[center][h3]Build Mission - Connecting the Hamlet[/h3][/center]

After a good twenty minutes of arguing, the team finally reached a consensus that satisfied everyone--namely, the rather headstrong and insistent King Dedede, since the consensus was that everyone else would do the work of building a trade route and he would supervise. Steve voiced no objections, or anything else for that matter. Meanwhile both the fairness-minded Shovel Knight nor an unruly Knuckles made their disapproval known, but agreeing that leaving all the labor to Steve would be even more unfair, they grudgingly agreed to the braggadocious king’s plan. With their excavating prowess the dissenters would tame the land, and across it the angular craftsman would construct his road of packed dirt, bordered by stretches of fence and dotted by Steve’s peculiar torches, which never seemed to go out.

And so, with a broad smile on his beak the ponderous penguin waddled out from Lumbridge, crossing the bridge past the hill where Ryu so often meditated to the sprawling plains beyond. The afternoon sun shone down across miles and miles of rolling grassland, intermittent copses of trees, and the odd geological rarity. From here Dedede couldn’t catch so much as a glimpse of the settlement this route would eventually reach, but it was out there nonetheless, and for his part the king wanted to see it. After all, anywhere inhabited by civilized pigs surely boasted some good eating.

“Raight hea oughta work!” He stuck out his mitten and beckoned at his squad of Waddle Dees. One round minion separated himself from the crowd and handed his king a wooden post, which Dedede planted in the ground. With one smack from his mighty mallet he drove it in. [i]Clonk![/i] “Ahaha! Every journeh begins with a single step, and Ah decleah we’re beginnin’ raight hea!” When he laughed, his belly shook. “Ah say, hammerin’ them posts is heaps o’ fun. If Ah take care uh that, maybe yew belly-achers’ll quit lookin’ at me crossways, hm?” He glanced back at the others as if daring them to start complaining again. Steve, meanwhile, had already started tamping down the soil. Even one touch from his spade seemed able to treat a few cubic feet of ground at a time, which to Dedede wasn’t just magic, but incredibly useful. With him around, an impossibly arduous challenge suddenly seemed like a chore that could be done in time for dinner.

He took a few steps forward then held his waggling mitt out again. “C’mon, gimma anotha!”

One timid Waddle Dee stepped forward, but he wasn’t carrying anything. Dedede’s brow furrowed. “Whea’s the post, son?”

“That was the only one!” his underling quavered. “Steve is the only one who knows how to make them!”

The king rubbed his chin. “Is that right? Weall, Jus’ ask ‘im ‘ow! Steve mah boah, whah doncha show mah li’l Waddle Dees ‘ow t’do that craftin’ o’ yers? Ah kin ‘ave ‘em go ‘n collect whatever ya need, long as they got the tools.”

Nodding, the builder pulled a block out of his pocket and set it down. It expanded into a workbench, and the Waddle Dees gathered around to watch. Steve arranged pieces of wood to make sticks, then sticks and wood to make a pickaxe, a shovel, a wood axe, and even a set of three fences. How he was able to just change raw materials into finished products without hours of labor on each one Dedede had no idea, but it certainly impressed him. “Hot diggety, that’s one heckuva trick! Think ya got it nailed down, l’il Dees?”

His minions offered vague noises of reassurances that proved a little too effective. Satisfied, the king nodded officiously, and extended his mitten to the horizon. “Awlraighty then! Let’s hit the road, boahs!”

And they did.

