There were some mornings that Meta Knight just didn't feel like getting out of bed. Especially if he hadn't wanted to get INTO bed the night before. Particularly if he hadn't finished licking syrup off of himself.

Of course, all of that was fitting his current situation perfectly.

But he really didn't want to get out of bed this morning despite the fact that his crew was expecting him to be up. 6:30 was no time for a sane puffball to get out of bed! (And it wasn't just because he liked staying up late; no, no…) It interfered with their thinking ability and quite possibly even their personality, which may be why Meta Knight was rarely at the same level of easygoing-ness as Kirby. Either way, he really didn't want to get out of bed and was willing to do anything to avoid it. First he tried stuffing himself under the pillows, but soon realized that he was suffocating himself. Then he couldn't get comfortable because his armor got tangled and the blankets, and dang this was a bad morning, but he still had the pen, so—

The pen.

The blue puffball pulled himself upright, despite the weight pulling him down from every angle. If he could get the pen, he could blockade the door and sleep as long as he wanted, and then he would be one very happy puffball indeed. He reached over to grab the pen off the nightstand (which was filled only with video games and math directories), but his eyes were half-closed so he underestimated the size of the gap between the bed and the table…

…which meant that, of course, he fell into the gap and took all the bedding down with him since he was still covered in syrup.

However, Meta Knight was not about to give up getting the pen and going back to sleep. No, he wanted to be determined; he didn't want to be seen as someone who easily gave up! So he ignored all the blankets wrapped around him and grabbed the end of the nightstand. It tilted, but after some shaking, the pen fell off. Of course, the lamp, clock, video games, and everything else sitting on the table came with it, but the only part that matters (story-wise) is that the pen fell on the floor. The blue puffball shook a fifteen-pound Linear Algebra book off his head and rummaged around to find the pen. He picked it up and moved his paw in reach.

"Blockade the door," he muttered sleepily. He briefly noticed that a bunch of metal boxes had appeared in front of the door, and desperately hoped that the floor would not give out.

It's only for a little… He rubbed his eyes. Get back in bed…with the covers…

Another scratch from the pen rendered him and the bedding un-sticky-fied. He had to make a separate entry for the bedding to get back on the bed, but at that point he could care less. He used the pen to make his bedding-nest warmer before tossing his armor off, pulling a beanie cap on, and going back to bed.

Meanwhile, the Halberd crew was eating breakfast downstairs.

"Why do I get the feeling that we'll be the butt of a lot of jokes in this story?" wondered Ax Knight aloud.

Trident Knight put his oatmeal down. "It's because I'm the more serious one, you are the moderately intelligent one, Mace Knight is stupid, and Javelin Knight rips me off and is nowhere to be seen. That's why."

"Hey, I'm not stupid!" Mace Knight protested. "I'm just a little slow on things sometimes."

"Yeah, sorry." Trident Knight sighed. "Wasn't right for me to say that."

"Technically, you could argue that you rip off Javelin Knight—"

Ax Knight suddenly became quiet as he found a sharp, three-pointed weapon a few inches from his face. "…or not. I think—I'm just saying what the audience might think."

Trident Knight withdrew his weapon—albeit slowly—and went back to eating his breakfast. It was less than a minute before he glanced at the clock and noticed what time it was.

"Does anybody know where in NOVA's name Sir Meta Knight is? It's almost eight."

Sailor Dee walked through the door as a convenient plot device. There was also a plot gap considering that he came in from a door behind Trident Knight, which was technically nonexistent since there was only one door in the room that was on a plain wall nowhere near the table, but this is Kirby and Meta Knight's story, so the plot gap is their fault instead of mine.

"Well, I'm assuming that he's still in bed, considering that his door is closed." Said Sailor Dee in his normal, quiet voice.

