ZGen/SSB | Pieces and Bits | T

[Selah]

Pieces and Bits: An Exhibition
... of unfinished fanfiction from Selah Ex Animo, =D




Exhibition the 1st:
The Princess's Gentleman

• Summary: | Twilight Princess | Alternate Universe (AU) | Short Story | She’ll make a gentleman of that farmboy yet, despite the fact she’ll have to catch him and keep him caught first. And despite that imp, Midna, as well.
  
  
• Author's Notes: Gentleman is hardcore AU, and is in no way, shape, or form in harmony with the canon story of Twilight Princess. Characters have been lifted and transported and set down again without a lick of sense in their movements; you won’t find any symbolism is their new roles or speech or anything. So read at your own risk, x3

|Part 1 of The Princess's Gentleman|

At first there was the Gerudo schoolmaster, Ganondorf Dragmire, who came looking for sponsorship for some struggling Twili school and ended up destroying everything. However, Princess Zelda hesitated to qualify the term "everything"—indeed, it had only been her he’d broken to pieces and bits, scattered across the floor, and trampled on as he’d left the castle of Hycourt with her father the king’s patronage in tow. And it wasn’t as though he’d wrecked her on purpose. When he wasn’t ignoring her, he’d actually been kind.

She found him as hard to grasp and understand as the elements that ruled the desert from which he had come. He had forced her—without request, without regard—to stifle her judgments and to take him as he was: all patterned robes wrought in black and Gerudo calligraphy; foreign jewelry in his ears, braided into his flaming, dredlocked, chignoned hair; manners no barbarian was supposed to have and yet a barbarian possessed; a passionless, expressionless face that sometimes had its smiles (smiles that stripped her raw; direct enough to be intimate, sarcastic enough to make her feel like a pup of a girl infatuated with what she’d never understand) - a face that always had its culture and its curiosity, its confidence and its nonchalance, its impeccable beauty, its exotic ugliness.

He no doubt thought her a foreign animal (she saw it in his look, how he would examine the white, shimmering summer without, then glance significantly at her too long dress, turning eyes to the collar that had been cut too high). And yet it was he who was the foreigner, seated carefully, to a fault, in a rod-straight chair, speaking of his newly established school for Twili in northern Gerudo in an accent she had had to work to understand. The school was built on the edge of the ancestral lands of the Mirror House, he said. Where Twili royalty disport with the supernatural, she thought.

"If you’ve established Mirror and Halcombe—pardon me, the school’s Halcombe and Mirror, right?—sorry about that—if you’ve built your school right near the lands of the Mirror House, why can’t you get them to sponsor you, Dragmire?" her father the king had asked, as she squirmed in the backdrop, near the window, too hot in her collar and skirts. "The family’s a good one—I’ve heard of them."

"Good in name, yes." Ganondorf spoke in a rich, even voice that plunged deep past Zelda's marrow into her very substance, as though he himself had entered her veins, and spoke there from the swell of her blood. "The family has a good name, but no money to back it. Nothing to support it, actually. They’re nearly all dead, if you will excuse my freedom with such a word—"

Oh yes, he is considerate, for see how he nods at her in gentleman’s apology for uttering such a coarse word as "dead"!

"They’re nearly all extinct," Ganondorf continued, "merely a scattering of cousins and some wasted branch of the Halcombes. What support they can afford they gave to my school, that is, the services of the Mirror House heiress, Miss Midna Halcombe. She teaches Hylian, geography, some other practical skills—yes—but the Twili-Halcombe family, for all their ardor, can offer little in solid patronage, much as it grieves me to say this. Their wealth consists of only their ancestry. Forefathers, matriarchs, connections. That’s it."

"Ah!" Zelda's father smiled, leaning forward, lodging his elbows into the mahogany face of his desk. "What a sad tale! Nothing left to them but their ancestry. Tragic, tragic. And they a dying branch! Most sad, most sad. Of course, ancestry is a fine thing to have, but penniless! I feel for them—and to have seen their names in the papers! Well. You say their heiress teaches at the school. An industrious, working bunch, are they? Though I suppose it’s necessary…"

"Yes, they are hardworking," said Ganondorf. "All for the benefit of their Twili kind. I am glad to have their help." And he turned his eyes upon the Princess Zelda. She froze, and the too-warm dress burned as though draped in the flames of the Dark World.

