Chapter 45: The Heaviest Artillery
Kirby flew slowly through the tunnel. He could hear something in the distance...
Kirby stopped. He had hit a dead end. This puzzled him. He could definitely hear noise, but where was it coming from? It sounded like huge machinery being moved around.
Kirby looked around, trying to locate the source of the noise. He then, realizing the direction the noise was coming from, looked down.
The tunnel did continue... into a vertical drop. Kirby descended through the tube.
Once he had descended quite a ways, he saw another tunnel leading off to the right. He took it.
The noise was getting louder...
Suddenly, Kirby saw it.
"It" was a huge machine. Its main body was cylindrical and had a dome on top. Attached on opposite sides were metal arms, which, instead of hands, ended in circular chainsaws.
The machine stopped what it was doing (Kirby suspected it had been creating another tunnel) and turned. One mechanical eye stared at Kirby from the dome and above it the words MEGA MECHA MOLE v2.0 were clearly visible. Kirby didn't know what "v2.0" meant, but his eyes suddenly widened as he saw something that made his heart skip a beat. There, buried in the pupil of Mecha Mole's eye, was the sixth star rod shard.
Kirby readied himself. This battle was going to be difficult.
Mecha Mole, however, did not see Kirby as a threat. Instead of attacking, it continued with its work.
Kirby inhaled a rock from the ground. He knew it would not be smart to use Stone ability against Mecha Mole. If he hit the bottom of the tunnel as a rock, he might just plummet through the bottom, destroying the ground beneath him. Kirby didn't want to create his own deadly abyss, so he shot the rock out at Mecha Mole.
The rock created a little dent in Mecha Mole, but that was enough to make it angry. It stopped working. Metal panels all over its body slid open. Cannon-type weapons emerged from the holes. In one swift movement, they all pointed at Kirby and fired.
Kirby turned vertical just in time. Every single missile hit the warpstar, causing a huge explosion. That explosion threw Kirby to the ground while his warpstar shattered like glass.
Kirby was expecting everything to go black, but Mecha Mole seemed to be covered in red fluorescent lights.
Mecha Mole put away its cannons and went back to its work, unaware that Kirby had not been killed.
Kirby hesitated to shoot another rock at Mecha Mole. If it used those missiles again... Kirby didn't believe he could survive a direct hit from those things. He couldn't inhale them. They moved too fast.
Kirby got an idea! He ran over to Mecha Mole, who had moved a considerable distance away along the tunnel it was creating, and climbed on top of it.
Mecha Mole seemed not to notice. It did notice, however, when Kirby inhaled a rock from the ceiling and shot it right down into Mecha Mole's back.
Mecha Mole stopped working again. Its dome head swiveled around and its eye stared at Kirby.
Mecha Mole raised its chainsaws and banged the flat parts together. They rang like a gong. The immensely loud noise filled the tunnel and the entire structure shook.
The horrible sound almost made Kirby faint. Though he did not, the vibrations caused by the noise had started a cave-in.
Rocks loosened themselves from the ceiling and came crashing down everywhere. Kirby, being near the ceiling, wasn't hurt as much, but his head was ringing. The noise had been so loud.
Kirby heaved a rock off of himself and watched in horror as Mecha Mole prepared to bang those "hands" together again.
"No..." said Kirby feebly.
Mecha Mole brought them together again for a resounding crash.
Kirby screamed in pain, unable to cover his non-existent ears.
Suddenly, Kirby was no longer in pain. He had somehow gotten an ability that blocked out the sound! He didn't know how he had gotten it, but he activated this new power right then.
With an evil grin, Mike Kirby turned around his cap so that the visor faced backward, pulled out a megaphone about as big as himself and screamed into it.
The scream, enhanced in volume by the megaphone, was about ten times louder than the crashes of Mecha Mole's "hands".
Mecha Mole creaked and groaned, clearly in pain. Kirby's screaming was so loud, that the piles of rocks that fell around him were reduced to dust by the sonic waves.
Kirby ran out of breath, but he still had his ability. He put on some headphones that had materialized in his hand and screamed again. This time, he screamed into a microphone that sounded like it was linked to mile-high speakers buried in the ground.
Sparks flew from Mecha Mole. It was collapsing.
As Kirby screamed, he got an idea as to how he got this power. The vibrations from Mecha Mole's crashing sound must have entered Kirby's mouth in such a way that gave Kirby this sound-oriented ability.
Kirby ran out of breath again. Now he climbed up on top of the immobilized Mecha Mole, grew a rock-star's green Mohawk and screamed one more time.
Mecha Mole shuddered... and then exploded.
Kirby awoke many hours later. He had so gotten used to not sleeping that he found this quite awkward. He looked around.
Some of the lights that once covered Mecha Mole were still shining, though they were spread all over the crater Kirby was sitting in.
Maybe "crater" isn't quite the right word to describe it. Kirby was, of course, still underground, but was sitting in a sort of bubble in the center of a mass of stone. Kirby rummaged through all the pieces of Mecha Mole he could find and finally located the eye.
Kirby picked up a rock and crushed the eye under it. Then he reached in and pulled out the sixth star rod shard!!!
Kirby popped it into his mouth and gained the most useful power he had gotten so far.