Chapter 2: …Another Door Opens
You learn new things about yourself with every passing day.
For Kirby, what he'd found out just a minute ago and was immensely glad for was that his rubbery body gave him the advantage of absorbing hits that would normally hurt a lot more if he was a regular person with normal skin. Even with this new information however, he wasn't infallible. Though his flexible skin would deflect much of the blow, even a mere nick that managed to make it past his protective silicon-like skin would still end up being able to hurt him. As such, Kirby was now the proud owner of a boo-boo… sorry, a bruise. The pink puffball rubbed the injury that he received on… his head? Was it around his head area? Truth be told, Kirby wasn't sure whether the bump was on his back, front, face or… wherever on his body. For crying out loud, his body was in the shape of a literal ball, so how was one able to accurately describe exactly where a specific spot was on the surface of a sphere? Short and simple, you couldn't, and thus Kirby didn't bother to try.
But unlike the specific area of his bruise, what he was definitely certain about was how he had received the injury itself. It had happened after King Dedede had laughed and proceeded to send him flying with his hammer. Even as Kirby flew high into the air, he was able to hear Dedede's snide taunt through the air before landing in the valley below. "Heheheh! Some Star Warrior!" the penguin had jeered after smashing his hammer full throttle at Kirby, "He couldn't even take a mere hammer to the face!"
Kirby let out a sad sigh as he remembered Dedede's hurtful words. He vigorously shook his head to rid the thoughts from his mind, unable to comprehend or understand why Dedede's insult had hit him so close to his heart.
"Yaaaahhhhhh!"
A terrified scream pierced through the air, snapping Kirby out of his stupor. As he looked to his left and right to try and locate the source of the sound, he suddenly caught sight of an object falling from the top of the canyon out of the corner of his eye. As he focused on the falling object, Kirby suddenly realized that the one who had screamed was the girl that had tried to protect him earlier. He then jolted up when it hit him that she was in grave danger. On instinct, he gently held his breath, which inflated his body up just like a hot-air balloon. Beginning to slowly to ascend off the ground, he then jumped off the rocky platform he was standing on and moved his legs gently to hover forward until he found himself underneath the screaming girl.
With a flourish, he managed to grab ahold of her as she fell on top of him, thereby cushioning her fall as he slowly descended to the floor. "Po-yow!" Kirby yelped when he felt a sharp pricking sensation by his feet. The pain caused him to jump backwards out of pure instinct, which had the unintentional side effect of causing the girl atop his head to slide off. "Woah!" she yelped as she fell down a distance of about three feet and landed with a whump on the rocky cavern floor. As the puffball rubbed his sore bottom, he noticed that the reason he had gotten pricked was because he had landed on a stalagmite, one sharpened to a very fine point. He had to wince at that, wiping worried beads of sweat off of his forehead when he comprehended just how close the falling girl was from death. If he hadn't intervened, the girl would have been impaled by the stalagmite in what would most certainly be a spectacularly gory fashion.
Speaking of the girl, she was currently gaping at Kirby openly, before clutching her head to snap herself out of her shock. "Y-You can fly?" was all the dazed girl could spit out. He simply gave a nod of his head in response. If Kirby was to be honest with himself, even he hadn't realized that he could pull off that technique until literally a few seconds ago, when he'd instinctively inflated himself out of his pure drive to save the falling girl. Funny how the stakes of a life-and-death situation could make one discover new heights.
"That was totally awesome!" Kirby hopped around to see a boy with unkempt greenish-orange hair, which was so unruly and long that his bangs shielded his eyes. It didn't take a genius to infer that he was the one who had butted into the conversation. "Did you see Kirby back there? Man, that was so cool!" the boy squeed at the girl. Kirby saw the girl roll her eyes in return as she slowly got up and dusted her hands. "It's not something to be proud about, you know?" she grumbled, trying to brush it off. "After all, I was trying to save you when King Dedede sent you hurtling down here."
"But it ended up the other way around, sis. Kirby just saved you from a nasty fall, ya know?" he rightfully pointed out. "I was so scared when you slipped off the rocky cliff! The drop that you fell from was massive! Would it kill you to be just a little bit more grateful to him?"
Kirby took special note at the mention of the word 'sis'. He looked back at the squabbling duo in a new light. So the two of them were siblings. Huh. He honestly hadn't realized.
