There was that sensation of falling, every Pegasus had to deal with it eventually and I knew Fluttershy still had a problem with heights. I however had no problems falling and kept my hooves wrapped around the back left corner of this thing called a tank which wasn’t for fish apparently. It’s hitting the ground at terminal velocity that hurts and apparently this large metal thing wouldn’t do that even if it could survive it.
About a hundred feet before we hit the ground big flames erupted from the bottom of the tank and we slowed down and landed, the tank immediately started off down the road that my ant friends were going to set down later for when we leave. As it rolled forward, we went past several round yellow helmeted things who just silently watched us enter the city.
“This is Canjo where do you need us Khronozooie, its aboot time I helped out my little sister out eh?” Inside the large metal canopy was a white furred Banjo, he looked exactly like him and even addressed her like he did with a Ms. Hooves when talking with her.
“Get over to the energy field generator and help Banjo, putting it up on your mini-map and remind me later that I owe you tons of bacon and maple syrup. Vela I want you to help get Goombella out of danger. Buck Bumble get up in the air and aid Ristar ASAP, he’s taken some bad hits and is still putting up a fight up there on his own, when the energy fields on the fleet goes down he’s free to evacuate or do whatever he wants. Honey you provide Canjo with support as I know you want to help Banjo out. Excuse me I need to concentrate I’ve got three Eagles firing homing blasts at me.” Canjo didn’t reply and immediately hit the thrusters on the tank and took a right off the main road into the city to quickly drop off Vela.
Buck Bumble had already taken wing for the enemy Reploid Fleet hanging in the air above with a small army of Clan-cars still hanging around.
“What about me?” Derpy asked to Honey as she crawled up and over to Honey on the tank as it took off down the road and turned to head towards the energy field generator.
“Just stick with me and watch out for danger Derpy or did you not notice you no longer have any weapons.” Even as Honey pointed this out she fired six blazing fast pistols shots behind the tank taking a speeder bike riding Reploid off his vehicle which promptly crashed. Both faded from existence and sight relatively fast as was the prerogative of the video game realms that everything destroyed fades out of existence after a while in certain realms.
It was true Derpy had become disarmed the second she got too far from the S.S. Anubis as she was no longer in the realm of Jet Force Gemini; even so she still wanted to aid Honey even when she wasn’t armed with a weapon. Friends don’t ditch friends in need, as a true friend will help show a friend the light. Even if she ended up bungling the situation she was sticking to her friend’s side.
As the tank alit down the street the right side rose up on jets before it stomped down on a Reploid and fired several blasts as it was just passing by Quote who waved to them with a smile. Quote was almost done here and he wanted to move on to team up with Curly Brace.
Derpy sat there on the back of the tank wondering if her new friends, the Mizar bug people, would be alright. Fox and his team were going to protect both the Anubis and the Great Fox, while her friends would set up a defensive force outside the city, waiting to pick up all of Honey’s friends and their friends. Oh look she went wall eyed again, now wasn’t the time to be having vision problems as she shook her head trying to get her eyes to realign.
Shaking her head Derpy wrapped her hooves tightly around the vehicle as it suddenly swerved hard and stopped a few feet into the next street. In front of them was a large building with a ton of flying machines firing on a small brown, yellow, red and green speck being chased by what looked like a giant metal dog three fourths the way up. Honey was immediately in the air and flying towards the large glowing building and Derpy sat there for a moment before realizing she should follow.
Banjo wondered what he did to deserve all this trouble, looking back at Lyra she seemed to be sweating keeping her magic focused on the floating missile and making sure it does get blown up prematurely. He was definitely going to introduce this pony to Raz of Psychonauts later, he was certain to survive this and so was the pony as long as she was tied to his extra lives.
He rushed forward and skid into a long jump as four missiles came up from behind him and more were fired at him from the left only to strike the side of the building. He immediately tucked and rolled upon landing to avoid several missiles from those aerial machines as much as Cerberus Alpha. He made his way for the corner of the building to grab and climb the piping only to halt his progress when a eagle ride armor rose up in front of him preparing to fire its charged beam cannon only to be blasted out of the air by a large ball of green homing plasma.
