A/N
Told you guys the next chapter would be along shortly.
Happy two year anniversary Twinsane Wedding! Ah! Man, where does time go? :P Let's get to it, no need to bore you with notes! Reminder: aforementioned spoilers ahead.
FlautaRara you said things were going too well for the N Team. Well I fixed that in this chapter. And it'll probably continue in the next.
A Twinsane Wedding
Chapter 22 Reveal and Conceal
"Madam Amberly?" The lead Brat Girl replied, kneeling down once again in respect tword Amberly. She was feeling slightly sheepish as she looked at the state of their uniforms. Her professional look had been besmirched and she hoped it wouldn't be noticed. Snarling up at Bruce who was still standing, the Gothic bat grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and forcefully pulled him down onto one knee. She hit him in the shoulder afterward. "Have some respect would ya!?" She hissed, baring her mouth full of razor sharp fangs.
"Did you get zem?"Amberly asked, her voice firm as she arose from the misty pit once again. She placed her hands on her hips. Her demand was like a drill sargent, causing her students to squirm uncomfortably under her gaze.
Everyone looked at each other worryingly, totally unprepared to break the disappointing news to the headmistress. They took a deep breath, "No, we got slammed and thrown into a puddle of acid. And Nina and her crybaby uncle escaped. Nina said that she wasn't coming back here." The lead Brat Girl explained, her allies nodded in agreeable disappointment as they whined bitterly.
"She also...knocked the wind...out of me..." Bruce wheezed, sucking in air, he felt as if he would pass out.
Sighing, the headmistress figured there would be no way of getting Nina Cortex back but someone needed to be punished for this occurrence. "Zince you don't have Nina, detention for all of you. You will spend zee remainder of zee day thinking carefully on how to znare a successful plan to outsmart anyone else who could potentially stumble into our school." Bruce and the Brat Girls hung their heads. "You promised you vouldn't fail me. You zaid I could count on you. And go clean yourselves up, you all look horrible." Madam Amberly shook her head in disappointment, her protege clearly needed more training if she was to be at the top of the Brat Girl class.
"Dang it. I hate this." Grumbling quietly to himself, the boy and the small group of gothic bat students stood up and made their way twords the detention room. "Nice going." Bruce noted, shoving the leader of the mutant pack forward with ease, which deeply aggravated her. "You landed us in detention."
Snarling, the shorter of the two whipped around on her heels to face him, "Oh, shut your trap!" The Brat Girl harshly snapped back, while giving him a swift kick in the shine, piling on and adding to previous injuries. It earned a groan from the taller student who almost toppled over from the new agonizing pain that had been bestowed upon him. "Now march!"
Carefully setting the spybots down, positioned in the same place as before, the N Team once again ventured into Cortex's room. "I'd just like to know, how long he's had the shrine." Brio shuddered at the unbearable image of catching Cortex in the act with a camera, observing Crash from a distance or prowling around at night, flashed through his mind. "He's a creep and we didn't even know, and me and N Gin have been friends with him since the academy. But I guess everyone has a skeleton in their closet. And in the academy, we actually did have skeletons in some closets." Picking up a stack of books and magazines that were lying in a crooked pile on a shelf, he flipped through them and took in each title. Secrets to Hair Growth, Wumpa Times Magazines, Dr. Roo's Book of Coping With N Sanity, multiple copies of Villians Weekly. Huffing, he dropped the pile with a thud after finding nothing of interest and kneeled down on the floor. "'Secrets to Hair Growth'? Didn't even know they made books like that."
Nothing looked out of place so far. Nothing seemed suspicious.
N Gin returned to the computer and opened up more files. No more mysterious playlists, just various images of Cortex himself that he had used Photoshop on to give himself long, flowing hair and abs. "Oh!" N Gin immediately winced in horror and closed that specific file, though in his mind he wanted to trash it. 'I'll never unsee that now but I am going to pretend I never saw it in the first place.' He shuddered horrifically as a frightened gasp exited his mouth. Upon hearing that uncomfortable noise, Tropy and the rest of them turned around.
