Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cold. That was the first word that entered his mind. He was very, very cold. Maybe it was because he was suddenly all alone. Maybe it was because his surroundings were completely unfamiliar. Maybe it was because he was sleeping on a floor made of ice. That was probably it. The whole place was bitterly cold, as if the icy hand of death was never far away. Cold places had always made Magolor incredibly uncomfortable. Shivering, he tried to get his bearings. The room was large. Very large, in fact, but also very empty. What’s happening? Where am I? Why am I here? He made his way to the only exit. Somehow, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

In the next room, it was slightly warmer. He took a few deep breaths to try to get his nerves under control, then kept moving. This room had three other exits. He’d probably have to check all of them, but he logically started with the one on the left. As soon as he entered the room, the part he entered from slid shut. He tried opening it again, then melting the walls with a revolution flame. For some reason, the fire extinguished itself as soon as he started it. Frantically, he looked around for another way out.

He couldn’t see an exit in sight. Were it not for the glowing of his own eyes, Magolor wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all. His ears picked up on a quiet hissing filling the room. Then he noticed the odour. It was foul, noxious. He was pretty sure the room was being filled with poison gas. The air was heavy. Magolor’s eyes became teary as he tried to hold his breath. Even though he thought he was about to die, he didn’t feel very panicked. I wonder why not. It’s not as if I’m okay with dying. The thought had finally struck him that he should call for help. “HELP! ANYONE?” His vision became more and more blurry, the ringing in his ears drowning out all thoughts. As his consciousness eroded, he was faintly aware of himself falling. Falling into the depths of what was either death or just a nap. 

Then he realized that he was actually physically moving. Despite how this would usually make him feel, he was relaxed. Maybe it was because he was mostly unconscious. The fog in his head cleared, allowing him to form real thoughts about what was happening.

Someone was carrying him. There were two hands on his body, holding him against something soft. He blinked to clear his vision. He was in a dark, cramped corridor. Whoever was holding him couldn’t have been that much bigger than him. Despite the situation being one he would normally find scary, he was utterly calm. Almost… happy. He tried to turn himself around to see who was behind him. He couldn’t. The corridor was rough, as if it was dug out by hand. Eventually, the person carrying him spoke. “Are you feeling alright?” The voice was familiar, though he couldn’t quite attach a face to it. They sounded concerned.

“I… think so?” Magolor responded. “Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but… I don’t think we’ve met. Who… are you?”

“I’m Shadow. You remember me, right? You and the others helped me and my friends make the world a better place.”

Shadow? Like… The grey Kirby from the Mirror World? I don’t think this is him… “I don’t think I remember you. When did we meet?” 

He kept moving forward, hands comfortably holding Magolor close. “Looks like that gas did a number on your memory. I’ll start from the beginning, okay?” He moved one of his hands underneath one of Magolor’s ears, and lightly rubbed it. Magolor felt a chill run up his back.

I guess he really does know me. It would explain why I’m not feeling panicked at all about him carrying me. Still though, how did he get close enough to me for me to allow this? “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Alright.” Shadow quickened his pace. “To start with, my name isn’t actually Shadow. It’s Magolor. But since your name is also Magolor, and we look almost the same, everyone just started calling me Shadow Magolor. You called me Shadow. Um, what’s the last thing you remember?”

So he’s… me. Well, not exactly, but he’s pretty close. But then, how does he exist? I mean, I’m… artificial. Manmade. Does he know? “Before I tell you that, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Go right ahead.” Shadow spoke with gentle elegance. 

“Okay, well… among most of my friends, my existence is… unique, I guess you could call it. So, if you’re a Mirror World version of me, how do you exist? …That sounds a little rude. Where did you come from?”

“Hehe, it’s fine. I confess I’m not entirely sure. As far as I’m aware, I can’t really remember anything of where I came from, there’s just a few little fragments of memory that I’ve based my entire identity around. Actually, I don’t think I said I was from the Mirror World. How’d you know?” Shadow’s hand seemed to tense. “Are you regaining your memory?”

“Hmm.” Magolor racked his brain. “I don’t think I am. I just made an educated guess. The only other person I know with Shadow in their name is the Kirby from the Mirror World, so I just figured…”

“Hm. You’re very perceptive, Magolor.” Magolor suddenly started to feel very warm. Warm and cozy like he had just crawled into bed. “Ah. We’re at the end of the tunnel.” 

The light was bright red. A lot of the surroundings were engulfed in flames. “What the…” Magolor squirmed out of Shadow’s grasp, looking frantically around the area. “This is… what is this?” 

“It’s, uh, my home. This is basically my hometown, or, well, as close as it gets to a town. It’s… been like this for a long- Look out!” He fired a bright yellow sphere at something that was about to ambush Magolor from behind. “Before we continue our talk, do you mind if I bring you to my house? It should be safer than it is out here.”

It was only now that Magolor finally got a good look at Shadow. His gloves and yellow patterns on his robes were identical to Magolor’s, but the blue on Magolor was light grey on Shadow. His scarf was a deep, dark blue instead of white, the tips of his ears were jet black instead of white, his face was a darker brown, his eyes were pale green instead of yellow, and the underside of his cape was dark purple instead of dark blue. In addition, his cape was tattered and torn, and one of his ears looked like it had been partially chewed or burnt off. I guess this guy’s supposed to be trustworthy, so it makes sense to follow him. “Okay, let’s go. Where do you live?”

Shadow led him through the flaming disaster site. On the way through, a stone tower exploded. He quickly grabbed Magolor and rushed him away from the collapsing tower. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rough with you. Are you okay?” 

“Y-yeah. Thanks.” Magolor looked around. “How much farther is it?”

“It’s just another minute or two if we hurry. And we should hurry. He might be chasing us.” Shadow rushed towards a large pile of rocks that could barely be made out through the smoke in the air.

“Who is- Never mind.” Magolor followed, moving as fast as he could.

Shadow pulled a loose rock off the pile. “In here. Quickly.” He ushered Magolor into the small hole, then came in behind him. There was a metal hatch beneath them, which Shadow opened. Underneath was a pristine white light. “C’mon!” Shadow descended through the hatch, and then closed it after Magolor followed. They were in a hallway, with doors lining the sides. Shadow led him into the first door on the right. Inside, there was a couch and two large chairs positioned around a table. “Here, sit.”

Magolor sat in one of the chairs. “So, who is ‘he’? And, where’s everyone else? Surely there were others involved in whatever I forgot.”

Shadow pulled an envelope out of his robes. Inside was a message. “It says, ‘You’ve heard of out of the frying pan and into the fire, now get ready for out of the freezer and into the oven <3’. The back of the message is designed to look like the Ace of Diamonds, like you’d find in a deck of cards. It has to be from him. I don’t know his real name, I just call him Ace.”

“Um. Okay. Where’s everyone else? Like, Kirby or Marx or Taranza or Meta Knight? Where are they?” Magolor had a worried look on his face.

Shadow Magolor’s face fell. “The people who came to help me were Shadow Kirby, Kirby, Bandee, you, Taranza, Daroach, Elfilin, and Marx. After we cleaned up the planet Shadow Kirby lives on, we came to this one on my ship. Only the thing is, I kind of crashed it. We were going to try and salvage this place, make it more liveable. While we were doing that, everyone went missing. They have to all still be on this planet, but other than that, I have no idea where anyone is. The only reason I was able to find you was because of this message I got from Ace. He was probably the one who set up the gas chamber.”

Magolor fell silent. “So… what do we do? How do we find them?”

Shadow had grasped his hand without Magolor noticing. “Maybe we could ask my friend about it. Come with me.” He got off the couch, making his way to the door on the other side of the room. He opened the door.

On the other side was a bedroom, the decoration on the walls making it seem like it belonged to a child, or Marx. Perhaps both. Someone poked their head up from the bed. It was someone who looked a lot like Marx. His face was paler, and his bowtie was purple, and his hat was black and white instead of red and blue, and the black side of his hat had the tip torn off, and his eyes were a bit bluer, but other than that the resemblance was uncanny. He greeted the two of them with a grin. “Hey, Mags and Magolor! Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick! Hahahahahaha!”

Magolor turned to his grey-clad other self. “Remind me who this is?”

“Shadow Marx. Uh, sorry, but it seems Magolor here lost a lot of his memory, he… doesn’t know who either of us are. Hey, come to think of it, you never told me what your most recent memory is.” 

“Oh, I was just going to bed. I remember I was reading a book with Taranza, and I got to the end of a chapter and put the book down. He was really invested, so he got a little upset at the cliffhanger. After that, we went to bed. That was about…” He looked at the calendar. “Two months ago?”

Shadow turned his eyes to the wall. “Closer to two and a half.”

“So, I wouldn’t have lost that many memories from before I met you, then?” Magolor turned around to look at the other two. Shadow Magolor was looking back caringly and empathetically. “I guess that’s good… I’m sorry I forgot you two, though.”

Shadow Marx climbed out of bed. “Well, now’s as good a time as ever to get reacquainted! I don’t think I’ve eaten since yesterday. Mags, did you find any food up there?” 

“Marx, we have food in the house. Magolor, could you come help me in the kitchen? We should go make dinner. I’m… really hungry, too.”

“Hey, what? Why do I need to help? I don’t live here.”

Shadow’s eyes formed into arches. “ Welllll, you kind of do now. For the time being, of course. Besides, I can’t make Marxie here do anything like that. He’s… physically unwell. All the smoke did that to him. I’ve basically been like an older brother or dad or whatever to him for fifteen or sixteen years now, because he really needs the help. He might be lying about some of the things he can’t do, but I’m not willing to risk anything with his condition. So, please, could you help?” 

Magolor lightheartedly waved his hands. “Fine, fine. I can’t turn down someone who’s clearly been working hard to provide for his friend.”

“Hey, could you get the rice out? It should be in that cupboard up there.” Shadow indicated one of the cupboards above the microwave.

“On it!” Magolor pulled the cupboard open. He pulled out a blue bag of rice and tossed it to Shadow. Behind the rice, there was a container that caught his eye. He took it out and examined the contents. It looked like caramel chocolate chip cookies. Don’t mind if I do. While Shadow was carefully trying to get the right amount of rice into the pot, Magolor cracked open the lid. He grabbed a cookie and put it in his mouth.

While he was chewing, Shadow folded up the bag and turned around. “Hey, wait! Don’t eat those! I haven’t checked to make sure they’re safe!”

Magolor spit the crumbs into the sink. “Maybe you should have mentioned that a little sooner?” It left a bitter taste in his mouth. “Uh oh. That’s… probably not good…” He scrambled to get a glass from a cupboard and filled it with tap water to wash out his mouth.

“Was there something bad in there?” Shadow grabbed another one and broke it in half. He sniffed the broken side. “Okay. That’s not normal.”

“Yeah… I can tell…” Magolor’s speech slurred, and his vision faded. 

“Oh no. Stay with me! You’ll be okay! Magolor, wake up!” Shadow’s cries fell on deaf ears. He saw Magolor’s eyelids close, and he slumped against the counter. At least he was still breathing. Shadow picked him up and gently carried him across the hall, placing him on the couch in the room on the other side. He then went back to the kitchen to finish cooking.

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Magolor opened his eyes again. He was on a couch, feeling a little chilly. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, he picked his head up. Shadow Magolor kindly waved at him from a nearby chair. “You’re up! Oh, good. You should probably get to that food on the table pretty soon, it’s getting cold.” He indicated a plate of meat and rice.

Magolor dug in. After a few bites, a thought seemed to strike him. “How often do you find poisoned food just lying out in the open?”

“It’s not that bad! I usually only find it like… two times a week?”

“That’s really bad!”

Shadow gave a solemn nod. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Who would do something like that in the first place?”

Shadow’s ears drooped. “I don’t know, but they always seem to be near the house. My guess is they know Marx- er, Shadow Marx is here.”

Magolor had finished his plate. “That was really good, thank you. From what you say, it sounds like he’s had problems that aren’t related to the health complications. What’s up with that?” He leaned back as well.

“I don’t really want to get into that right now. But… he’s been hurt a lot. I’m basically the only person he trusts.”

“Hm.” Magolor cast a glance at the door Shadow Marx was sleeping behind. He wrapped his cape around himself, leaning into the corner of the couch. Ever since he finished eating, he had felt himself get colder.

Shadow took notice. “Hey. Are you cold?” Magolor nodded. He moved himself onto the couch next to him. “Do you need anything?”

“Can you just get me a blanket or something?”

“Of course.” Shadow was out of the room within seconds, and back in under a minute. “I got the best one I could find.”

“I’m feeling… a little tired…” Magolor yawned. “Do you mind… if I take a nap?”

“Of course I don’t mind, Magolor.” Shadow grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around him. “Go ahead and sleep if you think you need to.”

“Mhm.” Magolor, feeling warm again, let his eyes close. Even if I don’t have any of my other friends nearby, at least I have him. Maybe… things aren’t so bad.

Chapter Text

The game of chess has a somewhat uncommon outcome known as a stalemate. A stalemate involves the two players reaching a point in their game in which, as long as they both play well, neither one can win or lose. More often than not, one of the players has no way of realistically winning, but has enough wiggle room to make sure they don’t lose. The other has no way of realistically losing, but the other player is able to fend off their attempts at winning. In that scenario, one is chasing a victory they can’t achieve, and the other is fighting to stay alive. The stakes aren’t very high for the one who chases, but it’s functionally a matter of life and death for the one who runs away.

That had been the state of the Mirror World for several decades. People held power, but it wasn’t absolute. They held no regard for the health of the common folk, and had them constantly blaming one another for all the problems in the world to keep the focus off of themselves. On the other side, a veritable mosquito that they just couldn’t seem to get rid of. His name was Kirby, but everyone he was on speaking terms with called him Shadow Kirby. He’d gotten somewhat cocky over the fact that no one was able to get rid of him, once he’d gotten the confidence from the previous Dark Mind incident. Only a matter of time before things get better.  

That was what he thought, anyway. The fact of the matter was, any efforts he had amounted to nothing. His high spirits could only last so long before he was fully gripped by the futility of the situation. A few months ago, when Dark Meta Knight disappeared, he realized that was the first time in years he had ever felt hope about the fate of his world. When he came back, it had shattered to pieces. Not like he had the option to give up. The only thing worse than knowing it will never get better is knowing it will get worse, and it won’t stop getting worse.

Speaking of getting worse, one of his least favourite people had appeared. “Heheheheh, is our brave little hero feeling dejected?” That whispery, insufferably smug voice meant that Taranza had likely done something horrible. Well, he heard that there was a much nicer Taranza in the other world, so he decided to call this one Dark Taranza. “Isn’t this just so very delightful? I feel as if we rarely speak to one another anymore! Have you been distressed or lonely in my absence?”

“No. And stop talking like that, just be normal.” Shadow Kirby could hardly muster the energy to hit him with the usual cutting remarks.

“Ohhh, you slash at the strings that hold my heart in my chest! How dare you insinuate that one such as myself is abnormal?” Despite claiming to be hurt, Dark Taranza still kept that obnoxious smile on his face. “I must retaliate! I must strike back somehow! It’ll be devastating! It’ll be torturous! It’ll be… it’ll be… hmmm… It’ll have already happened about an hour ago!” He began erratically moving away, but paused on his way out. “You know, I’ve always heard that you’re alone in the world. No family, no friends, no loved ones at all. I thought we were on good enough terms that you’d come straight to your good friend Taranza when that changed! I’m wounded! You never told me of the delightfully handsome gentleman in the red hat. We had a pleasant little chat just this morning, and I’ve been missing out? You are cruel! Cruel as cruel can be! It’s a good thing you hadn’t known each other long…” He suddenly was right in Shadow Kirby’s face. He placed two of his hands on his face, staring down on him with intensity that made him actually fear him a little bit. “Or else I’d have been very upset with you.”

Shadow Kirby ran after him as he was fleeing. “Hey! What did you do with him? Where is he?”

“Oh, you want to know, do you? Very well! I just invited him to stay for a little while. No need to worry, he’s happy, healthy and… alive. Toodle-oo!”

Shadow Kirby ran after him as he fled. Eventually, he lost sight of who he was chasing, but his ultimate goal was the same anyway. The dark castle loomed over the hill, as if it was taunting him. His face grew more determined. I’m not going to lose my friend. Not again. I’ll save Daroach. Daroach, the thief, had become acquainted with Shadow Kirby fairly recently. Despite them not knowing one another for long, they felt almost like family. Perhaps it was Daroach’s natural charisma, or the fact that he was strikingly similar to someone Shadow Kirby used to know.

Regardless, he felt he had to save his new friend, even if it was only to not feel as lonely as he usually did. He made quick work of the guards outside the castle, then snuck around the inside to avoid having his location known. He saw stairs leading down. Dungeon. That seemed about right. He vaulted down the stairs, into the dark hallway at the bottom. The walls were lined with cells. At the end of the hallway, there was a large wooden door with three guards blocking it. One of them pointed at Shadow Kirby. “Get him!” To make a short story even shorter, they did not get him.

“Heh… I’m still standing for a reason, guys.” With that snarky comment, he began looking through the cells to find Daroach. It didn’t take him long. He was sprawled out on a bed. “Hey! Are you okay?” 

Daroach stirred, then raised his head. “Shadow Kirby? Is that you?”

“Yes. It’s me. I’ll get you out of there, ok?” He quickly ran back to the guards and snatched a ring of keys off of one of them. He ran back and began trying keys. “What did Taranza do to you?”

Daroach rolled off the bed. “I was bringing you some biscuits I made at home and he ambushed me, stole them, trapped me in silk, and zapped me until I passed out. He was also… weirdly enthusiastic about it. Is he always like that?”

Shadow Kirby finally got the right key. “I think so? Not sure.”

Daroach threw the door open. “Alright. Let’s get out of here.”

“Hold on.” Shadow Kirby eyed the door at the end. “What’s the deal with that door? I’ve been in here a few times, and that door has never been here. I… kinda wanna check it out. Maybe they’re hiding something there.”

“Hm. I guess we could do that.” He pushed the door open, and was surprised by the sudden appearance of the blue sky. “Huh. I wonder what that’s for.” He looked up and saw that it was because of a destroyed hole in the ceiling. “What…”

On their left was a large, round… thing. Shadow Kirby ran up to it. “Hey, what is this thing?” He searched the outside. “Hey, there’s a button here.” He pressed it and a piece of the sphere swung down, becoming a staircase that led inside. “Whoa… it’s like a spaceship…” 

Somewhat recklessly, he jumped in. The inside was slightly cramped. There was a small monitor, a control console, and some various tools, kits, and manuals. The most immediately concerning thing was the door. It was locked. He searched for a key. He didn’t find one, but he did find something else. A photo. Inside the photo was an emblem of some kind. It was a blue and green gemstone. He thought it looked… familiar… a word flashed through his mind. Crast… something. It was long, whatever it was.

Daroach called from outside. “Hey, I found something. Come look.”

Shadow Kirby took the photo out with him. He looked at where Daroach was pointing. It was… the same emblem as the one in the photo. Actually, the exact same one. The photo depicted this specific section of the strange capsule. “What?” He looked at the photo again. “Why…”

Daroach looked over at the photo. “Did you just find that now, or…”

“Yeah! I just found it now, inside. But it’s…” He held the photo up to the emblem as it appeared in reality. “Why would anyone have taken this photo? Is there something… important about the gemstone?”

“No idea…” There was a distinct glint in Daroach’s eyes when he looked at the emblem. Knowing him, he was probably thinking about stealing the gem. He suddenly turned, alert, to the back wall of the room they were in. There was a pile of rubble in front of the wall, but closer inspection revealed something abnormal behind it. “Who’s there?”

They walked over to the rubble, and looked at what was beyond. Another cell. At first glance, it was empty. Then Shadow Kirby locked eyes with a person cowering under the bed. Daroach flinched when he saw who it was. He was shaking. “I-I don’t know anything! Please, let me out!” 

Shadow Kirby tilted his head. “We can’t. Um, who are you?”

He seemed to steel himself somewhat after hearing the response. He blinked his green eyes, green like an olive. “I’m, uh, Magolor. Who are-” He froze for a brief moment when he looked at Daroach. “You?”

“Oh, okay. I’m Kirby, or Shadow Kirby depending on who you ask, and he’s Daroach. It’s… nice to meet you, I think.”

“Wait, but-” The guy calling himself ‘Magolor’ seemed flabbergasted by the mere idea of their identities. “You can’t be Daroach! You… have lighter fur! And yellow eyes! And your clothes are red!” 

“Well you can’t be-” Daroach cut himself off in the middle of his retort. “Oh. Oh . Wait, but that means-”

“You know the other Daroach?” Shadow Kirby pressed his face against the bars of the cell.

“The, other, I guess I do?” He looked confused. “How is there more than one, what does this mean?”

Shadow Kirby took the time to lay out the basics of the Dimension Mirror, and what was on the other side. Magolor, or Shadow Magolor as they agreed to call him, seemed to mostly understand. Daroach nodded once. “So, do you know who has the key to your cell?”

“I don’t know his name, but he was this yellow and purple guy. He has six hands and talks kind of like he’s performing for an audience. He also said I was adorable, which was a nice confidence boost, but he also stuck me in here, which… I didn’t really appreciate it.”

Daroach pulled his hat down. “Dark Taranza.”

Shadow Kirby nodded. “Yeah, him.” 

They waited in place next to the door. Daroach was holding a large rock. As soon as the door opened, he swung the rock down, hitting the person who entered. It was, unsurprisingly, Dark Taranza. Kirby snatched the keys and ran over to the cell. As soon as the door opened, Shadow Magolor excitedly came out and gave him a big hug. Shadow Kirby wasn’t used to this kind of treatment, in fact it felt so unexpected that he almost felt like crying. Shadow Magolor let go and backed off. “Thank you thank you thank you! I’m so glad…” He led the two of them to the capsule. “You know, you don’t have to go back out through the hallway. We could take this! I can fly us out if you want.”

After recalibrating for a minute or two, the spaceship rose off the ground and through the hole in the roof. Shadow Kirby directed him towards where the mirror was. Once they got out, he pointed at the Dimension Mirror. “Okay, you two go through. Try and get help from the other side. I’ll… take care of things over here.”

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Magolor wasn’t expecting any visitors today. Granted, visitors were rarely scheduled in advance, but in this case, he really felt caught off guard by Daroach knocking on the door. “Hey. I know you’re probably trying to cool off right now, but I got into a bit of a situation. I think you’ll want to meet him.”

Magolor grinned. “You got into a person? You might want to rephrase that-” The words stopped flowing as soon as he saw who was behind Daroach. The "new" face gave a friendly, yet somewhat timid wave. “Um.”

Daroach stepped aside. “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

When Shadow Magolor saw the counterpart of himself in the doorway of the beautiful looking ship, he was surprised. There were multiple reasons,one being the fact that such a person existed at all. If the concept wasn’t already a tough pill to swallow, seeing the way he lived sure was. He lived almost like the threat of a fiery death wasn’t creeping around every corner. What a life that must be. He entered the large ship, looking around at everything. “Whoa! This thing’s deluxe! You LIVE like this?”

The other Magolor looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Um, yeah. You two look… tired. Make yourself comfortable, I guess.” He ducked into a nearby hallway much too quickly to be considered natural.

Shadow Magolor’s ears, or ear and a half, drooped. “He’s a little shy, isn’t he?”

Daroach absentmindedly twirled a cane he had retrieved from his cape. “He’s usually more cordial, just a little shaken from… well, you.”

“Oh, I get it. He didn’t know about the mirror either, then?”

“No, he did. It’s just… He doesn’t have a very good impression of your side of it. That, and…” Daroach was about to say something, but realized that what he was thinking of was definitely too delicate of an issue to be bringing up now. “Well, he’s skeptical of people he doesn’t know.”

