Intermission 2-Flashbacks Galore

From Accct Wiki

Roy leaned back in his chair, propping his legs upon the desk as he placed his arms behind his head, emotionlessly gazing toward the ceiling panels in the silent ambiance of the room. He sighed, his eyes drifting slowly to a close, and muttered, “Link, can you tell me where the hell Marth decided to run off to for no reason?”

Link glanced up from his book of crossword puzzles. “I don’t know, Roy,” he responded, frowning slightly. “Maybe he took a break.”

Roy’s eyes immediately snapped open as he furiously placed his feet onto the floorboards and rose, extending his arms, fists formed loosely, and crying, “Are you kidding me? I didn’t give him permission to take a break!” He hesitated for a moment, his arms drooping at his sides, and then continued, “Well… then again, I never gave him permission to do anything else that he normally does.” He paused once more as he raised a thoughtful index finger to his chin, and added, “Maybe I could use those as reasons to take money out of his paycheck.”

“How much does he owe you?” Link inquired innocently.

“I don’t know,” Roy replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Hell, I haven’t been keeping track of these things… Let’s just say he owes me one hundred bucks, and we’ll go from there.”

Link nodded to himself, glancing once down at his book of crossword puzzles. “That seems like a good idea,” he agreed as he lifted his pencil slightly. His shifted his attention toward the puzzle upon the right page, and then apprehensively frowned. “Hey, Roy,” he began, “what’s a five-letter word for happiness?”

“Money,” Roy replied, smirking, “of course!”

Link began to bite the eraser end of his pencil. “That doesn’t fit here,” he nervously replied.

“Then make it fit,” Roy sneered.

“I don’t think it will, Roy…”

Roy sighed and strolled toward his colleague, muttering, “You’re useless, you know that?” He halted at the elf’s side and peered over his shoulder at the crossword puzzle in question. Roy blinked, and then cocked an eyebrow in frustration as he sputtered, “Maybe it doesn’t fit because there’s only four boxes there, Link.”

Link hesitated as he continued to glower down at the page. “…Really? I could’ve sworn there was five.”

“Link,” Roy began, his expression cringing slightly, “can you count?”

Link bit his lip, and then looked up to gaze at Roy anxiously. “Well,” he began, a slim chuckle overlapping his voice, “there was this whole incident that you probably don’t want to hear about. It involved a whole lot of vodka and a waffle iron-”

“Okay, thank you, Link,” Roy interrupted, slapping a hand to his forehead. “I… really don’t want to hear it.”

Link smirked. “I had never seen so many pink-”

Roy smacked the back of Link’s head and sputtered, “Shut up, I said!”

Link rubbed a sore hand to his head. “Sorry,” he whimpered.

“You’d better be,” Roy scowled. He placed his hands upon his hips, narrowing his eyes as he observed the nearly vacant room. “It’s actually pretty nice with Marth gone,” he announced, grinning to himself with newfound content.

Link glanced away. “I thought you hated when he was gone,” he began, redirecting his gaze toward the redhead once more, “because he’s the ‘poster child’ and apparently we need him to do that.”

“Do you listen to yourself when you talk?” Roy questioned. “ ’Cause it seems to me like your mouth is stuck in ‘blather like an idiot’ mode.”

“I thought I took it off that mode,” Link muttered, pouting.

Roy huffed and crossed his arms, and then leaned against the nearby wall, lifting one leg to level the sole of his tennis shoe with the wall. “I swear that you’ll be the death of me, Link,” he sneered, grimacing, “and not in the good way.”

Link remained silent, still intently focused on the crossword puzzle book in his hands. The door abruptly opened effortlessly, causing both members of Red, Blue, and That Other Guy Incorporated to direct their respective gazes toward the occurrence. Marth lazily stepped through the doorway, shut the door behind himself, and then shifted his gaze between Roy’s accusing glare and Link’s perplexed expression. Marth forced a smile at Roy, and then lifted the three envelopes he had been carrying. “Roy,” he began, his weak smile becoming a hearty grin, “our paychecks came in today.”

Roy’s eyes grew wide. “What?” he recurred, cocking an eyebrow.

“It is the end of the month,” Marth explained, offering one of the envelopes to his colleague. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile. You know, actually getting paid, I mean.”

