Status: Uncertain -- may not continue. First revision.
Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.
Warnings: mature themes, offensive language, implied homosexuality, minor bigotry, (yuri/anti-yuri, yaoi/anti-yaoi).
Features: Marth, Roy (if continued, may include all)
Comments: Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think. Readers without accounts may email me their critiques.
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prologue
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"Tell me true."
They hadn't changed the carpet in ages. They even had the same wall decorations I remembered as a kid. And the same paint job. Not that it mattered. In the dark, no one noticed the stains on the orange-brown carpet, the graffiti on beige walls, the cracks in the ceiling. No one really cared about the rotting cheese smell of the rubber-on-cardboard pizzas at the food counter, or the sticky soda stains on the tables. So long as they had functioning machines, both vintage and new. So long as the controllers were clean and the screens were high-res, no one gave a flying fuck about the rest.
My palms were sweaty, and the dry taste in my mouth would not leave. I watched as my robotic ninja took two more hits on the screen. My moves kept slipping up. I side-stepped, went for the guard, and instantly, the CPU threw me. Recover, then a dash…right into an unblockable attack. Flashing colors and streaks of lighting flickered wildly. My life bar drained as I stood there, hands motionless on the controls. Game over? Had to be. The CG stage disappeared, replaced by the words, 'You Lose!', accompanied by the little dancing mushroom that always popped up. It only stopped its happy badguy jig every other second to turn around and flash me its ass. Just to mock me.
I stepped back from the machine. Go figure. I was no good at this. I pushed my hands deep into my coat pockets. No tokens left. I glanced around, not sure of what to do.
The air inside the arcade was warm, stuffy, incubated by body heat, and livened by synthetic sonic booms and CG clashes of steel. The sounds were muffled to my ears now. My fingers tingled. It was that familiar feeling, adrenaline fading into disappointment. Frustration edging closer. In semi-darkness, the neon flickering of the game machines lit my way to the exit.
I welcomed cold night air. I pulled the box of cigarettes from my pocket and lit up without breaking my stride. Arcade noise fell away behind me. Quiet night. No more artificial cheese or BO in the air. There were different odors now. The city smelled like garbage. As usual.
Where was I going? My steps came to a halt. I puffed idly on the cigarette, trying to think. Where to go? I had no money. The game machines took all of that every week. I tilted my head back, took in the black sky spread out above, lined by high rooftops.
Time to go home then. What else was there?
It was a long walk on a long path up to a dark house on the hillside. I didn't mind. It was just the price of isolation.
I pushed through the iron gate and made my way to the front entrance through a neglected yard, dimly lit by soft glowing lamps. Leaning against the heavy door, I pushed inside and locked it behind me. I knew these steps by memory, the locks by feel, that way I never had to turn on the house lights.
My steps sounded hollow and deep against the hard floor. The footfalls should have been those of someone of greater weight, but they were mine. The tip of my boot tapped against an object that rolled away from me. I looked. It was a Yoshi egg.
I'd have to talk to them about that. When did they get so careless? Leaving those things out for me to trip over…
I walked on, down the hallway, still in the dark. Everyone was asleep, I assumed. We had a few night crawlers here, but it was late, even for them.
My room was the farthest from the front entrance. I slipped inside and closed the door. Darkness hid the disaster that was my life. I hadn't cleaned in a long time. Silver light leaked in from the window. It had a nice view of the city, if I remembered correctly. I rarely looked.
My computer sat on an old classroom table in the corner. I woke it up and clicked on the music. To the sound of a two-stringed dulcimer, drums and an Asian violin, the exotic female voice carried soft, wailing notes with beautiful resonance. It was an eerie harmony.
I took the cigarettes in hand and shrugged off my coat, tossing it onto the folding chair at the table. I paused. By the window there…
I had a visitor.
"Why the same song?"
He stood with his back to me.
"I like it," I said.
As he turned around, the glow of the computer screen caught an outline of his face. Dark eyes, careful smile.
"She sounds…" he began, tilting his head to the side. "Like a plea."
I shrugged. "Maybe. I don't understand the language."
He offered the same slight smile I knew. And it could have been disdain or sympathy behind that mask. I just didn't know which.
Moving to stand beside him, I reached out and slid open the windowpane. He watched in silence as I lit up again. Around another cigarette, I mumbled, "What can I do for you, Marth?"
When he didn't answer immediately, I glanced to the side, saw that his gaze had turned to the window again. I tried to read his face, but he gave nothing away. Not until he spoke.
"Some of our members have been missing."
I shrugged. "Yeah. I know. Everyone leaves occasionally for a little while. Nothing wrong with that."
"One of them has been gone for a long time."
Nodding, I blew a trial of smoke out the window. "I know."
"It's been too long."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
Marth was asking a favor and being discreet about it. He didn't want to say it outright, and I almost wished he would. But mostly, I hoped he wouldn't. That way I could ignore it. That way I had no obligation to grant his request, no matter how simple. Or vital.
"There's nothing I can do," I said. "He'll come back when he wants to."
"It's been weeks!"
"Roy's like that," I replied stoically. "You know that."
"He's never been gone this long."
I took a drag from the cigarette, tried to think of something to say. "He'll come back when he's ready to."
"You don't know where he is, or what happened to him, but you believe that?" Marth demanded. Anger and worry made him bold.
