The Great Gingerbread Phantom
(Donkey Kong marches through a pristine-looking building, the walls colored white, pink and red, while carrying a thin looking man with a bag on his head over his shoulder. DK pushes open a large set of double doors, revealing Peach sitting patiently at a fancy-looking desk. Ken and Daisy are standing on both sides of her, Ken with his arms crossed and Daisy brandishing a Home Run Bat. Both are clad in formal business wear. DK roughly drops the figure he’s carrying into a chair in front of Peach’s desk. Peach looks over to Ken and gestures towards the man. Ken walks over and removes the bag… revealing none other than Joker, slightly bruised but barely exhausted. He glances around the room for a second before turning to Peach and smirking.)
Peach: Good evening, Joker. Or may I call you Ren?
Joker: Well, you already abducted me, so I think politeness is out the window.
Peach: (chuckles darkly) They didn’t tell me you’d be funny. I guess the name makes sense now. But you’re right. I think we should skip the formalities and get right down to business. (she reaches into her desk and pulls out a folder. She pulls a picture out of the folder and shows it to Joker) Do you know what this is?
Joker: Umm… that appears to be a gingerbread house. The kind you’d make around Christmas.
Peach: Yes. It's my gingerbread house. A fixture of the Mansion Christmas party since Melee. Far exceeding any ordinary centerpiece, it is a fully sized structure, getting bigger and bigger each year, with every detail lovingly crafted by yours truly, with the finest ingredients gathered by Toads from across the Mushroom Kingdom. And with flavor that has become infamous… and that has made it a prime target for thieves such as yourself.
(she pulls several more photos. This one shows pseudo-mugshots of several of the kid Smashers prior to grounding, including Mega Man, Bowser Jr., Toon Link, Sonic, and Villager)
Peach: You see, the children’s access to this gingerbread is highly restricted. They’re enough of a handful without extreme amounts of sugar in their systems. So every year, I would keep the gingerbread under extremely heavy surveillance, and the offenders would be strictly punished to discourage further misbehavior. And for a while, it worked. Not a single team, no matter how coordinated, could steal the gingerbread… until three years ago.
(She grabs the rest of the photos and slams them down on the desk. They show several knocked out adult Smashers, including DK, Dark Samus, ROB, and Bowser, and a single empty photo with a crude outline of a house drawn on it)
Peach: It was my most intricate creation yet. Days, weeks, months of work down the drain. Not one of my guards can tell me what happened. As you can imagine, I was quite angry. This happened in 2018. Now tell me, Mr. Ren… do you think it’s a coincidence that the first successful gingerbread heist in Smash history happened the same year that you, an infamous Phantom Thief, moved into the mansion?
Joker: Oh, that’s why I’m here? Because I heard the League of Villains did that.
Peach: (chuckles) It’s funny you should mention that, because I confronted Wario over it, and he claimed that he had no knowledge of this heist.
Joker: Maybe he was lying.
(Peach stares at him for a second… and then starts laughing. After a couple seconds, Daisy, Ken and DK join in. Everyone in the room except Joker continues laughing… until Peach stands up, snatches the bat from Daisy’s hand, and slams it on her desk. The pictures scatter. The room goes quiet.)
Peach: I’m not an idiot, Ren. I had Mewtwo read his mind. He found no traces of anything related to gingerbread. (she moves from behind the desk and stands directly in front of Joker, close enough that he could feel her breath) I’m just gonna drop the bullshit right here, okay. I know what you did. And I hate being lied to. Almost as much as I hate punishing the kids. But someone has to keep order, or else things like this would happen everyday.
Joker: Yeah, real responsible of you to do that, but I’ve got a question. (he adjusts his glasses, casually revealing that he slipped out of the ropes on his hands in the process) Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I did do that thing three years ago. What would you do about it? One, it was three years ago, and you’d look like a fool accusing me without clear evidence. Two, I don’t live in the Mansion. I live with my mother and Ganondorf, completely out of your jurisdiction. How would you punish me?
Peach: …I literally just had Donkey Kong beat you up and drag you over here.
Joker: …Fair point. So, are we done here? Or did you have more in mind for me than this whole “scare em straight” thing?
Peach: Oh no… we have much more to discuss. We also know that you didn’t do it alone. Now, we know that you won’t give up your accomplices, but we have an alternative proposal in mind… we believe that they’re plotting to steal it again this year.
Joker: …It’s March. They’re planning the heist ten months in advance?
Peach: …Show him. (Daisy puts down a blueprint for an absolutely massive gingerbread house. Joker studies the document intensely) Beautiful, isn’t it? The first one I’ve made since that dreadful night. It’s at least half the size of my very own castle. So large that it requires ten months of construction just to have it ready for the holidays. It should be impossible to steal, but we also said that about the last one.
Joker: So, what? You want me to infiltrate the heist crew and rat them out? Because if you knew me, you’d know that that’s not happening.
Peach: No, Mr. Ren… (Ken hands her a suitcase. Peach opens it to reveal several stacks of cash, and a large bag of gingerbread) I want you to steal it again.
