Despite Kirby's state of…agony, the two were quickly teleported back to the mansion, with Kirby using one tiny hand to hold his trophy, and the other to nurse his wound. It was already swelling up quite alarmingly, but some of Master Hand's….magical….mystery juice would probably be able to clear it up. The giant hand "shook" his hand with Bomberman (by 'shook', he extended one finger and let Bomberman shake it as vigorously as he could), and he presented him with a new type of 'bomb', in the shape of a green Koopa shell.
"Now, Bomberman, you need a ride back to your dimension?" Master Hand asked.
"Nah, no thanks, I'm catching a ride back on my Karabon. See you guys around someday!" Bomberman shouted at the watching Smashers, holding his Koopa shell in one hand, before a large Pokemon-like object appeared and whisked him away.
"All right, now, all of you, you have half an hour's rest before the next event. Use it well, some of you may not want to know what is in store next!" Master Hand smirked in his invisible manner, before he disappeared into thin air; probably back into his private room.
As soon as he vanished, the room erupted into chatter, with most Smashers quite stunned at what had just happened in the last half-hour.
"God, was that amazing or what?" Mario asked Kirby, who was still groaning.
"Yeah, it was pretty cool. And I've got a shiny new trophy…and a shiny new bruise to the face." Kirby muttered, though he did look pleased at the golden bomb that reflected his image back at him.
Meanwhile, Donkey Kong had better things to do…
"You. Are. So. Dead…" he growled at Popo, who was pretending that he wasn't listening.
"Whatever." Popo replied, keeping his head down so DK couldn't see him trying not to laugh.
Donkey Kong went to punch him, but Popo was expecting it, having been struck four times already during the day. He sidestepped the swing, and took off. Donkey Kong gave chase, but he was struck by a…stray…Koopa Shell. He screamed in pain, and collapsed on the floor, yelling at the roof:
"Screw you, Master Hand!"
"Take that, bi-uh….female dog!" Master Hand's voice echoed back at him.
Eventually, the two settled down again, and they began to immerse themselves with others in the conversation of what had just happened, and what they thought might happen.
"Well, I never really played much Bomberman, but it was mildly amusing, I guess." Samus said to Malon, who was combing her hair.
"Thank god I survived that Diahorrea Skull….those things are darn awful!" Roy admonished as he chatted with Mewtwo.
"Using psychic power in the maze would have made things so much easier…" Mewtwo said, shaking his head.
The thirty-minute rest passed quickly as a result of the excitement that had been caused from the event, and Master Hand soon appeared to take everyone to their next destination…a real-life living room?
"Master Hand, what the hell are we doing here?" Samus queried, not looking pleased.
"Relax, it's SingStar."
There was silence for a moment, followed quickly by both Ganondorf and DK crashing to the floor. Master Hand woke them by giving them hard nudges with a finger, which did well, considering he could choose to have an electric touch…
"Well, now that everyone's up and ready, here's the rules: you can choose short or standard song length, you can pick from anything on the SingStar games, and songs are categorized into Normal, and Difficult: Difficult songs are a 1.5x bonus. Oh, and the Difficulty will be on Easy, so be pleased with yourself there. The game picks you the song, but you have three shuffle tokens to use as well, so randomize until you…choose something that sounds the best for you."
"The order will be from back-to-front, so, the first performer is Ganondorf, since you were eliminated first in Bomberman." Master Hand said, and everyone roared with laughter.
"Oh shit." Ganondorf whispered, as he stepped forward, and took the microphone.
Master Hand fiddled with the game for a minute or so and somehow managed to add a "TPP Challenge Mode" with the menu screen. A nifty leaderboard was opened when this new mode was chosen, and each of the Smashers' names was displayed on the board, in order of whoever would be performing.
"God, how do you do that?" Ness whined, exasperated that Master Hand was able to achieve game hacking without having to spent countless hours.
