I'm quite possibly the fastest updater around here. That's not a bad thing, is it?

Chapter 35
The power, I can feel it!


"So what's new?" Eva asked, sounding rather unimpressed.

"I'll show you what my new Dedede Hammer can do!" Dedede told her. "Watch and be amazed!"

BGM: Masked Dedede (Kirby Superstar Ultra)

He held his hammer in front of his face and a scope appeared from the top of the hammerhead and he looked through the crosshair. Pushing a small button that was on the handle, the front part of the hammerhead opened up and a couple of missiles shot out from it.

The missiles flew towards Emonicus who was still crying in airborne, and when it was about to hit him, a towering wall of water rose out from the water and blocked the missiles. Despite being liquid, the missiles were unable to go through it but rather exploded when came in contact with the wall. The wall then molded itself into an arm and dived at Dedede. Dedede pulled back his hammer and then swung it at the water arm when it got near, splattering it into water droplets. The power of the strike was a lot more powerful thanks to the electricity all around it and even left behind a trail of sparks in the air when swung.

"And here's more!" Dedede said. He swung his hammer over to the back of his head and the hammerhead detached itself from the handle but was still connected to it via chain. Dedede then jumped up into the air as the chained hammerhead flew backwards, but then the back of the hammerhead opened up and released a stream fire which caused it to zoom forward in an arc. "Super Rocket Hammer!" Powered by the jet engine, the electrified hammer slammed onto Emonicus's head really hard and shot him right into the water below.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!! SPLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!!!!

The hammerhead retracted back to the handle as Dedede fell back down onto the ice platform. "How's that?"

"Not bad," Eva commented.

Then the water around their ice platform started to bubble and the platform shook, and then water burst out from below, shattering the platform and sending the both of them spinning through the air. Eva came to a stop by herself in midair but the king went on to crash into the wall instead and then fell towards the water below. "Crystalline Earth!" Eva said, snapping her finger. This caused an ice pillar to rise out of the water underneath Dedede and he fell onto it on his back.

The water then started to toss and turned by themselves and a mound started to form on the side of the room. It kept on growing in size and eventually shaped itself into what looked like a giant snake with a body made of water. The top half of Emonicus's body was sticking out from the top of the snake's head and he was no longer crying out loud, though there were still tears coming down from the corner of his eyes. "What the heck…?" Eva said in disbelief.

"Life is like a grass trampled on the ground… A lone leaf on the tree during the winter…" he said in a very sad voice. "My life is like a speck of grain lying on the road… There is no future and light in life… There is no path ahead for me to go on… Life is such a woe and sadness… What is the meaning of life?" The snake took a deep breath and then opened its mouth to shoot out water projectiles in her direction.

"Ice Blade!" Eva encased her own right arm in ice and then swung it at the incoming projectiles like a blade. A gust of cold wind was released from the swing of the frozen blade-like arm and the water projectiles were changed into ice and shattered afterwards. "If you throw water at me, I'll just freeze them all up!" She charged at the large water snake which continued to spit out projectiles at her, but she deflected everything that was in her way and then plunged her ice blade deep into the body of the water snake. This caused the body to slowly freeze up until the water snake was completely turned into ice.

"My turn!" Dedede said loudly. Eva moved out of the way and allowed the king to shoot out missiles from his enhanced hammer. Being frozen and unable to do anything, the frozen water snake was nothing but a sitting duck as the swarm of missiles touched their warheads with it.

KAAAAAAAAAAAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

Pieces of ice shard rained down as the frozen water snake was blasted into smithereens, and Emonicus himself fell down alongside the ice shards and into the water below with a splash.

SPLASH!

"Dyeheh! Now you know why you shouldn't mess with the king!" Dedede said proudly.

"Careful, don't celebrate too early," Eva told him. "It's not over yet."

They both kept their eyes on the water which was bubbling from a certain spot, and then all of a sudden, a shark made of water leaped out towards where Dedede was with its mouth wide open, and Emonicus was inside the body of the shark with his mouth wide open as if he was mimicking his armor of water.

