It was some time later that I was walking down a corridor deep within the base, accompanied by Axe. This was after I had been informed that Mace had set off a small EMP in the arena, installed beforehand just in case Vul attempted something stupid. It had the unfortunate side effect of taking out the lights as well. When order and visibility were restored, the Heavy Lobster had been abandoned, there was a hole in its glass dome and Vul was nowhere to be seen.
After that was my swearing in as new leader of the Meta-Knights conducted by Mace, who did not try to disguise his contempt or distrust. Javelin, Nautilus and Trident also viewed the event with differing amounts of scepticism – only Axe seemed unabashedly enthusiastic, which may have been why it was the jabbering little skull who now conducted me towards our hangar.
"I'm so glad you came back, Meta!" he wittered. "I mean, I know you're a traitor, and that you left us to join the LOVE and take over Dreamland and all that…"
Yes, thank you, Axe.
"…but I always think it's possible for people to make up for past sins. And, well, Vul wasn't a very nice guy. He kept telling me to shut up. Is there anything wrong with liking to talk! I mean, I know I like to talk, but talking's what makes the world go round blah blah waffle drone" (I forget what he said here) "going to kick some ass! Am I talking too much! You just tell me if I'm talking too much, okay! Am I talking too much!"
Axe had been like this ever since I had first known him. The trick was to try not to listen too hard, otherwise the brain would be overwhelmed by the deluge of verbosity. Fortunately, I had enough on my mind, such as what my plans were, how I could regain the support of the Knights and whether it would still be necessary to disembowel myself afterwards to reclaim my tarnished honour.
"And here we are! Behold the Meta-Knights' new project!"
The hangar doors opened. Inside the massive space where the Halberd would once have rested, launching through what seemed to all the world to be an abandoned warehouse, a smaller ship now resided, covered in scaffolding. In progress though it was, sufficient work had been done for me to recognise a main influence on its design.
"It's like the Halberd!" said Axe unnecessarily. "Only smaller and…"
"…and with a hideous stain on the front."
Where a mock-up of my mask should have resided, there was instead an ugly facsimile of Vul's face, the windscreen where his crazed blue eyes would have been.
"We can redesign the front now he's gone," said Axe hurriedly. "Only, see, it was his idea. We still have the blueprints for the Halberd, and he wanted to construct a smaller version we could use to attack Dedede in his palace. One that just required six of us to pilot."
That seemed like an oddly competent idea for Vul. An attack from the air was sensible, avoiding as it would the Waddle Dee army, especially as Sonic claimed he had dismantled Mecha-Kracko; hence why I had adopted it for my own scheme, although at conception I had thought of no fixed way of getting airborne. Without the Halberd proper, still sitting damaged as it was on the Archanean plains, and with King Dedede sitting on the other most powerful air vehicle in the galaxy, a mini-Halberd seemed to be the best way to go. But was it complete enough? I had less than five days before I was due to meet the League…
"We commence work on it immediately," I said. "I'll do as much as I can myself, but I want everybody spending every stray hour on this project. Start by getting the propulsion done, then the weaponry. The outer shell can come later. Comfort is not a priority. I want this thing to be able to get in the air, stay there and blast its way into Fort Dedede in three and a half days."
"Three and a half days!" gaped Axe.
"Are you a Meta-Knight or a parrot?" I snapped back. "You heard what I said! You can start work now; I'll round up the others, and we'll be with you in ten minutes."
"Y-yessir!"
I swept out in a flurry of sliced cape. Now I felt like a Meta-Knight again.
"Oh, and Axe?" I said over my shoulder.
"Yessir!"
"Get rid of that abomination on the front. Now."
o o o
Time passed.
For three and a half solid days we worked on the mini-Halberd. Construction had started shortly after I made my mistake, so I was surprised at how unfinished the craft was. It was as if Vul had been content to complete some feasible blueprints and then leave the ship proper to rot, which sounded just like him apart from completing the blueprints. I soon changed that ethos, and though I faced not a little grumbling we were soon working away as if I had never left.
