Chapter 12

The group slowly filed into the dark doorway, Blade leading the group with his sword out in case it was needed. As he walked inside, he paused in disbelief; these ruins appeared to have been built inside a cave. A tiny path of weathered stones, almost completely covered up by debris, marked the entryway. Meta Knight's eyes scanned the darkness as he stepped inside. He guessed that the ruins were inhabited by a lost civilization long before electrical lighting was invented, and if they wanted to see where they were going they'd need a torch. He swept up a dry piece of wood that had been laying among some debris a few feet into the cave, probably blown in by a storm, and carefully cut a cross section of notches into it using Galaxia. He then gathered some small, dry bits of grass from the same debris pile and stuffed them into the notches. The Star Warrior then carefully put the torch away, next to where Galaxia was sheathed, and began to scout the area for a useful pitch.

To his surprise, though, what he found instead appeared to be tiny balls of light that gave the group just enough to see beyond the sunlight's reach into the dark ruins. Curious, he walked towards one such ball of light. Up close, he could see that the lighting was caused by bio-luminescent fungus colonies growing on the ruin's walls.

Fumu and Shieldmaiden walked up to him, followed closely by the others. They examined the ball of glowing fungus curiously.

"Incredible..." Fumu said to herself. "Bio-luminescent fungi. No wonder the ancient civilization chose to build this cave. It must have looked like magic to them."

Shieldmaiden nodded. "Never seen anything quite like that before...but at least we shouldn't need a torch now."

Bun reached out a finger tentatively, poking the colony. He then yanked it back, shaking his hand rapidly.

"Eww...it's all cold and slimy."

The others giggled amongst themselves as Meta Knight stood by, silent. He waved his hand as he walked deeper into the cave.

"Let's go."

The group continued in silence, making their way through the room. A few dozen feet into the cave and all signs of man-made building vanished, the ceiling suddenly opening up into a vast cave. Stalactites and stalagmites grew from the cave, rising from the ground and hanging from the ceiling like the teeth of a carnivore. No sound could be heard but a very slight trickle of water, a number of small channels winding their way through the rocks. The area around them was poorly lit, with little of the area visible beyond the small radius of several colonies of glowing fungi.

Bun couldn't believe his eyes. "Wow...this is so cool. Echo!" He yelled, putting his hands to his mouth to carry the sound better.

Meta Knight turned to glare at Bun. "Don't do-"

"Poyooo!" Kirby called out, his voice even louder. He then held an arm to his earhole playfully, listening to the echo of his own voice "talk" back to him. What he heard, however, was instead a strange rustling and squeaking noise.

Meta Knight ducked as low to to the ground as his rounded body allowed, hands above his head. "Duck!"

"Duck? Wh-" Bun asked, the strange sound hitting his ears before he could finish his sentence. From the blackness of the cavern's ceiling, a pulsing cloud of winged creatures descended upon the group.

"Bats!" Blade cried, ducking along with Meta Knight. The rest of the group followed suite, heads tucked low with hands over them for cover.

In seconds a wave of startled bats descended upon them, flying through and past them as they made their way towards the cave's entrance. Invisible in the dim light, the only way to tell that the swarm of rodents was heading towards them was through the cacophony of squeaks and beating wings.

Shieldmaiden shut her helmet entirely, blind but protected. In seconds she felt a repeated pinging against her armor and heard metallic scraping noises as the bat's wings and claws rammed into her. She felt a repeated tugging and bumping sensation on her wings as the bat's wings scraped against them. Fumu and Bun, not having armor to protect them, felt the bats on their face. Fumu felt nearly overwhelmed, hands protecting her eyes instead of her skull as she felt the bats flap by and occasionally bump into her. A wingtip of one wing carried away a strand of her hair, nearly getting caught before it freed itself with a rough tug. Kirby had no defenses for the bats whatsoever, but his pliable body was able to duck so low to the ground that he was able to avoid most of the onslaught. In a few seconds it passed; the noises stopped as the swarm had moved past them and escaped through the cave's entrance.

Meta Knight looked up slowly, one gloved hand removed from his head. "Looks like it's over."

Fumu and Bun looked up, their hair a ruffled mess and their faces covered in tiny scratches. Sword, Blade, and Shieldmaiden were mostly unphased by the onslaught thanks to their armor, and Kirby nearly flattening himself on the ground completely allowed him to avoid them.

"No more loud noises!" Fumu snapped, her hair so tousled from the swarm that much of it escaped her ponytail and hung in front of her face like Bun's bangs.

"Sorry..." Bun responded with a small frown, running a hand through his own hair.

Kirby watched the two quietly, disturbed by Fumu's mood but not understanding why the bats upset her so much. The bats did not actively attack, after all. Mirroring the two, he touched the part of his head where hair would be if he had any.

