Phazon: I did not forget. I have a life, too. Let's get to it.
--
Distasteful Forces
Did Adeleine die? Her head crashed against a rail during her fall and knocked her unconscious for ten seconds before she realized she had survived the fall. Eyes fluttering to life, Adeleine clutched her easel, but could not keep her hands from shaking. The pounding pistons and grinding gears ran from ear to ear as she edged herself in a corner and tried to block out the pungent sulfur drifting in her nose.
"Am I…in the bad place?"
"No." Dedede's voice rang as he climbed off of the ladder. "You just don't listen."
The eardrum shattering hum of a drill drowned Adeleine's response. She looked up and saw Waddle Dee and Kirby riding a drill. Adeleine leapt out of the way and onto a nearby metal stand. "Kirby, where did you get that thing?!"
Once the drill stopped spinning and Kirby returned to normal, he jumped onto the stand. "I found a few critters outside. Plus…" he paused to admire the glistening machinery and odd hand thingies that moved by themselves, "…a drill fits well here." He edged down the stand, but his shoe got caught in a nearby Rockn: blue and yellow rockets that had no sense of direction. Kirby watched the Rockn drag him towards the wall. "Hey, do you mind?!"
The Rockn, annoyed at Kirby's impatience, increased speed. The impact caused it to detonate and the explosion shot Kirby down several levels. He bounced around like a pinball, crashed through a frightened Burnis bird, and landed atop a Shotzo cannon.
Waddle Dee descended Adeleine's makeshift ladder and rushed to Kirby's side. "Hey, Kirby, Ribbon says the shard's starting to react again…Kirby?"
The world still spun and Kirby resisted the urge to talk to seven Waddle Dees. He pushed forward and shot out a drill. Waddle Dee dodged just in time for the drill to spin through the gated corridor. Kirby frowned when he realized that the drill would just disappear like the last ones, but it didn't. The drill bore into the tan and orange box until the box broke into splinters and dust.
"Drat! A dead end." Waddle Dee looked to Kirby. "Well, no shard, I guess."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ribbon replied, the Shard still vibrating.
Kirby climbed down to the next level and had to rub his eyes to make sure he saw what he saw. The tan and orange box winked, almost mocking him. You thought you'd finished me, but I wanted to have some more fun, it seemed to say. Seething at the thought of going back in time and ending up five seconds earlier, Kirby fired another drill, but the block shattered again. He poked around to make sure he hadn't gone back in time again before descending to the next level. "Oh, come on! Not again!"
Ribbon squinted to make out the blurry image at the end of the alcove. "It's another one of-"
"I can see it!" Kirby ignored the cannons bouncing off of his body and charged. The drill, attached to him, revolved over and over until it bore a hole in the block. Adeleine thought she heard the faint sound of laughter, but shook it off when she climbed down to the next level.
"Hey, you guys! There's no block here!" Adeleine motioned for them to join her, but before she could crawl into the alcove, she felt one of Dedede's flippers on her face throw her backwards. Her head crashed against the cannon with a resounding thump. It wobbled back and forth until Waddle Dee jumped off of Adeleine's hat and into the alcove. As the others crawled into the extended cubby, Adeleine peered over the side. Her beaming eyes went well with the childish grin now on her face.
Kirby strained to grab the shard floating at the top of the ladder, but Ribbon zipped past him and added the fragment to the Crystal Shard. A dangerous whirrrrr buzzed for a few seconds before the Shard lost its glow again. Ribbon stared at the growing jewel. Just a few more. As she descended the ladder, she looked at her reflection in the fragment and thought of Queen Gretchen, Dixie…the world she once knew. No! The world she still knew and would save once she located every fragment.
It took Dedede no time to guess where Adeleine had gone. He leaned over the side and saw Adeleine sitting on her easel as the emerald green conveyor belt rode her into darkness. A Hack hammer huffed and puffed to split Adeleine down the middle for interrupting its personal space, but Dedede decided that was his job. He jumped off of the rail, his coat coming inside out like an umbrella, and smashed the hammer under his flipper.
