fox, paper still in hand, out of the complex and to the training grounds. Fox made sure to put as much distance between them and any of the ambitious early-morning champions who were already out and about. Lucina was looking as moody as she could, but at least she had come out.

Once he felt he had gained enough distance, he spun on his heel to face her. She looked a little startled by how quickly he had turned around. Better now than never.

"Look, there's something I need to tell you."

The look Lucina gave him wasn't quite like the disgusted or bored one she usually had while working with him out here. This one had a great deal of apprehension mixed in with a bit of fear. Her eyes were wide, and her brow furrowed as she took a half step back and tilted her face slightly away to stare at him from the corners of her eyes.

"Uh, okay, but if you say something weird, I'm getting my sword and stabbing you."

"Um, alright, well…" Fox stammered. Even with the push he had just given himself, this was way harder than he thought it would be.

"You know, maybe you should just not-," Lucina tried to negotiate, but Fox was already committed.

"I placed a bet that you would be kicked out of the company at the last Reveal Day!" Fox said very quickly with his head looking down. "It was unprofessional, insensitive, and I shouldn't have done it!"

He dared a glance up at her after his confession. Her mouth was frozen open mid-sentence. She might have even frozen mid-breath. There was an excruciatingly awkward pause for about ten seconds where Fox wished anything would happen, but preferably him being vaporized on the spot, or eaten by an aparoid. Either felt more comfortable at the moment.

Then Lucina turned on her heel just as Fox did a moment prior.

"I'm getting my sword," she said tonelessly. She began marching towards the stadium where the equipment room resided.

"What? Hey! Wait!" Fox scampered after Lucina, who had lost all emotion on her face. She might as well be a drone currently programmed with the sole purpose of stabbing Fox. He kept trying to get in front of her eyes, but she was deliberately avoiding looking at him.

"Look! It's something I've been feeling really bad about for a long time, and I know how much this place means to you and how upset you were when you knew there was a chance you might be leaving, and then I felt like I was exploiting that, and-."

Lucina snapped on him.

"WHO CARES?" she bellowed. Her voice blew through Fox's head and wiped his thoughts clean. He stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Huh?" was all he could blurt out.

"Who. Gives. A. Damn. About a stupid bet you placed?"

"I-. Well-."

"Bowser places bets on us every week! You don't see him crying to people he bet against, do you?"

"But this…you were really upset-."

"Then I guess we'll just have to chalk this up as another time you underestimated me! Is this seriously what you've been secretly moping about this whole time?"

"But Zelda found out and she said-."

"I don't care what that bossy blonde said! It's a stupid bet! Of all the problems going on right now, of all the things we have to keep up with between duos, and interviews, and all this other crap, this is what you've been burning energy on?" As she heated up, little puffs of fog were coming from her mouth in the chill autumn air.

Fox could only stand there, stunned. Of all the responses he had prepared for, out of every scenario he had calculated in his mind, this had been nothing like any of them. Anger? Sure, he was fully expecting that, but in the direct form of being angry at how he had treated her like a betting object behind her back, not because she thought he had been overreacting about the whole situation and his concerns were unfounded. He tried to reason with it, to justify in his mind that she really was mad at him for that and she was just being nice about it, but the more he thought about it, the more Lucina's words made sense. If she didn't care in the slightest about a dumb bet he had made about her, then why should he get so worked up over it? In fact, after that comment about him underestimating her, he was half-convinced that she was actually happy that she had stuck it to him without even realizing it.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was much more confident this time.

Lucina wound up again. "I just told you-."

"Not that. I'm sorry for making such a big deal of this when it shouldn't have been. I got so worked up thinking I had done something offensive that it interfered with our matches."

So that was it, Fox thought. All that energy burned over something that didn't matter and could've been resolved in a single minute. Months of guilt all for no good reason. He wasn't sure if he had ever felt so dumb before. How much effort had been wasted that could've been spent training, working with Lucina, or better yet helping Zelda and Hand? So much for acting like a member of the Big Eight.

Lucina sighed. "Look, thanks." She rubbed her head some. Her face had gone quite red while she was yelling at Fox. "And I don't just mean thanks for apologizing about the overreacting stuff. Thanks for telling me about those other things. I know I just said I couldn't care less, but it makes me feel better knowing you felt bad about it and wanted to apologize. At the very least that lets me know that you care about the rest of us."

Foxed rubbed his face and Lucina ran her hand through her hair while looking off to the side. All their fighting seemed so petty now. The truth was there was something much more important going on, and whining with each other had been pretty selfish when everyone else was trying to think of ways to help out.

"So, are we good now?" Lucina asked.

"Yeah."

