Sakura's POV:

Things are dead silent here on the Lor Starcutter. Clerk still silently sits, face hidden, in the corner. Meta Knight noiselessly paces back and forth across the control room's floor, staring down at the ground. I tried putting a comforting hand on one of his shoulder guards awhile back, but he just shrugged it off and kept pacing. Magolor is flipping through a book, but since it's upside-down, I'm assuming he's not actually reading it at all.

Bandana and Shadow are huddled close together, whispering fearfullly, Shadow's eyes huge and brimming over with tears. With a sigh, I go over and sit down between them before curling a protective wing around both of them and giving them each one of my gloves to hold. Shadow accepts it willingly and thankfully; Bandana (ever the tough guy) hesitates for a second, but soon gives in with a grateful sigh.

"Think we'll be okay?" he wonders quietly, looking up at me nervously. "I mean, this looks worse than even the Returning Darkness ever did."

Giving a small shudder, I reply, "I know. And I don't know for sure if we'll be okay, but I'm sure... I'm sure that the Star Power knows what he's doing."

Sniffling, Shadow snuggles closer to me and hides his face in the palm of my glove before asking in a muffled voice, "Nobody's gonna die or anything... right?"

Although I don't answer at first because I don't know things like that, Meta Knight suddenly pauses and glances over at Shadow. "Please, my small friend, do not torment yourself thinking about the future. It helps nothing." Shadow just hiccups and shakes his head quickly. After a short hesitation, Meta comes over and places a glove on his head. "Whatever happens, I will do my best to protect you and the others. That is my job, just as it is your job to stay hopeful and help the rest of us do so as well."

For a long second, Shadow doesn't say anything, but finally sits up, swipes a paw across his eyes, and nods slowly. "I'll try, Mister Meta Knight. I promise."

Smiling warmly, I nuzzle Shadow a bit and then glance up at Meta. 'Thanks,' I mouth up at him. He just nods slowly and then goes back to pacing and staring at the floor again.

Suddenly, Magolor slams his book shut and puts it down. "We can't just sit here all night! We gotta do something, or, or something!" Going over to the control panel, he starts to start the ship up, but suddenly finds Galaxia blocking the control panel.

While the two ever-on-each-others'-nerves guys start to have a stare-down, I groan and point out, "This isn't exactly an optimal time for you two to be fighting over everything! It's fun to watch, okay, but now isn't a good time for this!" Looking at Magolor, I sigh, calmer now, "It was your idea to wait for Kirby. He's the Warrior of the Stars, and we can't exactly do anything without him. Give him a few more minutes before we go and bother him." Looking over at Meta Knight, I add, "And throwing a sword in an ally's face isn't exactly a great plan either. Remember what the Time Pedestal said. We have to take care of whatever allies we have, because it sounded like we're basically all we're gonna get."

The two continue to glare at each other for a second without looking over at me, but finally they both grunt and stand down. Meta Knight quits holding his sword over the control panel and sheathes it for the time being, and then wraps his cape around himself again, and Magolor gets a pair of headphones out of the glove box and plugs them into the sound system while humming anxiously.

Just as suddenly as he stormed out several minutes ago, Kirby storms back in out of nowhere, determination far beyond his years written all over his face. "So, guys... what do we do?"

No one answers for a second, until Meta Knight clears his throat and begins, "Well, I suppose a good place to start would be to identify all of our current problems."

"Isn't our numero uno problem kinda obvious?!" Magolor squeals as he throws his gloves up in the air, getting them both all tangled in the headphones' wires in the process. "The Fountain of Dreams is deaded. I repeat, the Fountain of Dreams is deaded. Doesn't have a pulse or nothin'. That's kinda the problem here, genius!"

After just giving him an extremely unimpressed stare for several seconds, Meta finally sighs and nods once in agreement. "That is definitely a problem, yes. What else is there that must be dealt with?"

While Magolor crosses his gloves and mutters something under his breath about the whole situation being pointless and wishing he wasn't involved, Bandana raises his paw hesitantly.

Smiling weakly, I murmur to him, "This isn't school or anything like that; you don't have to raise your hand, buddy."

Rolling his eyes, he sighs and starts while Meta Knight listens, "Dark Solar's obviously a big problem too. If he's able to destroy the Fountain of Dreams... Wait. How did he destroy the Fountain of Dreams, anyway?"

