[I would like to preface this first chapter by saying that most Smash characters will not be represented in this fanfic, and several newcomers will be present from games not previously showcased in the Smash series. This decision is for several reasons: A) for novelty; B) to avoid having to incorporate a lot of lore I know nothing about, since I'm not intimately familiar with every IP featured in Smash proper; C) to be able to enrich the story with foreign characters whose lore I do actually understand; D) to maintain the traditional Danganronpa formula of sixteen students per killing game; and E) because not all playable Smash characters are human, and trying to write non-humans into the story would pose a needless narrative complication. I hope you understand. Even so, some non-human characters I particularly like, or am particularly confident about writing with, may be incorporated in human forms that will be explained in the course of the story.

Also be warned that this fanfic may contain UNMARKED MAJOR SPOILERS for the following games: Mother 3, EarthBound, the Mario series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Pokémon series, the Kirby series, Celeste, A Hat in Time, Yume Nikki, and—of course—Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, New Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, the Danganronpa 3 anime, and the Danganronpa Zero manga. (There will not be spoilers for Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer, and there will probably not be any spoilers for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.)

Additionally, characters from the Metroid series, the Megaman series, and the Splatoon series will be present, and I will represent them to the best of my ability based on what I know about their personalities and surface-level background, but major spoilers for those games will be relatively unlikely since I've never played them. Actually, there may be some major spoilers for entries in the Metroid series, since I've looked up some of the plot elements, though which games those plot elements belonged to I don't recall.]

Prologue

For as long as I live, I'll never forget the day I received that red-stamped invitation.

It was nine at night. I'd just come back from taking Boney out for his nightly bathroom break. Dad was wrapping up shearing the sheep and cleaning up after their supper. Reckoned it was time to head in for the night, he did, said so and strolled right in without another word. Went to bed with all his dirty clothes on, too. Must've been hells of tired, but with everything that's happened to our family in the past few years, I can understand that feeling. I noticed he hadn't checked the mailbox all day. I'm not supposed to check it myself after what happened last time, but, well, I didn't want any nosy critters getting into our mail overnight, so I thought I'd just have a peek to make sure nothing was in there.

"IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED

"To young Mr. Lucas Locke:

"Every year, our staff selects a handful of talented and noteworthy warriors from across the multiverse to compete in hand-to-hand combat in front of a live audience of our millions of passionate fans. Those who fight well are rewarded with fabulous prizes and eternal fame.

"Local word of your feats of heroism has not escaped our devoted scouters. As such, we are writing to notify you that you have been selected to bear the honor of doing battle with us. You are cordially invited to the 2008 Annual 'Super Smash Bros.' Mixed Martial Arts Grand Tournament. You will be helping us test our new ruleset, codename 'Brawl'. Your roster position is not guaranteed, and as a courtesy to fellow prospects, your response is required within 12 business days of receipt.

As is traditional, the victor of the competition will be granted a single wish, courtesy of the Overseer, with the cooperation of special attendees Eldstar, Hylia, and Jirachi. Some conditions may apply. Unique and high-value consolation prizes will be offered for second and third place.

"We look forward to working with you.

"Kind regards,

Overseer (M&C. Hand)"

The Super Smash Bros. Tournament—the highest honor this side of the multiverse that could possibly be bestowed upon common folk like us. Rumor had it that regulars there included only the best of the best. For instance, not one tournament would pass without involving the "Super Mario Bros." Though plumbers in name, the twin middle-aged brothers Mario and Luigi Mario boasted famed mastery of numerous diverse trades, particularly parkour, acrobatics, carpentry, pharmacology, and culinary arts. By way of consistent service to their homeland, the Mushroom Kingdom, they had risen over time to the ranks of de-facto lead royal guards, and become the direct servants and closest friends of acting princess Peach Toadstool herself.

