My name is Derpy Hooves and I don’t know where I am or what could have gone wrong. One minute I’m flying into the doctor’s time machine to wrestle control of it form that crazy bird thing and the next it’s disappearing leaving me on this tiny floating island with a rock like that Mr. Tom that Rarity won’t talk to anymore, except it was big, green and glowing.
To say I was disoriented wasn’t much of a stretch, I was looking everywhere the only signs of civilization seems to be the nearby train and I was about to check it out when I heard a sloshing sound behind me. I turned around and screamed at what I saw.
Sonic the hedgehog main video game realms innate ability: all biological beings can run/fly at heightened speeds without tiring.
Being a cartoon character was still new to me and now I knew a few more things about myself after my check up with Dr. Mario. I was currently in a place Kazooie brought me to, a place called Twinkle Park. Soon mom told me to enjoy the stuff here and to walk around the park, she also told me to ignore the robots chasing a bipedal pink hedgehog and to not leave unless it was with her brother Banjo. I was apparently left waiting for Banjo to show up. So all I had to do was pay attention to the attractions that were open to me. Kazooie was setting off for the RPG worlds of the video game realms.
Elsewhere.
Final Fantasy main video game realms innate ability: Guest character applied statistics, levels and abilities. In certain situations set classifications are also applied.
“Remember I’m this parties acting white mage for this venture so keep me in good hit points and MP potions and I’ll make sure to keep throwing the phoenix downs.” Kazooie was with a guy in dragoon armor, a thief that acts as a treasure hunter, a moogle and a wild kid with green hair. What they were facing were giant dinosaurs and it was a long line of high hit point enemies waiting to do battle with them. The multiple groups of dinosaurs were each holding small slips of paper with numbers to show what order they’d be attacking in that they took to prepare the heroes for a gauntlet of constant battles, until either side gave up or got bored and fled the area.
“Today is just going to be one of those days.” The dragoon armored man said as the first battle started and he leapt into the sky with his pike in hand.
The quest for the rare Celestriad Relic had begun.
Back to the Sonic the hedgehog video game realms.
The innate abilities of each realm tended to give the visitors those abilities, so currently I could move faster than I ever could before, well assuming I’m not in a spinoff games or outside the main realm of games with the same general rules across the board. Of course I couldn’t hit speed booster levels of speed that Kazooie could do, apparently the speed booster allows her incredible bursts of speed on straight-aways that are almost unmatched by anything short of the hero of this realm himself. The acceleration build up was the biggest difference from being to being here; apparently I had decent acceleration whereas someone named Knuckles had a horrible running acceleration but could actually get up to speed with the realms hero if given enough time.
I stood around the park looking at the strange beings coming and going, which included a pink hedgehog being chased by a large green hovering robot that had Sonic Industries imprinted on its side. Well mom said to ignore it, so I did; I just decided to go go-karting along the special speedway which was a blast.
After a few hours of go-karting I got tired of picking up all those rings and feeling strangely safe in case of death. I’m pretty sure it happened every hundred rings that I felt even safer and Kazooie has mentioned that the one-up things are easy to acquire. So I must have had at least ten extra lives on me or at least I think I do, plus a lot of rings that allow me to take a powerful blow of any proportion. Though the rings will disappear faster every time I drop them or at least that’s what the giant purple cat with the frog said.
I wonder what was taking Banjo so long, he should have been here by now… I sat down on a park bench and plucked up a digital flower to eat, tastes like the real thing and even acts like it to fill my stomach. I didn’t question what I just ate nor would I bother doing so.
After finishing my snack, a crowd of screaming characters ran by shouting something about a dangerous creature. Funny, I didn’t think Banjo was that scary and Kazooie tends to freak people out because she tends to play with her grenade eggs too much.
“Hey what’s going on?” I reached out with a hoof and grabbed the easiest looking being to stop. What I got was a small, two legs, a pith helmet with light attachment, brown skin and with a blonde ponytail creature.
“Apparently some cartoon character somehow let Chaos loose, people are evacuating the general area… given what happens in the game, things might start to get bad around this realm. Say… who are you, never seen a cartoon character like you before. Would you happen to know what’s going on here?” I blinked confusedly at the creature and shrugged, I pretty much stated to her I had no clue and I was wondering who she was. “Sorry I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Goombella the Goomba archeologist, scholar and professor on all video game creatures extraordinaire! I’m also a good friend to have and a spunky lady.”
With a twirl the creature gave an admittedly impressive hop six feet straight up in the air before freezing in a flashy background and a text box appeared below her saying that she joined my party. I blinked, I seriously thought my Discords’s shenanigans and fetish of buffalo’s in tutus was weird but now I had a RPG character joining me out of the blue? She didn’t even ask if I wanted her in my party, she just jumped right in.
