maspers-reads-subspace

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Previously: The Oddness Gets Odder

Chapter 5: Enter The Bad Guys

Hmmm... *reaches back up to my intro post to grab that Ace Attorney image*

I swear you can get so much mileage out of Ace Attorney exclamations

Before we delve any further into the tumultuous territory of Chapters 5 and 6, we need to talk about the double-edged sword that is rewriting fanfiction. The concept is simple. Imagine you're a fanfiction writer, and you've been writing this fanfiction for a while. It started off as a small project, but now it's grown into something you're quite proud of. You look at your most recent chapters and go "heck yeah, this is good, I'm definitely doing my best work here!" and that's all well and good. But then you go back and reread the first chapters in the work, and oof. Did you really used to write like this? Talk about cringe. Looking back, there's so much you could have done to make it better.

So you decide to go back and rewrite the older chapters to match up with your current standards. This is perfectly reasonable! It's fanfic, not a book, so you can just go on and edit the chapters! No big deal, once you're done the story will be a whole lot better, since it'll be keeping its consistent quality all the way through. In theory, the process should be something like, uh, this. Kinda.

Look graphic design is NOT my passion just bear with me okay

As you can see, when the rewrite is complete, they'll connect directly to the current "good" chapters and ensure the story is ALL good. But when an author is rewriting part of a fic, they usually don't want to seem like they've vanished off the face of the earth during the rewrite process, they'll often update the rewritten chapters individually as they're complete. Now, if the author is careful, this isn't too much of a problem, especially if they inform the readers this is happening. Sure, the adjustment from the rewritten chapter to the next original chapter can be a bit jarring, but as long as the plot is about the same as it was before, you should be fine. A theoretical reader can still understand everything and experience the fic roughly as intended. A good example of this is Dimensional Links by ChangelingRin. The fic's rewriting is currently incomplete, but while this does result in one mini-arc getting repeated due to the slightly different pacing in the rewrite, you can shift from the rewritten chapters to the unrewritten chapters without too much difficulty. The plots of the original and rewritten chapters are the same, the characters go through the same arcs, and while you can definitely tell which stuff the author decided to add/polish in the rewrites it still doesn't affect the reading experience of the later chapters. It's still the same story, roughly.

The author of Worlds Conquest, by contrast, wanted to try something different. There were certain aspects of the early arcs he wanted to drastically change, so that they'd be in theory better than the original less-good plot beats. Since Worlds Conquest is such a behemoth of a fic, in theory changing a huge early chunk wouldn't be too much of a problem, since it won't have too much of a change on the later arcs. So the end result would be something like, uh, this:

Shout-out to the color orange, it's one of my favorites.

In theory, these "revamped" chapters could have a drastically different plot to the originals, as long as they eventually reach the same endpoint and connect back up to the recent chapters. It'll result in a better story, right? Well, if you can complete the rewriting and revamping, sure, but in the case of Worlds Conquest, the rewrite was never completed. It didn't even approach completion. And while the previous chapters we've covered didn't diverge in any significant way from the plot of the original chapters, when it comes to Chapters 5 and 6, well...

Noooooo all that orange, lost to the abyss, whyyyyyyy

What I'm trying to say is, Chapters 5 and 6 are when the author started trying to diverge the plot a little, but since the rewrite stopped after Chapter 6, all of those divergences get abruptly rendered non-canon. It's not quite as bad as I make it sound; two chapters is hardly enough for any huge plot changes. Mostly the divergences have to do with characters. There's a whole bunch of characters that make their debuts in this fic in Chapter 5 (and a couple in Chapter 6), in a completely different context to what their debuts in the original chapters are. In fact, just about all of them weren't originally introduced in Chapters 5 and 6 at all, instead making their first appearances much later on in the story.

The broad strokes of the plot in chapters 5 and 6 are about the same as what I recall the original chapters being, and the disjoint between chapters 6 and 7 occurs when the plot is transitioning to the next arc anyway. So we don't need to worry too much about what little plot divergence there is. I just wanted to point out that a LOT of stuff in this segment is essentially not canon.

...Wow this explanation took way longer than expected. I need to remember that my summaries need to be shorter than the chapters they're about, lol. Onward!

Chapter 5: Enter The Bad Guys (for real this time)

Pictured above is Saturn Valley, as depicted in the fangame Super Smash Flash 2 because EarthBound's graphics suck. Most gamers likely know Mr. Saturn as that one weird and mostly useless item in the Smash Bros. series, but these quirky fellas are a recurring presence in the Mother series. Despite their bizarre manner of speech and odd behaviors, Mr. Saturns are surprisingly technologically adept, and help create some pretty plot-important machinery later on in Ness's adventure.

Chris, Lucario, and the EarthBound party members are welcomed by Mr. Saturn into Saturn Valley, where they're promised a chance to rest from their labors. However, despite Chris's condition, the group is still skeptical and investigate a bit. After talking with the Mr. Saturns a bit more, they learn that recently a significant amount of the Mr. Saturns have been going missing. Since none of the local wildlife eats Mr. Saturns, Ness and company conclude the Giygas is probably responsible (and players of the original EarthBound, like Chris and Lucario, know that they're probably right). But strangely, when Lucario activates his Aura Vision to try and find traces of Giygas's forces or the Subspace Army, nothing comes up. So the group decides to split up and try to hunt down some more leads.

Chris, unfortunately, is still really out of it, so he and Lucario try to figure out a way for him to rest up and take it easy. Fortunately, the Mr. Saturns have a solution: a magic hot spring! Chris and Lucario have never tried a hot spring bath before, but as certified anime geeks they definitely understand the basics. This leads to an awkwardly extended sequence where Chris and Lucario bicker about getting Chris's clothes all wet and whether or not Chris should strip, which the Mr. Saturns insist he shouldn't. You'd think that would resolve the issue immediately but nope it goes on for a while. Even when they finally get INTO the hot spring (clothes intact) this leads to another conversation about the hot spring-related anime tropes (you know which one), which then leads to a conversation about romantic partners. Eventually they conclude that while they have no idea what they want in terms of future love interests, they can agree that right now they're just really happy that they get to spend time together in these hot springs. So I guess I'll just add another tally on the "Chris and Lucario unintentionally acting gay for each other" board.

The Saturn Valley hot spring! Its magical pink waters can heal your party up to full health in just a couple seconds, which is really helpful... but the very FIRST time you use it in-game, it triggers a three-minute-long unskippable cutscene where nothing happens except narration panning across the screen giving you words of encouragement. Which is nice in theory but aggravating in practice. Of course, Chris and Lucario would probably take a vaguely contemplative soliloquy over what happens to them instead...

Unfortunately for Chris and Lucario, they start to fall asleep. Chris realizes too late that normally that's not something you're supposed to do in a hot spring, and that means the water must be drugged. The last thing he sees before passing out is a horde of Mr. Saturns surrounding him and Lucario...

We cut back to Ness, Paula, and Jeff, who are finally reuniting after what's presumably an hour or so of Mr. Saturn-related antics. The three of them swap accounts of how they've been minorly inconvenienced by the Mr. Saturns and their weird behavior, but it's all harmless enough so they don't see any red flags yet. As they meander around in search of Chris and Lucario so they can meet up with the duo, they notice another of Ness's "My Sanctuary" locations nearby, but decide to check it out later (spoilers: we don't get to see them check this one out either).

Soon, they find Lucario floating face-down, in a hot spring, alone. After a brief panic, the trio heave Lucario out of the water. This takes some effort since Lucario is significantly heavier than they are (Ness compares Lucario's weight to that of some cops he beat up once, long story). Lucario thankfully hasn't drowned, and upon being roused the group very quickly determines what happened: the Mr. Saturns drugged Chris and Lucario with the hot spring, and while both were passed out, Chris was kidnapped.

Ness, Paula, and Jeff attempt to calm Lucario down. They fail. Upon realizing that Chris is missing and not showing up anywhere on the Aura radar, Lucario goes berserk and explodes in a frenzy of Aura and rage. He then proceeds to get started on rampaging through Saturn Valley, and when Ness and co try to stop him, he flings them into the hot springs so they don't get in his way.

The story cuts back to Chris, who awakens to find himself in a cage dangling from the ceiling in an unknown location. As he awakens and starts to panic (yeah, he panics a lot, don't worry he'll get better at not doing this as the story goes on) he's soon greeted by his captors. The first of which is the iconic EarthBound enemy: Master Belch.

Master Belch, later on called Master Barf, one of EarthBound's more iconic enemies. He's a massive pile of sentient vomit animated by Giygas, and is exactly as disgusting and evil as you'd expect a massive pile of sentient vomit animated by Giygas to be. He's smarter than he looks, and extremely dangerous, but he has one crucial weakness: Fly Honey. Well, that and PK Starstorm, but everyone is weak to PK Starstorm.

The other villains introduced here are probably one of the most significant points of divergence that happen in chapters 5 and 6, before they'll get retconned into not happening as we jump back to the originally written story chapters. While I can't remember all the details, I'm pretty sure that the main representative of the Subspace Army during the EarthBound arc was our good ol' buddy the Ancient Minister (I could be misremembering, but I can't think of who else it could be at this point). This makes some amount of sense, considering we saw a Subspace Bomb earlier, and in the original The Subspace Emissary story mode the Minister was the one responsible for deploying Subspace Bombs. From what I can vaguely recall, in the original story the Minister mostly did what he always does: hung back and let the waves of Subspace Enemies do the talking for him. While the Ancient Minister plotted in the background, Master Belch took center stage, using the Minister's Shadow Bugs to power himself up and become the main threat for the heroes to face. This would culminate in the heroes doing what heroes do best and storming the enemy headquarters, blowing Belch to smithereens, and saving the day. Chris would then try to ask the Ancient Minister why he betrayed the Smashers, but the Minister would just nope out of there without answering, end of story. Pretty simple plot, but this was the first story arc, where the characters are still figuring things out, so simple is good.

In this rewritten chapter, things are different. Because now the Ancient Minister is nowhere to be seen, and instead the Subspace Army's representatives are THESE guys:

I dyed them purple and gave them evil glowing eyes so you can tell they're supposed to be cloaked in shadows or whatever. Going clockwise from the far left: Sonic, Roy, Mewtwo, Wolf, Lucario (from Super Smash Bros. Brawl), and Pichu. Don't worry, them being evil is temporary and subject to change, particularly when the events of these chapters get retconned out of existence.

Yup. Suddenly, a group of evilized Smashers, corrupted by Tabuu to serve them and be a recurring Rogue's Gallery for the Gathering Arc. It seemed like the Author was trying to address something he saw as a problem in the original version of the story's first arc: the fact that it was mostly just Chris and Lucario jumping from world to world and dealing with occasional Subspace incursions, with significantly less presence from the actual Smash Bros. cast until the whole party gets gathered. The solution was to have the revamped chapters have these shadow-infested Smashers be the main antagonists of the arc. Based on the events of this chapter, it seemed like the general trend was going to involve them showing up, getting bested by the heroes, and having one of them get the shadows beaten out of them so they can join the good guys sooner. This way we get the party together faster, plus we get more overt Subspace presence instead of the Ancient Minister scheming in the background and not really doing much.

And I will admit, if the author of Worlds Conquest had managed to follow through on this revamped Gathering Arc, his choice of villains made sense. As previously established, Roy, Pichu, and Mewtwo didn't make the jump from Melee to Brawl, so they're available on the side for the writer to do whatever with. Wolf and Sonic were in Brawl (in fact that was their Smash debut) but Wolf wasn't a part of the plot of the Subspace Emissary story mode at all, and Sonic didn't show up in it until the very very end, so that puts them in a similar boat to the Melee-exclusive trio where new plots can easily be designed for them. And lastly, the original Lucario from the Smash Bros. series is perfectly primed for a villain arc. After all, it's like he's been "replaced" by Chris's Lucario, who probably outmatches him in every respect. It makes sense he'd want revenge, right?

Shame all of this completely contradicts how these characters were introduced in the original Gathering Arc plot, aka the only Gathering Arc plot starting from chapter 7. So like. Once we get to Chapter 7, you can just forget any of these characters were here, okay?

Chris naturally freaks out, and it turns out he's not the only one unhappy about this situation; the bad guys are too. After a brief discussion, it's revealed that the Mr. Saturns kidnapped the wrong guy. They were supposed to capture Ness. After all, Ness is the lynchpin needed in order to defeat Giygas, so if he can be defeated early then that means that Giygas's forces will be available for Subspace to use. But since Chris still has his PK Kid Job active, he's wearing Ness's clothes. The Mr. Saturns only had a basic description to go off of, so they just settled on the easier target: Chris.

