Khronozooie stood on the ridge wielding her Amaze-o-gaze glasses while Screwball stood next to her; they had caught up to Banjo and Chaos in record time. Still she had to wonder why Kazooie didn’t use the Amaze-o-gaze glasses more often as she did the Spec-o-spy goggles, sure the functionality was slightly different but they mostly had the same features.
For some odd reason Khronozooie’s thoughts went to how much they, the heroic breegull’s in question, hated moles to the point that the hardly ever, if seldom mentioned, third Kazooie practically eradicated Bottles existence from her Spiral Mountain entirely. The first and second file Kazooie’s took a while trying to figure out how she managed to rid her file of Jamjars as well as Bottles entire family. It was later found out she dropped them into Grunty’s Revenge and they were being tortured by the breeding seagull’s there, yeah it was kind of common for her species to hate moles for just breathing the same air they did. It was probably some instinctual reason of their coding that just made them love doing hurtful things to moles so it probably wasn’t their faults in the first place for being hateful. Moles were probably their natural prey or something to that extent anyway. Khronozooie wasn’t going to try and reason why game designers created their species like that and she was not going to complain an iota.
“Yeah we have to move out soon as they are getting swarmed out there, but at least they aren’t getting creamed to be fair. Seriously I’m starting to sound like that witch the wart face, so let’s lend some aid and with haste. Ugh I tire of the rhyme yet that Zebra made it look good in time.” Khronozooie reached into her backpack to pull out a vehicle that could help them with this situation.
I and Khronozooie had arrived to this location ahead of Banjo and Chaos; it sure looked like they could use a hoof. Still don’t understand why we didn’t just go straight to the empire city place, but I really rightfully didn’t care as Banjo and Chaos were in trouble. Khronozooie had landed her Epoch on a high point in a mountain and stowed it away as soon as I had gotten out of it.
“Would you happen to know anything about driving, at least anything as say a simple go kart?” The time displacing bird said as she leaned against their mode of transport.
Screwball smiled and here she thought that kart racing she did at Twinkle Park had been just for fun. Well actually it was, but still rather convenient for the situation.
Chaos was standing on the back end of Cerberus Alpha and Banjo was in the hardly used seat at the front behind the head of the bike, as they rode through the badlands towards and hopefully past the arctic zone with less problems then what they had at the moment, it was Clancer Empire City or bust.
The bust might become the likelier if this kept up, so far Banjo was having a problem hotwiring the weapons systems and they had to deal with constant jetpack using Clancer assaults. Not counting the flying clan-cars shooting at them with laser beams and the Reploid riders on speeder bikes keeping up with them firing constantly at the back of the giant motorcycle with little green plasma blasts. It was close to becoming a ‘Danmaku’ situation if the enemy didn’t have such horrible aim and the bike was practically indestructible until the rider, who was Banjo, was defeated.
A Clancer was a strange being, given they are practically walking white clay creatures with three glowing holes for eyes and mouth that turn to dust when they are killed thus releasing their spirit like a Pikmin.
Despite being made of clay Clancers were actually quite tough, well at least the good Clancers that had abandoned this realm were. The jetpack wearing ones were usually armed with shuriken and grenades; other Clancers who usually wore cowboy hats tended to transforms their arms into working laser cannons for a few shots before they have to forcefully revert back to normal. The less humanoid Clancers were usually named ‘clan’ followed by a general idea of what they looked like; an example would be a Clan-cat.
Reploids on the other hand were usually humanoid robots with humanoid emotions and feelings and they tended to have a higher rampancy level then Cortana ever exhibited too. The rampancy they had led to mavericks or Reploids willing to do viable harm to biological life forms, for the biggest target for said machines are usually humans or near humanoid biological based beings. So far there were only speeder bike riders in the pack giving chase to Banjo and Chaos; they looked like Sniper Joe alternatives then again most human style Reploids do.
(Suggested music Final Fantasy VII Crazy Motorcycle Chase)
A clan-car was basically a flying saucer with a Clancer face on the front and rungs on the bottom for Clancers to drop off from; it let loose several Clancers wearing jetpacks. The three of them flew towards the back of the giant bike and each flung shuriken at the vehicles pilot. Banjo was important as his health was directly link to the Cerberus Alpha at the moment, if he went then so would the bike.