“What was that?” Lyra questioned keeping her attention solely on the object she was tasked to deal with as she jerked the missile out of the way of another missile; she was getting thoroughly tired of holding onto this Badonkadonk thing. Her control slipped for a second and she immediately reignited her horn catching the bunny bound explosive device before it could fall too far. “Also please tell me we’re close to getting there and why I had to levitate this thing all the way up here when we could have waited to take it out at the top.”
“I think that was our backup, also if you haven’t noticed it would have been more problematic to take it out at the top because we haven’t had a moment’s peace otherwise the entire time I’ve been climbing and I’d rather not have it blow up in my face given how powerful just one of those things is.” Banjo grappled onto the large pipe and started to crawl up paw over paw, climbing was one talent the bipedal honey bear was good at.
“Banjo thank goodness you’re safe…” Hearing the soft feminine voice, Lyra looked up from the missile and saw what was likeliest the biggest bee she will have ever seen in her somewhat hopefully long life in the near future. However splitting her attention really didn’t help her keep the Badonkadonk afloat and it fell, she tried to reignite her horn but it sputtered out as she sorely needed a rest. She flopped limply in the backpack.
“Whoa… Lyra is that you, you dropped this!” Okay that was definitely a voice Lyra knew, she looked down from her position and saw Derpy of all ponies flapping to follow them upwards with her hooves wrapped around the Badonkadonk. The grey pegasus pony was here and now holding onto the explosive device… Lyra didn’t feel very safe or assured that everything was okay at the moment with those two facts on mind given Derpy and her friend’s reputation for collateral damage.
“Honey, Ms. Hooves, what in the world are you two doing here. Better yet how did you get here?” Banjo didn’t pause in his climbing nor did he stop moving as he was being constantly bombarded with energy blasts and missiles, the missiles which were being dealt with by Honey taking potshots at the large number of ride armors hounding him. There was also the fact that he couldn’t very well ignore the Cerberus still climbing up after him and snapping at his heels either.
“We were in the neighborhood and thought you might need some help sweetie. Derpy be careful with that it’s very dangerous and Banjo obviously needs it for something. I really need to have a rather stern talk with Tina the next time I see her about all the explosives she keeps giving the Kazooie’s. Anyway we caught a ride with an army to come help out and we met up with some other reinforcements Khronozooie called in. Need any honeycombs sweetie?” Banjo would have stopped to give Honey a dopey grin if it weren’t for the fact that she was currently keeping several of the twenty or so ride armors flying around the building busy at the moment.
“I’m good; Ms. Hooves don’t let anything happen to that Badonkadonk. I’ll tell you what to do with it when I need you, how are you holding up Ms. Heartstrings?” Banjo pulled himself up to leap off the top of the pipe onto the roof access and he was just short of where he wanted to fight the Cerberus.
“I could be better, once my horn stops feeling like it’s going to burn off my head.” Groaned Lyra in a piteously whiny voice, she was not meant for this kind of heavy duty lifting as she was a musician for crying out loud. Was it any wonder she was professed a ‘spoony bard’ almost immediately by all the video game characters?
“Okay, you can count on meeeeee…” Derpy screamed as she was chased off by several missiles aimed at her personally; she lifted the explosive above her head and flew away quickly chased by three of the ride armors circling the building.
“Help her; I don’t quite need it yet, but get it back here in the next five minutes!” Banjo yelled to Honey as Cerberus poked its head up over the edge and stared straight towards Banjo. The leapt up and grabbed the ledge to heaving himself up onto the very tip top of the build, which was a large circular flat area.
Banjo considered this as the Perfect place to have a boss battle, but Cerberus Alpha wouldn’t technically activate a boss field because he was tampered with. This would make falling off a very real threat to Banjo’s extra lives, not to mention the rain of explosives and energy blasts that had been constantly focused on him. He was grateful that he was as acrobatic as he was even without Kazooie’s support.
