Super Smash Bros. Massacre

Out Of Character Stuffs (open) Out Of Character Stuffs (close)

I am not a horror/creepypasta writer guys, we know this. Horror and humor are genres I generally avoid because they're so ungratefully hard to pull off. However, a little while this idea popped into my head, and when I started reciting it to Double for fun's sake he said I had to write it, because it was interesting.

This is only part one of two, and the part that I had kind of worked out in my head before even telling it to Double. Part two is mostly planned, but I have to make some critical decisions on that one and it might take a week or so before it goes up.

I TRY to avoid several cliché's, as well as stuff that I really hate in creepypastas such as 'hyper-realistic' blood and gore, but this is my first attempt at this so I can't say how well I did. The reason I'm not posting this in my 'BP steals intellectual property' thread is because this doesn't technically fall under my Fire Emblem fanfiction and it's not posted to my FanfictionNet account.

Many thanks to Double for looking over this and ensuring the pacing isn't off!

Disclaimer: I do not own Super Smash Bros, Fire Emblem, Ike or Marth. All is belong to Intelligent Systems and Nintendo.

I’m what you would call a semi-casual gamer. I only follow a few series religiously, and I’m admittedly not very good at many of the games that I DO play- especially Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I can hold my own against the AI, but as soon as I enter an online match with my friends, I get my rear end royally handed to me- and not just because of the lag.

Still, I love the game and I play it a lot by myself, tackling the challenges or the final level of the Adventure mode. Of course, this was before I got my hands on the disk that I’ve come to call Super Smash Brothers Massacre.

I don’t even know why I picked it up- I already had a fully functional copy of the game, after all. I suppose I wanted to start with a fresh slate without losing all my completed challenges or my records or replays. At any rate, it was second-hand, cheap, and when the store clerk showed me the disk so I could confirm it was undamaged, it looked perfectly normal. Even when I took it out at home and compared it with my own disk, they were identical.

However, it was in the store that the first unusual thing happened. The clerk put the disk into the case as normal, but then told me that it came with an SD card. I remember how weird I found that, but hey- worst-case scenario I could format it and use it for my camera or something. It didn’t add anything to the price, so I took it and brought it home.

I popped my own SD card and Brawl disk out of my wii and inserted the new ones. The game started as usual, with the opening song in Latin and the previews of the Subspace Emissary cutscenes. It ran smoothly, without skipping frames and without messing up the music. I figured the game had been returned by someone who had lost interest in it or gone to pick up the knock-off All-Stars Battle Royale for his Playstation or so. Well, his loss, it wasn’t often that you ran across a perfect game.

Curious, I checked the usual things- the sticker album, the trophy collection, and the challenges. Whoever had returned the game had built up an impressive collection, but I noticed something peculiar.

I’m a huge fangirl of the Fire Emblem series by Intelligent Systems. It’s gotten down to the point where I main Marth and I know almost by heart what characters from each instalment are used as stickers. Looking through the gallery, I couldn’t help but notice that all stickers featuring characters from Marth’s games –Marth himself, his fiancée Shiida, and the swordsman Nabarl- were missing. Talk about coincidence.

In the trophy collection, I noticed that Marth’s trophy and that for Critical Hit, his Final Smash, had not been obtained. Was this for real? Marth is such a powerful and easy character to use, and this guy had not even cleared Classic mode, let alone All-Star mode with him? Time to rectify this.

Going into classic mode, I grabbed the ‘P1’ token and started moving it up into the roster, trying to find my main. It took me a little bit to realize that if he wasn’t going to be above Ike, he wasn’t there at all. This made me pause for a good few seconds, and looking over the roster a second time, I realized that every last character had been unlocked EXCEPT for Marth.

While I consider myself a bit of an expert on Marth’s series, I don’t claim to be familiar with all the methods in which all of the unlockable Brawlers can be unlocked, so I figured the former owner had simply never gotten the blue-haired prince. It happened.

