AN: HNNNNNNGGGGG. So much for keeping the chapters nice and short and bite-sized.

The two chapters following this are basically finished and will be uploaded over the next two days. Thanks again for everybody's support and patience.

They were only a few blocks from HQ. Misato had really done a fantastic job recreating the streets of Kyoto; the startling accuracy paired with the lifelike numbness made Luigi keep slipping and forgetting for odd moments that this world wasn't real.

Before he'd had to keep pace with him, Luigi had never realized how fast Pit was. He tore over the streets with a speed that bordered on precognition, and when at last he paused at an intersection it was only to allow Luigi to catch up.

"You don't…have to go…that quickly…" Luigi wheezed.

Pit smirked at him. "My apologies, old boy. Just another block and we're there."

That couldn't be right. Luigi straightened and looked around. They hadn't even left the commercial district; they were barely halfway to HQ. He looked questioningly at Pit, who shrugged. "New location. That's how it goes. What can you do?"

The new location, it turned out, was a rented office in a building downtown. It was in a part of Kyoto that Luigi had never explored before, and it was terribly easy to understand why. There were few people walking the streets, and the dark buildings were somber and decrepit. Pit stopped in front of one and squinted up at the top-story windows.

"I don't get it," Luigi said, "Why would they move HQ here?"

"As I'm sure you've figured out by now, your lack of existence hasn't caused Nintendo to tank, per say. You're not quite that important, Luigi. But if it's any consolation, I don't imagine many of us are." Pit shook his head and nodded back at the entrance. "However, the company is much smaller, enough so that one floor of this building gets the job done." He grinned darkly. "Why not go up and meet them?"

Luigi started. "Aren't you coming?"

"Of course not! How awkward."

"How awkward?" Luigi repeated, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Listen," Pit trilled, heaving an exasperate sigh and rolling his eyes. "You are the one who's never existed in this world. I, on the other hand, have been existing just fine, thank you very much. I have a history in this world, and I have a history with Nintendo. If I go up there, everybody will recognize me."

"I understand that," Luigi snapped, face scrunched. "But how could that be a bad thing? Wouldn't they be happy to see you?"

"That's cute," Pit remarked dryly, and he with that he seized Luigi by the shoulders and pushed him roughly through the entry.

Luigi stumbled for a moment and caught himself. He wanted to turn back around and yell at Pit, but the door had already shut smartly behind him, so he resigned himself and looked around. The lobby was barren. There was a desk for a receptionist, but the job was (imaginably) thankless enough for the post to be vacant. Instead, there was a sheet of paper tacked to the front with a list of the tenants. Nintendo, it seemed, occupied most of the third floor, so he took to the stairs.

He was about to open the door into the main third floor corridor, but stopped with his hand on the doorknob, unsure of what to expect. The Nintendo he was familiar with began and ended each day with a flurry of activity, but if the company was smaller now, would that remain the same? What about the employees? Who would still be here? Would there be anyone unfamiliar? For that matter, what about the characters?

For a brief moment, he considered just lingering in the stairwell for awhile and concocting an elaborate fib to recite for Pit just to avoid the whole uncomfortable experience, but as soon as he'd decided this, the door swung open of its own accord, and Luigi looked up into the startled face of Satoru Iwata.

Well, that answers one question, at least, he thought, and despite himself, felt relieved. The feeling didn't last; Iwata was still staring at him, and it became unnerving enough that he had to look up and demand, "What?"

Iwata scrunched his brow. "Who are you?" Before Luigi could reply, however, Iwata apparently changed his mind, shaking his head violently and saying, "No, no, and don't say you're an avatar, because I can see that, obviously. But I ought to tell you straight off. We're not hiring anybody right now. That includes programmers, and that definitely includes original programs." Luigi tried to protest, but Iwata silenced him. "Now, please, I'm sure that your game pitch is quite good, and if you're lucky your game itself might even be pretty good. But we just can't afford to gamble on a new franchise right now."

"Oh, honestly," Luigi snapped, and Iwata, curious, fell silent. "I'm not here for a job! I just want to talk."

That seemed to be an uncommon request. "Talk?" Iwata repeated, "About what?"

"What do you mean, 'about what?' The company, of course!"

