Work Text:
Cover Illustration: “Dadd-ey” by DalSifoDyas
“ You have a lot of heart. Unfortunately, you don't have a lot of reach. With those tiny arms you cannot touch me. But, if you truly focus your powers, nothing is unreachable. And I will prove it to you. The steel of this sword is hard, but the steel of my will makes it harder. ”
— Meta Knight, Kirby: Right Back At Ya! S1E3: “Kirby’s Duel Role” (2002)
Pre-Mission
[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!]
“… Seriously?!” Whitney muttered, struggling to untangle herself.
Being a fitness expert, she had a habit of doing yoga stretches before bed, so her joints wouldn’t feel sore in the morning, but the past few nights hadn’t been kind to this routine. In this case, the noise of the console had startled her right in the middle of one of her more complicated poses, leading to her getting tangled up in a knot of limbs.
After several attempts at freeing herself up, she finally lost her patience with the noise from the console, and was forced to roll across the floor over to it. Thankfully, this motion loosened up one of her legs, undoing her tangled position; she almost immediately stood up and hit the big red button.
She cursed under her breath, fingers and toes curling. Then she turned away from the console, wearing her unnerving blank expression for a moment, and grabbed a whistle from her bedside table.
FWEEEEEEEEEET!
The blond teenager in the other bed muttered wordlessly before letting out a loud snore. Whitney, annoyed, blew the whistle again.
“Zzzz… Dunban, for the last time, there aren’t any Mechon…” Backslash mumbled. “I can sleep as late as I—”
“Wake up!” Whitney’s voice was stern, almost commanding. She blew the whistle a third time.
“Five more minutes, Dunban,” Backslash replied, still groggy.
Fed up with this, she grabbed the blanket and yanked it off the bed. To her surprise, Backslash went with it, and landed on the floor with a startled yell and a loud thud.
“Whoops,” Whitney said with an embarrassed laugh.
“Was that bloody necessary?” Backslash growled, struggling to free himself from the sheets.
“Pulling the blankets off of you certainly was,” said Whitney, scowling a little. “We have a mission.”
“Whaa? But I got into bed like, twenty minutes ago!”
Whitney turned and checked the clock on the console screen. She cursed, louder this time. It was 11:50 PM.
“What is it this time?” asked Backslash. “Another one of those Mario Stus trying to bone Rosalina? I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime…”
“Wrong answer,” replied Whitney, returning to the console to program their disguises. “It’s a Kirby Sue. Shocking, I know.”
He blinked. “They actually have those?”
“You know what they say. If it exists…”
“Yeah yeah, no need to finish that. But seriously, this is like what, the fourth bloody time in a row this has happened this week? Can’t the Flowers understand basic agent needs?!”
“Says the guy who decided to pull an all-nighter binge-watching the entire Kirby anime this past weekend and ended up sleeping through the entire Monday,” Whitney replied, shaking her head. “I have to say, for a vengeful spirit possessing a sword, you sleep like a log.”
The blond had finally managed to free himself from the blanket. “I’m a humanization. Homs-inization? Whichever. The point is, there’s a big difference, and anyway, I most definitely did not deserve four consecutive late-night missions in response to that!”
“You did. And for the record, I’m not happy with you, either. You’re ruining not only your sleep schedule, but mine, too. That can’t be healthy for either of us.”
“Can we not talk about this? Let’s just clobber that there Sue and go back to bed.”
Whitney nodded. “We won’t need anything aside from our standard equipment,” she said, entering portal coordinates. “This fic apparently takes place in the anime sub-continuum, so we’ll be safe if we stay out of harm’s way. We may have to be careful around Meta Knight, though.”
“Huh? Why?”
“This Sue is his alleged girlfriend.”
Whitney lapsed into silence while she finished her prep work. Just as she opened the portal, however, there was a yell from over near the closet followed by the sound of a massive pile of food being dumped onto the floor.
Backslash extricated himself from the pile, clutching some of the food. “Three Maxim Tomatoes for each of us, and one Invincibility Lollipop each. I think that should be enough for us to survive the boss fight!”
Whitney took one look at her partner and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What am I ever going to do with you?”
********************
Act One
Soundtrack:
this is my first time writing a fanfic, ever.
I haven't quite figured out these writer's notes either :3
so if I'm doing something wrong, sorry, and tell me so I can fix it!
(I own none of these characters except Kitty)
It was a fine, sunny day on the outskirts of Cappy Town (save of course for that obnoxiously squeaky Author’s Note). A gentle breeze made the grass ripple and the trees rustle, and there were just a few puffy white clouds in the pretty blue sky. In short, the perfect time for a portal to open up and spit out two round, light brown creatures with peach-colored faces, rosy cheeks just under their beady brown eyes, and nubby hands as well as toeless, orange feet.
Whereupon one of them started to scream. How he did so despite having no mouth to speak of is anyone’s guess.
“AAAUUUUUGH! WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!”
“Backslash, calm down! Just take a deep breath and focus…”
“BUT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BREMMMM, MM MMMM MMMPH MM MMMPH!”
“Don’t think about it. Anime logic. Now, follow my lead. Puff up, inflate your chest…”
“Mmph?!”
The Waddle Dee with the female voice swelled a little, like a balloon being pumped with extra air. The other Waddle Dee hesitated, and then did the same.
“…Haaaaa. There you go!” said Whitney, a little white mushroom-shaped puff appearing in front of her face.
“Haaa… haaa… H-how do you do that?!” cried Backslash, feeling a bit relieved that he could speak again.
“It takes some getting used to. But like I said, I tend to not think about it.”
“Yeah, I should’ve known that Waddle Doo doesn’t have a mouth either, and he can talk in the anime,” said Backslash. After an awkward pause, he added, “Sorry for flipping my lid there. I wasn’t supposed to do that, right?”
“To put it bluntly, you’re lucky your stupid freakout didn’t attract Meta Knight’s attention. Or that of the invisible fangirls he now has chasing him for some reason.”
“Wait, what?!”
Indeed, the fic had started without them. Meta Knight, who was currently narrating, was hiding from the unseen fangirls in a tree. Then a strange figure appeared on a branch close to him…
"What? I don't understand," the figure said.
I stepped closer, and the figure shrunk away in fear.
