Many would assume Screwball asked Rosalina to take her to the Mischief Makers realm and many would be quite frankly wrong. Even Rosalina being who she is was surprised by Screwball’s screwball request.
What made the request a screwball one was that it was nowhere near where Rosalina thought Screwball would want to be, but then again this was a cartoon character whose namesake was the word ‘absurd’. There had to be some logic behind the request, they weren’t currently bound for the Mischief Makers realm or even Banjo Kazooie’s Spiral Mountain. Instead they were traveling to an odd realm for the pony to be dropped off at, one that was filled with incredible dangers.
Still if this is what Screwball wanted… Rosalina against her better judgment turned to one of her Luma, a cute Luma that was was white with yellow eyes. Motioning gently to Screwball who was having trouble with the launch star as her body was stuck floating in it upside down performing slow rotations and her limbs were flailing wildly, Rosalina watched her Luma go to work.
The star creature carefully flipped Screwball upright and then quickly spun a tight circle around Screwball causing her to dip slightly in the launch stars gravity before she was launched flying into the dimension of raw madness for gamers who’ve played it.
“Will the pretty pony be okay mama?” The Luma suddenly asked as a few other Luma floated over expressing some of their concerns as well.
“Do not worry; she will be perfectly fine my children… and a bit of time off on the wayside will certainly aid her cause.” Rosalina gave a simple knowing smirk.
‘Battletoads’ video game realms innate ability: Smash hit body modifications, additional combat instincts. Possibility of increased aggression and speaking in ‘angrish’ when involved with this dimension.(Angrish, Angry Anguish.)
Screwball always knew that what Kazooie did to Discord would come to mind or be relevant to her later on in life, other than uttering the words ‘Turbo’ and ‘Tunnel’ causing the Draconequus to cry. Now she was landing in level one and hoping that things would be easy and that getting to the turbo tunnels would go smoothly.
The landing was anything but smooth as she came down flying horizontal to the horrible mountain plains of earthquakes and lava. The star energy holding her aloft finally ran out causing her to slam into the ground and tumbled crazily until she came to a painful groaning stop. Two yellow pillars like objects immediately popped up out of the ground and out came two strange bipedal barbarian pigs wielding battle axes. The yellow things retreated leaving the two early warning guards of the impact crater AKA Ragnarok’s Canyon.
Screwball knew she only had a few seconds to accomplish this, she flipped to her hind legs and charged the first pig with her right hoof pulled back she smashed his gut in once and then again. After that she brought both her hooves together and swung hard and was immediately surprise to find her double hammer blow with her front hooves had them fusing together to form a baseball bat temporarily. This sent the pig off the cliff in a pained grunt leaving him yelling his epitaph.
“Hey, I don’t come into your home and bat you off cliffs!” the pig shouted angrily flailing his battle axe helplessly at the air as he fell.
One down and the other to go before the intruder defense system shuts off the minion special wormhole access. Screwball didn’t bother to turn around as she got onto her front hooves and bucked out with her back left hoof breaking the other pigs glass jaw and then her right hoof into its groin with a satisfying crunch. Within a second she brought in both her back legs and they formed into a mermaid’s tail and slapped the pig upside the head hard and subsequently also off the cliff yelling his own far more disturbing epitaph.
“I think I love you, call me!” The pig yelled before he fell out of sight, most likely to his death.
Screwball had never been more disturbed in her life, shuddering as she got up on her hind legs that returned to normal in a split second. She turned around and quickly darted forwards looking to her left and jumped up towards the eight white dots on the high ledge and vanished from sight. This was the first in a part of a series of the things Screwball needed to do successfully if she had any hope of succeeding in her objective.
Screwball landed on all four legs in a long vast wide open tunnel, she started sweating. Goodness knows she really knew what was coming soon as she made her way forward only for a two rats to get in her way. The music was kind of ominous in the way it was playing in the background. She immediately pulled her baseball bat out from under her hat.
