Into the Smasher's World (Part 2)

Part 2: A Broken Flight

Chips of glass and papers blown from their glasses shuffled beneath his feet as Isaac ventured down the hall, holding the Dark Pit staff down like a rifle as he approached the open doors to the gym. Doors stood by with gray-lit windows, somberly standing like curious bystanders watching a doomed man walk past.

It felt underground and foreign in the place while it was swallowed with shadows and smelled like dirty snow; the faded light from the gym brightened the end exactly like a tunnel. He found his breath spiking at the dark stains—Shadow Bugs left behind a distinctive juice when crushed—and his heart sinking at every splash of blood along it. Foreign whispers of the wind and mutterings of unknown origin made him all the more wary.

But he stayed focus on the chattering ahead and the promise of vague safety held in them. They seemed at least somewhat human, spare the occasional incredibly unique accent, and were engaged in a quiet conversation like they were recovering from shock.

Snippets of it echoed down the hall:

“…I don’t think even one could…”

“…shame, they were all just kids…”

“…this could really be where those five…”

“…and the Jecksons confirmed it…”

One of the voices was female, a bit dark and gruff with a sort of war-torn sweetness. The other was male, and sounded like a kid around his age—or younger—but with a snap of seriousness in it. And they only got more hushed as he got closer while they spoke of the private topic.

He slipped behind one of the propped doors, wincing when it gave a metallic creak only a bit louder than the voices; they seemed unaware, lucky for him. He peered around to look into the room after a minute of precautious hiding.

The gym was still as dreary as ever, and had begun to gain a light covering of snow from the gaping hole in the wall and a building storm outside. But several…beings had entered since he last exited. There was a woman and a boy talking near the center, the woman wearing a long, cyan tunic and a sword sheath at her back while the boy bore a red vest and jeans. Her green (that was green, right?) hair was tied up in a long, thick ponytail that hung near her waist; his black hair was kept hidden under a red and white cap.

Isaac found himself staring for a long time, probably with his mouth open in stunned silence, when he finally noticed that they had both stopped talking.

“…something wrong?” the boy asked after a while.

“Something’s here,” the woman muttered darkly, putting a hand upon the sword at her side.

He did the smart thing and ducked behind the door again, breath tightening, trying to merge with the shadows. He found his grip tightening on the Staff, despite every neuron in his brain shouting at him to not fight back against an experienced fighter who used a sword and, if the games were right, could chop him in half in a flying slice.

Then again, he always had that inner instinct to rebel. Natural teenager thing.

Isaac peered around the edge of the door and found that the pair had moved—not anywhere near him, thankfully, but closer to the stage and the mound of backpacks still waiting. He stood still, wondering what to do next. On one hand, he could stash the weapon and go up to them peacefully for answers; on another, he could take the weapon with him and try to force answers from them; on yet another, he could bolt from the scene.

As he was considering, something stung his neck with a small, hot pain. He instinctively brushed it off, glancing towards it and finding it to be a couple of embers.

His eyebrow rose in suspicion. Now that he was paying attention, he could tell that it had gotten a little warmer around the area; but it came in even waves that blew stinging embers on his neck and warmed his skin through his sweatshirt.

“What the…” he muttered, turning around.

A fair of fierce, blue eyes stared back at him.

“Oh jeez,” he wheezed, flattening against the door as the orange-scaled dragon came closer.

It cocked its head slightly and rumbled deep in its throat, advancing its powerful self and laying a flame-tipped tail over Isaac’s one possible exit. It bore its fangs and fanned out its blue-skinned wings in a threat display.

“H-hi,” Isaac stammered, pulling his arms in so that the Dark Pit staff crossed over his chest. “Uh…h-how’s it goin’?”

The dragon snorted a small cloud of embers that blew past his face, burning the edges of his ears.

“I…uh…” he paused to clear his throat. “I’m looking for some video game characters that might have a clue of where my classmates went. You…wouldn’t happen to know any…others, would you?”