[hr]

Naturally the team rubbed up against some friction while trying to put their imperfect plan to work,  the hours dragged on, they settled into a productive rhythm. Their process, shaky at first, got better with each leg of the trip across the plains. With his burrowing Knuckles scouted ahead to get both the lay of and the feel for the land, and he brought his reports of obstacles and resources back to Dedede. Though the others had worried -with reasonable cause for concern- that the King might just laze around and let everyone else do the work, he soon proved himself a capable foreman. Once given the details of the upcoming terrain, Dedede dispatched his Waddle Dees to gather wood, dirt, and stone with the tools made by Steve, while he clobbered any hostile wildlife that arose to threaten his minions. Shovel Knight lent a hand to defense and excavation, ensuring bountiful harvests. Some of the materials went to crafting replacements as the Dees’ axes, shovels, and picks broke, but the rest went to construction. With dizzying speed Steve laid down stretches of fence and the cobblestone road, although he left the dirt footpaths on either side to his chivalrous teammate’s shovel. And wherever the team paused to take a break, everyone pitched in to build a rest stop with back-to-back wooden benches beneath a shaded overhang.

Work continued over hill and dale, through wood and crag. The team cut a path across vast fields of [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/09/6b/b1/096bb1b7db9c87d99910fb1109a85261.jpg] vibrant flowers[/url] and [url=https://i.redd.it/qe71bqclpfq41.jpg]billowing wheat[/url]. They ran into wild animals, [url=https://runescape.wiki/images/a/a5/Magpie_impling.png?4702c]cheeky implings[/url], and even lonesome farmhouses. Dedede invariably elected to divert the roads to connect the scattered domiciles, even if they were a little out of the way, explaining that he wanted nothing more than to expand his kingdom even as he imagined the little homes being wiped away by the Land of Adventure’s regeneration. Still, the mercenaries made good progress all through the day and deep into the afternoon, until Knuckles ran back with some news.

Dedede looked up from his half-eaten apple, fetched from the leaves of a fallen tree, to see the red echidna on his way in a hurry. “Hm? Whah yew runnin’ like yer pants on fire theah, fella?”

In a cloud of dust Knuckles slid to a stop. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news, and I’ll save ya the trouble of askin’. Spotted the Hamlet up ahead, finally.”

“Oho, that is good news!” Shovel Knight roared. “My muscles haven’t ached like this in ages, and I’ve shoveled my way through entire questlines!”

Knuckles looked annoyed that he’d been interrupted. “Well, don’t kick your heels just yet, ‘cause before we reach the Hamlet we’ve got a real problem. A canyon that makes that ravine’s we’ve seen so far look like cracks in the sidewalk.”

“Canyon? Sidewalk? Boah, yew ain’t makin’ a lick-a sense,” Dedede said, waddling forward to see for himself. “If theah was somethin’ big like that in the way we woulda been told about it.” But sure enough, once the overgrown penguin crested the next hill with the others at his back, he beheld a rift in the ground of elephantine proportions.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Ftnj4WN.png[/img][/center]

A few moments later, Dedede stood on the edge of the precipice, his eyes about as wide as they could get. “What in tarnation?! It’s dang near bottomless!” He turned around to see Steve deep in thought. “But it ain’t nothin’ t’worry about, ‘cause yew kin just build stee-raight across, raight?”

The silent craftsman’s strange face did not convey emotion well, but his expression spoke of anything but certainty. Nevertheless he placed a workbench, pulled a heap of leftover stone from his inventory, and began to craft slabs, stairs, and walls. Taking what assurance he could get, Dedede gave a nod and clapped Steve on the shoulder. “Good man! Yew git busy, and we’ll pull the road ‘round this way.”

He left after ordering a number of his Waddle Dees to stick around and help out Steve. The others followed suit, less than convinced by a solution that seemed a little too good to be true. About twenty minutes later the road was almost connected, but a loud crack hastened the crew back to where Steve was working. When they arrived they were surprised to see the makings of a sturdy-looking stone brick bridge already well underway, courtesy of the newly-built furnaces beside its anchoring point, but their maker stood by with a somewhat glum expression. A quick exhibition revealed that as strong as the bridge looked, even one block farther out over the void would cause a portion of it to crumble away.

