47: Spinning
of roulettes that apparently make good enough decisions if you're smart at it.
"Dedede, rate Bandana Dee on a scale of one to ten."
"What."
"I'll rate him eight. One because he's a waddle dee, and there are too many waddle dees. Two, because his name is… Bandana Dee. It's just one letter swap away from Badnana Dee."
Dedede cast Kirby a squinted-eye glance before gluing himself back to the cooking show.
"What? What's this? I'd say silence means consent, but this isn't even a yes-or-no question!" Kirby wound himself round to mirror Dedede's look in his face, but the king (?) ignored him. "Fine. I'll ask you a simpler, yes-or-no question. How many years of education did you receive?"
"That ain't a yes-or-no question."
"It's close enough, right?"
"How many years of education did ya receive?"
Kirby raised a brow and poised his stub under his face, adopting a musing expression. "Hm. That's a good question, but I'm an alien, so I don't receive education."
"Sounds like a loada bull."
"You could not hope to understand the secrets of the universe, Dedede!"
Grudgingly, the king agreed with him silently.
Kirby's presence was a norm by now. Even the minions understood that for weeks and only spared the pink puffball so much as a glance before resuming the sweeping of floors or frying of fish. Or their cleaning of windows. Their chess games, sometimes. Their showers, too, although that didn't actually happen because Kirby had no place in a toilet. If the grumpy waddle doo guard—who had been promoted to The Head Guard of all head guards—would grumble about something and maybe swear a little at Kirby's presence, but no flashing death rays in the hero's direction.
"By the way, I was trying to decide on something for someone else, so I consulted a roulette." The topic change was also a norm.
Dedede raised a brow. What was a roulette again? The thing the waddle doo guard always threatened to bash people with? Wait, no—that was a slot machine. That circular spinny-thingy in one of the shoddier rooms the wheelies liked to play with? "And how did ya do that?"
"Well, if it landed on any number that wasn't a zero, the answer would've been yes."
Right, right. There were numbers on the circle. Dedede knew that. He knew that.
"Hang on." Dedede cast Kirby a suspicious look. A very suspicious, very shady, very ya-sure-are-up-to-something look. "What did you… con-sult the roulette for?"
"Whether you would go on a picnic with me and Bandana Dee. Possibly Batty Knight, too."
"Well—"
"By the way, there aren't any zeroes on the roulette that I have." Kirby jumped up with a proud grin that resembled a grin he would make right after he blended in with a couple of toadstools successfully. "It landed on a four!"
"I didn't agree on nothin'—"
"No, but the Wheel of Fortune did, so it says you will! By the way, the pancakes your chefs make in the morning are really good. Maybe you could bring those?"
"I'm not even going to—" Pause.
"Ya're the idiot who's been eating my food?!"