Her father had thought Dragmire amusing and clever (or if not clever, possessed of some gray matter in that Gerudo skull). He heard Dragmire out, and in the end gave his royal patronage: five thousand rupees per annum, endorsement of the school’s name, baskets for the children at each new season, stockings. Dragmire politely pointed out no one needed the stockings where arid winds kept little Twili legs warm, but her father insisted. Stockings and five thousand rupees would be sent, and then the baskets, when summer had ripened into fall. Dragmire brooked no argument.

He gave her no farewells when he left for Gerudo Province; he failed even to spare her a glance, as he bowed to her father and tilted beckoning fingers at his long faced escort. His stay had been short—merely two days—he came and went as suddenly as a dust storm, or those desert winds called simooms, blowing up over the moving dunes and spilling into desert places, were the Gerudo, the Twili, and the Zuna dwelled.

He was just as devastating as a dust storm, Zelda later thought; he had blown through her and left nothing unturned. It shamed her to know she thought and panted after him, him after whom the courtiers of Hycourt sneered, declaring him a barbarian, with his earrings and his hair ornaments and his robes and accent. She clung to their prejudice.

In her thoughts—hard, judgmental thoughts—she swore to herself that there was nothing beautiful to be seen in him, that the pit in her belly and the warmth in her frame came from girl’s stupidity. Ganondorf had ravished all Hylian etiquette with his foreign customs, she told herself, he had left them all in the dull, twilit knowledge that Hycourt was now connected to his school for disadvantaged Twili. King Harkinian had exhibited an excellent stroke of benefice when he had given his patronage, true, but one had to consider the stain that came with association with the Gerudo, even if that association was humane and could be easily dispatched with if it proved unsatisfactory.

It was an old prejudice, an old hatred against the Gerudo, that Zelda clung to—a race of women and their men who were idle, sinful creatures, who remained trapped by simooms and foremothers in an inhospitable place, who failed to progress, who shamed with sloth and thieving tendency the Goddesses who had created them. They were a race to whom one condescended; the virtues of sentiment and feeling, so finely tuned and deeply felt in a Hylian, could not be replicated in the Gerudo, who did without marriage and proper clothing. Such was the problem; so, the answer: only the sordid gave their affection - their adoration, perhaps, even, their love - to a Gerudo.

And the princess of Hyrule—heiress of Hycourt, daughter of a Harkinian, Hylian in virtue, and intelligent in the manner of her foremothers, for whom she had been named—Zelda could not afford to be sordid… all natural, human feeling aside.

[No12]

Good really good, I've read your other fiction's (Word?).
Although one thing I noticed was

He heard Dragmire out, and in the end gave his royal patronage: five thousand rupees per annum, endorsement of the school’s name,

I would put semi-colon there put thats might be me listening to Word to much
Other than that good, please continue

[Selah]

Thank you for the comment, No12, :3

Though, I must ask for a clarification: do you mean you have put a semi-colon after the word "patronage"? "Name"? Or some other word in that sentence?

[No12]

I meant a semi colon after patronage
And thanks for replying to my fic!!

[Selah]

| Part 2 of The Princess's Gentleman |

Between Part 1 and Part 2 (in Part 1 and 1/2, perhaps?) Zelda takes Link on as a protege, shamed, as she is, by Dragmire's mentioning that the heiress of the Mirror House (Midna) teaches at his Twili school and does all she can to help the disadvantaged, despite her own poverty. Zelda tells herself that Dragmire was comparing her own efforts with the disadvantaged - read, none - to those of Miss Midna; being herself an heiress, and just as useful as Miss Midna could ever be (and more so! for Zelda has money where Midna does not) Zelda decides to take on a "disadvantaged soul" and provide for him. I wrote up a few scattered pieces of this Part 1 and 1/2, but it's far too choppy for my liking. The next scene concerns the "proper cleaning up and dressing up of the princess's protege, scheduled to turn gentleman":

Chudley made a fine gentleman, for he dressed well: jackets of velvet, a cashmere cap and tassel, pants cut by Terminian tailors, pointed shoes. Her father admired him, and so by default Chudley was excellent.

But though Zelda accepted—partly accepted—the shopkeeper’s excellence, she found he was “fine” in figure only; she could not forgive his arrogance nor the cost of his wares. (It had shocked her that a brace of roughly cut goblets—rough, Chudley had remarked, in celebration of that romantically rustic manner of country living—had cost five thousand rupees, and this the plainer set, sold without the encrusted jadeite that characterized a seven thousand rupee set higher up on the shelf.)

