Very close to the meeting’s location, two kirbies could be seen walking towards it. They were chatting, discussing various things about the meeting.
“I wonder if we’re late…” said the light blue one with an icy crystal crown.
“We shouldn’t be,” the light pink one with a blue and purple jester hat and a mirror headband said. She looked into the distance. “That said, I don’t really see many yet at the meeting’s location. I wonder if they all are late or what.”
“Hmm, weird…” said the blue one, thoughtful.
“Hey! Anny! Clare!” said someone else who was not too far from the two.
“Huh?” Anny, the light pink one, turned around to look behind her. “Daisy? Grace? I would expect you two to be ahead of us.”
“Indeed,” said Daisy, the light orange kirby with an orange and red jester hat who had originally called the other two, “ideally I would want to already be at the meeting point. But I had never studied the bushes of Green Greens before, and so I calculated the time I would need to properly study them, and came to the conclusion that I had enough time to do it and still arrive at the meeting on time, so I went for it.”
“…Seriously?” Anny was baffled. “Studying bushes of a simple grassland?”
“It’s not just any grassland!” Daisy argued. “Green Greens is THE grassland! There are numerous theories that the first bushes and greens of this planet were all born here, and then spread across all of it, so studying them is key to figuring out the growth of Popstar!”
“…Yeah, I’m not interested,” Anny said, unamused.
“But I am!” Clare, the light blue kirby next to Anny, was indeed very interested in what Daisy was saying, even though she couldn’t exactly understand most of it.
“Ah, of course you are, Clare,” Anny said, more unamused than ever. “But look, we don’t have time to listen to Daisy’s rambles, we have a meeting to attend. So, let’s go.”
“Oh, right!” Clare quickly phased out of her curious transe, and looked at Anny. “Bye Daisy, bye Grace!”
The two friends walked away together, as they left Daisy and her quiet friend, a lavender kirby with a hat similar to a party popper, behind.
“They don’t understand, Grace, but I’m used to it by now.” Daisy started walking in circles, as she talked to herself. “But indeed, I’m pretty much done with my studies, I just need to find this one type of bush…” She stopped walking, remembering something. “Oh, I believe it grows behind the meeting’s location!” And so she started thinking, “So instead of heading directly there, we could take a different turn and then go behind the house… Perfect! That will do.” She looked at Grace, who hadn’t moved at all. “Let’s go!”
And so Daisy walked in a different direction from the meeting’s location, pretty sure of herself. Grace didn’t say a word, and just followed her friend: she knew that, at the end, she was right, and the two wouldn’t be late to the meeting.
Meanwhile, Anny and Clare continued their walk towards the meeting, but Clare couldn’t help but be curious about Daisy. She looked back a couple times, trying to find where she was, and if she was finally going to the meeting. Anny, on the other hand, couldn’t care less, and just wanted to get to the meeting spot already, so she continued walking normally, barely noticing Clare’s movements. At the end, Clare found nothing about her orange friend, and got impatient.
“Where do you think Daisy went off to?” she asked Anny.
“What do you mean?” Anny was confused by the sudden question.
“I thought she would eventually follow us, since she’s also coming to the meeting…”
“She said she was going to study those stupid brushes still, remember? She’s just doing that right now, I bet.”
“Maybe.” Clare looked up. “But she wouldn’t ever be late for it…”
“Yeah, but she has tim—”
“AHHHHHHHHH”
Anny and Clare stopped, as a scream interrupted their talk. Both looked towards where it came from, to their left, and they saw a purple kirby with a parasol running in fear. Not too far away from her, they could also see a yellow kirby fallen on the ground, as if they had just collapsed.
“LARRY NO GO AWAY I JUST WANT TO REACH THE MEETING GO AWAY!!!” Dana continued screaming in fear, as she ran towards the meeting’s location.
Anny and Clare were still confused about what was happening, but couldn’t happen but try to make their own conclusions.
“So she ran away from him?” Anny wondered. “But why? He looks harmless…”
“He’s in pain, let’s help!” said Clare, who ran towards the yellow kirby.
Larry had actually been conscious this whole time, but he was still recovering from his fall, so he couldn’t move quite yet. Poor Dana happened to stumble upon him as she ran away, and that only made her become more nervous. Larry knew that, so deep inside he was happy to make the girl that afraid; that was his goal all along. But Anny and Clare had no idea about his intentions.
Almost recovered, Larry spotted two kirbies heading towards him: Anny and Clare. Before he could even wonder who they were, they started talking to him.
“You okay?” Clare asked, being the first to stop next to him.
Larry thought of answering, but he also didn’t want to waste time talking to the two stranger kirbies. He was already really close to the meeting’s location, and he wanted to find either Dana or Raven to go back to bullying them, or Percy, to get revenge on him. So instead he gathered all his energy, and slowly got up silently, much to Clare’s surprise.
“Oh,” she said as soon as he started getting up, “so you are better?” She was still confused as to why he hadn’t said a thing.
Larry simply ignored her, and after getting up completely ran towards the meeting’s location, without saying a word. When he was almost completely out of their sight, Anny and Clare looked at each other, in confusion.
“How odd…” Anny commented.
