A/N: I wrote this fic to scold myself for doing too much work on my fan-theory-intensive story I'll probably never publish. Personally, I can confess to doing a good portion of all the things I mentioned in this fic. XD

Disclaimer: I can think of nothing even remotely comedic to put in this line. So I'll just get to the point and say that I don't own any video game characters, or the (sadly cancelled) logic and mystery show that bunches of FFN authors love to obsess over, THE MOLE. Hooray for THE MOLE!


"In thirty seconds, the winner, runner-up, and THE MOLE will step out of these boxcars."

The camera zoomed over to the three numbered boxcars on the disconnected tracks. Offscreen, a certain blue puffball pushed himself a little closer to the edge of his seat. While the authors typically made him watch some boring history show or something so insanely intellectual he felt like falling asleep, he did enjoy something with a good puzzle occasionally, even with such things forced upon him. He really didn't watch too much television, but there were one or two shows he'd tune in to, with THE MOLE being one of them (the second happened to be Viva Piñata, and the two others were both shows that were filmed in their native environment). He'd watched every season of it in every language he knew, and was ecstatic when he'd heard that they planned on reviving the show. He had a pretty good guess on who THE MOLE was, but he knew from prior experience that even when the subjects were limited down to three, it was near impossible to pick out who it was. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly enough, Meta Knight had never gotten more than one guess right, and he'd watched ten full seasons of the show.

Well, he'd almost watched ten full seasons of the show. The tenth season would be finishing at ten PM tonight, which was in (believe it or not) ten minutes. Maybe this would be the time that he could finally say that he'd gotten more than one guess right—Kirby had taken a guess on the same person that he had, though, meaning that the two would be tied for the number of times they had correctly guessed who THE MOLE was. At first he'd been suspicious of Diane, but then both puffballs had changed to Kay when Diane was executed at the end of the last episode. Neither was too sure of Ross; and Mary Sue…Mary Sue seemed like the least likely choice. She was too out of it, and the puffballs were never quite sure of all the information on her. There just wasn't enough to convict her, unlike Kay or Ross.

His line of distracted thoughts broke up as the hinges on the boxcar doors creaked and fog blew in front of them—

-before the camera cut to an untimely commercial break.

Meta Knight sighed in dismay and fell back against his chair. He attempted to stare at the ceiling, but it was a bit hard to do that when you're wearing, as quoted from Kirby in one of the games, something that gives you a 'sense of mystery, but also a sense of sitting in the dark'. Oh well, it was really just the idea that he was staring at the ceiling that he needed, not actually staring at the ceiling (although he had to admit, that would've helped). And since he never, ever watched the commercials on this channel, he had five minutes to meditate on how much his social life sucked. Even then, that was four-and-a-half minutes too many.

As a commercial for something I can't even put in this story came on, Meta Knight quickly busied himself with thinking about something so he didn't have to hear the horrid thing process in his brain. The basics were probably the best, so he busied himself with thinking about how the fangirls typically saw him.

Well, the majority of them, at least. He hoped that there were at least a few who saw him differently than what he was thinking of.

'What he was thinking of', by the way, was quite a few things. For starters, it was the utter reverence that almost every fangirl held for him solely because of theories that other fangirls had made up about him. Whether it was because they thought he was a demon beast, or a vampire, or Kirby's biological father (he almost threw up on that one), or all of the above, or some evil person who hated Kirby, or someone who was just plain bad…it didn't matter. Meta Knight wasn't particularly a big fan (he was beginning to despise that word) of any of these. Yet he was loved for them solely because nobody wanted to hear anything else about his background. It was boring if a character didn't have an evil side, or at least, any evil rivals. He'd seen that example with his old friend Luigi already; when reviving his 'evil side' was overused by fangirls and forgotten, so was he. And even though Meta Knight liked some attention for his accomplishments now and then, he was never desperate for it.

Personally, he just wanted some respect and maybe five minutes of admiration per person. Maximum. It would also be nice if the person admiring or respecting him had a taste of what hardships and mishaps he'd come across in order to get to his position, but he knew that was next to impossible.

That led him to his physical appearance. Why did they care so much if he wore his mask all the time? Just because he looked like Kirby didn't mean he wanted to walk around that way all the time (even though it would've been nice on several occasions). People probably wouldn't take him seriously, and he didn't want to risk finding out whether they would or not. And also, when you're using a sword as your main means of battling, and you're offering your opponent a sword to battle you with, it's a pretty good idea to cover your face. Especially if your face is one of your main attack methods, even if you don't use it in-game. Meta Knight just didn't understand the humans' fascination with his physical appearance. It definitely wasn't because they liked the color blue; if that was the case they could've used sapphire spray paint and gotten the same effect. It also wasn't because they liked his bat wings, because the majority of them thought that his cape turned into his wings. The only logical option left to the blue puffball was that it was because he was so secretive about it.

So? Couldn't he be secretive?

Well, he wasn't purposefully secretive…he was just pretty sure that the majority of Dream Land wasn't interested in anything he had to say. After all, his mentality was all or nothing—he was either a beginner at the subject or an expert. He refused to be in the middle ground because that would mean that he'd look dumber than an expert. At least as a beginner he wouldn't know anything about the subject. Also, he was secretive about himself and his backstory because people kept taking it the wrong way or they didn't believe him…his appearance and actions made people think that he was evil, and since Meta Knight happened to be a bit of a people pleaser, he had never gotten up the heart to tell them what really happened, mainly because he didn't want them to get into his mind and figure him out.

