As Anny slowly went down on her floating mirror, she looked forward deep in thoughts. The last few minutes had been pretty chaotic for her, and she was still processing everything that had happened, and was also wondering deep inside if everything had really been true.
“Man… If I am a clone… I guess that means I am not exactly myself… Oh my…”
Anny really was incapable of thinking of anything else. Not even the high height she was in was enough to make her think of maybe her safety. She just continued thinking about those revelations.
“And this is real somehow… It has all been in my brain… I think? What if that crazy jester actually managed to create a fake memory? After all he did have a memory machine, hmm…”
Indeed, one thing she was still thinking about was if it had all been true. After all, not only were the things revealed to her very wild, the circumstances were also fairly odd. She was trying to figure out what to even do with all that information, real or not.
“Honestly, true or not, this is so crazy… If I try to tell anyone about it, they will think I went mad, and if they somehow believe it, they will go crazy too… So yeah, I best not tell anyone about it. Well, everyone is asleep right now anyway, so it should be eas—”
“Anny!”
Anny heard someone calling her and looked down, where the voice had come from. She realized she was already very close to the ground, because she could spot the house and someone right outside it looking in her direction: Clare.
Having pretty much reached the ground, Anny jumped from her mirror and asked, “Clare?! Wh-What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same!” Clare said with a smile. “What were you doing?”
“Well, huh…”
Anny wasn’t sure what to do. On one hand, lying to her best friend would be a dishonest move. On the other hand, telling her the truth would probably just cause even more confusion.
“Just tell me, Anny! You can trust me!” Clare said, anxious.
Anny looked at Clare, then said, “Eh… Clare, I will be honest… I’m not sure if you would like to know.”
Clare was confused. “Why not? Were you doing nasty things?!”
Anny shook her head, embarrassed, “No, no! It’s just…” She stopped to think of what to say, but couldn’t. “Man, it’s so hard to explain…”
“Hard or not, now you made me curious!” Clare said with a smile. “So tell me!”
“Sigh, I made her curious…” Anny thought. “Now it’s over. How careless of me…”
“Clare,” Anny started to speak up, “for your own sake, and everyone else’s, I better not. Sorry.”
“But if you don’t tell me now, I won’t be able to sleep…” Clare sad with a very sad face.
“Ugh,” Anny thought.
“Pretty please!” Clare said, staring at Anny with a pleading face. “I won’t tell anyone!”
“…Really? Because this is a big secret…”
“SECRET?!” Hearing that, Clare became even more excited, and started jumping. “TELL ME! TELL ME!”
“Man, I am digging my own grave…” Anny said quietly to herself, facepalming. Realizing she didn’t have much else to do, she looked at Clare and said, “…Alright, Clare, I will tell you.”
“YAY!” Clare celebrated.
“BUT you will have to not tell this to anyone else,” Anny said, pointing at Clare. “Got it?”
Clare saluted Anny. “Got it!”
“Alright.” Anny took a quick pause to take a deep breath, and she finally started, “So, huh, a voice called me out, and told me to go to Bubbly Clouds. So I did.”
“Wait… Isn’t Bubbly Clouds high in the sky? How did you reach there?” Clare wondered.
“Oh… I rode a floating mirror upwards until I reached it,” Anny explained.
“Oh, yay, fun!” Clare said, smiling, very excited. “Your powers are just so much fun Anny!”
“But yeah,” Anny decided to just continue, “anyway, there some… weird jester dude called Marx told me a story— Hmm.”
Anny interrupted herself as she had an insight. If she had truly unlocked some memories thanks to the story, and they weren’t fake ones by Marx, Clare would unlock them too if told the story. So she decided to try that.
Noticing that Anny had stopped talking, Clare called her attention, “What’s up, Anny?”
Hearing Clare, Anny said, “Huh, well…” She wondered how she would start telling Clare that story in an attempt to restore her memories as well, and once she had an idea, she continued, “Clare, what is your earliest memory?”
“Huh?” Clare found that question random, but answered anyway, “Well, I dunno why you are asking, but remember I told you once? I woke up surrounded by Chilly friends in Float Islands!” she said smiling.
“Right, right.” Anny decided to press further, “Don’t you remember anything before that?”
Clare thought for a bit, then said, “Huh, no?”
“Do you remember meeting some purple round guy with a jester hat with some big, claw-like wings that had some colored crystal things on them?”
“…What? No—”
Before she could finish, Clare had a small insight. A flash of memory had come back to her.
“Wait, actually…” She put her hands on her head. “Maybe?! Huh…”
“Oh man, is it also working with you?” Anny wondered.
“…What is working?” Clare asked, looking at Anny. “What is this, Anny?”
“I told you, Clare, this is complicated. Do you still want me to continue?”
“Well, now if you don’t, I will die wondering what this is!” Clare said, curious.
“…Right, right,” Anny said, agreeing with her friend. She realized there was no helping it, so she explained, “So, basically, I am unlocking some memories in your brain, and this also happened to me. So, let me continue.”
“Ohh, exciting!” Clare said, very interested. “Okay, you can continue.”
