Printing Practice

Chapter 1
What Do We Do With This?

(Uploaded on November 23, 2018)

Notes: This fic is set prior to the events of Kirby: Star Allies, and most prominently, prior to the events of Kirby Battle Royale.

[King Dedede]

November 3, 2017

Smash Mansion – Living Room

"What."

I stared at the invention sitting in front of us with a blank expression, unable to say anything other than that single word.

"What."

"I agree," Kirby said beside me. "What."

"So? What do you two think of my Smasher Printer?" Master Hand asked of us. The 'Smasher Printer' he was speaking of was this weird blue-rimmed barrel-like contraption on wheels, sporting a crank with wheels on the side presumably to make it work. The side of the barrel looked a lot like my sash, actually, though it's distinguished with a yellow-rimed triangular hatch in the front. Its appearance did nothing to tell me of what it was actually supposed to do. Like, at all.

"It's… a cool looking thing…?" I tried to compliment it, though the questioning look on my face didn't go away. "…I'll be honest, I have no idea what it's supposed to be."

"Same here," Kirby threw in his two cents. "What, does it print high-scale pictures of each of us Smashers, or something? It's gotta do something neat-ish if you're showing it to us like this."

"Ah, that's right!" Master Hand snapped his fingers. "Well, if you just turn the crank here," he pointed at the aforementioned lever, "you two will get to see what it does! Go on! Try it out! It won't do anything bad, I'll promise you that!"

Kirby and I looked at each other with both nervousness and curiosity. Master Hand's a pretty eccentric guy; you'd have to be to help found the Super Smash Bros. tournament with all of us Nintendo characters to begin with. And that's not even getting into what his brother Crazy Hand is like. I've been blown up by his bombs far, far too much for my liking.

The point is, we weren't exactly all too willing to charge in and try it out based on just his word. Knowing his brother, he could've tinkered with the thing so that it was a bomb just waiting to explode from underneath Master Hand's nonexistent nose. It was something the insane wackjob would definitely do.

Kirby motioned to me, appearing to take something out of his hammerspace (though he didn't actually). I got the message immediately. From my robes, I summoned one of my trusty Waddle Dees – though it wasn't Bandana Dee, sadly – and he went to turn the crank on the so-called Smasher Printer for us. We watched as the machine promptly started glowing all sorts of rainbow colors, lighting up the room in a technicolor crusade.

"Gee, that's a bit bright," Kirby remarked.

"What is it, a miniature Fountain of Dreams…?" I briefly pondered. My friend seemed to be contemplating whether or not to pull out a pair of shades; I don't think he really needed it, honestly. It may be too bright to stare at comfortably, but it's not that bright.

The lights continued on for a little bit more, before the hatch in the front opened up and… spat out a Kirby.

Yeah. You heard me right.

It spat out. A Kirby.

A. Whole. Kirby.

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped, and next to me, I saw Kirby doing the same. "Wh-Wh-What the heck!?" I exclaimed. Even the Waddle Dee operating the 'Smasher Machine' was very visibly taken aback. I knew Master Hand was a bit off his rocker, but I never could've expected this!

"You like him?" Master Hand asked us. I'm sure he would've clapped his hands together if he wasn't a single hand himself. "He's just like the original, don't you think?"

The Kirby clone in front of us was orange with brown feet, and had the familiar green hat and sharp sword of… well, Kirby's Sword ability. He looked around the room with all the curiosity of a newborn child, and was in fact now running around the living room, jumping on every couch he could find.

"Poyo poyo!" he said, even speaking like a child. I remember Kirby saying to me once puffballs can only speak 'Poyoese' when they're young, and Meta Knight collaborated this fact. Even so, it was strange to see someone that looked almost exactly like Kirby, just with the colors swapped around, hopping around like this.

"Is that a—another me!?" Kirby asked, regaining his composure. "H-How? Why? What even?"

"Y-Yeah," I agreed. "How is this possible and why did you make it?"