"The bats were harmless, at least." Sword said as he stood back up. "We just startled them out of roosting. It could've been worse."

Meta Knight offered a curt nod in response as he straightened his posture before wrapping himself up in his cape again. "Indeed. Now, let's get moving."

Shieldmaiden withdrew her relic sensor, inching the sound up with a dial on its side. The steady blips it had once emitted had turned into a frantic, alarm-clock like beeping. Meta Knight snapped to attention at the noise, leaning in closer. The screen was lighting up.

Shieldmaiden pushed a button on the device, brow creasing; she was worried about its battery life. Although they were designed to go without power for a long time, they couldn't last forever and there was no way to generate more electricity for it. If it chose to die at the wrong time, they'd be completely stranded with no way to track either of the relic's pieces. At least it appeared that they were very close to one half of it. She hit a few more buttons on the device, trying to further narrow down the location of the power source. The machine drew a crude graph for her, indicating that it was meters directly below them. It then emitted a few rapid, garbled word-like sounds in a curiously rhythmic pattern.

"What was that?" Sword asked.

"I think your machine's busted..." Blade chimed in, leaning forwards as well.

Fumu heard a faint "Heh" in a deep, familiar voice and turned to look at Meta Knight. His eyes appeared to flash green for a second, before settling into a faint pink hue.

"Oops" Shieldmaiden replied sheepishly, hitting a few more buttons. "Sorry. This thing's fine, it was just set to my home language."

"Your home language...?" Fumu began, stopping herself mid-thought. Of course Shieldmaiden, coming from an entirely different planet, wouldn't speak Fumu's own birth tongue naturally.

Fumu recalled when asking how visitors such as Silica could understand them that Meta Knight informed her that nearly all soldiers in the Galaxy Soldier Army cast their own home languages aside to speak a unified, common tongue - the same one spoken in Dreamland. This was done to break down barriers between species, build camaraderie, and most importantly allow important messages to be fluently relayed without any translation issues. She turned to glance at Meta Knight again with one eyebrow raised. He and Shieldmaiden were, to the best of her knowledge, the same species - did he understand that thing? Was that his home language, too?

"Yeah, never bothered to adjust the settings since I was the only one using it. Anyway, it wants us to go down and east" Shieldmaiden said, turning the volume down again to save power. "We're gonna have to go as deep into this cave as we can."

The group ventured deeper into the cave, each step becoming more and more dangerous as their pathway became darker and narrower. As they walked, Sword felt half of his foot land on dead air. He stepped back abruptly, holding out his hand to protect the others from walking in front of him. In front of him, the cave gave way to blackness.

"A dead end..." Blade murmured, eyeing the pit.

"I don't think so" Shieldmaiden said, watching her radar go crazy. "There's more to this cave. We have to get down there somehow..."

Meta Knight's eyes dimmed slightly. "The only way down there is to climb. And we don't have any rope. That would be extremely dangerous."

"Couldn't we just fly down there?" Shieldmaiden asked.

Meta Knight's eyes began to tint green as one hand rubbed the part of his mask where his chin would be. "Hmm...we may have no other choice."

He turned to Shieldmaiden."You and I should go first, along with Kirby. We need to make sure there's safe ground to land on down there. Sword and Blade can stay up here with Fumu and Bun. If it's safe, they can follow us down."

He walked over to a colony of mushrooms growing among the rocks and grabbed a few, frowning as the slimy cold fungi stained his nice gloves. "This could be our 'flashlight'."

The two armored Star Warriors took some of the glowing mushrooms in their hands, peering down into the blackness. Kirby, who needed his arms to steer, would simply have to follow them from above.

Meta Knight's eyes grew wider as he stared into the black pit until they were almost perfectly round, heart beginning to race. He knew that what they were about to do was so dangerous that it bordered on suicide. There could be cave-ins, rocks that hindered their wings, passageways narrowing until they could no longer fly and could even get stuck. He shut his eyes slowly and tilted his head back, steeling his nerves. This was no time to let fear take over.

His cape responded to his will, splitting in two and forming visible bones, sinew, and muscle in a fraction of a second. He spread his bat-like wings, held the fungi out in front of him, and hopped into the hole.

Meta Knight flew downward as cautiously as he could, flapping his wings desperately in order to control his falling speed. He lowered himself downward, the mushrooms he held giving off an eerie green light that illuminated only about a foot in front of him. Directly in front of him, he could see nothing but rock. A few feet above him Shieldmaiden flew, the area around them silent except for the beats of their wings. Above her was Kirby, who used his ability to gently float downwards. Meta Knight took note of the rock wall as they descended; it was rough and appeared to be full of handholds; suitable for climbing. That would make the journey easier for Sword and Blade, at least. He wished that he and Shieldmaiden had the strength to carry them too, but that was impossible. Even without their armor on the two men were bigger and heavier than Fumu and Bun, who the Star Warriors could already barely carry safely.

