Nathan balled his fists and released them, steadying himself, adjusting his footing to keep his center-of-gravity stable. He felt his back quickly grow clammy and his heart rate skyrocket as he stared at the bandicoot. He swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes.

"What are you doing here, bandicoot?"

Crash tilted his head and made some sort of indiscernible sound. Nothing resembling coherent speech, anyway. He pointed to Nathan and made another sound, raising his eyebrows and turning behind him.

Nathan grit his teeth, stomping his foot once, groaning.

"What? Come on, tell me. Why are you here? What purpose do you have-"

"He clearly is an associate of Doctor Cortex… but… I sense something… there is a darkness in him… but not quite as consuming as Cortex's other allies. He must be a new one. And perhaps not yet formally initiated in the spreading of evil."

Nathan didn't recognize the voice that spoke, but it was a deep and melodic one, one that almost made him feel at ease listening to it. A solid-looking wooden mask with a face on it, with glowing gold eyes, floated out from behind Crash and stared back at him.

"I'll presume that you're Uka Uka's brother, then?"

Nathan hadn't met Uka Uka yet, but the others had filled him in on who he was. If Cortex was the equivalent of a CEO, then Uka Uka was the entire board of directors, rolled into one. He was the one whose whims were most integrally followed in all of their schemes. Cortex just happened to be the one who did most of the actual strategizing and execution.

Brio speculated that while Cortex was annoyed, angered, maybe even a bit spooked by many people, Uka Uka might be the only being in the universe that Cortex truly feared . And also, according to Brio, Uka Uka was absolutely a being worthy of being feared.

This mask, as much as it could do so, considering the lack of neck, nodded.

"I am Aku Aku, guardian and protector of this world."

It narrowed its eyes. "If you serve my brother's whims, then I am afraid that we cannot simply leave. We had cause to believe Cortex might have a scheme in the works, and I think that this has provided the confirmation we needed. That said, I think I'm correct in my assumption that you are not well-experienced in the machinations of evil. I do not know what brought you to work with Cortex: fear, desperation, jealousy, anger, whatever it was. But we will give you one chance to stand down and let us continue to investigate without your interference."

Nathan felt all the blood drain out of his face again, but this time, not completely out of fear. This was out of the absolute affront that the mask's words were.

How dare he?

How dare he?

How dare he assume Nathan had merely stumbled upon Cortex and had been blindly tempted, some sort of precious innocent who was corrupted, or something? How dare he downplay Nathan's agency?

And how dare he assume Nathan might back down like that, at the mere threat from a sentient block of wood?

He slung the strap off of his shoulder and removed the hammer from it, grasping it with both hands, close to his chest. He hoped that neither the bandicoot nor the mask noticed how white his knuckles were, gripping the hammer tightly, out of pure distilled, tensed fear and rage. He pulled his goggles over his eyes and stared at the two of them through his lightly yellow tinted vision.

He tilted his chin up and plastered the most visibly cocky grin he could muster onto his face.

"On the contrary, my friends, you have one chance to walk away unharmed."

Aku Aku narrowed his eyes and turned to Crash, sighing slightly. "I'm afraid we have no choice, then."

Crash nodded, and Nathan almost thought he saw a similar nervousness in Crash for a split second.

He quickly pressed his communicator and said as rapidly as his mouth would move: "All operatives, this is Dustrielle. The bandicoot is here , in the moat, might need some backup. Over!"

He'd barely gotten his left hand back on the hammer before Crash rushed towards him. He grit his teeth, sucking in his breath, and did something he'd never done before: mentally, quickly prayed. He'd always been a skeptic and didn't know which entity he was directing it to, but in this moment, it was the only possible thing his fevered brain could consciously do.

But as Crash started to clamber up the trash pile, Nathan's gut instincts kicked in. The only thing he understood in a fight was to hit, and hit hard, with whatever he could. Keep the reach advantage, use every bit of your surroundings, and never take your eyes off of your opponent.

These unspoken, hell, noncorporeal rules had served him well in every fight he'd ever gotten into: with rivals, with the random individuals he'd gotten into public confrontations with, with childhood bullies and those he himself targeted. His mother had been warned by his middle school principal that he displayed "particularly vicious tendencies'' during these incidents.

And those tendencies would not be suppressed now. Now, more than ever, they couldn't be suppressed.

Because this might well be a fight for his life.

He stuck his hammer into the trash pile, wiggling it, and destabilized a small section of the trash, causing a small landslide to form. Crash's eyes went wide, and he briefly stumbled down the hill. As Crash slid down, Nathan eyed a heavy-looking toaster sticking out of the debris, out of the corner of his eye, and dragged it towards him with the hammer. There was no good reason that someone had kept a toaster in the bedroom, but he thanked his lucky stars that they decided to do so.

He pulled the sledgehammer out, raised it behind him like a golf club, and aimed with intent at Crash's head.

And he couldn't resist…

"Fore!" He shouted, with a bit of manic glee, fueled by the adrenaline, before hitting the toaster. He was no stranger to golf. His schools had forbidden him from contact sports, after all. And for an object that was much heavier than a golf ball, the aim was pretty spot on, if a little lower than he wanted.

