A/N: PLEASE READ!

I normally don't do Author's Notes except in the cases of emergencies, and this is definitely one.

I had to repost the sixth chapter of Hello, Dolly! because I was messing around with fonts. Since traffic was low for a while, I figured I'd quickly post what I was experimenting, see if it caused any visible effects on my story, and, after reaffirming that the changes took place, delete them and return the story to normal.

Unfortunately, even after I was done with my experiment and reverted the doc back to its original, experiment-less state... THE CHANGES STILL REMAINED. And I know ff tells us to wait at least thirty minutes for visible changes to occur, but the perfectionist in me just got so angsty after ten minutes that I ended up deleting the chapter and re-uploading it.

Then I got an email saying that a new chapter of Hello, Dolly! has been uploaded, and I facepalmed.

I apologize, I really do. It wasn't my intention to re-post the same chapter and spark some false hope that I had uploaded a new one. And if there was any way I can take this story down from the front page that it currently is sitting at AGAIN without anything new, then I would do it in a heartbeat.

Sorry for the mishap, guys. It'll never happen again ^^;

As penance for my wrongdoing, I'll keep this Author's Note (and I absolutely DETEST including A/N's in my story, can't stand them because I feel they break away from the engagement of the plot) until this story is over.


Though the sight of Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron standing up on its own will and then pointing its finger squarely at his face could not have been clearer, Ness still had to rub his eyes and blink once or twice. It was true that he was used to the sights of inanimate objects, from ordinary cups of coffee to nondescript spheres of metal, attain some measure of sentience – but it was a different story altogether when it involved his long-lost, cherished childhood toy.

When at last Ness believed what he was seeing, he pointed his own finger straight at the toy and cried, "You're alive?!"

"If by 'alive' you mean I can –"

"But that makes no sense," Ness interrupted, not even looking at the Monkeytron as he began pacing back and forth with his chin resting on his hands. "All the objects that took on life should have returned to normal after we defeated Gigyas." He took one more step towards the right end of the room before looking back up and fixing Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron with a curious hard stare. "How are you still a… I mean, how are you still here?"

The plastic protrusions of Monkeytron's face that formed those stern, noble lips stretched into a slight smile. It was both out-of-place and perfectly comfortable upon the rest of its features. "Let us not concern ourselves with such trivial matters, Ness. Put that silly Yoshi doll back into the box, and answer me this. I, Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron, am your best friend, am I not?"

One word broke through the walls of deep concentration Ness had trapped himself in, two syllables among the myriads of others that just so happened to possess the right blades to slide perfectly into the keyholes of Ness's ears.

"Yoshi!" Ness uttered to himself, smacking his forehead for forgetting what should be his top priority. "Look, Monkeytron," Ness said, suddenly adopting a business-like tone as he turned to face Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron again, "I know it's a stretch, but you haven't seen him around lately, have you? Yoshi, I mean?"

The smile flickered, but Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron maintained the face of contradiction as it replied, "Perhaps, Ness, you would like to answer the question I proposed earlier first?"

"What now?"

"I asked you to reaffirm the fact that I am your true best friend that you have ever had. A simple 'yes' will suffice."

There was a second's pause as Ness's jaw dropped slightly in response to Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron.

Then the second passed and out came Ness's answer, as quick and brutal as a Mad Taxi driven by an even madder driver. "Hell no."

The Monkeytron's smile faltered completely this time, turning a full hundred-and-eighty and affixing a frown upon its face.

"What did you say?" he spoke in a low, cold, deadly whisper.

"No. N. O. No!" Ness stressed the last syllable as he strode over to the Monkeytron and stuffed his face directly into the latter's. "Listen here, you toy. If you think something like you – a cheap, delusional chunk of plastic and metal designed to entertain the most childish of minds – can ever compete with the flesh and blood of my actual friends, then boy, do I have news for you!" Ness prodded the Monkeytron right in its cybernetic chest. "You're just a toy, you understand that? Nothing more, nothing less! Know your place in the world, and don't elevate yourself to anything but!" His message made clear, Ness stood back, his eyes still boring into that of the Monkeytron's, and spat out, his words and tone as vile as ever, "Now, unless you're going to help me look for my best friend, I suggest you sit tight and not speak a word like the good little toy you're supposed to be."

