Author's Note: The end is here, my friends! This story might end this month, or maybe the first week of the next one. Regardless, I hope you all keep reading until the end!
Now, for the results of the poll (plays dramatic tune on harmonica)! Who is the best villain? Well, it certainly isn't Bowser, who's sitting in 7th place, which is dead last. Sorry guy. In 6th place is Falco; congratulations, you're not much of a villain, Falco! Sharing 5th place is the Wal-Mart Trio (Mario, Samus, and Snake) and the giant squid, so good for them (kinda)! Also sharing a spot in 4th place is the Ancient Minister and Lucas.
And now, I'm going to save the top three for last because it'd be dramatic. Now, get to reading, and I hope you enjoy the last story arc!
It was a time of peace in the Nintendo dimension. There were no wars. There were no kidnappings. Fighting was at an all time minimum. Things were calm in Smash Castle. The Pokemon legendaries were appeased. Birds flew peacefully. Fish swam carefree. Toon Link was still getting punched, but he's the resident butt monkey, so it's all good. Everybody was happy, content with this calm.
Then, there's this asshole.
FINAL ARC: THE GARLIC KING STRIKES BACK - PART 1
Dialga, Palkia, and Cresselia were gathered around a small table at the top of Spear Pillar - Cresselia had arranged a nice little tea party, thus, they were sitting together, drinking tea.
"It truly is peaceful today, yes?" Cresselia stated, taking a long sip of tea.
"Yes. It's quite surprising that Palkia and I haven't fought in the past few days, which is good for the space-time continuum." Dialga answered with a nod.
Even Palkia nodded in agreement. "Yeah. I guess it's nice to sit around and-"
"Wah!"
Palkia flipped the tea table and grabbed it by its legs to use as a weapon. "Who dares disturb our tea time?" He looked down to see who came to bother them. "Oh. Just a fat idiot."
Wario had taken the time to venture out to Spear Pillar; how exactly he accomplished that, nobody knew. The guy was decked out in his usual biker gear - however, he had a cape tied around his neck and a golden crown on his head. "Hey, I'm no fat idiot, I'm the Garlic King!"
"Strange. I never knew that garlic had a hierarchy." Cresselia said, with a tilt of the head.
"Can I destroy this clown?" Palkia growled.
"Patience." Dialga hushed. "Er, Mr. Garlic King, why are you here?"
"I'm here to deliver this contract." Wario pulled out a scroll and rolled it out: the scroll was written in Wario's terrible handwriting, with crayon no less.
"Contract?" The time Pokémon leaned down and snapped it from his hands with his mouth. Dialga read the contract throughly, ignoring the horrible penmanship. "Hmm... yes... interesting..."
"What is it?" The small legendary asked.
"It's a treaty. It states that the next time the Smashers annoy us, instead of attempting to annihilate them, we trap them in a space-time bubble - they'll remain stuck there until we feel that they feel bad enough for whatever they've done to invoke our wrath. It seems like a fair treaty."
"Can't we just destroy them if they piss us off again?" Palkia groaned.
"No. Now help me sign - oh drat, it seems that I don't have opposable thumbs."
"I'll sign it for all of us!" Cresselia chirped, bringing out a pen.
Wario could only smile evilly as they fell into his plan, hook-line-and-sinker.
"Oh boy! I got a message on tumblr!" Lucas said, while sitting in front of a computer. "I wonder what it says..." He clicked through to check his inbox...
'deer Lucas, you r a complete loserrr and w8ste of space, lol. haha go kry u dorky pansy. from, dialga, polkia, and kresselia.'
Lucas stared at the message, obviously upset - like the people that didn't actually send it, he failed to notice the errors, for he was too depressed to realize it.
He immediately smashed the computer screen with his twig and stormed out.
If anybody was outside, they would have seen a giant squid in the air, getting carried by a whole legion of Puppits, who struggled to bring him to his location. The squid glanced at the Puppit King, who floated beside him. "Are you sure that this is the only thing I have to do?"
"PoSiTiVe." the Puppit King confirmed with clattering teeth.
"Oh yes. This should be easy then." The Puppits arrived to their destination: above a giant lake. They let go of the squid and the giant creature splashed into the lake, scaring the fish population inside of it. "Come to me, my little morsels... you're only a precursor to our true motives..."
The Normals were gathered in King Dedede's room once again, ready to get back to what they were doing before Wario stole Falco's Arwing. "Okay guys, let's get back to playing New Super Mario Bros U!" Dedede shouted.
"...Oh crap!" Falco yelled suddenly.
"What?" Meta Knight asked.
"We forgot to get the batteries yesterday."
"...We had one job. Just one." Lucario sighed.
"I'll go." Meta Knight got up and left to go to the castle's hangar.
Wario and the Puppit King watched Smash Castle from the distance. They heard the giant squid doing his job at the lake - everything was going according to plan.
"HmM... i'Ve HaD mY dOuBtS, bUt NoW, i TrUlY bElIeVe ThAt ThIs PlAn WiLl WoRk." the Puppit King whispered creepily.