The dragon grumbled a response. It flicked its snout in the direction of the gym.

“So…you do,” Isaac confirmed.

It bobbed its head and growled again—in a warning way.

“I swear, I’m not here to harm them,” he stated.

It sent a pointed glance to the staff in his hand.

“…yea, uh…the place is infested with Shadow Bugs, give me a break.”

It huffed, still unconvinced.

“…listen, I, uh…I know you don’t trust me, but I just woke up from a Subspace raid and I need to find these…’smashers’ so that I can try and find the rest of my kidnaped group. Do your allies know them?”

The dragon bobbed its head in a slow nod, the two maintaining eye contact the whole time.

“…then…can you take me to them?”  

…can a dragon smirk? Because Charizard just did.

*ASW*

A sudden clamor by the room’s doors caught Lyn and the Pokémon Trainer’s attention. They went taunt and held still, expecting a monster to come charging.

“What was that?” Lyn asked.

“Barney the dinosaur,” the Trainer stated sarcastically.

“…what?”

“A joke I heard. Anyway, it was probably just Charizard,” the Trainer shrugged.

Lyn turned around to look, anyway. “…no, it wasn’t.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t just Charizard,” Lyn stated.

The Trainer turned away from the benches, leaving the Tanks and Infantry to dive deeper into them; he faced a smug-looking Charizard holding up an irritated fourteen-year-old boy by the hood of his dark purple sweatshirt.

The two parties stared at each other for a while.

“…hey,” the boy finally spoke up casually.

“Hhhi,” the Trainer answered, one of his eyebrows halfway off his head.

“Hello,” Lyn greeted.

“…so…this your Charizard?” the boy asked, jerking a thumb upwards.

“Yep,” the Trainer answered.

…

“…can he let go of me?”

“Char, drop him,” the Trainer ordered.

Charizard dropped him. Onto hard, partially frosted concrete.

“OW.”

“Not like that,” the Trainer groaned.

 Charizard chortled with a toothy sneer.

Lyn helped him up. “Were you one of the cosplayers who were attacked by Subspace?” she asked.

“Yea,” the boy confirmed, dusting himself off. “The Dark Pit one.”

“…”

“…I took the costume off,” the boy huffed. “Anyway, my name’s Isaac.”

“I am Lyndis. Call me Lyn,” the woman introduced. “I know someone in the Assist Trophy barracks known as Isaac.”

“Huh. From Golden Sun, right?” Isaac asked.

“Yes.”

“Neat. And…wait, is this guy Red?” Isaac asked, turning to the Trainer.

“No,” ‘Red’ groaned, “I just get mistaken for him. A lot. Anyway, are you the only one here?”

“I think so…unless you count the bodies…” Isaac muttered.

“I am sorry about your comrades,” Lyn apologized, putting a hand on his shoulder as he sent a somber glance towards the floor he recently landed on. “If it helps, many of them are still alive; under Subspace, but still alive.”

“…is Palutena among them?”

“What?” Red asked. Isaac look at them with sharp, cold seriousness in his eyes.

“Is the Palutena cosplayer with Subspace?” Isaac asked, a titch more slow and a lot more sternly.

“Yea. You know her?” Red asked casually.

“Yup. Cassandra Hurn.”

“Aunt? Sister? Girlfriend?” Red suggested.

“She’s my mother,” Isaac deadpanned.

“…oh,” Red peeped.

Lyn looked at the two, Red shrinking away from the glaring Isaac, before clapping her hands together in an echo that sounded throughout the gym. “Well then,” she stated, “now that we’ve found you, we should comb over the rest of this room before we head back to the Smash universe.”

“Ivysaur and Squirtle should be heading back here by now,” Red noted. “And the Tanks and Infantry are combing through the gym. We should be ready to go in ten.”

“Alright. …hold up, I’m coming with you?” Isaac asked, somewhat stunned.

“Do you wanna die?”

“No.”