Iwata was skeptical. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything!" Luigi cried, "What's going on here? What games have you been making? How well'd they do? Who works here? And I wanna know all that for the past twenty years, too."

That did not in any way ease Iwata's skepticism. In response, he could only muster a single word: "Why?"

Luigi sighed. "For now, let's just say that I'm an avid, avid fan."

Iwata considered him for a painfully long minute. He sighed and shook his head, bemused. "Well," he admitted, "I haven't got any problem with it. If you're from another developing firm and you're trying to steal trade secrets, I'll tell you right now that you're in the wrong place. But otherwise, I mean, whatever. We'll talk to you." He shrugged and glanced down at Luigi with a little smirk of disbelief. "Been a little while since I've heard from an avid, avid fan, anyway."

He opened the door wider, and Luigi followed the apathetic man inside, wondering if he was really Iwata or (hopefully) another fellow who happened to look uncannily like him. That question, annoyingly, was answered moments later when Iwata opened a door that, according to the plate on the outside, belonged to his office.

Iwata sighed, knuckles rapping on the door frame, and he scrutinized Luigi, apparently trying to decide what to do with him. "Ehm, listen," he said awkwardly, not meeting his eyes. "There're a few calls I've gotta make first off, huh? Why don't you go and talk to the, uh, the, uh…." He gnawed his lip and snapped his fingers.

"Programmers?" Luigi guessed, but Iwata shook his head. "Avatars?"

"That's the one," he nodded. Iwata made a sweeping gesture towards the other end of the hallway. "They tend to…collect…in the breakroom. Probably keep you entertained for a little while, right?"

Luigi was still mystified by Iwata's mannerisms, and as a result, he wound up forgetting to retaliate at having been snubbed by him. Iwata shrugged, and before Luigi could protest, he darted back into his office and shut the door.

The very thought of traipsing through those silent hallways alone and without aim or intent was enough to glue the soles of Luigi's feet to the tile, but a sharp and sudden cry forced him off the ground.

"EIJI!"

Luigi wheeled. His eyes darted back and forth, but the hallway was deserted.

"Eiji, you promised me!"

But the door across from Iwata's office was opened a crack. Luigi glanced up and down the hallway once more before sneaking forward and looking inside.

There was a larger room, divided into four cubicles. He took a step inside and peeked cautiously into the closest one and felt his heart reel—he recognized someone. Or, at least, he believed that he recognized someone. It was a strange feeling. Comprehension warred with cluelessness. Luigi found himself staring, scrunching his eyes.

The man named Eiji was sitting in front of a computer. He removed a pair of glasses, leaned forward on one elbow and massaged the bridge of his nose. He sighed, "I promised you I would ask, Link. And I did ask."

So it was Link. Sort of. Luigi scrutinized him again. Link's hair was red and his face was freckled. He was wearing tights and an undershirt both the color of rust. A simple shield adorned only with a red cross was in his grip, and Luigi realized suddenly that he was looking at Link as he'd been during the era of the original Legend of Zelda. He hadn't seen him like that in nearly twenty five years, and the memory had all but passed out of Luigi's mind.

It was impossible to tell what they had been arguing about, but Eiji's answer seemed to have deflated Link. He slumped back against the side of the cubicle, arms crossed. Eiji was staring vacantly at his monitor, one finger tapping rhythmically against the desktop. His mind was obviously not on his work.

"I am sorry," Eiji added after a few minutes. "Really, though, you should have known better than to ask."

Luigi felt himself grimace and brace for an explosive retaliation, but Link didn't even react when Eiji had admonished him. Link gnawed on his lip and concentrated very closely on the toe of one boot. He was either thinking uncommonly hard or making a rather graceless show of taciturn.

Despite his bizarre and unpromising looks, Luigi still hoped that Link hadn't changed much. The Link he remembered was clueless, certainly, but he was also electric, a firebrand, outgoing and adamant; he had once hurled Mario off the roof during a squabble over whose cereal was better, for christsake. If the Link he remembered had had some sort of beef with Eiji Anouma, he would have argued loudly and purposefully (or at least until his attention deficit prevented that, in which case he would have probably just bombarded the man with a numbing downpour of questions, stories, and gossip that was so legendarily thick as to be the very reason Miyamoto himself had forbidden Link from ever uttering a single cogent word in any one of his own games).

