A/N: First of all, I'm incredibly sorry for the delay. School has been a real bitch these last weeks….and I've been lazy too. Also, Kirby's Dreamland 3, Mass Attack and Return to Dreamland have turned out to be incredibly distracting.

ANYWAYS, here's the 4th chapter of Within the Abyss. We go back to Dedede as more characters are introduced and the plot of the story begins to reveal itself…(I just realized I might have already revealed it in the summary. Crap.)

I do NOT own Kirby. Nintendo and HAL Lab do…lucky bastards.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

IV

The warm light of the afternoon sun bathed all of Dreamland, a sign of yet another beautiful day for its inhabitants. The sunshine bounded off the thick brick walls of Castle Dedede, making the fortress look more imposing and terrifying, yet in a strange way, also more regal and majestic.

Yes, everything was fine in Dreamland indeed.

"HEY! Watch it! I need that arm, you know! How the heck am I supposed to kick ass if I can't use my hammer- YEEEEEOWCH!"

…Well, almost fine, actually.

"That's it; I can't take the pain anymore!" King Dedede, who was now sitting on the throne of the castle's Main Hall, cried out a little too dramatically as an elderly Birdon took care of his previously injured right arm, "You'll have to chop off my arm; won't you, Doctor? Ohhhh, everyone in Dreamland will think I'm a freak! How could they possibly follow a one-armed king?" But suddenly his anguish was replaced with anger as quickly as it came, "Well, SCREW THEM! I'm still the king, and if they don't like it, then I won't go easy on their little-"

"Your Majesty," the Birdon doctor spoke in a calm collected voice, only his grey eyes behind his spectacles betraying the annoyance he felt for the penguin, "I enjoy your so-very-entertaining ramblings as much as the next person…But I haven't even touched your arm yet."

"….I knew that!"

"I'm sure you did," the Birdon doctor merely shook his head in disapproval. He had treated Dedede in the past, and he had seen the king endure worse injuries than these without complaining so much. Then again, the king relished attention; and right now, after being manipulated countless number of times by otherworldly beings and defeated by Kirby, he would probably do anything to bring his subjects closer to him and salvage what was left of his reputation. Anything except actually being a good king, it seemed; "Your arm is already healed anyways, all I'm doing now is removing the stitches from the wound. That's no reason to whine like a little child…"

"Watch your mouth, old man!" Dedede jerked his arm away from the doctor's hold, wincing slightly at the jolts of pain from moving his injured arm so harshly, "I'm not paying you to complain, am I?"

"…You don't pay me, Your Majesty. At all."

"So you see my point!"

The Birdon doctor sighed and turned his attention back towards the king's wounds, carefully undoing the stitches that helped them heal. Meanwhile, Dedede closed his eyes to distract himself from the painful tugging in his right arm, and his thoughts diverted back into the event's from almost a week ago.

Ever since the Galboros attack in Green Greens, no other regions had been attacked, thankfully. But he still couldn't shake the feeling that something way more terrifying than a rowdy fat lizard was yet to come. And to make things even worse, it was probably all work of the Dark Matter.

And his Crystal Shard was still red and giving off bad vibes, which certainly didn't make things any better.

At this point, Dedede couldn't help but feel furious towards his nemesis. Three times had the Dark Matter taken over Popstar and even the entire galaxy (not to mention that they possessed him all three times, and saying that such events were incredibly disturbing would be an understatement), and three times had Kirby defeated them, and still that wasn't apparently good enough considering they were probably back for a fourth time. Couldn't that cursed pink ball do his job right?

But as much as he loathed the young hero, there was no other way around it: He would need his help in order to vanquish the Dark Matter. And this time, he would personally make sure those creepy black eyeballs never returned to his kingdom ever again. On the brighter side, having his "vacations" in Ripple Star cut off early would certainly upset Kirby, and this thought was enough to bring a smile to Dedede's face.

"Whatcha smilin' about?"

