It was disgustingly hot. The merciless flaming star that soared above all lands seemed to have a desire to burn every single living thing. It made Marth's blood boil, in a most literal sense. No cloud dared to break the star's unjust fire, and no man could stand it on his own. Then again, that king, or "Firelord", as he called himself was no man.

Marth missed the simplicity of Ylisse, and perhaps the whole of Osternia. While yes, those two realms were now the same, Marth still had a hard time adjusting to this change. But just inside doors. To the outside, he was a fair ruler of a new realm, disliked and feared, but also honoured. Or so he liked to think. While the strings pulled to unite the west into a single nation where too ravelled in themselves to explain, it had been a job nicely done. And while he knew beforehand that next to no one would join the Ylissian Empire, he still gave everyone the chance to unite for peace and order. Said chance, although ignored, had piqued the interest of a certain lord in the Kong Islands, a one self-declared King K. Rool. As far as he knew, those who had seen him described him as a giant, self-indulgent ever-hungry reptilian beast. He wondered if Bowser and this K. Rool were actually the same person, or, at the very least, related.

Bowser had failed in their full attack against the Mushroom Kingdom the mere instant they had entered those lands through the valley. While the attack force had been the greatest ever in the Koopa Kingdom, even having consultants and strategists from the Ylissian Empire and Ylisse itself, it was split in many fractions due to the plans to be made effective whether the attack was successful or not. In total, there were around 40 thousand in the ranks of the koopa army, ranging from mercenary humans and natives to the Firelands. Although large, Bowser's army was inefficient. Most of it were farmers and common citizens, rounded up by the government. This practice, though commonly used and cheap, was useless. War had taught Osternia many things, and Marth himself had seen that professional maintained armies were far more effective. Still, war and its prologues came with a cost, but no cost was too great for Marth.

However, with the help of the Ylissian Empire to the Koopa Kingdom, Marth being at the head of the operation in the south east, its military had vastly improved. He knew little of the Mushroom Army, but he knew it was a mix of peasants called in times of need and a professional persistent army. Toads were moved by loyalty, and koopas were moved by fear. That same fear reached through most of the south east, manifesting in the form of Bowser, the ever-looming threat upon Peachville, and King. K. Rool, the tyrant of the Kong Islands.

Marth and Bowser, accompanied by some legions, were currently heading to his capital city, Gangplank, a coastal city in one of the main islands of the Krock Archipelago, part of the Kong Islands: Crocodile Isle. It was notorious for its port, being a hotspot and hub for pirates, mercenaries and fishermen who brought with them stories of the eastern seas, as well as, as Marth soon found out, its stench. Fishing sustained the population but ruined the possible beauty of the city. Even within a carriage, Marth being in one and Bowser in another, leading the march, the wooden structures, suspended through the crags and cliffs that made up the natural valley of sorts of the city, didn't keep the place very clean, not that the people cared. Ropes hung from houses, often connecting them trough loose wooden boards as bridges and sometimes, through no boards at all. Some passageways were dark and probably dangerous, and safety hazards like the sea itself or the rocks that threatened with falling upon the wooden houses and cities of the kingdom were ignored. K. Rool's residency, a palace unlike any Marth had ever seen surprised him, being excavated into a cave where a small river flowed into the sea.

Eventually, they reached the main square of the city a paved plaza decorated by some merchant posts and statues of the King. A massive reptile with armour and a comically large crown, though Marth would keep that to himself. He stepped off the carriage, and saw Bowser, who had done likewise, approach him.

'Lord Marth. Has the trip been of your liking?' the Koopa King asked simulating a bow.

'Cut the act, Bowser. I couldn't care less about the trip, though the putrid smell of the city hasn't been precisely welcoming. Let us speak to this K. Rool and head to Kongo Bongo Island. A minute more under this sun and I might as well vacation in hell itself.'

Marth was usually, as he saw himself anyways, somewhat cocky. He liked to play around unsuspecting foes when using the art of language, and was fond of being somewhat irreverent, but he knew when to turn serious, be that a battle of swords or of words. Bowser always kept him on edge. He knew about the famed or rather infamous wrath of the Firelord, and so he wished to stay as neutral -and boring, he thought- as possible. Still, he always allowed himself a bit of fun.