The engine was a mess, the controls were all over the place, the boilers were inadequate, the jets underpowered, the cannons weak and insufficient in number, the shielding non-existent and the front of the ship hideous beyond belief, but apart from these minor setbacks some good work had been done. And I mean "some", not "a lot". In my rare breaks between tinkering with weaponry, steering and plumbing, I wondered why Vul had even bothered with the project in the first place. Something about it smelt not quite right.
At last, as the evening of the fourth day of work approached, the vehicle was recognisable as a small warship. It had a working engine, and Javelin's extensive computer simulations showed that it should fly so long as the wind was not too strong, and might even survive a shot or two. I felt proud of my work, and of the elbow grease I personally had put into it. There's no solvent for washing away mistakes quite like one's own sweat. In addition, my workforce seemed to tolerate me more as the period went on; Mace even inquired after my health when I seemed feverish that last evening. I had to sweep the inquiry away – I did not want anyone to know exactly what I was doing before I did it.
And time passed.
o o o
I had to hand it to King Dedede. Of all the numerous plans he had vomited forth to rid Dreamland of Kirby, teleporting the entire country away from Pop Star while Kirby was abroad was one I would never have thought of; partially because I had believed it to be impossible, as would most sane people.
It was some time after the Halberd incident, and the eponymous ship had been dredged up from the bottom of the sea and repaired at great cost. Kirby was away on holiday, and I was considering doing the same thing when I looked out of the ship one morning and saw the space around me turned green. There was a lot of whooshing and transportation noises, and then we stopped somewhere new.
It was a shocking turn of events. One moment we were the biggest country on a small planet; the next, Dreamland had been warped adjacent to the magnitude of Hyrule, and we were all feeling tiny and insignificant, not to mention a little confused. The "King" was the only one who seemed to know what was going on, so the entire population crowded round its TV sets and listened to the fat blue penguin enjoying the sound of his own voice.
The official story was that he had got fed up of Pop Star and, by moving us all to Nintendo, had given us a bit of a change of scenery he was sure we would all enjoy, as well as prosperous trade links with Hyrule under its new ruler Ganondorf. It was a feasible enough explanation, in accordance with Dedede's capricious nature, and that he gave not a fig for Dreamlanders outside the country at the time or those with family abroad was in character and utterly unsurprising. We did not find out until later that Ganondorf had captured Zelda and fed her Farore's Wind teleportation spell through a massive amplifier, first teleporting himself to the bizarre ringed planet his astronomers had spotted in the corner of the sky to negotiate with Dedede, then the entire country of Dreamland to Nintendo.
It was a classic example of pre-LOVE villain-villain teamwork. Both parties were interested only in squeezing the other for as much as they could – Dedede was not satisfied with the extra money he might make through trade and wanted some of Hyrule's wealth, while Ganondorf desired nothing less than complete control of Dreamland. Neither would co-operate further than the teleportation. While they fussed and debated and fought, the green-clad Link of Hyrule had swept in and saved Zelda, followed by the kingdom itself, leaving Ganondorf back at square one. Furthermore, the holes in Dedede's intelligence were revealed when it turned out that Kirby had been spending his holiday in southern Dreamland, with the result that Dedede paid for his "change of scenery" by being brained with his own mallet. But with Link having broken the amplifier beyond repair, and Zelda unwilling to power it again anyway, Dreamland and its inhabitants were stuck on Nintendo.
"Meta!"
I blinked. Trident was looking into my eyes, while the rest of the crew stared out of the windscreen with positive expressions. Javelin's optic panel was bright yellow. I was vaguely aware that there had been cheering.
"Sorry," I said, shaking my headbody. "I was enjoying a flashback. What's happened?"
"You idiot," she said, poking her trident at the rushing wind. "We've taken off! The mini-Halberd works!"
"Of course it works. I didn't ask Javelin to run endless simulations because I thought he would enjoy it."
I watched Trident walk off in a huff, put it down to it being her time of the month and looked out of the windscreen. The lights of The City looked like fireflies below us, sinking further as the mini-Halberd triumphed over gravity. Nautilus revolved the steering wheel gently in the direction of the large castle-like building that housed the government of Dreamland, said "government" consisting of King Dedede, King Dedede and King Dedede.
