The Mii Fighter Chronicles

Prologue: The Crash

"We've got to hold the line!"

Twelve warriors stood alone atop a lonely castle wall. All around them, their world had crashed down in flames. A host of twitchy, pixellated creatures surrounded them on all sides, many of them trying to scale the wall to reach them. Intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran shot one, a Missingno from the world of Pokemon, from the wall with her laser cannon. The dinosaur Yoshi nailed the one beside it with an exploding egg.

"We can't hold it, Mario," the pink puffball Kirby shouted. "There's too many of them."

"We have to," Mario said, his overalls burned and tattered, his hat long since lost to the glitches. He stared up at the sky, which had already started to dissolve into vast purple nothingness. He tightened his grip on the tiny statuette in his left hand.

"Mario, we're all that's left," the star pilot Fox McCloud shouted as he blasted a pair of glitches in the head. "There's nowhere else to go. Everything's gone."

Mario blasted a long-necked alien glitch in the chest with a fireball. "I know," he said. "But we can't give up yet. If we don't stop them, who will?"

Villager spoke up from beside Mario's elbow. "Maybe R.O.B. 01 figured something out."

Mario glanced at Villager. He and the Wii Fit Trainer Jazz stood side by side, fending off the enemy with an array of projectiles ranging from soccer balls to turnips. They had been the first of the newest recruits to the Smash fighters last year, and he had watched them grow over the last several months from insecure rookies to confident and competent heroes.

"Sorry I dragged you two into this," he said.

Villager and Jazz stopped and looked at him. "It's okay," Jazz said. "We became Smash fighters for a reason, right?"

Mario looked down. "Right."

"Everyone, get back!"

The shout came from Link. He and Marth had been at the foremost point of the wall, fending off attackers with their swords. The two swordsmen fell back as a fresh wave of glitches flooded over the ramparts and onto the top of the wall itself. The twelve heroes bunched together, backing up as they defended themselves from the oncoming forces. Everyone gravitated behind Donkey Kong, who cleared away wide swaths of enemies with swings of his powerful arms. Pikachu jumped up over Donkey Kong's head and called down a storm of lightning that incinerated over a dozen glitches.

Mario fell in beside Peach, who knocked a glitch away with a swing of her frying pan.

"Looks like we're out of options, Mario," she said. She looked over at him with those big blue eyes he had fallen in love with the day he first arrived in the Mushroom Kingdom.

"I know, Peach," he said.

Peach hipchecked an enemy and knocked into several of its fellows. She held up the statuette she held. "I think it may be time to use these," she said.

Behind them, an enemy slashed Marth across the chest. The young prince started to dissolve into pixels.

Mario turned around quickly. "Marth, hurry," he said. "Your amiibo."

The warrior nodded, his sleek blue hair falling in his face as he did so. He held up his statuette, the tiny faceless figurine slowly taking on the form and features of the Prince of Altea. Marth soon vanished, leaving behind only a tiny replica of himself.

Donkey Kong fell shortly after, followed by Kirby. Samus went next, then Fox, then finally Link. Soon Mario and Peach found themselves with rapidly pixellizing wounds as well.

"This is it, Peach," Mario said, grasping her hand. He held up his amiibo and watched as it started to recreate his face. "We can only hope R.O.B. survived and figured out a way to reboot everything."

Peach gently kissed him on the cheek. "It'll be okay," she said. "We've survived a crash before. We can do it again."

Mario smiled at her. The two tightened their grip on each other's hand and closed their eyes as everything became fuzzy.