A Shattered Sword and a Fading Star

Deep within a secret base near a racetrack, the four imprisoned children looked around for guards outside the prison cell in which they were held before daring to speak to each other. "Do you think there's hope of anyone rescuing us?" asked Jeff nervously.

"There has to be—I'm an SSBM fighter, we'll have all the heroes looking for us," reasoned Ness. "But it looks like it may be a while before they find us."

"I hope it's really soon," moaned Poo.

"Shh!" warned Paula. "We don't want the guards to hear us!"

But the last that the children saw of any guards was one that ran up a corridor past the prison cell, apparently alerted to trouble on the opposite side of the base. Several tense minutes passed before the children saw anyone else—but the next person to appear was not a guard. Instead, a mysterious female figure, clothed in a suit of some dark purple reflective material, appeared and made a few attempts at breaking the code to unlock the children's prison cell before the door opened. "All of you come out, hurry!" commanded a clear voice from under a silver veil that covered all of the young woman's face save her wide blue eyes.

"Peach!" whispered Ness joyfully upon hearing the voice and noticing the medallion that fastened the young woman's purple cloak: she bore the SSBM fighters' emblem, which meant that she had infiltrated the base for the sole purpose of rescuing Ness and his three friends. "How did you know where to find us?"

"I didn't—but it's irrelevant now, we all need to get out fast," answered the disguised princess. "Follow me and stay close!"

Quickly and quietly, Princess Peach led the four children through many secret passages until the group reached the roof—and a Hoverboard that Peach had apparently used to reach the base.

"Oh, no, do we have far to go before we get to an N-gate?" asked Paula upon seeing the Hoverboard.

"We might," replied Peach. "Taking you children home through an N-gate near the racetrack will be too dangerous; we'll need to go to one that's farther away. We'll be much safer going to Port Town in search of an N-gate."

Without further ado, the princess and the children boarded the Hoverboard and made their way to Port Town. When they were within a few miles of the outskirts, however, trouble arose.

"I have those fools now, and the Bond of Salvation will be severed, for the first fighter to rescue a fellow bearer of the fighters' badge will be the first to fall!" said Nephorius triumphantly as, disguised as the king of evil Black Shadow and aboard a large shuttle full of henchmen disguised as Black Shadow's soldiers and the Red Canyon bandits (with some real soldiers and bandits onboard), he came upon Peach leading Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo to Port Town.

"We got company—Black Shadow's soldiers at six o'clock," reported Jeff fearfully as he looked behind the Hoverboard.

The other children all gasped. Sure enough, dozens of black-uniformed men on speeder bikes were visible on the horizon behind them, along with a looming black shuttle and a dark reddish-mauve machine that must have been an F-Zero racing vehicle.

"Here, Ness, take the controls," Peach ordered. "I'm going to try and hold Black Shadow's men off!" Curses! Even if the miscreants don't recognize me, they know Ness is an SSBM fighter, she realized. To ensure the safety of the children, Peach would need to get them into Port Town and to the nearest N-gate fast.

As the young psychic boy obeyed the order given, the disguised princess pulled a blaster from her belt and started shooting at the black speeder bikes. She succeeded in hitting several black-clad men, and she even neatly disabled the dark red F-Zero with a well-aimed shot to its engines as it sped ahead, probably for an attempt at knocking the Hoverboard out of the air.

"Good shot—looks like you've taken out Samurai Goroh!" congratulated Ness, but Peach had to tell him to fly the Hoverboard lower and faster as it became a blaster-fire target for the looming black ship.

The small, speedy Hoverboard may have been able to dodge many blasts from both the speeder bikes and the large black shuttle, but it could not dodge them all. At last, when the Hoverboard was but a few yards from the town limits, a blast that hit the ground created an explosion that knocked the Hoverboard and all its riders into the base of a building.

The group of five escapees fought gallantly as the black-clad soldiers began landing their speeder bikes and attempting to rush in and seize the children. But the battle went ill: when the black ship landed, out charged more soldiers—and a contingent of Red Canyon space bandits thatBlack Shadowhad probably hired.

