What a thrilling show that was indeed.

I must say, I am impressed two feeble humans such as yourselves were able to accomplish such a task. You've done well, Popo and Nana.

Never have I seen a better exhibit of teamwork than this Player 1 and Player 2 duo. This truly is something else.

The pair of you would make quite the fine addition to my trophy collection. I trust you would be a good asset to me in the future.

As you so wish, and as I see necessary, the two of you shall be bound together. You are two united into one from this day onwards; thus, your fates rest on one another's shoulders, for you now share a spirit formed by your intense bond. A bond that could not have been fully realised were it not for your embarking on this journey. A bond no other creature can possibly fathom; a bond of sheer devotion so powerfully overwhelming it will provide the strength and power you seek to continue.

That is what has joined your spirits and that is what seals them into one. I do not doubt that what the two of you have formed will ever waver, not for a second.

I will take care of you both dearly. Do not worry.

RETRY?

There's a distant, chilling breeze brushing past me. I can feel it softly stroking my face, petting my head as it glides. It's a soothing sensation with homely comfort, calming enough to ease me back into slumber like the hum of a lullaby.

There's a lightness all through my body, nothing like the heavyweight of fatigue that tugged and pulled at me before. I could float – maybe fly – away from this cold world, away to somewhere warm where I can see the sun again. Where I can find Popo again.

Opening my eyes, a gloved hand holds my own. A tuft of messy bangs pokes out from the hood of a blue parka, a calmly resting face hidden behind that characteristically untidy hair; glowing with the warmth of life in his cheeks, he rests.

Is this where the sun is?

I take a moment to study his visage: not a trace of hurt or pain remains upon him as if he'd merely fallen asleep on the snow by me.

"...Popo?"

With my unclasped hand, I cup his face gently, the battered leather of my glove brushing past his bangs. It surprises me for a second, the blushing heat radiating off of his skin, when the last thing I remember is being swallowed by thorns of frost and paralysing ice crawling through my bones. I can feel the warmth of his breath too, across from my own gaze.

If this is death, I don't want to live.

He stirs as I lightly stroke his cheek, eyes fluttering open drowsily. Laying across from me, the night sky in his eyes looks as beautifully blue as ever, the same starry gleam shining in their irises. I smile.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead."

Slowly, his eyes start to adjust to the light glossing over his face. As he meets my gaze, they start to widen in awe, and before I know it rivers are trickling out and pouring down, thawing that serene slumber, cracking, crumbling-

"W...what…?"

Popo stares back at me in stunned silence. I stay quiet too, taking in the rest of his appearance. He's as mysterious as ever, but quaintly tearful – not even in the same way he's cried the nights before. For the first time, I feel like I can understand the constellations in his gaze, completely exposed to me, nothing hidden away from my view. I can see everything, and I want to know everything. I want to hold on.

"It's okay," I whisper, trying not to let my own tears of joy well up. "We're okay."

Still awestruck, he blinks furiously, seeming to struggle to comprehend my presence. He tentatively squeezes my hand in his; his uncertainty gradually dissipates the more he recognises my warmth, his grip on me tightening as he realises.

"It can't be...how- how are we..."

I sit up, pulling Popo up with me. "I dunno," I shrug. "...Does it matter, though?"

Squeezing his hand back, we meet eyes again, exchanging tearful looks. The landscape around us is almost pure white, save for the scatters of trees nearby; nothing like the sickly pale mist of Icicle Mountain. In fact, mountains seem to be a thing of the past where we are, with only flat plains and small cliffs making up the relief of the world around us. Any dastardly deathly peaks are a long ways away from wherever we are, resembling pathetic sugar lumps in the distance.

...But if that's the case, then that means-

"I- this is a… a miracle," Popo exclaims. He gapes at the surroundings in awe, his perplexed astonishment having melted into an expression of joyous amazement. Then his head whips back round to face me.

"You're- I- we, we're alive, Nana!"