"Are they okay?" Fumu asked timidly, looking downward as the tiny green circles grew smaller and smaller.

"I'm sure they're fine" Blade replied, quavering voice betraying his nerves.

After several minutes that felt far longer for everyone involved, Meta Knight saw the ground looming beneath him. He sighed audibly from behind his mask, relieved that the tunnel didn't go on for miles or end in water. His focus on the ground took away from keeping an eye on the surroundings in front of him, and as his wings beat through the dead air one flapped downward onto a protruding rock.

Meta Knight felt his wing bone snap like a twig, feeling no pain as it wasn't biologically a part of his body but able to sense that it had been damaged. He looked up sharply just in time to watch his battered wing fold in on itself at an unnatural angle before wilting and going limp, reforming into a cape. He let out a surprised cry as his wings disappeared, causing him to plummet downwards.

"Sir Meta Knight!" Shieldmaiden cried out in alarm, flapping her wings less to try and descend faster.

Meta Knight barely had time to react; it took him less than 2 seconds to fall roughly 20 feet. He fell on the ground face-first, the sound of flesh and metal colliding with the ground echoing up the tunnel.

Shieldmaiden flew downwards as fast as she could, folding her wings against her body and allowing her own body to drop for a second in order to avoid the ledge that hit Meta Knight. She landed next to him a few tense seconds later and shook his back, calling his name.

Meta Knight's eyes blinked open. The first thing he was aware of was that he had a terrible headache, the effect of the ground and his own mask smashing into his species equivalent of a skull. The next thing he was aware of was a curious, coppery taste in his mouth. Blood. He slowly sat up, wearily looking over to see Shieldmaiden's blue eyes glowing in the darkness.

While such an injury would have been disastrous for most species, their kind was almost perfectly designed to absorb falls - a short compact body, light body weight, stout limbs, and no skeleton to speak of barring a simple cartilage framework for their "spines" all meant that falls did little damage to their species. Meta Knight's real damage came from his own mask smashing into his face with the force of a minor automobile accident. He felt a slight warmth from his noseholes, odd moist lines tracing themselves down his face and body. He recognized the feeling of blood trickling downwards in a slight nosebleed.

"Are you okay? You're okay! Oh thank the Stars" Shieldmaiden yammered as Meta Knight rightened himself.

In a swift motion he was unprepared for, Shieldmaiden leaned forward and gave him a big hug from the side. Meta Knight realized what was happening a beat later and choked slightly, heart pounding for an entirely different reason than what had just happened. His noseholes began to bleed a lot harder.

"Poyoyoii!" Kirby cried out from above the two, exhaling a few feet above the ground to land safely. The second his feet touched the ground he sprinted forward and gave Meta Knight a hug as well.

Meta Knight's eyes bugged; this was too much. He wrapped himself in his cape and disappeared entirely, reappearing a yard away from the two. Both Star Warriors held the air where Meta Knight once was, lowering their arms and whirling around to see where he then stood, jaws agape. Neither had ever seen his teleporting ability before.

Meta Knight held out a hand in a blocking motion, waving his wrist. "I'm fine, really. Thanks."

The blue Star Warrior looked up, seeing nothing but blackness above. "We'll have to carry the others down one by one. Sword and Blade may be too heavy...they'll have to climb down themselves."

Meta Knight's masked grimace hidden, he turned his head away from both Star Warriors to lift his mask and spit blood. He wiped the still-running blood away from his mouth, flicking it away with a scowl before readjusting his mask and turning to face them. His head throbbed mercilessly in pain, the area between his eyes and mouth hurting the most, but he couldn't dwell on it.

"Kirby, you can't pick anyone up since you don't have wings. Stay here and make sure the area stays clear of danger."

"Poyo!" Kirby replied, nodding enthusiastically.

Meta Knight then looked to Shieldmaiden, who was still eyeing him. He found himself unable to meet her gaze, choosing instead to look just past her. His head was still pounding; curiously enough, his heart was too. He wasn't sure if the fall or the hug scrambled his brain more, but there was no time to dwell on either her actions or his own injury; they had to keep moving. He spread his wings, which were mended anew from transforming back into a cape, and crouched in preparation to spring forward.

"Ready to fly?"

Shieldmaiden nodded, her own wings unfurling. "Always."

Clutching his mushroom "light", Meta Knight jumped into the air and began to fly back upwards out of the pit. Shortly afterwards, Shieldmaiden joined him. Kirby watched the two fly upwards, one arm-tip by his mouth in concern. Not only was he now alone in darkness, but he also felt uneasy with Fumu and the others out of his sight.