The transformation in Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron's face was a phenomenon in itself. The awkward, yet genuine smile was nowhere to be seen now, replaced by a frown pressed violently into the molds of plastic. The glossy-brown eyebrows became angry slashes that only further communicated the rage spewing from those painted eyes. And yet, when he next spoke, it was in quiet, controlled voice that was perfectly in-character with how he was portrayed in his cartoons.

"Why do you feel this… Best friend of yours necessitates such a long, arduous search?"

"What are you, stupid? Doesn't the fact that he's my best –"

"What I mean is," the Monkeytron interrupted with random spazzes of his tail and arms as he twisted his head to face Ness again, "why do you feel such a long and arduous search is necessary when your best friend is right here, right now… In your very hands?"

It took quite the while for the words to hit him.

Ness, with eyes and jaws wide in disbelief, slowly turned his head to the Yoshi doll that he held in his hands. He stared at the stuffed head that forlornly slumped over its shoulder. The proportions and the features that were an exact spitting image of the real Yoshi. The dead button eyes, looking without seeing straight into his own.

In a rattling croak, Ness whispered, "Yo – Yoshi?"

There was no response, and so Ness wrapped his hand around the velvet rope and pulled.

Nnn… Nnn… Nnneesssss…

Silence.

Ness's body shook as his breath rattled from his mouth.

"Change him back," Ness finally said, in a voice completely devoid of emotion.

"Ah, yes, I suppose I should do that," Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron muttered, taking, from seemingly out of nowhere, a tiny crystal that glowed with some green phosphorescence trapped within. "I did promise after all, didn't I? But you know –"

"I said," Ness interrupted, his voice ascending into a deadly snarl as he gently sat down Yoshi on his bed and whipped out his bat, "change him back."

"– I haven't given up yet," Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron finished without paying the slightest heed to Ness's words as it sucked the crystal back into its right arm cannon.

Then it lifted both the Shrink Forblicator Gzornagun 8000 and the Supreme Vacuum Gun of Undying Good high over its head, crossed them into an X-shape, and yelled, "Extremely Epic But Gratuitously Named Supermassive Vortex of Simultaneous Rapid Accelerated Contraction!"

And Ness, despite the latest series of revelations, despite the sudden direness of the situation thrust into the light, could not help but drop his jaw even further as the words triggered a memory long hidden in the recesses of his mind.

"No way!" he cried out, half in shock, half in wonder. "You're really doing the Extremely Epic But Gratuitously Named Supermassive Vortex of Simultaneous Rapid Accelerated Contraction? The very same technique you used to defeat Dr. Scientist Peenees's 6969 Monster of Binary Insignificance from Season 4, Episode 10?"

"The very same," grinned Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron as it conjured a small circle of green smoke from the cannons of its arms.

"Super cool," Ness muttered in awe as he stared at the reenacting of one of the show's monumental moments happen in his very room – before snapping back to his senses with a quick jerk of his head. "I mean," Ness immediately corrected by raising his voice once more to its previous amplitude as he pointed his baseball bat at the toy with its arms crossed to the heavens, "stop your mumbo-jumbo at once and change. Yoshi. Back! Don't make me go over there and bash your head in!"

"Too late," Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron whispered with manic glee, and Ness realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that it was right. The wispy circle of green had already evolved into an emerald spiral of heavy smoke, which billowed in copious amounts from either of the arm cannons and added to the ever-expanding circumference of the aerial whirlpool. Quicker and quicker the vortex span, wider and wider it spanned. A whistling draft rustled its presence in the room, comforting and breezy at first. Ness, however, knew not to underestimate the calm before the storm. He grabbed Yoshi and gently, carefully, pushed him into the biggest, most spacious compartment of his bag. As an afterthought he kept Yoshi's head out of the bag, zipping the compartment around his neck and sparing his friend from the stuffiness of a sealed environment.