Link set his book of crossword puzzles aside and casually rose from his seat, and then almost reluctantly accepted the envelope offered to him. He stared at the paper in confusion for a moment. Roy eagerly restrained the letter in his extended hands, staring at its glory from afar, an expression of sheer joy plastered upon his face. Marth smiled pleasantly as he witnessed Roy parade around the room gazing upon the envelope. “You know,” Marth started, “you could open it instead of having to resort to dancing with inanimate objects. We’re not in high school anymore.”

Roy’s ecstatic expression faded slightly as he halted in his steps, and then retracted the envelope toward his chest, where he stared down at it contently. He swiftly ran a fingernail underneath the flap, tearing the top portion of the envelope, and then hurriedly lifted the content from its container, neglecting to notice the envelope as it descended unnoticed to the floor. He hastily unfolded the paper and then began to stare blankly. “Twelve cents?” he muttered, narrowing his eyes. “I think I got your paycheck, Marth.”

Link proceeded to open his designated paycheck and then held the envelope behind the paper as he unfolded it. After a moment of silent examination, he stated, “Mine only says I get twelve cents, too.”

“What?” Marth questioned, his brow drooping in frustration as he placed two pensive fingers at his lower lip. He ignored Roy’s emerging grimace as he tore open his own paycheck envelope, studying the paper contained within afterward. “I-I…” he stuttered, his right eye twitching, “I’m only getting fourteen cents.”

Roy crunched the paper’s edges within his clenching hands as he spewed, “Well, what the fu-”

“Roy, I think I know what the problem is,” Marth interjected, his own facial expression fading into one of accusation. “See, ever since you started this stupid little lemonade stand of job-hunting you call a company, none of us have been doing the tournament battles we’re supposed to be doing for our jobs as part of the Super Smash Brothers.”

Roy hesitated. “So?”

“So,” Marth sneered, “we’re not getting paid for what we’re not doing.” He scoffed, then continued, “And, apparently, the minimum wage here is twelve cents.”

“How does that work?” Link asked.

“It just does,” Marth answered. “I don’t know.”

Roy scowled as a peculiar thought pierced his subconscious. “Hey!” he yelped, pointing an accusing finger at his fellow swordsman. “Then, how come you got paid two cents more than me or Link?”

“Use proper English once in awhile, and maybe you’d realize why,” Marth replied.

“I think it’s because he’s much prettier,” Link interjected.

Roy huffed, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: ‘Damn you and your pretty-boy status!’ ”

Marth blinked. “You guys are morons.”

“Morons who want to be paid the extra two cents they deserve!” Roy spat in response. “Dude, that’s just not right. I’m going to write an angry letter, man!”

“Yeah, that’ll teach ’em,” Marth sighed, rolling his eyes afterward. He shook his head, offered a peaceful palm into the air, and added, “Roy, I’ll bet you wouldn’t even be able to articulate what you wanted to say into intelligible sentences.”

Roy hesitated. “I only got four words out of that, Marthy, and they were ‘shut,’ ‘up,’ ‘you,’ and ‘pansy!’ ”

Marth gazed emotionlessly at his colleague. “You promised you’d stop calling me that,” he whimpered.

An expression of anger faded into one of unease. “I know,” Roy muttered. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

As his colleagues attempted in vain to stare in dissimilar directions, Link raised his eyebrows with suspicious concern. “You know,” he began, clutching his designated envelope within a loosely clenched hand as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, “you still haven’t told me what’s up with all this ‘Marthy’ stuff that Marth’s always complaining about.”

“Not complaining!” they cried in unison.

Link forced a smile and the nervously bit his lip. “You sure?” he questioned, an uncharacteristic notion of thoughtfulness becoming increasingly apparent across his face. “I don’t know… you guys never really included me that much in anything that was ever going on.”

“Like I’d include you in anything, anyway,” Roy huffed.

“You included me in this company.”

Roy paused. “Touché, but it was for good measure.”

“Good measure?” Link recurred. “I always thought-”

“Damn it, Link!” Roy interrupted, slamming a fist into the nearby wall as he furiously clenched his papers within his left hand. “Will you just shut up for awhile? Two minutes, maybe three! That’s all I ask!”

Link apprehensively gazed at Roy, whom was halted in his fist-to-wall position to complement his enraged facial expression, and remained silent. Marth tapped his dress shoe to the floorboards once, then threw a nervous hand behind his head as he exhaled, whispering, “Maybe you should tell him.”

