Guest the Fifth "dust": Partially. o(^▽^)o I would chalk up the sporadic updates to life (and pandemic) mostly but I like writing too much to not do it as at least a hobby. And essentially what feels like me relearning English isn't helping. I don't remember being taught em and en dashes and semicolons and I wonder if I was. Surely I was.

That being said…

Another note to future self: em dash for interrupted line within quotation marks. You misremembered it as en dash. ALSO, if no speech verb, need em dashes to offset action b/t/around quotes in same sentence. [Boinks head with inflatable hammer.]

Those That Long. Those That Lurk.

Today was the day – the day he started their experiment that could threaten the present for just a chance of a better future.

Technically six had been chosen to be debriefed for this first round but after some considering, he had decided to go with only the four for now.

Sir Meta Knight arrived early in the time period that Yuki had relayed back from his mother for when she would be free to take the Guard's order. He paused, though, some distance down the road from the house. He had originally planned to go and ring the bell but he spied Mrs. Amamiya out in her gardens and seeing her had made him pause.

Was he really going to pollute the relative calm that came with certain ignorance?

…

…

Shaking his head at himself, he moved towards the little hut. It proved easy enough to gain her attention, and once inside, he sat down in the offered seat at the kitchen table with Mrs. Amamiya taking the opposite. Pencil in hand, she flipped through several sheets on a clipboard she had grabbed from a nearby bookshelf.

Eyes not looking up, she asked, "Yuki mentioned pepper and dandelion root. How much of each, and was there anything else you wish to add to the order?"

"I wish to discuss about Kirby first."

"… …" Slowly, her hand came up and slipped off the glasses she had just put on. She folded them neatly and set them parallel with her pencil on the clipboard that now rested fully on the table. "… Is his condition serious?"

"No, not like how you're likely thinking," he said, thoughtfully. "First, he is not currently in danger, and the reason for his absence actually stems from a biological quirk of his species, not an illness.

"Kirby's species follows a pattern of development similar to cappies with noticeable changes from infant to juvenile. An example being the teething."

"Mm-hm."

"For Kirby's species, there are also distinct morphology changes associated with this period." There was clear confusion on her face but also curiosity, and though it shouldn't, the scrutinizing gaze made Sir Meta Knight uneasy. "In a strange way, comparing it to a butterfly without the pupae stage would be an adequate analogue."

"… He had a terrible rash."

"He was scratching at the developing wings and my men and I didn't catch it in time to keep him from doing so."

"…" She took up the pencil again only to lean back in her chair. "Wings?"

He nodded.

"Alright," she tentatively said.

"Even when Kirby eventually returns, they will be delicate. They won't be harmed by a tug from a too-curious child's stray hand but care should still be taken, even if just to set boundaries. Like with most races, it is rude to touch another without permission and the village children may get too curious and need reminding. Furthermore, it is extremely rude to pluck feathers. His people hold superstitions about feathers and to have a feather of someone you do not have a familial or deep connection with is… unsettling."

Oooh, Mrs. Amamiya silently mouthed.

"Also, those at Kirby's age can get bity. There's no maliciousness in this play but they don't know how to regulate their bite. Once Kirby returns, please keep an eye out for such behavior. Kirby can't be allowed to get into the habit of gnawing on what he shouldn't, especially others. At all. Any such action must be stopped as quickly as possible to— to prevent the habit," he redirected.

"Okay."

"There is one more thing." He paused to push back at his growing unease. "Kirby's species has an infamous reputation in parts of the galaxy," he finally got himself to say. "With these changes, it will be easier to identify Kirby's species, and if the King learns of this reputation, he may use it to sway opinions negatively towards Kirby.

"Kirby is a child, and children should not be held accountable for the sins of others. And children make mistakes which is dangerous when said child has tremendous power. Living in this village, however, has been good for Kirby. Believe it or not, this village is comparably peaceful. The air and water usually clean. It is a good place for children to grow."

"… … What are you asking me to do?"

"I know you have your family to protect but if such events were to occur where the King incites violence to help in at least the smallest ways you can to keep the peace."

"… …" The pencil found its way back to resting on the forgotten clipboard, and she sighed heavily.

A/N: Ting! Ting! Warning ding!

Let your imaginations tread a little carefully here.

The haze Sir Meta Knight had been wandering in hadn't been like this a moment ago. What once was peaceful was now far too off. Feeling a sudden chill wrapping around him, his hands slapped up only to confirm what he already knew.

Utterly naked, exposed to this abyss of mist and flashes of broken landscapes, and he growled as he curled into himself.

He was just beginning to recognize where he was when whispers flittered closer from beyond, taunting him, muddling his thoughts, and causing him to drift further from awareness.

He ran with the last glimmers of his consciousness. He couldn't truly escape them but just being out of their grip could amount to enough.

Too clean labs that flickered to razed, smoldering scenes...

Retraining facilities with thin, grim faces, and the phantoms of his own hunger and thirst and the leaden feel of a body in pain trying to slow him down…

Impossibly long rows of covered forms, too still to—

He lashed out with his fist, breaking through the very scene itself and he found himself back where he might as well had begun, haunted by the lingering smell of blood, his own and others', and those whispers growing in volume and number.

…were snipers in the grotto…

…and those bastards won't know what hit them…

…telling you it was huge…

…you are not escaping this time…

…you did what you had to do to…

…must prepare for that it may no longer be a nest…

He forced himself up to his feet even as the ground slowly sucked him in. He ran, using the shreds of lucidness he gripped tightly to look for the fault he needed to—

Before him, a too-tall, exaggerated form of an overseer, robed in stark white, suddenly congealed from the dark mist to block his path. Its head bent down, its face featureless, emotionless just like every other of its kind but still so frustratingly domineering. Wordlessly, it loomed over him – examining, evaluating, cataloguing…

Monsters, he growled, sparking old rage to life in his fist connected with the image, shattering it, too, as well as snapping off the black tendrils that were apparently wrapping themselves around his arms.

No more!

The tendrils felt like thick brambles as they suddenly snapped around his form, his breath squeezed out from his lungs as they pinned him against the firm but shifting sludge that made up the ground.

Brutalizer! Bestializer!

The smell of his own blood grew stronger as the brambles incrementally tightened. He gritted his teeth as his lungs urged him to breathe despite having stopped being able to too long ago.

That voice he hates tauntingly sneered in a whisper far too sickeningly close to his ear in words not its own.

Maybe it was not the Name Stealer's Taint. Maybe, instead, it was not the stars that blessed them…

but the void between them.

What made you feel such hope?

Getting too close to the edge of oblivion, Sir Meta Knight resigned himself to his trump card and wrenched his arm free only to bite hard into his hand, his fangs piercing his own skin easily.

The first gasp of true air was cut short as his face connected with the floor.

He wasn't sure how long he laid there, gulping air into his aching lungs in the silence of the Guard's empty, dark quarters beside his bed and the color of his fists blanching from the tightness of their grip on nothing tangible, but by the time he pushed himself from the floor, he shivered from the cold stone brick and his mask having stolen away the warmth from his body.

With a grunt, he stumbled into the small adjacent toilet. Door shut, locked tight, and the small laundry basket uselessly kicked against it, Sir Meta Knight unhooked his mask, letting it go as it slipped to the floor from where he haphazardly leaned it against the wall, and slapped the hot water open. He didn't bother looking in the mirror but instead pulled up the plunger with too much force so that it made a noise as it protested the sudden jerk. It didn't break, which he could be happy for later, his distressed mind told himself in a small voice before he plunged his face into the water quickly pooling in the bottom of the basin.