Lucina stepped up to Fox and held out her hand. When he shook it, it was the first time they had made eye contact without one of them looking contemptibly at the other in months.

"About that," said Fox, looking at the paper in Lucina's other hand.

"Ugh, I'm going to kill her." She gripped the paper and looked down at Kaitlin's article again. "Where did she even get all this information?"

"She's good," Fox said. "You don't get into her position at her age without being a real superstar. She probably has connections we don't know about."

"So is she just going to start stalking us now? I'm not sure how much I like that idea. We could just get Hand to make her stop. You know how jumpy he is about media getting into our business too much. It took a hell of an extraneous circumstance just to let a few of them onto the training grounds."

Fox stroked his chin. Now that he wasn't spending so much mental energy being subconsciously apologetic every time he was near Lucina, his thoughts were clear as day. Aside from the parts of the article she had taken offense to, he also wasn't too pleased with how she had gone after his status as a member of the Big Eight. It wouldn't take but a single stop by Hand's office to cut off her access to the whole complex. But then a little voice in his head piped up.

Characters, Fox, people like characters.

"Actually, no. We don't tell Hand," he said.

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because I just got a crazy idea."

Lucina's apprehensive look returned. "Somehow, that's the scariest thing you've said all day."

Zelda balled up her hands and threw them into the air. "Haha, yes!-oh, sorry."

She had just sent a half dozen pieces of paper flying off Hand's desk when she celebrated the official ratings that had just been calculated. The numbers from Leaf's match had blown away every other match, up to and including the Opening Day ratings. At the culmination, when she and Incineroar were duking it out in the tiebreaker set, the count had reached almost double that of Opening Day's. Of course, after her match, the numbers went back down to their dreary amounts within an hour or two, but the huge spike during Leaf's match stuck out like a beacon of hope.

"It's alright," said Hand, picking up the papers. "Let's just be cautious about our progress."

"Oh c'mon. How can you not be excited? These numbers are the clearest indication we've ever had that we did something very right."

"Of course, I'm quite pleased with it. In fact, I plan on meeting with the board again today to bring these up. It should put their minds at ease for a while."

Zelda was bouncing on her toes. She hadn't sat down since arriving in Hand's office. It was good that he wasn't meeting the board until later because she had resumed her old habit of barging straight in unannounced, something he had repeatedly chided her about, but today's anticipation had been too great.

"So, what do we do now? Do we just start bringing reporters in to conduct interviews with everyone?"

"Not quite. We need to be a bit more creative than that. Remember, it wasn't the interview itself that got people interested in Leaf."

"Still, it's an easy option we know already works. Why not use it as a basis while we cook up other ideas?"

Hand didn't respond, nor did he meet Zelda's eyes. He just looked over to the window and at the brown and red splattered trees outside while stroking his chin.

Zelda folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. "You know, there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

"What's that?"

"What happened between you and the media that makes you so distrustful of them to the point you're always ultra-restrictive with what kind of access they have with us? Even Kaitlin is limited in what she can do, and you seem to have a pretty good relationship with her these days."

Hand gripped the edge of the table for a moment before letting out a sigh and relaxing a little. "It's more a culmination of things they've done over the years than any single event. The incident with Pichu, for example. That was a rather extreme one."

"Oh," said Zelda. "Yeah, I remember that."

Back when even Zelda was a newbie, and Hand was spending part of his time trying to stop her and Link from harassing or outright attacking Ganon mid-training, Pichu, the adorable electric rat they all loved, was also a newbie. However, its performance had been very poor, rarely winning a match. Eventually, articles were written asking why Hand bothered to keep such a weak champion on the roster. The champions themselves never read these articles directly, so at first, they were all oblivious, but eventually, their sentiment became so prolific that fans began to act accordingly towards Pichu. Once the others found out what was happening, they began going easier on Pichu, but that just resulted in more ridicule. Eventually, Hand decided it would be better for Pichu to leave altogether to stop the harassment. It never returned until the most recent Reveal Day they just had over the summer.

"Yeah, we were all pretty pissed about that. Didn't Fox call you a coward or something when you let it go?"

"Fox was still in his young superstar phase then and thought anything could be solved if you just went at it hard enough," Hand shrugged. "He's far more mature now, and I'm certain he wouldn't act the same. Anyway, that's always been my experience with them. They need readers, and drama gives them more readers, so they'll manufacture it if they need to. Kaitlin isn't an exception to this, as I'm sure you saw from her article this morning."

"This one?" asked Zelda, picking up the sports section in Corneria from that morning. It had her piece on Fox and Lucina's troubles on it. "But, isn't this all accurate? They were at each other's throats for a long while, and Lucina just wasn't having anything to do with him at one point."