Not having the patience to find out how else to get him, I decided to recruit him in the Subspace Emissary. As expected, there were no save files for the adventure mode on it, which explained how Marth was missing from the roster.

The SSE started off and proceeded as normal- I saved Zelda since she’s my primary alt, played as Pit, Mario, Fox and Lucas amongst others, ignoring all orange item boxes that weren’t on the beaten path in my impatience to reach the Battlefield Fortress.

This was when things started to get freaky. I was looking forward to the cutscene in which my favourite brawler would be introduced, startled by the Subspace Bomb that would be set off outside his fortress, but instead of showing a cutscene, the game dropped me right into the stage. I WOULD have figured I found the error in the disk, but I was kind of busy dropping my jaw and my controller over something else.

Why was I playing as Ike?

I KNEW I wasn’t crazy- I knew that the unlockable Marth, not the starter character Ike, was supposed to kick off the Battlefield Fortress. Still, the game had given me control of Ike, although he did start in the same position as Marth usually did. I really should have just taken the disk out, possibly back to the store, and used my own disk to have Marth beat up some Fighting Alloys to get my mind off of it, but I was curious and started playing anyway.

Ike is a character from the Fire Emblem series as well, but one I’ve always been a lot less interested in. He’s also a lot less agile than Marth, if a lot more powerful and with similar range, so I struggled a little for the first part of the stage.

Upon reaching the point where Marth would normally meet with Meta Knight, the cutscene played as normal, even featuring my favourite character. Maybe Marth’s eyes were slightly different or something, I didn’t get a good look. I was too busy relaxing my shoulders and believing that the game had fixed itself and that I’d be dropped into the usual gauntlet with Marth and Meta Knight.

I could not have been more wrong, for while I was dropped into the right stage, I was not controlling Marth and I wasn’t fighting Primids. I was still controlling Ike, and I was fighting Marth. Interesting to note was that Marth wasn’t dressed in his default dark blue clothes- instead, he used his red palette. This was… unusual, but it was hardly the strangest thing the game had done and I figured by now that there was a way to change palettes in the SSE that I simply hadn’t found yet.

I wasn’t too thrilled to see the change though. Marth ranks pretty high on the tier lists for a good reason, and I’m terrible with Ike. Of course, Meta Knight wouldn’t be much better, but at least he was fast. I tried to use Ike to get as much damage in on Marth as I could, but there was no way the AI was set to the Easy difficulty for this! Marth was playing as though a human player was controlling him, or as though he was reading my button inputs; I didn’t stand a darned chance!

When Ike was sent careening off the screen, I figured I’d spam Meta Knight’s tornado. Already starting to tilt the analog stick into Marth’s direction, I’m pretty sure I screamed when my next character was dropped into the stage.

Where the hell was Meta Knight?! Why was the game giving me Ike again when I had SELECTED Meta Knight at the end of the cutscene? How bugged or glitched or hacked or otherwise screwed up WAS this game!? I just wanted to get my main!

Being fuelled by rage usually works for me when I need brute strength, but it doesn’t help my gaming at all. While I did slowly but surely manage to get some damage in on Marth, in the end he still kicked my ass.

Just when Ike dropped back into the stage on his final stock, I had to refrain from throwing my wiimote and nunchuk across the room. Smash Balls NEVER appeared in the SSE, but of course, in this screwy stage they did. Ike had scarcely ran out of invincibility frames from spawning when the familiar sound effect and flash occurred, spawning a Smash Ball.

After my initial rage at yet ANOTHER thing that wasn’t going as it was supposed to, I realized this could net me my much-needed victory. Marth had a good bit of damage on him, Ike’s Final Smash, Great Aether, should finish him. Of course though, as anyone will confirm, Smash Balls never come close to you. Of course Marth got his hands on it.

Now, most of you will know that if Marth can land his Critical Hit, you’re basically done. Fortunately it’s also one of the easiest Final Smashes to dodge by jumping… if you know the character you’re using well enough. I made Ike jump WAY too early, which combined with his heavy weight meant that he took the hit.

