Heroes of Dreamland Rewritten, Book 1: Stars Amidst Lightning

Chapter 34

Magolor|マホラア

Rubbing my head with a groan, I slowly get up and resume floating above the ground. What I said earlier about this not being my day? Yeah, that was an understatement for the ages. This day very well might be in the top 25 candidates for 'Magolor's Worst Day Ever, Thus Far.'

What all went wrong? Well, let me tell ya. First, Sparky took my ship, as you know. Then, he crashed it into the ground not too far from here, right in the middle of the Whispy Woods, sometime early this afternoon. Thankfully, I got out unscathed, but the Lor sure didn't, and unlike last time she suffered a bad landing onto this particular planet, I don't think I'm gonna be able to get any of the yokels to help me fix her. The Lightning told me he was gonna go set up shop in some northern world and build himself some kind of cloud fortress, and ordered me to try and keep an eye on the heroes for him— apparently now he can see what I see, as creepy as that sounds. Probably has something to do with that little zap he gave me back right before he took over the Lor.

Anyway, after all that happened and he was gone, guess what happened? Yeah, someone goes flying a Warp Star down out of the sky and breaks the sound barrier not far from the ground, making my ears ring for about an hour afterwards. What's worse, I saw Meta-Not up there looking none-too-happy not long after the hotshot went zooming back up into the sky again, although thankfully, he didn't seem to see me. After that, I stuck to hiding here in the Woods, figuring the tree cover can only work for me when it comes to avoiding any heroic types.

The Woods, on the other hand, haven't been any fun either. Between being chased by a bomb-happy horde of Poppy Bros. Juniors, falling in a mud puddle, running straight into more than one tree while fleeing the above-mentioned horde, and getting poked by tons of branches, it's hardly been a good evening. And then I saw Meta-Not wandering through the Woods about an hour ago, right before sunset; he seemed to be looking for something, but I vamoosed in the opposite direction of where he was headed way too quickly to guess at what.

Anyway, at least now my hood and cape are nice and clean again, thanks to the frigid plunge I took straight into the river about fifteen minutes ago, since it was dark and I could hardly see where I was going. Once I got out of the river on the other side, I saw smoke from a fire and decided to get closer, hoping maybe whoever built it had some food I could quietly nab. After all, I haven't eaten since the cup of instant noodles I had for breakfast this morning. Once I got close to the source of the smoke, I climbed up a tree to see what I could see, and quickly noticed Kirby himself and his Waddle Dee pal snoozing under a tree opposite the small campfire from me. Welp, at that point I'd found everybody except the overweight, underbrained monarch. Unfortunately, the sight of the two hero-puffs surprised me so much that I fell out of the tree right onto my face.

Again, this really hasn't been a great day for me. At least it can only go up from here, right? I hope?

After shaking off the numerous tiny Planet Popstars that are cheerfully circling my vision after my nasty fall, I go to quietly float far, far away from the pink bottomless pit, only to have a feminine, rather-cute voice grunt right behind me, "Put your gloves up where I can see them, now."

"Aw, meep," I mutter and seriously consider trying to run away, but then feel something rather sharp poke me in the back none-too-gently. Throwing my gloves up, I spin around and come face to face with—

Some girl Waddle Dee? With a pink flower ribbon and matching cape? Who's actually, like, kinda-almost cute? Which is unheard of? On Popstar? Where there are like? No puffball girls at all?

While she glares at me down the blade of her sword, eyes narrowed and a torch clenched in her free glove, all I can process is shock at the pretty-much-miraculous appearance of a female puffball on this planet. I thought girl puffballs of any variety on Popstar only existed in myth— well, actually, that's a lie; they don't even exist there, as far as I know.