"It's ok, I won't hurt you," I said, hoping Galaxia wasn't going to intimidate it.
"Please don't attack me monster!" Said the figure, who had now come into focus as a teenage girl, about that same age as me, with ice blue fur and sea blue hair that covered one of her purple eyes.
Backslash slumped over, which in this case meant flopping onto his face in the grass with a noise not unlike a squeaky toy. “What the bollocks?! There aren’t any humanoids aside from Tiff and Tuff, and I don’t recall them having furrrrrr…” He yawned, which basically translated to the Waddle Dee doing a stretch.
“The show never specified what species Tiff and her family were,” said Whitney. “I guess the Sue just assumed her species was the same as theirs, except now she looks like a tiny blue yeti.”
“And what’s more, not only do they not elaborate on what Galaxia is, but Meta Knight isn’t a teenager!” Backslash moaned. “I want to go back to bed already.”
“Oh, no you don’t. We started this, and we’re going to go through with it.”
The male agent could only moan a second time.
Only then did I notice a long cut down the side if her face, and I felt a tug in my stomach, like I was feeling her pain.
I finally got ahold of myself and spoke; "yes, I am, who are you?"
"Kitty Knight, I've been running from monsters all week! Finally another Star Warrior!" She clutched the side of her face in agony.
“YOU CACK-SACK!” Backslash waved his nubby hands in frustration. “The Star Warriors don’t use the Knight identifier, and on top of that, you don’t just stick yourself into their ranks willy-nilly. You’ve got to be qualified!”
“Or born a Star Warrior, in Kirby’s case,” added Whitney, taking her notepad and pen from her hammerspace.
“Whatever. Also, Kitty Knight?! That’s just… tacky…” He stifled a yawn.
Whitney wrote the charge down with surprising dexterity for a Waddle Dee. “Can’t agree more. Uh, do you need to rest?”
“I can handle it. Just let me keep watch and we should be fine.”
Unfortunately, things were not fine. The Sue started bleeding ugly pink glitter, and Meta Knight instantly rushed her over to the Cappy Town hospital. The two Waddle Dees followed, silently blessing their improved ability to hide thanks to their little bodies.
After the new patient exited the hospital (and kissed Meta Knight, because of course), Whitney added a minor charge for anime!Meta Knight knowing what Maxim Tomatoes were. Why he had called it a metamato , however, she had no idea; at least the word was spelled right. The chapter ended with Meta Knight taking the Sue to the Halberd .
“We now need to skip to key chapters and point out all the major charges,” said Whitney, swapping her notepad for the RA. “This fic is twenty-five chapters long, and as much as I want to take a nice jog through all of them for thoroughness, I get the feeling that wouldn’t be fun with these tiny little legs.”
Backslash moaned wordlessly and then flopped onto his face again.
Since the second chapter was simply the Sue meeting Sword Knight and Blade Knight, and Meta Knight explaining how he’d met them, Whitney decided to skip that one. The third chapter concerned the Sue learning to cook, so she skipped that one too. But by the time they’d run into the fourth chapter…
we left off with a creepy snail.
haha.
Now, this is the chapter that makes me have to rate this T, just to be safe...
(EDIT: I'm going on a road trip, one-two months, internet might be bad at wherever I'm staying, so if I don't update, I have an excuse :3)
(I don't own any of these characters except Kitty)
“Creepy snail?” asked Whitney.
Backslash groaned. “Escargoon. Ugh, now Dedede’s involved, and I’m pretty sure this is gonna get real ugly real fast.”
“No Visions necessary to predict that, am I right?”
“Oh, shut up.”
The chapter started with Meta Knight being alerted to the Sue’s kidnapping. He almost immediately received a note from Dedede stating as such, and announced that he was going to get her back.
"And we're going with you," I turned around to see who had spoken, it was Sword and Blade!
"It's gonna be dangerous," I warned.
"Can't be more dangerous then when we helped Kirby deal with that Yin Yarn fellow," Sword told me.
“Epic Yarn . Came out. In 2010,” Backslash muttered. “Temporal inconsistency aside, is it even possible for the anime to cross over with one of the games?! Ow ow ow, my heeeead…!”
“The anime ended its original run in North America in 2006,” said Whitney. “I can understand crossing over with a distant sequel, but…”
Backslash stretched and yawned again. “Ngggh… The Kirby anime is not wholly based on the games, though. It’s a sub-continuum of its own.”
“Mm-hmmm.” Whitney thought about it for a moment. “Anyway, should we head over to Dedede’s castle? Meta Knight should be there by now.”
"You've fallen into my trap, Meta... Now watch your friends die before your eyes, while you live on in the horror of it!" The raspy voice laughed manically, and robotic claws reached into the cages and plucked Sword and Blade right out.
I tried to save them, but Escargoon the snail wheeled out a large glass tank with Kitty inside it!
The agents recoiled, and Whitney started wobbling like she was in an earthquake simulator.
“Escargoon isn’t THIS violent, even with Dedede guiding him,” said Backslash.
Whitney had to use her Deep Breathing to calm herself, though it was a little hard to get the pose right with such stubby limbs. “But what if that’s the case here? We know Dedede sent the letter,” she said.
“But even Dedede himself wouldn’t hurt anyone this bad! Clobber that there Kirby, yes, swindle the townspeople, yes. But cut someone like what this scene is implying?!”
Whitney turned away and covered her little eyes. “My thoughts exactly.”
Meta Knight was now arguing with Dedede, who had arrived on the scene. The king was threatening to do horrible things to either Meta Knight or the captured Sue; Meta Knight let himself be captured by Dedede, but asked for the other two knights to keep Kitty safe, complete with two Single Tears in succession.
“That was fast,” said Backslash, before yawning. “And completely and utterly boooooring .”
“What, the fact that he inevitably fell for her?” replied Whitney, her voice trembling. “She had two whole chapters to try and seduce him, and I doubt she’d have been successful in canon.”
“Yeah, but they all seem to have taken place within a day or two! Love at first sight just isn’t Meta Knight’s thing, plain and simple.”
“Neither is torturing and killing Dedede’s thing,” replied Whitney. “Who’s willing to bet that the Sue is influencing them both for the sake of cheap drama?!”
“Um, Whitney?” Backslash was slowly edging away. “You’re shaking again.”