Chaos spun his upper torso around to stretch and curve his left arm into a tentacle in front of himself catching all the shuriken thrown at Banjo; he whipped his upper torso back around releasing them back at the fast flying Clancers. Three explosions sounded out in the air behind the bike.
“Hup waaa!” Three shouts sounded out as the Clancers barely landed on the bike with their jetpacks destroyed. Two regular Clancers landed behind Chaos taking up immediate boxer stances one facing Chaos and the other going for Banjo. The third smaller Clancer that had landed in front of Chaos barely grabbing onto the back edge was already turning to dust having been speared through its body by Chaos’s right limb.
The Clancer behind Banjo was quickly backhanded by Banjo’s right paw sending him into the path of a speeder bike causing a small explosion. The last Clancer threw a simple punch with which Chaos melted into a puddle under and with three rapid beeps popped up and grabbed the Clancer with both arms causing it to start crying in a panic. Looking around Chaos tossed him at a different speeder bike causing it to go up in an explosion.
A Clancer car flew down behind the bike and started lighting it up with laser blasts which Chaos was quick to dodge by dropping onto the side of the bike. It flew over head and dropped several more Clancers onto the bike before pulling back.
“Chaos, could you maybe try to keep them off of me please?” Banjo asked nicely as the four Clancers that were dropped off crawled their way for him across the back of the bike only to be intercepted by Chaos who was quite the deadly close range combatant. He grabbed the first Clancer and tossed it into another one sending them both flying off the moving vehicle.
Chaos moved to attack the other two and one tried to throw a right punch only to have its arm engulfed by Chaos’s left arm and was summarily used as a mace to smash the other one to dust before it to was sent flying off the bike and was quickly rammed into a pile of dust by a speeder bike that didn’t explode.
It didn’t take the enemies more than a minute to figure out concentrated fire on the large armored bike wasn’t helping their cause and the fact that the bike wasn’t making evasive maneuvers meant it had problems or didn’t need to evade at all. Most enemy AI’s weren’t know for their tactical standpoints, but this was open invitation as Banjo was obviously the key considering he was still trying to hack the bikes steering mechanism along with the weapons system at the back of Cerberus’s head.
Three regular sized jetpack Clancers launched from a Clan-car flying ahead of the Cerberus Alpha and they dropped off red grenades as they flew by and they made tinkling sounds before they exploded only to barely miss hitting Banjo who was furiously trying to hack the bikes systems. Chaos wasn’t so lucky and was splattered across the entire bike; the three Clancers circled around priming more grenades.
“Uh oh…” Banjo said as a grenade managed to go off in his face depleting him of one honey comb from his health bar, really not much of a problem considering he had a full health bar. “Well if this keeps up we’re not going to make it to the city to even rescue my sister. I almost have the steering down and then I might be able to get the brakes too.”
The ten to twelve speeder bikes still in the chase swerved outwards and then inwards firing in hopes of nailing banjo with plasma shots erupting from the front of their bikes. Chaos sloshed in agreement to Banjo’s somewhat pessimistic outlook as he was half formed when he was splattered back down by another grenade.
The fast flying Clancer’s were swinging around for another run when the sound of a rapid firing gun was heard, three explosions went up where the Clancer’s were and nothing but dust fell from the clouds. An engine revved and a four wheeled vehicle shot over the Cerberus Alpha with a jet thruster going full blast before its tires screeched in protest as the vehicle landed and turned to keep pace with the motorcycle.
A shadow on a distant cliff eyed the new vehicle warily and saw the breegull in the gunner’s chair, the tall shadow dashed off to warn the other two shadows of impending doom that another Kazooie had come to Planet Clancer. It didn’t leave without making sure it’s ambush team was set up first, but it didn’t think the ambush would survive contact with a breegull.