"I'm glad you asked!" Master Hand proclaimed. "You see, for the next Smash Bros. tournament, I wanted to bring back everybody that couldn't join us for Brawl and Smash 4. To that end, Crazy Hand and I experimented with making clone fighters, and the results are what you see here!"

He held up the Smasher Printer—while my poor Waddle Dee was still hanging on to the crank, for some reason—and continued, "Using special life magic and lots of copy paper, this Smasher Printer can make clones of any fighter you desire! They can fight just like the original, and even have their abilities!"

The orange Kirby in the background was now currently puffing up and flying all over the place. Evidently, that demonstrated he did have at least some of Kirby's abilities. "…I see," I carefully replied. I think my brain's half-shut down at this point, and it's just barely chugging along. "Why are you showing this to us, though? This seems like something you'd save for everyone to hear." Actually, not even everyone – at least just the original twelve Smashers.

Master Hand usually likes to give 'the original twelve'—Mario, DK, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, Pikachu, etc.—special privileges over all the post-N64 guys. Which makes it weird that he's showing it to just me and Kirby. I came in Brawl; I barely have seniority over the Smash 4 brigade. What the heck am I supposed to be doing with this knowledge?

"Well, you see… the Smasher Printer isn't so much a Smasher Printer as it is a Kirby Printer. It can, uhh… only print out Kirby clones."

My face became flabbergasted. "…are you serious?" All the magic in the world and only Kirby can come out of it!?

If it were that easy to make puffballs, Pop Star would be swarming with them a long time ago!

"Only me?" Kirby similarly queried, with an equally stunned expression on him. "That—That can't be right, right?"

"Unfortunately, it very much is." He put the Smasher Printer down, much to my Waddle Dee's relief, and continued explaining, "No matter how much Crazy Hand and I tried – and believe me, Crazy Hand did try – we couldn't get anything out of it other than clones of you. And all of the clones use Copy Abilities rather than your innate Smash moveset, so we can't even use them for the next Smash tournament. They weren't really useful, so I decided: being that you two are Sakurai's most favored," (I snorted. That's a bit of an understatement), "I'd just give the thing to you and see what you can do with it!"

…really? You're… You're giving it to us? "Uhh… Thank you?" I awkwardly thanked him, rubbing the back of my head in even bigger confusion. When Master Hand called us here, this was the last thing I was expecting. I honestly thought we'd be sending out invitations to newcomers, or something…

"I… I guess we could find some use for this, if you don't want to have it…" Kirby added, equally as unsure as I was.

Master Hand didn't seem to notice our uncertainty. "Great!" he said. "I'm done experimenting with clone fighters, anyway. Sakurai says he's got licensing duties all figured out, so we won't need to clone Snake back into the fray. He probably wouldn't like the whole clone thing anyway, so—it's a win-win situation for us!" My jaw dropped again at the casual reveal of that information. Snake's coming back!?

"I've got to hammer out the details for the rest of the next tournament—we're gonna be labelling it Ultimate this time—so I'll be seeing you two later! I look forward to seeing how you use this machine of mine! Don't destroy it now!" And with that, Master Hand opened up a portal – probably to his office – and flew off, leaving the two of us (plus my Waddle Dee) alone in the living room with a still hyperactive clone and a printer that only spits out Kirbies.

"So… What do we do now?" I asked Kirby, as his hyperactive clone started trying to hug the walls for no discernable reason at all.

"We should get this into your castle," he replied. "No way this thing's gonna stay safe in my tiny house."

"My castle it is, then." I've got plenty of storage space, anyway. I summoned a dozen of my Waddle Dees from my robes. "Waddle Dees!" I commanded them. "Help me bring this thing back home, will ya?"

Castle Dedede – Throne Room

I sat on my throne, reading the instruction manual that had come with the Kirby Printer. Despite essentially being made out of magic and paper, the Kirby clones were pretty durable, able to sustain quite a number of hits before they ran out of strength. And they proved pretty competent in their use of Copy Abilities. There were several Copy Abilities available in the Printer, including Sword, Cutter, Tornado, Ninja, Mirror… and Sleep, for some bizarre reason.