“Like there’s even anything to tell,” Roy scoffed, parting his fist from the wall and resuming his correct posture. He carelessly adjusted the collar of his suit jacket, snickered to himself, and then grinned deviously as his colleagues began to stare worriedly. “You’d be bored out of your mind,” Roy began, shifting his gaze eerily toward Link.

Link stared down at his paycheck. Roy shut his eyes for a moment, and then chortled to himself, causing each of his colleagues to return their respective troubled gazes toward him. Roy reopened his eyes and glowered at the paycheck within his trembling hands. “You know,” he began, “I remember when we got paid almost two thousand bucks a month.”

Marth hesitated, and then tardily made his way toward the folding chair behind Roy’s makeshift desk, afterward sitting upon it and propping his legs unto the desk. “It never seemed like enough money, what with all those losers that get paid by the hour,” Roy continued through a subsequent snort. Link strolled in Marth’s direction and then took a seat lazily atop the desk, dangling his legs over the side as he withheld his designated paycheck within his hands.

“Those punks tried to cheat me out of my two thousand,” Roy persisted, leaning against the wall, “but I knew better, man. It was so different than when I had first gotten here. They would throw money at me and say, ‘Use your awesome Flare Blade attack! The crowd loves it!’ But, somewhere along the line, it turned into, ‘God, you’re asking too much from us… sales are down, and yet you’re asking for a three thousand dollar raise!’ Well, what’s wrong with that, I thought. Excuse me for trying to make an above-average living, Mr. Jerkwad. I didn’t want to have to make that bomb threat, but they just kept pushing me into it. It’s their own fault, if you ask me. Roy can only take so much financial abuse, then he starts getting angry… and starts referring to himself in third person.

“Then, finally they told me that I was just a clone of some other character that already existed in the Super Smash Brothers. I was like, ‘Hey, whoa! So, all my moves are bastardized versions of someone else’s?’ It was about two months after they gave me a point three percent salary cut, and by then I was pretty pissed off, by George. I mean, I couldn’t wait to meet this character so then I could kick his move-stealing ass.” Roy paused for a moment to clear his throat, and then continued, “Seemed like a good idea at the time, man, but when those executive-types finally pointed him out to me, I knew that kicking his ass would be only slightly tougher than I had originally thought.

“Marth Lowell, they told me. All my moves are bastardized versions of Marth Lowell’s. ‘Welcome to the Super Smash Brothers!’ Jackasses…

“It wasn’t until way later that I found out that his room was across from the one to the right of mine. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed earlier; he always seemed to be pacing back and forth in front of his door like he was waiting for the bus, or something. Pfft… He always had an innocent look on his face, that pansy. Must be why he got a raise… damn fangirls never want to keep their hands to themselves.”

Roy hesitated for a moment, staring at the vacant floor space between his extended feet and his colleagues seated near the desk. Marth’s azure eyes stared sedulously, slightly welled with moisture. “I’d see him wandering around for no reason; either he was looking for the bathroom twenty-four seven, or he lost his car keys every single day,” Roy continued. “I never had a proper opportunity to unleash the ass-kickin’, though I don’t really know if that was a good thing or not, looking back at it now. Come to think of it, I had never really kicked anyone’s ass before… ’cept my nutritionist, but she deserved it.

“One day, they gave me horrible news – I had to work with this moron on a Team Battle against Mario and Peach. Now, Mario’s a cool dude, but I couldn’t really hate Peach more, let alone this jackass I had to be partnered with. Just ’cause we were from the same game series doesn’t mean I wouldn’t totally hate his guts. That stupid Team Battle turned out… okay, actually. I still wouldn’t talk to him, but, hey, silence is better when you’re trying to smash someone off the side of a giant turtle.

“After the battle, he tried to talk to me… and I remember what he said. He said, ‘That was a good battle, Roy – you did well.’ Pfft! Trying to patronize me? ‘I don’t need your sympathy,’ I said. I mean, I knew I needed to use a different word than ‘sympathy,’ but I just couldn’t pull it out of thin air at that moment, for whatever reason. My mind was kinda’ screwed up. Guess I was still pretty miffed about the salary cut, or something.

