Kaz paddled desperately, away from Mother Base. He can't believe Cipher did this… To him. To MSF. He had been paddling for days, weeks, maybe even months. It's been so long.
He sees an island in the distance, and feels a sense of relief. Maybe he can get help from there, contact Zero or something.
He stops at the island and gets out of the boat and onto the beach. The island was covered with tropical palm trees and there were lots of wooden crates with question marks on, but Kaz wasn't really bothered by that. He was more concerned by the the orange humanoid approaching him.
Kaz blinks and pushes up his sunglasses, "And who might you be, little guy?"
He notices that he is covered in hair and looks like some kind of animal. A bandicoot maybe?
Before he can get a response, the small creature is spinning rapidly and heading in his direction. He hits him and he falls to the ground with a loud THUMP!
"Hey!" Kaz protests, "What was that for?!" he yells, annoyed.
The small creature laughs and spins away, into some bushes.
"I wonder what that was about," said Kaz, getting up and scratching his head.
The same animal/creature/? Approaches him, but this time with a smaller and cuter creature of the same species. She looks like a girl, but who knows? Gender is a concept.
"Hey!" says the girl(?) animal, "I'm Coco, and this is my big brother, Crash!" she explains, gesturing to him, he waves.
"I'm Kaz. Where am I?" he asks, not wanting to be rude about their appearance.
"You're currently on North Sanity Island," she explains.
"But... Where's that?"
"South-East of Australia?"
He pauses. "…I've been rowing for how long?!" he ponders, looking down at his bruised hands.
She chuckles, but the laughter is quickly halted by a look of shock.
"Oh no!" she exclaims, grabbing Crash's hand, Crash grabs Kaz's.
"W-What?"
"It's one of Cortex's robots! Run!" she yells, pulling her brother and their new companion to safety.
"Who's Cortex? Why does he have robots?" he asks, afraid there might be more things like Peace Walkers or Metal Gears.
"No time, get over here!" she says, pulling him into the bushes.
"W-Woah!" Kaz says, as he trips over a branch and lands onto Crash.
Their faces are incredibly close, their bodies pressed together, and Kaz feels a sense of affection for the small creature. His face flushes pink.
Before any skin-on-skin contact can happen, Kaz is pulled up by Coco. He sighs.
"Cortex is an evil scientist who wants to take over the world!" she explains. "He wants to kill me and my brother, Crash!"
He would correct her grammatical error, but he's too shocked. "Who would want to kill Crash? Or you?" he says, shocked.
"He's crazy," she says, looking out to see if the coast is clear.
Kaz's eyes glance at Crash, who is staring at a leaf on the floor. He wondered how he must be feeling.
He turns to Coco, "Can he speak? Sign language, maybe? Does he have specific noises?"
"Umm… He can say certain things. Like 'Yeah' or 'No'. I don't know what sign language is but I don't think he knows that, either. He makes certain noises at certain times, though."
Crash screams.