There's an extended sequence where the villains bicker amongst themselves, and in the process confirm their location (Master Belch's factory, the same one from the original game) and that they've apparently been using Mewtwo's psychic power to hide from Lucariou's Aura sight and Ness's PSI abilities. They decide to just keep Chris locked up for now, and leave, with Roy standing guard outside after explaining to Chris that he and the others have been corrupted by Shadow Bugs to serve Tabuu.

Interestingly, I think this the first time we get to see the title Chris will eventually become known by later on in the fic: The World Traveler. The narration apparently slips up and calls him that by accident. He's not supposed to be called that until a bit later. I guess getting the plot point timeline mixed up is just another danger of rewrites.

So we finally cut back to Saturn Valley. Ness wakes up to see-

Pictured: Saturn Valley, after Lucario was done with it.

Yup, Lucario has pretty much decimated the place. Eventually Ness is able to locate Lucario and calm him down, and Paula and Jeff wake up. While Lucario continues to seethe in the corner, we get to see Ness do some proper protagonist-ing as he quickly puts together the pieces of what happened. After interrogating a Mr. Saturn, Ness learns pretty much everything I said earlier. Chris was mistaken for Ness and kidnapped, and taken to Master Belch's factory. We also learn why the Mr. Saturns tried to kidnap Ness: because most of their population is being held captive and forced to work in Master Belch's factory, just like in canon. Though in this case they agreed to trade Ness for their fellow Mr. Saturns.

Ness is downright furious, and threatens to go on a rampage of his own, but then he realizes that his shouting could send Lucario into another berserker rage, and promptly shifts gears.

This may come as a surprise to many, but despite his design being based on that of a stereotypical American boy, Ness DOES have a self-preservation instinct. That's how you know this is fiction. Well, that and the psychic aliens.

So the group heads off in the direction of... Grapefruit Falls, since The main waterfall is hiding the entrance to Master Belch's factory. Along the way, their interrupted by a gust of wind, which is soon revealed to be the result of a spontaneous PSI Teleport. The new arrival is someone genuinely unexpected: it's EarthBound's fourth main character, Poo, the Crown Prince of Dalaam.

Poo is the Prince of Dalaam, the last of the Chosen Four, and one of the top contenders for "Most Unfortunate Main Character Name in Nintendo History". Poo is very much the monk archetype he appears to be, using expert martials arts and meditation to hone his PSI power, and treating his role as a chosen one with utmost seriousness. To counteract his greater skill compared to the others, Poo has stricter requirements about what items he can and can't use. Poo is also the first person in the franchise to use PK Starstorm, which would eventually become Ness's and Lucas's Final Smash in the Smash Bros. series.

Poo is actually far ahead of schedule. He hasn't completed his training yet, and in the game he doesn't join the group until a few mini-arcs after this. He hurries to explain that the reason he's here early is because he had a vision about the Subspace Army, and arrived to lend his assistance against them. The Subspace Army isn't supposed to be here, and while Poo isn't fully trained yet he does have the ability to sniff them out, even though Lucario can't (it's because Poo can recognize the planet's life energy and how the psychic powers in the factory are mimicking it. Lucario's not a native to the world so he can't discern between the normal life energy and the fake, but Poo's been studying this stuff his entire life, and can notice the difference immediately). But once the Subspace Army is dealt with, Poo's going to head back home to finish his training so that he can join Ness at full strength later on.

With Poo's help, the group is easily able to locate the factory entrance, which they then explode through with gusto. Lucario barges ahead, happy to have a real target for his rage, and starts wrecking the factory to search for Chris. Meanwhile, the Chosen Four, continue through the factory at a slower pace, trying to figure out what's going on and cleaning up whatever enemies Lucario leaves behind.

The four of them have a brief encounter with Sonic, which ends almost as soon as it begins when they trick him into spin dashing over a guardrail and into a pit. They run into Wolf next, and while he puts up more of a fight than Sonic does, he's still one against four. Paula and Poo immobilize him with PK Freeze, and the group moves on.

As they take a brief respite from the chaos, the Chosen Four briefly discuss how terrified they are by the situation. While it's not exactly relevant to the overarching plot of Worlds Conquest, it is pretty neat to see the author examine what it must be like for these four kids to be placed in such an insane situation. Ness and Paula bond over their experiences with having to learn PSI, and while Jeff and Poo can't weigh in as much (Jeff doesn't have PSI and Poo just met them all) they still lend some words of encouragement. It's easy to see how these four will eventually grow into the Chosen Four, a well-oiled machine of a team who can and will destroy Giygas at the end of the game. It speaks to the author's love of the game that he has this moment. That's one thing I love about this fanfiction in general: even if the quality is spotty at times, you can't deny that the author genuinely appreciates every single game he incorporates into the story. The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest is a labor of love, and it's brief humanizing moments like this that prove it.

Side note: One thing I dislike about this rewritten chapter is that now the Factory basically only amounts to brief encounters with the main villains, with very little presence from the EarthBound villains. Specifically, in the original chapter the factory was infested with Foppies, enemies that filled the factory in the original game in droves. Foppies are a menace because they appear in extremely large numbers, and while they were mostly played for comedic effect they did a great job of being an obstacle Lucario had trouble dealing with simply because of how MANY there were, and the group needed to come up with clever ways of dealing with them and escaping the horde. With Lucario just smashing his way through the factory seemingly uncontested, a lot of the dramatic tension is lessened. ...Also I just think Foppies are funny and the one good thing to come out of Grapefruit Falls. So their removal disappoints me.

We cut back to Chris and Roy, who are listening to the roars of Lucario in the distance. Chris is ecstatic. Roy is terrified. With good reason, as soon Pichu's unconscious form is blasted through the door, covered in flaming Aura that purges the Shadow Bugs from him. Master Belch soon arrives, and he and Roy have a brief argument as they try to figure out what's going on. They'd figured that the Chosen Four would arrive eventually to rescue their friend, but nobody expected the overpowered Lucario. This isn't even Pokemon world! They couldn't plan for this! Belch even points out that the Subspace Smashers are even more useless than his regular security (see, they should have kept the Foppies!) and is subsequently proven right when the evil Lucario is launched through the door after Pichu, smashing directly into his head.

As Shadow Lucario picks himself off the ground, Belch reforms himself and decides he's going to take care of things himself. He's clearly fed up with the Subspace Smashers at this point, so when he proceeds to press a button that starts to slowly submerge the room in in stomach acid, he doesn't particularly care if the other villains get caught in it. Between Master Belch's acid and Lucario's distant rampaging, the factory continues to lose structural stability... until the sounds of destruction halt and Mewtwo enters the room with Lucario held tightly in his psychic grasp. Eeyup. Apparently even Lucario's overpowered status isn't enough to beat a Legendary Pokemon.

Unfortunately for Mewtwo, as he enters the room he makes the mistake of monologuing about how he's clearly the only sane person here... and inhales some of the fumes from the vomit acid. He gags, and Lucario takes advantage of the moment to escape Mewtwo's psychic hold and blast his way over to Chris's cage, freeing him. The two happily rejoice in being reunited.

Mewtwo is furious at being caught off guard, and he and Master Belch turn on each other, arguing and blasting each other with psychokinesis and acid. But this only proves to distract them further, and when the Chosen Four explode their way into the room, Mewtwo is caught in the blast and sent flying. When Master Belch tries to take advantage of the confusion to attack Ness, Ness responds with the same tactic he uses in the game: distracting Master Belch with Fly Honey while the rest of the group barrages Belch and reduces him to a dead smear on the floor. RIP Belch, I guess.

At this point, Roy decides it's time for a tactical retreat. He summons up some dark portals, and he and the other Subspace Smashers depart from the world of EarthBound, leaving Pichu behind. The acid is hurriedly cleaned up, and after briefly introducing Poo and Chris to one another they group of heroes escapes the collapsing factory successfully, with the freed Mr. Saturns and an unconscious Pichu in tow.

They escape out of a back tunnel and exit... right next to the hot spring. If they had just found that tunnel beforehand, the rescue of Chris would have been a lot less complicated, whoops. Celebrations are also dampened by the fact that Chris still hasn't figured out how to reverse his de-aging effect to return to being a teenager. Poo ponders on this for a moment, examines Chris, then uses PSI Healing. This successfully manages to undo the effect of the Malfunctioning Subspace Bomb, and Chris is returned to his proper age!

Ness is mortified when he realizes that he has PSI Healing too and could have fixed Chris at any point. But in his defense, not even Poo was sure it would work.

Further celebrations are interrupted by the booming telepathic voice of Master Hand, congratulating the group on a job well done. But now, since the Subspace Army has left this world, it's time for Chris and Lucario to depart. The entire group is saddened by this development, but they all knew it was coming. Paula, Jeff, and Poo all give brief farewells, but Ness pulls Chris aside to have a more serious discussion. He gives Chris some words of encouragement, and they both empathize with each other about being thrown into crazy adventures without warning. Ness gives Chris a piece of advice: that as long as you have people to rely on, and people who rely on you, you don't have to be scared. (Okay I had to reword that a bit because of this fic's tendency for slightly awkward phrasing, but that's the gist.)

Before Chris and Lucario depart, the cameraman reappears out of the sky again to take a picture of the entire group, startling them. Looks like the world of EarthBound couldn't resist one last running gag. "Say 'fuzzy pickles'!"

Then Chris and Lucario bid the group farewell and vanish through a portal opened by Master Hand. Satisfied, the Chosen Four head back down to Saturn Valley, where the extremely apologetic Mr. Saturns agree to do whatever it takes to get back into Ness's good graces (which will probably turn out to help the group in the long run when they return to Saturn Valley near the end of the game). Poo then informs the group that he has to depart too, since he's definitely not strong enough to keep up with the others yet despite his enhanced sensory abilities, and PSI Teleports back to Dalaam. Ness, Paula, and Jeff prepare to hit the road again, and Ness gets an odd feeling that this isn't the last time he'll team up with Chris and Lucario...

The last scene in the chapter is a cut to the very end of EarthBound, as Ness finally arrives home after turning into a robot and blowing up an eldritch abomination (long story it involved the fourth wall breaking and his childhood friend getting yeeted into the distant future) and opening his mailbox to see all the photos the cameraman took while he was on his adventure. It's at this point when he learns that a ghost appeared in the picture the group took near the graveyard... and was apparently continuing to follow them throughout the entirety of this chapter's events, since it appeared in the next photo too. Huzzah, jumpscare for Ness. And that's the end of the chapter.

Yeah, I think I'll make these "Achievement Unlocked" banners for every world cleared. It'll help me stay sane, probably.

Ughh, this chapter really fought me. Not only was it significantly longer than the previous chapters (which is admittedly something I'm going to have to get used to later on), but it was really difficult to feel invested when so much of this chapter is technically non-canon. Sure, the broad strokes are canon: Chris and Lucario did help the Chosen Four defeat Master Belch. But so much else of this chapter won't matter in the long run. I can't wait to get back to chapters that actually matter.

Just remember: next time we see those Smashers who were "evil" in these chapters, it'll be in completely different contexts. Their appearance in this chapter is completely noncanon to the rest of the story starting in Chapter 7.

Of course, to get to Chapter 7, we have to get through Chapter 6, first...

Next Up: Welcome to the Smash Mansion

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Previously: Odder Oddness

Chapter 4: The Oddness Gets Odder

Yes, this chapter's title is remarkably similar to the previous one. Yes, the author is aware of this, he lampshaded it during his author's notes at the end of the previous chapter. Moving on.

The Sky Runner has crashed, and now Ness and Paula are finally united with the rest of the group. The two of them are overjoyed to see Jeff, seeing as they were pretty much banking on him rescuing them (well, Paula is overjoyed, Ness is still mourning his sandwich). But when Jeff reveals that Chris and Lucario accompanied him, Ness and Paula are understandably more guarded. After all, they were only expecting Jeff. There's only supposed to be four chosen ones after all, and the fourth one definitely isn't Chris or Lucario.

The tension is exacerbated by the fact that Lucario is mistaken for being some kind of monster (Pokemon aren't exactly native to Eagleland, after all), and the fact that in the midst of the crash, Chris's clothing changed to be identical to Ness's without warning. Most readers probably figure out what's going on there pretty fast: Chris's outfit changed to match the new Job power Master Hand gave him last chapter. But Chris is significantly slower on the uptake and panics a little, not understanding what's going on.