The voice that suddenly spoke in front of him was definitely not the doctor's, who was the only one with him in the Main Hall as far as he knew. All thoughts of Kirby and Dark Matter forgotten, Dedede opened his eyes…

…and was met with a pair of big aquamarine eyes merely inches away from his face.

"AAAAAAARGH!"

The force of Dedede's scream and sudden jump was enough to throw both his doctor and the intruder off the throne. Meanwhile, the king himself reached out for his hammer, and was ready to deliver a skull-breaking blow into whatever had surprised him. But before he could do such thing, his eyes focused one last time at the intruder and finally registered who it was.

"Adeleine!"

"Well yeah; hello to you too, Dee Dee." The owner of said aquamarine eyes, a black-haired human girl, stood up from the floor and wiped off the dust from her green shirt and grey skirt after being thrown off so unceremoniously by the penguin's reaction, "You know, for our first reunion after so many years, this is certainly not what I expected-"

"What the hell, Adeleine!"Dedede's initial shock was replaced with anger as he went on full tantrum mode, "Who told you to sneak on me like that! Heck, who said you could get into my castle without my permission!" He hesitated for a second as if realizing something, and his face turned as red as a Maxim Tomato, "And for the last time, MY NAME ISN'T DEE DEE! THAT'S A GIRL'S NAME! IT'S KING FREAKIN' DEDEDE TO YOU!"

"But doesn't it bother you that everyone treats you so formally all the time?"

"OF COURSE NOT!"

Ignoring the king's flaring indignation, Adeleine began to twirl a paintbrush between her fingers, "Well, it bothers me. After all, friends shouldn't be so formal with each other, right?" She twirled the brush one last time before putting it away and turned back to pout at Dedede, "Bandanna let me in to pay you a visit. And here I thought you would be happy about it!"

But before the King of Dreamland could answer to that, said Waddle Dee barged into the Main Hall, his bright blue bandanna partially covering his vision as he waved his brown paws around frantically, "Adeleine! You can't run off like that, the King doesn't like it-" Finally getting a grip on himself, Bandanna adjusted his namesake just in time to see his monarch glaring down at him. "Oh dear."

"YOU!" The poor Waddle Dee had to cover his ears from the penguin's verbal onslaught, "YOU LET HER IN? JUST WHO THE HECK TOLD YOU TO DO THAT! SHE SCARED ME HALF TO DEATH AND I WAS THIS CLOSE TO CLOBBERING HER!"

"Well, Your Majesty-"

"AND YOU KNOW WHAT! MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE DONE JUST THAT, BECAUSE APPARENTLY, THAT'S THE ONLY WAY OF GETTING SOME DARN RESPECT AROUND HERE!"

"Hey!"

"Great King, please don't shout!" Bandanna sank to his knees – or what could be considered knees in a Waddle Dee – and bowed down to his king, unsure of what else to do in order to avoid his wrath, "Please forgive me for disobeying you!" He rose to look at his king just barely, lest he take it as a sign of defiance, "I just thought you would be pleased to see Adeleine again! You never want to go into Whispy Woods to visit her, after all-"

"And that's because last time I did, I almost got a concussion from all the apples Whispy threw at my head," More annoyed than angry now, Dedede rubbed his temples and sat back on his throne. The Birdon doctor, who had witnessed the bizarre reunion without moving from his spot beside the throne, immediately set back to tending to the king's stitches, "but that's not the point! The point is that you should have told me before! You know I hate surprises, and you just can't let anyone get into the castle as you please! The last thing I want is for some other weirdo from another dimension to possess me…" The king's expression turned sour at the thought, "…Again."

"A-are you saying," The Waddle Dee wailed, his eyes going unbelievably large with sadness, "that y-you don't trust Adeleine? After e-everything we went through?"

"That's not what I said!"

"Then why are you so upset that she came to visit us?"

"BECAUSE SHE ALMOST GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK!"

