Post by bobsnicket on Jan 12, 2008 17:18:58 GMT -5
Chapter 9: The Tournament
PART 4
Round III
Match#1: Kirby vs. The Crystal King
You may have noticed that the match descriptions are increasing in length. Well the reason for this is simply the fact that better fighters make better (and usually longer) matches. When Round III began, the sun was already beginning to sink below the horizon. There had been a dinner break during the intermission, during which about one-third of the audience had left for the concession stands, and the rest had either brought their own food, or were too excited about the upcoming matches to eat.
Anyway, Kirby was at a major disadvantage this time because the even if he sucked up one of the Crystal King’s ice crystals and transformed into Ice Kirby, he knew that the King wouldn’t be affected by his own element (basic RPG logic). The Crystal King laughed wickedly and summoned a whole swarm of floating ice crystals to circle around Kirby, spinning faster and faster. From the audience’s perspective Kirby could not be seen through the virtual wall of ice crystals. Then all 234 of them suddenly froze in place (no pun intended) and darted towards the center. The crowd gasped when this occurred, but cheered when the ice crystals flew back towards the Crystal King to reveal not an ice-impaled Kirby, as most had expected, but a large rock. The rock soon turned back into Kirby, who, although he had avoided most of the potential injuries by transforming into a rock, was badly covered in cuts and scratches. The Ice King continued laughing and advanced towards Kirby’s barely standing round figure. Kirby looked around him, but there was nothing that he could eat to transform into a powerful copy ability, only the field and the audience…
Outside the stadium, a previously-flaming Shy Guy was just waking up from his defeat. Unfortunately, the flames had damaged it mentally as well as physically. In fact, now it was completely insane. It used a magnifying glass and the sinking sun to light its head on fire once more, and began charging towards the stadium, ignoring the yelling guards who leaped out of his way.
Screams came from the audience as a mad flaming Shy Guy started running onto the field. Even the Ice King and Kirby turned to watch as the hazardous Shy Guy flailed its tiny arms around and ran around randomly. Then the Ice King turned back to his victim. “After you are in a state of being cryogenically preserved, I shall move onto the Finals! Ha ha ha!” He raised one of his arms to charge up his freezing finishing blow.
But by now, the ignited Shy Guy was only a few feet away from Kirby, who just then realized the opportunity he had been given. He forcefully sucked up air powerfully, dragging the screaming and wailing Shy Guy into his mouth, and quickly swallowed before he could get burned. And what happened next isn’t hard to predict. Kirby dramatically transformed into Fire Kirby, much to the glee of the audience, and began preparing an attack of his own. The streams of fire and ice were released at precisely the same time, and met each other briefly in the middle of the distance between Kirby and the Crystal King, but the ice was easily overcome, and the flames engulfed the Crystal King in a nearly-fatal wave of energy. The first Finalist had been chosen.
Match#2: Mr. G. and W. vs. The Shadow Queen
Black vs. purple-black. Slow frame-rated outline vs. dark hand surrounded by purple energy. It made for a good match, showing the crowd for the first time the real extent of “The Shadow Queen’s” abilities. The only other participant that could have provided an equally interesting match is perhaps Dark Link (the real one), because silhouettes are strangely immune to being dragged down by the purple hand’s grasp.
Mr. Game and Watch was extremely nervous. He had heard rumors of this competitor’s effortless victories, and although he knew of his immunity, there was no telling what such an opponent might have in store. When the match began, Mr. Game and Watch didn’t even try to use his sausages; instead he circled his opponent warily, looking for an opportunity to use his hammer that sometime could prove to be a lethal attack (every time he used it a box appeared over him displaying a number from 1 to 9, 9 being the most powerful and effective, 1 doing no more than a firm tap). Hopefully luck would be on his side.
“The Shadow Queen’s” purple hand and arm stayed still and considered its opponent, as if it were trying to decide which way to cook a chicken for dinner. Then its hand balled itself into a fist and suddenly lunged rapidly at Mr. Game and Watch, the arm stretching from the ground behind it. Mr. Game and Watch did his remarkable “trampoline/firefighter” jump, soaring high into the air, then lunged himself down toward the spot where the arm came out of the ground. He smack his chance hammer hard onto the stretch of arm coming out of it.