“Hey guys, need some backup?” Khronozooie swung the turret around and started blasting one Clan-car and after enough sustained fire it finally exploded. The Borderlands Two vehicle called an ‘Outrunner’ she was in came in two flavors machine gun and rocket launcher; Khronozooie chose machine gun for this particular runner painted a nice bright blue color. She was very much assured that Kazooie might have the rocket launcher version in her backpack, if not then something far deadlier. “Don’t just keep your eyes on the road Screwball drop some speed and lend some fire support with the forward gun.”
“Well hey its Screwball! Where’d you find her?” Banjo perked up at seeing who the driver of said vehicle was the purple and white curled mane with hooves on the wheel that suddenly turned and waved at him. Chaos had finally fully reformed and exclaimed a happy slosh at finding out that Screwball was okay.
“Funny thing about that, she found me!” Khronozooie turned the turret and unleashed an unending amount of fire into the speeder bikes quickly dispatching them with barely even a second of sustained fire between them. “What’s the problem guys, you don’t seem to be maneuvering to well there.”
A speeder bike swerved into the path of the Outrunner and Screwball quickly lifted her right hoof off the wheel to toggle a button on a joystick off to the side and the front gun opened up, it was hard to use for Screwball given she didn’t have a thumb for it. Two seconds later the speeder bike exploded and the vehicle harmlessly passed through the resulting dust cloud without its shield bar even dropping.
“Well I got the thing started, but I haven’t exactly gotten it entirely under my control yet I’m just glad to even have the radio working. You Kazooie’s are the ones that take up questionable talents you know, I guess I really need to step up my game a bit if I’m to get back in the hero business.” Banjo was speaking in a relatively easy and not very worried tone, in fact he seemed to be a bit happier that there was a Kazooie to talk to even if it wasn’t his Kazooie specifically.
“Have you tried separately hacking the weapon and drive systems yet? I know you’re a damn good go kart driver given you were born in Diddy Kong Racing, but from the looks of it you have no clues about hacking the weapons and drive systems of any enemy vehicle simultaneously. Screwball can you handle yourself for a few minutes without me?” Screwball looked back at the blue and purple feathered bird curiously asking what she was about to do, but gave an affirmative that what she was driving wasn’t that difficult to steer even with hooves. “Good question, something you should never do in a moving vehicle unless you know what you are doing. Bring us up alongside them.”
Khronozooie jumped out of the seat from the Outrunner’s gunner position and stood on top of it and then leapt onto the middle of the Cerberus Alpha. It was around this time that more Speeder Bikes and Clan-cars were starting to appear and they were entering a canyon like area.
“Banjo out of the way, I better make this quick because we are about to get ambushed by even worse then what’s attacking us already.” Banjo didn’t even question Khronozooie; he knew she probably already rewound time once considering she suddenly had that one dagger held in her left wing quickly being stashed into her backpack as she took up the position at the literal head of the bike. He pulled himself from his seat and stood on the back of the motorcycle with Chaos as another wave of Clancers dropped on top of them, it was hard to fight with such little room on the bike.
Screwball kept the Outrunner alongside the Cerberus Alpha and watched as Banjo and Chaos grappled with their opponents only to hear a thud as something landed on the hood the vehicle she was driving. Her eyes met two glowing red holes and a glowing open mouth greeted her as the clay creature that landed on hood of her vehicle reached down and tried to jerk the wheel off course. Screwball stuck her tongue out the corner of her mouth as she fought for control of the car with the creature.
“Hmmm… I can see why Banjo was having problems with this… tough system to crack but if I can do this fast enough I should be able to… there!” Khronozooie knew Screwball was going to be in trouble, so she had managed to access the Cerberus Alpha’s missile system and hack it in record time. A second later the bikes middle expanded and a solitary missile flew forward at an angle into the Clancer rendering it to dust and left Screwball hacking and coughing, but completely fine. Sure Khronozooie could have turned her head and launched a quick grenade or battery egg, but this solution allowed her to keep working on the systems of the motorcycle. “I think I can get the turbo laser to work just give me a minute.”
