Wednesday afternoon, and still Ness was sprawled on his bed. He snored lightly, a gentle dribble of drool oozing from the left corner of his mouth and staining a generous puddle into his pillow. A persistent itch broke through the anesthesia of his dreams, and Ness lifted a flap of his blue-and-white striped pajamas from his stomach and scratched away at the skin until it was red and hot.
Outside, the wild breeze of an afternoon rain blew small droplets through his open window and showered Ness's face with a gentle spray of cold and wet. He winced, frowned, turned over and muttered, "Five more minutes, Yoshi. Five more minutes, dammit…"
A particularly cold and heavy droplet splashed itself on the tip of Ness's nose. The reaction was immediate. Ness threw the covers off his legs, shot up from his bed, wrenched open his eyes, and yelled, "It's back throw time, mother –!"
There was no one there.
"…Huh," Ness finished lamely as he blinked twice and rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things – and by that he meant seeing nothing. He scratched his head through the mess of his disheveled hair while wiping the traces of water with the sleeve of his left arm. A low, rumbling clap of thunder alerted him to the source of his awakening, and Ness jumped off his bed, strode over to the windows, and slammed it shut.
Along the way, Ness's eyes caught sight of the time on his Dali's Clock.
"Holy fishsticks!" Ness cried as he scrambled to the drawer above which the clock hung to ensure that the cloudiness of sleep was not altering his vision. There was no mistaking it – it was two in the afternoon, a whopping six hours past the regular time at which he was normally forced to wake up. More than half the day gone by and here he still was in his room, still clad in his pajamas, still without a meal in the comforts of his belly.
Which could only mean one thing.
Yoshi had not come to wake him up.
He had mixed feelings on that, as he opened the door to his closets and dug through for his attire of the day. Having never been a morning person, Ness's greatest guilty pleasure even before the days of Smash was to ignore the shrill rings of his alarm clock (and later, the enraged screams of his mother downstairs) and sleep in, nestling his head deeper into his pillow or throwing his blanket over his head to block out the daylight. No longer was this the case, however, once he became good friends with Yoshi towards the start of Melee. The dinosaur would barge into his room and employ a rich variety of methods to wake up the stubborn youngster – be that drenching him in tropical juice, or borrowing a wave of Pikmin army to attack his head, or repeatedly throwing a Mr. Saturn and bouncing it against all parts of Ness's body until finally with a murderous roar Ness would grab Yoshi and back throw him out of his room – at which point the expenditure of energy would ensure his departure from his mattress and prevent him from falling back into the clasps of sleep.
Still though, there was no denying the advantage of waking early, Ness thought as he pulled on his blue-and-cyan bubble shirt designed to resemble Master Belch, complete with a pair of evil red eyes. Ness had forgotten the simple pleasures of a steaming hot delicious wholesome breakfast – scarfing down crispy bacons and eggs over easy, fluffy pancakes drowned in saccharine floods of heavenly maple syrup, hot crunchy brown toast smeared with sticky dollops of peanut butter (he preferred them chunky and without the jelly, thank you very much). As Yoshi himself put it, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so dig in!" Followed quickly by a "Oh, and lunch is just as important, too." And, barely half a second later, "And dinner. And supper. And those little snacks you have in between your meals. Oh, and don't forget –"
"Shut the fuck up, Yoshi," Ness smiled to himself as he pulled on a pair of red shorts. Other than the joys of breakfast, so too was there the prospect of an entire morning of adventures that would have been nigh impossible had Yoshi not intruded his sleep. The early awakening came with it a six-hour gain in playing and Smashing and fooling about, be that playing baseball or pulling another one of their insufferable pranks on the too-easily-annoyed adults.
And so it was more than a little surprising that the long-lasting tradition had finally been broken on this apparently fateful day. Ness wracked his mind for some explanation, some mental reminder that Yoshi had surely alerted him if he really was to be out of town for whatever reasons today – but could find none. Shaking his head as he put on an azure blue cap, Ness could only assume that the reason for his absence was linked to some sudden business that had befallen him before he could wake him up.
