Author's Note: EEEEENNNNNDDDDD.

Believe it or not, I found it really hysterically funny that noone cared about this story. Looks like I'm the only person crazy enough to find it funny after all. Huh.

On that note, I guess noone will care that Pit's psycho-logic in the last chunk is flawed, because there is also an Earthbound character named Claus. But maybe he's just not legit either. *shifty eyes*

How does it feel to drown in a little fluff and circumstance. How does it feel indeed.

Ok go.

Ike felt pretty sure that Pit's new belief wasn't significantly healthier than the one the Cult of Ario was trying to push on him, but hey, what the hell ever.

Mario just shrugged. "Well, okey-doodles. But it doesn't change the fact that it's time to harvest the Subspace Eggplant Larvae and terminate them appropriately. Now Ike, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way involves us slicing you in half, removing the Seed of Ultimate Subspace, embarking upon a fantastic trek across Middle-Earth and casting it into the fiery depths of Mount Doom from whence it was forged."

He stared at them dumbfounded. "What the hell's the hard way!"

"Oh, it's pretty much the same thing. We just have to chase you first."

He stared at them dumbfounded some more.

"I never said it was easier or harder for you."

"Alright listen!" Pit whooped at them from where he was stretched taut on the rack. "I don't know what the frik's got these people's panties in a knot, but Fatty, it looks like there's only one thing you can do to make them believe you."

It was a mark of how worried Ike was that he actually had hope for it.

"You're just gonna have to let them slice you in half."

"WHAT!"

Pit shrugged and rolled his eyes in an exasperated sort of way. "Just let them slice you in half, then they'll look around in there, see there's no Subspace thingamaboober or Eggplant Larvae or whatever the crap, and then they'll realize they were wrong and you'll be off the hook. Seriously, think stuff through."

"Pit," Ike said as deliberately as he could, "I'll be sliced in half."

"You'll be proven innocent, though."

"And sliced in half!"

Link looked bored. "I don't have anything to do with this at all. Can I leave?"

Lucario barked at him. "No, you're a peon, sit your ass down!" And Link did then, grumbling, crossing his legs resentfully before pulling out his phone and sending emo texts to all the conformists he thinks are his friends about how his life is just a big pile of poo and no one ever includes him in anything.

"Hey listen up!" That was Popo again, shouting over the general disorder and claiming everyone's attention, because despite the fact that he had constructed a satanic altar in his boxer shorts and done a freaky little primordial dance all around them, nobody really liked Popo enough to pay attention to him for more than three and a half minutes straight. He had taken a hardcore stance, mittened hands tightened into fists, a look of judgement plastered across his features. One of his trembling, woolen reindeer-print hands rose to point at Ike. "There is another way for us to know the truth!"

He took a jolly good stroll over to Ike and leaned against his back. "The Mark of the Eggplant," he said dramatically, "is a marking that marks those marked with the Mark of the Eggplant."

They stared at him.

"Was that a complete thought?" Ike said after awhile.

"Oh it's more than a complete thought," Popo continued, eyes glistening with insanity. "It's hardcore proof that you are the Vessel of Subspace." And before Ike could try and wedge another one of his obnoxious comments in, Popo shoved him over and ripped his tunic off.

"THERE!" The declaration crawled out of his throat and spread its rancid jaws towards the sky. "DO YOU SEE IT! DO YOU SEE THE EVIL OF IT? THE EGGPLANT-NESS? THE PURPLE!"

"That's the bruise where you tackled me yesterday, you DIPSHIT," but the room was in an uproar. Mario and Lucario had been whipped into a lather-frenzy and were doing little skip-hop-jig things on the spot. Link had taken a picture and was emailing it to everyone he knew. Ike thought that Pit was laughing at first, but then he heard a long, sorrowful wail pull itself out of him and he saw the tears spraying off his face.

"Oh, Fatty!" he sobbed, "I thought we were friends! Why would you do something like this? I thought I could trust you! I thought I could trust you!"

Ike was too pissed off to care very much about him right now, and instead he rolled over and snatched up Popo by his twiggy little neck, squeezing with gusto. Right before he was about to disconnect his head from his body, however, Mario and Lucario came barreling towards him with an eight-foot machete, and Ike decided it was time to leave.