Kirby wouldn't stop laughing at that last one actually being included for several minutes straight.

And then he got his butt whooped by the Sleep clone.

Heh, I have to admit that was pretty funny to see. For a guy who actually has fought in his sleep before – long story; I think my butt's still sore from that – he really should've seen it coming.

The Kirby clones definitely weren't as strong as Kirby himself, though. Once he really got serious, they went down rather easily – despite the fact that he went into fights outnumbered 3-to-1. (He insisted on it. Really.) So that struck out 'combat practice' on our list of possible uses for them.

It also, by proxy, struck out 'being assisted by clones in our adventures,' since they couldn't take the level of punishment the rest of us could. They'd fold in an instant if they were thrown into the True Arena, that's for sure!

We also can't make too many, lest the machine run out of power from overusing it. While we do have blueprints to make more, it's not like we really need more either.

It's worth noting that all the clones that came out don't have the level of mental development that Kirby has. While they do share his friendliness – I mean, Kirby wouldn't be Kirby without it – they're not as skilled in combat as him, nor are they as mature. All of them also speak only in Poyoese. (And here I thought Kirby's Amazing Mirror brigade was weird.)

"There's a lot of caveats to the Kirby Printer," I said, still reading off the manual. "I have no idea what we'd be able to use it for under all of these restrictions."

"I'm sure you'll find something, Great King!" Bandana Dee reassured me. "You're the Great King of Dream Land, after all!"

I smiled. "Well, you've got that right." My trusty assistant always knows how to cheer me up.

"It seems weird that Master Hand would just abandon this, though," Kirby stated. He was sitting atop the redubbed Kirby Printer, casually relaxing on it with his signature Sleep cap on. (Because of course he was, and with that hat.) "I mean, he's always complaining about how much of a mess everybody makes. You'd think he want to grab a bunch of assistants to alleviate that, at least?"

I shrugged. "Maybe he just got lazy," I offered. I can get pretty lazy sometimes (the Nightmare crisis in particular was embarrassing in retrospect); it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Master Hand was that way, too. "He got to set up the whole tournament, after all. He's got trophies to worry about, equipment, special modes, the laws of physics… Cutting a few corners wouldn't be out of the question."

"That sounds like a lot of work!" Dee spoke up, waving his hands in the air. "I couldn't get all that work done, not by myself! He must be have a lot of determination and energy!"

"Well, he is a giant reality-warping hand," Kirby said. "Energy clearly isn't a problem for him."

Not to mention he's a bit of an Eldritch Abomination. To this day, he refuses to answer any questions about whatever the heck Master Core is. And Crazy Hand is no help on that front, either. Even Mewtwo hasn't found out yet, and he's good with finding information.

Right, enough off-topic stuff. I put down the instruction manual. "So," I said aloud, leaning my head on my arm, "what to do, what to do… We've got a whole printer and endless possibilities as to what we can do with it. I don't really need more assistants," that's what my trusty Waddle Dees are for, "so we should come up with something else."

"They might make good sparring partners!" Dee suggested. "It'd be nice to have some help with training! The other Helpers and Mid-Bosses are nice and all, but they can never beat out Kirby!"

"Awww, I'm happy to hear you have so much respect for me!" Kirby grinned. "Betcha everyone else has warmed up to me, too."

"That might work," I mused, "but I think everyone's current level of training is adequate enough. Kirby comes over enough to help, anyway." He comes here so much, he's got all the Mid-Bosses' attack patterns down pat. "Besides—I know we can go even higher than that."

"What else could we do, though?" Dee asked. "I think we've exhausted most of our ideas at this point."

"Well, Master Hand did say he wanted to use it for the Smash tournament," the puffball remembered. "Maybe we could do something similar? We do have the Arena, after all."

That's right. The Arena—not to be confused with the True Arena—is a coliseum here on Pop Star where, pardon my lackluster description, a bunch of fights happen for the people of Dream Land to watch. They also host boss rushes, though luckily they're not the world-ending, tough-as-nails ones that the True Arena recklessly hosts. (Kirby's ranted for ages about that.) It's just the Super Star brigade of bosses. Nothing more, nothing less.