“Oh…”

Shadow Magolor had scarcely finished sighing in vague disappointment when the door slid open, with four more people in the doorway. Two of them looked familiar. The one who looked like a significantly more mellow version of that Dark Taranza guy was the first to comment. “Daroach. Who is this?” He sounded cautious.

The small blue one looked at the nicer Taranza in confusion. “What do you mean? That’s Magolor, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you recognize him?”

“I would. That’s why I know this isn’t him.” It was strange to hear that, considering he was reasonably confident his name was, in fact, Magolor, and had said as much to everyone he ever met.

The pink one who looked like Shadow Kirby walked over to him. “Hi! What’s your name?”

“I’m, uh,” He paused to make sure he’d be saying the right thing. “Shadow Magolor. I came from the Dimension Mirror. It’s nice to meet you all!” He put on his best smile.

The green Taranza backed away from him. “Hey, Daroach? Can we talk? Like, over there?” They retreated into a corner of the room. Shadow Magolor inadvertently craned his head to overhear what they were talking about. “Can you just tell me where the other Magolor is? He sounded really panicked over the phone and I’m worried about him.”

“Well, he went into the kitchen and hasn’t come out since. That means either he’s cooking or having a mental breakdown. Hard to say.”

Green Taranza hurried to the room which was apparently a kitchen. Shadow Magolor finally noticed the small brown creature with the blue bandana staring at him. “Oh! I’m sorry, were you saying something?”

They frowned, or at least they would have if they had a mouth to frown with. “I was telling you my name. I’m just called Waddle Dee, but everyone I know calls me Bandee or something like that.”

The pink one jumped up and down. “I’m Kirby! Are we gonna be friends?” 

Shadow Magolor was delighted that Kirby had the demeanor he did. “Oh, that sounds wonderful! Of course we can be friends!” 

The blue one waved. “My name’s Elfilin! Nice to meet you! Just to preface everything else I say to you, I have no idea what the Dimension Mirror is and I don’t understand who you are or how you exist.”

Before Shadow Magolor could answer that, the door opened again and a familiar face walked in. Well, sort of familiar. He looked like the Marx he knew and loved, but even more peppy and with an air of mischief about him. In addition, his hat and face were more colourful. Guess he’s not sick. “What’s up, dingdongs? I heard there were things happening!” His eyes stopped on Shadow Magolor. “Oh. Fake Magolor. Gotcha.”

“Shadow Magolor. I’m from the Dimension mirror and Daroach just agreed to start calling me that. You’re… Marx, right?” It felt wrong to call him that. He didn’t quite feel like bringing up the other one, though, so he thought to just leave him as a passing remark.

Daroach raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know that?”

“Take a wild guess.”

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Taranza entered the kitchen. It was dark inside. “Magolor?”

Magolor opened his eyes, the faint glow illuminating his location. He was sitting on the floor in a withdrawn pose. “Hi. How’re you?”

“I know you’re in here because Shadow Magolor caught you off guard.” He sat in front of him and gave him a gentle smile. “Talk me through it. I want to hear about all the red flags it raised for you.”

“I’ve traveled to so many planets.” Magolor began. “And throughout it all, I’ve learned that if I find anyone who looks like me, I shouldn’t trust them because they’re almost certainly a shapeshifter trying to lure me in with a false sense of familiarity so it can… do something. I never stuck around to find out. Obviously this one isn’t a shapeshifter, I, I don’t think, but anyone who looks like me is bad news ninety percent of the time.”

Taranza frowned. “Ninety percent? How did you fall for the shapeshifter thing that many times?”

“I was really lonely and they seemed so friendly and caring…”

Taranza’s face fell. “Oh, Magolor…” He moved forward and wrapped all six of his hands around him. “I promise I won’t let that happen to you again. If it’ll make you feel better, I can make sure you don’t have to talk to him ever. Would that help?”

Magolor patted him on the back, then shook his head. “No. I’ll get out of here. If he’s up to something bad, I’m not just gonna sit by and watch as it happens.” He got up, opened the door, and went back to the main room.

After they got back, Daroach and Shadow Magolor explained the story of how they were freed from the dungeon in the castle on the other side. After they were done, Magolor eyed his unfortunate-looking counterpart. “And… what happened before that?”

“No reason not to tell you, I guess.” Shadow Magolor shrugged.

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“I don’t understand, why can’t I come with you?” His eyes were full of fear, like he suspected he was about to hear some bad news.

Shadow Magolor took a deep breath. “Look. I can’t sugarcoat it. I don’t know what lies ahead. I don’t know if this is safe. If… things go wrong, I want you to be okay, Daroach.” Noting the fear on his face, he brightened. “But I’m sure I’ll be okay! And I’ll contact you the second I land!”

Shadow Daroach nodded. “Thanks. That makes me feel better.” He wrapped him in a hug and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll miss you.”

The stairs folded up behind him, and Shadow Magolor leaned into the microphone on the small spaceship’s console. “And we’re taking off.” He saw Shadow Daroach waving at him as the ship flew away.

When he got to what he was pretty sure was his destination, he came across a large, dark, castle. “Hmm…” The charted course was going to crash him directly into a part of the castle. “Wait, no-” He scrambled to change course and land somewhere else, but he was too late. The ship cracked through the black brick roof and onto the ground beneath. The impact put him on the floor. “Ungh, rough landing.” He tried to get the ship to fly again. No dice. “Okay… I guess I’ll look around outside, then.”

He went out of the ship and inspected the outside. The area he had landed in was dark, save for the new hole in the ceiling. The ground was natural. There actually didn’t seem to be much of anything here. He was looking at the brick walls that had nothing of note, when he felt a hand on him. “My my, what do we have here?” He turned around. The person who had spoken was a yellow, black, and purple spider-like creature.

“Um, hi?” Shadow Magolor greeted, wary of the look on his face.

“Oh, well you are just positively adorable!” He grinned in a delight of dubious intentions. “I’d love to get to know you, why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

“Oh, okay, well, my name is Magolor. I kind of… crashed here by accident. I’m sorry about that. Uh, what’s your name?”

“What a charming name! I am Taranza. Would you care to tell me more about your wonderful self?”

Shadow Magolor tried to back away from him a little bit. “Well, I flew here from another planet. I was in… that.” He pointed at the small ship.

Dark Taranza eyed the vessel. “Ah, it seems that great things  come in small packages after all!” He scanned the outside of the ship. “Ah, I see.”

“See what?” His gaze seemed to have landed on the emblem.

“Hmmmm…” In a flash, he turned around and covered Shadow Magolor with electrified webs. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay a while, but not to worry! Your new good friend Taranza will get you a place to sleep! I’ll be back soon. Ah, don’t go anywhere. It’d be a terrible shame for a face as cute as yours to be ruined by a pointless struggle.” Shadow Magolor tried to get out of the webs, but his efforts were stopped by the electric shock. Dark Taranza stared down at him in pity. “My my, my delectable little chocolate egg, you really must learn to listen to what others say.”

.... . / .. ... / ... --- / ..-. ..- -.-. -.- .. -. --. / .--. .- - .... . - .. -.-.

There were a lot of things to unpack with the story, and different people responded in different ways. Daroach spoke up before the others. “My Mirror World self is in a relationship with you?” Then he looked over at Magolor, who was deep in thought. “Okay, I guess I can see it.”

Taranza looked alarmed. “Am I going to have to intervene here…?”

“What a creep that Dark Taranza guy is!” Marx huffed.

Magolor snapped out of it. “So, uh, me, can I call you Shadow?” Shadow Magolor nodded. “Right. So, he only took you as a prisoner once he saw the gemstone emblem on the ship? Is that it?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what else it could have been. Why?”

“What is that emblem, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Shadow Magolor shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t build the thing.”

Kirby seemed to have some issues processing all of that information. “I don’t know what that means, but I think there’s something going on over there, and we need to find out what. Right?”

Elfilin nodded. “That sounds… well, it’s so soon after everything else.”

Daroach grinned. “Nonsense! We’re always ready to help, aren’t we?”

Shadow Magolor individually thanked every single person in the room, but was interrupted by his stomach growling. “I hate to trouble you all further, but is there anywhere around here I can get something to eat?”

Bandee hopped up and down. “Castle Dedede’s always open! Come on!” They led the group up the hill to the castle in question.

It was a lively dinner, with people getting to know each other, Dedede himself made an appearance and opted not to bother with whatever new thing people were doing now. “Before I go to bed, could some combination of you go make a chocolate cake for tomorrow afternoon? I was thinking of delivering it to Meta to see if it’ll help cheer him up.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Taranza offered. Dedede nodded and went upstairs. 

Shadow Magolor looked Taranza over. “Hey, so do you have one dominant hand, or three? As in, are your three right hands generally better than your three left hands, or is it just one hand that’s better than all the other hands?”

Taranza blinked. “I’m sorry, I spaced out. Could you repeat that?”

“Do you have one dominant hand, or three dominant hands?”

“Six.” Magolor responded curtly.

Marx giggled. “Right. And how exactly do you know that one?”

Bandee glared at him. “Really? In front of my mac n’ cheese?”

They had collectively gotten up to wash the dishes and put them away together, but then Magolor noticed something. Shadow Magolor was gone. He had snuck away while he wasn’t looking. Immediately, Magolor was out of the castle, frantically scanning the area to see where he was going. He saw him high up, going to where the Dimension Mirror was. He followed him, not wanting to let him do his likely nefarious deeds.

Once he had gotten through the mirror, he saw Shadow Kirby sleeping next to the ship Shadow Magolor had been flying. Magolor hid himself to avoid being seen, but saw Shadow scanning the area to ensure he was alone. He was holding a brown bag. Then, he climbed into the ship. Magolor slowly followed him, being careful not to wake Shadow Kirby.

As he got closer, he heard Shadow Magolor’s voice. “I’m glad. Sweet dreams.” Then, a door closed, there was a sound of a phone ringing, and he started speaking again. “Hi. I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to tell you this earlier, but I am safe and… I’m missing you a lot. I’ll have my fair share of stories to tell you when we can actually talk again for sure. Love you!” 

Magolor didn’t think there was anything wrong with the voicemail message, but he definitely got the impression that there was a second person on that ship. He reached for the door to open it-

“Why, hello there, handsome! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” He didn’t have to turn around to know who that was. “I can’t help but wonder why you would be wandering around, all alone at night in a place such as this. Are you lost? You poor thing! Why don’t you follow me so I can bring you somewhere safe?”

Hearing him outside, Shadow Magolor burst out of the ship. He stared at the situation in a mixture of fear and confusion. “Wh-why?”

Dark Taranza moved his gaze off of Magolor to look at Shadow. Then back to Magolor, then back to Shadow. “Now just what in the FUCK-”

Chapter Text

Magolor used that opportunity to summon a sword and hold it against Dark Taranza’s throat. “Oh, I apologize. Were you saying something?”

Dark Taranza shuddered, and held two hands over his face. “No.”

“Good. Now run. And if I see you back here, you’ll regret it.”

Dark Taranza was gone before he even finished speaking. Shadow Magolor brightened. “I’m so glad you were here to help! Hey, come to think of it, why were you here? Did dinner wrap up that soon?”

Magolor froze for a brief moment, then regained his composure. “Not exactly. I just noticed that you weren’t there anymore and I got worried.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just came back because I never got around to contacting Daroach- well, Shadow- you know who I mean.”

Magolor tilted his head thoughtfully. “It was just that?”

“Yes? What else would I have been doing?” 

He was lying. Magolor knew that for sure. He saw the brown paper bag. He heard him speaking to someone other than Shadow Daroach. He was up to something, but pressing the issue wouldn’t get him anywhere. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. Let’s go back, then, if you’re done here.”

Once they got back to Castle Dedede, Shadow Magolor explained the same mostly true story he had told Magolor. When he was done, everyone split up for the night to go their respective ways. Taranza went into the kitchen to bake that cake, and Magolor decided to stay with him. Taranza, while measuring sugar, posed an offhanded question. “That wasn’t the real reason you went after him, was it?”

“Well, I was worried about him… worried about him pulling something sneaky, that is. But in my defense, I was right. He snuck a paper bag into that ship. He spoke to someone who wasn’t Shadow Daroach. There’s another person in there, and he doesn’t want us to know about them.”

“Relax, Magolor. I believe you. I have some doubts about him, too. Nothing that comes out of that mirror is good. We’ll see what we can do later. But for right now, can you just beat some eggs?”

Magolor grabbed three eggs out of a carton in the fridge. “You know, sometimes people tell me I look like one of these.”

Taranza looked at the eggs, then at Magolor, then back to the eggs. “He…hehe…hehehehehehe…”

“Aw, Ranz, not you too!”

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Shadow Magolor got back to the large ship he had been in before. The Lor Starcutter, it was called. He thought about just going in, but his conscience won out and he waited outside for the other Magolor to get back. He looked up at the starry sky. He couldn’t remember if he had ever seen anything like it before. He probably hadn’t. “Wow… It’s beautiful.”

“Is this your first time seeing the stars?” A voice came from behind him, and he turned around to see who it came from. However, he saw no one. “Ah, you’re confused. I am the Lor Starcutter herself.”

“O-oh.” Shadow Magolor didn’t quite know what to make of that.

“I usually limit my speaking to the captain and those who are close with him, but there is something I specifically wanted to say to you.”

“Okay, go ahead. I’m all ear.” Shadow Magolor grinned.

The next time the Lor spoke, she did so very quietly. “If you do anything to hurt him, I will personally ensure that you wish you did not. And that goes for any of his friends, too. Treat them well.”

Magolor and Taranza arrived soon after. Magolor gave him a salute as a greeting. “Hey, Shadow! Looking for a place to sleep?”

“I am, actually. Would you mind if I stayed here? It seems like the most secure place around and I don’t want to be an easy target for the… Mean Taranza. …Of course, you can say no if you want to!”

Magolor nodded. “No trouble at all! I can take care of that.” The door opened and he ushered the other two in. “I’ll get you a bed, and you can just relax. Anything you want, I’ll get it. Within reason. Ranz, you’ve done enough today, you can go to bed. I’ll be with you soon.”

Shadow Magolor smiled softly at his altruistic approach to having a guest. Anything I want within reason, hm? How thoughtful of him.

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Kirby looked around in the hazy, dim light in the room. The candle seemed to be about to go out. A small part of him said that he didn’t have a candle in his house, but it was clearly wrong, so he ignored it. His house had no one in it but him. Despite that, he heard a sound coming from outside. It sounded like someone… crying. Wanting to cheer up whoever it was, he got out of bed and ran out of the door. A small ways across the plaza, he saw the source of the crying. 

The white hood, the green tips of his ears, and a single orange gloved hand were laid out on the stand in front of him. He shook as he sobbed. Kirby quietly walked up to him. “Magolor?”

Magolor picked his head up and blinked repeatedly to cut off the tears. “Hello, Kirby! Up late? Me too! What can I do for you?”

“Why were you crying? Are you sad about something? Can I help?”

“It’s… nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine!” Magolor smiled with his eyes. “So do you have something you want to buy or not?”

Kirby looked at him with sad eyes. “I need to know why you were crying because you’re my friend and I care about you!”

Magolor’s hand tensed. “I’m your-” He stared, seemingly stricken with a mixture of despair and fear. He lowered himself under the counter.

“Huh?” Kirby jumped over the counter into the booth. “Why are you-”

Magolor was sitting under the countertop, with his head buried in his hands. “Kirby, please. Go home. It’s not your problem.” Kirby walked forward slightly and tried to give him a hug, but he pushed him away, eyes flaring with vitriol and contempt. “DON’T TOUCH ME!!” 

Kirby stumbled backwards into the back wall of the shoppe, starting to cry himself. “I- I’m sorry… I won’t do it again…”

Magolor looked up at Kirby, then rushed the very short distance over to him. “Hey, no, don’t cry, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“You don’t… you don’t want to be my friend…?”

“Of course I do. Just… Please calm down. I can’t bear to see you like this, Kirby.”

Kirby had his eyes squeezed shut, and those words rang in his head. Slowly, he calmed down. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Elfilin looking at him, concerned. “Hey, Kirby. Were you having a bad dream? I thought those weren’t possible here.”

He was right. They weren’t possible here. At least, they shouldn’t be. And yet, on the rare occasion that they happened, they always seemed just as vivid and memorable as that one. It was such a strange dream, too. Where did the candle come from? Why didn’t he think of Gooey in his house? He’d lived there for as long as Kirby could remember. Why was Magolor wearing that outfit? He’d never seen anything that looked like it before, so why did it appear in his dream? And he also couldn’t think of a time he saw Magolor crying, either. Maybe he’d talk to someone about it.

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“Everyone here?” Daroach scanned the group. “All accounted for.”

Bandee nodded. “Hey, Shadow Magolor, where did you sleep?”

Magolor answered on his behalf. “I had him stay in the Lor. I figured he’d be the most safe in there, in case Dark Taranza came through the mirror for him. He wants him badly. In multiple ways.”

“Ah, yes, Shadow Magolor. I don’t believe I asked. How did you sleep?” Taranza asked. 

“I slept great! I could’ve moved in then and there if I didn’t have people waiting for me to come back.” He gave a thumbs up.

Marx perched himself on top of the mirror. “I’m a bit lost, does anyone remember what we’re actually about to do right now?”

Bandee raised their hand. “We’re going into a mirror dimension to solve the mystery of a weird looking rock. It’s like elementary school playground roleplay meets real life.”

“Awesome! Sounds fun.” He hopped off, spreading his wings.

Elfilin flew in front of the mirror, turning to face the group. “Let’s go! I wanna see this place!” He flew into the Dimension Mirror immediately.

“Wait up!” Shadow Magolor leapt in after him. Marx, Kirby, Daroach, and Bandee followed behind them in order.

Taranza stared at the mirror. “Alright. Just going to… go in. I’ll just- I’m going in. I’m going in. I am.” He wiped tears from his face. “How long until this starts making me go insane like she did?”

Magolor placed a comforting hand on his back. “I heard Meta Knight and King Dedede did a pretty good job of, uh, exorcizing it after what happened to Sectonia. Just to be safe, though, you should probably not be taking this approach.” He nudged him from the side. “If you don’t want to come, you can stay behind. I know this is difficult for you, Ranz.”

Taranza looked up, eyes closed, then shook himself. “No. I’ll go. Just… Can you… Help me along?”

Magolor nodded. “Of course I can.” With almost no warning, he shoved Taranza into the mirror, throwing himself in right after.

On the other side, Shadow Kirby greeted them. “Wow! That’s a lot of people.” After introducing himself to everyone, he pulled out the photo. “Okay, so, the best place to start is to ask who took this and why.”

Marx snatched the photo. “Lemme see that.” He squinted, frowned, tilted his head, and turned the photo upside down. Someone decided to stop him at around the point he started chewing on it.

Daroach grabbed the photo and started explaining what it was. “We found this photo inside Shadow Magolor’s ship. The photo itself depicts the outside of the ship, as you can see by making the comparison yourself.”

Bandee examined the ship. “So what is this gem thing? Is it like, a symbol of something?” He turned to Shadow Magolor. “Do you know?”

“Nope. I didn’t build the ship, I just found it abandoned and had it follow the course that was set. Had to do some repairs first, though.”

Shadow Kirby stared at him, incredulously. “Follow the course?”

“Yeah. I just had to set it to go where it was charted to and it crashed through that roof on its own.”

Magolor’s eyes went wide. “And who charted it?”

“Dunno. But maybe, if we can figure out the significance behind the emblem on the ship, we can find out who charted the course.”

Shadow Kirby lit up. “OH!!! I know what we can do! There’s an archive hidden in the castle! There could be something in there!”

Daroach nodded. “Good idea! Let’s… how do you know that?”

He looked down, forlorn. “I used to go there with Meta Kni- Dark Meta Knight before… everything changed.”

Kirby shook his head, as if to psych himself up. “Okay! We’re going!”

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After mowing down the guards, they made their way to a room that was predominantly white, with abstract sculptures dotted throughout. Shadow Kirby rotated a few of them, causing the one in the center of the room to move aside, revealing a staircase. “Everyone in.” He said with a kind of confidence they hadn’t heard much from him recently. After the others had all piled into the staircase, Shadow Kirby followed behind them, flipping a lever to cover the stairs with the sculpture again.

There was a light at the bottom of the stairs. They reached it fairly quickly. The room at the bottom was dusty, save for one section that seemed to have been navigated recently. Magolor pointed to it. “Looks like we wanna go over here.” He picked out a specific book from the shelf. “This one’s super old, but there’s no dust on it at all. I’ll read it.” He cleared his throat, and began reading out loud.

“The Dimension Mirror has existed as a gateway between our current world and the one we used to inhabit for nearly three thousand years now. In that world lies many of our precious co-creations, heirlooms that have been passed down through generations, taken from us because we opposed them. We were robbed of the Star Rod, of the Master Crown, and of countless other artifacts. Our new dimension may not be perfect, but for the time being it is the only thing we have. This gateway will exist forevermore, as will we. We will thrive. Not because we belong, but because we know no other way of life. And, to tell the truth, not everything…” As Magolor was turning the page, he was interrupted by a shriek. It had come from Kirby. Elfilin cowered behind him.

Dark Taranza’s smirk from the top of the staircase in the low lighting made him look rather demonic. “Well, hello, kiddies! It seems you’ve been caught trespassing! How unfortunate for you…”

Daroach jumped into view of the stairs. “Hey! Leave them alone!”

“Oh, going to ‘take care of me’ yourself? Sounds… wonderful.”

“Shut up!” Daroach pulled his scepter out of his cape and aimed it at him. “Be a shame if I made you cool off while you’re all hot and bothered.”

“What a sharp line! Let me give you one of my own.” He snapped his fingers, and a huge net of webs fell from the ceiling. “Hm. Not quite as witty as it was in my head, but it seemed shocking enough all the same.” In one fell swoop, he tied the corners of the net together, having successfully grabbed everyone he’d seen in the room, including the two Magolors, two Kirbys, and the person who looked similar to himself. He leaned in close to the cramped, uncomfortable-looking Shadow Kirby. “And just so you know, I have a surprise in store for you when we get back to the dungeon.”

Once he was sure he was gone, Marx tumbled out of the bookshelf he had climbed onto.Looking up in advance had let him evade the falling net, but now he was alone in the archive by himself. The only thing to do now was to break his friends out of the dungeon. Hah. Didn’t think I’d ever be on this side of a jailbreak. He hurried up the stairs.

Chapter Text

Magolor felt… uneasy, despite everything. It wasn’t a tense situation at all, but he felt like he was about to do something bad. He wasn’t, of course, it was just a question, but it feels different to ask questions when you’re just aware enough that you might not want to know the answer. Of course, at the time this had happened, he wasn’t able to experience thoughts that complex. He had just turned three, after all. Though he was, as his caretaker told him, “intellectually stellar,” he was still just a child. 

He tried knocking on the door, but his gloves were too thick compared to his hands to make any kind of sound. The idea of simply taking a glove off didn’t occur to him, so he just grabbed the doorknob and twisted it. He didn’t have a traditional family situation, but he always felt that the man sitting behind the desk in the room was his father. He knew he wasn’t, and was taught that he was special in having neither a father nor a mother, but everything he knew a father as applied to him. Nonetheless, he had no intention of saying it to him, as he was always a stickler for being correct.

Magolor entered the room, giving his non-father a wave as a greeting. “Hi! I wanted to ask something.”

He looked up from the book he was writing in. “Ah, hello Magolor. What is it you want to ask?”

“Well, a few days ago, on my…” He paused, trying to remember what the word sounded like. “Bert day…”

“Not quite. But keep going.”

“Okay. You were teaching me about magic, and how I could… do it. And I made those big purple balls, and I’ve been trying to get better with them, but…” What he was about to say wasn’t exactly what he was thinking, but he didn’t know how he was supposed to put it, so he continued with what he had in mind. “I don’t like them.”

