Candy Kong fretfully twisted her blonde hair in her fingers as she and Funky rode in the jeep toward his surplus store. "Do you really think they'll be all right?" she asked the laid-back ape driving.
He tossed up a hand. "You need to quit worryin', girl! They've done this sort of thing like three times already and they've come out pumped every time. This'll be just another swing through the vines, don't you worry about a thing."
Candy sighed. "I'm sorry, Funky. You're right. There's no point in worrying. All we can do is support them the best way we can."
"That's what I'm sayin'!" Funky agreed, slapping the steering wheel for emphasis. "Between you and me, we've got their backs. My hardware and your, uh, moral support will get them through and once they've kicked those spineless lizards' tails, we'll all be kicking back, sipping coconut milk and watchin' the sunset."
Candy smiled. "Nothing ever gets you down, huh?" She laughed. "Thanks, Funky."
Funky spread his hands in a gesture of indifference. "Hey, we all just do what we gotta do. You need a pep talk, Funky's your man!" He slapped his chest with a fist.
The blonde she-ape giggled. "I mean it, Funky. I needed the pep talk and you delivered. And you're right..." She set her jaw. "We've done this before and come through, and we'll do it again. That croc is going to rue messing with us."
Funky squawked, throwing up his big arm. "Look at that, girl, you just gave me goosebumps!" The both of them laughed.
It wasn't long before they pulled up in front of Funky's armory. They wasted no time in getting out of the jeep and getting it reloaded with the equipment the Armys had stolen. Funky cried out, "Hey, girl! You just leave the heavy lifting to me. No need for a delicate lady like yourself to be sweatin' over this."
"Why, Funky, you're such a gentleman," was what Candy was about to say in a slightly exasperated tone until there was a great, big crash and the ground shook like a giant turtle with a terrible stomach cramp, knocking the heavy box of ammunition from her hands and sending her to the ground on her rump. "My goodness! What was that?" she said instead.
"Soun... retty bad..." replied Funky in a voice so high that half his words went missing. He had dropped his heavy case of coconut cannons straight onto his foot. He didn't get the chance to say anything else as there was another crash and the island shook again. Then another crash. And then another.
"Oh no!" Candy cried as she struggled against the terrible tremors to get back on her feet. "Could that be that horrible K. Rool's Blast-O-Matic?"
"...should inve...tigate..." Funky replied and limped toward the jeep as fast as he could - a feat made all the more challenging by the constant crashing that rendered ripples through the topsoil. Candy tottered right behind him, and within moments they were roaring off toward the source of the clangorous calamity.
...
It had been a group effort to haul Chunky's unconscious form onto the deck of the Gangplank Galleon (it was mostly Donkey, though). It was a nearly unanimous decision that Tiny should be the one to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
"What?" protested the one who made it short of unanimous. "Why me?"
"Well, because you're a girl," Diddy answered practically. "A guy giving another guy mouth-to-mouth is kind of... awkward."
One of the well-documented accomplishments of the Kongs was their incredible lung capacity that bordered on impossible. It was this fact that spared Tiny the awkward duty of resuscitating Chunky for he suddenly awoke with a whoosh of air that he had been holding and then started howling and flailing his arms.
Diddy was the first to react. "Whoa, hey, Chunky, calm down!" Soon they all had his arms and legs pinned down while reassuring him that he was all right and that the bad Kremlings were gone and wouldn't hurt him anymore.
"Bad people... gone?" Chunky whimpered hopefully after they finally got him to calm down.
"That's right, Chunky," Diddy reassured him. "Bad people gone. Went 'glub glub.' Not coming back."
They let him sit up. He looked around and then covered his head and began whimpering again.
Lanky asked, "Hey, big guy, what's wrong?"
Chunky answered, "Me not like it here. This bad place. Me want to go home."
"Don't worry, buddy, we'll get you home. But can you do us a huge favor first?"
Chunky peered out from under his arms. "Huh?"
The long-limbed orangutan explained to him about K. Rool's Blast-O-Matic and the five shutdown buttons they needed to find in order to stop it. He finished, "So what do you say, buddy? You wanna help save our island?"
Chunky sniffed and wiped his nose morosely. "Why K. Rool so mean?"
Lanky shrugged. "Some people just are for no good reason. That's why there are good people like us to stop him. Good people like you, right?"
Chunky nodded slowly. "Me good. Me not like bad people. Me stop bad K. Rool."
"That's the spirit!" Lanky cheered, clapping him on the back.
With all five Kongs on the same page, it was decided that they needed to meet up with Cranky and Snide, wherever they had gotten to. The first step toward that was to find a way out of this gloomy gutter. There were stairs leading up and out across the water from the Gangplank Galleon though the little motorboat that Lanky had used was far too small to accommodate all the Kongs so they all swam for it instead. Then they all trooped up the stairs, one after another, like an army of Mario minis on the move.
