Chapter Nine: The Flight of the Flying Krock
Kaptain K. Rool bounced around in the Flying Krock's hangar as the ship gave an enormous jolt. He landed hard on the floor when the violent movement finally ended.
"What in blazes happened?" he mumbled as he stood up and ran back to the cockpit. He looked out the window and saw an unexpected view: The Flying Krock had been pulled back by a long rope that had somehow attached itself to the plane. He was at the outskirts of a thick cluster of brambles on the island's southern side. The rope was entangled in the thorny cluster. What was the most surprising of all, though, was what was on the other end of the rope: a gigantic corpse laying at the foot of his Keep.
Impressive, he couldn't help thinking.
"Well Kong," he said to his prisoner, who was as dazed by the violent movement as the Kaptain himself, "it looks like your buddy Billy has more tricks up his sleeve than I thought. I'll have to get that rope off my aeroplane, so I'm gonna land to kut it." He talked to DK like this because he was the only one in the room, and the Kaptain generally thought better aloud. "On the other hand, that would take a while, and Diffy could be here real soon if he has found some way to fly. I think I have a better way."
He pushed the button that would have the plane broadcast his voice, massively amplified, and spoke: "Kreatures of the bramble... Kluster... Foresty... Thing! I am Kaptain K. Rool, and my plane got tied down by a rope running through your... Whatever you kall that. Any kreature that unties or kuts the rope will get my weight in gold as their reward!"
"Hahahar, now I just have to wait until we're loose."
–
Icy cold wind blew in Diddy's face as Squawks flew after the Flying Krock at top speed. They knew it was only a matter of minutes before K. Rool would have untied or cut the rope, and if it happened they'd have no hope of ever catching up as his plane was of course much faster than Squawks. Apparently Kerozene's fall had pulled the plane into a bramble forest on the other side of the mountain. As Squawks approached the forest, K. Rool's voice, amplified enormously, sounded.
"Kreatures of the bramble... Kluster... Foresty... Thing! I am Kaptain K. Rool, and my plane got tied down by a rope running through your... Whatever you kall that. Any kreature that unties or kuts the rope will get my weight in gold as their reward!"
"His weight in gold?" Diddy remarked, "He must be feeling very generous today."
Dixie sniggered, but Squawks flapped on in a determined silence. It seemed carrying the two of them while flying at top speed was very exhausting for him, as he had started panting again.
Following the rope, they entered the bramble forest. Large sharp thorns surrounded the Kongs and Squawks, but altough they frequently missed them only narrowly, Squawks seemed to know what he was doing as they never actually hit anything.
After a while, they saw a black falcon trying to use his dagger-like beak to cut the rope. As soon as he saw Squawks he flew up and followed them.
"Hey! Where do you think you're going, greenhorn?" the falcon said, "I'm the one who's gonna get that gold, or my name isn't Screech!"
"So why are you wasting time talking to us instead of cutting it?" Diddy couldn't help but wonder.
"The rope's too thick to cut here. But it looks damaged at the plane itself, so I'll cut it there! And you won't beat me there!"
"Don't worry about us," Squawks called, "we're not interested in the gold. We're the people K. Rool is fleeing from!"
"In that case I'd better make sure I get there before you!" Screech screeched. He dived, sinking his claws into Squawks' side. The parrot screeched in pain, but Screech had sprinted away before he had a chance to retaliate. "That reward's as good as mine! Smell ya later, greenhorn!" Screech shouted.
Blood leaked from Squawks' wounds onto the Kongs.
"Are you alright?" Dixie asked startled.
Squawks didn't say anything, but looked furious, accelerated to even faster speeds in pursuit of Screech.
Diddy drew his peanut popgun. "I'll get that jerk." He aimed with his free hand and fired, but the popgun only made a "click!"
Diddy looked at the popgun. "Why does that always happen at the worst possible moment?" he asked.
"Don't worry, I think I still have ammunition." Dixie aimed her popgun at Screech, but she too got a "click!"
"Huh. What are the odds?" Dixie said incredulously.
Squawk flapped his wings as fast as he could in furious pursuit of Screech. Their speed, coupled with how reckless he was flying now, caused the Kongs to be scratched by smaller bramble branches several times, and almost be hit by larger ones. When they finally caught up with Screech, Squawks dove into him and tore some feathers out with his beak.
"So you can fly like a real bird, greenhorn? I hadn't thought it possible with such a plump body." Screech taunted as he prepared to attack Squawks again.
Diddy drew Kutlass' sword and pointed it at Screech. "Attack Squawks again, and you'll regret it."
Screech laughed. "Hey, greenhorn, there's some parasites hangin' on to you! What does your mate think about that? Never mind answering that, I'll ask her myself when I return to my nest!"
He flew above Squawks to attack him without getting within reach of Diddy. When he dived, Squawk made a sudden evasive manoeuvre, causing Screech to narrowly miss him and hit several thorny branches, screeching in pain as he got entangled in them.
"Good job, Squawks! I think we're nearly there!" Diddy said.