“Oh?” He got out of his chair. “Why not? Are they hard to control?”

“Yeah, but… that isn’t all…” Magolor tilted his head. “They feel kinda… evil? In all the movies and books, the bad guys are always the ones who use things like that.”

“Ah.” He stared at the wall, unsure of how to respond. “That’s a hard thing to explain. But I’ll give it a try.” He walked over to a lamp in the corner of the room and turned it on. “Here. Come look at this lamp.” He turned it on. “When I turn the lamp on, it makes the room brighter, right?”

Magolor nodded. “Yeah… the light comes from the bulb, right?”

“That it does. And do you remember what happened a few weeks ago when you looked at a lightbulb for too long?”

“It hurt.”

“Exactly. Now, you don’t like the orbs because they look evil, right?” Magolor nodded, and he continued. “Light can hurt you. And that’s bad. It seems great on the surface, but it can hurt just as much as darkness can. Now, let me turn off all the lights.” He flipped the lightswitch. Magolor made a small gasp, suddenly unable to make out anything but silhouettes. “Don’t worry, I’m still here. You’re safe.” He went back to his chair, and quietly tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him. “Ah, you heard that, right? Now let me do that again with the lights on.” He got up and turned the lights back on. He gave Magolor a loving pat on the head, then walked back over to the chair. “Did you hear that?”

For the first time since the demonstration had started, Magolor spoke. “When it was dark I heard something, but not now.”

“Right. When it was dark, you heard it, but not now. That’s a good thing about darkness. You start to notice things that can’t be seen.” Magolor’s wide-eyed engagement in the lesson very nearly made his caretaker feel bad about lying. He hadn’t, if fact, tapped the desk with the lights on, but Magolor didn’t have to know that.

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Perhaps remembering times like that was how Magolor tried to mentally remove himself from the present situation. If I just keep dissociating from the present, I won’t have to think about the horrors. It wasn’t helping much, he had to be honest with himself. But at least now he felt he could handle himself better than he used to. As opposed to the usual violent outbursts, he now found that he was able to get through experiences like this by only sobbing profusely and snuggling up to the nearest person he trusted. Fortunately, Taranza was there. 

Unfortunately, he was still in the net, and Dark Taranza was carrying them and watching their behaviour. “Awww, is chocolate egg the second feeling scared? You want me to let you out? Perhaps I will if you’re good… Although… watching you all squirm is quite the sight to behold.”

Daroach scowled, trying not to electrocute any new parts of himself. “You sick fuck, some of us are kids.”

“I don’t mean it in that sense. At least, not for all of you. I find it amusing, really.” Dark Taranza brought the net down to the dungeon. He magically split the net to separate Magolor from the rest of the group. He was now crying harder. “Since you seemed sooo excited to be here, I’ll get you your room first!” He opened a cell door, put him in, locked it, and then released him from the web. 

Magolor immediately started trying to break out, from warping through the bars in the door to simply breaking it. His efforts were in vain. “Urgh! Why? Why can’t I get out?” Fear was starting to show on his face again.

“My my, you’ve got some fire in you for someone so small…” He clicked his horns against one another. “I’ll have fun with you.”

“I sincerely hope you don’t do that.”

Once he had gotten everyone into separate cells, he gave the keys a twirl. “Well, I must bid you all farewell. And by farewell, I mean I’ll be seeing you again once we’ve figured out what we’re going to do with you.” He gave an infuriating smile to Taranza. “I’ll make sure I figure you out too, my little woodland creature. You gave me quite a scare, you know.” Without another word, he ascended the staircase with the keys in hand.

Magolor, trying to shake the fear from his mind, looked across the hall at Elfilin, who was in that cell. “Marx isn’t here. Did he get away?”

Taranza slumped against the wall. “I’d certainly hope so.”

Daroach spoke in a hollow voice. “Dark Taranza kept saying ‘we.’ Who, other than him, would be involved? And on his side to boot.”

Shadow Kirby sighed deeply. “The king. It’s gotta be him.”

Kirby flinched. “The king? Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. I hear about him a lot, though. And none of what I hear about him is good. Dark Taranza definitely knows him though. He talks about him all the time.”

Elfilin pressed his face against the bars. “I guess, if we’re already talking about him, I might as well ask… has he always been like that?”

Shadow Kirby nodded. “As far as I can remember, yes. He’s always acted like he owns the world and everyone in it.”

Magolor looked down, those words echoing in the back of his head. His voice was forlorn. “I wonder why…”

--. .- -.-- / -... .- -... -.-- / .--- .- .. .-..

Marx made his way up out of the staircase and into the lobby of the castle. It was uncomfortably empty. He trotted over to the place that was obviously a dungeon. At the bottom of the stairs, he saw everyone that had been taken away, locked up. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t free them. That left only one thing to do: Get the keys from Dark Taranza.

He left the dungeon to try and get the drop on him. If the so-called King the others mentioned was real, he’d probably be somewhere upstairs, which meant that Dark Taranza would be there too. With no time to lose, he hurried up the stairs. The second floor was hardly a concern to him, he went straight to the stairs that led up again.

.... . .-. . / .-- . / --. ---

Shadow Daroach pulled open the door. “Ah! If it isn’t my two favourite people! Kirby and Meta Knight! What brings you here?”

Shadow Kirby ran past him. “Things are a little uncomfy back home, so we’re coming here for dinner! Um, if you want.”

He gave them a warm, accommodating smile. “Of course.”

Dark Meta Knight cast his eyes across the room to where Shadow Kirby was already getting a little too inquisitive. “Now, Kirby, I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, but if you break anything in Daroach’s house, we will be leaving and finding somewhere else to stay. Be careful.”

He stepped away from the cabinet. “Right. Sorry!”

Shadow Daroach immediately made for the kitchen, clearly having nothing better to be doing. “Meta, why don’t you tell me about what’s been going on?”

Dark Meta Knight sat down in a large, comfortable chair. “Ah, it’s the king. He’s being rather irritable about something or another.”

“I hear that. Seems he’s always, to quote you, ‘being rather irritable.”

Dark Meta Knight couldn’t help but chuckle at that one. “It’s even more inane this time. I don’t even almost know what he’s trying to get me to care about now. Something about a crastwhocares and a reservwhatever.”

“Yikes. Don’t tell me any more, you’ll give Kirby a headache.”

“Too late!” Shadow Kirby called, trying and failing to hold in a giggle,

Before long, the other two were laughing as well.

A few weeks later, there was another knock on Shadow Daroach’s door. He pulled the door open. “Kirby! To what do I owe the honour?”

His crestfallen look changed only slightly when the door opened and revealed his friend behind it. “I’m feeling really lonely…”

“Oh, that’s terrible! Come on in. It’s cold out, and I’ve got a fire going.” He brought him inside, wrapped a blanket around him, and motioned to have him sit on the sofa. “Now what’s been going on? Is Meta okay?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t talked to me. Or looked at me. We haven’t trained in a week, and every time I ask why, he ignores me.”

“That’s awful. Stay here, I’ll go find your friend Marx. Er, if you want me to.” He approached the closed door.

“Won’t find him. I tried it already.” Shadow Kirby mumbled.

“Okay.” Shadow Daroach sat next to him. “How about this? You can sleep here tonight, and in the morning I’ll go talk to Meta and see what’s going on. He’ll tell me. I’ve known him since before you knew your own name. Okay?” No response from Shadow Kirby. “Hey. How about before you go to bed, we can play some games to get your mind off of things?”

“Okay…”

The next morning, Shadow Daroach made breakfast, and after Shadow Kirby had eaten, he went to the door. “I’ll be back in a little while, alright? I’ll go talk some sense into Meta for you. I won’t be long.” Leaving those words behind, he left.

No matter how long Shadow Kirby waited, he never came back through the door again.

Even now, as he was stuck in a cell, all his hopes hinging on someone he had just met that morning, he still thought about him. He looked across the hall at Shadow Magolor. “When we get out of here, can I talk to him?”

Even though he hadn’t specified who he was talking about, Shadow Magolor still gave him a knowing, reassuring nod. “Of course you can.”

-... .- -.-. -.- ... - --- .-. -.-- / .--- ..- -- .--. ... -.-. .- .-. .

On the fourth floor of the castle, Marx saw a room that was painted bright yellow. He cautiously stepped inside. It was definitely a bedroom, and the garish decorations suggested it belonged to Dark Taranza. There were two sheets of paper on a desk. They looked like entries in a journal or a diary or something of the sort. Immediately, he started reading them.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written one of these, but something big has happened. The gemstone emblem has come literally crashing back into the spotlight, but I was able to get a hold of the lone person at its head. It’s doubtful this Magolor person even knows the significance of his vessel, but being able to stop this potential insurgent preemptively may finally be what I’ve needed all along.

Marx read the next one.

It may be wrong of me to be happy that others are misbehaving, but nothing has brought me greater joy than catching that escaped prisoner Magolor trespassing alongside several cohorts from the other side of the mirror. Bringing them to justice… the thought almost makes me giddy. As if I’m on the cusp of everything I’ve ever wanted.

Nearby, Marx found a ring of keys. He slipped them under his hat and left.

Dark Taranza, coming down from the fifth floor, spotted his hat bouncing as he ran. He raised an eyebrow and hurried after him.

Chapter Text

Marx half ran, half tumbled into the dungeon, snatched the keys from under his hat, and started trying keys at random in each cell door. He got open the ones with Elfilin and Shadow Magolor before he heard a voice behind him. “Well, well, well, what do we have here? An intruder freeing his cohorts?” Dark Taranza appeared in the stairway.

“I’ll handle it this time.” Shadow Magolor jumped from behind Marx, launching two white glowing spheres tinged with yellow. 

“Augh!” Dark Taranza didn’t seem to be exactly hurt by them, but they definitely had an effect, considering he froze in place and ceased his attack. It gave Marx more than enough time to free everyone else. As they bolted up the stairs, he simply let them go by in a daze.

Magolor was already at the top of the stairs when he realized everyone had followed him other than Shadow Magolor. “Hey, Shadow, what are you doing? We can go, y’know.”

He was down at the bottom of the stairs, looking at Dark Taranza with something similar to sympathy on his face. “Why are you always so angry?”

“Ang…ry…?” Dark Taranza looked up at him in sheer confusion. “What are you talking about? I’m never angry!”

“I see.” It was plain in his voice that he didn’t believe him. “When you get time to unwind, I want you to really think about what you want. Because… well, let’s just say something’s telling me this isn’t it.” Leaving those words behind to echo in his mind, Shadow Magolor gracefully floated up the stairs to join the others. “So, are we leaving?”

Once they had gotten back to where the ship was, Elfilin made sure no one was nearby, then asked his question to Shadow Magolor. “All that stuff you were saying to Dark Taranza earlier… what was that?”

“Oh, right.” He held a hand out in front of him, one of his shining spheres floating above it. “I never told you all how these work, did I?”

Bandee tilted their head. “You did not.”

“Ah. Okay. These basically pacify people when I hit them with it. It’s a little… forceful for my liking, but it doesn’t hurt them, and I only use it when I feel like they’re going to hurt me or someone else I care about.”

Magolor cocked his eyebrow. “They’re attacking you and the main thing you’re concerned about is that the Calm Down Spell is too forceful?”

“I guess you have a point. Anyway, I’ve never seen anyone react as strongly to it as Dark Taranza did. I’m not an expert, but I imagine that means he’s been really angry for a really long time.”

The group as a whole seemed to telepathically have a discussion about how strange that was, then Shadow Kirby entered the ship. “Can I talk to him now?”

Shadow Magolor followed behind. “Sure.” As he came in, he faced the others who were still outside. “I’m gonna close the door.” The door swung shut from below, leaving the others outside. He pressed a few buttons on the advanced, yet fairly understandable console. There was a sound of a phone ringing, then it seemed to connect.

“Hello?” There was a hopeful tinge to the voice that answered.

“Hi! It’s me!” There was more excitement in Shadow Magolor’s voice than he had ever shown to Shadow Kirby or anyone outside the ship.

Shadow Daroach’s response was a half laugh, half sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you’re okay… How have things been going on that planet? Is it… still inhabited?”

“It is. Not only that, but it is as you thought. This is where you came from all those years ago. I’m guessing you’re curious as to how I know?”

“I am, yes. How do you know?”

Shadow Magolor patted Shadow Kirby on the head. “I met a few people over here. Don’t worry, they’ve been treating me well. And… one of them told me he knows who you are. He wants to talk.” He moved aside.

Shadow Kirby approached the microphone. “Daroach?”

“Kirby!” He cried out in ecstasy. “Oh, you have no idea how worried I’ve been! When Mag said someone wanted to talk with me I was worried it was someone bad. Are you okay? How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been doing okay… things have been really hard since you went away. I’ve been missing you a lot. Especially since… Meta Knight never went back to normal.”

Shadow Magolor raised an eyebrow at that, but he was no longer part of the conversation. Shadow Daroach sighed from the other side of the phone. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course I can.”

.-. .- - / -.. .- -..

Almost the instant the door had closed, Magolor turned to face the others. “I don’t trust him for even a minute. He’s up to something, I know it.”

Daroach gave a rather disinterested wave of his hand. “We know, we know. You don’t trust anyone other than me, Kirby, and Taranza.”

Bandee’s eyes turned sad. “He doesn’t trust me?”

“No, I don’t.” Magolor said curtly. “But this isn’t the same thing. This is less like the usual distrust of ‘this person could easily hurt me and I don’t know yet if they would or not,’” He indicated Bandee. “And more like ‘this person is actively doing something bad as we speak and we should be doing more than we are to stop them.’”

Elfilin barely noticed how clearly offended Bandee was. “So… what is he doing? He seems like a really nice guy to me.”

“There’s someone else on that ship. I heard him talking to them. And whoever it is, he doesn’t want us to know. I’ll bet anything he’s got an accomplice or a torture victim or something in there.”

Daroach seemed no more convinced than he had before. “And if you think I should turn against the guy just because you heard something that might have just been a phone call or something, you’re out of your mind.”

Magolor started sputtering indignantly. “It couldn’t have been a phone call, because after he was done talking, I heard him shut a door and then dial a phone. Who dials a phone after talking on a phone?”

Bandee’s tolerance was wearing thin. “Maybe he was talking to someone else. Are you dumb?”

“I’ve got more!” He shouted. “How about the fact that he exists at all, huh? That book said there was no Lor Starcutter on this side of the mirror, which means he has to exist because of some other thing. Do you really think it’s likely that that other thing is good?”

“Oh, right.” Daroach shrugged. “You never bring it up, so I honestly forgot that you were chosen before birth by the high council of people who should’ve died a long time ago to become a god or whatever. …Y’know, now that I think about it, that seems like the kind of thing you’d absolutely bring up more often than you do.”

“He has a point.” Marx nodded, ignoring Daroach. “We know about his relationship with Shadow Daroach, but we know almost nothing about him.”

Elfilin cocked his head. “That’s not really his fault, though. I mean, none of us ever asked. Why would we know?”

Bandee held their hands out. “Exactly!”

“Fine.” Magolor scoffed. “I’ll wait until we actually get to grill him before I do anything hasty. And, because I’m a good person and an even better friend, I will accept your apologies when I’m proven right.”

“Not the best attitude to have here…” Taranza offered.

Once the door opened again, the two people who had gone in came out. They both looked happy. While the door was still open, Taranza pointed inside. “Hey, Shadow Magolor. Do you mind if I look around for a bit in there? I’m curious.”

“Of course I don’t mind! Search around to your heart’s content!” As he cheerily waved Taranza in, he rubbed his thumb against the bottom of his scarf. “Well, now that we’ve gotten out of there, what’s the plan?”

Magolor made an almost identical thoughtful expression. “Y’know, Shadow, most of us don’t really know you. I was wondering if you could tell us more about yourself. We’ll reciprocate, of course, but probably one-on-one rather than in front of everyone. Don’t want to spend too much time in one place, you know?”

Shadow Magolor nodded. “Okay. I might as well start with the first thing I remember.”

.... . .... . .... . .... .-

Shadow Magolor was faintly aware of a pain in the back of his head. As he became more aware of his surroundings, the pain became stronger. He picked himself off the ground, coughing from what smelled like smoke in the air. He noticed a reprieve from the heat in the form of a nearby ice cooler. He pulled the lid open and stuck his head in. That helped the headache a bit. The pain fading slightly allowed him to hear someone groaning nearby. He followed the sound to its source– a small hole in the ground.

Inside the hole was someone he wasn’t quite sure if he’d seen before. It was a good thing he had heard him groaning, because he was clearly not well. The groans seemed to be an effort to call for someone, anyone, to help him. “Hello?” Shadow Magolor called.

“Gnrrrhh…” The person in the hole mumbled something that seemed like an attempt to form a sentence or word. 

“Poor thing…” Shadow Magolor scooped him up. “I’ll get you somewhere safe.” He looked around at the inhospitable surroundings. “And/or die trying.” The listless person who had started to grow cold was warming up, cradled in Shadow Magolor’s hands. A slight movement from him told Shadow Magolor that he had things on himself. He stuck a hand into his cape and pulled out two things: An engraved key, and a note. The note said, “To Magolor: I’m sorry. I know it won’t fix anything, but I kept this drawing of yourself that you made when you were a lot younger.” On the other side of the note was the drawing in question. It wasn’t very good, but it had an undeniable earnestness to it. The engraving on the key said, “Stonehill base G3.”

While he was trying to work out where exactly Stonehill base G3 was, he heard the person he was holding start to make sounds that were closer to a comprehensible language. “Hnnh… thengoo…”

Shadow Magolor still didn’t quite understand what he was trying to say, so he continued looking for whatever the key opened. Next to the ice cooler, there was a shed. The door said “A1.” He quickly went in. On the wall, there was a map labeled “Stonehill.” There were a variety of small buildings on the map, each with a designation like B9 or J4. After locating G3 on the map, he carried himself and his barely conscious cargo to where it was. After unlocking the hatch in the ground, he went in.

Inside was a hallway with multiple rooms, and he immediately set to looking for a comfortable place to put this strange person. He set him on a couch and went to see if there was any water around. If there wasn’t, he’d have to get some ice from the cooler and wait for it to melt. Fortunately, there was running water. He put a glass of it next to the guy on the couch, and continued looking. At the end of the right side of the hallway, there was a room with a decent amount of food stocked. On the other side of the hallway from here, there was a rather comfortable-looking bedroom. On the back wall of the hallway, opposite the entrance hatch, was another door. Behind it was a dimly lit room with a desktop computer. It was already on. He found a folder full of what looked to be research logs, so he opened the first one.

This is a series of research logs regarding two ancient artifacts that were brought to this world at its conception— the Krasstwyrman gemstone and the reservoir of Aellvough. 

Before he could read more, a voice reached him from behind. “Hey… can you… come back…?”

He immediately bolted out of the room and back to where he’d put the person. The glass of water had gone from full to half full. “Hey, are you feeling better?”

“A… little…” He coughed a few times, weakly.

“Okay. Drink the rest of that water.” After he complied, Shadow Magolor went looking for a blanket. He brought one back and laid it on him. “There you go. Now, can you tell me your name?”

He coughed again. “Marx…” His voice was still weak.

He looked back at the note he had in his cape. “I’m Magolor. Just stay there, okay? I’ll make sure you get better.”

..- .... / --- .... / -... .- -.-. -.- / - --- / - .... . / .-.. .- -... / .- --. .- .. -.

“Hold on.” Marx stopped his story. “Is, er, ‘Shadow’ Marx the person you’re hiding in your ship?” Magolor stared at him in bewilderment.

Shadow Magolor fixed him with a penetrating gaze. “I have no idea what you mean. There’s no one in there.” He had spoken in a tone that starkly contrasted his usual kindly demeanor. 

Everyone who heard him looked at each other uncomfortably. Magolor tried– and failed– to hide the smug grin on his face.

Chapter Text

Before Marx could begin a more irate line of questioning, he was cut off by, oddly enough, Magolor. “Alright, well, we’ll just leave that alone for the time being. How do you spell those two artifacts?” He had pulled a notepad and pen out of his cape. “For research purposes.”

“Right. They were K-R-A-S-S-T-W-Y-R-M-A-N and A-E-L-L-V-O-U-G-H respectively. Do you… need me to repeat any of that?”

Magolor flicked the pen upwards. “Nope! Now…hey, wait a minute.”

“What?” Elfilin twitched, then looked around. “Oh no.”

Daroach’s pupils shrunk. “Where… where’s Shadow Kirby?”

Bandee hopped up. “They’re gone!”

Shadow Magolor looked around frantically. “That’s bad! We have to find him! Whoever’s responsible for this, they’ve gotta be at the castle!”

They were there within minutes. As soon as they entered, however, they noticed something in the air. Not something that could be seen, or heard, or felt, or even smelled, but it was definitely there. The inside of the castle had never felt quite as oppressive as it did now, and there was a distinct reason they could all point to as to why this was.

It was empty. Unnaturally so. No guards. No one in the kitchen or the dining room. No prisoners in the dungeon. No Dark Taranza. No one.

Magolor shuddered. “H-hey… guys… what… happened?”

Taranza rubbed his chin. “We were only gone for about an hour…”

Elfilin stuck his head out the door. “We should split up and look for him. …Into groups, of course.”

.. -. / -.-. .- ... . / -.-- --- ..- / - .... --- ..- --. .... - / .. / .... .- -.. / . -. --- ..- --. .... / .--. . --- .--. .-.. . / -.. .. ... .- .--. .--. . .- .-. .. -. --. / ..- -. -.. . .-. / -- -.-- ... - . .-. .. --- ..- ... / -.-. .. .-. -.-. ..- -- ... - .- -. -.-. . ... --..-- / .. / .... .- ...- . / -. --- -

The moss on the ground made running feel rather pleasant. At least, physically it felt pleasant. Kirby and Elfilin were still rather panicked. Elfilin seemed to get tired after a while, and they found a place to stop and reenergize. Kirby sat down next to him. “Oh yeah! I wanted to ask you something. You know a lot about dreams and stuff, right?”

He held a tiny hand to his chin. “Well, yeah, I guess so. Why?”

“Well, I’ve had a few dreams which are… weird. And they’re the only ones I really remember when I wake up. Usually, they’re not very good…”

Elfilin’s brow furrowed. “But what about the Fountain of Dreams? Isn’t it’s whole thing that it… makes that not happen?”

Kirby shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah… but sometimes something slips through, I guess. And they always feel so real, even though they’re not.”

“Uhh, I don’t really know what that could mean. Could you give me some more details?”

Kirby nodded. “Okay! Well, they usually start with something like a choice, or something that could have gone a few different ways. When I wake up, I remember it happening before, but it was never something that happened the same way. Like, I remember that after what happened with Magolor I just went home and fell asleep, but in the dream, I went for a walk and ran into Daroach. Next thing I knew, It was raining hard outside and I heard someone fall in front of my house. When I opened the door, I saw Magolor. And he… looked like he was about to die.”

Elfilin exhaled. “Okay. And, when you actually chose to just go home and sleep, was that… a hard choice?”

“Yeah. It took me a minute or something to decide.”

“I see. Well, maybe your mind is just second-guessing itself and wondering if you made the right choice. And the fact that they don’t go well is a sort of defense mechanism to reassure you that you were right.”

Kirby slowly shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”

“It’s not? Why?”

“...Let me tell you about last night.”

After Kirby recounted all the details of the dream he had the previous night, he looked up and noticed Elfilin looking troubled. “So, do you have any idea what that could mean?”

“...”

“Elfilin?”

“...”

“...Are you okay?”

“That’s… odd. That’s really… I don’t know.” He shook his head.

Kirby frowned. “But aren’t you supposed to know everything about dreams? There must be some reason why they happen.”

Elfilin shuddered. “I guess I don’t. Whatever it is, I’ve never heard of anything like it before. Um, should we keep looking?”

