Chapter 4

The sun is breaking from the horizon as the birds started singing from the trees by the small bungalow. Opening the door comes out a big muscled bandicoot, stretching his arms, back and legs to warm up before going putting in his earbuds and start his morning jog. Inside the house lays a blonde, female bandicoot Coco, still sleeping in her pink bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals and her pink laptop open on the bedside table with a sleeping face on it. Coco appears to have an uneasy sleep, tossing and turning while groaning in her sleep causing Pura to wake up from his slumber. He is getting worried and goes over to Coco's be, jumps on it and gently paw on her face to wake her up. He has succeeded as Coco quickly opens her eyes and sees Pura's face up close to hers. She groans in annoyance and just turns away to try and go back to sleep, but she couldn't. She can't help but think but think what a weird dream she had as she can remember it clear as day. She was walking down a dark cave, surrounded by little purple shards of crystals glittering from the walls. She keeps walking and walking until she sees the biggest power crystal she has ever seen, lighting up the entire cave. It looks so beautiful, she can't help but be drawn to it. She inches herself closer and closer towards it until she hears a small voice. A woman's voice. It sounded like it was coming from the giant crystal. Coco strains her ears trying to figure out what the voice is saying. It sounds like it is calling out a name. Then, a hand suddenly slammed from inside the crystal making a smashing sound that causes Coco to jump awake, accidentally pushes Pura off the bed. Coco got up and head straight to the kitchen to find the root of the noise. When she got to the kitchen, she sees Nina in her pink nighty, kneeling down trying to pick the glassthat was smashed on to the floor. Coco forgot Nina is staying with us, still watching her trying and failing picking up the glass from the floor due to her giant metal hands. Nina felt she is being watched and looks up to see Coco watching her with an unreadable expression on her face. She immediately stands up, blushing with embarrassment.

"I am sorry, I just wanted a glass of water but the glass slipped out of my hands." Coco just gives her a look and walks towards the sink to get herself a drink. Nina kneels back down to continue cleaning up when she gasped in pain. A shard of glass sticking out from her knee. She pulls it out and blood starts dripping down her leg. Coco sees this, mentally conflicting whether to help her arch nemesis's niece or not. She caved as she sees Nina's eyes starting to form tears. She tears off a bit of kitchen roll, getting dust pan and brush and walks towards Nina, putting a bit of kitchen roll onto her knee,

"Here. Hold this," she says guiding one of Nina's hands to her knee. With a deep sigh Coco starts cleaning up the glass while Nina just sits there, holding her knee not knowing what to do. She is still awkward around Coco. She obviously shows reluctance with the situation but Nina is still grateful for her to let her stay and help her with the cleaning. In all honesty, she rather deal with an angry blonde bandicoot than an evil all powerful magical mask.

"Can't you just take your hands off?" Coco ask while she is getting up and head for the bin.

"No. I always have them. Uncle says he made them for me so I can protect myself."

Coco can't take it anymore. She slammed the dustpan down and sharply turns towards Nina.

"You know your Uncle is an evil man, right? You can not be that stupid! How can you look up to a greedy, selfish and a cowardly man who only wants power for himself. And you genuinely believe he cut off your hands and replace them with giant gauntlets for you? When you can't even use them to get a glass of water? I am sorry but I don't believe that for a second!"

Nina was shocked at first then she becomes furious as she slowly stands up.

"Don't you dare talk about my Uncle like that! He is the only one who stepped up and took care of me from day one! He even stood up against Uka uka when he suggested to get rid of me. I owe him my life." Nina looks down feeling depressed, starting to miss Neo. Coco just sighs,

"Look, when you fought against him for years, witnessing him trying to kill your brother countless of times you can't help but think awful things about him. He is a monster." Suddenly, she is getting a pounding headache. A headache so painful its causing her to collapse on to the floor. Nina immediately ran up to Coco to catch her.

"Are you alright? Coco! Can you hear me!?" Nina shouted at her but Coco couldn't hear anything she said, starting to get flashes of her dream from the previous night. A dark cave, glittering walls, giant purple crystal and a hand, slamming hard from the inside of the crystal, looking like whoever it is it's trying to get out. Everything appears to be the same except she can hear what the voice is shouting in fear.

"Neo!" hand still slamming, trying to get out of the crystal.

"Neo! Ne-co- Coco! Coco!" she felt a hard slap across her face, bringing her back to her house, breathing heavily as her vision starting to go back to normal as she sees Nina's face with a look of worry on her face

"Coco! Are you sick!? You keep screaming my Uncle's name. Shall I go get Aku aku?" Nina asks, still comforting Coco who is trying to figure out what just happened. The back door opens and in comes Crunch who just came back from his morning jog, clearly listening to a cheesy pop song based on his comically bad singing and dancing.

"Fancy yooouuu yooouu da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da oh yeeeaaahh Fancy yoooouuuuu yooouuu-" he slows his singing to a stop and took out his ear buds when he notices Coco and Nina on the floor, glaring at him.