But damned high prices for damned silly wares aside, Chudley admittedly did cut a fine gentleman’s figure.

The princess made his impeccable figure her goal—he would act the mold into which she would squeeze Link, somehow or another. Grooming came first: a bath, a trim, all those necessary things to do with the body. (She dictated “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” to the valet she had chosen to serve Link, hoping the man would know what “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera” meant, because she certainly didn’t; he looked capable of knowing, but then, too many idiots looked capable nowadays…).

The clothes came last. Zelda ordered dressing catalogues from Termina and New Hyrule, lined her private study with them, and went in search of Link, who she found deep among the courtyard hedges, whittling. He looked neither hopeful nor relieved when she came upon him and gazed at her with such low-spirited resignation she hesitated momentarily. But the catalogues would not be put off; she beckoned he join her, and led him back to the castle.

“What’s the surprise today, princess?” Midna asked, cheerfully, when patron and protégé entered the castle foyer and found Midna sitting where Zelda swore no one had been sitting before.

“Dressing catalogues,” Zelda said, before caution and common sense could stop her.

Link flinched.

“Oh really?” Midna giggled, and somehow managed to make the sound excessively sarcastic.

“Yes.” Her own tongue had betrayed her; Zelda sighed, and resigned herself to the ill-timed disclosure and its consequences. It was like her to make things harder for herself, wasn’t it? “I was just going to… show them… to Link here.”

Link didn’t run, as something in her had expected him to do; rather, Midna uncurled from her seat and offered to accompany them to the study. Zelda accepted the offer as graciously as her discomfort would permit; walking resumed. If Link was reluctant, Zelda could not tell, but Midna kept flinging searching, half-laughing glances toward him as though offering encouragement. “Come on then,” she chirped, slitting her eyes, cat-grinning at him. “It’s for your own good, you know! Good boy, that’s it—keep yourself coming—”

Zelda bristled. She did not want the afternoon, spent flipping the pages of dressing catalogues, to be merely for Link’s “own good”; putting it that way made her plans seem callous, gross, ugly, as though Link’s compliance was Link’s sacrifice, and she a tyrant. No, it would never do if things came to that.

There was always the question of whether things already had come to sacrifice and tyranny, but Zelda shook the notion from her brain with a savage, inward growl.

She twisted nails into her forearm until the unpleasant thoughts stopped boiling so intensely, and then they had reached the study; she pushed open the door.

“See, Link?” She turned timidly to him; he stared at something beyond her. “We’ll fit you out with a proper wardrobe, see?”

“The doggy needs a sweater now and then,” said Midna craftily.

“… Indeed,” Zelda said.

She caught, nearly too late, Link’s eyes upon her—that, and his faint smile, as though he knew something she did not.


They pored over the catalogues, or at least Zelda did, pored with a sheet of parchment in hand, pen trembling a centimeter from its soft-pitted face. It was a distraction, examining clothes and noting down those she thought suitable, and it kept her from thinking too deeply—from bawling at Link and throwing things at him for not giving a rupee shard for her efforts, from screaming at Midna and maybe shaking her (she’d come up with grievances against the Twili later), from screaming at herself and maybe throwing herself out a window—but no, that was too dramatic, pathetic, and without reason, so she kept at the catalogues with all the concentration of a student.

It distressed her to consider how violently her thoughts fermented, how tiny grievances grew into chasms that in the end swallowed her and all reason. She couldn’t understand the violence of her reflections, couldn’t learn to suppress them; but perhaps she was a naturally emotive person and the fact she did not throw things at Link or shake Midna came from the fact that she did suppress herself—but the energy that was suppressed had to go somewhere, and so it went into her thoughts, which were just as terrible as if she had chucked a tiny marble bust of King Druas Harkinian at Link’s head. Why, exactly, she was so angry—distraught—homicidal—was an embarrassment: it was petty, like a tantrum: Link didn’t appreciate her or her efforts, and Midna wasn’t helping.

She could hear Midna disparaging both clothes and their creators at the far end of the study table, and Link’s eyes glazed over the material room into some unreachable beyond.

No12,

Thank you for your clarification! It is appreciated. I see where you are coming from, in the edit you suggest. However, since the sentence following "patronage" is a list (rupees, endorsement, baskets, stockings), a colon works better than a semicolon would.

