Chapter 11
After a good night of rest had passed, the bright sun rose up over the vast desert, baking its sands to prepare for another day of blistering heat and dry air. Not that Magolor noticed, since he kept himself inside the Lor, and the Lor kept its interior shielded from the effects of the weather around it, creating its usual, optimally comfortable conditions for its pilot. As the sun was continuing to make its route to its apex in the clear sky, an almost black dot zoomed along on pointed wings, spiraling down to a landing on the deck of the Starcutter. The ship welcomed the guest by opening a hatch automatically for the masked acquaintance to enter, unleashing a hiss of cool air, then snapping shut behind his metal footsteps.
"Welcome back, Meta Knight!" Magolor greeted as the blue knight entered the quietly humming cockpit of the Lor. The little alien expressed a smile in his eyes, his gloved hands rubbing together, his cheerful disposition unmarred by their previous conversation.
"Yes," Meta Knight responded simply, "if you're ready, we can get started now."
"Absolutely!" Magolor exclaimed with leaking enthusiasm.
The little wizard waved a hand towards himself, and Meta Knight responded to the cue by following him as he headed into the hallways, into the room of circular doors with freshly reprinted hexagonal emblems on their surfaces. Race 1, Race 2, Race 3, and Race EX. They stopped at the Race 1 door, Magolor turning to address the knight again while bringing his attention to the aforementioned door with a lift of his gloved hand.
"I'll try to be brief," Magolor started, "I've got four races here, each one trickier than the last! The idea is that Kirby will get to use a certain set of copy abilities for each one, and if he uses them properly, he will succeed! And the better he does, the more points he'll get! So you're going to help me make sure these races are fair, challenging, and most importantly, fun!"
"Kirby's mentioned your challenge stages before, back when we were helping you after your ship crashed." Meta Knight said indifferently.
"Oh? He did? What did he say?" Magolor asked, pressing his hands together as his curiosity pulled him into a lean towards the knight.
"That he enjoyed them a lot. And that you were such a nice guy to make them."
These two sentences firmly lodged themselves into Magolor's heart, and then whirled around to tear it apart like a tissue. Magolor turned to have his back facing the knight, trying to fake a contemplative pose.
"Go on in there and give it a spin. Just to familiarize yourself with the setup. I'm going to monitor your process from here, so no pressure or anything." He said stiffly.
Meta Knight simply nodded, ignoring Magolor's pose as the door opened up for him, and he walked inside. Now that he would be out of the way for a few minutes, Magolor clapped his hands against his face, shuddering, a whimper softly hitting against his scarf.
Kirby never suspected a thing the whole time. He thought he was a nice guy. Just a person in need of help, which he selflessly gave. And in the end...
Magolor shook himself, his head, his body, as if the sorrow were excess water on an animal's fur that needed to be flung away. He pressed his hands to the sides of his head, took in a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and opened his eyes back up in a remorseful stare.
"That's why I'm doing this," Magolor reminded himself aloud. "I'm doing this all for Kirby. To say I'm sorry. Gotta focus."
With another rigorous, full-bodied shake, Magolor put a calm face on. He didn't actually have a means to monitor Meta Knight from here, but he had the layouts memorized, and knew he'd do an excellent job getting through.
After Meta Knight came back out from the stage, Magolor almost immediately hit him with a barrage of questions. The knight answered them all, which Magolor responded with more questions, some branching from others, some getting off topic, and then having to remember why it was brought up in the first place. After this improvised quiz satisfied Magolor, he quickly made some modifications to the stage, and then asked the knight to run through it again, this time with himself joining in to put the racing aspect into effect.
Magolor altered placements of things based on Meta Knight's performances, and occasionally, the knight would make suggestions himself, or give detailed explanations of Kirby's abilities. He added golden conveyer belts where he thought Kirby might not move fast enough, he put in a few alternate paths so they wouldn't be in eachothers' way in some areas, he adjusted for Meta Knight's faster flying speed, and rearranged where the obstacles would pop up.