I pretty much expressed that I’ve been in Twinkle Park playing through the go-kart courses for the last few hours before stopping for a snack and that I knew fluent silent protagonist because my mother taught me. I also exclaimed that my mother was a certain red crested breegull and Goombella didn’t bat an eye, instead she pulled out a strange book and the pages on it started flipping without her having any hands to flip pages with.
“Let’s see, aha… red crested breegull, so you know Kazooie, which file is she?” I simply answered that my mom was the file one to the small mushroom shaped creature and after a moment she twirled the book around and started reading the text out to me without looking at it. “Let’s see, the file one is Kazooie Kalzoonteight most notorious hero for blowing up the Kingdom Hearts universe and is always said to be welcome to Bomberman Land for party games. Her RPG statistics while limited are quite good, she’s a platform game character and is cousin to multiple species of video game birds, sister to Banjo Kalzoonteight and it is also a rumor that her mother was an eldritch abomination. Her hit is explosives and the explosions they dish out and her miss is people using her last name for whatever reason.”
Well, that was pretty much the stuff I already knew about mom. I quickly asked her what this chaos stuff was about. After a moment Goombella thwacked her own forehead with a foot before flipping through some pages and around this time Banjo came running up to us just as Goombella finished finding the data I asked her about.
“Technically his name is Chaos Zero, his lowest evolutionary form when not being powered by chaos emeralds. Note that negative chaos energy makes him a really cranky customer to deal with and it takes three to four hits to defeat him in combat. I can’t even begin to wonder why he doesn’t just absorb the positive energy… but then again there probably isn’t much after protecting this race of adorable critters he loves called Chao. Wonder why he’s here and who the cartoon character is that freed him, he’s not exactly evil and he can be considered to be a misunderstood anti-hero. He is walking liquid chaos, do not get stuck inside of him or you could incidentally end up drowned.” With that Goombella put the book away and then noticed her audience had grown in size to a bear and pony. “Oh hello there, you must Banjo.”
“Yep, guh huh… just what is going on around here? Where’s the witch?” Banjo was about to receive a response from the Goomba when a familiar pegasus crashed into the ground near us.
Banjo was a honey bear and weighed well over two hundred pounds; sometimes I wonder how Kazooie hadn’t broken her back carrying him around with her talon trot ability. He had brown fur, blue eyes, shark tooth necklace and was wearing yellow shorts with a belt. He was Kazooie’s notably nicer easy going half and without Kazooie around he might have let Gruntilda run roughshod over him. He does have his own heroic side, but was nowhere near as violent without Kazooie egging him into action.
The pegasus rolled onto her stomach groaning, soon she heard a splash and blob of water landed behind her causing her to sit up and scrambled backwards against Twinkle Park castle’s wall as it slowly took a two legged green eyed form with claws that started stalking towards her sloshing with each step. Soon it stopped and turned to stare directly at me. Why did I not like the look in its faded eyes?
“That… would be the witch Banjo; in this case the lowest level of the Chaos boss fights Chaos Zero.” Goombella said dryly right next to me. “Though it seems he’s not interested in following that cartoon character anymore, he seems more interested in the cartoon pony next to me… any idea why?”
“Well Screwball does have chaos powers from what Kazooie told me.” After a moment of putting his paw under his chin Banjo’s eyes narrowed as the creature stretched its arms out to grab me. I found myself simply lifted out of the way by Banjo with a single deft grasp of his strong paw on the scruff of my neck. “Now that doesn’t seem very friendly.”
I looked at Banjo and asked him ‘really’? That’s what you think? Get in there and bust his butt! Or that’s the approximation of what I said with my silent protagonist voice, this bear must really need a large push to get into a fight.
“Well I don’t know, he doesn’t seem to realize what he’s doing or even seems to be awake. He could be instinctively following programming and not actively be a threat.” As Banjo said this we watched as it reeled it’s arms back in and started to slowly make its way for us, the grey coated blonde haired mare looked to me and seemed to have a note of recognition after seeing my cutie mark. There seemed to be a spark of hope in her eyes.
Banjo actually made his way forward, to confront the liquid chaos creature and the way his dull green eyes seemed to focus on Banjo didn’t make me feel too good. Banjo waved his left paw in front of the creature and it didn’t react to it.