“So, this jester is named Marx. He asked his friend, Simis, a green and purple simirror, to capture Kirby. He put Kirby inside the glass tube of a weird machine…” Anny hesitated for a moment, but knew she had to continue, so she did, “…a cloning machine.”
“Huh?!” Clare exclaimed, in surprise.
“And said cloning machine made some clones of Kirby, but they weren’t perfect clones: they were twenty transparent clones, and a white one, Panee.” Anny once again stopped, hesitating to continue, but she had to continue, so she said, “We were some of these clones, Clare.”
Clare was frozen. Anny noticed that, but she was also lost in her own thoughts, so she simply continued saying, “I don’t know more, but this all is probably why Kirby was confused about us existing, and why we have permanent abilities or whatever that was. And also—”
“WHAT?!”
Clare had finally come back to her senses… barely. Still in shock, she said, “I… I… now have… these memories… what…”
“Oh,” Anny looked at Clare, “so you did remember!”
“Yes…” Clare slowly said, still in shock. “They had been here all this time?!” She immediately wondered, confused. “How did I forget?!”
“Oh yeah,” Anny started explaining, “all this is the fault of a memory machine Marx has. He—”
“Was that the gun thing he attacked us with?!” Clare asked, interrupting Anny.
“…Yeah.”
“Welp, this is legit,” Anny thought. “Clare remembered something that I also remember now without me specifically telling her about it. Unless there is some sorcery in this, this all has to be true.”
“Oh man…” Clare started saying with long pauses. “This… This…”
“Yeah Clare, I know, it’s a lot to take in—”
“This is so funny!” Clare said with a big smile.
Seeing the opposite reaction of what she expected, Anny could only say, “…WHAT?!”
“Yeah, what a weird story!” Clare laughed, and continued, “So we are clones of Kirby, then we got attacked by this weird jester and lost our memories, and now one year later we are remembering? It’s funny…”
“…Clare, what?!” Anny said, still baffled at Clare’s reaction. “You think it’s funny to be a clone?!”
“I mean, sometimes I wondered where I came from, but I had no clue; I thought I had just appeared one day… but this is much funnier than I expected!” Clare said, in high spirits. “In fact, I do find it funny how we are clones of Kirby, but we look nothing like him! And same as everyone else! Different colors, voices, and genders!”
“Huh… You do have a point…” Anny said, thinking about it. “I guess that has to do with us being ‘born’ transparent?”
“Maybe?” Clare answered, unsure.
Anny yawned. “Anyway, I’m so sleepy now, and I guess speculating about it will get us nowhere.”
“True…” Clare agreed.
“I’m going to head inside and go to sleep,” Anny said, walking towards the house’s door entrance.
Seeing Anny entering the house, Clare decided to follow her, although, unlike her friend, she wasn’t sleepy at all.
“My head is so full now…” Clare thought, as she entered the house as well. “I cannot stop thinking about this…”
As Anny and Clare quietly walked inside the house, heading to their sleep corners, Anny slowly whispered to Clare.
“Clare… please… remember… don’t tell anyone else about it…”
“…Okay!” Clare whispered back.
The two walked and observed the other kirbies inside sleeping peacefully, although Clare noticed that Anny’s eyes were barely open. It was clear that she was having trouble keeping them open.
“You reacted calmly, all things considered… but… I doubt… the others would…” Anny continued whispering to Clare, even slower than earlier.
As she reached her corner, Anny crouched and immediately lay down. She turned towards Clare in an attempt to continue talking to her, but it was in vain. She was so tired that she instead fell asleep.
After removing her hat and grabbing her Chilly plush, Clare realized that Anny had gotten quiet. Confused, she called her friend out, “Anny?”
With no reply, Clare directly looked at Anny and saw that she had already fallen asleep, and was even snoring.
“Oh, so she already slept…” she thought.
Clare envied Anny. She knew she needed to fall asleep like her friend, but she simply couldn’t anymore. That whole story had completely made her lose her sleepiness, as she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Wanting to talk to someone, but not having anyone, she instead turned her attention to her Chilly plush, Caio, and started talking to it, whispering.
“Caio… I need to sleep, but I just can’t! What do I do?”
After some seconds of silence, as if the plush had replied, Clare replied back, “Oh, why? Well, I just learned something big about me, Anny and the others, and I just cannot stop thinking about it!”
Clare stopped once again, and continued after some seconds, “True, thinking about it won’t change a thing… But it’s just…” Clare shook her head. “Ugh, I just need to talk with someone about this! Talking to Anny wasn’t enough and…” She looked at Caio. “Yes, I love talking to you, Caio, but I wanted to talk with other kirbies about it!” Clare looked towards the others in the room. “I know Anny told me to keep it a secret, but maybe it’s fine to talk with just Daisy about it…”
She stopped again, and a couple seconds after nodded, and said, “True! Right now everyone is sleeping, so I can only talk to them tomorrow…” She closed her eyes and yawned. “And it will go by faster if I go sleep.” She opened her eyes. “So it’s decided!” She looked at Caio and smiled. “Thanks Caio!”
Realizing that, Clare lay down holding Caio, and closed her eyes, ready to sleep. Before falling asleep, she thought, “It’s like I was talking to the real Caio…”
20 Times Kirby! 