“Hey wait a minute, that’s cheating! The toads never had baseball…” The first black shirt wearing dirty bipedal rat tried to say before he was pinged out of existence and the second one just stared on horrified. Screwball just looked at the second rat daring him to approach her threateningly as she hefted the end of her bat in her left hoof several times while holding it in her right as she stalked forward.
“Aw crud… we got another crazy one…” The rat jumped off the side of the level to his doom not wanting to be home ran straight through the ceiling like his buddy coincidentally named Lefty, considering his name was Righty and he was the second rat to appear in this stage was surprisingly not a coincidence.
Screwball stuffed the bat back under her hat and leapt over the gap in the ground and then these three green creatures started invading her personal space bleeping menacingly. Screwball was about to attack, only to stop when they stopped. They had just realized something important about Screwball.
“OH GOD, WHERE’S THE HEALTH BAR! I AM FREAKING OUT MAN!” One of the green creatures screamed horrified at Screwballs lack of a health bar.
“MOTHERSHIP SAID THERE WOULD BE DAYS LIKE THIS, THEN AGAIN SHE WAS SHOT UP BY A TANK BECAUSE IT KNEW WHERE SHE WAS GOING TO BE! I’M FINDING MYSELF IN EXISTENTIAL QUANDARY AS WELL BROTHER!” The second one shouted equally as loud and all in caps.
“Guys, guys, just be cool… everything’s going to be fine, just please stop yelling in all caps. This isn’t as bad as it looks, so we’re functionally unable to hinder the intruder in any way shape or form. It’s not the end of our cameo.” The third one said trying to calm down the other two freaked out floating block creatures.
“NO THREE EVERYTHINGS NOT GOING TO BE FINE AS YOU PUT IT! SHE DOESN’T HAVE A LIFE BAR TO STEAL, WHAT IS OUR POINT FOR EXISTING ANYMORE… I’m going to go throw myself in front of Pac Man.” The first one floating off slowly and the background music abruptly started playing a sad violin tune.
“Aw no… come back… don’t throw yourself in front of… ” The second one tried, only for it and the third one to stare in horror at something happening off screen. A slow bunch of ‘wakka’ sounds in the form of a jaws theme was heard and then a quick sad bleeping sound winding down was heard after the music the ‘wakka’ sounds hit their climax. “No… he just… he killed himself… WHY! YOU HORRIBLE CREATURE, WHY DIDN’T YOU HAVE A LIFE BAR YOU DESPICABLE, EVIL CREATURE?”
The second green space invading creature started to cry little blocks directly below him, the third went to comfort him and they started to conjoin together in each other’s comfort. Screwball raised her hoof to interject or try in vain to say something about this strange situation, the third invader broke away to stare her down.
“Look, just go, you’ve done enough! You’ve done enough…” The third space invading creature said as it returned to cradling the other crying space invading creature.
“He was just three days from earning his top of the screen flying saucer.” The second invader muttered softly as the third one softly shushed him.
Screwball bowed her head a bit and continued trotting down the tunnel horribly confused, but she had a mission to continue and was quickly back to business. Two rats suddenly bounced out from in front of and behind her from out of nowhere a minute later, she reared up on her hind legs and smashed her head down on the rat in front of her sending his body into the ground. She bucked outward with both legs stunning the other one behind her and then she lifted her hind legs higher into the air conjoining them into a ten ton weight. She brought it down harshly sending the rat behind her straight through the squishy floor entirely.
“Um… yeah… wow… talk about iron sides.” The rat said as Screwball stood back up and brought her right hind hoof back and then slung it forward transforming into a giant boot mid swing sending the rat flying off into a void.
As she ran forward and jumped to the next platform she passed by two flies.
“Hey when did this game start to pony up?” The fly said to the other.
“I think it was when we finally started having more screwballs thrown into this game than usual.” The second fly said, before they both started laughing. At least this time they weren’t being eaten by bipedal toad warriors.