“Then you’re coming,” Red declared, heading off for the hall from which Charizard dragged Isaac out of—probably to find his Pokémon.

Isaac watched him leave, stunned. He was going into a video game. One where famous characters were situated and fought like gladiators, a game left unexplained other than fighting. Yet these two seemed peaceful—it couldn’t be an all-fight-no-fun game if they were so at ease. They could have an entire world like this one over there, glossed over by the actual software known as Super Smash Brothers.

…what the heck was he getting involved in?!

“That was an incredibly unserious answer,” Isaac muttered.

“What?” Lyn questioned.

 “I ask ‘are you taking me to another world?’ he answers, ‘if you don’t want to be killed, yea’. No passports, luggage checks, heck, even a ‘can you handle interdimensional travel?’” Isaac muttered. “This might turn out easier than air flight.”

“Not until you’ve experienced it,” Lyn stated grimly.

“Aw, man. It’s gonna be terrible. …how does one cross universes, anyway?” Isaac questioned.

“Well…” Lyn hummed, putting a hand to her chin in thought. “The way we did it was through Tears—rips in the dimension’s fabric.”

“So you literally shredded Reality to get here,” Isaac noted.

“I wouldn’t put it that way…although, too many rips in a universe can cause it to implode…” Lin shivered slightly. “But that rarely happens. They’re usually more help than harm; it was how many beings got to the World of Trophies. After finding one and entering it, you’d be deconstructed into small pieces and transferred into it. In our scenario, we’ll be going along a stream straight into another rip—a safe area in the World of Trophies. Then we’ll reconstructed there, piece by piece, and begin hunting Subspace for your allies.”

“…sounds, uh…sounds delightful,” Isaac peeped, shrinking back a little.

Lyn spared him a small smile. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t feel like you’re being taken apart at the seams at all.”

“Okay…”

She signaled for him to follow as they set off down a hall. It would take them to the opposing wing that Red was headed down, Isaac had noted. “We need to keep looking for life, even if you say you’re the only one here,” she explained.

“Sounds like you’re pretty dedicated to finding us,” Isaac spoke up, sliding over a fallen locker to follow her.

“My comrades owe you.”

“For what?”

She was silent for a while, with just their footsteps echoing through the hall—the squeak of his sneakers and the clicks of her boots.

 “…did they not tell you?” she finally asked.

“Who? You’re just getting me more lost…” Isaac muttered.

“The group of seven we owe. They never told you about us?” she asked again, more incredulous than before.

“A group of seven…,” Isaac repeated. “I know a friend group of seven. They helped put a lot of details into the costumes—one of them gave me this apparently authentic staff. Which I guess is normal for someone random like her, trusting me with a magical weapon. Anyway, they’re incredible at SSB. I mean, incredible. Top score as their favorites, can take on a team of level 9 CPUs alone, heck, they beat people in this school who could rule the first Smash Brothers game. I thought they were just supernerds or something, but you and Red keep mentioning this group that helped you…I have suspicions.”

“As do I. When we find them, though, they’ll have to face the music—they’ll know us, or they won’t,” Lyn decided.

“If they don’t?”

“We owe their world, don’t we? And its good to give random acts of kindness. In addition, if it concerns Subspace, it concerns us.”

Neither spoke for a while, Isaac following Lyn silently as she checked in rooms and hiding spaces, feeling a bit useless but still too consumed in thoughts to voice anything.

Finally, Lyn shoved the conversation again. “So, tell me; how much do you ‘nerds’ know about us?”

“A fair amount,” Isaac shrugged. “Mainly about your adventures and anything you revealed over that time…a bit of stats, some classes, what games you came from—or universe, I guess—and random little details Nintendo gave us to interpret.”

“So…do you happen to know that Mario saved a princess?”

“Who doesn’t? We know he was first a carpenter before becoming a plumber, that he’s Italian, was saved by Yoshis as a kid, a general idea of his height and weight, and the cheap fact that his last name is Mario.”

“…pardon me for saying it, but that’s incredibly scary.”

