AN: Yeah I know, late huh? I promise I'm not dead. XD
Banjo-Kazooie: Fracture
Chapter 3: Split
"Little people down below, I have something you should know…"
A figure viewed the output of many surveillance cameras stationed around town.
"Proud leader, who ruled this land, has now succumbed to my hand…"
They watched intently the goings on in the town: people fleeing from authorities, others gathered under crude shelters to get out of the rain. The figure repeatedly tossed a thin, black, object into the air; it was one that was most crucial to her success.
"Lord of Games is now no more, Grunty's rule is now in store!"
It was then that the witch felt the need to let out a maniacal cackle, right within hearing range of a sleeping cat. The shrill sound of her voice sent Piddles' flying into the air from shock with a shriek of her own. Now wide awake, and roughly clinging to the back of Grunty's chair with extended claws, Piddles starred daggers at Grunty before helping herself to the arm of the chair.
"So, anything good going on down there, Winkybunion?" Piddles asked, a slightly annoyed tone to her voice.
"Nothing new from what I see, if only among them I could be…"
Grunty was well aware of the resistance building in the Jiggoseum against "LOG," but she didn't want to intervene now: she wanted to play with them for awhile, let them stagnate a bit before she cleaned them up from LOG's world, no her world!
However, sitting around and watching from the sidelines wasn't her idea of fun: she needed someone to get "intimate" with enemy, a spy of sorts. A crooked grin crossed her skeletal features as she eyed the cat the Lord of Games had given to her.
"Piddles, I have a job for you: watch the bear and his crew. Should anything go awry, report to me right away!" Grunty exclaimed, shoving Piddles off the arm of the chair and sending her on her way.
"Stupid wench, why did LOG have to assign me to her?" Piddles huffed, marching out of the factory and into the rain. Being stuck as Grunty's sidekick was not the job she would have picked if she'd had the choice. She was always told that once one was assigned a role in one of LOG's games, it couldn't be changed. It was one of the many Laws of Gaming that LOG created, and a simple game character couldn't go against the Lord of Games.
Sighing heavily, Piddles was about to make her way down the side of the mountain where the Factory was perched when she heard two familiar voices.
"You think LOG knows what's going on?"
"No, he only created this place to have no idea what goes on in it."
"Perfect timing," Piddles thought to herself as she staked out a good hiding spot to watch the bear and bird.
"Funny, he's normally waiting outside here…" Banjo rubbed his chin in thought.
"Well, electronics don't do well in the rain, and LOG is just a floating TV set anyway…"
"He could always bring an umbrella?"
"No Banjo, just no."
Defeated yet again in another conversation, Banjo turned on his heel and went back the way they came.
The rain was falling a little bit harder now as Bumper made his way back to his post at the docks. A bunch of the workers there were looking over into the water at something.
"Oi, Bumpa! Good timing, mate. Could ya take a look a' this?" a burly rhino asked.
A penguin felt it next to add: "One o' th' metal barrels fell off the dock 'ere an' sank. Think you could get it for us?"
Without a word, Bumper pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, and approached a magnetic crane. The machine roared to life at his command.
A young mouse girl appeared from beyond the construction site, an umbrella in her hand. She was shortly followed by a blue-haired cheetah.
"Aw c'mon Pips, wouldn't you rather date a winner? You deserve someone with talent, good looks, and well, someone like-!"
"Timber? You're right and I'm happy with him, now Thomas-"
"No, I meant myself, and call me TT,"
Seeming a little annoyed, Pipsy continued, "Love isn't something you can just win."
"Oh really?" he replied, "I've clearly won the love of my fans."
"It's not the same thing," she replied before turning to the docks and noticing Bumper, "Oh Bumper! Over here!" She started to run over to him when TT stopped her again.
"C'mon Pips, just give me one chance. You and I'd be perfect together! You, the winner of the races on Timber Island, and me, the winner of, well, everything…"
"Thomas, if I told you one time, I've told you a thousand, no."
As Pipsy left, TT muttered a few things to himself before stubbornly following her like a lost puppy, "I'll win her over, that I'm sure of, she'll give in eventually! Timber doesn't deserve her; he doesn't deserve the island either! I'm better than him, and always was!"
Bumper noticed a bit of commotion between Pipsy and Trophy Thomas and felt the need to break things up, or at least break TT if he was bothering Pipsy.
Releasing the metal crate onto the ground with the machine and hopping out, he approached the two of them.