In the few seconds it took for Ness to do this the gentle breeze had accelerated into a tumultuous mini-typhoon. Every article of fabric and cloth, from the sheets of his bed to the dry curtains of his window, rustled madly as it was pulled towards the raging eye of the tornado. The objects within the immediate vicinity of Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron's summoning were the first casualties, and the Starman figurine, the Pencil Eraser and the Eraser Eraser, a plate of half-finished Lucky Sandwich – the residents of Ness's desk were lifted into the air, sucked towards the gravity pool of the Monkeytron's surging creation, shrinking and shrinking as they spiraled further and further into the center of the vortex, until they became so small that they became, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

"Not in my room, dammit!" Ness yelled hotly, but he knew it all to be in vain. Already the chair and the desk itself were being slowly lifted into the air… The winds grew stronger and stronger, buffeting him towards the direction of the proportion-altering quicksand. Ness, with squinted eyes and arms over his face, began trudging towards his door. His cap blew off his head, and for one mad second Ness thrust out his arms in order to grab it – but it slipped from his grasp and was promptly sucked into the wasteland of disintegrating sizes. In that second Ness's body swayed dangerously, and, without warning, he was suddenly lifted off his feet, his body about to enter a state of free fall not limited to the vertical dimension.

"Play with me, Ness!" roared the Monkeytron in deranged laughter. "Play with me!"

Ness could not hear, he was yelling so loudly. He once again made a wild grab for something – anything. His left hand found the cold surface of his doorknob. The winds were howling all around him now. The framed picture of he and his dog King looking over the town of Onett flew past his ear, shrank to the size of an ant within a millisecond, and disappeared into the whirlpool another millisecond later. The smoky rings were close, dangerously close –

Ness twisted the knob in his hand. The door slammed open, but before it could squish Ness against the wall, he let go and used his right hand to grab the now-exposed doorframe. He flopped and flapped like a flag in a thunderstorm, his cold fingers nearly losing grip of the cracking, splintering wood.

Ness directed his left hand away from the wide-open doorframe, towards the vortex, and, mustering every ounce of his psychic powers from every corner of his brain, screamed, "PK FIRE!"

A hot jetblast of flames exploded from the palm of his left hand, and the sheer momentum of the psionic projectile was enough to bodily launch him out from the doorframe and free him from the vice grip of the tornado.

Ness performed two somersaults, blasting off towards the adjacent wall of the corridor. He was about to crash his bag, and hence, Yoshi, against the wall, but at the last second made a split aerial turn that made him smash his chest and face instead. As he slid down to the floor of the corridor, Ness, panting heavily and looking as though he could faint from exhaustion alone, looked into his room. It was fast becoming deleted from existence, the last of the door crumbling into splinters of wood.

He closed his eyes, inflated his lungs with oxygen. He had to get up. It wouldn't be long before the shrinking whirlpool would exert its power well outside the confines of his room. He had to get up, had to get up now and run, run away…

The violent whooshes of the manufactured meteorological disaster suddenly subsided, and Ness opened his eyes a peep.

The Extremely Epic But Gratuitously Named Supermassive Vortex of Simultaneous Rapid Accelerated Contraction was gone.

Which could only mean one thing.

Ness gulped.

He had to run away. Now. He couldn't fight. Not with Yoshi strapped to his back.

Ness pressed his palms against the floor, took one last huge breath, and pushed himself off.

Mere seconds after he moved from his spot, there was an earsplitting WHAM! as several layers of wood and concrete were reduced to heaps of rubble and clouds of dust. The shockwave of the massive collision nearly whisked him off his feet, and Ness, after several bouts of violent coughs and rapid blinks, turned to see what had caused the sudden destruction.