But was it worth it? Was it worth having to hear about how he was a bad guy to Kirby all the time, or some demented creature who was just barely keeping himself sane? Everyone thought Meta Knight was a non-emotional person and that he hated feelings, but he was just as prone to them as everyone else, and he was quite affected by them as well. However, his psychology dictated that talking about his problems meant that he was self-obsessed, so he covered his feelings up instead. It hurt, being called things he was not, but who would believe him if he said something like 'I'm just a kid who was deserted and therefore decided to do something with his life instead of sitting around moping or becoming evil like you think I would?'

Nobody, he was sure.

He personally didn't know why everyone thought he was trying to be the bad guy to Kirby. He was just trying to be as good—no, better than—Kirby, that's all! Nobody thought Dedede was the 'real bad guy' to Kirby, which left Meta Knight to unwillingly pick up the 'evil' slack (because Dedede did not look as hot or mysterious as Meta Knight, and evil is the last thing to add to such a list for the perfect subject for fangirls to obsess over). Meta Knight would much prefer to yell at those people and tell them that nobody cared about the times that he spent just joking around with Kirby; that the whole point of the video game was that an adventure had occurred where they'd battled briefly before Kirby broke his mask/whacked him on the head before he'd run away in shame. Happy stuff like that was what they'd sneak into the staff credits. Apparently the fangirls were as all-or-nothing as Meta Knight was…why couldn't they understand that the two just had friendly competition between each other? The puffballs' ideas of 'normal competitions' were simply much more wild than normal competition—a sword duel or bomb-throwing contest was as normal for them as an intense game of Monopoly. And since neither of them held a grudge for very long, it was all good and forgiven. They didn't hate each other, even in huge incidents.

Some people that Meta Knight did hate, though, were his supposed 'rivals'. Meta Knight did not particularly enjoy hanging around with Galacta Knight or his dark clone from all the way back in the Mirror World, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn't be forming any…romantic relationships with them either (Any dates he picked up were ones that he wouldn't be letting HAL know about any time soon, although hopefully they hadn't already caught him...). There was nothing he liked at all about hanging around with them, which was why he'd tried to murder the two from the first time he'd set eyes on them. If the fangirls loved him so much, why couldn't they understand that? Why, oh why, did they keep bringing them back for the sake of what? Just because the blue puffball apparently wasn't as hot without them adding to the evilness of the whole thing? That topic was making Meta Knight sick, so he decided to move on. The commercials, he assumed, were almost over.

So what did he make of this whole argument? He needed to stamp these psychological principles into his mind every so often; it helped to repeat stuff into his mind because it somehow made it true (although, he hoped, that was not similar to the fangirls' mentalities). He supposed some attention was better than no attention, but he'd like it to be positive attention. Preferably some attention where he didn't always have to act like a serious know-it-all. Never once in his life (besides the anime and a few secret appearances) had he gotten to pull any good pranks. Instead, he'd always been stuck in a rut dwelling on his role in the story, whether it be because he was some sort of demon beast (in which he hated himself), Kirby's father (in which he wanted to scream that their species had no real lifespan and that the writers didn't even know how old exactly he was), or just being used as a replacement for characters like Marx or Magolor simply because he had the 'mysteriousness' bonus. Couldn't he have a change? Couldn't he be a bit different? Couldn't—

"The winner for this year is none other than…Kay!"

Meta Knight's eyes instantly went wide and he pulled himself forward so fast that his armor got caught on the chair and pulled him down with it. He quickly shoved both the chair and his equipment behind him so he could see if the screen was lying.

It wasn't.

The blue puffball sighed. Yet another season that he had incorrectly guessed THE MOLE's identity. It was probably Ross.

"And our runner-up…"

The male Waddle Dee known as Ross stepped out of the train car, and if Meta Knight had had an actual jaw, it would have dropped. That meant that…

"And our saboteur, our double-agent, our MOLE…"

Mary Sue stepped out of the third car with a smug smile on her face, and Meta Knight beat on the floor in agony. He shouldn't have been thinking of FFN authors in between commercial breaks on this show; he swore he never would again. It was just too detrimental to his streak.

Oh well. Another season would give him more time away from the camera's—and the fangirls'—watchful eyes. Now all he had to do was plan his list of complaints for when he and Kirby discussed the finale…preferably over a metric ton of candy bars…


And now that the story's done, you can flame me all you want. Go ahead, boost that review count with flames-you know you want to; I know you want to because I would flame this story myself for crushing my desires of numerous fan-theories. Kudos to you if you remembered where the quote for Meta Knight's mask came from (the treasure description from Kirby's Epic Yarn).

(Edit: It seems there's a bit of confusion about me implying that MK doesn't want to be in any romantic relationships. I was simply talking about the streak of MKxGK stories in certain other places; not that he would reject the idea of...dating someone...completely (that sounds so awkward...). Or maybe he would; HAL purposely keeps their characters open for fan theories, so we'll never really know much more...)

(PS: THE MOLE is a cancelled TV show that FFN authors (especially those in the Mario archive) love to watch, reference, and even mock-compete in. The idea is that a group of 10-14 people competes in numerous challenges. One of the people is paid by the producers to sabotage their challenge-completing efforts while keeping their identity a secret. The person who knows the most about the saboteur (known as THE MOLE) is the ultimate winner, and the people who know the least about the saboteur are eliminated each episode and sent home.)