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King Dedede stood on a gold-covered and red chair on one of the many balconies of Castle Dedede. He was enjoying some tea, accompanied by a good number of colorful and tasty biscuits filled with all kinds of jelly, various chocolate chips, or simple butter in all kinds of peculiar shapes. But he was mostly looking over the scenery, enjoying the warm breeze which brushed past and graced all of Dream Land in that season. He quite liked it.
Finally footsteps approached from behind him, quiet even if a bit rushed. He had been waiting, and for a King such has himself he had already waited too much, yet he enjoyed just staying like this and taking in the air of home, especially after an adventure which had taken them so far away from their comfortable grasslands.
A similar cup of brownish-colored tea remained on the other side of the table, and he was soon joined by those steps. Soon enough, Meta Knight sat comfortably on the opposing stool and Dedede gave a nod in his direction, which was reciprocated, before looking back to the scenery. Meta Knight didn’t like to be watched when he was drinking or eating, because he had to partly remove his mask. And Dedede was completely used to turn around to let his friend eat and drink calmly.
A quiet hum came after the soft sound of sipping.
“Cinnamon. Thank you.” The quiet voice said. Dedede finally leaned back and looked at the other, mask back to its usual place and piercing gaze behind it.
“No biggie.”
“You asked of me. What did you want to discuss?” Meta Knight was always straight to the point, and took any possible threat very seriously. He was already on the edge of his seat, ready to strike should an unknown enemy make itself known. But the situation was peaceful, so Dedede eased off the atmosphere with a lazy gesture of the hand.
“Nothing to be really concerned about.” He replied, taking a sip of his own tea with a good munch on a heart-shaped jelly filled biscuit. Even if Meta Knight’s gaze was hidden, he could see the way one of his eyes curved in curiosity, as if he had raised a brow. “Mostly, like… a curiosity of mine.”
The knight’s shoulders relaxed and the hand he had readily on the hilt of his sword left its place to get more comfortably on the glass table. He let himself enjoy the view too now. The cape, which had remained completely still defying all laws of physics, began slowly fluttering in the wind too.
“Then what is it?” He let the tea in the cup sway in a circle as he gently stirred it.
Dedede took a breath, but the status of his position fueled his ego enough to speak clearly
“It’s about… y’know, Kirby. Do you have any idea if… well, is he a boy or a girl?”
Meta Knight stopped for a moment, repeating the raising-the-brow-but-not-literally motion, and stopping any other movement. His tone sounded almost baffled.
“Why are you asking me?” Dedede clicked his tongue.
“’Cause, like, aren’t you two alike? The same species or something like that? …You could be his dad.” Dedede fumbled a bit with his words, chewing faster on another fistful of biscuits. Meta Knight resisted the urge to facepalm, simply closing his eyes and shaking his head.
“… we are the same species, yes.”
“Then what about it? Is he… er, she a girl? Since you’re blue and all deep voice and knightly honor and that and Kirby’s a pink… puffball? Is… is that the name of your species?” He tentatively said, leaning forward.
“I guarantee you the color of the skin has nothing to do with gender.” Meta Knight quickly whipped, clasping his hands in front of his face. “And… some folk call us… ‘puffballs’, you could say. Or Astrals or…”
“Yeah, but the questions still stands!” The king repeated, leaning more on the exasperated side.
Meta Knight fidgeted quietly with his fingers under the table undisturbed, for a while. He then sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“What?” Dedede almost chocked on the bite of sweet food, eyes wide. “What do you mean you don’t know? Aren’t there differences??”
“There are, but… they only come in adulthood.” Meta Knight pointed out. “Like a deeper voice. Doesn’t your species have something like that?”
“Well, of course! Do I look like a girl to you? Men are bigger and more charismatic! Like me!” The great King replied, putting half his body in a cool pose.
“And are children… ‘bigger and charismatic’?” Meta Knight pointed out using air quotes. The King went back to his seat.
“Huh. Not… really.” Dedede got a few other biscuits, munching them down while thinking.
“What about Waddle Dees? Do you have any idea whether they’re male or female?” the other pried.
“Now you’re going a bit too far. It’s not my job to understand that!”
“I think you’re letting this concern you more than you’re willing to admit.” Meta Knight replied, voice calmer. “The question will resolve itself when Kirby’ll grow up. You just need to wait.”
“And when will Kirby grow up?”
This time, the warrior deliberately shrugged.
