Okay everyone, cut me a little slack. This is my first. . . fanfic. . . EVER. So please don't hunt me down and flay me alive if it fails to meet your expectations. Go ahead and criticize if you want, though.

Big Official-sounding Disclaimer: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and all characters contained therein are the sole property of Nintendo and HAL Laboratories. I claim ownership only of the characters created for the purposes of this narrative.

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"Wow. That thing's ugly."

"Excuse me?" Waddle Dee said angrily, spinning around from where he was standing to face Adeleine, when he noticed she wasn't even looking at him. She was holding a pair of binoculars up to her eyes and peering into a clearing on the other side of the bushes she was standing behind.

"Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about me," Waddle Dee said.

"Nope. There's some really weird-looking animal over here. Gosh, I've never seen anything like it."

"What's it look like?"

"Hmm. . . an aardvark."

"An aardvark?"

"Yep. An aardvark."

"I've gotta see that!" Waddle Dee grabbed the binoculars away from Adeleine and looked through them himself. Sure enough, there was something sitting in the clearing, and it looked more like an aardvark than anything else. It had four legs, long ears, and a longer nose, but very unlike an aardvark, it was purple, and had a series of dark scars running down its back.

"Wow! What d'you suppose that thing is?"

Adeleine didn't answer. Waddle Dee had failed to notice that the binoculars had been hanging from a leather strap around her neck, and as he had pulled them away, the strap had tightened, cutting off Adeleine's windpipe by a considerable amount. Rather than answering his questions, all she was able to do was make a series of choking noises while scraping at the strap.

"Ah, well, it's probably not important," said Waddle Dee, tossing the binoculars carelessly over his shoulder. As luck would have it, they hit the still-choking Adeleine squarely in the head, causing her to fall to the ground in a twitching heap.

"Woah. You okay, Ad?"

"Geez, Waddle Dee, what'd you do to her?" asked King Dedede, who had just shown up. "'Cause whatever it was, you've gotta teach that to me."

"Oh, ha, ha, ha. You're a riot," Adeleine said irritably, standing back up and dusting herself off.

"Why were you looking at that thing in the first place, anyway?" Waddle Dee asked her.

"Duh! I wanted to paint a picture of it! I mean, painting the scenery is okay, but after a while it gets a little boring. Now if you'll both excuse me. . . ."

She grabbed the binoculars off the ground and looked through them again.

"Oh, man! It's gone! You guys scared it off!"

"Um, Ad," said Waddle Dee, "you might want to put the binoculars down."

"Huh? Why?"

She did so, and the first thing she noticed was that the aardvark was standing right in front of her.

"Oh! Hi, little fella," she said. "Where'd you come from?" It was gazing up at her, regarding her with a curious expression. Unable to resist, Adeleine reached down and pet it.

No sooner had she done so than the aardvark shot a bolt of electricity out of its nose, hitting Adeleine squarely in the chest and sending her flying backwards a full six feet. Then it spun around and scrambled away.

"Wow! That was awesome!" King Dedede exclaimed.

"Sweet Georgia Brown!" Adeleine screamed. "That really HURT!"

"Well, now we know that it's got spark power," Waddle Dee quipped before helping his best friend back to her feet. "I guess we ought to tell Ribbon about this."

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"You mean to tell me you got electrocuted by a purple aardvark?"

"Um, well, yeah, I do," Adeleine said uneasily, sensing that Ribbon was about to started yelling at her for at least the twentieth time that day. It seemed like she couldn't go for five minutes without doing something to tick Ribbon off.

"Ad, that's the dumbest story I've ever heard! There's no such thing as a purple aardvark!"

"But I have witnesses!"

"We know nothing," Waddle Dee said very quickly, knowing better than to side against Ribbon in any argument. He nudged King Dedede in the side, who nodded enthusiastically.

"What! YOU TRAITOR! I'LL KILL YA!" Adeleine snarled as she flung herself at Waddle Dee. Ribbon, of course, had long since gotten used to Adeleine's frequent lapses in self-control that seemed to come with being the emotional artistic type, and quickly grabbed her and hauled her back.

"Ad, knock it off. I really don't have time to deal with you and another one of your hare-brained stories. I have to find Kirby."

"He's gone?" Waddle Dee asked in surprise.

"Yes! I've been looking for him for hours and I can't find him anywhere! I get the feeling that he's avoiding me for some reason." Ribbon folded her arms and let out an angry huff as her wings started flapping more rapidly, as they always did whenever she was irritated.

"But Ribbon, who would ever want to avoid you?" Adeleine asked innocently.

A few moments later, Waddle Dee was once again helping up Adeleine, who was now sporting a bright red bruise on her cheek.

"Wow. Ribbon doesn't punch you very often," he remarked.

"She's better at detecting sarcasm than I thought," Adeleine noted.

"Hey, guys," came a faint voice from several feet above their heads. "Is it safe to come down yet?"

Everyone looked up. "Yeah, Kirby, she's gone," Adeleine called up. "She went off to look for you."

Kirby quickly shimmied down from the large tree he had been hiding in, landing on the ground with a thump.

"Man, you've got to do something about Ribbon," Adeleine continued, rubbing her cheek. "You seem to be the only one she likes even remotely. And she's been getting worse and worse."

"I used to think I was the cranky one," said King Dedede.

"Guys, you've got to cut her a little slack. She's just taking this whole Crystal Shard business really seriously."

"Too seriously, if you ask us!" Waddle Dee said sternly. "She never lets us relax, or have fun, or anything! We're getting, like, four or five hours of sleep a night! And every second we're not actively looking for a Crystal Shard, she bites our heads off!"

Kirby shook his head. "But you shouldn't give her such a hard time. You're always talking about her like there's nothing good about her at all. I mean, she's smart, she's determined, she's hard-working. . ."

"Yeah, she's got a lot of other stuff wrong with her too," Adeleine remarked.

Kirby just sighed and rolled his eyes, deciding it was useless to pursue the argument any further. True, Ribbon was harsh, domineering, humorless, and acted about thirty years too old, but he knew that she wasn't that way by nature. Really she was sweet, shy, and caring for everyone. The problem was, she felt like she had to behave the way she did. She felt like the responsibility to save her home planet rested solely on her, and that every moment she wasted increased the chances that she would be too late, and that Ripple Star would be beyond salavation from Dark Matter. She was constantly pushing herself to the extreme, and unfortunately, she did it to the others too.

"Okay, I admit she's been getting a little out of hand lately," he said. "And yes, I'm worried about her. All that stress building up might eventually turn lethal."

"For her, or for us?" Adeleine asked, gesturing to the bruise on her cheek.

"Hmm. Fair question."

"You're right, Kirby," Waddle Dee said. "Ribbon may be. . . well. . . not nice at times, but she's our friend. If we let her keep going like she is, she's going to hurt herself. We should help her."

"Help her?" Kirby repeated. "I was just going to sit here complaining about it some more."

Kirby did not always have the best ideas.

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Okay! Hope you enjoyed! Next chapter hopefully coming very soon!