Thanks a lot for the reviews! I'm glad you guys like the first chapter. This time we get to meet two of the (possible) love interests. Let's see if you guys got some of them right! Just to not get people confused, I'm naming the male Robin here "Daraen", which is actually Robin's name in European versions of the Fire Emblem and Smash games. I just couldn't bring myself to call him Reflet.
By the way, I will be answering your reviews in the author's notes in the end of each chapter. I just liked doing this in Self Support a lot.
There was another path to the courier, one that was actually less convoluted for most part. Unfortunately, it wasn't entirely peaceful either, but not for reasons of Smash or any gang activities. No, the reason why Robin wanted to avoid taking that path was because of a less lethal, but equally annoying reason.
Fanboys and fangirls.
"Palutena, look over here!"
"Palutena, when will our time come?"
"Please, look this way!"
There was a crowd of adoring people ahead of her, circling a tall and elegant woman, whose silky green hair and golden jewelry made her emit a rather regal aura that was hard not to notice. Despite not being able to make out much of the rest of her, Robin knew very who it was and, honestly, she had no time to deal with her at the moment. As much as she would like to stop and talk, she really needed to pass by unnoticed before she got even more late and…
"Robin?" the woman said, spotting her trying sneak by. "Is that you?"
At that rate, she would get at the courier tomorrow. Maybe.
"Hey, Palutena," she awkwardly greeted, raising a hand at her. "Listen, I'm kind of in a hur-"
"Don't tell me you were planning on passing by without saying hi to me," she smirked, making her way through the people and towards her. "Is this how you treat me?"
"But I'm in the middle of work..."
"Come on, Robin! Surely you can waste five minutes to humor me?" she winked.
"Palutenaaa..."
Everyone's eyes were now on her, making Robin extremely uncomfortable. That was why she wanted to avoid talking to Palutena. It wasn't as if she hated her, that was far from the truth. Both Robin and Palutena had been close friends for a very long time. They used to play together a lot when they were just kids, when Palutena moved in to the island, and even to this day they still kept contact and visited each other frequently.
But Robin simply couldn't stand it when she was being surrounded by all her adoring (and rather creepy) fans/clients.
"So, how's the shop going?" Palutena asked, ignoring the people behind her.
"Nothing I can complain about. What about you?" Robin asked, looking behind the woman and into the impatient stares they were getting.
"Well, I've got my hands full at the moment, so I guess I could say I'm doing okay," she gave a cheeky smile.
Of course she was doing alright, Robin just asked out of politeness. Only a blind person would not notice the amount of people who were waiting to be attended by her. Even then, a blind person could realize that just by hearing the ruckus they caused.
Palutena was a freelancer masseuse and hairdresser, one of the best in Sakurai City, or so rumors said. Those who received a massage or haircut were said to be sent to heaven by her touch and it didn't hurt that she was incredibly gorgeous. Not that Robin would know… mostly because she never got a massage or a haircut from her.
"Listen, I really need to get to the courier now. And I'm sure your clients also don't want to be kept waiting," Robin said, bringing Palutena's attention to the package she carried. "Could we maybe talk later?"
"Oh, alright," Palutena rolled her eyes. "Just walk 'till the end of this street and turn right. Then you'll have to walk 'till the end and turn left and..."
"Yes, I know how to get there from here, but thanks anyway," she gave her a smile. "See you later, then."
"Oh, and don't forget that tonight I'll pass by your house," Palutena returned the smile. "Send my regards to Rosalina."
"Yeah, yeah, alright."
Robin walked away as fast (but subtle) as she could, leaving Palutena behind to deal with all her clients. One minute more and she thought she would be personally thrown off of the street.
After the minor contrivances, Robin arrived at the courier without any more problems. The place was pretty empty for that time of the day. Not that she would complain, since she wouldn't need to wait in line to deliver the package. Sitting behind the counter was a rather short, big nosed man, grinning from ear to ear as he saw the white haired girl entering the courier.
The man was known as Olimar, one of the sweetest people Robin had ever met and owner of that little establishment. He usually could be seen behind the counter, despite having a staff that could take care of that for him.
"Hello, Robin!" Olimar greeted with enthusiasm. "Here for another delivery?"
"Yeah," she nodded and placed the package over the desk. "Just a hardware, nothing else."
"Boss' orders, uh?" he got the package and set it aside.
"If people are not coming to buy our products, then we'll take the products to them, right? Can't have people not buying."
