Disclaimer and Notes: Nintendo's characters belong to Nintendo. They should be content, as I frequently tell them "Shut up and take my money!" during those rare times when there is spare money in my life.

This is one of those weirder ideas I'm starting, have some plans for, but am not sure where it will ultimately lead. I figure that we're coming up on Halloween, so what the heck. Writing characters I "know," with a few exceptions. (Please let me know if I am getting the Mother/Earthbound characters correct-on-research alone here. Same with Samus – I've written her before, but I've only played her a tiny bit). If any of your favorites aren't in the main group and are not otherwise mentioned, figure that they found their own bus / their own way out.

The premise of this is very loosely based upon the online freebie parody game "Organ Trail." It's a fun way to waste time if you're old enough to remember virtual trips to Oregon by wagon during school computer-time or are just a really dedicated retro-gamer, but wish westward travel had included more zombies. Stupid stuff like this is loads of fun to write.

ROAD TRIP

A Super Smash Brothers Fan Fiction by Shadsie

The tires on the beat-up old yellow bus with scuffed paint screamed as the rubber hit the road hard. Dust flew everywhere as it cleared the ramp and slammed with a disturbing thump on the broken asphalt. People whose arms were hanging out of the popped-free windows steadied themselves to keep from falling out. Those that were by the flung-open double doors braced and steadied themselves, hanging onto the back seats. They leveled their weapons once again and fired into their pursuers. Small black-powder bombs flew out from the bus' rear. The pair of angels on the roof of the bus crouched to stay steady and lit their wings with holy fire to keep themselves in place. They went back to firing strange weapons that at once resembled bows but worked with the steady rhythm of machine-gun fire in their skilled hands. They'd never be short of ammunition, either. The dog on board scrambled to the front and barked warnings, howling his displeasure at the rough landing.

The enemy horde was surprisingly fast. A few of the beings on the bus had prior experience with creatures similar to their kind. Both of the long-eared swordsmen complained that undead beings in the variant timelines of their world had moved much slower than the throng. The disease that decayed the former people and beasts that were after them did little to slow them.

The woman in the technical armor charged up the canon in her arm and let fly with a beam that tore through at least a block's worth of former Smash City residents. A pair of children stood ready with baseball bats at the sides of the open doors at the rear of the bus, ready to beat back any "runners" that tried to climb inside. A few of the infected, brains rotted as they were, remembered driving-skills and ran up the sides of the speeding bus in smaller vehicles.

The black-winged angel on the fore of the bus- roof dispatched the driver of a jeep without remorse or pity. The white-winged angel took out the tires of the small Toyota that was coming up their tail. The car spun and the thing that was once a woman inside it came through the windshield, painting the glass in black blood.

That was one of the most telling signs of infection… the black blood.

The younger and elder swordsmen lobbed small bombs out of the back. A turtle-like creature spewed a cannonade of water in response to the shouted orders of a tense young man. The dog scrambled to the back and started throwing what appeared to be clay pigeons and blasting caps before retreating behind one of the seats. One woman in a long, regal dress sent a ball of explosive, magical fire out of the back of the bus. Another woman in dress threw a turnip and told the man in overalls at the wheel of the bus to punch it.

The bus trundled on until it came to a roadblock: More of the former residents of the area. More of their former fans. No one wanted to think too hard about how they'd all cheered for them in the stands of the various arenas, eager to watch them to fight in a pageant of courage and honor. No one on the bus wanted to think of the gifts and praise they'd not at all long ago received from these people for being celebrity athletes.

Now all these fans wanted was their flesh – not in the lurid way that some of the Smash Tournament staff used to catch spies on the grounds of the mansion they all resided at with camera-phones camped around the hot springs, but in the more literal sense. The mysterious infection they suffered had rendered them hungry beasts, only interested in either eating any live-meat they could wrap their teeth around or spreading the disease.

The saddest thing, a few of the survivors thought, was how some of their own had never even gotten the praise they were due when the world was normal. Some of the fighters on the bus were newcomers whom everyone had just met, who had yet to show their skills in the latest tournament to which they'd been called.

"Lady Palutena, can you hear me?" the white-winged angel shouted to the sky.

"Of course she can't!" his dark-feathered counterpart groused. "Our world is cut off from this one, remember?"

The first angel continued his desperate, screaming prayer, ignoring his brother. "I'll do anything! I'll scrub all the floors of the temple! I'll stop giving wedgies to the younger centurions! I'll eat my vegetables! Just get us out of this!"

"Mama mia!" shouted the man in the driver's seat. The sounds of a stalled engine echoed in everyone's ears. Those with projectile weapons used them.

A large, yellow, sphereroid being jumped out of the bus.

