This is Princess Blaziken's request for a chapter starring the little smashers! I had a little bit of difficulty defining who exactly was a "little smasher," but I settled on Ness, Lucas, Nana, Popo, and Toon Link. I seem to have a thing for groups of five…

Disclaimer: oh lordy, I don't own SSBB, anything at all affiliated with any superhero mentioned in this chapter, or Professor Layton (from which I got all the puzzles/riddles/whatever you want to call them in this chapter, with the exception of Marth's, which came from something but I can't remember what). I think that's it. If there's something I forgot, I don't own it either.

Of the many trees in the field surrounding the Smash Mansion, only one was perfect for a treehouse: a tall oak, with a thick, straight trunk, and powerful limbs branching outward, leaving a large, empty space at the center of it all. It looked nearly like something out of Lord of the Rings.

In that central gap was built a clubhouse, about the size of a small bedroom, with a low ceiling that was perfect for the little smashers. For them, it was a sort of secret getaway, and over their time spent there they filled it with a number of things: a set of folding chairs and a picnic table to match; a long, low dresser (though how they got that up the ladder no one could ever tell) in which they kept everything from board games to treats smuggled from the kitchen. Elaborate drawings of things from the respective worlds of the little smashers covered what available wall space there was.

The three walls that didn't have a door built into them had windows instead, to let in natural light. Butterflies liked to flit in and out of the window, occasionally congregating in the middle of the clubhouse in a colourful explosion, much to the amusement of Lucas, Ness, Toon Link, Nana and Popo.

The five liked to meet in the clubhouse on the days they didn't have to brawl to choose what they wanted to do. One day, it was superheroes.

"And then Superman swooped in and saved her!" cried Ness, raving about the movie he'd just seen. "It was amazing!"

"I like Batman," Lucas put in. "The Dark Knight is cool!"

"Ooh, and Spiderman!" Popo cheered, mimicking shooting webs from his wrists.

"We should play superheroes today," Nana suggested.

This was met with resounding approval. "We could be…the Justice League of the Smash Mansion," Ness said, beaming with pride at the clichéd ingeniousness of the name.

And so, it was decided that Ness would be Superman and Lucas would be Batman; Popo was adamant about being Spiderman, while Nana had her heart set on Wonder Woman. Only Toon Link was left.

"C'mon, Toon Link," Ness urged, "you pick a superhero too!"

Toon Link shifted uncomfortably in his folding chair. "I don't want to be a superhero."

Ness's jaw dropped. "What? Why?"

Toon Link shrugged. "Because I'm already a hero." Then he grinned. "I want to be a supervillain."

Everyone beamed at that, and after much delliberation, Toon Link settled on a classic Batman villain: the Riddler.

"Okay!" Toon Link stood up and walked over to the dresser. Out of the top drawer he pulled a timer; he placed it on the table and set it for one hour. "When this goes off, come track me down in my lair!"

The four remaining in the treehouse passed the time by playing Chutes and Ladders. They got through a game and a half before the timer went off, scaring Nana, who happened to be the nearest to it. She recovered quickly, and they were all out the door and on the ground in no time.

"All right," Ness said, puffing out his chest and putting on his best Man-of-Steel look, "the Riddler has stolen a precious treasure and we," he paused for effect, "the Justice League of the Smash Mansion, must get it back!"

Everyone cheered.

"So, how are we gonna go around and look for clues?"

Lucas was quick to answer Popo's question. "We'll take my Batmobile!" He put out his hands as if to hold a steering wheel. "Come on!"

Ness, Popo, and Nana lined up behind him and each put their hands on the one in front of them. Then, the makeshift Batmobile sped off through the grass.

It wasn't long before they came across their first clue: a folded slip of paper tacked to a tree at eye level. Lucas took it down and read it out.

"If yesterday's day after tomorrow is Sunday, what day is tomorrow's day before yesterday?"

"That's tough," Popo stated. "I don't know the answer." He looked around at his companions; they all shrugged or shook their heads. "Well, that's it then." Just as they were about to admit defeat, however, their saviour showed up.

"Hey, guys!" Pit smiled, jogging up to the little group. "What are you up to?"

"We're the Justice League of the Smash Mansion and we're chasing after the Riddler!" Ness announced. "But…we can't figure out the riddle."

"Well that's no fun. Here, let me have a look." Pit held out his hand, and Lucas passed him the paper. Pit read it once, twice, and then a third time very slowly, tracing shapes in the air with his finger. Finally, he produced a scrap of paper and a pencil from his pocket and marked out seven boxes in a row, labelling each one a day of the week. He made a few additional marks, and then presented it to the three younger boys and Nana.