He scampered around the auditorium for a little while in wide circles, screaming like a sissy-coward, Mario and Lucario hot on his tail. In addition to the eight-foot machete, they had now also materialized a medieval flail and a bazooka. Still screaming, Ike scurried up one of the stage curtains like the world's gayest Spiderman, which didn't really prevent Mario and Lucario from trying to scurry up after him, but at least he was higher than they were and could stomp them in their faces to try and keep them back. Mario went tumbling to the earth and a little mushroom cloud formed where he hit. Lucario was able to dodge Ike's foot, then he chomped it and Ike screamed even harder and started swinging it back and forth to try and shake him off. Popo, Link and Wario all had a big bucket of popcorn and were sitting together and watching. Link probably could have untied Pit from the rack without the other two making too much of a fuss about it, but he wasn't too worried about him and the thought never occurred.

Ike finally managed to fling off Lucario and he flew through the air and caught on fire and smacked up against the far wall.

The two of them refortified at the base of the curtain, glaring up at Ike with serious malcontent. Lucario plucked out another loose tooth and flicked it aside. Mario's gaze narrowed.

"Alright, Fatty," he said in a hardcore sort of way, and suddenly the world seemed dark and heavy, and Ike's heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach as he realized that Mario was holding a box of matches. "We're bringing an end to this darkness. One way or another." There was a long, caustic scratch and the flame squealed to life, and Mario tossed it, without a single hesitation, onto the curtain.

It just made something like a little cigarette burn and then fizzled out. Seriously, it's a stage curtain, they're not that flammable.

"Curses!" Mario cried, and then he and Lucario just tried to rip the freaking curtains down, but at that moment the auditorium doors flew open and that entire room became stifled, still and quiet.

It was Master Hand. And not only that. He had an armada of losers with him, too.

Master Hand pointed his giant floating finger of destiny towards Mario and Lucario. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

Mario and Lucario, for their parts, only looked slightly miffed by this development. "We're trying to kill Ike," Mario replied matter-of-factly, "destroy the Seed of Ultimate Subspace, come on, you know the spiel."

"Oh, thank God," Ike cried, "Everyone in this room is crazy! You've got to tell them there's no hostile eggplant takeover in progress and that Pit's not trying to destroy the world and that the only things I've got inside of me are bones and organs and stuff and no Seed of Ultimate Whatever!"

"FOOOOOOOOOOOLS!" Master Hand boomed, although I'm not entirely sure how, since he's just a giant floating hand. The finger whipped up towards Ike, who was still clinging to his curtain in the fetal position and generally looking like he'd be happier dead. "IF YOU KILL THE VESSEL OF SUBSPACE, THE SEED OF ULTIMATE SUBSPACE WILL BE RELEASED UPON THE WORLD! IT IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE! FATTY MUST LIVE!"

Mario and Lucario looked stung by his words, and they hung their heads like poor little puppies who had just gotten reprimanded by their owner. Lucario scuffed his heel, and he said, "Aw shucks, I totally forgot."

"DAMN STRAIGHT, BEE-YOTCH. THIS IS WHY I AM MASTER HAND, AND YOU ARE MERELY SUBSERVIENT PEONS."

The two of them scuffled off, tails between their legs. Well, Lucario did anyway. Ike finally began to relax.

"That was…that was, pretty clever, you know," he said to Master Hand, chuckling nervously and beginning to slide down his curtain. "I wish I would have thought of that when things first started to get out of hand, right? Just pretend to roll with it, and tell them things that would have gotten me out of being killed?" Ike's feet hit the ground. "Freakin brilliant, huh-"

"APPREHEND HIM," Master Hand shouted, and Marth and Diddy Kong darted out and dive-tackled Ike. Marth did, anyway; Diddy Kong just sort of latched onto the back of his head and beat him senseless with a banana.

Marth marched Ike back over to Master Hand, and once he noticed what exactly Diddy Kong was doing he peeled him off and threw him aside. Ike was still pissed, don'tchaknow, and he wheeled on Marth, his mouth foaming with slobbers and crazies. "Is there ANYONE in this room who isn't BAT SHIT CRAZY!"

Marth rose his hand like an over-eager school child trying to answer a question. "I'm not bat shit crazy! I'm not!"

