CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Getting Down.

Kazooie opened her eyes -- though she never recalled closing them. Sitting up, she realized she had been reclined on the pig DJ's turntables. Everything from the edge of her talons to the tips of her wings ached.

Now changed back into his blue denim overalls, Snide walked up to the Breegull. "Are you all right?"

The bird groaned, "What...I..."

"You're quite the party animal," remarked the weasel.

She stood up. The club had apparently been deserted for quite a while. The lights no longer strobed.

"Very good on your talons too, I might add."

"But... I don't remember a thing!"

"Whoa. I didn't think you were THAT out of it..." The weasel gestured towards the storage room.

There awaited the mole, shaman, and canary.

"Breegull really let all hang out," noted Mumbo.

"I'm pretty sure I never taught you those moves," said Bottles. "I don't teach forbidden stuff."

"You really got your freak on at the dance floor," added Mary.

"Quiet, all of you!" said a slightly embarrassed Kazooie,

"You quite done?" asked Snide. He placed the briefcase he was holding onto a table.

"What'cha got there?" asked the Breegull.

The weasel opened the case. Inside were large framed floormaps of a tall monolith. The drawings of it made it look like a giant cola bottle, only more cylindrical.

"This, my fellow adventurers, is Blackeye's fortress. It's located where a big lighthouse once stood over at Gloomy Galleon. He has his ships docked there, near one of my old posts. Anyways, Banjo's remains are locked away in a safe near the top. They're well guarded."

"Good work, rodent!" said Kazooie. "Now, we just fight a couple of guards and we've got the bear back."

"Er, I don't think it's going to be that easy," said Mary, pointing at a specific area on the map. "What kind of safe is that?"

"Exactly what I was getting at," said Snide. "This is no ordinary vault. It won't open with lockpicks, detonation, of even run-of-the-mill keys."

"So how does it open?" asked Bottles.

"With a Jiggy."

The four stared.

"Yeah. Apparently the safe was an old contraption built by master Jiggywiggy ages ago. Blackeye discovered it in the deep, wide open as I recall. He never found the key for it though, which was the thing he'd been searching for in the first place: the Platinum Jiggy."

"A jigsaw piece made of platinum?" asked the mole.

"No, a metal hamburger!" said Kazooie sarcastically.

"Anyways, until we get our hands on that Jiggy, there's no way we can open the safe," the weasel concluded.

"But Snide," spoke Mary, "Couldn't we just build a Platinum Jiggy?"

"Sure," he said, "If you just happen to have a cubic foot of one of the world's rarest minerals lying around."

"This is hopeless," uttered the Breegull. "Why is it the most impossible obstacles keep us away from the simplest goals?"

"I hear ya," said Snide. "Imagine having to put 50 pieces of a blueprint together just to delay the firing of a large laser cannon by about 45 minutes."

The four stared.

"Let's just get to the surface, okay?" said the weasel.

"Surface?" said Kazooie "I thought we were underwater."

"The club is a submersible only on weekends."

"Yeah, so?"

"Well... today is Monday."

The walls around the Breegull spun.

"I... I was out for that long?"

"Weird, huh?" said Bottles.