"I have skills. Unlike you." Master Hand replied jokingly, and moved to the back as Ganondorf looked at the song screen. He had a pick of choosing songs from each of the games, ranging from Normal, to Anthems. Eventually, he decided to go for "All" songs from the games, and awaited for the song to be picked. Finally, "Tutti Frutti" rolled up on the screen for him, and Peach giggled.
"Please don't do this…" Zelda muttered, shivering at what the result could be.
Ganondorf picked the song, and the Smashers who had heard and sung the song on the game all had to hold a cry of….despair…or something.
"Get me some temporary anti-laughing powder…" Wario said, gritting his teeth tightly, but he couldn't control himself. He fell about laughing, and was soon joined by Falco and Krystal as Ganondorf started the song.
By halfway through, Ganondorf was looking dangerously at not even breaking the 1000 barrier. He had missed most of the notes in the first section, shocked by the speed that he had to sing to "Tutti Frutti", and had only managed 450, as a result of humming on a single note. With everyone laughing, nobody noticed. In the second part, Ganondorf finally managed to keep up with the pace, and got a few lucky guesses on note pitches, and he managed to end up with 1425, and that was even with the 1.5x multiplier.
Link was next, and despite what he said about having no singing voice, he had quietly acquired a reasonable voice from singing (or humming) along to stuff on his iPod and watching MTV for countless hours. Picking a combination of "Rock" and "Pop", 'Speed of Sound' showed up for him, and he eased through it smoothly, hitting some nice golden notes in the chorus of the song. He eventually ended up with 8670…six times more than Ganondorf's score. Sad, but true.
Zelda came after Link, and once again, she went for the Pop songs, and got 'What's My Age Again' and the hilarious video-making antics of Blink-182. Being a big fan of such pop-punk rock bands, no matter if they were declared emo or not, she performed even better than Link, hitting most of the notes perfectly, to break 9000 and pretty much post a catch-me-if-you-can type of score of 9790 on the leader-board and put her in pole position to take the 24 points for the event.
Falco was the fourth to perform, and he decided to go pretty easy-going, without any real care for his score. He picked SingStar Anthems, and used a couple of shuffle tokens to land on Cher's 'If I Could Turn Back Time'.
"Sing it! Sing It! Sing It!" came the chant.
Falco shouted back, grinning:
"I'll only sing it if everyone sings along!"
"I'm in!" everyone yelled back.
Falco, smirking, picked the song, to wild applause. He turned away from the screen, and by looking at it with the corner of his eyes, made it look like he was singing it off by heart. Everyone followed him as well, even Donkey Kong and Bowser, and nobody bothered noticing that he was progressing slowly, and was even in danger of getting lower than Ganondorf's score. But he didn't care, as this was all about the singing. Sort of.
"Pity they didn't have 'Rock Me Amadeus' in the game!" called Bowser as everyone cheered Falco who was diving back onto the couch.
"Yeah, it goes well together with you, considering that it was made by an artist of the same name!" Fox jeered.
"Who was a money-making player who ain't with us no more ever since he failed to see that tree coming!" added Marth, getting in on the act…
"You've been listening to the Bloodhound Gang again, haven't you?" Roy asked, shaking his head.
"Sort of. And searching 'Falco' up on Wikipedia…" Marth admitted.
"Wait, so did you search for me, or were you actually searching for the German guy?" Falco asked.
"Both, I guess. I was searching you up on the personal laptop we had at our camp back in the Fire Emblem dimension, when we ran into some trouble with skeletons, but then I found 'Falco, the German pop artist', and yeah…"
"Rocker or pop artist?"
"Rocker. Shut up!"
"Idiot." Popo said, yet again adding to the conversation with his own unique way.
Roy bashed him over the head with his sword softly, but hard enough to send him flying onto the carpet.
Master Hand quickly stepped into the growing conversation, and it was back to business, with Samus up. Naturally, being cheap, she picked the easy pop songs, and even though she got three crappy shuffles (according to her), singing Ashlee Simpson wasn't too bad for her, and she popped up with 8220. Malon was next, and she bravely went for a song which was had a ridiculously high melody, ending with 5610, which was a pretty decent effort.
