He'd made it his home.
Ever since battling Pit at the ruins, he'd continually returned there, until it was as comfortable as any other base. Underground, hidden except for his two exits, he felt safer.
Dark Pit hadn't been able to return since the Rewind Spring. Now he landed, looked over the layer of dust, and automatically decided to clean up a little. There was at least one difference between him and Pit- at least he was organized.
He wasn't neat, but he was organized. He picked up his weapons and put them back in their chest- one he'd salvaged from the ruins. Dark Pit tightened the circle of blankets he called a bed. He picked up the training targets and remade them.
A secret he'd kept to himself when he took Pandora's powers was the type of odd magic he'd acquired. It was what had allowed him to make training dummies out of rocks, assembling them. He'd fashioned lights with it, learned to cast a kind of disorientation on his enemies and produce bursts of damaging, chaotic magic.
Now he had none of those, but he did have something else.
All weapons put aside, he raised his hands to concentrate. He felt the air of the room drawing in, swirling towards his hands and collecting in a ball. He focused on one of his targets, now a simple mark on the wall. The wind in his hands glowed grey-white. Dark Pit grinned, fierce with the feeling of power, and shot the magic at his target.
It swirled out of control, colliding with the wall far off the mark. Dark Pit scowled and rubbed his arm. He'd have to work on that.
"Meanwhile, that light... He liked the dark down here. It made him feel safer. But he preferred to have a single light illuminating the place. He'd already made light once. Surely he could do it again.
Dark Pit called the wind into his hands. First, he needed to practice. He played with it- first a gentle breeze, then a gale, to a steady wind, whatever he liked. It was easy. He tried moving it with two hands, one, no hands at all. The last was hard. He had to truly focus on hovering it with the wind, or it disappeared. He needed a way to make a wind "permanent." He played around with it, and found that a repeating pattern of winds was more stable than trying to move it. He could leave it like that.
Satisfied, he sent it up to the ceiling to cast a soft white light over everything. It wasn't as mysterious as the purple gloom of Pandora's power, but he could work with it.
"He stretched, his wings doing the same behind him, and settled on his "bed" with a triumphant smirk. He was independent again. He was separate. Pit didn't have powers like this. Pit wasn't on his own.
He was no copy.
He wasn't Pitoo, he wasn't Dark Pit, he was...
Who was he?
He'd never thought about it. A name different from Pit's. He couldn't take Pit's name. This place, these people, wouldn't accept it.
In the darkness, he was comfortable. His black wings shifted behind him. He was a shadow to them. He was evil and amoral. Of course he was. He couldn't let them know that he had values. His independence, his freedom, came first. But protecting the things he found important was a close second.
He'd found his name, anyways. No need to get distracted.
Kuro. Shadow. Dark. Crow. It was a slap in their faces, if they were paying attention. Which... he doubted.
Kuro. It was good. He raised his head, flashed a grin and fell back. The blankets piled around him, like a nest. He'd fetched them one by one from a shipment moving to a town. Hadn't hurt the human or his horses, just scared him off and taken some comfortable "samples" of his work.
His independence came first, after all.
Kuro closed his eyes.