Shuddering, Kirby hugs his cape around himself like a blanket and turns away. "He was putting all sorts of stuff in it, like a piece of the chest Dark Nebula hid in, the Master Crown, some Dark Matter, everything. Like, really, everything I've ever fought before. Drawcia, Mags, Yin-Yarn, Nightmare, Dark Mind, Necrodeus, Queen Sectonia, everyone else; he had a piece of their weapons or something else related to them."

All of us are silent as the situation seems to get ever worse and worse. After a long pause, Kirby sighs, "He was making some kind of potion with it. Once everything was in it, it turned all gross and black and sludgy. And then this weird cloud of extra-thick Darkness-stuff surrounded him. That's when the Star Rod shattered and the Fountain of Dream split in two with a crack all the way down the center."

I shudder at the mental image of that sludge running out of the broken basin and poisoning everything else in the Garden around it... The poor cherry tree and flowers... If the tree dies, I don't know what I'll do. That tree is where I got my sword, my cape, my name, not to mention that I've always felt like it's somewhere really important. An old hint of a memory tries to find its way to the front of my mind, but to no avail, and before I know it, it's gone again.

"Then what happened?" Shadow suddenly asks fearfully as he grips my glove tighter, staring at his big brother with huge eyes.

With a huff, Kirby kicks at the ground and mutters ashamedly, "I ran. I can't believe I ran. I shoulda stayed and done something, anything. But no. The Warrior of the Stars, me, the one who's supposed to protect everyone from stuff like this, got scared and ran away like some scaredy-cat little kid."

"But Kirbs, you are just a kid. You, Shadow, and me are all just kids. I woulda run too," Bandana tries to comfort him from where he still sits at my side, but Kirby just shakes his head.

"It's not the same thing, Bandana. Just 'cause I'm a kid doesn't mean I can act like one."

Narrowing my eyes, I state firmly, "Just because you're the Warrior of the Stars doesn't mean that everyone can expect you to be perfect all the time. You're a hero, sure, but you're also a kid, and it's about time that things stop happening to prevent you from being one. I don't want you to grow up and hold grudges against people because you spent your whole childhood taking care of everyone else."

While everyone stares at my last outburst of a sentence, I clear my throat, blush, and add, "I mean, that wouldn't be good, if you did that." Changing the subject while Kirby crosses his arms and stares sadly at the ground, I go on, "Dark Matter and the sick Mirror World. Those are our other two big problems."

Meta Knight nods slowly. "I suppose before we do anything else, we should return to the castle and ensure that the king and Escargoon made it back from their imprisonment in the Mirror World safely and that no other harm has come to anyone there."

Reluctantly, Magolor agrees, "That does sound like the best plan, way of going forward, course of action, all that. Let's go, everybody." Again he starts up the engines, only this time, no sword tries to stop him.

The ride back to the castle is even more uneventful than the ride over here to Tick-Tock Clock was yesterday evening. With a yawn, I get up and lean on the sill of the big window that faces opposite Mags' control console. Everything looks fine for now, except for the occasional dark patch where Dark Matter has set itself to trying to rot everything. 

"Are you all right?" someone suddenly asks me as a glove gently takes mine and gives it a warm squeeze.

Glancing up at Meta Knight with a tiny smile, I wisecrack, "Asks the guy who just had a huge battle with his dark reflection no more than an hour ago." Growing more serious, I sigh, "Yeah, I'm all right. Dreamland's not, though."

He nods slowly and then quietly asks, "How did your fight with Dark Sakura go?" Even though I've haven't mentioned it at all to him yet, I'm not all that surprised that he knows about it anyway. He's Meta Knight, after all, and the longer I know him, the better he knows me, especially.

"Well, she won, I think," I murmur ashamedly, "but you can see that I made it out in one piece. So did she." After pausing, I try to explain, "She had... sort of a change of heart. I tried to encourage her, and I think I did, but there's only so much I can do, you know? She doesn't want to be called Dark Sakura anymore though, which is a step in the right direction."

Mildly surprised, he wonders, "What does she want to be called instead, then?"

"Jiyuu," I reply quietly. "She wants to be called Jiyuu." Rather than waiting for him to ask why 'Freedom,' I go on, "From what it seems to me, as time went on, the less she wanted to be perfect and powerful, and the more she just wanted to be free from the trap of being stuck as my dark side. Yesterday, it seemed like she hated me not because I was her copy, but because she was mine, if that makes any sense. But once she realized that she wasn't trapped being my dark side like she seemed to think she was, I think she started to let some Light in. Hopefully she'll turn out all right in the end after all."