“We really don’t have that much time here... oh wait I forgot who I was talking too.” Thanks to the sudden reprieve of the bear rubbing his face in consternation, the Clancer Banjo was dealing with lunged forward to try a punch at the back of Khronozooies head. Only the attack didn’t land as it was quickly stabbed straight in the forehead with the dagger now in birds left wing again held in a reverse grip. When the Clancer turned to dust instead of blowing away the dust absorbed into the dagger. Khronozooie didn’t even bother to look away from what she was doing while continuing to hack the Cerberus Alpha’s systems with her right wing still in the back of the transforming robots skull.
“Yeah, I know tight space on this bike for the three of us, but please try to knock them off faster. The fire rate on the laser is kind of phenomenal for the output and energy usage… why do evil characters get all the good stuff? In any case I got the laser cannon online but it might be a moment before it gets up to speed.” Said laser cannon was being stood upon by Chaos as he whipped the last Clancer off and then the thing started to tilt so that it pointed straight up with the liquid formed being comically holding onto it. A small beam of light emerged and slowly shrunk into the cannon then a big bright beam of energy shot skyward ripping the clan-car above them to atoms. “Oh and I got the brakes down, steering is based on mental control and you are currently labeled as the driver Banjo, good work on that by the way. I think it’s very commendable for a Kong Country bumpkin, you should know how to aim the missiles right?”
The bike expanded and started launching more missiles behind it at the clan-cars that were flying at level with the Cerberus Alpha to fire upon it. They found themselves quickly destroyed by walls of four missiles at a time. The eyes on the bike soon lit up and started firing plasma shots forward destroying a speeder bike that had been pointlessly popping explosives at the bike for a while now and didn’t bother to change its attack patterns. It was causing Screwball some problems and Khronozooie didn’t like it being in the way, after few moments the bike was starting to automatically target the problems on its own.
“All set, I’m getting back onboard with Screwball in my Outrunner; I have weapons on auto though you can use them manually but only one at a time. Oh, and whatever you do Banjo don’t use the transformation sequence until we get to Clancer Empire City or we might have another Saucer of Peril incident. Witchy World was never quite the same after that mess, though it was amusing.” Khronozooie leapt from the bike and performed an aerial dodge that temporarily allowed the laser blasts coming from the low flying clan-cars to seemingly pass through her as she resumed her position back in the gunner’s seat of her Outrunner. Banjo gulped at the warning and took back his position behind Cerberus Alpha’s head.
Screwball felt a twitch in her tail and it wasn’t because she was sitting on it; she immediately out of instinct looked up and saw several things moving along the ridges above them. She hurriedly turned her head to Khronozooie and yelled for all them to look out from above.
“Damn it, the ride armors are early this time.” Khronozooie muttered as she continued to gun down the chasers. “Screwball, pull us back behind the bike now!”
Screwball quickly hit the brakes and swerved behind the Cerberus Alpha and just in time to avoid having the runner crushed by a giant blue walker known as a rabbit model ride armor being piloted by another Joe variation. The thing sped up and was suddenly rearing back its left fist which was a large cylinder with four large spikes sticking out of it; a grenade egg blasted it back followed by a stream of bullets. It was quickly destroyed before it could punch the Outrunner for massive damage.
“Eat it, you oversized rock’em sock’em robot!” A missile landing near the vehicle caused it to bounce into the air and lose slight control before it was back up to speed. Swerving the turret around Khronozooie saw they had another minor problem, four hovering hawk model ride armors and another rabbit which was already in the process of being destroyed by the Cerberus Alpha’s forward plasma shots. Rabbit models couldn’t fly but the Hawk’s models certainly could, a large flight fan and two rocket launcher arms were the main differences between this and the rabbit models.
Screwball was having a rough time keeping the car from going out of control. The steering was simple enough, as long as you weren’t currently under fire from several Clan-cars, speeder bikes and now flying machines with twin rocket launchers barraging them. A light bulb appeared above her head and she quickly reached her left hoof under her hat and with a quick heave there was suddenly a large anvil in the road behind them. The domino effect took care of all the speeder bikes behind them in a series of explosions preceded by a humorous amount of silly sounding clang noises, after the smoke cleared the anvil was completely unscathed.