"Excuse me!" Both king and servant stopped their argument to face Adeleine, her arms crossed and her expression disapproving, "As much as I like this little reunion, I don't have time for it." Her expression became more business-like as she stepped between Bandanna Dee and Dedede to keep them from arguing again, "I didn't come here all the way from Whispy Woods for a casual visit only. I came here for something important-"

"If it's paint what you want, I don't have any."

"I DON'T WANT ANY PAINT, OK!" Both Dedede and Bandanna Dee were shocked at Adeleine's reaction, her happy-go-lucky demeanor replaced by frustration and…fear? Taking a few deep breaths to keep her emotions under control and turned to face her friends, the worry in her eyes being now more evident, "Ribbon called me the other day-"

"Ribbon?" Bandanna scooted closer to Adeleine, his eyes shining at the fond memory of their pink-haired fairy friend, "She's here?"

"No, she's still in Ripple Star. But she contacted me yesterday through this." She pulled something red and shiny from her pocket, and Dedede's stomach did a flip thinking it was a corrupted Crystal Shard; Adeleine and Bandanna Dee had their own Shards as well, after all. But as the young painter polished it with her sleeve, he noticed this crystal was smoother and more rounded, colored a bright rosy red. "Ribbon gave this to me during the victory party at Ripple Star back then, saying we could use it to keep in contact even from all the way at Popstar. She originally wanted Kirby to have it…" Adeleine smiled at the memory came to mind, "but after he tried to eat it a dozen times thinking it was hard candy, she decided to leave it to me."

"Wait a minute," Dedede, now with his arm completely healed and stitch-free, dismissed his doctor and walked closer to Adeleine, "How come you got that crystal and not me! I'm the king around here, darn it!" He turned his back to her and huffed, acting offended.

"Because everyone, even Ribbon, knows you hate to be social." Adeleine sighed at the king's childish behavior and returned her gaze at the crystal's pinkish surface, "The crystal uses a lot of energy so I can't call her that frequently, but we would still talk at least once a week if only to check on each other. Sometimes Kirby would stop by to visit me when I called her and we would all tell jokes and talk and…" But the young artist didn't finish her sentence, her sad gaze never leaving the crystal in her hands.

"Addie?" Bandanna tugged at her sleeve tenderly, his hazel eyes beginning to fill with tears at the sight of his friend in such distress, "what did Ribbon tell you? What's wrong in Ripple Star?" For a minute she didn't answer and kept gazing at the crystal, and he thought she hadn't heard him. He was about to repeat the question when Adeleine took her beret off and ran her right hand through her black, slightly longer hair.

"She didn't really tell me anything." She looked into Bandanna's eyes and then at Dedede's, taking in both males' reactions, "She called me yesterday and told me to come here as quickly as I could and talk to you guys. She said that all three of us had to hear it." In that moment, her eyes clouded over with worry, "You didn't see her, guys. She looked awful, which means that whatever she has to tell us can't possibly be good…"

"But what could've happened at Ripple Star?" Bandanna whimpered while fiddling with his brown paws, "Isn't Kirb-"

But he couldn't finish speaking when Adeleine's rosy crystal started glowing strongly, filling the Main Hall with its soft glow. It rose from its place in Adeleine's hands and floated in the air, glowing even more brightly and forcing the three Dreamlanders to look away lest they go blind. When the light died out and it was once again safe to look, all three of them turned to see not a crystal, but a soft pink portal floating in midair. And on the other side, bloodshot dark blue eyes looked back at them from a tired pale face framed with unruly pink hair.

"RIBBON!"

Upon recognizing the three figures before her, the Ripple Star fairy's face brightened as she smiled seemingly for the first time in days, "Oh thank goodness you're all here! Adeleine, I can't thank you enough-"

"Ribbon, you look absolutely awful!" the young artist didn't let her finish, horror in her face as she took in her friend's state, "You look even worse than before! What the heck's going on over there!"

"You're scaring me, Ribbon!" Bandanna was crying, big sloppy tears rolling down his cheeks as he stared at the distressed fairy with watery brown eyes, "I've never seen you like this before! Please tell us what's wrong!"