An electric shock surrounded the hammer as it hit its target (the number 6 was displayed in the box above Mr. Game and Watch’s head); alone the hammer would have done nothing, but with the electrical surge, a screeching wail was heard coming from the returning hand, reminiscent of the battle Mario fought in the Palace of Shadow. Mr. Game and Watch backed away as the purple hand writhed and screeched on the ground, and finally sank wearily into the ground, leaving empty space in its place.
Mr. Game and Watch held up his hands triumphantly, one clutching his lucky chance hammer. But unfortunately for him, the somewhat diminished version of the Shadow Queen was just biding its time; soon after Mr. Game and Watch took his sight off the battlefield, dozens of smaller purple hands shot out of the ground and overwhelmed the poor silhouette. But before he went down several of the hands were smashed by large black sausages, frozen, zapped, KO’d, or hit by a turtle.
Match#3: Captain Falcon vs. Diddy Kong
By Round III, Diddy was one of the most favored competitors to win the tournament. Some audience members were already wearing Diddy’s trademark red hat and red shirt with a hollow yellow star on it. However, Captain Falcon, with his impressive build and intimidating suit, was also fairly popular among the crowds, so the crowd was still split.
Diddy Kong and Captain Falcon immediately dove into a tussle of swift acrobatics. They dodged each other with jumps, flips, and (in Diddy’s case) cartwheels. A few minutes into the match they were a good distance away from each other, already tired from their extremely athletic efforts. Then, a certain obnoxious crowd member in the front threw a medium-sized rock at Captain Falcon, who narrowly dodged it. Diddy meanwhile was busy waving to the crowd. Captain Falcon seized this opportunity to pick up the rock and hurl it as accurately as he could at the chimp. Diddy noticed the projectile just in time to avoid a direct impact, but the rock landed directly onto his tail, snagging it in place.
At this point Captain Falcon charged full speed toward the trapped kong, ducking his head to go faster. So quickly did he move that Diddy had no time to pick up the rock; instead, he fired a barrage of peanuts and exploding oranges. Captain Falcon, with little difficulty, avoided each item, and rammed Diddy mercilessly, knocking the chimp a dozen or so feet away. “Show me your moves!” Captain Falcon gloated, as he closed in to finish the monkey off.
Diddy did not have the strength to get up. He could only watch as Falcon loomed over him and raised a boot dramatically to squash him like a bug. Diddy then discovered a new move to add to his arsenal; just as Captain Falcon was about to lower his foot, Diddy spun on the ground in a sort of break-dancing move, balancing on one hand and using his tail to knock his opponent off his feet. He then used the last of his strength to activate his jetpack, and hover directly over the startled captain, burning him with the flames emitting from his jetpack, careful to only burn him long enough to take him out of the running.
Match#4: Popo vs. Fox
Unfortunately for Popo in this match, all of his ice-related attacks could easily be countered by Fox with either his laser or his reflector. Popo, as short as he was, wasn’t really much of a hand-to-hand combat fighter, and suffered for his hereditary weakness.
Popo began blocking all of Fox’s kicks and punches with his sturdy hammer, but soon after it was splintered into hundreds of pieces by a carefully aimed shot from Fox’s laser. With no hammer available and ice not being able to be used effectively against Fox, Popo was running out of ideas. If only the battlefield wasn’t so flat, he thought, then I would have the advantage. But alternate terrains were one of the features unavailable during this particular tournament (due to a pesky affair when a myriad of Monty Moles sabotaged the equipment used to change the field, forcing the ones making preparations for the tournament to settle for a flat cement ground). So he had no means to defend himself when Fox went in for a sideways spiraling kick to finish the match.
Match#5: The Shadow vs. Iron Knuckle
The particular Iron Knuckle who had so far been fortunate in the selection of his opponents had grown overconfident. Disregarding all of his relatives who had been slain by a small boy dressed in green, he had made the decision to make his ascent to the big leagues. As satisfying as it was to be victorious over a purple monkey and a crazy crocodile, his assumption that all of the competitors were incompetent did not help him concentrate.