Whitney looked at him, and then down at her big orange feet. “I see… Should I not listen to the fic, then? I don’t mean to scare you—”
“You should, Whitney. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for four whole days!”
Meta Knight was now fighting a random monster that Dedede had apparently summoned. The agents silently noted a charge for Dedede not once mentioning Nightmare Enterprises (though oddly, Meta Knight had mentioned the so-called company earlier while narrating how he’d met his companions), and returned to their argument without missing a beat.
“How do you even get a good night’s sleep, anyway?” asked Whitney. “You’re technically dead.”
“How do you get a good night’s sleep? You’re a bloody NPC!”
“I care about my health, though. I’m a Wii Fit Trainer. And I’m very disappointed that for an RPG protagonist, or a duplicate thereof, you don’t have nearly as much attachment to your well-being.”
“I don’t care about my health because I’m a protagonist! The future can’t tell me what—”
“Not in the PPC, you aren’t. How many times do I have to tell you that before it manages to sink in? Why do you think I dragged you here in the first place?”
Backslash facepalmed. “You’re unbelievable, you are.”
Whitney managed a humorless laugh. “The feeling is mutual.”
The battle ended with Meta Knight discovering that the monster was a machine, and destroying it by attacking its one weak point. He then freed the Sue and his companions before escaping, leaving Dedede and Escargon at a loss.
The agents ran after them, ducking into the Halberd just before it's doors shut. Then the ship took off and started flying far away from the castle.
“So, did either of us bet that they’d immediately start dating?” asked Backslash. “The Sue and Meta Knight, I mean?”
“No, and I think no bets were needed,” replied Whitney, glaring off into space. “This Kitty is dead to me.”
Backslash face-planted a third time. “Can I at least take a nap before we continue, Mom?”
“No.”
“Aw, come on!”
********************
Act Two
Soundtrack:
The agents continued to the next chapter, ducking under an author’s note citing a water balloon fight as inspiration for said chapter along with P.O.V. Blade.
“Since when has anyone referred to Meta Knight as just ‘Meta’?” asked Whitney. “His full name, his only name, is Meta Knight.”
“I thought the same,” said Backslash. “Apparently, the author just couldn’t be bothered to write the full name all the time. Which shouldn’t have been that hard, honestly!”
“Sword is… asking Blade out… Uh…” Whitney narrowed one of her eyes in an expression of confusion.
“They’re always seen together in the anime, so the shipping was bound to happen,” said Backslash. “As long as it’s more tasteful than the obvious , we should be fine.”
“I can only—”
An unmarked scene shift sent the two of them tumbling about the room they were in. A moment later, the fic transitioned to Sword Knight’s P.O.V., and the two canons headed off to greet Meta Knight and the Sue for breakfast.
“It’s morning already?!” Backslash yelled once they were gone.
“In the fic, yes. Don’t get discouraged,” said Whitney. “We’ve still got a ways to go, but we haven’t been here for longer than an hour, tops.”
“Don’t care. Need sleep.”
“You’ll get it after we’re done. I can’t promise I’ll make it quick, but—”
“Please.”
The agents decided to skip most of this chapter, which consisted of the Sue and Meta Knight doing some training. Later on, it started to rain, but instead of going indoors, the two of them started a mud-fight.
Backslash walked over to the nearest tree and started banging his entire body against it. “Meta. Knight. Is. A. Comically. Serious. Character. For. The. Bionis’. Sake!”
“Backslash, whatever you do, do not let me barge in before we have enough charges,” Whitney snarled. “Five chapters in, five chapters, and I already want to—”
Backslash pressed his hands to the sides of his body which he was pretty sure corresponded to ears. What Whitney was saying became muffled, but he could tell it had become quite heated.
He risked uncovering his “ears”, and…
“—fracture her lumbar vertebrae so badly that she won’t be able to walk away once I tear out her—”
He covered his “ears” again.
It was another minute before Whitney finished, and when she did, she turned away, her hands over her eyes, breathing heavily. Backslash, of course, waddled up to her and patted her on the shoulder.
“Maybe I should handle her,” he said. “It’d be better for us both. You don’t want to repeat Dedede’s example, trust me.”
Whitney shuddered. “Good idea.”
An unmarked timeskip sent the two of them flying. The Sue and Meta Knight were thankfully too engrossed in their playing (having engaged in their mud battle for at least an hour) to notice the two Waddle Dees being flung across the field for some strange reason.
I wiped the mud off her face and we started laughing for no reason.
We found shelter under a giant leaf, and Kitty snuggled close to me, I wrapped my cape around her and held her close.
It didn't matter that we were covered in mud, I could feel Kitty's breath, and she closed her eyes and snuggled even closer to me.
I closed my eyes too and sat there under the leaf, holding Kitty close and daydreaming of my future with Kitty...
Both Waddle Dees, having landed in some convenient giant-leaved bushes under a random tree, were surprised to learn that making a retching noise was in fact possible without having any facial features other than eyes.
“What I’d give to cave in that skull of hers,” said Whitney.
“To quote a certain game title, I have no mouth — or any other orifice for that matter — and I must scream!” cried Backslash.
“Isn’t that game based on a famous short story of the same name?” said Whitney.
“Whatever! I can’t do this anymore. I’m going back to bed!”
“We’re not done yet. As much as I want to kill this Sue now, too, the chargelist needs to be thorough. No, what are you doing with that leaf? Stop lying on the mud, you’ll — Oh, too late.”
The agents remained there for the rest of the chapter, Whitney tapping her foot in frustration while Backslash started snoring. It was noted that the Sue, like Meta Knight, was apparently a “puff”, which resulted in her contracting down to a little ball with feet and nubby arms. (She still looked furry and cat-like, though.)
Meta Knight and the Sue exited via the figurative stage left, ending the chapter, and an Author’s Note rang overhead…
aww so cuuute
so, the reason Kitty calls Meta Knight "Mety", you ask?
THATS WHAT I CALL HIM :3
(I'm a serious MK fangirl, if you didn't notice :3)
kk baiz
Backslash woke up with a surprised yell. “METY?!”
Whitney cringed again. “What. The actual—”
“Don’t finish. I’m just as disgusted as you.”
“Aren’t we all? And speaking of which, clean that mud off and let’s get going, before you start tracking mud all over the RC.”