"No! Pac-Man! Don't!" the little blond boy with the bat at the back of the bus shouted. It was too late. The creature opened his impressive maw and started chomping back at those people that everyone had been reluctant to call "zombies," though no other term fit.

The engine came back to life again. The zombies from the front started milling to the back. All the attention of the horde was upon the creature that had the gall to bite them back. Pac-Man's impressive mouth chomped through limbs and crushed bones. Link put a hand over his younger counterpart's eyes as the creature crushed a head. It was a terrible sight to behold.

"Go! Go! Go!" Peach shouted to Mario as soon as the road ahead became clear.

"But he's still back there!"

"She's right," Link sighed. Everyone on the bus watched forlornly as the infected began to overtake their newcomer friend. Pac-Man was an ancient being, but one that the others had yet to enjoy the company of for long.

"We can't save him!" Link said, gasping. "We have to punch it or his sacrifice will be for nothing!"

"But Link…"

"But nothing, Toon!" Link said to his different-dimensional "little brother." "We will die! All of us!" He then sighed, his sword-hand shaking with the hilt. "He… he knew what he was doing."

The bus was already moving again. The people inside could hear the angels on the roof fighting. "No, Pit!" The roof-steel dented in slightly. The sounds of one person restraining another echoed. "I just lost a friend; I'm not going to lose a brother, too!"

The dog let loose a long, loud, mournful bay as the bus fled from the scene. The last everyone saw out of the back of those double-doors was the yellow sphere still fighting, still drawing the enemies away from them, taking down as many as he could with fists and face. The boys standing beside them drew the double-doors closed.

Link put a hand on Toon Link's shoulder as they stared. "I can't believe it…" the elder swordsman began…. "He just jumped in there…distracted them… and saved us all. That's what heroes are supposed to do. I wish I had thought of that… that it had been me."

Princess Zelda's dirty glove clamped itself upon his shoulder. "Don't wish that," she ordered - her voice heavy with quiet wisdom. "He was brave, but he may have just caused us more problems."

The two Links looked up at her oddly. So did Ness and Lucas. The Pokemon Trainer looked her way, too, after retiring his Squirtle for a rest in a pokeball.

"I know that it is not a pleasant thing to hope for someone's death," Zelda began, "but the alternative is worse. If he is merely bitten and contracts the infection, he may come after us. And with that maw of his…"

"Let's not think about it," Princess Peach said.

"The sun is rising," said the quiet, wolflike blue creature who sat cross-legged in a meditation-pose in one of the center bus seats. Lucario's eyes were closed. "I do not sense the aura of the unfortunate ones following us. They will not travel during the day. The light is on our side."

Long limbs followed by robes and feathers snaked through the popped-open windows.

"Are you okay, Pit?" Toon Link asked, noting the scrapes on the white-robed angel's skin and his bloody nose.

"Yeah, Yeah," Pit dismissed. "I'll be okay."

Dark Pit, for his part, didn't say a word. He hunkered down in a seat at the front of the bus, pouring over something he wasn't letting anyone else see.

"We'll a' rest once I get some distance between us and the city," Mario said.

"Let's hope we don't run out of fuel," Samus Aran said, sitting heavily in another one of the front seats, still in her power armor.

Ness and Lucas sat down together, sniffling and commiserating. Red shuffled pokeballs in one hand. Toon Link doused a rag with one of the canteens and helped Pit to clean up. The dog wandered over to Ness and Lucas to give the boys something to pet. Peach at in the seat nearest to Mario and stared out of the front window. Link and Zelda sat down together. Link kept looking out of the back windows.

"I'd never be so rough on my little sister," Toon Link quipped as dabbed Pit's nose.

Pit smiled. "Dark did the right thing," he said. "He saved my life. I'm sure you'd clock your kid sister one if you had to keep her from fighting a hopeless battle against a city full of zombies."

For some reason, perhaps because of the stress, this made everyone on the bus burst out in laughter.

"Well, we're on our way, I guess," Link said. "We're on our way home – to my home and Zelda's. Let's hope Otto can take us that far."

They'd named the bus "Otto." It had just seemed to them like an appropriate name. The bus looked and felt like an "Otto." The band of survivors had been lucky to find it in one of the stadium-parking areas outside of one of the arenas they all fought in as the "Super Smash Brothers." Of course, there were some "Super Bash Sisters," as well, but the name for the first tournament had stuck for them all.

Everyone guessed that the bus had probably once been a school bus, but it had clearly been modified. It didn't have as many seats as a typical school bus, having had some taken out of the back for greater space. It seemed capable of running faster and starting up more quickly than a typical pokey school bus, too. The survivor's group had further modified the bus to their needs – popping out windows so they could hang weapons out of the sides and fire them off.

And so a group of mis-matched warriors were off and running across a land not their own.