Ness and Paula are eventually convinced to let Chris and Lucario tag along temporarily, mostly because 1) Jeff explains he feels a bit guilty for Chris's current age problem and 2) Lucario briefly engages in a show of force after being provoked by Ness, and the latter is extremely impressed. You'd think provoking Lucario would be a horrible idea, but Ness is apparently the type of person to be distinctly unfazed by most things in his life. And hey, if it gets our heroes to team up, I'm not complaining. They climb out of the crater the Sky Runner made and make their way back into the city of Threed.

I hear Threed is actually very nice this time of year... when it's not being occupied by hostile undead controlled by psychic time-traveling aliens.

The group has a brief encounter with a zombie, which Lucario very quickly disintegrates. This prompts a brief discussion about how Chris and Lucario unfortunately cannot tag along for the Ness's entire journey, but they do plan on at least helping out with eradicating the zombies from Threed, and possibly a little bit after. When Lucario boasts that he should be able to destroy all the zombies in no time, Paula interjects and explains that if they make too much of a disruption the zombies might become more aggressive and start going after the people hiding from them inside the buildings. Threed is and inhabited city right now, and the only way it's managing to stay functional is because the zombies are docile enough to not put much effort into breaking down doors. I'm rather fond of this explanation. Not only is it the sort of worldbuilding that fanfiction is good at (picking up where the game's limited graphics and descriptions leave off) but it also reasserts how the author is trying to keep Lucario from being overpowered. Strength isn't everything, and the variety of ways Worlds Conquest leans into that concept to keep its party composition balanced is one of its charms, in my opinion!

There's a brief sidequest of sorts when the group goes to order some pizza, during which the author takes the chance to call out the convoluted pizza delivery system in EarthBound. But they still get their pizza, and there's a couple of small funny and heartwarming moments as there tends to be when a group of people enjoy pizza together. Nothing plot-important though. Then Lucario senses some particularly concentrated evil Aura and the group gets back to business.

Surprise! It's a boss fight! I'm kind of mad the original game doesn't have Lucario in it, both finding and defeating this thing was a pain.

The Aura is coming from one of the local circus tents, which has been possessed (somehow) to become the Boogey Tent. In-game, this was one of Threed's main bosses, and it surprisingly manages to put up a little bit of a fight against our heroes. It needs to be struck in the face for any damage to be dealt, which means the group's first salvo of attacks can't do much. Then it hits the group with a large PSI attack, specifically PSI Flash alpha. Unlike in Smash Bros., PSI Flash/PK Flash originally is one of those moves that has a lot of weird randomized effects, especially status conditions. So in this case, it causes most of the group to cry uncontrollably... but it causes Chris to "feel strange" which essentially means he's going to end up accidentally attacking the rest.

Since Chris is currently using his PK Kid Job, this means he's going to let loose the one move in his arsenal: PK Fire. Anyone who's ever played Smash Bros. knows how much of a danger PK Fire is, and it's even more potent in the original game, where it can hit a large amount of targets at once. So everyone else gets bowled over by a wave of fire. Lucario, naturally, takes issue with this, and slams a massive Aura Sphere directly into the Boogey Tent's face.

Do I feel guilty about spamming this move? No, not in the slightest.

As you might recall from The Bond of Aura, Lucario's Aura Spheres are explosive to a frankly spectacular degree. The tent is obliterated. Only a crater remains. Later on the Threed Newspaper will blame the zombies.

Paula then determines that Chris was the source of the PK Fire, and this prompts discussion about what PSI is and how it works. Somehow Chris still hasn't figured out that his PSI abilities are a result of the Job that Master Hand literally gave him last chapter. Maybe the author just forgot? Fortunately PSI isn't really unheard of in this world, so Chris manifesting it doesn't raise any red flags, but it does cause Chris to panic a little.

The group then puts together a plan to at least temporarily deal with the zombies in Threed without raising too much of a fuss (somehow annihilating the tent didn't count). It's the same plan from the game: fill another circus tent in town with honey and flypaper, which will then attract all the zombies overnight, trapping them in the tent (apparently zombies really like Fly Honey for some reason). Once the bait is set, the group relocates to a hotel to stay the night. When Chris and Lucario are alone, they have a brief discussion about how insane this whole situation is, and Lucario reminds Chris to not be too negative about their situation. He'll get a handle on their powers in no time, and they'll be able to protect Ness from the Subspace Army.

Unfortunately, this happens to be the precise moment when Ness and Paula decided to try reading Chris and Lucario's minds, out of suspicion. Lucario catches them (because Aura can apparently sense psychic powers), but Ness and Paula are still able to figure out enough that an explanation is necessary. So Chris and Lucario reluctantly explain the basics: they're from another world, and they were specifically sent by Master Hand to protect Ness from another otherworldly threat, one that's unconnected to Giygas. Ness and Paula are skeptical (and Jeff is a little shocked as well), but Paula points out that there's no way they're lying seeing as she and Ness just read their minds. Plus, if they meant to harm Ness, Lucario could have taken him out without much difficulty, so clearly Chris and Lucario must be genuine about their intentions.

With all that explained, the group decides to team up for real. The next morning the group heads out to investigate Threed further. The zombies had previously been obstructing a pathway in the woods, but with all the zombies trapped in the circus tent it should be easy to determine what they were guarding. There's a brief encounter with one of EarthBound's running gags: a cameraman who flies down from the sky to take photos of people. "Say, 'Fuzzy Pickles'!" The group gets their photo taken in a graveyard, then continues heading down the passage into Grapefruit Falls.

Pictured: (Part of) Grapefruit Falls. Also Pictured: The undying rage I feel when I'm reminded this place exists.

I remember Grapefruit Falls. I freaking hate Grapefruit Falls. I am so jealous of the fact that the heroes have Lucario with them. When I played EarthBound I kept nearly dying and retraced my steps over and over again until I could finally reach the dang Saturn Valley, but THESE guys just have an overpowered Lucario that takes out everything in their path! I know it's partially for story convenience, nobody wants to watch fifty bajillion encounters happen when they aren't important to the plot. But like. Come on. This area was so hard.

That doesn't mean the group has no monster encounters in Grapefruit Falls. There's a couple of ghosts, and a pile of slime called a Mini Barf, who identifies Chris and Lucario as people it was specifically told to look out for, implying the Subspace Army has already started making alliances with the evil forces in this part of Eagleland. Lucario destroys the Mini Barf, but when he activates his Aura vision to see if any of Subspace's forces are around he oddly comes up empty, aside from a vague mass of negative energy in the distance.

There's a brief encounter with a croissant salesman (EarthBound is weird okay?) and then another monster encounter, this one slightly more significant: the path through the waterfalls is barred by a sizeable group of Plain Crocodiles.

Apparently balancing on one's tail is just. A normal thing crocodiles do in this universe. At this point I would have turned my brain off, but it's hard to do that when you're trying to keep your party from dying. I hate Grapefruit Falls.

Ness, who at this point has only seen Lucario take down the undead or other things devoid of functioning internal organs, cheerfully declares that with Lucario around defeating these Crocodiles should be a snap. Lucario, who remembers how Chris and Jeff reacted the last time he disemboweled an animal, refrains from doing so, instead resorting to fighting defensively. This eventually results in some of the Crocodiles sneaking past him to attack the kids. While it's tough, we get a sort-of-triumphant moment when Chris finally uses PK Fire intentionally to attack one of the Crocodiles. ...But his celebrating is cut short when Chris then gets knocked into the water and screams in a panic.

This is enough to set Lucario off, and we're treated to a surprisingly gruesome description of the Crocodiles being physically torn apart.

Oh, um... [Content Warning: Discussion of Blood, Murder, and Trauma Responses to said Blood and Murder]

Seriously I swear most of the fic isn't this gruesome, this chapter is one of the rewritten ones so I expect that like in The Bond of Aura the author was going for a slightly darker and more mature tone, not realizing how much it clashed with the generally comedic premise of the fic.

Anyhoo, Chris and Lucario and the others get physically drenched in crocodile blood, and Chris just... completely shuts down. It's full-blown panic attack, with the shock and heavy breathing and everything, and the rest of the group aren't faring much better, once again calling Lucario out on resorting to overkill when he really shouldn't have. They're able to get washed off, but Chris is still really out of it, just muttering the words "too much blood" over and over and over again.

Lucario then explains to Ness, Paula, and Jeff that he's actually partially responsible for Chris having this shock reaction, because this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened to them. Which then leads to a backstory drop which completely blows my mind.

To rip off the band-aid: apparently Lucario has straight-up murdered a guy. Like. In the real world. At some point between the last written chapters of The Bond of Aura and the start of Worlds Conquest, a thief broke into Chris's house and threatened Chris with a knife. Lucario's protective instinct kicked in, and he tore the thief to shreds. Chris was covered in blood in the process, and shut down similarly, to the point that he's developed a form of hemophobia that kept him bedridden for multiple days.

What the heck??? I can't remember if this was in the original version of this chapter, but I am pretty sure this backstory is never addressed or comes up again. I know it reasserts the fact that Lucario's overpoweredness is nowhere near an ideal solution, but like. He killed a guy. There isn't even any explanation of what was done with the body??? Did they just hide it somewhere? Is this really just going to be glossed over? I can't say I'm particularly impressed with using a murder in a backstory for sheer shock factor, if that's the case. It's a bit tacky and insensitive, to be brutally honest.

I also can't remember if Chris's blood phobia comes up again after this. Video Game worlds are often pretty devoid of blood, so I'm not surprised if the concept just didn't come up again for me to remember it, but I'm definitely going to be looking for it specifically this time.

Ness, Paula, and Jeff chew Lucario out some more, but what actually gets to Lucario emotionally is Chris's barely functioning pleas for Lucario to help him. After feeding the boy and getting moving again, Lucario and the children keep moving forward.

[Okay we're done with the Content Warning stuff now]

Paula points out they probably shouldn't be moving, Chris clearly is in desperate need of rest so he can calm down and get out of shock, but Lucario sees a bunch of good Aura signals up ahead and forges on anyway, leading the kids through the falls and caverns while stomping on cockroaches. I am not complaining about the change in locale. Somehow this little traumatic encounter managed to sour my opinion of Grapefruit Falls even more than it already was. If Worlds Conquest somehow has more Suddenly Dark Tonal Whiplash moments like this that I'm just conveniently not recalling at the moment, I'm gonna call them "Grapefruit Falls Moments". Because like. Screw this place. Anyway, when the group finally exits the cave...

BOING!

They're greeted by a creature who introduces itself as Mr. Saturn, which leads them further into a valley. However the group is so focused on getting Chris to safety that none of them, not even Lucario, notice a figure high up on the cliffs shrouded in dark aura. The figure makes an ominous comment about how taking down Ness is its main goal and implies Mr. Saturn might not be as altruistic as it seems.

Next up: Enter The Bad Guys (Plus, a bit of commentary on the inherent hazards involved in fanfic rewriting)

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Previously: Bounded to a New Earth

Chapter 3: Odder Oddness

Onward into the cave!

At first, Jeff and Chris are confused as to why Lucario just dashed into the cave on a whim, but Lucario explains how the malevolent Aura is "different" than the one outside. Chris immediately picks up on what Lucario means (it's probably not native to EarthBound), and Jeff acknowledges that if they just leave the problem be then it could come back to bite them later. So the group proceeds further, and it turns out they're absolutely right to do so. After dealing with a couple of mundane obstacles, a Primid appears, with hordes of its brethren close behind. it.

Primids are the rank-and-file soldiers of the Subspace Army. They're essentially dolls stuffed with an eerie substance called Shadow Bugs. Shadow Bugs are capable of possessing things, but in most cases they resort to created Primid bodies from scratch, then attacking with both their bare hands and an assortment of weaponry. They may be weak, but they make up for their weakness with sheer numbers.

Fortunately, the group has an overpowered Lucario on their side, and the Primids are easily dealt with. Chris questions if he and Jeff should really be letting Lucario do all the work, but Jeff points out that they're still leveling up from all the combat Lucario is doing, which seems to indicate that combat isn't the only thing operating under in-universe video game logic. Though I can't remember if this becomes a recurring thing or not.

Soon the group has gone deep into the cave, and figured out the source of the malevolent Aura Lucario noticed before. Lo and behold, it's exactly what the Ancient Minister said was going to be deployed in the World of EarthBound: A Subspace Bomb. And halfway across the world from where Ness is! If Chris and Lucario had ended up with Ness instead of Jeff, they would have missed it entirely, which seems to lend credence to Master Hand's claim that he drops the heroes where they're needed most.