Trident Knight let his fist fall to the circular table. "What. Seriously? We get our—" Ax Knight interceded at this moment to prevent Trident Knight from swearing in a K+ rated fic— "—out of bed, and he isn't even up? It's one-point-five hours AFTER everybody is supposed to be up! He expects us to get up, but—"

Trident Knight stopped again. "Well, I guess we could've slept in if we wanted. I mean, there's nothing for us to really do."

"But Tri," Mace Knight protested. "We've been getting up at 6:30 ever since we joined Sir Meta Knight! Back when we were with Captain Vul, we got up at 4:30! It's kind of a hard habit to break!"

Ax Knight leaned back against his chair. "Yeah, I mean, I still find myself getting up early sometimes. It's like…part of my genetic coding."

Sailor Dee rubbed his eyes. "Well, we had to get up early, but only when we needed to. And we used to do 7:20, not 6:30."

If any of the Knights had had noticeable jaws, they would have dropped. "What…HOW DID YOU GET READY?!" shrieked Mace Knight.

"Well, since neither of us had to get dressed and prepped, I got up at 7:20 and ate breakfast, and then I woke up Sir Meta Knight at 7:50 so he could eat. It never took him long since he could just inhale it like Kirby. Then we went to work…we checked all the story updates and news and stuff at night, and we stayed up until 1 or 2 AM instead…"

The three Knights were dumbfounded. Sailor Dee pulled out his chair between Ax Knight and Trident Knight and sat down at the table, pouring himself a bowl of Dream Land's version of Reese's Puffs. Ax Knight reached over to Sailor Dee and straightened the Waddle Dee's sailor cap for him, then smoothed his fur down (since none of the crew had to worry about fur, they ended up brushing Sailor Dee instead; it worked out rather well for him). The four present members of the Halberd crew sat together, eating their breakfast in silence and wondering if they would get the milk before Meta Knight got it all (a frequent event at the breakfast table).

Meanwhile, Meta Knight was dreaming that he was playing the part of Luigi in a Kirby-fied final battle scene of 'Super Paper Mario'. Whether this was because he had played the game the night before or because the authoress didn't have complete Future-Project-Spoiler Insurance Coverage was 'another story'.

Meta Knight rolled his eyes (if it was possible) at the use of the word 'story' in the last sentence before walking up to Magolor unwillingly. Realizing what was about to happen, he tried turning around, but found that he couldn't. His eyes widened a little.

Oh no, am I actually going to be mind-controlled in my own dream? Why can't—wait, dream?

Meta Knight focused all his concentration into kicking himself in the face. While he didn't see himself doing such a thing in the dream world, he definitely felt the effects of his actions. With the hope of escaping sparked in his partially-controlled mind, he tried everything he could think of to wake himself up from his dream…

CRASH!

…and succeeded. A little TOO well.

The blue puffball moaned from his self-induced pain, trying to pull his paws out from the mess of blankets. He'd dropped the pen, but he didn't feel like looking for it outside of the fact that he knew he should get up. He had to get up for another boring day of doing absolutely nothing but checking the ship. The crew had absolutely nothing besides checking the ship to do since they hadn't gotten into any fights. Since they hadn't gotten into any fights, there was nothing they needed to fix. Since they had already upgraded a lot of the ship's abilities, there was nothing left to upgrade except stuff that required extra materials. Since the crew had spent most of their money on the month's food, there wasn't much money left. Since there wasn't much money left, Meta Knight and Sailor Dee had taken the money left and spent it on video games. Since they had spent the money that was left on video games, there was no extra money left to buy candy until they did their next round of monthly odd jobs.

Since there was no money left to buy candy, that meant that Meta Knight was in a really, really bad mood getting up. He was in such a bad mood that he didn't even bother fixing the logic gaps in the previous paragraph, despite the fact that this event was pre-editing and he therefore wasn't caring about the words.

It literally sucked the motivation right out of him.

With no candy, he didn't even feel like moving.