But Link as he was now was apparently stifled. He was silent and guarded. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, so what he said next was as surprising as the act of speaking itself.

"I shoulda dipped when Pit did, Eiji."

Anouma sighed. "You'll get another game again someday, Link. We just haven't got the budget for an original production right now. That's exactly what Mr. Iwata told me when I brought it up, and it's exactly what I was expecting to hear. We just need to be able to stand on our own again, huh? We gotta wait for the company to recover."

Eiji bit his lip immediately. Probably he was thankful that Link was so silent, otherwise he may have pointed out that there was no guarantee they would ever recover.

To change the subject, Eiji added hastily, "Besides, what good's dipping ever done anybody? It's been years since Pitto's left, and nobody's heard of him since. He could be lying in a gutter for all we know, and a traitor besides."

"Could be," Link said quietly, "but at least he didn't have to watch everything rot first."

"Honestly, he's such a drama queen."

That had not come from Anouma or from Link, but instead from Iwata, who had snuck up behind Luigi to watch him with detached patience. He shrugged and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "I can see you now," he said, and added in a pessimistic afterthought, "if you're still interested, anyway."

Iwata settled himself behind a small, disheveled desk and motioned for Luigi to take the chair opposite. He twiddled his thumbs, and after a moment asked him, "Where would you like me to start?"

Luigi had been hoping that Iwata would have just run with the explanation on his own, but if he wanted his hand held, Luigi thought with a sigh, he could accommodate that, too. "Start with Donkey Kong," he said, "You might as well. That's where it all began."

"Where all what began?"

"Come on, now," Luigi said crossly, meeting his gaze with a sharp twist of the neck. "I'm talking about the whole Mario franchise, for goodness' sake! Everybody knows that Donkey Kong was the first step!"

Iwata groaned and leaned the bridge of his nose into his upturned palm. He rubbed his cheekbones with an air of exhaustion. "I would never have agreed to talk to you had I known you were going to drag all that up."

Luigi was perplexed. "Drag what up? You mean Mario?" A scowl from Iwata told him he was correct. He blinked and drew his eyebrows together. "I don't see how we can talk about Nintendo without talking about Mario, too. The two are all but synonymous."

"Be that as it may," Iwata said curtly, "we would all prefer to forget those games ever existed. Surely you must understand why it's a tender subject." But when Luigi didn't respond, Iwata had to grit his teeth and elaborate. "It cost us an awful lot. Notoriety, respect in the industry, customer loyalty, employees…and let's not even mention the money."

Luigi still didn't respond, to Iwata's dismay, but it was because he just speechlessly trying to conceive of how the game could have possibly gone so awry. Eventually he wagered his best guess. "Was there, like, some kind of obscure scandal that I've never heard of? You know, like drug trafficking? Money laundering?" Faced with Iwata's own speechless astonishment, Luigi added, "I don't know, that's all I got."

Iwata was incredulous. "No…" he said slowly, "The games were just really terrible." When Luigi continued to stare at him, he revised himself, with a sigh. "'Terrible' might be too strong of a word. But they didn't sell well at all, and I'm sorry if the truth goes contrary to your ideals, kid, but we are a business, and even if Mario had been to gaming what Shakespeare was to literature, it wouldn't have mattered. They didn't sell, and that was a big problem."

By this time Luigi had managed to overcome his disbelief to shake himself and frame an outraged response. "But why wouldn't they have sold? Those games were absolutely brilliant! They represented a huge leap in creative design! They were ingenious, addictive, thoroughly and thoughtfully made!" Through this heap of accolades, not even Iwata could maintain his despairing disposition, and Luigi caught him with a weak smile, for just an instant. "There was no reason that they shouldn't have sold! They were too good to have not!"

A grim expression had returned to Iwata, and he got quietly to his feet and walked to the door. "Wait!" Luigi started, but he only poked his head outside and looked up and down the hallway. He turned back around, white-faced, and after carefully locking the door, returned to his seat. He leaned forward and looked Luigi in the eye very carefully.

"No one ever named an official reason, but if you want my opinion, I'll give it to you." Luigi nodded immediately, and Satoru leaned back, chewing his lip. "They weren't…different enough."