Honey nodded to herself as she flew off after the grey pegasus, taking in the tank on the ground sitting in one spot ripping into the Ride Armors flying around up here that were trying to take her down as well. She wondered how team Star Fox was doing, because as soon as they had landed a large portion of the Reploid fleet broke off to go deal with them while they were stuck on the defensive. So far things seemed pretty easy.
(Metroid Theme music)
In space not even ten minutes away a large black cruiser floated straight for planet Clancer and inside the ship a pair of red glowing eyes maliciously narrowed. Hundreds of ships and drop pods were at the ready and they were going to take what they came for.
It had no illusions that the casualties on its side were going to go through the roof on this excursion.
Kazooie was the target and they wanted her captured with all potential methods of escape for any video game character sealed off, although it didn’t seem like that was possible anymore considering the large movement to rescue her was succeeding.
(Metroid Theme music end.)
Screwball really didn’t question how it was working nor would she ever comprehend the fact that it was, for to acknowledge that it shouldn’t be working would mean that it would immediately stop doing so.
She sat there with a cartoon signboard held in her left hoof in front of her as the robot slowly moved around the room trying to locate her. This was despite being a glaringly obvious pink, purple and white pony with a beanie hat sitting in one corner of the room holding a sign in front of herself with a clearly amused expression on her face.
“Not here.” Her sign simply did read and the capsule guardian RT-55J believed it, to acknowledge the fact that this was working would also be a fallacy as much as acknowledging the fact that it shouldn’t be. For if it was working Screwball would have to ask exactly why, it was a good thing she wasn’t feeling particularly curious as she was when she was on the ceiling as she sat still, wedged thoroughly into one of the corners of the room.
Screwball had no idea how she was supposed to fight the metallic sumo beast, considering its clamps could probably choke her to death or just plain rip her to shreds with its mechanical strength. Well that would be assuming that she actually needed to breathe being a cartoon character and that she wouldn’t just get all stretched out by its attempts to tear her from limb to limb.
It was after a few minutes of waiting that the building started to shake and what sounded like a huge explosion was set off, Screwball looked questioningly at the wall the where the deafening sound was coming from. She idly wondered if the room was sound proof and yet sounds still made it through the walls here on the principle of the matter of the explosion she just heard.
Screwball felt her tail start shaking involuntarily meaning something was going to fall, yet the ceiling looked completely fine and she wasn’t currently standing on it defying the very laws of physics that at times she has to admit don’t really matter in the long run if it keeps you alive to ignore them.
So assuming she was safe as Screwball didn’t have an imminent pain twitch, she was perfectly fine sitting right where she was. Except that when her right leg harshly jerked and her left knee started itching fiercely.
Odd, the opposite of that meant that she would soon be in pain so what did the other way around mean? Also there was a certainly level of severity to her twitches given how hard the twitch was, the one she had just felt was largely ominous.
It was proven to not be nearly as ominous seconds later when a yellow sphere of pure light blinded Screwball for a second as it smashed solidly through the however many feet thick wall that the RT-55J was standing next to. When she blinked the blindness out of her eyes she gawked at the scene before her, even she couldn’t hold back a laugh at this even if it was in poor taste given she knew what her recent twitch meant. She figured it generally meant imminent pain for others; well it was nice to know if a friend of hers is about to get grievously hurt so she could prevent injury to them.
After a moment Screwball thought back to her last thought, if she was in a crowd of people she wouldn’t exactly know who to help and only knew if the situation affected her personally. She didn’t even know if the twitch was just for friend or for her enemies exclusively. If she were to think about it too hard she might go more insane then she already is… well at least she’d be more like her mother in that respect.
Screwball was ignoring the current fight going on in front of her as Ristar started fighting the sumo sized robot in stretchy armed combat. She was also ignoring the groaning figures on the floor and one was coughing up a bit of smoke having a slightly charred countenance about her.
