Chapter 12: Butter Building Revisited
Kirby left Castle Lola on a Warp Star (which had brought him a Maxim Tomato). The incredulous Lololo and Lalala had told him that they had indeed received a shipment of one Star Rod shard. They had delivered it to its intended recipient, an anonymous individual two floors below in Butter Building. Kirby was to go search for it there. Meanwhile, Lololo and Lalala were going to depart from Pop Star so that they could avoid being possessed again.
Before traveling into Butter Building, Kirby's Warp Star flew a considerable distance away from Castle Lola, stopped in midair, and turned around. For a few moments, why it had done this was not clear.
But then Kirby watched as gigantic rockets blasted from below Castle Lola. The noise was incredible. Slowly, the entire castle lifted off from Butter Building and, picking up speed, shot into the sky.
As Castle Lola disappeared from view, Kirby's Warp Star flew back toward where it had been and entered Butter Building through a hole in the wall. Kirby moaned in frustration as he fell off when it stopped.
He hadn't explored this high up in Butter Building before. This floor was darker than the others, with more crumbling structures everywhere. He noticed a Rocky walking around. He inhaled it and swallowed to acquire Stone ability.
He didn't have to walk far before he found what he was looking for.
It looked like a gigantic safe. There was an appropriately huge door on its front, but it had no handle. He tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge.
He looked around for something that might explain how to get in. The only other interesting thing he could see was a wooden peg, about his size, in the ground to the left of the door.
He took a guess as to what to do. He jumped above the peg and activated his Stone ability to smash it into the ground.
The door opened. He transformed back from a rock into himself and went through it.
Inside was a huge, amazingly lavish dining room. He wondered what the heck something like this was doing on one of the highest floors of Butter Building. He also wondered what the thing sitting at the huge table was.
From what he could see, it was a giant ape, over five times his height, that was wearing purple body armor. The instant it saw him, however, it sprang into action.
"AAAAAAAARGH!" bellowed the ape. "LITTLE PINK BALL FIND BONKERS!" It then picked up a huge mallet at its side. "BONKERS SMASH PINK BALL!"
The ape, which appeared to be named Bonkers, bounded toward Kirby, knocking the entire table out of its way with its mallet as it went. The table cracked as it collided with a wall. All the decorations on it flew in every direction, as did all the table settings. Plates, glasses and the like smashed excessively.
In no time at all, Bonkers had crossed the room. Before Kirby had time to react, he was dealt a powerful hit with the mallet.
He flew to the side and bounced off a wall, losing his Stone ability. He landed face-up on the ground. The aches in his body that the Maxim Tomato had just recently banished came rushing back.
"BONKERS AM FAST AND STRONG! BONKERS MAKE PANCAKE OUT OF PINK BALL!"
Before Kirby could get up, Bonkers landed a terrific blow on his face.
He yelled in pain and then inhaled. Bonkers' mallet was already on its way to Kirby's face again when Kirby did this. The inhalation happened just in time to forcibly suck up the mallet.
Kirby swallowed, ushering forth a burst of stars in front of his eyes. Two ropes, twisted together, one white and one light blue, appeared like a headband on his head, tied off near the front. And a mallet with a head slightly smaller than his body appeared in his hand.
"Hammer ability!" declared Gooey.
"AAAAAAAARGH!" howled Bonkers as Kirby jumped up, striking him repeatedly with the 'hammer'. "PINK BALL HAVE HAMMER NOW! PINK BALL MAKE BONKERS SO ANGRY!"
Bonkers jumped away from the attacking Dream Lander and ran back across the room to the buffet table, which was piled high with coconuts for some reason.
The ape grabbed a coconut in each hand.
"BONKERS BLOW UP PINK BALL!"
He threw the coconuts wildly. Neither of them even came close to hitting Kirby. They both sailed past him, out the open door.
He turned back to Bonkers, smirking slightly. But then he was startled by the two coconuts exploding behind him.