“You see, he is asleep, his eyes are closed. It’s just really hard to tell unless you’re close up, I’m sure he’s a nice guy and I just need to wake him…” Banjo was suddenly slugged across the face with a water tentacle knocking him onto his back. I ran forward and pushed him into a sitting position and soon he stood up on his own, but he wasn’t alone. He needed a partner and I was that partner, clasping my hooves around his neck I pretty much yelled in silent protagonist to get in the game. Banjo wasn’t like Kazooie; she would have already fired at least a grenade egg by now and would have continued to fire them until they proved completely ineffective.
“I seriously don’t think…” Banjo started, but then the background music changed on us into boss music and large three dimensional letters appeared in front of Chaos Zero. The words floating in the air read as ‘Sleeping Chaos’ and a life bar appeared above his head. Yep, I just got dragged into a boss fight riding a honey bear and this is normal for the video game world. This was probably something I’d never do back in Equestria, as if I wanted to go back to being a starving kid looking for their next meal.
Behind us a different scene was playing out.
Goombella stayed a safe distance away from the battle zone as the boss battle seclusion walls were set in place, next to her was the pony that scrambled to safety and was regarding her with great interest. Soon the pony stuck her tongue out and slowly started to move it towards Goombella who instantly turned on her.
“What are you doing?” The pony stopped and rubbed the back of her head giving out a goofy smile as Goombella regarded her with suspicion.
“Well, I kind of wanted to know… are you a talking muffin?” Say what you will, no matter what dimension she’s in Derpy will always be looking for the closest muffin shaped thing to eat.
“No, I’m not a muffin… though it’s kind of odd that my species can kind of look like one, I am what is known as a Goomba and my name is Goombella.” Even after explaining she wasn’t a muffin Derpy still licked her anyway, she didn’t go into the spiel of her background considering how this pony had been looking at her. “Ugh, why did you do that?”
“I had to make sure you weren’t a muffin, because a real talking muffin would try to deny it’s a talking muffin… but I guess you really are that Goomba thing you said you were. You also kind of taste like mushrooms from those stir fry foods; I’m Derpy Hooves by the way. It’s really nice to meet you Goombella.” Unperturbed by the fact that she just licked something that tasted of mushrooms and flesh; she went back to watching the fight.
Goombella sighed, this wasn’t the first time she had been confused with a muffin or a cupcake. She really should stop doing research on Yoshi’s, she really didn’t like being stuffed in an egg or waiting a week for things to pass on their own time.
Now back with me and Banjo preparing for the fight.
Banjo weighed his options quickly; he guess he had to fight now and there was no possibility of getting Screwball out of the crossfire as she was part of this fight. Kid like that doesn’t need to experience her first video game death so early.
Well Banjo’s first idea on how to fight the creature regarding them is to see if Screwball can function like Kazooie does… he didn’t really believe she could be exactly like the Bombastic Breegull but he had to try. He quickly pulled Screwball from his back and wrapped his left paw around her throat and his right paw around her belly; he’d call it the Pony Pitcher mode perhaps? He cocked Screwball and was surprised to actually hear the pony cock, even if her sound effect was vastly different from Kazooie.
Banjo quickly squeezed me with his right arm. I felt; oddly enough, safe in his paws and there was this weird sensation in my throat. I really had to cough and so I did in a spectacular manner. What was thought to be a grenade egg exploded out of Screwball’s mouth, however upon second appearance it was a green baseball that was on fire. It slammed into the approaching Chaos and he was slammed back into the castle wall by the brilliant explosion.
After watching Chaos getting splattered all across the wall to the castle, we saw that he quickly reformed and began to stretch one of his claws out at us. Huh, so that’s how Kazooie sprayed eggs from her mouth… I had always wondered about how that felt for mom to do. That really hurt my throat and now I know I needed to figure out how to do that without causing self injury. How in the world was Chaos still asleep after that and why did it only take a quarter of his life bar?
As Banjo dodged out of the way he noticed Screwball suddenly having a coughing fit and a few wisps of black smoke pouring out of his suddenly haggard looking living weapon. He decided he couldn’t subject Screwball to anymore Pony Pitcher mode and slung her onto his back despite the pony complaining that she was fine; he didn’t buy it for one second.
I’m fine, would be something to yell if I could but that baseball grenade really took a lot out of my actual voice, but it didn’t bother my silent protagonist voice one bit. So there was a really good reason to learn that language, Kazooie said she learned it in case she ever lost her voice again from shouting at dragons.
Chaos stalked forward having completely reformed pulling back its left arm and Banjo started forward after I had my hooves well wrapped around his neck and his waist. Chaos slammed its arm into the ground and a whirlpool appeared in front of a charging Banjo who jumped as a tentacle whipped out at him. He wouldn’t have cleared the whirlpool as the tentacle came around for a second pass if it had not been for him having a partner this might have hurt.