The silence was deafening. Luigi glanced around for a bit, waiting for Iwata to start laughing and poking him in the chest, but, no, Iwata was still very stony. Luigi felt something inside of himself snap.

"We are talking about the same game here, right?" he blurted. "I mean, different? Are you kidding me? You couldn't have taken Mario any further in the 'different' direction without just crossing the line into schizophrenic."

"I meant 'different' within the franchise," Iwata snapped, "not 'different' compared against everything else, you dolt."

He seemed prepared to pause again, but Luigi insisted, "By all means, elaborate."

Iwata sighed. "I'll start with Donkey Kong, then, because you're right; it did all begin there. As I'm sure you know, it was a smash hit." Luigi felt himself perk. "That game was absurdly popular. Completely unprecedented. In retrospect, I think that might not have been so good for us."

"No?" Luigi said. "I can't imagine why you might ever wish less success for yourselves."

Iwata was staring through the walls of his office, gnawing distantly on his already ruddy knuckles. "We might if it was unsustainable," he decided, lowering his hand and re-focusing on Luigi. "And it was unsustainable."

"Your success with Donkey Kong? You couldn't keep up with that success? Is that what you're saying?" Iwata nodded, and Luigi continued, "No offense sir, but that's really crazy. Success inspires itself. You guys had a good game in Donkey Kong, so you must have understood what constituted a good game. After that, it's just a matter of repeating yourself."

Luigi stopped when he realized that Iwata was chuckling at him. "What!"

"You make it sound so easy."

Luigi crossed his arms and snorted through his mustache. "Well."

"Well, it's not." Iwata's lips tightened into a thin line. "And I know it's not because we did just that. Donkey Kong evolved into the arcade game Mario. And it did alright, but not as well as Donkey Kong before it. Mario evolved into Super Mario on our first modern home system. And it did okay, but not as well as Mario before it. It goes on and on, and I'll give you three guesses why."

Luigi drummed his fingertips together for a moment before nervously suggesting, "You guys got sloppy?"

"No!" Iwata snapped, and then apparently forgetting Luigi's remaining two guesses continued, "It was because we did exactly what you just said! We repeated ourselves. And it turns out that you can't follow a recipe for video games in the same way that you can follow one for rice krispies treats. Or whatever. You get what I'm saying. If your new game is just like the old game, why would anybody want to play it?"

Luigi said nothing, but Iwata hounded him. "Well? Why would they?"

"I guess they wouldn't," he said quietly.

Iwata was nodding. "They tried to rectify it, you know. In the next sequel. Super Mario 2. We thought we'd caught on to our little weakness before it was too late. So we changed it. Completely. The game was all but unrecognizable. It was as if Mario had simply been plucked out of his early worlds and dropped into a totally different game. We had hoped that Mario alone would be enough to sustain the franchise, but we were wrong. No one character is that powerful, I guess.

"We faced an uproar of scandalized fans and players. Mario had been too little for too long, and now this, a complete betrayal? If they felt like fools for trusting us, it was nothing compared to how we felt a few short years later when our much hyped last-ditch effort, Super Mario 3, was launched to an apathetic audience and greeted with all but nonexistent sales."

There was a tumultuous silence between them then. Luigi asked eventually, with trepidation, "So what then?"

Iwata smiled bitterly and parroted him, "What else? You saw Link and Mr. Anouma. Even if our other franchises might have had potential, no gamers would dare take a chance with them after the very public Mario fiasco. They were just other Nintendo games, after all. Just other let downs. No need to get excited. And so here we are today, existing quietly, waiting and hoping that people might eventually forget."

Luigi could feel himself sweating. He swallowed hard, and registered vaguely that Iwata was continuing to talk. "I guess it wouldn't have had to be that way. We should have been smarter about it, really. Surely it could have been possible to strike a balance somewhere between our two extremes, improving gameplay and adding new features while still honoring what made the game so popular to begin with. You know, I think the creator actually wanted to experiment with a two-player feature at one point, but he was shot down because it would have required introducing more characters, and they didn't want anyone else to rival Mario."

"They…they wouldn't have had to."

"What's that?"

Luigi was gripping the arms of his chair tightly. "They wouldn't have had to rival Mario. You could have introduced characters who were…obviously inferior to him."