A Subspace Bomb, the Subspace Army's most dangerous weapon, at least in canon. Insert two R.O.B. units, watch the time tick down... and boom! One giant whole in reality, that starts out big and only keeps expanding from there. Subspace Bombs are Tabuu's favored method of expanding his domain, so dealing with them is paramount. If you can destroy them before they've been properly deployed, great. But once that timer starts ticking, then you're going to have to either find a way to defuse it, or turn and run like a bat out of jigoku.

Chris and Lucario are horrified. They weren't expecting to run into a Subspace Bomb this early on, and neither of them has any real way of dealing with it. If Lucario were to attack it, he might detonate it prematurely. But thankfully, Jeff is a tech whiz, and decides to have go at disarming it. We're treated to a tense sequence of Jeff deliberating over which wires to cut and when, which then turns into a funny moment as the bomb's timer jumps around to odd amounts. Eventually the bomb reaches its final countdown, and Jeff desperately resorts to just cutting ALL the wires.

Which works, sort of. The countdown stops, and the bomb seems to die, but as the group is prematurely celebrating the bomb explodes anyway. It doesn't explode the way it's supposed to, but it DOES knock the group across the room. When they manage to recover, they discover that they fortunately managed to survive the explosion unscathed. Except for Chris, who... somehow got de-aged?

This is really weird, there isn't much of an explanation given for it at all, except for an off-hand explanation from Master Hand later on who attribute the effect to either the world of EarthBound having an odd effect on the bomb, or it being a result of Jeff's fiddling. But yeah, for the time being, Chris has been de-aged from being a teenager to being the same age as EarthBound's main characters. Chris does NOT react well, and right as he's about curse up a storm the scene transitions over to Threed, where Ness and Paula are still trapped underground.

Ness, Smasher #10. EarthBound's protagonist, a young boy who was awakened in the night by a meteor landing near his home, only to learn he was destined to develop PSI powers and fend off an alien invasion from the future. Nowadays he's essentially the face of the EarthBound franchise, due to his presence in Smash Bros. from the very first game. Surprisingly for a kid protagonist in an RPG, Ness's skills aren't primarily based around damaging the opponent. Sure, he has his signature move PSI Rockin, but most of his other skills focus on healing, or providing other esoteric effects in battle. He likes steak!

Paula is the second main party member in EarthBound, the daughter of a pair of preschool teachers who has the misfortune to get kidnapped by a cult before Ness comes along and helps her escape. Very sweet, and very talented with PSI. Interestingly, Ness's most iconic moves in the Smash Bros. series, PK Fire and PK Thunder, were originally hers, and she has PK Freeze in her arsenal as well. She's no pushover, and is arguably more of a leader of the group than Ness is in-game!

At this point in time, Ness and Paula have presumably been stuck in an underground cave for quite a while hiding from zombies, and Ness complains that he's starting to get hungry. The two have a brief discussion about how insane their circumstances are, and bicker about whether or not they should wait until later to start eating their limited supply of sandwiches. Paula points out they really have no choice but to put their trust in Jeff, because he's the only one who knows they're stuck down there. But even if he shows up, the chances that he brings enough firepower to deal with the zombies is slim to none.

Ness verbally complains about how the universe must hate him, and the scene transitions back to Chris, who's saying the exact same thing, complaining about his newly acquired youthfulness. The group has managed to escape from the mazelike cave housing the Subspace Bomb, only to end up in another cave that's more cramped and humid and otherwise unpleasant.

After an encounter with a walking mushroom (quickly dealt with by Lucario), the group discovers a glowing light that Lucario registers as an enemy, but doesn't seem to be willing to attack them. This is because said enemy is one of EarthBound's main area bosses, the Sanctuary Guardians. They must be fought by Ness in order so the group can't fight them yet. Incidentally, this one's called "Shrooom!". Since Chris and Lucario won't be sticking around long enough for the group to get back to Winters, this is one boss fight the fic is skipping entirely. Sorry, Shrooom!.

The group exits the cave to find Stonehenge. Yes, Stonehenge, EarthBound has Stonehenge, it's populated by cavemen, don't ask questions or we'll be here all night. Chris and Lucario boggle at just how weird EarthBound's world is, Bubble Monkey very abruptly finds a girlfriend and leaves the party (fare thee well, temporary party member), and completely obliterates a caveman when it attacks the group in a frenzy. Once again Lucario goes overboard, the caveman is definitely dead in all sense of the word, and Chris and Jeff give the Pokemon another stern talking-to about not using excessively violent methods.

Fortunately, the group doesn't have to worry about any more encounters now, because they've finally arrived at Dr. Andonuts's laboratory.

Dr. Andonuts, the absent-minded professor of the Mother series. Nice guy! Excellent inventor! Kind of a crappy father. Notable for being one of the few characters to appear in both EarthBound and Mother 3. If any of you mention The Halloween Hack I will throw you out a window.

Andonuts is delighted to finally see his son Jeff after so many years, and while Jeff is resentful he becomes a lot less so after Andonuts points out that if he had raised Jeff, Jeff would probably have lost an arm or leg to one of Andonuts's crazy experiments. When Jeff explains that they'll have to put the reunion on hold because Jeff needs help rescuing some psychic strangers talking to him in his head, Andonuts immediately rolls with it without question. He even gives the group access to his latest invention: the Sky Runner, a UFO-like device that should be able to get them over to Threed lickety-split!

Chris and Lucario react to Andonuts with incredulity, agreeing that the man is definitely a horrible parent with very little regard for things like "safety" and "keeping in contact with his child". When the group explains that it was a bomb that caused Chris to shrink, and that Jeff disarmed it, Andonuts's first instinct is to praise Jeff for disarming the bomb instead of being sympathetic. While within the context of the fic Andonuts's and Jeff's interactions are kind of played for laughs, having read The Bond of Aura Chris's reaction seems a lot less funny. Chris knows what having neglectful parents is like, watching Jeff and Andonuts interact has got to be painfully familiar to him. No wonder he and Lucario are quick to call Andonuts out on his crappy parenting, they've been through this before. Jeff for his part seems to mostly be taking things in stride and focusing on his current goal instead of really addressing his familial conflict.

Andonuts offers to fix Chris's age problem, but his solution is experimental and probably unsafe, the Chris declines in the hopes he'll find another solution later. After dropping some foreshadowing for later EarthBound plot points and asking Lucario if he'd like to become a lab specimen (he doesn't) Andonuts loads the trio into the Sky Runner and sends them on their way to Threed... then belatedly realizes he forgot to fuel the thing and they'll probably crashland.

While the Sky Runner is soaring across the sky and Jeff is focused on controlling its trajectory, Master Hand contacts Lucario and Chris telepathically. This, I think, is the scene where we truly get the glimpse of Master Hand's character: he's a jerk. Like, he's still a good guy, and pretty reasonable all things considered, but he's got an ego the size of the sun and a tendency to nitpick and criticize everything his subordinates do. Don't get me wrong, I love Master Hand's characterization in this story, his "bad boss" vibes add to the comedy and when things really get difficult he's perfectly capable of taking things seriously. But early on, when the characters are still finding their footing and are less willing to snark back at Master Hand, it can be a bit aggravating.

In this case Master Hand chews Chris and Lucario out for not doing much. Sure, they managed to disarm the Subspace bomb, but Jeff really did that by himself, and Chris still got de-aged in the process. Not to mention they don't know if the Subspace Army has any other plans for this world. When Chris and Lucario ask why Master Hand can't just do everything himself, Master Hand gives an elaborate explanation of how his appearance would cause the entire Subspace Army to come down on that location and destroy them all.

Master calls out Chris for being pathetic, but then announces he's decided to take pity on him by giving the boy his first Job.

I reserve the right to use Achievement Generators to make cool graphics

Master Hand explains how the jobs work: Chris can change between them at will, and when he does so his outfit will change. In the case of the PK Kid job, Chris will get an outfit that matches Ness's. But just like in other RPGs with job systems, Chris's Jobs need to be leveled up in order for them to reach their max potential. That means that right now, Chris is still pretty weak, he only has access to PK Fire. (Then again, some Smash Bros. players might attest that PK Fire is all you need :P)

Lucario reassures Chris that he won't be a burden, and Master Hand wishes them good luck and ends the connection, because they're going to arrive at their destination soon. The Sky Runner soars over Eagleland, Chris and Lucario catch a brief glimpse of Pokey Minch on the ground enjoying his cameo, and then Jeff abruptly announces that the Sky Runner is out of gas and they're about to crash.

Meanwhile, Ness has finally managed to wear Paula down, and she's allowed him to start on the sandwiches. Paula points out that at this rate, it'll be only ten hours before they resort to cannibalism. Ness refutes this, and tells Paula to be quiet so he can enjoy his sandwich in peace.

Then the Sky Runner crashes directly though the cavern's ceiling.

Ness's Sandwich is ruined.

Next Up: The Oddness Gets Odder

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Previously: START OF DISC 1: New Game

Chapter 2: Bounded to a New Earth

Mother 2, known in the west as EarthBound, is a 1994 RPG that's nowadays mostly known as "The game Ness is from". The game itself chronicles the adventures of a group of children with psychic powers called PSI who strive to save the world from an alien invasion. It's creative, fun, and quirky... really quirky. Poor marketing and lackluster sales led to it being the only game in its series to be officially released in the US (though the original Mother would eventually receive an English release on Virtual Console as Earthbound Beginnings, the same can't be said for the third game in the series, Mother 3), but it still enjoys a reputation as a Cult Classic. I've played Earthbound, and you should too.

Chris and Lucario get dropped out of Master Hand's portal directly into a snowy forest. A freezing cold forest. After a brief moment of complaining, the portal opens again and Master Hand throws a winter jacket through for Chris to wear. When Chris and Lucario voice their complaints, Master Hand points out that this is where the current plot of the game is happening, if Chris and Lucario were to be dropped somewhere else they might miss something important and the Subspace Army could take advantage of that. After reminding them of their mission once more, Master Hand once again closes the portal.

At this point, Chris vents a little bit more about his situation, particularly complaining about how Master Hand didn't give him any jobs to use. Lucario points out that they have something more pressing to worry about: namely, the fact that their bodily proportions have been altered to match the game's chibi art style, with more squat bodies and larger heads. After another brief amount of panic, Chris calms down and the tow of them figure out where they are: in a forest near a boarding school in the in-game location of Winters. Which means Chris now knows exactly where they are, and what they need to do next... not that it helps with the cold.

Eventually Chris and Lucario are able to locate who they're looking for, Jeff Andonuts, one of EarthBound's main party members. We're treated a brief recreation of the scene in-game where Jeff's roommate helps him sneak out of boarding school. Chris and Lucario watch Jeff from a distance, trying to figure out how to approach him, and see their chance when Jeff goes into a local convenience store to stock up on supplies. When Jeff exits the store, accompanied by the Bubble Monkey, Chris and Lucario meet with him under the pretense of being travelers who want to team up with Jeff to cross through the woods safely. Jeff is skeptical, but eventually relents under the logic of safety in numbers.

Jeff (left) is a schoolboy from Winters and the third main party member in EarthBound, whom the player takes control of after the first two party members get trapped underground in a zombie-infested city and call out for help with their psychic powers for him to come rescue them. Unlike the rest of the party, Jeff doesn't have PSI powers, so he fights with an assortment of rockets and firearms instead. Early on during his journey he's accompanied by the Bubble Monkey (right), a temporary party member obsessed with chewing gum, because the owners of the store it was hanging out in wanted to get rid of it.

After successfully convincing Jeff to join their party (complete with narrative fanfare), the group head southward into the woods. After some brief conversation in which Chris and Lucario awkwardly hide their origins, Lucario calls attention to the fact that the entire vicinity is cloaked in a dangerous red Aura. Literally everything is covered in it, even the party themselves. They figure that since they haven't noticed anything, they're probably immune to it.

EarthBound fans can probably guess what that malevolent aura is: the massive PSI powers of the game's main villain, Giygas, corrupting the land itself to turn against the heroes. We get to see this in action right away, as Lucario identifies a nearby goat as being corrupted by the evil aura. The goat turns monstrous, moves to attack the group, and suddenly Chris and Lucario are surprised to see reality shift around them. Turns out battles in the EarthBound world happen like they do in-game: via turn-based combat. While Chris stands there confused, Jeff and the Bubble Monkey take their turns attacking, and then... Lucario's turn.