"What do we do once we get there, boss?" asked Axe from the control deck.
"Oh, just fly about a bit and annoy Dedede, I suppose."
"You don't have a clue what we're doing, do you?" sneered Mace.
Not quite true. I had a very clear idea what I would be doing. All part of the cleansing.
"Captain!" squeaked Nautilus. "There's a squadron coming to meet us!"
I rushed and leapt towards the windscreen. This was implausible. We were a tiny dark ship against the night sky, with the Halberd's anti-radar technology. We should have been utterly undetectable, and yet rising from around the government building were, as the helmsman had said, about fifty… no, sixty…
"Captain, I'm getting eighty-one ships!"
I never was any good at estimating.
"Eighty-one?" I cried incredulously at Axe, who was on radar. "Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure! Maybe more, if some of them have working anti-radar!"
I pressed my mask up against the glass, not wanting to believe my eyes. There they were, an eighty-one-strong ugly mess against the cityscape, each craft looking awfully similar to…
Oh no.
"Captain!" yelped Nautilus.
"Yes, I know."
There he was, his ugly yellow beaked countenance staring back at me eighty-one times from over The City, looking irreparably smug and stapled onto the front of eighty-one copies of our craft.
"No..." breathed Axe, for once lost for words.
"He didn't…" gasped Mace, his eyes even larger than usual.
"TRAITOR!"
Nautilus gave me a look that questioned whether I was going to become a threat to his life again. He need not have worried; the only gullet I wanted clasped in my clenched fists was that of Admiral Bloody Look-At-My-Face Vul. And there, on the quickly assembled crackly communication monitor, was his face again, smug as ever.
"Guess what I did."
"You wormed your way back into the Meta-Knights," I hissed. "You abused their confidence to sneak a look at the Halberd blueprints and draw up plans for a smaller version. And all the while you were working for Dedede!" I was shouting now. "Have you no decency?"
Vul shrugged. "Birds of a feather flock together. Anyway, not like you can talk. Not with your track record."
There were all sorts of horrible, foul things I wanted to label him, but thankfully Trident saved me the need.
"You're more of a traitor than he'll ever be!" she cried, spraying the monitor with spit. "And a worse leader, and a bigger coward, plus you're ugly!"
That was nice of her.
"Oh, whatevah!" said Vul, making a "W" sign with his wingtips. "I'm not the one who'll end up in a charred, burnt wreckage on the city streets!" And he was gone.
"Is there no leader we can trust?" said Mace with a despairing look to the heavens.
There was a brief moment as I thought about whether this statement was worth responding to. Then I was saved the trouble as a volley of bright green laser fire ripped through the night sky, surrounding our ship in a blaze of chartreuse light. Miraculously the ship slid through the first salvo unharmed, but further fire continued to ring out over The City.
"Orders, Captain?" cried Nautilus.
"Charge the middle one," I replied, pointing out the craft dead centre. "Don't fire until you see the whites of its windscreen."
The mini-Halberd increased velocity and started rattling in a rather unsettling way. Lasers continued to illuminate our progress.
"Captain."
It was Mace who had spoken, his large eyes reflecting the green glow of the surrounding blitz. Since his last jibe at me, he had been looking steadily at the floor, evidently building up to the pronunciation of this distasteful title. Now it was out, he turned to me and gave me a sceptical yet acknowledging stare.
"If you do have a plan," he said, "I'd like you to tell us now." A short pause, and then, "Please."
They were flying into a massive fleet for my sake. It was the equivalent of taking on a tank armed with a rusty trowel and wearing a moth-eaten pair of boxers. More than that, I needed them to trust me, now more than ever, and it wasn't as if I had earned it particularly. I took a deep breath.
"When we pass over the government building, I shall jump from the cargo hatch on my own."
The cries of disbelief and "Oh Gods, he's finally flipped" were drowned out by Nautilus getting into range and Javelin switching the four turrets to "On". Our own green light streamed out and hit the centre ship, in which I was sure Vul had been preening himself, on the beak. The ships clearly had insufficient armour, for the target craft caught fire and toppled slowly earthward. It was immensely pleasing to see a familiar yellow dot emerge from the flames and attempt to abscond.
