Gumdrops and Lolipops

[Samus Aran]

Samus was stunned and overwhelmed. Everything had changed in an instant.

One moment she was in her personal gunship, soaring through the largely unknown but somewhat predictable cosmos of space and time. She thought she knew it pretty well, but what she saw before her challenged her beliefs about everything. Suddenly she wasn’t in her ship anymore, but instead in a wild and unreal setting. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her journeys across many planets. There were mountains of cotton candy greater than she could comprehend, fountains of chocolate that seemed never ending, and that was an entire cloud with a milkshake pool build into it over there. Samus had to collect herself. What had happened, and where the hell was she?

It was obvious with a moment of reflection. The hardened huntress had to smile and bask in the warmth of the moment. The evidence before her was enough to solve this sudden mystery. Her ship, her power suit and even her Zero Suit were completely gone. She was standing in a ridiculous setting in only her blue shorts, tanktop, and boots but she wasn’t worried. She knew the truth already.

She was dead. She was blissfully dead and had earned the benefits of a perfect afterlife. No more Space Pirates, no more bounties to fuel her ship and keep her fed, no more day to day struggles. It was over, and her journey was done. The struggles of the world behind her were gone forever. This was heaven. It was perfectly peaceful, and well deserved. She could only bask in the peaceful glory before her. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms out wide, taking in a deep breath of relief.

Were her parents here? What about the friends she had lost through her constant struggles and battles? Questions like that filled her mind as she walked down a trail made of small chocolates. She would have to look for them all. If she ended up here in what had to be heaven, surely they were around. As she was thinking about her new peace, the ground rumbled, and she cocked her head in confusion. Something was wrong, and she slowly turned around to see what it was.

Uphill from where she stood was the mouth of a volcano, or at least what looked like one. Another rumble told her it was about to erupt, and she hesitantly took a few steps backward. The next thing she knew molten fudge sprayed everywhere, and boiled over the top. A river of the chocolate rushed towards her as her mouth dropped in disbelief. Still, she didn’t want to be caught up in all of that, so she turned and fled down the trail.

She continued to flee as fast as she possibly could. The veteran hunter had been a lot, but she didn’t have a clue what would happen if she died while already dead. The thought alone was confusing to think about, but she just knew she didn’t want to find out.

Samus was so distracted from running that she let her awareness drop, and was surprised to hear the joyful sound of children cheering. She panicked as she looked ahead, realizing that if there was a settlement nearby there was no evacuating them in time. Yet, the sight confounded her even more. A group of children made entirely of marshmallows charged right past her, diving into the fudge.

“Wait!” Samus called out as she stopped and turned to witness what she expected to be a horrific sight.

Instead, the kids just rolled around and cheered as they played in the flowing chocolate. Samus could only stare in her continued disbelief as she stepped onto a stack of oversized crackers. The harmless chocolate rushed past, and she watched the frolicking children for another moment as she struggled to take in the sight. Paradise was difficult to take in.

“Miss, are you alright?” a voice asked from behind Samus.

The hunter jumped in surprise, while cursing herself for letting her guard down. She turned to find herself face to face with a man made out of two giant circular cookies, with what looked like strawberry ice cream for hair. Her eyes remained as wide as they had since she arrived, but she did her best not to stare in too much shock.

“Yea, I’m sorry,” Samus said, feeling a little sheepish after yelling at the children who were apparently in no danger. Why would they be, after all? “I’m just new here. I just recently… died.”

The man laughed at her confession, which she took a minor bit of offense to. She wasn’t quite sure how she had died anyway, but that was just one of the risks of space travel.

“Dead? You look alive and well to me!” the cookie man said. “You must be a newcomer! Welcome to the Crossroads! You’re on the world we call Nos’Talgia, and this is Sweetzerland. Well, the outskirts of it.”

Samus took a moment to digest those words, before nodding in agreement at her own assessment. Yep. Dead.

“We’re a peaceful world, even in the middle of all the insanity of the Crossroads,” the cookie man explained. “Especially lately.”

“What do you mean?” Samus asked. Trouble was something she tended to flock to. After all, she had to pay the bills somehow. Then again, was that going to be a thing in the afterlife?

“Oh, there’s always something going on,” the cookie shrugged casually. “We don’t get too much in the way of news out this way. From here it isn’t too far to the Imagine Nation. You might find more information there.”

“Okay,” Samus blankly responded as she watched a boulder made of rock candy roll past, chased by more hungry children. “Okay, thanks.”