"Bumper-"
"This guy buggin' you?" the badger interrupted, "'cause I can make 'im stop real quick if 'e is …"he flexed his knuckles threateningly.
"Ah, no Bumper, it's fine." Pipsy lowered his arms for him.
Bumper shot a disapproving look at TT; he didn't like guys harassing girls, particularly Pipsy. He thought of himself as a big brother to her.
"Well, she likes me enough to save me from being beaten up- not like that other guy'd win or anything…" TT thought to himself.
"Bumpa, Look a' this!"
"Ugh, what'd they knock over now?" Bumper questioned aloud as he went to investigate the problem. The same few workers were looking over the dock. Occasionally, a burst of bubbles would erupt from the bottom.
"I reckon ya missed somethin' down there…"
Sighing again and brandishing the key ring from before, Bumper started up the crane again, positioning its magnet over the area and lowering it.
All eyes were on the crane as it pulled the object from the water.
"What the…?"
"Is that LOG?"
Sneaking around the town square as before, Banjo kept his eyes peeled for any torpedile-wielding police vehicles. He soon found himself wandering into the Theatre District, the poorer side of town.
"This is terrible…," Banjo said to himself, "How could it get this bad?"
"Well, if that paper was any indication-"
A large crash and a few screams alerted the duo to a scuffle going on in a nearby alley. Two large Gruntbots had cornered something in the alleyway.
"Hey! Pick on someone your own size!" Banjo hollered, arming himself with Kazooie and firing two Ice Eggs. The projectiles made contact with their intended targets, leaving Kazooie to break them with the wrench.
"Y'know that was pretty lame, Ban-," Kazooie began, noticing the bear crouching in the corner where the Gruntbots had been.
"Hey, are you okay little fella?" Banjo spoke gently.
The little creature was visibly shaken and wide-eyed. Kazooie recognized it as a Pretztail from Piñata Island. Something was odd about it though, it had split-end ears, and from what Kazooie knew, they weren't common in Pretztails.
"Oh c'mon, no Jiggy?" Kazooie shook her head, "Let's go Banjo, it doesn't have anything."
Glad the little thing was okay, Banjo caught up to Kazooie.
The Pretztail watched them leave before donning a Witch's hat and leaving itself.
"Might as well just head back to Bumper for now, maybe he has something new to tell us…" Banjo stated, looking up at Kazooie.
"Eh, we've got no other leads…"
"Banjo!"
"Well there's one now." Kazooie corrected herself.
Pipsy raced up to them, "It's great to see you again," she gave Banjo a hug.
"Pipsy! What are you doing here?" Banjo asked, returning the gesture.
"I could ask the same thing, but there's no time now. There's something you need to see…"
"Processes starting: speaker enabled, emotions online, personality activated. Rebooting… rebooting… The system has recovered from a serious error, please tell Microsoft about this problem…"
Various things floated through his mind as he felt himself being powered up.
"Virus scans running, screen…functional. Memory…memory… output negative. Hardware not found: Memory Chip, restart?"
The group surrounded the soggy, cloaked figure lying in a heap on the ground.
"Well, this would explain the state of the town…" Kazooie spoke.
A strange spluttering sound, almost like a cough, erupted from the speaker in the center of the monitor, followed by water, and a goldfish.
"Is that Roysten?" Banjo asked, scratching his head.
"Probably," Kazooie added, kicking the fish back into the harbor.
"Hey, I think he's coming to…" Pipsy said.
The screen flashed a few times, first static, and then a blue screen. A few red rings appeared on the screen before it changed green entirely. Two pixilated "eyes" appeared, then a "nose."
"Uh…oh…" LOG seemed to get up, assuming his normal floating position, shaking the water from his cloak.
All was quiet for a minute or so as the monitor looked around at his surroundings.
But as always, "quiet" and Kazooie never mixed well.
"Decided to go for a swim, scart mouth?"
"Uh… who?"
Although they hardly knew him for more than a minute, both Pipsy and Bumper knew something wasn't right with the deity.
"Um, Mr. LOG, are you feeling alright?"
"I'm sorry; I don't… recognize you…"
"Oh lovely…," Kazooie lamented, "He's lost it!"
"You think you two can help him?" Banjo asked hopefully.
Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba sat as far away from each other as the bench allowed.
"Mumbo help out Cloaked Computing one," the skeletal witch doctor snapped, "do much better job alone than with stupid Humba!"