So Iron Knuckle laughed at his small cloaked opponent as he swung his gigantic sword at the swift figure. But he quickly grew frustrated as one by one, the adversary knocked off each one of his pieces of armor, including his helmet and shield. Finally, he could not tolerate it any longer; he impatiently (and more swiftly now that he was not burdened with his heavy armor) drove the figure back towards the wall of the stadium. At last the figure was backed up against the wall. Iron Knuckle brought his sword back without raising it, and stabbed straight at the cloaked figure. But the result did not suit him well; not only had his opponent leaped up and over him in a blur at the last second, but his sword was stuck deep into the stone wall. He attempted to tug and pull it out, but failed to accomplish this before The Shadow leaped and land hard onto the middle of the sword, snapping it in to. The force released by the sword pushed Iron Knuckle backwards and onto the ground, giving The Shadow time to use the portion of the sword still stuck in the wall as a sort of diving board and land a hard red-and-white-boot kick into the swordsman’s head.
Match#6: King Dedede vs. Luigi
After his grape-flavored encounter with Lanky Kong in Round II, Luigi worried how difficult his next opponent would be. The Shroob had been a piece of cake, but Luigi considered himself very lucky to still be conscious after the grape explosion. As Luigi stood across from King Dedede, who was brandishing his giant hammer with stars on the ends, Luigi remembered back to the Beanbean Kingdom when he had dueled with the Hammer Bros. with Prince Peasley on top of the Bullet Bill-shooting tank. In that instance, though, his opponent’s hammer wasn’t twice as large as his, and wasn’t being controlled by a fat but bulky opponent.
Dedede sucked in air rapidly through his mouth with his hammer at the ready, expecting the same results as in his battle versus Wolf. But Luigi, who had fought Kirby before in VS. Mode, knew exactly how to counteract this attack. He generated a ball of green fire in his hands, molding it like a snowball, and threw it like a baseball directly into Dedede’s open mouth. The fireball was further sped up by the force of the air pushing it along its way into the source of the suction.
Dedede closed his mouth in surprise, but too late, for the green fireball had already entered his mouth, and was scorching everything inside. Dedede closed his eyes painfully and coughed, billows of smoke coming out of his burned mouth. He then opened his eyes with a new fury lit inside them, and charged with his hammer at the green Italian plumber.
Luigi brought out his hammer just in time, blocking Dedede’s swing, but painfully jerking his hands holding the hammer. Then another fiery hammer brawl ensued (hammers were about as popular as swords these days). Although Luigi’s muscles had been built up considerably from plumbing and swinging his hammer, Luigi’s skills were a questionable match-up to Dedede’s brute force. Luigi had to be nimble, dodging his opponent’s swings and looking for an opening. Finally, after ducking low beneath a particularly savage horizontal swing, he swung his own hammer backwards behind his head and smashed Dedede’s hands.
Dedede immediately dropped his hammer (which Luigi promptly crushed) and nursed his throbbing fingers. Suddenly he looked up with even more savagery, more than Luigi had seen in an individual since he had fought the bewitched Chestnut King. Dedede puffed up his body and floated into the air several feet, then moved so his round shadow was directly over Luigi. He took a deep breath, and then dived relentlessly at the green figure below. Luigi bent his knees, braced himself, then, at the perfect moment, made upward contact with his fist, leaping upward against gravity’s crashing force.
This inexplicable move has puzzled me for a long time; if Luigi is in the correct position, one upward thrust of his fist and a jump can instantly KO many opponents. His brother, Mario, has no such move, only managing to steal several coins from his opponents.
So Dedede soared at least 30 feet in the air before coming down with a shaking bang, his great red coat sizzling from the attack (also inexplicable).
Match#7: Ness vs. Ganondorf
As were all of Metal Ness’s other opponents, Ganondorf was surprised when he discovered that his opponent was not really Ness, but a metal copy with the same abilities. At first he took it as a mindless puppet being controlled by some cowardly mage in the audience or outside the stadium. But soon into the match, he realized this couldn’t be the case.
Metal Ness was not only individually intelligent, but he had all of the real powers that the normal Ness would have. It also seemed that the metal opponent knew every trick Ganondorf tried before he attempted it. No form of Gerudo Kick, punch, elbow, dive, or roll seemed to startle Metal Ness in the slightest. And Ganondorf’s opponent’s attacks were becoming increasingly difficult to avoid; even though he was very strong and reasonably fast, he could not keep dodging repetitive PK Flashes, Fires, and Thunders forever.