"Anyway, how are things going for you, deary?" he asked, still with that warm, goofy smile of his.
Robin let out a nervous smile. Oh crap, she knew exactly how things were going from there.
Olimar wanted to rent her ears to talk for hours and hours. Oh, she had absolutely no time (or patience) for that at the moment! Yet… he was such a sweet man. She had no courage to tell him in his face that she was in no mood to talk.
So she made the terrible decision of humoring him for a while, like she would always do. And by a while, that meant that after an hour of hearing him talking his ears off, Robin was seriously afraid that she ended up making a hole in the ground from tapping her feet on the floor in constant anxiety a little too much. He kept talking about his family, his life, his lovely wife... She really didn't want to seem rude, but if this kept dragging on, she would have to cut him off.
"By the way, deary," Olimar commented. "Have you heard about the recent street kidnappings as of late?"
"Kidnappings?" she asked, growing a little more interest. "No, I don't think I have."
"Oh, yes! I'm surprised you haven't heard about them, they are all over the news," the little man said. "They say that there have been some Smash players that simply disappeared one day without any trace. Nobody knows who might be behind these kidnappings, they just know that most, if not all, victims were involved with that Smash game. Pretty frightening, isn't it?"
"That's horrible… But, as long as I'm not involved with Smash, there's no need to worry, right?"
"Still, do be careful out there, Robin! Don't go getting involved with these thugs, alright? Who knows what might happen to you..."
"Don't worry about that, Olimar," she gave a reassuring smile. "I know how to take care of myself."
Luckily for her, salvation appeared just in time, walking into the room carrying a beige, carbon box.
"Boss, I think Robin has more to do than listen to your life story," Daraen mocked.
"Oh, concentrate on your own work, Daraen!" Olimar said playfully.
"Actually, Olimar, I really need to get going..." Robin said, grateful for the breach he gave her. "I still have work to do."
"Well then, don't let my rambling get in your way," he said, though not being able to hide the disappointment in his voice. "Have a nice day, dear."
Robin said her goodbyes to both of them and left the courier, only to let out a huge sigh of relief once she was outside. The sigh was then followed by a yelp of surprise as she felt her shoulder being tapped by a gentle hand. She turned around and met Daraen, staring at her with those dark brown eyes that were so similar to hers.
"Hey, Robin," he said. "Just so you know, whenever Olimar decides to ramble on and on, you know you can always call me, right?"
"I don't have the courage to tell him off," she admitted, rather embarrassed. "He's so nice!"
"Still, you can't forget to live your life just to humor him when he's feeling chatty."
"Yeah, I know. I promise I'll let you save me from his rambling next time," she smirked.
"Good."
Daraen was a good friend of Robin's, who has been living around the same neighborhood than her for as long as she could remember. It was not uncommon for him to suddenly show up and save her from uncomfortable situations, the guy was practically a life saviour. Too bad she really couldn't stay and talk to him more, since avoiding Olimar's rambling just to get lost in conversation with him would be kind of pointless.
She bid her farewells to him and decided to finally return to the shop. She had the feeling Shulk might be in a desperate need for help.
Turns out she was right on how wrong she was. There was absolutely nothing happening in the store at the moment, meaning Shulk had absolutely nothing to do and was bored out of his mind. Robin didn't think she ever saw him get from his seat so fast once he saw her entering the store.
"Where have you been?" Shulk asked. "I was worried something has happened in the way."
"Let's just say it was hard to get to the courier without bumping into someone," she answered, immediately his place by the counter. "So did anything happen while I was away?"
"Believe it or not, that Ike guy you had talked on the phone came here a little after you left," he told her as he leaned over the counter. "He seemed a little disappointed that you weren't here to attend him. I think he would have waited until you returned if I didn't tell him you had to leave work earlier."
"Oh, what a shame," she mocked. "Did he happen to buy anything else while he was here?"
"He actually bought a few books," he raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you seduce him into buying more stuff?"
"I just told him about our promotion, nothing else."
"Aaahhh, these bills are still going to kill me one day," nagged a rather nasal sounding voice from the other side of the store.
Robin and Shulk turned their attention to the source of the voice and found the manager of the store, Waluigi, walking towards them.
"What's the matter, boss?" Shulk asked in concern.
"Maintaining this store is giving me more headaches than ever," Waluigi complained. "I swear if we don't start selling more, I'll probably have to close this stinkin' place for good."
