Chapter Text
Hat Kid looked out at the glassy bay of her ship, watching the small planet below.
She managed to take back most of the Time Pieces, but some were still on the planet, hidden or lost somewhere. She pouted. There was still so much to do; other planets to visit and Time Pieces to collect! But if she left all those she had already had (and lost), her boss would yell at her for her incompetence…
She sighed. What a pain… Still, she was grateful to be in the Time Collect section. Fun was at each step of the trip! She softly laughed at some memories: painting Snatcher blue, the Dead Bird Studios films, the walk in Alpine Skylines, and so many others!
So many fond memories…
Her thoughts were cut off as an alarm resounded in all rooms of the ship:
“ TIME RIFT ALERT! TIME RIFT ALERT! ”
She quickly pressed some buttons, shutting the alarm off, and verified where that Time Rift was and its level of dangerousness. Her eyes widened.
There were ten levels of dangerousness, which functioned this way: 1, which was extra difficult (purple), to 10, which was easy peasy (blue). Simple, right?
Yet there was an urban legend about another level, higher than 1.
But then again, this was just some rumor.
However, this little number was clearly present on her monitor: 0
She tried to localize it with her computer, but to no avail, so she looked around with her eyes when she finally spotted a little turquoise time vortex, slowly opening, some millions of meters away from the planet…
She had a bad feeling about it, but she shrugged it off, thinking it was gonna be okay, like it was gonna be like the other time she had to deal with those, as she sat back and started to drive toward the rift. However, she noticed something strange… the size of the vortex keeps increasing. Bigger than the planet; it kept growing until it was as large as a star.
...she had a really bad feeling about this one…
Then, things got worse.
Something came out. Wait. No. Some things came out of the Time Rift. At first, she thought they were tentacles, but then realized it was the bandages. Multiple bandages that grabbed the planet and start to pull it in, the giant vortex swallowing the planet without a problem.
Oh no! Her friends! She had to do something!
But before she could think of a plan, the bandages sensed her ship and started to wrap it up and pull in too. Almost automatically, she put all her motors backwards, trying to escape the grip of those eyed bandages.
Wait. Eyed bandages?
She verified that her eyes didn’t betray what they saw as a weirdly-drawn eye looked back at her, as many others scanned the interior through the glassy bay. Suddenly, they all focus on one point and she has no difficulty to follow their line of sight:
Her Time Piece safe-deposit box…
The bandage eyes turned into some happy wrinkles, then proceeded to break the door and pull on the wheel, ripping it off before grabbing the Time Pieces inside.
Oh no. Not again! Not this time!
She quickly switched to the Witch Hat and threw a brew at one of the bandages. It twisted in pain and loosened its grip around the precious item and she rapidly took it, hiding it on her as other bandages grabbed her, pinning her arms, which prevented her from defending herself. She was then knocked out with a Time Piece, and pulled out of her ship and into the vortex.
~•~•~•~•~•~
She slowly gained consciousness but she felt like passing out again.
She…