"After that," I continued, "I shall fly down to ground level and take Dedede on personally."
"You can't!" yelled Axe.
"It's suicide!" cried Nautilus.
"What on earth are you thinking?" shouted Trident.
Javelin waved his claws and displayed different colours, as if to say that all simulations of this exercise yielded the same negative result. I waited for Mace to add his declaration of madness to the group's. For a while, he continued to watch the battle.
Then he spoke. "Will it put you at peace with yourself?"
The rest of the Knights stared at him open-mouthed.
"I hope so," I said. "Will it put me at peace with you?"
The yellow dot was hit by a green beam from his own squadron. Once the smoke and feathers cleared, Vul was nowhere to be seen. Sucked to be him.
A sudden jolt told us more clearly than Nautilus could that the craft had been hit. Our little ship was thrown violently to one side, the crew were thrown violently to the floor and the shielding on the right of the ship was thrown violently clear of it.
Mace was on his feet in an instant. "Don't just lie there, everyone! Nautilus, back at the wheel. Axe, back on monitors. Javelin, give 'em all we've got. Trident, help me with the cargo hatch."
"Do you want him dead?" shrieked Trident. "He'll get shot down the moment he…"
I put my hand on her stubby arm.
"Trident, please."
Her red dots linked briefly with mine, before throwing themselves into the air along with her hands. Then she was kneeling down beside Mace, hauling open one of the large metal shutters that separated us from the rushing wind and flashing beams below. The City, unaware of the cacophony in its skies, slept down below, or watched late-night television, or got thrown out of pubs. I prepared to follow the last share's example.
"Meta."
Trident's eyes looked almost pleading.
"If you don't come back alive… I'll kill you."
o o o
AAAAAAARGH…
It was utterly terrifying. Down, down, streaking through the night sky, my stomach seeming to drop slightly faster than the rest of me, and around me deadly green tendrils whistling through the wind. The government building rushed up towards me, its sharp edges and artificial metal crenellations waiting to impale my soft body.
Something else was coming towards me too, its wide eyes narrowed and its paintbrush extended. As I fell towards it, the paint formed itself into two sub machine-guns, which fired two blazing parallel lines. Wrapping myself in my cape, I whisked out of range and sank below the gun-toting Paint Roller, who sent himself into a dive and came after me. As the bullets hissed around my ears, I saw coming towards me a large grey cloud with four golden prongs and a single malevolent eye, its body Kracko-ling with lightning. Below that, in the building's central courtyard, hundreds of Waddle Dees, Waddle Doos and all sorts of Dreamland's races waited for Dedede's command.
Only now did I fully comprehend what I had just stepped in. It felt and smelt distinctly of dog faeces. I drew Galaxia from its sheath, preparing to try and fight Paint Roller and Mecha-Kracko at the same time, and all the while the fleet was homing in on me, the green lasers getting closer and closer to my position until one struck Paint Roller directly in the face.
Wait what?
Twisting awkwardly in the air, I saw that the ship charging towards me had a large copy of my mask on the front. Mecha-Kracko turned as well, and fixed its one eye on the beam that drilled straight through and into its core. Javelin had excellent aim, and Dedede had another repair bill to contemplate. Looking at where my eyes would have been, I thought that I saw Mace smiling through the windscreen, before there was a green flash and the ship lost a wing.
They would not give up, bless them. As the smoking craft flew lower, the guns turned to the courtyard and sent the Waddlers down below running for cover. For a moment I had to choke back a tear of pride and a fear that they would not survive. But if they were giving their lives to my cause, it would be ungrateful for me just to hover and watch. I dived further, skimming over the mêlée of scampering soldiers, and all but unnoticed flew into the halls of the building.
