The Arrow of Time

Breakdown

"'Figure it out.' Awesome! How the fuck are we supposed to do that?" Magolor shouted.

"Calm down. Let's talk it out." Dedede said in a tone that was an ineffective attempt at being calm himself.

Daroach shrugged. "I mean, it's pretty easy, no? She joined up with her resurrected father, and is keeping us here because that's what he wants her to do. It's that simple."

"No, it isn't." Taranza said flatly. "Might as well come clean now, I guess. I don't think the Haltmann AI is our mastermind here."

"Wh-WHAT?" Flamberge shouted. "But why not? It all lines up!"

"Not all of it." Magolor interjected. "There is one thing... I didn't know about it until after I told you all it was the AI's fault. But Taranza told me about something he remembered right before we went to that cabin..."

"Taranza, explain. What did you remember?" Francisca asked.

"Back when we were all in the old building, Magolor, Kirby, Meta Knight, Bandee, and I were all looking for Francisca, Elfilin, Daroach, and Dedede, because we couldn't find them. While we were looking, I checked one of those rooms with the suits of armour. There was a monitor on the wall, and it was turned on. Someone spoke to me from that monitor. They didn't tell me who they were, or what their role is in our kidnappings. However, they did promise a reward for me if I answered their question. I don't imagine anyone would be able to promise that unless they were intricately involved in our current situation."

"I see. So you think they have to have been the kidnapper. After all, no one but them would even know where we were." Meta Knight mused.

"Right." Taranza nodded. "And then what they asked, well... it wouldn't make sense to have been said by the late president. They asked me where Haltmann was. I tried to say that he's dead, but they insisted I was wrong, or lying." He stopped to let the group think that over.

Daroach scratched his head. "Well, that just doesn't make sense."

His sentiment of general confusion and bewilderment towards the described dialogue had been shared by the rest of the group.

"I can't think of anyone who would say that..."

"No matter how I look at it, it's wrong."

Taranza nodded. "Ever since I remembered it, I've just thought of it as something that shouldn't have happened at all."

Marx brightened. "Hey! Maybe it didn't!"

"What."

"I'm serious! If you forgot it in the first place, maybe you're misremembering a detail, or there was some other thing they said that you forgot, or maybe none of it ever happened at all!"

Meta Knight glowered at him. "It's blatantly unreasonable to discount another's memories because they're incompatible with your preconceptions of the illusion of common sense."

Dedede shook his shoulder. "Meta, you're doing that thing where you get mad and then start speaking in long words."

He cleared his throat. "Regardless, your attempts to convince him that his memories are a lie or a half-truth makes it seem as though you have something to hide yourself."

Daroach shot him a sideways glance. "Come on, I think that's going a bit far."

Meta Knight paused. "Wait, actually, I may be onto something here."

Marx looked at him incredulously. "How? You're just deciding things based off of one thing I said."

"Oh, really? Think about this. We just finished getting wrangled up by a mind-controlled Kine in a mech suit, and back when we were in the old building, you two were together when you disappeared! I hardly think that's a coincidence."