"Can't believe the last a-guest is about to arrive," Mario remarked with a light sigh, patiently sitting in the living room alongside some of his friends.

After so many years of being in the mansion and seeing so many new faces join the Smashers, he never truly thought he would see the day that he would be greeting the final fighter to be invited to the largest of all the tournaments.

"Master Hand said this place only had room for one more new fighter," Link, who sat on the opposite side of the room, replied. "If there were any others than just the new guy to get invited, I'm not sure where they'd be staying. He didn't have any plans to continue building expansions, as far as I know."

"That is a-true," the plumber responded. "Not sure how much larger it can be. Say, what was the new fighter's a-name again?"

"Sora, I think. From what I've heard about him, he's gone on quite some adventures before getting invited to come here."

"You know," Samus chimed in, "you guys mentioning mansion really starts to take me back. Back to when this place was just a small fraction of what it is today."

Link laughed under his breath and looked back at her. "I remember that like it was yesterday. There was only twelve of us fighters occupying the place back then." A small smile started to form on his face as he reminisced. "I guess twenty-two years goes by a lot faster than you think."

"But it wasn't all fun and games in the very beginning. I don't think any of us could forget the hell we went through reconstructing the place." Samus shook her head and cringed a bit in her seat. "Not exactly the fondest memories I keep of this mansion."

"I remember a-signing the papers and buying it, but don't recall it being so bad fixing it up." Mario's recollection of those moments were a bit foggy, in need of being pulled out from the many memories he kept from all of the experiences he had throughout his life. "Perhaps you a-could help me remember, Samus."

"And revisit that point I promised myself to never think about again? Sure," Samus replied with a small, dry laugh. With a sigh under her breath, she started, "I don't have a sixth sense whatsoever, but I swear I had a feeling that there was going to be a bumpy road from the moment we opened the doors…"

It was twenty-two years ago when Mario, Link, and Samus all stood outside the front doors to the mansion, which hadn't been occupied in quite some years. The world was a much different place from what it was then, and the same could be said about the construction that were standing in the vicinity of. Not only was it much smaller compared to how gigantic it was in the present, but it was also in a much more rundown state.

The windows that looked out from the second floor of the mansion didn't look clear at all, filthily covered in dust and grime from years of not being cleaned. Spider webs seemed to be the only decorations that adorned the pillars that led to the front door, and the mulch beds where plants might have been before were overthrown and dominated by unkept patches of weeds. Had it not been for the spots of red they could see in those beds, they might have suspected that what had been growing there the entire time.

"Well, this a-place is officially ours," Mario said to the two standing beside him, trying to shed some positivity despite them looking at the place's glum exterior. "Just imagine: New a-fighters all congregating here in the years to come. I can see it a-now!"

"I'm thinking it's gonna be awhile before we can even consider trying to have company," Link remarked. "It's not exactly in the state I would want a place to be in if guests were stopping by."

"How much was the price of this mansion?" Samus inquired shortly afterwards.

"They said this was once more than a million a-dollars," Mario answered, "but it was a-listed for a couple hundred thousand."

"And there was no apprehension at all to such a questionable drop in the price?" Samus replied. "I'm far from someone with expertise in real estate, but something like that would tell me that there was something behind that price decline."

"I guess there's no going back now, Samus," Link said to her. "The keys to this mansion are in our hands."

"I might a-look a little… dilapidated from the outside," Mario remarked, "but maybe it'll be a bit better on the inside."

Link and Samus followed him as they all walked up to the front entrance of the newly-acquired mansion. As they approached the door, they saw that the stone below them was littered by leaves that had blown up here and had never been brushed away.

Mario placed the key into the lock and then gently opened the tall door in front of him. Just as he did this and everybody got a quick look at the inside for the first time, an unpleasant squeaking sound started to come closer towards them. A mischief of rats fleed towards the front door and ran out of the mansion into the freedom of the daylight. The three became quite surprised at seeing the unexpected rodents just come running out of the place.

It wasn't exactly the most ideal start to purchasing a new place to reside in, after all.

"Okay," Mario said with a sigh, "so the place might a-need some traps put out. Better find some of those and then get to work with that before Luigi and the others come over."

"From what I could see not the inside," Link replied, "I think a good amount of renovations are going to have to be done. Maybe even a fair amount of demolition."

"We'll get everything fixed and looking good as a-new," Mario responded optimistically. "I'll take care of the plumbing and you a-two can help with some other a-projects. What could possibly go a-wrong?"

Several days later, Mario sighed as he set down the box of tools to his side, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Being someone well-versed in his trade of plumbing, he handled quite a few problems when it came to the pipes and fixtures in different places. This house's plumbing, however, proved to be something that was record-setting in its own right. He expected a fair amount of gunk to be inside of it, but he didn't think there would be as much as he took care of just then.

"At least that's a-taken care of," he said to himself.

