The last Jambastion is destroyed by Mirror Kirby piercing its core with the Dragoon, finally ending this battle. Everyone can finally rest.
The battle took a little longer than they thought. After Mirror Kirby destroyed his first Jambastion, the other Jambastions became very wary of him and did everything to not let him approach. This forced all the ships plus the Landias to do all they could to gather the attention of the Jambastions one at a time to leave an opening for Mirror Kirby to approach and hit. At the same time, they did their best to make Mirror Kirby's job easier by trying to destroy some Jambastions too. In the end, four Jambastions were destroyed by them, while Mirror Kirby destroyed the others.
They still lost the Death Egg. Susie won't be happy... The other ships also all received more or less damage. Paint Roller's ship is the one that received the most, the guys clearly not used to operate one. It's even a miracle that their ship is still holding despite all the holes on its hull. Maybe because it's a painted ship?
Now, everything depends on Magolor and his friends.
Lockwar still keeps an eye on the Jambandra Base, just in case the Jambastion Cult decides to send something else against them now that all the Jambastions have been destroyed. But, suddenly, he hears the sound of someone slicing something behind him, and he, along with everyone in the bridge with him, turns toward the origin of the noise and spots a hole in space that was definitely not here before.
And coming out of it is none other than the Pink Devil himself: Galacta Knight.
Panic immediately appears on the bridge.
"Galacta Knight?!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! That's Galacta Knight!"
"He will kill us all!"
"Abandon ship!"
Lockwar, despite the intense fear he feels, takes the rocket launcher from his back and points it at the knight. "I warn you, I will fight to the end!" he yells, but before he knows it, his rocket launcher is slashed in two, and he can only look with wide eyes at the front half of his weapon falling on the floor, Galacta now standing in front of him.
"Listen," then says Galacta Knights. "I don't want to fight. I'm at your side."
"What?! Are you ki-"
"I don't want to see this universe destroyed! But now, the situation has evolved to the point that your heroes will have to fight father no matter what happens!"
This stops everyone on the bridge, the room suddenly as calm as a dead... and as cold.
"What do you mean?" asked Gandaro, terrified. "The heroes haven't been able to stop Hyness in time?"
"Worse. The Jamba Heart absorbed Hyness, and he's now merging with father. Now, either they merge totally and they break out of the Jamba Heart, or Kirby and the others stop it, but destroy the Heart. In both cases, father gets free."
...
One of the mages on the bridge faints.
"This is why I am here. You are linked to the other ships, so you will be able to warn them. Also..." Galacta throws a pink heart at Gandaro. "Spread it to everyone. It is very important. We will end father's threat once and for all!" Before the mages can ask anything, he turns around and slices a new hole. "Now I must go. There are more places for me to travel to," he finishes before jumping in the hole, leaving some confused mages.
But he has no time to answer all their questions. He doesn't know how long they have, and from what he could feel, there's still A LOT of people for him to meet, including some in another dimension. Thanks to his master of the Heart Matter helped by the power of the pink heart, he can feel where are all the friends made by the heroes, and which ones have received a heart. Thanks to it, he can feel a lot of those last ones mainly in the Jambandra Base and on some near planets, while he feels the first ones a little everywhere.
Maybe he should first warn the ones in the Jambandra Base to evacuate... Hopefully, the battle against the God will remain in the other dimension, but it's not impossible that the God passes one of the many forming rifts, or even creates one himself, bringing the fight near the giant space station. And if this happens, then there are high chances that the station ends up damaged. He's not called the Destroyer of Worlds for nothing! Anything near the fight, planets, stars, and whatever else, could be destroyed in the fire of the action! Anybody that won't participate in the fight must move away at least a couple of light years!
Scratch that, they must move away at least a couple of hundred light years.
No... Let's go with a couple of thousand. Yes, thousand is better.
The best would be to evacuate to another universe, but not everyone can open portals like him, so...
No choice, they have to do with what they have and hope to survive. Meanwhile, Galacta will do his job, warn the friends in Jambandra Base to get out of there if they want to live, then go to the place where he can feel the most friends to spread the power of the pink heart.
This will be hard to choose, he can feel three planets with a huge quantity of friends. Why do they have so many friends?! It's ridiculous!
At least, against the God, it will be for the better.
Sweetie Belle comes out of the rift with her friends, and she lands on the familiar solid space of the other dimension. It doesn't take long to see, and even feel that the dimension is on the brink of collapsing, and for good this time. Because of what's happening with the Jamba Heart, the energies of the already fragile dimension are going absolutely wild, and some rifts and cracks can be seen opening here and there. It's pure chaos, and it gets worse.
