"Ape Escape: Red Light, Blue Light: Three Apes in a Trench coat"
The cityscape looked beautiful in the setting sun as the two friends walked through the normally bustling streets towards their homes. It was always dead this time of day, but made it a safer, refreshing walk. A breeze blew through the wind tunnel-esque streets causing the redhead of the duo to shiver.
"Burrrr! It was such a nice summer!" he said as he untied his jacket from around his waist to put it on.
"Well if you wore it like a jacket instead of a skirt, or maybe check the weather before going out, you wouldn't be so chilly." His blunette friend chided.
"Hey, it's not like I hate fall or anything! I just think if it looks like shorts weather when I leave the house maybe it should stay like shorts weather until I get back home, hmm?" Spike explained before being cut off by the urge to sneeze. "ACHOO!"
"THERE you go idiot. Now you caught a cold."
"It's not nice to call your friend an idiot Jake." Spike said to his friend.
"Only idiots catch cold in the summer," Jake flipped his finger against spikes forehead, "idiot." they continue to walk their way down the street. As they approached an alley, a loud sound echoed out. Jake's eyes widened in for he would realize he had done it he shoved Spike to the ground with a 'move!' And punched into the alley at full force. by the time the world had caught up with him Spike was ambling to his feet.
In the alley lay a broken flower pot. In the nearby window sat a cat, obviously pleased with itself. Just inside the darkness of the alley was a metal dumpster, now connected to Jake's fist. Spike entered the opening to the narrow passage to inspect the damage.
Jake punched so hard that the dumpster had been dented! Jake himself stayed rigid in his position, eyes wide if he wasn't all there. Spike placed a hand on Jake's arm and tried to pull it from its stone-hard position, but to no avail.
"Jake? Hey Jake, it was just the cat being a jerk, it's all good!" the redhead tried to coax him. For a minute it didn't seem to reach Jake, but with a deep calming breath and a slow blink Jake pulled back his arm and flexed his now bleeding fingers.
"Sorry about that. I guess that pot falling just spooked me!" Jake smiled at his friend. Spike handed Jake a tissue from his coat pocket.
"Yeah, about that... Do you maybe want to talk to someone about that?" Spiked asked.
"About what? I'm fine!" Jake didn't like this accusation, but Spike had seen this enough times and wasn't going to ignore it anymore.
"Yeah you're fine sometimes Jake! But every now and then you get weird and paranoid and extra jumpy! Worst of all, I've been watching you And I can't find a pattern to what is setting you off!" Spike was angry but stern, so he decided to reel it back in for sympathy points. "You're my best friend and I want to help. I don't like seeing you like this man. You don't have to tell me, I don't know if I can even help... But, I just want you to be okay."
Jake stood staring at his feet for a moment before mumbling something almost inaudible. "..."
"What?" Spike inquired.
"It's been too quiet!" The blunette explained. " at least when he's up to no good I know where he is!"
"He?" the redhead asked.
"SPECTER!" Everything made sense now. Jake had been hypnotized by Specter during his first campaign to change the flow of time. But they stopped him! They always stop him.
"Jake, Specter's not anything to get all worked up over! Sure he's smart and Evil, but his plans are somewhat getting less and less genius." he tried to reassure his friend. " remember the karate chopping robot? Not exactly smart!" Jake returned his friend's effort with a scowl.
"It's easy for you to just wave him off Spike! He tried to convert you to his side and you just told him no! Me? He weaseled his way into my mind twice! You are always better than me! You're good at sports, faster, stronger, cuter!"
"You Think I'm cute?" Spike joked.
"Well At least you had a girlfriend!"
"You Just have a thing for redheads, don't you?"
"Spike Seriously! Is that all you picked up from this conversation?!" as this was going on Spike was cracking his knuckles.
"No, I'm listening Jake." the redhead then winds up and slams his fist into the dumpster a foot away from where Jake had. The blunette was flabbergasted as Spike moved his now bleeding Fist from the metal container. A small dent was left, nothing compared to the fist-sized dent left by Jake.
"Why the hell did you do that?!" Jake asked, trying to find a clean side to his own tissue to cover Spike's scuffs.
"Man that's as hard as I could punch!" Spike smiled at his friend. "Weak Is not the word I'd use to describe you!"
"I- I guess I've been working out. I don't want to miss the next adventure." Jake awkwardly responded.
"Well On the next adventure Specter better watch out! If you get close enough to punch him he can say goodbye to his pipo helmet! And most of his brain cells!" Spike slung his arm around the taller boy's shoulders as they laughed and headed off.
