"Sooo... if you aren't Kirby, where are you from?" Ribbon asked as she, Shinji and Meta Knight were slowly floating down the mountain.
"Umm..." Shinji tried to concentrate on her question, as this whole floating thing made him very nervous. He expected to be swept away by a sudden gust of wind any time. "Tokyo-3," he finally said.
Meta Knight raised just an eyebrow (even if you couldn't tell beneath his mask), but Ribbon curiously continued to ask her questions. "Really? Where's that? I always thought Pop Star was the only place where you puffballs live... I could never keep the name of your race in mind... Is it a planet? Or just your hometown's name?"
"Um, it's the name of the city. The planet's name is Earth. And I'm not really a..."
"Earth?" Meta Knight interrupted him. "I think I heard of that planet before... but I can't quite place it..."
"Is it close to the Lylat System?" Ribbon wondered.
Shinji's head was spinning with all these questions. He was glad when they finally landed on solid ground. He let out a deep sigh of relief. "Flying is not my favorite way of traveling," he muttered.
A round, red body with a big, yellow face looked out of a nearby bush. "Kirby? Ribbon? Is that you?"
Shinji got alarmed. "Another Nightmare Creature?" he asked.
Ribbon shook her head. "Nope, that's our friend Waddle Dee, he's a... a Waddle Dee."
Waddle Dee came hopping out of the bush. "You're not Kirby?" he asked. "Strange, I thought Kirby was the only pink puffball around..."
"He's not from Pop Star, he's from a planet called EARTH!" Ribbon explained in a rapid succession of words. "Isn't this exciting? And he wants to help us finding the crystal shards..."
Waddle Dee scratched his head. "There are OTHER planets besides Pop Star? WOW!"
Meta Knight, Ribbon and Shinji sweatdropped. "Is this guy for real?" he whispered into Ribbon's ear.
"Don't judge him just yet," Ribbon said. "Waddle Dee, or WD, as we like to call him, isn't exactly the brightest resident of Dream Land, but he's a good fellow and a devoted fan of Kirby. And he's a master of survival."
"I always try hard," WD nodded.
"You also stumble over your own feet if you're not careful," another voice spoke up. A young human girl with short, black hair, a green shirt and a red beret came walking out of the woods. "So, if that's not Kirby, where is he?"
"I can't say for sure, Adeleine," Meta Knight admitted. "I was practicing with Kirby when suddenly, this guy was taking over his place. Maybe he is where Shinji came from..."
Shinji had wondered about that as well. 'If Kirby is in my place, I can only pity him...' he thought. 'Especially since he knows nothing about Angels and the situation on Earth... and also because he has to live under the same roof as Asuka.'
"Say..." he spoke up, just to change subjects. "How many shards have you managed to find up until now?"
"Just four," Ribbon said. "And we managed to merge them into one bigger crystal, see?" And she took a purple, glowing crystal out of her dress pocket.
"Those crystals are dangerous because Dark Matter's looking for them as well," Meta Knight grumbled. "And anyone who picks them up is in danger of getting possessed by one of his smaller bodies."
"The same thing happened to me and Adeleine," Waddle Dee nodded. "I was forced to fight Kirby even though he's my hero... I really hated that."
"Same here," Adeleine nodded. "He even misused my painting abilities against him."
"Painting abilities?" Shinji wondered. "How could those be a threat?"
Adeleine smirked. "Watch!" she said as she pulled out her paintbrush and a painter palette. She also pulled out a small box that suddenly grew in size and became an empty canvas. Putting a few colors of paint on the tip of her brush, she quickly painted the image of an apple on the canvas.
And then, the apple fell off the canvas and into the grass.
Shinji blinked.
Adeleine smirked as she picked up the apple. "See? Using my paintbrush, I can make anything I paint come to life. Food, tools, you name it." She frowned. "But Dark Matter forced me to create paint monsters to battle Kirby... that really made me upset."
"And... all of you agreed to help Kirby with fighting Dark Matter?" Shinji wondered.
"Why not?" Ribbon smiled. "Everyone of us has a unique ability that can come in handy, don't you think?"
Shinji was still a bit skeptical about that. "So... and where did you want to go next?"
"Well, after I arrived on Pop Star, Kirby and I could see how the crystal shards were scattered all over the night sky... and we could watch in which direction they were falling. One of them fell in that direction." And she pointed eastwards, where they could see another tall mountain.
"Th-that way?" Waddle Dee squeaked. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, why not?" Ribbon wondered.
Meta Knight frowned. "That is Mt. Dedede. King Dedede's castle is located there. And if he managed to get one of these shards into his flippers, I doubt he'll just hand it over."
