"Huh? Wait, what? What's happening? Where are we? How are you here?" Marx wasn't exactly calm with this turn of events. Or ever, really.

"Relax, Marx. This is my home. I brought you here after I found you conked out in a dirty old crate. The look suits you, I must say." Magolor giggled. "I hope you don't mind the method. You looked like you were about a week away from dying, so I felt like I had to take you somewhere safe."

Marx rolled off the couch. "Agh… how did you find me? I was in a hole in a cave in a forest that was covered in mist! What kind of magic did you pull?"

"I guess you could say I just had a feeling."

Marx had shifted himself into a more comfortable position, and had his wings sprawled out on the floor next to him. "It is so good to bring these out again! That wire was a real pain, you know?"

Magolor finally closed his laptop and hovered over to Marx. "I imagine it must have been. It was covered in your blood. Now that you're awake, I wanted to ask you a few things about that cave."

"Screw that! I wanna eat something that's not an overripe banana I found in a box!"

"Fair enough. How do we feel about spaghetti with garlic bread?"

"I LOVE the way you think! Get me some of that!"

As Magolor went to prepare the meal, he took a good look around the pantry. Something about the room seemed amiss, but he couldn't quite place it. He took a long, hard look at the bowl of fruit on top of the pile of boxes he had in a near corner. Boxes, fruit. Could it be a coincidence? The boxes were all the same make and size, and stacked in a 3x2x2 pattern. The big bowl on top always sat on the box in the middle of the back, or at least it did until now. The box it was usually on was gone, and it instead sat in front of it, making the gap harder to see. There's another clue to add to the mental pile.

As he waited for the water to boil, he started to silently indulge in his own thoughts. I'm looking for a few people. The identity of R1-G, the break-in culprit, the person who lives in that home behind the waterfall, the one who wrote me that note, the one who put that fragment in my brain, the one who stole that crate, the one who attacked Marx, the other survivor(s) of the facility's explosion, and the one who planted the bombs. There's an extremely high possibility that the answer to most, if not all of these people are one and the same. Now, for leads.

Marx. He'd be able to clear up a few things, so I'm anxious to see what kinds of things I can learn from him. He could even fit the bill for a few of the things I'm looking for. The mist appeared fourteen years ago, and that approximately lines up with when Marx disappeared from Another Dimension. The mist is produced from that big flower in the cavern, so for those fourteen years, someone had to be watering it. Depending on when Marx got injured, that could explain why the mist started thinning until I got back. If he was the one who created the mist, it's likely that he was also the one who lived in that house behind the waterfall. That would mean he would at least know something about the photo in the nightstand, or the bookshelf that opens when I scan my own name.

As far as other information goes, when I woke up after losing my memory, I was just lying in a hole in a floating rock. That would make sense, if not for the fact that it doesn't. I was stuck in a transparent case when I was thrown out of the facility. When I woke up, the case was gone. Where did it go? How long was I unconscious in there? Did Marx take it? Or was it gone before he found me? The book was in the secret room, but it used to be in the case. It looks, from that, that Marx might be the one behind everything, but from what I've already heard from Kirby and his friends that they've seen him around on Popstar regularly enough before his stunt with the clockwork star.

That makes it pretty much impossible that he was the one who broke into the facility, or that he was the one who planted the bombs, and he absolutely can't be R1-G. Besides, I've seen him write before, and it looked nothing like the handwriting on the note in the book, or the note hanging in the passage. He might be responsible for some of the now, but the past is more concerning and he has an alibi for all of that. Although, it's not impossible that he might know something about the facility.

Magolor finished the food he was making, and carried the plate piled high with spaghetti back into the study, where Marx had climbed back onto the couch and was stretching his aching wings. "Hey, food's ready." Magolor set the plate down on the table. Marx didn't say a word, just pulled the table closer to him and scarfed down all the contents in a minute and a half. That was probably to be expected.

"Ah, that hits the spot!"

"Cool. Anyway, I was going to ask you a few things."

"What's up?" Marx smiled like a school kid who just snuck an extra cupcake out of the bake sale without paying for it.

"How long had you been in that hole for?" Magolor had shifted into thinking mode, and whatever jokes he and Marx would usually be cracking were not welcome at the moment.

"I couldn't say for sure, but it was probably somewhere between three weeks and a month."

"Yikes. That's… pretty bad." Three weeks? Like the date on the extra note in the book? "All right, do you know who put you down there?"

"Nope. Whoever it was must have been some kind of ninja, because they got me while I was flying up the waterfall. It must have been a trap."

Magolor lowered his eyebrows. He could practically hear the cogs turning in his own mind. "A trap?"

"Heyyy, Mags? You doing okay? It sounds like something serious is going on." Marx walked up to the puzzled wizard at the table. "What's going on here?"

Magolor met the jester's gaze, and returned it with as much visible stability as he could muster. "Call me that again and I will put you back down there. Now… why did you say it was a trap?"

