Compromise

By Myst Knight

Disclaimer: Kirby's Dream Land is owned by Nintendo and HAL Laboratories. I write this without consent, and am making no money off of it.

Character Expose: Chuchu

A cute, pink girl blob with a bow on her head, and one of Kirby's new partners in Kirby's Dream Land 3. With her elongated arms, she can pluck up enemies from a great distance. Her favorite spot is perched upon Kirby's head, and she is known to have a quick temper. Chuchu and another blob character, Gooey, originated as point items in Kirby's Dream Land 2.

It was a bright, sunshiny day in Cloudy Park, with the sun smiling down on the cirrus and cumulus clouds like a benevolent father. Most of the clouds here were capable of holding up weight, so non-flying residents were free to explore the heavens like a fall carnival, popping in an out of the clouds in an eternal game of peek-a-boo. It was a favorite playground of Kirby's, and although he wasn't here today, his friends quite enjoyed it as well.

Chuchu bounced along the cloud tops towards her meeting with Gooey, her amorphic from jiggling like a child's blob toy that never washes out from the couch. Her bow flipped up and down, enhanced the girl's feminine charm. although she was capable of slipping across the landscape like a snail, she had determined it was much more spunky to bounce her way through life. Guys like bouncy girls, right?

Despite her seemingly jovial jaunts, Chuchu didn't having the expression of a girl on her way to meet her best friend. In fact, if you had talked to her a scant three days ago, her opinion of Gooey would be something closer to 'that creepy blob friend of Kirby's that never washes.' There was a sort of resigned frown on her face, as if she was taking three weeks of clothes to the laundry mat, with some murmered cursing to go along with it.

"Come on, girl," she told herself, breathing exasperatedly. "Ya gotta go through with it."

The whole matter started about three weeks ago, during Chuchu's time with Kirby, Gooey, and their animal friends in the forest. Rick the Hamster, Nago the Cat, and Pitch the Bird had already left, so the remaining three had occupied themselves by collecting berries from. Chuchu was doing her best to impress Kirby with the supreme reach of her stretchy appendages. She was getting better too; she could reach two and a half feet longer than she could six months ago.

Kirby had pointed to her side, and Chichi saw that Gooey had surreptitiously eather all the berries she had gathered in her basket, licking that big, obnoxiously long tongue around his globby jaws. Her anger had already been aroused, but what was worse is that Gooey had taken it upon himself to apologize. The sight of his tongue preoffering regurgative food for her ingestion made her stomach turn; he might as well have just horked it up all over her. So Chuchi had punched him into a tree, shaking the the trunk and sending more than a three baskets worth of berries onto the unfortunate creature's head.

Her frown deepened, and creases lined her goopy forehead. She still didn't get why Kirby got so cold with her after that! Okay, so she did him punch hard enough to split apart concrete, but that little goob deserved it! But in the end, all she remember was Kirby giving her this angry frown, and then leaving with Gooey.

That's what pressured her to go seek out Gooey this Sunday, the day Kirby usually slept in until early afternoon. Even if she didn't like Gooey, she liked Kirby, a whole lot in fact. If she ever wanted him to feel comfortable around him, she would have to at least learn to tolerate him. She likened it all to an anger management therapy session.

But of course no one likes attending their anger management, and so Chuchu was still noticeably grouchy. "I mean, it's not my fault it's such a weird little twerp!" she complained outloud. "Doesn't Kirby want a feisty, passionate gal?" She had made this point to Nago awhile, and he told her that she was doomed to be a stereotypical manga girl with that attitude, offering up a wide collection of manga as an example.

And so she was here, behind an outcropping of clouds about ten meters away from Gooey, watching him bumble about a celestial palace at his leisure. The blue-black blob was meandering back and forth in self-amusement, making little Pokemon noises. "Gooey, gooey, goo," he burbled to himself, enthralled beyond belief. Already she could feel the irritance boiling in the pit of her stomach.

Still, she had gone this far, right? "Get it together now," Chuchu murmured to herself, gathering up her nerves for one final jaunt. "...Okay!" And with her mouth crinkled into a faux grin, she hopped into plain view of the young blob to greet him.

Gooey did not take her intrusion well. "Gooey...GOOEY!" he wailed, his tongue firing out of his mouth like a snake in a can bought from a gag store. "Googoogoogoogoo...!" The blue blob promptly hightailed it around a pillar sticking out of the clouds, morphing his body sideways so that it could not be seen by the pink blob. There, he shivered in abject terror, obviously expecting another beating for not clearing out fast enough.

"Gooey, wait, come out!" Chuchu cried, putting blobby 'hands' around to project her voice. Oh heck, I've given him a complex! she thought, a new strain of guilt shooting through her heart. "It's alright, we can share the cloud!" she tried.

The blob peered out cautiously, his googly eyes haphazardly trained on her. Chuchu sweated for a brief moment, and then offered him a goofy, strained grim to appeased him.

Slowly, Gooey began to creep out from behind the pillar, moving like a slug with a case of indigestion. Chuchu kept up her school-photo-smile, and Gooey continued moving towards him. Finally, he came within a few feet of her, finally seeming to relax. "Gooey gooey," he said to her, as means of a greeting.

"Uh, yeah," the girl blob said, looking over to the side to gather her thoughts. "Sooooo...what's new?" she asked awkwardly, the words coming out of her mouth like loose bricks on an aging library.

"Gooey," he responded.

