Chapter 9
Magolor spent the rest of the day and much of the night reconfiguring his drafts. He made a chaotic slathering of new lines, circles, and X marks, then getting new papers and redrawing over them. One of his stages was crumpled up into a neatly compact ball between his gloved hands, and completely reworked from scratch. And were it not for a stern beeping emitting out of the Lor's walls, he might have skipped dinner in his energized planning.
"Everything Kirby does in these challenge stages, he's going to need to apply to these races!" He excitedly explained to the Lor as he munched on a synthetic burger, circling around in the cockpit, trailing bread crumbs. "They'll test his skills with all these abilities, and he'll only win if he uses them strategically! Doesn't that just sound like the best? And I'll be using my abilities, too!"
Magolor diligently relayed his new stages and feelings for the entire time he was eating, often with a full mouth. Once he was finished, Magolor bushed the crumbs off his clothes, swept the reflective floor clean, and went back to work. By the time he went to bed, his blueprints were as done as something in the planning phase could possibly be, and his sleep was filled with dreams about his stages being a thing of wonderment, regal and magical. When the Lor woke Magolor up early the next day, he snapped out of bed feeling inspired.
There was the sound of keys being tapped, buttons gently clicking as Magolor typed into the colorful console some new specifications for what kind of blocks he wanted the Lor to produce for his races. Before long, he was in the empty challenge room, watching the large bricks pile up as the Starcutter hummed loudly, churning them out from some hidden, internal machine. They had the look of polish metal, lustrous golds and bronze, with illuminated shapes and panels built into some, different colors in others. There where glorious, giant, golden gears, bolted and smooth, some with royal blues and star shapes in their centers. There were even checker-printed strips that pulsed with a soft light for the finish line. They didn't quite measure up to his dream, but they were good enough. Using his summoning, he sent the blocks around in compressed balls of light to their proper places, swiftly creating a simple, straight, long strip of a track. Knowing Meta Knight could show up at any moment, Magolor's focus was on setting up an area that would merely be for him training his dash. Making the stages according to his drafts would come after the fact, after knowing just how fast he could go, and how often he could do it for a short race.
It ended up taking longer than usual for Meta Knight to make his entrance. Magolor had time to get three of the four stages into likewise linear tracks before the Lor made a ringing sound, heralding the knight's arrival. By then, it was afternoon.
"Welcome back, Meta Knight!" The little wizard greeted politely, meeting up with him in the ship's cockpit, as usual. "I'm used to you coming around in the mornings. Was there any problems?"
Meta Knight, with his thick cape wrapped tightly around himself, stared at Magolor for what seemed like a very thoughtful moment before answering.
"... I had a different arrangement to attend."
"Oh!" Magolor exclaimed with a smile, clapping his hands together. "I totally understand! I don't want to take up all your time, I know you're a busy fellow. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay!"
"There's nothing for you to concern yourself with. Let's get started." The knight insisted.
And start they did. Magolor lead Meta Knight into one of the gold-gleaming linear tracks, wasting no time.
"We were focusing on using your magic to phase through objects before," Meta Knight explained once they were at the starting line. "But now we know that was the wrong path to take in learning this skill. We're working your body this time. That means don't use your magic."
"Understood!" Magolor responded enthusiastically.
Meta Knight began this new training by having Magolor simply run across the track and back for a few laps. After using that as a warm-up, the knight moved further along the track while he had the little alien go back to the start. Following a set of commands that the blue knight shouted, Magolor began with a basic run, then swayed himself into a rotation, spinning, watching the path and walls and ceiling whirl around him like the innards of a washing machine, a conical smearing of glossy yellows. Maintaining his balanced proved difficult, as he ended up veering right into the metals of the walls and floor, rolling like a ball for a distance before his momentum gave out. With a stern smack of Meta Knight's sword against the steeled floor, like the commanding crack of a whip, Magolor rushed back to the starting line to try again.
"Focus! Concentrate!" He hollered at the little wizard, echoing in the spacious track.
Magolor tried again. He tried a few times more, with the same results. Then, as he was getting ready for his next attempt, he remembered what Meta Knight had said the previous day. Like a gear. With that thought in mind, upon the blue knight's cue, he envisioned himself as a gear this time, being spun on a pole, turning the other gears of some massive, grandeur machine. He held his gloved fists straight ahead, eyes squinting tightly, and began his rotations. He veered towards the walls, towards the floor, towards the ceiling like rocket, in a constant struggle to recalibrate and stay the course. His mind raced as quickly as his body, his thoughts shot and pierced like bullets. Spin! Stay straight! Go faster! It was verging on being out of control, swaying between getting it right and near-misses against the rectangular track, until finally he could go no further. The spinning ceased, the speed dropped, and Magolor lingered over the floor for a short distance more before collapsing against the cool slabs. He heaved heavily against his scarf, sweating into his hood, limply hugging the bricks.
"Good job," Meta Knight commended. "You didn't hit anything this time."
"Yes!" Magolor's fists raised up as he breathlessly shouted face-down into the floor.
Meta Knight decided a short break for the little wizard was in order. After being helped back up to his non-existent feet, Magolor lead Meta Knight to the ship's cockpit, gently buzzing with energy and rotating lights in its foreign symbols.
"Well, I'm parched!" Magolor exclaimed cheerfully. "I'm going to get some water. Can I get you anything, too?"
"I'm fine." Meta Knight said.
"Are you sure?" Magolor looked at him almost hopefully. "It's no trouble, and the Lor can make anything you want!"
"... I'll have some water too, then." The knight answered with a side glance.