“Derpy were you trying to kill us!” Lyra said as she poked her head out of the backpack on the floored bear who was sitting precariously on a bee’s carapace.
“Oops my bad…” Derpy said sitting up, eyes slowly doing spirals in their sockets.
“You did nothing wrong Derpy, in fact some would say that this has lead to a rather fortuitous situation.” Honey was blushing up a storm on the floor and Banjo quickly came to his dazed senses and got off of her, much to her disappointment.
“Can I get some help here, no hurry I’m just fighting a giant killer robot by myself. I mean I just slammed my face through five feet of concrete and steel for you guys so a little aid would be appreciated!” The star grappling the clamps with his hands fought for domination against the sumo robot. Their battle went completely ignored as the star kid continued trying to ask for help from a rather inattentive audience. “Please, I’m on my last health point here… you’re all really good people right?”
“Sorry Honey… hey look there’s Kazooie’s backpack!” Banjo walked up to it, but the reserve power activated and the shields popped back up around it. “Things are never that easy huh, I wonder how we’re supposed to get the backpack out of there.”
“Oh I don’t know, maybe beating this large killer robot I’m fighting!” Even as he said it, Ristar slammed his face straight into the robots head several times before having to dodge out of the way of its clamps. Again he went ignored.
Derpy slowly trotted up to Banjo with a slight limp to ask a question, however the building shuddered and shook as several explosions were taking place around the complex. Honey floated over to them wings buzzing softly as the cacophony of explosions kept getting louder and louder from dull thuds to somewhat audible booms.
“Well we know Kazooie’s free at least, no one else can cause that much noise without using grenade eggs in a signature death blossom attack style. The fact that the explosions aren’t stopping leads me to believe she’s not going to stop firing them anytime soon and is certainly having fun in the form of incredibly violent revenge.” Honey sighed to herself, so far being a hero didn’t seem as fun as it looked and that landing took out two full Gemini bars from her health. Honey now knew and understood that having a hit box hurts. “Now all we need is to find Screwball and meet up with Kazooie after retrieving her backpack so that we can get out of here.”
Screwball was honestly surprised they hadn’t noticed her yet, she wasn’t that unnoticeable right? After a moment she realized she was still holding up the sign in her left hoof. With a twist of her hoof the sign spun around, everyone except Ristar and the robot, jumped in shock looking in her direction.
“I’m right here!” Though she hadn’t known the reason for writing it beforehand, it now kind of made sense to Screwball as to why she put that on the back of her sign in the first place.
“When did you get here?” Derpy asked just as surprised as everyone else, she idly pulled out a banana nut muffin to start gnawing on it. Despite her scorched look a minute ago she now looked completely fine now.
Only Banjo and Honey were still reeling from the lost health which would eventually be restored by generally any video game power ups that could raise health. So they were completely fine, still ignoring Ristar and the now smoking RT-55J in the background continuing to stretch arm fight.
“Wow it’s like you appeared out of thin air! I swear that was just like Pinkie does sometimes.” The mint green and white pony of lyres and spoons stated.
Screwball told them all to never mind how she got there, she had to ask what that large explosion was just now.
“That, well we just took out the energy field generator and Kazooie will probably meet us here in three… two… one…” Banjo turned to stare at the sealed door along with the three ponies and Honey.
A hole ripped open in the floor and a penguin shaped object immediately slammed into the ceiling, earning everyone’s attention when Kazooie wearing magnetically driven skates leapt up and grabbed the metal penguin before he could hit the floor.
“Why haven’t I exploded yet? Please convince her to just let me die.” Chill Penguin asked sorrowfully, the robot penguin never knew pain like this existed. No wonder they had a kill switch when their life bars ran out.
“Things to note, if you never let the boss rest on the ground you can keep juggling them ad infinitum in the Mischief Makers realm. So you’re not iced until I am well satisfied kicking the c… oh hey guys, I spent the last five minutes juggling Chill Penguin here around the entire facility.” Kazooie smiled at them cheekily as she bounces Chill Penguin of a wall of the room and grabbed him before he could hit the ground again despite the miniature explosion running almost constantly along his body.
