Author's Note: In honor of the upcoming remakes of the original Crash trilogy, I've decided to give my own fanfic here its own HD remake, by which I mean I'm, err, combing it harder for typos and fixing some continuity issues. "HD remake" sounds more exciting, though.

It was a dark and stormy night, not fit out for man nor bandicoot. If you were to venture out into the ocean somewhere between Australia and New Zealand, you'd find yourself at a secret trio of islands that, tonight, were being vomited on by tidal waves and storm clouds. And, if you were to venture though the vilest, most polluted one of these islands, minding the potoroo gangsters that maintained the power plant, you'd find a crooked castle looming over the archipelago, complete with an airship tied to the top, rocking back and forth through the sky like a balloon in the wind.

And if you were to somehow make it through the halls of this castle, minding the occasional swinging ax and a couple yellow blob monsters from down in the laboratory, you'd hear a pair of voices in the midst of a heated argument.

"But Dr. Cortex, we have not determined the cause of past failures!" One voice was timid and stuttering.

"Moron! This bandicoot will be my general, and he will lead my Cortex Commandos to world domination! This time, I shall reign triumphant!" And the other was, well, the exact opposite.

Next, you'd have heard the sounds of crackling electricity and some high-pitched squeals. The electrocution wasn't actually integral to the experiment. It was just that, when given the option between electrocuting the test subject and not electrocuting the test subject, Dr. Cortex tended to favor the former.

"We are closer than ever before! Quickly, into the vor-"

And then, you'd have heard a third voice suddenly cry out, "Stop!"

"What the-? How did you get in here?"

"Neo, you fool," the newcomer spat. "Don't you have any idea what you're about to do?"

"W-Who are you?" asked the timid voice.

"Wait a minute, I remember you!" said the deeper voice. "We had Evil Laughter 101 together at the Academy. You're Dr. N-"

"Listen to me, Neo," cut in the newcomer. "If you want your dreams of world domination to ever come to fruition, you must do exactly as I say..."

It was an incredibly appropriate time for a clap of thunder.

Wumpa fruit. Wumpa fruit everywhere the eye could see. It trailed off beyond the horizon no matter which way you turned your head. The sunlight gave the sea of fruit an almost golden glow. And standing in the middle of this heaven on earth was a bright orange bandicoot, a toothy grin spreading over his face.

Suddenly, a Wumpa the size of a boulder erupted from the pile and landed before the bandicoot's sneakers.

"We love you, Crash!" the delectable snack declared in an angelic voice. "We want to be with you forever..." Crash opened his mouth wide, preparing the oblige its request, and then-

"Crash! Crash! Wake up!"

Our hero reluctantly opened his eyes to find another bandicoot looming over him – a teenager with fur as orange as his and her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. Being a girl, Coco couldn't quite pull off the "nothing-but-pants" look of her brothers, and she'd outgrown her overalls, so now Coco wore a white t-shirt with a flower on it. See, because she was a GIRL, and girls like flowers and pink and stuff.

Crash let out an irritable grumble. This was not the first time he'd had his beauty sleep rudely interrupted, and if Crash had to fetch a battery one more time, somebody's butt was getting spun.

"Crash, get up! This is important!" Crash would've happily ignored her and drifted back off, but then Coco started shaking him. Sensing the urgency in her voice, Crash yawned and pulled himself to his feet.

Our lovable marsupial had dozed off in front of the hut's fireplace, napping in his usual belly-up, arms outstretched fashion. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked around. Coco hadn't come to Crash alone; she was accompanied by their adopted brother, Crunch – a bigger, beefier bandicoot with reddish-brown fur who shared Crash's hatred for wearing shirts.

"That jerk Cortex is down at the beach tearing stuff up with his robots!" said Crunch. "C'mon, we've gotta go kick his butt again!" He slapped his metal fist into his palm to punctuate the point.

"Hold up, Crunch, maybe we should think things through," said Coco. "Something seems off here. Cortex should still be stuck in some random dimension after his Psychetron backfired on him. How'd he get back to our world so fast?"

Crunch rolled his eyes. "Because Cortex always comes back."

"And what about Aku Aku? He ran off to that outer space temple of his, remember? He said he sensed an 'imbalance in the time stream.'"

"That's just more of Aku Aku's mumbo-jumbo." Crunch let out an impatient huff. "C'mon, when has Cortex ever been an actual problem for us? We'll beat him like we always do."

"I guess you're right..." And with that, Coco and Crunch ran outside.

Crash lingered behind a while longer. He wanted to make sure he had all his equipment on before running head-first into battle with the forces of villainy. Blue jeans? Check. Sneakers? Check. Fingerless gloves? Check, and highly fashionable. Crash even still had on his knee-pads, a recent addition to her arsenal upon Coco's insistence that Crash keep his knees protected from all the sliding and double-jumping he tended to do.

Our fuzzy hero took one last glance around the house. The Bandicoot household was littered with items that, though seemingly random, were actually memorabilia from past adventures: A jet-ski, a racing trophy, Mecha-Bandicoot's head mounted on the wall... Above the fireplace rested an old photo of Crash's ex, Tawna, and on the other end of the living room, Polar and Pura – Crash's pet polar bear cub and Coco's pet tiger cub respectively – were engaged in a match of tug-of-war over a slobbery piece of rope.