As the conveyor belt crept along and everyone passed under the entrance, Kirby felt a sudden jolt in his stomach that brought the elemental crystal up and warbling against his mouth until he spat it against Dedede's coat. The king whirled around when he felt his robe defiled. "You pink…pudgy...thing! How could you-"
A thundering boom interrupted Dedede's and had him jittering from head to flipper. The cherry red hammers came first, but the jagged smiles and cerulean eyes of the leering robots smashing in unison had Adeleine step back towards the entrance. Ribbon grabbed Adeleine's collar before she could get far, while Dedede tipped his hat and pulled out his hammer.
"Well, this is why they call me the King." He led the way and ignored Adeleine's questioning of "Who are they?"
Dedede reeled back his arm and brought the hammer down on the steel door. A crack stretched to all four corners of the barrier, but Dedede shook his head, puckered his beak, and slammed the door in two as metal flew everywhere. After clearing clutter from his hammer, Dedede looked to the others. "Well, come on."
Dedede was careful not to drop Kirby, who clung onto his robe for his life. He stopped before a steel barrier as the grinning robot's left eye focused on Adeleine for a few seconds. The robot brought down the hammer as Adeleine's legs quivered even before the hammer hit the conveyor belts. She ran to Dedede's side.
"I say we run."
"We're not going anywhere, artist. We're getting through here no matter what."
Well, Adeleine just threw her hands into the air. "That's what I said. We run at full speed without even thinking."
Everyone looked to one another and gave it thought. Was Adeleine a kid genius or just a scared out of her wit girl trying to avoid getting her head flattened? When Dedede told Kirby to hold on as he spun his hammer, everyone went for the second choice.
"The second that hammer comes down…" Dedede whispered, "…run!"
The robot's hammer inched up at a slug's pace until it reached the top with a clang, locking it in place. Its eyes cranked to the right with great anticipation while Dedede's hammer almost slipped from his flippers. Ribbon's wings stopped fluttering, Adeleine had squeezed all of the green paint out of one tube, and Kirby almost pulled out a foot's worth of Dedede's robe.
SLAM!
The hammer came down and created a dent in the conveyor belt. Dedede dashed towards the steel door and smashed like a madman looking for his victim. Without a second thought and a shrill yell piercing everyone's ears but his, Dedede smashed ahead. Inattentive Bouncy springs came too low as several pairs of feet flattened them.
Adeleine held onto her hat with one hand and kept her skirt from flying with the other.
The battle cries eclipsed Kirby's screams as he began losing his grip on Dedede's robe. The wind rushed in his mouth and could have torn off his shade of pink.
SLAM! SLAM!
As Ribbon hastened through the steel door, she felt something clawing at her right wing. At first, she thought one of the robots had hammered it off, but it was nothing but a Fishbone. Wait? A fishbone?
Dedede slowed down when Ribbon's cry overtook the group cry. "What is it?!"
"Keep your eyes in front!" Kirby insisted, tugging on Dedede's robe.
"Kirby, the fairy's supposed to be your friend!"
"No!" Kirby shook. "I mean look ahead!"
When Dedede did, it was too late. The first spike from the glaring Gordo caught Dedede in the stomach, causing pain to shoot from his mouth. During his frenzy, he sidestepped to the right to avoid the spikes, but Adeleine bumped into him, Waddle Dee into her, causing the four to tumble forward and slam into a wall.
Birds sang in Adeleine's ears while a dark circle shrunk until it vanished. Adeleine's eyes flickered for a few seconds, but when she saw the robot's grin widen, her eyes doubled to the size of dinner plates. Her scream had enough earth shattering power to break through the steel door, which saved her life as she gathered the strength to push Kirby, Waddle Dee, and Dedede past the opening, out of the hammer's reach, and under the next laughing Gordo.
Ribbon kept her head down and voice low as she floated to Waddle Dee's side. "Um…I rid of the fishbone."
Everyone kept their pace, but Dedede abandoned the idea of running like a mad penguin if he could end up flattened. As he led them past another robot, Dedede paused when he heard a soft buzzing. At first, he thought the power died, but Dedede looked up and saw the pincers of a Turbis: purple spheres with four metal electric teeth. As the Turbis leapt from the ceiling lamp, Dedede spun on one flipper and cracked the Turbis open with his hammer. A second one teased him, but Dedede grabbed it and, to keep from snapping someone in two, he broke each tooth off of the Turbis and left it in a smoldering heap.