“One would think.”

“But…do you know where he is now?” Lyn asked slowly.

“…like, what universe?”

“Yes.”

“Nope,” Isaac stated. “I never really thought of it like that. Wouldn’t he be in the Super Mario universe…?”

“He’s currently residing in the World of Trophies—err, the Smash universe,” Lyn corrected. “And I suppose you wouldn’t know of the Super Smash Brothers Manor.”

“They’ve got a mansion in that world?”

“Or the Assist Trophy villa, or the prime Tear zone in that area…” Lyn continued, stopping to list them off her fingers while Isaac was staring, confused beyond belief, in the background. “Or Smash city, or our predicament with the characters cut from the roster, or the contents of our local warehouses…”

“…and I’m assuming that you’re not going to tell me what any of these places are until we get there?” Isaac grumbled.

Lyn turned to him, smiling despite herself. “You’ll see them when you get there.”

“Which is gonna be soon,” a familiar voice spoke up from behind them.

The pair turned around to face Red. He had a serious, somewhat irked look on him that gave Isaac the feeling that he wasn’t entirely happy with the predicament at hand. Or the nickname on him.

“No luck, then?” Lyn confirmed.

“Yup. The place is desolate,” Red shrugged. “I took out some Primids with Charizard, though. So…Isaac, right?”

“Red, right?”

“Are you always like this with names? Because Dark Pit’s gonna have a hard time,” Red deadpanned.

The side of Isaac’s face perked up into a smirk. “I take what I can get to throw at people.”

 Red rolled his eyes and began heading the other way. “Well, c’mon, you Pittoo rip-off; the Tear’s about to open, and I feel more like leaving you behind.”

“I could sue for the stunt your Charizard pulled.”

“We don’t have lawsuits in the World of Trophies. I’ve done extensive research into it.”

*ASW*

By the time they got back to the Gym, the Tear had already spawned. Isaac had no idea what he was expecting for a portal to fictional worlds…maybe something flashy and glow-y, with that weird hum that reeked of “other dimension” and a constant suction that would pull any passersby in.

What he got was a quiet, mint-colored, vaguely oval-shaped slit that could be called nothing else but 2-D. Completely flat. It was a bit wider and taller than the average adult, though it was a bit hard to tell because it kept moving—folding itself in midair and extending upwards, then inching down to slink in a circle on the ground, then rising back up again and widening like a threatening cobra. A bit like a lost, slow caterpillar that didn’t have anywhere to go, except most caterpillars didn’t act like windows where you could see an infinite void that hurt to stare at.

“Whoa,” he murmured, bracing himself and not following as Lyn and Red stepped forward, fearless.

The Tanks and Infantry were already gathered around it in a loose cluster, seemingly at home around another flat object. One of them tossed the last of the backpacks into the portal before dusting his hands off proudly.

Red pulled a gold, folded-up object out of his pocket and opened it—revealing it to be a pair of gold brackets. They were formed with three lines that curved together near the center into a beautiful pattern, and looked to be as flimsy as paper as it lightly fluttered in the cold breeze.

He tossed one to the top of the Tear and the other at the bottom; they latched on with a metallic hum, freezing the Tear open into a vague door shape.

Lyn turned around to face Isaac with an encouraging smile. “You are coming, aren’t you?”

“Y…yea, just…uh…yea,” he stuttered.

“Come on, now, it’s not going to bite.”

“I know. It’s going to split me into tiny pieces and warp me to another realm.”

“This is why we don’t let Real Worlders into different universes,” Red huffed in irritation. “They’re constantly paranormal.”

“And I’m one of the few who doesn’t have conspiracy theories tucked under his belt.”

“Exactly.”

He plucked a trio of Pokeballs from his belt and tossed them in front of him, where they opened with three bursts of light into a water turtle, a fire dragon that Isaac was already too acquainted with, and a flowery dinosaur. All three greeted their trainer with their signature cries and turned to the Tear, bracing themselves and overall looking far more ready than Isaac was to face warping.

