PART 14: Cold as Hell
Kirby knocked on the door with his fists desperately, determined to escape. There was a hollow sound as he hit them, but the doors did not budge. Desperately, he continued to hit it with his fists, hoping to make it open.
There was an enormous cracking sound, and Kirby fell off his feet, losing his balance. Kirby looked around for the source of the noise and there was another cracking sound just behind him.
There wasn't any time to react. With one final creek, the balcony split apart from the castle and started to topple toward the ground.
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Inside the enormous silver ship, the long needed funeral was about to take place in the dining room, a huge, circular, carpetless silver room that had been cleared out for the funeral. Leading the funeral and walking to the front of the room was Chief Bookum, dressed in a black suit.
There wasn't any music. There wasn't any coffins. Just an otherwise empty room filled with men, women, and children. All of them were dressed in black, the color of mourning. There weren't any photographs, and there wasn't any noise from anyone.
As soon as Bookum reached the other side of the room, he pulled out a electronic microphone and hit the switch. He began to speak into it in a loud voice.
"We are gathered in this room today to mourn the losses of Mabel, Samo, and Tiff. All three are respected members of the community and one of them is only a child..."
Before he could continue, Bookum started to cough. He held one hand over his mouth as he did so, and a dark red liquid dripped down his face. Coughing without ceasing, he put a hand to his chest as his breathing began to become labored. He staggered backwards, fell to his knees, and collapsed onto the ground, face-first.
Everyone watched this in shock, metaphorically frozen to the ground. Nobody moved an inch from where they stood, and children clinged to thier parents. Behind all of them, the doors to the dining room slammed shut.
Before anyone could react, twenty random men in the room pulled out double-barrel shotguns, cocked them, and aimed them at different people in the room. These men were wearing all black, had large black boots and gloves, and thier faces seemed to be shrouded in darkness, so you couldn't make out who they were.
One of the largest men grabbed a small girl nearby him by her neck and lifted her off the ground, holding the shotgun against the side of her head.
"Pop quiz." said the man in an icy voice. "First of all, where's Dedede? Get the question right and I'll ask another. Get either one wrong and I'll blow this fucking kid's brains to Ripple Star."
"In his escape ship, past the huge silver doors in the east wing." a child answered quickly.
"Very good." the man responded coldly, slowly pulling the shotgun away from the girl. Before you could blink, he turned the shotgun at the boy who had spoken and fired, making people jump backwards as the kid flew into a wall and slumped down onto the ground, killed instantly. The man with the shotgun smiled sadistically.
"Now..." he continued icily, facing the other people and pulling his shotgun back against the girl's head. "How much money is on this ship and where can I find it all? Answer me that correctly and I'll give this little one back to her mommy." To show the effect, he pinched the girl's cheek and smiled cruelly, his mouth the only thing visible behind the strange darkness surrounding his face.
"It's in Dedede's ship...in the vault..please, give me my child back." cried a middle-aged woman in the background, as the man with the gun reloaded it.
"Thank you ever so much for your cooperation." the man said icily. He looked at the little girl. "Now, now, my sweet little pawn..." he said. "It's time to go back to...mommy..."
With the quickness of a hawk, the man turned the gun towards the woman, fired, reloaded, fired, reloaded, and fired again, all in under half a minute. The woman staggered, holding her neck as blood poured from it like wine from an open bottle, pouring onto the ground as every part of it was covered in it, and she fell to her knees and collapsed onto the ground.
Both the girl and another, very muscular man watched in horror, and the man ran towards the woman's side and felt the side of her neck with his hand. The man looked suddenly infuriated, and he pushed everyone else out of the way and charged towards the man, the one with the gun, shoulder-first, ready to rip him apart with his bare hands. The gun-wielding man watched him idly, and as soon as the muscular man was a foot away from him, he threw the girl high into the air, aimed his shotgun at the other man, and fired. The muscular man was so close to the gun that the shots completely destroyed his chest, killing him instantly. He slumped to the ground and fell at the man's feet.
The girl fell toward the ground, and the man caught her by her neck again, reloaded the gun, and held it to her head. The girl continued to cry loudly, flailing around uslessly, tears rolling down her cheeks. An icy annoyance could be seen on the man's shadowy face, but the annoyance was almost fake, as if the girl's crying was an excuse for him to kill something.
"STOP CRYING, YOU LITTLE BRAT, BEFORE I BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS ACROSS THIS ROOM!" he roared into the girl's face. "I SWEAR IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!"
The girl continued to cry, now even louder than before.
"THAT'S IT! TIME FOR A LITTLE TARGET PRACTICE!" the man roared, throwing the girl into the air and cocking his gun.
The sound of a gun being fired rang through the air a second later.
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A few hours later, the balcony lay on the ground in ruins, reduced to enormous piles of rubble. Kirby was nowhere to be seen, yet the fog avoided the pile of rubble completely.
