The day was like any other; sun shining, birds singing, flowers blooming, and a little pink puffball napping peacefully.

As Kirby snoozed the day away, resting on the side of his dome-shaped home, an odd puttering noise sounded. He opened one eye a bit, but unable to immediately find the source of the unfamiliar noise, opted to open both fully. Kirby looked left, then right, still not noticing anything. Eventually, he looked up.

There was some kind of unidentified object slowly descending towards the earth. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and standing up, Kirby got a closer look at the object as it touched down. It was a small, orange sphere, the top half of which was glass. Orbiting the sphere were what looked like floating hearts, but they stopped moving as the ship gently landed.

"Hmmm?" Kirby hummed in intrigue at the sphere. It didn't seem dangerous, so he poked it. The glass half of it split and retracted into the rest of the sphere. Sitting inside was a small envelope with an inviting heart stamp on it. Kirby plucked it out and, concluding that it was his, ripped it open haphazardly. The letter inside was written in neat cursive. Kirby could read just fine — rather well, in fact — but he always had trouble interpreting this curly writing style, so it took him a moment to look over the letter.

Dear Kirby,

You are hereby officially invited to the annual Ripple Star Ball. We hope that you will grace us with your presence and thoroughly enjoy the gathering!

Sincerely, the Ripple Queen

Kirby's eyes widened in surprise; he had never really been invited to anything like this. Well, he had been invited to King Dedede's birthday party that one time, but the king had refused to let Kirby attend subsequent parties due to the puffball's ravenous devouring of Dedede's entire cake (and the candles).

Unable to contain his excitement, Kirby raced down the hill his house was perched on toward the aforementioned castle, eager to show his best friend Bandana Dee his invitation.

—

"Oh, hey Kirby!" the Waddle Dee in the blue bandana shouted a greeting to Kirby when he noticed him dashing to the castle. Bandana Dee had outside guard duty that day, which he had deemed a tad unnecessary, since Dream Land was generally a peaceful place.

And if something wants to attack the castle, it will apparently do it with giant laser beams… he thought grumpily, recalling the recent invasion of Pop Star by the Haltmann Works Company and the painstaking reconstruction of Castle Dedede.

Bandana Dee shook his head as if to clear it of the bad memory, and by that time Kirby had arrived, the pink one gasping for breath.

"Woah, where's the fire?" the Waddle Dee joked, wondering what Kirby wanted to tell him so urgently.

"Check this out!" Kirby thrust a piece of paper toward his friend's face, so close that Bandana Dee couldn't read it at first. He grabbed the paper and began to carefully read over the cursive writing.

"Huh, neat," Bandana Dee said simply, handing the letter back to Kirby. The puffball looked disappointed at his friend's underwhelmed reaction. Noticing this, Bandana Dee quickly added, "That's really cool, Kirby! You know, that you were invited to that." Kirby instantly brightened.

"Isn't it?" he said, beaming. "Do you think they'll have cake there?"

Bandana Dee shook his head at Kirby's comical preoccupation with his stomach. Reading the letter again for whatever reason, he noticed some smaller writing at the bottom of the note.

"Hey, it says something down here…" he pointed out. Kirby tilted his head quizzically. Clearly he hadn't seen the fine print. Bandana Dee read it aloud.

"P.S. It is requested that you escort a partner with you to the gathering if at all possible."

"Partner?" He had to bring someone with him? Well, that wasn't a problem! Kirby was sure Bandana Dee would come with him; he was his best buddy.

"Do you wanna—" Kirby was cut off by the Waddle Dee shaking his head. "What?"

"You can't just bring a friend to this, Kirby. When you get an invitation to a fancy gathering like this, you have to bring a date," Bandana Dee explained matter-of-factly. Kirby wondered how he was so knowledgable on the subject; he didn't think Dee had even been to a ball before.

"A date, huh?" Kirby said mostly to himself, unsure.

"Yeah. If you show up without one, people will think you're weird."

"Weird?!" Kirby exclaimed, as if this was the worst thing imaginable. "Well where do I find a date?"

Bandana Dee shrugged. "Just ask a girl you know. You're naturally cute, so just lay on the charm on top of that, and you'll be irresistible!"

"A girl I know…" Kirby repeated under his breath. He knew a handful of females, but he always just thought of them as good friends, none of them somebody he was interested in… like that, and he was a bit young for a romantic partner.

"Alright then," the puffball said after a moment. Retrieving his invite from Bandana Dee, he waved goodbye to his friend and started off toward the woods to find a date.

—

Hey look, I wrote a thing! It's the first thing I've written actually. If you liked my thing, tell me! If you didn't… also tell me! So… yeah. I'll try make the next part of this thing less boring and more funny. See ya then.