Screwball turned around to scowl at the two flies and she noticed a shadow on the floor and before the black shirted rat could even touch the ground, she was already in mid swing with her baseball bat.
“Not again…” Lefty the rat whimpered before he shot off like a bullet as he was pinged a second time.
Jumping to the next platform she saw the rat she booted earlier coming down for a landing, he received the same treatment of face meets homerun bat.
“I died doing what I loved, which is dying!” The rat scream as he was flew away off the screen forever, Screwball shuddered lightly at the fact that she didn’t seem to care about harming these rat clone things.
Hoping to not run into anymore trouble she jumped to the next platform and saw them, two blue things that looked to be jet engines on them. This was it, the speeder bikes of the famed Turbo Tunnel and in front of them the setting bar.
Screwball was really dreading this moment because this was what drove even Discord insane and yet Kazooie enjoyed this thing; the ominous music wasn’t helping her make the decision any easier. She knew what would happen the minute she gripped the handle on that machine.
Carefully climbing onto the machine not sure what to expect, Screwball wrapped her left hoof around the handle and it started slowly forward and bumped the bar out of the way. Well now this didn’t seem so bad; wait… did the background music just change?
Three sections later and after just hitting another bar. Screwball’s right eye was twitching and she was getting really edgy now, she was starting to see what exactly Kazooie had done to Discord. She was getting closer to it and her mind was fraying a bit from having to dodge walls at high speeds, not to mention actually get the thing to jump was quite hard considering half the time her hind legs were having a hard time holding onto the machine. She was going to have bruises on her front legs for a long while after this.
The thing was picking up even greater speed and this was it the final moments that Screwball needed to remember Kazooie’s words about this game realm. They were the words that would lead to the next wormhole. She already had problems with those things that dropped the walls and those explosives running the turbo tunnel floors. Then she smacked into the fifth bar.
“Count for five bars and past, dodge by nine and turn right real fast.” Kazooie had told her, when mentioning the Battletoads realm and its secret warps. She had just hit the fifth bar and the walls were coming up on her almost too blindingly quick.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine… Screwball pulled hard right as hard as she could on the machine and saw the wall seconds before her machine hit it. Screwball was still screaming with her eyes shut when she heard the music had changed to something different and hearing the sound of rushing waters she finally opened her eyes. Her belly was on the floor and her legs splayed out, she shakily stood up as her nerves were completely on edge, she was shivering badly but eventually she managed to calm down as she came off her fear and adrenaline high.
Screwball was standing mostly unharmed right where she needed to be, she found herself standing in Surf City. This was what she came for and all she needed to do was find who she was looking for, the only way to do that is to call attention to that she was by yelling a rather magical phrase.
“Don’t you know?” Screwball shouted verbally to the empty air, there was no response. Hopefully the cavernous area full of waterfalls and rapids would make her heard, she wasn’t here to try and complete this level and her nerves were still jittering from the Turbo Tunnel. Kazooie implied there were harder versions of the Turbo Tunnel which Screwball thought was completely ludicrous even if her own name meant as much.
In front of Screwball was a wooden dock with one yellow surf board with green and lime stripes on it, she ignored it for the time being and inhaled to shout again.
“Don’t… you… know!” Screwball shouted again louder and again in a physical voice. Hopefully who she was looking for heard her this time after waiting for five minutes she sighed and decided a different tactic was needed.
She decided to yell the words in silent protagonist, nothing again and a few moments of thought Screwball held her left hoof to her chin to rub it a bit. After a moment she realized that she wasn’t saying it right at all!
“A well a, don’t you know!” Screwball yelled adding the words ‘a well a’ before the other three words, the reaction was almost immediate and it caused Screwball to fall on her back at the fast reaction to voicing it correctly this time. A surfboard rider flew overhead and leapt off a surfboard landing in front of her and started singing and dancing to the sudden change in music. It was quite catchy.