Dedede said nothing, his expression unreadable as he merely stared at Ribbon. Said pink fairy's fleeting smile faltered and sadness crept back into her eyes. She didn't – she couldn't – bring herself to say anything for what felt like ages, the deathly silence that fell over them only being interrupted by Bandanna's soft whimpers.

Adeleine was the first one to break the silence. She tried to keep her voice stern, but the growing fear in it couldn't be ignored, "Ribbon-"

"Kirby's gone, Adeleine."

The silence that followed her revelation was crushing compared to before and the three Dreamlanders present found themselves unable to breathe as Ribbon's words sank into their brains. Adeleine was about to speak when Ribbon interrupted her, "He's been gone for over a week, and I haven't been able to sleep since then. Everyone said that he would be fine, that he was probably in another adventure but that he would come back because that's what he always does…" Her eyes widened as her expression became more horrified and her voice more frantic, "But the Power Crystal has been corrupted and there's Dark Matter everywhere AND KIRBY HASN'T RETURNED YET AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITHOUT HIM-"

"Ribbon, calm down!" Adeleine's shout interrupted the young fairy mid-rant, "Dark Matter? In Ripple Star again? But that's just not possible, we destroyed it-"

"Except that now they're back." Everyone turned to see Dedede speaking for the first time, a rarely seen somber expression etched on his face, "They possessed a Galboros a few days ago and forced it to attack Green Greens. I had to stop it-"

"I was there too," Bandanna Dee's voice was shaky yet quiet as he wiped the remnants of his tears, "but I…I never thought…I didn't want to believe-"

"Did your Crystal Shard started glowing red and made you feel sad all of a sudden?" Dedede nodded, and Adeleine's expression soured, "So did mine, right before Ribbon called me. It's happening all over again-"

"Except that Kirby has gone missing," The sheer and utter despair in Ribbon's voice sent chills down everyone's spines, "which means the Dark Matter have already won. Kirby was the only one who could stop them, b-but now…Oh, I told him not to go-"

"That's not true! We gotta get to going to Ripple Star; there's no way we're leaving you to deal with those creeps alone!"

"You can't."

"Why not?"

"If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me," Ribbon sighed and brushed away strands of her pink hair away from her tired eyes, "so I guess there's no option but to show you…"

"Show us what? How do you plan to do th-" But before Dedede could finish his complaint, his voice suddenly failed him. And then his sight, then his hearing, and slowly he felt all feeling leave his body until he felt as if trapped inside a never-ending void. Terror began to settle inside his mind at the idea that the Dark Matter had attacked them by surprise by interfering Ribbon's call, and the mere thought of losing for real, of surrendering to the Matter's power like Ribbon had said before made him want to scream even though he didn't have the voice to do so.

And then, just as quickly as the void appeared, it was soon replaced by a brilliant flash of light that threatened to leave him blind. With the return of his sight also came back all his other senses and the general presence of his body, and after he recovered from the temporary blindness caused by the light and the wave of nausea that overcame him, Dedede finally found the strength to open his eyes.

"Oh, goodness! Are you OK?"

The overweight king blinked at the sight of Ribbon's blue eyes so close to his face. An uncomfortable silence arose as fairy and penguin looked at each other, Ribbon's gaze becoming more and more worried while Dedede's became more and more confused. After several minutes, Dedede closed his eyes and pinched his arm, and his expression became even more confused when he opened them again and saw that Ribbon was still present before him. Just to make sure, he looked around him and realized they were in one of the many halls of Ripple Castle, "What the hell-"

"At least you didn't suffer any permanent psychological damage," Ribbon sighed in relief as she turned to Adeleine and Bandanna Dee, which were waking up from their stupor and looking as confused as Dedede, "I'm really sorry; this is the first time I tried something like this. I could've called someone else but-"

"What exactly did you do, Ribbon?" Adeleine asked as she rubbed her temple, "Ugh, my head…"

"I tapped into the communication crystal and used the power within to 'teleport' your minds here into Ripple Star and project them into a more concrete shape…" All three Dreamlanders looked at themselves, discovering that their 'bodies' looked almost static and transparent, "You are seeing Ripple Star right as it is in this very moment, but you can't interact with any of the things or interfere with any of the events you witness here. Others can see you, but they can't interact with you either."

