Kirby and the Rod of Darkness

Chapter 13: Fight or Fright (Halloween Special!)


It was the evening before Halloween. Kirby was walking into the main room of the Lor Starcutter when he got the shock of his life. Out of nowhere, what appeared to be a small version of a round white villain with a single red eye approached him. "Grr! I've got you now, Kirby!" he growled menacingly.

Kirby could only stand there staring, his whole body trembling. "Z-Zero? I th-thought I defeated you already!"

As it turned out, the one standing before Kirby wasn't Zero at all; it was only Magolor wearing a mask. "Ha ha! I sure scared you, didn't I?" he laughed once he'd removed the mask.

An idea forming in his mind, Kirby left the room. A minute later he returned as Ghost Kirby, using his powers to make himself invisible. "BOO!" he shouted, materializing himself in front of Magolor and making him leap into the air. Now it was Kirby's turn to laugh. "Ha ha! You should have seen the look on your face, Magolor!"

Susie, who was sitting on the other side of the room and saw the whole thing, sighed and stood up. "I just don't understand men sometimes…" she said to herself while starting to walk away. She didn't get far before something suddenly dropped down right in front of her. Startled, she jumped back...and found that it was just a familiar spider hanging upside-down by a thread. "Taranza! What are you doing?!" Susie asked him, a bit displeased.

"Sorry," Taranza answered, "I was decorating the Lor Starcutter for Halloween, but I lost my balance and fell."

Susie watched Taranza slowly rise to the upper walls, which he'd been busy covering with his magic webs. It's certainly fitting for Halloween, she thought, even if it makes the Lor look like it needs a major cleaning.

Meanwhile, Magolor was getting his "revenge" on Kirby by playfully chasing him around the room. "Gotcha, you pesky ghost!" he said upon tackling him. Kirby didn't answer because he was currently in a fit of laughter.

All of a sudden, they felt an oddly familiar movement in the floor beneath them. Kirby abruptly quieted. "What was that?" Magolor wondered.

Across the room, the sudden motion caused Taranza to fall from where he was hanging again while Susie was watching the computer screen anxiously. "Magolor, we're lifting off!" she cried out in alarm.

With Kirby following, Magolor raced to the computer. "What?! But I didn't give the ship any commands!" He frantically pressed buttons, but nothing happened. "The controls aren't working!" he exclaimed before turning back to his friends nervously. "Better hold on tight-I think we're in for a wild ride!" The Lor sailed rapidly through the sky all on its own, its four riders not knowing what to expect. Finally they felt it land, though it did so roughly enough to make them fall down. "Is everyone all right?" Magolor asked the others, to which they acknowledged that they were.

Kirby and friends decided to see where the ship had taken them, so they stepped outside-and were met with an unsettling sight. They appeared to be in a vast, dark, and spooky graveyard. Its main features consisted of dead trees and countless tombstones, with a few tunnels and buildings in the distance and no signs of life in sight. "What is this place?" Susie wondered uneasily.

Kirby recognized this place because he'd once explored it himself, when he was dealing with the Skull Gang. "It looks like Volcano Valley, one of the Popopo Islands."

"It...doesn't look very volcanic," Taranza noted.

"Only part of the island is volcanic. The rest is a spooky graveyard. Not exactly a tourist attraction, but maybe we'll find whatever made the Lor act so weird somewhere around here."

They knew they didn't really have a choice in the matter, because the Lor refused to budge now that it had chosen a landing spot. They cautiously started to move ahead, finding nothing out of the ordinary at first. After a few minutes Kirby paused and looked around, noticing someone was missing. "Where's Taranza?" He then spotted the silver-haired spider himself, building a particularly large web alongside a Spideroo that was doing the same. "Um...Taranza, what are you doing?" Kirby asked, approaching him.

"Seeing which of us can make the better web, of course!" Taranza answered. Kirby just looked at him.

A few more minutes of journeying led Kirby, Magolor, Taranza, and Susie to an area filled with tombstones placed close together. Immediately the graves quivered and popped out of the ground, surprising everyone. Their faces and wings became visible, revealing that they were actually monsters called Graveys (which, despite their name, were not at all appetizing). "Leave this to me," Susie said. She used the Business Suit's twirling arms to smash into the Graveys, destroying them all. However, her machine kept going even after this was accomplished.

"Okay Susie, I think you can stop now!" Kirby called out to her.

She desperately pushed every button, to no avail. "I can't! The Business Suit's not responding!"

This was bad. The Business Suit was advancing toward a cliff, and Susie couldn't get out without being hurt by its arms. Taranza, acting quickly, flew as fast as he could after the mech, positioning himself right above its controller and extending a hand out to her. "Susie, grab my hand!"

"B-but, the Business Suit…"

"You can build a new Business Suit, but you can't build a new you!"