'Very well then, sir. We are to head into the palace then. The royal guard of K. Rool will guide us.' He then turned around to look at his company. 'Tell those maggots to hurry and reach Royal Bay before it's too late! Send the message that anyone who's late will be held highly responsible…'

Their armies were still on the way to Gangplank itself, but the reunion and tactics had to take place as soon as possible, and so Marth, to his distaste had had to travel before his soldiers, accompanied only by a dozen ylissian men under the scorching tropical sun. Sooner than later, some guards, all reptiles known as kritters made their way to the Koopa Lord and the Ylissian Lord and guided them through the Cave Palace, as it was called. Its exterior was frankly quite menacing, with an entrance to the cave that looked like sharp teeth leading into eroded chunks of rock. The exterior of the palace itself was quite dark, but one could still see. Two wings situated in the sides presented their façade as brown and white walls using stalactites as makeshift columns. The entrance to the palace was a large sharp archway with no door. Coloured tiles made up the floor, and different statues and naval utilities decorated the walls of the throne room. Once they reached it, Marth saw the spitting image of the statue of the main square snoring, sitting in a large dark wooden throne.

'Lord Marth from Ylisse and Lord Bowser from the Firelands are here, your Majesty!' announced one kritter. Although he had got the titles wrong, what annoyed Marth was the one person their operation depended one sleeping happily while he waited there, uncaring about the outside world. The kritter the sighed and blew a trumpet, waking the lazy king. Baffled at first, he looked at both kings and started laughing.

'Hahaha! Long live the putrid gods who've taken ya here!' he said approaching them, loudly stepping towards them until he was mere centimetres away from them. 'Lord Marth, Bowser, I take it your journey was good enough, ay? If you liked the sun and the burning of your body, we've got far more than that, lads!'

'King K. Rool' Bowser spoke up, keeping a somewhat calmed demeanour. 'We've seen better. Our armies are not yet here, but what can we ask of them.'

'They ain't? Then when are we marching to kill that damned monkey?'

'Tomorrow at dawn, sir.' Said a guard.

'Damn it…'

'You've waited years to finally kill this… ape, milord, surely you can wait just one more day.' said Marth, masking his anger.

'Ah, Lord Marth, bringing your Ylissian wisdom and elegance to these forsaken lands… The Apes are long gone, nothing rests at Kongo Bongo, but mere and foolish baboons!'

'I beg your pardon, sir… Either way we must discuss our plans to deal with these pests.'

'Of course, lads. Follow me.'

The study was made entirely out of wood. The air was heavy and felt old. The walls were covered in ancient nautical maps and all kinds of instruments and globes. The three lords and their respective commanders and another commander, right hand man of K. Rool, sat around a large table with the biggest map in the room, depicting Kongo Bongo Island, a long island near Crocodile Isle, where the Great Apes used to live, lead by the Monkey King. However, their legacy and people were long forgotten and their descendants, big and strong monkey tribes in the islands depended on Donkey Kong, a direct descendant of the las Monkey King for protection. Marth, although intrigued by the past of these so-called superior Apes just wanted to leave with a plan.

'If we attack their house directly, we can win!' said one of K. Rools commander.

'You've always lost doing that. You can't keep headbutting against a wall hoping it breaks, you'll break the head first!' replied Bowser's second in command, Morton.

'There are no other clear ways, though…' said Bowser himself. 'Our navy can cut them off easily, but the hills of DK's house have proven to be impenetrable, as you say, K. Rool. What's more, if they go into the jungles, we're doomed. Their control there is inimitable.'

King K. Rool studied closely the map and the chess pieces they had placed in it acting as their troops. He moved some around until he kept looking at them again.

'What was that?' asked Morton.

'Plan Tribal.' Answered K. Rool's commander.

'So you essentially want to surround them?' Marth noted. The locals assented. Marth then studied the pieces, and his military mind got hard at work. Since he was a child, he had been both a great swordsman and a decent strategist. He always saw all possibilities and selected the best outcome. Afterall, no cost was too great. He quickly came up with a solution. Seeing how everyone, including his partner were confused, he explained his idea. 'We attack them, but we do it through phases: At first we cut off the wester coast of their town. This is as I've seen the strategy you've used since you started attacking these monkeys.'

'But it's never worked…' said Bowser eyeing an angry K. Rool.

'No, it hasn't… However, were we to then attack through the hill, fooling them to think this is a usual attack…'

'We can surprise them with your forces!' exclaimed K. Rool enthusiastically.

'Precisely' Marth continued. 'Before your forces are decimated, some of them run into the jungle, but not too deep. They hide far away enough they can't be spotted, but close enough to hear the fighting. Then, our navy cuts the other escape route, putting a barricade through the shoreline, leaving only the jungle.'

'You wish to fight them there?' exclaimed Bowser. 'We just said that-'

Marth cut off the koopa while he kept rambling. 'Then the forces in the jungle come out. While they surely won't kill those monkeys, they will entertain them long enough for our landing troops to pursue them before they venture too deep into the jungle.'

'So, we use the kritters as bait? I cannot accept that! Do you know the cost of that?' denounced K. Rools commander.