Lyn took Isaac’s hand as he was still focused on the Tear and brought him to it, leading him closer until he stood at the same distance as them. “Sorry,” she apologized, “but this is the only known way to jump universes.”

“You have your friends waiting for you, anyway,” Red spoke up. “And your mom, right?”

Isaac glanced down, clenched his jaw, and looked back up at the Tear with a calm, eyes-half-open look. “Yea. And I’m curious about this Smash Mansion or whatever.”

“Alright,” Lyn instructed, “one at a time, Tanks and Infantry.”

The soldiers saluted before forming a line. The first one bent his legs and hopped into the Tear, vanishing into motes of white light that arched off into the Tear’s shown distance. Another followed a few seconds later; Isaac watched, eyes widening slightly, as they each followed suit—becoming pixel-like pieces of pure light that eventually disappeared between dimensions.

“Okay,” Red spoke up as they were going through, “so this’ll take us straight to the Tear supported by the opposite Arches that I put in…right, Lyn?”

“I think that was the plan,” she confirmed.

“Those gold things are Arches, then?” Isaac confirmed.

“Yup. They’ll branch us right to the World of Trophies. There’s not a chance that you’ll get lost in between,” Red nodded.

“That can happen?” Isaac asked.

“…nnnope. Perfectly safe!” Red answered, faking a smile as he approached the Tear. He beckoned the Pokémon, then tossed himself backwards into the Tear with a wave to the others and a confident smirk.

Squirtle flung itself in after the trainer was whisked away, declaring (and I quote) “Squiirtlllleeeee!”

Ivysaur sauntered over and hopped in casually in a cat-like manner with a bored look gracing its snout.

Finally, Charizard ducked itself under the arch, grumbling a “Graruh” towards Isaac.

“You first?” Lyn asked.

“Sure. Hey, is this what lemmings feel like before they pitch themselves off an iceberg?” Isaac questioned.

“…what’s a lemming?”

“Nevermind…” he muttered, approaching the Tear slowly. Here we go… he thought a moment before entering.

The instant his body crossed the threshold of the Tear, his senses…dimmed. Like walking outside to a snow-covered backyard. He lost track of the feeling of the cold breeze on his skin, and the sound of the whistling wind and echoing gym. His vision blurred out into a swath of cyan, greens, and blues, laced through with white. Emotionally, he felt like nothing. Like he had gone into that video game stasis when your face went slack and thoughts honed in, except there wasn’t much to watch and his thoughts had tuned out entirely.

In the silent realm, his vision steadily cleared and his senses woke up just a little; the colors became…paths, textured swashes of the brush in a painting, that lead off in dozens of directions—each color different than the others by a shade or two. They were blocked off from him by a transparent wall of flittering, glass-like stuff that formed a tunnel to wherever he was headed.

The World of Trophies. He could barely see it, a distinctive slash on a watery wall in the cyan sea, holding firm. Nothing inside it was made obvious.

He could see bits of white light traveling in a stream in front of him, some in larger clusters than others, and was aware of one group that was tailing him from behind. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that those lightshows were the beings he had just met; they felt like a group as they were traveling like this, one party headed together in a big, incredibly odd-looking band.

For that moment, he felt at peace, feeling a prickly sensation from being the first “Real Worlder” to see such a place.

Then something tore the moment apart.

Something being a large, dark shadow that launched itself at the tunnel and scurried along it with dark intent, eventually ramming itself straight through the wall of shards into the small gap between him and the lightshow that was Lyn. Rage and shock spiked in him as he watched the glass bits go flying; they were swallowed by fear as the shadow wrapped itself around him in a cloak of darkness and tossed itself out of the tunnel again.

 Lyn’s lights let out a dulled, shriek-like sound as he fell through with it; he tried yelping “HEY!” or something back to her, but could only manage a warbling of his own that felt foreign to mutter. Anyway, he lost sight of her and the tunnel entirely as he found himself tussling with the shadows.