Thankfully, no Doomers in sight, Magolor having told that most of them perished at the first collapse after the destruction of the Master Crown. However, the place is now being filled with negativity, to the point that if it wasn't for the power of the Heart Spear Pieces in them, they would probably start to become as if they were possessed by a Jamba Heart Piece.
"A dying dimension full of negativity, perfect place for the Final Battle," says Magolor.
"So, we collect 120 pink hearts..." starts Bandana Dee.
"118. Remember, Kirby and Sweetie Belle already possess each a heart," interrupts Meta Knight.
"Right. 118 pink hearts, we fight 4 overpowered evil parallel counterparts, we defeat a second time Hyness who will be overpowered too and even more crazy..."
"And we finally fight the Dark God himself," finishes Sweetie Belle. "Let's go. Who knows how much time we have left before Hyness merges with him."
Following Sweetie's words, they all start advancing, the path, at first, revealing to be made of space blocks of various shapes moving up to lead them to the next part.
"We still don't know who and what was that butterfly guy," then says Dedede. "Seriously, he just came out of nowhere to 'judge' us." He looks at Magolor. "Any idea, egg boy?"
"And he said that he was watching Kirby since the first day!" shouts the Parasol Waddle Dee as he looks left and right in fear. "To think that someone like him was here all this time..."
"The butterfly," says Cape Knight. "There was always a butterfly near Kirby."
"No idea of what he was," answers Magolor.
"He was feeling like... Death..." says Dark Meta Knight.
At this moment, they reach a wall that rises when they approach, revealing a black door that they pass.
"Maybe Galacta Knight knew. We should have asked while we had the occasion," says Susie.
"Then we will ask him once we see him again," says Marx.
"By the way, this Morpho Knight called Kirby 'Son of the Void'. Is 'the Void' a name for the Dark God?" asks Broom Sunglasses.
"Why would he have a name like 'the Void'?" asks Dedede.
"Galacta Knight also called himself the 'first son of the God creator Void' while we fought him," says Adeleine.
Magolor starts writing something on a paper. "So, the Dark God's name would be Void? Gandaro will love it. Each piece of information about our past and the God that we find is like a treasure for him. Mmh... Void... Funny, it reflects Zero, both representing the nothingness. We can say that it would be logic since Zero was a creation of Void, but then why weren't the other creations possessing such names? Was Zero a special case? And... Why naming himself Void? He is not 'nothing'. He is the Creator, and also the Destructor. This has nothing to do with the void."
"Again, something we will have to ask Galacta Knight next time," says Susie. "Right now, we should start to run, a part of the ceiling is about to crush us."
With some swearing, the members of the group about to be crushed by the section of the ceiling dropping are able to escape just in time. Paying more attention, the heroes then see how the path has many such sections, either of floor or ceiling, lowering and rising periodically, some of them in a way that would crush them if they aren't careful.
And of course, the path is full of gaps and of those fake beings (Waddle Dees and others) that Sweetie Belle, Kirby, Dedede, Bandana Dee, and Meta Knight encountered before when chasing the Doomers. However, those beings are far more hostile than previously, with clear intention to hurt, and even kill.
"Well, at least, we won't get bored," says Marx with a laugh.
It doesn't take long to find the first pink heart behind some big metal blocks, then a second at the end of a small secondary path where a big part of the floor at the start is rapidly rising and lowering. For this one, Knuckle Joe grabs Ribbon and uses all his strength to throw her rapidly through the path before it closes. Ribbon absorbs the heart, then bounces on the wall before coming back as rapidly as the path reopens. A third heart is then found when they press a switch, causing to open a door, but also a trapdoor causing the heart to start to fall into a gap, forcing someone, Daroach with his teleportation, to quickly act before it disappears in the darkness of the pit. Daroach then quickly teleports back before a big space block could fall on him and bring him in the pit too.
Again, fate has decided, that to collect the heart, they will have to take some risks and/or accomplish things to reach them, exactly like for the Energy Spheres, or any other collectible before... Or maybe it's the Dark God, Void, who was somehow able to influence things from inside his weakened seal so the pink hearts weren't easy to access.
Not long after obtaining this third heart, they reach another black door leading to a path with less moving sections. However, dozens of Shotzos, of all kinds, are everywhere, firing at them constantly. Some of the Shotzos are on blocks above pits, so those ones are easy to deal with, but most of them are on solid ground, so this leaves the heroes no choice but to try to avoid the various and many projectiles fired at them, or for the ones who can, to protect themselves with shields, mirrors, or whatever else.
It doesn't take long for them to find a first heart just in front of a Volttzo, the cannon firing at it constantly, leaving little room for someone to reach it, absorb the heart, and leave before they get electrified. The second heart is much more dangerous to get, the thing being in the middle of a field of Shotzos. But this gets really dangerous when they spot one of those cannons where they have to light the wick to use it to propel themselves. The problem is that the cannon is pointed right at a long path constantly opening and closing, meaning that if they light the wick too soon or too late, then the cannon will not fire in time, and whoever will be fired from a cannon will be crushed. So this force them to calculate the time it takes for the cannon to fire and the time it takes to reach the opening and closing path.