Waddle Dee jumped for joy when the conveyor belt ended. "Ha! No more fighting, smashing robots!" For the first time in a few minutes, which felt like hours to him, Waddle Dee stepped on solid metal. He collapsed to the floor as he tried to get his breath back. Nothing like Pop Star, he thought. No trees…no streams, robots! As Waddle lamented on what he did not have, he did not realize his body was moving by itself.
"Waddle, move!" Kirby yelled as he ran after Waddle Dee. Before Kirby could catch him, he began slowing down. He looked at the red conveyor belts and frowned when they continued running in the opposite direction. Puffing up, Kirby held his breath and ran as fast as he could.
Everyone ran against the red conveyor belts except Adeleine, who focused on the massive tanks. The glob of pink swimming in the tank winked at Adeleine, causing her eye to twitch as she looked to the others. "Okay, am I the only one who noticed the swimming pig?" When no one answered, Adeleine shrugged and caught up to them.
A Flora: pink flowers that popped from their stems and spiraled down to earth, landed atop Dedede's hat. He removed the interference, but a few feet from where he threw it, an I3 cube descended and flattened the flower. After leading the others past the cube, Dedede blinked twice, trying to stomach what he had just seen, and turning to the others. "I think I just saved our lives, so bow down and wor-" Before Dedede could finish, Kirby cut him off and grabbed the metal plume that almost took Dedede's head.
The plume twirled back into the Sir Kibble knight's hand. "So, the fairy is still alive? Well, he didn't set me here for nothing." The knight eyed Ribbon and pulled back its arm.
When the Knight threw its plume, Kirby charged and engulfed both the plume and Knight in one gulf. He groaned as the Knight tried to fight its way out of Kirby's stomach, but with one pat in the gut, the Knight gave up its power and Kirby smiled again.
"Yeah, so it's just down the hall?" Waddle Dee asked the nearby Gordo before turning to the others. "Hey, you guys! This guy says he saw something shiny fly past here three days ago!"
"Well then, let's go!"
Kirby, Dedede, and Ribbon climbed onto the next level, but Adeleine was still lost. She felt a sharp pain cut her in the neck as her face remained locked with what looked like a mad scientist's lab. Amidst the crunching corkscrews and jumping joints, yellow stars drifted in tanks and the goldenrod eyes of an uninterested cat seemed to jump out at Adeleine from behind the tank. She shivered and ran to Waddle Dee's side, tugging at his foot.
"What?"
"All right, cat staring at me! And…where's Kirby?" Adeleine looked around, but could not find him. Waddle Dee pointed up.
Kirby hung onto one of the wheels of a filtration tank with an emerald gem in his hand. He groaned as he tried to throw it at the buzzing Turbis, but every time he tried to throw the elemental crystal, sparks sputtered from the Turbis' teeth.
Adeleine rolled her eyes, thinking she knew it all. Since when does lightning go with a boomerang? The sound of glass shattering brought Adeleine out of her thoughts when she looked up. Her eye twitched as Kirby floated down with a green and yellow crystal in his hand before. Before Adeleine could ask anything, Kirby swallowed the crystal and walked through the passage. Adeleine ran to catch up to him, but she bumped into Waddle, who tried as hard as he could to maintain his balance at the edge of the path.
Ribbon felt the heat of Neo Star's volcano return as beads of sweat raced down her forehead. Her breath came out in great, labored puffs as she loosened the collar of her skirt to release some steam. With each stone dropped, Ribbon fell closer to the ground as the oasis that had been the underground factory now became a raging inferno.
Kirby saw the flames drop off of the giant Burnis' wings as the bird dropped stones into the lava, causing small waves to splash the chains that held a small platform in place. Chains rattled as each boulder smashed into the lava, all the way up to where Kirby stood. He turned around to the others, who looked at him as if they all had the same idea. "Me?"
"You're the only one who can climb back up here without getting fried," Waddle Dee explained. "Ribbon's gotta protect the shard, Dedede can't jump that high, and Adeleine isn't smart enough to beat that thing."
"Yeah, and I'm not smart enough…" Adeleine paused, looked at Waddle Dee, and made a sour face. "Hey, shut up!"
"Besides," Dedede continued, "something might pop out of this cage, so we should be ready up here."