[Selah]

Exhibition the 2nd:
Fox, Ness, and Nana

• Summary/Author's Note: | Super Smash Brothers Melee | There's not much to say about this next piece. It's just a spur-of-the-moment bit of fun, and an attempt at humour SSBM, after several years of questionably serious Zelda fanfic. ^^

One cold, murky day in April, when trails of tire-scored snow scarred the roads and winter clung to earth and sky with the strength of a lunatic, Fox sat in the waiting room of the Green Street car body shop, and listened to a television anchorman drone on about nothing.

The news reporter had been droning on for some time now, muffled voice melting in and out of the quiet like a tide. The television sat in a corner by the door into the garage, where just beyond a hazy pane of glass, a lone repairman could be seen trotting about an ink-black Hummer, pulling, every few seconds, at his mortifyingly low pants.

Frost blurred the other windows, where cars and people passed in splotches of movement.

Fox’s eyes roved from one icy window to the other, and then to the tip of his nose, where he slowly exhaled and watched his breath drift into the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Nana doing the same: gently breathing, watching her breath drift like the morning mist shrouding Nintendo City. Ness, seated in the three-legged chair, was too preoccupied with keeping himself warm to engage in such trifling diversions.

"Ness," said Fox. His voice was crisp, a novelty in the hush. "I told you you should’ve dressed more warmly."

Ness glanced up, eyes slit, jaw square with defiance. His round face was flushed with the cold, and he turned away, flushing further with irritation. Fox saw a corner of Nana’s mouth turn up. She caught him looking at her, smiled, and buried herself deeper into her parka.

"Can you please stop fidgeting?" Ness snapped.

Nana swiveled her fur-lined head. "I’m sorry," she said, in a voice void of all pity. "Was I keeping you warm?" She glanced significantly at her companion’s shorts and light jacket.

Ness shifted his weight with a moody huff, and the chair, its equilibrium shattered, lurch forward onto the leg it did not have. There was a startled, "Dang—!" and Ness and chair fell in a heap on the ice-cold linoleum.

Ness shot upright, became tangled in the chair, and struggled. Fox was too tired and cold to chuckle, but Nana grinned. After several moments, Ness dislodged himself, twisted into the center of the room, and uttering a curtailed oath, kicked the chair back into place.

The old lady by the door gave him a strange look.

"It was warm last week," Ness snarled. "Freaking warm last wee—" His voice broke and went soprano; Nana bit her hand too late to prevent the escape of a spasmodic laugh.

"Sit here," said Fox, pulling his crossed arms closer to his chest, and nodding to a vacant seat. Ness twitched and obeyed, stiff with embarrassment. His new chair had wobbly legs, and shook beneath him as he sat. Nana gulped, grinned, and giggled.

"Stop it," hissed Ness.

"I don’t know why you’re so angry," she replied.

Ness snapped around to the black television, and fixed his gaze upon the small, indistinct images. Nana, perceiving herself ignored, fell into a singsong murmur, and began to play with her nails, picking at the cracked and ineptly applied fingernail polish that coated them. "Young Link didn’t do a very good job," she whispered, and smiled dreamily. "Not good at all..."

Her whispers grew inaudible. Ness stared resolutely at the screen, and Fox, turning lazily, sluggishly, did likewise. There was nothing special about the TV, nor the news. And yet, somehow, the television fascinated him, enchanting despite its ugliness.

The repairman came into the room.

The old lady by the door started, and the repairman said, "Mr. Fox." He wiped his oil-stained hands on a cloth.

"Yes?" Fox tore his gaze from the TV, and stood.

The man was looking apologetic; Fox imagined ruptured batteries and imploding engines, courtesy of a simple job badly done. "Mr. Fox," said the repairman, wiping his hands again (Mewtwo would call it an obsessive compulsive gesture), "we got the new tire on."

"Glad to hear that."

"But the heater is broken."

"And just what were you doing messing with the heater?"

The man’s shoulders twitched. "Well, you see..." He paused, and then said something professional and arcane about cars and car parts and that obscure connection between the tire and the heating system. Fox rolled his eyes heavenward, and gave a little sigh.

"I see." He paused. "How much do you charge to fix it?"

"Oh... just a couple hundred dollars... somewhere in that range," said the man evasively, wiping his hands.

"How long will it take you to fix it?"

"An hour or so."

Ness gave a compulsive twitch from somewhere behind Fox.

