Review replies:
Bunnyrabbit202 Mwahahaha
In all seriousness, it was indeed inevitable. Regarding your other comment, there have been subtle hints throughout this story suggesting that what you're suggesting has been going on the whole time.
The Artist Formerly Known as 'Raspberri-Marxie' (i.e. YourFluffyTrashIsFull) Yes. I decided to do a Prince joke to celebrate the name change. You're welcome.
In the meantime, yes. That was intentional. Good to see the chapter had the desired emotional response. Glad you're enjoying the story so far.
With all that settled...ON TO THE CHAPTER! We've got another long one here, so sit tight!
There was...ringing. A soft ringing noise.
And pain. A lot of pain. Though it seemed not to come from any injuries. As far as he was concerned, he hadn't any injuries of any sort.
It didn't feel like he was waking up from a pleasant slumber, nor did it feel like he was frightened out of a terrifying nightmare. It felt...strange. Like he had risen out of a coma. His head was buzzing and everything was aching, but there were no bruises to be found.
He was spinning. Spinning and spinning around, away. Stars circling round.
This place felt familiar. Like he'd been here before.
Nah. That didn't matter.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Here he was. The great Kirby of the Stars, floating in space, useless and powerless, having been sober aside by the newly self-proclaimed ruler of Popstar. The backstabber. The betrayer. The jester. Marx.
How could he have ever fallen in love for him? How could he have been so blind? The signs were there for months, heck, maybe even a year or two, yet he never bothered to press his suspicions. To ask the right questions.
What use was he now? He wasn't even brave enough to try and stop Marx after he had revealed himself for what he truly was. He allowed himself to be so easily molded by his presence, molded into melting away whenever he dared tease him.
Maybe that's why he felt so crummy after awakening. Maybe he had left such a wide opening that Marx couldn't resist to finish him. To push him out of commission. And it worked. He may as well just be some random stray husk of space material traveling across the cosmos. Who knew how long he had been knocked out? Hours? Days? Years? Was there still even a Popstar worth saving? Was he even still in the Gamble Galaxy at this point?
From the looks of his surroundings, Kirby could determine that the worst case had not come to pass. He was still near home, but only just. And even then, "near" still meant he was millions of miles away.
Why should he even bother thinking about going back? Stopping Marx? Saving himself? There was no point to it anymore. No point in trying to do anything but close his eyes, and return to his somber state, where he wouldn't have to deal with reality.
What would everyone say if he came back? They'd probably just shout him down. Tell him that he wasn't fast enough. Smart enough. That he didn't save them in time.
That he was too late.
If Marx had intended to kill him, he had succeeded. He won.
So there he was. Kirby of the Stars. Left alone, flying through space without much of a care in the world left in him. Such a hero. He didn't even want to call himself a star warrior, not like he deserved such a title at this point.
Let go.
He should just give up.
Let go, Kirby.
He should just close his eyes and keep them shut.
Let go and just die already.
Die.
Die.
Why is it so hard to die??
Something wasn't right. There was a reason he was still alive. There was a reason he wasn't dead.
There was a window. An opportunity. A chance, just a chance, to maybe, just maybe, redeem himself. He just needed to realize it.
To unhinge himself from his own self-pity.
But how? Where? What was he supposed to—
Out there, in the distance. Look.
It was a small speck. But not small enough to be mistaken for something in the background.
Come on...spin back around so we can — there we go.
It was leaving a streak of faint, blue light behind it. It was the comet Nova. It was still blasting toward Popstar. But how? Surely he had been out here for too long. How had he any chance of stopping it?
He could feel something. Something twinkling nearby. It was growing stronger...
The planets. Kirby could feel their power. But how? Surely they must've been used up on granting Marx his wish. Unless...
Unless that, too, was a lie. The bastard. Though, at the very least, his shortsightedness had proven itself to be for Kirby's benefit.
He could feel his own strength growing. His own confidence boosting. Come on, now wasn't the time to hide away and sulk! He had a planet to save!
The small, colored stars that had revealed themselves during his confrontation with Nova now encircled Kirby, orbiting around the puffball at faster and faster speeds as they neared him. He could even feel himself glowing brighter and brighter until at last they merged together and a blinding light engulfed him.