Inside the pristine beige corridors with their mauve carpets and their yuccas, the silence was almost eerie compared to the clamour outside. My wings reverted to cape form as I scurried gracelessly through the building, following the signs with three capital letter "d"s on. The place was not entirely abandoned – Waddle Dees peered out, cowering, from behind their desks. I thought about telling them to get some backbone, but this would have been pointless given a Waddle Dee's lack of back, so I kept quiet and proceeded.
It was not hard to spot the centre of operations. It had massive red double doors with golden depictions of the penguin himself giving a v-sign on them. I pushed them apart and found myself in a massive office, decorated with red velvet, fruit peels and sweet wrappers. Camera monitors on one wall displayed different viewpoints of Dreamland at different levels of crackly-ness. A few, including no doubt the one cybernetically inserted into Mecha-Kracko's eye, were completely on the blink, as would I have been had I not dodged the massive mallet that swung down where I had been a second ago.
The penguin shouldered his massive hammer, glaring at me with sweat running down his beak. Stupid, wearing a fur-trimmed robe and bobble hat indoors.
"I've come to reclaim my honour," I told him.
"I should have killed you long ago!" said Dedede, swinging the mallet horizontally. I hopped neatly over the swing.
"But you didn't. I've always wondered why that was."
He said nothing for a moment. I looked curiously at his face, and followed his piggy eyes to Galaxia. Then I laughed.
"Even when I was unconscious, you couldn't outfight me!" I said. Or Galaxia: one of the two, I didn't say. "What on Nintendo makes you think you can now?"
It was a horrible moment, watching that rubbery beak curve into a smile. Dedede had a beak and teeth, and now they combined to form a hideous grin that made my stomach churn.
"Oh, I don't," the grin said. "But I won't be fighting you."
Oh no.
o o o
Why did I join the LOVE? Why did I abandon all honour, all nobility, and the Meta-Knights in order to join a multi-villain conglomerate? What made me take this step, apparently so contrary to my nature?
Kirby.
After Dreamland's interstellar journey, Kirby continued to save the country from all threats as if nothing had happened, with a smile and a dance and a shout of "Hai!" The Meta-Knights were as out of a job as we had ever been, and I was spending less and less time with the group. What was the point?
Then Dedede came along.
This was shortly after the falls of Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom, and the whole planet was still in shock, except perhaps for Dreamland. We were still getting used to living in a new galaxy, for Gods' sake. Nothing could shock us now. But when King Dedede called me to a secret meeting and explained the new rules of the interplanetary game, I was shocked too. Furthermore, I was being offered a position as a player.
I would have refused at once, of course, and joined the resistance. It would be a chance for the Meta-Knights to shine again. What use had I for power anyway? But Dedede pointed out that there was one substantial hindrance to taking over Dreamland, and that hindrance was pink and overly optimistic. He had given me a brief outline of SubSpace power, despite knowing next to nothing about it himself, and pointed out what a foe Kirby might become if he absorbed some of it. If instead I helped him capture Kirby…
Kirby trusted me. He was young and impressionable, and I was older and wiser. Certainly I had tried to destroy him more than once, but the rest of the time I was trying to help Dreamland; so when I told him that the country was in grave peril (true) and asked him to meet me in a secret place, near which King Dedede would be hiding with a SubSpace-powered gun, the pink blob trusted me implicitly. Did I feel awful? I did. Did it give me a brief moment of incredible satisfaction and Schadenfreude? Yes.
I would then spend the next year and a bit regretting my decision, of course, and never more so than when at this moment a thick boulder fell from the roof, alerting me that a Project Z clone of Kirby was present and had absorbed a stone ability from someone or something. Indeed, the stone quickly reverted into a stubby-armed pink blob with red feet and a glittering blue stare. He waved pleasantly at me, before charging me with mouth wide open.
"You cheap cad!" I said, taking to the air. "Getting your worst enemy to do your work for you!"
As I narrowly dodged the puffball's cavernous maw, I noticed the purple glinting in the depths, the same lustre as the beam Dedede's gun had shot at the original Kirby all those months ago. After all my hard work, betrayal and feelings of deep regret, Kirby (or a clone of him) had absorbed SubSpace power anyway. In quick succession, the clone swung a purple sword, a purple laser whip and a purple mallet, about as big as Dedede's own, all in the blink of an eye, while the King watched on from his swivel chair and ate smoky bacon crisps.