"So we're like holograms or ghosts or something like that?" Bandanna tried poking a nearby vase with his paw, only to see it sink through it. Surprised yet excited, he turned to 'smile' at Ribbon, "This is awesome! I didn't know you could do stuff like this!"

The young fairy smiled again, but the gesture still looked haunting in her tear-stained face, "Thank you. I've been practicing for a while now; Her Majesty has taken the liberty to teach me-"

"LYRA!" Dedede's abrupt shout made everyone in the room turn their sights towards him. Realizing his mistake, the penguin king turned beet red and diverted his gaze across the room, "I-I mean, is the Queen alright? Is she here?"

"Queen Lyra has been in Grand Library searching for old documents and scripts ever since…" Ribbon's eyes began to tear up, but she hastily wiped them away, "…since disaster struck Ripple Star. Without Kirby, many fairies here in Ripple Star succumbed to panic. The Queen, however, believed that she could find a way to fix all this, with or without Kirby, by searching through ancient tomes. Ripple Star's Grand Library specializes in books about magic and mystical items-"

"Ribbon, you said there was Dark Matter everywhere..." Adeleine walked closer to the fairy, her arms crossed, "And yet we haven't come across a single one." The young painter, though sympathetic for her friend's emotional condition, remained skeptical towards her, "In that case, shouldn't you be possessed along with everyone else here in Ripple Star?"

Adeleine's words struck home: Ribbon bit her lip and struggled not to cry, not daring to look into Adeleine's eyes. She turned around and headed for the doors located on the other side of the hall, the Dreamlanders following her hesitantly. It took a while for her to open the great mahogany doors, but with the help of her friends, the doors finally burst open and led them into the castle's courtyard.

What they saw outside was enough to turn their blood into ice.

Ripple Star's sky was black. Not the bluish black of a moonless night sky; it was the tar-like black of a deep, endless void empty of all form of life. Not a single star, cloud or comet was visible amidst the darkness that surrounded the heart-shaped planet. And it was such emptiness that filled Dedede's, Adeleine's and Bandanna Dee's hearts with a terror they had never felt before.

"The sky…everything's gone…Ribbon, how-" Adeleine turned to her fairy friend, but Ribbon wasn't listening. She was stretching her now cupped hands in front of her, muttering under her breath as light began to gather between them. Before long, she was holding a small yet bright sphere of light. She stepped further into the courtyard and lifted the sphere as high as she could, bathing everything around her in white light.

The three Popstarians behind her waited in silence, not sure of what to expect next. It was Bandanna's terrified gasp that finally broke the silence, and after looking towards the direction his paw was pointing at, Adeleine and Dedede had to fight the urge to scream, too.

Blotches of white and orange appeared amidst the darkness that surrounded Ripple Star as result of exposure to the light. It was too far for a normal person to make out what they where, but the three of them had seen this before and easily recognized the sight before them.

They were eyes.

Blinking tiredly as if disturbed from a long deep sleep, the eyes' orange irises followed the source of their discomfort – Ribbon, to be precise. They narrowed at the young fairy at what was probably hatred and annoyance, but the pink-haired girl stood her ground, returning the gesture defiantly as she kept the sphere suspended in the air.

Dedede's grip tightened around his hammer. Adeleine whipped out her paintbrush. Bandanna brandished his spear, which proved more difficult to do with trembling hands. All three of them took battling stances, prepared to protect Ribbon if those eyes decided to attack her, or to attack if their fairy friend was determined to retaliate. But much to their surprise, Ribbon put out the light sphere with a motion of her hands, still staring at the eyes above her. These remained motionless, looking at Ribbon and her friends behind her with unfathomable expressions. Finally, after what felt like forever, the eyes began to close as they sank into sleep once more.