Ike draped his arm over his shoulder in a sort of cliched, buddy-buddy confidential maneuver. "Then maybe you could help me out here real quick. Things as I understand them currently stand something like this: Lucario joined a cult because he threw a gooey bomb at Pit, and Wario and Mario are also in this cult because their names all end in "ario," and for some god-awful unknown reason the three of them are trying to create the Ultimate source of Subspace with their three ignoble gasses, only not really, because when we all showed up in our shiny little Coalition Against Evil, they went bullshitting on about us trying to take over the world with an Eggplant Alien Armada or something, and apparently Pit's the leader even though he goes into a psychotic breakdown every time he's within five feet of an eggplant and Popo and Nana are both double-agents. Well, actually maybe they're not double-agents, cuz the Cult of Ario said they were gonna kill them too because they were Pit's peons; grunts, excuse me; so I'm not sure who's side they're really supposed to be on. Nana and Popo probably don't even know whose side they're supposed to be on. And apparently I'm the so-called Vessel of Subspace because the Seed of Ultimate Subspace got planted in my innards because I eat a lot of chicken or something like that and now everybody's trying to kill me to prevent the eggplant bastards from taking over the world, only then they stopped cuz Master Hand said it wouldn't work, and then I got jumped by you and Shitty Kong anyway. And I'm still not really sure what the hell Link's doing here."

Link held up the popcorn bucket and rattled it. "I made the popcorn!"

"Well there you go." Ike said flatly.

Marth nodded energetically. "Yeah, that all sounds pretty much right."

Ike stared at him.

"Oh, well, okay, there are a couple littledifferences," and Marth rapped Mario on the head repeatedly until he forsook the Story Stick. "Nobody's really trying to take over the world or anything I guess, and there aren't really any wacky cults either. Because who the hell wants to be in a cult with Wario? Oh, and there aren't any eggplants, involved either. Also, Popo and Nana aren't double-agents, they're just bat shit crazy. Same thing goes for Pit, although to his credit, he's slightly less bat shit crazy. And that's definitely a good thing. Oh, but that Seed of Ultimate Subspace? That part's real."

Ike had been looking relieved and a little smug all up until that last remark and then a look of horror crossed his face and he clutched his stomach. "It is!" he gagged.

Marth just kept on a-tapping his Story Stick to the Pulse of Discovery®. "Oh, yeah, sure," he said easily, "But it wasn't Pit or the Ice Climbers or even anybody in the Cult of Ario who had it arranged, though. It was Master Hand."

"Master Hand! What! Are you serious?"

Marth looked at him sternly. "Of course I'm serious. I'm a pretty boy from a generic fantasy RPG, just like you are. We don't have imaginations."

"That's a very good point," Ike admitted, thoughtfully, but another moment later he brushed it aside for a clearly more pressing issue. "But why would Master Hand want to plant the Seed of Ultimate Subspace in me?"

"FOR THE LULZ," Master Hand piped up.

Ike stared at him. "How!"

"I JUST DEEP-FRIED IT AND GARNISHED IT WITH SOME CHICK-FIL-A SAUCE. YOU REALLY ARE A FAT ASS."

Ike stared at him some more. "So what's gonna happen to me now?"

"YOU BLOW UP. AND DIE. THE WAY GOD INTENDED."

"Oh, don't mind him," Marth said lightly, air-swatting Master Hand aside with the Story Stick. "He just wanted to see how crazy everybody could go based just on a few rumors and speculations, on just a little fluff and circumstance. There are really two ways this can all end, you see, and the first is to blow up and die, the way God intended."

"And the second?" Ike said expectantly.

"The second? You just have to not eat any chicken for a few days, and you'll be perfectly fine."

Ike's expression was inscrutable.

Marth looked concerned. "What?"

"I think I'm gonna go with that first option."

"FATTY!" and that was Pit roaring from across the room, still stretched across his rack. Marth cracked Lucario on the top of his head and shooed him over to untie him. Pit rushed over to him, but stopped awkwardly a few feet away. He set his jaw and shook his head in all hardcore like that foot cheese. "Can't let you do that, Starfox. Rule one of Friendship: Friends don't let friends let alien eggplant babies let themselves devour their entrails."

Ike looked at him with astonishment and disgust. "Pit we are not friends."

But it didn't matter. Pit had enveloped him in the world's most awkward squirrelly bastard little angel man hug. "I know you think you got a dependency Fatty, and I know it's tough, but it's okay, it don't matter, we're gonna get through this thing together, okay? And I know you're in denial," he added when Ike began to yell obscenities at him, "But there's nothing you could ever do to drive me away, alright? I'm in this for the long haul. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you-"

Ike scowled at him, a fiery and homicidal look spreading over his body. "What about when you thought I had a bunch of eggplants inside of me?"