The male agent glowered down at the mud puddle he was sitting in. “Isn’t there a shower somewhere around here? Or should I go back to the one we have?”
Fssssssssh. Both agents looked up to see a tiny raincloud hovering over Backslash, washing away the mud with a tiny drizzle. On closer inspection it had a single eye at its center, and bristled with blunt yellow spikes.
“Aw, cute,” said Whitney. “Your own personal raincl—”
“AAAAAAAAAA, HE’S SO CUUUUUTE!!! MOMMY, CAN I KEEP HIM?!” Backslash immediately jumped up and tried to grab the mini-Kracko, but it floated gently out of his reach. And again. And again.
“Hmm. I’m guessing this is Meta's ?” said Whitney. “Funny, I’d have sworn he showed up earlier than this. At any rate, Meta Knight doesn’t go by ‘Meta’, either in the anime or the games. Yes, you can keep him. Now, come on, before we miss the Sue.”
As she prepared to open up a portal, her partner had finally managed to grab hold of the mini. Said mini simply floated off after Whitney, though not before it shocked him. And again. And again.
ok, so I wrote this chapter because something very similar to this happened to me in real life :3
this chapter is a bit longer then the others.
anyways.
Chapter six people.
(I own none of these characters except Kitty and Music)
“Music?!” Backslash cried, his face covered in soot and the mini still hovering over him.
“Another one, oh good gosh,” said Whitney. “I’m starting to guess that this isn’t the first piece of writing written by this author…”
“Who knows how it’ll turn out, though?” asked Backslash. “Perhaps this Music will be totally fine and dandy and will fit into this continuum like a hand in a Bionis-damned glove!”
A blob of Sar-Plasm promptly added itself to the grime coating one very grumpy Waddle Dee, who promptly got rained on again by Meta's.
The chapter proceeded, and as Meta Knight and the Sue headed back to the Halberd, they had to take a forest route. Unfortunately for them, this resulted in the two being surrounded by a pack of wolves.
And then one of them changed into a purple Puff with indigo hair and a wolf like complexion.
“Is that Music?” said Whitney. “I don’t get it. What does music have to do with wolves?”
From the dialogue, it seemed that Music had engaged in a relationship with Meta Knight before, but he’d turned her down. After pushing Kitty away from the scene, Meta Knight was immediately jumped by Music, who kicked Galaxia away.
She looked down and Meta, and pulled out her sword, she said, "you could have been great, we could have run away with the wolves, and we would have been together... But now I have to kill you, time to face the Music," she stabbed Meta right in the head, her blade tearing through his mask like it was butter!
The two Waddle Dees let out simultaneous gasps of horror.
“Overly violent… bit character… Uncanon… Backstory…” Whitney had started shaking once again.
“Should we kill this Puff, too?” asked Backslash.
“You tell me. Maybe I should go and—”
“No. Wait for the fight to stop. She’ll be driven away, and then she’ll vanish into the continuum. And I’ll get rid of her, then. It’s safer that way.”
She looked down at her nubby hands and sighed. “Probably. My disguise probably wouldn’t be good for breaking her neck, anyway, if she had one.”
He looked at her, feeling a twinge of doubt. There seemed to be a different reason for her agreeing with him, and he had a good guess as to what it was.
Before he could ask anything else, however, the Sue had leapt out of her hiding space, and engaged the bit character. With a flurry of slashes, she killed all of the wolves, leaving only Music behind.
“Charge… for… sword… overly… talented…” Whitney scribbled in her notebook with surprising ferocity. So focused was she on writing that she didn’t notice that Kitty had driven Music away until she heard a thud and a scuffling noise. She looked up to see that Backslash had pinned down the fleeing bit character, who was struggling to throw him off.
“Music,” said Backslash, “by order of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, you are hereby convicted of being a Mary Sue by proxy on account of attempting to revise a canon’s history, attacking and nearly killing a canon character, having an unfitting name for this canon, using the lamest of lame one-liners, and existing only to antagonize a Sue and her Twu Wuv. Goodbye.”
Whitney understood at once, and passed him the RA. He opened up the portal and shoved Music through. There was a scream and followed by a loud SQUISH, and then silence.
“What did you do to her?” asked Whitney, tilting her whole body due to currently being a waddling head.
“That advancing spike wall from World 2 of Triple Deluxe ,” Backslash replied, closing the portal. “I put her past the teleporter, so there’s no escape.”
His partner winced at this. “Right. Well, I guess it’s back to stalking the one Sue. And speaking of, weren’t they supposed to be part of a double date?”
He started. “Yipes, thanks for the reminder! But wait. How do we get rid of the Sue if Meta Knight is protecting her? Or vice versa?!”
“Simple. We wait until they’re separated and kill her when he’s not there.”
“Knowing what just happened, that’s a… pretty tall order,” said Backslash, yawning. “And we’re probably going to have to skip a lot of filler, anyway. Who knows if we miss an opportunity?”
“I don’t care. It’s either come down on her or let her rampage throughout Popstar with her lovey-dovey OOC boyfriend. I think you can guess which I’d prefer.”
“I feel you, Whitey. Now, let’s follow that — Um. Are you laughing at me?!”
She wiped a tear from her eye. “Should I check the Lost and Found for a lowercase n? Well, I guess that’s what I get for calling you Monado Boy all the time. And yes, I think that would be a good idea…”
“I should be so lucky.”
They portaled to near the end of the chapter. The canons and the Sue were trying to figure out what to wear for their double date, but other than that there was nothing exciting. Meta Knight had apparently healed off the injuries he’d gotten while fighting Music, though, which worried the agents greatly.
“Is that normal? Meta Knight having healing powers?” asked Backslash.
“Either that or, more likely, the Sue patched him up,” said Whitney. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was good at healing, since she’s perfect at everything else.”
“She got captured by Dedede, though!”
“For the sake of cheap drama. C’mon, it’s not that hard to understand that…”
“Okay, fine. I get it. But still, she can’t be this good at what she does…”
“And cue the Ironic Overpower winding up for a curveball.”
“What did I say?! I had nothing to do with the IO!”
Beat. “Do you even listen to yourself when you talk?” asked Whitney.
“Uh, no?”
“If you did last summer, you wouldn’t have had your arm nearly taken off. What is your problem, Backslash? Do you really think that low of everyone else around you?”
