13 September 2015

Updates will suck until mid-ish-October. Or that's the general range, anyway.

28. Abseiling

of roaring waterfalls—like the types of roars in your dreams and then you wake up and it looks like a waterfall attacked your bed.

"You know I hate large bodies of water!"

"Yep!"

"Prick!"

In which Bandana Dee felt more ballsy than he usually did.

Kirby shrugged, tapping a crackled helmet carelessly. Bandana Dee winced—he was pretty sure the pink puffball had just made the crack larger and made the helmet closer to complete obliteration.. (Not really.) Which was not good at all. For either of them.

(Then again… it didn't really matter if they had a hard landing, did it? Puffballs were resistant to being injured from dropping from great heights—oh, wait. Sharp rocks. Oh.)

"You have to overcome your fear someday, Band-Aid!" Kirby grinned, throwing his helmet on. It cracked again when he did so. It didn't expand the original crack—it just gave birth to a new one, and Bandana Dee thought he might get sick. "So, we will do it today. Because I am the greatest friend you ever will have, and most probably the only one."

"Did you just insinuate—"

"That you don't have any friends? Yes."

Bandana Dee narrowed his eyes, and Kirby laughed. "I do have a few—"

"I'm not saying you don't!"

Right. Right. Of course. (Liar.)

"Anyway," Kirby breezed, hopping into the pool that created the waterfall. Everything in Dream Land was so magical.

Instead of completing his sentence, Kirby began to pick up the rather new-looking gear he had brought. ...Was it actually new, or did it just look new because Kirby had stored it away in some hidey hole for a million years and spider webs and fungi grew on it, but he washed it all off?

Both were plausible. And sensible.

Honestly!

"So here's the stick," Kirby pointed to a very thick, very sturdy, very more-like-a-stump stick in the middle of the pool. Had Kirby stuck it in there, or had it always been there? Either way, it didn't seem very Band-Aid-friendly. "You attach a rope to it, then you go down!"

"That's it?"

"Oh, and hope you don't die. Yeah. But don't worry, there's only an eighty-percent chance of that happening."

Only. Bandana Dee snatched a glance at the rope Kirby had tied onto the stump-stick thing, and it seemed like... a... rope. Yeah. It seemed like a rope. Not overly weak. Or overly strong.

Just rope.

Simply was rope.

"Where... did you get that from?"

"Get the what-what?"

"The—um. The rope."

Kirby straightened his back for a moment to show Bandana Dee his full-on, idiotic and silly grin. "Oh, dunno! Found it in the garden shed, y'know..."

"...You don't have a garden shed."

"I know, right. Guess I stole it, then."

"You—what."

"Sarcasm!"

Those type of things were do-not-talk-back things. There was honestly no point trying to figure out where Kirby's train of thought started, or attempt to watch it as if flew off the rails into a ravine. If you talk back, the train would start swimming, back to shore, and then proceed to flop around a little like a dead fish before Kirby completely shut the argument down with something stupid.

And even if Bandana Dee had wanted to talk back, Kirby had already disappeared off the edge of the waterfall. Hesitantly, Bandana Dee very carefully stepped into the pool and when he reached the edge, kept his spear stabbed into the bottom of the pool to make sure if he was smacked down by a carnivorous plant, it would not be an instant knockout for him.

Kirby was halfway down the waterfall and going at a terrifyingly quick pace.

"So when you get to the bottom!" Kirby was speaking in a loud voice, over the thundering water. Although, Bandana Dee didn't know if he wanted to hear it. "You don't actually go to the bottom! You go like, three-quarters the way down, then you... uh."

"'Uh.' Yes. Descriptive. Ten out of ten."

"Well someone's snarky today." A notable pause. "Oh, yeah! You kinda have to jump down into the pool below... Yeah, a jump!"

"Oh. No. No, no, no, no, no, nope." That was essentially diving.

Or more commonly known as the Bane of Band-Aids.

(Was that an alliteration? Maybe... nearly?)

"It's easy. You won't die." Kirby let go of the rope on one hand, the other supporting him. The free hand adjusted the helmet so it wouldn't fly off and hit a carnivorous plant when he did the Dive of Doom later. "Unless there are sharks... Not that that one matters."

"'Not that it matters'? Did I hear that right? I didn't, did I? Whoops, haha, looks like I need to clean my ears! So... uh. I gotta head back, yeah!" Bandana Dee nervously tittered, taking a few steps backwards and splashing at the pool.

"Nope, you heard me right! And—whoops! Nearly slid off."

"You nearly slid off!" Bandana Dee screamed, voice hoarse as he raced towards the edge of the waterfall, before remembering that there were possible sharks and oh god it's a waterfall. He backpedalled, to where he marked as a safe zone, and leant over slightly. Kirby was fiddling with his rope with one hand, the other still clutching onto the rope. "Uh oh. Do I need to pull—?"

Kirby blinked and took a while to register his words. "Oh! Pull? No, no! Don't. I'm jumping off—like I said I'm supposed to, you know—"

"But you'll die!" The current pushed Bandana Dee forward a little, and he stumbled, tilting forward a good angle before his arms flailed and he righted his posture. Not before he got the full glare of the height of the waterfall and the pool with rocks below, though. "Oh. No."

The pink puffball had tugged the rope off without Bandana Dee catching it and dove into the pool below.

Bandana Dee decamping into a bush: "How do I pause this horror movie?!"