Scrap #2: Meta's Backstory


"I don't get it, Meta Knight. If you're so good at fighting, why don't you ever do anything with it? You could be a bounty hunter, or a wandering hero, or something! You'd get rich; you wouldn't need a day job! What do you even do for your tech-nerd job, anyway?"

Meta Knight absentmindedly pressed a few buttons on his keyboard, toying with his computer program while he thought about his answer. Unfortunately, he hit 'Enter' three times in a row while testing a dialogue box, which caused his computer to open an endless loop of respawning dialogue boxes faster than they could actually be read. The knight's expression betrayed only a hint of surprise, which implied that this had happened several times before. Not that Dedede would know that, since he couldn't see the puff's face.

"I fight only because I have the power to do so, where some others do not. It would be a waste not to use it at all, but it's not what I wanted to do with my life. Personally, I prefer to live in a perfectly regulated environment, where I can modify my surroundings to my taste and interact with new scenarios without even having to leave my room." The puffball glanced briefly at the king. "My technical skills allow me to live in a perfect world, without having to endure anything I dislike, or…anything that could hurt me. Why would I choose a life of danger, violence, and uncertainty when I could trade all of that for mental suffering, instead? To me, this is a much safer, calmer alternative. Much more enjoyable."

Dedede blinked, trying to think of what the puff could be saying. "So…you don't want to fight? But why use your wish on Nova for fighting bragging rights, then? That's stupid."

"Just because it's not my top priority doesn't mean I could care less about it," Meta Knight answered curtly, glaring for a split second. "I mean to say that I fight because I have the ability to, instead of picking it because I thought it was interesting. Although that certainly played a role in that decision; swordsmanship was the only remotely physical class I had in school."

"School?" The king had never thought of it, but yes, Meta Knight couldn't have learned what he knew without someone to teach him. "Where'd you go to school? Not on your home planet, right? If uh—I-If you still call it your home planet."

Meta Knight was quiet for a moment. Then, he jumped out of his desk chair and walked silently to a small shelf in the corner. What he brought back to the king was nothing more than a single letter made of metal…but to the citizens of Popstar (and many other planets), that letter was a symbol of great respect—and more recently, a symbol of great fear. Dedede himself went quiet, unable to do more but gape.

But it makes sense, doesn't it? Nova, they're so similar…He's one of them. I wondered why he didn't want to attack them, and why he asked to keep their stuff, but…How could someone nice like Meta ever fit in with them?

"Meta, y-you aren't—Are you—Wh-Wh-What…" the king stuttered, trying to organize his thoughts and say one thing at a time. It wasn't really his strength, however… "Meta, you're one of them?! Seriously? But you're so nice! How—How—"

"He really cared before most of us died."

Silence hung in the air.

"The Galaxy Union offered us tons of grant money to research ancient technology and artifacts, and though he refused to activate the more dangerous ones, magic tech is hard to resist when you have a wish you want granted," the puff murmured, unable to make eye contact. "His wife died from an incurable disease, but he never let that drag him down…in public. I greatly respected him. He was always able to focus on what mattered, make tough decisions quickly, and…everything. He didn't have many flaws."

Meta Knight frowned, playing with his paws. "He took me under his wing when I was younger, and taught me everything I know. His school was expensive, but he told me that I had great potential, so he only charged my caretakers a tenth of the tuition. He even provided meals to me, and my classmates as well. There weren't many of us due to the rigor of the material, so we all had our own rooms, furniture, computers…It…was wonderful. A paradise, even. It was a perfect world…"

"So…" Dedede tapped his fingers together. "Why'd you leave?"

"He forced us to. One downside to working with ancient technology is that you're never certain of the quality or mechanics of the materials you're dealing with, so when you work your calculations and create your theories…Well, our honors project blew up from inaccurate guesses. It killed several of us, and everyone else—myself included—had to be hospitalized. Even then, if it wasn't for one of the robots I'd been working on, I would have died."

The sapphire puff stroked his arm, and though it would make sense that he'd been severely injured…Now that Dedede thought about it, Meta Knight had no scars on his body, anywhere. How was that possible? Certainly, his species couldn't have that good healing power, but…what other explanation could there be?