Additionally, since time immemorial, it was traditional for the Overseer to invite "Link." The name didn't refer to one person; it was more like it could only refer to one person at a time. "Link" was the pseudonym for each incarnation among a bloodline of legendary master knights who served the distant land of Hyrule. Whichever specific person he may have been in any given generation, "Link" always wielded the legendary Master Sword—"Blade of Evil's Bane," they called it. The wielder of that blade was said to be chosen by divine predestination, marked by the image upon his body of a fragment of the divine artifact known as the "Triforce," to defend the kingdom against periodic attacks from the ancient sorceror Ganondorf, a mighty and feared practitioner of black magic whose vast influence and severe deleterious impact on society had earned him his welcomed title of "King of Evil."

Knowing those three would likely return would have been enough of a testament to the prestige of the festival. But when I flipped over the invitation and read the backside, I could hardly believe my eyes. Apparently, other returning fighters included "Satoshi 'Red' Tajiri," the renowned "Pokémon Master" who stood far above all other tamers of the magical beasts called "Pokémon" that inhabited his home world, and, on numerous occasions, had harnessed his phenomenal taming skills to fight animal cruelty worldwide and help disestablish every international crime syndicate on every continent; "Kirby of the Stars," a soft-bodied extraterrestrial animal, who, despite being incapable of complex communication and seemingly a mere infant among its kind, had already demonstrated remarkable valiance and rescued entire galaxies from the clutches of unknown dark forces; and even "Samus Aran," an interstellar bounty hunter who had cooperated with the Galactic Federation to stop a rogue AI's intergalactic conquest plans and save her entire universe from a fate worse than death. The list went on and on, and each name I saw boomed louder in my head than the last. These were the kinds of people a timid, average little eigth-grader like myself had been chosen to work with.

Everyone in Tazmily had known for a long time what this sort of letter meant, but this was the first time we'd ever gotten one here. No one would have thought such a small and unremarkable town, on such a small and unremarkable island, would ever see a letter like this—let alone to such a small and unremarkable boy. My friends and I had saved the world here once before, but everyone had already forgotten about that. I don't blame them. It's understandable when I think about how much we all had to sacrifice—how close we all came to the end—and how many worlds everyone knows there are out there to save. So, why me? Why here and now? It's true I'm a hero, but as heroes go, I'm just a chump. Just a crybaby; everyone was right about that after all. I may have a few fancy brain tricks—PSI, they call it—but overall, I'm no different from any ordinary kid.

Even so, I couldn't ignore those words. As is traditional, the victor of the competition will be granted a single wish. I had to wonder.

I had to wonder if I could bring them back. And once I started thinking about that, I couldn't stop. With such imposing competition, I knew my chances of winning were close to none. But knowing there was any chance at all was enough for me to make up my mind.

I shoved the letter into an old leather backpack by my bedside. Gave Boney some head scritches one last time. For good luck, I slipped a lace off what was left of Mom's red sundress, undid Claus's shoelace, and shoved them into my pocket. Took along one or two week-old PSI Caramels from the nightstand drawer to be safe. And with that, I headed down south to the shore, reached out to the dark, cloudy night sky, closed my eyes, thought as hard as I could, and shouted—and, like always, a gust of cold wind billowed through my hair, and a flash of lightning carried me off, out over the raging ocean and off to the stars. PK Teleport was one of the PSI techniques I'd realized after Porky left us alone. Not even I knew my destination. Only the letter in my backpack knew that.

That was the last time I saw Dad, Boney, the house, the village, or any of my neighbors. All gone in one night. All gone in one bright flash. Looking back, it would've been better if I'd ignored that red-stamped envelope. It would've been better if I'd ripped it to shreds and cast it into the bottom of the sea.

Anything would've been better than what was to come. What hell I'd brought upon myself, my family, my very notion of reality, with that single brief episode of blind selfishness. Nothing in my past adventures could have prepared me for the horror that awaited.

I should have known nothing could bring them back. I should have remembered, no matter how much magic there may be in this world, there's no such magic as a second chance. If you believe in something like that, all that waits for you is despair.