"But sales have been good this week!" Robin said, in an attempt to cheer him up. "I mean, yeah, today has been pretty slow, but yesterday we've been pretty busy. Right, Shulk?"
"Right! I think we might see some profit soon!" the blonde agreed.
"I don't know… I'm not feeling optimistic about this," he shook his hand. "You know what? I'm not feeling well today. Having this huge migraine. Just… go home you two. Go home. I'm done for today."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Nobody is going to come in anymore, Robin," he said in irritation. "I'm closing the store for today. You two rest and come back tomorrow, okay?"
Knowing they wouldn't be able to convince him otherwise, Robin and Shulk just nodded and went to grab their bags, ready to go back home.
Despite leaving rather early from work, Robin ended up arriving home only in the evening, since she still had some errands to do that she'd been postponing for days. She gave a big sigh of both exhaustion and relief for finally arriving at her house's front door, only to then tense up once she saw the lights were already on.
Oh, crap!
Robin carefully opened the door and tip-toed towards the stairs that were right next to small the entrance hall, trying her hardest to not make the wooden floor squeak. Almost… She was almost there…
"Robin?"
Shit.
The girl turned her head towards where the voice came and saw Rosalina leaving the kitchen with a clearly annoyed expression on her pale face. Robin could feel her entire body tense up as her mother walked towards her in stern and quick steps.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" she started, her voice cold as ice and cutting right through Robin's heart. "Always lock the front door when you leave for work! How many times do we have to go through this until it finally gets into your thick skull?!"
She didn't raise her voice once, but Robin could feel the guilt weighting on her the more she went on.
"I'm sorry, Rosa!" Robin apologized, raising her hands in defense. "I'm so sorry! I promise I'll pay attention next time, I swear!"
"Who knows who might have gotten inside meanwhile?" she continued, her voice still as cold. "Are you even aware of how dangerous your recklessness is? And don't even try to give me the excuse that you were late for work, because it doesn't take more than three seconds to lock the door."
"Actually, it was because I was such in a hurry that I forgot..." she meekly explained.
"That's still not an excuse."
"I know..." she rubbed her arm. "Sorry, Rosa. I promise I won't do it again, really..."
There were a few seconds of silent tension between them, before Rosalina let out a sigh, making Robin give a small smile of relief, thankful that she was not in the mood to keep ostracizing her.
"Alright then, I accept your apologizes," Rosalina said. "Make sure you don't do it again, okay?"
"Okay."
"By the way, I have already started making tonight's dinner," she then commented. "I'll call you once I finish."
"Do you want any help?" Robin asked.
"Don't worry about that, love," she smiled. "I can handle it myself."
Robin simply nodded and made her way upstairs, leaving Rosalina to take care of the dinner herself. By the smell of things, she would guess she was cooking pork with vegetables, mostly because the wonderful scent of pork combined with the awful smell of braised vegetables created a mixed reaction on her nostrils.
Gods, she was so tired.
She entered her room at the end of the narrow corridor and immediately belly flopped on her lavender bed once she turned on the lights. With a groan, she turned around and laid on her back, throwing her boots away before she accidentally dirtied her sheets with the boot's soles. Robin laid there for a good couple of minutes, taking in the comforting silence with spread arms dangling from the bed, feeling too lazy to switch positions even if she wanted to.
Peace didn't last long, though, as she felt a buzz from her phone inside her dark purple hoodie's pocket. She probably just got a spam e-mail, since that was what 70% of her inbox looked like these days. Still, Robin was somehow curious about what could it be, so she took out her phone and unlocked the touch screen. She opened her e-mail and widened her eyes at the sight of the same kind of e-mail taking over the entire first page of her inbox, with the title "SAVE THE PRINCESS" (all in caps) repeated over and over again.
"What the hell?" she asked in confusion.
That was a virus. That must be the only explanation. Either that, or someone was just doing this because they had nothing better to do than torment her. What did "Save the Princess" even mean? Was that some chain mail or some stupid image? Whatever it was, Robin knew one thing for sure…
It just wasn't worth her time.
Robin selected all the messages with the same title and deleted them all, putting her phone back on her pocket. She closed her eyes and was about to take a nap, when there was another buzz in her pocket. Letting out a huff of annoyance, she took her phone out again and checked her mail again.
"Seriously?" she groaned as the same message appeared again.
She deleted it once more, only this time she kept staring at her screen, daring the device to vibrate again and show her the same message.
Bzz! Bzz! Bzz!
"GAH!"