They soon emerged into the main body of Crocodile Isle where there were portholes giving the cheerful sun a bit of leeway into its austere interior, providing the Kong clan with some light and warmth. That light and warmth were quickly snuffed when the speakers squawked to life and K. Rool's tinny voice came on:
"Attention all crew members, including you Blast-O-Matic engineers, this is your King, K. Rool, speaking: there is no longer a need to repair the Blast-O-Matic. Our good friend K. Lumsy has, at last, realized what it means to be a Kremling. Even as we speak, he is on the island now, smashing it flat. I invite you all to find a good view so that we can watch as he destroys the home of those mangy fleabags." A second later, his voice was replaced by a terrible sound of trees and rocks cracking and Kremlings howling with glee.
Tiny trembled with fury. "He's destroying our island!" she screeched.
With his hands on his head, Lanky shook it in horror. "We have to stop it!"
Donkey was already moving, the metal shuddering under his furious pace. Diddy got the rest of them moving with a cry, "Let's go, guys!" and then they were all racing back to their island to stop the diabolical destruction.
...
Candy was at first heartbroken to hear the terrified sobbing of those who were being trampled under the foot of whatever machine of destruction K. Rool had employed. Then it occurred to her that the sobbing was rather loud and that it only ever came from one person. As the jeep hummed closer to the sound of trees being snapped in half, she heard the sobber speaking: "Please run! Run before I smash you! I don't want to hurt you! Run, little furry guys, run!"
The one smashing down our island... is he actually crying?
Then ahead of them they saw a flash of green scales above the trees and with a thunderous "CRACK!" a palm tree flopped down, almost crushing the two apes in the jeep. Funky barely avoided it by skidding to the side while Candy gripped his arm and screamed in terror. Somehow they avoided overturning though the jeep did tip dangerously far before slamming back down on all four tires. The moment they stopped, Funky shrugged off Candy, kicked the door open and collapsed onto the ground. He was back up a second later, reaching for a bazooka from the back of the jeep, where he affixed a giant combat boot to the barrel and readied the weapon to fire.
"Don't shoot!" Candy screamed as she scrambled out of the jeep.
"I'm aiming for that big, jumbo-sized machine of destruction!" Funky explained, hefting the bazooka onto his shoulder.
"Don't shoot!" Candy repeated. "Can't you hear him?"
"Babe, he's wreckin' our island!"
Candy placed her hand on the barrel of the bazooka. "We should try to reason with him first. Maybe we can use him against K. Rool!"
Funky made an exasperated noise. "Okay, if you think it'll work. But how are you going to get close enough?"
Seeing the trees that the giant Kremling was toppling like a herd of Gnawtys, Candy was stumped. That's when they heard a primal shriek that raised the fur on the back of their neck and saw a flash of pink latch on to a tree and shimmy up its trunk. Candy had been so startled that she had jumped into Funky's arms and grabbed his neck in a chokehold.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed. "What is that?"
Funky made a choking noise in response. Realizing what she was doing to him, she dropped off of him with an apology. Then she noticed someone ambling their way toward him.
"Why, Kiddie! What are you doing here?"
The young Kong in blue footie pajamas made an urgent noise that sounded quite adorable in his baby voice as he pointed at the pink blur that had now reached the top of the tree. Candy Kong realized a second later who it was just before the pink blur launched herself off the tree and tackled the giant reptilian island smasher.
The howl of fright of the giant Kremling was loud enough to create a mass migration of all the island's birds and to send the Kongs' ears ringing. Then he began to giggle. "Ooh! No, stop, please! That tickles!"
But the pink blur would not relent. She would never surrender because if there was one thing you should know about Dixie Kong, it was that you don't threaten her island and expect to get away with it.
...
It took some doing, but the Kongs finally found a way outside Crocodile Isle so that they could get back to their island and stop the Kremling wrecking ball. They ran into Squawks and Cranky on the way; the latter had an earful to give to them as if it was somehow their fault he got lost. He also had to announce that he had perfected the growth potion, but everyone's focus was on getting back to the island. It fell to Chunky to carry him on his back.
Kongs are great swimmers, but what they didn't realize as they paddled their way back to land was that there was a current flowing around its western side, and, as a result, they were carried all the way to the backside to a section of the island known as the Fungi Forest.
The moment they stepped onto shore, they knew they were in trouble; specifically with Cranky Kong, who had warned them more than a hundred times not to go anywhere near Fungi Forest. All sorts of strangeness happened there, and most who went in were never quite right after that. It was a place that messed with your head - made you see things that weren't there, distorted your sense of time - your sense of direction - and they had landed right in its lap.
"Well, Boss, now what do we do?" Lanky asked Donkey.
Donkey scratched his head and then shrugged.
Diddy pointed out, "We don't have the strength to swim against the current that brought us here and trying to swim around the island with the current would take too long. Our only option is to go through this forest."