That gave him pause. But before he could answer, there was a noise like horns blowing, heralding the opening of a building. The agents turned to see a wooden stage, just as a pair of puppets in the guise of the author and Meta Knight made their grand debut.
“sorry about that drop-off ending, I didn't really have the motivation to make it more interesting.” said the author puppet.
“Meta: it's ok.” said the Meta Knight puppet.
“What,” said Backslash.
“Me: you're not supposed to show up!” said the author puppet.
“ Meta: I'm a crazy figment of your imagination.
I can show up when I like.” said the Meta Knight puppet, resulting in the world jolting and leaving the Waddle Dees sprawling.
“Me: you're making me look crazy in front of the Internet!.” said the author puppet.
“Meta: they've read your fanfiction, I think they know you're crazy.” said the author puppet.
While the two puppets descended into a meaningless argument, Backslash clutched his head and muttered, “Must… resist… temptation… to… author-bash…”
“Okay, that settles it,” said Whitney. “This fic is crazy.”
“Which says a lot, coming from you,” replied Backslash. Whitney’s response was to kick him in the side, which led to him flipping over with a startled yelp and landing on his head.
“Where’s our next stop?” he asked, still reeling.
Whitney checked the RA. “Chapter 7, the double date itself, is relatively uneventful, so unless you want to try and clog your arteries with Kawasaki’s cooking, we’re better off jumping right into Chapter 8. Yes, I know this is going on for longer than you’d like. Just be patient and wait for a good stopping point.”
“Uggggh…”
Strangely enough, this was a much shorter chapter. Landia from Kirby’s Return to Dreamland attacked the Halberd for some reason, but naturally the Sue ended up shooting the dragon at point blank range with the ship’s plasma cannons, ending the fight then and there. The crown on the boss monster’s uppermost head fell off, and was picked up by a figure with ears and a hoodie .
The agents exchanged dismayed looks.
“And that,” said Whitney, “is why we don’t bait the Ironic Overpower.”
“It was something I said, wasn’t it?” asked Backslash.
She opened a portal to the next chapter, and then turned to him with a look of disappointment. “Yes. It was.”
********************
Act Three
Soundtrack:
Skipping past another Author’s Note, the agents found themselves tailing Meta Knight once again. A brief monologue later, the canon received a note from an unknown sender, and realized that someone had kidnapped the Sue, again, after she had apparently went on another solo quest.
“You’d think she’d take Meta Knight with her,” said Backslash.
“Either she thinks she can handle everything herself, or she’s just that stupid,” replied Whitney. “Then again, who’s to say these two things aren’t mutually exclusive ?”
Before Backslash could answer, a scene transition threw the agents into a wall, which resulted in each of them being squashed like Kirby under a falling anvil, before sliding to the floor.
By the time they managed to un-flatten themselves, complete with the obligatory accordion noises, they found themselves in a random blank void, with the Sue tied to a chair nearby.
Oh great, another chair.
The downside of being Meta Knight's girlfriend was that his enemies typically liked to use you for bait or leverage.
This time I wasn't physically hurt, just a bit unnerved, the guy who had caught me had one eye and one hand, where his other hand should have been was a wicked iron claw.
I flinched away as he walked back into the room, he was a Puff like me and Mety, but he was horribly scarred, and his hair stuck in awkward angles.
The agents looked at the new “Puff”, and then at each other. Then they made the mouthless retching noises again.
“What are these Puff things, Monsters of the Week?!” cried Backslash.
“More like a ton of extra Kirby-clones,” said Whitney. “I’m willing to bet that they’d all come back later to side with the main villain of the fic, whomever that is. But for now, if this Puff doesn’t kill her — which he isn’t likely to, seeing as Meta Knight is on the way — then you can do the honors.”
He stared at her. “You want me to do it?! I thought you wanted to do all those things to her…”
“I would , but at this point I don’t think it’d be worth it anymore.”
"My dear little Kitty, Meta Knight will come to try and save you, but you will be the one to destroy him!" He flipped a switch on the wall, more restraints kept me from moving at all, and something lowered down over my head.
I could feel pain instantly, and I couldn't remember my own name, I couldn't hold on to anything, and eventually I slipped into a nightmare.
“…never mind,” said Whitney, her face turning as white as her normal skin tone.
Yet another transition hurled the Waddle Dees and the mini across the room. Meta Knight burst into the castle where the clawed Puff, apparently called Octo Knight, was holding the Sue captive. The fight was unexpectedly brief, with the Sue changing her sword into a bow and quiver and firing a barrage of arrows at him. He dodged all of them, grabbed the bow from her, and shot at Octo Knight. He described it as a bad shot, but it hit Octo Knight square in the face, killing him.
“Welp, so much for him,” said Backslash. “Now it’s up to us again, isn’t it?”
“Knowing the fic, we may see more angry puffs in the future,” replied Whitney. “Just a few more chapters to be thorough, and then we kill her.”
New "Kitty, I'm not your enemy, Octo has altered your memories!" Kitty stopped kicking and looked at me.
"I-I remember... In the rain... Under the leaf..." Kitty looked thoughtful for a second…
"Mety!" She tackle-hugged me and I wrapped my wings around her.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"Octo put this thing on my head, and then I forgot who I was! But when my memories came back they were distorted! And the false memories said you were evil!" Kitty shuddered like the memory hurt.
The agents stared at the Words, completely shocked.
“What. The. Bleep. Is. This. Sue.” Whitney’s voice, not to mention her entire body, was noticeably shaky.
“That’s it, I’m done,” said Backslash, turning to walk away.
Whitney grabbed his nubby hand and pulled him back. “You’re done? Just like that? You can’t back out of this mission now, not after we’ve gone this far. We have to kill her, before she dooms Meta Knight to a lifetime of loving her and destroys Popstar in the process!”
“I know that. That wasn’t what I—”
“I can tell that you intend to abandon all this. I know how you feel. But the very canon is at stake, so even if you want to, you just can’t. Can’t .”
He glared at her, and Meta's imitated him. “What made you make such a stupid bloody assumption?! I can’t leave the PPC, plain and simple. I want to, yes, but there’s no way I can, and that’s that.”
Whitney gave him a wide-eyed stare. “You. Want. To. Leave us?! To leave ME?!”