I didn't answer. In the time it took me to smoke until the brand label on the cigarette had burned away, I answered his question with silence. He continued to watch me. I snubbed the cigarette remains into the ashtray on the windowsill and waited for his display of defiance to subside. My eyes were on the urban skyline, and I sighed, crossing my arms, wishing I were somewhere else. "What do you want me to do? Like you said, I don't know where he is. So I can't just go out and bring him back."
From the corner of my eye, I caught Marth turning away.
"If it were me," he whispered after a moment, "would you feel the same as you do now?"
"You wouldn't leave," I said flatly. In the distance, the city lights were shimmering. I watched them, not him. "There's nothing to see out there anyway," I said. "It's an ugly world we're born into."
He kept his eyes on the floor. I couldn't tell if my words had sunk in or not. I waited for a comment, but he offered nothing, and I turned from the window.
"You guys are lucky you don't have to bother with the real world," I assured him, taking a seat at the table. I was too tired for this, and I wanted to drop the matter. I set my fingers on the console and hoped that the sound of clicking computer keys would cue the end of the discussion.
But Marth was determined.
"Why do you do this?"
I kept my back turned, didn't answer.
"Why do you spend all your days in bed? Why do you wake only during the night?"
My fingers resumed their motions on the keyboard. Behind me, I could sense his frustration. And his desperation.
"How long has it been since you've seen any of us? And how long since you've tended to the house?"
A low empty laugh escaped my throat. I couldn't help myself. How funny…
"I can barely tend to myself," I murmured.
"We worry about you," he insisted. "I worry about you. How can you care for us if you don't care for yourself? Things fall into disarray when you're like this."
I laughed the same soft, hollow laugh. I laughed the air out of my lungs. And continued laughing. "Don't pretend you need me."
Clothing rustled, barely audible, and he was kneeling down beside my chair. His hand latched onto the end of my shirt. His eyes seemed to search my face for moment. I still refused to look toward him.
"If I ask you something, will you tell me true?"
My eyes stayed on the screen. Opened wide. Waiting.
"Tell me," he pleaded. "Will you do nothing for us? Will you do nothing to help yourself?"
I stared straight forward until my eyes began to dry out. Tried to ignore the breaking in his voice.
"If you care nothing for us, and you care nothing for yourself…what will become of this house?
"Tell me. Are you still our master?"
He leaned his forehead into my side. Teeth clenched, jaw going rigid, I held still and worked on breathing. 'Goddamn…' I blinked, and it felt raw.
Finally, I turned to look down at him. "Pathetic," I whispered, voice cracking. "You're really pathetic, know that? Did I train you to be pitiful, or did you come that way? Suddenly, I can't remember anymore."
Words didn't stop the shaking in his shoulders, and all I could think was, 'Why me?' Why the fuck did it have to be me?
"What's wrong with you?" I asked quietly. "Why are you always like this? You're my best trained fighter and still you breakdown like a little crybaby."
I never saw tears like this from anyone else. Not the Pokemon. Not even the girls. Zelda was too proud for tears; Peach, too cheerful. And Samus…Samus was a tough bitch in robo-armor, enough said. But Marth…. He'd had problems since the beginning. Highly susceptible to angst, sucky leader syndrome, and other things. So I had decided not to coddle him, or anyone else. I never went easy, not even on Pichu.
But maybe I demanded too much from Marth. He had shown the most potential in the beginning, so I used him to train the others. He became the best adapted of all my fighters. But I had also turned him into the house punching bag. And I did it too often. While everyone took turns beating him, he also become the most self-defeating. He was physically adept, but powerless at heart.
I guess I broke him. For a while, I had no regrets about it. He was at his best this way.
Then along came Roy.
Someone should have warned me about these things. Then I would have just stuck to training Pokemon. Simpler emotions. Feed them and they're happy. No complicated relationships. Fuck this 'two-steps-down-from-human-emotional-capacity' bullshit.
"Is it because he challenged you?" Marth asked. "Is that why you don't care if he never returns?"
I didn't answer right away. I didn't say what I was thinking: 'No. I'm not mad. Of course not. Why would I be? Just because your asshole boyfriend decided to take me on in a match and undermine my authority in front of everyone…' Monologue of a sarcastic heart.
Someone should have warned me about that too. Not just the possibility of subordination, but also about what happens when you're pairing teams and you pick a pair with high affinity for each other. And then you train them too much, too hard, and they end up spending a little too much time together and stuff happened… Yeah, knowing about that would have helped. The whole bonding thing. I didn't know they were programmed to be fags. Honestly.
"Are you still crying?" I asked in monotone.
He tightened his hold on my shirt. "Please." A whisper.
I sighed. What did I owe? What did I owe to him? Had he given me more victories, I would have known the answer to that. Had I been assured of his loyalty, I wouldn't have had to treat him like this. But it was common knowledge. Bonding within the ranks threatened the authority of the master.
What did I owe?
Without thinking, my hand rose and landed gently on top of his head. Real hair. Real skin. Real life?
"'Beautiful,'" I said.
Marth lifted his face. "What...?"
"The song," I told him. "That's what it's called."
He searched my face for answers. I was angry. He knew how to wear me down. It was in his nature to fight the inevitable with every last breath in him. I had known that when I chose him. Could I deny that he had served me better than I had served him?
But he knew me. He knew I would do anything to keep him from leaving.