Dark Meta Knight

**Dark Meta Knight** appeared in 2004 video game called *Kirby & The Amazing Mirror*. Dark Meta Knight is a character in the *Kirby* series, debuting as the secondary antagonist of *Kirby & The Amazing Mirror*. He is the Mirror World counterpart of Meta Knight.

Dark Meta Knight also appears as a Dream Friend in *Kirby Star Allies*, where he teams up with Kirby despite being evil.

As a Mirror World copy of Meta Knight, Dark Meta Knight bears a great resemblance to his original counterpart. The main difference between the two is their coloration. While Meta Knight's design is somewhat vibrant, Dark Meta Knight is gray and dark, perhaps in reference to Meta Knight's original design from *Kirby's Adventure*.

He has a dark gray body (black in *Kirby: Triple Deluxe*), bright red sabatons, and pale yellow eyes that have an orange glow to them. His mask is essentially the same as Meta Knight's, although official art and later games show a large scar-like scratch on its left side. The mask also features spikier horns, as well as a thinner and more angled slit in his mask, giving him the impression of a constant scowl. He wears a torn black cape that apparently grants him wings like the original Meta Knight. His sword, a near-copy of Meta Knight's sword Galaxia, is silver, has seven branches of blades instead of Galaxia's typical five, and has a blue sapphire embedded in its hilt.

In *Kirby Star Allies,* he maintains this appearance, but he now has Meta Knight’s emblem on his right shoulder (mirroring Meta Knight having this emblem on his left shoulder), tattered wings in lieu of his tattered cape, armored plates on his gloves, dark gray feet inside of his sabatons instead of both of them being the same color like Meta Knight's, and additional chinks and scratches present on his mask.

Dark Meta Knight possesses a drastically different mindset from Meta Knight – he has almost no sense of a knight's characteristic honor or chivalry like his brighter counterpart, rather adopting a very pragmatic approach to dealing with his enemies; this is displayed as he prefers ambushing his foes rather than giving them a chance to defend themselves, and as he trapped Meta Knight in the Dimension Mirror, he promptly shatters it to preemptively remove a particularly dangerous obstacle in the near future. Another trait of Dark Meta Knight is his aggressiveness compared to the real one in lieu of his pragmatism, making frequent use of magic along with his accomplished swordplay as he does so. Curiously, he also seems to possess some minor desire to impersonate his real counterpart so long as said knight isn't present, as every encounter with him has his true colors altered in some manner as to deceive others, only revealing in his true nature when exposed as the imposter he is or (most likely unintentionally) as he is escaping after being beaten down.

After his defeat in *Kirby & the Amazing Mirror*, Dark Meta Knight (in his dubiously canon appearances) seems to have been consumed and driven by revenge in *Kirby: Triple Deluxe* (him targeting King Dedede in Dededetour could be a form of revenge by proxy, as the king is affiliated with both individuals responsible for his own and his master's defeats), and with the lack of a master following Dark Mind's defeat, his motives thereafter are shady at best (in a rare similarity to Meta Knight) even as he allies himself with Kirby and his friends during the events of *Kirby Star Allies*, with the darkness of the Jamba Heart pieces being cited as a possible explanation. Humorously, in the latter game, he is shown to not be artistically inclined, as his drawing of Galaxia is the poorest in quality between the other Wave 2 Dream Friends, when shown in the post-credits image for Guest Star mode after playing as any of the Wave 2 Dream Friends.

## Powers and Abilities

Dark Meta Knight is capable of using many of Meta Knight's standard abilities, including wing-based flight, tornado columns, dark sword beams and crescents, and the dimensional cape (though not utilized to the extent of Meta Knight's); in *Kirby: Triple Deluxe*, he is also capable of summoning copies of himself, and even causing giant sword blades to pierce up from under the ground to impale his opponents, along with some of Galacta Knight's attacks present in *Kirby's Return to Dream Land*. He also seems to be capable of summoning mirrors to deflect projectiles. In *Kirby Star Allies*, Dark Meta Knight is shown with even further differing abilities than Meta Knight, primarily relying on his mirror-based techniques mixed in with his swordplay to protect him from harm—particularly from projectiles with his barriers, or to gain a ranged advantage in battle with his duplicates. His sword during these events is also shown to be a receptor for various elements much like Meta Knight's own Galaxia, enabling it to be empowered further and gaining different properties based on the element conferred upon it.