"What did you find?" Brio asked, not looking up and not taking his focus off from where he was; down on the floor, crawling around and looking under everything. "Is it something suspicious?"
The shorter scientist took a breath before he spoke, "You don't wanna know. It's just plain creepy." Turning off and then stepping away from the PC, N Gin placed his hands over his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to erase that picture. It didn't succeed though. "You finding anything?" The cyborg asked, deciding to quickly change the topic of conversation so the image wouldn't remained burned into his retinas.
Brio was carefully feeling each floorboard, alongside the wooden baseboard of the wall which met the floor at a point. He was jumping back and forth in between the stone walls and the wooden boards, carefully observing to see if there were any loose ones. "I'm not finding anything either..." He instantly trailed off his sentence when he felt his hand come across a loose piece of base board. Intrigued, Brio applied some pressure and pushed against it, it started to bend inward. "Scratch that, this board feels kinda loose, someone find me a crowbar or a hammer."
"On it." N Gin dashed off to the hall closet and came back seconds later. "Here you go." Extending his arm out, he handed Brio not one but both of the instruments that he had enlisted along with a flashlight to see and some nails to put the wooden plank back just so as to keep things more on the down low.
"Thank you...wait a minute. Where did you find those?"
"Hall closet, came across it while rummaging around for the spybots."
"When did we get a crowbar?" The unnecessary exchange of questions and answers was then halted abruptly.
"Are you two gonna keep mouthing off questions or are we going to see what's under warps?" Tropy interjected, before this nonsense could escalate any further. The duo clamped their mouths shut in an instant and shared a look. "Always with excuses and you guys know how I feel about those. Proceed."
"Agreed, we've limited time here, hurry up!" Uka Uka barked, not wanting to break their attention away from the task at hand. "And when you said that you rewired those spybots, did you happen to test how much of a range, that connection had?"
"Course I did, their range is over a hundred yards away. We'll get out of here with time to spare." N Gin didn't seem bothered by the small window slowly closing. "And you didn't think we had time to kill did you Uka Uka? Well, the master's not back yet." The mask decided to let that remark slide for now.
Getting a firm grip on the tool, N Gin wedged it in between the boards and began to pry them loose, the nails falling out and the high pitched squeaking grated on everyone's ears. Soon, the wood gave way and fell to the floor with a clatter that echoed through the room. More dust flew up into the air after the action was carried out, causing everyone to cough. "Alright, what'd we find?" Uka Uka's curiosity was peaked at its highest before it dwindled upon the sound of everyone's coughing, "Besides the fact that Cortex really needs to dust in here that is?"
Shining the light into the hole in the wall and with a great sense of caution, N Gin reached his arm in and pulled out a dusty old box. "It's a box." Picking up a thin rectangular object, he stared at it, confused for a moment as he turned it over in his hands. "This is a VHS tape." His real eye then caught a glimpse of title on the side. It was written on a strip of faded, ragged tape, the letters almost unreadable. "There's something written on it. Looks like Subject #218. Ok!" N Gin piped up. "Who's got a tape player? Oh right I do." He chuckled, amused by his own realization moments after.
Brio's eyes grew big like saucers as memories came back to him about the name of the tape. "I think I breifly remember that tape. Wait, is there anything else besides the box?" Settling down next to the cyborg, he reached his hand into the dusty hole, only to pull it back seconds later when he felt cobwebs. "Yuck. Disgusting." Brio whined shaking them off. "Let's go sift through these and see what Cortex did. Hopefully this was worth it. Let's see if any rejog my memory."
Heading into N Gin's room, they watched the rocket headed scientist rummaged around under his own bed, moving bits and pieces of mechs and other items aside in order to retrieve a VHS player he had smuggled away. Blowing off the thick layer of dust that settled on top and pulling the cord out from where it lay on the floor in a big, tangled mess, N Gin connected it to his tv, set up the whole process and popped the tape in. As the devices whirred to life, everybody glued their eyes to the screen. What appeared was Crash standing before a long line of crates, before he proceeded to jump across them. Cortex's voice soon followed after, it seemed like he was observing him and commenting on his progress.