Super Smash Danganronpa C12: Killing School Tournament

Where was I? Was this a classroom? It wasn't just a classroom-themed arena, right?

I felt a sharp ache in my head, running down the back of my neck. I had to take a minute to get up on my feet before the floor would stop spinning beneath me, and another minute to remember my own name and what I was supposed to be doing here.

This wasn't how PK Teleport was supposed to work. Some minor injuries could occur in the alpha levels of the manifestation, but those injuries were supposed to be mild friction burns all across the skin, not unexplained symptoms of acute head trauma.

"Kid." A nebulous female voice, somewhere in my consciousness. I looked around for the source, but all I saw were rows and rows of leather textbooks. Several of them had been knocked onto the floor. That explained the head pain, I supposed. Sheepishly, I started to pick them up and put them back on the shelf.

"Hey. Kid."

The more urgent tone snapped me to my senses, and I turned around. Behind me, I saw her. Her? It? If I'd had the presence of mind a moment ago to notice the vague quality of staticky tinniness to her voice, as if through a long-distance transciever, what I saw next fully explained that timbre—if you could call the sight an explanation in any sense of the word. Frankly it only brought up more questions. What I saw was an orange metal suit, complete with a helmet and what looked to be an arm-mounted projectile weapon of some kind. Understandably, I panicked instantly and turned to flee in terror, but I tripped backward into the books I'd just started arranging. The whole case shook, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every book on every shelf somehow managed to tumble directly onto my face.

The heavily armed woman sighed. I could have sworn her sigh carried the slightest hint of an amused smirk, but I couldn't see through the glowing visor on her helmet. She started to close in on me and raised her arm—to fire, I assumed. I scrambled back against the wall and tried to cry out for help, but no sound would come out. I tried to invoke PSI, but in the face of such panic, the necessary mental clarity wouldn't come to me.

Just when I was ducking away in the corner, shivering and silently reflecting on how regrettable it was that my life had wound up being so short, she leaned in close, fiddled with a control system on her arm, and her visor vanished in a holographic spark. Behind it was a person, after all—a real person, with a real smile. Well, maybe not a smile exactly. Her expression was serious and flat, but there was something welcoming, almost lighthearted, about her eyes and lips, that made it clear she meant me no harm. She reached out her other hand—the one that could still be called a hand—and lifted me up out of the pile of books by the arm.

"Calm down. You're safe with me."

I wasn't sure what to say, so I just glanced to the floor and swatted the dust from the old books off my shirt. The armored lady just rolled her eyes and turned her back on me. Then, she spoke to someone I hadn't noticed yet:

"Alright, that makes fifteen. So this is everyone?"

Lifting my gaze, I looked around the room. Two middle-aged mustachioed men in overalls, arm in arm, loud and proud, one in red, one in green—one short, one tall—one fat, one thin, but neither out of shape, exactly. Just about every kid in the multiverse would recognize them anywhere. They seemed distracted from the situation at hand, and were instead preoccupied by an involved conversation between them, but their accents were so thick I couldn't understand a word they were saying.

Standing across the room from them, arms crossed impatiently, was a certain equally iconic young gentleman in a green-and-brown outfit that looked to befit a lumberjack in the middle of winter. He responded first: "Yeah, can't say I recognize you all, but this is definitely the whole roster. Wonder why they trimmed it down this year."

"Hmph. What a disappointing turnout." The one who spoke next was a boy a little over my age, in a red sun visor and a track jacket. He had that aloof sort of aura that gave the impression he only ever opened his mouth to snub his nose at those around him. A quick look at the red-and-white ceramic orbs belted to his waist showed everyone what he had to be so smug about, but the air of superiority he gave off wasn't one of smug superiority per se. It was more a solemn superiority, one that said, Being so much better than you all is really lonely, so please try your best to grow stronger for me, okay? I don't think he meant to show that feeling so openly, but it was plain as day, written all over his travel-worn, shadow-crested face.

