Heroes of Dreamland, Book 3: The World of Nintendo (OLD)

Dreamland Disasters (or, The Halberd Gets Blown to Bits Yet Again)

Several days later:

Above Dreamland, on board the Battleship Halberd:

Sailor Dee looked around himself to make sure no one was watching, and then switched on his favorite music. He began to dance randomly around the control room of the ship. No one was going to bother him, the rest of the Meta-Knights (plus Kirby) were in the meeting room in a different part of the ship. Since he couldn't really talk, he wasn't included in the meetings. It was his job to keep an eye on the ship. But these were the perfect times to just set the ship to autopilot and take a break.

In the meeting room, Meta Knight stood at the head of the table. "So, you all know why we are here, correct?"

Sword, Blade, Mace, and Ax all nodded. "Poyo!" Kirby said in agreement. The little pink puffball had come along as part of his training to be a better warrior.

"I was not necessarily posing the question to you, Kirby, but as long as you stay out of our way, it is all right," Meta Knight sighed. "Now, you four, to your positions."

All four Meta-Knights stared at him blankly. "Which are what?" Sword finally asked sheepishly.

Meta Knight managed to restrain himself from maskpalming. All of the Meta-Knights were extremely loyal, but a dull set of armor was brighter than any of them. "Do any of you really know why we are here?"

The four knights looked at each other, then meekly shook their heads.

Meta Knight muttered something under his breath, then explained, "All right. A little over a year ago, there was an earthquake. Starting that night, I thought the sky seemed strange. After returning from defeating the Monstrous Lightning, with one less in the party..." His voice grew quieter and his eyes took a blue tinge, but he cleared his throat and continued, "As I was saying, after I returned, I did some observations and realized that the stars had completely changed. There were only one or two constellations that had been there before.

"Then I did some aerial observations, and noticed that the shape of the planet had changed. Also, the moon is larger now, and the planet's rate of rotation has changed slightly, as if the planet has grown. Now, obviously, this is impossible, and-"

"Um, sorry to interrupt," Ax grunted, "but we can't really understand what you're talking about. I'm sure it's interesting, but just tell us what you want us to do, Sir Meta Knight."

"Very well," Meta Knight rolled his eyes. How he longed for some intelligent company. "What we are doing today is taking more aerial observations. Each of you needs to take your regular post in the control room, and-"

Sailor Dee suddenly burst into the room and started jumping around urgently. "Please, Sailor Dee. In a moment," Meta Knight ordered. "As I was saying-"

But Sailor Dee wouldn't give up. He started tugging on the Star Warrior's cloak. "Sailor Dee! Would you please stop that!" When he wouldn't, Meta Knight finally groaned. "Fine. Show me what is troubling you, my friend."

The smallest and quietest of the Meta-Knights hurriedly led him to the control room, where he pointed out of the front window at something in the ocean below. Frowning, Meta Knight walked over to the spyglass he kept near the window and looked through it, then gasped in astonishment. "I have gone insane. It was bound to happen sometime," he moaned, stepping away from the spyglass and sitting down against the wall.

"What do you mean?" Mace questioned, confused.

"One of you look through the spyglass and tell me what you see," Meta Knight ordered in a resigned voice.

"Well, I see the ocean, and some trees, and ooh look, an eagle!" Ax told the others.

"I mean in the ocean, you fool!" Meta Knight shouted in exasperation.

"Well, there's water, and more water, and look there's Kine, and-" Ax suddenly cut himself off. "And there's also a really big scary-looking boat. And the boat has some really weird monsters on it, and some even weirder giants!"

Meta Knight suddenly leapt up. "So you can see it? So either I am not crazy, or we both are. Which is possible, but..." he shook his head, and then got an awful feeling. "A huge warship carrying giant monsters is coming towards the coast. Oh, Shotzo," he hissed.

"What do you mean by giant, Mety-Knight?" Sword demanded.

"I mean, if my primary calculations are correct, which they always are, then that one with the green hat is around three times our size. And I think even the smallest of the monsters is probably about as big as we are. This cannot be good. Where in the Shotzo have they come from? Why are they coming here?" he fretted. "Battle stations. Now. All of you," he ordered, going into military mode. "We will not strike unless they do, but I wish to be prepared."

He slid a glove under his mask and rubbed his forehead as everyone around him ran into each other and over things in their crazed attempts to remember where their battle stations were and take them. This was just wonderful. Dreamland didn't have any sort of a military other than him and his Meta-Knights. If there were even just a few more ships like this one, they were all essentially done for.

"Poyo?" Kirby suddenly murmured quizzically from where he was standing over in a corner.

"What is it, Kirby? This is really not a good time, young one," Meta Knight said tersely in reply, then gasped. "NO! Kirby! Do not do that!"

Kirby tilted his head and looked at him in confusion, wondering why Meta Knight was so upset that he was trying to push the small red button that had been covered by a glass case until he had accidently broken it. It was such a pretty red, and it needed a purpose to fulfill in life, so with an innocent grin, he pressed it.

"ARGH! I am surrounded by bumbling idiots!" Meta Knight shouted in distress. "Kirby! I told you not to push that! You air-headed, food-crazed, numbskull! That was the emergency self-destruct button!"

Kirby smiled at him sheepishly, his hands behind his back. "Kirby not know what that mean. What self-destruct mean, Meta Knight poyo?"

Sighing, Meta Knight tried to remember that he was basically talking to a six-year-old. "It means, Kirby, that in a few minutes the Halberd is going to go 'boom' with a lot of fire. That is what it means."

"Oh," Kirby murmured, shrinking away from the world against the control panel.

"Can this ship survive just one voyage without getting blown to bits?!? Just one?!?" Meta Knight yelled angrily at the universe, feeling like hitting his head against a wall. "I spend months putting it back together, but it never can survive even one flight! Even one!"

The other Meta-Knights silently watched his meltdown. Blade finally walked over, and patting his leader on the back, murmured sympathetically, "Try again rug muggen. Outten run gruff sug?"

"That would probably be wise," Meta Knight agreed tersely. "Seeing as how this blasted piece of steel alloy is going to be nothing but chunks of burning metal in around sixty seconds."

As he spread his wings and grabbed Kirby and Sailor Dee, Meta Knight kicked through the front window of the ship and flew towards the water, followed closely by the other Meta-Knights, which just jumped from the ship towards the ocean.

Unfortunately, he had misjudged when the ship would blow up, and they were not far enough away when it did. The explosion knocked them unconscious and sent them into the water.

The last thing he saw before his eyes drifted shut was all of the strange creatures staring at him over on their massive wooden warship. Oh, this is just perfect, he thought weakly, and then it all went black.

(I know this is a short chapter, but I've had several really long chapters lately so it all balances out. We just might end up with 3 chapters this point instead of 2. I don't really mind, Dreamland is my favorite anyway. Thanks for reading! Vote and comment what you think!)