The two of them working together managed to make Magolor's work far easier than he anticipated—being that the tracks were only a few minutes of racing each, they ran through them dozens upon dozens of times, being carefully refined after each run, and finished all four stages before sunset, making the little alien thrilled by how much progress was made.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Magolor cheered as he pressed a grateful hug on Meta Knight, whom took it with his usual frigid reception.
"What comes next?" Meta Knight asked, moreso to get Magolor's mind onto a different subject so that he would let him go faster. It succeeded, the hands removing themselves from the dark blue cape, setting down contemplatively under the little wizard's scarf.
"Next is finishing the theme park itself," Magolor answered definitively. "Moving these stages into it...but first, I need to add some new structures to put the stages into. All I have to do is get the Lor to produce the parts, and then I can just wiz them together. If I hurry, I can have that finished tonight!"
"And then?"
"And then..."
Magolor paused before answering, eyes pointing to the floor, going into a thoughtful silence as his hand subconsciously rubbed at his scarf. Only the Lor's pulsing hum could be heard for a moment or two.
"... And then...I'm going to look for Kirby. I'll search all of Popstar if I need to." Magolor's eyes slowly rose to meet with the glint of the masked knight's hidden eyes. "Though...if, maybe, you might know where he is, or even just a general idea of where to look...that'd be a big help."
"I don't know where Kirby is right now," Meta Knight responded flatly. "He tends to travel around."
"Really?" Magolor asked, his expression shifting lightly into disappointment. "Er...well, if you don't know, that's okay. Actually...you've helped me out a lot as is. The stages are all done, so I don't need anymore assistance with setting things up..."
The knight didn't respond to this, only continuing to keep his typically stoic stare on the wizard.
"... Meta Knight..." Magolor started, regaining a happy gaze, but different in that it seemed to be a smile holding something back. There was just a hint of sorrow in there he didn't want to reveal. "It really means a lot to me that you've helped so much...even if it was because the Lor asked you to at first, you still didn't have to do it. You did it, and helped train me...you helped me get control over these powers I have...and, I feel, most importantly...you stopped me from becoming something terrible all over again. You helped me face myself."
Meta Knight still didn't speak, only waiting with an uncomfortable stare. Magolor took in a deep breath through his covered nose before continuing.
"Well...I mean, what I'm trying to say, is that I'm really grateful for all you've done. There isn't anything more I can ask of you. If there's any way I can repay you, any way at all—"
"Just don't cause anymore trouble," Meta Knight interrupted. "The best thing you can do is not bring anyone or anything intentional harm. That's all I want out of you."
"Oh, of course, of course!" Magolor beamed joyfully. "I told you before, and I really meant it! I know what the consequences would mean...so, you can consider it done!"
"I'll take my leave, then."
Meta Knight turned abruptly to walk down the hallway, clacking back into the cockpit of the Lor. But before he reached the deck, Magolor quickly entered the cockpit as well, and shouted up, his voice resonating in the metallic room.
"Thank you again, for everything! Goodbye, Mentor!"
For a moment, Meta Knight stopped, looking back at the oval alien with an unreadable stare. He then continued on his way to the deck of the Lor, his wings fanned out, and with a jump, vanished over the searing winds of the desert sky.
A few minutes later, the Lor Starcutter began to glow, reflecting blue lights against the beige sands. It lifted up out of the days-old impression its hull left in the rolling dunes, dust blasting off its underside as the ship climbed higher into the sky, oars rotating against the parched air.
"To the theme park!" Magolor exclaimed inside the cockpit, slamming a hand down on one of the colorful buttons of the Lor's keyboard in eager confirmation.
The ship complied, turning around, then zooming forward, leaving behind blue and white sparkles that shimmered and disappeared in a breath. By the time they arrived at the massive, checker-printed tower where the theme park waited, the sun started to recline in the sky, feathering the clouds with illuminations of oranges, lavenders, and red-violets. The Lor Starcutter parked itself closely to the tower, hanging near it like a gradually circling mobile.