Brio breifly thought these moving pictures looked vaguely familiar. Surveying the old clips, he tried to remember as far back as his mind would take him and it was only after Crash fell to his death that all this made sense, "Oh, now I remember this, from years ago in the masters former castle which is in charred ruins. These were the testing chambers before the vortex. The so called "Subject #218" was Crash."
"These are all new to me then, some of these were before I was even interviewed and quite possibly way before Uka Uka or N Tropy." From the corner of his non imitation eye, N Gin saw the mask nod. "We have found ancient relics from the past." A puff of smoke emitted from the rocket in his head due to the excitement over these. "Geez, no wonder they're coated in dust, they're from decades ago." As the scientists watched and listened, the feeling of anxiety soon settled over N Brio. Cortex couldn't have had feelings for Crash dating all the way back to the testing days...could he? He didn't look away as the tape finished playing and Tropy popped in another one that had caught his attention. The one that Tropy chose had an interesting title attached to it...
Diary Entry
May 30th 1996
"Wonder what this one could be?" Tropy smirked with malice, he only figured that this was gonna be good. Everyone leaned in close to the screen and tensed up in suspense.
Nina very carefully steered her uncles dirigible home and she had to admit, this flying thing was fun. She didn't know how she was managing but she was. Her gaze was straight ahead of her but Nina couldn't stop herself from looking at Cortex out of the corner of her eye once and a while due to him now being an emotional wreck. Neo's shaking had subsited and he was now sitting up but he couldn't fully relax for fear of being watched by his mother. Chills ran up his spine as he realized that he was. Going back through his childhood, reliving the trauma from school, fighting his newfound feelings for Crash...Would this day ever come to an end for him? "Just try to take it easy and relax till we get back, we're almost home Uncle Neo." Nina's reassurance was the only thing keeping Neo calm and holding him back from mentally and physically snapping.
"Good. Now I can just relax and try to survive the drama will surely ensue after having my mother around for a while. No wonder she has an establishment in the mountains, Natalie Cortex is a cold hearted woman and not actually the easiest person for me to talk to. I don't see eye to eye with her."
"You're no picnic yourself Neo." Natalie piped up, clearly overhearing them. "You were a problem child to raise."
"There you go, criticizing me again! I complained about therapy sessions only two days ago cause I didn't believe that I required such nonsense but now, I'm actually glad to be going back tomorrow." Neo couldn't believe that he had just admitted that out loud. Nina smiled, both proud and impressed that he was going to give family therapy a chance.
Even though Natalie almost didn't want to be involved in this, it didn't stop the woman from wanting to know what this was all about. "Why are you in therapy anyway? What did you do now and whose life did you ruin?" She knitted her eyebrows together, tilted her head and looked him dead in the eyes, while still wondering why Neo ended up as such a horrible son.
Cortex froze and he almost forgot the main reason why. "Um..." Soon, it all came back to him as Crash flashed through his mind. Cortex wanted to focus his eyes on something other than his mother as he explained but her Medusa like stare was too strong for him to resist. "Right, it's because me and Crash have issues to work out due to a decade long rivalry. Nina and someone else set up those sessions for us and on the contrary, they are working." Just explaining that to his mother felt like talking with a mouthful of sand; and it wasn't a very pleasant sensation. "I'm still figuring some stuff out. I've ruined the lives of so many people, some more than others." Cortex's hand trailed down his side and felt the photo in his pocket.
Before having a chance to bring up more about Crash (which he didn't want to yet), a wave of releif rushed over him as Cortex saw the fortress come into view. "We're home!" Nina triumphantly announced, landing her uncles dirigible overhead their shelter and extracting the keys from the ignition. "All safe and sound Uncle Neo. Here's your keys back." She tossed them to him.
The scientist pocketed them and hopped to his feet immediately, "Thank goodness, now I don't have to carry on with this conversation." Neo didn't want to have to end this chat on an awkward note or mention what he really thought about Crash to his mother. At the moment, his brain was scrambled, overwhelmed by the countless thoughts that were racing around inside. He needed to carve out time to sort out these multiple scenarios.