But after about ten minutes of sulking, he rolled out of bed—and onto the corner of the Linear Algebra textbook, as well as a pencil and a GameCube controller. His first priority was checking the GameCube controller to make sure it seemed like it would still work. He put it to the side before nursing his arm where the pencil had stabbed him. He really hoped that there wasn't much lead in the cut, but then he hoped that puffballs were immune to lead…and then he got tired of thinking about all the different medical ailments that could happen to him from the lead cut and just decided to wash it out. He was about to kick the Linear Algebra book to the side since that would be easier to write, but he cared too much about his books to do such a thing. Instead, he carefully brushed the pages out, brushed the cover and binding off, and stuck it under his bed.

Well, he tried to. There was no space under his bed, so he stuck it under his pillow instead. That way, he could put it back later. The blue puffball threw his bedding back onto his bed before crawling out the window. He had tacked on a small ledge outside his window so that he could sit outside his window instead of sitting in the window frame. The window frame just wasn't as comfortable to sit or stand on for long periods of time, and sleeping on the windowsill was definitely out of the picture. The ledge was kind of…unsturdy, but he passed off its utter unsafeness since he had built it secretly out of scrap materials. Meta Knight was absolutely certain that it would collapse when he had first built it, but when it hadn't, he'd become more bold about stepping out on it and bringing a little extra weight onto it.

He had, however, refrained from bringing his math directories onto it because that would be just plain stupid. And because he would have to rebuild it if he wrecked it.

At this point, it's been about 263 words since Meta Knight got stabbed with the pencil. You'd think he would've forgotten about it by this point but since this all was thought process it's actually only been two seconds. Meta Knight glanced at the stinging spot on his arm before sticking his arm in his mouth. He swore it had a healing effect of some sort, or at least made it feel better. There was no scientific proof to back this up, but he'd be the scientific proof if somebody ever called it. It made his arm feel better, so he didn't really care whether it was science or just his mind causing less pain to his body now that he wasn't stressed. Meta Knight stared out at the ocean, wondering at first if it was seriously sunset before realizing that no, the water was just permanently orange or purple.

If there was one downfall of living on the edge of a most-likely-and-probably-enchanted ocean-slash-bay, it was the time-of-day confusion. The water never changes colors until around sunset, right? Sort of? Maybe? Well it did in TV and video games, so suck it up and play along. Meta Knight was always a little confused living along the coast of Orange Ocean because he always looked out to see the time of day, and the area was always tinted orange. It drove him mad sometimes; he could never get used to it and whenever he thought it was sunset, it was like his body reset his internal clock and he couldn't go back and change it. As of late he had tried flying around more by himself outside of the Orange Ocean area because taking the Halberd out by itself was more work, but he couldn't stand walking around the immediate area because it was all orange! He loved enchanted places and beaches, but…

…But he didn't.

Wait, what?

This was getting far too confusing for the protagonist/author/game character to keep track of. Yes, even though it was his own logic. Meta Knight sighed and flopped down on the balcony, even though he was already sitting. To fix this gap, he lay down on his back and stared up at the sky.

And then he realized that he didn't even have a back because his entire body was a circle.

"Why?" the blue puffball asked aloud. "Why has this day—section—oh, whatever it is, why has it just been useless detail-for-humor information?" His face fell into a saddened expression. "I tried to make something happen, but it's all just a bunch of words. People will think it's boring; no way I'm showing this to anyone. Not that I'd show them anyway…"

He pushed his feet against the small railing, not noticing or caring that it was weak and probably unsafe to push on. "Why is this story just seeming to write itself? It's like I don't even have any control over the words, even though I'm attempting to channel them…maybe I'm just not good enough to be a writer? Maybe the words are just being written and I'm fooling myself into thinking that I'm writing them…but, Kirby seemed to be writing his words! But he wasn't writing anything that was actually a part of the story. He just wrote up a bunch of…somethings. Cats? Food? I dunno. Maybe it's just me. But…what if this whole thing is just boring? What if I'M the boring one? What if my entire purpose in life is just so that the main heroes of Dream Land aren't all based on the color red even though they're alluded to the color blue?"