Kirby nodded, looking somewhat disappointed. “Yeah.”

--- .... / --. --- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .. / ... ..- .-. . / -.. --- / .-- --- -. -.. . .-. / .-- .... -.-- / - .... .- - ... / .... .- .--. .--. . -. .. -. --.

The ground was hot. It had Daroach taking care to keep his feet off the ground as much as he possibly could, lest he burn his feet. After walking for a while, however, he began to move more normally as he adjusted to the heat. He looked behind him at Shadow Magolor, who was moving gracefully and unperturbed. “Heat’s not bothering you?”

“I’m used to it. Do you see any sign of Shadow Kirby?”

Daroach shook his head. “No, nothing. You?”

“Nope.” They continued on in silence. Shadow Magolor wiped his forehead. “I’m sorry. This is weird.”

“The fact that I look like him, you mean? I have to say, the idea’s pretty weird to me too.” Daroach kept walking. “If we can just avoid that part for right now, though, there’s a path split up here. Do you want to go up or down?”

Shadow Magolor examined what was visible of the two paths. “Are you suggesting we split up?”

“No. I’d rather stay near you. If we split up and got lost, we wouldn’t exactly be able to find each other again. Besides…” He paused. “I’ve recently found that leaving people by themselves in a tense situation goes badly more often than not.”

“Hm?”

“Nothing.” He jumped to the upper path. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

As they continued on, Shadow Magolor scratched his head. “You know, since I’m going to presumably be around you guys for a while, I want to avoid ruffling any feathers if I can.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I guess I mean to ask if there are any things that I should avoid. Subjects, actions, et cetera. Anything that’ll make people upset, really.”

Daroach nodded. “I see.” He took a long breath in and out. “Well, for starters, Kirby. If he knows something that needs to be done and he’s not doing it, it’s because either someone else is, or he doesn’t know how. It’s perfectly fine to tell him what you need, but don’t tell him what to do. It’s likely you’d be pushing a bit far there.” Then he shuddered slightly. “And don’t take his food without asking. He gets real mad.”

“Okay, good to know! What about the others?”

“Right. For Bandee, they’re generally pretty tolerant of most things, but if you ever imply that they’re not unique, or that they’re unimportant… well, their opinion of you would go down a lot. As for Marx… I haven’t got a clue. I’ve never seen him get really upset about something, and frankly I don’t ever want to. If he ever starts getting uncomfortably serious, find out what he wants and let him have it, no questions asked.”

Shadow Magolor’s eyes went slightly wide. “Are all of your friends as scary as you make them sound?”

“Relax, they’re not gonna kill you. …Well, let me rephrase. Most of them are probably not gonna kill you. …That sounds bad. Point is, don’t worry that much about it. Onto Taranza, don’t ever insinuate that something’s his fault when it’s not. Not because it’ll upset him, but because he’ll believe you and he doesn’t need more things to feel guilty about. Elfilin only dislikes the obvious no-nos, like violent crimes or things of that nature, I have no tolerance for anyone who harms my loved ones… oh, and also there’s Magolor.”

Shadow Magolor nodded. “Okay, and what about him? He seems pretty easygoing, and I don’t imagine another version of me would be mad about all that much.”

“Right! It’s just a few things that I’d say to avoid, and a good amount of them become acceptable once he gets to know you well enough. But, to name what’s at the top of my head… no asking about his past, no touching beyond a handshake, no implying that he’s a bad person, no requesting that he sleep in an unlocked room, no bringing objects below freezing temperatures near him without prior warning, no physical restraining, no…”

.-.. .- ..- -. -.. .-. -.-- / .-.. .. ... -

“You know, I can’t help but wonder.” Taranza scanned the walls of the dimly lit mansion. “Why did you want to go with me?”

“Do I need a reason?” Marx kicked a ball at a nearby scarfy. “I just wanted to hang with my pal. My buddy. My chum. My-”

“Stop saying synonyms.” Taranza descended through a hole in the floor. “I’m not dumb enough to think that there was really no reason.”

“Oookayyy, fine, you got me. There might have been one teeny tiny reason. We’re on the same page about the new guy, right?”

Taranza craned his neck to look at the ceiling. “I believe so. Assuming you also believe he’s… fishy.”

“Heheh. Don’t phrase it like that. What if Kine’s listening?”

“Heh, heh, heheh, ha, ha…hahahahahahaha!”

Marx rolled ahead of him, looking back. “That wasn’t even that funny.”

“What! I thought it was hilarious!” Taranza was trying to stifle barks of laughter so he could manage the impossible task of speaking coherently. “Ah, anyway, continue. You wanted to talk about Shadow Magolor?”

“Yeah. You went into his ship after he came out of there with Shadow Kirby. Why?”

“Oh, that. You see…” He paused for dramatic effect. “I was checking the door. The one that our mysterious other person seems to be locked behind. I didn’t open it, but I did find out what keeps it locked: A card reader. If we had that card, we’d be able to open the door.”

Marx brightened. “Ah hah ! Nice find, spider-man!”

Taranza gave him a disapproving look. “As my reward, can I ask you to never call me that again?”

“I dunno, can you?”

- .- .-. .- -. --.. .- / .-.. --- .-- - .. . .-. --. --- -..

“No breaking windows, no sneaking up on him… oh. And no saying ‘I’ll be right back’ unless you’re actually going to be right back.”

Shadow Magolor stared straight ahead in bewilderment. “I’m so sorry, I think I missed some of that. Could you please-”

“You want me to repeat it?” Daroach gave him a friendly smile.

“Not all of it, just the ones from-”

“I gotcha. No asking about his past, no touching beyond a handshake, no implying that he’s a bad person, no requesting that he sleep in an unlocked room, no bringing objects below freezing temperatures near him without prior warning,”

.- -. -.. / .- ... / .. - / .- .-.. .-- .- -.-- ... / .... .- ... --..-- / .-. --- -.-. -.- / -.-. .-. ..- ... .... . ... / ... -.-. .. ... ... --- .-. …

“Ghakh! Pleh! Get off of me!” Magolor swatted at the light blue creature that had attached itself to his face. After he pulled it off, he threw a dark sphere at it. “I hate this place.”

“Are you hurt?” Bandee trotted over to his side.

“No, I can keep going. I want to get out of this area quick-” He stopped short of finishing the sentence, looking intensely at the ground. “Bandee, do you see that?” He pointed. “Footprints.”

“Ah!” They turned their gaze to where he was pointing. They led into some nearby bushes. “Do you think they’re Shadow Kirby’s?”

Magolor examined them closely. “No. They’re a little too big to be from him, don’t you think?” He followed them to where they led. “Notice how they go into these bushes but don’t come out?”

“That means that whoever made these footprints is still in the bushes!” Bandee exclaimed. “Um. How exactly would that work?”

Magolor moved his hands around where the vegetation was at its densest. “Maybe there’s some-hey. I found it. There’s a hole here.”

Bandee nodded. “Well, okay, but we’re looking for Shadow Kirby right now. You just said that whoever’s down here isn’t them. There’s no reason to go into that hole until after we’ve found them.”

Magolor tilted his head. “Really? I don’t think I agree. We can assume that he either ran off on his own, or was forcibly taken. Either way, he’d have to have ended up somewhere meaningful. If this isn’t it, we still might find a clue as to where he’s gone. Or, to the bigger picture.”

“I guess that makes sense. Let’s go.” Bandee pushed the branches aside and jumped in. Magolor followed close behind. “Whoa…”

The room they had found themselves in was well-lit, and very large. On their left was a plaque on the wall that read, “SECRET BASE OF THE SCANNITE: B1F.” Magolor read it carefully. “Hm. Interesting.”

“What is the scannite? I’ve never heard it before.”

Magolor continued moving forward without answering. “There’s a lot of desks here. They look like they haven’t been used in a really long time.”

Bandee looked around. “Whoever came down here, I think they went down those stairs.” They ran over to a staircase. “Let’s go-Magolor?”

Magolor was hovering next to a desk, looking down at a slip of paper in his hand. “N2 before N1… I see.”

“What?”

“We’re going.” He rushed over to the stairs and started descending. 

As soon as they got to the bottom, a voice rang out behind them. “Ah, good evening! I love having guests!”

They turned around to see Dark Taranza emerging from the shadow cast by the staircase. Bandee got into a fighting stance. “Where’s Shadow Kirby?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He smirked.

“Mmf! Grmf!” A muffled cry emanated from behind him.

Bandee shot Magolor a sideways glance. Magolor met their eyes and gave a quick nod. Instantly they leapt toward Dark Taranza, putting him on the floor. “I’ll handle him! Magolor, go release Shadow Kirby!”

Magolor darted past them. “Ah. I see. They were… your footprints.”

“Fuck. I wasn’t supposed to be seen over here.” Dark Meta Knight grumbled, his hand tightly holding Shadow Kirby’s mouth shut. “Fine. Don’t come closer or I’ll kill him.”

“Grk- AARGH!” Dark Taranza cried out in pain from behind him.

“He’s out. What’s going… on here.” Bandee stopped short.

“I’ll say it again. Go back now or he dies.” Dark Meta Knight stared them down.

Magolor sighed. “Fine. We can’t play risky here. Let’s go.” They turned around and started to leave.

Dark Meta Knight exhaled. “Consider yourself lucky.” He whispered to Shadow Kirby.

Above them, on the stairs, Magolor held his ear to the wood. He whispered something to Bandee. “Got it.” They leapt over the railing, hit the wall on the other side and then jumped off the wall, springing spearfirst at Dark Meta Knight. As soon as they hit him, they grabbed Shadow Kirby and jumped up, grabbing Magolor’s waiting hand.

Magolor heaved them back over the railing, and carried them up the stairs. “Let’s get out of here as fast as possible.” Shadow Kirby was breathing heavily. He couldn’t seem to keep up with them. “Bandee, can you carry him? I’ll lead us back to the ship.”

Bandee hoisted him onto their back and ran after Magolor. They clambered their way out of the hole and ran back through the ruins.

Chapter Text

“Argh…” Dark Taranza picked himself off the floor. “Meta Knight, I do trust that you- where is he?” He darted over to Dark Meta Knight, grabbed him, and shook him awake. “What happened? How did you lose him?”

“Gh-” He jumped to his feet. “That little bastard! They got me with a spear!”

Dark Taranza glared at him, with none of his usual flamboyance. “And you mean to tell me that you let them do that?”

“They caught me off guard!”

“WHY were you off guard? You heard them attacking me!”

“Th-they fucking left!” Dark Meta Knight sputtered angrily.

“If they left, how did they attack you?”

“I heard-” He cut himself off. “Look, I’ll bring you down there now. If you get any good ideas about how to open it, that’d make things easy.” He began walking to the stairway on the other side of the room. “Come on.”

.-- .... .- - / .. ... / .... . / .--. .-.. .- -. -. .. -. --.

As soon as they got back to the ship, they hustled Shadow Kirby inside. “We’re here.” Bandee put the nearly catatonic Shadow Kirby on the floor where he could process what had happened. “You’re safe.”

Magolor gave Shadow Kirby a nod. “I’m gonna try to gather the others, you stay here with him.” He backed out of the ship.

Bandee sat down next to him. “What happened?”

Shadow Kirby didn’t move. “I think we were talking about a cooler… and then I… I don’t know. I fell asleep or something. When I woke up, it was kinda dark, and there was a hand on my mouth, and I heard the mean Taranza say ‘I heard someone. Hide.’”

“Do you know why they brought you there?”

“No. I’ve never even seen that place before. But I… I know Meta from over here isn’t a good person like I used to think he was, but… I never thought he’d do something like that to me.” Tears formed in his eyes.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” Bandee slid forward and hugged him. “We’re not going to let it happen again. None of us are. You’ll be safe. I promise.”

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“Oh! Good! Daroach! Come over here!” Magolor waved.

“Magolor?” Daroach rushed over. “What’s up? Where’s Bandee?”

“We found Shadow Kirby! He’s back at the ship right now, Bandee’s protecting him. Oh, and remember what you told me a few days ago about the guy who’s supposedly not going to be a problem? He’s a problem!”

Daroach lowered his voice. “You mean Dark Meta Knight?”

Magolor nodded. “Yes, him. Anyway, we gotta find the others and go back! Come on! You too, Shadow!”

Shadow Magolor rushed to catch up with them. “Wait! Where did you find him?”

“We don’t have time for this! Let’s go! ” Magolor led them to a nearby mirror door which would take them somewhere unexpected.

“Alright, we’re back!” Magolor called as he reentered the ship. “Is he okay? Nothing happened while I was gone?”

Bandee nodded. “Everything’s okay. They’re… really upset about what happened, but they’re not hurt.”

Elfilin gazed out the door. “It’s getting late, what do we do?”

Taranza clapped his hands. “Well, let us think things through. We could go back through to the other side of the mirror for the night, but Shadow Kirby and Shadow Magolor would not have a place to sleep. We cannot leave them over here because Shadow Kirby could get kidnapped again, and we cannot get them a spare place to sleep in Castle Dedede or the Lor Starcutter because those two could come through behind us and find a more large-scale way of making things worse. That leaves us with the third option: We all stay here near the mirror and sleep in shifts to ensure none of them get up to anything bad.”

Daroach drummed the dull edges of his claws against his other hand. “Great idea, one problem: Sleep where exactly?”

“Well…” Taranza’s brow furrowed. He slowly looked around the room.

“Absolutely not, Taranza. If we’re doing this, I’m not sleeping in here.” Magolor cut in.

Taranza sighed. “I know. It’s just… I don’t know what to do.”

Bandee’s face lit up. “I do! Hang on. I’ll be back in a while.” They bolted out of the ship and sprinted to the Dimension Mirror. 

“And then I lifted them over the railing and we high-tailed it out of there as fast as possible. Shadow Kirby here was in a bit of shock, so Bandee carried him. Once we got back here, I left them in the ship so Bandee could guard him and I could find all of you.” After he was done expositing to the rest of the group, Magolor folded his hands in front of him.

Everyone nodded understandingly, with the exception of Shadow Magolor. “One more thing, I don’t think you told us where he was.”

“Yes I did. The secret base of the scannite.”

“And where did you find that?”

Magolor gave a nonchalant wave of his hand. “Oh, that’s what you meant. It’s in the ice palace. Hard to explain where because everything in there looks broadly the same, but we managed to find it after looking for a while.” He looked pointedly at Shadow Kirby.

“Is that right…” Shadow Magolor mused with quiet wonderment in his voice.

Shadow Kirby nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t remember it that well, but when we got out I know it was cold and the walls were icy.”

They heard the sound of someone running as Bandee returned, carrying a huge pile of things above their head. They set everything down on the ground outside. “I brought tents and sleeping bags!”

Taranza brightened. “Hey, that’ll work!” He turned to face Magolor. “Right?”

“How many?” He asked hopefully.

“Well, there were more than enough sleeping bags for all nine of us, so that’s no problem. We only have four tents, though.” They spread out the bags on the ground. “So it’d need to be split into three, two, two, and two.”

Magolor mulled it over for a few moments. “That’ll work. Let’s get to setting them up, shall we?”

About thirty minutes later, three of the tents were set up, and Magolor was helplessly tangled in the fourth. “These poles want me dead!”

Daroach approached with slow steps as he thrashed around in a cyclone of polyester. “I, uh, think the poles would be more cooperative if you weren’t putting them through the door. Do you need any help?”

“Hold on.” Magolor twisted himself and climbed out of the tent, which immediately formed itself into perfect shape, more stable than the others. “All according to plan, I’ve never been wrong in my life, et cetera.”

Completely unfazed, Marx quickly ran around the tents. “Now what?”

Taranza hubbed the horn that jutted out from the right side of his head. “Each group stays up for two and a half hours, then wakes up the next group and goes to sleep. Now it’s just a question of what groups.”

Magolor nodded at him. “Well, of course I want to go with-”

Kirby unthinkingly interrupted him. “Can I stay with Magolor?”

Magolor recoiled slightly, then made a quick recovery. “Er- of course! That’s what I was going to say all along, hee hee…” He wrung his hands.

Taranza was equally disappointed in not getting to spend the night with Magolor, but he was better at hiding it. “Okay, does anyone else have someone in mind?”

Shadow Kirby turned to face Bandee and Daroach. “Do you guys mind if we…”

Daroach nodded. “Sounds good.”

“I wanna go with Elfilin!” Marx announced.

Elfilin eyed him nervously. “I guess that’s okay…”

Taranza snapped his fingers. “Right. That leaves…” He spun around to look at Shadow Magolor. “Us. Okay. That works. No problems, right?”

It was at that moment that Magolor realized he had balled his hands into fists so tight they hurt. He quickly shook off whatever it was that had made him do that, and remembered the question. “Nope. We’re good.”

Daroach pretended not to notice the obvious reaction Magolor was having, and moved on to the next issue. “Which group is staying up first?”

Marx hopped up and down. “We will! I’m not that tired anyway.”

“I am…” Elfilin muttered.

“Don’t worry about that.” Marx smirked. “I’ll keep you awake.”

Magolor grinned wryly. “Don’t blow up anything important.”

“No promises! Now you guys go get some shuteye. We’ll wake up Taranza and Shadow Magolor when our shift is over.”

Magolor giggled in amusement as Kirby tried to make himself comfortable in the sleeping bag. “These are so comfy! I want to keep it.”

“I’ll sneak one to your house when we’re done here. You really should be trying to sleep, Kirby. We don’t know how much we’ll be able to sleep tonight.” After getting those words out, Magolor rolled over.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Kirby shifted in the bag. “Oh, right. There was something I wanted to ask.” Kirby waited for Magolor to acknowledge him before continuing. “You have extra outfits in the Lor, right?”

“Yeah, why? You wanna try ‘em on again?”

“Uh, no. I wanted to ask if you have any that are… white and green?”

Magolor’s breath paused. He wasn’t sure why. A wave of emotion so powerful it felt like it would crush him worked its way through his entire body, putting his heart in an ironclad grip. He had to physically force himself to start breathing again. He identified it as guilt, but he still didn’t understand why it was there or how it had stemmed from a white and green outfit he had no memory of even seeing. A minute had passed before he remembered that Kirby was still there and was looking at him with concern on his face. He decided to just tell him the truth. “No. I don’t have anything like that. Why?”

Kirby tilted his head. “Are you okay? You look really scared…”

Magolor regained a little more of his composure. “Yeah, I’m okay, I just… I wish we could lock that door. I know, it’s silly.”

Kirby nodded. “No, I get it. I promise I’ll protect you if someone bad tries to get in here, okay?”

“Thanks, Kirby.” Magolor smiled weakly.

... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / -- .- .-.. .. -.-. .. --- ..- ... / .. ... / -... .-. . .-- .. -. --.

Shadow Magolor was awoken by the abrupt sound of a zipper opening. It was Marx, peeking his face into the tent. “Hey hey hey, time to get to your shift! Up and at ‘em!” Taranza didn’t move. Marx jumped in and started shaking him violently. “WAKEY WAKEY EGGS AND BAKEY!”

Taranza blinked himself awake. “Eggs?”

“Of course that’s the thing you latch onto. It’s time for your shift. And wake up Kirby and Magolor when it’s over.” He ducked out of the tent, leaving the zipper open. As soon as he turned around, he saw Elfilin fast asleep on the ground. “Heh. Little weirdo.” He extended a wing and lifted him off the ground, nestling him comfortably between the two sides of his hat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taranza and Shadow Magolor emerging from their tent, and opened the door to get into his own.

Once he’d gotten them inside, he put Elfilin into one of the sleeping bags. As soon as he did, he opened his eyes. “What happened?” He mumbled. “When… shift… sleep…?”

“I left you alone for five seconds.” Marx said. “Now go back to bed.”

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Kirby pushed the sword against Magolor’s hands with all his might. He was fighting back hard, but Kirby was sure he’d be able to break that crown. Bandee, Meta Knight, and Dedede watched, cheering him on. There was no way he’d lose. No chance. Even if he didn’t really want to hurt him, he knew he didn’t have a choice. Magolor continued to struggle against the blade and Kirby continued his unrelenting attack. They both knew this wouldn’t continue for much longer. Kirby’s determination deepened… and his hand slipped off the handle of the sword.

That split second was all Magolor needed. He grabbed the blade and ripped the sword out of Kirby’s hands. Almost instantaneously, He swung it at the other three, knocking the consciousness out of their already weak bodies. He stared down at Kirby, eyes flaring in demonic triumph.

Kirby tried to inhale the sword out of his hands, but Magolor knocked him onto his back easily, then reached down and nonchalantly picked him up. “Heh heh heh. Too little, too late, Kirby. Oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m not gonna kill you. Yet. I’ll destroy everything and everyone you love, and then I’ll kill you. Or I won’t. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Kirby realized at this point that he had lost. His only way out was to try to talk himself out of this situation, which he’d never been all that good at. “Y-you don’t have to do this!”

“Yes, I do.” His response was quick. He created a magic rune around Kirby that immediately shrunk down and immobilized him.

“Why…?”

Instead of answering, Magolor reached up and placed Kirby on top of the crown. “Now try not to fall off. Not that you have any say in the matter, heh heh.” Kirby could only watch as Magolor approached Bandee’s unconscious body, lifted the giant sword, and brought it down in a swift motion. The only thing distracting him from the inevitability of what would happen after was the feeling of cold metal snaking up and coiling itself around his feet.

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“Kirby? Kirby? Hey, wake up!” Kirby opened his eyes to see Magolor who was slightly shaking him. “Oh, good. You looked like you were having an awful nightmare. Are you okay?”

“Yeah… it was just a nightmare. It scared me a lot, though.” Kirby averted his eyes from Magolor’s, unable to separate him from the horrific entity he had become. He didn’t have any issues with this before, but after that nightmare… he couldn’t get the image out of his head.

“What kind of nightmare?” He asked. Kirby didn’t respond. Magolor blinked, and turned his head toward the door. “Ah. I understand.” He sighed deeply. “Do you want me to leave? If I’m scaring you, I’ll go.”

“No!” Kirby flipped over. “It’s just… would you mind holding me until I can get back to sleep? If you’re right there, I can tell myself not to worry.”

Magolor was surprised by his request, but he was happy to oblige. He lay down next to Kirby and put his hands around him, pulling him closer. “Is this okay?” Kirby nodded silently, and they lay there for a few minutes.

“…Please don’t go…”

Magolor’s drooping eyelids snapped open. “Did you say something?”

“No…” Kirby mumbled. He was snoring softly in seconds.

Magolor had fallen asleep as well shortly after.

His eyes opened again to Taranza’s voice from outside the tent. “Magolor! Kirby! It’s your turn!” He shook Kirby awake, then clambered over to the door and zipped it open. Taranza smiled when he saw him. “Hey.”

“Everything go okay for you?” Magolor asked.

“Yes, everything went fine.” Taranza quickly gave Magolor a kiss on the forehead. “Wake up Daroach and the others when you’re done, okay?”

Magolor nodded. “Will do!” He went back into the tent. “Kirby?”

“Nnh.”

“Oh dear.” He pulled Kirby out of the sleeping bag, then carried him out of the tent. “Walk around for a bit. It’ll clear the sleep from your mind.”

“I had another dream about you…” Kirby said. “You were hurt really badly, and you were in my house… you didn’t say how you got hurt, but you were begging me to let you stay with me. I was really worried, but you started getting better, and when I woke up I saw you and-” He ran over and jumped into Magolor’s hands, hugging him. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

.. / -.-. .- .-. . / - .... . -- / ... --- / -- ..- -.-. .... / .- -.-. - ..- .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / - .... . -.-- .-. . / . ...- . .-. -.-- - .... .. -. --.

“Bandee! Time to get up!” Kirby called.

Magolor slowly zipped open the door, looking inside. “Hey, where’s Shadow Kirby? Did you guys eat him?”