Susie is the one doing the calcule in her mind before she says "Ok, I think I have it. Now, who volunteers?"
"Googoo! Googoo! Googoo!" shouts Gooey as he raises his tongue.
Susie nods. "Alright. Then enter the cannon and prepare yourself. Burning Leo, be ready to light the wick when I tell you."
Burning Leo nods at her before he walks toward the end of the wick while Gooey enters the cannon. Susie starts looking at the path, watching opening, closing, opening... closing... opening... clo-
"Now!"
At her signal, Burning Leo breath fire at the wick, lighting it. Everyone (or almost) looks at the cannon or at the path anxiously, hoping that Susie isn't wrong. after a couple of seconds, the cannon fires a little before the path opens again, and Gooey enters it successfully.
Now, has he reached the other end without getting himself crushed?
They don't have to wait for long. After only a few seconds, a black door opens in the air, and Gooey comes out of it safe and sound and very excited. "Googoogoo! Googoo! Goo goo goo!"
"Three hearts?" asks Sweetie Belle.
"Goo!" confirms the blob.
"Yay! This makes it ten!" shouts the filly in joy.
"Only 110 left to go," says Marx.
This stops all cheerings among the heroes, some of them giving Marx deadpan looks and Sweetie Belle saying "Party pooper..."
Kirby gives a sigh followed by a chuckle before he says "Poyopoyo, poyo poy poyopoyo." Don't worry, we will rapidly collect all of them. Of course, almost nobody understands him.
After another black door, they find the next four pink hearts by climbing weird collapsing space towers on their way, the hearts forcing them to make some dangerous detours and lose precious time fighting enemies and avoiding traps to reach them. Two more hearts are found on trap doors, the heroes having to hurry to get them before the trap door could open because of boulders falling on switches. More boulders were falling on the way, slowing the heroes along with the many enemies.
Then comes the path after the next black door, or rather, the lack of path... After said door, they are stopped by a giant pit with a locked door at the other side. However, after a few seconds, wondering what to do, they could see some moving space blocks forming a secondary path leading to further up. But they don't take it, having the feeling that there's at least one pink heart behind the locked door. But where's the key?
Kirby then signs to them before he starts using the energy of the pink heart. Following his lead, they all assemble together to form a very long bridge linking both sides of the pit. As soon as they are stabilised, a Key Dee holding the key of the door appears and starts walking on the formed bridge. With everyone forming the bridge, they have no choice but to leave the Key dee do his thing (besides, one of them breaking the bridge would cause the ones who can't fly to fall in the pit).
Leading the Key Dee to the door is harder than it first appeared, obstacles with spikes appearing on the way to hurt him, forcing them to move down. But more spiked obstacles appear below, so they can't move down too much, and some of the obstacles rising even force them to move back up to not be hurt. This leads the Key Dee to pass through very narrow paths, some of the spikes at the limit of reaching his head.
But the Key Dee eventually reaches the door, ending this stressful moment. Victorious, the Key Dee disappears like he appeared, and thanks to the power of the pink heart, the heroes are transported to the door where they are rewarded with four hearts.
"Are appearing and disappearing Key Dees a normal occurrence, or is this just this dimension?" asks Sweetie Belle.
"It already happened to us a few times in our part of the adventure," says Dedede. "I think it's just a thing of the pink heart to open locked doors missing keys."
With this done, they continue down the path where they end up fighting two Bonkers while a ceiling is slowly lowering down, threatening to crush all of them if they don't beat the two enemies rapidly. Of course, it doesn't take long to eliminate the two Bonkers and open the door to the exit where a last pink heart is waiting before a black door surrounded by trees with leaves forming cubes.
The door leads them right in front of a black and grey version of Whispy Woods with glowing yellow mouth and eyes.
Before the heroes can even prepare themselves, the tree starts inhaling while his roots poke out of the ground to impale them. Acting quickly, they teleport away or start running to the opposite direction to not be eaten.
"The first enemy is a Whispy Woods, of course," says Sweetie Belle. "It's not a proper adventure without an encounter with a Woods."
"We already encountered two Woods in this one!" shouts back Bandana Dee.
Parallel Woods eventually stops inhaling and changes tactic, dropping apples and some Gordos and Blados while continuing to use his roots to attack them. The heroes take this occasion to attack him until he starts inhaling again, inhaling many apples and some Gordos and Blados before spitting them back at the heroes like a machine gun.