"What?"

Dr N Tropy storms into his lab where it is littered with scraps of metal looking like a junkyard. He slams the door getting ready to start his plan to get rid of Neo Cortex as he can't wait to get his hands on that little dwarf.

"BRIO!" he shouted as a green, goblin like man in a lab coat, swinging from pipe to pipe like a monkey and lands in front of Tropy.

"I need you to do something for me." Brio tilts his head in confusion as Tropy hardly asks him for his help. He can't help but be intrigued.

"When I go visit N. Gin, I need you to turn into a bloodhound and go into Nina and Neo's rooms, get something that heavily smells of them and come back to me. I just invented a new time warp machine that can send me to the location of a specific person I need to fin. In order for this to work I need an object that is full of there DNA, trace to that person that owns that DNA and teleport me to that specific spot. Genius, right?" he asks with an evil chuckle. Brio agrees by chuckling with him, putting his hand in his pocket to take out a little vile of an amber colored liquid. Takes a drop of it and painfully transforms into a bloodhound.

"And when you find the stuff, don't forget to wear your latex gloves before you touch them. We don't want it contaminated with your DNA and have our plans ruined." N Tropy says as he puts latex gloves into Brio's pockets. He opened the door for the hound and follow it out, going down the hall almost skipping along the way till he stops outside the door that says 'Keep Out! Beware: !' Tropy just rolls his eyes and knock on the door.

"Go Away!" shouted the man from the other side of the door when Tropy just clears his throat.

"It's me Nikolas, Nefarious. May I come in?" There was a little pause before the sound of unlocking coming from inside. N. Gin slowly opens the door to reveal his face. Still has a missile throbbing in his head but it looks like it is sinking deeper, his skin has a grey tone and grey strands in his hair.

"Hello D-D-Dr Tropy, what brings you here?" N. Gin asks to invite Tropy in and just goes to continue his work.

"What? Do I need a reason to see my little gingerbread?" he glides smoothly towards N. Gin and puts his arm around his shoulders. N. Gin can't help but blush at this but he is not fooled, he knows Tropy wants something. Tropy continues,

"I was just wondering if you would like to go out for dinner sometime? Dinner, under the stars, just you and me. What do you say?" It sounds tempting. Too tempting which makes N. Gin become suspicious of this offer.

"That s-s-sounds nice."

"That's what I thought, there is just one thing though." Even though N. Gin knows he wants something out of this, he can't help but be a little disappointed.

"W-w-w-what?"

"I just need to know where Cortex and his dear niece are. I am just so worried about them." Over dramatized by putting the back of his hand onto his forehead trying to look upset as he possibly can.

"Oh. Dr C-c-c-cortex and Nina are out I am afraid. I don't know when they will be back." Tropy pretends to be surprised by this,

"That's alright. He is probably taking that angel out for a day." he says gritting his teeth when he said 'angel'

"I can go find him myself," he inches closer to N. Gin, causing him to back into a wall,

"You just have to tell me where they are," he whispered making N. Gin squirm,

"If you tell me, I can give you anything you desire." Tropy is aware of N. Gin's crush on him since their school days, and it disgusts him but he can control him, making him do whatever he wants and he likes that kind of power. N. Gin gently pushes him back,

"S-s-s-sorry, I don't know where they are. We can go out some other time." N. Gin says trying to distract himself with work. Tropy is a little disappointed that his flirty manipulation didn't work, but decided to let it go.

"Very well, I shall leave you to it." he says as he turns to walk out the room. N. Gin can't help but look back at the door Tropy just went through, looking exceedingly worried.

Dr N. Tropy came back into his lab with a big sigh, but he went from disappointment to curious as he sees Brio in his normal form with a cardboard box full of stuff.

"Hellooo, what have we here?" he got his latex gloves and start looking through the stuff inside the box. The first thing he notices is a black and white framed photograph of the young Dr Neo Cortex, a woman and a baby, all of them smiling at the camera in front of their house. He can't help but look at the beautiful, slender woman, smirking a little. However, he notices something familiar with the baby but he can't place his finger on it.

"This photograph will be perfect. I can imagine him looking at this every night." He is about to get up when something caught his eye. A folded pink paper, neatly in the box. Tropy doesn't know why but he thinks it might hold vital information. He takes it out the box and what he reads shocks, then he smiles evilly.

"Oh. Oh now this is very interesting. Uka uka would want to know this," and put the paper inside his pocket.

A cliffhanger! I actually had so much fun writing this chapter so I hope you guys had fun reading it! XD I am sorry it took so long, I won't lie I was in a stump but hopefully I could get the story going. If you guys want to know what song Crunch was singing too, its called Fancy by Twice, here is the link: watch?v=kOHB85vDuow. I also noticed a few mistakes while re reading the previous chapters so I will go back and do some tweaking.

Anyway guys,

Keep Reading! :D