smashfic ultimate
Chapter 3 - You Can't Cheat Death
This is it. The moment I've trained so long for. Hours at the firing range with Fox. Sparring with Roy and Marth. Sitting under waterfalls with Ryu. Intensive yoga with Wii Fit Trainer. So many times I offered to aid my best friend Mario on his adventures and so many times he convinced me to stay in the Mushroom Kingdom where it was safe. So many times he risked his life so that I could live a comfortable life without ever having to endure the horrors of war that were just business as usual for him.
Finally, after all this time: I would have a chance to return the favor.
Snake nods to me. I nod in return. In perfect sync we both swivel from having our backs against the sides of the door to standing just inside the supply closet, guns drawn and ready to fight.
I was not prepared for the scene inside this supply closet. The first thing my brain is able to process is the massive, dragon-like, space pirate Ridley seemingly pointing in my direction before it lets out a horrible screech.
"Hey, can someone pass Ridley the beer nuts?"
The sheer horror of Ridley's presence wanes somewhat as King K. Rool slides a bowl of assorted nuts across the poker table and in front of the beast. Ridley daintily picks up a single peanut with his razor-sharp claw and pops it into his huge jaw.
"Now, what's so important that you dinguses felt the need to barge in and interrupt our poker night?"
My eyes finally travel away from Ridley (which seems as though it would be a death sentence in any other scenario) and I find Dark Pit standing on the chair next to him, obviously waiting for an answer to his question but likely to be just as pissed no matter the answer. A number of other great villains are seated at the table: Bowser, King Dedede and Ganondorf. They also don't seem especially happy about our surprise visit.
"Ah, Dark Pit..." Snake says, lowering his weapon. "Good to see you. Maybe you can give us some directions."
"HEY!" (Non-Dark) Pit screams, finally picking himself off the floor after apparently knocking himself unconscious for a moment after his tumble through the door. "He's not going to give you directions! He's the EVIL one, remember?? We talked about this???"
Snake looks to me for confirmation via my extensive knowledge of video game character moral alignments.
"Pit is to Dark Pit as Sonic is to Shadow." I state solemnly.
Snake looks back to the room. "Right. So Dark Pit is the good one." Pit faceplants on the floor for what is now the third time today (that we know of).
I turn back to the assortment of poker-playing evil. "We've Come for death!" I shout, my voice trembling slightly as Ridley decimates the entire bowl of beer nuts (including the bowl itself). A few bits of ceramic cascade from his ferocious maw.
"You've come for...death?" Dark Pit repeats. "You know there are easier ways to die than tracking the location of Dracula's teleporting castle, entering said castle, and interrupting the villainous poker night he so graciously hosts every other Tuesday, right?"
"I um...." I stutter meekly, now hiding behind the safety of Snake's tight ass. "I may have emphasized the wrong word there....we've come for Death."
"Oh, that makes....slightly more sense...." Dark Pit sighs, realizing he just lost his excuse to royally fuck me up. He drops back down into his chair and picks up his hand of cards. "Who's deal is it?"
Bowser deftly swipes up the cards scattered across the table and shuffles them between his meaty claws before dealing a hand out to each seat at the table. He has obviously done this before.
"So is Death nearby?" Snake asks, anxious to move things along. He pulls out his Nikita missile launcher and points it at the poker table. "If not, I'm sure a pile of bodies would draw his attention."
Dark Pit shakes his head, looking exhausted. "Look man, we're just trying to enjoy a night off from villainy and play a nice, quiet-" Ridley suddenly interrupts with another horrible screech. "DUDE, can you chill for like two seconds? I'll ask a skeleton butler to get you more fucking beer nuts as soon as I tell the three stooges over here to get the hell out."
Ridley nods and emits a defeated chirp. Dark Pit takes a deep breath and composes himself before continuing his speech.
"Ahem...as I was saying...we're just trying to play a round of poker in peace. Death USED to play with us, but we kicked him out after we caught him cheating."