“About the bird, well everybody knows that the bird is the word! A well a bird, bird, b-bird’s the word! A well a…” The bird with blue and purple feathers and a red backpack was shifting back and forwards dancing to the sudden change in the music as the drum beats turned up, the surfboard she had been riding was back in place next to where there was once just one surfboard.
Screwball sat back and enjoyed the show; it wasn’t everyday you got to watch a bird dance to music such upbeat music. Not to mention it was her mother’s old friend and file two counterpart recolor Khronozooie the time surfing breeding seagull. Despite the fact that Screwball hardly got to know her, except that she had a hard on for time travel gimmick weaponry and a thing for the color blue, there was really a lot she didn’t know about this strange character. After a few minutes the music finally returned to the normal Battletoads Surf City tune, Screwball clapped her hooves in applause leading the bird to bow to her.
“Well if it isn’t my old one time dates little girl at hand, what are you doing in this hellish land? Darn it I’m still speaking in Zebra, so what you need bra?” Khronozooie smiled she was almost exactly like Kazooie if not for the different interests and habits, not to mention a bit narcissistic in wanting to date someone almost exactly like herself once. She was over herself anyway and now she had to find out why Kazooie’s little pony was in the middle of what gamers define as hell in gaming or in other words Nintendo Hard. Yet gamers still joined in ridiculous racing challenges to beat the game first because it was exactly the insanely difficult challenge that made it so fun in the first place, it wasn’t like it was impossible right? Well without the extra lives cheat or infinite lives it almost was.
Screwball flailed both her hooves and started exclaiming excitedly silently while gesturing that she needed Khronozooie’s help and that her mother had been captured by these things called robot masters. She learned of this fact that the nice lady Rosalina told her about it and Banjo was with Chaos heading towards the Mischief Makers realm and everything.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down a little, you’ve met Chaos? How’s he doing lately? Besides Kazooie the so called ‘Princess of Adventure’ as she is now known in Equestria was actually captured? Really, oh this is just too good; she’s become a damsel in distress.” Khronozooie was amused by this as she started barking with laughter with no end in sight. To think that Kazooie’s adoptive daughter was coming to her for some help for a timely rescue. “At least Grunty had cut scene powers and Kazooie wasn’t allowed to defend herself at that time. I wonder what her excuse for all of this will be.”
Screwball rolled her spiraling purple pupils and she raised a hoof turning it into a paper fan before smacking Khronozooie across the face hard, her hoof returned to normal as usual for the effects of the realm she was currently in.
“Right, right, sorry about that it’s just really hilarious, after all the griping Kazooie does about princesses being so lame and useless. Now she is a princess and she’s living it up as a kidnapped character probably spouting random wisdom like Confucius. Back up a bit I need to pull my Epoch out of the pack.” Screwball backed up and Khronozooie slung her red backpack from her back and shook it upside down. The time surfing bird would deliver or she wasn’t chronologically the second file Kazooie and a time travelling one at that. The backpack shuddered and out popped a blue egg shaped machine called an Epoch from the Chrono Trigger realm. It just happened to repainted to suit Khronozooie’s obsession with the color blue being the most appropriate color for time travel.
“Now come on, let’s go rescue myself and first stop the end of time.” The top of the machines glass like bubble opened and they both hopped in, Screwball was in the back left seat and watching the dome close. Soon the machine had popped out wings and was airborne; from her position Screwball could see the entirety of the caverns and the level, how was somebody supposed to survive all that? Well obviously Khronozooie had, but still she didn’t think anyone would go surfing through all that.
“By the way, hang on to your underwear if you have any and please don’t make a mess in my favorite time machine.” The cheeky smile on Khronozooie’s beak made Screwball wonder if coming to this mad realm to find the time traveling bird was a good idea. Soon the machine shot forward at impossible speeds disappearing in a white flash.