Mimicking EarthBound's entertaining level-up text was 100% the right decision

Right. Lucario is the definition of overkill. Oops. Combat ends, and the group is left staring at a decapitated goat corpse. While I found it amusing, Chris and Jeff were NOT in the mood to see a live animal explode (especially in a game where evil animals usually just turn tame when defeated instead of dying) and reprimand Lucario for disproportionate retribution. See kids? Violence is only the answer when it's within appropriate parameters!

After leaving the goat's body in the snow for a hunter to find, the group continues southward until they reach Lake Tessie. Yes, EarthBound has its own version of the Loch Ness Monster. EarthBound has a lot of things. When Lucario detects "Tessie" with his Aura vision the group is worried that they're going to have to fight it, but thankfully the Bubble Monkey is able to get Tessie's attention and play with it a little, revealing it to be surprisingly docile. Tessie even allows the group to ride on its back to the other side of the lake, which is really convenient.

At this point, Jeff accidentally lets slip to Chris and Lucario what he's actually doing: trying to meet up with two other kids he's never met, Ness and Paula. This doesn't come as a surprise to either of them (they know the game's story, after all), but they still inquire further, to get more insight on why Jeff is doing this. This is fun thing about fanfiction in general: the chance to see what "silent" player characters are actually thinking and saying. Jeff admits acting on his "hunch" that he can trust Ness and Paula is illogical, but he still feels like it's something he needs to do. Honestly, I can kind of see parallels between Jeff and Chris. Neither of them are really the "shonen protagonist" type, preferring to stay inside and study, but when both of them end up dragged into an adventure they only put of the most token resistance. That may sound like grasping at straws, but trust me the parallels definitely go deeper, even than I expected.

Tessie unfortunately doesn't seem to understand landmarks, and drops the group off on a part of the lakeside next to a cave that's otherwise blocked off by cliffs... except not really. In what I think is a joking reference to the original game railroading the player, Chris and Lucario point out an easy side path further along the lakeside, meaning they can avoid entering the spooky cave entirely. In game, it's probably blocked off or otherwise just not an area the player sprite can walk in (blocked off by cliffs and trees and such) but realistically a person should be totally capable of fitting through the gap. Just something I found funny.

Though it ends up not mattering, because Lucario senses another different red Aura emanating from the cave. Something nasty is in there, and on instinct he rushes in to hunt it down, the rest of the group chasing behind him. To be continued!

This chapter then starts the trend of having the next chapter's title be announced by the characters in the story, as opposed to just being said in the narration. These little mini-dialogues don't seem to be canon in any way, especially since the fourth wall doesn't seem to exist at all in them, but they're a fun little add-on that gives the fic more uniqueness, I think. This particular dialogue features Ness and Paula (who will make their "on-screen" debut next chapter) asking if they're finally going to appear, and then noting that there's also a greater chance of the heroes dying horribly next chapter. Fun!

Next up: Odder Oddness

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Previously: I summarized Worlds Conquest's prequel work, The Bond of Aura.

It's time to actually START on the big one.

One last little note: While I'll be including brief explanations of certain key aspects of the background when they come up, I will NOT be summarizing the entirety of the original The Subspace Emissary adventure mode. There are plenty of people who have already done that, so while Worlds Conquest is a direct sequel to the game mode I'm not going to retread old ground. The extra-truncated version: All of Nintendo (with Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog) teams up to stop Subspace from turning everything into an empty void. That's it. If you want more details, find a Youtube summary or go to the Smash Dojo or something.

Now, without further ado:

Chapter 1: START OF DISC 1: New Game

I told you Worlds Conquest was leaning into the video game theming. The fanfic is divided into multiple sections called "Discs", mimicking how many older video games were saved on multiple disc drives in order to have enough storage. Scene changes are indicated by the text straight-up identifying the new location, like how a game announces you've arrived in so-and-so place, and starting next chapter the text will also occasionally identify what the theoretical backing soundtrack should be. Most notably, each chapter ends with a mock "save file" menu, identifying the protagonists' current location party members. It's a very convenient way to keep track of which characters are where once the amount of Smash Bros. characters starts reaching unwieldy levels.

The chapter opens up with a scene deep in the void of Subspace, where Tabuu, the progenitor of Subspace, is pondering on his recent victory.

Tabuu, the main villain of the piece. Look at this fetcher. He's just sitting there. Scheming. Being evil. Who is he? Where the heck did he come from? Idk ask Sakurai.

Worlds Conquest's primary divergence from regular Subspace Emissary canon happens at the very end of the story, during the final battle. Most of Tabuu's forces have been destroyed, but at the last second he was able to prevent his destruction and seize victory. Just as he was about to eliminate the entire Smash Bros. roster, the godlike powers of Master Hand and Crazy Hand (more on them later) were able to launch all the Smash Bros. characters back to their own worlds, back in time to long before the events of The Subspace Emissary, in a desperate attempt to save them.

Now weakened but victorious, Tabuu is floating in Subspace and trying to decide his next move. His forces have been all but destroyed by the heroes before their defeat, so he's now setting his plans into action, in order to take advantage of what time he has before the heroes are able to recover their strength. Assisting him in this matter is The Ancient Minister, Tabuu's most faithful right-hand man.

The Ancient Minister, aka R.O.B., Smash Fighter #42. The Robotic Operating Buddy was a "toy" made by Nintendo so that they could advertise video games as something other than video games during the Great Video Game Crash of '83. While its games sucked, it still went down in history as helping to salvage the game industry. In The Subspace Emissary, R.O.B. dons the appearance of "The Ancient Minister" and is one of the most active villainous forces. He's portrayed as completely loyal to his people (the large legions of R.O.B. robots) above all else, and eventually betrays the Subspace Army to join the good guys... but now, he's back on the bad guys' team.

The Ancient Minister, having apparently betrayed the Smash Bros. roster for unexplained reasons to rejoin Tabuu during the final battle, gives his boss a brief status update and prepares to resume control of the manufacturing facilities used by the Subspace Army in the original game. When he enquires about what Tabuu's next move is, Tabuu explains that his end goal is to not just take over all the video game worlds, but the real world too. But in order to do that, he needs to regain his power by invading a whole bunch of the video game worlds first. He instructs the Ancient Minister to deploy a Subspace Bomb to Ness's world (more on that later too), and the Ancient Minister departs to do so, quietly thinking to himself in a vague manner that seems to imply he is already planning on backstabbing Tabuu again. Dang, R.O.B., there's playing the long game, and then there's doing whatever you're doing.

The narration announces that this marks the beginning of the Gathering Saga, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: the long process of getting the band back together again after everyone in the Smash roster got yeeted back to their own worlds. The general process of the Gathering Saga is episodic; the heroes go to the world of a video game, they follow along with the plot of the video game for a bit, and then they deal with whatever Subspace villains show up. It's a bit like Kingdom Hearts, where a lot of the appeal involves bouncing from world to world to see all your favorites. But since so many of the Smash Roster are from those worlds, and they have a tendency to stick around and remain relevant, visiting all these different places actually has a point! Take that, KH!

The scene cuts to a place more familiar to us: Chris's house. Much like in The Bond of Aura, Chris introduces himself in first-person, explaining who he is and providing a bit of backstory on himself and Lucario for those who didn't read Bond of Aura, before the third-person narration resumes. And in case you skipped my summary of it: Chris is a lonely rich 16-year-old kid who lives alone, lightning stuck his DS and a Lucario who's basically an overpowered Alpha Lucario from Legends Arceus popped out, now they're best buds. Chris's narration also confirms something I suspected about the unfinished chapters of Bond of Aura; specifically that Lucario does, in fact, ultimately cave and proclaim to Chris that he wants him to be his real trainer.

There's been a timeskip since we last saw Chris and Lucario at Christmas. Now it's March. Specifically March of 2008, when Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in the US, and when this fic's original first chapter was published in order to commemorate this. In fact, Chris has just gotten home from purchasing that very game.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The third game in the iconic Super Smash Bros. fighting game series. Smash Bros. is known for two things: pretty much defining the Platform Fighter genre, and loads and loads of characters from a huge variety of video game franchises. Brawl specifically has 39 playable characters, but the latest game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has over double that number.

Chris has acquired Smash Bros. Brawl for the purposes of playing it with Lucario, because as previously established they're both massive gamers. Unfortunately, when Lucario first sees the game case, he immediately realizes that something is amiss. A dark aura is emitting from the game's case. He points out that he thinks something is wrong with the game, and that they shouldn't play it, and while Chris says he trusts Lucario, after further discussion they decide to dismiss their worries and just play the game. They can't figure out why an inanimate video game disc would have a dark aura around it, but they definitely don't want to spend the evening watching TV again when they've been excitedly waiting to play Brawl for months.

Yes, there's absolutely no way this is going to go badly. No siree.

They head up to Chris's room and boot up the Wii, but the moment they load this disc into the console, it abruptly turns off. And starts emitting bright purple light. And a massive wave of energy or something knocks the two of them back. While Chris and Lucario panic and start bickering about whether or not they should have put the game in the console, numerous other smaller purple lights then fly out of the console, and then merge with Chris's stack of video games, which has been previously established to be quite large.

Naturally, this just causes them to start bickering even more. Lucario is panicking because now all the games are covered in dark Aura, the Wii itself is probably corrupted too, and they should probably just throw all the games out. Chris hates this idea (he's spent a lot of time and energy on those games) and proclaims that maybe they should try calling Nintendo to get the Wii fixed. All this bickering means they're caught completely unaware when the Wii basically explodes and launches out a pair of giant hands to land on top of them in a heap.

Master Hand (top) and Crazy Hand (bottom), are a pair of recurring bosses in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. If the playable characters represent toys, then these two giant disembodied hands represent the children playing with them. Despite being the usual "final bosses" of the game's Classic Modes and frequently engaging in maniacal laughter, both of them are usually portrayed as forces of good that only engage in genuine villainy when controlled by an outside force. Otherwise they're just here to have fun.

It turns out that this is where Master Hand and Crazy Hand ended up after escaping Tabuu's clutches. After a brief panic on all sides, Lucario is able to point out that Master Hand and Crazy Hand have good auras emanating them and as such, and soon we're given a proper introduction to the two Hands and the general role they play in the story. Master Hand is this story's "Big Good", he runs the interdimensional fighting tournament the Smash Bros. games are based on, and was leading the Smash Bros. roster (which he refers to as the "Smashers", which everyone else hates but ends up using anyway) against the forces of the Subspace Army when Tabuu revealed himself as a threat.

Crazy Hand is completely nuts. I don't know if he's actually funny, or his general randomness just appeals to my sense of humor, but for me he's one of the most entertaining characters in the story. I love this guy.

Master Hand gives us some further exposition on what exactly is going on. When Tabuu was able to defeat the Smashers, Master Hand responded by sending them back to their own worlds, back in time without memories of their defeat so that they would have the extra time to prepare without actually messing up the timelines of their games. Exactly how this works is not really explained well. Master Hand claims that since his area of expertise is Creation and not time travel or whatever his options were limited, but honestly it's a pretty clear excuse plot to keep the plots of the games the heroes visit intact until they diverge things with their own presence.

Master Hand also explains what all those lights that went into Chris's game collection were. It was the forces of Subspace, chasing after the Smashers into their game worlds in the hopes of beating them while they're still weakened. If Tabuu can pull that off, then the real world will be ripe for the picking. He also confirms that it was Chris's disc specifically that had access to the video game world (Master Hand apparently just linked to a disc at random), and provides the reason for why some of the characters from Brawl's prequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, didn't return for Brawl: they got killed during the final fight. (Interestingly, Master Hand DOESN'T mention something that Tabuu's narration earlier DID: that Mr. Game & Watch and another unidentified Smashers were accidentally left behind and is currently in the clutches of Subspace).

Roy, Pichu, and Mewtwo, the Smashers from Melee who didn't make the cut for Brawl. May they rest in peace. (Young Link and Dr. Mario didn't make cut either, but they're essentially the same people as Link and Mario in this story.) Don't worry, Time Travel is involved, remember? We'll be seeing these three again.

The Hands also humorously identify that Masahiro Sakurai, creator of the Smash Bros. franchise, is their dad. Exactly how this works is never explained.

When Chris and Lucario ask what exactly this has to do with them, Master Hand explains he and Crazy Hand were planning on coming to the real world to recruit a special human, one who was chosen to protect the multiverse by reuniting the Smashers and leading them to victory against Tabuu and the forces of Subspace. "But screw that cliched fanfic idea! I found myself a better recruit with this guy!" He's talking about Lucario, of course. Why go to the effort of recruiting a teenager with attitude when you've got a walking war machine Pokemon right there?

