Chapter Text
Prologue: The Ultimate Reboot
At the Bandai-Namco headquarters in Japan, Masahiro Sakurai and his development team were hard at work. Though the base game of Ultimate was already completed and awaiting release, they were already combing through the code to try to find any bugs that they missed, which would have to be fixed in a day one patch, and were also starting their work on DLC.
Suddenly, however, a receptionist entered the room.
“Mr. Sakurai,” the receptionist said, “someone is here to see you.”
“Whoever it is, tell them to come back later. I'm busy nerfing Greninja,” Sakurai said.
“But Mr. Sakurai, she says it's a matter of upmost importance,” the receptionist said.
Sakurai sighed, “let me guess. It's another filthy gaijin coming to whine about that Grinch thing being fake. Tell them to fuck off, and be sure to laugh in their face about the fact that Geno, Isaac, and Banjo are never going to be playable.”
“Uhh... Mr. Sakurai,” one of the programmers spoke up, “I just noticed something.”
“What is it now?” Sakurai asked.
“We're all Japanese, right?” the programmer said, “and we're all in Japan right now, right?”
“Obviously,” Sakurai said.
“And there are no native English speakers in this room right now, right?” the programmer said.
“Yes, yes. What are you getting at?” Sakurai asked.
“So... why is everyone speaking English?” the programmer said.
“Now that you mention it, I'm almost positive that I wasn't a fluent English speaker before just now,” a second programmer said.
“Also, you just called Isaac from the Golden Sun series 'Isaac', when his name here in Japan is 'Robin'. Not to be confused with Fire Emblem Robin, of course, who is called 'Reflet' here. Also, you should have said you were nerfing Gekkouga, not Grenin...” the first programmer kept talking.
“Quiet!” Sakurai said, “now, receptionist, describe the visitor who wanted to see me.”
“She looked half-foreign, half-Japanese. About early thirties. I'd say about 5'1”, a little less than 100 lbs...” the receptionist said.
“Oh, shit,” Sakurai said, “it's her.”
“Should I also bring up the fact that the receptionist just gave her height and weight in Imperial measurements, despite the fact that pretty much no one outside of the US uses them?” the first programmer chimed in.
“I'm pretty sure I told you to be quiet. Now, get back to work. I have an annoying woman with godlike powers to deal with,” Sakurai said. Then her turned to the receptionist, “might as well let her in. I have a feeling she'll barge in anyw...”
“Hey-ya, Massive Hero Soccer Guy!” Melanie said, bursting into the room.
“Called it,” Sakurai said, “also, never call me that again. What do you want?”
“Remember how you said you'd turn the entire roster into 'fifty shades of Pit' if I wrote another Mishonh story?” Melanie asked.
“Let me guess, you want to write another story without me doing that,” Sakurai said, “what's in it for me?”
“Maybe I could introduce you to my friend... George Washington?” Melanie held out a single US dollar bill.
“Yeah, that's not even worth the effort it would take to get it exchanged for yen,” Sakurai said.
“Oh? Well maybe President Washington's friend could help change your mind. Have you heard of him? His name is... George Washington,” Melanie held out a second dollar bill.
Sakurai was still not impressed with this bribe, and just stared at Melanie, confused that she could possibly have thought this would work.
“Come on! This is the only cash I have on me right now,” Melanie said.
“Aren't you literally omnipotent?” Sakurai asked, “can't you just conjure up any amount of money you want?”
“Oh... yeah, I didn't think to do that,” Melanie said, “so, how much do you want?”
“Eleventy bajillion yen,” Sakurai said.
“Uh, Mr. Sakurai, 'eleventy bajillion' isn't really a number,” Melanie said.
“Which is perfect,” Sakurai said, “because I'm not really going to accept your bribe.”
“Come on!” Melanie said, “Please?”
“No,” Sakurai said.
“Pretty please?” Melanie asked.
“No,” said Sakurai.
“I'll let you erase the Dragon Ball series and Shrek films from existence again,” Melanie said.
“Still no,” Sakurai said, “also, most of those memers have switched to bugging me about Waluigi now.”
“Are you sure that there's nothing I could give you to change your mind?” Melanie asked.
“No! I will not allow you to write one of your insipid trollfics ever again!” Sakurai said.
Melanie turned around and started to leave, dejected.
“Nah, I'm only kidding,” Sakurai said.
“Wait, what?” Melanie was taken aback.
“You should've seen the look on your face. I thought you were about to cry,” Sakurai said, laughing, “you should take note. This is how you troll someone. Just admit that I'm a better troll than you could ever hope to be, and I'll let you continue your dumb stories. Here, let me write exactly what I want you to say.”
Sakurai wrote down a message on a piece of paper and handed it to Melanie. Melanie began reading.
“I, Melanie the stupid, filthy, half-breed gaijin, am inferior to the great Masahiro Sakurai in every conceivable way. He is the greatest troll to ever live, while I am nothing but a third-rate Tara Gilesbie imitator who can't come up with anything more creative than misspelling common words as sexual innuendos or names of Pokemon. I am not even fit to eat the cat shit out of Mr. Sakurai's cat's litter box... is this really necessary?” Melanie stopped.
“Keep reading,” Sakurai said, “you're almost done.”