In a slightly-ashamed mutter, he muses, "It's a pity that my copy is far too set in his ways to be redeemed in the same manner. But I think he wants to be who he is, evil and Dark, and I suppose that there's nothing I can do to change that."

Giving him a look, I remind him, "That's not your fault, though. He's not just an exact copy of you; he has his own free will to choose his own path. If he chooses evil, that's no fault of yours, remember that."

Seeming to smirk, he wisecracks, "Says the Star Warrior who just a few days ago was telling me that the dark reflections were 'nothing more than our copies' and that 'taking care of them' was going to be 'a piece of shortcake.'"

Turning towards him, I jokingly defend myself, "Hey, give me a break. I've grown a lot in the past few twenty-some-year-long days."

He laughs halfheartedly while his eyes glow pink, but before he can say anything else, Magolor makes a hurried (and bumpy) landing and squeaks, "Welp, we're here, everybody! Let's go make sure everbody's all find and dan-"

But before he can get another word out, the two Fairies we left at the castle yesterday evening to keep an eye on things come zooming in the second the door opens with two streaks of super-fast moving pink and violet.

"The Fountain's broken," they both gasp in unison as soon as they've put the brakes on and practically screeched to a stop.

Panting, Taffeta continues, "Remember how you left us to hold down the fort?"

Before anyone can answer one way or another, Ribbon goes on, "Well, we did. Or we tried to, anyway. But the Fountain broke, and we don't know how, and you guys have some guests, and-"

"Guests?" Meta Knight wonders in an 'oi vey' sort of tone, but his question is quickly answered for him, whether he likes it or not.

"Kirbs! Meta Knight! Bandana! Princess Sakura! Help!" Into the Lor Starcutter runs a very disgruntled (and oddly three-dimensional) boy made out of yarn. Apparently remembering his royal status, our blue-green, hollow Patch Landian friend suddenly straightens his little felt crown and clears his throat. "I mean, I was sent here on behalf of my kingdom to inquire into having you all please come and offer your heroic services. Our whole kingdom has started fading and slowly losing color, as well as the magic thread that holds our world together starting to grow brittle and not glow as brightly. We'd like to ask you to please come and, uh, help somehow." There at the end, his forced, professional tone turned more into a normal young boy's voice, which was pretty comical. "There was more to the speech than that, but I forget the rest now. Point being, we need your help."

Another voice coughs politely from outside of the ship, and in floats some kinda spidery Halcandran guy. "Greetings, Sir Kirby and Sir Kirby's wondrous compatriots. While I have waited for the royalty present to speak, I must also put in a most humble request for assistance, seeing as how the great kingdom of Floralia is also slowing fading from all color, which is rather concerning to all inhabiting said kingdom. First, before I explain the problem any further, may I have all your names?"

Well Meta Knight groans and stares at the ceiling in a 'goodness help us, now there's two Halcandrans here to torture me' sort of way, Kirby starts to introduce us all, but Prince Fluff takes it upon himself to help out first.

"These here are Kirby, who you know already, Magolor, who's a weasel-"

"I am not a weasel!"

"Ahem, Sir Meta Knight, Kirby's friend and mentor, Bandana Dee, Kirby's go-fer, I think-" Bandana grunts in annoyance here, which to tell the truth, I can't blame him- "and I don't know who the gray child is, although any friend of Kirby- minus the weasel- is a friend of mine. And last but not least, the lovely Princess Sakura. Just don't call her that... she seems to want it kept secret, so why she ever let the weasel know that she's a princess, I dunno."

While I groan (great, just when I thought that whole 'Sakura's too much of a princess to help with that' thing had blown over, now Fluff's here to start it all over again,) the new Halcandran-looking guy suddenly perks up, whizzes over, and takes my glove in a friendly manner.

"A pleasure to meet you, your Highness. I am Lord Taranza of the Floralian Court, at your most humble service."

"I'm not a princess," I sigh in exasperation while he gives my glove a court-ly kiss, Meta Knight tries to stifle a laugh, Kirby and Bandana both roll their eyes at each other, Shadow blinks in confusion, Ribbon, Taffeta, and Fluff laugh freely at me, and Mags- Well, strangely enough, actually, Mags is looking at this 'Lord Taranza' like he'd like to tell the Lor Starcutter to go all 'angry' mode on him.

"She doesn't like to admit it, does she?" Taranza laughs formally over at Fluff, but then suddenly frowns. "Wait. I thought King Dedede was the current monarch here in Dreamland."

"He is," I grunt, only to have Taranza suddenly start to look at me all sympathetically. "What?"