“Well, I guess what matters is that he got better!” Clare smiled.
“I guess… But still…”
Anny couldn’t help but find the whole situation strange. A kirby running away from another kirby that was collapsed on the ground; what was going on? She started to ponder, and got a bit lost in her thoughts, but not for more than a couple seconds.
“Anny! Let’s go!”
“Oh!” Anny snapped out from her short trance. “Right, my bad. We have a meeting to attend.”
“Yeah, and those two went towards its direction!” Clare pointed at their route. “We can then find out what all that was about.”
“Oh, you’re right…” Anny realized that Clare had a point; it was a smarter idea to just follow them and find out more about the situation directly at its source.
“So let’s go!” Clare started walking fast towards the meeting’s location, leaving her friend behind.
“Wait up!” Anny followed her, trying to catch up.
Dana continued running: she just wanted to get to the meeting as soon as possible, and either find some place to hide, or someone to help her. She was too focused on her objective, so she wasn’t paying attention to anything else. That’s when…
“GAHHHH!”
Dana had just stumbled upon no one other than Natty, just as she arrived at her destination. Their impact was so strong that Natty was thrown away a couple meters, and fell upside down. Tim and Matt saw what happened, and the former got up and ran in Natty’s direction. Meanwhile, Dana had just lost her balance, but quickly came back to her senses.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed, as she realized what she had done. “I’m so sorry!”
Natty just hadn’t moved ever since the impact. She was slowly building up her anger, extremely annoyed about what had just happened.
“Natty, you okay?” Tim said, as he approached her.
Before he could get closer, however, she jumped and screamed, “HOW DARE YOU?!”
Dana got scared, and hid behind her parasol. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!!” She was trembling.
“NATTY!” Tim screamed, interrupting Natty before she could even continue. “Let her be! It was an accident!” He looked worried, and directed his vision to Dana.
Natty snapped out, and followed Tim’s vision, looking at Dana too. She realized she was panicking due to her, and she felt bad. “Oh my, I’m sorry!” She got closer to Dana in worry. “I shouldn’t have screamed at you like that.”
“Ahh…” Dana was still very scared, but as Natty approached her, she started to notice she truly meant no harm, and slowly started to become calmer.
“Are you calmer now? Again,” Natty looked down, “sorry, I sometimes snap like that…”
“Yeah…” Dana peaked from behind her parasol. “I’m better now—”
“There you are!”
Dana suddenly was back to square one: scared and trembling. The voice she had just heard was none other than Larry’s. He had found her, and couldn’t be happier.
Natty, Matt and Tim spotted Larry, as he approached them.
“Who… Who are you?” asked Natty, with a bold face.
“I’m Larry,” he replied, not paying much attention to the others. “Now get away from Dana.”
“Why should we?” Matt asked, as he flew and landed right next to Natty, with an angry face.
“Just do it, okay?” Larry answered, annoyed. “I don’t need to waste my time with you three, I just want Dana.”
“Look,” Natty said, “we’re just here for this meeting, and I assume you two are too. So if anything, we should all stay together.”
“Ah, right, meeting.” Larry remembered. “Whatever, I already got one of them, now—”
“Stop right there.”
Larry was interrupted by someone who approached him from behind. He recognized the voice and looked back, only to see Yan pointing his katana right towards his face, with a serious stare. Larry flinched.
“You came here for the meeting, not to continue your bullying feats.” Yan thrusted his blade even closer to Larry’s face. “So leave Dana alone and just head inside the house. Now,” he said with a cold stare.
Larry, much like minutes earlier, felt fear, and also felt powerless. That kirby, Yan, looked like a very skilled ninja, that could slice him in half if he needed to. And so, despite not wanting to deep inside, he gave in. “Alright, alright. I will head inside.”
And so Larry did as he said, and moved past Dana, Natty, Matt and Tim, and headed inside the house next to them. With no sight of Larry anymore, Dana started to calm down yet again, with some help from Natty.
“Okay… You better for reals now?” Natty asked her.
“Yeah… I believe so… But…”
“I apologize for interrupting,” Yan interjected, “but I would like for us to enter the house as well. I would like to start organizing the meeting.”
“Ah, so it was you that invited us?” Matt wondered.
“No,” Yan answered, “but I am helping who invited you, and so is my best friend, Percy.”
“I see,” said Natty.
“At any rate, we better get inside…” He looked at Natty. “But you, beige one, stays outside.”
“Me?” Natty was confused. “Why?”
“You just showed everyone you have a good heart, all things considered.” Yan looked around. “At any rate, just stay here and guide anyone you see that may be lost. I will be inside with all the others, taking care of Dana, and making sure no one else will cause trouble.”
“Well,” Natty looked at Matt, and whispered to Yan, “he really is the only one from us other than that guy you sent inside that you should try to keep away from trouble.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong.” Yan looked backwards. “You all can come now!” he shouted.
And so, five kirbies came in his direction. They were the three that were initially following him, plus Larry’s friends, Leo and Luke.
“Let’s head inside,” Yan continued.
And so, everyone but Natty followed them, and headed inside.
Natty looked at them, until the last one got inside. “Alright,” she thought. “Now I wonder how many are left…”
20 Times Kirby! 