When the light faded, the puffball found himself to no longer be spinning aimlessly. He felt upright. In control. Energy flowing through his veins. He felt more awake, more aware, than ever.
Now it was time to catch up to Nova, out in the distance. If he were to disrupt Marx's plan, he would need to disable and/or destroy it. Vengeance would be sweet. Now, it shouldn't be too dissimilar to taking down the Halberd, right? Think that, but scaled up. But by...a thousand. ...To be generous. Shouldn't be too hard.
The question now was how he was going to get to it. And the answer was something Kirby was laying his eyes on. The Warp Star.
Kirby knew that it hadn't ever traveled fast enough to catch a comet rocketing toward a planet with an ion engine. Perhaps all the Warp Star needed was a little boost. He summoned it at once, and, once stood upon it, closed his eyes and focused. He was attempting to transfer the planets' energy into the Warp Star. He couldn't keep his eyes closed for long, as the surface, shape, structure of the Warp Star changed before them.
The plain yellow star that Kirby was long accustomed to had transformed into a miniature spaceship-like device, with the aforementioned star having become the sparkler's hull. Kirby now sat atop it as though he were the pilot of an airplane, rather than leisurely sitting on its surface. Destination in mind, he blasted off toward the comet.
At these insane speeds, the background stars and space objects around him appeared to be streaking as the distance between himself and the comet closed. He readied himself.
Not wanting to be cooked by Nova's propulsion mechanisms, Kirby veered just slightly left of his target, hoping to make another pass and enter through any number of openings in the mechanical monstrosity's body, namely those for the various appendages that stuck out of it.
There was, however, a slight hitch in this plan. He was now headed straight toward Popstar. He wasn't expecting the comet to have been so close to his home planet. He zipped away just in time to avoid entering the planet's atmosphere.
After turning around and slowing down, Kirby was left slightly confused. Surely, if he nearly accidentally rammed into Popstar by accident, Nova should have hit its intended target by now. Something was pushing it back.
Some things were pushing it back.
The Sun and Moon. The ones that were supposed to be fighting.
It seemed as though they had put aside their differences for the sake of protecting Popstar. It was a miracle. Now all he needed to do was—
"You've come to see the show, I see."
Kirby stopped his train of thought, turning his attention to the voice that had addressed him.
"Hello, Marx." Kirby said.
"They can't hold forever, you know." Marx explained. "Their feud has left the two of them weakened. They will destroy themselves under their own stress soon enough."
Kirby frantically looked around. "Reveal yourself!"
"I don't think so. I'll stay here, the humble director, while you, Kirby, watch all of your friends be made an example of."
He gasped. "H-How dare you— Cappy Town did no wrong!"
"Nor did they, nor the people within a 1000 kilometer radius, do any right, now did they? They'll pay for the world's wrongdoings!"
Kirby trembled. The stakes had been tremendously raised.
"All the world's wrongdoings against me! Against us!" Marx continued.
He regained his focus and narrowed down a point of entry. There was a large gap in Nova's gold plating right above a spherical observation pod just below the middle-right of the comet. Hopefully it would be wide enough for him and the Warp Star to fit.
"The world will bow beneath my feet, standing atop rubble!" Marx yelled out. "Standing atop the bloodied remains of those who dared oppose me! OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW!!"
"Marx." Kirby said. "You should stop living in your dreams. It's time for you to wake up."
He leaned forward as the Warp Star accelerated, blasting itself toward the opening. Impact was imminent...
He slipped inside, but soon found was whiplashed by a sudden push backward. Not so much like a strong wind, but a force. A force begging to keep all foreign specimens out of Nova's insides. The upgraded Warp Star's sheer grunt was enough to overpower it. It soon subsided, but even then it was difficult to increase speed to anything that could cause catastrophic damage if crashed into anything.
And whilst the outside looked as though it was made up of various objects mashed together with a clean face on the front, the inside was a wide, massive, intricately designed chamber with pillars, pylons, and the like providing things from power to structural support.
Headed right toward Kirby was the second level of security within Nova; various probes and small robots sent to kill the specimen that had entered the body.
With careful maneuvering, the pink puffball dodged laser blasts, intent to kill him, and kamikaze bots, intent to knock him off his vehicle or, in the case of some explosive ones, blow him up. In other words, everything in here was trying to kill him. To prevent him from reaching Nova's heart.