"Oh, Fatty, you do have a bunch of eggplants inside of you."

He nutted him then and tossed his cringing body aside, then turned back to Marth. "There's really only one more thing that's really bothering me."

"Only one? That's very concerning," said Marth, and he frowned slightly.

Ike ignored him. "How did Master Hand figure out what was going on in here?"

Marth laughed openly at that and then motioned over his shoulder at Olimar who was standing under Master Hand shock-still like the most sick farce of a garden gnome the world had ever seen. "Link went into a fit of emo rage and started texting Olimar about everything that was going on. He read it, told Master Hand, and now here we are."

At that Ike gave a long slow stare over his shoulder at Link.

"What?" he said defensively.

"You talk to Olimar?"

"Maybe? So freaking what!"

"How much of a loser are you?"

"Shut up! You talk to Pit!"

After Link said that Ike just had to sit down and cry because it was so, so true.

"Whatchu got there, Fatty?"

Ike had carried a tray over to the table where Link and Pit were sitting in the cafeteria. Willingly. Because as painful a fact it was, nobody else just freaking liked Ike enough to let him sit with them. And as much as Pit and Link both made him want to gouge out his own eyeballs and spear them on shishkabob rods and roast them over a mushroom cloud, he still had his fragile little bubble of self esteem to worry about and it was easier to delude himself into believing that these people he despised were friends than coming to grip the hard truth that they weren't. I guess he's kind of a sissy like that. Bawwwwwwww.

He scowled openly at Pit, probably extra hormonal for the aforementioned reasons. "Mashed goddamn potatoes."

"There's not any chicken in it, is there?"

He stared at him. "Mashed. Goddamn. Potatoes."

Pit rolled his eyes dramatically, tossed back his head in a gesture of exasperation. "Well excuuuuuuuuse me for being uncertain of all the ingredient complexities of your exotic food choices. I am the captain of Palutena's bad ass Fluffy Angel Death Army, not freaking Alton Brown."

Link fiddled uncomfortably with the mylar lid on his green jell-o cup. "Seriously Ike, chill out, I mean, he's only trying to help you."

Ike decided not to gratify that comment with a response and opted instead to stare with malcontent down into the chunky white bowels of his mashed potato agony.

"So anyway," Pit said after an uncomfortably long time, "There's something I've been wanting to tell you, Fatty." And before Ike had any time to complain, Pit had leaned over next to him, one wing wrapped around to shelter him from view, and gestured over towards a table where Lucas was sitting alone. "You ever notice the Earthbound characters, huh? They're all named after consoles, huh, except him. The first guy was called "Ninten," you know, short for "Nintendo Entertainment System," and the second guy was called "Ness," short for "NES," which I guess is technically the same thing, but whatever. Listen! But this guy, he shoulda been called, like, I don't know, Disci, or something. Wiimo. But it's just freakin Lucas!" Ike had been trying to inch away, but Pit latched onto his sleeve and pulled him back over, and the look he was giving Lucas was one of pure, unbridled determination. "I don't think he's legit!"

"Is zhat so?" Ike said, trying to sound indulgent, and he inched away again.

"Now you listen to me, Fatty!" Pit said, angry, hooking him on the sleeve again. "This is a big freaking deal, you understand? Stuff that really, really matters like this don't come up much, right? The rest is just stupid. You either chase after the big game, or you spend your life drowning in fluff and circumstance, my friend. Now, we have to decide how we're going to go about kidnapping him for questioning. I happen to know from a reliable source that the kid's into whittling, so I was thinking that we get a big pile of sticks, and put them under a net…and…"

Pit prattled on, and Ike was only left to wonder, defeated, when exactly his life had become a never-ending string of pointless endeavors…

THE END.

EDIT:Oh wow! Reviews? And some favorites too? I honestly hadn't expected that. Especially Joeb: It was my birthday when I read that review, and I could have done backflips of happiness! And that aside, I feel...distressingly unable to adequately put into words exactly how grateful I am for what you wrote. I'm very glad that you enjoyed the story so much (The best fanfiction you've ever read? Out of many fandoms? And all genres? I find it hard to believe, and yet at the same time the thought makes me so giddy that I hardly know how to act). And then to follow all that up with the exact reasons why you liked it! Please excuse me if I sound a bit like a raving lunatic right now, but your review was one of the nicest surprises I've gotten in a long time. I was moved. Very much. Thank you!