"See here," he began. "If yesterday's day after tomorrow is Sunday," he pointed at the box marked as Sunday, "then yesterday is Friday," he hopped back two squares to Friday, "and today is Saturday. Follow?"

There was a moment of silence as the little smashers processed this, and then Pit received four nods of confirmation. He continued on.

"Okay, so that means tomorrow is Sunday, and Sunday's day before yesterday is…?"

Nana got it first. "Friday!"

"Yes!"

"But what does it mean?" Popo asked.

Everyone was stumped. Pit looked back at the page in his hand, and flipped it over. Written on the backside was the word "clue." He looked up and around, and noticed several more trees in the area, all with papers tacked to them.

"Guys," the angel instructed, "check these other papers and see if there's something written on one of them."

The little smashers spread out and checked the trees, and Lucas was the one lucky enough to go to the right tree first. "This paper says 'Friday!'" he called.

Ness ran up beside his friend, took the paper off the tree, unfolded it, and groaned. "It's another calendar puzzle."

While everyone else was annoyed, Pit looked eager. "Let's hear it!"

"'If seven days after seventy days ago was a Sunday, seven days before seventy days from today is what day of the week?"

Pit's eyes seemed to bug out of his head. "Whoa…uh, let me think on that one."

Ness, Lucas, Nana, and Popo watched with amusement as Pit, with a screwed up face, counted things out on his fingers and mumbled to himself. Then, he took his scrap of paper again and wrote something on it, studied it, wrote something else down, looked at it sideways, and then finally said, "It's Sunday."

"Wow!" Lucas was impressed. "How did you figure it out?"

Pit waved dismissively. "Too complicated for you. It has to do with multiples of seven."

"I don't know what those are…"

"Exactly my point. Now, was there a tree with a paper that said 'Sunday?'"

Nana was the one to get up and go over to the tree to retrieve the paper. She unfolded it and looked at it before turning back, upset. "It's blank!"

Popo rushed to his sister's side and confirmed what she'd said. "Now what?"

"I know!" Ness cried. "Let's look in the tree! Pit, gimme a boost!"

The angel complied, airlifting Ness into the tree. The psychic boy shuffled around up there before yelling, "Jackpot!" and jumping down to earth. He passed Pit the green cloth-wrapped bundle he'd retrieved, saying, "This was up there, and one of Toon Link's arrows pointing at the mansion."

Nana took the bundle from the angel and unwrapped it. Inside was a cookie.

"What does it mean?" Lucas asked while Ness and Popo eyed the cookie hungrily.

"Well, think!" Pit prompted. "Where in the mansion do we get cookies?"

"The kitchen!" Ness exclaimed.

"Let's go!" cried Lucas, and they all ran off, Nana passing the green cloth back to Pit. The angel fingered it.

"Funny…this feels just like the material Link's hat is made of…I'd say it was Toon Link's but this green is too dark to be his. Hmm…"

In the kitchen, conveniently enough, was a large plate of chocolate chip cookies on a table near the door with a roll of paper sticking out the top. Ness took it and unrolled it.

"What does it say?" asked Nana, hardly able to contain her excitement.

"It says…RHB, with two little lines after. Kinda like an equal sign."

"Here," Pit held out his hand. Popo handed him the paper trying to roll back in on itself. He held it open and examined it. The writing was terribly messy, and the lines looked almost like they could be…

"It's an equation!" Pit yelled suddenly. He produced his paper and pencil again and rewrote out the numbers, careful to keep his handwriting clear. "It's not RHB, it's 121-113!"

"Eight!" Lucas chirped. Pit gave him the thumb's up.

"So now that we have the answer," Nana said, "what do we do with it?"

"Maybe there's something we're supposed to count," Popo offered.

"Like the cookies?"

"Nah, there're too many of them."

"Well, then what?"

"There must be something numbered we're supposed to count."

"The weapons are numbered!" Nana exclaimed.

"Oh, yeah!" Popo agreed. "Like our hammers are."

"Your hammers are numbered?" Ness asked, disbelieving.

Nana explained: "Yes, well…we have more than one pair, so the pairs are numbered to keep track of them."

"Bombs and things are numbered as well," Popo put in. "I think arrows are too."

"Mine aren't," Pit said, "but Toon Link's might be. Let's go check them for the Riddler's next clue!"