He broke out in a cold sweat. “N-no! That’s not what I meant! I can’t abandon the Duty, or my job, I—”
But her look of horrified rage remained unchanged. Finally, he sighed, and face-planted with a cute little squeak .
“Look… I haven’t been honest with you, Whitney. I wanted you to feel happy, I really did. But as far as the PPC is concerned, if people like Kitty keep showing up, if badfic continues being made, we’re fighting an uphill battle, and I don’t think we can win. It’s why I treat everyone else as though they’re beneath me — I just don’t have faith in the world around me.”
Whitney felt as though her world was crumbling. She hadn’t expected her partner to say anything like this .
“I know I can’t leave. But if we’re going to continue like this, arguing and creeping each other out and generally holding each other at arm’s length, I won’t stand for it. I’m sorry, but… If that’s how it is, then, well…”
She stared at him, tears welling up in the corners of her little black eyes. Then she helped him up and opened a portal back to their RC.
“Go on,” she said. “It’d be better if I finish this alone. I guess this is goodbye.”
“Maybe. And Whitney… I’m sorry for letting you down.”
He turned and walked through the portal, his mini-Kracko following suit. Whitney closed it just as the stage popped up again.
“ everyone loves a deranged psychopathic Puff :3 ” said the author puppet.
“ Meta: I don't. ” said the Meta Knight puppet.
“ Me: you ARE a deranged psychopathic Puff. ”
“ Meta: no I'm not! ”
“ Me: this is MY fanfic, if I say you're a deranged psychopathic Puff, you become a deranged psychopathic Puff. ”
“ Meta: I'm a rebel. ”
“ Kitty: didn't I say that last time? ”
“ Meta: yes. Yes you —”
Whitney, fed up with the show, reached into her hammerspace, whipped out her Header, and headbutted it at the stage, destroying it in one hit. She picked up the ball, smashed it over the stage several more times, and stormed off, sobbing.
She spent more or less the entirety of Chapter 10 in dead silence, listening to the Words, trying to forget her soon-to-be-former partner. Kirby finally made his debut in the fic, albeit in an even more minor role than in the anime proper; he and the Sue ventured into Whispy Woods to visit a friend from the supposed Star Warrior academy, an OC named Dim. A brief discussion revealed that multiple academy members had defected to Nightmare, including Music (full name Music Mage ). Kitty then passed out, as though slipping into her nightmare from before.
Everyone took Kitty to the Halberd , whereupon they started discussing Magolor—
“What,” Whitney said to herself. “ Return to Dreamland was even later than Epic Yarn . Temporal. Consistency. Ow, now I know how he—”
She stopped short of mentioning his name. She couldn’t start thinking about him now. She couldn’t afford to miss him, not while this Sue was on the loose.
But for once, she didn’t know how to handle a Sue with Meta Knight protecting her. He did, and he…
She pressed her hands over her eyes, wiping away the wetness. He was gone now. What mattered the most was getting this mess of a fic over w—
"Anyways, Kitty was the weakest, so Magolor decided to use his curse on her," Dim said sadly.
"What curse?" I asked, I really did have to know.
"The curse that if somebody loves her..." Dim started.
"What happens?" I asked, this story seemed more like something you would see in a romantic drama.
"The one who loves her is cursed to die a horrible death," Dim finished.
“Okay, that does it,” Whitney growled. She dialed a portal to the next time the two of them would reunite, which was at the start of Chapter 12 — one month later.
Meta was not in good shape. He looked so thin, and for a so-called Puff that made him look almost like a shrunken head with feet. That is, if said shrunken head had Meta Knight’s mask on.
He even tried eating a bit of his own cape to alleviate his hunger pains.
Kitty, Blade Knight, and Sword Knight showed up, and upon realizing how awful he was, they all rushed in to comfort him. He was about to pull off his mask and reveal his face to her, and…
FWEEEEEEEEEET!
The Waddle Dee standing at the doorway, whistle in hand, made everyone look around. Blank shock crossed the faces of the canons and the Sue, especially considering how angry the Waddle Dee looked.
“Sword Knight. Blade Knight. Out ,” said Whitney. “I need to deal with these two. Alone.”
Surprisingly, both bit canons obeyed her, no doubt because they figured Kitty would deal with her easily. She was just one little Waddle Dee!
She slammed the door behind her and locked it, before turning to face the Sue.
“Kitty Knight, by order of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, you are hereby convicted of being a Mary Sue on account of the following charges: being of the same lineage as Kirby and Meta Knight without explanation; referring to your species as Puffs when there aren’t any canon names for said species; having a speshul color scheme; romancing Meta Knight, and warping his character beyond recognition in the process; ruining Meta Knight’s mental and physical state; establishing relationships among canons which are not known from the original source material; integrating elements from Kirby games which were released after the conclusion of the anime, and thus inducing timeline distortion; referring to Meta Knight as ‘Mety’; creating a mini-Kracko by means of an unneeded name abbreviation; introducing trauma and angst for their own sake; making Dedede and Escargoon excessively violent as a means of providing said trauma; creating multiple antagonistic characters specifically for drama purposes when any one of the monsters from NME would do just fine; having scripted Author’s Notes; using weapons with improbable skill even for a Star Warrior; implying that the Star Warriors still exist in their state from before they were mostly wiped out by Nightmare; supposedly cursing Meta Knight, again for the sake of drama; and ruining what could’ve been a perfectly good night’s sleep for me and my former partner. For all of these crimes, your punishment is death, so if you have any last words, now is the time to speak up.”
Whitney raised her hands, preparing to make the motion that would end the Sue’s life, but when she saw the nubs she had lifted up, she was quick to realize her mistake.
“Um, excuse me,” she said. “You don’t happen to have a spear on hand, do you? Extra bow?” She had her Header, sure, but against Kitty and her bow, it would likely do her no good.
"Why should I give you one?" asked Kitty, raising said bow. "You already said you were going to kill me!"
"Kitty," said Meta, his voice growing fainter. "Just... get rid of her..."
"Gladly!" The Sue nocked an arrow and drew. "All right, hold still!"
Whitney realized what was happening a half-second too late, and managed to duck just as the arrow went flying. It grazed her scalp, leaving a shallow but painful cut. As soon as she knew it had passed, she sprang up and started running.