“I think it was later that week that he tried to talk to me again; I was minding my own business, sorting my various credit card bills into piles of ‘to pay’ and ‘to not pay,’ when he sits across the table from me and says, ‘Hello again, Roy.’ Damn, what an annoying high-pitched voice, man. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I ain’t got time for your babbling. I can’t pay my bills ’cause they cut my salary.’ Though, now that I think about it, I never would pay my bills anyway, but it’s the principle of the matter… He seemed kind of reluctant, or something, – my word choice is off today – but he just totally got up and left. And, that was definitely a good thing, since then his frickin’ bishonen-status thingy wouldn’t distract me from my… nap. Screw bills…

“He started stalking me, man… always trying to talk to me. Excuse me, but pants don’t just fly off over idle conversation. I was just minding my own business watching the football game one day, when, who would’ve guessed, Marth comes and sits next to me and says, ‘Watching the football game?’ Well, der, Einstein. But… when he said, ‘I’ll bet you that the Cowboys will win,’ there was just something that stirred in there… in the gut, where it feels like you’ve got Irritable Bowel Syndrome. How this punkass could want to make a bet with me – I am the king of betting, man. Anything that involves money! ‘You’re on,’ I said.

“And the Cowboys won. I haven’t gotten around to exacting my revenge on them yet…

“I gotta’ admit, it was pretty fun making a bet with some jerk I didn’t even know, even though I lost. It was kind of awkward to dish out twenty-five bucks after I had already told him I didn’t even have enough money to pay my credit card bills, but I don’t think Marth remembered that little schism.

“And, we kinda’ hit it off from there… Marth seemed to be a much nicer guy than I had thought. He always seemed to know who to bet on, – and, for that much, I hated him to a degree, I guess – but overall, I had fun. Though, my salary cut was still pissing me off something awful. Well, turns out he had an idea: ‘Why don’t you get a second job?’ he said. Apparently he was working at Taco Bell. I always thought a second job would solve my problem, but, come on, I’m too lazy for that… What I needed was something that would get me a lot of money without much work, but, at that particular moment in time, my genius was still taking a shower, since it wasn’t there to give me a brilliant idea.

“I think it was… dude, I want to say a couple weeks later, but, hell, I don’t remember, that he actually invited me to his room to play a linked battle on Pokemon. I had been training that stupid Weedle forever, and now, finally, I could kick someone’s sorry Pokemon-trainer butt with it. Turns out I lost, again, to Marth… I swear, if I hadn’t been going to anger management classes, I could’ve just hauled off and gone postal on Marth himself. Well… I don’t really know what ‘going postal’ on someone means… I guess I would’ve tacked a stamp on his forehead and mailed him to China, or something.

“But, yeah, all this losing was kinda’ making me feel… weak, or something.”

Roy paused once more, his gaze still fixed pleadingly upon the floorboards, and then continued, “He got really close to me. A little too close for comfort, I thought. Well, I guess he was just trying to get his Gameboy link back, since I was trying to steal it…

“We hung out a lot more often after that. He was – ah, hell… – cute, always following me around and stuff. For awhile there, he was really happy; happy about… whipped cream, for whatever reason. I dun’ know, he was always mentioning it. But, yeah… just a little puppy dog, which, in retrospect, was pretty creepy… I didn’t really have anything against him, but I did like to tease him. Somewhere along the line, when we were watching Six Feet Under, I had been shoveling in the vanilla ice cream, – Six Feet Under makes me sad, okay? – and I swear he started leaning on me like a broken barstool. I just smiled and said, ‘You want some ice cream, Marthy?’ Poor thing… I got his hopes up a little too high.

“He stared at me like there was no tomorrow; either he wanted to kill me, or he wanted to pin me to something and… do… horrible things…

“And he blinked once, and he said, ‘What did you call me?’ I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I mean, you can’t really take back words that you’ve already said, unless, you know, you sue, or whatever, but I didn’t exactly have time for that. Court’s never exactly been the best place for me, anyway. ‘Marthy?’ was how I replied, but, geez, he was already pretty… gawky.

“After that, he always wanted me to call him ‘Marthy.’ Somethin’ about the way the word rolls off your tongue, or something. Either that, or he was too obsessive-compulsive to let it go. Bastard…

“Somewhere along the line, I figured out that he was as queer as a three dollar bill. I don’t know why I chose to use that analogy, but just roll with it. I mean, yeah, he was my…” – he hesitated for a moment – “friend, or whatever, but, Jesus, I didn’t want him stalking me if he was just going to be staring at my ass half the time. I figured that it was my duty to fix his little… situation-thing, since, after all, admitting someone else has a problem is the first step to making them recover.