Not a single "Smasher" was in his or her own country here. They had come from many lands, worlds and variant timelines of worlds to participate in a grand gladiatorial-style contest. It was a non-lethal form of combat, despite the formidable weapons and powers the chosen warriors wielded. The mysterious patrons that ran the tournament had a "trophy system" – that is, a failsafe that ensured that anyone sustaining serious or fatal wounds would be transformed, temporarily, into a statue on a stand. The trophies could be brought back to life, fit and whole. It was an annoying state to be in, but preferable to actually dying.

That safety was of course, gone now – dust in the wind just like the planned fourth tournament.

The lands that everyone belonged to had some connections to the central territory of "Smash," also known by some as the "Nation of Ninten." Link didn't much like that name, for he thought the name sounded superficially like "Panem," but that might only be because he'd broken the Fourth Wall to read certain books and some of the other fan fiction the author of this story has written.

The infection had started mundanely enough. It looked like a cold at first. People who got it were of the ordinary sort – people from the central Smash City as well as people who had come from other worlds as fans of the celebrity tournament fighters. The initial symptoms were merely "the sniffles," but instead of recovering, sufferers became increasingly sluggish – and sluggish of mind. Eventually, there was a "necrolyzing effect," - at least that's what Dr. Mario had called it. The afflicted began to become malodorous. They bled black. All but the most basic, animalistic functions of their brains died. The skin paled and they looked, for all purposes, like corpses that moved, whose life had not completely left them.

What is more is that they'd developed a taste for living flesh. It was not only human flesh, as in zombie movies (this would have made no sense because not all of the sapient residents of and visitors to Smash City were strictly human), but any kind of meat that coursed with warm blood that was part of a living body. Unlike the zombies in movies, as well, the hungry were capable of digesting their meals. The wastes left behind wherever they wandered were utterly horrific. Perhaps, this is why the infected were able to move with speed instead of being hampered by the "classic" sluggishness. These zombies were not risen dead, but were transformed people. They were still considered undead, however. Whatever had been left of an infected person's "soul" or "spark" was gone by the time the disease hit its terminal stage.

The darndest thing was that the rotted brains apparently did not register pain. The afflicted could walk through fire and over broken glass and suffer all manner of broken bones and gunshots – even hits that should have been fatal – without stopping. The classic "destruction of the brain," seemed to be the way to give them their final rest. "Two shots to the heart" in classic gunslinger fashion also seemed to be effective.

Master Hand had begun closing off the other worlds when the illness had spread to the Mushroom Kingdom. This was for those worlds' protection. He and Crazy Hand, the rulers of this world, were determined to find a cure, or to, at least find a way to evacuate their fighters in a safe manner. Unfortunately, this emergency plan wasn't the best thought-out as it kept people who might have been able to help from being able to do anything. For instance, before anyone knew that the "virus" going around Smash City was anything more than the common cold, the Goddess Palutena had been called home to Skyworld on divine business. She insisted that her angels, Pit and Dark Pit, stay behind to participate in the tournament and to wait for her return. She was still there when the Hands slammed the door on Skyworld, and as much of a goddess as she was, her power held no sway over the power of the native divinities. Any Light she could have brought to the situation had been lost, the passage between their worlds severed.

Pit wasn't even able to speak with her anymore via his laurel-crown. He put up a front of strength, but the silence in his mind greatly distressed him since he was so accustomed to chatter and to the general feeling of a divine presence in his life.

The Smash Mansion had put up a good front. It had all of the amenities of a fortress, but it had fallen. Last night had been the final push. The starving hordes and broken through the force fields and the fencing. No one knew what had become of the Hands. Everyone was separated from one another. The group that had found "Otto" hoped that the other Smashers had found similar vehicles. They even whispered of the possibility that the others might have gotten to the Halberd – which was why they couldn't find it. No one blamed anyone for not "waiting for them." When the hordes had pushed through the mansion doors, everything was chaos. Everyone was afraid.

Upon finding Otto the plan quickly became to high-tail it to Hyrule. According to the last snatches of information that had been gathered, Hyrule – specifically Old Hyrule, where the adult version of Link had come from, was the last unaffected land that had not been completely severed by the Hand's overzealous guardianship.

Although the Triforce of the current Link and Zelda's era had been housed within them and Ganondorf, the "true Triforce" was suspected to reside somewhere in that land, or in the Golden Land that was spiritually connected to it. If they – or, hopefully, other survivors, could make it to Hyrule and if any of them were balanced in heart enough, there was a possibility of not only stopping the hordes of death, but of reversing the entire problem altogether. It was certainly within the wishes of all of the hearts of the people aboard Otto, at least, to make the world right again – to make the disease never happen.