'General' said Marth, his blue eyes staring coldly at him, his expression totally serious. 'No cost is too great.'

He groaned heavily as he woke up. Sunlight came in through the wide windows of his treehouse, taking him away from the realms of sleep and rest. He got up and stretched, yawning as he did. Walking outside, he was greeted with a usual but nonetheless beautiful view. A meandering sirt path went along a small cliff into the rolling grass-covered hills, which in turn lead to a coast of white soft sand, daring the sea to come for it. To both his left and right, there other houses, belonging to many of his friends, all part of the tribe of monkeys that lived there.

Donkey Kong was a direct descendant of the Monkey King, one of the fabled Great Apes, yet he absolutely didn't feel like one and he sure didn't act like one as well. The whole royalty thing was not his style, and every monkey there saw it as outdated. It made sense in the age of the gods, when they were assisted by the same beings that made them, but now that times had changed, the Great Apes were a thing of the past, and so were their legacy. Monkeys just wished to live in peace and eat bananas. Not necessarily in that order.

Those relics of the past lied deep within the jungle, and though some visited frequently, it was just for amusement or to seek some time alone. Sometimes, they ran into the jungle to fight off the blood-crazed fiends that lived near him, in what the monkeys, in their language, called "Mountain Island", commonly known to outsiders as Crocodile Island. The self-declared King, a beast called K. Rool had been a pirate who settled there and forged a reputation of being ruthless and filthy rich, crafting for himself an armour made of gold. All those things attracted scoundrels of all kinds and soon, Gangplank was born, and claimed all the Kong Islands. But of course, Donkey Kong and his tribe rejected him, keeping Kongo Bongo Island free, though sadly not the entirety of the archipelago.

DK heard some shouting and mumbling in the town square, a simple flat zone with some wooden houses around it and made his way there to hear about it. After all, he was the leader of the town. Upon reaching, a tumult was forming rapidly. All the inhabitants of the tribe were gathered around a certain monkey Dk knew very well: his nephew Diddy Kong, more commonly known as simply Diddy. He approached him, and soon he began to talk.

'Diddy, what's going on? Why's everyone here?' DK asked confused.

'It's K. Rool! Lanky came here and told us he's attacking again?'

'Yeah, what he said.' Lanky Kong, a close friend of DK made his way into the mass of people there. 'I saw them right up around Toucan's Peak, all in boats. Looks like they're attacking to me.'

There were gasps. K. Rool's attack, although not usual, weren't unheard of. He had attacked many times trying to conquer Kongo Bongo and rid himself of the Kong tribe. But he wouldn't have his victory.

'We'll fight him. He'll fall on his ass and run away with the tail between the legs.'

DK looked at the endless expanding sea and saw in the distance K. Rool's warships. He tensed up.

Soon, a couple of soldiers descended into the pure white sand of Kongo Bongo. They made their way up into the hills that lead to a small cliff where the jungle and monkey tribe lied. A few cannonballs flew in from King K. Rool's ship, but most missed their target, landing in the cliff's walls or deep into the jungle. The King's voice could be heard from kilometres away.

'DK, this is your last chance! I'll run this place down into ruins, ya hear me? Ya best run away!'

The monkey's response was throwing barrel after barrel against K. nRool's troops, who were going up the hills, making their way into the cliff. As usual as this strategy was, it always seemed to work. Sometimes some of the barrels were on fire, or exploded after some time, and sometimes other monkey would join in. Diddy Kong would use his make-shift musket throwing rocks, and the other monkeys would throw other things. The enemy rarely made it into the path in the cliff itself, or even into the houses above, but the monkey tribe was always ready to pass.

Eventually, some made their way up to DK's position. Three kritters surrounded him. Punching one of them, he then jumped back, dodging a kritter's sharp claws. The other one, who wielded a knife and looked higher rank than the others, struck at him, stabbing. He dodged and disarmed him with a punch. He then jumped at him and buried him into the floor. After that, dodging to the side another attack, DK threw a jump kick into the face of the kritter, most probably breaking something important. He looked at his right side, where Diddy and Dixie Kong, another friend, were fending off some Krushas and a Klump, more elite forces. After a few minutes, the monkeys had done a good job defending the village, with only a few enemies running into the jungles where they'd surely be hunted down. But, before they could do that, a disturbing sound froze DK's blood.

