Heroes of Dreamland, Book 5: Nintendo World: The Fate of All Worlds (OLD)

Half of the Points' Heroes are Here; Betrayal

"I have no idea what you are speaking of, like so often in the past day," he mutters, sounding a little bit annoyed. "Since when do you even know how to run a computer?"

Pausing a second, I then leave the Word document I was trying to open and pull up a command prompt box instead. Quietly, I murmur a spell as I type it into the box so Meta can understand what I'm doing. I then hit enter, and a pixelated thread of pink Light appears on screen, floating around a pixelated Meta Knight's head. "Here, magic is just science. I can't use it in real life, but I can get a computer to do pretty much whatever I want it to," I explain, then close the command prompt box, making the little animation I just programmed disappear.

"Oh," he murmurs with a single nod. It kind of stinks, learning that magic isn't real. Learning that everything you thought was real isn't. Even home is just another video game...

Going back to the Word document, I see that it's finally opened. "We keep research in documents like these," I tell him, then turn away from the screen and look towards the box on the other side of the room. "The way the Nintendo people got in was some sort of teleporter or transporter. As far as we can tell, they've destroyed all evidence as to how to get in, so we're stuck until the rest of the world can figure out how to teleport things. So, we hacked into all of the major science institutions and keep a close eye on their progress-"

"We, or you?" he wonders dubiously.

"Me, mostly," I laugh, then continue, "At the Humans' current rate, we'll be able to teleport ourselves into the box in..." I check the daily-updated file that we use to estimate how much longer it'll take the Humans. "Hey, they must've made a pretty big leap forward, it's fifty years less than yesterday. Anyway, we're going home in about three hundred years."

"Three hundred years?" he gasps, staring at me. "Is that really how long it will take?"

"Maybe less," I shrug, then stare at the floor. "Maybe more. We don't have the cash or the expertise to figure it out ourselves. At least... at least we'll still both be alive then. Trusting that nothing happens, of course. And that our lifespans aren't shorter here."

"Oh," he murmurs again, quieter this time.

"Anyway," I smile again, closing the document and pulling up the Internet again. "I want to show you something, Mister I-Hide-My-Face-From-Everyone." Grinning deviously, I pull up Yahoo image search and type in 'Meta Knight unmasked,' then collapse into laughter as fanart after fanart of him with his mask off fills the screen.

"What?!?" he groans in horror, then buries his masked face in the desk. "No, no, no," he moans, shaking his head.

I can't even breathe for about thirty seconds, then I finally gasp out, "Well, you knew it had to happen sometime."

Sounding dead serious, he growls to the table, "Somebody is going to die for this."

After collapsing back into borderline hysterical laughter for about a minute, I manage to squeak, "Ah, yes. Because killing a bunch of teenaged girls is really going to help things."

Shaking his head and still speaking to the desk, he sighs, "Why are the teenaged girls all participating in such a nefarious scheme to ruin my reputation?"

"Aw, come on. They just think you're cute," I tease him, trying to keep from falling back into laughter. "And look, look at this!" I type in 'Meta Knight and Sakura,' and the first result is him wearing a sombrero and shouting 'I want Taco Bell' in Spanish.

"What even is that?" he mutters, obviously lost.

Laughing again, I reply, "Your guess is as good as mine, Señor Knight."