“I don’t know. Fifty years? Maybe one hundred? It’s impossible to tell and everyone grows up differently. For all I know, it’s a child.”
Dedede gulped down the rest of his, now almost cold, tea and turned his gaze to let Meta Knight finish his own before it became too cooled, drumming his fingers on the table. So there was no way to tell if Kirby was a boy or a girl, not that the kid appeared to mind. But, if they needed a deliberate answer, there was one more card they could play…
“Well, we only have one more thing we can do to solve this mystery then.” The sound of armor clinking was the signal for him to turn around to a surprised knight. The king put up his best charismatic smile. “We’ll just have to ask the kid.”
Meta Knight put down the empty cup in front of him and sighed as he often did when one of his friends proposed a dumb idea.
“As I’ve said, it’s a child. Kirby has no idea of gender right now.” He hesitated a bit on the next word before continuing, but brushed it off. “He only cares about his friends and his food right now. You can ask, but since he can’t even speak coherent sentences yet, I doubt you’ll get the answer you’re hoping for.”
But the King was always so stubborn, and had already decided on a course of action.
“Give the pinkie more credit! Kids are incredibly perceptive, and you just gotta put matters in a way they can understand.” He put his fist on his open palm, eyes shining while hatching the perfect plan. He’d just need a bit of help.
“You’re… going to ask him to eat a pink or blue cake and determine it on that?” Meta Knight replied. His face was the obvious deadpan, but the tone carried a bit of informality and maybe even a suppressed chuckle, but he’d deny it. The guy’s poker face was incredible.
Dedede puffed.
“As if! But I just know someone who can help us. It’s about time you finally met them.”
“Adeleine, Ribbon, meet Meta Knight. Meta Knight, they’re Ribbon, Adeleine. Alright done.” King Dedede clasped his hands in front of his chest and walked off for the three to greet each other. Meta Knight lowly bowed to the others.
“It’ s a pleasure to meet you.” The bigger of the two waved a hand with a gracious smile in his direction and the smaller one hid a bit behind Adeleine, but gave a small nod anyway.
“It’s… uh, been a while, King.” Adeleine said, the title rolling hesitantly off her tongue. She wiped a bit of paint from her face, turning it into more of a yellow splorch, but she didn’t seem to mind. “How have you been?”
“Stellar, as always! Adventure here, adventure there… you get the gist.” The monarch replied, with a smile. “I suppose everything’s been well for you?”
“The planet is still safe.” Ribbon explained, quickly shifting her gaze to Meta Knight in apprehension. Dedede noticed and gave the knight a noisy pat on the back.
“Don’t worry about him! He’s one of my trusted knights.”
“But you know that puffballs are connected to D…” She bit her tongue. “You know what, never mind.”
Meta Knight’s gaze got more piercing, but Adeleine quickly monopolized the attention again.
“You said you needed my help?”
“Ah yes, we need your artistic abilities!” The monarch declared, almost starry-eyed. “She’s the best artist in the galaxy! You’ve really got to see some of the things she can whip up on that canvas, Meta Knight!”
“Oh, I’m not really…” Adeleine began saying, looking sheepish. If it wasn’t already clear by the dots of loose paint on her dress and cap, she had been painting as they were coming. While the work was still unfinished, it showed great promise. Meta Knight nodded.
“I can see. However, we came here for another matter.”
“And what’s that?” Ribbon pried, sitting on the girl’s red hat, clearly not very at ease.
“We want to figure out whether Kirby is a boy or not!” Dedede declared with a wide hand gesture. Adeleine and Ribbon shared a confused glare, the latter relaxing but still keeping the doubtful look, before the artist spoke again.
“Huh. I just always assumed they were…”
“They?!” Dedede exclaimed startled, and Meta Knight jumped a bit in his boots too, causing Ribbon to quickly hide in Adeleine’s cap.
“Was Kirby divided again?” He asked, on his guard, whipping out his sword.
“There’s more than one Kirby?” The king shouted almost at the same time. Then, with even more wide eyes, he quickly turned to the warrior. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘AGAIN’??”
Before the tensions could escalate, Adeleine was quick to shake her hands in order to calm them down.
“Nothing like that happened! I- I meant ‘they’ as in singular they!” The brows of the two furrowed deep.“… When… when you don’t generally know the gender of someone you just use they, as in singular? So you don’t accidentally offend anybody?” She tried to explain, but the gazes were just getting more confused. Ribbon shifted under her cap and her tiny head finally came out of hiding.
