One bright winter day, Meta Knight was doing his patrols through the castle alone, when suddenly, he felt a strange feeling on his left foot. Not just any strange feeling. Meta Knight's foot was itchy. No, it wasn't just a little tickle, this itch was one of those horrible itches that felt like someone was slowly pressing a needle into one's skin.

Meta Knight was very aware of the itch but he just kept walking, trying to ignore the awfulness until it went away. But it didn't. The itch got worse and worse until even Meta Knight just couldn't take it anymore. He stopped walking and almost stooped down to scratch his foot, but then realized the embarrassment that would come if someone saw him, namely King Dedede with binoculars or someone happening to pass by.

After all, it wasn't like Meta Knight could, say, kneel and scratch his foot, as his species didn't have knees. Thus it was difficult enough to touch his foot as all Meta Knight could really do was tilt his body down a few degrees and hope he could reach the itch.

Meta Knight looked around himself and seeing no one was in sight, dashed to the nearest restroom, just around a few corners and a group of Wadorudi. Meta Knight locked himself in a stall and finally, finally, scratched his now throbbing foot.

His joy quickly turned to anger when he noticed that his glove was too soft and silky to scratch anything, even with the artificial fingers. So, Meta Knight took off his glove and tried again, but to no avail as his bare paw was even more silky soft and even somewhat ticklish. Which meant he was feeding the itch by trying to scratch it.

Meta Knight groaned and unlocked his stall, quietly murmuring words so harsh they would probably put him out of his ill-paying job. As Meta Knight went back to his patrol path, the itch seemed to subside after a few minutes, bringing immense relief to the knight. But then, his right foot hit the side of his left foot, and the itch was started all over again, and it seemed to worsen twice as fast as the first phase of the itch of doom.

Meta Knight cursed again and kept on going, but the itch was too much even for the mighty Meta Knight. 'Okay, maybe if I just get my mind off it somehow... I wasn't supposed to do patrols today, so I could just go back to my apartment and watch television. Ow, *censored*! Can't let anyone see this...' With that thought in mind, Meta Knight uncurled his wings from his cape and booked down the hallways to his room, which only took about ten seconds with his foot as fuel.

Meta Knight recovered his cape as he sat in a wooden chair in his and his knave's shared TV room. The remote was on top of the television. Meta Knight didn't want to use his foot. So, he hopped over on one foot, snatched the remote and tripped on a piece of paper someone had left lying on the floor. Had it not been for his mask, Meta Knight would probably have poked his eye out on the leg of his chair. Another reason to keep it on, in case he randomly gets clumsy.

Meta Knight picked himself up, embarrassed he had fallen but glad no one had seen. He looked at the piece of paper that had writing on it and picked it up. The only part he could read were the names "Bun" and "Meta Knight" and the phrase "Say hi to" before his own name. Certainly not his or his knave's handwriting, so he threw the note in the trash bin next to the television stand.

Meta Knight returned to his chair and wondered why he wasn't voluntarily patrolling like he usually did, then mentally kicked himself in the face and physically mask-palmed when his itch returned to remind him. Meta Knight growled as he punched the power button on the remote and quickly changed the channel when the image of a Dedede Diaper commercial was renewed in his mind again. His favorite show was this mystery series; he liked it because he always knew who the culprit was before the show revealed it, and rarely was he wrong.

That day, the episode was on who spilled the bag of louse eggs in the school courtyard.

Meta Knight literally punched the power button again and slammed the remote on the armrest of his chair before he stomped into his bedroom, seething with fury that the show had decided to use lice as a mystery. He sat on his bed and just looked at his foot. His eyes turned red as he took off one of his spaulders and tried using the point to relieve his burden, but it surprisingly didn't work.

He reattached his spaulder and tried thinking for a moment. Eventually he got out his wings. He grabbed his left wing near the thumb and brought it down to his foot. Meta Knight tried using the spiked thumb on his wing to scratch his foot, but his wing wasn't quite long enough to reach.

Meta Knight cursed a bit louder than his other trips to impurity, and with eyes so red they were almost black he unsheathed Galaxia. He prepared to take a few skin layers off his foot but shook his head and cleared his thoughts. The knight instead prodded and scraped his foot... But that only seemed to irritate it more.

"Nova *censored* it! You will stop itching, like it or not!" With that, Meta Knight actually seemed to go off into super-ultra-ticked-off mode as he tore his own mask off and began trying to bite his foot to death, his sword clattering noisily to the floor. He writhed around on the bed for a while, and by the time he had exhausted himself (a few hours later), he lay out of breath on the floor trapped in a cocoon-like blanket with a slightly bleeding and extremely itchy foot.

