At the same time as LOG's grisly fate was made uncertain by the witch acting out, the sunny and cloudy sky touched down upon the home of the three time, maybe five time heroes of the isle, Banjo and Kazooie. Now, the bear and bird was no stranger to stuff happening at any given moment, having their little sister being kidnapped during a day's rest, their friend being killed during a game of Texas Hold'em, or their days of eating pizza being ruined by a game set by the ethereal lord of all gaming. Where have they been now since 2008?
Outside in the hot summer heat, the bear finished harvesting the crops of carrots, throwing in the last of it in his woven basket to not burden Kazooie out of getting out of her safe spot. The ol' bear felt the heat beating down on him, sweat going down his face and chest as he sighed, relieved that he picked the last of the carrots.
"Mmhm! Dat should be the last of it! How's about it Kazooie, looks good?" Banjo chirped, prompting Kazooie to come out and take an inspection to the basket.
"What I think? I think you shouldn't have bothered and we could've gotten some at the market. Yknow, like real people." Kazooie snarked, still as the dry bird as possible.
"Maybe could use 'em as good carrot juice, if you're willing to say.. kill them?" This made the carrots with eyes shriek and leap from the basket, starting to hobble all over the place. Kazooie cracked up while Banjo groaned.
"D'yooooooah! Now ah have to grab 'em all! Ah had a thin' going on and you ruined it."
"Don't hate me, hate how our vegetables have feelings and thoughts, probably living every day with the fear that they'll be chopped and served," The bird looked at Banjo, explaining their world like he hasn't known already. "Maybe their little baby carrots will be watching as the big mean bear eats their daddy up!"
"I'm not a big mean bear.." Banjo murmured lowly, starting to grab some stray carrots as he felt like he was being personally attacked.
In truth, Kazooie didn't even know why she was like this. They had gotten the call to be in Smash more often, and had plenty of scheduled fights with Mario, Diddy, and all of their old and new friends laid out for what seems to be a long time. The least Kazooie could do was to help Banjo carry some, and that's exactly what she did. Leaping out, she snatched some carrots from the grass and threw them back into the basket. "How's this?"
"Nyaaaw, you really do have a heart." Banjo chuckled, almost intentionally doofy like.
"Oh.. whatever. I can't get too snarky when we're back with our old friends for the time being. Finally, I get to smash Falco!" Kazooie grinned.. ".. oh, and maybe fight him too."
After they grabbed the last of the carrots, they looked at each other and smiled. "Ya know, Kazooie?" Banjo started, "Ah honestly wouldn't know where I would be if you weren't around. Yer kinda like the backbone, yknow? Heh.. even spend your days in my back."
Kazooie felt like she needed to be huffy, and she was.. with an overwhelming blush to her beak. "I'm just there cause I grew up with you, man. Don't get all mushy. Graaaw.." Banjo snickered, not helping himself to smile at Kazooie blushing.
Right there and then, the bird leapt into the backpack with a Bree! The famous video game duo now walking off towards their newly decorated house. No more gaudy Jolly pink, just blue and blue alone. Sorry, Jolly. You'll have to get off somewhere else.
Suddenly, the bear felt his ear flicker. "Hm?" Banjo looked around and heard a faint noise. Something electronic.. and not right. He looked back at Kazooie with a hushed face, almost like a "did you hear that" face, and he knew Kazooie had that face too. Suddenly, the noise grew closer and more apparent, even louder. And like that, the basket they were holding glitched out of existence. The duo stared at where their food was at, mouth agape at what happened. Looking by the waterfall, their surprise was realized when an engulfing purple-black void was starting to close upon them, phasing out everything they grew near and dear to in a horrifying glitched manner, the land fading color and static occupying some of the scenery.
"Oh my fff-!" Kazooie could only muster.
"Kazooie, we gotta run! NOW!" The bear started running from the void, speeding up closer to them before Kazooie leapt out to talon trot both herself and Banjo to gain a bit of traction. They soon realized they were sitting ducks as they had nowhere else to run that wasn't occupied by the buggy vortex of eternity.
"Banjo, the ugly vehicle with your mug on it!"
"Good idea, we just n-" And then he saw it get no-clipped right into the grass, before disappearing completely.