“Uhm, for example, if you’re at a restaurant and eat a great meal, you may tell the waiter ‘My compliments to the chef, they did an excellent job’ or something like that.” She helped, swooping into the conversation. “We do it a lot on Ripple Star.”
“Ripple star…” The Knight murmured.
“I never heard of it.” Dedede crossed his arms with a pout.
“I heard of some cultures doing it, but never properly put it to use in Dream Land.” He concurred, putting the sword away. “Guess we have the answer to our problem.”
“No, that’s not in my plan!” The King retorted instead, fists clutching. “I meant to ask Kirby how he felt about it!”
“I don’t think they’ll give a good answer.” Ribbon deadpanned, then pointed a bit more to the masked warrior. “If you can even understand the answer.”
“And that’s when you come into the picture!” Dedede replied with usual cheer indicating Adeleine. The girl startled. “I was thinking you could draw a picture of a girl and one of a boy, and then we can ask Kirby which one is more to hi-… uh, their tastes!”
“There’s a lot of wrong things with this.” Adeleine replied, biting her lip. “What if they don’t fit into just woman or man? What if they’re somewhere in between or something else entirely?”
“What if they don’t even have a clear idea yet?” The small fairy explained, gliding directly in front of King Dedede’s face. “Kirby’s really young!”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Well, we can at least try!” He retorted. “Won’t you help me? Come on!”
Ribbon sighed but turned to her friend, who had already grabbed her sketchbook and a few colored pencils, but still moved in apprehension.
“Alright, we’ll try it. But… I’m not very convinced.” The King, as always, was completely unperturbed, and was already leading the way.
“We’ll see about that. Now come on, by this time that pink menace will be somewhere under the shade of a tree eating a watermelon whole. Let’s go!”
“Hey, Kirby!” The pink puffball got up on their two little feet as soon as they heard the familiar voices, and the small Waddle Dee showing off his bandana spending time with him too. Kirby recognized Adeleine immediately, and became even more overjoyed with the little red fairy following her. Bandana dee’s grin spread on his mouthless face and he too began running towards them.
“Waddle Dee too! Hii!!”
They both jumped, Kirby somersaulted in the air before enveloping the girls in a warm hug and slurring what appeared like the world ‘friends’ multiple times. Both Adeleine and Ribbon were amazed by how clear the little one sounded, considering they had barely heard them talk.
“Kirby can talk??” Ribbon asked excitedly, circling the little hero and leaving a bit of fairy dust for them to play in.
“Just a couple of words. Mainly ‘friend’ and ‘food’.” Meta Knight explained. Kirby seemed to understand it, quickly saying both the word ‘food’ and ‘friend’ in quick succession, but almost immediately following them with three repetitions of ‘de’ and something else not quite understandable probably starting with an m.
“They said your name, King!” Adeleine exclaimed, the smile now steeled on her face.
“They?” Bandana Dee questioned, looking at the company. Ribbon came down to him to explain.
“It’s… ah, let’s just say we don’t know Kirby’s gender so we resourced to use ‘they’ right now.”
“But it’s…”
“I’ll explain later, I promise.”
A bit under the shade of the tree more, Adeleine raised Kirby with her arms. “Can you say ‘Adeleine’, Kirby? Please?”
The kid fumbled a bit with ‘f’s and ‘d’s, but then settled on…
“A… Ado!” The girl’s heart was overcome with joy.
“I can’t tell if it’s because you can’t say my full name or if you remember, but you’re dong great anyway!”
Reacting to the cheer, Kirby somersaulted in the air again and offered her a piece of candy.
“Can Kirby say your name too?” Ribbon wondered, asking the Waddle Dee.
“Not really. But if you hear something like Banana, then that’s me.” He admitted a bit sheepishly.
“What… what about mine?” Ribbon asked quietly. Kirby appeared very concentrated and raised their fists in front of their face.
“R… R… Rbon! Udon!” They exclaimed, with a gigantic smile, which couldn’t help but raise a chuckle in the fairy’s face. She still came closer to give them a hug.
“Close enough. It’s great to see you again, Kirby.”
“Friend...s! Friend!” The small blorb thrilled, jumping from side to side in a dance, then they turned around, making a quick jog around the tree and coming back with small hands filled with food over their head. “Food?” They handed it to the others, ranging from frappes to fruit and vegetables, and then sat down simply admiring the nature and the company, humming a very low song.
