Kirby (SSBU)/Neutral special

Overview
Kirby opens his mouth and begins to inhale. It possesses a grabbox and can be held indefinitely until the player decides to release the B button. Upon inhaling an opponent, Kirby can spit them out as a star to deal damage to them and any nearby opponents, copy their neutral special move, walk around slowly, or perform a short hop. Alternatively, Kirby can descend from the air and inhale opponents near the ledge, attempting to perform a Kirbycide. Opponents caught off guard will try to mash out, resulting in Kirby being given the chance to footstool the opponent and likely net a KO. If the opponent is caught, it would be best to either accept the stock trade or buffer their recovery move right after Kirby releases the opponent.

Most characters will give Kirby a slight variation of their neutral special (such as Monado Arts and Pikmin Pluck), allowing Kirby to use the abilities to varying degrees of usefulness. In most cases, however, these copy abilities will always possess unique niches that can benefit him. This is more noticeable in doubles play, where a teammate like or  can allow themselves to get inhaled, setting Kirby up to get the ability and allow him to pressure foes with the aforementioned abilities.

Update History
   

Inhale

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Swallow/spit

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Star
The star's damage depends on the spat out character, correlating loosely to their weight. If a projectile is spat out, it is instead equal to 0.8× of its damage rounded down, with a minimum of 10%.


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Inhale
The searchbox is used for item-swallowing. After one full loop, the move can be ended by releasing the special move button at any point.





Opponent inhaled
The timing is from since the opponent enters Kirby's mouth. When coming in range with the inhale's grabbox, it takes at least 4 frames for the opponent to enter Kirby's mouth, then the additional frames depend on their distance from him.

Swallow
!Kirby !Star

Spit
When an opponent is spat out, the star lasts from 25 to 60 frames, depending on their percent difference with Kirby and button mashing from their part. The framestrips below show the star's minimum duration without button mashing. When a projectile is spat out, the star always lasts 50 frames.

!Kirby (grounded) !Kirby (aerial) !Star

Inhale
When inhaling an opponent, after the initial intangibility period, the amount of frames the opponent is held in Kirby's mouth is determined by, where t and k are the target and Kirby's respective percents when the target was inhaled. On the ground, button mashing reduces this amount by 12 frames per stick input, and 21.6 frames per button input (though they cannot be registered as quickly); in the air, these amounts are increased to 16 and 28.8.

Additionally, while Kirby has an opponent inhaled, his blast line detection is extended forward and down by 4 units, usually causing him to get KO'd first in Sacrificial KO attempts. Prior to update, this increase was of 10 units.

Star spit
The star's travel speed and duration change based on both Kirby and the target's damage percents. The duration in frames is determined by, with a maximum of 60, while its speed in units per frame is determined by  , where t is the target's percent prior to being spat out, and k is Kirby's percent. The star's speed decreases by 0.05 per frame, and it releases the target when its speed drops below 0.4. The speed equation can be rewritten as  to estimate the number of frames—when paired with the frame equation, whichever is smaller will be the number of frames the star lasts.

Button mashing from the target reduces the star's duration by 10 frames per stick input, and 18 frames per button input (though they cannot be registered as quickly), with a minimum resulting duration of 4 frames.