Crash let out another yawn. He had half a mind to nod off again, but luckily, Crash's heroicness usually outweighed his laziness. And besides, the thought of N. Sanity Island's total destruction made it hard to sleep soundly. Smacking his lips, Crash took the time to scratch both Polar and himself behind the ears, then followed his siblings out the door. Guess it was time to save the world again.

The beach where Crash had washed up all those years ago was only a few steps from his hut. N. Sanity Beach was exactly as Crash remembered it. Broken tiki boats littered the shore, crabs scurried back and forth over the sand, wooden crates floated inexplicably in the air, and giant, destructive robots launched rockets and set fire to the trees.

Wait.

Crash did a double-take. His jaw dropped. He'd fought Cortex's robots before. Cortex's robots were floating security cameras and little machines with arms that opened or closed depending on whether you needed to spin them or jump on them. These things attacking the beach were not Cortex's robots. These robots were twice as tall and armed with every weapon under the sun – machine guns, saw blades, missile launchers, you name it. You wouldn't have thought they were actually Cortex's if they didn't have the unmistakable "N" logos on their chests and the standard Lab Assistant faces with big round Harry Potter glasses.

The robots seemed to have backed Coco and Crunch into a corner, so Crash sprang into action. He gave the head robot his hardest tornado-spin, but all this accomplished was to make Crash hop around and clutch his sneaker in pain.

"Dang it! These guys are too strong!" Even Crunch's metal fist failed to leave a dent.

"I've got an idea," said Coco. "Follow me!" The instant the Lab Assistants launched their homing missiles, Coco leaped into the air via her kung fu skills and landed on one of the robot's shoulders. At the last second, Coco tumbled out of the way, causing the missile to hit the unlucky Assistant and explode spectacularly.

When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of the robot but its head, which rolled to a halt at Coco's feet. The other Lab Assistants backed away slowly.

Crash and Crunch traded glances.

The next instant, the air was filled with spinning, jumping, and backflipping bandicoots. Every last missile, bullet, and plasma-ray was led into a Lab Assistant instead of a lovable marsupial. Pretty soon, Crash and his siblings had racked up a respectable robot body count.

But it wasn't enough. The robots kept coming and coming, tens of hundreds of them teleporting onto the beach, two for every one the bandicoots destroyed.

"W-Where do these things keep coming from?" Even Crunch was out of breath, and he was nothing but a big hunk of muscles with fur.

No sooner had the question left his mouth than the leader of the robots teleported before them. The bandicoots could tell this was the leader by the shape of its metal head: A gigantic, flat-topped forehead with a gray "N" branded on it, a lower lip the proportional size of a banana, and strips of pointy black steel representing the beard, and, err, unique hairstyle of one Dr. Neo Cortex. Naturally, this robot was also much larger than the Lab Assistants, which was where the resemblance ended seeing as Cortex made Peter Dinklage look gigantic. And, more troubling, its entire left arm seemed to be a scaled-up version of Cortex's signature ray-gun.

"Cortex! I was wondering when you'd show your ugly mug!" spat Coco. "How'd you get back to our dimension?"

The Cortex-bot stayed silent. Frankly, the idea of Cortex keeping his trap shut was a bit unsettling, but the bandicoots were too preoccupied to dwell on it. Wordlessly, the Cortex-bot made a sweeping gesture, and then another person teleported into battle. But this one wasn't a robot...

Crunch and Coco gasped while Crash merely looked confused. Standing before them was a perfect copy of none other than Crash Bandicoot himself. From the reddish-brown mohawk to the cream-colored fur around his chin and tummy, he was an exact match. The only difference was their fashion sense – this Crash's gloves and jeans were jet black, and he also wore an equally black cape around his neck (insofar as Crash can be said to have a neck).

The evil Crash (but not the Evil Crash because that is a totally different dude who lives in the Tenth Dimension) let out a maniacal cackle. Like our Crash, this one had a giant, toothy grin, only his grin seemed less goofy and more murderously insane.

"That's your evil plan this time?" scoffed Crunch. "Cloning Crash?"

"Making the exact same bandicoot twice?" smirked Coco. "Talk about being creatively-bankrupt."

Crash smiled and waved at his twin. He figured any clone of himself must be a pretty swell guy. But the other Crash apparently didn't see it that way, seeing as he responded by pouncing forth and spinning into Crash-prime while cackling like a maniac.

"Whoa!" yelped Crash.

"Big brother!" Coco and Crunch tried to attack Crash's clone, but he effortlessly dodged and spun both of them into submission.

The robo-Cortex stepped forward, patting the Crash clone's shoulder with his mechanical arm. "Excellent work, Crash, my boy. Now ready the Vice-Versa Reverser Device." On his master's orders, the caped Crash pulled out a gigantic machine that had miraculously fit inside his pants, then wedged it into the ground.

Our Crash managed to feebly lift his head just in time to see the device give off a spooky green glow. The last thing Crash saw was a wave of darkness passing over the sky. Then everything went black.

On the plus side, Crash got to catch up on his beauty sleep after all.