In the weapons room, which appeared to be closet size but was really much bigger, Toon Link's number eight arrow was located with relative ease, in a quiver on a shelf not far from the door. Tied onto the shaft of the arrow was another rolled up page. Popo unrolled it.

"Hey!" he gasped. "There are two riddles here."

"Read the first one," Ness prompted.

"A woman says, 'I'm trying to shoo the birds away from these power lines. Each time I clap my hands, half of them fly away, but one comes back and the number of birds always ends up right back where it started!' So, how many birds were on the power lines to start with?"

After a minute, Nana was the first to think of something. "Well, if half fly away but one comes back and the number is back where it started, half must be one."

"And the total must be two!" Popo finished.

Ness spoke again. "Now what's the next one?"

Popo read: "According to a survey, there's one place in the Smash Mansion where there is a higher average of injured people throughout the year. Where?"

"The stadium?" Nana offered uncertainly.

Lucas scratched his head. "I don't remember a survey…"

Pit asked, "Any other ideas?"

No one answered.

"Alright then. To the stadium!"

The stadium, without its roaring crowd and colourful sets for brawls, was little more than an empty platform in the middle of rising rows of empty seats. But despite its size, it took the Justice League of the Smash Mansion and Pit less than a half hour to completely search it, and their efforts yielded nothing.

"I don't get it," Popo gasped, collapsing into the nearest chair. "We searched…everything…"

"We're in the wrong place," Pit said, landing next to the Ice Climber, "but where else could we look?"

Nana finally voiced something that had been puzzling her ever since they'd entered the stadium. "I think…I think that even if the stadium is where we get injured the most, it's not—"

"It's not where the injured stay!" Pit finished, hopping back into the air and swooping around. "C'mon guys, let's go to the infirmary!"

The group had much better luck in the infirmary. Following the clue given by the lady with the birds puzzle, they located the bed second from the door and found an envelope lying on the bed sheet. Ness got it first, and dumped all the contents on the floor back out in the hallway. The ripped pieces of paper that fell out all had fragments of writing on them.

Lucas had two of the fragments in his hands and was examining them closely. "What do they mean?" he whispered.

Ness took the papers from his friend. "We have to put them together, like a puzzle. This is a job for the Man of Steel!"

The "Man of Steel" was not really up to the task. The other four allowed Ness to fuddle around with the scraps for a full five minutes before Nana and Popo stepped in, orienting the pieces and completing the note in no time. Ness looked put out.

Lucas read the note: "It says: 'Come to my room,' but 'room' is scribbled out. 'Lair' is written under it."

"We should go to Toon Link's—I mean, the Riddler's lair then!" Popo announced, standing up and walking off. The others followed, Lucas and Pit bringing up the rear. Lucas was having some doubts, and voiced as much to the angel.

"Um…Pit?"

"Yeah?" replied Pit. "What's up?"

Lucas fiddled with his hands nervously. "I just noticed…the riddles aren't really riddles, they're more puzzles." Being a true fan of Batman, Lucas couldn't let this slide.

"Hmm, I guess you're right," Pit agreed, but then dismissed it. "Toon Link must've just got it confused."

"I guess…" Lucas was not convinced. "But I have a feeling…I think someone who isn't Toon Link is leaving the puzzles."

Pit stopped dead, and Lucas walked right into his leg. The angel turned and squatted down beside the little psychic boy. "I've been thinking the same thing! The green cloth the cookie was in is a different kind of material than the kind Toon Link has. The green is too dark."

"And the puzzles!" Lucas chirped, excited now and bouncing on his heels. "They're not at all like what Toon Link would come up with!"

"Yeah, they're too complicated."

"So what do we do now?"

Pit stood up and scratched his head. "Well…I guess we keep going. This thing's gotta lead somewhere eventually!"

Lucas nodded eagerly, then ran off down the hall, excited to get to the bottom of it all.

Outside Toon Link's room, the group ran into a snag: the door was locked.

"No sweat!" Pit said, kneeling and pulling out a bobby pin. "Link showed me how it's done."

It wasn't long before a loud, satisfying click sounded, and Pit opened the door. Inside on the bed was a hastily scribbled and slightly crumpled note next to a pocket calculator. Lucas picked up the paper. "It says 101 x 5."

Ness punched the equation into the calculator. "The answer is 505," he said.

"Five hundred and five," Popo repeated. "What do we do with that?"

"I'm pretty sure there's not five hundred and five of anything in the mansion," Nana said, frowning.

