(Note: This is a side story, and as such, is narrated in first person and is complementary to the main story.)
All of us, still confused and unsure what to do, just stayed there staring at the transparent kirbies, once again not knowing how to even react to that wild situation.
As they properly woke up, they started talking:
“Ugh, my body hurts…”
“Huh… What the?”
“Why… why am I here?”
“I’m so confused…”
“What is going on?”
Yeah, all twenty of the transparent clones started to talk at the same time. Funnily enough, even though they looked identical to each other, somehow they each had a slightly different voice, but, unlike the voice of the white kirby, their voices sounded way weaker… not sure how to best explain. It kinda felt like their voices weren’t really complete voices, if that even makes sense?
Anyway, with them all talking at the same time non-stop, it was extremely noisy, even for me. And, surely enough, Marx didn’t take long to run out of patience…
“SHUT UP!!!!”
…That was what Marx shouted as loud as he could. Likely out of fear, every single kirby stopped talking pretty much the moment he shouted, and they all looked at Marx.
“…Thank you. Anyway, I see you are all confused, and I guess I can explain like I just explained to the white one… The thing is…” Marx took a deep breath, and then started saying, “You are all clones of Kirby! Somehow…”
“Kirby? Who’s Kirby?” one of the clones asked.
Marx realized they didn’t know, and said, “Ah, right… That pink dude over there.”
Marx pointed towards me, and I awkwardly waved at them. Thankfully for me, Marx didn’t notice that the glass tube already had some cracks in the glass. Also, I realized that these kirbies really didn’t have my memories or something like that, otherwise they would know who I am, naturally.
“But… You said clones?” another clone started to wonder. “Then…”
Marx looked at them and said, before they could properly finish, “Yeah, I know what you will say: then why do you look different from him? Well, I’m not sure of that yet, but… I’m not happy about that!”
“Huh?” Simis said, sounding surprised.
“If I used a cloning machine, I was expecting perfect clones of Kirby!” Marx said, angry. “Not a bunch of transparent ones and a white one!”
“But Marx, they are still kirbies…” Simis said to Marx, with a sad tone.
“True, but they aren’t Kirbies with capital K!” Marx shouted at Simis. “They are not as strong as I hoped!”
“But, Marx…” Simis tried to say something, still sad.
But Marx didn’t let him talk. “Simis, really, shut up! Let me be! I have high standards for quality, and all I mean is that I will throw away these clones and try cloning Kirby again to see if we can manage to make perfect clones this time around! These ones are imperfect, and probably bad!”
“Throw away?!” Simis said, shocked, and then continued, mad, “Marx, they aren’t objects! They are living beings!”
Marx stopped for some seconds, likely thinking of what Simis had just said. Then he simply said, “Eh, ok sure, maybe not throw away, but you get what I mean!”
Simis took a break and stopped arguing, but he appeared to be really disappointed with Marx still. He quickly followed up:
“Wait Marx, before you do anything, why don’t we see if these kirbies can be useful in any way?”
“Huh?” Marx didn’t appear to understand.
“You called them imperfect and bad. But just because they look different from Kirby? What if it’s just looks?” Simis wondered.
Marx stopped for a moment, then said out loud, “Huh, true… What if they can still inhale or something…”
Marx looked at all the clones and called their attention, “Hey, you all! Show me your best inhale!”
However, all the clones just looked at each other, likely confused at Marx’s request.
“Inhale?”
“What is that?”
“Huh? How?”
It really appeared that none of them knew what inhaling was, which I found odd. Like, myself and the other kirbies always knew and could do it, it was so second nature to us. Why would it be different for them?
“See, Simis, they are really useless!” Marx said to Simis, disappointed and angry. “They don’t even know what inhaling is!”
“Huh… Interesting…” Simis was really thoughtful. “Then there’s just another possibility…”
“Huh?” Marx wondered.
“Try asking them to just try to do something,” Simis suggested to Marx. “Like using a special power.”
Not sounding confident, Marx said slowly, “Eh… Ok…”
Marx looked at the clones and said, “Ok, you don’t know what inhaling is… But can any of you do anything else? Like a power?”
I found that request odd. If they couldn’t inhale, that meant they couldn’t copy abilities either, and thus how would they even get any kind of power?