Unfortuately for Master Hand, Chris and Lucario are pretty much inseparable, so if Lucario's going to go on this epic quest, Chris is going to come along too. Master Hand objects to this somewhat, seeing as Chris is the exact opposite of a fighter, but eventually he relents. He then explains what Chris and Lucario are going to do: they're going to go into the stories of the games at the points in the plot where the Subspace Army is threatening to disrupt the timeline, and work with the heroes to prevent that disruption. That way the Smashers will be able to be able to complete their journeys and then be picked up from later in the timeline to help. Master Hand makes it very clear to Chris and Lucario that they're to operate under Kingdom Hearts rules: Don't tell anyone you're from another universe!

In order to help Chris and Lucario with this quest, Master Hand alters one of Chris's Wiimotes so that it can make the desired interdimensional portals. When it's pointed out that Chris still can't fight, Master Hand decides to give Chris a power he copied from another game world: the Job System.

Prominently featured in the Final Fantasy series of video games (among many others), a Job System allows a character to change their entire skill loadout by shifting between different "jobs". For example, having a Warrior job makes you better at physical combat, but you can then changes to a Mage job to use magic instead. Pictured above are the jobs from Final Fantasy III, but Chris's jobs will be rather different, and come from a variety of different sources.

When Chris asks how he can change his current Job to get new combat abilities, Master Hand cheerfully explains that he doesn't have any jobs at the moment. Right now, Chris is undergoing a test of sorts to see how he'll manage without any extra powers, and he'll only get his first Job after a little bit of effort. Chris is outraged, but Lucario points out that he is in fact overpowered and can most likely protect Chris from threats for the time being until Chris is up to par in combat. Mollified, Chris and Lucario prepare to enter their first video game world.

Master Hand identifies their first target world as EarthBound, the home game of Ness, instructing the duo to go meet up with him and do what they can to help him on his journey while facing off against the forces of Subspace. The Hands give Chris and Lucario a heroic sendoff, and the two enter the portal to Earthbound ready to face whatever comes next!

...By which I mean Master Hand shoves them into the portal without warning. As the portal closes, the two Hands briefly discuss what they're going to be doing while Chris and Lucario are busy: heading back to their home world and working on some "special arrangements", including something called the "Smash Mansion"...

And that's the end! Establishing the precedent for future chapters, this one ends by identifying the upcoming Chapter by name, and going through the process of making a mock "save file".

Enjoy this small size while it lasts, as this fic gets longer the party gets bigger. MUCH bigger.

As starting chapters go, I'd say this is a pretty decent start! It's very self aware of what it is: an excuse to get things going. The author knows what I'm really here for: epic video game adventures. The "going through the motions" vibes aren't the best, but I'd argue that they're better than trying to take the tropes extremely seriously in a way that would ultimately clash with the mostly light-hearted vibes of the rest of the story. This introduction chapter gets you (re)introduced to the characters, give the basic setup of who they are and what they're doing and why, and then sends them off. I do genuinely enjoy the twist of Lucario being the "chosen one" instead of Chris, but make no mistake: Chris is the main protagonist here, and while he's definitely not any sort of leader right now he'll end up becoming surprisingly heroic later down the line.

It may not be the strongest start, but at least it makes its foundation very clear, and once the story starts building on that foundation, magic starts happening! Not to mention the chapters really only get longer from here. They start out pretty short (making summarizing them easier and faster) but they'll get longer and longer as the story goes on. So enjoy the faster updates while they last, I guess?

Next up: Bounded to a New Earth

[maspers-reads-subspace]

So, as previously stated, before we get truly started on the behemoth that is The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest...

Speedrunning The Bond of Aura

We're going to be covering the entirety of The Bond of Aura, the prequel to Worlds Conquest, in one post, so try to keep up, this is gonna go fast.

First thing's first: this is, unfortunately, not the original version of The Bond of Aura. After being somewhat dissatisfied with the original work and noting the attention Worlds Conquest was getting, AuraChannelerChris decided to start rewriting it, to expand on some scenes and otherwise do some cleanup. His plan for the remade Bond of Aura was 19 chapters... the 17th of which was published in November of 2020. Yeah. I was surprised too, I didn't even know about this until like. A couple days ago. But the fact remains that this fic, like its sequel, is incomplete and dormant if not dead. Good thing that doesn't matter to me!

The Bond of Aura has a pretty simple premise: regular high-schooler Chris is a Pokemon Fan whose DS gets hit by lightning, and this results in the Lucario from his game being brought into the real world. Shenanigans ensue. All the shenanigans. All of them.

An Aura Sphere, the artwork that is cropped to serve as The Bond of Aura's cover image on FF.net. Lucario is on the left, Chris is on the right. This and a ton of other official artwork was made by the author AuraChannelerChris himself, and they all can be found on his DeviantArt page! ...So go check out his art, if it's not a public fic cover I'm not going to repost it for you.

Chapter 1: A Fateful Event

A recurring theme in both Bond of Aura and Worlds Conquest is the narration framing itself as if it actually were a visual medium like a video game or movie, even though it's fully prose. This can be a little difficult to get used to (For example, any time a character has an internal monologue they use parentheses as if it were a visual novel) but once you adjust it's not so bad. Since Worlds Conquest really leans into the video game theme, Bond of Aura is more like a movie, starting with first-person narration as Chris provides the exposition introducing himself, before the narration switches to third person for the remainder of the work.

Chris doesn't introduce himself in full so that later chapters can reveal stuff about him, but seeing as I have the power of knowing all that stuff, I can just tell you everything straight-up. Our protagonist is Chris Garcia Bennett, an 15-year-old lad living in Los Angeles, California. He's of mixed descent (he later explicitly identifies his mother's family as Mexican and his father's family as Native American), and his parents are extremely talented freelance computer technicians. So talented, in fact, that their family is able to own a pretty large house with a pool and other luxuries, at the cost of the parents being away for work pretty much non-stop since Chris was in kindergarten. He was mostly raised by his uncles, and now that he's preparing to start high school he lives completely alone.

Yup. Chris is a lonely rich kid. Yes, it's convenient for the plot (especially that of Worlds Conquest), but Chris's parental issues are one of the main driving features of Bond of Aura. The other two being Lucario's identity crisis and (most importantly) dealing with the fact that Lucario is there to begin with.

Chris is a huge geek, and he's excitedly starting his summer vacation by playing Pokemon Diamond Version on the Nintendo DS. We're given a brief insight as to how his game is progressing, and he specifically makes note of the Pokemon he currently has in his party. Including a Lucario which just received a Burned status condition. Noticing that it's late and stormy outside, Chris saves his game, closes his DS to put it in sleep mode, then goes to bed.

Pokemon Diamond Version and Pokemon Pearl Version: The first set of games in the Fourth Generation of the Pokemon video game series, released in Japan in 2006 and in the US in 2007. Pokemon is a franchise based around collecting magic creatures and training them to engage in epic battles, and is the most lucrative multimedia franchise in the world. Diamond and Pearl were also some of the first games in the series to introduce deeper plotlines into the Pokemon series, with an overarching plotline about the in-universe mythology and what it truly means to have a perfect universe. The enhanced version of these games, Pokemon Platinum, was the first mainline Pokemon game I ever played!

Naturally, what follows next is an epic Pokemon reverse isekai! Lightning strikes through Chris's window and hits the DS, then the DS also starts emitting lightning, and then BOOM. Cue a Poke Ball sitting in Chris's room. He opens it, and out pops his Lucario. The same Lucario from his game. Including the Burned status condition.

The rest of the chapter is tense. Chris is able to help Lucario get better, but not only is Chris scared out of his mind with no clue what's going on, Lucario is also panicking and is also a giant bipedal jackal with magic powers. This does not a calm situation make. Not in the slightest.

Chapter 2: A Fateful Encounter

Eventually, Chris and Lucario are able to sit down and have something resembling a civil conversation. Lucario just wants to know what's going on, and Chris (being the geek he is) puts things together pretty quickly. Lucario is from another world based on Chris's video game, Chris explains, and Chris doesn't know how to send Lucario back, so for now Lucario needs to stay with Chris. This is also when Chris explains his living situation to Lucario, and the fact that Pokemon don't exist in this world. Lucario takes it surprisingly well, considering how much he was panicking earlier.

The two of them (somewhat reluctantly) agree to be friends for the time being, and then the two of them go eat a late-night meal and Chris introduces Lucario to anime. It's sorta fluff, but not quite. The author makes it very clear through the characters' words and actions that the two definitely are NOT comfortable with each other yet, and even when they go to bed Chris's internal monologue is split between "oh gosh there's a Lucario in my house this is so cool!" and "oh gosh there's a Lucario in my house what the heck".

We also get the first glance at Lucario's main problem for this story: the fact that he's from a video game, and the resulting identity crisis. While Worlds Conquest will eventually reveal that the game worlds ARE real to some extent, and Lucario isn't just some kind of artificial construct, Lucario's own understanding of his history in the Pokemon world is primarily based on Chris's own playthrough of the games. Lucario knows all the stuff a Pokemon would be expected to know by default, but he doesn't know his own personal history (since he's based off of an in-game Pokemon egg given to the player) and while he feels intensely loyal to his trainer he can't remember anything about her (since she's not really a person, just a player character controlled by Chris).

Spoilers, but eventually Lucario and Chris will become the bestest of buds, reconcile their differences, and grow to view each other as partners, with Lucario explicitly identifying Chris as his trainer. But for now, he needs to get over his attachment to his previous trainer first.

Lucario, the Aura Pokemon. A Fighting-Steel Type that can and will beat you up. Imagine a monk from D&D crossed with an anthropomorphic jackal and that's Lucario in a nutshell. Their "Aura" powers and the lore connected to them is something that Pokemon fans have taken and ran with (you name it, Aura's done it in a fanfic), but it does have explicit canon abilities. Conveniently, one of those abilities is established to be the usage of human speech, something most Pokemon are unable to do.

...This is taking too long. Time to pick up the pace. Things get much smoother, simpler, and fluffier for a while, so it should be easy to rush through the next couple of chapters. You all should know what a slice-of-life story is, right?

Chapter 3: A Very Calm, Relaxing Approach

After waking up and slowly getting to know each other better, Chris abruptly remembers hygiene exists and very sternly instructs Lucario on how to use a shower. Lucario, being a Pokemon, has no idea what a shower is. Shenanigans ensue.

Once all that's dealt with, the two of them have breakfast, and then go to water the flowers in Chris's garden while discussing Lucario's Aura powers. There's a very deep discussion about the ability to sense life and what it means to Lucario, as well as how cool Aura is in general. I'm beginning to suspect the author is a huge Lucario fan or something.

Chapter 4: A Carnivorous Aura Pokemon

Chris realizes that the animal Lucario's design is based off of is, in fact, a carnivore. So he makes steak! Lucario greatly enjoys the steak. I don't blame him, steak is fantastic. Afterwards Chris remembers ANOTHER aspect of hygiene and instructs Lucario on how to brush his teeth. Something something very wholesome moving on.

Chapter 5: A Gamer is Born

While Chris is asleep, Lucario does some very serious pondering about the posters in Chris's room and the frankly absurdly large video game collection the boy has, wondering if his entire reality was just being puppeted around by human children. But then Chris wakes up, introduces Lucario to his game collection, and explains how much his games mean to him, how he enjoys living vicariously through the game worlds because his real life is so dull.

Then he gets Lucario addicted to video games. VERY addicted.

Chapter 6: An Unbelievable Strength

Okay time to slow down a bit again. This chapter is pretty short, but its contents carry some pretty important backstory that WILL matter in Worlds Conquest. Namely, Chris and Lucario realize that the latter is way larger and way more powerful than a normal Lucario is supposed to be.

Regular Lucario are around four feet tall. Chris's Lucario is 6 foot 7 inches, a head taller than Chris himself is. He's way stronger and tougher than the average Lucario as well, lifting Chris's bed like it's nothing and doing push-ups under it, and chopping wood essentially with his bare hands. His Aura senses are stronger too, being able to detect stuff within multiple miles as well as a couple other tricks that usually fall within the range of psychic powers, such as telepathy or being able to see out of another person's eyes. And as for his Aura Sphere projectile attack... we'll get to that.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it: Lucario is overpowered. Greatly. I find it amusing how the author is very defensive of Chris and OCs in general, adding a disclaimer at the start of Worlds Conquest talking about how he's going to great lengths to ensure Chris doesn't fall into the trap of becoming a dreaded "Mary Sue/Gary Stu", yet he seems to completely overlook how if anyone's going to get accused of being a Sue it's not going to be Chris; it's going to be Lucario.