A sleepy-eyed, sickly-skinny brunette girl in a pink sweater gave a long yawn, and nodded in agreement. "Fwwwaaahh...~ It's been forever already. If it was gonna be this boring, I shoulda' just stayed in bed." She pulled her hairband tighter to cool down, and yawned again, somehow drawing the second one out even longer.

A disapproving sideways glare shot from one of the tables in the rear of the room, at which slumped a very short readheaded grown-up in a blue parka. "You can't just sleep all the time," she warned, before taking a hearty slurp from a bottled spirit, slamming it back down, and wobbling out a tiny hiccup. "G'ahh. Trush me, I'the tried."

From the lumberjack's side, an olive-skinned young lady in pantaloons marched toward the bottle, and, with a huff of indignation, swatted it out of the parka lady's hand. It clattered to the floor and soaked into the floorboards. After a worrying extent of delay, Ms. Parka Lady looked up in pure shock and confusion, but Ms. Pantaloons Lady just whirled right back around, put her hand on her hip, and took charge.

"Right," she announced: "how's about we leave the damn lousy chit-chat for later and try to figure out why we're in this situation?"

"Why we're in this situation?" This one was dressed similarly to the lady in the hi-tech orange armor, but this one was blue, and I could see his face. He'd been reclining on a bean bag chair in what looked to be the classroom's study corner. "Isn't it obvious?" he continued, without turning his head to speak. "This is the Smash tournament, right? This is like the meetup spot or something."

The pantaloons girl flicked an earring and crudely twirled a lick of hair. "Yeah, y'all look like a bunch of chumps, so I figured that's what you'd think."

"Tetra, please." The lumberjack-looking one sighed and showed a slight wince of secondhand embarrassment.

"Look," continued 'Tetra', brushing off her friend's futile effort to ground her ego. "Does anyone know how they got here?" Murmurs from the crowd.

It would have been dishonest of me to stay quiet. I perked up and raised my hand. "Um, I teleported—"

"I ain't talkin' to you, pipsqueak." I supposed that settled that matter. Mildly dejected, I sat back down. My view was blocked by the orange-armored lady from that point forward, who had stepped to my defense to angrily rebuke the 'pipsqueak' remark with a somewhat unflattering argument of her own—"How dare you say something so unkind to such a defenseless creature!"—but even so, I heard the pantaloon loudmouth murmur grumpily to herself. I think it was something like "Teleported. Yeah right. Kids these days." And then something about how it would have been impossible because I don't even have... 'triumph forks'? I couldn't make out that last part.

'Tetra' strutted around the classroom and resumed her lecture. "Alright, listen up. I don't care how many times you've been in your fancy little kiddy fights, you bunch don't look like a single one of you's ever seen real violent business before, so lemme teach ya three little things about how it works." She unsheathed a wooden broadsword from her waistband, and, as if pretending to teach the class, she began tapping it against relevant items around the room as she spoke.

"One, looks like we can all agree you don't remember how your sorry asses wound up in this room." She tapped her sword against the wall-mounted clock. "Two, it's been about an hour now and no one's come to get us all started." Finally, she walked over to the door and struck it. A heavy rattle, and a hollow echo down the hall behind it. "Three, this door's locked, and there are no windows."

"So what?" The blue-armored boy kicked a leg over his knee, lay back farther, and flipped a page forward in his book. "You got a point to get to? Don't kick up a fuss over nothing, I'm try'n'a read."

Skinny pink sweater girl yawned heavily into her sleeve and looked like she was about ready to suffer an anemic episode and fall over. "Yeah, what are you saying? I'm too sleepy for this."

"I see. I understand." Gloomy elitist sports jacket guy spoke up. The eerie monotone that dripped from every word he spoke compelled the rest of the room to silence. "What she's saying..."

He tilted his visor down over his eyes—then, suddenly, pulled it backward, and lifted his head. It might have looked plucky and cute if he'd done it with a confident smile and shouted something cool and heroic, but with his quiet monotone voice and the piercing emptiness on his face, the gesture just painted him with all the more dreadful a gravity.