"I SAID HOLD STILL!!" cried the Sue, firing arrow after arrow. Whitney’s apparent wild dash of panic was the only thing keeping her alive, the arrows whizzing past her and missing her by inches.
The good news: Kitty Knight, apparently, had the aiming skill of an Archer Waddle Dee. The bad news: They were in an enclosed room, with nowhere to hide.
Whitney skidded to a halt, finding herself facing the corner of the room. Arrows covered every other part of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Now Kitty drew her bow, aiming directly at her, and her partner was still nowhere to be seen.
Which is good, because I feel like murdering him, she thought — her final thought, no doubt.
Then the Sue screamed, once. A white line crossed her body, and then the two halves of her slid apart before exploding in a massive cloud of glitter, her bow and quiver clattering to the floor.
"KITTY!" Finding a sudden burst of strength, Meta launched himself through the glitter cloud, frantically blowing it away with his cloak, but all that was left was her bow.
“I was afraid this would happen.”
Canon!Meta Knight stepped forward, Galaxia drawn and slightly glittery. The effect was somewhat ruined by the Waddle Dee hiding behind him. (Somewhere, Whitney was sure, a guitar started playing.)
"What is going on?!" Meta yelled, backing away. "Stay away from me! You killed Kitty, you- YOU-"
“If you were going to call me a monster, I’m afraid that dubious honor went to Kitty. She was a foul beast who drained the power of warriors through a curse of false love. Your heart belongs to her now. You must be destroyed before the curse spreads.”
“Thank you for summing it up better than I could,” said Backslash. “Which reminds me… ‘Meta Knight’, a.k.a. Meta, Mety, and a bunch of other ridiculous nicknames I can’t care less about, by order of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, you are hereby convicted of being a character replacement on account of the following charges: Replacing the canonical character of Meta Knight; being so completely OOC that I couldn’t see the real Meta Knight in you even if I used a bloody microscope ; devoting yourself so completely to Kitty that you have lost all regard for literally everything else ; being an utter disgrace of a portrayal of one of my absolute favorite characters from the Kirby anime; aiding and abetting a Mary Sue; and wasting several hours I could’ve spent catching some Zs. Meta Knight, I can’t exactly maul him with these stubby arms, so…”
“Much obliged.” Meta Knight’s eyes turned red, and he charged at his double, Galaxia first.
Meta screamed and tried to parry with his own sword, but Meta Knight moved too fast for him to follow. There was a loud CRACK and a noise like a tomato being skewered by a railroad peg, and the replacement too exploded into glitter, leaving only his sword and the two halves of his mask behind.
Whitney stared at the whole scene, and then her gaze met that of her partner. There were no words needed. Her gratitude was palpable.
Meta Knight flicked the pink gleam off his sword, and then turned to the Waddle Dee in the corner. “You have done well,” he said. “Your distraction allowed me to take care of the monster before it could notice that I was here. Had I been forced to take on both it and the copy of me it created, there’s a good chance that I would have lost.”
Backslash shuddered. “Good thing you didn’t! Perhaps we should—” And then he saw the fake Galaxia. “AAAAAAAAAAA, IT’S SO PRETTY!! MOMMY, CAN I KEEP IT?!”
Whitney facepalmed with an exhausted white puff. “Go ahead. I don’t want it near me after all this. The mask bits and the Sue’s bow, though…” She took out the RA and prepared to open a portal to Dedede’s castle.
Meta Knight, meanwhile, looked down at said mask fragments, thinking. Backslash realized what was going to happen a bit more quickly, though, and pulled out a little rod-like device.
“Look, as much as I’d appreciate the pun, Meta Knight, I have a feeling that becoming a meta -Knight wouldn’t be a smart move on your part. Look this way, please!”
FLASH!
********************
Post-Mission
The remaining neuralyzations took ten minutes, including assimilating any non-important OCs into the canon (and gathering the Suvians’ weapons to sell to the Armory). By the end of all this, the two Waddle Dees found themselves back in the grassy field where they’d started.
A gentle breeze made the grass ripple and the trees rustle, and there were just a few puffy white clouds in the pretty blue sky (and one cloud with yellow spikes and a single eye, still hovering over Backslash’s head). And under a certain tree, there was a faint shimmer where a plot hole had once been.
“Okay,” said Whitney. “I know this is going to sound very, very awkward, coming from me. But… aside from the obligatory thank you, I just wanted to say that… while you were gone… I missed you. And that scared me.”
“Because you’ve worked alone all your life,” said Backslash.
She nodded. “It’s such a strange feeling, having an attachment to someone else and then seeing them walk out on you. And realizing that you depend on that other person to remain sane.”
“You were barely sane to begin with,” he replied with all chuckle.
She lightly slapped the side of his face, but she too was laughing. Then she sighed. “So why did you come back?”
“I never said I was bailing out of this,” he replied after a moment’s thought. “I just wanted to go back and check if there was something else we’d missed. And apparently, I was right.”
They looked at the fading shimmer under the tree. Whitney nodded in understanding.
“You could’ve told me in the first place,” she said.
“I was going to do that, honestly. But then you started accusing me of wanting to leave altogether, and one thing led to another, and, well…”
She looked down at her feet. “I guess it was wrong of me to draw such a conclusion. It’s just…” Her cheeks grew redder than usual. “I like you. Not just as a partner, but a little more. I want someone by my side, someone who can help me cope.”
“Cope? Cope with what?”
She closed her eyes, blinking back tears. “With the fear that people are scared of me.”
Backslash looked at her, and then burst into a flurry of giggles. “Whitney, that’s not true! You’re terrifying when on Duty, sure, but you’ve been so nice and caring to everyone you’ve met. A lot more than I have…”
She sighed. “Because I don’t want people to see the truth. I don’t want people to find out how violent I can be when trying to protect the canons I love. You’re the first person to see that, and I hoped you’d understand…”
“Well, I have two words for you. Who isn’t?”
She looked at him. “Um, what?”
“We all want to protect the canon in our own way. I do as much as you do. And even if your mentality about it is scarier than most others, in the end it all amounts to more or less the same thing.”
“I thought you said you had no faith in anyone else?”
“Not in the long-term, I have to say. Sad, but what can I do? But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. Try to change the future. Try to bring peace to the multiverse while we can. Try to live the lives we’ve always wanted, even while we keep killing badfics, Sues, and other products of terrible writing. It’s like someone told me once: like saving money on car insurance by switching to GEICO, it’s what we do.”