"We're going to make it right again!" Link said, attempting to give a pep talk as the group stopped in open country for a rest. The zombies did not move during the daytime for some mysterious reason. Pit speculated that their skin might be sensitive to light, something that he would know about as a being with strong connections to the element.

"I suppose the other option, if your Triforce doesn't pan out, is the Wish Seed," Dark Pit muttered as he leaned against a tree, stretching out in its shade. Pit perched in the same tree, resting in one of its branches.

"The Wish Seed?" Link asked.

"Oh, yeah," Dark Pit went on. "It's a magical item from our world that can grant the wish of anyone who touches it…"

"Dark…" Pit warned.

"Too bad it's bupkiss," Dark Pit said. "It was a ruse by Hades, the god of the dead to get people to go to war with each other."

"Then why would you tell me about it?" Link asked.

"I don't put much faith in your 'Triforce," he said bluntly. "It seems like the very same thing."

"The Triforce is real!" Toon Link shouted. "My ancestor saw it first-hand!"

"Your ancestor?" Dark Pit said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, well…" Toon Link began, "It was used for a wish for the future – for MY time. New Hyrule works more with the Force Gems… and technology, trains…. But the Triforce does exist!"

"That it does," the elder Link assured. "I carried some of its essence in my body. It kept me safe as I walked the Twilight. It kept me from giving into the dark."

He emphasized the last word, just to annoy the black-winged angel.

Dark Pit replied with a "Hmph," and curled up on his side to take a nap. His light-aligned twin settled onto his branch, letting his wings hang loose over it as he enjoyed the rare pleasure of laying on his back. "We're gonna save everyone…" Pit mumbled as he smiled and closed his eyes, starting to fall into an exhausted sleep.

Peach sat down with Mario, rubbing his back. "Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find Luigi. He's probably just with the others." Mario stared off across the countryside, too worried to properly rest.

The two children of psi played with the dog. Lucario sat nearby, watching them. Samus was checking the bus over. Red had gotten up to take a walk, within sight of everyone.

Link whistled and the hunting dog that had stowed along with them immediately came to his side. "Sorry, boys," he apologized to Ness and Lucas. "I'm going to need to borrow Duckie for a little bit."

"Aw," they both said.

"I like a' dogs as much as the next guy," Mario spoke up, "but do we have the resources to take care of him?"

"No one disses Duckie!" Lucas shouted. The animal had not been a part of the mansion for very long, but the boy had grown much-attached to him, as if in remembrance of a past beloved pet that could not be there.

"He's going to earn his keep," Link said. "Remember, he's a retriever. Do you see that line of water up ahead? Between those trees?" He pointed. "That's a river or at least a nice-sized pond. I've been watching waterfowl dip and dive over there since we pulled off here. I managed to keep my bow in the chaos. I'm going hunting."

Zelda spun around and used her magic to transform into Sheik, losing her bulky dress for more moveable attire. "I am coming with you, Hero. We think the zombies don't move during the day, but we can never be too careful. Someone needs to watch your back."

"Maybe I should go with him," Samus suggested. "If anyone needs protection, I'm the best equipped here."

"No," Link said. "I need you to watch the camp. People need their sleep and if you're not tired…"

"I'm not."

"You'll make the best guardian."

"A boring job. Maybe I'll use the time to compose a poem for a fallen hero. I can't believe Yellow did that…"

"Yeah," Sheik replied. "But rest must come before memorials. Mario will rest if you have to make him. He's our driver. We need him perky by nightfall."

Link and Sheik headed toward the bushes, trees and water. The brown dog came capering along with them, eager for the hunt.

"Didn't he used to have a little duck-friend that sat on his back?" Sheik asked.

"A little mallard? Yeah, he got lost last night. I tell you… this hunt would be really awkward with the little guy hanging around. It's already awkward enough for me… since I used to talk with all kinds of animals when I was a wolf, ducks included. I don't know what happened to him, but it was just the dog that followed us to the bus." Link got a strange look on his face – half-disturbed, half-amused. "I think I saw a few feathers on his jowel…"

They both could have sworn they heard the canine snicker.

Continue?

I looked up some gameplay of Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS of "Duckhunt." I've chosen not to include all of the moves for the sake of wanting a somewhat realistic dog for this fic. The clay-pigeon throwing and the blasting caps were too good to pass up, though. Little duck-friends, however, are too tasty to last long on a bus full of hungry Smashers.

I was excited when I learned of the leak for that dog, though. It's been far too long since I've tried to shoot him down over his snarky laugh. There was a (regrettable) time in my life when I just wasn't into gaming. I ended up giving away my NES and various now-collector's-items childhood games – including Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt... also a gold-cartridge original Legend of Zelda. Once I got back into gaming, I started mentally kicking myself very hard.