"He's right," said Cranky to everyone's astonishment. "We don't have time for delays. We'll just have to charge through here and hope for the best. The spores in the air here will likely addle our brains, though I can think of a few of you who will be fine, seeing as you don't have any brains to addle." Despite his rebuke, he managed to procure enough dust masks for all the Kongs. Once they were all protected from the harmful spores, Squawks led the charge through the forest toward the sounds of destruction. None of them really stopped to admire the variety of detritivores that grew only here, passing under the shadows of the towering portobellos, trudging through the clusters of enoki, brushing past the turkey tails and chanterelles that clung to the stipes of the porcinis, and taking a moment once or twice to sit down on the brightly colored toadstools.
Well, none except for Chunky. While he was certainly notable for his timid nature, he was also an easily distracted ape. The bright blue Entoloma hochstetteri lured him off the path more than once, and the brain-shaped Gyromitra esculenta whispered promises of knowledge to him. Hydnellum peckii wept tears of blood, while Mycena chlorophos tantalized him from the deep shadows with their eerie green glow. With Cranky on his back, whacking him on the head every time he wandered off, Chunky couldn't stay distracted for long, but with each new attraction that diverted him, the clan got farther and farther away.
"Chunky!" barked the cantankerous, old ape with a sharp rap to the head. "How many times am I gonna have to tell you to stay on the path, eh? Do you like it when I smack you?" He rapped him again for emphasis. "Eh?" He smacked him again.
But Chunky just couldn't help himself and soon they lost sight of the other Kongs entirely. "Now look what you've done, you buffoon!" Chunky squawked with a sharp rap to Chunky's head. "We'll never catch up to them now!" Chunky whimpered apologetically.
Between Cranky's griping and Chunky's yelping, they were making quite a bit of noise. Normally, as the largest animals in the food chain, they wouldn't have to worry too much about this, but it just so happened that a particularly cranky dragon had made his retreat here.
The noise roused Dogadon from his beauty rest, and once again he was cranky. With an irritable sniff, he stood up on the giant velvet shank he had been using as a bed and turned his head toward the sound. When he spotted the culprits, he let out a roar and then dived off the cap and toward the two bickering apes.
"Run, Chunky!" Cranky snapped as he used his cane as a riding crop. "Run, you big loon, can't you see..."
Poor Chunky was running as fast as he could, but he had never been the fastest of his cousins and with Cranky on his back he was too bogged down to really get a good start. Dogadon caught up to them easily and he grabbed Cranky, who grabbed Chunky in a death grip. "I ain't going alone!" he screeched and they were both carried away.
Dogadon dropped them onto a tall platform - a giant mushroom with a parasol-shaped cap. He wheeled around and then flew in close to give them the evilest eye that he could manage - bloodshot, bulging, and with a tiny death's head in the depths of the pupil... or that could have been the effect of the mushroom spores, but they weren't dulling Chunky's fear any. He trembled and whimpered in a manner most befitting a Kong about to meet his end by dragon breath.
"Get a hold of yourself, you ninny!" Cranky snapped. "If you want to get charbroiled by this overgrown smokestack, that's your call, but to allow me to go the way of the dodo, Wrinkly would be furious with you, rest her soul."
Chunky shook his head. "But... dragon... too big!"
"You think that's big?" Cranky snorted. "I've tangled with bosses that were three screens tall! ...with one hand tied behind my back! But I'll tell you what: I've been meaning to try this on someone anyways, and you were always my guinea pig, so what could be a more perfect opportunity?" He dug through his satchel with a clatter of beakers and then pulled out a vial of a red syrup. "Here you go, drink this," he said and tossed it to Chunky. The timid gorilla gave it a sniff and then gagged.
"What, you think a powerful potion like that is going to smell like roses?" Cranky snapped. "Just drink it!"
But still Chunky was reluctant. Dogadon had watched this exchange curiously but seeing it wasn't going anywhere, decided he would follow through on his plan to eliminate the nuisances. He drew in a deep breath, wisps of smoke curling from his nostrils.
"DO YOU WANT TO GET FRIED, YOU BIG NINNY?" Cranky howled, seeing the coming danger.
That did it. Chunky's eyes widened with fear of an incendiary death, then pinched his nose, pulled up his mask, and gulped down the potion.
The medicine was as bad as Chunky feared. Besides tasting like rubber and compost, it immediately went to war with his insides where each of his internal organs was brutally beaten and hauled in for questioning. But it did the job. Even as he was rolling on the cap, his body stretched and swelled, growing larger and larger until Cranky had to retreat to the edge of the cap, and old Dogadon choked on his flames.
When Chunky stopped growing, he was at least twice as big as Dogadon. He rolled to his feet and saw the dragon, whose jaw had dropped and was starting to tremble.
"D...DRAGON... BAD!" Chunky roared. And what did Chunky do with bad dragons? Why, he punched them, of course. Sent them flying backward through rows of wrinkled morels, clusters of tiny pinwheel mushrooms, gatherings of amethyst deceivers, and scatterings of orange peel fungi until the naughty thing was so thoroughly bruised and confused that he wasn't quite sure what he was doing there in the first place. With a hasty shake of his head, he spread his oval wings and buzzed out of there, looking for the most remote place he could find where he really could just nap in peace.
