"And the crowd goes wild! Cloud Strife defies the damage he received and shakes up Pikachu with a whopping amount of power!"
A boot covered in leather slammed against the hard soil of an emulated version of Gaur Plains. With Fusion Sword in hand, Cloud Strife raised his weapon to waist level as he picked himself up from a leaping attack. Across him ran Pikachu, red cheeks trickling with electricity and a look of determination on its plush face. Taking a brief moment to pause, the Pokemon let out a brief spark of light before flashing towards the swordsman.
Cloud flipped over the lightning-fast movement as his eyes trailed over to the ground beneath him. He thought about where the Pokemon would stop its movements, and what option would be the safest against the fast fighter's barrage of restless attacks.
His eyes caught a particular point on the ground. An area between the ledge and the center of the battlefield they were on…
There.
Letting himself fall quickly to the ground, he landed on his two feet and raised his sword above his head. With a good amount of strength put in, he swung his blade forward in a chain of three attacks.
Pikachu zapped right into his blade. After two quick strikes, Cloud slammed his weapon against the Pokemon as it flew out of the battlefield. Quick to act by instinct, the lightning-type Pokemon flew towards the ledge in a zig-zag fashion.
Letting the Pokemon get back on was the last thing the swordsman wanted to allow. Gathering his focus, he struck the soil as he concentrated his mind and power into generating a beam of bright Mako energy. He dashed over to the ledge and brought his sword above his head.
As soon as the Blade Beam connected with the recovering Pikachu, Cloud's Fusion Sword sent the mouse Pokemon plummeting to the depths of the battlefield.
Pikachu was knocked out, and Cloud had won.
"That is it! Cloud Strife ends the match with a critical hit on his opponent!"
Little Mac and Ike sat at the couch, watching television without the intention of getting up.
The Bruiser from the Bronx had finished a rigorous training session with Doc Louis not too long ago. Due to the significantly smaller time he spent with Doc as of recent times, Little Mac trained as much as he could before they parted ways yet again. After all, Doc had his own matters to attend to, especially back at Earth. Though Little Mac did not know what Doc did back there, he was told that Master Hand specifically told his coach to keep an eye out over Earth's media to look out for any potential threats. Of course, that further supported that something was up with Master Hand at the moment, but the boxer deemed the situation to be not too impactful to him at the moment.
The Radiant Hero ended not one, but four Smash Bros matches with Lucario, Link, Kirby, and Ryu. The match he had with Kirby gave him some breathing room due to how the pink puffball did not take the battles that seriously. Every other match kept him on his toes, though, and Ryu outright destroyed him once Ike attempted to commit to an onslaught of aerial attacks and revealed a big opening for the martial artist.
Both of them opened up bottles of water and chugged down what was left in them. They promptly crumpled the plastic items and turned around, tossing their respective trash into a nearby empty trashcan.
"So I heard you met Palutena?" Ike asked the boxer as they watched a weird-looking creature shoo off a Metroid in some sort of documentary.
"Ye."
"Well, that's good. Just don't hurt Pit and you'll be a-okay with being her friend."
Considering that Palutena was pretty much Pit's guardian, Little Mac found it obvious to imagine why she would be angry with someone hurting the innocent angel. With that in mind, it seemed odd that someone would be able to hurt an angelic warrior who practically destroyed a god of death according to Pit's background.
Putting the remote control aside, Little Mac stood up and rolled his neck as he went over to his bedroom. He emerged with his pink jumpsuit.
"I'm gonna go exercise," the lightweight boxing champion told the hero in his dormitory as he left. "We're eating sushi at the city tonight."
As the boxer left, Ike blinked before pumping a fist silently. He liked sushi.
The late afternoon air was always colder than its earlier counterpart. The sun was tired, and the moon slowly made its way to let the source of sunlight have its rest from watching over the world. Whatever world the conglomeration of floating islands was supposed to be in did not change how the sun and moon took their turns. Every day and night, the coin flipped systematically. That was how nature worked.
Under a sky painted in a fading blue and an approaching orange, Mac jogged. He took balanced breaths, making every moment of his jog worth the training.
Fighting in tournaments that existed outside of his own world… Little Mac had never thought such a thing would happen, but it did. Like any other surprise, however, he took it all in with face value, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. The essence of being in a competition with others around him was what tended to drag him into certain activities.