I quickly spun my propeller using what little chaos magic I had to my name and felt my legs stretch slightly as I carried Banjo up and forward over the rest of the whirlpool to a safe landing. Chaos’s arm was stuck in the ground until he stopped using the whirlpool and that gave Banjo ample opportunity to rush up and slap him with a quick left and right before putting his left foot on Chaos’s chest and giving him a hard kick.
Chaos partially splattered against the wall and his health went down another quarter and he was flashing invincibility frames this time as he reformed. I really wondered how he was managing to stay asleep through all this; I really didn’t know how much longer I could keep supporting Banjo.
“You okay Screwball? He’s only got two hard blows left and I think I can take him without your help if you’re too tired.” Banjo was a really sweet guy; he really did deserve that giant bee girlfriend of his.
I gave him the go ahead to kick ass, but I’m not out of this fight yet. I really had to wonder how Kazooie did all this tag team stuff without problems.
Chaos leapt two his triangular two toed feet, he stalked forward and then his body started spinning around lazily whipping his liquid claws out at us. Banjo quickly started to run around the enclosed battlefield as Chaos continued to follow him his spinning getting faster and faster. It was a good thing this realm included the ability to move faster because I don’t think Banjo would have been able to normally outrun this thing as it tried to ram into him and by association me.
After a few moments Chaos stopped and stood completely still, Banjo ran forward squatted down and then in surprise burst of energy he barged forward and shoulder charged Chaos. Chaos once again was reduced to a puddle form as he slammed into the ground from the honey bear body check; he sloshed back up sluggishly with only a quarter of his health remaining.
Then Chaos decided to change its tactics on us, he shot out his arm and soon he was on one of the four light poles in the area. Both me and Banjo blinked, well crap there was no way Banjo would be able to shimmy up one of those light poles nor would he be able to jump between them as fast as Chaos could with his stretchy arms and extending fingers. Banjo quickly ran out of the way of one of its fist and nearly ran into the other, apparently being closer to being awake gave him some form of higher brain function to stay out of range of our attacks. Whenever we got to one light pole he’d immediately grapple to another to continue a barrage of stretching arm attacks.
I was getting thoroughly annoyed by this point, outside the battle zone Goombella frowned and the pegasus was trying to breach the battle barrier trying to help us. Ugh, I was beginning to feel righteously angry that this guy hasn’t woken up yet; before I knew it I found myself being hugged tightly to Banjo’s chest as he rolled us out of the way of another attack and took a blow to his back for me when Chaos launched its other arm.
Okay now I was steaming mad and I couldn’t do anything or think of anything to help, I scratched the back of my head to think of something when I felt it…. strange I normally didn’t have a bit of wood sticking out the back of my neck, but then I remember I had a baseball bat I could throw at Chaos. In my righteous fit of anger I quickly slung my hoof forward and despite the fact that I didn’t reach into my hat, there went my baseball bat flying through the air end over end and automatically charging up on its own.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Goombella watch my bat fly through the air with a bit of nostalgia and the pegasus was completely surprised by the sudden appearance of the long piece of wood. It slammed into Chaos’s head and with the same ping sound it always had when charged fully. Chaos almost seemingly atomized in the general direction of the ground in a small rain shower and my bat disappeared instantaneously once its job was done.
The battle zone soon dropped and the small blue drops of liquid chaos started to slowly flow together and soon the awakened Chaos Zero was in front of us with his green vibrant eyes completely open. He stalked for us again looking at me until Banjo brought his paws up into fist growling a bit, Chaos hesitated.
After a moment I crawled off of Banjo’s back and made my way towards him despite Banjo’s protest that he could still be dangerous. I saw something of myself in him; I think he was sorry he attacked us. Slowly I reached out my right hoof and he reached out his right arm, his three claws melded together as they enwrapped my hoof and both our eyes started to glow.
His sadness and past was revealed to me immediately along with his love for his mother Tikal, I shared my own sadness and the fact that I missed Mr. Cold Spot my pet ice cream cloud and how I met Kazooie. I think I’ve just met someone I can relate to on a personal level.
Elsewhere in Equestria.
Pinkie bucked a tree and a load of apples fell down into the basket, sugar cube corner was almost finished being rebuilt and until then she was using her honorary family member card to work on the Sweet Apple Acres farm. She wiped the sweat from her brow and looked up to the sky with a smile.
“Say Mr. Cold Spot, do you think you could hit me with a few cotton candy flavored scoops please?” Pinkie opened her mouth wide open and frosty scoops of ice cream rained down into it. Sure Mr. Cold Spot couldn’t do the raining chocolate milk thing, but at least he could do chocolate ice cream when he needed to. The cloud was in good hooves until his owner Screwball came back.