There was odd sensation in his brain, though. Something that wasn't clicking. Why wasn't he able to fight back?
Without warning, his Warp Star fired a set of three yellow shots, one in front and two angled slightly above below. The one aimed slightly downward destroyed a probe that Kirby hadn't seen coming toward him. Now this was going to be fun.
He continued navigating through the inside of Nova, shooting away at its security and immune system as it continued to attack him. He caught sight of a large, cylindrical chamber walked off just above him. Lights that periodically pulsated smoothly between on and off and on again surrounded much of the walls of Nova's interior, but all of them converged on this sealed off area. That was surely where the heart was. Or the brain. It shouldn't really matter which was destroyed.
As he prepared to approach it, a large swarm of probes engaged him from the front. He tried shooting them all down to no avail.
They smashed straight into him, but not to directly impact him. This swarm wasn't meant to hit him off his ride. It swept him off.
Only now did they all converge, encasing him before he could fall down. Within seconds nearly all the light from the chamber's walls was blocked out, replaced by a million faint, light blue status lights on each probe. One by one they all turned orange, and he could hear beeping.
Before Kirby knew it, the Warp Star sliced through the wall of probes, scooping up the defenseless puffball before they all exploded behind him.
He nervously wiped some sweat off his forehead. That was too close to disaster, right there.
And there was an entry to the control chamber right there. He soon found himself inside, where he would have to, for a bit, shield his eyes. Compared to the somberly lit, darker palette of Nova's interior, this room was bright, and full of reflective metal. In the center was the comet's heart, enclosed in a casing of plexiglass. Circling around it were eight towers, each protected by two turrets.
The entry closed behind Kirby, and soon found himself subject to a very strange artificial gravity field, which saw himself unable to risk firing directly at the heart's enclosure itself. He would have to take out each support tower, which rotated almost effortlessly around him. He couldn't move to the sides of them of their way, either, meaning he'd have to fit between the narrow gaps in each tower used for railings for their respective turrets.
He fired away at each turret, slowly blasting away at the heart's defenses. Once enough damage had been dealt to the turrets for any one particular tower, the resulting explosion resulted in a chain reaction that downed the whole tower, making the navigation problem easier as more of the towers were destroyed. All the while, all the remaining turrets fired missiles seemingly unaffected by the chamber's odd gravitational field, making the task quite precarious to undertake.
Finally, the last tower was destroyed, and the room seemed to shut down. The restrictions on movement were lifted, and now, free to fire away at the heart, Kirby did so. The casing, and heart inside, were shattered. Soon, however, the whole chamber began to explode around him. He rushed out as quickly as he could, only barely managing to speed away from the fireball that engulfed the small chamber.
It continued to grow, blasting a large section of the top-right of the comet out into space. Nova had been paralyzed.
When Kirby finally emerged out of the wreckage, he saw just how tightly he managed to snatch that victory.
The Sun and Moon looked cracked in places, as if they had nearly crumbled apart. From the looks, it seems as though paralyzing Nova has also deactivated its rockets, thus halting any progress it was making toward colliding with Popstar into the dust.
Having spent the last few minutes blasted with beeps, mechanical noises, and the soft hum of the comet's ion engines, however, the sudden silence in the aftermath of it all felt...unsettling.
And the victory felt...unsatisfying.
He had won. Barely.
But not completely.
Marx wasn't finished just yet.
With Nova dealt with, Kirby could now sense...a presence. He could feel where Marx was situated.
He was on the Moon. The same one that had been trying to stop Nova from crashing into Popstar. And the same one where Kirby defeated Nightmare so long ago. If he was hiding there, he hadn't been for too long. He must've gotten there only after Nova had been paralyzed.
But why? What was he planning? What was he scheming?
Before Kirby could descend, however, he could feel the Warp Star metamorphose beneath him again. Back into its original form. It had transferred the planetary energy it had left back to Kirby, and it didn't have much left to give back.
It had weakened under being put under so much strain. Much like the Sun and Moon had.
Kirby could only hope that he wouldn't have to suffer the same fate.
He thought about which Copy Essence he would equip when confronting Marx. He went for the Sword ability.