Susie knew Taranza was right. She reached out and grabbed his hand, allowing him to pull her out of the Business Suit and carry her back to where Kirby and Magolor stood. When he let her down, she looked down disappointedly. "I've never had the Business Suit malfunction like that before."

"First the Lor Starcutter and now the Business Suit," Magolor said, "Whatever's going on here, it must have negative effects on machinery."

"Susie's visor was working fine, though," Kirby pointed out.

"True, but it's also incapable of harming anyone."

This discussion ended when the sound of thunder was heard in the area. Rain began to fall and lightning flashed in the sky. Kirby's team raced to the nearest form of shelter before they could get soaked. This happened to be a large shack, which its visitors found to be mostly empty. It was dark inside except when lightning flashed outside, which would light up the entire room for a few seconds. No one else appeared to be around, the only sounds being rain pounding on the windows and the crackling of thunder.

By now it was the middle of the night, and the four of them were giving in to drowziness in spite of the weather. They found themselves dozing off while they waited out the storm, but they didn't get to sleep very long. Kirby woke up first when he heard a strange noise, and when he saw what was in front of him he hopped up from where he lay. "AAH! G-guys, wake up!"

Kirby's shout woke Magolor, Taranza, and Susie, who discovered that the storm was over, Kirby was shaking like a leaf...and they were face-to-face with an enormous shadow resembling a dinosaur's head! It was Shadowbite, the eerie, shadowy monster who called this place home. "Th-that sh-shadow! It's alive!" Magolor exclaimed, now wide awake.

Everyone ran for their lives, the dark monster chasing them relentlessly. Kirby stayed in the lead so he could attack and destroy the several rows of blocks that blocked the path. The four of them ran and ran until they reached a dead end. There was nowhere to run, and Shadowbite was getting dangerously close! Just when they thought their hearts would pound out of their chests, Kirby tried lunging at Shadowbite and used his Ghost ability to possess it. Under his control, the beast turned and zipped right into a Kirby statue the hero had built last time he was here, which sent it flying out of the shack. Magolor, Taranza, and Susie all sighed in relief as Kirby rejoined them.

At that moment, an odd squealing noise sounded from behind them. They noticed a door on the wall behind them, so they carefully opened it and entered the next room. Inside this room, a large one-eyed ghost wearing a purple hat was fiddling with a machine with a small satellite on top; numerous small one-eyed ghosts flew around him. He looked away from the machine when he saw Kirby and the others standing there. "Look what we have here! I rarely have live guests, eeheehee! I'm Tedhaun, and these little guys are my Caper buddies. We built this machine so we could control other mechanical objects-it causes interference to them. I'm having so much fun messing with people's machinery as a joke, eeheehee!"

Kirby wasn't one to lose his temper, but the idea of someone thinking that putting his friends in danger was funny made him furious. "So you're the one behind this!" he burst out, "You could have seriously hurt all of us! You could have killed Susie! And you think it's a joke?! You'd better stop it right now!"

"Hmph," Tedhaun frowned, "Touchy, aren't we? If that's how you want to play, then...get 'em, Capers!" He tossed an army of Capers at his victims, but the little ghosts were weak and any kind of attack made them explode. Kirby charged into some of them, Magolor fired electric orbs at some more, and Taranza threw webs at others. At first, Susie didn't know what to do since all of her typical methods of attacking involved using machinery. She pulled out her Blaster but instead of shooting, she smacked Capers on the head with it.

As soon as all the Capers were gone, Tedhaun surprised Kirby and company by grabbing the four of them. "Heheheh! I've got you now!" he cackled. But before he could try to drain their life energy, he suddenly froze as light began to shine through the windows; dawn was breaking and the sun was rising. The sunlight caused the spooky specter to drop them before vanishing in a puff of smoke, leaving only his hat behind. Then Magolor destroyed the machine he'd been using with a black hole, ending the mayhem for good.

Once everyone returned to the Lor Starcutter, Magolor and Taranza were in the main room while the former checked its status. "What a crazy adventure that was!" Taranza said to Magolor, "It sure is good to see the sun shine again."

"I'll say!" Magolor replied, "Great to see the Lor working the way it should, too."

Susie came in from the room where she repaired her equipment. "The Business Suit had a nasty fall when it went off that cliff, but it's still salvageable. It'll be good as new once repairs are complete."

A few minutes later, Kirby entered the room with Tedhaun's hat on his head; this made him look a lot like a miniature version of the troublemaker, although his face was different. "Happy Halloween!" he told Magolor, Taranza, and Susie, "How do you like my costume?" But his three friends didn't answer because...they'd all fallen asleep! After being up most of the night, they were too tired to stay awake. "Oh well-if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" Kirby said, and he settled down for a nice, long nap. Have a good rest, heroes!


Have a happy Halloween!