There was his desk, as wooden and plain as ever – except now it was about the size of a bus. One end of it had brutally rammed into the wall that Ness had been sitting against seconds before. The other end was still stuck through the massive crater it had blasted in the wall of Ness's room.

And right atop this giant table was Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron, the deranged smile of blocky plastic teeth still plastered upon its plaster face.

"PllaAaayyYyy wiiIItttHh mEeeEEe, NeeSssSS!" it shrieked in a garbled voice that sounded as though it was screaming through a voice distorter. "PlLlAaaaaAayyyY WiiitthhHhh mEeeeEeeee!" it shrieked again, even as Ness immediately turned tail and began running in the opposite direction of the psychopathic toy. It aimed its erect, throbbing Supreme Vacuum Gun of Undying Good straight at Ness's back, straight at Yoshi popping his head from the flap of Ness's bag, and moaned, in a chilly, detached monotone: Ppppppppllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy wwwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhh mmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.


"Hey Ness!" piped up Kirby in his cute, squeaky voice as he waved towards the youngster rushing forward from the far end of the corridor. "You're just in time for our Last Supper before Master Hand comes back next Event Match! Come in and –"

"Get the hell out of here, Kirby!" Ness bellowed as he ran past the entrance of the Dining Room.

"Wha –" Kirby stuttered, both surprised and hurt by the suddenness of the rejection.

And before he or anyone else in the Dining Room knew it, they were attacked by a tidal wave of humongous objects. Monsoons of massive mugs and marbles rained down upon their unprotected heads; collections of colossal coins and cards crushed them under their sheer weight; sprays of seismic-sized soaps and spoons spelled their doom to be trapped underneath heaps and hills of enormous objects for the unforeseeable future. Kirby screamed, Roy yelled, Fox hollered, Zelda shrieked – but, at least for the time being, it seemed the Smashers in the Dining Room really had had their Last Supper, after all.


"Falcon, could you please just get out of the way?" Samus groaned, barely able to keep her eyes open as she waited in exasperation for Falcon to budge from her door.

"How about a goodnight kiss first?" Douglas Jay Falcon said playfully before winking to the plane of your computer screen, clearly convinced that his latest plan in making out with Samus was totally going to work.

"How about a goodnight punch?" Samus snapped back, flying her eyelids right open and reeling back a fist ready to devastate the finer features of Falcon's face.

At that moment, Ness and Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron ran right past them. There was a loud whoosh as the Supreme Vacuum Gun of Undying Justice looked for new things to consume, and when the dust from the speeding duo cleared, Douglas Jay Falcon stood buck naked (except for his helmet) before Samus, with only his humble hands present to cover his super sexy manly privates from her eyes.

Samus, a little disgruntled at first, spat her hair out of her mouth, took one look at Falcon, and snapped her neck a hundred-and-eighty degrees away. "Eeeeewww! Put some clothes on, you dirty flasher!"

Falcon cast one disbelieving glance at the fully-clothed Samus. Then he looked down at himself, before turning his head up to the ceiling and weeping:

"Why couldn't it be the other way around?!"


Our chase continues outside the mansion, as a random girl from the Elite Beat Agent universe walks the street with her red tabby cat nestled comfortably in her arms.

"Don't you dare wander outside on your own this late at night again, do you hear me, Dorfclif?" the little girl gently chided at the mewling feline.

Customary cartoony cat-and-mouse chase involving Ness and Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron later, Dorfclif the red cat is gone from her arms.

"Dorfclif! They took my Dorfclif!" screamed the little girl, little droplets of tears oozing from the corners of her eyes.

Just as she was about to look to the heavens and cry "HEEEAAALP!", Ness and Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron ran right back behind her, and before she knew it she was looking up into the gigantic face of a familiar cat.

"Hi, Ylime! It's me, Dorfclif the Big Red Cat!" he said in a purr that shook the earth and made the poor little girl lose her footing and fall on her rear.


