Heroes of Dreamland, Book 7: Kirby and the Battle for Dreamland (OLD)

Nowhere is Safe

Kirby's POV:

"Strawberry shortcake... Tomatoes... Watermelon... Gah, how am I ever supposed to choose?!"

Even if I'm not here on the Comet Observatory for the food, I have to say that the Kitchen is my absolute favorite place to be on this ship, I've discovered. Princess Rosalina is really nice and told me that I could eat whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted of whatever the Lumas whip up, whenever I have a break from training and can come over here. There's almost always at least a few Lumas in here trying their hand at cooking, and they seem to be willing to make pretty much anything I can think of. They're no Master Chefs, but they're better than Kawasaki back home, and that's way more than good enough for me.

While I look over the menu that a couple of the Lumas drew up for me so they could play restaurant, Meta Knight suddenly walks in, seeming even more serious than usual. "Another customer!" one of the Lumas squees happily and practically slaps him in the mask with a crayon-drawn menu that looks pretty close to mine. "If you want something that's not on the menu, sir, just tell us and we'll add it! The Lumeatery aims to please!"

"No, thank you," he sighs, trying to stay polite and patient, as he takes the menu in his gloves instead of his mask's eyepiece, hands it back to the disappointed Luma, and starts to walk over to where I'm sitting at one of the few small, round tables. Luckily for me, he has to go through pretty much a wall of Lumas to get here, which'll buy me a little bit of time.

Getting the feeling that he's going to tell me that I have to leave for whatever urgent reason, I hand the menu back to my Luma waiter and order all in one breath, "I'll take some of everything, and pleeeeease make it fast, so that I can eat it before Meta Knight makes me leave!"

"Your food'll be ready in five minutes or less, thanks to the secret ingredient, magic!" the Luma assures me and zooms off over to the kitchen area on the other side of the room.

Pouting a little bit, I sigh to myself and eye Meta Knight's progress through the room in annoyance, "I hope that's quick enough."

About then, Meta Knight makes it over to my table, eyes squinted mostly shut so that the Lumas won't notice that they're glowing orange in irritation and get their feelings hurt because of that. "The others will be arriving very soon, as soon as the Lor Starcutter can get here by interdimensional travel," he informs me simply. "I just wanted to let you know."

Although he turns to go after that, I get the feeling that something more is bothering him, so I ask, "Hey, is anything wrong? Aside from everything going wrong lately, I mean."

After a pause, he nods slowly without turning around to look at me again. "Something about Princess Rosalina worries me, but it's probably just me and my being constantly overly paranoid, or so people say I tend to be. It's nothing you need to worry about, Kirby. You have more than enough on your plate already." Eyeing the empty plate in front of me, he adds, "And I have a feeling that within in a few minutes, you will have more than enough on that plate as well."

"Okay, good, and yeah, I sure hope I will," I sigh in relief and watch as he turns to push through the Luma wall and leave. As soon as he's gone, I turn back to the table and excitedly wait for my food.

In a little less than five minutes, the Lumas start bringing me over everything I ordered, but then Luluke the Luma shows up and tells me urgently, "Mama wants you to join the others on the Main Deck in front of the Beacon. She says it's really, really important."

With a sigh of sadness, I nod slowly and get up to go. But then after a moment of thought, I suddenly turn, inhale up the big pile of food while being careful not to inhale any Lumas along with it, and swallow the whole thing all at once before quickly dashing out the door.