Post by bobsnicket on Feb 27, 2009 20:54:57 GMT -5
Chapter 18: Secret of the Room
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{6} The Cloaked Truth Descends
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They had returned to the barren, desolate room around which the Alliance lay dead or incapacitated. The walls were solid once more, no longer transparent. The eight survivors stood upon the top of Master Hand’s Fortress, waiting to see if it was all over, although most of them doubted it—not with their great enemy’s pattern of never relenting until he had gotten what he wanted. Everything he wanted.
Sure enough, not a minute passed by before the ominous amaranthine shroud swirled into existence in front of them. No longer bothering with a masking silhouette, Master stepped out from the shroud into the air with an unfathomable expression on his cold, hard face, especially with the flat-topped sunglasses covering his eyes. However, the man who was more than a man could not conceal the fact that he was visibly trembling, his tight grip on the Smash Rod shivering. But it was not out of fear or even anger. It was of pure disbelief, of a person whose life has been shattered by something that person had never for a second considered possible. His control over his countenance held, but a shadow of the emotions exploding inside him leaked out most noticeably.
The Smash Rod itself had also changed. Now, not a single wisp or drop of the blue matter remained within the glass orb bearing the so oft-recurring insignia. Evidently, transforming into the Behemoth and exerting such abysmal power in this form had rendered the golden scepter juiceless. A sudden leap of joy soared in the survivors’ hearts; Master’s power was gone. They had won.
Then, in an unexpected action, Master flung the drained Smash Rod with alarming, inhuman strength straight downward. The survivors flinched as the symbol of authority crashed against the battlements, the orb shattering and the rod rent in twain. And, abruptly, Master’s head jolted down to bore into those who had so repeatedly defied him.
The voice was so very resonant, deep, and now, passionate. “You…you…” He pointed a pale, shaking finger at them. “…you defy every one of the few rules which define this world. Because of a little unforeseen teamwork, you make sense out of the impossible, rebuking every form of death I throw at you, formidable or not. This cannot have been done by you mortals alone; destiny must have had a hand in this. It seems, for now, to be on your side.” It was almost like he was trying to convince himself of this.
“So, you force me to upset the balance of fate and reality.” A gradual, maddened grin appeared on his face. “It looks like I must show you my true, core self. For I have…another…name. I will have to go full out on you, utilize the utmost extent of my power in order to claim this war.
“The Smash Orb means nothing to me, not when we absolutely must get down to it. I need no tool, nor army, nor pulses of destruction, nor even my imagination to prove my superiority. This world will bow to me one way or another, and if this must be the way in which my reign begins, then SO BE IT!!!”
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As it had prior to the fight against the Hands, the entire room, even the Battlefields surrounding it, began rumbling and vibrating. Only this time it was on a much larger scale. Giant objects on the desk, shelves, and table rattled and shook violently. Trophies shuddered like toy action figures, some even tipping over onto the array of bodies. The desk lamp the size of a fully grown Evergreen tree wobbled dangerously, and fell over the edge. A devastating crash accompanied by a great electrical explosion gave birth to a large fire which quickly spread to be promoted to the rank of inferno.
The deep velvet substance swirled more and more rapidly around the single trembling figure before the survivors’ eyes, forming a unified direction and purpose and developing some sort of current. Master’s dark green hair whipped in the wind as his entire body became obscured by the growing flux.
“He will never quit until we have lost, will he?” Professor E. Gadd spoke in a voice as awed and horrified as the other seven around him, all of them standing agape. Kirby’s eyes were the widest of all.
From no apparent source, glowing white star shapes mixed in with the spinning purple current. It had now grown so dense and strong that Master’s outline could not longer be seen within; the bottom end slanted into a point, forming a man-sized cyclone, speckled with the stars. The cyclone increased in size at an unnatural rate. The heroes waited for the swelling tornado to cease its enlargement, but it seemed to just keep on expanding and expanding.
More objects succumbed to the titanic tremors, and the great blaze spread, licking all the way up the shelves to the ceiling, and encircling the room like a horde of rioting demons. The entire room was now aflame other than the table in the middle.
At last, upon retreating only slightly against the limits of its growth—the ceiling—the great purple funnel ceased its expansion, although still spinning much, much faster than any eye could ever follow. A low, sinister laugh, deeper than Master’s had ever been, echoed unmistakably, dreadfully, in the survivors’ ears. Dark, curved shoulder armor formed atop the living tornado’s wide edges. A massive head, only an indistinct shadow at first, slowly materialized into view.
It was indisputably the head of Master, but had undergone terrifying alterations. The giant, pale, grayish-blue head faced them, the double-chin jutting out in the same direction. The sunglasses had reshaped into two obtuse triangles, the tips pointing opposite directions. In place of the hair was a midnight blue, cap-like thing covering from the forehead up; embedded in the center of it was a round red jewel with golden lining. A similar but larger jewel was located beneath the chin, a pendant hanging from a golden chain, seemingly on top of the swirling part. The odd thing was, the spinning tornado had the appearance of a great cloak, as if it were both at the same time. It was like looking at a spinning wheel, but seeing a different picture that was an illusion of an image formed by the spinning. Finally, two imposing golden prongs curved up like antlers from each side of the blue covering, only they did not split or veer in any direction that would ruin the symmetry, instead ending in perfect points, giving the appearance of a strange crown. He looked like some kind of apparition from one’s darkest dreams, like—well, there was no description that fit better.