Now that Screech was defeated, Squawks looked very tired. His wounds seemed to be catching up with him as he flew rather slow and clumsily, and his skin was so pale that Diddy could see it through his feathers. His breath was very fast and ragged. Fortunately they emerged from the brambles and were within sight of the Flying Krock. Its back hangar was open, and with his last strength Squawks managed a half-hard landing in the hangar's corner before passing out from sheer exhaustion.
"You did great, Squawks." Diddy said to him. Then the ship shuddered and started moving: Screech had cut the rope.
Most of the plane consisted of the hangar, which held several barrels, chests, and a couple of huge bananas. At the front of the plane, the hangar transited into the cockpit, which held two large chairs turned away from the Kongs. In each chair a familiar figure sat: one fat, green, and in a pirate coat, the other bound, brown, and muscular.
"We've got you!" Dixie said to K. Rool.
"You can't run from us anymore, K. Rool!" Diddy said, "We've caught up with you, flight is no more option!"
The crocodile turned his chair around. He was wielding a gigantic gun and had an insane smile on his face. "If flight is no option, I guess I'll have to fight!"
"We're not scared of you." Dixie said despite the gun, "Diddy defeated you before, he can do it again, and this time I'm here too."
"Brave words, lass, but they won't save you! I've got you now, Putty Kong and..." He squinted his non-twitching eye and tilted his head looking at Dixie. "...Just who the hell are you?"
"My name is Dixie Kong. And his name is not Putty, but Diddy."
"Well then, Pixie Kong, I have no kwarrel with you, and I don't know why you have one with me, so if you surrender now and don't bother me while I kill Dudley here, I'll let you live."
"Not a chance!" Dixie said determined, "I came on this adventure to help Diddy. I'm not about betray him at the last minute!"
As she defied K. Rool like this, Diddy realised just how much he liked her. He couldn't help but smile, and gnawties ran around in his stomach like they had had too much coffee.
I should keep my head on the upcoming fight, he thought, it would be an incredibly cruel irony if Dixie ended up dead because I got too distracted by being head over heels in love with her.
"On your own head be it, then." K. Rool said furiously, "Tuffy and Styxie Kong, you two are a nuiscance. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing you krushed, dekapitated, melted, or eaten by Kerozene, but killing you personally will make up for that."
"That's enough talking, K. Rool, surrender now or prepare to fight." Diddy said as intimidating as he could.
K. Rool laughed. "Surrender? I'm the one holding the gun! Prepare to die!"
Diddy drew his sword, but K. Rool fired his gun immediately. A huge, spiky cannonball flew straight at Diddy, leaving him no time to dodge. In the split second he had, he could only put his sword in the cannonball's way. The sword shattered when the cannonball hit it, and Diddy was blown backwards.
"Haharr, that is kwite impressive! Let's see what this button does!" he fired, and the gun launched a whole barrage of cannonballs, though with low speed, as they immediately fell to the ground. Strangely, though, they bounced. Fortunately Squawks didn't lie in their path, but three were coming at Dixie. She jumped over one, rolled to dodge another, and ran under the third as it bounced. Diddy rolled to dodge several more cannonballs.
"What does this button do?" K. Rool said before the Kongs had a chance to approach, and several more cannonballs were released from the gun, but these had an even more bizarre flight path than the once before: they flew in circles while making a weird fluting noise. Both Kongs managed to dodge these too, but before they could try to get closer to K. Rool, he had fired another shot. This time it was a weird blue ball of light, that moved so fast Diddy couldn't dodge it. Instead of the pain he expected, he didn't feel anything. He tried to walk, but his legs didn't respond. He tried to warn Dixie, but neither his lungs, nor his vocal cords, nor his mouth responded. He couldn't even move his eyes.
"Haharr, now that be a good button! Now I kan shoot you easily without having you run all over the place!" K. Rool laughed as he aimed his gun for Diddy once more.
"Not while I'm still standing, you won't!" Dixie shouted as she slapped K. Rool with her hair, jumped up on his head, and began to pound him.
"Arg, get off of me, you stinkin' monkey!" K. Rool said as he tried to slap her away from him, but Dixie was too fast for him. When Diddy's feeling finally started coming back, K. Rool managed to hit Dixie with a backhand, launching her off of him back into the hangar. Diddy managed to move again, and K. Rool pressed another button. The gun made a sound like a huge vacuüm cleaner and a fierce hurricane of wind filled the plane, blowing towards the gun. Both Kongs tried to run away, but the wind was so strong they could accomplish no more than to slow their movement. Squawks, lying all the way in the corner, was only moving slowly.
"Haharr, now that is a good button! Let's see how you'll like being me ammuntion!" K. Rool's voice was barely audible over the hurricane.
Diddy had an idea. "Dix! I'll need your help to jump as high as I can!" he shouted to Dixie who was a bit closer to the Kaptain.
"Ok!" as she ducked.