Magolor went up to the deck of the ship, taking a bit of time out to admire the structures he set up on the differing levels of the great tower. Wooden play block castles with their colorful block doors, simple rope partitions and blue velvet curtains. It was all exactly right for what the stages were, but the wizard decided the doors for his races needed to be as special as the races themselves. Swiftly bounding back for his workroom, he spent some time drawing up new doors over his metallic table, trying out numerous different designs on paper until he settled on golden, arch-shaped doors with star knockers.
The Lor Starcutter got to work producing the materials while Magolor left the ship to visit his theme park, rearranging placements of platforms to make room for these new stages. Before long, he was sending the completed doors and the races themselves part by part on currents of white energy to their rightful places. He finished it off by placing silver locks with star-shaped keyholes over the shiny doors, to ensure they wouldn't be accessible until Kirby finished the challenges first.
"Time for the final touch!" Magolor exclaimed excitedly to himself.
The oval alien floated back to the Lor Starcutter, and reemerged with three wooden panels in his hands, a hammer wedged behind his belt, and nails held by their pointed tips in his mouth. He didn't want to use his magic for the final touch. It needed to be extra special. It needed to be done by hand.
Starting on the lowest platform, Magolor hammered the panel near its edges into an available blank wall. He then removed himself from it, backing up to analyze its position, ensuring it was placed evenly and level, revealing it to be a crafted sign with sanded edges and playfully arranged letters carved into its surface. It simply read 'Happiness Hall'. Once that met his approval, he carefully hovered up to the middle platform, placing a 'Apricot Atrium' sign there for it, and then ascended to the final platform near the very top of the tower, setting it with a 'Last Land' sign.
By the time this was all finished, the sky had turned black above Magolor, dotted with spherical clouds, sprinkled with shimmering stars. The moon rested peacefully among them, tracing the theme park with its silvery light, offering it a subtle glow amid the darkness. The air became chilled without the presence of the sun, and the night was silent with sleeping creatures. Magolor returned to the deck of the Starcutter, viewing the completed theme park that wore the moon's light like an iridescent blanket. It looked so cozy, the little wizard realized he was quite sleepy as well. He went back into the ship's cockpit.
"It's done," he said to the Lor as he moved. "It's finally finished. My present to Kirby is complete! All that's left is to find him, apologize, and show him my gift."
Magolor smiled bashfully as he made his way down the Lor's corridors, aiming for his private quarters, drawn by alluring thoughts of the warm blankets and soft pillow that awaited him there.
"Did you notice?" He asked the Lor. "The way I named the levels? Each name has the same first letters, and if you take the first letters of each one, and put them together, you get...H-A-L. I've named this theme park in honor of your home world, Halcandra! It's not much, but...I wanted to give respect to your world in some way, somehow. Landia didn't want me to go back, so I'll probably never see it again. But that's okay! Everyone is happy this way, and that's what matters most."
Magolor arrived in his room, dimly lit by the ship in preparation of his sleep. He opened the covers of his bed wide, and jumped in with a soft bounce. He curled himself up snugly under the blankets, resting his hooded head against the pillow, a deep sigh of satisfaction hissing out of his concealed mouth. The Lor dimmed the lights until they faded out, to give its pilot the optimal darkness for resting.
"I hope you liked that, Lor." Magolor said with closed eyes, body relaxing, laying peacefully limp. "I feel good. All the struggles we endured, all the hardships we faced, all the obstacles we've overcome...everything's been worth it. And if we find Kirby...no matter what he'll do or say...even if he hates it and tears it all down...I can leave with no regrets. I did my very best for him."
With another sigh, Magolor ceased speaking, filling his head once again with thoughts of how he would apologize to Kirby, running through many words, carefully constructing sentences, painting out an entire speech in his mind until tiredness overcame him, lulling him into a restful sleep.
While Magolor slept, the Lor Starcutter sent out a message. The message was received, and a response came shortly after. Someone would be ready in the morning.