I lunged at the crisp packet, Galaxia outstretched, but suddenly Kirby was in my way again, smiling and swiping with his own shiny sword. Weapons clashed, and instead of cleaving straight through his blade as Galaxia should have done it bounced off with a clang. While I ricocheted, Kirby floated over with air-filled cheeks and brought his laser whip back out, lashing at me and catching a blow on the mask that the metal did not absorb all the force of. Now he held a microphone, and Kirby's vocal chords were setting my ear holes on fire with pain, stunning me in a brief moment before a large pink wheel crashed into me and sent me flying into the wall.
"Oh dearie me!" said Dedede, his laughter spraying crisp-spit everywhere. "It's so sad to watch. Kirby thrashed you even when he didn't have every copy ability under the sun. Now it's not even funny any more!" He choked on a crisp to disprove his point.
When I opened my eyes, there were Kirbies everywhere, clones of the clone. I span into a Mach Tornado and charged at the slightly more corporeal version, tangling him up in a gust and making the clones disappear. The attack hurled him up into the air, and I just avoided the stone crashing back down. Then he was Kirby again, and charging at me with fists burning with the fury of the Falcon Punch, only moving four times as fast. As I whisked out of the way of this, preparing for another sword swipe, I felt my body judder as Kirby pre-empted me and struck at Galaxia before it could even start the slash; and as I wobbled, he opened that mouth, and I felt my feet lose their grip, and watched as everything went dark.
It was amazing, the amount of time over the years I had spent in the pink prat's throat. It had grown almost relaxing, just sitting in the darkness and the warmth, listening to Kirby's slight breathing and his heartbeat. It was oddly but thankfully saliva-free in there. I wasn't scared of being swallowed, because Kirby never did. This time was less relaxing than previously, because the Kirby clone had a shiny purple gullet, but I knew that all I could do was wait…
…and I was out. I never knew how I seemed to leave his mouth, since he didn't open it, but the important thing was that I had to be ready with sword drawn, because now he would have absorbed Galaxia and…
I stared at him. He stared at me. He had copied my mask.
"And I looked from Kirby to Meta, and from Meta to Kirby, and from Kirby to Meta again; but already it was impossible to say which was which!" cackled Dedede, reaching for another packet.
He looked exactly like me. Well, not exactly – he lacked the purple boots and shoulder pads, and I lacked the manic blue eyeshine, but other than that he looked exactly like a pink version of me. And if I took off my mask, I would look exactly like a blue version of him.
I took off my mask. I looked exactly like a blue version of him. It shut the penguin up, at least.
As my yellow eyes locked with his sparkling blue ones, I contemplated the similarities between us (well, between me and the non-evil clone version). We had both started off trying to save the world from the forces of evil (before I went onto trying to mash Kirby into a marshmallowy mess), we were both accepted by Galaxia, we had the same floaty jumping if you counted my wings and we both had a propensity to go red around the jowls at the slightest provocation.
But at heart, we were so very different. Kirby was nice. Granted, he never had to contemplate the great moral dilemmas of the day, or make informed decisions about good and evil – his were always cases where there was a clear-cut "bad guy" vs. him. But he always risked his life to save the people from oppression. He never joined them out of stupid vengeance. He never even felt the need for vengeance.
Kirby was good; I was bad. That was the difference.
And now, as he raised a purple crackling version of Galaxia above his headbody, he paused and looked me in the eye. A slight tear was running down my cheek, pink with embarrassment to think that here was a (clone of a) being so innately better than myself. Even in the evil-consumed Project Z clone, Kirby-ness shone through as my foe, dropping its sword, made an inquisitive "Ooh?" sound.
"Kirby, what are you doing?" cried Dedede through his crisps. "Kill him now!"
Kirby looked at his sword as if seeing it for the first time. I felt that it was time to blow the penguin's mind through the top of his bobble hat, and sheathing Galaxia I waddled over and held my breath. There he was, and there I was.
Time to complete my penance. I swallowed my pride.