"AAAAAAAARGH!" bellowed Bonkers again, stomping in frustration. "MALLET AM BONKERS' BEST WEAPON! BONKERS GET REALLY, REALLY ANGRY!"
Bonkers jumped behind the buffet table and kicked it over, sending a mountain of explosive coconuts rolling in Kirby's direction.
Kirby immediately inflated and flew up over the cascade. The coconuts rolled past him. Bonkers jumped up to tackle him, but Kirby quickly deflated to barely dodge the opportunistic attack.
As Bonkers landed, Kirby jumped and spun around, hitting the ape in the face with his hammer.
Bonkers let out a stunned sort of grunt and swayed, dazed. Kirby jumped at him and hit him hard in the stomach.
Bonkers toppled over backwards, and Kirby, realizing what he had done just in time, leapt back.
There was a massive explosion, as all the coconuts blew up at once. Bonkers was immediately engulfed in the flames, while Kirby was blasted backward. He concentrated with all his might to keep Hammer ability and miraculously managed to do so.
But then the situation rapidly became more serious. The combined force of all the coconuts' explosions had blown a whole section out of Butter Building, and the huge safe that Kirby was in was tilting forward.
He quickly ran forward and jumped. He fell downward, past a couple wrecked floors until he landed on a solid one. Then he ran forward again as fast as he could, out of the way of the gigantic safe, which crashed down behind him a moment later.
The safe smashed through the floor and continued downward, wrecking everything it came in contact with.
The whole of Butter Building was shaking now. Pieces of it were falling down everywhere. The entire thing was collapsing.
Kirby ran toward the nearest breach in the building's side.
"Gooey! Send a Warp Star!" he yelled as he ran.
A Warp Star crashed through a wall on Kirby's left. He turned quickly and jumped onto it. It then sped out of Butter Building.
As Kirby's previous Warp Star had done, this one stopped a ways out and turned around.
He watched as Butter Building crumbled, falling inward on itself. Every bit of it broke apart, eventually reducing the once grand structure to nothing more than a massive pile of rubble on the ground.
Kirby was wide-eyed. "But, the Star Rod shard..." he wheezed fretfully.
"You..." Gooey's voice was full of incredulity and restrained emotion. "You destroyed it."
Silence.
Suddenly, Gooey shouted a single word. Kirby had never heard the word before, but the tone of the shout very clearly conveyed the shouter's utter frustration with the situation.
"Now I'm going to have to dial up ANOTHER organization to take care of THIS!" Gooey continued. "It'll be a miracle if we find the shard in this mess in any remotely acceptable timeframe!"
"Wait..." said Kirby. "Something's coming."
A small green-and-white thing was flying up to Kirby from the wreckage of Butter Building. He readied his hammer in case it was a threat.
"What?" said Gooey.
The flying thing turned out to be a small bird with a green back and a white stomach. And in its yellow beak, it held...
"The shard!" exclaimed Kirby in astonishment.
"The shard?" repeated Gooey in disbelief.
Kirby hesitantly reached out to take the shard. When the bird didn't move, he snatched the precious item away from it quickly. He ate the shard immediately afterward.
"How are you doing, Kirby?" chirped the bird.
Kirby jumped slightly. He hadn't expected it to talk.
"Oh, um, I'm doing great now you brought me the shard," he replied.
"Glad to help out," said the bird, its tone matching its words.
"Pitch?" said Gooey. "Is that you?"
"Yep!" chirped the bird.
"You're a lifesaver, Pitch," said Gooey, clearly very relieved. "We would never have found the Star Rod shard in this mess."
"No problem. Have to get going now. Ice Dragon woke up again somehow."
"Good luck!" called Gooey as Pitch flew off.
"Thanks!" tweeted Pitch, disappearing into the distance.
Kirby stood there, unsure what to do. It was growing increasingly weird to have people talk to Gooey through him.