But the orange bastard did something Nathan never would've expected: he span . It was quick, too fast for Nathan's eyes to track. And powerful enough to hit the toaster back at him.

See, the thing about a golf swing is that when the arc of motion is complete, your arms are not in a great position to defend yourself for a couple of seconds.

And a couple of seconds was all that Crash had needed.

The toaster flew back to Nathan and hit him square on the shoulder.

Nathan yelled and got knocked back, nearly tipping over the other side of the pile. However, he managed to stabilize himself before falling. A quick movement of his arm made him wince. He knew there was going to be a nasty bruise, but he didn't think that he'd broken anything, or had any other serious damage.

He narrowed his eyes, grit his teeth, and snarled, swinging his hammer with force, his first attempt to directly hit Crash with it. Crash made a sort of panicked squeaking noise and jumped back down to the bottom of the pile. But he, too, set his face in a determined expression and rushed back towards Nathan.

Nathan quickly found another object he'd like to weaponize, a small stone statue of a dog. Some sort of tchotchke for a previous resident, perhaps sentimental, perhaps simply aesthetically pleasing.

He exhaled heavily and took a quick deep breath.

Just a little higher, just aim a little higher, just a hair more force…

He swung the hammer and hit the statue. It did, indeed, fly higher, and Nathan's face broke into a wide grin.

One that quickly morphed into a terrified grimace as Crash jumped and span again.

Shit…

That was all that Nathan could think in the time that it took for the statue to fly back at him. He did manage to turn slightly, to get his left forearm to partially cushion the blow, rather than hitting him square on the chest. He winced as the statue hit him, groaning in pain, and he knew there was going to be another gnarly bruise. But that was better than a set of broken ribs. That was the last thing he needed right now.

He looked down at the handle of his hammer, knowing that any more hits might knock him down and potentially leave him down for the count. He eyed the button on it. He hadn't thought that he'd need to use the secret weapon this soon, but it was the only chance he had, his only trap and trump card.

"That's it!" He bellowed in a rage, an anger, and a pain beyond anything he'd ever felt. He could practically see the red in his vision.

He aimed his hammer away from him and towards the bandicoot. Even if it missed, it would narrow the range with which Crash could maneuver.

He pressed the button, and the bright green sludge shot out of the hammer. Crash gasped and dodged, but as the liquid landed onto the spot of the trash pile that Crash had been standing on, it found a large moldy submarine sandwich, presumably left by the last employee occupying the room. Or perhaps Cortex chucking it into the room after a team lunch. Whoever originally owned the sandwich, as it was consumed, its particles quickly reacted and became more of the acid, spilling down the trash pile, forming a small river down the center.

Making the reaction self-sustaining would be a plus…

Cortex's command from the first day rang in Nathan's ears as Crash sidestepped the acid with wide eyes and a squeak. His movement was certainly limited now… and though certain waterlogged puddles in the pile would dilute the acid, even those spots would cause quite a bit of pain if Crash's fur found it.

Nathan grinned and searched for something else to hit, finding a solid-looking lamp. Crash hopped over the river of acid, trying to clamber the pile from the side rather than from the front.

Nathan decided to switch up his tactic a bit. He dropped the hammer and picked up the lamp and hurled it down towards Crash. He aimed low this time, hoping Crash's arms wouldn't be as effective if he crouched.

But as the lamp left his hands, he swore, eyes going wide, as Crash sidestepped slightly, dropping to a slightly lower elevation, and raised his arms.

"No!" Nathan yelled.

But by the time the word came out, the lamp had already hit him in the shin. And though, once again, nothing seemed broken from the impact, it was enough to knock him forward.

Flat onto his face.

And before he had the chance to react, his left hand was submerged in the pile of acid, with the left side of his face hitting a waterlogged puddle.

He screamed as a searing, hellish state of pure agony came over his arm. If it hadn't been hijacking his nervous system's pain center and kicking his survival instincts into red alert, he would've noticed a lesser, but still burning, pain on his face as well. He felt around without looking, desperately, in his crazed, terrified state, and managed to stick his hand into the same waterlogged pile that his face had landed in. The pain, while still intense, dulled slightly, and within a few seconds, the hydrogen in the water reacted with the acid to neutralize it.

By the time he'd caught his breath and soldiered himself to look up, the bandicoot and the mask were nowhere to be found. He whimpered uncontrollably, sniffed and spat, and the taste of metal coated his mouth. Blood.

He moaned and whined and coughed, only able to stare straight down the pile in his intense disorientation, blindly reaching into his pocket and found the communicator. He pressed the button, groaning for several seconds, before managing to gasp out.

"Dustrielle here. Bandicoot gone, dunno where he… fuck… owww…I'm still… still in moat… I need urgent medical assistance… please… help… "

He didn't even bother with "over" as his vision blurred over, and his mind went fuzzy. He tried to reach up with both hands to rub his temples, to slap himself back into focus, but only his right hand seemed to find his face.

His final thoughts, before his vision went dark, were wondering if his kinesthetic sense had been affected somehow. Why else didn't his left seem to be touching anything?