When he was a little boy, Mac had been afraid to throw punches. "They'll get hurt," he'd say calmly, insisting that it was common sense to never raise a hand against others. As for his childhood, he remembered good portions of it, but not all of it. He forgot why he had come to acknowledge that fighting was not all about being more selfish than others; if it was something to forget, however, his reasons for coming to terms with boxing was probably not worth too much to fuss over.
And here he was now, jogging to improve his own endurance as he thought about upcoming matches he could possibly contest in.
Clearly, Mac rarely thought hard about what he could not comprehend. He never thought of himself to be an interesting person, let alone an interesting fighter. Compared to the flashiness of fireball-tossing plumbers and sword-wielding heroes, Mac was just a man who wanted to do what he did best.
Some people liked him for who he was- a boxer who did what he found most interesting to his life. He knew he lived a linear life, but he preferred not to get tangled in strings of fate he could not predict the motions of.
Step by step, he moved forward. Sometimes he would take a break from what he liked doing. Perhaps one day, his interest in boxing would die eternally. Maybe one day, he'll be interested in living a more settled life. But today was not that day, so he jogged on. Such were the simple thoughts of a simple man known as "Little Mac" to the vast universe.
He could be a small man in a large universe, but he was no smaller than those who wished to do what they enjoyed the most.
Mac knew that more than anyone.
His breaths grew heavier ever so slightly, reminding him of how human he was compared to the many other contestants in the world he was in. Taking a seat at a bench, the boxer quietly remained still for a few minutes. The wind silently brushed against his jumpsuit, a very small portion of its cool air managing to seep through his clothing.
As time crawled at the pace of a snail, a blond man sat next to Mac. They remained silent as they stared at the horizon in front of them.
"…That's a nice sunset," the boxer commented.
"…"
Remaining silent for a few moments, the blond stared on blankly at the orange side of the skies.
"It is," Cloud Strife answered in a monotone voice.
"Ye."
Mac and Cloud watched the sun continue to fall towards the horizon.
The Bruiser from the Bronx had met the ex-SOLDIER before. They never spoke to each other that much, but they always seemed to acknowledge each other's presence. There seemed to be a select few who shared little talk like the boxer, some of them quieter than Mac himself. That much assured that he was not the least social of people.
A series of chirping rang quietly near the bench as several birds fluttered around past the lake in front of the two men.
"You're Mac, right?" The spiky-haired swordsman asked out of the blue, his tone ever-so monotone.
"Ye."
Nodding, Cloud glanced at the pugilist before looking back at the warm orange horizon.
"Cloud," the man greeted himself simply. "Cloud Strife."
This time, it was the boxer's turn to nod. Cloud's peripheral vision caught sight of it as he remained still.
Without many topics to talk about, Cloud spoke- almost as if he were alone. "Afternoons are nice."
"Ye."
The two had long histories, regardless of the general tone their lives had. Even if one experienced more excitement and the other confronted more dangers, their backgrounds definitely accounted as to why they were invited to the Smash Bros tournaments in the first place. They could guess that much about each other, even if they did not meet each other like BFFs and the like.
Silence wasn't always golden. To some, silence served as a bad omen. But several found silence to be respectful towards certain others. As for Mac and Cloud, they found the latter belief to apply to themselves.
"Training?"
"Ye."
Getting up, Cloud watched the afternoon horizon for just a bit longer. Judging by the rustling of plastic bags, Mac presumed that the swordsman had gone off to the city for groceries.
"Good luck," the swordsman said with his idle tone intact.
And the boxer nodded again, with a tone just as idle.
"Ye."
The two parted their ways from there; one returned to the mansion, while the other continued jogging. Although some people learned about each other slower than others, progress always meant something in any kind of relationship. In their case, the start of respectful appreciation had begun to grow between two men who lived completely different lives.
Later that night, Mac and Ike really did eat sushi. Even though they ate sushi through the form of delivery food, both of them still found it to be pretty tasty. Mac's cooking only got them so far in his dormitory, after all.
"This is pretty good," Ike said as he watched the news through Mac's television.
"Ye."
In Mac and Ike's case, the two respected each other. In fact, they seemed to respect each other in a very friendly way.
Neither of them had yet to know why the heck Ike was practically living in Mac's dorm now, though. Even Ike himself.
But they didn't question it because the sushi was pretty good.
Author's Notes:
Next chapter- "A Starry Neighbor"!