As though the brother's words had knocked some sense into his sister, the puffball observed that she let out a defeated sigh. Certainly a haughty one, this girl. Having seen enough of the rocky cavern, he slowly walked forward to make his way out, with two children and two floating beings hot on his tail. Evidently they had expected him to stay still.
"Hey, wait up!"
With a cheeky grin, he proceeded to mischievously do the exact opposite as what the girl wanted. Hey, being naughty certainly had its perks! As he continued to hop forward, Kirby soon found himself at the top of a hill, the scenery below showing a bustling village beneath. As he stood by the cliff, he let out an impressed murmur at the view.
"Isn't this village beautiful?" A small, floating pink round orb with a ribbon on her head asked as she finally caught up with him. Kirby had to give a very subtle nod in agreement, as he gestured towards the village with a sappy smile in a bid to ask them more about it.
Luckily for him, they understood what he was driving at from his hand gestures alone. "Pretty, eh? This is the place where all of us live in!" the boy explained in a voice that almost made it sound as though he was a property agent trying to brag about the exquisite location to potential customers. "Say hello to the quaint little village of Cappy Town!"
Satisfied with the answer he got, Kirby then sprang to his left to stroll off. However, the abrupt action caused him to bang headfirst into the girl, who had been standing beside him. "Hey, you… are you even listening to a word we say?" the girl folded her arms, beginning to get exasperated. Seeing as how she got no response when Kirby merely blinked his eyes in confusion, she sighed and tried a different tactic. "I'm the daughter of the Cabinet Minister of Dream Land," she casually mentioned, pretending to be disinterested by flipping her braided ponytail in an aloof manner. Kirby, however, was able to see through her act and chose not to react. "Call me Fumu," she said, finally introducing herself.
Cute name, Kirby thought, immediately repeating it back to her face with a sneaky smile. "Fumu!"
Hearing her name, she let out a gasp. Her eyes widened as she stared back at Kirby, slack-jawed. "You ta-talked!" Fumu finally picked her jaw off the floor and promptly rounded onto him. "You can understand us? You know what we're saying?"
"I'm her little brother, Bun!" He wasted no time in introducing himself the moment he realized that the pink puffball could understand him.
"Bun," Kirby recited. After that, even the two floating blue and pink beings couldn't resist getting into the fun.
"We're the servants Lololo…" the blue orb started.
"…and Lalala!" the pink orb finished.
"Lololo, Lalala?" Kirby couldn't stop grinning when he saw the entire lot of them appear surprised once he demonstrated his ability to comprehend their language. He closed his eyes with a little prideful smile. Honestly, he didn't get what all the fuss was about. Identifying people by names wasn't that hard to do at all!
Vrrrooommmmmm…
The sound of screeching tires caused his eyelids to flutter open.
"Hold still, you pink demon beast! For the good of Dream Land, I'll send you hurtling back to wherever you came from!"
Kirby turned around to see an off-terrain jeep headed towards him. Unsurprisingly, it was commanded by that jerk Dedede, as well as his snail assistant. He cocked his head in surprise, however, when it didn't slow down and instead accelerated. He then flinched back in mild panic when he realized that Dedede wasn't driving on the grassy area to get off the vehicle and taunt him. As the other four by his side ducked out of the path of the vehicle with yelps of terror, Kirby held his ground, staring right at Dedede with displeasure clear on his face.
That guy wanted to run him over! That penguin was too much, really!
"Kirby! What are you doing?" Fumu yelled when she saw the puffball refusing to budge, his feet firmly planted on the ground. "Don't stand still! Get out of the way!"
"She's right! You're a sitting duck, Kirby! Don't let Dedede get ya!" Bun shouted as well.
"Kirby!" Lololo and Lalala yelped as Kirby ignored all of them, continuing to stare Dedede down as the jeep came closer and closer towards him.
"Look at that, King Dedede." Escargon pointed at the unmoving Kirby, "I think he's given up. Looks like you can get rid of the meddling brat before he ruins your plans, your majesty!"
"Accepting your fate, you meddling failure of a Star Warrior?" Dedede clutched the steering wheel even tighter as he sped the jeep up. "Good on you, Kirby! For your bravery, I'll make this quick for you!"
Kirby narrowed his eyes in response to Dedede's words. Against his own body's flight mechanism, he waited until the jeep was almost upon him before he made his counterattack. "Po-poyo!" Kirby yelped, jumping up and immediately inflating himself to float above the oncoming vehicle, barely missing it by an inch. Just a single second later and he would have been flattened.