I don't think either of them are a "Gary Stu", for the record. Not only is the term extremely subjective to begin with, but with a story as massive and multifaceted as Worlds Conquest there's only so much you can really do with raw power. There's plenty of situations where it doesn't matter how strong you are, it won't help you win. If I were to guess, I'd say that the depiction of Chris's Lucario stems disappointment. The idea of the Pokemon Lucario is rad as heck, but when you compare its epic marketing to the actual in-game Pokemon it's rather... lacking? It's cool, but it can't normally go toe-to-toe with gods the way the marketing makes it look like it's capable of. I suspect Lucario's absurd Hercules-level strength in Bond of Aura and Worlds Conquest is a "correction" for this, bringing Lucario back in line with its public image.

For the record, there is a reason why Chris's Lucario is overpowered. His backstory (which at this point is unknown to him) is revealed more in full later on in Worlds Conquest. But hilariously, as of the game Pokemon Legends Arceus released in 2022, there doesn't need to be a reason. Lucario's drastically increased size and strength is a perfect example of an Alpha Pokemon.

An Alpha Lucario positioned next to a human for scale. Chris's Lucario is likely to actually be a bit shorter than this one, if you can believe it. Image courtesy of ShackNews's article on Alpha Pokemon.

Alpha Pokemon are exactly what they sound like: Pokemon that are significantly bigger and tougher than most examples of their species. Considering the existence of Chris's Lucario predates the existence of Alpha Pokemon by over a decade, it's entirely coincidence, but I still find it amusing.

So yeah, Chris and Lucario figure out that Lucario has insane stats. Moving on.

Chapter 7: A Very Odd Team

Chris and Lucario go back to gaming. Specifically, this time they're playing Wii Sports! Annnnnd Lucario keeps breaking the controllers with his absurd strength. Fortunately Chris has copious amounts of wiimotes but it still takes a while before they're able to find a game Lucario can play without getting so distracted he crushes the controllers. Eventually they settle on Wii Sports Baseball.

Along the way they discuss the possibility of Lucario becoming a "Renaissance Pokemon". Like a Renaissance Man, who's good at everything, except as a Pokemon. Spoilers: Lucario is not going to become a Jack of All Trades, Master of All. Sure, at this point he starts aspiring to become one, but once Worlds Conquest rolls around he'll mostly settle into the role of providing raw muscle and being Chris's main confidant, if I recall correctly.

Chapter 8: A Reading Experience

Chris decides to teach Lucario how to read! It's... pretty slow going. While Lucario presumably used Aura to learn how to speak properly, knowledge of reading and writing is entirely different. This poor 'mon is illiterate and does NOT have a brain that adapts to reading easily. Fortunately we have Chris there to help Lucario out in a way that's quite wholesome!

Unfortunately, Lucario's identity crisis acts up and he briefly panics and attacks Chris in the confusion, so they go for a week of things being tense between them before Chris relents and forgives Lucario for it, and goes back to teaching Lucario how to read.

Chapter 9: A Hot Summer Day

Exactly what it says on the tin! It's hot, and it's Southern California so it's dang hot. So Chris and Lucario get the pool set up, and then there's the usual sort of pool party shenanigans that happen in fluff fics involving pools. There's discussion about how a Pokemon with steel literally grafted into their body deals with heat, and cool experimenting with underwater telepathy.

Lucario also brings up the fact that he doesn't know how to use Aura Sphere yet, a move heavily associated with the Lucario species, and resolves to try and learn in. Spoilers, he'll get it down before the fic is over.

Chapter 10: Movie Night

Okay this one's kind of funny. As the title implies, Chris and Lucario watch a movie together. Their choice of movie?

The eighth Pokemon movie, premiering in July of 2005. As part of the advertising for the soon-to-be-released Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, the movie featured the debut of various Pokemon from those games, including Lucario. If you listen closely, you can hear all the Pokemon fanfic writers hurriedly taking notes on everything in this movie that involves "Aura" and "Ash Ketchum".

Rather an appropriate choice, I'd say. Chris and Lucario spend most of the chapter just commenting on the movie and raising questions about the way the Lucario in the movie uses Aura, but eventually all the plot holes are ironed out ant Lucario is satisfied. The movie's Lucario isn't what I find funny about this chapter, though, what I find funny is Chris and Lucario's discussion about Ash Ketchum and Pikachu. Chris describes Ash as "the face of the anime" who will "never, EVER leave the position". He and Lucario also complain about how Ash never wins any big tournaments, and how if the trend keeps up then Chris is planning to stop watching the Pokemon anime entirely. Modern fans know that while it took a while for him to get there, Ash eventually became a Pokemon Champion in 2019, and eventually left the show entirely to give rise to a new Pokemon anime with a new cast.

Lucario also calls out Ash for not evolving his Pikachu, insulting Pikachu for choosing to stay in a weaker form. This is already funny, because at the time this chapter is written, Worlds Conquest has already been chugging along steadily, and Lucario and Pikachu have met and become pretty good allies. Guess I'll have to look into that when we finally catch up on the reread, and see if Lucario and Pikachu actually talk about it at some point.

Chapter 11: A Pokemon Cook

After learning that Lucario doesn't know what fireworks are, Chris and Lucario briefly chat about what Lucario's childhood was like, and what Lucario's previous trainer was like. As I've previously established, Lucario's "previous trainer" wasn't really real, and he doesn't remember them at all. So he makes up stuff and lies about it. Deciding that Lucario needs to have more happy memories to look back on, and realizing that Lucario's going to need to be able to feed himself while Chris is at school once summer ends, Chris decides to try teaching Lucario how to cook.

A knife gets destroyed in the process.

Chapter 12: A Day of Training

ALSO exactly what it says on the tin. Lucario does some more exercise, including doing push-ups underneath Chris's bed. While Chris is still asleep. This leads to a funny moment where Chris wakes up and mistakes the push-ups for an earthquake. A little bit more Lucario angst happens as he realizes how attached he's getting to Chris.

Reading this fic in the year AD 2025, my brain is seeing all these scenes of Chris and Lucario enjoying each other's company and going "wow, there is a hilariously unintentional gay subtext here". Like, the bond between Pokemon and Trainer is completely different from romance for VERY OBVIOUS REASONS, but the way Chris and Lucario are written has hilarious levels of "Does This Remind You of Anything?" in hindsight. Definitely not intended by the author in the slightest, and definitely shouldn't be interpreted that way. But once you see it it's really hard to unsee it.

Chapter 13: An Aura Sphere

Frustrated with his lack of progress with Aura Sphere, Lucario (with Chris's help) decides to focus on honing his Aura detection skills specifically so he can better understand what he's doing wrong. Eventually he's able to get it to work, and since it's his Aura, he's even able to temporarily hand the ball of energy to Chris without harming him! It's a very cool and powerful moment, ending when they decide to dispose of the Aura Sphere by launching it into the sky.

Big mistake. Lucario's overpowered-ness comes back to bite them when the Aura Sphere explodes and the neighborhood is put under lockdown in fear of a terrorist bomber. This would be a hilarious scene, except Chris has to explain to Lucario why everything is under lockdown, which includes a brief discussion about terrorism that... really hasn't aged well. It's a small moment, but it serves as a good reminded that Bond of Aura and Worlds Conquest were primarily written in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with a lot of the unintended biases that come with that era.

Chapter 14: A Day at School

Summer vacation has finally come to an end, and Chris has to go back to school, leaving Lucario at home. Alone. And not coping well. I haven't mentioned this yet, but pretty much every time Lucario has his identity crisis about his origins, he ends up arguing with himself. Lucario staunchly believes he needs to be loyal to his original trainer, even if he doesn't remember them at all, and that by getting too close to Chris he risks "betraying" his original trainer. Arguing in favor of fully accepting Chris as a "new trainer" is an imaginary Riolu that's taken form in Lucario's mindscape and pretty much acts like a very needy puppy whenever Chris is around, trying to annoy Lucario into caving and fully being with Chris. This causes Lucario to react badly and push down any positive feelings he has towards Chris, leading to some of the chaos in earlier chapters.

Riolu, the Emanation Pokemon. A Fighting-type. Look at this precious little baby fella. More huggable than you'd expect! Can also beat you up! Evolves into Lucario, hence why Chris's Lucario's subconscious seems to manifest as one; he WAS a Riolu when he was young.

So now Lucario is trapped, at home, by himself, with Riolu driving him crazy in his mind. He tries to distract himself by using Aura to see the world through random humans within his Aura perception radius, but soon he ends up fixated on Chris again. A couple hours later, Chris walks outside for lunch and finds Lucario in a tree, and gives the latter a very stern-yet-kind talking-to.

Chapter 15: A Birthday

...Oh frick um

[Content Warning: Attempted Suicide and Self-Harm, and discussion of topics????? Skip to the next red text if you want to avoid it.]

Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. Genuinely! I hadn't read this chapter before! I'm not even sure it existed when I last reread Worlds Conquest, or maybe it did and I just didn't bother to check if Bond of Aura had new chapters. Either way: what the heck?

Well, apparently, "the heck" is "Chris does not cope with parental abandonment well". The main lead-up to this chapter is that Chris's Birthday is coming up, and his parents are planning on coming home to visit. Chris hasn't seen them in over a year. Then a couple days before his birthday, they call to tell him they'll miss it again because another job came up. Chris snaps, yells at his parents, and hangs up, which is extremely jarring because Chris has been pretty much an endless beacon of sunshine up to this point. Lucario even notes that Chris's Aura is WAY out of wack. And it's a good thing that Lucario notices because Chris then proceeds to make a dash for the kitchen knife to try and stab himself in the chest. Lucario stops him just in time, and Chris completely breaks down in tears, explaining how he feels worthless and unvalued by everyone in his life, and that this isn't the first time he's snapped like this, though the last time he tried to kill/seriously maim himself was when he was in Kindergarten and his parents left the first time. Lucario helps Chris calm down and reassures him that his life has value, and that even if his family can't be with him, at least he has Lucario with him instead.

This caught me completely off guard. As you've noticed, the tone of this fic has been pretty light-hearted and fluffy so far. There's been a bit of angst on Lucario's end, but mostly his mental arguments with Riolu have been played for laughs. Suddenly shifting to suicide prevention came completely out of left field. And from what I can recall of Worlds Conquest, this is a pretty jarring contrast to that work too. Don't get me wrong, there are gonna be some dark moments, but... nothing like this. Worlds Conquest usually stays on the side of comedy.

I don't think I really like it, from a writing standpoint, but I don't know if I'm supposed to? The author clearly is trying to handle the subject with utmost seriousness, and it really puts a lot of Chris's behavior both in this story and Worlds Conquest into perspective in a new way for me. This scene will probably be in the back of my mind going forward, when before I didn't even know it existed. But because this is a rewritten version of the original Bond of Aura, I don't even know if I should take it into account. What if it was just added for additional shock factor, or to give Chris some depth the author felt he was lacking? Regardless, it's here. I think the author handled it the best he could, but I genuinely question if he needed to handle it at all. I think I need more context here.

[Okay we're done with the content warning stuff you're good now]

So Chris's Birthday finally happens, and after spending the morning visiting relatives he returns to spend the rest of the day with Lucario... and he brings gifts! Turns out that Lucario's theoretical birthday (the release date of the game he's from) was a couple days ago, and Chris realized that he didn't get anything for Lucario. They then agree to celebrate their birthdays together, Chris briefly calls his parents to apologize for snapping at them (while still respectfully calling them out for their neglect), and then the two of them have tacos.

Chapter 16: A Few Memorable Holidays

And by "a few", I mean "Halloween and Thanksgiving". Halloween has a funny moment come to pass when Chris dresses up as a Lucario for Halloween, and Lucario briefly panics and wonders if the costume is made from authentic Lucario fur. Chris has to once again reassure Lucario that no, the fur isn't real, because Lucario is the only real Lucario in the world. Then they eat a lot of candy. And steak.

Thanksgiving is exactly what you'd expect Thanksgiving in this fanfic to be. Lots of the warm fuzzies, with Chris and Lucario being appreciative of each other and eating some really good food, including Turkey (if you're not from the US and aren't somehow arne't familiar despite us Americans having a tendency to loudly broadcast everything we do, traditionally turkey is eaten as part of the thanksgiving dinner). The fic once again shows its age when Chris shares the story of the so-called "first thanksgiving" with Lucario (I can't tell if Chris being part Native American makes it better or worse) but thankfully they don't linger on it too long.