“I tried to get him involved with the women around here, you know? But, uhh, the Super Smash Brothers isn’t exactly the best place for a guy to meet chicks that won’t slap you to a bloody pulp. But, still, man, the poor loser had to meet chicks… chicks with racks big enough to make him forget about the sticks.

“And then I remembered we work for Nintendo. No girls with huge racks here.

“So, Plan B: just introduce him to the jerk girls that I hadn’t known he had already met, and then lock them in a closet for two hours. I mean, that’s how everyone gets their freak on, right? Yeah… more or less.

“Anyway, so, I set him up with Peach, right? Well, lucky for me, she was right next door, so I didn’t have to fulfill my exercise requirement for the week after all. And, – stupid jerk… – I told him ahead of time, ‘Dude, just ask her to kiss you. You’re relatively good-looking, or whatever, so, naturally, as a chick, she’ll want to rip your pants off right then and there.’ He said he didn’t think chicks worked that way, and also that he does this weird twitchy thing around them. ‘Dude,’ I said, ‘does it look like I really give a crap? Just do it!’ Well, he wasn’t going to do it, so I held his curlers hostage. I had been dying to test out my new lighter on something, ’cause I don’t smoke; I’m a pyromaniac.

“Well, the little get-together with Peach didn’t really work out the way I wanted; Marth got slapped something awful, and somehow Peach found his curlers and mutilated his hair with them. I dun’ know how that’s possible, but, hey, she figured out a way. And it was a scary sight. Almost as scary as Link’s version of ‘Y.M.C.A.’ I saw him sing in the cocktail lounge later that night. No offense, man, but you were wasted. That didn’t really make a good first impression on me, you know.

“So, the women thing wasn’t going to work, I thought. He got pretty mad at me, too. Feh… Marth was never very good at forming death threats, so it was pretty easy to ignore him. I guess all the stress of having some chick hate him and getting angry at somebody he thought he could share is rainbow sprites with was gettin’ to his head, since he got pretty depressed after that, man. He even got fired from his job at Taco Bell after the manager found out that he had a really weird obsession with garters… though, that seems totally unrelated to the story, and I have no idea why I just told you that.

“Okay, well, maybe it does relate a little bit, since that’s when my genius struck again: I said, ‘Marth, your last boss was a jerkwad, so why don’t you come work for me?’ I knew he was confused and still miffed, but, dude, I got the brilliant-est plan! I was going to start my own little business-thing, since I really needed the money. I mean, since it’s hard for a money-obsessed, bipolar pervert with anger management issues to get a decent job outside of this God-forsaken company, I thought I’d just create my own! I had even written up some nice little contracts on some notebook paper.

“Well, yeah, I got a plan to start a little company-type thing, but I didn’t even know what we were going to be doing, so I just kinda’ put off the idea for a little bit while I tried to figure that out. I, uhh, don’t really put much thought into things. Well, that’s what my therapist said, anyway.

“Flash forward a couple of days, right? Yeah, there was another Team Battle-type thing coming up, and somehow I got partnered with Marth again. We had to fight against Fox and Falco, – remember that? Falco’s feathers were still screwed up because I replaced his shampoo with honey! Ha! – but they didn’t really seem into it. Yeah, well, screw them, right? ’Cause I was all for the bonus pay you get for winning. Though, if Marth hadn’t still been in his the-world-totally-sucks mood, then maybe we could’ve won. Now that really steamed my broccoli, man. It was time to get even. …Or parallel.

“I took the liberty of telling the executive-type jerks that Marth was forging documents, not paying his taxes, stealing more than his salary, hacking into Nintendo’s main computer database and removing all the M-rated games, and kicking small puppies whenever given the opportunity. I think only one of them was really true, but I don’t remember which… not that it really matters. Anyway, and so they fired him once, but too many fangirls got pissed off, so they rehired him about two weeks later… which is weird, since we all know about their ‘fan appreciation’ policy.

“I guess that got him pretty pissed off, since he started making way more death threats to me than he normally did. Plus, he got a salary cut, too, but it wasn’t point three percent like mine. It was something like fifty. Oh well. He deserved it. …And yet, it didn’t seem like enough. I like to mess with people’s heads, after all.

