Disclaimer - I most certainly do not own Super Smash Bros. Brawl or any of the characters within. Neither do I own the concept, nor the right to try and make a profit out of this story. I mean geez, people, I'm not that psyched about college savings…well, not yet, anyway.

This is my first story to be contributed to so I sincerely hope that it'll be all right. Flames will be discreetly ignored or laughed at, not to mention reported, so don't waste your brain cells on that kind of crap. Be a nice person and send in a civilized review instead. Constructive criticism is welcomed with open arms.

And now, on with the story!!

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

Fighting.

It was all they had ever known. It was the thing they were best at, the thing they were born with, and for. To battle, and battle, for the satisfaction of those cheering crowds they could never truly see. The impulse was natural, the reason simple, obvious.

They fought because that was what they were meant to do.

They were trophies brought to blessed, vibrant life, the standing idols of their own worlds, individuals with their own legacies. All of them had done something in the past, a distant memory, unnaturally clear but hopelessly detached. They knew, but they could not remember. It was an attached string that gave them something to recall, an insight to the thing called memory, something that did not have anything to do with fighting and fighting. They knew, but they could not remember. And they never mentioned it, never troubled over it, never questioned it. Why should they? That did not matter now.

They had been imagined, designed, and put to ground for warfare. Their existence hinted nothing else. You fought, and if you did not there were unspeakable consequences, a taboo that, when broken, inflicted the most terrible of all terrible punishments.

You were returned to the dark. The terrible, lonely, dark. Where you could not fight, or think about fighting, or even watch a battle. Where you were condemned to nothingness, to the inability to do what you wanted to the most.

You were turned back, into the lifeless trophy from whence you had emerged. And the only merciful chance of release came when a fellow fighter took pity and touched you, despite the repulsive plastic stuff from which you had been made and trapped within, despite the hideous disfiguration of your frozen, expressionless pose upon a golden base. Yes, if that fellow fighter did so, only then would you be released, only then would you be alive again. And you would be eternally grateful, and fight to your last breath as the chances came and went, so long as you need not experience such torture again.

Fighting. The lifeblood of them all.

The story that takes place here is a tale of these fighters, who knew nothing but such. There were two groups, self-formed, naturally attracting to each other, with an instinct that held each together. One of the groups were comprised of merciful fighters whom, should the enemy be reduced to the torture of trophy, would release that unfortunate of all unfortunate individuals in terms of a second chance. Then there was the other group, that comprised of other fighters, fighters who could not stand the thought of being returned to the dark. They were deadly afraid of it, but delighted in reducing their enemies to such, and would not even think once about returning those poor fools to their proper states.

So it was, and so it is now. But something shall upset the balance of things, a third group, a group of accidental chance that occurred in the blooming thoughts of a game-manufacturer's mind, idle, waiting…

But hidden no longer.