Courage of the Broken Hearts

by ladycordelia17

COMPLETED AT LAST! A powerful mage of darkness named Nephorius comes to the Nintendo universe to destroy the Smashers! Rated T for character death. Please refrain from the use of Fire Flowers.

2. The Argument

A Matter of the Heart

"Impossible!" Princess Peach of the Mushroom Kingdom scoffed at the mere thought of what Princess Zelda of Hyrule, a friend and fellow SSBM fighter with whom she disagreed, was saying about a matter of the heart. "I couldn't break such a heart even if I wanted to—the heart of a bounty hunter is unbreakable.

"Peach, that's an awful thing to believe," Zelda protested. "The only reason that villains like Ganondorf and Bowser are evil is because they have no heart. No heart is unbreakable, you need to see that."

But Peach would not believe it without proof. "If you believe that the heart of a bounty hunter can indeed be broken, then why has neither Samus Aran nor Captain Falcon ever suffered from a broken heart? Even they aren't strong enough to hide that sort of an affliction from those around them—therefore I can only conclude that the heart of a bounty hunter is unbreakable."

"You imply that a bounty hunter by definition has no heart at all!" accused Zelda. "Why are you accusing two of our fellow SSBM fighters—two whom you've always held in high regard—of being heartless all of a sudden?"

"I accuse nobody of heartlessness," said Peach with a voice of somewhat forced calm. "I simply defy even the worst of evildoers to break the heart of a bounty hunter, for I believe all too strongly that it cannot be done."

Unbeknownst to the arguing princesses, there was a bounty hunter just within earshot of them who heard every word of their heated debate: fellow SSBM fighter Captain Falcon, an F-Zero pilot who just happened to be on his way from the Intergalactic Travelers' Center to an N-gate that would take him to the Battlefield stage where he would use the Fighting Wire Frames that frequented the stage as targets for fighting practice.

That's unusual—Peach and Zelda usually agree about everything to do with matters of the heart, but I suppose they're bound to disagree sometimes, Captain Falcon thought for a fleeting moment. Little did he know that one of the princesses would unwittingly put her own view on the matter to the test.