He was trying to untrap himself from the blanket so he could put his mask back on and take care of his foot. He was, surprisingly enough, putting the former task in priority because he knew his knaves would be back soon.

Meta Knight wrenched himself from the blanket and put his mask back on and the blanket back on the bed, then went to disinfect his open foot. On the way, though, the itch got really bad, so bad he jumped out the nearest open window into the night air to go find some help from someone who could keep their mouth shut... Fumu? Not a chance. No. Bun? Less likely. Kirby? Can't keep his mouth shut, but he wouldn't say anything.

Meta Knight's wings were pressed tightly against his sides as he raced to Kirby's house, opening them every once in a while to gain more altitude and speed. In mere seconds he landed in the branches of Kirby's tree, right above a peacefully sleeping Kirby.

"Kirby! Hey, Kirby!" Meta Knight whispered.

Kirby smiled and turned in his sleep.

Meta Knight sighed and jumped down to the branch Kirby was on, prodding the pinkie as he did so.

Kirby's eyes slowly opened, and he jumped when he saw a scary silhouette with creepy eyes staring at him from a foot away. He reflexively got into a fighting stance, but quickly calmed down when he saw it was just his mentor.

"Kirby. May you do me a favor?" Meta Knight's eye twitched from the itch.

Kirby sleepily nodded.

"I need you to inhale the rose bush behind your tree and rub the needles on your hat on my foot."

Kirby did as he was told, not even knowing there was a rose bush behind his tree, and turned into Leaf Kirby.

"Leaf..." Meta Knight grumbled. But then he realized what texture Kirby's leaves were. Kirby stared at the knight expectantly. "... Just use the side of the leaf, then..."

Meta Knight braced himself against the trunk of the tree while Kirby lightly rubbed a leaf against the irritated part of his mentor's foot. It somewhat helped ease the itch, but kind of hurt at the same time. "... A little harder, please?" Kirby pressed down a little harder on his leaf, and Meta Knight sighed and slumped down a bit in relief. "Thank you, Kirby. You may stop now."

Kirby stopped and smiled at Meta Knight, happy he could help. An idea came to Meta Knight and he asked, "Hey, since you're Leaf Kirby now, don't you know all sorts of plant names and uses?" He could already feel the persistent itch returning.

Kirby brought out a whole ton of different leaves of different shapes and colors the way a magician would show a volunteer a face-down stack of playing cards to say yes.

"You wouldn't happen to have any Pyihchy leaves at hand, would you?"

Without hesitation, Kirby threw all the other leaves away, pulled out a few thin leaves with rounded edges and gave a whole bunch of them to Meta Knight.

"Thank you, Kirby. You may go back to sleep now. Did you want me to take your hat, too?"

Kirby yawned and unhooked the blue strap connecting the hat to his head, giving it to Meta Knight before returning to his little hollow and falling asleep to the sound of Meta Knight's fading wing beats.

Meta Knight clutched the Pyihchy leaves close as he flew all the way back to the castle. The foot was really starting to itch again when Meta Knight touched down on a windowsill, and due to the amazing recovery rate of his species the wounds he had given himself with his sword were already healing.

Meta Knight was about to jump off the windowsill into whatever room when he realized it was his and his knaves' shared room, and they were both in their beds, presumably asleep. So, instead Meta Knight gently lowered himself to the floor and snuck into the kitchen.

He spent a good, long, itchy half hour chopping the Pyihchy leaves to make them into a tea that assists crawling skin and itching. Oh, and also he spent the thirty minutes thinking about the horrible pun whoever named the Pyihchy flower was probably going for. A mix of the Pyuuki flower and itchy. Pyihchy. Terrible pun.

While the water heated on the stove, Meta Knight silently put the Leaf Kirby ability hat in his closet in a locked chest, the snuck back off to the kitchen.

Meta Knight made a homemade tea bag with two rubber bands and a coffee strainer and used it to steep his Pyihchy tea. While it steeped, he went to get a straw from a cabinet. No, Meta Knight wasn't spoiled because he drank out of straws all the time, just paranoid.

Meta Knight topped off the tea and escaped back to his room into bed, the itch successfully gone and never to be dealt with again.

Just as Meta Knight was about to go into a blissful slumber, however, a strange, short, high-pitched noise escaped his throat and made his entire body lurch. Then it happened again. And again.

Meta Knight groaned and rolled out of bed to eat a tablespoon of sugar, a known cure for hiccups. He grumpily ate the sugar and went to bed, hoping no other household ailments would befall him.