I barely have time to reply before Popo pulls me into a close embrace – as he reels me towards him, I lose my balance, toppling over, and in the blink of an eye, I find myself collapsed on top. He hugs me tightly, gleefully sobbing with laughter. "Nana...oh, Nana, I'm so..."

I push myself up a little so that I'm able to face him. "Yeah, but- where are we?"

The shimmering white snow, the never-completely clear skies above, the scattered litters of snowdrops poking their heads out of the ground; a familiar sight etched into my memory more than enough times. Paths and roads we've explored so many times we know them like the backs of our hands. Air deliciously fresh and cool that I know the breath of. A tattered but sturdy bag of lumps sits idly in the distance amongst the snow, securely tied at the top-

We sit up and turn back to one another, mirroring each other's amazement open-mouthed.

"...This can't be real."

But sure enough, it's there. The harvest bag. The white snow we're sat on. The hand I'm holding. The huddle of the Kiyun forest's pine trees a few miles away in the distance from this small cliffside. And next to that, a slightly larger huddle of brownish dots, such a familiar view: the discreetly magical village and its magical forest.

I blink, expecting the vision to vanish as soon as I open my eyes. Blink and I'll wake up from the dream. Because this- none of this makes any sense, and I have to snap out of it, back to...reality? Death? The boundary between the two?

I shake my head. I don't understand. "How did we- why are we...how are we here?"

Popo gazes off into the distance, looking towards Yukino. Then his head turns to the sky with curiosity as he takes my hands into his again. I notice his lips start to murmur words under his breath as he gazes up before he turns back to me:

"You didn't hear the voice, Nana?"

"Voice?"

He smiles softly, his face still a little wet with the tears he shed earlier, though he looks like he might start crying again. "'The two of you shall be bound together'," he whispers happily. "I- I don't know what it was, or what it means, but... we're saved, Nana!"

His face has the biggest smile I've ever seen, stretching across like a colourful rainbow with the most immense joy; in front of me, a Popo that I've never laid eyes upon before sits, grinning like an idiot as he tells me about a vocal hallucination. No impression of the reserved chief's son lies in that smile: the adventurous, loving and compassionate heart of a young boy sings and shouts of his glee, unafraid and unwavering.

I laugh. "What, do you think it was God or something?"

"Does it matter?" he replies.

I roll my eyes as he shoots my own question back at me. Though I guess there isn't much point in asking Popo when neither of us has much of a clue as to how we miraculously survived the condor's battering and how we've somehow woken up some ten or more miles away from our village instead of...where we last were. Whatever spectacular deity's behind this, it's got some damn good powers, that's for sure.

Eventually, I bring myself to return his euphoric smile, pulling him back into our earlier embrace (a lot more gently than he did) and relaxing as I take him into my arms. He's warm, he's as happy as he ever gets, he's alive and he's here – we're here, together.

That's all that matters.

I bury my head into his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're okay, Popo. Thank goodness…"

He sighs. "I'm glad you're okay, Nana." We linger in our hug for a few moments, then he pulls away for a moment with serious eyes. "Please don't surprise me like that again. It's not funny."

I try to avoid his gaze, feeling my cheeks redden a bit. "I had a feeling you might say that." Of course, he's upset, after all the times he's lectured me about how important I am and how needed I am and yada-yada. "...But we wouldn't be here otherwise, right?"

"That's not the point," Popo snaps. A little more than he meant to, apparently, because he also goes red right after it leaves his mouth, flushing. "I… I really thought I lost you, you know."

I don't say anything. There are twisting knots in my stomach that have suddenly decided to get even tenser, and there isn't much I can say to him about it.

For the moment, we're both quiet, unsure of what to say next.

"… It's okay, you can admit it. You were worried because you wouldn't be able to function in your own house without me," I smirk.

It's his turn to frown and roll his eyes at me. "Please. I think things would run a lot faster without an extra disturbance around," he scoffs with a playful glint in his eye.

"Oh, shut up."

"You shut up."

We exchange mischievous glares, burning with feigned fury. My stare locks onto his blue-eyed grimace with determination as I continue to play the part Popo knows – has known – all this time.