“Also, Isaac is a bland, dumb character from an overrated, dead series that almost no one played and I only care about because of my stupid nostalgia for games that came out when I was in high school. Piranha Plant is a much better choice for the Smash Bros roster, and anyone who disagrees is just a salty loser who needs to get a life,” Melanie said, “there, I'm done.”
“Wonderful!” Sakurai said, “now, you can do whatever you want.”
“Then let me just...” but then she stopped.
“Not that I care or anything, but you seem conflicted,” Sakurai said.
“Well, the last story ended with Sara going into a period of self-reflection. I think having her being the exact same awful person she always was three years later would kinda cheapen that,” Melanie said, “also, she'd be nineteen now. Having her be borderline-illiterate at thirteen years old in the first story strained credibility enough, but now that she'd logically be a college student...”
“Look, I can't believe I'm actually bothering to give you advice, but have you considering rebooting the series?” Sakurai asked, “it's not a universal solution. For example, I quickly ended up deciding against a reboot for Ultimate, and instead went with bringing every character back. However, it is worth considering.”
“You know what, Mr. Sakurai?” Melanie said, “that's actually a good idea. I probably should start fresh after three years away from the series. I just need to create a parallel universe to set this new continuity in. A universe where Sara and everyone she associates with are all about six years younger, to reset their ages to what they were in the first story, along with several more changes that I won't spoil in this clunky expository dialogue.”
And so Melanie snapped her fingers and this new universe she described was willed into existence.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sakurai said, “so, does that mean you'll finally leave me alone?”
“One last thing,” Melanie said, “I'm going to leave this universe to follow its own course while I pay attention to the new universe for the new story. Since I'm basically the god of both of these universes, it would be rude to just abandon the original Mishonh stories' universe without doing at least something to set it on the best possible path.”
Melanie snapped her fingers again.
“OK. So, Sakurai, how did you feel about the response to the recent Direct?” Melanie asked.
“It was great, but I feel it would've been better if those idiots over in France didn't spoil the final seven base roster newcomers about a week early... wait, why are you asking me this?” Sakurai asked.
“Certainly not because I just altered reality to make a certain fake leak real or anything,” Melanie said, “and, this might seem like a random question, but how do you feel about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door HD that came out recently for the Switch and also totally isn't something I just willed into existence?”
“I think many people were glad to see something from the Paper Mario series again, since there hasn't been a Paper Mario game since Super Paper Mario back on the Wii. However, what I'm most excited about, and the only reason I'm telling you this is because you're basically omnipotent and could easily find out anyway, is that Intelligent Systems was so thrilled by the success of this HD remake that they're going to start working on an HD combined remake of the Fire Emblem Tellius duology as soon as they finish work on Three Houses. Since I'm sure every Smash fan knows how much I love Fire Emblem, this definitely excites me,” Sakurai said.
“Glad to hear it,” Melanie said, “another thing, how is President Bernie Sanders doing?”
“Well, I admit that I'm not very knowledgeable about foreign politics, but I hear that the US is doing really well. President Sanders has already been able to improve the lives of poor and middle class Americans to the point where they no longer have to choose between eating food and paying their bills. In fact, many of them have extra money to spend on luxury items such as video games, which is really good for me. I hear that absolutely everyone in the US who wants a Switch and a copy of Ultimate will be able to afford one. Apparently, rich people are pretty upset though. I'm sure you could get a ton of mileage out of having Sara whine about his policies, right?”
“Well, now I'm just making myself wish that I had these kinds of reality-warping superpowers in the real world,” Melanie said, “there's just one more thing I need to do to create the perfect timeline...”
Melanie snapped her fingers again, and... suddenly Reggie Fils-Aime appeared from seemingly nowhere.
“That's not what I expected,” Melanie said.
“Hi! I'm just here to tell you that even your omnipotent, reality-warping author powers can't make me localize Mother 3,” Reggie said.
Melanie sighed, “well, it was worth a shot.”
“OK, that's all the time I've got. I gotta get back to playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS,” Reggie said, and then he teleported back to America.
“Wait... so if Reggie can just block my reality-warping...” Melanie turned to Sakurai.
“You didn't actually make the Grinch leak real. I was just messing with you there. That stuff about erasing Sticker Star and Color Splash from existence and making Thousand-Year-Door HD, and the Fire Emblem Tellius HD duology? Yeah, you managed to will all that to happen. You even really did make Bernie Sanders the US President in this universe,” Sakurai said, “however, I control the Smash roster, not you. Don't you forget it.”
“I guess that's all for me, then,” Melanie turned and stared at a random wall as if there was a camera there for her to talk to, “The new story, not counting this prologue, will start in December. Probably about the 20th, due to that being the sixth anniversary of when I began the first story, and because it will give me almost two weeks of Ultimate play time before I start writing. Also, all this reality-warping I just did only applies to the original timeline's universe. The new universe, where the rest of this story will be set, will obviously be much more like reality in terms of what video games and political figures exist.”
“Who are you talking to?” Sakurai asked.
“The audience,” Melanie said, “OK, now I've gotta go.”
“Wait!” Sakurai said, “at least make my team and I speak Japanese again. It'll be really awkward if we all get back home and there's suddenly a language barrier between us on our families.”
“Oh yeah, sorry. I forgot all about that,” Melanie said. She snapped her fingers again.
“Arigato, Melanie-baka,” Sakurai said, his proper language restored.
“You're welcome,” Melanie said, “and now... end chapter!”