The wake-up process from blacking out was a slow one. As I started to regain consciousness, I became vaguely aware of something poking my forehead. As soon as I became aware of this, I shot straight awake and gave a startled yelp, turning around to see what was the source of such avid poking.

What I saw made me scream again. It was a small pink-blob thing, about the size of my torso. It was looking up at me with huge eyes, and now that I got a better look at it, I had to admit it was pretty cute. As I knelt down to return some of the poking to see what it actually was, the blob-thing backed away, obviously startled. I foolishly took more steps closer to it, trying to reach out and poke it. The darn thing was adorable, after all.

The pink creature was clearly not happy by my sudden advances and outreached arms. I realized my mistake too late when the thing pulled a hammer.

No, I am not joking right now, it was holding a hammer the size of its whole body! It was hard to comprehend where he actually got it from, and as I was trying to work it out in my mind, he swung it as hard as he could right into my gut.

All the air I had in my lungs rushed out in one clean huhhh, and for a split second after the blow, I thought I would literally just fall over and die. What I wasn't expecting to happen, though, was for me to go flying into the air.

I probably soared about 20 feet up. That's about the best guess I could come up with as I spun towards the ground. I had a bit of time to think on the way down, and as the initial shock of the hit wore off the hurt and pain that should have been there were nowhere to be found. Instead, I just got mad. I mean, who doesn't get a little angry when they get launched 20 feet by a freaking hammer? I didn't even know who I was, but right now that didn't matter cause this little guy was going down. I didn't know why I thought that exactly, just some sort of gut feeling I guess. But what happened next really didn't make sense. In all of my rage, dictated purely by instinct, I pulled a sword out of nowhere. A literal sword. It wasn't anything fancy, just a plain old sword, but still, a sword.

As I marveled at the new weapon I quite literally had just pulled from nothing, I didn't realize I was still upside down and heading straight for the ground. The resulting crash double knocked the air out of my lungs and I wheezed as I stood up again. Okay, now this thing was going down. I raised the sword and just started running. How do you find an angle of advance on something that's literally a circle? Ignoring the bizarreness of the current situation, I took a swing at the blob. I missed when the pink thing literally compressed itself to the ground to avoid my blade. It responded with a series of quick kicks to my chest which sent me stumbling backward. With each blow, I stumbled farther, as if with the more of a beating I took, the more he could hit me away. Through the barrage of attacks, I saw a tiny opening, and struck out, praying that I could land at least a single hit before I straight up got murdered by a cute pink blob.

Apparently, whatever amount of random instincts and luck I had was enough, and my sword knocked the pink thing off of me. It gracefully landed a good 20 feet away. I knew I was going to get destroyed. This thing looked like it was about to pull out the hammer again, and my lungs said no thanks to that. I set my sword down on the ground and put up my hands.

"Look, guy, whoever you are, I don't want to fight you," I said, kind of sheepishly. It was obvious it understood, because it visibly relaxed, and didn't look like it wanted to kill me.

"I fell into this place and I can't remember anything and I don't know what's going on and I…" I realized I was rambling. Hearing everything so plainly like that spoken aloud was kind of terrifying, and I started to tremble a little bit.

I hadn't really noticed what the blob was doing. It was much closer to me know, almost at my feet. My eyes widened as it inhaled a breath of air and floated up to my eye level. It was staring very intently into my eyes, seemingly piercing my soul. Now that I got an even better look at him (I can only assume) he really was cute. Huge puppy eyes on a big pink ball with little nub arms and big red shoes. The only part not to like was the huge hammer and the barrages of kicks.

Apparently satisfied, he floated back down to the ground. This time, I kneeled down to get on his level and poked him. He seemed to get what I was playing at, and a big smile plastered his face/body. I smiled back.

"What's your name?" I asked. I didn't want to call him "him" forever.

He evidently couldn't talk, instead opting to carve out his name in the dusty terrain. Now that I looked, we were in a deserted plain. It was extremely dusty and grey. Pretty bland, if you ask me.

K-I-R-B-Y

Kirby?

So me and a pink blob named Kirby were stranded out in the middle of a desert.

"Well it's nice to meet you, Kirby" I stated, swallowing my thoughts of how weird this was as I extended my hand. He met it with one of his nub-things, and we "shook" if that's what you could call it.

With that out of the way, I started to ask Kirby about what was going on. Through charades and more carving, I was able to get the gist of it. I assumed this was his "home", although I used that term he shook his head. He didn't live here. Maybe he was from somewhere else like me? I didn't know all the answers. But when asked about his home he simply carved out "Pop Star", whatever that meant. He was looking for his friends, who got taken by something. I honestly felt bad for the little guy. He had obviously been through a lot.

He did seem familiar with the landscape though, and as we started walking and making slow progress towards whatever destination he had in mind, he seemed to know where he was going.

I didn't know where he was leading me, but I didn't really have another place to go, did I? As I trudged along, I thought about the girl in the vortex from earlier. Clearly, she must have been shot out into this world too, right? I really hoped she had met someone nice like Kirby. As I thought about this, I resolved that moment to do something.

I was going to find that girl.