Dedede hadn't realized he had held his breath back all this time until the eyes in the sky vanished and the cold, heavy feeling of fear left his chest for a moment. But it soon returned as quickly as it left as the grim realization hit him like a hundred Moundos, and he couldn't prevent his voice from shaking as he turned to Adeleine and Bandanna Dee, "Dark Matter…so it's true".

Ribbon nodded but didn't look back at him, "After Kirby disappeared and the Power Crystal became corrupted with negative energy, they appeared out of nowhere and surrounded all of Ripple Star. They…they haven't attacked us or done anything at all for that matter…" She turned to face them, fresh tears running down her cheeks but her eyes burning with frustration and defiance, "all they've done is keep us prisoners within our own home! They won't let us out or let anyone in, all while Kirby is probably out there risking his life fighting them-"

"You mean that all that darkness in the sky is actually Dark Matter?" At this point, Bandanna couldn't look any paler or more terrified, "But there must be millions of them! Maybe billions!"

"But that….I don't understand…" Adeleine had broken into a cold sweat, her knuckles white from gripping her paintbrush, "We destroyed Dark Star – Kirby destroyed them all! How could so many of them survive!" She turned to Ribbon with terrified eyes, "HOW!"

"I don't know, Adeleine," Ribbon could not force herself to look into the artist's horrified expression and turned her gaze back into the void surrounding her planet, "All of Ripple Star has undergone an emergency lockdown. The Queen is doing everything in her power to find a solution to all this, but without Kirby or even the Power Crystal, there's nothing we can do-"

"B-but we can do something!" Adeleine exclaimed, "Once our minds return to Dreamland, I can paint us a ship! A-and maybe distract the Dark Matter so you can escape-" But she stopped midsentence upon seeing Ribbon shaking her head, "Ribbon, you can't expect us to stand aside and do nothing-"

"And you can't expect me to just stay here and see how you guys get killed by the Dark Matter!" Ribbon snapped back, but soon her anger was replaced with exhaustion, "I already lost a dear friend; I can't bear the thought of losing you guys, too."

"We don't want to lose you either, Ribbon," Bandanna Dee whispered and stepped forward to hug her. However, he forgot his "body" was merely a hologram manifestation of his mind, and yelped in surprise as he passed through Ribbon. Upon realizing his mistake, his brown eyes glistened with tears but he forced them back.

Dedede's face remained expressionless and said nothing.

"Y…r Ma…sty…..in….Ded…."

All four of them jumped at the sound of the voice that echoed around the courtyard, distorted and distant as if it were coming out of an old radio. Dedede was the first one to come back to his senses, hammer in hand, "Who said that? I swear, if you're Dark Matter, I'm going to beat the stuffing out of you, you piece of-"

"Wak….up, Yo….jest…..lease, snap out of it!"

"That's Waddle Doo's voice!" Bandanna Dee cried out.

"They must have found your unconscious bodies back at Castle Dedede; they're breaking the communication crystal's spell." Ribbon turned to the group with a sad smile, "I hoped we would be together longer than this…but spells like this one take up a lot of my magic, so I'm afraid we won't see each other anytime soon."

"But we can't leave you like this!" Adeleine reached out for Ribbon, but her hand, now blurred and barely visible, went through her just like Bandanna. "We can't leave you guys trapped here with the Dark Matter! We wanna help you!"

"In that case, you have to find Kirby." Ribbon's determined voice now matched her expression as she looked at her disappearing friends, "He might still be out there, and he probably doesn't even know what's going on here in Ripple Star! Like you said, I can't do anything, but you guys can!" She hesitated for a second, and when she looked at them again, there was more pleading than determination in her eyes, "You must find him. Please promise me you will."

At this point, Adeleine's, Dedede's and Bandanna Dee's forms were much too blurry to the point they were barely visible, but Ribbon managed to hear Adeleine's distorted one last time. And those words were more than enough.

"We promise."

And with that, they were gone.

/

"YOUR MAJESTY!"