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Spike had been aware of the friendly rivalry between himself and Jake. Many friends, especially boys have that sort of competitive relationship. what Spike had failed to notice was how much that affected Jake. Spike didn't want to admit it, but he had been very good at showing up his friend. He had reveled in out doing Jake... and that had made it that much easier for Specter to slither into Jake's mind, with Promises of power and superiority. Once Specter knew how to get in, it was hard to keep him out. Now that they were older, the duo had balanced out a bit. Jake was taller than Spike, and as mentioned before more muscular, enjoying cars and working out. He had been taking karate to try and help him deal with some of his issues. Spike was average height and lean. He still enjoyed watching soccer, but fell out of playing it as much. After the first Adventure Spike became fascinated with what went into creating the professor's gadgets, spending more of his time entertaining taking things apart and rebuilding them. If he had a rivalry with Jake before, he had a rivalry with Natalie now. a rivalry that he is sorely losing at. Natalie can make a teleporter out of spare junk just lying around her room! The girl truly had no rival and would easily succeed her grandfather Professor Ozel. But that was all fine to Spike. Being the best was never important to him.
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"So you're telling me that this kid, who is somehow friends with an old man genius scientist, travels through time but the time machine is a CAR?!" Jake was in amazement at the description of this movie. "That's way cooler than the time station! But I think we should check for hidden cameras... That sounds a little too much like OUR time travel Adventure."
"Don't worry! It's completely different! There's no hostile ape takeover!" Spike replied. "THAT'S a different movie!"
"Hey no spoilers! What if I want to watch it!? The first one, not the hostile takeover one. I'll skip that one."
"Well my parents are still out of town! After you have dinner why don't you come over and we'll watch it?" the redhead offered as they came to the corner where they would split ways.
"Sounds cool, I'll be over in about an hour!" the blue haired boy said as he headed down the street leading to his apartment complex. Spike still had a little further to go, as his family was lucky enough to own an actual house in the city.
Eventually the little yard came into view and Spike opened the little gate and walked up to the steps as he went to unlock the door. His stomach growled a little. 'Man I'm hungry. Don't really feel like cooking though. What I could really go for is-'
"Ukki ukki."
"Yeah! A pizza!'' There was a pause as Spike registered that he was not alone. Looking over shoulder he came face-to-face with about what he expected: A pipo ape! Errr- Apes. Plural. There were maybe two or three, but they were stacked up under a trench coat. The one on top wore a baseball cap with the word 'pizza' written across it. In the hands of what Spike assumed was a middle ape was a box of delivery pizza. This... was new...
"Oh! You read my mind!" Spike played along with the scenario. "You must be the delivery boy I didn't call!"
"Ukki ukki!"
"And that must be the pizza I didn't order!"
"Ukki!" Spike made a show of exaggeratingly turning his pockets inside out.
"Ohhhhhhh nooooo." he was such a ham. "I Left my wallet on the table!" he grabbed the knob and turned it. "You stay riiiiiight theeeeeere!" jumping inside and slamming the door shut.
Running to the couch and rifling between the cushions he pulled out the watch that the professor had given him (it fell off that morning and he was too lazy to retrieve it then). Having the device in hand he returned to the window near the door and peeked out to the curtains. The Apes were still there, but had unstacked and went about eating the pizza. The redhead hit a button on his watch and a green haired girl shaped AI appeared in Hologram and greeted him.
"Spike! Hello! How may I be of service today?"
"Casi! I need you to tell the Professor to turn on the monkey Nets Network. There's three monkeys outside of my house and I'm going to send them over!"
"Pipo apes?!" Casi replied. "That would mean that Specter has become active again! Messaging Professor Ozel. Have the Apes harmed you in any way Spike?" She asked.
"No actually, they tried to sell me a pizza while wearing a fake mustache."
"What could be their goal?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's nothing? Given Specter's current track record of stupider and stupider plans, I could see this being the next logical step. I mean, how the hell was he expecting... whatever this is to work?" Spike left, but stopped when he felt a hand placed on his back. Before he could even respond a wave of pain shot through him and he fell to the floor. He'd been so wrapped up in his conversation with Casi that he had not noticed a figure sneak up on him. His legs went weak and failed to do their one job as he collapsed to the floor.
"I think it worked rather well." The familiar voice of the figure chided. Black spots whirled in Spikes vision as he tried to lift his head and focus, though he knew that face well.
"Specter..." it was almost a whisper.
"You're STILL conscious?" The albino ape tilted his head inquisitively. "Well I guess this is you we're talking about. This just means I get to do THIS again!" Specter slammed his hand over Spike's face, and the wave of pain returned. It came to be too much for the redhead that everything went black as he lost consciousness.
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A/N:
I've never actually posted anything to FFN before... So thanks for checking out my first (public) fanfic! It's also up on AO3 but I thought I'd back it up here too. I've set this story in an AU called the "Nannersverse" Which is less based off of Ape escape and more my childhood INTERPRETATION of ape escape as far as characterizations and stuff. The characters are also aged up, mostly because 90s NA dub Spike sounded like... not a 10 year old so I had assumed he was like 16 when I was a kid and this takes place like 4 years later? ish?
Anyway thanks so much for reading!
Oh yeah I forgot, this is just a puke draft as a project to keep me writing, it's being written by the seat of my pants outside of ideas for it that have existed since 2015 for it, so if you wanna poke holes, point out typos, or critique go ahead!