"If he's the king, shouldn't he know what's best for his kingdom?" wondered Shinji.
"Normally, yes," Adeleine sighed. "But Dedede has never been crowned by anyone, he just likes to see himself as our king, even though nobody listens to him but his closest subjects. And he's also a quite conceited moron. I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to keep the crystal shard just because it's 'shiny'."
"Shiny or not shiny, he'll have to hand it over if we want to stop Dark Matter," Meta Knight spoke up. "I never really wanted to help Kirby, but after realizing the threat Dark Matter is to Pop Star and its neighbor planets, I agreed to train him for the upcoming battle."
Shinji sighed. "And now I have to handle all of his problems... that's just great..."
"You'll help us, won't you, Shinji?" Ribbon asked in a hopeful voice as she fluttered in front of his face.
'Curse the girls and their puppy-dog-eyes...' Shinji mentally grumbled. "All right, it's not like I have anything better to do..."
Ribbon smiled sweetly. "Thank you, Shinji!" she said and gave him a hug. Shinji's color changed instantly from pink to red.
In the vast emptiness of space, two small spacecrafts were flying next to each other.
"Shouldn't be too long until we reach the Lylat System," Katt spoke up through the intercom. "It's been quite a while since I've been home... I wonder what Falco and the other guys are up to."
"Hmm..." Yui wished she could say more in this conversation. Obviously, Samus had been a visitor on many planets and met many different people. Still, she wondered why it had been so surprising for Katt and the troopers at Norion that she had a son. Samus must have had at least one suitor on one of those planets. A good-looking woman like her...
"Say, Samus?" Katt asked.
"Um, yes?"
"This son you're talking about... have you met him before?"
"Well... sort of..." Yui admitted. She wasn't ready yet to tell Katt that she was a woman from another planet who just got transferred into this new body from the giant body of a bio-mechanical battle mech that her son used to pilot.
"Well, do you know what he looks like? It would be helpful to mention when we're talking to Fox and the general..."
"Oh, sure!" Yui smiled. "He's the sweetest boy you could imagine, with black hair and a pair of shining eyes... a bit shy, but absolutely lovable."
Katt frowned.
"What's the matter?" Yui wondered.
"Oh, nothing! I was just surprised to hear words like 'sweet' and 'lovable' coming out of your mouth. You really have changed since the least time we met, Sammy."
"Well, it's true that I'm not quite the same as before..." Yui admitted. Before she could say anything else, however, her ship shook around by some invisible force.
"What was that?" Yui muttered.
"Is something wrong?" Katt asked.
"I'm not sure, but..." Yui's fingers darted over her ship's consoles, which she managed to master over the past two days in space. "I think something has hit my ship's outer hull."
"A small meteor, perhaps?"
Yui switched the outer camera of her ship on. "It rather looks like some space debris..." she murmured. "I wonder if I should get rid of it."
"No, you should keep it, maybe it's something valuable. You don't know how often spaceships discard stuff that's useless for them, but can actually be worth billions on other planets. I once found a piece of red rupee ore in the abandoned remains of a Space Pirate trash compactor. Not much worth on most planets, but part of the main currency on Hyrule."
"All right, I'm gonna let R.O.B. take it in," Samus said. R.O.B. was her ship's little assist robot, a tiny, white automaton that could do several works aboard. He was especially useful for repairs on the outside of her ship when it was in outer space.
The square-edged robot reached the upper part of Samus' gunship via a small elevator the bounty hunter had installed especially for him. The magnetic rolls underneath the base his main body was placed upon carried him over to the small piece of space junk.
The cameras in his eyes transmitted the image over to a small, holographic projector in the ship's cockpit. Yui blinked when she saw the thing that was sticking to her ship.
"It's a rocket..." she murmured. "A tiny spaceship... as big as a coffee machine."
"WHAT? Are you serious?" Katt blurted out.
"See for yourself!" Yui insisted as she transmitted R.O.B.'s visual data to Katt's ship.
Katt's eyes widened. "You're right... I never would have believed that such a small spacecraft could fly into a remote part of galaxy as this. And look... there's someone coming out!"
A small hatch in the tiny space rocket opened, and an even smaller man in a spacesuit and a round helmet came climbing out of the rocket. He looked around, saw R.O.B. in front of him and waved.
"Hello," he shouted in a high voice. "Can you help me? My ship is damaged and I can't fly on. Could you please let me in?"
Yui was confused. "Um, no problem, but... who are you?"
"Oh, excuse me! Allow me to introduce myself: I am Captain Olimar!"
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(Posted Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:00)
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