The clan-cars simple just hovered over the anvil in continued pursuit but it looked like they were all out of Clancers to drop thanks to Khronozooie shooting the Clancers hanging from the rungs beneath them there were five left still blazing away with lasers at their tails slowly. The unfortunate problem is the current position of the Outrunner and how quickly its shields were faltering under the barrage from behind and above. Khronozooie turned around and started dealing with the incoming rockets and was having a hard problem keeping her gun focused on ride armors flying above them as they maneuvered quickly out of the way of the constant stream of infinite ammo.
Chaos turned to slosh a request. Banjo agreed and hoped that Khronozooie knew to get out of the way… who was he kidding of course Khronozooie would know to get out of the way, she wasn’t his Kazooie.
A thin beam of energy went past Khronozooie’s head and she turned her head to the Cerberus Alpha’s cannon preparing to launch a huge beam directly at them.
“Screwball whatever you do don’t move out of the way of the beam and when I shout hit the brakes!” Screwball didn’t question Khronozooie and just kept the Outrunner right where it was behind the Cerberus Alpha.
Chaos was worried that the Outrunner wasn’t changing course to get out of the way and it was too late to stop the beam from firing and it blasted a beam towards the Outrunner.
“TIID-KLO-UL!” Khronozooie shouted and Screwball immediately hit the brakes, only to become shocked at how everything around had turned grey and stopped or at least slowed drastically. Khronozooie’s voice hoarsely spoke up it sounded like she shredded her vocal chords. “No time to explain, just drive around and get in front of the bike and make it snappy! Oh and be prepared to floor it and hit the jet too or else we’re going to get run over.”
Screwball rolled her eyes; she wasn’t that stupid and taking hint that time would probably quickly revert from whatever Khronozooie just did. Quickly she drove around to the front of the bike with little room to spare between the bike and the canyon wall and right past the now slowly moving beam still erupting from the cannon. All this took ten seconds leaving about six to spare when Khronozooie spoke up.
“On my mark three… two… one… now!” Screwball hit the thrusters and gunned the Outrunner as time reverted to normal and they barely avoided getting rear ended by Banjo who managed to slow the bike down slightly in shock at seeing the sudden appearance of the Outrunner in front of him. The beam cannon did its job with wiping away the last of the clan-cars and all that was left was the four hawk model ride armors to be shot down.
The aerial armor’s were made quick work of by the rotary missiles from the Cerberus Alpha and the never ending machine gun fire from the Outrunner blowing their rockets out of the air. After the enemies were gone things were quiet as they drove out of the canyon they came to a stop and hopped out for a little powwow at the edge of Planet Clancer’s arctic zone.
“Well suffice it to say they know we’re coming at least and they were certainly prepared for you, but they aren’t prepared for a time twister.” Khronozooie stated bluntly as she walked up to banjo giving him a hug. “Good to see you Banjo it’s been a while since I’ve seen a lovable goof like your ugly mug and I really should go to more of my Banjo’s hockey games. He’s been doing quite well oh and someone’s been nearly dying, quite literally, to give you a hug.”
Screwball trotted up to Banjo and lifted her front legs up and smiled toothily up at Banjo, he brought her into a tight hug and exclaimed he was glad that she was safe after disappearing like that. When she asked why he was so worried, he responded that she was family after all and his niece. She nuzzled into his soft warm chest in a fit of giggles. Chaos just stood of to the side with a tilted head looking confusedly at the situation till Khronozooie walked up to him and started chatting about if he knew a thing or two about time travel, surprisingly he was quite a fountain of knowledge.
Meanwhile still in the cage getting slightly less sane by the minute.
“I’m so gooney, looney tuney, te’ched in the head. Please pass the ketchup; I think I’ll go to bed! Hoo! Am I the screwball, woo woo! Throw me the 8-ball woo woo!” Kazooie sang cheerily as she sat in the middle of the room bored out of her mind and taking glances at the energy field above her head holding her here. It was only a matter of time before she got out and when she did...
“What is she doing now?” The posh shadows voice said from the room with the observation screen.
“I think she’s singing show tunes, but I can’t exactly tell you what she’s singing though. Somehow it sounds rather familiar for some reason, yet I can’t place it.” The short shadow said.