Ness closed the closet door, and was promptly presented with the second surprise of the day: His Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron, sitting comfortably atop a box by the door, joined by some new, plushy doll he had never before seen in his life, and yet of a design whose immediate familiarity struck with Ness instantly.
He walked forward, grabbed the new toy, and held it up to his face. Sure enough, it was exactly what he had expected it to be: A Yoshi doll, soft and huggable in all its plushy glory. It was remarkable, and even somewhat eerie, how similar its appearance was to the actual, living species. Proportions had always been a tricky aspect to nail for the craftsmen, from professional toymakers to talented fans, whenever they took a stab at remodeling any one of the Smashers into their own personal artistic creation – but this one seemed to get every little detail right, from the ratio of the length and width of its arms to the exact scale of its belly relative to its size. Ness turned the doll around and around in the hopes of finding some imperfection, some jarring quality that would immediately deter his mind from the strengthening association he was making with this doll and his missing friend – but he found none. The only prodigious difference was the blue button eyes stitched into the doll's sockets, but this only bolstered the unsettling dissonance with which Ness currently conjured Yoshi's image. What would a real-life Yoshi look like with buttons for eyes?
Ness suddenly had a vision of a giant metallic hand working needle and thread into Yoshi's eyeholes.
"Black is traditional…"
He shuddered and dropped his eyes from the buttons, instead focusing his gaze on the small, thin, red flap of a tongue that curved out from the doll's mouth. Curious, Ness wrapped his palm around the velvety material and gave it a quick, hard pull – revealing a hidden rope unraveling from the depths of the doll's mouth, until Ness's hand met tension and the tongue, having made its way to the Yoshi doll's legs, refused to be yanked any further. He let go, and as the ribbon of red slowly snaked back into its owner's mouth, a muffled, electronic voice suddenly burst from within the doll's belly.
Ness?! It's me, Yoshi! Can – can you hear me? Listen, you need to –
The voice faded away as the tongue resumed its original length and position from the mouth.
"Ha! It knows my name," Ness grinned, which all but confirmed the rising suspicion that who had suddenly gifted him this doll and who was responsible for waking him up were but the same. He pulled, again, and brought his ear closer to the doll's belly this time.
Just – just answer the question! I'm your best friend, right? No one else but –
Again the voice faded away, and this time Ness just smirked and shook his head. "You don't need to feel that bad about not making it today, you dumb dinosaur."
Another pull.
No, listen, I'm not –! Just answer the question! And don't stop pull –
"Booo~ooorring," Ness yawned as he threw the Yoshi doll behind him. Its head bounced off the wall and landed on Ness's bed with its nose turned to the ceiling.
Not even casting a second glance behind him, Ness tenderly picked up the Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron from the box and peered at the label that it and the Yoshi doll had been partially concealing.
DONATION BOX FOR ALL YOUR TЯASH TOYS LMAO
"Odd," Ness muttered, closing the box after opening it to check whether anything was in there (there wasn't). His mind worked furiously as he turned back to the Yoshi doll on his bed, staring mindlessly at the ceiling with its cold button eyes. The only Smasher who knew the code to his room was Yoshi, which meant that the only Smasher who could have brought in the doll and the donation box would also be Yoshi. But then why had he not woken him up? Had he been so stripped of time that neatly placing the donation box by the door and sitting the two toys atop it was all he could manage? Not to mention the amount of time wasted in going down to the Atrium, picking up his box, and bringing it back to his room…
He rubbed the back of his head. The most rational explanation he could think up of was that some emergency had transpired that required Yoshi to wake up at some ungodly hour – much too early to wake him up. The dinosaur's general disposition to kindness would explain his effort in lugging the box up to Ness's room before he took his leave, a gesture which evoked a small feeling of warmth in Ness's heart.
