The Joy-Con at Seventeen Fathoms

Chapter 1: The Crush Depth

Beneath the North Atlantic, the submarine RMS Callisto groaned in its iron skin. The hull flexed as if exhaling—an animal held too long underwater. Lieutenant Pavel Orlov pressed his forehead to the periscope glass and tried not to think about the surface, the world above, or how far his lungs would carry him if the cold burst through.

The sonar pinged again. Each echo was a Morse-tap of bad news: two blips circling them. Soviet hunter-killers, far from friendly. The sea was a chessboard, but no one had explained the rules.

In the stale air, time thinned to threads. Private Avner Cohen sat cross-legged in the crew quarters, his Switch console’s screen flickering under a string of dying bulbs. The blue and red Joy-Cons glowed like twin lighthouses. Cohen’s thumbs danced between Mario and Samus while Chief Engineer Vega, grizzled and sleepless, leaned on her elbow watching.

“What’s it like?” she asked, her voice brittle from recycled air. “To fight as someone who isn’t yourself?”

Cohen shrugged. “Sometimes it helps not being me.” He grinned weakly as Pikachu zapped Snake off a floating platform. For a moment, nobody was scared or alone—they were heroes leaping through space.

Lieutenant Orlov entered silently, his face lit by dim emergency lights. He watched Vega pick up a Joy-Con. Her calloused thumb hovered over Donkey Kong.

“Any luck up there?” she muttered.

“We’re not dead yet,” he said flatly.

The crew gathered nightly for these absurd tournaments, their voices echoing strange under low ceilings. Someone else’s music piped from tinny speakers—a defiant carnival inside a steel coffin. Outside, depth charges boomed like thunderclaps from another reality.

Vega handed Orlov a controller with a wry smile. “Join us before we join the abyss.”

He hesitated but sat down anyway. Their fingers met plastic; their eyes met pixels; for ten minutes they were gods and monsters rather than prey.

---

On day three of the siege, paranoia seeped into every corridor. The cook accused the medic of hoarding morphine; one radio operator whispered that Moscow had given them up for dead. No fresh orders came—only static and old propaganda songs.

In their next match—a four-way free-for-all on Final Destination—tensions spilled over into play. Vega hurled Kirby offscreen with surgical precision; Cohen cackled as Link tossed bombs at everyone indiscriminately; Orlov played Captain Falcon with desperate fury.

Between matches, they argued strategies for survival as if discussing Smash stages: "The aft ballast tank is like Battlefield—too many angles." "We should be aggressive—like sudden death mode." Even in their analog hellscape, metaphors bled from game to life.

But when alarms shrieked—torpedoes inbound—the Switch was set aside so they could man battle stations. Hands still tingling from fake violence now clutched metal levers slick with sweat.

---

After an hour of chaos and near-misses—water leaking in seams no engineer could reach—the submarine’s power flickered out save for backup batteries. The only light came from Cohen’s Switch, docked near a tangle of cables and ration wrappers.

They huddled around it like ancients around firelight.

Orlov broke the silence: “Why do we keep playing?”

Vega’s laughter was hollow but sincere. “Because when I’m Peach throwing turnips at Ridley, I’m not waiting to drown.”

Cohen nodded solemnly. “And because as long as we’re still fighting here”—he tapped the screen—“we’re not ghosts yet.”

For one unbroken hour they played until dawn threatened beneath two miles of water—a last rebellion against fate’s slow squeeze.

---

By day six, supplies ran low and hope starved with them. The Soviets outside had gone silent; either waiting or gone themselves, it hardly mattered now.

Only Cohen’s Switch endured—its battery drained carefully between rations of fear and forced optimism. In Tabletop mode atop an upturned crate in engineering, they clung to its chaotic energy: Cloud’s sword flashing through mechanical gloom; Isabelle’s fishing pole yanking Pikachu offstage; laughter rising in strange counterpoint to the hiss of leaking pipes.

It wasn’t just distraction anymore—it was memory made muscle: hands moving together on controllers older than some crew members’ hopes. Each round ended with sighs of relief that almost sounded like prayer.

Orlov finally spoke what none would admit: “If we make it out… let’s never talk about this again.” His voice quavered between shame and gratitude—the strange intimacy born at seventeen fathoms’ depth.

No one answered directly; instead Cohen picked Mario again and Vega chose Samus with steely intent—a final round before whatever came next.

Above them somewhere, war might rage or peace might have already fallen; down here only victory screens flickered against steel walls until sleep claimed them all.