"... good." Kazooie gritted her teeth before just attempting to fly on the spot, holding Banjo and trying to flap over their house and mountains that occupied the back. But with every flap, she felt herself and Banjo get sucked harder by the hole, the hellish glitch hole having a grasp on them.
"Kazooie, we're not g̴̣͎̻̖̠̫ͅo̺̣̙͝n̼͇̗̜̝̟̥͜n̠a͈ͅ ͚͠mà̩ḵ̖̻͇̘̺̻e͈̥͎͔̤͍ ͓͓̜͔̰͢i̢t̳̥̭͟!"
"I̪͓̼ ̵K̞̬̤NO̙W!̙͔̖" She cried loud, flapping as hard as she can before the both of them finally got sucked into the vortex, like the rest of Spiral Mountain and the Isle o' Hags."
"A̵AA͏A͟A̢A͝A̶AA̸AAA̷AH!" The bear and bird fell right into the wormhole, falling into what seemed like a giant dark room. They eventually landed with a thud on the cold hard floor, Kazooie next to Banjo.
"Banjo..? Are you okay?!" Kazooie struggled to move forward to Banjo, knocked out cold. Nothing a few slaps to the face couldn't handle.
"W-what the? What's happenin'?!"
"I don't know.. are we dead? It feels like we're dead." Kazooie tried to joke to herself to make light of the situation. A valiant effort at least. "The last thing I knew was.. a pixelly nightmare sucking us and our home up!"
"Oh.." Banjo sat up on his butt, rubbing at his head. "Oh man.. you don't think that the ol' witch is behind all of this, right?"
"I get the creeping suspicion that it is.." Kazooie stood up, shaking a bit from the trauma that they just endured. "It looks like an empty room.. I think I can still hear the outdated console noises."
Banjo stood up and immediately petted at Kazooie's head, something he usually did under stress to help himself keep calm. "Mmmnn.. ah think we need to ask LOG. It feels like more of his line of work to get in these machine type stuff."
"Wait, you mean Radio Head? You're right!" Kazooie looked up at Banjo with a determined look. "There's NO way that floating CRT unit can't know what's going on! We gotta find him and ask what the bloody 'ell's going on!"
Banjo was a little less on the hopeful side. "Ah mean we can but.. who knows how long and far this place is? We could be searching for him for hours!"
"Oh please," The breegull started trotting in a single direction. "I'm sure at one point, he'll be right under our noses to answer any quest-BRAAAAH!" Kazooie tripped over a metallic husk, falling over it in a clumsy manner. The bear couldn't help but laugh at Kazooie's misfortune.
"Ahuhuh.. well, when you're right, you're right." This was replied with Kazooie giving Banjo a British middle finger. Banjo merely rolled his eyes. "Kazooie.."
"The heck is this? Is Loggo Breath sleeping on the JOB?" Kazooie looked down at the disengaged god, circuitry springing from the back of his monitor. "Hey! God of all things dumb and clickbaity! Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!" The bird kicked the god right side up, and to their surprise, the Lord of Games had a large hole in his monitor. Kazooie immediately shrieked.
The bear gasped, feeling his heart skip. "Ohmaigawrsh! What the heck happened?!"
"Holy shit, his face's been broken in!" Kazooie yelled, before the duo saw his speaker mouth move.
"... turn… me on…"
"Ew, no." Kazooie replied, before receiving a hard slap to the back of her head by Banjo.
"He means turn on the monitor." The bed immediately.. uh.. um. ".. how does this work again?"
"OH, for crying out—" Kazooie pulled him over and flicked the on switch, letting the monitor dimly turn on.
The Lord of Games was in a weakened state, his mice were all out of commission, his powers were depleted, and he can't do the cool pause and appear thing that he liked to do.
"The.. old witch.. my chips.. stolen."
Banjo and Kazooie looked at each other and lidded their eyes. Gruntilda, yup. The lord continued, "My chipschipschips.. give me power. She.. entrapped your friends.. will take over the world.. she must be stopped..!"
Suddenly, his monitor blinks purple and white, and ol' Gruntilda was broadcasting herself from LOG's monitor, possessing the god for a time being.
"ARAAAAHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEE!"
"Gruntilda!" The duo said in unison.