His childhood best friend Nana: a cheeky, loud-mouthed extrovert who's always got more to say than she should with a selfish, clingy attitude. Mediocre at climbing, she's better off supporting than leading, but she knows more about cooking a good meal than he knows about saying "thanks" to a compliment. She's petty and mischievous, always starting silly fights with him. But she's almost always by his side, has been since they were little, and doesn't plan on going away any time soon.

Now, it doesn't seem to work, though. The moment my smile slips through the cracks and my leer melts into a cheerful gaze, the ice melts- I melt, and I can't stop myself from giggling uncontrollably for no reason. We both seem to melt, bursting into laughter in unison the way we both do when there isn't anything else we can do; when words fail, our actions sing.

But I know I can't go on laughing all the time and pretending life's a big fat joke. I know I can't stay blind to what's real. What I truly see and what I truly feel.

I exhale, exhausted from my raucous outburst. Then I look back up into Popo's eyes.

"Hey, Popo?"

"Yeah?"

"… You still up for climbing those higher mountains you were talking about?" I ask.

It's hard not to stifle my returning snickers the moment Popo turns bright red at hearing my question – he quickly looks away, a feeble attempt at hiding his embarrassment I'm all too familiar with. It only makes the mess he's in look even more hilarious.

He pretends to look back towards the distant view, playing with his bangs.

"I- well, uh, I guess...um-"

I raise my eyebrow curiously. "Hmmm?"

His gaze moves back to the ground and he shuffles awkwardly. I get up from the ground after he doesn't go on to say anything else, still giggling a little from the spectacle of flustered Popo. There's a breeze brushing past us, blowing away from the cliff to the grounds far below and taking the powdery snow at my feet in its stride. The gust of air and snow beckons us to the way home.

At the bottom of the mountains, where we're nearly at our lowest, I feel so high up that I could just take a leap and fly away. Hand in hand, bound by these ropes, we can climb any mountain. No matter how high it may be, we've been to places many metres higher than those puny peaks, and we'll go to many more. We'll soar higher than the wings of that condor ever did. We'll climb higher mountains than ever before. We'll hold on to each other and we won't let go.

No mountain will go unconquered. They're no match for this bone-chilling duo of ice climbers!

Popo hesitates again, looking even more unsure of himself than earlier and redder than ever. Still refusing to look me in the eye, he stammers,

"I...I mean, if- if you're up for it then...I am too."

I turn back to my partner, holding my hand out to him.

"Then we'd better get going."

After almost two years of writing this (with many multiple month breaks between each chapter thanks to my rotating blocks and procrastination habits), I've finally managed to complete my first fully-fledged fic ever! Seriously, this is the first time I've actually finished a long piece of writing like this lol

It's not the best piece of writing out there. In my head, it feels like it's dialogue-heavy - guess that's what happens when you imagine the entire story as a scripted anime - and half the time what I'm writing doesn't seem to make sense. I've gone back and edited chapters far too many times out of cringe or been disappointed in my chapter word counts in comparison to other fics. Heck, the total word count for this fic (not including my silly AN rambles) barely qualifies as a novella, when I'd rather be inspired to write great big stories and sagas with 100k+ words together.

But I think I've made a good start, though it may just be short and sweet. I'm proud that I actually accomplished something in my own writing that I can be proud of, and that I was able to create something that other people also enjoyed. So I don't plan on stopping anytime soon!

This isn't the last you'll see of my Nana and Popo. They'll be reappearing in the many other fics I have planned very soon :)

Thank you for reading to the end of Journey (if you were willing to make it this far!) and for supporting me in my own journey as I wrote this. It wouldn't have started if I hadn't dared to return to FFN and discover that the SSB fanbase is still thriving with some amazing writing, even if it isn't as lively as it may have been years ago. It motivated me to return to my own writing and actually try to improve on my skills, and this was the result.

Once again, thank you, and I'll see you soon in whatever the next fic I decide to write is!