The N Teams eyes widened in shock after the first few seconds of the current VHS playing. "Dear Diary, I seem to be developing a connection with the subject. A fatherly...wait, did I hit the wrong button?!" There was an extended pause before Cortex spoke again but he didn't know if the bandicoot had heard anything. "Subject is to ignore my last message."
Upon hearing that statement, Tropy pushed the stop button and powered down the device, ejecting the tape afterwards. "Alright, I've seen enough, I beleive we've got more than enough confirmation about our suspicions, now we just need Coco and to wait for Cortex to return." The time master rubbed his hands together. "Go place the box back where you found it."
"Sir, yes sir." The cyborg felt like a soilder saying that as started off. Right as he entered the masters room for a third time, the alarms for the spybots sounded. 'Oh boy...'Gripped with a panic, N Gin bolted down and snatched the robot up from the front door and then fled back up to his room. "Guys code red. Code red! Cortex is back! Shut everything down and make things seem normal! Raise no suspicion! You guys put everything back, I'll stall him and alert Coco once the master is ready for dinner. Go, go, go!" He shoved the little robots into Brio's arms and took off running like a marathoner.
"With time to spare hm?" Uka Uka asked, his expression going neutral. N Gin started down the stairs as Brio ran back, powered Cortex's computer off and started nailing the boards back up to conceal the evidence of them being in the masters room.
As the airships door opened, Cortex's mother peered out the window and down below them to see just exactly what she was walking into. Sliding down the rope ladder after Nina who handled her luggage, she was once again skeptical. Her sons current means of living didn't exactly scream "luxury" to the woman. "This is where you're living?` She streched her hands and arms above her head, which had fallen asleep on the ride over. "You couldn't have sprung for something better?" Natalie queried as she approahed the "castle", her uncertainty about therapy and Neo's current living accommodation was sending her mixed messages and she didn't know what to make of it.
"Yeah, well it's only because Crash destroyed our other sanctuary years ago before mine and his first battle after his escape from my castle. He's been a thorn in my side ever since. This shelter that me and my other minions built is only temporary until my real castle is repaired, which I have to check on at some point. Eh, do it tomorrow after therapy." Cortex concluded, opening the door. "Well, come on in I guess." It looked as if Cortex was just going to have to deal with this until tomorrow. The hard part would be avoiding his mother.
"Talk about a warm welcome." The woman stepped on the heels of her sons feet as they walked and almost tripped him. He only growled in irritation back at her while Nina looked on in worry.
As he entered the castle and leaned his hoverboard up against the wall next to the door, Neo looked around, confused as to why nobody was in the lounge/living area.
Natalie sat her stuff down and scanned the premises, taking in the setting. "Yeah, this seems liveable." The comment exiting her mouth was laced with sarcasm. The scientist was too emotionally drained to fire any sort of comeback at her, instead another low growl sounded in his throat. All he wanted to do was unwind for a while, crack open Dr. Jacobson's book to get a start on it and then head for bed. Tomorrow would be a new day.
"Hey guys?! Where are you?!" He tilted his head when he saw N Gin come down the stairwell, he was no longer donning his cooking attire. The rest of his minions then made themselves present, following behind the short scientist, they all assembled at the bottom of the stairs. "Hey, what's up guys?"
"Master you're back..." Brio said, delighted to see him. "We've been awaiting your return. Where have you been? It's dinner time and you've been gone all day?"
Even though he was still feeling emotionally exhausted, he managed to responded with an anwser, "Well, I started at therapy, then went tword the mountains near my lab, met up with a familiar face and finally, I took a trip back to Madam Amberly's to unenroll Nina where I also had to relive that day. Remember Melanie and the academy's social?" Brio and N Gin looked at him as if he were crazy but they nodded yes. "Remember Bruce, the one who tripped me and then embarrassed me in front of everyone?" Images ran through both their heads.