"All righty then." Fox sighed again, folding his arms more tightly against his chest. "Do you think you could give me a precise estimate of the cost?"

"Sure," said the man, and plodded into a room marked EMPLOYEES ONLY THNX.

"Another hour?" snarled Ness.

"Appears so," said Fox, glancing back, smiling ruefully.

"But my philosophy class starts in thirty minutes," said Ness, voice dilating.

"I can call Roy, if you’d like."

Ness was momentarily silenced. "But... he’s out shopping with Marth," he said at last. "And Marth has a new John Tesh album."

"And the problem is...?"

"Marth's in an angsty moooood," Nana provided, doing a Plantana dance. Ness glared at her.

"The library’s only twenty-five minutes from here," Fox replied, rocking on his heels.

"Yeah, but..." Ness was growing pale.

"You just like riding in Mr. Fox’s Hummer," said Nana. Ness gritted his teeth.

"Quit!" he snarled.

"Quit what?" Nana retorted, rebellion in her tone.

"Mr. Fox?" said the repairman.

"Yeah?"

"It’ll be $250."

"You’re eating up my salary!" said Fox, laughing grimly.

The man smiled painfully, and wiped his hands.

"So... do you want us to...?"

"Sure. Fix it," said Fox. Ness spluttered.

The repairman nodded. "Okie-dokie. It’ll be done somewhere around eleven fifteen. Mrs. Perkins?" He turned to the old lady by the door. "The Cadillac was looking fine, just needed an oil change, but then there was an issue with the rearview mirror; it snapped off when I was—um..."

The lady moaned.

"Fox!" Ness wailed. "FOX!"

"That’s my name," said Fox, seating himself and pulling out his cell phone.

"Why?"

"I’m not about to spend this stretch of winter-spring bundled up like I’m on my way to the Arctic in my own Hummer," Fox replied, dialing a number, and shooting Ness a dry glance. "The only reason I’m always running the streets is to escape that icehouse Peach insists on calling a… I have no idea what she calls it." He shook his head, pressed the phone to his ear. "I wonder if she understands the logic behind heaters…"

"So the only reason you so generously agreed to taken Ness and me to the library was to get out of the icehouse?" asked Nana, with more than a little sarcasm in her tone.

Fox grinned. "Brilliant display of logic, little lady—Oh—ah—hey there - Marth? Yeah... hi... This is Fox. You and Roy still on the road?" The repairman slammed his way back into the garage; Fox paused. "You are? Oh, good... great. Hey, could you swing by AutoService right quick? Yeah, that one on Green. Ness here wants—needs—to go to the library for his philosophy class at ten forty-five. Yeah... yeah... I was going to take him, but these idiots at AutoService did something to the heater, so I gotta stay here for a little while... yeah..." Another pause. "Great. You’ll be by at what time? Ten-thirty? Sounds good to me. Ok. Thanks. See ya. Bye."

Fox lowered the phone, switched it off as he spoke: "Marth said Roy’ll be happy to take you to the library. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes."

The corners of Ness’s mouth drooped, and he shrugged.

"It won’t be that bad," said Fox.

"Can I come?" Nana shoved back the hood of her parka to reveal flushed cheeks and an abundance of fuzzy curls. "The crafts workshop starts at eleven."

Fox shrugged. "Sure. I guess."

Ness clucked disapprovingly. "You’re too little to be wandering around the library by yourself until then," he said.

"Dang it Ness, I’m eleven-years-old!" Nana snapped. "Really - Popo’s less of a mother bear, and he's my brother."

---

The older lady by the door started as though she had been jabbed in the posterior by a scalding poker. Nana glanced around at her and caught sight of the cause of the lady’s disturbance. A titanic truck, engine roaring, had pulled up in the narrow parking lot. Someone was emerging from the driver’s side, looking, despite his height, a tad too small for the ridiculously huge vehicle.

"Roy’s here," said Nana.

Fox and Ness glanced up in time to see the door swing open.

"Thanks for coming by," said Fox, as Roy stepped into the room.

"No problem." Roy smiled first at Fox, and then at the children. "Ready?"

"Yes!" said Nana, leaping off her chair and pulling the hood back over her head. Ness stood with an unintelligible grunt of compliance, and strode out the door.

"Sorry about the Hummer," said Roy, and added, matter-of-factly, "they do a pretty poor job here at AutoService. Despite the commercial."

"I think it’s because of the commercial," replied Fox, chuckling. "See ya."