He now thought it was time for him to head downstairs and see what everybody else was up to at the moment. His brother had arrived alongside Fox and Captain Falcon, and the three of them agreed that they would do their best to help get the place restored to its former glory. Kirby, Ness, and Jigglypuff were still running a bit later than expected, but he was certain they would offer some assistance when they found the place.

Mario made his way towards the staircase and carefully made a slow descent down the steps. The wood on both the stairs and the railing to the left of him seemed pretty splintery, as if it could simply break if too much weight was placed on it at once.

He walked over towards the kitchen that probably looked pretty nice before it became abandoned. He could imagine the place being prettily decorated back in its heyday, and hopefully he would be able make it exactly that with more modern-day decor.

Walking over towards the dusty kitchen countertops, he saw that Fox was standing there with a quizzical look on his face. In front of the vulpine in uniform was a black mixer, which he presumably gotten out of the large cardboard box that sat open on the kitchen floor.

Fox shook his head as he moved the lever on the side of the mixer that controlled the speed in which it was supposed to mix ingredients. Despite the appliance being plugged into the wall, it didn't anything at all. "What is going on?" he muttered.

"What seems to be the problem?" Mario asked him.

"Well," Fox replied sardonically, "I was testing this out to see if everything was working alright and it went dead all of a sudden. I guess the circuit breaker tripped or something."

"That might a-be the case," responded the plumber. "The electrical is a-pretty old in here as well."

"That's not the problem, though. The wrench in the system's that there's no labeling for that breaker box, so we don't even know what switches send power to each room. Don't worry about it, though, Mario. After everything that I've been through, finding the solution to this tripped breaker should be a fairly simple task." Fox turned around to face the entry that led to the other rooms on this floor, placing his paws around his mouth. "Hey, Link!" he shouted from where he stood. "You ready to start flicking those switches?"

"Ready!" called Link in reply from another room on the opposite side of the mansion, where the breaker box presumably was.

"Just start trying each one and I'll tell ya if this starts working in here!" Fox replied.

Flick!

"That do anything?" Link exclaimed back.

"Nope, that wasn't the right one. Try another one!"

Flick!

"Anything?"

"No, try the next one!"

Flick!

"No!"

Flick!

"Now?"

"No!"

Flick!

"Nothing, Fox?"

"No, Link!"

"There's gotta be an easier way to figure this out! You don't understand how many switches there are in this box."

"This is the only way I know how to solve this, Link. We just gotta try them one at a time and figure which one powers what."

The monotonous process of deciphering the tripped breaker continued from there. Mario, meanwhile, walked out of the kitchen as this carried on, seeing if there was anything else in range that he could do. He knew, of course, that the entire house would have to be renovated, but baby steps needed to be taken if everybody wanted to do it correctly.

It was better for all of them to take their time and then try to hurry up and make more hassle than there already was.

Crash!

The loud and sudden noise caught Mario off guard, and he rushed over towards the entry to see what caused it. It sounded like some gigantic crash happened not too far away.

He walked towards the staircase and saw that Samus was sitting on the second-to-last step. The two steps directly above that one were both broken, the rickety wood they had been constructed out of having finally caved in from years of possibly former neglect. He just had a feeling that that would happen sooner or later.

"What a-happened?" Mario asked.

"I was about to walk up the staircase when those two steps completely collapsed under my feet," explained Samus with a sigh. "I went to catch my balance on the railing and it felt wobbly, but I'm just lucky it didn't break off. Guess these stairs are going to have to be fixed up as well."

"Well, I'm just glad you didn't fall and get a-hurt," the plumber replied. "That would have been a-worse than a few stairs a-breaking."

"I'm quite alright, Mario. I've went through graver situations than maybe taking a little fall. There anything else I can assist with here?"

Mario shook his head. "No, after Link and Fox are a-done with what they're doing, we'll all take a break."

Sure, there might have been some potential issues when it came to the electricity, and most recently a staircase that was in terrible need of an upgrade. But that could hold off for now. After all of the slow yet steady progress they made throughout the afternoon, he thought it was about time that the team take a much-deserved few minutes to rest from their work. And after that was done, they would probably work for about two more hours before calling it done for the rest of the day, going their separate ways until tomorrow rolled around.

In the meantime, he put his hands together and prayed under his breath that the rest of the renovations went smoothly. That there wasn't anything unpleasant awaiting them when work resumed.

Throughout the rest of that day, Mario and his friends managed to accomplish fixing some small things and looking into fixing the broken stairs. The work on that went just as hoped it would, smooth and without any wrenches thrown into their system.

It went smoothly, that is, until work proceeded on the rightmost rooms of the mansion.

That was where things took their turn.

The previous owners, Mario presumed, tried at one point or another to fix certain things themselves without having any knowledge on home improvement. He reached that hypothesis rather quickly when they all went to work over there.

This led to the renovation vision in mind becoming a bit more complicated when it came to making it a reality. Led to a bit more confusion than desired and, consequently, more of a headache.