"What the—" Dedede swore as Kirby ascended upwards to dodge him. He sneered as the jeep missed its target, before letting out a frantic shout when he realized that right behind where Kirby had been standing was a sharp drop. He immediately slammed his foot down, flooring the brake pedal as hard as he could in a futile effort to avoid the cliff. The jeep screeched to a halt, but Kirby's last-second dodge meant that Dedede couldn't react to the danger in time. As a result, the front tires rolled off solid ground before he could bring the vehicle to a stop. Dedede and Escargon yelled as they felt the jeep tip downwards. Mercifully for them, the back wheels remained on the hill, leaving the jeep edging back and forth in a very precarious balance. "Don't move, Escargon!" the king yelled at his side passenger as he felt nothing but thin air under the front half of the jeep. "Our weight is all that's keeping this thing balanced! If you do anything stupid, this jeep will topple and we'll go down with it!"
Kirby's sharp ears managed to catch Dedede's panicked words. With a glimmer of a mischievous smirk, he slowly let himself hover downwards so that he was floating in front of the windshield.
Dedede's eyes widened when he saw the floating Kirby. Even his normally confident gaze had tapered off. "Do-don't you dare land on the hood!" he squealed at the dangerously hovering puffball. The king knew that if Kirby were to land on the bonnet, physics meant that the additional weight to the front portion would cause the seesawing jeep to fall out of its delicate balance and topple off the cliff.
Despite maintaining his neutral expression, Kirby shot an impassive look at the yelling penguin. He felt a teeny bit upset that Dedede was insinuating that he would send the jeep down. Even he wouldn't be that bad! To do something like that out of spite just felt… wrong. All he wanted to do was taunt Dedede and mess with the king a little as a tiny bit of payback for the bump he'd received earlier. Thus, Kirby proceeded to do exactly just that. Maintaining his friendly demeanor, he made it look as though he was going to land on the unbalanced jeep, but floated upwards at the last second just as his feet was about to touch the hood. As Escargon and Dedede shrieked in panic, he shot them both a teasing smile and repeated the act to psyche them out a second time.
By his next attempt however, Dedede was ahead of him. After the initial scare of the puffball trying to intentionally sabotage them to fall to their doom had worn off, Dedede clenched his fist in anger when he saw that Kirby was actively trying to taunt him by faking them out for the third time in a row. "Why, you little brat! How dare you play me!" Completely forgetting about the safety implications due to being blinded with anger, Dedede disregarded his own advice, unfastening his seat belt and propped himself up on the seat with his trusty hammer in his hand. He stared down the floating Kirby, getting ready to mash the annoyance into next week—
"No, wait!" Escargon panicked. "Great King Dedede, don't—"
His warning came too late. It wasn't the snail's words but rather a sudden sway of the jeep that tipped Dedede off to his fatal mistake. The movement that Dedede had made to get into his usual hammer stance was ironically enough, what provided the right amount of force that was needed to tip the jeep past the point of no return. A mildly panicking Kirby flailed his arms wildly to float upwards and evade the vehicle as the jeep lurched forward. However, Dedede and Escargon weren't as lucky as the floating puff. Although in some other time and place, another version of King Dedede might have been able to expand his belly in this situation to float up and save himself, this Dedede was unable to do so. As a result, he found himself trapped with Escargon as their predicament proceeded to get a hundred times more dire. A second after the violent lurch, the jeep's back wheels lifted off the ground. The king and his most trusted servant began to scream, bracing for impact as the unbalanced jeep careened off solid ground and promptly hurtled down towards the bottom of the cliff.
In contrast to the rapidly falling jeep that contained two very frantic passengers, Kirby pushed himself up against gravity by using a draft of wind and proceeded to recover back to the hilltop where the jeep had been a few seconds prior. The next thing he heard after he exhaled to let out the puff of air he held in his mouth was a massive explosion as the vehicle impacted the ground below.
"Kirby!" Fumu and Bun simultaneously yelled when they saw the billowing smoke. "Are you okay?" Taking one glance at the black dust now swirling at the air, he gave a nod in return with an affirmative "Poyo!" He was most definitely okay, unlike poor King Dedede and his assistant. You couldn't even compare between them.
"KIRBBYYYYYYY!"
