#It's not exactly an AU but What If scenario when Gooey is ROMK protagonist due to Kirby being in Great Cave Offensive

[yarmiko-art]

Your child is melting lmao

Gooey is pretty much kind of a shapeshifter and solidity of his from heavily depends on his mental state. Any extreme emotion can make him loose his grip on the body, so he kinda starts melting over. Most common nominators for that are negative emotions: fear, grief, shock. Being especially specific - something BAD happening to Kirby (pic 1)

Tho it also can be excitement or exhaustion. The extent of the body melting is fully up to intensity of the emotion

....And in a very rare cases, it can be anger

I rumble a bit abt DM biology under the cut

All Dark Matter are shapeshiters outside of the hosts. They're capable of changing their form since it's not solid from the beginning, but it can't happen purely by the power of will. Dark Matter's appearance very heavily depends on it's way of preciving itself.

Due to their nature being part of the hive mind, DM unit doesn't have an individuality in normal conditions - thus rarely any different traits. They might have some, but those mostly caused by environment and adaption to it.

When unit is separated from the hive, they start to accumulate more and more individualistic traits, gaining sense of self. It's a mix of "what I want to be" and "what I see in the mirror". If that makes any sense. More humanoid form, number of limbs and much more trivial traits like height are born exactly from that mix.

Gooey, growing up in Dreamland for most of his life, just tried to copy Kirby at everything, therefore perceiving himself as a child, growing along with Kirby. It isn't far from truth, cuz even as a DM unit they were pretty young. Haven't even figured out how to morph fingers yet (opposite thumbs are pretty usefull evolutional trait)