Then Ganondorf decided to resort to heavy duty. The Triforce on the back of his hand glowed brightly; dark matter materialized into his huge heavy sword, glinting off the setting sun above. He yelled and charge at the metal figure. In response it charged up a particularly fiery PK Fire, and then when Ganondorf was drawing upon it, unleashed its attack in his direction. Ganondorf laughed and effortlessly blocked it with his resistant sword (if Metal Ness had eyebrows, he would have raised them). The metal enemy rapidly charged up a huge ball of energy, a mix of all three of its psychic attacks, and launched it at Ganondorf, but the entire ball of energy was absorbed into the purple hilt of the sword. As the King of Evil sliced his weapon down upon Metal Ness, mercilessly, it hopelessly tried a psychic shield, which is commonly known to only absorb certain energy projectiles. A lot of good that did it.
Luckily for Ganondorf, the medics, in their examination, weren’t sure if a metal character is supposed to breath (and through my research, I have discovered that in fact they don’t), so were unable to declare it dead until some while after the tournament.
Match#8: Captain Bobbery vs. Sonic
Sonic had quite a predicament on his hands. He couldn’t directly attack his bomb of an opponent for feat of it exploding the moment they made contact. The bomb, on the other hand, while not speedy, needn’t worry about blowing itself up after it was in a close enough proximity to attack him, because Bob-ombs always strangely survive self-detonations (there are so many strange facts and laws like this in the Nintendo world that it would bore not necessarily you, but me to the point where I would just scream, “Who cares!!!!” at the sky and give up on my work. And you would not want that…would you?)
So all Sonic could do was stay far out of Bobbery’s exploding range while the captain called out remarks such as, “Come on, lad! I personally have all day, but we wouldn’t want to keep this audience waiting too long, would we, lad?” or, “Hedgehogs these days and their strange hair styles…” (“I’ve heard of explosive personalities, but this is just going too far,” Sonic muttered mid-run)
His only chance was to fool Bobbery into exploding and then knock him out while he was still re-fusing himself (or whatever Bob-ombs do that allow them to explode repetitively). Sonic looked around the arena, and spotted a gigantic hammer smashed in two not far away. He sped over to the hammer’s remains, picked up both pieces (not including the tiny splinters of wood that broke apart from the hammer), and hurled one high and accurately. Captain Bobbery was distracted by the wood and followed it with his old eyes. Meanwhile, Sonic sped right towards the unsuspecting sailor. When he was only a couple yards away, Bobbery caught sight of the blue hedgehog, and prepared to explode. As Sonic barely entered hitting distance, the captain with an explosive personality instinctively detonated, sending itself high into the air. Before Sonic could be hit, however, he almost instantly doubled back and ran a few yards the other direction to a safe distance. He then quickly aimed at the soaring bomb and chucked the second hammer piece to nail Bobbery right in the face. The Bob-omb then exploded a second time, but this time he zoomed horizontally, slamming into the wall. He was too weary to look up to see Sonic’s high jump kick, so therefore the fortunate hedgehog left the match both victorious and unscathed.
During and After Round III
Somewhere on Yoshi’s Island…
Bowser Jr. and Doopliss (the phony Dark Link) woke up in a densely forested jungle with saturated light coming from the setting sun above. Everywhere around them were brightly colored palm trees and various twittering and chirruping noises. Confused, they got up and explored together through the jungle (Doopliss as a duplicated Bowser Jr.) until they found themselves at the shore of an expansive sea, with distantly visible land on three sides. They stood there for a while, pondering what they could remember of their last tournament battle, involving a large purple hand and a horrible sinking feeling.
Eventually they found their way to the nearest Yoshi village, but were treated almost as if they were old enemies and banished from Yoshi civilization. So Doopliss and Bowser Jr. were forced to head back into the jungle, where they faced all sorts of perils to occupy them far into the future, when the tournament seemed to be only a fading dream. By the time they had finally managed to construct a small boat and oars for their journey to another land, the baby Yoshis in the village had almost reached adulthood (I will not go into detail on Yoshi growth patterns here).
