#scrobblefic

[xveilofnightx]

“DDD.FM”

Genre: comedy

Fandom: Kirby, Hoshi no Kaabii/Kirby of the Stars/Kirby Right Back at Ya!

Characters: King Dedede, Escargoon, Kirby, Tiff, Tuff, Chef Kawasaki, Waddle Dee, Meta Knight

Audience: last.fm users

Words: 1572

Date Published: November 24, 2022

Summary: The residents of Cappy Town hop on a new trend, Last.fm. King Dedede wants to become the top scrobbler.

AO3 Link

“So these things are called scrobbles, huh?” Escargoon shelved his hands to his hips as he looked down at the mobile device before him. He had stopped a Waddle Dee in the castle out of pure curiosity, and the Waddle Dee had been showing him his favorite app, Last.fm. The Waddle Dee nodded and averted his eyes from his phone to Escargoon. The Waddle Dee wore large on-ear headphones, Beats by Dre, regardless of his lack of external ears. Escargoon grabbed hold of the phone and scrolled through this Waddle Dee’s scrobbles. “And the Cappies are really into this stuff?” The Waddle Dee nodded and looked back to his phone. Escargoon perked up. “I’ve really gotta tell the King about this!”

Escargoon promptly entered Dedede’s lounge area with the stolen phone in-hand. The Waddle Dee struggled to chase after him. King Dedede loudly laughed at what he was watching on the big screen. On the big television above, the King was watching an episode of Himouto! Umaru-chan. At the moment, this was his favorite anime. Umaru-chan enjoys potato chips and cola, just like him. His loud voice bellowed through the halls of the castle before he turned to notice Escargoon. He wiped a tear of laughter from his eye before he spoke. “Whaddya want, Escargoon? You’re interrupting Umaru time!”

“‘I’m sorry, sire, but I recently came across this new phenomenon. It’s the hottest thing in Cappy Town right now. I think you’re gonna love it!” exclaimed Escargoon.

“And what’s that?” said the brash King.

“Last.fm! You listen to music on a phone or a computer and as long as you link your account to it, it logs it for ya! You can even install applications to log when you listen to mp3s!” Escargoon detailed.

“Hmmm…music… Haven’t we done this before?” asked Dedede.

“Don’t fret, your majesty! Cappies farm these logs as scrobbles! They see how much they listen every week and compare. There’s even Discord bots they use to compete.” responded his henchman.

“Scrobbles? Ahahaha! Why didn’t you just say so? I’m ‘onna be the king of scrobbles!” The King pressed a button on his remote, instantly calling Nightmare Enterprises. Escargoon rounded the King’s chair and the Waddle Dee shook with nerves. At this point, he wasn’t getting his phone back.

“Long time, no see, King Dedede!” said the salesman.

“No more talkin’! I need scrobblin’! You’re gonna get me a scrobblin’ monster!” spat the King.

“We don’t have a monster that scrobbles for you, but I think I might know a fancy tool that can help you…” the salesman insisted. Next to him on the screen, a popup window appeared. “This, King Dedede, is Open Scrobbler.”

“Hubba hubba!” the king rubbed his hands together.

“This website lets you scrobble songs manually, so you can scrobble anything you hear without having your account all linked up,” the salesman paused before slyly speaking again, “or, you can scrobble any type of entry you want.”

“Alright, sire! This is big! You’re gonna rack up scrobbles in no time!” Escargoon couldn’t hide his excitement at the King’s vision of success.

The King wore a wide toothy smile on his face and laughed, “That sounds great to me, N.M.E.!”

“One more thing, king; Open Scrobbler isn’t part of Nightmare Enterprises. So we can’t help you if you catch repercussions for your actions. That being said…Au revoir!” The salesman signed off and the TV went black.

-

Tiff and Tuff were hanging out with Kirby down in the square scrobbling together. They had a Spotify party going which allowed them both to scrobble the same song at once. Suddenly, Sober by Project Dani started playing through their bluetooth speaker.

“Tuff, what is this music?” asked Tiff, “I don’t really like it.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” answered Tuff.

“Why don’t we listen to something we both like, like Brentalfloss?” suggested Tiff. Kirby looked towards her.

“I don’t want to listen to Brentalfloss. It would be bad for my weekly scrobble report!” replied Tuff. Kirby looked back to him.

“Is that all you care about? What about just hanging out with me?” questioned Tiff in a rage. Kirby looked down. He was sad and worried about his friends fighting.

“Hey, Kirby, why don’t you decide what to scrobble with us?” Tuff handed his phone over to Kirby. Kirby then excitedly smacked the phone screen until a different song started to play. It was World is Mine by ryo (supercell), famously sung by Vocaloid performer Hatsune Miku.