All of them sat down, almost in a circle, enjoying their small snacks. Quickly looking for something else to do after they had engorged the snack, Kirby pointed to Adeleine’s sketchbook and to the pencil case, wanting to draw. The girl exchanged a glance with the rest of crew and put on a calm smile.
“Just a moment Kirby, okay? First I’d like you to look at something for me.” The kid turned their head, but stopped dancing around and pulling the pencils out, suddenly paying attention. With the promise of something fun, they idly stood in front of her, but still could barely reach her eye-level.
Adeleine opened her book to a couple of pages after the covers, and took out a few drawings. In one was the silhouette of a man in green marker, the other was a more feminine one drawn in purple. Meta Knight had insisted not to use blue and pink, because he feared the kid would immediately go to the pink one when asked which one they’d prefer.
She was not done yet, because she handed one of the drawings to Ribbon, the page was almost as big as her, and took out another. This time, it was a swarm of orange butterflies. They had settled on that to show the ‘neither’ or ‘both’ part, since nobody could come with a better argument against Dedede’s “If it’s a ‘they’, let’s make more than one thing.” and then a butterfly had flown past.
She felt a bit of sweat down her scalp, tension from blowing everything up and maybe confining Kirby in a box they would not be comfortable with eventually, all because she couldn’t make a good enough drawing. But she digressed.
“Hey, Kirby. If you, uhm… if you had to say which one of these pictures represents you the most, which… which one would you choose?”
The kid passed their eyes from each picture to the next, admiring the colors with shining eyes.
Dedede closed his fists, and while Meta Knight was appearing calm and collected, his wings under the mantle were on edge. Ribbon barely managed to look over her papery cover, and Bandana dee was a bit torn seeing all of them so on edge, but fidgeted with his hands. The moment of truth was about to come.
Kirby walked closer to the leftmost, the picture of the man, and…
“Friend!” They squealed with open arms, jumping in the air. Then they jogged to the one Ribbon was holding, the purple woman, and smiled again, taking a spin. “Friend!”
Meta Knight barely managed to keep a chuckle to himself as King Dedede deflated by his side. Just like that, Kirby stopped in front of the butterflies.
“Pretty… friend...s!” Then turned to Meta Knight and Dedede, repeating the words. Then to Adeleine and Ribbon, doing the same. They quickly took another spin to squeeze Bandana dee in another hug. “Banana friend!” The poor Waddle Dee flushed red.
The pink puffball then went back and gently tugged on the butterflies’ drawing. Adeleine lent it to them with a warm smile, tension leaving her shoulders. Ribbon chuckled, lowering her paper.
“We probably won’t have an answer, will we?”
“Preeettyyyy!!” Kirby waved the piece on top of their head, making it wobble, smile never leaving their face.
“I guess this just proves you’re still a good artist.” Dedede puffed, head on his hand, while Meta Knight gave him a soft bump on the shoulder. Bandana Dee also joined them.
“It was a really good idea, sire. Too bad Kirby doesn’t care.”
“And they’re so easy to please.” Adeleine replied.
Seeing that the little test was over, the kid dropped the drawing on Bandana Dee and pulled the pencil case in front of them again. They shuffled through it and ended up taking almost all the pencils out before finally finding the object of their woes: the pretty pink pencil and quickly after, the glitter glue. They began drawing a crude picture of themself in between the butterflies.
“What do you say, want to draw something?” Adeleine proposed, putting a clear piece of paper in the middle of their little circle and collecting the other two from Ribbon and Bandana dee.
Dedede was still a bit mad, but he shrugged it off to get a couple of pencils and began doodling and angry face on the paper, which afterwards turned into his castle. He mainly used the red pencil, but he eventually gave up the orange one to Bandana Dee by his side, seeing he was busy making the King's dress.
Adeleine got the green one for herself and passed a violet crayon to Ribbon, who began scribbling away too.
Meta Knight, a bit more aware, waited for everyone to pick their color, but just as he was going to grab the blue one, Kirby had already offered it to him. The kid shifted so the knight could lay by his side and draw away, repeating that weird word starting with ‘m’ they had exclaimed earlier.
Just a kid, he thought, and considering Kirby’s next drawing was the closest thing they could draw in stance of strawberry shortcake, he was completely convinced of his definition.
He nodded a thanks to the small child, and began making a circle for his mask.