"Now, I make my living dealing with you avatars," Iwata said, and that odd distant look had returned to his eyes as he wrapped his knuckles thoughtfully, "So I know what I'm talking about. No avatar could be content in such a place. You're all too proud. Egotists." He seemed to suddenly remember Luigi and he looked down with a grimace. "Uh, no offence." He wove a hand. "Anyway, I don't mind suggestions, but in this case it's ancient history. It won't do us any good at this point." Iwata allowed a moment to pass before, forcing it to be casual, asked, "How did you find us, again?"

Luigi was too floored to recall his weak charade. He gestured to the window. "Pit led me."

"Pitto?" Iwata suddenly snapped, and before Luigi could blink, he was on his feet, face pressed into the window. "He's back?" he sputtered against the glass. "What's he doing back here?"

Iwata wheeled and stared accusatorially at Luigi, who could not help but feel suddenly self-conscious. "What? I don't know. The guy's just showing me around. The way Link and Mr. Anouma were talking, huh, they made it sound like he ran off. What's with that?"

Electing to ignore him, Iwata grit his teeth and, grabbing Luigi roughly under the arm, marched back down to the ground level.

"PITTO!" he roared, knocking the door open. Pit had been huddled cross-legged under a street lamp, absently drawing pictures in the thin layer of snow, but when Iwata suddenly appeared a look of abject horror crossed his face and he immediately scrambled to his feet.

"No! Stop there!" Iwata cried, and before Pit could run away, he lurched forward and pinned him to the wall. The few passerby didn't much react, although they did give the scuffle a wide berth by passing to the other side of the street.

"Oof…Iwata, gerroff!" Pit's complaints were muffled where his face was shoved against the concrete.

Iwata wasn't letting up, however. "I just want some answers, Pit. That's all." The fury in Iwata's eyes undercut his calm tone, however. "You abandoned us! You just cut out when things began to head south! You tell me why, Pit! You owe us all that much."

One of Pit's wings struck Iwata in the stomach, and he huffed for a moment, bent double, but managed to keep his grip. "What did you want me to do?" Pit cried, "Stick around and watch everything turn to rot? No thank you!"

"That's that, huh?" Iwata shot back, "Never mind about the friends and coworkers you left behind. I guess they weren't worth it to you to try and tough it out!"

"And you're suggesting that watching them all march into failure is somehow more noble than allowing them to do so in private? People do rough things in desperation, and you're gonna hold it against me that I was disgusted?"

"That's not your call!" Iwata snarled. "We created you! You're ours! You'll do what we tell you, and if that means sinking with this company, so be it!"

Luigi had been unable to do anything throughout all of this, so paralyzed he was by sheer disbelief. But at Iwata's last comment, something inside him snapped. "That's never how it's been," he said suddenly, and Iwata and Pit paused for a moment. "I don't care how desperate you are, it's no excuse to be at one another's throats!"

Iwata stared at him for a long moment, calculating. He looked shrewdly back to Pit. "He says you're the one who led him here. Who is he?"

Pit didn't even blink. "His name's Luigi. In a truer world apart from this one, he is Mario's brother and Nintendo thrives. This world is just a computer program invented for the purposes of demonstration. Luigi and I are probably the realest things in here. You're just an NPC."

Iwata shook his head, face screwed up into an expression of hurt and betrayal. "You're crazy, Pitto. You're an embarrassment to this company."

"This company," said Pit, "is an embarrassment to me." Pit shoved him away and re-adjusted his man-dress. "And if I may be quite frank Mr. Iwata, that's really saying something."

"Get out," Iwata deadpanned, having stepped aside and adjusted his tie. "And don't you dare show your face around here again."

"I've only been waiting twenty years to hear someone finally tell me that." Pit took Luigi by the shoulders and was about to walk away, but he looked backwards and called out to him. "Things shouldn't have turned out like this, Mr. Iwata. You're a good man. You work hard. It shouldn't be in anonymity."

Iwata said nothing. He only scowled until Pit had turned back around and ushered Luigi away. When the two of them had rounded the far corner and were out of sight, he brushed the snow out of his hair and walked back up to his office, silently wondering about the supposed world of Pit's delusions where his company was successful, and silently hoping, despite the threat, that the two of them would someday return anyway.