Chapter Text
Darkness.
Everything around Tiff was a dark, empty abyss. It was like reality itself had been wrapped in a cold, shadowy cloak. What had happened? She couldn't remember. Her head was spinning, her whole body felt numb and her heart was beating slower than it should. She couldn't move, she couldn't think. She didn't even have the strength to call her friends for help. What was going on? Why was she so afraid? Was she dreaming? Was she trapped in a nightmare?
"Tiff, wake up."
Someone was calling for her in the dark, a voice she couldn't recognise in her current state.
"Come on. You have to get out here."
'Here'? Where was 'here'? Did it even matter?
"You have to find them. Seek help from those on the other side."
Find who? And what was that 'other side'? That voice in her head was only giving her more questions instead of helping her. She was too tired and weak for that... She just wanted to dismiss that voice and to sleep. To sleep and disappear in the darkness that was slowly devouring her.
“Tiff, No! You can't let it consume you. Kirby needs you. Everyone needs you!” the voice spoke with urgency and anguish.
Those words woke up something inside her. Kiby... everyone. She didn't know what the voice was talking about...
“Open your eyes. Wake up!”
... but if the people she loved needed her, she had to do what it said and resist the darkness.
Tiff was filled with renewed determination. She may not understand what was going on, but that wouldn't stop her. Slowly, warmth returned to her body, her heart returned to its regular beating, and, at last, she could feel the darkness receding.
“And, please, don't let...”
The voice's last words were cut off by a flash of warm light.
Tiff's eyes snapped open as her senses came back to her. The first thing she noticed was a pleasant warmth running through her body. She was lying on a bed, and someone had completely covered her with a blanket, probably her mother. She could also feel a damp cloth on her forehead.
Apparently, she had just woken up from a strange fever dream. That dream, like most others, was fading from her memory, and she could no longer recall what happened in it. The last thing she could remember with clarity was what she was doing before feeling so ill: Kirby and Tuff had been playing in the rain, and she had told them to go inside if they didn't want to get sick. But life is often ironic, and in the end, it looked like she was the one who had caught a cold. Surely, those two were playing a board game or eating candy while waiting for her recovery.
Anyway, she felt much better now, so she guessed the fever was over (even if she was still a bit exhausted). Tiff removed the damp cloth from her forehead and pulled back the blanket that covered her, expecting to find her mother watching over her, as she always did when Tiff was sick.
But, to Tiff's bewilderment, her mother was not there, nor was she in her room.
The place she had awoken into looked too much like Kirby's house, but there were quite a few differences too striking to ignore. Her mind got so focused on them that she didn't even wonder how she had gotten to her friend and protégé's house in the first place.
“Since when does Tokkori have so many pictures of Kirby?” the girl said as she looked around her.
The walls of the room were filled with numerous photographs, all framed and preserved in an immaculate state. She didn't need to look at them any closer to know that Kirby appeared in most of them. His pink, rounded shape and blue eyes were unmistakeable.
Another detail that she couldn't ignore was a bedside table with a half-open drawer, which stood out in an otherwise tidy house. Tiff got up from the bed and, with the intention of closing it, approached the drawer. However, before she could do so, her curiosity made her examine its contents. On its inside there was only a sock accompanied by a sign that read "Do not close the drawer, please" in elegant and refined calligraphy. Neither Tokkori nor Kirby could write so clearly (well, Kirby couldn't write at all), so who had put that sign there and why? Anyway, it wasn't her house, so she decided to follow the sign's request and leave the drawer open.
“Maybe this is the house of a Kirby fan, one with an unhealthy obsession with him... I must tell Chief Bookem in case this is the work of some creepy stalker,” the girl thought as she decided to examine the photographs.
The first thing she noticed was that, in those pictures, Kirby's pink colour was brighter than usual. Actually, everything captured was brighter, as if the colours had been saturated. But the scenes portrayed in them were even more noteworthy.
In many of the photos, Kirby was with Dedede, but the attitude of the obnoxious monarch of Dream Land towards the pink puffball was strange and out of character. Even in the few photographs in which the king looked angry, the malice and unhinged rage he usually directed at Kirby, who he considered a nuisance that he had to get rid of at any cost, were totally absent. Most pictures portrayed Dedede regarding Kirby with... camaraderie and joy? Tiff couldn't help but find it kind of unsettling. Who had modified those photos to make Dedede act like he was a different person?
Furthermore, while Meta Knight and the Waddle Dees, especially a recurrent one with a bandana on its head, were also present in many of the photos, there was no sign of her, Tuff, or any of the Cappies. Instead, she saw many unfamiliar faces, some more similar to the monsters Dedede had ordered in the past than to the Dream Land inhabitants she knew. Some of them even portrayed Knuckle Joe, Kine, Coo and Rick! Why were those four pictured, but she and her brother were nowhere to be found?