A horn unlike any he had ever heard resonated from the shoreline, further away from K. ROol's ship, yet near. He turned to see 5 immense ships making their way into the coasts of Kongo Bongo. Two of hem were made of wood and black iron, bearing some sort of dragon or tyrtle in their front. Turtle creatures made the ranks of those two ships, while the others, bigger and better built, were occupied by humans from far away. They suddenly out barricades through the shoreline up into the cliff, slaughtering some of his people. DK, seeing the horrors committed, became angrier, his wrath slowly taking control of his mind. Those foreigners who no one knew or even cared about in the whole of the Kong Islands had come to his land on their own terms and started killing indiscriminately, and he was going to stop them.

He joined up with Diddy and started protecting the other monkeys who were trying to go into the jungle. Men with swords approached him, but their armours were nothing compared to enraged brute strength of the descendant of the Great Apes. Diddy himself was scratching and biting, jumping from one enemy to the next in the blink of an eye. His focus had shifted totally to these new and disgusting sights. Some turtles approached him, somehow wielding fire in their hands. They burnt part of DK's body, but his answer was more than enough to silence them forever. Then, a blue-haired man in a blue and red armour stepped in, with a calm expression on his face. Around him, the bodies of his fellow soldiers had all fallen down, leaving him alone, although more were coming.

'You must be that monkey they call Donkey Kong… You seem strong. But not strong enough. Now, don't take this personal, but I need the alligator's help.' He then unsheathed his sword, pointing at DK. He, in return, screamed at him, his anger building up even further beyond, but the man stared at him blankly. 'Don't make an effort with your words, I don't understand them. Plus, you'll soon won't be able to talk.'

The man lunched at him, his sword aiming at his chest. DK jumped behind him and prepared a punch. Diddy came in flying, kicking the stranger in the chest, sending him backwards. DK the lunged furiously, screaming with anger at him, but the man merely stepped to the side. He then kept baiting attacks from DK, whilst trying to evade the quick attacks of Diddy, disarming him of his musket. Turning around to defend from one of Diddy's high speed icks, DK saw the opportunity and charged up a decimating punch for a second, before striking at the man. All of a sudde, as if he had been aware of DK's attack, the countered the punch, turning his blade around and cutting of the monkey's hand. The injury spat out a fountain of blood, adding to the now red fields and plants, while DK screamed in pain at the top his lungs. He fell down, and Diddy was sent away by a kick from the blue-haired man. Them, a bunch of monkeys ran away from the jungle, being met with troops from both sides. DK was their best bet to survive there, but the man who had cut of his very hand had entertained him. He saw many being killed and some being put in large but not large enough jails, making them prisoners or pets. He hopelessly watched as Diddy, knocked out, was put in one, but managed to wake up and escpae in the last second, along with the most agile monkeys. He looked above at the man, who was satring coldly at the jungle. He then collapsed to the ground briefly. DK tried to take his opportunity and avenge his people, trying to grab him, but the man turned around and stabbed DK, making a scar on his chest and putting him unconscious and in even more pain. He then felt how he was lifted up and put in a cold metal cage. Trying to see through his dormant eyes, he saw that cursed man, that monster take a torch and throw it into the jungle, his soldiers doing the same thing. Crying, he passed out.

Marth was in the ship, leaning against the rail of the sides, looking at Kongo Bongo Island, making their way back to Gangplank. Its ruler, who was sharing the same boat, went near him, loudly chewing some meat he was eating.

'Ya know? I really wanna kill that monkey.' He looked at Marth closely in the eye, with his bloodshot reptilian eyes. 'Why's he in a jail, lord Marth?'

Marth stepped away from the rail, stretching his back and neck and got some rum pored into two cups. He turned to look coldly at . 'He might as well be dead for you, lord K. Rool. We'll send him off to the Empire, to a colosseum. There he'll be of more use, entertaining us. He can't do anything so far away from his home, much less try to come back here.' Marth offered the new sovereign of the Kong Islands a cup. He took it.

'I guess I can't go against Ylisse, huh?' he sipped his rum. 'Well, just keep him away from me, won't ya? Our next stop, the Mushroom Kingdom!'

'Thank you for maintaining your end of the bargain.' Marth said, staring again at Kongo Bongo.

'Of course, lad. Ya help me get these islands, I help ya and that other big bloke get that castle. All's well that ends well, I say! Cheers!' He made a toast with Marth, uninterested, and went away, loudly stepping on the firm wooden boards, below which lied asleep a fallen great beast.

Marth looked over at the column of smoke that had arisen from the hellish landscape of the once lush jungle. It went up high into the sky, covering the sun. He looked at his red-blood hands, dirty from the slaughter. He drank some more rum. 'No cost too great…'

Hey, so I'm back. I'm sorry I haven't posted in ages, but I was very busy studying for mytest to get into university, but all's well now! I'll bes posting as I used to from now on, as I've got all summer ahead of me. With that, review and favourite and please enjoy this new chapter! - Red