"Yes... the Garlic King will succeed! We will smash those losers to the ground!" Wario stood up and laughed evilly. "Wahaha! I am so great!"
The Puppit King dragged his fellow king (?) down. "KeEp YoUr HeAd DoWn, YoU iDiOt. WaIt FoR oUr FoRcEs To ArRiVe."
"Sir! Sir!" As always, a dispensable Primid hurried into the Ancient Minister's office, gasping for air.
The Ancient Minister didn't even look at him, being so used to this by now. "IS IT A NORMAL PROBLEM, OR A WARIO PROBLEM?"
"N-no, it's something else for once."
"REALLY? ELABORATE."
"There's a commotion from the lake - the one we get some of our fish from - and there's some sort of monster eating up all the fish!"
"WHAT?" the robot leader put his full attention to the Primid. "IS THAT TRUE?"
"Yes! It came out of nowhere and started eating the fish!" the purple creature screamed.
"OH DEAR." he looked at his desk nervously. "THE FRESHWATER FISH POPULATION IN THE LAKE IS UNDER THREAT... IF WE DON'T GET RID OF THIS CREATURE..."
"They'll become endangered!"
"...WE'LL HAVE TO IMPORT ALL OF THE FRESHWATER FISH FOR LUNCH AND DINNER INSTEAD OF CATCHING IT OURSELVES. IT WOULD BE A QUITE A PROBLEM."
"...Are you kidding me."
"NO. THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM. GET OUR TOP SMASHERS: MARIO, LINK, SAMUS, PIKACHU, KIRBY, YOSHI, NESS, DONKEY KONG, JIGGLYPUFF, AND CAPTAIN FALCON. THEY MUST DEAL WITH THIS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE - IT'S A TOP PRIORITY."
"Are... are you really risking a lot of our important Smashers so we could get cheaper food? Don't we have that credit card?"
"YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. IT'S FASTER TO GET FOOD LOCALLY, AND IT'S MORE FRESHER THAN WAL-MA- WAIT, WHY ARE WE EVEN ARGUING OVER THIS? GET TO IT."
"...Hold on sir, you seem to have picked all the original Smashers except for Luigi."
"YES. NOW GET GOING."
Meta Knight was fiddling around with the Halberd's computers, eyes narrowed in frustration. He was going to fly the Halberd, but something was very wrong. The computers only showed blank boxes and the controls of the Halberd didn't do a single thing. "How come nothing is working?"
Then it hit him.
He slammed his head on the console. "That Puppit..."
Lucario left Dedede's room to fetch drinks for what was (hopefully) going to be a gaming session. On his way to the kitchen, he spotted the procession made up of the original Smashers (minus Luigi), heading to the giant door made of doorknobs and out the castle. "What's going on?"
"The Ancient Idiot wants us to do something." Pikachu grumbled to him.
"Hey, it is a very important job!" the Primid said. He paused. "Sort of."
"Am I getting paid in bananas? I want bananas." Donkey Kong asked.
"Oh yeah, are we getting paid in food?" Kirby said, rubbing his stomach. "I hope there's food."
"Yeah! Food would be great!" cheered an equally hungry Yoshi.
Lucario watched them go through the door and disappear. He briefly wondered what this mission was before shaking his head and continuing on. On his way to the kitchen however, Meta Knight came out of the hangar room and ran at him. "Lucario, it turns out that there was a point to the Puppit meddling with my computers yesterday. There might be trouble."
"What... the... helllllll!" an angry Palkia roared, making reality ripple around him; they had left for a bit to get some more tea and a new table, and when they came back, they found that Spear Pillar was trashed. Everything was broken (well, more broken than it already was), and there were giant rocks imbedded in the ground.
"It looks like a meteor storm happened. Or maybe a star storm." Cresselia mused.
"It was the Smashers! They did this!"
"Now now, let's not jump to conclusions..." Dialga said. "...although, I don't know what other group is capable of this much destruction. Maybe another legendary Pokemon, but I'm not sure that there are any in the nearby vicinity."
"Exactly. Let's blow them up."
"Wait, what about the treaty?"
"Ugh, fine. Let's just lock them up in a bubble like boring people."
"There. That would be a fair response to their transgressions."
"...Isn't it odd how the treaty was brought to us the same day they apparently did this?" Cresselia wondered.
"Yes... how peculiar. Hmm, we should at least lock the Smashers in a bubble for a temporary period while we look into this situation.
"It's not as if they're in danger, right?"
"...Oh wait." Link said, causing him and the others to pause. "I forgot my pots. I need to throw them at whatever we're dealing with."
"Link, you don't need any damn pots." Samus growled in annoyance. "You've got a sword, arrows, bombs, a boomerang, and god knows what else."
"Lady, I just want to break some pots. I'm just going to back and..." Link walked back toward the castle, but, as he crossed the threshold, he froze in place. Suddenly, he turned around and rejoined the others.
"...Link? Weren't you-a getting your-a throwing pots?" Mario inquired.