I didn’t get to see him fly off, though. The second Marth’s sword connected with Ike’s hitbox, the screen cut to black. I jolted at this, but Ike’s death cry could be heard so I figured it was a problem with my TV. My parents wouldn’t be happy to hear that, but oh well. Better than frying my wii. I jolted AGAIN when the screen suddenly cut back in with the Game Over animation for the Subspace Emissary, as if nothing had gone differently.

Well, one thing was different. Normally, the trophies of the last three characters you used appear on the Game Over screen, but this time only Meta Knight was lying there. I remember mumbling at the trophy that he was useless and asking it where Ike and Marth were, but after asking the question, I realized it was a legitimate one. Where -were- Ike and Marth? Now concerned, I didn’t hit retry as I normally would have. Instead, I hit quit, which took me back to the main menu.

Like I said, I’ve never cared about Ike as much as I have about Marth. But after using him for the entire Battlefield Fortress and watching him suffer in his duel with Marth, I had grown attached enough to him to be worried that something might have happened to his coding or something. Not knowing why I wanted to see it so badly, I navigated my way into the Brawl menu, where I pulled up the roster for a normal Brawl. My fears were confirmed.

Now both Marth AND Ike were missing from the roster.

---------------

It took me a few days, due to college and due to me being obviously freaked out, before I built up the courage to touch the second-hand disk again. I was still hopeful that I could somehow unlock Marth for the roster, so I tried playing through Classic Mode to recruit him that way.

Nabbing Zelda from the roster, I played on Easy mode for swift access to Master Hand, and tanked through all stages. Upon arriving on Final Destination, of course it would have been too easy to give me Master Hand as the final boss. Too predictable. Too normal.

Once again using his red palette, the final boss of Classic mode was Marth. And much like in Adventure mode, he was not set to Easy-level AI. While I’d gotten this far pretty easily, marth instantly depleted four out of my five stock, after which I just put down my Wiimote and Nunchuk.

Freaking Smash Balls.

Just like before, Marth nabbed the Smash Ball and landed his Final Smash on Zelda, sending me to the title screen. Figuring that Classic mode was not a way I was allowed to unlock Marth either (by now I had the vague idea that the game was toying with me), I turned to the last possible way of unlocking him- 10 VS matches.

Zelda was missing from the roster along with the FE’ers, so I took my second alt, Link, and started a battle with a random opponent. Marth. At this point I wasn’t even surprised anymore. Unexpectedly Marth made short work of my secondary alt too, and when I went back into the Brawl screen I didn’t even expect Link to be there.

Still, I didn’t give up. Maybe the loss counted as a VS match still. If I could just squeeze out nine more of these losses, maybe I would get Marth somehow. I don’t know why I was expecting it to go like that, or why I didn’t just grab my CLEAN disk and SD card, but hey. Call it foolishness, call it curiosity. It wasn’t like the game was going to physically HURT me.

Toon Link, Kirby, Pit, Peach, Fox, Falco, Wolf, Zero Suit Samus, and Pikachu all went down, and nothing happened. I decided I’d try some other things- maybe some of the Event Matches had been changed, or there was something in All-Star mode, or hell, something would happen if I cleared 100-man Brawl…

Bot nothing. Nope. Game wouldn’t let me have that. Whatever I did, every single time Marth would eventually pop up and kill (because by now I was pretty sure he was killing the characters and that was why they weren’t showing up on the roster anymore) whoever I was using. Saving my alts for last wouldn’t have helped either, because if anything Marth seemed to get STRONGER whenever I- was he levelling up? Please tell me he isn’t levelling up, I thought after he took out Mr. Game and Watch on All-star mode.

Levelling up was a core mechanic in Fire Emblem, but much like HP it didn’t EXIST in Smash Bros, did it? Still, it was the first thing I thought upon seeing how much more challenging he was getting to fight every single time.

