🌸Lost in Memories🌸

Chapter 6: Melancholic Hope

Taranza caught himself with a web and stared back to Queen Sectonia, his eyes still overflowing with tears. Flying towards the flower monstrosity he saw Kirby, ready to confront her. Looking around, Taranza noticed King Dedede attempting to escape as well. He quickly floated over, giving Dedede quite the scare. "Don't worry, I'm here to help." he reassured the King while wiping away his tears. "Let's help Kirby out as best as we can." he said before grabbing Dedede and trying to float towards Queen Sectonia, which proved to be quite the challenge with Dedede being much heavier when lifted personally. As soon as they got there, Kirby had already seemingly defeated the queen. He happily jumped out, not noticing the vine that was approaching.

"I'm not done with you yet!"

It instantly wrapped around Kirby, destroying his copy ability and making him completely unable to fight. Trying to escape, Kirby struggled but still wasn't able to get away. Taranza swung Dedede around before throwing him towards Kirby. Dedede immediately grabbed his hammer and hit Kirby on the head, pushing him out of the vine's grasp.

"What?! What are you doing?!"

Taranza quickly grabbed a miracle fruit from Queen Sectonia, getting ready to throw it over to Kirby as well.

"You...! How dare you?!"

Still fighting his tears, Taranza noticed Dedede's nod and he threw the miracle fruit at Kirby, who Dedede had also just thrown towards him. Upon eating the fruit, Kirby got up again and jumped up to face Queen Sectonia. In her rage, she knocked Dedede off the platform Kirby had fought on, hoping he'd focus on helping him first. "Kirby!" Taranza yelled. "Take care of Sectonia, I'll save Dedede." Kirby just nodded and turned towards Queen Sectonia as he flew down to catch up with Dedede. With the help of a few webs he managed to catch him and carried him to stable ground to stand on. Looking back up to Kirby and Sectonia, all Taranza saw was a huge laser, that slowly began getting smaller smaller, then disappearing. "What...?" he flew back upwards, arriving the exact moment Kirby fired the laser back at Queen Sectonia. Alongside her mortifying scream, he witnessed her entire form slowly getting incinerating by the beam until the remains finally exploded into a bunch of flower petals.

Taranza sunk onto the platform and reached his hand out, only for a single pink petal to land on his hand. He stared at it with his vision getting progressively more blurry. Through his tears he whispered with a shaky voice

"Sectonia, I... I'm sorry...I am so so sorry.. "

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"Shortly after that, I figured out that it was the mirror that had been corrupting her. It was still used as a prison for some... vengeful, dangerous individual... I felt...crushed. If it weren't for me, Sectonia... she'd be alive. She was killed because I didn't know what I was going." Taranza's words drowned in his sobbing. ". . .you did what you had to do. If you hadn't helped Kirby she would've destroyed all of Popstar." Susie stated in an attempt to lighten his spirit. "That's not it!" he screamed. "Sectonia had to die because of my mistakes! I got her that mirror, I failed to see that she needed help, I wasn't there for her when she needed me the most! She only wanted to make others happy...she never did anything wrong, she just wanted the best for everyone! Meanwhile I..." Susie tried to calm him down "Don't blame yourself. You didn't know any better-" "But I should have! I should've known better, I should've done something sooner, I should've been more supportive... I haven't done anything right, all I ever did was cause suffering! So why did she have to pay the price for it?! Why did she suffer all the consequences of my failures?! Why...." He buried his face in his hands. "Why did I get to live, but she didn't?!"

Susie grabbed two of his hands "Don't you dare say that. That is never a healthy way to think about it. It's clear that you've been living with this emotional baggage for a while with no real option to just vent. But that changes today." She gave him a long, welcoming hug. "I know it's tough and I'm surprised you made it this far without breaking down sooner, but we're here for you now. Magolor and I, and I'm sure even Metaknight would all be happy to help you. So if you need to cry, just let it out. I'll stay right here and listen and help wherever I can. I'm 100% certain Sectonia would hate to see you beat yourself up about something you couldn't have known." Taranza hugged her back and for the first time in forever just cried.

After a while of hugging and sobbing Susie broke the silence. "May I ask why you are joining forces with Kirby again?" "Of course." Taranza replied sniffling. "I need to get to that altar. If Hyness was able to resurect an ancient evil, maybe it's possible to bring her back to life... maybe I can make it right this time... or at least say goodbye properly. That's my hope at least. In a sense I guess I'm just hoping for a miracle... but even then, I have to try. I owe that to Sectonia. I know, it sounds stupid." "No, not at all. It's a nice thing to hope for..." "Hey Susie?" "Yes?" "You sounded like something similar happened to you, earlier. Is that the case or am I imagining things?" Susie looked up to the sky. "That is indeed factual. My father also got corrupted, except it was the side effect of his attempts to save me. He got destroyed alongside the machines he used. And I had a hard time dealing with that as well. Now I continue the business for him. I'm sure that's what he would've wanted." "Then... let's help each other out. That's what friends do after all."