[Selah]

Exhibition the 3rd:
Creditors Come Collecting Their Fee

• Summary/Author's Note: | Super Smash Brothers Melee | An attempt at writing action, 8D

“So,” said Marth, as the front door of the house cracked and buckled, ringing with thumps and kicks and what distinctly sounded like the hard edge of an axe against the panels, “it appear they’ve found us. Caught us. At last.”

The latch rattled, crunched, and the door burst inward, timed so impeccably with the end of Marth’s speech it was like a period, an exclamation mark. A grey, hard, reptilian face—no skull; ah yes, that was a skeleton coming in through the front door—a skull tore slavering, snarling into the foyer, teeth snapping, hot saliva spewing, and its body came writhing after it, a hard mesh of bone and coil burnt with the fever of exertion.

The figure remained for but a moment, or perhaps it remained too long; it had not yet gained the threshold; indeed, had gained no inch of the foyer at all, when Roy and Link hurled themselves from the parlor to the antechamber, slammed into the half-open door, and smashed the intruder between door and doorframe. The monstrosity flung sideways, caught, for a moment, by the shoulders in the door; and then the conjoined weight of the swordsmen thrust it from the chamber, leaving only its head and neck, and now—the neck shattered beneath the pressure, bone scattering across the tile; the head crashed to the floor still snapping and quite alive.

Decapitation did nothing to stern the assault without: the door shuddered, jounced, closed beneath the still heavy press of Link and Roy. The skull launched itself at Link’s leg; Link jerked aside, stumbling over his own feet. He plummeted into a small table. The skull pursued.

“Marth! Ness!” Link’s words came in a series of shrieks; he scrambled backwards, legs flailing like an untrained bicyclist’s. “Din’s blood, give me something—anything—Din’s blood!”

He gave neither Marth nor Ness time to react; staggered instead to his feet, seized the hall table, and broke it upon the rampaging skull.

Fragments of skull skittered across the floor.

The victory was momentary. The front door thrashed again, nearly flinging Roy off it; Roy screamed something, or perhaps he just screamed, and Link launched himself against the door, as yet another shudder ran through it.

”Something heavy!” he yelled. “Bring something heavy!”

His words had been anticipated. Marth was dragging a sofa across the floor, struggling against the weight of its iron-bound legs; Link clawed at the cushions and fought to brace it against the door. Marth next went for a bookshelf, throwing books from it in a flutter of old, yellowed pages.

And then there was Ness, standing gape-jawed in a doorway, watching the destruction of his foyer and parlor.

“Dear God…” he whispered.

Marth had gotten the bookshelf to its destination, backed away as though to admire some fine bit of art; he heard Ness and smiled. Ness seemed horrified by the gesture, and his face began to twist, warping like hot lead.

“We must thank you for the use of your house,” said Marth placidly, kneeling amid the wreck of books, picking up a vast, overstuffed tome. “And I do apologize for the books—you’ll forgive that?”

“You—” blubbered Ness.

“You are no doubt wondering what in the name of sweet heaven is going on,” Marth interposed, examining a page torn from a thesis on metaphysics.

“You said—” Ness was working strenuously to articulate his point; he looked upon the point of retching; twitching with every word. “You said everything was well and dandy! That no one was mad at you all in more! What in heaven’s name is going on? What in heaven’s name is—”

“I do believe you asked that already,” said Marth, returning the page to its book, glancing up at his auditor. “I’ll tell you, if you let me.”

“What in heaven’s name—?”

“Ness. Breathe.” Marth demonstrated. “Now. What’s going on, you ask? Roy, Link, and I are being chased by creditors.”

“That was creditor?” Ness gestured to the remains of snapping skull strewn like bone china across the floor.

“No. That was a creditor’s henchman. Or henchlizard. Hench-redead-lizard. You understand. You’ll recognize the names of our antagonists.”

“Wha—?”

“Mr. Game and Watch,” Marth began. “Lord Yoshi. Donkey Kong. And of course, Lord Luigi.”

“Bu—!” Ness’s jaw fell further; his face resembled nothing of its former, shape, normality, and hue. “L-Lord Luigi’s dead! How can he be chasing you? It was all in the papers—he was murdered three months ago—”

“There are ways,” Marth murmured. “If you have the nerve, you might look outside and ascertain for yourself the ambulant figure of Lord Luigi. Who, indeed, is dead.”

Ness now looked upon the verge of tears.