I gave Kirby a hug. In the background, there was the sound of somebody dropping his crisps.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into Kirby's ear hole. "I'm sorry I betrayed you, Kirby. I'm trying to make up for it now. I'm going to find you in prison, and break you out, and then we'll stop the LOVE together. Everything will be okay."
Dedede's beak hung open, half-digested crisps plainly visible.
"I concede, Kirby," I said, my mind boggling at what my mouth was saying. "You're a better fighter than me, and you always will be. And perhaps, as a better person, you deserve to be. I acknowledge you as my superior, and promise never to be envious of your skills again."
I disengaged from the hug, still slightly stunned. Kirby looked at me for the moment, before the mask disappeared as he dismissed his copy ability. The confused expression gave way to a big beaming smile.
"Hai!"
And in a blast of purple glitter, he was gone. No fuss, no mess. No lording it over me. Just innocent acknowledgement of my apology, and a friendly good-bye.
"What in the name of all that's tasty did you just do?" said Dedede slowly.
"Very clever of you, using my worst enemy to stop me," I said, restoring my mask. "Sadly, you forgot that it's impossible to make Kirby truly evil. His goodness will always shine through."
"What sort of cheesy bullshit is that?" wailed the fat bird.
"The sort of 'cheesy bullshit' that means you created a clone that would rather blow itself up in sheer joy than kill someone who had given it a hug and said sorry."
I was myself again, and Galaxia was levelled at the fat penguin's crisp-stuffed throat.
"Why don't you try giving me a hug, Dedede?" I asked. "See whether I forgive you."
"You should be grateful to me!" cried Dedede, risen from his chair and sweating afresh. "I was the one who gave you all those grants for Halberd equipment!"
Of course he was. Obvious now. Anything to get rid of Kirby.
"And also thanks to you and your friends it's now irreparable," I exaggerated. "All I owe you is a sword in the oesophagus."
The King was scampering around the room now, dropped crisps splintering beneath his boots, but he had nowhere to run. Despite my stubby legfeet, I was faster than the fat penguin would ever be.
"Time for my revenge, Dedede!" I shouted. "This is for my ship, and for my country, and for Kirby. But most of all, this is for…"
"Dragoon!"
Oh Gods. Why me? Why did it always happen to me? There he was, a lumbering fat penguin with the top speed of a… fat penguin, and in his hand he had the most powerful air vehicle in the galaxy, a small red and white jet apparently nowhere near large enough for the penguin's mighty posterior, and yet now he was climbing onto it with fire gently humming at one end.
"You may have won the battle, Meta Knight, but some day I'll be back and then I'll get you! You'll never catch me!"
There was a loud whoosh and Dedede was careening violently out of a window, balanced precariously atop his tiny craft and screaming loudly. The screaming stopped when he crashed beak-first into the mace ball somebody had swung just outside the window, knocking him off the Dragoon as it flew off on a journey of its own. Perhaps it would end up back on Pop Star. Who knows? For now, I looked out of the window, where Mace stood proudly over the unconscious Dedede, the other Knights fending off the Waddle Dee army with their sharp objects of choice.
"This reprobate giving you any trouble, Captain?" Mace asked.
"Not at all," I said, smiling beneath the mask. "He was just trying to avoid having to clean up his crisps."
o o o
I sat and watched a star move across the sky. Somewhere out there, my home planet was orbiting its own little star, its inhabitants probably still worrying where one of their countries had left them for. Not that I could see it, though, due to all the light pollution from The City; and as I watched, the star I could see flashed and flew behind a cloud.
I was sitting up on the top of the ex-government building, time two fifty-seven a.m., gazing into the night sky and trying to convince myself that I'd done what I came here to do. I'd taken out Dedede, now sitting in one of his own cells; I'd made it up to the Knights; I'd found the SubSpace Key hidden in a vat of wine; I'd apologised to Kirby… Except I hadn't.
I heard the skylight open. I had used my wings to climb to my vantage point, but someone who was enthusiastic enough could get a ladder set up and climb out onto the roof. I recognised the soft footsteps all too well, and turned away as someone sat down next to me.