"...Huh? I was?" The others gave him funny looks.
"Whatever. Can we just get on with this?" Ness complained.
Meanwhile, Falco and Dedede sat in the king's room, waiting for the others to come back. While he waited, Falco was looking around the room impatiently to pass the time (and make sure Dedede hadn't stolen anything else of his). His eyes passed several clocks (no doubt stolen) - that's when he noticed something strange. He pulled Dedede's robe. "Dedede, there's something wrong with your clocks."
"There are?" the king looked around at his clocks and he froze - the clocks had all stopped moving, stuck on the same time. Even the clocks with pendulums had their swinging arms frozen in place. "Oh."
Falco knew what all this meant: trouble. "Well crap."
The doors to the room opened and were quickly shut closed; Meta Knight and Lucario were back, and they looked worried. "There's something going on." The knight huffed.
"Yeah. Apparently, that Puppit from yesterday seems to have sabotaged the computer to make the ship not work the next time we start it up; all the first Smashers are also leaving to do something." Lucario explained.
"Really? That's not all that's wrong. Look!" Dedede pointed at his stolen clocks. "The clocks all stopped working!"
The Normals looked tense as the disasters were piling up; it seemed that things were about to get worse. "We need to get out of here. Now." the Pokémon said.
"If we really are in trouble though, walking out the front gate won't exactly be a good idea." Falco said. "For all we know, the castle might be surrounded."
"Then how will we leave?" Meta Knight asked.
"Well..." Dedede coughed. He knelt to the floor, grabbed a rug, and snapped it up - there was a trapdoor right under it.
"...How long was... that there?" a baffled Lucario asked.
"I got this bad boy built after the whole Wario thing. You know, for a secret escape route." Dedede said proudly. "It's really good for running around the castle, actually."
"Wait... that's how you sneak around the castle, isn't it?" the Arwing pilot asked.
"..Maybe."
"Well, let's go in then. Speaking of Wario... do you think that he's behind this?" Meta Knight asked the others.
"Yes." the other three said without hesitation.
"...Right then, let's get going." Lucario coughed. He opened the trapdoor, revealing a ladder. He went down, followed by Meta Knight, then Falco and lastly, Dedede - he pulled the rug over the hidden passage before closing the door, making sure that nobody can find them.
The door to the Ancient Minister's office roared as people started beating on it. The Ancient Minister regarded the situation with curiosity before he opened it. There was a whole crowd of concerned and pissy Smashers outside of his office. "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM TODAY?"
"All of the damn clocks stopped working!" Wolf yelled.
"THE CLOCKS STOPPED WORKING?"
"Yes, we've all got like, stuff to do - how am I supposed to attend my hair stylist appointment if I have no idea about, like, what time it is?" Marth elaborated.
The robot looked over them. "DO YOU ALL REALLY HAVE APPOINTMENTS?"
"Yeah. You know nothing about our lives, man." Bowser scoffed.
The Ancient Minister floated back into his office to look at his clocks: the hands of his wall clock wasn't working, and his digital clock didn't seem to be working. "I SEE WHY YOU'RE ALL CONCERNED. HOWEVER, I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED, AND HOW TO FIX IT."
"Who could be responsible for this?" Peach cried out over everybody (Lucas innocently whistled, while thinking about the consequences of his vengeance).
"Oh, I know who it was." a voice in the back said. The Smashers turned to see who said that, and they gasped in unison, realizing how fucked they were. It was Wario. "It was me, the Garlic King!"
There was a stark silence in the room. Finally, Ganondorf said, "KILL HIM!"
"Wahaha, oh no you don't!" he snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, the windows in the hallway shattered open as things from outside broke in: Puppits. The Smashers screamed in fear because it was so unexpected and, of course, Puppits are creepy as hell. The Ancient Minister tried to keep his cool. "Wario, what is the meaning of this?"
"It is the Garlic King!" the fat villain snapped. "I'm here to claim what belongs to the Garlic King - ownership of the castle! You shall kneel before me - and my partners - but mostly me! Wahahaha!"
Down below, in the tunnels that Dedede had built, the penguin looked up in worry. "Yep, something is definitely happening."
"You think?" Falco rebutted.
To be continued...
Author's Note: I hope that was enjoyable for you all. Now, for the moment some of you are probably waiting for, the top three villains! In 3rd place, we have the Puppits and their king - well deserved spot, I would say. In 2nd place, we've got the Spear Pillar Trio, aka, Dialga, Palkia, and Cresselia; they might take insult to being called villains, but they might be angrier at the person who took the number one spot from them! In first place is...
The Garlic King!
I'm pretty sure that some of you were expecting it (especially if you've been watching the poll for the past while - which sort of undermines the whole announcement thing, when you think about it), but whatever, all hail the Garlic King/Lord Asshole! He truly is the greatest and jerkiest villain in all the land!
Now then, for the new poll: would you be a Normal? You only get one vote, so make it count!
Will the Normals fight back? Will the Garlic King win? Will the squid eat all the fish? Find out, in the next chapter of The Normals!