"Yikes! Shark!" Dedede cried. Out of desperation, he swung his electrical hammer into the head of the shark as it was about to jump into him. The head of the hammer was smashed through and splattered all over the place by the electrified hammerhead, and not only that; Emonicus was also smashed in the side of the head really hard by it and shot across the room and crashed into the wall really hard.

"Heheh! Your time is up!" Eva said as she flew towards him with her ice blade pulled back. "Get ready to be skewered!"

"WAAAAA!!!!" Emonicus suddenly burst out crying at the top of his voice and massive amount of tears poured out from his eyes again. As Eva was about to hit him, Emonicus jumped forward from the wall and spun in a circle and smacked her with the tears to knock her back through the air.

"Yeow!"

Emonicus fell back into the water afterwards and the moment he did, a massive snake made of water came up from underneath Eva with its jaw wide open and 'swallowed' her before dragging her down into the water.

Underneath the water, Eva tried to swim back to the surface, but she was having a hard time doing so as the water was seemingly dragging her down and trying to hold her in place. Emonicus held his arms to the sides of his body and stretched his legs out straight, and like a torpedo, he zoomed at Eva and rammed into her and then turned around again and rammed into her constantly. Eva pointed her arms at him and was going to cast an ice spell, but an invisible force, which was probably the water itself, gripped around her arm tightly and break her arm by bending it it. "Dammit!" she cursed in her mind. "Let go already!"

Up on the ice pillar, Dedede was looking down at the water and could see what was going on underwater as it was pretty translucent. "She's having a hard time down there…" he thought. "I wonder how I can help." He looked at his hammer and something came to him all of a sudden. "Oh yeah! How dumb of me to forget about this! Water conducts electricity!" He detached the sparkling hammerhead from its handle again and quickly dropped it right into the water.

The moment the hammerhead touched the water, electric current spread throughout the whole place and one could see yellow sparks shooting out and sizzling all around the water surface. It was a pretty spectacular sight that can cause blindness.

BZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!

Both Eva and Emonicus were having a shock of their lifetime underwater to the point it was hilarious. Dedede reeled back out his hammerhead and reattached it to the pillar and the water was back to normal again. "Did that do the job?" he wondered.

Suddenly, Eva, charred from head to toe, came flying out of the water at a fast speed and gave Dedede a smack across the head.

BONK!

"Ow! What you did that for?! I saved you!" Dedede cried, holding his head in pain.

"COME UP WITH SMARTER WAYS THAN THAT DANGEROUS METHOD NEXT TIME!!!" she yelled.

Emonicus shot out of the water again, this time surrounded by a water tentacle as he went in the direction of the two. "LIFE IS NOTHING!!! LIFE IS HARSH!!!! ALL IS VAIN!!!" he cried at the top of his voice.

"I'm getting sick of you already…" Eva said, cracking a nerve on her forehead. "I have enough of playing with a crybaby like you! All you ever do is cry and whine like the world is like a piece of trash! And I can't believe I'm getting knocked around by someone like you! I'm a shinso vampire, and I am supposed to be in every way superior to the likes of you!" She dived down at Emonicus and quickly touched him in the face with her hand and shouted, "Ice Takeover!"

Instantly, Emonicus's froze over and the water tentacle froze too. In fact, the freezing process reached all the way down to the water and the whole pool of water turned into an ice field!

"Dyeheh! Now it is time for me to give the final blow!" Dedede said. "I'll show you the power of the king!" He raised his hammer over his head and then leaped up high into the air.

When he was at the peak of his jump, Eva placed her hand close against the hammerhead and encased in a block of ice that was very sharp at the front end. Dedede brought down his hammer as he fell towards Emonicus to slam it onto his face and shouted out, "Super Icicle Hammer!!!"

SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!!!!

Emonicus crashed through the frozen pillar below him and then through the ice field, and the impact so powerful that large cracks spread throughout the floor.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!!

When everything had settled down, Emonicus was seen lying on the bottom of the crater that he created with a mauled up and severely bleeding face.

Dedede fell on his butt onto the area next to the crater while Eva floated down next to him with her arms crossed. "Dyeheheh! I did it!" he said proudly. "The emo is no match for the king!"

"Don't talk like you're the one who did everything," Eva said to him.

"I gave him the finishing blow after all! I'm the one who put an end to this fight!"