"Uh huh," Chuchu responded, a nervous laugh forcing its way out of her throat. Geez, why do we have Pokemon talk in this fanfic? she thought to herself. It's so difficult this way.

Her internal monologue distracted her from Gooey's next actions, and when she was focused again, she found the blue blob was presenting her with a small bag similar to the packaging of grocery store candies.

"Er...for me?" she asked cautiously, trying to keep her face from grimacing. The bag was not full of candy, but with small chocolate covered beetles, some of which still seemed to be moving slightly. Gooey just nodded, though, his tongue sticking out at an awkward angle. So it was with a nervous twitch that Chuchu reached into the bag with an elongating arm, drawing out exactly one chocolate beetle and placing it gingerly in her mouth.

To be fair, the cholocate coating did a lot to negate the sensation of chomping though shells and spindly legs. It was still eating live insects, but the nasty feeling of it all was somewhat blunted. All in all, Chuchu got through it, ingesting the beetle quickly and offering Gooey a pained smile. "Um...good?" she tried, a dry, mirthless chuckle emanating from her lips.

This was enough to please the blue blob. "Gooey goo!" he cheered, plopping over to Chuchu's side and delivering to her a slobbery lick on the side of her face.

"Heh heh, okay..." the girl blob murmured, a crisscross of veins popping up on the side of her head. Stay calm. Do not belt Gooey. It's for Kirby. For Kirby...

While Chuchu struggled to regain her composure, Gooey proceeded over to a small incline of clouds a little ways from the pillar. Upon arrival, he sought out the girl's attention with a display of jumping and tongue lashing. Causiously creeping over to the blue blob's side, she peered over and glancing over the edge to look down at the incline. Close up, it appeared to be a slide like what you might find at a water park, only made entirely of slippery nimbus clouds.

"So...what exactly do we do here?" Chuchu asked suspiciously, raising a non-existent eyebrow in Gooey's general direction.

"Gooey," he replied, his manner dull and unworthy of comment.

"Ahhhhhh...!" Chuchu screamed, the blustering gales blowing her open mouth like a wind sail. She hung on to Gooey for dear life as they both slid down the twisting incline. Gooey's tongue was flapping out of his hedonistic smile, constantly slapping the girl behind him like a wet, uncooked salmon. She struggled to get the tongue out of his face as she stared, goggle-eyed, at the quickly-scrolling cloudscape that passed them by as if they were on a train.

Chuchu struggled to retain her lunch as they hsot down faster and faster through the hairpin turns and the steep, downward slopes that seemed more like drop-offs than anything else. Worse still, they weren't alone. Chuchu could see a gaggle of Cloudy Park denizens waiting for them around the next turn. At this speed, they would plow right into them, and Chuchu and Gooey's gelantious bodies would be just another splatter for the clean up crew.

"Gooey. we're going to run right into them!" she panicked, grasping his head in a vice-like pinch. "Do something do something DO SOMETHING!"

Gooey responded by simply pulling out a large lollipop from his flappy folds. To Chuchu 's horror, he began to lick his candy quite casually, as if he was on a Sunday drive.

"This is NO TIME to be EATING!" Chuchu hollered futilely, her voice being carried away from Gooey by the wind sheer. Gooey paid no attention to her, and continued to slurp at the lollipop with his oversized tongue.

...suddenly, Gooey's entire body began to give off small sparks, flashing like a broken neon sign at a Pep Brew bar. He became as if enflamed, and bowled over the creatures as easily as if he were flung as a set of pins. Chuchu gaped at this accomplishment, then peered over Gooey to regard his lollipop carefully, which she noticed had a small star sticking out on the side. Invincible Candy, she thought to herself in a moment of clear-headedness.

That clear-headedness gave way to light-headedness, as the duo continued to speed down the slide. Chuchu felt the adrenaline pump through her system, the excitement slowly pushing her fear down her gullet. She could feel the force of the chilled wind blowing against her face, as if she was riding in a convertible instead of on top of Gooey's back. Slowly, but surely, excitement started to flood her heart and soul.

That is, until the slide ride abruptly ended. The incline did not empty out onto another patch of clouds, but dropped off into a mile-high fall into the ground below. Chuchu felt her heart enter her throat, more by gravity than anything else. "Okay, not fuuuunnnnnn!" the girl blob screamed out, as she and Gooey plopped off the slite to what she felt was their apparent demise.

Then, she suddenly felt a strong force yank her from the air, suspending her mid-fall. Chuchu suddenly gasped, trying to compose herself enough to figure out what was going on. As it turned out, a small pink flipper had grabbed onto her side, hoisting her above the distant trees and hills that were now toylike in their appearance. That arm belonged to a round, pink creature, with red shoes and a gentle, unassuming nature.

"Kirby!" she smiled, her face exuding the warmth of a million sunbeams.

"Did you have fun?" he asked her, giving forth an innocent, winsome smile.

Taking a moment as if to ponder over the question, Chuchu looked over to her right. Gooey's long tongue was wrapped around Kirby's left shoe, his open mouth giving him a crazed expression of joy. She smiled slightly, and turned back to Kirby. "Yeah, I did," she told him, nodding with good cheer. "And what a great surprise at the end too!"

Without warning, the young, amorphous female swept up and nailed Kirby with a kiss on the lips. It tastes like candy, Chuchu thought to herself, as she continued to partake of the pink blob. Or chocolate-covered beetles, maybe?

'Fin