And then there was Kirby himself. He was bigger in the pictures (about the same size as Meta Knight) than in reality. He also looked more confident, though his friendly expression and love of food (more than half of the photos showed him eating) were the same as always.
“This is so weird. These photos are surely fake, but who would do such a thing and why?” Tiff wondered. “Maybe this is one of Dedede’s plans, but how has he managed to set up all of this without me noticing? It can't be the work of a monster. With N.M.E. gone, it should be impossible for him to get one.”
eNeMeE, the terrible villain and feared intergalactic tyrant who had been behind the company from which Dedede used to buy monsters, had been defeated a year ago. But even after the fall of the evil wizard and his business, the king of Dream Land had not ceased at all in his efforts to defeat Kirby. He had replaced the monsters with robots built by himself and Escargoon, his right-hand man, who she had just realised was also absent from the photos. Meta Knight had said that the creations of those two were way less dangerous than eNeMeE's monsters to the population of Cappy Town while also providing good training for the young Star Warrior, so he had decided that as long as they didn't 'cross the line', he wouldn't do anything to stop their machinations.
“I must be still dreaming. There is no other explanation for this,” Tiff decided, in a final attempt to give sense to those nonsensical images. “That fever hit me badly.”
“You're finally awake, poyo!" she heard someone say behind her in a surprised but joyful tone, snapping her out of her thoughts. “How are you feeling?”
Tiff could recognise that voice and that peculiar "poyo" in any place and time, although it was the first time she had heard that person speak a full sentence. He had turned her life upside down, filling it with adventures beyond her imagination.
“Kirby!” Tiff said as she turned to happily greet the baby pink puffball whom she loved like a sibling. Oddly, he was carrying a big red tomato over his head. “You just spoke! Also, is it me, or do you look way bigger? This confirms that I am indeed still asleep.” Then, in her mind, she added, “Any second now, either Mom, Dad, Tuff or the real Kirby will come to check on me and wake me up from this fever dream,” she assured herself.
“Dreaming?” Kirby asked, visibly confused. “Ah, you must still be a bit dazed. You were unconscious and had a very high fever when I found you.”
Tiff found it weird that those words made way too much sense for a dream, but she decided that the best thing for her health was to go along with it until it was over.
“Oh, so it was you who brought me here?” she asked. Kirby nodded in response. “Where did you find me?”
“Near the forest, poyo. Me and Gooey were on our way to Dedede's castle when we found you.”
Gooey? Tiff had never heard that name before. She wondered if it belonged to one of the strange creatures pictured in the photos. “But wait, aren't dreams supposed to be based only on things your brain already knows? How can this dream invent names and faces out of nothing?” she realised.
Furthermore, as time passed, her head regained more clarity, and her senses perceived everything more solidly in a way that no dream, as lucid as it could get, could achieve. And that scared her, because that could only mean she was awake.
An older Kirby, faces and names she didn't know, the photos of Dedede acting out of character... If she wasn't dreaming, there had to be some logical explanation for all of that. Had Dedede and Escargoon somehow invented a time machine and sent her into the future? No, that was not only insane, but it also didn't explain the absence of the people she knew from the images. Also, if she were in the real world, shouldn't Tokkori already be there complaining? That mean bird had taken over Kirby's house as if it were his own, and even if, over time, his attitude towards the young Star Warrior had slightly softened, it was very strange that he wasn't yelling for them to leave and play outside because he wanted to take a nap or something. His absence should be proof that she was still dreaming even if her senses said otherwise, right?
Tiff didn't know what to think anymore, and the contradictions in her reasoning were anguishing her.
“I'm sorry I left you alone while you were sleeping, but I ran out of Maxim Tomatoes and had to go out and get one,” Kirby suddenly apologised, breaking the awkward silence that had formed. “They are my favourite food. Once you eat it, you will feel better in no time!” he claimed.
No, that was wrong. Kirby's favourite food was watermelon. Tiff would never mistake which food Kirby liked the most as she was technically raising him!
The more time passed, the less things made sense. The more time passed, the more the feeling that something was wrong grew. The more time passed, the more aware she became of one thing: she wasn't home.
“Hey Kirby, where's Tokkori?” Tiff asked her friend, her voice a little shaky.
“Tokkori? Who is that?” he asked back. “If he is someone who was travelling with you, I'm sorry, but I haven't seen him.”
Kirby didn't know who Tokkori was. Tokkori was not in the photographs. She was not in the photographs.
“Kirby, do you know who I am?” Tiff finally asked, even though, deep down, she already knew the answer. An answer she dreaded hearing.
The look of sadness that crossed Kirby's face before he even began to reply was enough to confirm her fear.
“I'm sorry, poyo. It seems that you know me well... “
Kirby didn't need to finish that sentence for reality to slam Tiff.
“...but I don't know who you are.”