Everyone jeered Donkey Kong as he took the microphone. He waited patiently for the song name to pop up, and up it came: "Destiny's Child – Survivor".
In the same way as it did when Ganondorf had kicked things off, the room exploded…with laughter. DK's face turned red, and he shrugged, sighing silently. As did was the case with Ganondorf, he knocked up a Tone Deaf rating of 1515. He had something positive to take out of it though. He and Ganondorf had bet over who would get the higher score, and since he had managed 90 more, Ganondorf grudgingly handed over the promised 50 Rupees/1000 Poke/100 coins.
And so the contest continued, with a series of average scores, ranging from around 7000s to the 2430 by Bowser, who boasted about that to his two reluctant-villain friends. Peach and Krystal both went over 7000 with impressive performances of Alicia Keys and Duran Duran respectively. Ness performed a very good rendition of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" to score 8560, and as a laugh, Mario and Luigi requested to Master Hand if they could duet to the Veronicas, with hilarity resulting as they both popped up with scores in the 4000s, with the latter being the higher scorer. Marth sang "Complicated" to his two best friends' jeers, until he reminded them that they watched as much MTV as he did, and that he had outscored Link.
And suddenly, it was down to the last five people, and it was ALMOST competitive, especially after some terrible showings during the time. Captain Falcon lazily sang Hoobastank's "The Reason" and scored 7880, Roy got a lucky shuffle and went over 9k with Good Charlotte, Pikachu almost smashed his microphone when he got three dodgy shuffles which were all low-note songs and struggled to 5450, and Wario got Blu Cantrell and stumbled to 4220, outwitted by the speed of the lyrics.
And so it came down to the last singer, Kirby, who had been sitting around the place waiting for his turn. He grumpily pulled himself off his seat, and took the microphone which Wario gave him. For the first time during the competition, he picked a selection from 80s music. Unfortunately for those hoping for it, Madonna's "Like a Virgin" did not come up, but he got 'Eye of The Tiger' instead. Everyone cheered loudly as he selected it, and they sang it with him, giving up a total of 6750 to wrap up the contest.
And so everyone gathered around Master Hand, puffing from all the singing, cheering and laughing during the contest, as he pulled out the leaderboard. Zelda had come out on top as a result of her near-perfect rendition of blink-182, with Roy 2nd and Link 3rd.
"Okay and now for the presentation is the guy from the 'Take on Me' music video!" Master Hand 'grinned'.
"Aww man!" the Smashers yelled, remembering the shifty music video with the seemingly hand-drawn objects.
Master Hand smirked.
"Just kidding. I present to you…the random cover girl from SingStar Original!" Master Hand exclaimed loudly, as the girl walked out to them.
"So, yeah…I'm supposed to present this golden microphone to…Zel-da?" she asked, holding up the trophy and waiting patiently as the Hyrule princess came up to receive her prize.
"Yes. And for coming here for this short ceremony, you get a diamond ring and a SingStar pack courtesy of our friends at Sony, Michael Hill's and all of us-"he explained, but DK cut him off.
"Master Hand, this isn't Wheel of Fortune. Let's just say you get some shiny bling-bling…not that fake plastic stuff from Mattel and a nice silver PS2 with all the SingStar games…" DK said, ignoring Master Hand's displeased muttering.
After the SingStar girl had left, Master Hand put up the TPP scores after two rounds. Roy had gained a nice little break at 44, with Marth off by 3 and Kirby on 39. Ganondorf was last on 2, after getting wooden spoons from the first two events.
"All right, you guys, lunch has been set up. Scotch fillet and chocolate mousse-unlimited helpings again, but don't stuff yourself too much. You guys have a bit of 'blasting' to do after you finish eating." Master Hand chuckled, and he whisked them back to the dining room, disappearing as they got there.
Even as he appeared in his own function room, Master Hand was pleased-the competition was taking everyone's minds off belting each other up. Now all he needed to do was to ensure nobody exploded in anger during the tournament, otherwise it would be costing much.