"ARGH!" Dedede awoke screaming, back in Castle Dedede's Main Hall and inside his own body. For a fleeting moment he believed – he hoped – that his ethereal experience in Ripple Star had been just a nightmare, but he couldn't think much about before he was tackled by an orange puffball.

"Nova above, could you please NOT SCARE ME LIKE THAT!" Said puffball turned out to be Captain Doo, who was at the moment too busy venting his frustration on the king's stomach with his paws (not that it hurt, anyways). Behind him a whole troop of Waddle Dees were looking at the king, a mixture of worry and relief for their monarch evident in their cream-colored faces. Some of them were helping Adeleine and Bandanna get on their feet beside him.

"I come into the hall and the first thing I see is you body lying still on the floor, what the heck was I supposed to think!" Dedede's attention turned back to Captain Doo, who was now pointing an accusatory stub at him, "I thought you had died! WE ALL THOUGHT YOU HAD DIED!" He paused for a second, his whole body a reddish tone from all the angry screaming, and turned away while crossing his arms and huffed, "If you had dumped your kingdom like that, I would have never forgiven you."

In another time, Dedede would have shouted back at Doo for his insubordination, and would've probably smacked him away with his hammer, too. But upon realizing that his meeting with Ribbon had been real enough, he couldn't find the strength to snap back at his underling. The memory of millions upon millions of Dark Matter looking down at him from the sky sent shivers down his spine.

But it was also at that very moment that he realized what he had to do.

"I need to go to the hangar," he told Captain Doo, who in turn stopped ranting as he listened to his king's orders, "I want you to call Gyrem and his group; I need their help with it. And I don't want anyone interrupting me, got it?"

The one-eyed official blinked, too taken aback to comprehend what the penguin was saying. But once the words sank into his mind, he nodded in understanding and ran off after saluting him, the Waddle Dee troop following from behind. Adeleine, on the other hand, was not as compliant; "Wait a minute, what on Popstar are you talking about? We promised Ribbon-"

"-That we would look for Kirby?" Dedede scoffed, much to Adeleine and Bandanna's displeasure, "Yeah sure, on what ship?"

"I can paint us one!"

"Using what paint? And how long would that take you to make, anyways?"

Adeleine's face turned bright red, but that didn't prevent her from lashing back at Dedede, "It's still better than nothing! What do you have to do that's more important than saving Kirby? Stuff your beak with food?"

Dedede's face contorted into a snarl, and even fearless Adeleine flinched at the sight of it. But he didn't do anything as he turned around towards the Main Hall's back exit, "Stay here or go back home; I couldn't care less. But if you really want to go save Gumball Boy, you better come back in…" He halted in his steps, "Three days…yeah, that's enough."

"Three days?" Adeleine asked confused, and couldn't help but stare back suspiciously at the older penguin, "Dedede, just what the heck are you planning now?"

All she got from him was a wry smile, "Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise." But the smile soon left his face as he headed again towards the exit, getting lost in his thoughts soon enough and leaving Adeleine and Bandanna Dee on their own.

Neither of them could speak for a long time. The events taking place in Ripple Star, along with Kirby's disappearance and now Dedede's mysterious departure was too much to take in; it all just seemed too chaotic to be true. It was Bandanna who broke the silence at last.

"Addie…" the human girl turned to the brown puffball. He wasn't crying anymore, but the absolute despair in his eyes was far more worse, "All that Dark Matter…and Kirby's not here to stop them. I-I want to do something, but I can't-" he buried his face into his paws, "Addie, I'm scared."

Adeleine wanted to walk to him and hug him. She wanted to reassure her friend that everything was OK, that they would find Kirby and kick the Dark Matter's butt. That this was just another adventure and that there would be a happy ending just like every time before this.

But how could he convince him of that when she couldn't even convince herself?

"Me too, buddy….me too."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

….Well f*ck, I said I would try to make this chapters shorter, and I did exactly the opposite. Joy.

Sorry for the long wait guys. Chapters might take more time from now on, but I definitely want to finish this story so don't worry about it getting cancelled or something.