Kirby jumped two feet up into the air when he heard a furious roar coming from the bottom. As he peered down the cliff, he bore witness to a burning jeep, a sprawled out Escargon, and one very furious Dedede. "This means war, you hear me!?" a Dedede with very tattered robes yelled upwards at him when the penguin saw that Kirby was looking down at him from the top of the cliff face. "You insolent little so-called Star Warrior! I swear right here and now that I'm gonna personally pummel you out of my kingdom! Ya' hear me, Kirby? You hear me!?"
Kirby shuddered as Dedede proceeded to swear an overly-long oath of vengeance against him, his parents, and his entire bloodline up to his fifth generation of ancestors. He shook his head with a worried frown, honestly not liking where this was going. Despite not getting along well with Dedede, Kirby hadn't wanted to make enemies with him. It'd barely been two hours since they first met, for pete's sake!
"Man, this blatant disrespect," Bun muttered to his sister as he saw the fuming king hurl more and more insults at what he perceived to be a confused Kirby. "Kirby's too modest, sis. He isn't even retaliating to Dedede," he observed. "If I were him, I would've laughed my butt off at that rotten loser already!"
Lololo squeezed his eyes shut at Bun's callous remark. If Dedede had managed to hear that, the boy would have single-handedly exacerbated the tense situation even further. "The king sure is being petty even by his usual standards today," he commented with a sigh as Dedede began to jump up and down repeatedly in fury, screaming more insults at Kirby.
"To be fair, I wouldn't blame him for his bad mood when he'd just fallen down a cliff," Lalala pointed out as she beckoned towards the haze that had just started from the blazing wreck below.
"Hey, you! I see the two of you as well!" A trembling Dedede pointed a gloved finger up towards Fumu and Bun when he saw the siblings standing by Kirby's side. "This treachery will not be forgiven! If you're going to take sides with that alien monstrosity, then so be it! I won't go easy on you just because you're the Cabinet Minister's kids!"
"Ignore him, Kirby," Fumu whispered down at Kirby when she noticed that he had an upset face and seemed to be taking Dedede's words hard.
"Yeah, don't listen to Dedede! My sis is right! For once…" Bun said the last two words so softly that Kirby almost couldn't hear them. "Besides, any enemy of King Dedede is a friend of ours!" Bun declared, consoling Kirby by giving him a pat on the back in consolation.
"Come on," Fumu held Kirby by the hand to lead him away from the raving Dedede. "Let's head for Cappy Town."
Fumu's planned Cappy Town tour for Kirby was unexpectedly cut short. All of the fault for that could be solely planted on one singular person: Bun.
Although she had originally wanted to show Kirby around their hometown, that plan was derailed once her brother couldn't keep his big mouth shut and ecstatically mentioned about how Kirby had completely totaled Dedede's personal jeep to a few of the townsfolk. The result of Bun's claim was inevitable — even in the late afternoon, a crowd slowly began to gather around Kirby, with everyone swarming around to give their congratulations to the newcomer. The bustling mass of curious villagers was so huge that Fumu had no opportunity to even get a word in, since Kirby found himself being swamped by words of thanks and introductions from all the other villagers. It most certainly didn't help that Bun had exaggerated the whole affair to make it look like Kirby had deliberately insulted the Dream Land ruler, thus culminating in the entire village deciding to hold a glorious toast to celebrate the Star Warrior's arrival to their village.
Or it would have been a glorious toast…
If only Kirby hadn't feel his appetite acting up. The moment the so-called Star Warrior's nose caught a whiff of the delicious scent that the platter of food was emanating, he proceeded to expeditiously suck up the entire feast into his mouth, right down to the dishcloth. As he concluded his inhale attack and wiped his mouth, he roamed his eyes around to see the entire group around the table too stunned to move as cutlery began to fall from the air.
After that, Fumu then grabbed him by the arm, mumbling a hasty apology to the other guests before she unceremoniously dragged him and a grumbling Bun away from Mayor Len's house. "P-Poyo!" he cried, trying to wrestle himself away from her grip. He didn't understand what he did to warrant this treatment from Fumu, who had been nice to him up to now.
"Not now, Kirby!" she retorted back. As the trio entered a dilapidated shack, she quietly shut the door and looked straight into his eyes. "After what you did to the food at Mayor Len's house just now, I want a straight answer from you. Did you eat those sheep or not?"