Daroach slithered backwards out of the sleeping bag. “Think again.” He said, pulling his cape open and revealing Shadow Kirby inside.

Magolor chuckled. “Right. You all have fun.” He went back to his own tent, Kirby following behind.

As the three people got out of the tent, Shadow Kirby noted the brightening sky. “The sun’s coming up.”

Bandee nodded. “Right. When everyone else wakes up, we should go back to the ruins and check out that secret base again.”

Daroach’s eyes narrowed. “The ruins?”

Bandee tilted their head. “Yeah. Why, did you think it was somewhere else?”

Daroach gazed sternly at Shadow Kirby, who was pretending he didn’t notice. “Yes. I did indeed.”

Chapter Text

Daroach sat down. “Okay. Tell me. Why did you lie about where the base was?” He shook his head. “No, never mind. I know.”

“You do?” Bandee asked.

“It’s because Magolor lied first and you didn’t want to expose it without finding out why, right?”

Shadow Kirby nodded quickly. “Yes.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll grill him when he wakes up, then.”

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Shadow Magolor knocked on the door. “Are you awake?”

The strained, muffled voice came from the other side. “Yes. Come in.”

He opened the door. “Okay. I’m going out to try and find more food again. Judging from how I seem to have gotten most of what’s in the area, I might not be back for a long while.”

Shadow Marx frowned. “But… you will come back, right?”

“Of course. Take it easy. There’s still some food left, so if you get hungry again while I’m gone, you can have some of that. I gotta hurry to be back as soon as I can, so you just take care of yourself.” After saying all that, and seeing Shadow Marx nod in response, Shadow Magolor left.

Outside, he got his bearings, picked a direction, and started moving. He decided it’d probably be best to go beyond the shed with the map in it, as if there were other signs of civilization, he imagined that’d be the most reasonable direction to go. He had been on the move for about an hour when he came across a small building. It looked like a house. He looked through the window and saw that no one was inside. The fact that the window led to a kitchen implied that there was food in the house, but he had no intention of breaking in and stealing what belonged to someone else. He decided to keep moving. A single house above ground didn’t seem quite likely, and sure enough, his suspicions were proven right. 

Ahead, through an area with much clearer air, he saw a little valley scattered with several other buildings. Lights were shining through some of the windows, and Shadow Magolor quickened his pace as he approached them. He found the most well-kept of the closer buildings, and knocked on the door. It swung open fairly soon after, revealing a rather rotund creature with gray, white, and blue fur. He seemed puzzled. “Hey there. What’s up?”

Shadow Magolor blinked, unsure of what to say. He didn’t quite know how to talk to the first person he had any memory of talking to other than Shadow Marx. He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m just wondering, is there anywhere around here where I can get food?”

The stranger cocked his head. “Did they run out of it at the CL building? I didn’t know they could even do that.”

This time it was Shadow Magolor’s turn to be puzzled. “The CL building? What’s that?”

He leaned out of the door and pointed to his right. “It’s over there. That’s where most of the food and supplies are around here. The CL stands for communal living. …How do you not know that? Where did you come from? And who are you, anyway?”

“Ah! Right! My name’s Magolor. I came from…” He didn’t know the name of the collection of buildings he’d settled in. He pointed in the general direction of where they had been. “Somewhere over there. It’s nice to meet you, er…”

“Rick.”

“Rick! I’ll remember that. Thanks for pointing me over there, I’ll be going now. Bye!” Shadow Magolor hurried over to the large building he was certain the hamster had been indicating. As he got closer, he heard lively chatter coming from inside. He knocked on the door. 

It opened rather quickly, revealing a tall person wearing a white cape and hat. He had dark gray fur, huge ears, and deep red eyes. Despite his rather intimidating presence, his demeanor was anything but. He gave Shadow Magolor a cordial smile. “Welcome! I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before. Come in, come in! You look exhausted.”

He cautiously accepted his offer, and shortly after, a kid ran up to them from a room with dozens of people. “Mister Daroach! Look! The third tree out back is finally growing apples!” She held out a small apple.

The tall gentleman – Daroach – chuckled with a relieved tone. “Excellent. If you want Spinni to cut it up for you, he’s downstairs.” The kid ran down the nearby stairs, and Shadow Daroach turned his attention back to the visitor. “So, what are you here for? Er- no, sorry. Introductions. I’m Daroach. I’m basically in charge around here. What about you?”

“Magolor. I live pretty far away from here, and I’ve run low on food. I came here looking to get more. Can you help me, please?”

Shadow Daroach couldn’t help but notice the desperation that was plain on his face. “Sure can! C’mon, follow me.” He headed down the stairs.

They arrived at a large room that seemed to be used to store large amounts of food. Before Shadow Daroach could ask what he was getting specifically, Shadow Magolor surprised him with a question. “It seems like there are a lot of kids living here, but none of them are playing outside. Why not?”

“You haven’t noticed? It’s almost nighttime.”

Shadow Magolor cocked his head. “Uh… so?”

The confusion was plain on Shadow Daroach’s face. “Have you really not heard? People who go out at night tend to… disappear. We here have lost fifteen people to that since the rash of disappearances broke out about eight years ago, and we don’t know where they went. I ended up making it a rule to never go out at night, and since then, everyone’s been safe.” After he was done talking, he noticed the fear on Shadow Magolor’s face. “Oh yeah. I’d recommend staying the night.”

--. .- -.--

Kirby sat up. “Huh? Magolor, did you say something?”

“Yeah. Wake up, Daroach and the others are going to interrogate Dark Taranza and they want us to join them and help find him.” Magolor zipped open the door. Before he left, he noticed a strange look in Kirby’s eyes. “Uh, Kirby? You good?”

“The gem apple tree…”

“The wha-” Before he could finish the sentence, a surge of turbulent emotion attacked him. But once again, he didn’t know why. Once was weird enough, twice was flat-out unnerving. Did Kirby know something he didn’t? Or, perhaps even more terrifying, did Kirby know something that Magolor also knows but shouldn’t? Or… the other way around? Why did it all sound so familiar? What had Kirby been seeing, and why did it make Magolor feel the way he did? He recognized it as guilt the first time, but after feeling it again, he also saw other emotions in the surge. Fear. Loss. Helplessness. With that came something that Magolor always hated: Vulnerability.

He was about to overthink himself into a panic spiral, but once again, he noticed Kirby’s face. “You look scared again.” Kirby looked rather upset himself. “Is it… me? Magolor, do I scare you?”

Magolor suddenly realized how he looked to Kirby. After an involuntarily long pause, he answered much too quickly to be convincing. “No, no! Not at all! Of course I’m not afraid of you!”

Kirby tended not to pick up on the finer details of things, but not even he would be able to overlook the manner of the response. “You’re lying.” He got up. “It’s okay. I’m sorry.” He ran past Magolor out of the door, so quickly that Magolor couldn’t see exactly where he went.

After fruitlessly calling for him to come back, Magolor went to check the other tents. He started with Taranza’s. “Knock knock. Can I open the door?”

The door was open before anyone responded. Taranza had seemingly rushed over to the door instantly upon hearing Magolor’s voice. After opening it, he quickly, yet gently grabbed Magolor and pulled him into the tent. “You have no idea how much I missed you last night.”

While Magolor really did want to catch up to Kirby and give him some reassurance, he was also very happy to let Taranza shower him in affection. It certainly helped that Shadow Magolor had already left, as Magolor really didn’t want him to see them like this. After about half a minute of comfortable silence, Magolor twisted himself out of Taranza’s grasp. “Okay, we gotta go.” 

Before he went back out of the tent, he paused. “Just now, before I came here, Kirby said something to me. He mentioned something called a gem apple tree. As far as I’m aware, no such thing exists. And yet, when I heard him say that, I felt like somewhere, somehow, I’d heard it before. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good. After he said that, I kinda… shut down. Now he thinks I’m scared of him.”

Taranza frowned. “That’s not good. Is he okay?”

Magolor nodded. “Yeah. He just went to the castle to follow Bandee and the others.”

Taranza’s eyes narrowed. “Did he tell you that?”

Magolor instantly realized his mistake. “Well, no…” He said sheepishly. “I just kind of… assumed. I mean, where else?”

Taranza sighed. “You can be really dense, you know that?”

-.-. .- -- . .-. .- / .--. .- -.

“Marx! Are you coming?” Elfilin called. He had seen Magolor and Taranza leaving. “Everyone else is gone already!”

“G’ahead, I’ll catch up.” Marx responded groggily. 

Elfilin couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about the way he’d said it, but dismissed it as just his imagination and went to the castle.

Inside the tent, Marx was asleep, which he’d been for several hours.

. .-.. ..-. .. .-.. .. -. / .... . .- .-. .. -. --. / ...- --- .. -.-. . ... / .- --. .- .. -. / ... -- ....

When Kirby got to the castle, he saw Daroach waiting for him. “Finally, you’re here. We’re looking for Dark Taranza, but it’s slow going. I think he knows we’re looking for him and he’s hiding.” He looked back to see if anything was happening in the castle. It wasn’t. Then he turned back around. “Hey, you look down. Is everything okay?”

“Do I scare you?”

Daroach didn’t miss a beat. “No, why?”

“Okay. That’s good, at least…” He looked at the ground.

“No no. Don’t forget I asked ‘why?’ I know something brought this on.”

Kirby sighed. “I think Magolor is.”

He had barely gotten the words out when Magolor and Taranza showed up. “Hey! Daroach! Kirby! I’m glad you guys are here. Being all split up is a little worrying, y’know.”

Daroach turned from the two of them back to Kirby. “You sure?”

Before Kirby could think things over, Magolor had approached and gotten much closer. “You guys mind if I borrow Kirby for a bit? I need to talk to him.”

Kirby was happy to go with him, hoping that he was way off base for thinking what he did, but Magolor’s face was unusually sullen. It wasn’t often Kirby could tell what he was feeling from his face, but when he could, it usually wasn’t good. “What’s wrong?”

“The gem apple tree. What about it?”

“Huh?”

Magolor sighed. “Kirby, I’m not scared of you. But when you woke up this morning, what you said… I feel like I’ve heard it before. But with that recognition, it made me feel lost and guilty and afraid. And I don’t know why. So what is the gem apple tree? Do you know?”

“Oh.” Kirby looked down. “That’s weird. Did the same thing happen when I asked about the white and green outfit?” Magolor nodded. “Wow. Umm… okay, in the dream I was having last night, I was walking into some kind of… place. Like a town square or something like that. And I saw the tree, and- OH!” He started waving excitedly. “I saw Bandee! Maybe we could ask them about it!”

Magolor nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. We could! That’s… great…”

“Are you sure you want to know? What if it hurts you?”

“Uhhh…” Magolor slumped. “I don’t know. Wait… uh oh.” Giving no time to explain his sudden realization, he rushed back to Daroach and Taranza. “Where’s Shadow Magolor?”

Taranza looked slightly panicked. “He hasn’t seen him. We don’t know where he is.”

Magolor slapped his hand over his face. “Of course! Something like this was bound to happen when we started the day with Daroach yelling about coming here and then leaving everyone behind! Why wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, are you saying it’s MY fault that you people didn’t wake up fast enough to see what he was doing?”

“You bolted out of camp the minute you heard ONE sign of life!”

Daroach was about to offer a rebuttal, but Elfilin arrived before he could. “Hey, what’s going on? You guys are being really loud.”

Kirby waved him over, but before the conversation could continue toward a natural conclusion, Shadow Kirby appeared in the main hall of the castle. “You guys! Come on! Bandee caught Dark Taranza and locked him in the dungeon! Hurry!”

As the others ran in, Taranza tugged on Daroach’s cape. “Hey. Would you mind waiting in the doorway again? We need to keep an eye out for Shadow Magolor.”

Daroach nodded and went to wait in the doorway. The others descended into the dungeon and saw Bandee proudly twirling a ring of keys on their spear. In a nearby cell, Dark Taranza was silently fuming about having been caught. Magolor glided over, purposefully yet casually. “Alright, bud. We got you dead to rights. Now what’s up with that emblem?”

Dark Taranza grabbed the raggedy pillow from the bed and threw it on the floor, punching it after it landed. This seemed to go on for about fifteen seconds before he realized what Magolor was asking. “That’s it? Ohohohoho, is that all? If you had just asked that to begin with, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it? Well, very well, then, I will divulge all that I can. Gather round, ladies, gents, and others, as I have quite the story for you all!”

“The king of this land is a lot of things. For one, he’s very strong and capable, and he comes off that way, too. But no matter how strong one may be, fear comes for us all the same. He constantly feared insurrection or revolution or some such thing, as there were some denizens who disliked his style of leadership. Red herrings and goose chases filled a large portion of the lives of both him and his most loyal knight.” 

“But one time, I daresay near the time I was born, they hit on something real. An underground organization known as the Scannite, who were planning something insidious with some sort of complex blueprint. Their method of recognizing each other? The gemstone emblem. The king ordered his knight to quash their plans then and there, placing all possible members into a super-secret dungeon.” 

“He worked his staff overtime to build a large ship that could transport them all to another planet before promptly shutting itself down, denying them a way back. His vision of peace was attained, though at the cost of the knight’s relationship with someone he truly cherished. You know of whom I speak, don’t you, Grey Matter?” He was pointing to Shadow Kirby.

“Ch-CHERISHED?” Shadow Kirby sputtered. “Yesterday he tried to-”

“Ah ah ah.” Dark Taranza reached a single hand through the bars and held it over Shadow Kirby’s mouth. “What he did yesterday has no bearing on what he felt all those years ago. I understand your kind takes rather long to mature, but surely you’ve been somewhat aware of time passing, no?”

“B-but…” He whimpered. “Back then, Daroach, Marx, Adeleine, Coo, Rick, they all went missing! And there’s no way they’d ever have been a part of some creepy secret evil group! …Well, I’m not too sure about Rick and Adeleine. But there’s just no way-”

“Pardon me for interrupting your stupid fucking conversation.” Dark Meta Knight’s shoes clicked as he walked down the concrete steps. “Your sentry bailed as soon as he saw me. I’d say that was smart of him, considering I would almost certainly have taken him hostage if he hadn’t. Now, I’ll need you to release him. If he’s not out in three seconds, you will feel the sting of my wrath.”

Magolor scoffed. “Yeah, right. Kirby can easily handle you by himself and there are six of us here. Let me know how the sting of your wrath measures up to that one.”

Dark Meta Knight raised his sword, then walked down. A low rumble followed him as he almost immediately seemed to show up right in front of Kirby, lashing out with his silver sword. The rumble turned out to be a stampede of guards who were rushing the dungeon. The situation had quickly become very, very, bad. The six of them were doing a decent job of holding them back, but as Bandee had backed themselves against Dark Taranza’s cell door, he snatched the keys off the spear and let himself out of the cell. In a flash, he had subdued the entire group. 

After that, he called out to the mob. “Cease!” They did as they were told. He smugly gazed down at Shadow Kirby. “Really! The nerve! An ambush? Locking me up in a cold, dark, cell? I’ll have you know, as enchanting as I am, I certainly never desired to be reduced to a mere damsel in distress! Honestly, is that any way to treat a prince?”

Elfilin probably would’ve tilted his head if it didn’t hurt to move. “Sorry, a what?”

Chapter Text

Dark Taranza nonchalantly waved a hand. “Guards, you all may wait at the top of the stairs. Try not to let the remaining obstructions find their way down here, will you?” He fixed his gaze on Elfilin. “Oh, yes. The prince thing. That’s me. I’m him. I’m the guy. I’m the one who is he that is him. Me. Honestly, I’m amazed none of you figured it out sooner.” He looked around at the cells nearby. “Right. You’re all going to be staying here while you wait for His Majesty my dad to properly welcome you to this castle. Behave yourselves!” 

.... . .-. . / .... . / -.-. --- -- . …

Daroach ran back into the campsite, aiming for the door of the one Elfilin had slept in. He forcefully unzipped the door, revealing Marx. He was snoring loudly, a trail of drool running down the side of his face and staining the pillowcase. He was relieved to find that Marx was, in fact, still there, but not relieved enough to be any less aggressive when rousing him. “WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!”

Marx flew a whole foot into the air, and when he came back down, his eyes were open. He landed on his feet. “Huh? What? What’s wrong?” He looked to his left. “Where’s Elfilin?”

“He left already. So did everyone else. How in the world have you been asleep this entire time?”

“Mind your business.” Marx grumbled. “So if you all left without me, why are you back?”

Daroach turned his head in the general direction of the castle. “We ran into some problems. I didn’t stick around to find out, but I’m pretty sure they all got caught. All except for the guy they’re actually worried about, that is.” 

Marx was halfway out the door when he paused and slid back in. “What? How did they not get Shadow Magolor? And if they don’t have him, where is he?”

“We don’t know.” Daroach noticed Marx staring at him in disbelief and continued. “He left camp by himself and didn’t show up at the castle.”

“And you thought it’d be a better idea to come get me than to try to find him and make sure he isn’t going into a trap?”

“You’re right.” Without another word, Daroach ran out of the tent.

Marx hurried to try catching up to him. “You know, you could at least say where we’re going or give me some kind of warning before running!”

-... .-. --- / .. ... / --. --- .. -. --.

“Hey, Magolor, are you okay?” Taranza called to the cell across from his. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m doing A-OK, thanks!” Magolor gave a thumbs up. “Actually, since we don’t have anything better to do… Shadow Kirby.”

“Huh? What?” He looked up from the floor.

“Since you were around for the mass abduction that happened, is there anything you know that we don’t?”

Shadow Kirby looked back down. “Well, there’s one thing… that I should probably tell you…”

Elfilin tilted his head. “And what’s that?”

Shadow Kirby squeezed his eyes shut for a bit before answering. “Someone died. He was supposed to just get thrown onto the ship and taken away, but… he tried to do something reckless. He got caught and… died. I saw it happen. Well… I saw enough.”

Bandee shook their head. “Did you… know him?”

“Marx. It was him. Er, the one from this side of the mirror, at least.”

The others exchanged uncomfortable, confused, and surprised glances. Or, as much as they could have. Taranza tilted his head to one side, then the other. “I’m… not sure how to say this, but-”

He was interrupted by a heavy footstep hitting the bottom of the stairwell. “But what?”

-. --- .-- / - .. -- . / ..-. --- .-. / .- / -.-. --- -- .--. .-.. . - . .-.. -.-- / ..- -. .-. . .-.. .- - . -.. / ..-. .-.. .- ... .... -... .- -.-. -.- / .-.. -- .- —

“Do you have the notepad ready?”

“Yes, sir. What should I write?”

“At the top, write ‘Acquisition Trial: Subject #1.’ Yes, like that. Then, for the first body paragraph, we need to record the results of the preliminary testing. I presume you were given them already?”

“No, sir, I was not. May I be told them now?”

“You give a man one job… Fine. The subject was treated to one hundred and seven minutes in the freezer, followed by one hundred and ninety three minutes in the Scream Chair. If her incessant babbling is to be believed, she now sees evil creatures trying to eat her when there are none, is incapable of stopping herself from shivering, and ‘misses her mommy,’ among other things. Of course, a similar, though less severe process was applied to the Savior. The chosen setpiece for the acquisition process was a cavern, similar to the one her previously mentioned mother inhabited. If all goes as projected, The reservoir should be approximately zero point five percent full within forty eight hours.”

Once the sound of the pencil scratching the words into the paper had finished, the person writing looked up. “Sir?”

“What is it?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that people don’t seem to be showing up as much anymore, Sir. Why?”

“They quit. Said their part was done, and ‘wanted nothing to do with the depravity we’ve fallen into.’ Spineless cowards, the lot of them. I gave them homes, I gave them hope, and they threw it away because ‘they’re just children’ and ‘torture is never justifiable.’ It’s heartbreaking, I tell you.”

“Highly upsetting, Sir. However, would it not be best to simply ensure that we succeed rather than using the most extreme possible methods to prove them wrong?”

“...”

“...Sir?”

“You’re quite right. Quite right indeed.” Their conversation was joined by some muffled high-pitched screaming. “Ah. We should be about ready to begin.” The door opened. “Earplugs. Good. I was worried I’d need to request those out loud. Now…” He walked over to a glass sliding door above a closed-off pit. “Set location to cavern entrance.” The pit transformed into a foliage-cloaked grassland with a small cave entrance near one of the walls. The walls changed to sheer rock face. “Excellent.” He opened the door. “Now drop her inside.” The girl was released, landing at the bottom of the pit and crying out in pain.

“Sir, the readings on the monitors indicate a broken bone.”

“Fantastic.”

- .... --- ... . / --. ..- -.-- ... / ... . . -- / -. --- - / ...- . .-. -.-- / -. .. -.-. .

Magolor stared down the person who had appeared before them. “Nuh uh. No way. Not a chance. You’re not him.”

Rather than waiting to hear it from the proverbial horse’s mouth, Shadow Kirby opted to question Magolor instead. “Why can’t that be him?”

Bandee’s face twisted into something that resembled contempt. “Dark Taranza said the king was his father. This isn’t him.”

“How do you know?”

Magolor grabbed the bars of his cell exasperatedly. “Are you BLIND? THAT’S DEDEDE!”

Shadow Dedede gave him an annoyed look. “Ah. So that’s what’s been ruffling your feathers. Look, frankly, I don’t care what you think about my kid. But you’ve been stirring the pot, see? All of you. You’ve been causing me a whole lot of stress, and you wouldn’t be doing that if you’d just let sleeping dogs lie. Now, if you all tell me where he is, you’ll be released and you can all go home no problems. And in case you feel like playing dumb, I’m talking about the fella in the white outfit who looks like this guy.” He pointed to Magolor. “Any takers?”

Kirby piped up. “He was supposed to be with us, but he never showed up. He said he’d be here but he’s not, so we don’t know.”

Magolor’s eyes shone as he realized how this could be put to the group’s advantage. “Yeah, real piece of work, that guy. What kind of person acts all friendly and cordial like that just to stab us in the back like this? The nerve !” His gambit was exactly convincing enough to be believed by only the person who needed to believe it, and not a single other person.

Bandee quickly nodded. “Yeah, some friend he turned out to be!”

Shadow Dedede scowled. “You broke him out of here to begin with, didn’t you? How’d that happen?”

Shadow Kirby didn’t miss a beat before answering. “I saw the ship coming down, and he threw a paper plane out of it before crashing in the back there. It just said SOS. I always try to help people, so I S’d his S.”

Magolor produced a piece of paper from his cape. “Here.” It was a creased piece of paper that read SOS in bold black ink.

Shadow Dedede grabbed it, stared at it for a bit, then folded it along the creases. It became a glider shape, and he promptly threw it, watching it fly to the staircase before crashing. “Hmm. Checks out.”

He looked at everyone in the cells. “Alright. You guys are betting on the same racehorse as I am, so I’ll let you out. Now do me a favor and bring me that scumbag if you find him.” He pulled out the keys, unlocked all the cells, and everyone gave a polite nod before leaving. “Be seeing you.”

The group calmly, quietly, and quickly walked out the front door and out of earshot of anyone who would be in the castle. Taranza  immediately let out a loud sigh of relief. “Okay, Magolor, where did you get that?”

Magolor tilted his head backwards. “I stay prepared for things.”

Elfilin eyed him incredulously. “What are you preparing for?”

“Things!”

They continued walking in the direction of the camp, hoping that someone would be there. After they walked in silence for a few minutes, Kirby suddenly spoke. “But Shadow Magolor said he met Shadow Marx personally! And it was after the whole thing happened!”

Shadow Kirby stopped walking. “Huh? But… that can’t… no.”

Bandee tugged him along as they continued to walk. “Why are you so sure?”

“Because I saw it happen! Whoever he met, it wasn’t him.”

Taranza slouched. “I think it would be best if we didn’t ask him for more details on that. He seems convinced, so until we can really get information about this, we shouldn’t bother.”