"Is he still there?" N Gin asked, his knees starting to shake as he moved slightly to hide behind Brio. "He is never gonna graduate. Are you sure it was him?"
Wordlessly, Cortex nodded. "Yes and he told Nina all about that and the nickname, I'm still haunted by that." His two friends sucked in air through their teeth. Quickly looking over his shoulder, Neo locked his eyes on his mother, who wasn't paying attention to anything that had been uttered so far. It was a huge releif for the scientist. "Throughout the first half of this day, I've had to relive my whole traumatic, sucky childhood."
"Cortex, who's this?" Uka Uka questioned as he saw Natalie with Nina. "Doesn't she seem a bit old for you?" All of the minions almost burst out laughing.
Natalie scoffed upon hearing that. "Please, who on Earth would want Neo here? He's nothing but a disappointment." She stated with a straight face.
"Nina, is it wrong to want to hit your parents?" Neo whispered, as he rubbed at the spot where she had hit him earlier. The girl nodded yes, eyes widening in complete shock. It was understandable why her uncle wanted to do that, given the trauma and abuse he endured but Nina also thought that retaliation seemed slightly excessive. "Shoot." Snapping his finger, Cortex had no choice but to enlighten the group standing before him. "Yeah, I wish I could say I don't know her but sadly I do, from day one. This is that "familiar face" I mentioned. Guys, beleive it or not but this is my mother. Meet Natalie Cortex, owner of the club hangout Moulin Cortex in the mountains." He introduced. "Mother, these are my colleagues. Brio, Tropy, N Gin and the floating mask is Uka Uka. Formerly my boss before I quit and I'm not regretting that choice at all."
"Hi there. Me and Brio knew your son from school. Friends till the end." N Gin greeted. He awkwardly looked around when Natalie stared at him with a blank expression. He then realized why. "Oh, the missile jutting out from my head? Well that was an accident from years ago. We rewired it into a life support system for me."
"Ok, we can get fully acquainted with each other tomorrow. Right now I'm starving. A handful of Wumpa Fruits from a therapist's office doesn't exactly count as a full meal. Who made dinner?" Cortex questioned. Everyone pointed to the cyborg. "Oh really? Let's hope it's edible, then again, I'll probably eat anything since I didn't have lunch. I'll just go take my hoverboard to my room and I'll be right back. Nina, you go get Natalie set up."
All three Cortex's headed upstairs while four smirks appeared on the minions faces as they watched their fellow scientist disappeared.
After the Bandicoots dinner, Coco was relaxing by the fireplace containing a warm, glowing fire inside. It was curiosity of Crash and Crunch who were hard at work on the dishes. They figured the process would go faster if two people were involved. As for Aku Aku, he was weaving a bedtime tale for the pets to help them calmly wind down for the evening. Baby T was curled up in his bed, with eyes half litted and Polar and Pura were lying next to each other, their breathing calm and in synch with each other as they made their way to dreamland.
Coco, for the first time since before Crash was tricked by Cortex into following him, was now fully relaxed. The youngest of the three siblings gazed around the room, taking her focus off of her laptop which contained social media sites and comment threads. Being a techie and a slight nerd, Coco liked to keep up with what was going on. Her previous stress about accidentally blowing the N Teams scheme had disappeared, which was a weight lifted from her shoulders. The blonde haired marsupial sighed, turning to look at the crackling, calming fire. A relaxing ambiance added to her current state of serenity as she situated herself in an easy chair. She looked at the clock. 5:43. Coco had a few hours to kill before bed. Hopefully assisting the N Team with their plot would go smoothly if it occured soon. Her fingers were crossed.
The clinking of dishes pulled her from her browsing and she looked up, turning her head in the direction of the sound. Setting her device aside, Coco got up and waltzed tword the kitchen. Poking her head in, Crash was gathering plates that were being placed in the draining rack by Crunch and drying them, pausing every so often to stare at his own reflection, due to the bandicoots easily distracted nature. "I was going to volunteer to do those...that is if you didn't mind!" She quickly added before looking down at the floor.