He cocked his head, confused as to what she was driving at. "What sheep?" he thought in his mind. There had been no sheep at all on the dining table earlier.
Fumu went on to explain, not sure if Kirby was playing dumb or really had no idea as to the situation that the town had been facing up till now. "Many of the shepherds have been complaining that some sort of a demon monster, one worse than a natural predator like a wolf, had been gobbling up their entire flock recently." Her eyes gazed down at him with worry. "So did you do it? Did you gobble them up?"
Bun bit down on his lip when he saw that Kirby was remaining silent. "Maybe King Dedede was right. Maybe Kirby really is the demon beast—"
"Answer me, Kirby!" Fumu yelled over her brother. It was quite evident from her actions and outburst that she had not wanted him to finish that line of thought.
"Hey! What was that noise over there?"
With a startled gasp, Fumu put her finger to her lip, hushing the group. "Shhh! Someone's coming!"
"Oh man, what if it's one of Dedede's troops? We gotta hide Kirby!" Bun squawked, darting his eyes around the area to look for anything that he could hide Kirby in. "Quick! Lololo, Lalala! That bag ought to do the trick!" Kirby's vision suddenly went black as he found a burlap sack pulled over his body. Surprised by the sudden move, he wiggled around as Fumu and Bun held him down, only stopping when he heard the sound of the hut door being kicked open.
"What the… it's Fumu and Bun!"
"Just what are you two kids doing in a run-down place like this?"
Kirby kept silent, completely ceasing his struggle when his ears picked up two new voices joining the fray. "Sword and Blade!" he heard Bun utter with a tremble in his voice.
"Do-don't scare us like that!" Fumu stuttered. "We almost thought you were Dedede!"
Kirby had to stifle a laugh at that, making a silent bet that everyone in the town knew about the sibling's dislike for the ruler. He then heard the clanking of metal against the wooden floorboards as their heavy footsteps shuffled forward. Those newcomers are wearing armor, he realized with a jolt, before tilting his head in confusion and asking himself why that happened to be the first thing that came to his mind.
"We're looking for someone who goes by the name of Kirby…" the first of the two said in a serious tone.
The second then continued on, "…by the command of our master."
"Really?" Bun tried to sound innocent. If only he wasn't a terrible liar. Even with the knowledge that the boy was not being truthful since he was indeed in the vicinity, Kirby was able to tell that Bun was fibbing just from his tone alone, without even needing to see his face.
However, Fumu did a much better job than her brother. "Well, we haven't seen a Kirby anywhere." Her tone then turned accusatory, "So how about you two go and look for this Kirby at some other place?"
"But is that really the case?" Kirby perked up when he realized that his earlier conclusion was wrong. There were three newcomers, not two. "No way!" he heard Bun exclaim. "Y-you…" Fumu stumbled on her words. "Why are you here? Did you come on King Dedede's orders?"
Kirby began to feel a sense of dread in the pit of his bottomless stomach when he heard Fumu's quivering voice. Besides the time that she'd screamed when she was tumbling down the canyon, he'd never seen or heard the brash Fumu truly scared before.
There was a heavy silence for just a moment. Then without any warning, Kirby found that his vision was no longer black. Realizing that his eyes were no longer obscured, he took a good look around as the burlap sack was lifted away from his body. The first thing that caught his eye was a person standing no less than three feet in front of him. He was about Kirby's height and had a fluttering navy blue cape that he pulled in front of his body. The thing that drew Kirby in the most about him wasn't his sheathed sword or his imposing mask, but rather his impassive yellow eyes. Those eyes were so entrancing that he had to physically tear his own eyes away from them. He felt as though they could look into his very soul. Focusing on the others behind this fascinating newcomer, the next thing that caught his attention weren't the two armored knights behind the masked knight, but rather Fumu holding her hands over her mouth in terror.
Her reaction was Kirby's first hint for what was about to come.
"So, you are the Star Warrior that the villagers have all been gossiping about, hm?" the masked man muttered in a deep, determined voice. He took a single step forward, the creaking of the floorboards from the movement unnaturally loud. Gazing directly at the pink puff with those sharp pair of yellow eyes, he wasted no time in continuing on with his interrogation.
"Am I right… Kirby?"
The candles around the area flickered as the double-doors slid open, allowing the slightest breeze of wind to enter the enclosed room. "Lord Hyness?" a concerned voice meekly called out. Hearing no reply after a few seconds, she repeated her greeting. "Lord Hyness, sir?"