The group continued back to the camp in silence for a few moments until Magolor whispered into Taranza’s ear. “Shapeshifter.”

Taranza tried to hold back laughter, and failed, while responding with a lighthearted “Stop.”

-... .-. --- / - .... .. -. -.- / .... . / .- / ... -.-. --- ..- -

“No sign of ‘em.” Daroach sighed. “We gotta come up with a better idea than wandering around aimlessly.”

Marx struck him with one of his wings. “How about we go to the secret base of the Whatevers? He could be there.”

“No, that won’t work. They lied about where it was, so Shadow Magolor wouldn’t know that it’s actually in the ruins.”

“And you think there’s no chance that he’s in the wrong place looking for the base where two people he trusts said it was?”

Daroach stiffened, then bolted in a direction that he was pretty sure would lead to the frozen palace.

... -.- . -.. .- -.. -.. .-.. . -..

“They’re not here.” Bandee shrugged. “What now?”

Taranza snapped his fingers. “Look, if they’re out right now, they’re probably looking for either us, or Shadow Magolor. If we start running around like headless chickens,we’ll never find each other. But they’re bound to come back here eventually, so let’s just wait.”

And wait they did. Until… another person entered the campsite. Dark Taranza. “Hello, all. I’ve been informed of your recent disdain for he whom you call ‘Shadow Magolor,’ and I’d like to let you all know that we’ve thankfully apprehended him. Our knight is currently treating him verrrry gently, so if you’d like him to up the ante and deliver him his just desserts, please go tell him as much. So long, farewell, see ya later, et cetera. Bye!” As quickly as he entered, he left, before anyone could question him.

“Let’s go!” Kirby sprang into action, running to where Dark Taranza had just disappeared to. The others nodded to each other and followed, but as soon as they had gone through a mirror door, they collided with Marx and Daroach.

After recovering from the collision, Daroach led them to follow after Dark Taranza, undoubtedly leading to where Shadow Magolor would be. After running fast enough for a long enough time, they saw him, as well as the two people he’d mentioned before leaving. Shadow Magolor was being carried by the scarf, looking scared yet unharmed.

They moved to one side and continued running. There was a line of trees up ahead, which they could use as cover to run ahead of them, as well as come up with a plan.

“I must ask, since when have you been so courteous to enemies of the king?” Dark Taranza whispered.

“I don’t see the need to hurt people who won’t fight back.”

Dark Taranza paused for a moment. “Never stopped you before.”

They picked up the pace. They were almost there, after all. Just before they could go through that last mirror, however, a large portal opened right in front of them. They immediately turned around to go back through to where they’d been before, but the portal closed. Dark Meta Knight noticed they were still fairly close to the door, and simply continued going toward it. “Odd. What was the point of that?”

As they went past the trees that were now in the way, they heard a rustling sound, then Daroach dove out of a tree, tackling Dark Taranza to the ground.

As his cohort struggled, Dark Meta Knight looked up. There, he saw Bandee, who was also waiting in a tree. As soon as he saw them, they jumped down and assumed a fighting stance. “Let him go.”

“Not likely.” He held Shadow Magolor behind him, and his sword in front of him, staring down Bandee. “I know if I fight, you’ll bring your friends  to outnumber me. I’m not stupid.” He began taking steps backwards, toward the mirror.

“Rethink that last part.” They suddenly looked unusually smug. At that moment, a blow to the side of the head put him on the ground. It was Kirby, sporting a red headband. A follow-up uppercut knocked him away from Shadow Magolor, while Shadow Kirby led him over to the trees.

Dark Taranza continued struggling on the ground. “As infuriating as you all are, I can’t say I dislike this part one bit.”

“Shut up!” Daroach struck him with his claws, then jumped up and blasted him with an ice laser. He stood before them, alongside Bandee, Kirby, Shadow Kirby, Shadow Magolor, and Elfilin. “Had enough, or should we call in the others?”

Dark Taranza calmly got up, dusted himself off, and bolted back to the castle as fast as he could, with Dark Meta Knight following closely behind.

Elfilin called up to one of the trees. “Hey, guys! We did it! You can come down now! …Guys?” He flew up into the tree, then poked his head out. “They’re not here!”

Daroach put his face in his hands. “Oughhh. AGAIN?”

Shadow Magolor patted himself down, then scratched his head. “Hey, guys? I dropped my key card at some point. Did any of you see it?”

Bandee swiveled to look directly at him. “Key card for what?”

“The locked room in my ship. Why?”

Daroach’s eyes widened. “They’d better fucking not have-” He quickly started running back to camp.

.... .. --. .... .-- .- -.-- / .-. --- -... -... . .-. -.--

“Alright, I’m gonna open it.” Magolor swiped the card through the reader. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Taranza nodded.

“Uh-huh.” Marx tapped his feet on the floor.

Magolor opened the door. It swung into the room on the other side, revealing a small bed, with a person sleeping in it. “Of course.”

Marx’s face brightened slightly upon seeing him. “Heyyy, that’s him! The mirror me!”

Chapter Text

Taranza inched closer to the bed. “Should we wake him up?”

“Don’t see why not!” Marx extended one of his wings and poked him, causing him to roll over in the bed and end up face down.

“Marx, why did you not wait for more input?” As Magolor was admonishing him, Shadow Marx coughed.

He weakly rolled over, eyes still closed. Apparently sensing that something was off, he shook his head and blinked himself awake. He cast his eyes to Magolor, then Taranza, then back to Magolor. “Wh-who is that?” His voice was hoarse and shaky. He blinked again, now full-on staring at Magolor. “Who are YOU?” Then, he finally noticed Marx standing right next to him. He flinched, sliding away from Marx. “Wh-what’s going on here?”

Taranza gestured in the general direction of the Dimension Mirror as though there wasn’t a wall in the way. “We are from the other side of the mirror. The Marx next to you is like you, but… different. I do not fully understand how it works, but there is some kind of personality connection.”

The way he spoke was overly stiff and formal, as though he had an image to maintain. He was often like that around people he wasn’t familiar with. Magolor winced, knowing why that was. He gave a comforting squeeze to one of his hands. “Right. So… who is this side’s Magolor to you?”

Shadow Marx shrunk away from them, shaking his head. “Nope. I’m not going to talk to you. Go away.”

Taranza lowered his head. “Well, I suppose we have no reason not to comply.” He motioned to Marx and Magolor. “We should be going.” They turned around and stared directly into the highly unamused eyes of Daroach and Shadow Magolor. The former was impatiently tapping a foot on the floor.

Magolor gave them a sheepish grin. “Umm… hiiiiiiiii guys. Aha… haha… uh, uhhhhhhh,, er, someone help me out here.”

Marx, with all the unearned confidence in the world, looked them square in the face. “Sorry for the larceny, it will happen again.” Taranza slapped him on the back of the head. “Right. I mean, I’m not sorry for the larceny, it will happen again.” Magolor slapped him on the back of the head. Marx looked back at him and Taranza in annoyed confusion. Having apparently figured out what they wanted him to say, he turned back around. “WE are sorry for the larceny.”

Taranza nodded in approval. “Good.”

“And we’ll be sorry again for all inevitable future larceny.”

Magolor buried his face in his hands.

Shadow Magolor moved into the room with an unusual amount of intensity. “Guys, leave. Now.” The three who had entered the room sheepishly shuffled out of it, leaving the key card on the floor.

Daroach sternly corralled them and led them elsewhere. “Fucking idiots, the lot of you.”

Shadow Magolor closed the door and sat down on the bed. “Are you okay? They didn’t do anything to you, did they?”

Shadow Marx shuffled under the blanket. “No… they just explained the mirror thingie and then asked about you. I…” He shivered. “I don’t know what they’d have done if I answered them.”

“Hey,” Shadow Magolor put a comforting hand on him and held him close. “I’m sure they were just worried about my intentions. Now that things are being cleared up, I’m sure nothing like this’ll happen again.” He gave him a reassuring smile.

“But why would they ever not trust you? You’d never hurt anyone.”

He looked down, something indecipherable on his face. “I’m not as open with most people as I am with you, Marx. I was being really secretive, and not in a subtle way. I can’t even really blame them for wanting to know what was up. For all I know, they think you’re a hostage or a prisoner.”

“But you’d never-”

“Of course I’d never do that to you. But not everyone has the gift of seeing things the way you do. More often, they make guesses, and they’re wrong. I know that’s very difficult for you to imagine, because you can see peoples’ true nature, but it’s important to consider how others view the world.” Leaving those words with Shadow Marx, Shadow Magolor got up off the bed. “I need to see how everyone’s doing. Get some rest, please.”

Shadow Marx lunged forward, stretching out the silver branch of what might have been a wing if there was anything on it to help it fly. The claw at the end hooked into one of the holes of Shadow Magolor’s cape. “Please don’t go… If they don’t trust you, they might hurt you. I… I can’t let that happen! Please just…” He sniffled. “Stay here until one of them admits they were wrong. If they still don’t believe you, can we please just go home?”

Shadow Magolor turned around and tucked Shadow Marx back under the covers. “But Marx, if we go home now, we won’t be able to cure you!”

“It’s not worth it! No cure in the world is worth you getting hurt!”

Shadow Magolor sighed. “Okay. I’ll stay here until someone comes to deliver the good news. And if there is no good news, we’ll leave.” Following some extra body language plead from Shadow Marx, he climbed into the bed with him. Shadow Marx immediately wrapped both of what were almost wings around him, tightly. “I mean, I don’t think it’ll take THAT long…”

“I know, but… you’re really soft… and warm… and it makes me feel… safe…” Less than a minute later, he was snoring loudly.

Shadow Magolor lightheartedly shook his head and exhaled in a laughing sort of way. “What am I gonna do with you…”

.... . ... / ... --- / .--. .- - .... . - .. -.-. / ---... .... . .- .-. - ---...

“Okay. I don’t believe anyone should be interrupting us in here.” Daroach closed the door. “Right. I’ll try not to be loud because I don’t want to disturb Dedede or the waddle dees in here. As a preface, let me explain some things. Shadow Marx is, number one, very sick, and number two, very scared of new people. As I’m sure you’re aware. Considering you, y’know, broke into his room unprompted.”

Taranza shifted uncomfortably. “Won’t happen again.”

Daroach slapped the table. “You’re damn fucking right it won’t.” He turned his head to stare directly at Magolor. “And YOU! You told us that you’d wait until you actually had reasonable suspicions to do anything! You very specifically said you weren’t going to do anything hasty! Now what in the FUCK was that?”

Magolor stared straight ahead, unfazed. “I stand by it.”

Marx shot him a confused glance. “What…?”

“We needed to know. Now we know. It’s a good outcome.”

“No it isn’t!” Daroach shouted. “I don’t care about your stupid suspicions, you could’ve traumatized the guy!”

Marx shrugged. “Does it help if he was already traumatized before we got there?”

Daroach wasn’t sure how he looked to the other three, but he could practically hear steam rolling out of his ears. He tried to keep his composure when he answered. “You must know it does not.”

Taranza got out of his chair. “If this is just you telling us not to do anything like this again, I’m already there. Anything else?”

Daroach shook his head. “Fine. If ANY of you do something like this again, I’m sending you home. If you’re gonna jeopardize this, you’re better off absent. Got it?”

“Uh huh.”

“Got it.”

“Gotcha.”

-.-. .- .--. .. -.-. .

After an understanding had been reached, they began a discussion in camp. Taranza opened it. “So, what do we know? Everything that’s gone on here is such a whirlwind I’ve lost track of what we need to be doing.”

“Well…” Magolor scratched his head. “We started investigating because Daroach and Shadow Kirby found Shadow Magolor taken prisoner for no clear reason. There was a gemstone emblem on the outside of his ship, and a photo of it inside the ship. I believe we now know who took the photo, and why.” He looked pointedly at Daroach. 

“Uh…” Daroach paused, not expecting to be put on the spot like this. “Y-yeah, yeah, I know. It had to have been Dark Taranza, right? He took the photo because he needed to… do something with it…”

“He wanted to show it to someone.” Bandee interjected. 

“That is why most people take pictures…” Shadow Magolor rubbed his right hand thoughtfully over his scarf. “Do we know who?”

Daroach nodded, face tense. “Yep. At least, I do. After some urging from me, Dark Meta Knight agreed to leave this side of the mirror behind. The only thing stopping him from going was that he really did want to keep Shadow Kirby safe. He ended up being convinced by the realization that he was doing a pretty terrible job at every Shadow Kirby-related objective he had, and that they were better off without each other in the picture at all. But… I don’t imagine that up and leaving was something his cohorts were happy with. So… When Dark Taranza saw that emblem, he saw not only a threat to his supposed father, but also an opportunity to bring back the one who had stopped the insurrection in the first place.”

“Right!” Taranza exclaimed, then lost his enthusiasm. “What now?”

Bandee waved their hands. “Hey! I know what we could do! Let’s check out the secret base again!”

Before anyone else could respond, Shadow Kirby cut them off. “Let’s not. We don’t need to go there, so we shouldn’t. Okay?”

Magolor pushed forward. “No, I think they have a point. We should.”

“Nope. There’s not gonna be anything there, so there’s no reason to go.” Shadow Kirby seemed to be getting extremely agitated.

“Why do you say there won’t be anything?”

“Because there won’t.”

“But how do you know?” Taranza asked in exasperation.

“...”

“...”

“Look, I’m not going back there, okay?”

Bandee nodded. “Fine. We’ll go without you. Anyone feel like staying behind with them? I don’t think it’s smart to leave them alone.”

Shadow Kirby grouchily started walking off to Moonlight Mansion. “I can take care of myself. Go.”

Daroach whispered something to Bandee, then they gestured to where they knew the base was. “Let’s go, then.”

- .... . / -. . -..- - / - .-. .- -. ... .. - .. --- -. ... / --. --- -. -. .- / ... .- -.-- / ... --- -- . - .... .. -. --. / .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / -.-. --- --- .-.. / -.- . . .--. / .- -. / . -.-- . / --- ..- -

Shadow Kirby clambered over some bookshelves, glanced around him, and slid away the panel at the back of a lower shelf, revealing an opening. He climbed through the open space in the shelf, then slid the rectangular panel back into place. As soon as he did, he nearly collapsed from relief. Safety. He hadn’t had an opportunity to come here in some time, and things were heavily wearing on him. He walked forward slowly, and tipped over backwards into the pond in the center of the courtyard. As he let the gentle, soothing water wash away as much of his stress as it could, he heard a voice from the entrance. “Nice place you got here.”

He scrambled out of the pond. “D-Daroach? How did you…”

Daroach closed the panel behind him as well. “You walked into a dead end and disappeared. And I know a thing or two about secret hatches and entrances, so it didn’t take me too long to find it.” He sat down, letting his feet soak in the pond. “So what’s up? Why’d you come here?”

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this place.”

Daroach shrugged. “I won’t.”

Shadow Kirby shook his head. “That wasn’t a question. I’m telling you that you’re not going to tell anyone. I’m giving you a heads up.”

Daroach gave an easygoing smile. Despite the fact that he was basically just threatened, he realized that it was coming from someone who was simply afraid. “I hear you loud and clear. Now why’d you come here?”

The light animosity in Shadow Kirby’s voice vanished. “Long week.”

“It’s been three days.”

Shadow Kirby tipped over face first into the pond.

-.. .- ...- .

“Wow…” Taranza breathed as he entered the base. “It’s big.”

Marx snorted, but before he could make a comment, Magolor cut him off. “If there’s something of real substance in here, it’d be lower down. Let’s go to the bottom.”

Shadow Magolor nodded. “That makes sense! Let’s go!”

Once they got to the bottom, they were greeted by a huge circular door. Bandee’s eyes went wide. “Wow. That’s massive.”

Marx’s attempt to speak was ruined again, this time by Kirby. “How do we open it?”

Elfilin felt his way along the door. Something gave way. “Hey!” When he pushed in the wall, a keypad asking for a code was revealed.

The group quickly crowded around the keypad. 

“It wants numbers.”

“But it doesn’t say how many numbers it wants…”

Magolor muttered something to himself. “N2 before N1…”

Taranza turned his head to him. “What was that?”

“Hang on. Let me try something.” Magolor approached the keypad. He typed in the number 35268471. After hitting the enter key, the keypad made a beep in confirmation, and then a loud noise signaled the large door sliding into the floor. “Huh. Well how about that.” 

Bandee looked to the corner of the room, outside the door. “So I’m guessing that lever puts the door back?”

Shadow Magolor’s eyes widened. “How’d you know?”

Marx trotted into the room. “I’ve learned not to question these things. The answer’s usually more complicated than I bother to think about.” 

Despite how large the space behind the door was, it was mostly empty. There were some things on shelves, a rug that didn’t cover much of the floor, and a stain in the far corner. It had long since dried, and was difficult to identify. Taranza set his sights on the rug. A small table sat on top of it. He moved the table and lifted the rug. “There’s a space under the floor. Empty, though.” He put the rug back and put the table on top. “I don’t think there’s anything here.” 

The group shrugged at each other, then Bandee motioned to the stairs. “I guess… we should go.” 

Slowly, they shuffled out and moved toward the stairs. Shadow Magolor stayed behind, looking at the stain. Bandee, Kirby, Taranza, Elfilin, and Marx went up the stairs and heard the rumbling of the door closing behind them as Magolor followed them up the stairs. “Everyone here?” Bandee called from the front.

“Yep!” Magolor called back from the back.

Behind the door, Shadow Magolor was slamming his fists against it. “HEY! LET ME OUT! LEMME OUTTA HERE!!”

Chapter Text

When they arrived back at the campsite, Daroach and Shadow Kirby were there waiting for them. Daroach looked around and sat down. “So what are we thinking?” His eyes narrowed. “Hang on. Where’s Shadow Magolor?” 

“That’s what I’m saying!” Dark Taranza emerged from behind a tent. “You’re telling me I’ve been tailing you guys for half an hour and all I got out of it was the view? Suffice to say, my disappointment is immeasurable.” 

“A likely story!” Taranza scoffed. “You’ve been following us for this long without bringing along your knight friend? I don’t buy it. Dollars to donuts he’s the one who snatched him and you’re just here trying to get us panicked and disorganized.”

“Huh.” Dark Taranza’s face took on an expression like he was pondering something. “You know, that’s not even close to what happened, but that would’ve been a really good plan. You should be evil, you’re great at it!”

“Shut up.” Marx flicked one of his wings at the side of Dark Taranza’s head. “Now tell us what you two did to Shadow Magolor.”

Dark Taranza raised one eyebrow, then the other. He raised one hand to his chin and another to his hair. He tilted his head to the right, then forward. Then he moved it back to normal and dragged the hand in his hair down below his eyes, brows raising and lowering periodically all the while. “...Wouldn’t telling you require me to not shut up?”

“Stop talking and start talking.” Magolor snapped.

“............What?”

Daroach, who had gotten up again, stepped closer and grabbed him. “Tell us what you did with him, you son of a bitch.”

“The king doesn’t take kindly to being insulted, you know.” Dark Taranza smirked. “And as I’ve already said, I didn’t do anything to him. I don’t have a clue where he is. He was gone when you came out of the base and I certainly didn’t see him after that.”

Daroach let go. “When we… hm.”

Dark Taranza frowned. “Wait, I thought we were having a moment.”

“I was threatening you.”

“...And?”

Just then, Dark Meta Knight rushed into the campsite. He eyed everyone, then focused on Dark Taranza. “What have you been doing this whole time? You said you found him!”

Dark Taranza, for the first time, seemed to get somewhat uncomfortable. “Well, actually I said I found them , not him …”

Taranza gestured incredulously. “This is obviously some kind of charade! These guys are too incompetent to actually do their jobs properly, so they’re trying to trick us! Of course they have him!”

Dark Meta Knight drew his sword and swung it in Taranza’s direction. “No the fuck we don’t!”

“Wait.” Marx announced that single word with such intensity that it made everyone face him immediately. “Before you start fighting, I have a question for the group. What if Evil Dumb and Eviler Dumber are telling the truth? What then?”

Daroach scratched his head. “I thought about that. It’d mean he got held up in the base, right? …Assuming you know he at least went in there with you.”

“Right. And when we were leaving the base, we went in a… single-file sort of line. You all remember? Now…” He turned his gaze in the direction of Magolor, and his voice lowered. “Someone. Remind me. Who. Was at. The back. Of the line.”

Magolor shrugged. “Oh yeah, I guess it was me. Not that it matters, because it only means anything if those two aren’t lying, and… they’re lying.”

“Then let’s test it.” Bandee said sternly, yet nonchalantly. “Only thing that really could’ve happened is Magolor shut his doppelganger behind that big door at the bottom. If we just go back and open it, we’ll see who’s lying.”

“...”

“...”

“...Yeah, I shut him down there.”

Taranza gasped, clearly upset.

Daroach, despite being several yards away from him, covered the distance in two steps and gripped his sides so tightly it looked like Magolor would start bleeding. “What the FUCK, Magolor? Did we not JUST finish having a conversation about this kind of thing? Did you not agree that it wouldn’t happen again?”

“W-well, I-”

“I’m not letting you finish. Go home. You’re a liability and you need to be gone. Get outta here. NOW!”

Magolor shrunk away from him, then silently slinked off toward the Dimension Mirror. “Later, guys.” He mumbled as he went through it.

Daroach pulled the front of his hat down. “Let’s go open that door.”

Dark Taranza appeared next to him. “Yes, let’s. I’d like to see some more where that came from…”

Daroach spun away from him and pointed his cane at him and Dark Meta Knight. “You two don’t honestly think you get a spot on the team now, do you?”

“And what do you think you’ll be able to do? Stop us from following you?”

Bandee pulled out their spear, Marx spread his wings, Taranza readied a magic web, Elfilin began to ripple the space around him, and the Kirbies puffed out their cheeks. Taranza set his jaw. “I’m not in the mood to play games. You follow, you die.”

“Message received.” They hurried away from the campsite as fast as they could.

-.-. .... . . ... . / -.. .. .--. / --- -. / - .... . / ..-. .. .-. . / .- .-.. .- .-. -- / -.. .... .- .-. / -- .- -. -. / ... - -.-- .-.. .

Magolor got back to the Lor Starcutter, opened the front door, and sat down on the floor with his back to the wall. “Lor, am I too paranoid?”

“Yes.”

“How come you’ve never told me?”

“Captain, I have. Exactly fifty eight times, to be specific.”

Magolor rolled sideways before getting up. “How do I fix this? How do I fix myself?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Magolor sighed, hung his head, and went to his room.

... -.-. .- .-. -.-- / ... . ...- . .-. .- .-.. / .... --- ..- .-. / - .. -- . / ... -.- .. .--.

Magolor opened his eyes without realizing they’d ever been closed. His room was dark. He rolled out of bed, felt his way to the door, and opened it. His head felt cloudy. After getting himself a glass of water, he sat in front of the large monitor. “Lor, show me any records or information you have on the Dimension Mirror.”

“Very well.” A loading wheel appeared on screen. “I found a report written by a researcher from several millennia ago.”

“Are they… reputable?”

“Well, they also wrote a report on me, and in it, they described what an ideal captain would be. There were some understandable bumps in the road for you, but putting them aside, you match the description perfectly. I’m inclined to think this person knows what they’re talking about.”

Magolor clapped his hands. “Alright then! Pull up that report!” 

“I will give you a summary.”

“What, do you think I can’t read?”

“If you insist.” The written report appeared on screen. “Try.”

After staring at the report in bewilderment for several minutes, Magolor spoke. “Are any of these words even real?” 

The Lor repeated herself. “I will give you. A summary.”

“That sounds great, thanks.”

“The Dimension Mirror was one of the last creations of the Ancients. The dimension contained within it came into existence at the same time as the mirror. The world on the other side is theoretically just as limitless as our own, much like the reflection in a normal mirror. However, due to the nature of its existence, it requires immense effort to push the boundaries as far as they can go. 