Dedede removed his hat to scratch his noggin. “Yeah, that tracks. Ain’t practical to jus’ keep on buildin’ straight over nothin’. Bridges gotta have support.” When Knuckles gave him an incredulous look that all but said [i]yes, but how did you know that?[/i], the King puffed himself up. “What? I gotta know a li’l architecture so I kin keep buildin’ up mah castle!” Although he looked pretty proud, he didn’t dilly-dally for long, but instead stepped out onto the bridge.

Shovel Knight reached out a cautionary hand, saying “Uh, sire? Won’t it buckle under thy...?” only to get cut off as Knuckles returned the favor from earlier, interrupting him with a sharp [i]shh![/i] Yet nothing happened as the king made his way out toward the edge and stood on the stone promontory.

As best he could judge it, the partially collapsed bridge reached about a third of the way across. He looked over his shoulder as best he could. “Hey, Steve! If Ah kin getcha ‘cross, think yew kin finish the bridge?” At first the builder looked doubtful, but an idea came to him that made him nod. Dedede turned back, stepped toward the edge, and jumped. He ignored the shouts of alarm from behind as he puffed himself up, literally this time, and hovered across the rest of the gap. After he landed on the canyon’s opposite side, he dusted himself off and made the return journey, enjoying the surprise of his teammates the whole time.

Knuckles ran up as he landed. “You can fly? That would have been good to know! All I can do is glide.”

“Thou canst glide?” Shovel Knight’s head jerked between the two of them. “I mayest only pogo jump with mine shovel!”

Steve jumped a short distance into the air, then  looked at his feet, disconsolate.

“Buck up, mah boah!” Dedede encouraged him, pushing through the others. “‘Cause today’s yer lucky day. Ready t’fly?” 

For a brief moment Steve bore an excited smile, but then Dedede casually sucked him up and took off. Shovel Knight and Knuckles looked between one another, the former shaking his head as the latter shrugged. A few moments later Dedede spat Steve back out on the other side, and though he seemed less than pleased, the craftsman got to work.

They didn’t have long to wait, because as it turned out Steve needed more materials than he carried on him, and only Dedede could bring him what his other teammates gathered. Suddenly the king found himself in the exhausting position of having to hover back and forth, back and forth. “This ain’t fair! This ain’t fair!” he wheezed, tears streaming from his eyes, as the others looked on. 

“You can do it!” Knuckles grinned as he shouted his encouragement. “Just think of it as your responsibility as king! You must do what no-one else can!”

“Dadgummit!” Dedede gasped as he landed to drop a pile of stone. He wiped his brow and gulped in what air he could before taking off once more. “Guhh...heavy is the head that wears the crown!”

After what felt like an eternity the two halves of the bridge finally met in the middle. Dedede collapsed, chest heaving, as the others spanned the final section with planks of wood. His Waddle Dees gathered him up and carried him to the other side, and the others followed behind. “Not bad,” the echidna conceded while the penguin was semi-conscious. “If you’re willin’ to go the distance like that, maybe you’re half the king you say you are.” Even with their glorious leader indisposed, Shovel Knight and Knuckles knew break time was over, and alongside the now quite practiced Waddle Dees got back to work.

When Dedede roused himself, he realized he’d been laid to rest in the shade of a small copse uphill from the canyon. He sat up to see the tall, thin buildings of the Hamlet arrayed before him just ahead, the road almost complete. A whole host of pigs had gathered to welcome their visitors. Knuckles poked him in the ribs, and Dedede stood although his bones didn’t feel a thing. Shovel Knight chuckled as he watched him get up. “So, thou art finally awake? Good timing! We mayest make our heroic arrival to yonder Hamlet as one!”

“We’re heah then, ah we?” Dedede shouldered his mallet and smiled. “Let’s not keep ‘em waitin’!” Pausing only to brush the leaves from his royal cape, the king strutted out into the open with his team and procession of Waddle Dees right behind, waving to the joyful pigs. Steve finished up the last of the road as the citizens watched, and after the last cobblestone was laid, the Hamlet gave their saviors a warm welcome.