A vampire.
Pushing out through the cloak/tornado appeared two giant, white-gloved hands. Master and Crazy Hand were essentially back, only they were no longer independent of will, and the fullness of their host could now be seen. Not much about their movement seemed to have changed.
But something shocking happened. Purple flames erupted in countless spots on the hands, and the white began burning and withering away, disintegrating in small scraps. Almost as if rubber gloves were being scalded off the skin beneath. Revealing the true hands.
They were unbearably horrid and grotesque. Wrinkled purple skin, like some kind of aged alien’s. Long, obsidian-like fingernails, sharp enough to pierce through an unbreakable object. No wonder Master wore gloves.
Ness cringed at the repulsive sight. If there really was such thing as the “Hand of Fate”, he sure hoped this wasn’t it.
Once this was established, the sunglasses shattered, the pieces being caught up in the tornado body, revealing two gleaming slits emanating startling, unearthly whiteness. At the same time, the circular wall of flames about the room changed color in a flash to an almost blindingly bright purple-white. And despite this, the vast chamber became remarkably dark; every unoccupied inch of air was completely black, like some sort of apocalyptical scene.
“I…AM THE EMBODIMENT OF FEAR AND SUFFERING IN THIS WORLD. I AM NIGHTMARE. I HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED, EVEN AFTER KIRBY FIRST DEFEATED ME. SINCE THAT TIME, UNTIL NOW, YOU HAVE KNOWN ME AS MASTER AND CRAZY HAND. THE NINTENDO WORLD BELONGS TO ME. YOU STAND IN MY WAY. YOU WILL DIE.”
Dr. Mario remembered something he had said back in his world. “I a-happened to have just gotten a-back from ‘Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland.’ The first Kirby was babbling about a-some enemy mix-up that occurred some a-years ago…” Well, that explained it.
Surely, now, the end had truly come.
And then Nightmare descended upon them.
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Their ultimate foe apparently didn’t mind destroying his own fortress in the process. Spreading out the folds of his shifting cloak, completely altering the shape of the tornado, Nightmare fell slowly toward them, tilting like an unrealistic tsunami avalanching downward.
Soon, none of the survivors could see anything but the restless purple swirls. Each of them looked about them for some means of escape, some way of overcoming this; it seemed terribly wrong for them to lose now, after getting so far, so close to liberating their land forever. But it would never come to pass now.
As the Cloaked Nightmare enveloped them, the last heroes did not shy away from looking death in the face to the very end.
Mario and Dr. Mario leaped upward in a final Super Jump Punch.
Link dived forward with his bent Master Sword, plunging into the belly of the beast with a broken hope that he did not know how to respond to otherwise.
Meta Knight held up his blue cape up to the eye level on his mask and murmured, “So it ends…”
Professor E. Gadd carefully removed his swirling glasses to reveal small, squinty eyes, and gazed at their doom with a sigh of defeat. He had taken down the foremost servant, his own cousin, but the master, Nightmare, it seemed, had turned out to be impossible to overthrow after all. Well, they had given it their all. They had done their best.
Ness stood by Mewtwo, stock still. What now? he asked, not allowing reality to settle upon his conscience.
Mewtwo did not look away from the purple blanket descending upon them. His eyes, though, were without the flame they had always had. I…do not know. I am sorry, Ness. You are and always have been the strongest, sincerest mind I have ever taught.
Ness just nodded, trying not to think too hard.
Kirby blinked in denial. He had already defeated Nightmare, a long, long time ago. It didn’t seem fair that such an enemy was allowed to do this, to take away their victory through sheer athanasia. Was this really what the creators of the Nintendo World had intended by secluding such an evil, heartless soul here? To annihilate and conquer them?
Just before the blanket of death completely domed over the battlements, a comparatively small spark burst through the ceiling of the giant, cursed room, and shot below the purple darkness. Nightmare caused the fortress to collapse on itself, stones snapping and crashing over each other in a race down to the surface. Whatever was left inside—or atop—the building was seen no more. For several minutes Nightmare continued to fall upon Master Hand’s fortress, the two monstrous hands pounding through the architecture like it was a sand castle.
The same white dot, tiny in comparison to Nightmare’s towering tornado, whizzed out from beneath the demolition scene as everything was caving in around it. But now there was more to it; a single figure rode the speck.
Kirby steered the Warpstar sharply around in a direct course for the Cloaked Nightmare’s head. For some whim of fate had brought to him at the direst of needs a Warpstar from the sky; he might never understand why. But it appeared that he, the hero of Dreamland, had been chosen for some unknown reason to slip away from death. Alone.
So, as the last free hero, Star Warrior, and Smasher of Nintendo, Kirby sped to meet the end one way or another: his, or Nightmare’s.
No slowing down, no words, no hesitations. Kirby curved around on the most reliable of Air Riders so that his path of travel approached the fiend’s theatre screen-sized face. The very last glimmer of rebellion.
Nightmare spotted the speeding spark only when it was within a hundred yards from his face. The ageless master and enemy hastened to bring up his two purple hands to stop the puffball, needless though it may have been.
Now glowing all around with golden light, Kirby swerved as little as possible and evaded the hands’ attempts to crush him. The Warpstar neared, and, with no extravagant flashes or explosions, seared into Nightmare’s pure white eye slit, which was so large that the Warpstar and its rider vanished completely inside.
TO BE CONTINUED...?