When the mirror was first built, it housed people who were exiled from Ancient society. However, as time passed, it became clear that the two worlds were inextricably linked and events ran parallel to one another. That’s how it seems that people may find copies of themselves on the other side. It’s as though the will of the universe itself is forcing the two worlds to mirror one another, though the method for this is unknown. 

The common link between all people who find themselves copied by the mirror is that they all are what their counterpart could’ve been. Whether the feeling towards one another is anger, fear, envy, or pity, the people on each side have the same roots and their worlds could easily be swapped. In effect, while they’re not the same, they almost are. It’s why people will almost always be unnerved by their counterparts.

As for the ancient artifacts, the people banished would have had no means to build new ones after being banished. However, it is believed that two artifacts were stolen and brought over. What these artifacts were called, and their purpose, remains unknown.”

Magolor had his eyes closed for most of the explanation, and he opened them again when she was done talking. “I think most of that speaks for itself, but I do have one question. Does this mean that Shadow Magolor would’ve been made in a similar way that I was?”

“That would make sense. Of course, the motive was probably not the same for his case, considering the mirror world doesn’t have a variant of me in it.”

“Hmmm. Well, there was something else I wanted to do. Could you put that in a text file?” The requested text file appeared in front of him. “Thanks!” He scrolled down to the end, then began typing an addendum. (The two artifacts that were stolen are believed to be the Krasstwyrman gemstone and the reservoir of Aellvough.)

“The what?”

“Never heard of them?”

The Lor was silent for a few seconds. “Captain, I can’t find a single record of either of those words ever existing, let alone in this context. What in the world did you find over there?”

Magolor turned around in his chair. Then he turned back. “Maybe the records were erased because they were stolen?”

“That’s not impossible, but it seems extraordinarily unlikely that there wouldn’t even be a record of the words.”

He left the Lor. He didn’t have a destination in mind, so he just sat in front of the door, looking up at the stars that had now come out. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but there was something in him that lay still, abnormally so, and it was probably the reason why he had no reaction to the person who unexpectedly sat next to him. He took a deep breath before speaking. “Hi.”

“Hello.” Shadow Magolor said reproachfully.

“I’m sorry I locked you in a scary basement.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“Still! That was terrible of me to do that to you and I… didn’t even really have a reason.” Magolor had balled one of his hands into a fist and covered the side of his mouth with it. “You’re not really about to forgive me for that, right?”

“Of course I am.” 

“What! Why?” Magolor’s ears went straight up.

“Because you said you were sorry and I believe you.”

“Shadow, no offense, but are you stupid?”

Shadow Magolor grinned. “I thought you were in the middle of apologizing. What is this?”

Magolor exhaled. “Alright, never mind then.” They looked back up to the stars. 

“There’s something in the air out here.”

“Hm?”

“Peace. I think. I’ve only ever felt this on this side.” Shadow Magolor leaned back. “I’d really love it if, one day, my side of the mirror feels like this.”

Magolor nodded slowly. “I think I know what you mean. When I went into the mirror, it just… felt more tense.”

They stayed silent for a few more moments. Then Shadow Magolor made eye contact for the first time. “Hey… do you… know anything about me? Like… Something I would’ve forgotten? I know it’s a shot in the dark, but if you can even give me an educated guess, I’d love that.”

Magolor’s eyes widened. “Well… before I say anything, I want to hear any ideas that you have. Things that might point to other things and all that.”

“Well…” Shadow Magolor paused, deep in thought. “I do have some ideas. First, I think I was born after all those people got sent over to the other planet. Which would mean that my parents were exiled for some reason. And second… I think my existence was hidden. It was a whole new society being created over there, and yet after I lost my memories, I never met a single person who recognized me. Does… that tell you anything?”

Magolor ran his hands over his face. “I never thought I’d tell you what I’m about to tell you, but I think I should trust you by now. Let me tell you a story about a little thing that spanned several thousand years called Project Restoration.”

“On this side of the mirror, somewhere REALLY far away, there’s a planet called Halcandra. Back in ancient times, it was a paradise. It was serene, lush, it was almost as great as the planet we’re on right now! But, that didn’t last. The Ancients summoned four heroes to seal away their god, Void Termina. They feared its power, you see. The four heroes were successful, but perhaps a little too successful. 

The rest of The ancients thought, ‘If they can do that , what could they do to us?’ And so, the most powerful wizards among the ancients banded together to seal away the four heroes, betraying them. The chain of societal betrayals didn’t end there, but what’s important to this story is the banishment of those four heroes. Particularly, the one they called Galacta Knight. Because his punishment was for something he never did, and likely never would have done, they needed to take pretty drastic steps to smear his name.

First, they filled official records and reports with all kinds of barefaced lies. I could show you sometime, some of them are so absurd you can barely imagine an entire society falling for it. One of them said he single handedly destroyed a planet, but it didn’t even say which planet, or how he destroyed it, or why! I’m getting sidetracked here. 

The second thing they did was track down the only one who wasn’t buying it. There was someone who was partnered with Galacta Knight for a very long time, you see, and she would fight tooth and nail against the allegations. So they got to her first, and buried her deep under Mount Haldera. The mountain didn’t approve.

It’s unknown whether the eruption was actually triggered by the burial, but if it didn’t happen, The Ancients would’ve had a lot more of a chance at handling it. A majority of Halcandran society was wiped out in pyroclastic fashion. Of course, many of the people responsible for the coverup survived, either by escaping the planet entirely, or by avoiding the path of the lava. Either way, Halcandra never recovered. That was… until someone got an idea.”

“Hang on.” Shadow Magolor held up his hand. “Before you continue, can you explain more about that volcano? Why would the burial even be considered as a cause? And could this person really have helped save society from a giant eruption? And why was her existence such a threat to the smear campaign? Was she that special?”

Magolor reached back and patted the hull of the Lor. “She still is, my dude!”

“WHAT?”

“Anyway… a team of the best and brightest scientists that the universe had to offer was assembled. They had one goal: Restore Halcandra. But they couldn’t exactly do it themselves. It was mutually agreed upon that in order to maximize the odds of success, those who needed to go had some very specific criteria to meet. No one currently alive was able to hit even seventy percent of it, and any less than ninety was effectively worthless.

It took thousands of years and multiple generations to find hypotheses that worked. They had to resort to genetic engineering to create these beings, as waiting for one to evolve naturally would likely cause the plan to be lost to the heat death of the universe. Plus, it let them take a few… extra steps with their creations. Biological anomalies that wouldn’t occur naturally. It was a win-win. And that’s… how I was born.”

Shadow Magolor’s scarf had come down, so his jaw hanging open was visible. “Wh…”

Magolor noticed, and seemed to revel in the bewilderment. “And they did some REALLY weird stuff with me, actually. Did you know I was assigned every single gender at birth? Like, all of them? I just picked one when I was three to go by because I’d rather call myself a boy than the twenty three syllable word for it my ‘parents’ came up with.”

Shadow Magolor started swaying uneasily. “Can you please pause for a bit, I need to… pass out really quick…” His eyes were closed before his head hit the ground.

Magolor went back into the Lor. “I’m gonna need three more glasses of water. One for me, two for him.”

-.. .. ...- . .-. ... .. - -.-- / .-- .. -. -.-.-- / .-- .... .- - / - .... . / ..-. ..- -.-. -.- / .. ... / .- / --. . -. -.. . .-.

“Our shift’s almost over.” Elfilin pointed out. “Before we wake the others, can I ask you more about your weird dreams?”

“Oh! Yes, you can!” Kirby nodded. “So, last night, I had two more dreams. They both had Magolor in them, but that was probably just because he was there when I was asleep. I feel like I have the weird ones a  lot more when I’m away from the fountain, like when we were in that big building. I had them a lot then too, but they didn’t bother me as much because… being awake was worse. Anyways, the dreams I had were pretty similar to the rest of the weird ones, but there was another thing that happened last night.”

“What was it?!?” Elfilin flew abnormally close to Kirby’s face.

“Well, I said I saw Magolor wearing a green and white outfit before, right?”

“Yes… Go on…”

Kirby frowned. “I asked Magolor if he ever had one of those, and he got kinda freaked out. He said no, but I think there’s more to it than that.”

Elfilin brightened. “Well, let’s go find out! The mirror’s right there, we can just go through and look!”

“But… who’s gonna wake up those guys? Is it really okay to leave them unguarded?”

“We have half an hour. That should be plenty of time, but not too much that someone’s gonna notice we’re gone. There’s no way anything bad’s gonna happen!” 

“Well, I guess…” Kirby shuffled toward the mirror. “Let’s hope he lets us look!” He stepped through, Elfilin following closely behind.

“Hee hee hee…” Dark Taranza emerged from behind the empty tent. “My doppelganger’s gonna regret that comment about me being incompetent, I see…” He turned around. “Father! Our bait is ripe for the taking. We don’t even need to open their tents!”

Shadow Dedede’s stark white eyes shone through the night. “Adequate. Round them up and bring them to the dungeon before your thirty minute window closes.”

“But father! I may not have enough time to do that by myself…”

“You are my son. Are you not?”  

“Yes, Your Majesty…”

Chapter Text

“So, to summarize…” Shadow Magolor took a sip of water. “You think that I was created with genetic engineering to fulfill some kind of purpose?”

“That’s about the size of it. Actually, If I had to guess, I’d say the reason why everyone got exiled to another planet is because the king found out about the plan to make you.” 

“But what did they think I was going to do?”

Magolor shrugged. “How would I know? I wasn’t there.”

“Magolor!” A high voice came from fairly far away. The two people with that name looked in the direction of the voice to see Elfilin and Kirby.

“What are THEY doing here?” Shadow Magolor asked.

As they came closer, Kirby started pointing. “And Shadow Magolor’s here, too! Good!” 

Magolor held his hands outwards. “Why are you back here? It’s late.”

Elfilin stared indignantly at Shadow Magolor. “Why is HE here? You said you locked him in the basement of the secret base!”

Magolor gave a thumbs up. “Well, he’s out now, so we’re all good.”

“Wh- I- Okay.” Elfilin hung his head. “Can I go to your room?”

Magolor narrowed his eyes. “What could you possibly want in there?”

Kirby shook his head. “No! No! We don’t want to take anything, we just want to look at the wardrobe!”

Magolor bristled, as if his body was warning him that this was about to go somewhere bad. “Why would you want to look in there?”

“I got it!” Shadow Magolor exclaimed. “I bet they’re going to check the sizes on your clothes so they can get you new clothes as a gift!”

Elfilin nodded. “He’s right. Don’t ask where we’re getting them, though. I want to keep some parts of it a secret.”

Magolor stared at them, unimpressed. “What’s the real reason?”

Kirby frowned. “Well, when I asked last night if you had an outfit that was white and green, the way you answered was… really weird. So I want  to check. Can I?”

Magolor’s eyes shrunk. Again, he didn’t know why. The mention of that outfit that he didn’t even own clawed at the inside of his brain, desperate to break through and show him whatever horrible thought he was currently oblivious to. He tried to get his breathing back under control, then went into the Lor. “Come on in.” Perhaps having them see that the outfit did not exist and never had would ease his mind. 

He opened the door to the Captain’s Quarters, and hesitated. Kirby and Elfilin went past him into the room, but it was Shadow Magolor that concerned him. Were it not for the fact that Kirby and Elfilin had, effectively, already been there, he would have been on the fence on letting them in, too. However, he told himself that letting whatever baseless paranoia he had control him wasn’t gonna help him at all. “You go in, too. It’s fine.” What’s the worst that could happen?

Elfilin pulled open the doors to the wardrobe and looked inside. There was a surprising variety in there, most of which none but Magolor (and possibly Taranza) had ever seen before. He pulled out a camo outfit. “This?” Kirby shook his head. Elfilin looked more closely at the ones that didn’t catch his eye. There was what seemed to be an outfit based on a lab coat, a tuxedo, a detective’s uniform, a… Elfilin pulled out a frilly black and white outfit, complete with a pink bow. “I have to know. When do you ever wear this?”

“You can never be too prepared.” 

“For what?”

“Oh, y’know…”

Kirby stepped back from the wardrobe. “Huh. Nothing like what I saw.” He frowned. “Then how…”

Elfilin shook his head. “I can’t even guess. Were there any… ideas to have an outfit like that?”

Magolor, more concerned by his own reaction than either of theirs, folded his hands in front of him. “No… I don’t think I would’ve- hang on. Did you say you actually saw this outfit? It’s not just… imagination?”

“Please! Just hold on a little longer! We’ll save you!” The voice was quiet, but distinct.

“Kirby, you just said something. What was that?” Magolor suddenly looked panicked. “Save who?”

“What?”

“He didn’t say anything…”

“Are you okay?”

Obviously not, but that wasn’t what was important right now. “The point is, if I were to design a green and white outfit, it’d look better than that.”

Kirby pictured the outfit and admitted it didn’t quite seem like Magolor's style. The green was too faded, the white not as pristine as the white he currently wore. And accented with brown, of all colours? Who is that guy and what did he do with Magolor? “That’s true…”

Elfilin was already by the door. “Thanks for letting us look!”

Magolor laughed nervously. “Well, anything to put your minds at ease…”

Shadow Magolor clapped his hands. “I think we should be going now. Then, we can put everyone’s mind at ease!”

Magolor nodded. “Right. You guys get to that, then.” He motioned to the door.

Shadow Magolor tilted his head. “You’re not coming?”

“...Nnnno? I was told to leave.”

“Oh. Okay. Then what if I told you to come back?”

Magolor sighed deeply. “Just go. I’ll be okay.”

Shadow Magolor grabbed Magolor’s hands. “Please come back with us. I know you’ll be able to help.”

“I can’t! What if I end up hurting you again?”

Shadow Magolor tightened his grip as he gazed into his counterpart’s eyes. “You won’t. I know you won’t.”

Something hot pricked at the back of Magolor’s eyes. He blinked repeatedly, then coughed. His breathing slowed. “I won’t.”

-- . .-. -.-. ..- .-. -.--

The mirror itself seemed to be anticipating their return. It glimmered in the night almost as bright as the moon, and was enchanting in a way that almost made Magolor forget how bad of an idea it was to stare at it. Elfilin swooped in before the other three, and as soon as they followed him, they heard him suddenly cry out. Shadow Magolor rushed to his side. “What is it? What’s wrong?” 

Magolor tried to swallow the new lump in his throat. “Where’s camp?”

Kirby pointed frantically. “It’s gone! The tents and the people who were in them!”

Magolor gave a pained look to Kirby. “When you two came over to look at my clothes, did you leave anyone guarding back here?”

“Uh… well… I was planning on waiting until we were supposed to wake up the next group… but Elfilin really wanted to see…”

“Did he now.” Magolor was unimpressed. “I leave for twelve hours and your brains immediately evaporate. Great.”

... --- -.. .- -.-.-- -.-.-- -.-.-- -.-.--

Bandee blinked awake groggily. “Rnnngh.” They looked around at their surroundings, and saw four or five sets of eyes looking back at them. Also, they weren’t in a tent. “Hunh…? Wait, what? What’s going on?”

Taranza was slumped in a corner of the room. “We’re stuck. Again. Only, this time we’re without Kirby and Elfilin.”

“And Shadow Magolor.” Shadow Kirby piped up.

“Him too. Anyway, before you woke up, the stupid guy who looks like me showed up and basically told us that we’re gonna die, which isn’t great.”

“Oh no!” Bandee cried. “Do we have any ideas?”

Marx tapped Daroach on the back. “I have an idea. We’ll probably need you to do it, though.” After a moment of expectant silence, Marx decided to elaborate. “So, ratboy, how attached are you to your dignity?”

Daroach’s pupils constricted as he realized what was going to be asked of him. He looked around the room for anyone he could ask to do it in his stead. He sighed, defeated. “I’ll try flirting with stupid guy.”

After about a minute of him saying increasingly humiliating things through the door, he turned back around. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I feel… gross.”

Taranza scratched his head. “That’s weird. Normally he loves bantering with us. Also, he’s been drooling over you for several days.”

“Hey, it could’ve gone worse!” Marx said. 

“How exactly could it be worse?” Daroach grumbled.

“He could’ve locked himself in here with us and insisted you follow through.”

“You’re right. That would be worse.”

.-. . --. .-. . -

Dark Meta Knight gazed off into the darkness. He vigilantly scanned the area, watching for any signs of life. Really, he only had three lives in particular to watch for, especially since Magolor had been unceremoniously ejected from the party of annoying people. It was a matter of when, not if, Shadow Magolor would show up. As for when? Right now, of course.

Shadow Magolor, without hesitation, approached. “Please-”

He was cut off by a direct kick below the face. “Guards.” Dark Meta Knight called, pointing his sword down at him. “Bring him to the king.”

The flurry of blunt attacks kept him too winded to fight back. He could do very little but groan through the process of the restraints binding him onto some kind of board. He faintly heard Dark Meta Knight saying, “Bring the rest of ‘em up here.” Well, that’s good at least . When he regained his mental faculties, the board was being propped up so that he could look forward. He became painfully aware of the sword over his head, ready to drop at any time. After noticing that, he realized he was face to face with Shadow Dedede. 

“You were going to ask for something before you got dragged here. Make it quick.” 

“Let the others go.”

Shadow Dedede seemed to ponder that for a moment. “No. Meta, cut the rope.”

Dark Meta Knight flipped his sword in his hand. “At once.” Before he could swing it, a golden ball of light hit him, causing him to drop the sword. The other sword hanging over Shadow Magolor’s head remained hanging. Dark Meta Knight didn’t pick his sword back up. “Is this really necessary?”

Shadow Dedede leaned forward. “What’s gotten into you?” He rumbled.

Dark Taranza, looking panicked, rushed to the king’s side. “Sire, that ball of light just now-” 

Shadow Dedede grabbed him and hurled him at Dark Meta Knight. “IF HE’S GONE SOFT, THEN YOU DO IT!”

Dark Meta Knight caught him and gently let him go. “Are you alright?”

Dark Taranza brushed himself off. “I suppose- Since when did you care?” Right as he finished asking, he looked back toward the entrance of the chamber. The boards that the others were supposed to be tied to were vacant. “Sire, the other prisoners-”

“CUT IT!” 

“Yes, sire!” He hurriedly picked up the sword… and then dropped it. A sudden feeling of pacifism washed over him, and the change shocked him enough to cause him to freeze.

Shadow Dedede picked up the hammer next to his throne and leapt out of it, aiming directly for the head. He brought the hammer down.

A large bell rang out through the throne room. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. The vibration echoed through Shadow Dedede’s entire body, knocking the hammer out of his hands. “What in the-”

“AAAAAUGH!” The loud, pained groan from Shadow Magolor indicated that he had, in fact, survived the blow. “This thing wasn’t built for that! Fuck!” 

Dark Taranza descended from above the board. “Sire, I think there’s been a misunderstanding-”

Shadow Dedede backhanded him out of the way. “Quiet, useless boy!” He shakily picked up the hammer again. “Second time’s the charm.” 

“Oh, is it?” Taranza appeared on the boardwalk above them. “Seems like we should stop that second time from happening, then.” He threw a ball of energy at the hammer, knocking it out of the king’s hands. 

Shadow Kirby ran up from behind the board and inhaled the hammer, gaining the hammer ability. As he prepared to swing it back at its owner, Daroach undid the restraints on Shadow Magolor’s body. As soon as he was free, he ducked away from the fight. Shadow Kirby swung the hammer at the king with great force. “HEEEEEEYA!” The blow knocked Shadow Dedede through a hoop that Marx formed with his wings, into one of the pillars in the corners of the room. The pillar crumbled and collapsed.

Daroach sat Shadow Magolor down against the back of the board. “Are you okay?”

He pressed his head into his hands. “I’ll be fine, just… owwww…” He rubbed his head. “How’s everyone else?”

“Kirby and Elfilin untied us, and now they and Bandee are keeping the guards at bay. Dark Meta Knight jumped out a window. Only thing I don’t get is where those balls of light came from. I thought you were the only one who could use those.”

Magolor arrived to sit next to them. “Daroach, please. He can’t do anything like that.”

Daroach recoiled, both from the sudden appearance of Magolor, and what he said. “What are you doing here? And what do you mean?”

Shadow Magolor shook his head. “Hang on. This should illustrate things.” He reached over to Magolor’s ear and squeezed the tip of it, revealing that there was nothing underneath. He then grabbed his own ear below where the fabric was frayed and unfolded it, letting his very much intact ear out of the hole. “You still seem confused. Hang on.” He lifted his hood slightly, pulling something off of his face. It clattered to the floor, revealing his lighter brown fur and bright yellow eyes. “It’s me! Hi! Probably concussed, but I’m back!”

Daroach cycled through about a hundred emotions before the reality of everything that had happened fully dawned on him, and he broke into a warm chuckle. “Thanks for coming back, buddy.” He gave him a light hug. “Take care of your head, okay?”

Taranza butted in for an infinitely more aggressive hug. “Don’t ever do any of that to me again!”

Bandee rushed over. “Hey, guys, I know you’re having a moment, but Shadow Kirby just knocked out a load-bearing pillar and this whole place is about to collapse!” Their outburst was punctuated by a piece of the ceiling hitting the floor. 

Daroach quickly went and scooped up Shadow Kirby. “Everyone MOVE!” 

The nine of them got through the castle doors just before the whole thing fell down. Shadow Magolor, having taken off his own disguise, quickly looked over everyone. “Are we okay? Is everyone here?”

Taranza gestured at everyone. “Yep, we’re all here. Magolor’s in pretty bad shape, though.”

Elfilin nodded sagely. “Head trauma does that to a man.”

Daroach corralled the others in the direction of where the campsite used to be. “Let’s regroup in Shadow Magolor’s ship, okay?”

As everyone went off to the ship, Shadow Magolor found himself looking back at the wreckage of the castle. Some of the rubble moved, and he rushed over to see who was underneath it. Dark Taranza was pinned under a large piece of debris, and struggling to move. “Help… please…”

“Where’s the king?”

“Why should I know?” His voice was wrapped tightly around the tears of anger and despair he was crying. “If he’s alive, he didn’t bother to look for me! I just… I just wanted someone to smile at me, or tell me they were proud of me, or that they were happy I exist! Was th- was that so wrong?”

“But you didn’t have to get that from him!” Shadow Magolor bent down and grasped Dark Taranza’s only free hand. “There are so many people in this world. Someone’s going to appreciate you.”

“Please get this thing off of me…” Dark Taranza sobbed. “I need to know if you’re right. Please… I’ll do anything you want.”

Shadow Magolor stared at the chunk of debris, pondering.

Chapter Text

“Actually… I think I want to go back to the Lor to change out of these clothes. Do you guys mind?” Magolor weakly announced as the group was approaching the ship.

“I’ll take you there.” Taranza pulled Magolor closer to his side. “The rest of you just wait at the ship.”

The group entered the ship, and as soon as the door closed behind them, shutting them in the cramped main room, Bandee and Shadow Kirby collapsed against one another. Daroach looked around and then let out a long, loud, pained groan. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. Where’s-” 

The door opened again, showing Shadow Magolor, breathless. “Sorry if I worried any of you. I was checking the rubble for people who survived.” He looked at the people who were packed into the room. “Where are-”

“Magolor went to go change clothes at the Lor, Taranza went with him because he’s injured.” Marx interrupted.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll do that, too.” Shadow Magolor swiped his card and squeezed through the main room into the one where Shadow Marx was sleeping. It closed behind him. After going back to his normal attire, he gently shook his sleeping crewmate. “Good morning, superstar.”

“Mngh…” Shadow Marx opened his eyes. “Good morning…”

“I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I think we’re going to end up going back home for a while. The good news is that I’m definitely making progress on finding a cure for your condition.”