In return, the heroes circle the tree to attack him from all sides and avoid being inhaled and the spit projectiles, but the roots still remain a huge threat, especially when Parallel Woods starts using them to sweep the floor and the air like tentacles. But the roots aren't enough, so Parallel Woods starts spinning to spit his projectiles at everyone around him, to great effects thanks to his near perfect accuracy. But this doesn't stop the heroes from attacking him without stopping, angering the tree.
With a roar, Parallel Woods doubles in size. Then, all his roots come out of the ground and lift him, the tree now using them like legs!
"Oh buck!" shouts Sweetie Belle as the tree starts walking among the heroes to try to impale them with his roots while explosive apples start raining all around him. Yes, explosive, golden, giant apples! Without forgetting the Gordos, Blados, Comos, as well as many of those disgusting worms. When he sees that trying to impale the heroes with his roots doesn't work, he slammed himself down on the ground to crush them before rising himself to move and drop again to crush more heroes. Sometimes, he simply jumps to move. All the while, he uses his roots to attack the flying ones.
Sweetie Belle is among the last ones, self-levitating to not end up half buried in the ground. Parallel Woods is just so fast and merciless, he has absolutely nothing to do with Whispy Woods. It's like Morpho said, those counterparts aren't jokes. The tree is trashing them despite their number and power! And it's only Whispy Woods! Of course, Parallel Woods gets a lot of damage in return, but he seems ready to continue the fight for a long moment. They have to up their game if they want to finish this quickly and without anyone being killed.
Coating the weapons with elements isn't enough. Should she sing? But she needs to keep her strength for their fight against Void, and there's still four fights after this one, each as hard, or even harder. To make it worse, Parallel Woods is starting to puff air that spit into three air bullets.
They have to use attacks like the one they used against Hyness, the drill. But against Parallel Woods, fire would work better. Already they are using all the fire they can, but...
Ideaaaaa!
As Parallel Woods starts spinning in the air to fly around, using centrifugal force to throw explosive apples everywhere while trying to ram the heroes, Sweetie Belle shouts "Kirby! Gooey! Is there any way for you to obtain the Spider Ability?!"
Hearing her, Kirby tilts his head in confusion before he signs Como to throw a thread of web at him and Gooey while he drops his Staff Ability. They both then eat the web and gain the Spider ability.
"Good! Now you two, Como, and Taranza use your web to immobilize Whispy! Stick his roots to the ground! And make sure to make this web extra inflammable!"
Having an idea of what she's thinking, Kirby and the others start throwing web at Parallel Woods, targeting the roots, but also the eyes to blind him. When the tree eventually stops spinning and drops on the ground, they all target the same root, quickly trapping it under a huge quantity of solid and sticky web that even the tree has a hard time to free himself from. The four of them immediately work to trap another root, while the others to everything they can to protect them from Parallel Woods' counterattacks.
Once the tree as enough roots glued by the web, Sweetie shouts "Good! Now, Kirby and Gooey, can you get the Fire Ability? Meanwhile, everyone possessing a weapon coats it in fire!"
Some fire inhaled later and Kirby and Gooey now possess the Fire Ability while Magolor uses his magic and Spikezilla uses his fire to coat the weapons in the right element, all the while dodging the explosive apples and air bullets. Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle starts gathering the power of the pink heart, and rapidly, everyone can feel what she wants to do.
This is perfect.
When everyone is ready, they quickly assemble to form a giant fire cannon, the fire users being inside it ( Kirby and Gooey making sure to touch the animals and Sweetie Belle to share with them the Fire Ability) while the ones possessing weapons are at the extremity, weapons pointed toward the center of the hole of the cannon. Then, a huge stream of fire is fired at Parallel Woods, and before the web immobilizing him, he can only look in horror before the fire engulfs him, his ear piercing screech resonating from it until it stops a few seconds later.
When the fire stops, all that remains of Parallel Woods is a tree-shaped charcoal with three holes forming a mouth and two eyes, before the charcoal crumbles into a pile. Out of the pile come ten pink hearts.
When the heroes collect them, a new rift opens, and they are transported back where they fought Hyness, only, now, flowers have bloomed.
Not minding the flowers, the heroes take the occasion to recuperate their breath and to heal after this hard fight, preparing themselves for the next rift.
"We should stop underestimating the Woods," says Bandana.
"Poyo..."
"But we still totally got him! This fire cannon was an awesome idea!" shouts Yin-Yarn.
"It was a brilliant idea!" adds Dedede as he presses Sweetie Belle against him in a proud hug. "Eheheh! She's taking after me after all!"
Sweetie Belle looks at him in confusion. "Taking after you? I don't remember you being the strategist type. You prefer acting before thinking."
...
"Shut up. Let's just go to the next rift. We've lost enough time."