Finally, he killed Sonic in 3-minute Brawl and I was taken to a black screen for the last time. Sonic had been the last character on the roster. Surely SOMETHING was going to happen now. Maybe everything would reset, or the data would be wiped, or Marth himself would finally become available, or I’d get a creepy message saying ‘you are next’ like in those creepypastas people posted to the internet.

Well, something definitely happened. But it was definitely NOT what I had expected to happen.

Instead of the title screen showing up, I heard the sound of an achievement box being broken. My literal thoughts were something along the lines of ‘what the HELL’ when I hurried to see what had happened. The condition for breaking the box said ‘Eliminate all fighters,’ but that figured. That was the only thing I’d accomplished with all this. What really threw me off was what had been unlocked from INSIDE the box.

Roy.

Roy was a character from the FEverse who co-starred with Marth in Melee. I knew there was a data package for him in Brawl, hinting that maybe at one point he was planned to appear alongside Ike and Marth, but as far as I knew that data was both incomplete and inaccessible. And yet Roy was right there in the box- It wasn’t a trophy or a sticker, it was a FIGHTER. What. The. Hell.

When I hit the A button to proceed, I got the normal achievement unlocked screen telling me that

‘You unlocked Roy! Go to Training Mode to try him out!’

You know what? That was probably the cleverest thing this game had prompted me with EVER. Training Mode had proven to be the only safe mode in the entire game, the only place where Marth did show up, but didn’t viciously kill my characters with his Final Smash.

Trying out the redhead in Training, I noticed that he played exactly the same as Marth. His moveset was identical, as was his movement speed, range, tip versus base of the sword damage, and even his tripping chance. I knew Roy had been a lesser clone of Marth in Melee, but I had no idea that down to the smallest details he’d be the same in Brawl, too.

I admit I was kind of excited. More FE characters to work with was always fun for me, and besides… I basically had my main back. The fact that Roy’s Sword of Seals was suddenly functioning exactly the same as Marth’s Falchion rather than how it had functioned in Melee, told me that it was Marth’s programming in a different skin. Probably a side result of Roy’s data being incomplete. Well, who cared.

It was time to confront Marth, this time on equal ground. I wanted to go into a Brawl, but when I exited out of Training mode, I was thrust straight into Classic Mode. It was Normal difficulty, but Roy was set to a single stock. Not that that made much of a difference at this point, since I’d grown accustomed to my fighter disappearing upon losing a single stock.

I fought my way past black- or red-colored versions of several of the fighters that Marth had killed, accumulating dangerous amounts of damage but never once losing my stock. After defeating Ike, Zelda, and Link, I knew what was coming, and this time I was ready for it.

Final Destination. Camera pan. Maniacal laughter—wait, it was pitched differently. Instead of Master Hand’s voice cackling maniacally at Roy’s appearance at Final Destination, the laugh that sounded seemed more… human. Younger. Like something that could have been produced by the vocal chords of a sixteen-year-old swordsman…

It was the first thing in a while to send shivers down my spine. MARTH was cackling at my attempt to dethrone him? I knew the originally gentle prince with a hatred of bloodshed had already gone out of character by killing off the roster, but this was so far out of character it wasn’t funny anymore. The music started early, and I recognized that it wasn’t Final Destination. It was Power-Hungry Fool, a song chosen from the FE line-up for the game, and oddly appropriate to the man I was fighting.

I started off the duel, and miraculously, I found that I was able to hold my own against the red-clad Marth. Maybe it was because I finally, finally had his own moveset and stats to work with, or maybe the AI was holding back for some arcane reason… but at any rate, I could handle him. Our damage counters were about equal when the Smash Ball appeared, and I tried to make a mad dash for it.

I froze for a second when Marth instead got his hands on it and landed, immediately releasing. I jumped like mad, throwing in an Up+B to desperately get away from the killing move, and much to my surprise and relief, I was successful. Marth stopped at the edge of the stage, sadly not Self-Destructing, and our duel resumed as if nothing had happened.