"If I wasn't giving you any assistance, you wouldn't have lasted this long either."

"Fine, you have a point. You're such a pain to be with…"

"I can say the same thing to you too! Anyway, this has to be one of the most tiring opponents I've face, and to think that I was fighting at full power…"

-

"Yoshi! What's up?" Yoshi asked as his group and Wario stepped into the same room Pikachu's group was.

"We didn't manage to find the spirit," Pikachu said. "Turned out it was a trap all along…"

"We got into a fight with some big ugly flower," Pichu said. "And we won!"

"Well, we didn't find anything either in our location," Yoshi told them, "Looks like it was a trap too."

"The one in the toilet was a lie too," Wario added, "Though I did get to experience firsthand toilets of the royalty."

Then at this moment, Kirby's group came running into the scene and the pink puffball said, "Everyone! Did you find anything? We didn't find the spirit there."

"But we encountered the same person who beat Kaede at the tournament-aru!" Ku Fei said. "We managed to beat him up this time!"

"What was he doing here?" Pichu asked.

"Not sure," Kirby said with a shrug.

Kaede looked at Chisame from head to toe and asked, "Why are you draped in a curtain?"

"I don't want to talk about it…" she said embarrassingly.

"Everyone!" said Meta-Knight's voice. They turned to see him coming in here and he was accompanied by ROB and Chachamaru. "I'm sorry that I did not manage to find the spirit. I fell for a trap instead."

"The results were none at the junkyard too," ROB added. "We encountered an enemy waiting for us instead, but we were able to terminate it."

"By the way, have you seen the king?" MK asked. "I mean King Dedede. I was separated from him."

"I was separated from my master too," Chachamaru said.

"Nope, didn't see any of them," Yoshi said, shaking his head. "If I remember what they smell like though, I might be able to track them down using my nose."

"I hope his majesty is all right… He's capable of handling an opponent by himself, but it still worries me that I am not at his side to protect him…" MK said in a worried tone.

At this moment, Red's group came into the scene as well. "Everyone! We managed to rescue the prisoners and led them out of the castle safely!" he explained.

"And on the side note, neither the dungeon nor the hallway leading to it contained the spirit," G&W added.

"None of those places contain the thing we are looking for? That's very strange…" Pikachu said.

"That would make only three more places left…" Chisame said. "The tower that Setsuna's group went too, the other tower that Negi sensei's group went to, and then the basement area that Evangeline and Chachamaru were supposed to go…"

"Or do you think it's possible that none of those areas actually contain what we are looking for?" MK asked. "If you ask me, it wouldn't make sense for the enemy to allow us to find him and halt his plans so easily. It must've been a trap to separate us and then take us out one by one."

"That makes sense if you think about it," Kaede said.

"We've all encountered people waiting to kill us when we went to those locations, so I'm starting to think that it was all a lie after all," G&W said.

"There wasn't anybody attacking me when I went to the one in the toilet though," Wario said.

"Whatever the case, I believe it is clear that enemy never intended for us to find the container containing the Cruncher's spirit so easily," MK concluded. "The exact location is without doubt never revealed on the map in the first place. We have all fallen for his tricks!"

"Damn… I knew we couldn't rely on the glass whore…" Wario grumbled.

Chisame turned to him and yelled angrily, "What did you say about me?! How can I know about this in the first place?!"

"So what do we do now?" Lucas asked.

"Intruders must all be destroyed!" said a robotic voice. They all turned to the source of the voice and saw several green muscular robots with face similar to that of Fawful's stepping into the room. "Crushed like grapes they must be! Your asses we will kick out of here!"

"Looks like company," Red said, reaching for his Pokeballs.

"Oh goody! I'm going to have a load of fun out of this!" Wario said, cracking his fist.

-

The battle between Captain Falcon in his Ultimate Falcon form and Kitty in his half-beast form continued to rage on in the castle. The intensity of their fight was something to be talked about as the whole place was starting to get badly damaged by them. "Whoa man… Is really a fight between humans…?" Haruna asked. "It's more like a battle between monsters…"

"They both really are equal…" Yue said. "They both seem to be in their most powerful forms, and yet there still doesn't look to be an end to this fight…"

"Whoa man… Seriously, I've never seen such an intense fight like this…" Kotaro said.