Dedede opens his mouth and makes just the most horrible sound. Maybe worse than Ridley's screeches. I can only assume he's always sounded like that but for some reason it only really hits me just now, almost as though I couldn't remember if he was able to canonically speak English so I had to look up a Youtube video to refresh my memory. It sucks real bad and makes me very upset.
"Alright, alright," Dark Pit responds to Dedede's awful devil speak, apparently understanding it perfectly. "We didn't kick him out. We just lied and told him we were skipping this week. That's why we're crammed into this dinky supply closet instead of chillin' in Dracula's sick game room."
Snake lowers his missile launcher a bit. "Okay, so where is Death now?"
Dark Pit knocks on the table, obviously ignoring Snake's question. "I check." Bowser reveals a Royal Flush and begins raking in poker chips from the center of the table. Ganondorf, using his psychic abilities or something (I don't really know what Ganondorf's whole deal is) and detecting that Bowser had used the confusion of our presence to cheat, jumps out of his seat.
With a powerful shout (not as bad as Ridley or Dedede, but still unpleasant to the ears), he lifts his leg high into the air and drops it down on the table, snapping it in half. Chips and cards scatter as the scene erupts into an all-out Brawl. Surely a sight to be seen, all of these once Brothers suddenly Smashing each other with their most powerful attacks. I've seen some pretty Super fights in the past, but with the inclusion of King K. Rool and Ridley, this is certainly the most Ultimate one I've witnessed.
Dark Pit weaves deftly through the chaos of the Melee and begins walking toward us. Pit jumps in front of him and yells, "Stay away from my friends!" Dark Pit places a single hand on Pit's face and pushes him to the ground for the....I forget how many times now.
"Look," Dark Pit starts, already looking defeated. "Y'all have caused enough trouble already...if I tell you where Death is, will you please just get the hell out and leave me alone?"
"Luigi? Oh, I let that poor lad leave about an hour ago."
Snake, Pit, and I sit in Dracula's library, in the presence of Death. He offers us a cup of tea which we all politely (but also fearfully) refuse.
"Let...leave?" I wonder out loud. By Mario's reaction it seemed pretty clear that Luigi was very dead.
"Oh yes...it was all just a terrible misunderstanding, to which I am quite sorry about," Death continues, sipping his tea. "I seem to have mistaken the green boy for someone more deserving of my cold embrace."
We collectively gulp at Death's words, wondering who's soul he had intended to reap.
"Not one of us, I hope! Hahahahahahahah...ah...." Snake and I both stare daggers at Pit for prodding further.
"Oh my, no. You still have....some....time left. No, no, I was looking for a...." Death checks what appears to be the Notes app on his iPhone. "Wall iguana? Damn autocorrect! See, this is why my reaping has been so inaccurate recently!"
Once again calling upon my encyclopedic knowledge of video game trivia, I venture a guess: "Could you be looking for Waluigi?"
Death cackles and a chill runs down my spine. "Oh, yes!" he shouts, slowly typing the correction into his phone. "That's the one! Waluigi! That horrid man has been on my todo list since he first joined the tennis circuit. I can't believe I mistook that nice young plumber for the heinous war criminal Waluigi."
"So, you mentioned letting Luigi go...." Snake interjects, hoping to gather more intel while Death is in a good mood. "He's not dead then?"
"Oh, not anymore! I straightened out his mortal coil and fed it right back into his corpse. Took some time, too! You ever have a hoodie where the drawstring has come out and you have to feed it back through? Un-harvesting a soul is kind of like that."
Snake stares blankly at Death, either contemplating his own mortality or just trying to wrap his head around the analogy, having never owned a hoodie before. After a moment, he turns to me and gives a thumbs up: "Mission complete?"
I stare as well, definitely contemplating my own mortality, but also wondering if it would be pushing it to ask Death to re-thread the drawstring of my favorite hoodie....no, perhaps another time.
I turn back to Snake and smile.
"Mission complete!"