A few minutes later, the rubble, now buried in over ten feet of snow, began to shake, slowly splitting the layer of snow above it with it.
As it cracked, a tiny and half-frozen blue hand burst through it and grabbed onto the layer of snow above it, and a small, round, blue body began to slowly climb onto the layer of snow, which was steadily getting higher.
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At the words "Target Practice", there were the sounds of guns being fired, screaming, bullets richoteting off the walls, and bodies landing on the ground with a thump. Save the steady dripping of what was obviously blood, everything was silent again.
The previously silver walls were covered in blood as if someone had thrown paint onto them like a mischevious child. Shotguns, some bent, lay on the ground, surrounded by bodies and leftover bullets.
It could be estimated that over five hundred people or more had entered the dining room for the funeral. It could also be estimated that over four hundred of those people were now dead. And it was fact that everyone who had not come to the funeral did not know what had happened there.
The girl, named Honey, was the only one completely unharmed. Her only scars were mental ones, for she had just witness over four hundred people, including her mother and father, both dying right in front of her.
It was unliklely that the scars that had been left would ever heal, and the consoling of a few other survivors ceased to reach her ears.
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Shivering and half-frozen, Kirby weakly climbed on top of the layer of snow. He had swallowed some of the snow and transformed into Ice Kirby, which turned his skin blue and created a tierra with a shining glacier on his head. Blood dripped from a large scar made by the collapsing balcony, the scar just under the side of his head. Otherwise, he wasn't wounded, but he was still cold, weak, and tired, and he still only had about fifty-seven more hours to go, which meant that fifteen hours had passed since he had started. He had less than two and a half days to stop the Black Fog.
Knowing he still needed to continue, he didn't stop to take a breath. He trudged through the snow quietly, pulling himself back up whenever he found himself sinking into it too deep. The snow was luckily stable, but if he didn't keep on climbing, he'd be stuck, and the snow was still piling around him, getting ever deeper as if it was attempting to bury him alive.
But he pressed onwards.
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Enormous banging on the dining room doors startled the remaining survivors, except for Honey, who stood there quietly, the images looping through her mind like a broken video player. As soon as the man had cocked his gun, every person, small or large, jumped on top of the man and pinned him. Another shadowy man fired at the group and hit the first man on accident. All out war broke loose. People attacked with fists, feet, or guns, doing whatever they could to stop the strange shadowy men and stay alive in the process.
Shots were fired, people died, and she was falling toward the ground. Another boy her age in the crowd with spiky hair managed to catch her as she fell, but he was shot in the back by a stray bullet. He fell to the ground, and she rolled out of his hands into a wall. One of the shadowy men fired at her, but someone pulled his gun away from him and the bullets hit the wall and bounced off it, only feet away from her.
She tried to stop thinking about it, but how could she? The images of her mother being hit three times and her father getting ripped to shreds only feet away from her were images that don't go away...ever. They leave permanent scars. She noticed someone motioning toward her and saying something, but no words came out of his mouth. She was lost in thoughts that wouldn't go away, and she didn't hear the other person's words. Desperate to awake from this nightmare, she closed her eyes and did quite the opposite.
She passed out.
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Kirby had spent the last hour trudging through the snow. The doll was gone, the medallion was still there, and the castle was still a huge object on the horizon behind him. He had reached the top of a bunch of cliffs, which were now buried in snow. The snow was not high enough to bury these cliffs, and the snow was only knee deep now.
As he walked past the side of the cliff, a face burst through the fog. A face with a bushy blue mustache, walrus tusks, and a light blue complexion. This was followed by an enormous walrus body wearing blue overalls, and the body was twice as wide as it was tall, and the walrus himself was already twice as tall as Kirby. Kirby got in a fighting stance.
"Frosty." he muttered as three knights the same size as him appeared. They looked like walking golden helmets like the ones you'd find on suits of armor. A golden visor covered thier faces, red gloves covered thier hands, silver shoes covered thier feet, and there was a throwable cutter boomerange lodged in a slot in the helmets. This boomerang was thier weapon of choice. They all went by one name... Sir Kibble.
"Whassa matta, Kirby? Don't got anything to say?" Frosty asked in a wierd and incredibly fake accent. Kirby got slightly angry at his comment.
"I knew it, Kirby, you don't got nothing. And without Meta Knight around, you don't gotta chance against me, either." Frosty smirked.
"Why don't you shut up, drop the accent, and get the hell out of my way?" Kirby retorted icily. Frosty got angry himself, jumped around a bit with his mouth open, and held the side of his head with his hands as if he was getting a migraine.
"ATTACK!" Frosty ordered. The response was instant. Three small, round, armless blue creatures about Kirby's size burst from the fog, smiled menacingly, showing thier fangs, and began to roll at Kirby like bowling balls. The Sir Kibbles jumped onto the cliff above, two of them landing and throwing thier boomerangs, the other one jumping again and pulling his out. Frosty watched idly in the background, and felt a sudden icy chill, as if something was watching him.