"Ultimate Falcon Kick!" CF slid across the floor at a super fast speed that was almost too fast for the naked eye to see clearly.

"Tekkai!" Kitty blocked the incoming kick by hardening his body but was pushed back across the place. "Rankyaku!" He kicked out a wind blade at him but CF moved out of the way at a fast speed and reappeared behind him to throw a roundhouse kick, but Kitty quickly blocked it with his arm and then tried to hit him with his finger. "Shigan!"

CF moved aside and barely avoided getting hit and threw a punch right into his face and Kitty was pushed back from the simple but powerful punch. CF flew at him again to throw another punch, but Kitty once again hardened his body but this time with his chest thrust forward. "Tekkai Deutzia!"

CF's fist came in contact with his chest and though Kitty was pushed back by the blow, the captain himself was also blown back and hurt his arm too. "Ugh!"

"This kind of Tekkai will return the damage to the attacker, and with more powerful than the original force!" Kitty explained. "A normal person would've died from the recoil already!"

"Yeah, I think Lucci used something like this too," CF said.

Kitty held up his arms in a cross and claws came out from the end of his fingers as he rushed at CF at a blinding speed. "Soru Claw!" But thanks to his Ultimate Falcon form, CF was able to move at an equally fast speed too to avoid the attack.

"Ultimate Raptor Boost!" CF quickly delivered an uppercut into his head and knocked him up into the air, and then he jumped at him with his pulled back to hit him.

"Geppou!" Kitty quickly kicked against the air to do a midair jump and moved out of the way. "Rankyaku Stray Dog!" He then kicked out multiple wind blades that took the form of dogs and they went to CF and bit him down in the limbs and body hard.

"Gaa!!" CF endured the pain from the bite and then stretched out his limbs and began spinning horizontally until he became a spinning disk of fire which flew in the direction of Kitty. "Ultimate Falcon Slicer!"

"Tekkai Buzzsaw!" Kitty also did a similar move by spinning vertically until he became similar to that of a buzzsaw.

Spinning like disks, they both clashed and grinded against each other and then a few seconds later, there was a burst of shockwave as they were shot backwards, but came to a stop on the floor using their feet.

Both sides were panting heavily and looked tired from all the intense actions, but they continued to glare at each other with threatening eyes.

-

SLAM!

"Lilina! Where are you?" Roy shouted as he kicked down a door to run into a room. When he stepped inside, he witnessed Fawful doing something peculiar.

There was the glass container in the middle of the room that held the container for the Cruncher's spirit. The front part of the glass container was opened however and the container of the spirit was covered in a purple aura, and Fawful was standing in front of it using his headgear to suck in the purple aura.

"Oh no! Has he successfully used Negi's blood to free the spirit?!" Roy thought, and then he shouted to him, "Hey you! What are you doing?!"

Fawful ignored him and laughed as he continued sucking in the purple aura from the container. A few seconds later, he was done and the container dropped down motionless. Fawful turned around to look at Roy and he could see purple energy swirling around inside Fawful's headgear through its glass surface. "Geehehehehehehe!!!

The purple energy inside his headgear started to glow brightly and then it looked like it was slowly seeping down into his head. Slowly, Fawful's skin started to turn black and then black miasma appeared all around him until he was fully engulfed by it.

"What's happening?!" Roy gasped. "Did he just… absorb the spirit into himself?!"

The black miasma eventually disappeared, once again revealing Fawful, but now there was something different about him.

Fawful's eyes were now purple instead of red, his teeth were sharper, and his skin color was somewhat of a darker tone. His usual clothing was also changed from red to black and its design was more 'evil-looking', sporting pointing edges from the collars and sleeves.

"Geeheheheheheh!!! The power, I can feel it! Geehehehehehehe!!!" he laughed in a sinister voice that seemed to echo throughout the room.

TO BE CONTINUED

Did Fawful just absorb the Cruncher's spirit into himself? What exactly is he planning? I bet the last part is very surprising, isn't it? And for those who are wondering, the Cruncher's origin will eventually be explained.