“Not sure when, but somewhere along the line, I started apologizing and trying to be sympathetic, or whatever. Guess those drama classes I took in high school actually came in handy after all, since, geez, I didn’t really give a flying sheep about Marth… Well, turns out he bought it. I’m still expecting payment, by the way. Anyway, I had, like, never seen him so happy to forgive somebody. It must’ve been my ass, since apparently it really is that irresistible. …Why don’t I get that many fangirls?

“Anyway, I said, ‘I’m sorry, Marthy. I never meant to hurt your feelings’ – ” Roy broke off in his speech to chortle to himself for a moment, and then blinked once before continuing, “ ‘I was just jealous of your… awesomeness, or whatever.’ I didn’t know if he was going to fall for that crappy attempt at an apology, but apparently he did, ’cause he gave me a wet one right then and there. The door… why did the door have to be closed? Damn door has caused me too many problems to count before, but now it was just being vindictive.

“Now, this whole little schism was, uhh… unsettling, to say the least, but, dude, I thought that maybe I could use that to my advantage. And all I had to do was paint the sky with rainbows every weekend. I even got Marth to buy me that Rolex I had always wanted, even though he wasn’t getting paid enough to actually pay for it within a four-month timeframe. Too bad I lost the Rolex a couple weeks later…

“Then, after I got a bunch of stuff from him, he invited me to go to into the garden with him, right? Bad idea, I thought. But, then again, why not? Seemed like a good place to ditch the bastard, I mean… We got out there, and he looked like a giddy schoolgirl about to ask an upperclassman to prom, and I swear to God he was about to say, ‘I love you.’ And… that would be too much for this noggin to handle, man. So, I politely said, ‘Marthy, you’re a jackass and I never want to see your ugly, fangirl orgasm-inducing face ever again.’ That seemed to work pretty nicely. He sure did cry a lot… but, I must’ve missed a lot of the session, ’cause after, like, two minutes, I went back inside to get some pizza. I was hungry…

“Well, my idea about a company started stirred up here again, and I got more and more into the idea of doing menial jobs for money. I guess I started to not do the tournament battles, since twenty-four seven I was intently focused on the company in between my six-hour naps… I couldn’t really do it alone, – that’d be weird, man – so, I called you, Link. I’ll bet you know a lot of the storyline from there, but, sheesh… Marth never appreciated the invitation to join my company, did he? I mean, all we did was ‘borrow’ that Farmer Bill guy’s horse, barge into his room unexpectedly, tear it up, and then push his bed out the window. Plus, the cash would come flowing in, I said. Poor loser could learn to take a risk once in awhile; but, for once, the kind of risks that don’t involve the decision of whether or not to use one of the round latex things.

“Even Pikachu got in on the deal. I blackmailed him into building me a desk, though he did a pretty crappy job, that punk… You remember? I started coming up with awesome names, too, but Marth disapproved of them all. Jerk… I mean, ‘Roy’s Spiffy Jobs and Stuff Express’ sounded pretty good to me. Hum… I saw an infomercial where they talked about color paints, and I was like, ‘Dude, I know people with color.’ My hair is red, Marth’s hair was blue, and I didn’t really care what color your hair was, Link. I think it was orange, or something, at the time. Well, ‘Red, Blue, and That Other Guy Incorporated’ sounded pretty good to me. Yeah, well, I still didn’t know what we were going to do.

“I gave out Marth’s room’s number, but nobody ever called, man! I was like, ‘Oi!’ Pfft… well, you can’t please the public with a mere phone number, I guess. So, I just did what I always did in my time of need – I whored myself out. I could do people’s jobs for cash, and Marth and what’s-his-face would help while sharing almost none of the profits. Perfect planning, no? I even came up with a nifty answering phrase thingy for when people called.

“Yeah. Looking back at it now, I guess Marthy has got every reason to want me to stop calling him that, but I don’t think I will… just for old time’s sake. You can’t forget the past, but you can always look back on it and get your sadistic kicks that way.”

Roy heaved a nostalgic sigh, and then glanced up at his absent-minded colleagues sitting opposite from his leant position. He straightened his posture, loosely adjusted the collar of his suit jacket, and then began to switch his focus between their expressions, Link’s one of taciturn incapacitation and Marth’s one of silent encumbrance. Roy shifted his weight from one leg to another, choking out a nervous laugh as he ran a careless hand through his hair, muttering afterward, “…I hate flashbacks.”