"Water it is!" The little alien resumed his cheerful disposition, heading out of the cockpit into some other polished room of the Lor Starcutter, and returning with two mugs of cool, clear water. He passed one over to Meta Knight, whom looked down at the fluid analytically. Magolor began drinking from his mug, eyes closed as he did so, and opened them back up in time to see Meta Knight taking a drink though the gap in his mask. The knight then lowered the mug, and appeared to be staring oddly at the now partially drained water.
"Is something wrong?" Magolor asked with a slight fault in his expression, concerned.
"No," Meta Knight answered as his masked eyes looked up from the mug, meeting with Magolor's. "It's just a bit different from what I usually have."
"Is it? It's supposed to be exactly like the real thing..." the little wizard responded dejectedly, the points of his hood drooping.
"It's not a problem." Meta Knight dismissed. "But on that subject...how exactly does your ship produce materials like this?"
"I'm pretty sure it's using whatever energy it's powered on to create stuff." Magolor stated with a shrug of his unburdened hand. "I don't know exactly precisely how it does it, but...it seems to be making things out of that power. Whatever awesome power the Ancients used to create it!"
Meta knight looked at Magolor a little more fully on that answer.
"Do you know much about these Ancients?"
"Uh...well...just what Landia told me...before I tried to attack it and everything..." Magolor shamefully sipped more water out of his mug.
"Hm... Then how did you learn to repair the ship?"
"I figured it out on my own."
"You figured out how to repair a ship made by Ancient technology on your own?" Meta Knight asked with a slight raise of an eye.
"Is...that unusual?" Magolor asked in return, genuinely puzzled.
"If you're being truthful, then that speaks of some...considerable talent."
"Talent? Oh, no, no way, I really didn't do anything special. It's not like I rebuilt it from scratch or something, it was mostly intact, I just fixed it up." He said, swatting the notion away with a rapid flail of his hand. "Once I actually turned it on, then the rest was pretty easy—the Lor was showing what was wrong with pictures on its screen, y'know, like it did when we first crashed on this world."
"Even still, that's not something just anyone can do. And your draftsmanship is also something of note..."
"Draftsmanship?" The little alien gave another confused, lemon blink.
"Your blueprints. You drew those all yourself, correct? That's what draftsmanship is, drawing out how a machine or the like is going to be built."
"Oh," he smiled, as if amused by the idea. "I didn't know there was a word for it."
"Hm. How exactly did you learn?"
"I figured it out on my own," he repeated, but pulling his free hand up in the air, making sweeps, waves, and rotations with his palm as he detailed his experience. "There's a lot of wormholes that go in and out of Another Dimension, and every now and then, some junk would drift in from other places. That's how I survived, foraging for food and anything else I could use. I sometimes found pencils and paper, and I started making marks on the paper! Just lines at first, but they came out all wiggly. So I kept trying again and again to draw them straight. When I got good at that, I started drawing other shapes. Squares, rectangles, triangles. I kept doing it until I could draw those straight, too. And then one day, I realized..." Magolor's eyes got wider, shimmering as if dusted full of glitter, like a child awed. "...I could put those shapes together, to make new shapes! To build things out of my imagination! I created my own little machines using just shapes and lines! They were full of gears and poles mostly, and sometimes had made-up things that wouldn't work for real, but they were something magical to me..."
"Then, you're entirely self-taught with these things?" Meta Knight questioned as he mulled.
"I...guess so." Magolor blinked out of the memories, back into reality. He drained what was left of the water out of his mug, into his covered mouth.
"To think that someone such as yourself would have these latent, productive talents, and yet...would choose to seek power and vengeance over doing anything beneficial."
Magolor swallowed his water with visible difficulty, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable with the conversation.
"I—I'm never going to do anything like that again," he stammered. "I've learned the consequences..."
"That's good to hear," Meta Knight responded, setting his own finished mug down on the Lor's keyboard. "Because, if it were to ever happen again, Magolor..."
The masked knight creeped along the glossy floor, closer to the little wizard, enough to make him feel like a tiny ball under the black shadow of a looming eclipse.
"...After all the training I've been doing for you, after all the help I've been granting you, on behalf of a ship that seems to believe you're a person worth redeeming... If you were to betray that trust a second time, I would personally make certain a third time will never happen. That's my vow to you."
Chilled by this promise, Magolor quivered, withering under Meta Knight's currently overwhelming presence. Mercifully, the blue knight recognized that his point hit true, and backed himself off, turning to face away from the little oval of fear he'd just induced.
"If you have something else to do, you can go do it. Let me know when you're ready to continue training."
Magolor's first instinct was to run to his private quarters and hide under the covers of his bed, but he quickly shook his head out of that idea as a certain thought came to him. This vow would only be fulfilled if he backstabbed everyone all over again, which was something he already promised to himself he'd never do again. If he ever did do it again, if something made his soul rot so badly that he would betray the people he wanted to make peace with a second time, then he would absolutely deserve to suffer whatever wrath Meta Knight would bring upon him.
"Actually..." Magolor said, regaining his composure, summoning his resolve. "I'm ready to continue now."
Meta Knight turned back around, giving the little alien a sizing up with a quick scan of his shadowed eyes. Approval was granted with a silent nod of his mask.
The two of them returned to the lustrous race track, where Meta Knight had Magolor going at it again, egging him on to keep trying. With each attempt, his balance got better, he veered less, and he was nearly in a straight line by the time he was too worn out to continue. At that point, Meta Knight left with the assurance that he would return for more training the next day, and Magolor exhaustively spent some more time on the cooled floors before eventually forcing himself to get up and go to bed.
