A/N - This is a rewrite of my now-three-year-old fanfiction, Meta Origins. While I still like the basic idea behind that story, it had a lot of issues, mainly because it was written on a whim when I first entered the Kirby fandom. This version will go into a lot more detail with the concepts that should have been elaborated on, and hopefully it will feel more like a full, complete arc this time. As I said in the summary, there are OCs in here, but no pairings whatsoever. Anything that looks like it might be implying a couple is purely accidental and open to the interpretation of the reader.

Now, without further ado, let's begin!

Part One: What Legends Are Made Of

"Because I was able to speak to her in a language more direct than speech, I could soothe and amuse her when others could not, and a bond gradually developed between us that might be likened to the one that exists between identical twins…"

- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

Chapter One: Dead Zone

Beep…

Beep…

"Hai, hai," Chuva muttered breathily, swiping a gloved hand across her face lightly. "I'm getting up now." It was hard for her to rise from the soft, sticky cradle of sleep, but as the hibernation sequence continued to peel back from her mind, she opened her eyes and began to blink rapidly. Her head was fuzzy, her usually extra-perceptive senses seemed to have been dulled, and she wished that she had a glass of water so that she could rinse the layer of dry tack from her mouth. But, after what felt like both a moment and an eternity simultaneously, she was awake.

Rubbing her eyes, she turned to survey the environment outside of her starship's glass domed top. An expanse of star-studded blackness surrounded her on all sides, and she frowned, realizing that there wasn't a good landing place anywhere in sight. Besides, shouldn't she have already landed by now? She had always assume that she wouldn't rise from hibernation until the guidance system had safely delivered her to the Galaxy Soldier Army base…

It was then that she turned her attention to the persistent beeping sound, which was emanating from a small screen that continually flashed the words DEMON BEAST DETECTED at her. Beside that was a panel that should have contained a Warp Star, and in fact had at one time, but was currently empty.

Chuva sat up quickly enough to send her still-recovering body into protests, and she rubbed away the spots of dizziness that had formed before her eyes as she began to sift through her memories. Flashes of her last experience before she had been put into this starship leaped out at her. The huge fire-spitting creature, her mother shoving her into these new and oversized clothes, her panic at realizing that her Warp Star had gone missing…Meta…

"Meta," she said aloud, but of course there was no one around to hear her. She was completely alone, sitting in the pilots' chair with no companionship and no one around to help her.

There seemed to be too much empty space around her and yet not enough breathing room. She felt out-of-sorts, and she assumed that the absence of her double, coupled with lingering traces of hibernation stupor, was the cause of this sensation. She shut her eyes and cast her awareness out as far as she could, searching for Meta's mental presence, but the cold, resolute silence of the universe offered no response. She was fully isolated from him for probably the first time in her life, and it became a struggle for her to stay calm.

For the entirety of her life, she had been connected to Meta in a way that no one else had been able to fully comprehend. Even when she was by herself, she was never lonely and never alone – a constant stream of thoughts, feelings, and memories had bound her to her double. But now the sector of her mind reserved for him was disconcertingly empty, which meant that he was either unconscious or too far away for her to reach. The former had never felt like this before (if he was asleep and she wasn't, she'd usually get at least some inkling of his dreams); the latter hadn't ever happened to them.

The stirrings of fear in her chest tightened themselves into a firm knot. It was like a dead zone out here. What if she was in the wrong place? What if her ship's lack of a Warp Star had caused it to fly astray, and now she was too far away from the other Star Warriors to find her way back? What if Meta was gone for good…and where was she, anyway, and how had she gotten here, and how long had it been since she'd been put into hibernation?

Beep…beep…beep…

And why wouldn't that stupid panel shut up?! That obnoxious noise certainly wasn't helping with her agitation at all.

She paused and took a moment to consider those three flashing words, desperate for something else to focus on. She'd heard of something like this before, hadn't she? It didn't take her long to remember where, as her memories were still more or less intact, only slightly more fuzzy than they would have been after rising from a night of particularly heavy sleep.

"It is said that when the Star Warriors rise, their vessels will automatically move towards areas plagued by demon beast infestations, so that they will always be able to help those in need." Who had said that? It was Toshi-sensei, wasn't it? Well, she and Meta had never bothered to listen to Toshi-sensei, since he couldn't have possibly known more about the legend of the Star Warriors than they did. After all, they were the Star Children! But perhaps he had known something about the ways of Nightmare, and as Chuva stared at that blinking message, "Demon Beast Detected," she grudgingly admitted that he'd been right about at least one thing.

She examined her own body, or at least what she could see of it. Her fingers reached the tips of her gray gloves now, and their cuffs weren't sagging around her wrists; the body armor and shoulder pads that she'd donned at the last minute on that night appeared to fit now, and the chainmail slip beneath them was gripping her torso snugly. Her feet didn't bang around inside their metal-plated coverings anymore. As strange as it was to think of it, she was an adult now, which meant that she had aged during her hibernation as planned. It also meant that at least 200 years had passed.

She had slept away two centuries or more like it was nothing…

And now she was no longer a Star Child, but a full-blown Star Warrior. Meta was, too, assuming that he was still out there somewhere.

She extended her hand towards the still-beeping panel, and as she leaned over, she caught sight of something suspended in space below her starship. It was a planet, and relatively close, too; its round surface, mottled in shades of gold, green, and blue, sloped gently over an expanse that exceeded her field of vision. Something down there must have triggered the demon beast alert. She placed her palm against the noisy screen, and it quieted grudgingly, broadcasting a new message: WARP DRIVE DISABLED. PREPARE FOR MANUAL LANDING ON PLANET POPSTAR, SOLARIS GALAXY, SECTOR 5611.

"Warp Drive Disabled, huh?" murmured Chuva, casting her mind back and trying to recall where Sector 5611 of the Solaris Galaxy was. She had always been good at her astronomy lessons (it was one of those subjects that she and Meta seemed to have a natural knack for) but at the moment, she was having some difficulty with the specifics. If nothing else, she knew that she was a long way off from Planet Azulis in the Cyanical Galaxy.

Warp Drive Disabled. Well, of course it was disabled, since she didn't have a Warp Star. Now she was going to have to pilot a vehicle that she barely knew how to fly, as well as land it without killing herself. Toshi-sensei had also used to say that no one really knew how to operate a starship, and that the Star Warriors would be guided by instinct when their time came, but if she had been luckier and her Warp Star hadn't magically disappeared, then she'd be down on that planet already –

Chuva swallowed. If she had been luckier and her Warp Star hadn't disappeared, then she wouldn't be here right now, floating and hopelessly confused in the middle of nowhere. She would be safe with Meta at the GSA base, wherever that was, and the two of them would be sparring playfully as they placed bets on who would slay the most demon beast. She was frightened and disoriented now that she was out on her own for the first time, and she couldn't allow that. AS a young girl, she had bragged that she would never be afraid of anything once she became a Star Warrior; the time had come for her to make something out of those long-ago boasts.

So she gulped in a breath, clutched the starship's control lever, and assured herself that she would come up with a way to contact her double after she had safely landed on Planet Popstar. Who knew, perhaps she was in the correct time and place after all, and he was down there waiting for her…although now everything felt so skewed that she wasn't holding out much hope for that possibility.

"Look out, Popstar," she sighed, devoid of her usual gusto as she gingerly moved the lever forward. "Here I come."

A/N #2 - Just to let you guys know, each chapter takes a while to write and a while to type (I'm doing a handwritten draft first) so this might be updated fairly infrequently. In the meantime, I'd appreciate some feedback! Thanks for reading!