"Uh, okay. I thought it was a trap because of the noises. It was during a big storm, so I was taking shelter in my house. It's in a hole behind the waterfall." So that's that, then. "I heard some noises that were mostly unfamiliar to me. It sounded like people talking. I went out and flew up the waterfall to check on who they were. On the way up, I got shocked with something and fell into the basin at the bottom. When I woke up, I was in that hole, bound with the wire."

"Did you recognize either of the voices?"

"I dunno. They weren't all that close to me, so I couldn't really make any distinctions. One of them sounded a little familiar, though."

Magolor said nothing. There's no doubt about it. Marx was attacked while Taranza and I were talking in that side passage. That means Taranza has an alibi for when that happened. Of course. I didn't doubt him in the first place. Still, it's nice to have confirmation. Bandee can be ruled out as a suspect as well. They were sitting, injured, outside the cave. The one who wrote those notes was in the cave while Taranza and I were also there. I don't remember seeing anyone on the way down there, and I doubt Taranza would, either.

Regardless, the writer wanted me to read that book, so they knew I would end up down there, so they knew right away about the fragment. Is it because they're the one who put the fragment there? Not unlikely. After all, it's almost impossible that the one who broke into the facility and the one who put the fragment in my head aren't one and the same. The author admitted to being the culprit behind the break-in, but they may not necessarily have been telling the truth about that. Or maybe there's some kind of trick I'm not considering. At the very least, the author assaulted Marx, and is in on whatever the fragment-planter did. I should ask one more thing. He stared into Marx' eyes, expressionless. Marx stared back. Magolor thought this would be the best way to ascertain the truth. "Restoration."

"Huh?"

"Hmm, no reaction other than mild confusion. So you don't know the name, I presume?"

"I know the word, but could you tell me what's going on?"

Magolor shifted his gaze to the floor. "I've found some leads on where I came from. I don't want to tell the whole story, but what happened to you is connected to that. I wanted to see if you knew anything."

Marx' eyes widened. "Whatever the story is, I don't think I want to hear it. Thanks, but no thanks."

"That's fine, I wasn't going to tell you even if you begged." Magolor perked up again. "Hey now that that's over, what do you want to do? I imagine this is your first time ever having a real conversation in fourteen years!"

"Well, I'd love to go tearing up the streets with you, but they don't really like me over here. That, uh…"

"You can just say what you really did. I know you were lying originally."

After going over the story of what Marx did again, and Magolor's half-hearted retelling of how he died and came back, Magolor was just about to try to get Marx to announce his presence to Kirby and company when the Lor interjected. "Captain, Taranza is approaching. You should probably prepare to greet him and trauma dump the exact right amount so that you do not spend the next hour either celebrating or beating yourself up about it."

"Who's Taranza?"

I'm not too sure about this. They don't seem like the types of people who'd get along. "A friend. Don't worry too much, he doesn't know what you did. Also, Lor, I stopped celebrating months ago! Get over it!"

The door opened, and Taranza entered. "Salutations, Magolor. I wanted to- who is that?"

Magolor waved around a bit before getting to the new guest. "Hey Taranza. This is Marx! I found him unconscious in an old box of rotten bananas!"

"Are you going to introduce me to everyone like that?"

Magolor was unfazed by Marx' disapproval. "Of course! It says everything there is to say about you in one sentence!"

The back-and-forth that was about to start was cut off by Taranza. "Is this the same Marx who tried to take over Popstar, lied to you when you first met, and abandoned you in Another Dimension?"

Magolor's enthusiasm dropped like a stone, and he quickly turned to whisper to Marx. "There's a small chance I might have told him literally everything."

"SERIOUSLY?"

Ignoring the outrage from Marx, Magolor turned back to Taranza. "The very same!"

After a long discussion in the study, Magolor was able to convince Marx that he should be able to leave the forest in broad daylight. As long as he wasn't doing anything suspicious, he'd most likely just be left alone. This was backed up by Taranza, who knew the whole story and yet behaved calmly when they met. Marx said he was going to leave to get some food in a few minutes, so that was when it'd be put to the test. He didn't seem all that scared about it. Once that was all taken care of, Magolor looked back at Taranza. "So, why did you come here again?"

Taranza straightened his scarf. "I just missed you, that's all."

"Didn't I talk to you this morning?"

"Well, yes, but I like it when it's just us. You seem more like yourself then."

Out of the corner of his eye, Magolor saw Marx rolling his eyes. He started speaking then. "O-kay! I'm gonna head out. I'll probably be back soon, so you two shouldn't get too friendly!" He hopped on a ball that seemed to just appear beneath him, and rolled out the door.

Taranza seemed to think about what was just said for a minute before he registered what it meant. "Eheh… ahahahaha!" Before long, the two of them were laughing uproariously. Magolor had tears in his eyes, which were either from the laughter or from the fact that Taranza had apparently found it so ridiculous that he thought it was a joke. He couldn't tell which.