Despite the hardships that came with the projects from the moment they started, Mario didn't seem to be dampened by any of it. While everybody was sighing and shaking their heads, the difficulty of some of these improvements getting to them, he remained the person in the mansion with the highest spirits.

"Come on," he said to them during their quick break. "I know it's getting harder than we first a-thought it would, but we a-got this! What do we a-got to lose?"

"Our sanity," muttered Samus in response.

"Our lunch from that terrible odor coming from the one storage room," Link added. "I have no idea what might have caused such a smell to be there. Not sure if there was something living in there at one point or just... I don't know."

"We just got to keep our a-heads up," Mario remarked.

It seemed like every time he tried to keep things positive, something else unexpectedly happened. Not even a few seconds later, everyone paused upon hearing a strange creaking sound followed by a huge crash.

"What was that?" Link asked.

Shortly after the sound rung around them, Luigi, the only person who wasn't with them at the time, came walking in with the answer. "Well," he told everybody, "the door frame just a-ripped out the wall."

Things, once again, started to look up over the next two weeks, right up until a frigid early morning approached the place. He wasn't expecting the weather to suddenly take a shift over the short matter of time, but the chilliness didn't matter to him right now. His focus was on fixing and restoring the mansion, just as it was during the days prior to this one.

The first thing Mario saw when he approached the mansion then, was a group of specialists standing outside the place. Seeing those around the property to him was like seeing flashing lights from an ambulance in front of someone's house, meaning that there was some bad news in store for him.

This was something he definitely didn't need to see this morning. Not when things were starting to pick up and become better with the project in progress. It wasn't something he needed to be seeing at all.

As he got closer to the mansion, Mario saw that Fox was already here before him, talking to the Toad specialists that were gathered there.

"What's going on?" he wanted to know.

"Well, no one of us were expecting the temperatures to dip this low," Fox replied, "and we didn't turn the heat on in time. And you know the basement we wanted to make a huge entertainment room or something?"

"What about it?" Mario inquired.

With a sigh, the vulpine answered, "A pipe burst in the house and the basement's now filled with almost four feet of water."

If it were possible for his jaw to drop to the ground like he was in some cartoon, Mario probably would have done just that. This was definitely some bad news he was not in the mood to hear.

"I got here earlier and saw what happened and called to get this looked at," Fox continued to explain. "They said we're certainly gonna have to replace the water heater, and they're gonna do what they can to save that nice flooring down there. We'll have to tell the others if they come over soon that our plans to tackle that part of the place have been cancelled for the time being."

It went without saying that what they had planned to continue working on today was brought to a screeching halt. The specialists that properly knew how to handle situations like this went inside and started doing what they needed to do, and Mario, in the meantime, sat on one of the front steps to the mansion.

Never in his life did he believe in throwing in the towel when things became bleak or complicated, but he admitted that this had been a bit of a bumpy ride. He tried to keep that outlook of his an optimistic one, but he could only do so much.

Heck, he was sure anybody would have gotten at least somewhat upset had they learned the basement of the house they were renovating was now filled with several feet of water.

Remembering some of those incidents from two decades ago, Mario shuddered and brought his mind back to the present moment. Back to the mansion in its wonderful, perfectly-rebuilt state that it was in now. "Alright, it wasn't the best time," he admitted, "but that's all a-water under the bridge."

"Just glad that we were able to jump through those terrible hurdles and make this place what it is today," Link replied. "Now that it's all over and in the past, I'm not sure what this mansion would have looked like if we didn't refuse to give up on it. Don't know where all of these great fighters would be staying during their time in the tournaments had things been different back then."

"At least nothing really has to be ever be fixed around here anymore," added Samus with relief.

Just then, the lights in the room started to flicker above them before completely going out. The television playing quietly in the front of the room was abrupt turned off, and the arcade machines plugged into the wall, a recent addition to a once-empty corner, all went black.

On the left side of the space stood Pit, grumbling as he stared at the now-powerless arcade machine he had been using in that moment. "Come on!" he cried out. "I was just about to defeat the final boss! You know how long it'll take me to do that good at this game a second time?"

"I guess you can take back what I just said," Samus muttered under her breath, knowing she spoke too soon when she made her previous remark about the mansion.

"I think we just lost a-power," Mario said. "I'll a-go get a look."

And off he went to see what the problem was. He had a hunch that it was likely Wario being up to his typical tricks again, but he just wanted to make sure before the guest arrived. He didn't want the first thing the newest member of the Smashers to be greeted with was a power outage across the mansion.

Author's Note: Hey there, everybody! I was struck with this idea to come up with a story on what he mansion the Smashers live in was once like, so I decided to write this out. Thought that maybe the idea of it being something that went through a lot of renovation before becoming something grand would be something fun to come up with.

On another note... SORA IS IN SMASH! :D

When I saw that he was going to be the final Smash character, I was beyond excited with this big smile across my face. That being said, I decided that I would incorporate him arriving to the mansion into this story.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this little story of mine. And as always, your feedback, whether good or bad, is gladly appreciated.

'Til next time! :)