Meta Knight sighed. "Yeah, my purpose in life is just to serve as the misunderstood, second-to-last boss. I got a few playable options in some of the games, but since I never bother Kirby for dumb things or jealousy—in other words, Dedede mentality—oh wait, I do play games with him, so I get cameos there. But since I don't get involved in the villains' affairs, I'm just out of the way. No cameos for me…"

The blue puffball sighed and his wings sagged. He kicked the balcony rail; then grabbed it as he pulled himself up. Unfortunately, since he put all his weight on pulling himself toward it and then leaning on it, the railing gave out and he ended up plunging over the side of the Halberd. The camera stayed focused on the balcony solely for comedic reasons, then zoomed down to where Meta Knight had landed. There were some splintered boards from the railing on top of him, though surprisingly enough there were no stars spinning around his head…body…whatever, which was a wasted opportunity considering all the stuff about Star Warriors and Warpstars and black holes (which are imploded stars) and Popstar and et cetera. Meta Knight moaned, trying to reach for the pen. Once he had it in his paw, he dragged it along the metal deck, hoping for it to leave a mark.

"Please, please. I don't care that there's a bunch of stuff piled up on top of me. I don't care that it hurts. I don't care that I fell down a really far distance and didn't even bother measuring it. I don't care that I'm probably not in my right mind when I'm saying this. I DON'T. CARE. I'm useless in my own story and my own instance; just look at all the paragraphs above this one. Even my dialogue is useless. I'm TIRED of being useless. Can't you just, y'know, make me UN-useless?"

The green pen glowed briefly, and his eyes sparked in hope despite them being only halfway-open. "Great. Thanks. Can you just do…something. What would make me better? Does nobody like math nerds or fantasy lovers? Should I have not drank that potion that made my eyes change colors? IknewIshould'velookedforalabelinsteadofdrinkingitbecauseitwassugary. Is my personality just that un-interesting?"

Then he paused. "Yeah, that's a good idea! My personality is ALWAYS what gives people misconceptions about me! It's ALWAYS what gets me in trouble! It's the root of all my problems!"

(Of course, he was ignoring the fact that his personality was the root of a lot of his solutions, as well.)

He started scribbling on his paw desperately, the green ink actually forming a wetness like water held in his paws.

"All right, pen; I'm counting on you. Please, change my personality somehow—or whatever's messed up with me. I don't care how many times you have to change it, just DO something to make me a better character or something! I dunno, make me stronger or more socially inclined or—"

The pen, unfortunately, did not give him a chance to finish his sentence.

The blue puffball fell unconscious by the magic of the pen, wincing in pain at the effects of his actions. The reasoning for such is because he overused its ink for his said task. How would this new narrator know of this?

Simply because this temporary narrator IS the pen, and would thus be fully conscious of the consequences surrounding its misuse. And the pen was going to attempt to avoid talking in first person.

Regardless of who is narrating, this circular creature—Meta Knight, if the pen is not mistaken; is that even his real name?—had used far too much of the pen's ink to accomplish his task. Though the pen would require a slightly larger amount to accomplish doing this task to an author, it certainly did not need such a significant quantity as what had been poured out. Had he not used so much, perhaps the pen would have given him a chance to finish his sentence. Alas, he disregarded this and since he did not give any specific details as to what he wanted changed about himself, the pen decided to do it itself, which would be quite fun considering that for more ink used, the more extreme the effect would be…The pen grinned to itself, already dreaming of all the fun it could have. Then it caught itself almost abusing the use of ellipses points and decided to end the chapter instead as a convenient break. Its formality certainly was not fitting of the story, and it would give a fitting break from all the words contained in the chapter so far. Yes, indeed, the pen thought, it would be a very fitting break indeed…