"Humba work much better without low grade Mumbo messing up spells!" the Native girl exclaimed, scooting further away from Mumbo.
Banjo shook his head ruefully, "Come on guys, this is serious! We need you two to work together to help get LOG's memory back so we can fix this!"
"Mumbo help, just not work with Humba!"
"Same go for Humba!"
Piddles watched from under a table in front of Mumbo's Motors, swishing her tail back and forth as she watched the two argue. It was at least more exciting than packing crates of games no one would buy in LOG's factory.
"Alright, alright, if you both work one at a time, it should still have the same affect if you were both doing it together," Pipsy deduced, standing back so the two could do their work.
Taking this as a cue, Mumbo readied himself in front of LOG.
"Wait, why Mumbo go first?" Humba asked haughtily.
"Humba no need to go, Mumbo finish job in one go!"
Humba made an attempt to shove Mumbo out of the way, which Mumbo quickly returned. Eventually a scuffle had broken out between the two.
Piddles watched with interest.
"Hey, hey! Stop it, both of you!" Banjo exclaimed. The plea fell on deaf ears.
Suddenly, Mumbo's Wand collided with the ground, with both Shamans' hands lying on top of it. A purple and yellow electric beam shot forth from the item, directly hitting Piddles from underneath the table.
The cat felt herself being lifted into the air slowly, but progressively faster. Weird sensations enveloped her body as she felt her limbs being stretched out. A blinding flash finished the transformation. When the light cleared, there wasn't a jaw not open at the revelation:
Piddles, a normal cat, had become just like the rest. She had five fingers per paw, much longer legs and arms, and was about the same height as Pipsy. The blast had anthropomorphized her.
The cat girl placed a five-fingered hand to her forehead as she knelt on the ground.
"Hello…" TT said quietly.
Out of curiosity, LOG found himself floating over to the new Piddles, something falling out of his cloak.
Pipsy brought her gaze from the two and to the object on the ground, "What's this?"
A small, black, computer chip of some kind greeted her. Picking it up, she went over to LOG.
"Um, I think you dropped this…"
LOG looked down at the chip in her open palm.
"That's-"
Suddenly, the chip zipped out of Pipsy's hand, circled around, and inserted itself into the back of LOG's monitor.
"Good, a distraction, just what I needed," Piddles said to herself,
"I'll have to report this to Grunty… any try to find a way back to normal…" She began crawling away, not used to her new set of legs.
"Hey, fluff ball! Where do you think you're going?" Kazooie shouted.
Piddles could feel her ears slick back, "Uh…," she had to think of something quick, "I'm just looking for a… support!" It was the quickest lie she'd ever thought up.
She noticed a chair next to her and grabbed hold of it, hoisting herself up on wobbly legs.
Kazooie stifled a laugh as Piddles struggled to take her first awkward steps. TT, noticing Kazooie's absence from the rest of the group surrounding LOG, approached her.
"What's going-"
Kazooie was all out laughing now as a distressed Piddles tried to keep her legs straight.
"See, this walking on two legs thing, no big-"she suddenly fell forward, and would have landed on her face had she not awkwardly crashed into the cheetah a few feet in front of her.
"You need any help?" TT asked, steadying her. He looked to see if Pipsy was watching, to his dismay, she was not.
"Well, I think she likes me a little bit, maybe this chick could make her jealous…" he thought to himself.
"This guy seems like a womanizer…" Piddles pondered, "Perfect." Everything was going according to plan, other than the accidental transformation and having to relearn how to walk.
After having her fun, Kazooie went back to Pipsy, Banjo and Bumper who were still watching LOG.
"What's RAM head doing?"
"Loading apparently," Banjo noted, pointing to the hourglass rotating on his screen.
"New Hardware Found and Installed: Memory" flashed on his screen.
"Looks like it was a mem'ry chip of some sorts…" Bumper spoke, folding his arms.
LOG shook himself a bit, seeming to come back from his installation process.
"So… do you remember anything?"
The Lord of Games seemed to ponder this for a moment, "I… I think there was… a farm…, and those two…" he gestured to the still fighting, albeit verbally this time, Mumbo and Humba, "were married."
As if given a signal, the portal to Nutty Acres opened, revealing a spiraling light not unlike the one Banjo and Kazooie passed through to enter Showdown Town.
"Well, first things first," Banjo announced, with a heightened resolve upon their progress, "C'mon Kazooie!"
And with that, the two dissolved into the portal, not knowing what truly lie on the other side.