Nowhere To Go But Up

Story Time

"When you were here before, you said that you had an idea for how to find the cause of Sectonia's corruption. What was it?" Taranza clearly wasn't going to be cheered up yet, but Magolor had gotten through to him well enough to have a normal conversation about the love of his life passing away.

"I got some notes from Kirby's previous adventures, and thought something in them would help me find it. Obviously, that didn't go anywhere, but that was what I had in mind."

"I see, so if you had found something, maybe you could have saved her. Or stopped her from making anything worse. But I..." Taranza trailed off, then looked down.

"Hey, it's not your fault. You were just doing what she told you to." Am I doing this right?

"It was so unreasonable. I never thought myself capable of doing all those awful things, even if it was for some twisted love! You probably think I'm a fool."

If there was any time for Magolor to be completely upfront, it's now. "If I judged someone for making a huge mistake while being influenced by something sinister, I'd be a hypocrite. And I can't stand the thought of that."

Taranza looked up again. "You can... relate?"

Not entirely sure what it was that made him want to say all this out loud, Magolor folded his hands in front of him, then launched into his story.

"Growing up, life was pretty difficult. I didn't have a home, so I moved around a lot. Considering I was basically just floating around in space, there wasn't a whole lot of food or water, and I was pretty malnourished. I only had two friends, Marx and Susie, and they weren't the most reliable sort. Marx was a joker, and didn't take things seriously a lot of the time. Susie was better, but never seemed to put us very high on her priorities list. It wasn't that she didn't care about us, it was more so that she actually had people missing her, and she knew it. I don't know much about Marx, but if he had a family, he doesn't care enough about them to look for them. I might have people looking for me, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

We had to band together to survive, where Susie would try to look for a way out, Marx stole supplies that the Sphere Doomers had taken from some planet or another, and I helped out wherever I could. I'd try to help Susie sort out what we'd need to do to escape, and plan and execute food heists with Marx. We looked pretty out of place there, what with everyone else being some kind of Doomer. We got picked on a lot, which sounds a lot less bad than it was. They were horrible. They'd set Susie on fire for fun, and I'm still afraid of the cold of the ice ones. Sometimes we got caught stealing supplies, and they tortured us for hours on end. We slept in shifts in the event that we needed to escape quickly. I was never able to sleep for more than three hours at a time.

Marx somehow managed to escape eventually, leaving behind nothing but a message he carved into a chunk of land that said he was going back to Popstar. I'd have liked to know how he was going to pull that off. At this point, I was just angry. Angry at whatever kind of cold, heartless world would let this happen to anyone. I don't even remember most of what came after that, until I found it.

A portal. They opened up randomly, but always had something that was stopping us from entering them. Eventually, Me and Susie had both learned not to bother with them, but this one was different. It felt familiar, somehow. I tried to put a hand in, and found myself getting drawn in. I ended up in a dark tunnel, and the portal vanished behind me. I didn't know where I was, but I moved ahead on instinct alone. I had been feeling vengeful for what may have been years, I could feel some kind of malicious satisfaction seeping through my mind as I descended further. Eventually, I almost started feeling happy. I think. I'm not too familiar with all that.