Underneath the Fourside Colosseum Infirmary…
They had tried everything. Nothing would break the stone walls or steel door that enclosed them. Not even grenade eggs, blasters, or high-tech explosives (courtesy of Professor E. Gadd) were enough to break out with, and the ground was far too hard for Bottles to even attempt to dig under. But after a long while Banjo came up with an idea.
“Hey, Kazooie, why don’t you use one of your remote-controlled eggs to explore the room beyond the steel door?”
“Well, now there’s and idea,” Kazooie pronounced dramatically. Then her voiced became serious. “Yeah, we could do that, but I only have one left, and I can’t lay anymore without my special bird feed.” At the mention of food everyone realized that they were growing hungry after their confinement. Kazooie (from her roost inside Banjo’s blue backpack) searched inside her perpetual nest and drew out a large red yellow-spotted egg. The sassy red breegull stuck it in her mouth and spat it at the bars where it split open, and out popped the tiny clockwork mecha-Kazooie.
Everyone (or everyone who could) gathered at the window to watch the bird-controlled bird scurry across the sleek black room. It then stopped, showing that its master was unsure of where to go.
“Make it go up the stairs,” Bottles urged. So Kazooie, with a sort of sixth sense that allowed her to control and see the viewpoint of her little mechanism, made mini-Kazooie leap up the steps one by one.
“Dang! There’s another steel door up the steps!” Everyone groaned at Kazooie’s update. But at that moment, luck appeared to be temporarily on their side, for the steel door Kazooie spoke of opened up and a long-legged lanky mustachioed figure wearing a purple hat with a flipped L on it stepped through the outwardly swinging door (Waluigi, for crying out loud). The unfortunate side was that the steel door smashed mini-Kazooie into the wall with a bang that muffled its small explosion. But Waluigi was dragging a limp form through the doorway and down the steps, grunting occasionally with the effort. He then strapped the unconscious figure to a tall chair with the Super Smash Bros. symbol next to the strange machine. As he did this, the characters behind the bars gasped as they recognized Samus, still in her power suit. Waluigi then activated the strange machine until it was whirring dangerously loud. A blinding flash of light ensued, revealing in place of the drooping figure a rigid Samus trophy, standing up and posing as if everything was fine.
Waluigi whistled a merry tune as he pushed the life-sized trophy into a corner, shut off the machine, and headed back up the black steps, closing the steel door with a clang.
Through the glowing Battlefields marched an army at least ten times the size of Master Hand’s battalion from Saffron City. It was made up of several hundred currently camouflaged Fighting Wire Frames, led by five metal characters, and all directed by Crazy Hand himself. They had only just left Master Hand’s room, but were moving at a swift pace. In less than 24 hours they would be invading Fourside City, crushing the rebellion once and for all.
Or so Crazy Hand was thinking. He had been furious when many of their prisoners had escaped through the mouse hole in Master Hand’s room, and had been unable to pursue them far because they wanted to maintain the element of surprise when they attacked, and could not risk being seen by anyone from or around Fourside City until they were ready. Which they were now. Primarily on his mind was revenge on those who had escaped, the Rebels (although they had never been much of a threat), and especially that infernal Bomberman who had ruined their recent invasion of Saffron City. But unfortunately, most of them would have to wait until he, Crazy Hand, brought them all to Master Hand. This time they would not escape (for there was not much of a chance that they had already found their way out of the Battlefields and navigated out of Fourside City’s huge expanse). But in the impossible chance that they did, he would not rest until he had caught them.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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Character Locations
Fourside City (Colosseum): Luigi, Kirby, Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Fox, Toad, Ganondorf, Diddy Kong, Tiny Kong, Bowser, Sonic, Wario, Bomberman, Chunky Kong
Fourside City (Infirmary): Yoshi, Roy, Samus, Prince Peasley, Young Link, Donkey Kong, Lanky Kong, Mr. Game and Watch, Popo, Captain Falcon
Fourside City (Holding Cell): Zelda, Link, Falco, Nana, Goombario, Mario, Bottles, Banjo and Kazooie, Professor E. Gadd, Pit, Metaknight, Rito Postman
: The Shadow Sirens
Trophy: Pikachu, Princess Peach, Samus-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
END OF PART 4 AND CHAPTER 9
Sorry for the over-narration...I was a little too Snickety at the time I wrote those parts...
Chapter 10 will be longer but even more intense...
