At the start, I fought it as Kirby let loose full force to give it a taste of what to expect. It didn't seem to be learning much from it, so I started walking up to it and letting it hit me, just to see what it would do. At level 7, I noticed it had a weird tendency to frequently use Rock while on the ground even though I almost never use that move, and I was nowhere near it. It also kept doing jab combos from a fair distance away. I decided to punish it every time it did this by grabbing and throwing, then extended this to every mistake it made. For a while, this was the only damage I put on it, before letting loose again. I repeated this with a game as Yoshi, because I wanted to show it how I play with my main and I didn't want it to only know how to fight another Kirby.
Around level 20, I switched back to Kirby, and decided to stand still and watch what it did again. It was using Rock much less frequently if ever, but still starting jab combos from far away. It had also started sh > fairing often. After a while, I realized if I moved toward or away from it, it would move to that exact distance and use only those two attacks. It was at this point that I realized the reason for this is because it was expecting me to run in and it wanted to catch me. Testing this theory, I went at it full force again, and now noticed it was suddenly very good at catching me with a jab or grab. It was starting to get pretty good at punishing me.
However, there was something else going on that I didn't like - an unintended side-effect of me sitting back and watching, and only punishing it for every move it made, is that it had become extremely passive. It never wanted to come any closer than four Kirby-widths away, opting instead to wait until I came to it to respond. However, it was starting to become pretty good at punishes. I moved on to edge-guarding training, getting a ton of kills by hanging off the ledge and dropping off to bair it to death (and as a result realized I'm starting to really like Kirby for myself!)
My girlfriend was watching by now, and noted that, so far, the only projectiles it's seen me use were Yoshi eggs and Kirby's uair. I switched to Samus, expecting to blast it in the face repeatedly. However, by level 26 it was now dodging 19 of 20 shots fired perfectly, alternating between sidestepping, shielding, jumping over (and even between homing missiles), and even simply ducking. At first, it would try to approach between, but I would punish it for doing so - I'm not a good Samus player, but I tried my best to emulate what I've seen good players do online.
I kept this up all the way up to its current level, 37. It's now totally afraid to approach me at all, and instead will stand on the far side of the stage and perfectly dodge projectiles. Disappointed, I decided to switch tactics and bum rush it for the remainder of the match. It doesn't know how to air dodge to avoid Samus's Screwball attack or her uair, and dash attacks seem particularly effective against it (which makes some sense, since I haven't been using that as much as I've been playing more passively to study it). On the plus side, it's ridiculously good at dodging close-range attacks, interrupting combos with jab, can grab me even faster than a level 9 CPU can, and it's starting to get ballsy with its edge guarding.
Only time will tell how this thing will turn out when it hits 50. It's very difficult to hit, but it doesn't seem particularly interested in going in for a kill. For my next training session, I want to set it to a timed stock match, get one kill on it, and dodge the rest of the time and win via timeout. Or, I need to just wail on it like I would any other opponent. I need to teach it to be more aggressive - a disappointing outcome, given that I'm usually an extremely aggressive player. It makes sense in retrospect, but it makes it difficult to study if it's actually picking up on my studying it as though it's part of my play style.