"Let me see." Pit held out his hand and Ness handed him the calculator. The angel's blue eyes narrowed as he studied the blockish numbers, before getting very wide. "Holy Palutena…"

"What is it, what is it?" Ness, Lucas, Nana, and Popo all urged anxiously.

Pit looked worried as he revealed, "Toon Link needs help."

"What!" Ness gasped. "How can you tell?"

"Look."

Pit held out the calculator, and the younger ones peered at it. And one by one, they realized that the sharp, straight-lined numbers could be interpreted, not as 505, but as SOS.

"Oh my gosh," Lucas wailed, "what could've happened?"

The little boy's sick worry was contagious, and soon Pit was the only one in the room with the closest thing to rational thinking, given the circumstances. He quickly regained control of the situation.

"So here's what we'll do," he addressed the little audience. "We'll go talk to Marth."

"Why?"

"Well," Pit began in response to Nana's query, "based on experience, I think that even if Marth isn't behind it all, he'll know who is."

As Popo, Nana, Ness, and Lucas watched, Pit knocked on Marth's door. At first, there was no answer, but when Pit made to pick the lock Marth snapped, "If you break in here, I swear to the goddess I will slice you to ribbons."

"But we need to talk to you," Pit complained. "Something's happened to Toon Link!"

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Pit blinked stupidly. "Wha…what?"

Marth's smooth voice came again through the door: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

"Because they both start with R!" Ness announced proudly.

"Wrong."

"What!"

"Wait," Pit commanded just as Popo was about to answer, "this is a trick question. We have to think it through!"

They thought it through and through again, and the increasingly ridiculous answers were wearing on Marth's patience considerably, so that finally he said, "You've only got one more guess, so guess right!"

The four boys and Nana, mentally exhausted, were about ready to give up.

"This is stupid!" Pit yelled at the closed door. "A raven and a writing desk aren't alike at all!"

"Correct."

Pit's jaw dropped all the way to the floor.

"And as a reward," Marth continued, "here's a hint for you: on one of these doors is a recently installed keypad lock. To open it, follow these instructions: open with a two, but leave the four. Oh, and just so you know, pressing just the two button and leaving the four untouched won't work."

"Wait, what?" Ness said, placing his hands on either side and shaking his head. "Can you repeat that?"

"Sorry, your time has run out. Please try again later."

Pit was about to yell some choice insults at the Altean through the door when Ness called, "I found the door with the keypad!"

Sure enough, in the place of a doorknob was a keypad made up of the numbers 1 through 15, arranged numerically in five rows of three. Pit, however, noticed something rather odd about just whose door it was.

"Hang on, this is Link's…room…" Pit trailed off. "It all makes sense now."

"How do we open the door?" Ness asked, eyeing the keypad.

"I guess we try things," Nana suggested.

Try things they did. They tried every combination they could think of that involved pressing only two buttons and leaving the four button untouched, which totalled 182 combinations. Eventually Pit, running out of ideas, pushed several buttons that when lit up formed a two and left four buttons untouched. To his and everyone's delight, the door opened and Toon Link ran out and tackled Ness and Lucas screaming, "You guys really did come to save me!"

At the same time as Link appeared in his doorway, Ike opened his door and walked over. "What's going on?"

"Link, you jerk!" Pit yelled, running at the Hylian, but not getting very far before being jerked back by Ike grabbing the collar of his shirt.

"I think we should let him explain first," Ike said. The little smashers on the floor were feeling quite dumbfounded, and Pit was trying to recover from being choked by his shirt, so no one objected.

"It was simple, really," Link leaned his shoulder against the door frame. "I caught Toon Link not far from your little clubhouse, convinced him to tell me the plan, and then I kidnapped him and left my own trail of clues to lead you here! Unfortunately, the little squirt dropped some of his own without me noticing, but I guess even though I ripped up his note you all still figured it out."

"And just so you know," Marth said, his sudden appearance causing everyone to jump, "I was not part of Link's plan. Anything I did I did of my own free will."

"Well then you could've been more direct with your hints," Pit grumbled.

Marth grinned crookedly. "But that's no fun!"

"I'm confused…" Lucas mumbled.

Toon Link explained: "It was all just a big joke. And by the way," he turned to Link, "the Riddler uses riddles, not puzzles. Have you been playing too much Professor Layton?"

"Shut up, squirt!"

Long chapter is long. I think I went overboard. Oh well.

Also, I think I'm the one who's been playing too much Professor Layton, not Link.

Please review!