"... is that we're not just meeting up here. We've been abducted."

An icy chill fell over the room. "Abducted." That word weighed down on each of us. It took root in our minds, and if we weren't careful, it would surely spin into terrifying fantasies that would work us into a panic. Everyone was giving each other suspicious looks.

Mario—the squat, red-overalls twin out of the two mustachioed gents—ushered a tall crowned damsel closer to him. She leaned to her side to hear what he had to say, and, though his nose may have gotten in the way, he managed to whisper something in his ear. Even if he hadn't whispered, I suspect we wouldn't have been able to understand him. She nodded and stood up straight.

"Um, everyone." Her voice was so unbearably feminine it sounded squeaky. She didn't sound unsure of herself. It was more like she was the sort of person who tried to sound unsure of herself, because she knew that was what everyone who took one look at her expected from her. "My friends Mario and Luigi have something to tell you all."

The lank, green-overalls twin—Luigi—was next to whisper in the crowned girl's ear. She translated for us: "Um, according to our sources... This classroom is indeed unlike any place in the multiverse. It's quite worrying."

"Do you really expect us to believe you three have seen the entire multiverse?" shot Tetra.

"Of course they have," came a response from blue armor boy's reading corner. "They're the Super Mario Bros." But the response didn't come from blue armor boy himself. It seemed to come from behind him.

Peeking behind Mr. Blue's beanbag chair, I saw a few kids around my own age sitting off in the corner and reading. Collectively, we all seemed to be the youngest people there, and it seemed everyone that young except myself had been hanging out by Blue the entire time. One of them, who I instantly identified as the source of the voice, even had a striped shirt that matched mine, and I was picking up psychic energy signature that matched my own as well. Another PSI user...?

A warm flash of light flooded my vision, like a painless migraine. Somehow, it was fairly obvious I was the only one seeing it. The flash spoke to me:

"You too, huh? Name's Ness Montague. Come sit with us."

The rush of PSI energy, and the confidence in his mind's voice—somehow, it reminded me so much of him. Of Claus. Brushing a finger against the shoelace in my pocket, I closed my eyes and smiled. "I'm Lucas," my spirit replied into the ether. "Lucas Locke."

When I opened my eyes again, Ness had scooted over to make room, so I sat down next to him and peered over his shoulder at the book he was reading.

It was... some vapid baseball magazine...?! The team on the cover wasn't even good, and every other article was an advertisement for a burger joint or something dumb like that. I should've been able to tell from his getup, but even if this kid's personality reminded me of Claus, his interests definitely didn't.

"I like this one the best." Ness was pointing at a particularly unappetizing-looking burger joint ad. "It's so good 'cause it's so greasy." Their food looked almost like someone had just pulled it out of the trash. I just nodded and tried to hide how disoriented I felt.

"You kids should probably stay here for now and get to know each other."

Blue still didn't look up from his book when he spoke. From this vantage point, I could tell the book was full of blueprints for autonoma of all shapes and sizes.

"Apparently," he continued grumpily, "we don't know what's going on here. So whatever it is, it's best if we can face it together when the time comes."

"Yessir!" responded a small redhead in a magician outfit. The clueless-looking boy dressed in pink and red joyfully followed suit, followed by another redhead who looked like she was wearing a wetsuit and a stage mask.

I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and got back up from the beanbag chair. Blue was right. Even I had to admit, if what that girl who'd called me a pipsqueak said was true, it seemed we'd all been kidnapped—and if we were all going to make it out of this situation, it was for the best we should all get along. With that in mind, squeezing my hands in nervousness, I looked around to scope out the first person to introduce myself to.

[That's all for now. We'll start in on the one-on-one character introductions next chapter, and when we're finished with that, we can really get the ball rolling. (Oops, sorry Rantaro.)

If you have the time and the inclination, a review would be much appreciated. This is the most words I've written in quite awhile and I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing.]