"Well," Ness concluded his musings as he scratched his chin, "if Yoshi can't make it today…"
Without warning, he launched himself onto the bed, the impact of his landing bouncing the doll into the air. He caught it with his left hand, and shoved it close to the Monkeytron's face.
"Oh no!" Ness cried in a ridiculously exaggerated girly-girl voice. "It's the Evil Alien Dinosaurs from Venus, and they're pulling all the hair out of my ponytail! Somebody help me!" Then, shaking the Monkeytron slightly as his voice took a much deeper, more manlier tone: "I'll save you!" He pushed the Monkeytron's fist so that it aimed straight for the Yoshi doll, and then swooped him down to deliver a gut-wrenching punch.
"BOOOOOOOMMM!" A supernova of white and flames exploded from the collision point between fist and belly, and the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus flew one thousand miles away from the impact zone, crashing through buildings and reducing cities into mere chunks of rubble and concrete. Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron activated his jet boots and blasted his way through the mushroom clouds of dust and hazy rings of smoke, necessary destruction for the eradication of all that stood in the way of justice. He made the journey of a thousand miles in a single second, and found the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus picking itself up in the center of a circle of leveled mountains. It screamed a earsplitting roar that would have caused even the hair on the bravest man to stand up on end – but Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron was no man. He was Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron.
"You can't defeat me!" screamed the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus as it pointed at Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron with one bloodstained nail from its three-fingered claw. "My power level is over nine thousand!"
"Oh yeah?" said Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron in the most manliest and valiant voice you can ever think of as he unsheathed the Super Zaiyan Sword of Unlimited Justice from his tail. "Well, my power level is over nine thousand and one!"
"Eat this, neeeeeerrrrrrrddddddd!" the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus spat as it picked up a giant slipper-shaped boulder and flung it straight to Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron's face. Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron calmly lifted up his left arm, thrust forth the barrel of his Shrink Forblicator Gzornagun 8000, and fired an alternating sine-and-cosine wave of radiant blue that shrunk the boulder to the size of a pebble. Then he unholstered the Supreme Vacuum Gun of Undying Good (which sported an epic backstory that took up an entire arc of Season 8 and involved the lore of Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron's creation and his complicated relationship with Dr. Scientist Peenees) and unleashed a mega-sized air tunnel that seemed a bit overkill for the mere purpose of sucking up the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus's now-dinky projectile. Then he brought the cannons of his arms together, used his cyborg brain to reverse-engineer the guns, and combine their powerful beams to blast the slipper-shaped boulder back to the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus at a size even bigger than when the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus had first launched it.
Needless to say, all this took about a cool four seconds and did not take nearly as long as it took for you to read that ponderous paragraph.
"You fight well, monkey!" shrieked the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus with condescending delight as it smashed the rock into bits with a swipe of its spiked tail. "But too bad for you! This isn't even my final form!"
"Oh yeah?" grunted Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron as a green blaze of energy began to consume the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus's entire fricken body. "Well, this isn't even my final form!"
"Krrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!" screeched the Evil Alien Dinosaur from Venus through gritted fangs as it became a mere silhouette in the brutal incandescence of pure uncontainable energy roaring in climbing flames from its body.
"Hrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!" yelled Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron as he, too, became engulfed in a brilliance of blistering red that marked his pure uncontainable energy.
"KRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"KRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"…And then they'll carry on screaming for the next ten minutes to end the episode," Ness finished as he laid down the toys among a mess of slippers, blankets, and the looping string of his yo-yo. "Will Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron prove victorious in his hardest fight yet against those despicable Evil Alien Dinosaurs from Venus?! Or will he fall to his knees and send the world into eternal darkness under the rule of these tyrannical leaders who have not a single shred of goodness in their hearts?!" Ness, now, turns to the plane of your computer screen, gives you a small little wink, and continues, "Find out in the next episode – I mean, chapter, of Super Duper Ult – I mean, Hello, Dolly!"