Crunch turned his head to face her. "We do mind. Aside from rounding up a search party to track you down this afternoon, you've been good all day. We want you to continue that for the rest of the evening. Think you can manage?"
"Mmm hm. You got it. In fact I think I'll turn in early so I can get some extra rest and relaxation. See you in the morning." Coco gave a thumbs up and soon, her two siblings beamed and returned the gesture. Turning on her heels, she calmly walked out of the kitchen, pausing to look at the calender. Five days now until me, Crash and Cortex are in the same room. Keep yourself together until then Coco." She told herself, retreating to her room, computer in hand.
Coco lied in bed with her device next to her, staring at the celing and absent-mindedly twiddling the flashdrive in between her thumbs and index fingers, while she patiently awaited N Gin's transmission. She hated to admit it but Coco never thought that being on the other side would feel so...good. Even if this was just temporary, she knew her loyalty lied with her family.
Static feedback whined and the transmission came through, "Coco, we found something else hidden in Cortex's bedroom. Hidden behind the walls." N Gin said, once again catching the bandicoot off guard. Though it wasn't as startling as the first time, Coco didn't jump out of her fur as a result. It was just unexpected. The feedback wasn't even loud due to her lowering the volume significantly.
The girl could only fantasize about what N Gin was about to reveal, "Let me guess, is it a hidden gem?" She laughed, slapping her knee and then wiping a tear from her eye.
N Gin gave a little laugh of his own in retaliation, "Good one but no. Three things to tell you; one, Cortex is finally back. Two he actually has a real mother and three the main reason why I contacted you is this involves more about your brother. We found tapes dating all the way back to the days of first Cortex Vortex. Back when you and Crash were test subjects. Among the dozen tapes, there was one that contained a diary entry that the master accidently recorded the first part of, turns out he's thought of Crash as a son since the first months before the vortex."
"I'll come once everyone's in bed. That way I'll be able to sneak out or I could just lock my door and be over there in a flash. Going with the second option." Coco didn't want to have to make up another excuse right on the spot like earlier on the beach when her family wandered around looking for her. "What was that second thing you mentioned?" Once again, the girl thought she was hearing things.
N Gin bit his bottom lip out of nervousness. "Sounds good, and don't know of this will effect our plan but Cortex's mother is now with us."
"I thought that's what I heard." Coco's mouth fell open, once again sending her into shock. "Really? She's human like him? I always thought he fell off of a moving vehicle full of wild animals." Everyone had their own fantasy of how Neo Cortex came into the world and their opinions all varied. "Alright, going off topic. Do you need me back so we can execute the scheme?"
"Yeah, about to serve the master dinner. It started off as lunch when you were here and now here we are. See you soon and don't come in the front door, sneak around to the back and climb in through the window on the first floor."
"Gotcha." The connection was lost after that sentence. Coco carefully got to her feet and crept to her bedroom window. After securing her bedroom door lock and looking back at a framed family portrait, the bandicoot carefully unclicked the lock, swung her legs over the edge and jumped down to the ground. "I'm not trying to hurt or betray the family, I'm just being a protective sister who doesn't want to see them hurt." She, closed the window back up, dashed off in a hurry and didn't look back tword the house. Coco didn't stop running until she saw the shelter in the distance come into view.
The time had come to assist the N Team.
A/N
The beginning of this chapter, that was also the last time you'll be seeing Madame Amberly and the Brat Girls. Sorry for those of you who wanted more involving them. :P
I'm not sorry at all. I'm glad to be rid of them.
Of course you are. Things are gonna be dramatic for you next time.
Oh! *whines* And things with my mother are not going to go smoothly.
To quote the movie Are We Done Yet?, "It's gonna get ugly before it gets pretty. "
...
?...review time!
Gucci Mane LaFlare: I know. Between N Gin, N Brio and Cortex, Cortex would've been the main target during those academy days. And also looking back through his traumatic youth, he had always been picked on and been made fun of.
Wishmaker1023: Glad you liked it.
FlautaRara where you at?
Is this it for the stroll down memory lane?
Probably. *smirks* Until next time keep smiling! :3