"I'm less concerned about the accuracy than I am about the way she went about getting it."

Zelda tapped her cheek. She could see where Hand was coming from, but it wasn't sounding very sensible to her.

"She didn't manufacture drama, though," she said. "She just did a really good job of digging up already existing drama. If you ask me, that's doing her job as she should. You said reporters need readers. If you're concerned about her digging into our private lives, why not toss her a bone and give her things to write about that aren't as intrusive?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you think loudmouths like Cap would relish the opportunity to be in the spotlight of some drama?"

"It might be fun for them at first, but what are they going to do when someone takes it too far?"

"It's like I said before, I think you need to trust us veterans a bit more." She had to inhale and steel herself a bit before confessing, "Cap is dumb, but he's not stupid. He's more than capable of handling himself professionally."

Hand had to do a double take at Zelda to make sure he had heard her correctly. "You think so?" he asked. He sounded more interested in confirming that Zelda thought the Captain was professional than he was interested in whether he could handle the media machine.

"He makes way too much noise, he's far too overconfident in his abilities, and he's always encouraging the others into doing absurd stuff…but…he's rarely ever late to anything, he trains more than anyone else, he's got a heart of gold when it comes to protecting any of us, and, most importantly for this conversation, he is about as good as the Big Eight when it comes to interacting with the media. To be honest, outside of the Big Eight, he, Bowser, Ganon, and I are your safest bets for this kind of thing."

Hand stared at Zelda for a moment. She had gone red while forcing herself to compliment all those champions, but it needed to be said for Hand to understand. "You know, just like I was saying about Fox, you've also grown a lot, Zelda," he said.

"How cheesy," she replied bluntly, but she couldn't stop her smile from showing up if only just a little.

Hand thought for a while. Zelda quietly picked up the remaining papers she had scattered on the floor and stacked them in a neat pile at the corner of Hand's desk.

"So? Do you think you can trust us?" she asked.

Hand took a few deep breaths, tilting his head a little each time as the battle raging in his mind tugged him back and forth. "I don't think I have much of a choice at this point," he said. "This is your problem as much as it is mine this late in the game. We'll prioritize the champions who have matches coming up in the next two weeks. If anyone in particular sticks with the audience, we can follow up afterward. I guess we should try and get Leaf involved with something as well."

"Don't sound so worried. When have we ever let you down?"

Hand smiled. "I guess that's a fair statement."

Kaitlin had to delicately balance her cup of coffee as she bolted onto the first hovercraft that stopped near her apartment that morning. She had been rushing after missing her first alarm and had left the lid unfastened. Luckily, not a drop had been spilled.

"Oops! Sorry!" said a middle-aged gentleman when the hovercraft took off and he bumped into her. She danced a few steps and managed to keep the coffee perfectly upright.

"All good," she said, fastening the lid.

Her energy and alertness had increased since she started occupying herself with so many interesting tasks at work. A mysterious meeting between board members, the drama she had uncovered between Fox and Lucina, and Leaf's sudden rise to stardom, all set against the backdrop of an uncertain future within the company, it was all very exciting. Her story about Fox and Lucina yesterday had done well in particular. A brilliant stroke of inspiration on her part.

It was also easier to feel energized when she received word from Hand about how well Leaf's fight had performed in the ratings. So long as they kept their wits about them, they could make a real comeback, and she'd get to be the one to document it all in her own words. Compared to the anxious drudge of late summer, autumn was turning out to be entertaining and cheerful.

She trotted into the office, flats tapping softly against the tile floor and muffled by the overbearing scent of autumn leaves someone had brought into the building via scented candles. She was back in her happy place of work, even if she had to tolerate reading a few pointless articles now and then from…from…

She paused in the middle of the office. She couldn't smell the candles anymore. She couldn't even smell her coffee right in front of her. The tile floor suddenly felt much colder, and the soft fabric of the warm air around her was being punctured by sharp, cold keyboard taps and clicking pens.

Her boss was leaning against a cubicle nearest her office, holding a paper from Laurissa News.

"What," Kaitlin said it so flatly that it deflated the whole room's atmosphere. Several junior reporters and editors had stopped working to look at them. Her boss looked about as cheery as someone who had just been forced to walk through a cold autumn rainstorm with no umbrella. Without a word, she tossed the paper over to her.

It wasn't hard to find Adam's piece. It wasn't located in the sports section, like all of his and hers usually were. This time, his writing had been given half the front page, and ample room for the title to boot. It even had the tags of Sports, Business, Politics, and Investing attached.