They looked at each other, and then they both doubled over laughing. The two of them spent a good two minutes comforting each other and cuddling before Whitney decided that it was time to go home.
The two of them stepped back into their RC, returning to their normal selves with a noise much like an accordion being stretched. Whitney was glad that she’d dialed a human-sized portal.
“Oh, one last thing,” she said. “Where did you get the other RA?”
“What other RA?”
“You wouldn’t have been able to portal over to me so quickly without one.”
“Oh. Well, I borrowed it from a friend, that’s all. I’ll give it back, don’t worry!”
She chuckled good-naturedly. A moment later, she did something he didn’t expect: she wrapped her arms around him in a gentle embrace.
He blushed a little, cuddling the mini-Kracko like a teddy bear, and said, “Um… Would now be a good time to say that the Wii Fit Trainer is one of my LOs?”
“If you’re implying what I think you’re implying… Not today, Monado Boy. We’ll give it a few months of readjustment to a more open relationship, and I’ll consider it.” She ruffled his blond hair.
“Whatever you say, Whitey.”
That was when they heard a gale of laughter from the direction of the couch. Both agents looked around to see that they weren’t the only ones in the RC: a brown-haired teenager with white wings, a red-gold laurel crown, and a pink toga was rolling around on the sofa, guffawing at the pair.
“Whitey… Really? You couldn’t think of anything more creative than just… Whitey?!” The angel continued laughing.
“Um… Pit? What are you doing here in our RC?” asked Whitney.
Backslash looked at her, and then at the angel. “Uh…” He started speaking quite loudly. “Thank you for letting me borrow your RA, Cupid! You can have it back now!”
He held out the device, and Cupid sat up, still rubbing tears from his cheeks, and took it from him.
“Have we met before?” asked Whitney. “Or do you know of Monado_Boy_4739 only?”
“Oh! Uh, yes!” said Backslash, rubbing the back of his hair. “Intro! Whitney, DrunkenPinkToga. DrunkenPinkToga, Whitney!”
Whitney looked at her partner expectantly, but he merely smiled. So she let out a little sigh and extended a hand for the angel to shake.
“Ohhhh, I get it now!” said “DrunkenPinkToga”, standing up and shaking her hand. “Cupid Carmine, DIC. It’s an honor, really!”
“So, how come you dragged yourself out of bed to help my partner—”
“Help you ? Well, it was quite simple, really. He used the console to open up a portal into my RC. Sarah and Lapis got a really rude awakening, and I’m pretty sure I had to push him back through so he wouldn’t get bitten again. She says she won’t accept his apologies until he delivers them in person.”
Backslash laughed nervously. As soon as he felt Whitney’s glare at him, he decided to fill in the rest.
“As soon as I got Cupid over, I told him about the fic, what you were up against, and what I suspected about Meta Knight. He thought he was gonna be brought in as a backup in case something went wrong, but I just wanted to use his RA for a bit. No harm done, right?”
“Besides, I’m a disentangler, not an assassin,” said Cupid. “We’ve dealt with Suvians before, but not as much as you two have.”
“Understandable,” said Whitney. “Though I have to ask, you haven’t once tried to—”
“What makes you think I still do that?” asked Cupid, his wings fluffing out a little. “I’ve had some experiences that’ve taught me a lot about the opposite gender since I’ve taken up residence here in the PPC. Besides, I figured it wouldn’t be in good taste to glomp you in particular, since… well… You’re already taken…”
Both assassins immediately turned beet-red and started saying multiple variations of “NONONONONONO IT’S NOT LIKE THAT PLEASE STOP TALKING” at the same time.
“Eh, say what you will, but it looked like that to me! You are one lucky guy to have her, I gotta say. And if it helps any, I’ll gladly be your best man at the wedding, Buttscratch!” The angel pointed at the other male and winked, clicking his tongue.
Whitney doubled over laughing, and Backslash smothered his face with Meta's and muttered, “Kill me now…”
“Anyway, I guess I should show myself out,” said Cupid. “The girls would probably want me back in bed very shortly.”
“That would be a good idea,” said Whitney, still chortling. “Embarrassments aside, though, I can’t thank you enough for your help. Even if I didn’t know of it until after the fact.”
“Sure thing! And if you get a crossover fic that needs untangling, just call us. We’ll help you out in any way we can!” He made a V-sign with his hand, grinning broadly.
Whitney giggled softly. “As long as you don’t try to make us kiss, I’ll consider it.”
With that, Cupid opened a portal and disappeared through it.
Backslash didn’t uncover his head until he was sure he heard the sound of the portal closing. Then the two agents sat down next to each other on Whitney’s bed.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked. “I understand that you and I feel better when we’re together, but we have to work out some terms and conditions.”
“First things first, you really should stop making me fear for the safety of everyone involved while on Duty,” he replied. “When faced with badfic, we should at least look to each other to try and figure out how to handle it in a way that’s not excessively vindictive. The last thing I need is either a Sue dying through borderline torture or you getting yourself into a bad situation because of your prioritizing ending her life over your own safety.”
She nodded. “If I can trust you to ensure that my anger doesn’t get the better of me, then can you trust me to keep your own issues with the world as a whole out of your relationships with others? In other words, can I trust you not to be an asshole?”
“Well… I did come back for you. Does that count?”
“It’s a start. But you also need to respect other people. Don’t call them worthless because they’ve seen what badfic can do, especially not if it’s cost them their loved ones, or their limbs, or their…”
“Faith in humanity?”
“Especially their faith in humanity.”
Backslash thought for a moment, idly petting the mini-Kracko. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do what I can. For you. For both of us.”
“I can only hope that’s the case.” She stretched and yawned. “I think we should both get some sleep. The Flowers would probably know by now that you’ve learned your lesson, so hopefully we shouldn’t get any more missions tonight.” She knocked twice on her bed counter, just to be sure. Then she swung her long legs over the bed and rested her head on her Balance Board-shaped pillow.
Backslash had only sat next to her for less than a minute before she started snoring.
“Well, who doesn’t need a trip to Dreamland every once in awhile?” He pulled the covers over his snoozing partner with a soft chuckle. “Sleep tightey, Whitey!”