Extra surgery or magic, maybe? But wait—he didn't have any scars when he came back from—

"My team captain…Aaron…died, next to me…" the puff whispered, voice shaking ever-so-slightly. "Even though he programmed some of the medical functions for the robot, it chose to rescue me instead. I don't know why. Aaron was better than me in every aspect except magic; his life should have been worth more than mine. But I didn't know he died for the longest time…I just woke up in the hospital, and I got a letter stating that my bills would be paid since it wasn't my fault, and that everyone was dismissed from the college; apologies. I knew who it was from…and I knew how much it must have cost to pay all of my classmates' medical expenses, as well. I mainly suffered from burns and surface wounds; nothing severe, but others had to have serious surgery."

The puff twirled the metal piece in his hands, sliding it into a circular cutout of metal. The parts fit together perfectly. Satisfied with the result, Meta Knight returned the pieces to his desk drawer, pulling out an old envelope and slowly opening it.

"I wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, and that he wasn't a horrible person because of a single accident out of his entire career…but I never made contact with him again. He gave me food, knowledge, friends, and care…and though I could have saved him by sending a simple email, I let him send away everyone he cared about; let him drive himself insane to pay our hospital bills…and then killed him. What sort of person does that make me…?"

Dedede had no response. How did you respond to something like that?

"Meta…You're…You're not a bad person; you had to do that…How were you supposed to know about what he was doing? Nobody else noticed or cared, either!"

"Does that matter?" The puffball pushed his mask onto the top of his head, rubbing the area above his eyes. From Dedede's past experience with the knight, that was usually a sign that he had a headache or felt sick. "Is my ignorance justified, simply because nobody else cared?"

"No; that's not the point Meta," Dedede argued, taking a step closer to the blue puffball. Meta Knight lowered his paws to his sides as the king stroked the puff's forehead. "I…uh…um…Why would you ever think of that? His life isn't your problem; you have your own life to take care of."

Despite being confronted with a logical point, the knight still seemed doubtful. Though his headache slowed his will to continue arguing.

"I suppose that's valid, your Majesty…but still, I think it will take more than that to convince me…"

"Convince you? To do what?"

Meta Knight unhooked his mask and held it in front of himself, the features and design of the mask looking all too familiar to the front of his childhood school projects. To anyone else it was a simple piece of equipment, but to the sapphire puffball, it was a symbol of honor…and a daily reminder of a perfect world, now shattered beyond even a tiny bit of repair.

"Convince me to forgive myself."


C/N: I've been out of college for a month now, and I have done little to no actual work on anything. I have to apologize for that; it's just, I've been having a lot of self-doubt recently so my confidence points are currently at...negative 508, out of 20, when it comes to writing. I have absolutely no clue how out of practice I am in writing right now, and that scares me. Is my writing noticeably different, or am I imagining things?

Anyway, on the actual work, I'm sure everyone's guessed where Meta Knight got all his technical knowledge, but if you didn't, I will feel so proud of myself. This was part of a piece I'm working on to explore various details about the quartet's personality that I was testing out, based off of small prompts with 200-500 word sections. The detail prompt for this one was 'school' (as I see Meta as more of the thinker/strategist in the quartet), but as you can see, it's...1400 words long. There's a lot more I could elaborate on here, but in the meantime, do you think I should include it in the prompt fic (maybe abridging its length?), or expand it and publish it separately? I hate to publish Meta Knight and Dedede interacting closely without background (at least, before I publish a certain upcoming project... :D), but I figure if I did that, I could slop something into the beginning of the fic. Hmmm...a flashback from Return, or just some background about how difficult it is to convince Meta to trust someone? Eh, depending on your vote, I'll come up with something.

...I feel like I should include some headcanons on Meta's personality/background/skills here, but you know what? Being mysterious and keeping to himself is the main appeal of his character. I have plans for a pretty big project after Family Reunion, so unless you guys really want me to, I'll wait until then to explore his character. One thing I will give away though: I'm using the Four-Temperament Ensemble for the quartet. If you read my profile, you might've seen the link to a website that gives a description of each role...

Hey, speaking of Family Reunion, there were a few things I was going to rewrite in it, and I figured...since I had to make edits anyway, should I modify things so that Meta's family there is also his family in my usual character backstories? He will have biological parents regardless of the choice (to avoid stereotypical Meta Knight backstories), but since I know some of you keep up on FR...take a vote. Is FR background good enough to reuse if I need it in other works?

As always, thanks for your wonderful reviews! I always enjoy reading them and they make my day.