At first, Kirby thought the lime and lemon gated cage would spring to life, but the Burnis was more important. He took a deep breath and leapt into the air. As wind whipped his feet back, Kirby bounced off of the metal and landed.
Ripples of heat hit Kirby from all over. He found himself short of breath and nowhere to run as the lava poured from every steel gate surrounding him. The Burnis emerged from the left as Kirby grunted in an attempt to use his new power. Again and again with no luck. Frustrated, Kirby dug into his mouth and instead of pulling out the Kibble knight, a beam of light emerged. An unending buzz accompanied the double edged beam as Kirby swung it. He smiled at the saber's weight, as light as a feather.
As the flutter of the Burnis' wings grew, Kirby grinned and embraced the force. He leapt into the air, spinning the saber in his hands, and sliced through the Burnis' beak. The Burnis let out a savage yell as lava poured from its innards and spilled onto the platform. Boulders spewed without the Burnis' command as the fowl's screech echoed throughout the chamber. The left wing swerved and severed one of the chains holding the platform in place.
The ground groaned as Kirby leaned to one side of the platform. Magma chewed away at the concrete with a hiss while the Burnis staggered into a lava infested cove. Kirby's heart pounded in his chest like a war drum. His grip on the chain began to falter as the magma continued to eat at the steel.
Flames leapt out of the cove as the Burnis appeared again. Streaks of bright orange and red jumped around the feathered fowl. Without its tongue, the Burnis' yell came out strained and repressed like a tortured test subject. Its right wing cut through the steam and one of the chains.
"Whoa!" Kirby's body dropped three feet. Lava rose up to meet him as he leapt to the opposite chain. The war drum in his heart now beat faster as he withdrew the double edged saber. He closed his eyes and waited as the Burnis reemerged from the cove. Three…
The Burnis' eyes warbled as it jerked around, trying to regain its ability to yell.
Two…
Once the fowl spotted Kirby, it launched like a missile to sever the last chain.
Oh, forget it! Kirby sprung forward with the beam behind him. As the Burnis opened its mouth, Kirby spun the saber three times before swinging it with all of his might. With a swish, the beam shredded Burnis' wings. As Kirby landed on the platform, the flames on the Burnis died as the bird's skin melted and slurred in different directions. Noticing the chain reaction, Kirby shot up the last chain as the Burnis fell in a gush of brilliant red. Flames raced up the chain after Kirby.
Kirby jumped from the chain to the platform as flames ate the rest of the metal and sent the platform plummeting into the lava. Kirby backed up to catch his breath, but a twinkling light got his attention. Behind the lemon and lime cage was a Shard fragment. Before anyone could ask how to get it, Kirby chuckled and embraced the force. Ignoring the hole he put in Adeleine's cap, Kirby leapt forward, cut through the bars a, and landed on the opposite platform as the bars loosened and fell in the lava.
"All right…" Waddle Dee muttered, "But how do we get across?"
Ribbon, while grabbing the shard, flew over to Kirby's side.
"We don't all have wings! Some of us-" Waddle Dee was cut off when Dedede hoisted him and Adeleine into the air. "W-wait, what are you doing?!"
"Teaching you how to fly," Dedede responded before catapulting Waddle and Adeleine across like bullets.
The two didn't have time to recover. They scrambled through the door to avoid Dedede when he jumped across while using his robe as a parachute.
--
Computers beeped, gears moaned and robots sprung up and down like accordions as everyone entered the chamber.
"Come on, you guys! What could be so scary about this place now?"
"Falling ceiling?"
Adeleine's eyes drifted up as the ceiling came down. A Spark-i, once the ceiling rose, floated along to reach the clearing, but the ceiling flattened it and sent its parts flying. It had no chance to scream once the ceiling bludgeoned it like a sheet of paper. Adeleine's heart sank. "All right…let's go back." She turned around and walked straight into Dedede's stomach.
"We're going to run again, artist."
Adeleine stood up and straightened her hat as the ceiling came down again. "You know, I have a name."
"Yeah. It's 'artist.'"
"Well you're a…" Adeleine searched for the worst words in her vocabulary bank: "…fat bird."
A shadow fell over Dedede's face as he withdrew his hammer. "You say something about my weight, artist?" He didn't give Adeleine time to respond; he grabbed her head and stuck it on the floor where the ceiling would land. Adeleine struggled and fought to escape Dedede's iron grip, but her head remained locked in place. Before the ceiling crushed Adeleine's head, Dedede pulled her back to eye level. "I'm not fat! I'm husky!"