And, indeed, at first all kirbies just stood there confused like before. However, soon something happened.
“Err, I think… I know something?”
The one talking was the white kirby. It looked like they were trying to do something.
“Huh? What is it?” Marx asked them.
And, finally, the white kirby managed to bring out some sort of scanner visor… One exactly like the one from the Copy Copy Ability.
“WHAT?!” I thought to myself, really confused. What was going on?! We hadn’t seen that kirby copy Copy, so how did they have it?
Anyway, after having the scanner out for a couple seconds the white kirby put it back. They looked as confused as me, and said, “Huh… What was that?”
“No way…” Simis said… “The Copy Copy Ability?”
“…Copy Copy?” Marx looked at Simis and asked him, with a confused face.
“The Copy Ability called Copy!” Simis shouted.
“Copy Ability?” asked the white kirby.
Due to their confusion, Simis started to explain to the white kirby what Copy Abilities are… Somehow, he knew a lot about them. Anyway, noticing they were all distracted, I went back to continuing hitting the glass to free myself, as I had been doing slowly all this time. I kicked it once, then punched it, then kicked it again… When…
CRACK!
…Finally, the glass completely shattered into pieces! I jumped off the machine and landed on the ground, free!
But that was when I realized… Everyone was looking at me. I mean, that made a huge noise!
“W-Wait, how did you escape?!” Marx said, looking at me in shock.
“It’s made of glass, duh, I just hit it a couple times until it broke!” I said, pointing out the obvious.
Realizing said obvious, Marx said, “Oh, true.” But then, probably finally realizing that I had escaped, he looked at Simis and said, “Anyway, huh, Simis! Capture him back!”
“But Marx, the glass broke, and I won’t be able to contain him for too long…” Simis argued against.
“What do you mean?!” Marx argued back, super angry.
The two started to argue with each other, completely forgetting about me… Luckily for me. While the two argued, I went in the direction of the clones. I was still weirded out by the situation, but I couldn’t contain my curiosity, and I just knew what I had to do next.
“Huh, hello…”
I quickly said hi to… well, my clones. It was weird, but I had something to do.
“You all, come with me,” I said to them. “Marx is evil, I bet he will treat you badly. And besides, you’re clones of me. I know you better than anyone.”
They all looked confused at first, but then appeared to agree, as they slowly nodded to me. However, before I could continue talking to them…
“Hold it!”
Marx and Simis finally noticed what I was doing.
“You all will stay with me!” Marx shouted to the clones.
“What Marx?” I said. “Didn’t you say these transparent kirbies were useless?”
Hearing me say that, Marx then said, “Well, huh… True!” He looked at the white clone and said, “Yeah, huh, white one, you come here with me!”
Surprised by Marx’s call, they simply murmured, “Errr…”
“Here you idiot!” Marx shouted to them, very impatient.
Confused and likely scared, the white kirby went in Marx’s direction. Now only the transparent clones were next to me.
I looked back to them and said, “You all come with me.”
“No, Kirby! You are coming with me!” Marx said, glaring at me.
“What?” I said, confused.
Still glaring at me, Marx explained, “I can’t let you escape like that! I want to clone you again!”
Simis sighed. He said, disappointed, “Marx, please, I just told you that I thin—”
“Shut up, Simis!” Marx shouted, now glaring at Simis. “I will capture Kirby!”
“I… I won’t let you!”
I said that and got in a battle position. I wouldn’t let myself get caught easily again.
Surprisingly enough, once I got in that position, the transparent kirbies started to follow, one after another. And soon, it was twenty one of us staring at Marx, as if ready to start a big battle against him.
And Marx, naturally, was in shock. Although the transparent kirbies appeared to lack any sort of skill, I mean, twenty one people staring at you, as if they were about to beat you up, would scare anyone, I think.
Amid his shock, Marx started to look around, desperate. He managed to find something and quickly grabbed it: it looked like some sort of gun. Before any of us could even react, he pointed it at us and fired it in our direction.
I tried to dodge it, but in vain: I was directly hit. I was thrown backwards due to the impact of the shot, as my head started to hurt really bad and I…
…I simply blacked out.
20 Times Kirby! 