Diddy turned around and ran at Dixie, accelerated to high speed immediately by the wind. The moment he reached her, he jumped on her back and jumped again as she jumped, launching him extra high. Accelerated by the wind, he flew towards K. Rool at high speed. He flew just over the gun and kicked K. Rool in the face at high velocity. The reptile was knocked backwards and Diddy landed on his face. It was only a moment before Dixie joined him. They smiled triumphantly.
K. Rool looked furious. "ARR, do you stinking apes think you've won? You may have saved Donkey Kong, but my plans for the Lost World are far to near kompletion to be messed up!" he pushed a button on the gun, which Diddy had thought had fallen out of his hands, and a hatch opened right under him. The Kongs jumped off just in time to prevent falling out of the plane along with him. They saw K. Rool fall into the depths, until he stuck the gun in the air and fired a parachute from it. He drifted back to his Keep in the distance.
After a momentary disappointment that their enemy had escaped, Diddy realised they were victorious. "We- We did it!" he could hardly believe it.
Dixie embraced him and said with a radiant smile and gleaming eyes: "We won, Diddy! Can you believe it? We saved Donkey Kong, and it took us only six days!"
"Speaking of me, would you please untie me now?" Donkey Kong said faintly from the chair.
Diddy walked over to untie DK, while Dixie moved Squawks into the second seat. DK looked as if he had been beaten up, and was missing a bit of his finger, but was alright apart from that. "Thanks, Diddy. Thanks, Trixie. I didn't think you had it in you, but you defeated that ugly crock. I owe you both a lot of banana milkshakes."
Dixie looked annoyed. "It's Dixie, actually."
"Sorry." DK looked a bit embarrased.
"It's great to see you again, DK! You won't believe how big an adventure we went through to save you! There was lava, and Zingers, and an insane ghost bird with a vendetta against Dixie, and-"
DK interrupted him. "I'd love to hear about it all later, little buddy, but I think we should try to get this plane off the autopilot so we can get it back to DK Island."
Suddenly a shock went through the plane. "K. Rool, you uncool croc! Surrender and hand over my man DK, or I'll shoot ya again!" Funky's voice sounded.
Diddy pressed the voice amplifier. "Funky, good to hear you! We captured the ship already, and DK is alright! Come on over, we'll need your help flying this thing!"
Funky landed his barrel plane in the hangar of the much larger Flying Krock. He tried to do a complicated handshake with each of the other three Kongs, but none of them kept up with him, so he ended up looking rather silly. He took the ship off autopilot and sat in the pilot's seat, while Sqauwks slowly recovered.
"Well dudes," Funky said, "looks like we won. Let's fly this thing back home!"
"Wait Funky," Diddy said, "K. Rool said something about plans for a 'Lost World'."
"I think I overheard him talking about that to a Kremling with a sly voice." DK said, "He kept me tied up hanging from the ceiling of his throne room, so I couldn't see anything but his ceiling, but I always heard K. Rool talking to the Kremlings. Most of it was pretty uninteresting, but that stuff about this 'Lost World' sounded interesting so I tried to remember as much of it as I could."
"What did they say?" Diddy asked enthusiastically.
"Something K. Rool wants is in that Lost World. But he couldn't get it yet, as he needed something he didn't have. But then, the guy with the sly voice asked K. Rool if they should be having that discussion where I could hear them, and they left."
While a part of Diddy wanted to go home and relax on the beach (Preferably with Dixie, but lazily hanging around on his own sounded good too), he was very curious about this Lost World now, and just couldn't let it go. "I think we passed the entrance to this Lost World in the Keep. I am going there, to explore this Lost World and foil K. Rool's plan, whatever it is. Dixie, do you feel up to another adventure?"
"No." she said firmly. Diddy's mouth fell open with surprise. "I've had it with exploring bizarre places, I've had it with the fighting and running, I've had it with my life being in constant peril, I've had it with burning heat and freezing cold, and I've had it with my hair getting dirty. I'll be happy if nothing remotely exciting ever happens to me again."
Diddy had no idea she felt this way. "R-really?"
She grinned. "No, I'm just kidding. Let's follow that crocodile."
Both of them burst into laughter. When they had stopped laughing, Diddy asked DK "DK, will you join us?"
DK thought about it for a moment, and then replied, "No. Sorry little buddy, but it wasn't easy being imprisoned by K. Rool. What I need most now is to just relax and eat bananas for a while. Besides, you two managed to save me, so I doubt you'll need my help on this adventure."
Diddy had hoped DK would join them, but understood his reasons for not doing so.
"Alright, then. Funky, drop us off on the Keep's roof before you fly to DK Isle. We're flying in K. Rool's own plane, so there shouldn't be any trouble."
–
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Another chapter done quickly. It's a bit of a short one, but it's practically just an appetiser for the final chapter: "The Legendary Lost World". Unlike what some reviewers seemed to think, this is not the final chapter yet.
READERS' QUESTIONS:
Q: Chuckles the Great: I don't remember anyone by the name of kerozene, was that only for the GBA?
A: Kerozene is the boss for K. Rool's Keep they added to the game in the GBA version. He's a pretty cool and difficult boss, so I included him in the fic.