Two Board Members of Smash Co. Resign and Sell Stake

And Laurissa hasn't just given Adam a title. There was also a lengthy subtitle underneath in italics running the length of the paper.

Reports indicate three-quarters of the roster could be cut by end of year after major stakeholders bail on stagnant Smash Co. ratings

Kaitlin looked up at her boss. She wasn't mad, although she would have preferred it if she was. The look of disappointment she was being given was delivering the most crushing blow to her morale she had ever felt since getting this job. She was holding her head in one hand propped up by her elbow on the cubicle.

"I-."

She jerked her head a little towards Kaitlin's office.

"Look," her boss said, "I know you keep saying you've got everything you need, but you are clearly being outmatched here. You gotta tell me what's going on."

Kaitlin slumped down on her chair and slid until her head was near the base. She read through some of Adam's article, and as much as it pained her to admit it, this one sounded far more legitimate than the one he had written about the poor stadium attendance a while back.

"This…tool supposedly has some super secret special source that's been feeding him information about what's going on. He keeps bragging about it and he even invited me for a drink to boast. Then he offered it to me, for a price. At this point, he'll probably charge an arm and a leg for it."

Her boss's ears and eyes perked up in alarm. "He tried to sell you the source?"

"Yeah, and it was at some quiet, low-frequency bar as well."

"And, knowing you, you told him to shove it despite the fact you know Corneria could pay whatever price he named."

"Are you seriously telling me I should have taken him up on that offer?"

"No, and I'm glad that you didn't."

"Good, because I would have rather been swarmed with aparoids in my home again than accept help from-."

"And now I'm telling you that you should back off this story."

Kaitlin's little rant ground to a halt. "What? You want me to not report the biggest story in my field?"

"Kaitlin, I'm not going to act as if I know more about this topic more than you, but I do know how the larger world of journalism works better than you. I don't know much about this…Adam Sellar guy, but the fact he's publishing bombshells like this on a huge company that has a lot of powerful hands in it before the official corporate communication comes out, and then turning around and trying to sell you the source? That's throwing up so many red flags it's making my head spin."

Kaitlin folded her arms and pouted, "But, what am I supposed to write about then?"

"Just stick with the stories you're doing on the individual champions. The last two you wrote about Leaf and Fox and Lucina did pretty well. Stay the hell away from that corporate mess." She walked out of her office.

Kaitlin threw her hands into the air in silent indignation. What was she doing if not reporting on the competition's biggest story? Was she just supposed to sit around writing about petty champion drama while Adam raked in not only the biggest story in the sports field but one of the biggest stories in general for the whole year?

She tossed the paper across the office and into the glass wall. One of the junior editors just beyond jumped in his seat.

How was Adam doing this? Several times now he had come out with a report that was so far ahead of the game that it didn't make any logical sense. Something as colossal as a board resignation would have been kept very close between the board and Hand. The only person that could have possibly found out any sooner would have been Zelda, and she was pretty confident she would see right through a slimeball like Adam within ten seconds if he tried to contact her. Not only that, she would report that kind of communication and Hand would shut down all his access to the complex in the blink of an eye.

She sat up in her chair. The board would be the only possible way Adam could have known. Either that, or he knew someone who had an in with the board. Regardless, his information had to be coming from there. Flipping the problem upside down in her head, if his information originated from the board, then that meant someone from the board was leaking information. It would be contradictory for Hand to let any information loose. He probably hadn't even informed Zelda yet.

Someone on the board…was leaking information…to damage the company's reputation. Someone was deliberately hurting the company…and at the same time…one of the board members was harassing the others…

Gears began to churn in Kaitlin's head. She got up and retrieved the paper she had thrown against the wall. She sat back down and began looking for any particular information Adam may have included about either of the board members who had resigned.

Alex Davins relinquished her shares yesterday afternoon, citing that she wanted to protect her gains on what she viewed as a product that had passed its prime. The move is likely to shock Smash's market cap. Davins held a 10% stake in the company before the sale.

Kaitlin's eyes lit up. She dropped the paper and spun around to her computer to check her emails for an invitation she had received not long ago.

"Gotcha," she breathed when she found the invitation and its dazzling gold patterned outline. She snatched up her phone and began typing.

"Hey!"

Kaitlin spasmed so badly that she dropped her phone into her lap. Her boss had just barged back into her office. "What?" she asked, flustered.

"Don't go thinking you need to do something stupid, alright? You're still my star reporter."

"Mhmm," was all Kaitlin could offer back. Her boss gave her a wink and left.

In Kaitlin's lap, a message was displayed on her phone.

Kaitlin: I've got a lead, but there's a party in the city you guys need to attend.