Authors' Note: Well… I haven't been here for a long time. Anyway, I got a PS3 and Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time for Christmas and those have inspired me to work on this. As you may remember, Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper will be appearing in Trial of the Heroes II. So without further ado, I present chapter 3 of part III for Trial of the Heroes. Geek out.

Chapter 3:

New Friends

Both Hellcat fighters landed near the base of the dome and the Heroes got out. They approached the base of the dome to try and look for some way through. As they walked forward, someone hissed at them to get their attention. Turning to the right, all three saw a shadowed form beckon to them. Crash edged forward nervously and found himself in the shade of a Wumpa tree next to a very familiar muscular, long snouted cat type creature.

"Crash Bandicoot?" it asked in a gruff voice.

"Uhh, yeah," Crash replied uncertainly. The glint of long teeth smiling made Crash shiver slightly.

"Crash no worry, Tiny Crash's friend now," it said with stereotypically stupid 3rd person dialogue.

"Tiny? You're on our side?" The large Tasmanian tiger walked into the light so that Spyro and the anthropomorphic Jak could see him.

"Tiny help Crash free spy, Tiny will open secret door," he assured. The large tiger grabbed what looked like a normal tree root, but as he pulled on it and the square patch of ground around it lifted up, it became evident that the root was actually a handle. Crash led the way down the hole into the ground and through a small, cramped tunnel. While this was no trouble for the quadrupedal Spyro or the small Crash, Jak's large form had a lot of trouble squeezing into the small space.

After about ten minutes of terrifying claustrophobia, the end of the tunnel came right up into a small square of flat grey bricks. Crash heaved this open, slid it to the side cautiously, and clambered out with Spyro and Jak close on his tail. Once Jak had slowly shifted the bricks back into place, they all proceeded cautiously down the hallway. The few Lab Assistants they saw, all of which were buffed up with some new technology, were easily dispatched with either a zap of Blue Eco or an Electric Bolt from Spyro. The biggest problems were when they encountered one of Cortex's anthro minions, or at least it was a problem at first. Jak soon found one use for the sword in stealth: the hilt could easily knock anthros out. This all took them up towards the high towers of the castle, though they had to go through many before finding the correct one. Once they found the correct one, it was easy finding the correct room for there was only one that had cells in it. It was even easier to find the correct cell for only one was occupied and the occupant was sobbing. Crash ran to the front of the occupied cage to see a female bandicoot that he had never seen before. Unlike Coco or Tawna, she had brown hair that was worn in a braid down to the small of her back and blue eyes rather than green. She was around Crash's age and height with similar fur color even but was (for obvious reasons) a lot more feminine looking. Her sobbing stopped as she looked up at Crash. He could now see that one of her bangs hung down so that it half covered her left eye.

"Are you… you're not…" she stammered. Crash smiled broadly.

"Crash Bandicoot: hero, rebel, and lady's man!" he said with a smile. The bandicoot girl giggled a little at Crash's display as said Hero attempted to take out the door. Jak and Spyro watched in amusement as Crash pulled and heaved at the door until Spyro turned to Jak.

"Aren't you gonna help him?" he asked. Jak chuckled again and walked up to the door.

"Need and help? Or are you still trying to impress the lady we still have to save?" he asked while chuckling. Crash gave one final heave, then toppled to the ground in exhaustion. Jak stepped up, concentrated a large amount of Red Eco in his arms, and wrenched the door straight out of the frame. As he leaned it up against the wall, the bandicoot girl ran up to Crash and kneeled down beside him.

"Are you alright?" she asked with worry. Crash opened his eyes a little wider and smiled once he saw how close she was to him.

"I am now," he smiled. Jak and Spyro both shook their heads while Sparx and Daxter (who were there all the time just so you know) both booed and said: "Get off the stage!" Aku-Aku (who has been here all the time as well) heaved Crash to his feet and made sure he was steady.

"Alright, now to get out of here," he said. The bandicoot girl stayed closely behind Crash, which the other two Heroes could tell he enjoyed. No girl (except Coco and a relationship of romantic nature with her would be creepy) had shown interest in him, with the exception of Tawna, and that was for a very limited time. So this new girl who identified herself as Kendra was something that Crash was not going to miss out on.

A few diversions later, all caused by the silent alarm that was triggered once Jak wrenched off the door to Kendra's cell, they found themselves on the outside of the castle walking along the descending platforms that were there just like on the original castle. Crash had reluctantly agreed that because of Kendra's jumping ability which was far short of the Heroes' she should ride on Jak's back. Thankfully, she showed little interest in him and kept looking back at Crash with a small smile. Eventually, they found themselves faced with a very large gap between ledges which Spyro flew over and Jak Rocket Jumped across. Neither Crash nor Spyro wanted Crash to ride Spyro as neither had enjoyed it; in Crash's case it had been quite painful.

"Crash!" Kendra called out. Crash looked to see her fumbling with something before tossing a Violet Gem at him. He caught it and it sparked to show the mask of Lo-Lo the Air Elemental.

"Well Crash, it seems you've come to me for a move, the final move of this adventure I might add," he said in a high voice. "This time I grant you the ability to fly like a helicopter with your spin attack, so go do it to rejoin your friends." The purple electricity flew into Crash and he stowed away the Clear Gem. He jumped and spun around to glide like a helicopter towards the others, which was met by an admiring sigh by Kendra.

"So it is true, you can use the power of the Elementals sealed inside these Gems to do amazing things." Crash smiled sheepishly.

"Well yeah, still nothing to those two, they can do things without rocks," he said. Kendra still smiled at him as they continued down the side of the castle to the ground.

"Now there's a problem," Daxter said in annoyance. "The door to outside this dome thingy IS ON THE INSIDE!" Someone made a "Psst" sound and they looked around to see Tiny holding open the entrance to another secret tunnel, this one thankfully much larger. The Heroes and Kendra all followed him out of the dome and to the Hellcat fighters which they used to fly to the airship.

Meanwhile, in the secret meeting room of the Villains, things were going very badly.

"You nincompoop!" the dark mask shouted towards a cowering Neo Cortex. "We have the most powerful beings in the universe by our side AND WE'RE STILL LOSING! All because of your inadequate planning. You know that those Heroes just got away with the girl? She had one of the Gems with her and you know that with each subsequent Gem, Crash and that airship grow stronger!" Cortex leaned up against the wall.

"Mighty Uka-Uka, I have thought of this and that is why the girl is so dangerous to them," he whimpered. The mask backed off.

"Explain," he demanded. Cortex licked his lips nervously.

"I have implanted a chip into the girl's brain with which I can control her at any time. She has already had Crash Bandicoot fall for her which was her original purpose and with that fact, she could easily assassinate Crash and the other Heroes quite easily." The mask grinned once he heard this.

"Well Cortex, it seems that you have learned from past mistakes. Good work, universal domination may be ours yet."

Author's Note: Reviews make the world go 'round… I think.