At that point she just wanted to throw her phone out of her window.
Save the princess, save the princess…
Talk about annoying. Robin was pretty sure that she would have to connect her cell phone to another e-mail account, since this one seemed to be already infected with a virus.
"Hmm..." she furrowed her brows at screen, at the five new messages.
Well, gods be damned, now she was actually curious about what that was all about. Maybe opening one of these spam e-mails wouldn't hurt. After all, it wasn't as if her phone would get the virus, right? Robin was no technological expert, far from it, in fact, but she had some basic knowledge about it. One of them being that her phone model couldn't get an e-mail virus, due to them usually just messing up computers. The worse that could happen was her opening a blank message.
Robin decided to open the e-mail and was genuinely surprised that there was actually content inside. Apparently it was a retro-looking phone game, if the "Silent Oath" title was anything to take into account.
"A game, uh?" she mumbled to no one in particular.
Were the developers really that desperate to advertise it that they needed to spam her e-mail like that? Paying no mind to the game's aesthetic, Robin pressed the "New Game" option. The screen showed a lonely 8-bit sprite of a blonde princess in the middle of a grassy field. Why did the title of the e-mail said "save the princess" when the princess was already free was beyond her, but she also had no idea what could go through a person's head to spam her e-mail just so she could give it a try.
Robin tried to move the little princess, but the character wouldn't obey her command. She furrowed her eyebrow at the lack of response, but soon came to the conclusion that that was probably just a cutscene, since the character was moving on her own. Robin just watched in boredom as the princess slowly walked downwards, eventually reaching a small castle.
Alright, now something good might come out of this.
But just as the princess reached the castle, the screen black out.
"Oh, come on!"
A white text that read "To be continued..." appeared, making Robin even more annoyed at that huge waste of time. All that spam for that?! Whoever made that either had some serious brain damage, or just had a poor sense of humor. Robin decided to erase all the spam e-mails and felt grateful once she realized that "playing" that stupid thing was all that it took for her to stop being spammed.
She placed her phone on her bed desk and turned to her side, her yes slowly getting heavy and her mind drifting off. Perhaps she could take a thirty-minute nap... Her mother would wake her up when she finished making dinner anyway.
Yup, you all saw Palutena coming from miles away. I'm that predictable. Anyway, here are the answers:
Guest (1): I'm glad you enjoyed the concept! Yup, when I write an AU, I try to include as many elements from the Smash lore as I can. I just think it becomes more interesting this way. To be fair, up until Brawl, it was difficult to write yuri because there were very few female characters (there was just so much you could do with Samus, Zelda, Peach and sometimes Nana). Now that we have more, it became a lot easier to come up with pairings. Too bad people seem to still favor yaoi. Well, you got Palutena and the male Robin right, so let's see if your other guesses are also correct.
Guest (2): Thanks! Nope, Robin/Shulk will not be a thing here, at least, not romantically. They are just co-workers and really good friends and will stay that way. I'll see what I can do about including Lucas, even if just as a small cameo, but I can't promise you anything.
SmashBrosFan96 Jr: Sakurai City was the best option I could come up with when it came to naming the city. I think Robin's pretty cute, but the problem is that her voice just made people imagine her being some kind of goddess. It's just like when people hype a movie so much, that when you get to watch said movie you just go "wait, is that it?". Even if it's a pretty good movie, you kind of become disappointed. Will she end up with Lucina? I don't know, we'll have to wait to see. I'm pretty sure there were a lot of people demanding for Cloud. Like, if we take into consideration a lot of people's reactions, I think we can safely say he was one of the most requested characters. People just paid no mind to the possibility of him being included because he's Square Enix property… maybe. That's just a hunch, really.
PozzyP: Like I said on the PM, I'll try to tone down the info dump. I'm glad we are on the same boat when it comes to agreeing that there isn't a lot of yuri out there. And like I said before to you, Lucina's voice is way sexier. You were the only one who said about Rosalina being a mother figure, so kudos to you! Yup, she's Robin's mother in this story, but she looks quite young for a mother of a young adult woman. Why is that, I wonder?
mystic moogle: Glad to see you back! You got Palutena right at least, but I'm kind of surprised you actually got M!Robin right as well. Sorry, Robin/Shulk won't happen in this fic, but I do agree that they can be adorable together. I can see you already have a favorite character in this story, ha! Chrom/Olivia is a great ship, more people should marry Chrom to Olivia honestly.
Anyway, that's all for today.