"In the flesh, you idiotic swine! In less than a day, the world will be mine! Try and fail to save your friends, whilst the whole world meets its end! The whole world will be remade square, a giant version of my old lair! AAAAAAAHAAAAHAAAHEEHAHAHAAAA!" She cackled, but suddenly coughed up a stray hairball from Piddles. The transmission was over.
"Mm," Banjo looked at Kazooie and pursed his lips. "Well Kazooie, looks like we're in for another adventure. Only this time, ah think this won't be as easy as the other times."
"I'm delighted." Kazooie groaned. "Wait, you said she trapped our friends? Cmon, speak up man!"
LOG's phrases were riddled with glitches and bugs, but the more he spoke the more coherent he gotten. "Your friends are-are.. trapped in each genre of gaming that.. she set up. The chips that give me
p̠̕ow̪e͈̗r̞ l̹̘̯̼͠a͈̳͖̙ỵ̥͖͠ͅ ͙̪s̹̼t҉̠̜̦̝͉uc̖̣͕ͅk̫.̹̦͔͚̟͙͕͢.̛̺ ͚̙͇u͉͓̤̞͎̮p̢̝͖̞̝o̷̭͚͎͇ͅṉ̱̹͖͕̻̤ your friends and are possessing them..! Remove them, and you'll set your friends and give me the power to help you defeat her!"
"Who did she kidnap?" Banjo questioned.
"Anyone you cons-considered- anyone you considered- a friend.. and Mr. Fit."
"AND him? Uuuuuugh! This deal is getting worse and worse. Whatever, fine. Just tell us where to go."
Around the duo, appeared various video game genres and their accompanying games. Banjo looked confused as he hadn't played a video game himself since 2005. Kazooie was equally as confused, but even more unimpressed.
"Uh.. We Mr. Fit, Just Party, Trophy Tom Racing, Mumbo Party, Bottles Age.. oh my lord, this is all so dull."
"I'm aaaware.. the old skull in a jar made those games. Intentionally dull and broken against you, so you need to reall find a way to b b bb beat the game. s. Pickiness isn't in my co d e." LOG's monitor suddenly went static. "Have limited energy, need to shut down.. best of luck." He then shut down and laid dormant.
"... Well, this is more meta than we've ever been." Banjo looked over at Kazooie, scratching his head.
"Right? But we may as well do ol' Atari Jaguar a favor. I'm dying to kick some witchy butt one more time." Kazooie and Banjo jumped to do a high five together. "Guh-huh!" "Bree!"
"Alright Kazooie, first thin's first is what we're going to go into first. Ah mean, if these are Grunty's games, no doubt any of them will be trying to kill us."
"I dunno. Most if not all of these games look like total rubbish. It's not like there's a cool game like- A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE GAME!?" The breegull practically felt her jaw drop at first sight of a video game appearing in front of them that had King Jingaling, back in his zombified state, posed reaching out at the cover. This made Kazooie giddy as she rubbed her wings. "Hoohoooo! I was sellin' that wrinkled hasbeen short, this is my kinda jam! Getting to survive in a zombie invasion, being all BANG BANG with your shotgun, blowing zombies' brains out and seeing them splatter all over the wall and floor! And-"
"STOP! Please.. Just stop!" Banjo closed Kazooie's beak shut with his paw, and was holding back some vomit himself. "Let's just.. Go in and rescue King Flingaling."
"Man, you're no fun." Kazooie muttered.
And soon enough, they took a running start and leapedinto the game cover, teleporting them to a completely different world full of dread, abandoned cities and streets, and fog. Lots and lots of fog. The bear and bird gulped and looked around, nothing but the streets being deathly quiet. "Banjo, if there's one thing I have to tell you, is that this is the best thing I have ever been in in my entire life."
"Really? Ah think it's the worst.."
"Oh, you handled Mad Monster Mansion, you can handle some silly undead zombies."
Banjo gulped. Ghouls and goblins they've handled well, but zombies? Ones that Gruntilda made? He wasn't completely against it, but he needed something to fire at them with.. Oh right, Kazooie. Thankfully, the breegull was more than willing to become his shotgun once more. And thus, they ventured in deeper into the town's foggy streets, where they were being expected by an unseen, undead force of nature.