The princess brandished a Beam Sword only to become locked in combat with the katana-wielding bandit named Samurai Goroh whose vehicle, the Fire Stingray, she had disabled in the chase. Howthe Red Canyon bandit leadercould match blow-for-blow the princess's Beam Sword swings with his ordinary-looking katana no one had any time to wonder, so Peach fought with all her strength—until Goroh, infinitely the better swordsman, slipped past her guard and wounded her just enough to take her by surprise. Wanting revenge for the shot that blew out the engines of the Fire Stingray, the bandit made a vicious slash at the princess that cut her deeply in the side before being shouted at to come back to the black ship.

The order could only mean one thing: Black Shadow's soldiers had recaptured the children, and Princess Peach could never rescue them without help now.

Now Peach knew that she was too badly wounded to fight. The bruises and cuts from the Hoverboard crash, and the swordfight wounds, meant that she had to go to Nintendo's Central Hospital to be treated as soon as possible. She had to see her dear friend and lover, Mario, again, and she had to find additional help for Ness and his friends. Her purple-reflective-suit disguise was torn in places from the battle, and she had to hold a torn fistful of suit over the vicious katana-wound in her side in an attempt to control the bleeding.

Clambering to the damaged Hoverboard as she produced a tracking device that would find the nearest N-gate, Peach miraculously found that it could still convey her a few miles into Port Town. The nearest N-gate was approximately seven miles into the town, and the Hoverboard had little power left to take her there.

What power the Hoverboard had left was not enough. It gave out when it had taken the wounded princess just short of seven miles into Port Town: she still had a hundred yards to walk before reaching the spot marked by her N-gate locator. Her will to save Ness and his friends was not enough to see her to the N-gate: painfully making her way along a street, she reached what appeared to be a back alley before she collapsed there, realizing that she could not go on—her strength was leaving her, and she was surely going to die here.

But mere moments after Peach collapsed, she felt a strong pair of hands turn her body over so that she was face-up, and—

"Princess Peach!" exclaimed a male voice that sounded familiar despite the surprise in its tone—that of a bounty hunter and F-Zero pilot named Captain Falcon who would certainly have assisted Peach had the two crossed paths before. "Why are you here—and how did you get like this?" he interrogated, noticing that the princess's left hand held a blood-soaked fistful of fabric over a dangerous blade wound and pressing his own hand upon hers. He was unnerved to find the princess here, let alone to find her battle-scarred and dying.

The voice of the bounty hunter brought the princess back to her senses. Peach recognized Captain Falcon's crimson helmet bearing a gold falcon-shaped crest and knew that she would at least die with an ally at her side, and that there was still hope for the four captive children. "Ness and his three best friends…they were wormholed…held hostage in a secret base near the Lightning Loop Cross racetrack…" Peach began to explain in broken phrases. "I infiltrated the base and tried to take the children here to Port Town…"

"In search of an N-gate, naturally," remarked Captain Falcon, who had spotted Peach's dropped N-gate locator and activated the built-in distress signal (unbeknownst to the princess) to summon an Emergency Response Team from the Centropolis.

"But Black Shadow's men caught us on the outskirts," Peach went on, "we tried to fight—but they recaptured the children…and when I was wounded…"

"You knew you couldn't fight anymore, so you kept looking for an N-gate to get to the Central Hospital," the quick-witted bounty hunter finished. "Well, you've come to just the right place, we're very near an N-gate." In truth, the N-gate was just inside the entrance of Captain Falcon's base of operations, but he could not divulge this piece of information in case Peach survived.

But Peach's life was fading quickly. "It's too late, Captain Falcon…I'm…"

"Don't give up!" the bounty hunter told her, a clear note of urgency in his tone as he snatched her right hand in his, willing her to stay alive.

Feebly returning her fellow SSBM fighter's handclasp as the last of her strength failed her, Princess Peach made her last requests: "Get Ness and his friends safely home…tell—tell Mario I love him…"

And then Captain Falcon felt the princess's delicate hands go limp.

A/N: Peach is the first to fall at Nephorius's hands, but she certainly won't be the last!

What do you think so far? Review please (Fire Flower users will soon find themselves on the receiving end of Din's Fire or PK Fire).