He was terrible at attacking in his form, and for every swipe he tried at the thing with his pixel-formed limb-things, he just got more tangled in it. It didn’t seem the least bit fazed by his harmless swipes. He got a scary feeling from it, the same as a harsh glare from a hunting predator or cold eyes of a murderer.

They stopped falling when the shadow snapped open wings that caught them like they had hit a tight blanket. They were formed of curls of a dark, dark purple and shaped vaguely like dragonfly wings. It held them there as he tried fighting it off some more, and the pair wrestled in midair.

Eventually, the shadow shot a pair of limbs—hands—at his center, grabbing him with a clasp of steel. He panicked and flailed about even harder, buffeting the shadow like a swarm of angry fireflies, but couldn’t manage to get it off him—in fact, it only made it grasp harder.

It jerked him towards it, and a dizzying sensation clouded him, making him freeze in his “attacks” if only for a second; but it took that second to rip him from his cloud of bits entirely.

He could of sworn he heard something when he was taken out of his body. A tear of paper, or a rip of fabric, maybe the snap of breaking wood. Or even all of them combined, mixed up to become a sound of a soul being taken from its body.

The body itself, in its light-composed form, stopped struggling and settled into a calm mist that pooled on the shadow’s stomach, while he was trapped between its hands feeling foggy, tiered, and otherwise…detached.

The shadow tossed him away like a wrapper and he plummeted through the cyan void while it wrapped itself around his body and took off. He tried screaming after it, shouting a stream of curses that would forever haunt it for the rest of its days, but couldn’t manage a sound—not even that garbled yelp that he managed earlier. The shadow, curled around his body and dragging it in the same direction as the World of Trophies, soon vanished from his sight.

 He briefly wondered what became of the residents of that world; could the Arch Bridge still work if part of it was fractured? Would they turn out alright? And would they send help after him? …could help be sent between worlds? Would he die here?

Thoughts of how badly his mom would panic—if she was even alive—flashed through him.

 …no.

His plummet had slowed to a fall slow enough to seem like it was through water, possibly slow enough to stop or even reverse if he could find a way to move.

No. This isn’t the end. I am going to get through this.

 But all connections to his limbs had been severed, something made obvious when he found himself unable to swim back upwards; he couldn’t flip or look away from his backwards fall, growing more frustrated and desperate by the minute.

Argh…I WILL get through this! I can’t leave mom by herself! Heck, I can’t leave everyone lost in the Smash game! I need to find out if the Smashers aren’t mistaken about that group…I CAN get out of this!

He found a few stray pixels that had been torn out with him, and tried desperately to use them. It felt like having a finger in place of an arm, or a metal stick for a leg; yet he found himself able to move upwards just enough to reverse the fall. The whole while, he was getting more dizzy and drowsy, falling into a different sort of pit that would result from having your soul detached.

The whole time, he kept scolding himself for feeling like he was dying. No no no no no no NO NO…NO…no…! Stop it, darn soul…! Can’t fall asleep…I can’t fall asleep…

He was falling again. The few pixels that he had trailed in a messy line behind him, slowly following as he fell. They reminded him of the train he had just been in, the group that was interrupted.

 Gotta get back…can’t fall…can’t fall…I can’t…stop…no…don’t…d-don’t…

The cyan realm began fading into black, an inky darkness over his own vision that slowly consumed it from the edges inward. It engulfed the delicate lines laced through the beautiful place, the paths to worlds unknown to him, and the distant Arch-made path leading where he was supposed to go.

He slipped into a realm of darkness, a light thud seeing him out.

*ASW*

BONUS: A cut conversation!

Isaac: “So he is Red?”

Lyn: “No, everyone just uses that as his name. Have you ever tried to scream ‘Pokémon Trainer’ as you’re being assaulted by a starving Gulpin?”

Isaac: “Ah. Good tactic.”

Lyn: “It also irritates him, making him come over about twice as fast.”