Kirby and Meta Knight have been there plenty of times for that, finding it to be good practice – and good fun, too. I've asked Meta Knight before if he ever found it weird how he had to fight himself. He answered, "I treat it as if it were fighting Dark Meta Knight. It becomes far easier then."

(I remember that guy. Brrrrrrr! He was really not on our side. Like, at all. I hope I never have to see him again…)

"Hmm… You might be on to something," I replied. "Maybe we could have a battle tournament of our own. Dream Land would love to watch a cluster of Kirbies with different Copy Abilities duke it out for… I dunno, a giant cake, or something." Kirby immediately started drooling; he always does when his favorite food is mentioned.

"Oh! Oh!" Bandana Dee started jumping up and down. "I know! We could have them participate in some cool events! Like collecting as many apples as they can, or coins, or doing that WarioWare thing I've heard about! Or being the first to beat up a Mid-Boss!" The ideas were just flowing out of him now. When he gets going, he really gets going. (He's not my assistant for nothing!) His eyes began to sparkle. "Ooooooh, this whole thing could be so amazing!"

"We could have a whole bunch of separate leagues, too, to encourage the Kirby clones—and any other participants—to continue fighting and get better," Kirby chimed in with his own proposals, once he got over his cake-induced drool. "All the way up to Platinum! We could even have a final boss at the end, something like your old HR-D3 robot!"

"Heh heh heh!" I laughed. "Now we're getting somewhere!" We're really getting the ball rolling now! It's been a while since our last major crisis – which was the Robobot crisis back in 2016, if I'm remembering correctly – so it's not like we have a lot else to do. (I've heard there might be something coming in March of next year, but that's a while in the future, so it doesn't bother me right now.)

I wonder if the rest of our friends would want to join in, too. Gooey, Adeleine and Ribbon, Taranza… Heck, even Daroach might see it as interesting enough. He likes cake enough; or at least, that's what Kirby tells me. We may be a World of Peace, but that doesn't mean we can't want for a little excitement every now and then, right? A battle tournament will do some good to get our adrenaline pumping without having to get it pumping the usual way (i.e. saving the galaxy from disaster again).

So, yeah. Let's do this! This is probably gonna take a while to set up and advertise and everything – but something tells me it's definitely going to be worth it.

I hopped off my throne and gestured for Kirby and Bandana Dee to follow me. "C'mon, let's go get a notebook to write down all of our ideas in! If we're gonna make this tournament thing a reality, then we're gonna do it right!"

"Heck yeah," Kirby grinned. "I'm up for the greatest Cake Royale that ever was!"

"Yay, cake!" Dee cheered. That's the spirit!

Kirby Battle Royale is canon in the main Kirby universe… I think. It does a few weird things with Kirby canon, though. Dedede's back to being antagonistic, he's got a printer that prints Kirby somehow, Bandana Dee isn't loyal to Dedede and doesn't call him 'Great King' (though that might be more of a personal headcanon than anything else), there are Waddle Dee reporters all of a sudden… It's kooky!

Maybe it just takes place earlier in the timeline, or something. That's as good an explanation as any.

In light of this, I wanted to spoof a bit of Battle Royale for the Make a Friend 'verse, though without Dedede being antagonistic (I have him characterized differently here, after all) and with some sort of plausible explanation for the Kirby Printer. Then I remembered Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was a thing – and the ideas came flowing in immediately.

Oh yeah, and there is a normal Arena in this 'verse, too. It'd be weird if there was only one (the True Arena) and not the other. Besides, there are race-related competitions on Pop Star already (see Kirby Air Ride), so it's not like it's completely out of the question. It only makes sense, you know?

You may have noticed that this is labeled as a separate chapter. That's because I might add a couple of chapters to this fic later on, to show more of the events leading up to this 'verse's version of Battle Royale. Who knows what'll happen? We'll just have to wait and see what I do.

Well, that's all for now – see you guys around!