The white-cloaked mage only gave a response when he heard himself being acknowledged for the second time. With an irritated grunt, he turned around to face the speaker. "What… is… it?" he questioned in a tone that showed that he was displeased at being intruded upon.
The female by the door went down on her knees out of respect. "Pardon my interruption, Lord Hyness. But the three of us have done as you've requested."
"I see." There was no emotion whatsoever in Hyness' voice. But that was to be expected. The Jambastion Cult leader was known for having two distinct personalities — one stoic and serious, and the other completely off the wall. The two polarizing dispositions were truly a fearsome sight to behold.
It was due to him being in the latter mode that caused him to lose control of his emotions when he'd decided to get rid of the threat to his cult personally. Hyness had then used his dark magic to control her and the other mages like puppets in a stage show before he'd lost the battle, which then culminated in a combined sacrifice to the Jamba Heart. The betrayal from their leader had hurt all three of them. It's affected Franny and Berge, yes, but it had especially hit her hard. And despite everything, when all three of them regained their senses, they all found that they couldn't help but feel a primal, insentient need to put things aside with Hyness. Even she had to admit that it was a very weird occurrence, as even she would have thought the hotheaded Flamberge would have quit immediately. And yet, she'd remained. They all did.
And now, here they were… ready to make their comeback on an unsuspecting universe. "So, our status report…" Zan Partizanne held her breath as she glanced up towards the impatient Hyness. "We've managed to confirm it. It's like you've suspected, my liege." Instead of giving back an enthusiastic reply as she'd expected, the hooded mage wordlessly pointed his gaze towards a cluster of planets. As his most trusted subordinate followed his gaze, she was surprised to see where the cult leader was looking at — a bright star-shaped planet, with two rings orbiting around it.
She recognized it. How could she not? "Juh? Planet Popstar?" Zan Partizanne blinked once she concluded what Hyness was driving at. "Japolaga, but that's not a good idea—"
"NO!" Hyness screeched defiantly in a response that would have been highly exaggerated and comical to someone who didn't know him well. As it stood to the electric Jambastion mage, his outburst was already eerily creepy enough. "Our Dark Lord LIVES! HE LIVES!" he yelled out in a vocal range that was a cross between a little boy squealing about his new toy and a grown man who'd just walked out of a bar in a drunken rage.
"I know that, my liege!" she snapped back. Immediately realizing that she was speaking out of place, Zan Partizanne promptly knelt down even lower than her current position, to the point where the hat emblazoned with the Jambastion Logo atop her hair was almost touching the ground. "Japolaga, she quickly apologized, "I beg your pardon for raising my voice, Lord Hyness. But I must emphasize that even Franny and Berge are aware that…" she bit down on her lip before carrying on, "…Void Termina lives on."
Zan Partizanne could almost swear that she could see Hyness' sardonic smile underneath his hood. "So… you… can… sense… it… too? Isn't… that… wonderful…?" he asked. "For even in death, our Dark Lord continues to guide us!"
"Yes, my liege. It is truly a miracle that Void Termina still continues to drive and motivate the Jambastion Cult less than a week after his supposed demise. But now that we've confirmed that he's alive, what are you going to do, Lord Hyness?"
"We must find our dark lord!" he hissed venomously in response. "And on that miserable planet called Popstar… lies the key that will unlock our destiny! The path to our dark lord! The path to our eternal happiness, to a universe filled with sunshine and rainbows for our cult when our god achieves a complete victory over those wretched fools who dared to defy us!"
Zan Partizanne ignored the obvious oxymoron and numerous contradictions of Hyness' schizophrenic rambling. She was used to her superior making no logical sense at times when he went deep into his rants.
Hyness then continued to speak. Whether it was due to Zan Partizanne not being prompted to reply or because he was too absorbed in his own words, she didn't know herself. "Yes, and one little traitor to the Dark Lord will be all that I require in the palm of my hand before total victory is mine…" He raised his robed arms into the air as though he was in prayer, "This time the plan will be foolproof. This new course of action will ensure that Void Termina and I will be reunited once more!" The further Hyness got into his rambling, the more his speech became interspersed with demented chuckles of laughter. "Oh, exalted Dark Lord! Soon you will rise again… but this time with ME, your loyal and faithful servant, by your side!" His voice suddenly went off the rails, turning deranged as he started screaming to the sky in ecstasy. "The fated hour of your dominance dawns near! The time when you will arise from the shadows and save us all shall soon come, great Void Termina! BANZAI! ALL HAIL THE DARK LORD! ALL HAIL!"