As the Blue Epoch sped along with streams of light passing on by Khronozooie looked back at her wary passenger, she looked a bit scuffed up from most likely having been through the Turbo Tunnels. Poor girl got battered and scratched coming to find her for some much needed help. It seemed liked Rosalina was still puttering about making sure all the game realms were better glued together then the Kingdom Hearts world was, it really took a while for that one to recover. Hopefully the current events involving Kazooie weren’t about to escalate to dimensional bureau involvement levels.
“So Turbo Tunnels huh? Those are Kazooie’s favorite to play around with, I just happen to like surfing at Surf City better. I’m surprised you even got through the regular Turbo Tunnels without being too beaten up by it.” Hearing what Khronozooie said Screwballs pupils shrunk to do dots, there was actually worse than that? What in the hell did Kazooie put Discord through if that wasn’t the most worst of it? It would take the pony’s mind a while to stop imagining spiked walls, mines and bottomless pits of doom.
Khronozooie pulled out her plot device with her left wing making sure to keep the time machine steady with the other as she placed a call to a another device. She had a hockey playing bear that she needed help from; it was time to bring Banjo Two-Eh into the fold to help as things were getting huge. She just hoped he wasn’t in the middle of one of his hockey matches with Boggy’s team; she really didn’t like disturbing her banjo for anything even if it was an emergency. Whoever could catch Kazooie had to have a lot of resources at their disposal and had to have a death wish for the world she is being held captive at, thus she required her Canadian stereotyped styled Banjo to bring in some backup.
In Equestria where things were tense, only for a zebra though, we find Zecora making her way out to Sweet Apple Acres. The zebra was having a hard time dropping her guard around anyone except Big Mac and his family, including Applejack who had just finally discovered the pear tree in their orchard left behind by one Screwball Kalzoonteight after having watched over it for a while as a part time job to learn how to respect the land as Kazooie put it. Unfortunately some of Discords chaos powers happened, not that it was Screwball’s fault she couldn’t contain their entirety of incredible power forever.
“Then explain to me why we have a pear tree growing in an apple orchard, it’s even thriving there!” Applejack was just a little bit more then mad to find she had several baskets full of pears, the tree had seemed health enough until she found out those weren’t funny shaped green apples in its branches.
“I don’t rightly know, but we can still sell them right?” Big Mac tried slightly to look on the bright side, they could make some rare deserts from these pears and they didn’t need to buy anymore because this tree was really quite fertile. If only they knew chaos had made it a pear tree that has the same growing patterns as every average apple tree.
“Fine, it’s not like we only sell apples what with Golden Carrot-Top next door any who.” Applejack sighed, she knew Time Turner hated pears and just hoped that his abnormal hatred wasn’t shared by the other ponies in Ponyville. She stalked off in a huff lowering her hat over her eyes as she went.
Zecora came up to Big Mac with a smile from behind and then she started off on an eloquent rhyme.
“Is it true what I hear, do you have some pears to sell near? Excuse me for dropping in unannounced at your farm, but then we both know I’m not here to do any harm.” It didn’t take long for the big red dog like stallion to turn around and give her a sheepishly warm smile, Zecora smiled as well for even the Ever Free Forest was restless to some strange phenomenon coming soon. Only here could Zecora relax with such a sweet stallion that was gentle and kind, but she was prepared to defend the apple orchard herself as she just happened to have acquired a taste for pears recently.
“Eeyup, it’s very nice to see you Miss Zecora.” Big Mac said jovially filled with a sudden vim at seeing the zebra, there was even a spring in his steps. Applebloom may have enjoyed Zecora’s extra visits, only for Big Mac himself to enjoy them further than that as he always had time to talk to her. It was the one thing that could get him away from the Smarty Pants doll.
Zecora chuckled, she was almost an honorary family member living abroad to get such a warm welcome here. She especially liked Big Mac for his coltish nature and the fact that he willingly played with dolls after never having had much of a childhood, what was most important was that he didn’t care who saw him play with it. He was more of a kid at heart then even his own little sisters and Zecora enjoyed just being around him for that reason, but it was not the only one.