"Will you two hurry up?!"
Dedede and Adeleine looked ahead and saw Kirby, Waddle Dee and Ribbon slipping into a clearing. Once the ceiling rose, the two whisked over to their side.
Ribbon watched the ceiling descend and waited three…four…after five seconds, the ceiling rose again. "We have to time this just right. Unless you want to get flattened, wait for my signal. And when I say so, stop!" One…two…three…four…five… "Go!"
Feet clanged on the metal as the five ducked and dodged cannonballs in order to fit into the cubbies. At the sound of the gears stopping, they picked up the pace when the shadows beneath them grew.
"Stop!"
Adeleine shivered. It's a sign. The art goddesses are smiting us!
Like a game of Red Light, Green Light, everyone froze. The hum of the ceiling grew until the ceiling sat inches from Dedede's cap. A bead of sweat ran down the king's forehead and exploded with tremendous force as it hit the metal. The explosion rang in Adeleine's ears as she whirled around and tapped Dedede's beak.
"Be quiet! It'll hear us!"
"Ceilings don't hear, artist!"
"Oh, yeah? Then how do they make that whirring sound?"
"It's called mechanics!"
"Fat!"
"Artist!"
"We're leaving, you guys."
This time, Ribbon, Waddle Dee and Kirby left the room. Dedede and Adeleine felt the adrenaline pump through their feet as they rushed into alcoves like trenches and flew into the opening with Kirby and the others.
A Plugg: blue plugs that plug themselves into the ground, jumped back when Kirby entered the room and sent shots of electricity through the floor. A jolt ran through the ground and caused Adeleine's hair to stand on all ends. She shook until her eyes began to fade like a dim watt light bulb. The lightning stopped when Kirby held out the saber, absorbing the lightning until he leapt forward and sliced the Plugg in two.
"You know, I think you're doing that to show off," Ribbon commented, putting her hands on her hips.
But Kirby ignored Ribbon and walked on until he reached a point where shadows traced lines over his body. He looked up as light passed through the gates and, as he did, turned in Ribbon's direction when the Shard began to react.
As the others made their way under the grating, Adeleine frowned while staring at the narrow openings. "We can't fit through that. We'd have to be string cheese to fit."
"Hmm…" Dedede mused as he stared at the gate and his hammer. He swung his arm back and forth and launched his hammer into the air. The blunt end shattered the gates and caused metal to rain on Adeleine's head. Dedede just smiled. "You were saying?"
Kirby and Ribbon made their way up, while Dedede relied on the catapult method to rocket Adeleine and Waddle Dee. The King held his breath, sucking in as much air as he could, and jumped through the opening. Adeleine decided, for her head's sake, to question Dedede's weight later. When Kirby took five steps, he stopped when he heard metal scraping against the ceiling.
"Am I the only one who sees the wall getting closer?" Adeleine asked, scratching her head.
Rays ran across the electric wall. When a Sawyer saw was not quick enough to escape, the wall split the Sawyer into thousands of pieces and separated it, bit by bit.
"Haunted electric walls!" Adeleine shrieked as she pushed Dedede to toss his hammer through the grating.
The grating shattered as the five continued. The wall on the next level stood still, but a robot's head poked from behind the wall and smiled. "Hello."
Again, the wall surged as the five ran or flew as fast as their legs or wings would let them. Kirby tried to give the Fishbone time to run, but it remained confident, even after the ceiling separated its bones.
"What kind of robot does that?!" Adeleine asked, holding onto her hat to keep it from flying back.
"An angry one," was Dedede's calm response as he launched his hammer through the grating. He fired Adeleine and Waddle Dee into the air before jumping through the opening. Once up, Dedede let out a sigh of relief that was blocked by Adeleine's gasp of fear when the robot's head appeared on the right side of the wall.
"But we just left you!" Adeleine cried as she pointed at the wall. Her attention then went to the bouncing Cairns. "Mr. Rock orbs, you're gonna get crushed if you don't run!" Still they bounced and Adeleine had to grab onto one of her paintbrushes. "Come on, I'm trying to be helpful!" A clang brought Adeleine's focus up ahead where Dedede and Kirby made their way up another opening. "Hey, wait for me!"