The kneeling Zan Partizanne used this opportunity to quietly slink away from the unhinged Hyness. If there was any consolation, it was that he at least seemed to be significantly more sane compared to the time he last summoned Void Termina, which spoke volumes about how nuts he was when the pink puffball had arrived. Yes, that pink puffball. The leader of the ragtag group that had somehow managed to ruin years of the cult's progress, setting their hard work back by decades.
The hero of Dream Land, Kirby.
Zan Partizanne knew exactly what was required of her for the task that Lord Hyness wanted her to carry out, but the only problem that she faced was thinking about how they were going to get the hero of Dream Land out of their way. After facing him in battle twice, she'd come to the conclusion that the famed hero Kirby was not to be underestimated. It was also her priority to come up with a counterattack quickly, since he would find out eventually and that would certainly be no good. After all, he'd already thrashed her and her sisters not just once, but twice. As the icing on the cake, he'd also managed to beat Lord Hyness and even take down the great Void Termina. Even someone like her knew that you had to be suicidal to challenge someone as powerful as him again.
But maybe she was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe she didn't need to have Kirby in her way at all. Yes, if she played her cards right, then Kirby wouldn't be a problem to her at all…
Zan Partizanne smirked as she summoned her weapon and proceeded to zip away as quickly as a bolt of lightning. Since she wanted to maintain a low profile, she didn't take a Jambastion with her. Thus, the journey to Planet Popstar took her about a half hour as she made her way across outer space. She and her three sisters had different ways to transverse across the cosmos. While Franny might have used her snowflake axe as a makeshift spaceship, Berge used her fire cannon as an afterburner to propel herself through space. But of the three of them, Zan Partizanne definitely got the best deal here. The quick-foot mage used her feet to ride on her own electricity, basically zipping across space as a constantly reflecting beam of light, only stopping when the planet of Popstar appeared beneath her feet.
"One little traitor to the Dark Lord will be all that I require in the palm of my hand before total victory is mine…"
As Hyness' orders echoed in her mind, she finally decided to take time to reflect on the opportunity that had brought on the cult's second wind. Honestly, she couldn't believe the details herself. She'd actually first heard the news from Flamberge, but dismissed it as hearsay since she didn't see what the hotheaded mage claimed she'd witnessed during both of her own fights with Kirby. The first time and second time they'd faced off, he had the same three sidekicks by his side. She even knew their names by the time they had a rematch in the Jambandra Base — the grumbling King Dedede, the straight-faced Meta Knight, and the energetic spear-wielding Bandana Waddle Dee. However, Flamberge had protested and insisted that when she and Kirby had faced off for the last time on the desolate Sizzlai Moon, he had come fully equipped with a water-elemental team by his side to counter against the fiery mage. A Driblee, a Broom Hatter (who was only included in the 'water group' because she had equipped herself with a water bucket for some odd reason), and…
She shook her head, glaring down towards Popstar. But it just couldn't be true! There was no way that the third ally that Flamberge kept professing about could possibly even exist! But as it turned out, Berge's claim being true after all was one of the only ways that Void Termina could still be alive. Her gaze hardened at the thought. If it was really true… then everything wouldn't be in vain.
Taking a short pause to gaze upon the yellow star-shaped planet, she then grinned and sent herself zipping down to Dream Land.
Author's Note:
Thanks for all the support! To be honest, I've been rather surprised by the strong encouragement that the first chapter has managed to garner so far. I've even received a few messages saying that they had the same crossover idea themselves. Again, thank you all so much for your kind words!
Will I be adapting every single episode from the anime into this story? Ha, no. I'm sorry to admit, but this isn't one of those fics since I hope to have an even mix of focus on both the anime and the games. As of now I only plan to adapt in certain episodes, and even then their plot won't be taken wholesale. For instance, I can guarantee you that Dedede's jeep did not explode by falling off a cliff in the first episode.
This Kirby has a very slight change in personality from the anime. It's very slight, but I hope that it's still noticeable enough. Dedede's still probably still going to be the same for quite a while though. Hope you all enjoy and look forward for more!