"Hey shorty," that someone said, in a voice that suggested a smile. "Everyone else is partying in the building's banquet hall. Don't wanna join in?"
I was certain that the kitchens that had until four hours ago served King "Fatso" Dedede held enough delectable foodstuffs and fine drink, all bought with taxpayers' money, to host the party of the obese waddling millennium; but I didn't feel my stomach could stomach it.
"Not hungry, Titania," I replied.
"Why on earth not?" she asked, putting a hand on my shoulderpad. "You're a hero, Galahad! You've redeemed yourself in everybody's eyes."
Everybody's but my own, and his. It had been liberating to apologise to a Kirby clone, but somewhere in the world the real hero lay, incarcerated due to my own envy and stupidity, and it was a day and a half until I might have some chance of being able to make up for it. And being called Galahad just made it worse.
"I have to go back to Hyrule Field tomorrow."
"For Gods' sake, Meta, why can't you just accept that you've done well for once? Even Mace is proud of you. I mean, sure, you helped the LOVE take over Dreamland and made lots of people miserable, and technically we're still under LOVE control, and it's thanks to you…"
Yes, thank you, Titania.
"…but none of that matters any more! You've come back, restored yourself and the Meta-Knights to glory, and…"
"No I haven't!" I shouted into the night, dropping the heavy façade of indifference. "My mistake is still stuck there, as large and adhesive as ever!"
"What?" asked Titania reasonably.
"Never mind. Just a metaphor. But the point is that whatever I've done, it can't wash away the past. I'll always have that guilt upon my shoulders. However much I try to make up for it, I'll always be a villain to Dreamland. I've been on the wrong side of the line for too long." I sighed. "I have no honour left."
Looking back and listening to myself moaning, it would have been thoroughly reasonable for Titania to give me a trident-poke up the arse and tell me to pull myself together. However, she listened patiently and, when I had finished, stretched her stubby arm as far around my back as it would go.
"I think you're still honourable."
I looked into her eyes, reflecting the light of the city back into my own. She really did believe that, didn't she? In her eyes, I had saved myself. And if I could find salvation in her eyes, might I not find it in those of others? My black heart showed signs of light.
It was while thinking this that I noticed her face was moving imperceptibly closer to mine, her mouth slightly open. Was she trying to eat my mask? No – as she edged closer, she slid one hand underneath it and then, horror of horrors, I realised that she was trying to pull it off. Time to act.
"Come on," I said, jumping up quickly and yanking my mask out of her grubby paws. "Don't want to miss the party, now, do we?"
As I glided off the roof, leaving Titania to make her own way down, I smiled to myself. There would be time later for regrets, time to rue the past some more, time to ruminate upon my sins. For now, I had to acknowledge that I had done the best I could, and that I would keep doing so, and that just for a small moment, just for now, I could do something I should have tried long ago.
I could close the folder.
5
1 And the Crazy Hand did after a long while approach the Master Hand, looking as pleased with itself as a Hand feasibly can. 2 And the Master Hand did say unto it, "What pleases you, kindred spirit? And the usual disclaimer about your funny noises." 3 So did the Crazy Hand once more rethink what it was about to say, and spoke as follows.
4 "Look what I have made from SubSpace, fellow spirit! It bears the shape of a man!" 5 And it produced from the SubSpace a small figure, and it had a head, and a body, and arms, and legs, and feet, and hands, and a giant nose. 6 And the Master Hand, although not owning any eyes, could see that from whichever direction this figure was looked at, it seemed to be a two dimensional infinitely black representation of a man, moving jerkily.
7 And the Master Hand did say unto the Crazy Hand, "You asked me to create SubSpace for this? You could just have asked for Play-Doh." 8 And the Crazy Hand did respond, "What is this Play-Doh you speak of?" 9 So did the Master Hand give the Crazy Hand several tubs of Play-Doh and show it how to make a man out of it. And the Crazy Hand did emit several funny noises in its glee, and made several strange figures out of the substance. 10 And the flat man of SubSpace was left alone, forgotten and purposeless.