Tortimer, in his red Hawaiian shirt and classy top hat, ambled by with his trusty old cane, minding his own business on his nightly walk.

Peace and quiet, of course, were soon interrupted by the appearance of Ness and Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron behind him as they continued their mad dash through the outskirts of an Animal Crossing village.

For a while it seemed as though nothing had happened.

Then –

"My Type 2 diabetes," Tortimer gasped as he groped various parts of his torso, as though doing so allowed him to self-diagnose his whatever illness he was currently suffering, "it's gone! Oh, glorious day! My diabetes is gone! Why, I feel as young as a newly-born snapper in a pristine pond full of –"

Whatever the pristine pond was full of we will never know, for at that exact moment Ness and Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron chose to resume their crazy chase right behind him. The dust clouds cleared to reveal Tortimer, rocking to and fro on the back of his shell, eyes rolling to the back of his head as he suffers the immediate effects of Type 24 diabetes. From his mouth frothed forth tabs of toffee and slabs of chocolate – much to the delight of the other villagers, as they flock around his overflowing mouth for candy, candy, candy!


The chase, finally, concludes in the familiar sights of Yoshi's room. Ness, face flushed tomato red and drenched with profuse amounts of sweat, gasps and sputters as he slams the door behind him. His throat is parched, his tongue dry; his lungs burn with each gulp of air he heaves in. He sways for a while, the last lingering traces of energy providing futile balance to his legs. Then he collapses on Yoshi's dirt bed, and for a good five minutes Ness lies still, willing his explosive heart to settle down, settle down.

When at last he could breathe normally, Ness sat himself up, gulped in one last sputter of air, and took Yoshi out of his bag.

He couldn't bring himself to look into those dead button eyes.

At last he squeaked out: "Yo… Yoshi?"

Another pregnant pause of silence. Ness worked his shaky hand around the tongue and pulled.

Ness! Can you hear me? It's me, Yo…

His voice faded away before the mechanism of his voice box allowed him to finish, but that was all the confirmation Ness needed.

"Yoshi!" He nearly squeezed the doll to his chest for a good two seconds, closing his eyes shut and rocking his upper body to and fro. Then his eyes snapped open, pupils constricted to mere dots, lips pursed in horror at what he was doing.

He immediately held Yoshi a good arm's length away and said, in a rather lame, feeble voice, "I mean. Uh. Thanks for wiping the sweat off of me…? Eh hehe."

He cleared his throat.

"Dude! Are you okay? What – what happened to you? How – I mean, what – just, what happened?"

He waited a second for a response before he remembered and pulled Yoshi's tongue.

Ness! Behind you!

"NnnEeeEsssSsSs~" droned a familiar voice behind him.

"Oh, give me a fucking break!" Ness cried, nearly screamed in exasperation as he jumped up.

Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron jumped from the open window and approached Ness with the same deranged smile on its face. "He oNly EeeevVviill AalliiEeNNn DinOsssaaaUuR from VeEEeEnNnnuuuSsss. SsSTteeeaalLll YooUuu frOomm meeEeeE." Then, adopting the harshest, most distorted voice of all: LET ME KILL HIM.

"First of all," Ness yelled as he got up, ensuring Yoshi was behind him before turning to face the Monkeytron, "He didn't steal anything from you! I was never yours to begin with!" As the words tumbled out of his mouth, Ness readied his arms by his sides, conjuring an orb of fire and lightning in each hand. "Secondly, if you're going to kill him, you're gonna have to go through me fir –"

ZAP! A second later and Ness was the size of an ant. He looked down at his tiny body, then behind at the tiny Yoshi doll sagging by his ankles, and finally up at the hulking figure of Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron towering above him.

Ness hunched his back, squared his shoulders, and sighed.

"Right. I forgot about that."

The Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron lowered the barrel of its vacuum gun, right in front of Ness's face. Ness looked into the opening to the cave of barren metallic smoothness leading into the depths of nothingness, and gulped.

Then there was a whoosh and he and Yoshi were gone.