With that, he slowly descended down unto the Moon's surface, jumping off the Warp Star just a few feet off the ground. It flew away to await his next order, whenever it should be.
Kirby. He was seeing red. He was itching for a struggle. Where was Marx hiding himself?
SMACK*
He was punched in the right cheek, sending him to the ground.
"I'm right here." Marx taunted, before giggling to himself. He had snuck up on the puffball from the front.
Kirby looked up at where he had previously stood, trying to get eye contact.
SMACK*
He was face-planted on the ground again.
"C'mon, Kirby. Look at me."
Huh?
He looked up.
SMACK*
He was kicked to the ground from behind this time.
"Yeah! Come 'n find me!"
Marx you—
SMACK*
"You can't catch me!"
You little—
SMACK*
"YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!"
SMACK*
"YOU CAN'T—"
SMACK*
"CATCH ME!!"
SMACK*
There was blood. Blood was pooling on the ground from Kirby's mouth.
"You...you're so...weak."
SMACK*
Blood... So much blood.
"Look at me."
He was grabbed, and dragged up from the floor. He was eye-to-eye with Marx. His eyes were as crazed as he remembered, but his expression was freezing cold...
He couldn't get much other detail. Things were so...blurry...
SMACK*
He landed atop his pool of blood. It tasted tangy. Metallic.
"I said look at me, Kirby."
No...
"You cannot hope to destroy me."
I...I will. You'll see... You—
"You may have stopped Nova, but I will still rule Popstar. I still have all the power. You have nothing."
You...
Kirby tried to raise his sword. It was kicked out of his stub as Marx started to wrap his wings around the bloodied up puffball.
"You are nothing to me now."
I...I'm nothing—
No! Fight back!
He couldn't fight back.
"I gave you the chance to die alone. And when you didn't take it, I was generous enough to let you watch. You don't deserve another chance."
I don't deserve anything...
Don't let him get to you!
"You're just a child that yearns for death. I grew up long before your ever showed up."
I'm nothing.
I'm nothing but a broken child.
Marx's mouth opened up, as he positioned to puncture the puffball with his fangs. He was going to literally suck the life out of him.
I'm broken.
I'm broken.
I want to die.
Kill me.
Kill me, Marx.
"Don't worry, child. I'll grant you the release you so desperately crave."
Let me die, Marx.
Pleas just let me die.
The fangs pierced through the child's flesh. He could already feel his blood, his life, his energy, his light; everything being sapped away.
"There, there, Kirby. Just let go."
I love you.
"Be free."
I love you Marx.
"Let the pain consume you."
I'll do it for you.
Only for you.
I wanted you to be with me when I died.
Thank you.
I love you.
Kirby couldn't feel when he impacted the ground again. Not like he wanted or needed to know.
I love you too much.
Marx starred at him. What a pity.
That's why I have to kill you.
I'm sorry.
With the last of his strength, he regained the Sword ability, and with a dying breath, struck Marx straight through the center. The jester shrieked.
How did he— How could—
Why did this hurt so much??
This made no sense! Kirby was nearly dead! He had devoured whatever was left of the poor soul! How did—
Why was it stinging so badly??
Why was he bleeding??
He glared at those eyes. Those glassy, lifeless eyes. They looked so pure... So...accepting. Was this his plan all along?
"Kirby..." he cried. "I'm—"
He couldn't finish his sentence. An excruciating amount of pain had taken hold. In the location where he had been stabbed, his body had started to brightly glow. It was burning.
It exploded. It continued exploding. He was flying. Flying straight toward the disabled comet.
He crashed right into it, destroying them both in the process.
And from the ground on the Moon, Kirby lifelessly watched the sequence of events unfold.
In due time, he would be grazed by the massive explosion, and would too be destroyed.
At least, he would have. Had it not been for a combined effort. The Moon moved out of the blast radius and prepared to take up its usual position in Popstar's sky. The Warp Star retrieved him from the Moon's surface and was on course to fly him back home.
Kirby was battered, bruised, bitten, and covered in soot, debris, and blood. He layed limp upon the vessel. To say that he was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted would be an understatement.
And as he blankly watched Nova explode in the background, his eyes were left dripping with tears, the exact reason why lost in translation.
To be concluded