Beta read by: Byoshi, Herr Wozzeck, and Babycharmander.

Any mistakes and sloppy writing are the sole fault of the writer and not the beta readers.

Devoured

Ike reeled from the dark dining room. His hands clawed over his ears, eyes squeezed closed. He could not shut out the images, the sounds skirling through his skull like shrieking bats, each one more horrible than the last. Deep inside, he knew they would live on as part of him forever.

The rooms and hallways seemed to press in and enclose him like living organs. The air was thin, suffocating. He had to escape. Maybe outside he could breathe. Maybe he could keep running. But how did one outrun memories?

Vulgar laughter rose from the shadowed corridor behind him. Ike doubled over, retching. He straightened to find others nearby, watching. Did they know? And if they knew, then were they not insane? Yes. How else could they display such calm when quartered with alien horrors—tenets alongside depraved lunacy?

"Stop staring at me! I'm not the one who is mad!" he shrieked and hurtled down the stairs.

The others opened their mouths in shock or laughter. Perhaps it was he who laughed—great bubbling peals of psychotic mirth. He could no longer tell. The sight of their unhinged faces wracked him with new nausea. He did not stop running until the cool night's air enveloped his fevered body. The front lawn stretched away empty in the silver moonlight. Out here, nature ruled and things were sane.

Away from the aura of lighted windows he coughed into the dirt and wiped the foamed slaver from his lips. He began to pull together his scattered mind one fraction at a time. Partway through this hopeless process he made the mistake of looking up. The sky stretched out and over the earth like the lipless maw of a mad god, the stars glistening on its black teeth merely pieces of unswallowed food. If only it would consume this world as well and be done with it.

Footsteps on the soft grass. It was Fox McCloud, the laguz who piloted metal birds through the heavens. He and Falco and the shrill toad had been busy maintaining one such aerocraft. It was parked outside the garage and strewn with electric lanterns, close to where Ike had slumped onto the lawn. Now Fox's companions stared as their leader approached. Fox motioned them back to work. The other laguz made a pretense of working while they continued to eavesdrop.

"You look like you've just witnessed hell having a picnic. What's crawled up your exhaust port and died?" asked Fox. The laguz was a mercenary, like himself. Perhaps that flimsy bond between them would be enough, here in this strange land so far from friends and family.

A coherent explanation fled the mercenary captain the instant he made the effort to formulate a response. He struggled to get something out, anything at all. "I have gazed into the abyss. And it has gazed back into me!" It was all he could manage.

Fox plopped down on the ground next to Ike and laid a chummy arm over his shoulders. He cast one last warning glance at his comrades, and said, "Calm down, calm down. It can't be all bad. Tell me everything that's happened."

"I…I was challenged to an eating contest by Wario. A prideful fool, I accepted."

Fox chuckled. "I think I know what comes next. Go on, then."

Ike wiped the fresh foam from his lips and swallowed hard. "Wario tricked me, a snare of words half-hidden in our original agreement. In his stead, he set a freak at the table before me. His champion." A terrible trembling overtook Ike then. The mercenary captain fell silent. Some greater part of him was unable, or unwilling to continue. It was easier, he found, to stare at the sheered grass of the front yard and let the memories go elsewhere.

Fox gave him a hard slap across the face. His unsettlingly human eyes bored into Ike's. "Stay with me, damnit!"

Ike twitched and sputtered. The words spilled out in a tumbling rush. "Oh goddess! Its eyes! It had the eyes of a child! The demon's mouth yawned impossibly wide. It began to eat. I could not look away. From that dark cavity whispered voices in a language I could not understand. I think they were commanding me to join them.

"And the food it consumed—even now I realize my mind could not fully process what I was seeing. I'm left with only impressions. Glimpsed edges of a far greater reality! Whatever crossed that thing's lips slipped and twined around dimensions unknown to our mortal plane. Food mulched and formed into shapes that cannot—should not exist! The crunching and slurping! Even now the noises eat away my mind from within. Everything it devoured transformed into—" Ike pointed to the cold stars above. And then he fell to his face, exhausted, quivering in loathing and horror.

Fox's furry hand patted his back. "There, there soldier. I'll go get Ness and we'll remove those nasty memories for good. It's a lesson hard learned, and we've all had to learn it sooner or later. Never, ever watch Kirby eat."