The second Smash Ball was mine. It spawned right on top of me, and I managed to get it before Marth even reached me. I stood up from my bed at this point, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat. It was going to happen. I was going to WIN!

Marth was busy falling after a failed Dolphin Slash, so I knew he would be unable to move for a few frames after landing. I took that opportunity to hit B. Roy’s Critical animation wasn’t the same as Marth’s. I recognized the motions he went through as those of his promoted sprite in his own game. It was neat, but I hoped that didn’t mean his Critical Hit took longer to set up.

It didn’t. Before Marth recovered from his landing, Roy shot forward like a bullet out of a gun and touched the tip of the Sword of Seals to Marth’s hitbox.

The music cut. The screen slowly faded out, much like it does upon defeating Master Hand, but it had frozen before that. Marth didn’t twitch like Master Hand did. The screen just slowly but surely faded to white, frozen on that still of Roy piercing Marth’s chest.

When the screen had reached full white, I wondered if that was it. If I was going to get a normal game now. I jolted when a sound, similar to Marth’s death cry, was played. It sounded a lot quieter and a lot less sudden.

The screen then changed, showing a ‘congratulations’ image like always when Classic mode was cleared. Normally this would show some pose or art of the character used to clear the mode with, but there were none programmed for Roy.

Instead, I was treated to a scene on Final Destination. Roy sat crouched, swordless, by a face-down Marth. I noted that while I had been fighting a red-clothed Marth, the one in the image used his default palette. The most powerful thing about the image, perhaps, was the way Roy’s hand rested on the blue-haired prince’s shoulder and that Marth’s Falchion was not in his hand, but near his head.

That told me enough. It was over. I hit A, and the game reverted to the title screen. When I headed for Classic Mode, I saw that Roy was gone and the entire roster had returned—

Except for Marth.


I’ve since replayed the game a couple of times, just killing off the roster and fighting Marth with Roy, only for the game to revert. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s impossible to unlock Marth in the version of the game that I’ve dubbed Smash Bros. Massacre. However, with my combined knowledge of these events and the Fire Emblemverse, I’ve also devised a theory on what is going on.

Spoilers, by the way.

In the second game starring Marth, one of his dear friends and a fellow ruler of their continent is corrupted by an item called the Darksphere and turned into the main antagonist for a good deal of the story. More disturbing to some fans, including myself now, is that Marth obtains this Darksphere later on in the story after killing this antagonist. It is my belief that whoever hacked the game was creatively expressing his version of what would happen if Marth had been affected by the orb’s corrupting power.

In an insanity-fuelled bloodlust, he took to killing off his fellow fighters- his friends, if we’re looking at this from the perspective of the FE version of Marth. His high ranking on the tier lists, combined with the power of the sacred sword Falchion, made him a force to be reckoned with.

But Roy had been left in the game outside Marth’s reach. I don’t know why he became available- was it symbolic for Marth's old, lost friend from his Melee days setting out to stop him? Or is it the other way around and had Marth gone to find and kill Roy? I’m still debating that one. But finally, the two come face to face and Roy puts an end to Marth’s killing spree and suffering by killing him… much like Marth did with his own friend in his own game.

…makes me wonder why the guy didn’t just write a fic. And why he sold off his game. And how many owners before me it’s had…

Thanks for the acknowledgment BP. I'm glad I could help. I look forward to seeing how it goes!

Oooh! Great job, BP! I can't wait to see where you take this! c:

Part two is done! I'll put the entire thing into the first post tomorrow so that people seeing the thread for the first time don't have to scroll past comments to read the whole thing.

UPDATE: I finally got around to putting the whole thing into the first post.

I like it! I expected a kind of creepy-pasta ending, possibly with the narrator being sucked in and brutally murdered, but nope! I wonder what would have happened if Marth had won that fight against Roy.... Good job!