Chapter 17: A Christmas

It's Christmas! Which, like the Halloween and Thanksgiving scenes, is about what you'd expect from this fic's fluffy slice-of-life vibes. Chris gets to educate Lucario on what Christmas is, and they go about setting up the tree and decorations in a festive manner. There's a bit of a humorous-turned-cool moment when Chris accidentally gets jumpscared by a small spider (big mood, spiders are the worst) and is about to be crushed by boxes of decorations when Lucario manages to use ExtremeSpeed for the first time to catch the boxes. Very nice. Then Christmas proper rolls around and Chris give Lucario a scarf. Lucario doesn't have money to buy a gift, so he just promises Chris his eternal moral support. Which then turns into an absolutely delightful scene of them hyping each other up.

And then there's also THIS:

Mister author are you SURE you know what kind of relationship you're writing here??? Are you SURE??? Please tell me I'm not the only person seeing this, I haven't even gotten to the fic this blog is actually supposed to be about and I'm ALREADY going mad-

The chapter closes with the promise that New Year's Day is coming, and with it, a final challenge that only Lucario can overcome, to determine whether his future will truly involve him becoming Chris's Pokemon or not...

And then that's it. No more chapters. I did warn you! But figuring out what happens next is kind of easy to determine. Considering Chris and Lucario are still best bros living together by the start of The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest, my guess is Lucario has his final emotional crisis where he finally learns to accept that Chris is his trainer (and in a sense has always BEEN his trainer), and they resolve to be a Trainer-and-Pokemon partnership from here on out. Possibly with a guest appearance by Chris's parents so that side of the plot drama can be wrapped up before Worlds Conquest too.

My personal verdict on The Bond of Aura: Eh. It's not bad. The writing is consistent with the general quality of what I recall Worlds Conquest being like. Not necessarily up to my usual standard nowadays, but I've grown to become exceptionally picky with fanfiction I read, especially when it comes to grammar and formatting, to a level that I am well aware is pretty unrealistic. It's probably better than most fanfics, tbh. The story is very good at keeping its focus on the two main characters and only them (unless you count Imaginary Riolu as a separate character), which makes sense. This story is their backstory, at least in part. It solidifies who Chris and Lucario are, and why by the time of Worlds Conquest they've become so devoted to each other. Their relationship is then used as a bedrock for the network of relationships they'll then form with the other members of the Smash Bros. cast, which becomes a self-sustaining engine of character dynamics.

But for me, starting with Worlds Conquest way back then, and then coming back to this, I have trouble getting the vibes, I guess. I really like Worlds Conquest as a kid because it was action-packed, and because it was full of so many characters who would interact with each other and have their own arcs. Just focusing on two of them is a drastic change in scale for me, and while I think the quality is good, I don't think pure slice-of-life fluff is where AuraChannelerChris really shines in his writing. I know it's going to get better than this.

Which is really unfair to The Bond of Aura, which is pretty charming in its own right. That's part of why I've gone out of my way to include a summary of it before diving into Worlds Conquest proper, instead of just going "by the way here's the basic gist Chris is lonely rich kid and he has this extremely powerful Lucario in the real world don't worry about it". Backstories are important, and if I want to judge Worlds Conquest objectively I need to take The Bond of Aura into account. I know you don't have the time to read Worlds Conquest, seeing as you're here, but if you ever do... make sure you read The Bond of Aura first.

Alright. Obligatory predecessor work summary done! Now let's dive into The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest. For real this time.

Starting here.

[maspers-reads-subspace]

Reading The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest so You Don't Have To

...Okay, let me explain.

The year is 2015. I'm 14 years old and I have no idea what fanfiction is. I barely know what fandom is. I have no clue what's going on in life (and arguably still don't, but whatever). BUT. I am already a huge Nintendo geek. Me and my brothers have recently acquired Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, and have just completed the entirety of its epic adventure mode: The Subspace Emissary. It was, as everyone knows, freaking awesome. The ultimate crossover that every Nintendo fan had ever wanted. It was a dream come true.

And then it was over. Oops. We just ran out of game to play. Awkward. But... there was a hint of something more going on with Subspace. Not everything in the game was fully explained. There is, incidentally, a reason for this. Due to constraints not all of the Subspace story was able to be properly implemented in the game. So Masahiro Sakurai, the game's creator, had to explain a couple of extra stuff on the game's website.

The Secret Texts of the Subspace Emissary. It's all still there for you to see, if you know where to look! ...Spoilers, obviously, but come on, it's Smash Bros.

So naturally, past me took to the internet. And eventually he'd stumble upon the Smash Dojo website and get all of his questions answered, scratching the itch that the search for knowledge always inspires in people. But the thing is, when you put something into Google search, it's autocomplete will give you suggestions, trying to guess what you're typing before you type it so you don't have to type the whole thing. And lo and behold, when past me typed in "the subspace emissary" into the search bar...

Just pretend it looks like the Google of 2015 okay

Excuse me? What the heck is this? Since when does the Subspace Emissary have a "Worlds Conquest"? What even is a "Worlds Conquest"? That's not correct grammar, is it? Is this a game mode I missed? A separate game? Some extra lore? Something completely unrelated to Smash Bros that just happens to have the words "Subspace Emissary" in it??? At first I ignored it in favor of getting the original information I was looking for, but since I am a geek and was hyperfixated on Subspace at the time curiosity got the better of me. I searched "the subspace emissary's worlds conquest" and clicked the first (non-ad) link that popped up.

Poor precious baby me. You had no idea what you were in for.

The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest is a Super Smash Bros. fanfiction written by AuraChannelerChris on fanfiction.net. It is not, as you may have heard claimed, the longest piece of fiction ever written. At this point, it's not even the longest piece of Smash Bros. fanfiction ever written, which is an absurd thing to think about. But at one point it was a contender for the title of longest piece of fiction, and it's certainly one of the most famous. Worlds Conquest currently has over four million words (4,102,217 according to TvTropes.org) meaning it's one heck of a doorstopper.

It was initially published on March 4th, 2008 (right about when Smash Bros. Brawl was being released in the United States) and continued to update for quite a while. By the time past me discovered it in 2015, around 220 chapters had been published. That number would soon be brought up to 221, while the author was also going back and rewriting earlier chapters to have a higher standard of quality. Its most recent update was in June of 2018, with another chapter rewrite, and there hasn't been any indication of further updates since. It's just sitting there on ff.net. 221 chapters. Unfinished.

But just because it's unfinished doesn't mean it's any less of an epic read. Some of the individual chapters are longer than full length novellas. This thing is a behemoth that EARNED its reputation in the fandom circles. It's almost hard to believe the project was initially started with the goal of helping the author (a native Spanish-speaker) improve at English.

Worlds Conquest's current cover image on on ff.net

What is The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest about? To summarize, it's about the author's original character Chris (not confirmed to be a Self-Insert, but I have suspicions) teaming up with just about the entire Smash Bros. Brawl roster to save all of reality from the Subspace Army, which unfortunately didn't stay down after getting beaten up during the events of the original game's Adventure Mode. This involves visiting the worlds of a lot of different games and engaging in all sorts of shenanigans. Pretty much every game franchise you can think of gets a story arc associated with it, with multiple overarching myth arcs as the so-called "Smashers" make gradual progress against the forces of evil. Is it kind of generic, as fanfic premises go? Yes. "My OC gets to hang out with the main cast" stories are a dime a dozen. But this story managed to go on for way longer than any other of its kind, and was supported from start to finish. Its reputation continues to attract people to it to this day! So I'd say that's got to be worth something.

Okay, back to past me. Again, at the beginning of 2015, I had no idea what a fanfiction even was. My main priorities in life were geeking out over the latest Pokemon game, eating Kraft Mac & Cheese (the best food to ever grace this planet's surface), and procrastinating every single middle school homework assignment I ever received. To me, Worlds Conquest was not a fanfiction, nor was it one of the longest works of fiction ever written, it was just "this cool story I found online". And it was cool. 14-year-old me was HOOKED. I spent just about every ounce of my free time on my phone reading it. I am a very fast reader. I read all of Homestuck in under a month, But this took me significantly longer to get through! But I had never seen anything like it before! It gripped me in a chokehold and didn't let me go. For a few months, this fanfic was my life. I would read it in bed after my parents went to sleep (Mom and Dad if you're somehow on tumblr and reading this, don't act surprised, I know I was NOT as subtle about it as I thought I was). I would read it instead of doing homework (DO NOT DO THIS PEOPLE HOMEWORK IS SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO GET DONE). I definitely didn't understand everything that was going on in it. Not only was I a relatively sheltered child, but I also just hadn't played that many video games, and Worlds Conquest references a LOT of them. But still I read on, and on, and on...

And then, once the whole dang story was over and I was done, I clicked the next link that pops up when you search "the subspace emissary's worlds conquest", which at the time was the link to the fic's TvTropes.org page. I didn't know what TvTropes was. Turns out it's one HECK of a gateway drug to fandom, fanfic, and media in general. I fell down the fandom rabbit hole and have been quietly disappointed by the lengths of all the fanfics I've read ever since. Turns out when a doorstopper fic is your introduction to fanfiction it warps your perspective a little. But I've still had a ton of fun! A few years later, I went back and actually reread the whole thing again just for kicks, and because I must be insane.

But now? Now it's been ten years since I first read Worlds Conquest. I've read way more fics since then, and honestly my standards in whether I like a fanfiction or not have probably gone up significantly. I've definitely gotten better at looking for quality and not just quantity, to be sure. So that leads me to wonder...

Is Worlds Conquest ACTUALLY good? Or am I just biased?

So I've decided I'm going to reread it. Seriously, this time. And since I actually know how to do research now and have learned about more games that AREN'T Pokemon in the past decade, I won't just skim through the bits that I don't understand. Does this story deserve to be revered as a titan, a benchmark for other long fics to surpass? Or is it just overrated? Personally, I really hope it's still good as I remember it being, or at least somewhat decent. But you never know. So time to read it again and double-check! Right? ...Right???

Pictured: Me, someone who is almost certainly completely insane for doing this seriously what is WRONG with me

And chances are, you're probably curious to know if The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest is any good too! Nobody has the time to read massive doorstoppers in this day and age unless they're like. Retired. And retired people are significantly less likely to read fanfiction, statistically speaking. All you people who actually are interested have stuff like work, or school, and extreme bouts of apathy caused by depression, which prevent you from spending time reading one of the longest fanfictions to ever grace this beautiful Earth with its presence. Especially since it's unfinished, right? No point in committing if it's not DONE.

But lucky you! You don't HAVE to commit! Because I've decided on committing FOR you, assuming I actually have the chutzpah to follow through. (Historically I don't, but now I have the internet to hold me accountable!) The goal with this is for me to reread all of Worlds Conquest and summarize it for you, likely chapter-by-chapter, so that you still get to learn just what the heck this astounding monster of a fic is about without having to do all the work yourself. I get to reexperience my childhood and view the story with fresh eyes, and you get to become educated in this definitely important fandom icon. It's a win-win!

So come along with me, as we jump right into the experience of a lifetime, reading The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest-

...Oh right, I forgot about The Bond of Aura.

See, the thing is, Worlds Conquest is not a work that exists in isolation. It's actually a sequel. Though thankfully its predecessor work, AuraChannelerChris's The Bond of Aura, is much, MUCH shorter than its sequel, and is significantly less plot-heavy. But it still provides some really important context that's convenient to have when going into Worlds Conquest. It's not mandatory per se, obviously I didn't read it when I first discovered the behemoth and I was fine. But it's still helpful, and provides some info such as:

More details on who the Protagonist of Worlds Conquest is and what his backstory is like.

Explaining why he's able to HAVE the insane adventure he's about to go on without it disrupting his life in the "real" world too much.

Showing how he somehow managed to acquire a six-foot-tall Lucario who's a Pokemon of Mass Destruction.

Assorted adorable fluff.

It's not required reading, but I've decided to cover it anyway, or at least the basics just so you know what it's about. I won't go in-depth and probably cover the whole thing in one post for convenience, but I feel it's better to get it out of the way than not and regret it later.

So let's see how this goes, shall we?

My analysis of The Bond of Aura is here. Or you can just skip to the Worlds Conquest chapter summaries starting here.