In a conspiratorial murmur, he assures me, "Oh, don't worry, I understand, your Highness. I wouldn't want to let most people know that I was married to the lug if I were you either, Mrs. Dedede."

"What?" I squawk in unrestrained disgust while Meta Knight seems to completely lose it, suddenly turning away and having a coughing fit into his cloak. "Oh yeah, sure, laugh at me," I make a face at his back and then glare at everyone else as they start laughing too. Groaning again, I go lean against the wall in the corner and promise Taranza, "I'd rather marry Magolor than King Dedede." There, that got Meta to shut up. "Now, if you'd please believe me, I'm not a princess. Magolor just nicknamed me 'Princess,' Fluff took that and ran with it, and now you've practically gone and got me all but coronated. I'm not a princess, and the next person to say I am one is going to find himself fed to a somehow-reanimated Wolfwrath."

Now on the opposite side of the main room, Taranza muses in sudden thought, "Magolor? That name sounds awfully familiar..."

"It should!" Magolor shrills in an angrier voice than I've ever heard him use before as he suddenly speaks for the first time in several minutes. "It's your fault I never got to have my dreams fulfilled! It's because of you I ended up an outlaw, until Sir Arty pardoned me a couple months back, anyway. It's your fault that my name's not in six-foot tall lights on every good musical performance center around the Galaxy! Well, the fault of you and your daddy's fat wallet, Mr. Richie McRichRich!"

Completely lost, I mutter, "What the heck is he talking about?"

Meta Knight replies in a slightly-quivering voice, still apparently trying not to laugh about the whole 'Mrs. Dedede' thing, "Magolor was almost given the opportunity to attend a high-class music school on full scholarship, but someone else was given the scholarship because their family had more money, even though Magolor was more talented. That is what I have heard on the matter, anyway."

Apparently Meta Knight's explanation helps Taranza jog his memory some, because the blank look on his face suddenly changes to one of elite snobbishness. Turning to Magolor, he snorts, "Ah, yes, Mr. Polyester with the tear-jerker symphony. So you're the one who stole the Lor Starcutter back from the good Star Warriors? For shame, and you still dare to call yourself Halcandran?"

"Oooooooooh..." Magolor growls (hard to do when your voice is an octave above everybody else's) and begins to strangle the air. "I'll have you know, Mr. Richie McRichRich, that hood was cotton, not polyester!"

"What?" I wonder again, while Kirby, Bandana, Shadow, and Fluff all just snicker at the whole thing.

Really mad now, Magolor goes over to Taranza and shakes a fist in his face. "You listen up, bub! If it weren't for you, I would be a famous violinist, not a lonely broke guy who wanders around the Galaxy in an epicly awesome spaceship, which is the one pro of the whole thing. And what'd you steal my big break for?"

"Oh, please," Taranza snoots, crossing all six of his gloves in an extremely snobbish way. Maybe I'm just biased because Mags is my friend and Mr. Richie T here just called me Mrs. Dedede, but I'm really starting to dislike him.

Going on, Magolor squeals an octave higher than normal, "To impress some girl, that's what! And from what I've heard through the proverbial grapevine, Madam Snooty-patooty Debutante Heir-to-the-throne-of-Floralia ended up being a psycho who tried to kill everyone! And I bet she never did love you, even with your showy-offy-ness!"

As the most obvious alligator tear you ever saw appears in one of Taranza's four eyes, he sighs piteously and throws the back of one glove to his forehead dramatically while clenching the other five into fists, "Ah, yes, the stress did drive poor Darling insane... I can only hope our love was on her mind in her last moments!"

Making a face, Kirby mutters, "I think killing me was on her mind, not your love. And I kinda gotta agree with Mags here, I really don't think she ever loved you either."

"I feel like I am watching a Channel DDD soap opera, only even less interesting," Meta Knight muses with a shake of his head. "One of those shows that you always watch, always question why you watch it, and somehow end up watching it again anyway. Now, look, fellows, there really is a big problem here..."

"You stay out of this, maskbrain," Magolor growls before starting to wave his fists around in Taranza's face. "Come on, let's see how big and tough you really are without a bunch of doting sycophants to hide behind. Come on, put up your dukes! I won't use magic; you can't use puppetry. What about that, huh? C'mon, c'mon! Show me your best, McRichRich!"

With a snort, Taranza disagrees, "A gentleman would never participate in a fistfight without proper reason. But perhaps if I had the approval of a lady..."

As he turns to me, I shake my head. "Uh-uh. I'm not supporting any fights."