As the Crystal Shard almost blinded Ribbon with its glow, she saw the corresponding glow at the end of the corridor. "There it is!" She flew over the Scarfy heads and grabbed the jewel while Dedede created a new opening. Just a few more, she thought as she headed through the former gate.
This time, a stone wall stood in their way. Adeleine looked to her left, where the wall closed in, and the right, where the stone wall remained still. She looked left and right, left and right, left and-
"Oh, will you just come up here?!" Waddle Dee snatched Adeleine's hand and hoisted her onto the wall as Kirby and Ribbon followed.
Dedede stopped himself from gasping as the electric wall made all of the loose hairs on his coat stand at attention. Ahead of him, another electric wall approached, but something tugged at him. He looked down and saw Adeleine screaming and refusing to let go of his leg.
"It's a sign! We must not pass!" Adeleine wailed like an infant as an electric wall on both side threatened to shred her to pieces.
The gears turned and axles ran against each other until they ached as Adeleine tried to imagine herself in a box. A nice, tight box closed away from scary electric walls that ripped rocks apart like Swiss cheese. Her arms shook and hands clamped so tight around her ears that she could almost touch her eardrum.
Then the turning stopped.
I'm bored.
Me too.
The two robots murmured something else to each other before their legs ran in reverse. Adeleine removed her ears as the walls grew smaller and smaller until she could take one in the palm of her hand. "You think they're…good robots?"
Dedede scoffed as he hopped down and threw his hammer through the ceiling. "There's no such thing as a good robot. I challenge you, artist, to name one good robot you know!"
Waddle Dee helped Adeleine up. The artist sighed when no more electric walls chasing her, just an annoying Zoos throwing thunderbolts. Waddle Dee jumped up and knocked the Zoos out of its cloud before Kirby could retrieve his saber. "To keep you from showing off," Waddle explained.
"Look!" Ribbon pointed to the elevator at the end of the lobby. "There's our way out of here and maybe out of this factory."
Everyone rushed towards the elevator and Kirby pressed the button to go up. A low hum grew as everyone felt their stomachs jump. The elevator began to ascend as Ribbon focused on the growing Shard.
There can't be that many pieces left. Just wait, my Queen. I'll be there, she looked to the others, remembering how far she had come, and back to the shard, and it will all be over.
Waddle Dee's voice got Ribbon's attention. "Um, guys…did Shiver Star evolve while we were in the factory?"
Dedede scratched his head, Ribbon shrugged, Kirby looked around, and Adeleine didn't know what 'evolve' meant.
"Because I get the feeling we're not on Shiver Star anymore."
As the elevator ascended, a night blue and empty gray bathed all of the buildings as far as the eye could see. No snow, no gears or robots, no collapsing ceilings; just endless miles of indigo and silver as a calm cerulean bathed the sky.
The elevator stopped. Steam issued from the door as everyone walked onto the empty walkway. With each step, the silence thickened. Forget dropping a pin. Not even a child's scream could be heard from one end of the walkway to the other. Everyone's heartbeat drummed in unison like a marching brigade. With each step Kirby took, he looked to the side to see what whether or not the path would collapse.
Nothing happened.
Then something did.
A rumble, then a second rumble rocked the path. Dedede clutched his hammer, Ribbon fluttered in the air, Kirby- to everyone's distaste- withdrew his saber, Waddle Dee looked aware, and Adeleine prepared her easel.
"Guys…" Adeleine murmured as her breath came out in visible puffs, "where is-"
Ribbon raised her hand to silence Adeleine as she waited. Seconds dissolved into minutes, which seemed to Adeleine like hours, but turned back into seconds as her heartbeat quickened its pace. Her eyes whirled to the right.
The glowing eye gazed back.
Then it came to life.
Jets fired with the sound of a thousand planes as tons of metal attached to the eye rose from the cities and stopped at the walkway's level. The roar of the engines raged as the fine machinery ran a target reticule over the five.
Kirby patted Ribbon over and over like searching for money until he caught her collar. "Ribbon! It's a giant robot! Do you know what this means?!"
Not knowing what to do, how to respond, Ribbon said whatever popped into her head: "What does it mean?"
"It means I can see into the future!"