Shadow Marx brightened. “Oh, good! And you haven’t been in any more danger since I last saw you, right?”

Shadow Magolor coughed and looked away for a moment. “Well…”

“Take us home, now.”

“I will, I will. We’ll go home. Just, give it some time, okay? We’ll be bringing the rest of the people I met here, and two of them aren’t aboard yet.”

“Oh… okay…” His hat drooped. “Wait! Does that mean you’re not doing anything right now? Because I’ve been really worried-”

Shadow Magolor lifted the blanket and climbed underneath it, pulling Shadow Marx close to him. “Say no more. I’m here. You’re safe.”

-.. .- -- -. / -... .. - -.-. .... / .... --- .-- / .-.. --- -. --. / -.. --- . ... / .. - / - .- -.- . / -.-- --- ..- / - --- / -.-. .... .- -. --. . / -.-- --- ..- .-. / ..-. ..- -.-. -.- .. -. --. / -.-. .-.. --- - .... . ...

Taranza opened the door to Magolor’s room in the Lor. “Okay. I’ll wait out here for you.” He was halfway through closing the door when Magolor grabbed the handle. 

“Actually, can you come in?”

“Oh! Uh, okay.” Taranza entered the room. “Why did you want me in here?”

“Well, I, uh…” Magolor rubbed his forehead. “I’m still feeling pretty dizzy, and my clothes are kinda complicated, so I think I might… need your help…”

“Okay.” Taranza tried not to let every thought that just entered his mind show on his face. 

“Thanks for helping with that, Ranz. I know it was uncomfortable for you.” Magolor, with his hood still down, leaned his head against him.

“Aasbgbhj what gave you that impression?”

“Your hands were shaking the entire time.” Magolor’s weak voice had taken on a teasing tone. Taranza buried his face in his hands. Magolor hugged him tightly. “It’s fine, it’s allowed. I was gonna want you to see those scars sometime soon anyway.”

“You were? Why?” The scars on Magolor’s back were large and ghastly, and some of them were even distinct enough to paint a blurry picture of how they came to be. “I mean, you’re usually scared of letting people see things that make you look vulnerable.”

“They’re pretty horrible, aren’t they?” Magolor asked quietly. “Every time I think about them, they drive my self-esteem through the mud. Just a bunch of reminders carved into my skin announcing how weak I am.”

Taranza grabbed his face. “Don’t say that.” They gazed into each other’s eyes, the room filled with deafening silence. “They don’t mean that. Not at all. The only thing it says is that you’ve experienced something that difficult and you’re still here. And I’m so, so glad you are.”

“Thank you. I was hoping you’d say something like that.” Tears welled up in Magolor’s eyes. “Now… I can think of how obsessed you are with me when I remember them. Better than what they made me remember before.”

Taranza froze for a moment, processing what he’d just said. “You wanted me to see them so they’d make you think of me? That’s…” He trailed off, but the love in his eyes spoke louder than any words could. “Wait, what do you mean, I’m obsessed with you?”

Magolor laughed. “Ranza, you once told a ghost at a haunted house, ‘Back off, he’s mine.’”

“He was making eyes at you and you know it!” 

“He was a white sheet and his eyes were black circles of construction paper.” Magolor leaned in closer to Taranza and tenderly kissed him. “And, more importantly, he couldn’t compete with you even if he wanted to.”

“You’re not really all that dizzy, are you?”

Magolor put his hood back up, got off the bed, and hovered to the door. Or-no, he hovered into the door. A head-on collision with the door. “OW! …I think you were hoping I wasn’t feeling dizzy, and I was gonna try to be normal to impress you, but I’m actually fucked up right now.”

Taranza grinned. “Come on, I’ll take you back to the others.” When he got to the door and opened it, he put two hands around Magolor. “Stay close.” As they were leaving the Lor, The sky was brightening with the sunrise.

... --- .-. .-. -.-- / ..-. --- .-. / -- .- -.- .. -. --. / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .- .. - / ... --- / .-.. --- -. --. / -... . - .-- . . -. / ... ..- .--. . .-. / --. .- -.-- / .-- .. --.. .- .-. -.. / -.-. --- -. - . -. - / .. - / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .--. .-. --- -... .- -... .-.. -.-- / .... .- .--. .--. . -. / .- --. .- .. -.

The door to the ship opened, revealing a content looking Taranza and a slightly out of it but happy Magolor. Daroach waved. “Hey, guys. Kirby and Elfilin filled us in on your whole clothes swap plan.”

Taranza sat down against an empty patch of wall, and Magolor sat in front of him, still being held close. Magolor nodded. “Good. I really didn’t feel like explaining the reasons or setup behind that.”

Marx reached for the door to Shadow Marx’s room and tapped it. “Hey, we’re all here.”

Once Shadow Magolor had emerged from the room, the question of “What now?” was floated to the group. 

Magolor was the first to answer. “We’re not gonna find out anything more unless we go to the planet you came from, Shadow. That’s where you’d have been born, that’s where the artifacts are, it’s the only place we reasonably can go if we want to really figure out what’s happening here.”

Shadow Kirby nodded. “And, if we go, I might get to see my friends again!” 

Marx nodded. “So, we’re going? It looks like no one has a problem with checking out where the exiles were sent.”

No one spoke up. Shadow Magolor floated over to the console. He hit a few buttons, and a course appeared on the screen. “Let’s go!” As the ship rumbled to life and took off from the ground, the shaking of the room caused people to fall into each other. “Oop. Sorry about that, it should be more stable now. It should only be a day or so until we get there.”

“A DAY?” The outraged disbelief came from just about everyone.

“It’s a good time to catch up on sleep after last night. I’ll be in the bed in the other room, I’ll leave the door open. There’s a cupboard with extra blankets and pillows. Good… night. I know it’s morning, but who says good morning before knowingly going to bed? I’m tired. Good night.”

Bandee opened the cupboard doors and started pulling out the blankets and pillows. “Good news. There’s five of each.” They threw one set to Taranza, another to Daroach, a third to Marx, and a fourth to Shadow Kirby. Within fifteen seconds Marx had wrapped himself in a blanket, gone to sleep, and started snoring. Bandee was happy to share with Kirby, and Daroach with Elfilin.

Taranza propped Magolor’s head onto the pillow. “Even if you don’t fall asleep, you should lay down.” He lay down next to him, making sure he was kept warm by the blanket. “No being cold on my watch.” He muttered.

As slumber came for everyone aboard the ship, Magolor’s eyes stayed open. Not that he wasn’t tired, he just didn’t feel like being asleep at the moment. Instead, he simply looked to his side, watching the rise and fall of Taranza’s breathing. He tried to settle back onto the pillow, but was interrupted by a loud noise. A phone ringing. The one next to the monitor. As the others in the room, except Marx, came alert thanks to the sound, Magolor picked himself up off the ground and answered the phone. “Hello?” His voice wasn’t exactly energized.

“Magolor!” Came the reply. It was difficult to recognize the voice through the phone. It sounded like Daroach’s voice, but he couldn’t imagine any variant of him sounding this panicked. “Please! You need to get back here as soon as possible. It’s Rick! He… he’s dead!” 

“What?!?” Instantly, the fog in his head was cleared away. “Well, we’re on our way, what do you mean, he’s dead?”

“I mean he- hang on, who’s ‘we’?”

“You’ll find out when we get there. What happened?”

The person who was almost certainly Shadow Daroach took a quick breath. “I kept hearing from people who were friends with him that they hadn’t heard from him in a while, so I went to his house and he was… in the attic…” He took a few more breaths. “And… and that’s not all. There was a card, too. The ace of diamonds. Him again.”

Magolor got the impression that he was supposed to know what that meant. He didn’t, of course, so he opted to end the call. “Oh, no.” He let out a long, deep sigh. “We’ll talk more when we get there, okay? It should only be another…” He looked at the monitor. “Damn it. Nineteen hours. Is that okay?”

“I’ll be counting every minute. Just, please get here safely.” The phone was hung up on the other end.

Magolor turned away from the phone to see everyone save for the two Marxes staring at him in shock. “So, funny story.”

Once he was done paraphrasing the details of the phone call, the issue of the collective jaws on the floor had not been solved even a little. Shadow Kirby’s shock was the first to turn to something else. “I… I never got to see him again…” 

“Did you know him?” Bandee asked.

“Not very well…”

The heavy silence covered the room like a blanket. No one spoke for several minutes. That was, until Magolor directed a question to the one who’d know the most. “So, Shadow, what’s the deal with this card?”

“They started popping up a few years ago.” Shadow Magolor began. “And every single time, they’re next to a corpse. We don’t know why they’re left behind, but we can assume that they come from the killer. No one knows who it is or what their motives are.”

Daroach abruptly turned away from Shadow Kirby. “Hang on, you want to put us in the vicinity of a serial killer?”

“I… uh… I suppose I didn’t think through the details very well.”

Magolor shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re looking for the insurgents who wanted to overthrow Shadow Dedede. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m simply not going to get murdered.”

Daroach raised an eyebrow. “...I guess I can get behind that blind arrogance. Gang, we’re just not gonna get killed, we decided.”

Marx abruptly stopped snoring. “Can you guys shut up? I’m trying to sleep.”

Taranza frowned. “Marx, a person has died.” 

“Yeah, they do that.” He continued snoring almost before he even finished the sentence.

Chapter Text

“Ummm, excuse me? Hello? Are you okay, mister?” The familiar voice of Bandee cut through the haze in Magolor’s mind. He opened his eyes and spied the cracked, dry terrain he had apparently been face down in. He slowly picked his head up to make sure he hadn’t been imagining things. That was them, without a doubt, standing over him with a surprising amount of concern and a surprising lack of anger.

Magolor figured he had to try speaking. “....Hi there. I… I’m sorry.”

They tilted their head to one side, evidently confused. “What for? Do I know you?”

Magolor blinked, then shook his head rapidly. “Oh, I, uh, I guess not. Whoops, I guess I thought you were someone else. My name is Magolor. What’s yours?”

They held out their hand. “You can call me Bandee!”

.. - ... / --. --- --- -.. / - --- / -... . / -... .- -.-. -.-

Magolor awoke in a panic. His eyes darted around the ship’s interior so fast that he couldn’t see anything, his hands tightly clutched at his own sides, and he began hyperventilating as soon as his eyes opened. He was faintly aware of people calling out to him, but he couldn’t pick out who they were or what they were saying. Eventually, his vision began to focus, and he saw who he recognized as Taranza looking back at him. His breathing slowed, his grip loosened (causing him to realize that the skin beneath it was hurting), and one of his hands drifted over to grasp one of Taranza’s.

Taranza tried in vain to hide his worry. “Did you have a really bad nightmare?”

Magolor searched his brain and realized that, no, actually, he hadn’t. A fact which was far stranger than if he had. The dream he awoke from was, on its face, a little strange, but hardly a nightmare. Then why? Why did it make him react in that way? “I… Well I don’t think so…”

Daroach’s brow furrowed. “Now what in the world does that mean?”

“Let’s… not talk about this right now. Later.”

Elfilin looked up at the monitor, anxious. “We land in an hour.”

Magolor’s eyes widened. “Only an hour? When I went to sleep it was, like, fifteen!” He looked up at the monitor himself. “Wow. I must’ve been SUPER tired. And before I forget, I’d like to thank you all for not killing me in my sleep. People have had trouble resisting that urge in the past.” He caught Marx shifting awkwardly out of the corner of his eye.

“We should’ve brought snacks.” Kirby moped in the corner of the room. Looking at him made Magolor feel a brief shiver, but it passed.

Shadow Magolor smiled cordially. “Don’t worry about the long rest, you didn’t miss much.”

As the planet came closer and closer, its descent slowed, and eventually made contact with the ground. The door made a hissing sound before opening, revealing who looked to be Shadow Daroach on the other side. The excitement on his face quickly gave way to confusion as he took in the faces inside. “Uh. There was only one of you a few days ago.” He then locked eyes with Magolor, then Daroach, then Shadow Magolor. “Hey, what?”

Shadow Magolor responded by jumping into Shadow Daroach’s embrace. “Hi! Missed you!” Magolor and Daroach both turned away once their faces started getting closer, and inadvertently found themselves making direct eye contact, which caused them both to recoil.

Taranza moved forward. “If I may…”

Shadow Daroach met his gaze. “Oh, go right ahead. I’m all ears.”

Taranza went on to explain the Dimension mirror, who they all were, and why they were here. “And… I believe that would be everything. Do you have any questions?”

Shadow Daroach twirled the silver cane he was holding. “Well, I suppose I have a few. For starters, it seems to be no secret how I feel about the Magolor from this side of the mirror.” He began gesturing to his own counterpart. “So are you two…”

Magolor very quickly shook his head. “Nope. Taranza here got to me first.” A playfully devious grin crossed his face. “Much to the roachster’s chagrin, I’m sure.”

“Absolutely not. You’re way too high maintenance.” Daroach shot back, amused. “Besides, I have my eye on someone else.”

Everyone else in the room raised an eyebrow, but before someone could ask who, Taranza got back to business. “You said there was more?”

Shadow Daroach gave a nod. “So, the other day, I talked to, er, ‘Shadow’ Kirby, where is he?”

Marx tapped on the door that separated the main room from Shadow Marx. It opened, and Shadow Kirby stepped out, unhappy. “He won’t even- DAROACH!!!” He leapt across the room at his long-lost friend. “You’re here! You’re really here! I thought I’d never…” He trailed off as tears of relief began to stream down his face. 

Shadow Daroach held him close, letting the tears fall onto his pristine white coat. “I’ve really missed you, little buddy.”

Once the reunions were over, Magolor diverted the subject. “So, I can’t help but recall that there’s a dead guy.”

Shadow Daroach’s eyes widened. “Right! I almost, er, forgot about that. We’re still looking into that, last I checked, so, you guys just sit tight, okay?”

Shadow Magolor nodded. “Yeah. I’ll show them to where I live, I think you’ve got it taken care of.”

Magolor put his hand up. “Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, no. I’m going over there. I want to investigate.”

Elfilin nodded earnestly. “Me too!”

Taranza leaned to whisper in Magolor’s ear. “What are you doing?”

“My first times trying to help here were, to put it generously, an abysmal failure. I gotta make up for it somehow.”

Taranza leaned away, paused for a moment, then raised a hand. “I will go as well.”

Shadow Daroach seemed taken aback. “What in the world is the matter with all of you? We have it taken care of-”

“Clearly, you don’t.” Magolor silenced him. “This Ace guy’s been running amok for who knows how long now and you still don’t even know who they are. Let us help.”

Shadow Magolor looked concerned. “Well, we don’t want guests on our planet to be put in danger… if you got involved, and something happened to you, I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself…”

Daroach folded his hands in front of him. “So we’d be better off letting a murderer just go around killing people? What if we do nothing and die anyway? Would you be able to live with yourself, knowing we might’ve been able to stop them but didn’t because you didn’t want us to?”

Shadow Daroach froze, apparently out of shock. Once he regained his composure, the next thing he said seemed to signal the end of the debate. “So, who’s coming with me?”

... -.-. --- --- -... / - .... . / -.. --- --- / .--- --- -.- . …

Once inside Shadow Magolor’s home, he led Kirby, Bandee, Shadow Kirby, and Marx to the bedroom where Shadow Marx spent most of his time. Bandee deposited the blanket bundle that contained Shadow Marx onto the bed. Shadow Magolor gave him a pat on the head. “There. Home.”

Shadow Marx seemed to be asleep. Not wanting to wake him, the rest of the party filtered out of the room. That is, with one exception.

Shadow Kirby.

He remained by his old friend’s bedside, hoping he’d open his eyes. “Hey… Marx? You’re awake, aren’t you?”

The pitiful jester’s eyes drifted open. “I guess I am.”

“I wanna know. Why won’t you answer me?”

Shadow Marx rolled over. “Because I don’t know. I don’t know how I woke up. It’s one of the things that’s been clawing at me from within all these years. If you were sliced clean in half, and remembered it, would you be able to look someone in the eye and explain your inexplicable continuing life? I don’t know, Kirby. I’m sorry.” When Shadow Kirby walked around to the other side of the bed, he saw tears staining the sheets beneath Shadow Marx.

“You really remember?” Shadow Kirby frowned. “Once I heard that you were alive, I was just… wrong about what happened. But… how?”

“…Kirby?” Shadow Marx pulled himself out of bed.

“...Yeah?”

He wrapped his barren silver wing branches around his long lost friend. “I don’t think I’ll need to care anymore.”

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The other party approached the door, behind which was the crime scene. Daroach strode to it first. “May I kick the door down?”

“I would classify that as inadvisable.” Taranza mumbled.

“I don’t believe you were the one I was asking, Ranzer. What say you, other me? Kick or no kick?”

Shadow Daroach seemed to have already lost some of his patience. “Absolutely not. No kicking doors. Just open it normally.”

“Fine.” Daroach twisted the knob, pushing the door open. He let out a small gasp once he saw what was inside. “That’s… pretty bad.”

The body was laid on his back, with a large wooden stake sticking straight up from his stomach. It stretched so far upwards that it almost touched the ceiling. The dark red pool that stretched out around him left little to the imagination. Taped to the stake, was a single card. The ace of diamonds. 

Three others were already in the room, examining the scene. One of them, a small purple mouse, directed his attention to the door, confused by the new faces. “Hey, chief? D’you and your ‘friend’ have siblings? Who are these people?”

Shadow Daroach sighed. “These guys came from the Dimension Mirror. The two who look like me and Magolor are, in a way, copies of us. Though they’re not really… the same. The Magolor that we know brought them to this planet, and they insisted on coming here.”

The studious looking green mouse wore large blue spiral glasses and maneuvered using a UFO-like craft. “Chief, you appear… exasperated. Would this be a result of you being made to babysit a man who mirrors your romantic partner while you have been awaiting a chance to be with him again for the past several days?”

The large, hulking, bright yellow mouse almost knocked over a bookshelf in surprise. “Doc, I keep tellin’ ya! Don’t rub it in!”

Magolor nodded. “You three’d be Spinni, Storo, and Doc, I guess?”

They nodded. “So why’d you wanna come here, bucko? Did the part about the mass murderer fall out of your noggin?” Mirror Spinni sneered.

Magolor returned a flat stare. “Real quick, could you catch me up on how close you four are to finding them?”

The ones that weren’t Doc grunted. Mirror Doc himself seemed to have a retort prepared immediately. “We should like to know what semblance of a plan the four of you have that we apparently do not.”

“I’ll figure something out.” Magolor, feigning nonchalance, moved past the three into the kitchen of the house.

Back in the main room, Elfilin gasped. He quickly covered the part of his face where a mouth would be after drawing the attention of the Shadow Squeaks. “Oh, nothing! Nothing! I just, uh… need to talk to these two about something. Excuse us!” He hurried a confused Taranza and Daroach out the door, closing it behind them. 

Mirror Spinni shrugged. “Course I gotta know what they’re saying.” He quickly tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear against it.

“Sure,” Shadow Daroach muttered distractedly, his face turned toward the kitchen. “What’s he doing in there?” He followed Magolor in. “So, am I supposed to believe that you’re voluntarily putting yourself in danger by joining the investigation because you think we’re not doing a good enough job, and your first order of business is… rummaging through a dead person’s freezer?”

“Speaking from experience, you never know what you’ll find in a freezer.” Magolor replied. “Liiiiiiiiiike…” He pulled a large, flat, square box out. “This!”

“A frozen pizza. Uh, riveting. I had no idea people put food in these.”

“I know it doesn’t mean much, but consider this.” Magolor rotated the box. “It’s open.”

Shadow Daroach shook his head, still unimpressed. “Yeah, that happens. It’s one of the two things that boxes can be. So?”

Magolor shook the box. “This box has enough room for only one pizza. The box has been opened, yet the pizza is still in there. What does that tell you?”

“Oh… oh, wow.” Shadow Daroach’s surprise was apparent. “That would mean… if the box wasn’t open for anything to be taken out, it was opened to put something else in… what’s in there?”

Magolor slid the pizza out, examining the inside of the box. “Uh…” he turned the pizza over in his hands. “Ah HA!” he began scrabbling to peel back the plastic wrapping. He pulled a slip of paper out of it. “The classic ‘hide important information underneath a frozen pizza’ trick. Sooner or later, people gotta get more creative.”

“I’ve never heard of that trick in my life.” Shadow Daroach frowned. “Well, what does it say?”

Magolor’s brow furrowed as he read what was on it. “Where’s Stonehill?”

Shadow Daroach cocked his head. “That old place? What in the world could that have to do with this?”

Doesn’t your boyfriend live over there? “Uh. Humour me? How would we get there?”

Shadow Daroach led him back to the front door, then opened it, ignoring Mirror Spinni’s nagging. “We’ll just go…” He pointed off into the distance. “That direction. It’d take a while, though.”

“Sounds good.” Magolor headed off in the direction he’d indicated.

When Shadow Daroach tried to follow him, though, he was interrupted by Elfilin, followed by Taranza and Daroach. “Can we talk back inside? It’s important.” From their faces, it seemed clear they were truthful.

Caught off guard, Shadow Daroach seemed to not know how to say no. “Sssssure. Sure. Come in.”

Once they were all inside, Mirror Spinni tilted his head toward Mirror Storo. “Now.”

The yellow mouse, towering over everyone else in the house, lunged toward the outsiders. He held two cloths, soaked in some kind of substance, over Daroach and Taranza’s faces. Before Elfilin had time to react, he was knocked out as well. Shadow Daroach stared at them in shock. “Wh- why? What the fuck are you DOING?”

Mirror Spinni didn’t look him in the eye. “These fellas are too smart for their own good.”

.-- . .-.. .-.. / - .... .- - ... / -. --- - / --. --- --- -..

The paper read ‘Stonehill base A5’. Once he had arrived at the shed marked A1, he scanned the map Shadow Magolor had mentioned for his destination. Once he found where it was, Magolor slipped out of the shed and traveled the short distance to the hatch the paper had led him to. No mistake, this had to be it. One problem: He couldn’t seem to unlock it. Hmm. Master key it is. He placed a small bomb next to the lock, waited a short distance away for it to detonate, and yanked the hatch open. He wasn’t completely sure what he was expecting inside, which meant that the home he did find didn’t really catch him off guard. 

The room Magolor found himself in had two more doors, an ornate red and gold carpet, dark brown bookshelves that reached all the way up to the ceiling, and a reclining chair facing away from him. It seemed well kept, though there were no other signs of a person that he could see. “Hello?”

Unexpectedly, there was a response. “It’s rude to enter someone’s home unannounced.” The voice was definitely coming from inside the recliner, and Magolor couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity it gave him.

“Oh! Er, hi there. My name is Magolor. Could you tell me… who you are?”

“I haven’t used my name in years. I’m afraid I don’t know what it is anymore. Call me whatever you like, Magolor .” 

The resentment dripped off of that last word, so thick Magolor could almost feel it running down his body. “Well, Mr. A5, I came here because I have reason to believe that this place has a connection to someone named Rick. He’s a hamster, gray with white spots, blue feet. You know him?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Though I have not seen or spoken to him in a very long time. Nor anyone else. I haven’t left this base since… since it was all stripped away.”

I don’t imagine he’d say anything meaningful about the murder, then. Magolor swallowed hard, trying to pull the question that’d been nagging at him out of his mouth. “Did you… have a child?”

“That’s certainly an odd question. Yes, I did. What of it?”

Magolor’s heart flipped, and his breathing quickened. There’s no way, right? But I have to ask! This is gonna eat me alive if I don’t! “Was his name… T-Taranza?”

The chair finally turned around, showing the shocked face of the man that sat in it. He had bright red hair, black gloves with blue accents, a black cape with a red lining. But his most striking features were his two long horns, silver with orange tips and purple bases, and his number of hands.

Six hands.

“How in the world could you have known that?”