"Aw..." Kirby, Bandana, and Shadow chorus in boyish disappointment. When I turn and glare at them, they all three start whistling innocently. (Except for Shadow, I mean. He can't whistle, so he just starts kinda blow-humming.)

Meanwhile, Magolor comes over and tugs on my glove pleadingly. "Aw, come on. Please? Just tell him he has your favor, and I can finally get revenge for everything!"

"No," I disagree firmly, pushing him off. "To quote you, I'm not getting involved. Now everybody, back to the real problem here! Dreamland is in grave danger, and it sounds like Floralia and Patch Land are already seeing bad side effects. We already knew the Mirror World was having issues, but now even more places are!"

While Magolor and Taranza keep grunting insults at each other, I finally get really irritated and shout, "The Fountain of Dreams is dead, and you two are both acting like five-year-olds!" Still no one listens, so I growl loudly, "The Princess orders you all to shut up!"

Like magic, everyone falls silent and stares at me. "Did she just say that the Fountain of Dreams is dead?" Prince Fluff asks Kirby a second later.

"Uh... yeah," Kirby agrees with an ashamed blush and a stare directed down at his feet.

For another moment, everything is quiet, but then panic starts as the Fairies, Fluff, and Taranaza all basically start screaming. (Ugh, I'd rather listen to Magolor's pitchy screams than Taranza's snooty, vibrato 'Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!')

Rolling my eyes, I storm out of the Starcutter, Magolor, Meta Knight, Kirby, Bandana, and Shadow right behind me. While Magolor shuts the door, leaving the other four screaming yahoos inside, I groan and rub my forehead. "So, guys. What do we do now?"

With a halfhearted giggle, Kirby murmurs, "That's just what I asked earlier."

Smiling a bit, I look to Meta Knight. "Well, you're kinda the most experienced person here. What say you?"

With eyes that weakly glow light-green in amusement, Meta Knight begins, "Well, I think we should-" only to suddenly have a Luma zoom in out of nowhere, drop a letter on us, and go zooming back off into orbit again in a happy-go-lucky fashion without any sort of explanation.

"Well, that was rather non sequitur," Mags comments, while Meta Knight picks up the note with a sigh and then suddenly shows us the envelope bearing the royal seal of Nintendo World.

"It's from Rose. Doubtless, she has heard of our predicament and wants to know what sort of course of action we will be following."

Nodding, we all fall silent and wait for Meta Knight to read through it. He doesn't seem to get far before he becomes afraid, and then angry. Out of nowhere, he suddenly tears it up with a perturbed growl and throws the scraps of paper onto the ground. Without further explanation, he goes storming off.

The sky keeps getting darker and darker as the night goes on, and outside of the Starcutter here, we can hardly see our hands in front of our faces. Feeling rather scared, we all follow after Meta Knight to the Star Warriors' Garden, where he finally pauses.

Staring angrily at the Fountain of Dreams, which looks even worse than I imagined, he murmurs bitterly, "Someone has somehow convinced Rose that we let this happen without trying to do anything to stop it."

With a gasp of upset, Kirby disagrees, "B-but we had no idea what Dark Solar was up to! We were trying to fix the Dark Matter and Mirror World problems already! We didn't know he was gonna come do, well, this!"

Meta Knight nods slowly but stays silent. After a long moment, he looks up at us and sighs. Finally, he mutters, "We've been named outlaws. All of us but Shadow."

"What?" Magolor whines, not as bothered by it as everyone else seems to instantly be. "And I just got my name cleared up on Star World like two months ago! This is just beautiful, brilliant, wonderful, all that!"

Meanwhile, I clench my fists and glare at the ground. "Outlaws? B-but why? We didn't do anything!" Looking up at Meta after a moment of silence, I murmur quietly, scared, "Outlaws. What does this mean, in this instance?"

Seeming to scowl, Meta Knight looks around the Garden again. "First of all, it means that we are no longer welcome here." Without further ado, he turns with a swish of his cloak and heads back to the ship. "With Dark Meta Knight and Dark Sakura, I did not care what they said, but with Rose I do. For now, we must get into orbit. We will discuss what else to do from there." After a pause, he adds with a grunt, "I suppose for now we will have to continue to play guest to the other four, until such time as we may explain things properly."

With that, he leads us all wordlessly back to the Lor Starcutter, all of us too dumbfounded to say a thing.

Although, as everything continues to just get worse and worse and worse, I just can't help but wonder...

How in the Shotzo are we ever gonna get ourselves out of this one?