“Agghh…” Ristar screamed as the capsule guardian sumo robot RT-55J finally manage to grapple him with a pincer and started to draw him in to finish him off. The smoking machine never got the chance as a grenade egg blew its head off and it fell over into a pile of slowly disappearing parts that exploded. “You guys are jerks...”
“Suck it up Twink; you’ll be back to baking cakes with pretty pink princesses after your done here. I’m glad I took some of those combat lessons from Xoda Rap, because I’ll be darned if they weren’t effective.” Kazooie said already grabbing her backpack with her free wing and pulling it on while making sure to keep Chill Penguin off the floor. She walked over to the wall where Ristar had made a hole before the wall rebooted to not have a hole anymore; she flicked Chill Penguin up spiraling into the air and pulled back her right wing. “Falcon….”
(Star Fox Corneria theme music plays.)
“KICK!” The shout was heard by everyone of the Star Fox team that went on the attack as soon as the energy field generator went up in a fireball that took out a portion of the enemy fleet above it. A small penguin like figure was seen plowing throguh several enemy ships as he shot to the sky and straight into space constantly exploding. He wouldn’t stop exploding until he landed on something; this was a cruel fate and he was going to be stuck with for quite some time. It was a easily learned lesson to never make a breeding seagull mad.
“This is Khronozooie, looks like my worst half Kazooie is free and she has practically just neutered Chill Penguins effectiveness as a viable asset to the enemy army. Get ready to cover our escape route. Canjo I need you to support our flying units. Vela already got Goombella out and back to the S.S. Anubis. We’ve got Buck Bumble and Sparkster aiding the Star Fox team out there already. They’ll peel out when they’re well ready to do so, they can take care of themselves no problem so don’t worry about them too much. One is too awesome to die and the other just bumbles about precariously.” After this Khronozooie proceeded to rip out the pilot of the eagle rider armor she was standing on and then took operation of it. Walking up to Khronozooie in ride armor was Curly Brace in a hawk model and that was followed by Quote piloting a rabbit model behind that. “Quote get over the main building and prepare to escort them home and make sure the ponies stay out of trouble, they are really good at getting into it. Also make sure to tell Kazooie to look out for a red crate if Screwball hasn’t already, because we’re about hit with a hurricane ton of enemies.”
“You know you kind of worded that one thing in such a way that it sounds like your trying to get stuff past a radar of some kind…” One of the Star Fox pilots known as Slippy said suddenly, he was their chief engineer and boss scanner.
“Shut up and pay attention, you’ve got twenty seven enemies tailing you Slips.” Another pilot named Falco angrily shouted, taking note that Slippy had nine times the usual amount of enemies tailing him. This blue bird was never easy to shoot down.
“Do a barrel roll!” Peppy said over the communication line. “Use the boost to get through!”
“Remind me, why do we let Peppy fly when he’s been clearly declared senile and frequently forgets what an aileron roll is?” The feminine voice of a blue fox named Krystal called out, she was kicking her mind with her psi abilities having to listen to his ramblings about pressing c-buttons to do tricks.
“Hey cut the chatter and start racking up some kills, I’m the only one that’s got over five hundred and all of you are barely above twenty seven. Slippy has only shot down one by accident and that’s actually pretty impressive for him on a good day. Why am I always stuck doing all the work? Then again you guys are the best distraction flyers in the business and I’m glad that all my friends know how to mostly not die with impossible stunt flying.” Again the ace pilot Fox Mccloud wondered why his team was doing worse than Bill and Kat whose kill counts were at least into the hundreds at this point and they were the only ones covering the Great Fox and the S.S. Anubis by themselves. Hell even the Mizar ants firing randomly into the sky were getting more kills then the rest of his team individually and that’s not counting how many the Mizar beetles are shooting down with their heavy weapons.