The cookie man could only laugh. A shell shocked traveler wasn’t an unheard tale on this world, even if they didn’t tend to see them this far out.

“There’s a slope of frosting on the other side of the mountain. Head to the base from there, and you should be able to find transport,” the man said as he went to join the others. “Good luck!”

Samus looked in the direction he had mentioned, and began to depart with a shrug. The chocolate had hardened, so she easily walked over it now, dismissing the children breaking into it and engorging themselves.

The afterlife was a lot stranger than she had expected.

 

[Samus Aran]

Samus strolled through the ridiculous landscape, paying little mind to the sheer insanity of it. She would just have to get used to it, after all. That was going to have to be the price of salvation. She made her way around the mountain towards where the cookie-man had directed her, hoping for some sort of shuttle made of pure sugar or something equally absurd, but what she saw was just as asinine as everything else she’d witnessed since the moment she’d arrived.

Nonsensical people of all shapes and sizes were leaping down the frosting coated side of the mountain to make the journey down via candy rides of some sort. Of course, Samus wasn’t an uncultured idiot, she recognized the basic concept of skiing and snowboarding. But boy was it unfamiliar when the snow was frosting and the skis were made of other various foods. Yet, she didn’t see a gondola or any other easy way off this mountain, so she realized she was going to have to join the tourists on their descent. At least, that was her best guess on what they were.

She approached the only standing building, if it could be called that. It was more of a shack with an open window. A salesman that was really just a sentient donut welcomed all customers, so Samus didn’t really know what else to do except wait her turn in line.

“Welcome to the Sloppy Slopes!” the man that was just a giant donut cheerfully shouted as she approached the granola bar counter. “What method would you like to to rent to navigate the frosted hillside? We just got a fresh shipment of graham crackers yesterday, but there are plenty of options.”

Samus stared blankly at said options as they were posted on a nearby sign, only wanting a simple method from point A to B. None of the choices promised to be that.

“The crackers sound fine,” Samus replied, distracted from the transaction as she watched the candy people ride their skies, sleds, and snowboards down the mountain.

“Here you go, then!” the vendor replied as he passed an oversized graham cracker across the counter to her. “Free of charge before noon!”

Samus politely smiled as she took the giant honey flavored board. She wasn’t going to haggle because with her fresh arrival she was certainly short on gobstoppers or whatever the hell passed for money around here. Instead she just silently walked over to the edge of the slope. She wasn’t typically one for recreation like this, so she was actually a bit intimidated by the prospect of riding down the mountainside. Her vacations were few and far between, and she spent enough time murdering nature that she preferred civilization in her off time. But there wasn’t any other way off this sugar coated mountain, so she knew she had to just suck it up. The sight of a small child made entirely of marshmallows running past her and diving head first down the slope did help.

After gently setting the board down, Samus put one foot on it and took a deep breath. It was now or never.

She kicked off and quickly moved that foot onto the board to try and keep a semblance of balance. As she began a rapid descent down the inane terrain, she ignored the frosting spraying in every direction as her oversized graham cracker shredded through it. Instead she found herself enjoying the ridiculous moment. It felt like it had been ages since she smiled, but she sure was now as she tore down the sugar coated mountain.

Her enjoyment was cut to a sharp halt as she realized she had no idea how to stop this thing. That fear compounded when she realized her legs were beginning to spread out, and she looked down to see that on some sort of bump the cracker had split. It was something regular sized graham crackers did, but she sure didn’t except it from this. Realizing she would be doing a very uncomfortable split soon, she tried to move her left foot to the half that her right foot was steadily standing on. It didn’t work, and she fell from both pieces of her board.

Samus hit the ground with incredible momentum, rolling down the hill as she did. While rolling, a comically large about of frosting that pretended to be snow accumulated around her until she was just a massive snowball rolling down the hill. Though it reminded her of the morphball in a some saner and more comforting mindset, she couldn’t help but acknowledge she was currently trapped in a lethal ball of vanilla coated inertia.

This came to a head as she reached the bottom of the hill and bowled over two attendants at the bottom. She saw bodies of candy corn hurled in different directions while she collided with a cliff face across the road from the base. The frosting exploded everywhere, and Samus was left lying on the ground wondering what in god’s name had just happened. She held her hands in front of her face as she lay on her back to confirm that she wasn’t trapped in any sort of craziness still.

Samus limped to her feet, now thoroughly convinced that if she had died, she sure wasn’t in heaven. She made her way towards the small bus station situated near her point of impact, eager to get the first ticket out of here.