“Poyo! Poyo!” Kirby smiled and jumped excitedly at the sound of the music. Just then, Chef Kawasaki came walking by.

“Hatsune Miku? She’s my favorite! I’ve scrobbled Vocaloid songs more than any other!” he said happily.

“Wow! You scrobble too, Chef Kawasaki?” said Tuff.

“Yeah! I’ve got over 1,300 scrobbles this week alone,” the chef beamed.

“No way! I don’t have nearly that many,” cried Tuff, embarrassed. His attitude suddenly changed. “Oh well, at least I scrobble gamer music.” He held up his phone to show his scrobbles. His recent scrobbles included the Sonic Heroes soundtrack and songs from various Friday Night Funkin’ mods.

“That’s great, Tuff!” Chef Kawasaki remarked supportively, ”It says we have high compatibility!”

Kirby stayed by the speaker amazed by the music, when King Dedede came strolling through town with Escargoon by his side. “Gamer music? I bet you I know a thing or two about that!” proclaimed the King.

“Huh? What do you mean?” whined Tiff. To her, it was disappointing to hear that Dedede had hopped onto the scrobbling trend. This meant he would compete.

“I got 52,000 scrobbles just this week,” he declared. Beside him, Escargoon crossed his arms and nodded. “And I’ve got more gamer music on my weekly report than you could ever listen to!” Dedede held his phone out with his Last.fm profile open for the group to see. Escargoon stretched to see over the King’s shoulder.

“The Persona 5 Original Soundtrack? I didn’t know you had it in ya, sire!” announced Escargoon.

Tiff examined Dedede’s profile carefully. “Hey!” she shouted, “It says here that you listened to The Home Depot theme for 18 hours yesterday!”

Dedede broke a sweat. “That’s because I did! You ever heard it? I could listen to it all day long! Heheh!” Dedede nervously smiled and turned his phone back to himself. Tiff’s feet scuffed the stone beneath her as she turned back to her friends.

“Can’t you guys tell that Dedede is faking scrobbles? There aren’t even 52,000 minutes in a week!”

More Cappies gathered round. Kirby and Tuff both looked up at Tiff and Chef Kawasaki looked confused. “How do you know how many minutes are in a week?” asked Tuff.

Escargoon was ready to bite nails he didn’t have. He then drew courage and gave voice to a brand new idea. “That’s because this account is for all the Waddle Dees at the castle! It’s a combined amount for all of us! We call it DDD.FM and we’re all connected!”

“Poyo…” Kirby turned confusedly towards Escargoon.

“That sounds like cheating!” pouted Tuff.

“We could do it, too!” said a Cappy from the crowd.

“Yes…you can,” said a mysterious figure. In the trees, Meta Knight was perched, watching the crowd.

“Meta Knight! Where have you been?” Tiff called out.

He opened his cape to reveal a bright golden trophy whose shine pierced eyes in the sunlight. “I was busy accepting my Grammy with the 8 Bit Big Band,” spoke the knight in a low voice. Through his mask, Meta Knight began to speak once more, “There is only one way for this to happen. The King is using Open Scrobbler to manually insert false scrobbles. But, if we are all allowed to go against him, you need to find a way to combine all of Cappy Town’s scrobbles.”

“How are we gonna do that?” cried Tuff.

Kirby looked determined to help his friends, despite his previous confusion. King Dedede rushed behind the crowd and opened Open Scrobbler in a panic. His plan was to add more scrobbles than the Cappies could possibly combine together. Kirby noticed this and stepped forward toward him, separating the crowd.

“Wait, Kirby!” shouted the dishonest King.

Before he could think, Kirby had sucked up his phone — and swallowed. Kirby flipped up into a transformation. He gained a reddish color with a white “as” last.fm abbreviated logo horizontally across the back of his body.

“This is Scrobble Kirby!” announced Meta Knight proudly.

Kirby turned back to the crowd and charged up energy from the Cappies’ mobile devices. He combined their scrobbles together, and their accounts all became one.

“This is not good for my scrobbles,” mumbled Tuff, disappointed to see that so many scrobbles would mix together into the same report.

Cappies scrambled to check their phones. A combined total of over 1 million scrobbles appeared on the profile. The weekly total read 302,407 scrobbles when Kirby finished charging his energy. He then dispersed the energy and returned to normal, granting Dedede his phone back.

To 302,407, Dedede’s 52,000 was nothing, regardless of whether or not he recorded false scrobbles. At the sight of it, the King’s jaw dropped and laid agape for the duration of the encounter.

Escargoon took Dedede by the hand. “Oh come on, sire. Let’s go calm down and watch Chi’s Sweet Home.”