Chapter 22
The lights switched on in the warehouse to see lots of boxes and cases labelled with different weapons and machinary, covered in dust and cobwebs from being neglected. N. Gin walks in while Crash slowly follows behind, looking around at all the evil weaponary that has been used against him.
"We need to find the container that says P.L.A.S.M.A, it should be easy to find as it's a clear case with green liquid in and it has a nozzle at the top." Crash nods his head and start rummaging through the boxes when he can hear whimpering and crying from somewhere. He rotates his ears to get a better hearing to find the source of the whimpering. He can hear it coming from the other side of the room behind a pile of boxes. He moves them one by one to see familiar pointy ears and continues to move boxes faster until he sees a clear view of the familiar muscular tasmanian tiger, curled up in a ball, crying his heart out. Crash can't help but stare at Tiny, the big strong tiger who has the power to smash metal and break chains and pillars look so small. Tiny whipes his eyes and looks up to see a pair of eyes looking at him, Tiny looks shocked as he recognizes the eyes and immediately let out a mighty roar, causing Crash to jump back in fright. N. Gin turns around to see what the noise is and sees Tiny crashing through boxes, charging towards Crash with Crash looking terrified and put his arms up to defend himself. N. Gin run forward to stop him,
"Tiny stop!" But before they can reach them, Tiny wrapped his arms around Crash and hugs him tightly while crying his heart out.
"TINY SO SCARED! TINY SO ALONE! TINY HAPPY TO SEE BANDICOOT!" Tiny continues to cry as Crash is unsure what to do in this unusual situation and all he does is pat his back while N. Gin looks at the scene and slowly walks towards Tiny to try not to scare him when they see how vulnerable he is. They took a closer look Tiny and can see he looks malnourished, covered in scratches and dirt.
"Tiny, what happened to you?" Tiny slowly let go of Crash and wipe more of his tears away then turned to N. Gin.
"ZOMBIES! EVIL ZOMBIES CAME AFTER TINY!"
Tiny cowers inside the abandoned building as he hears the crystal zombies trying to bash through the door, constantly screaming "Help me!" Tiny looks around the abandon building to see if there's anything that he can use to go past the zombies in one piece. He can see there are lots of gardening tools such as a rake, spade, hoe but what caught his attention is a bright red, rusted over chainsaw on the otherside of the room but his weight is the only thing that keeps the door closed to keep the zombies out. He stands up and immediately run towards the chainsaw when the door burst open and run towards Tiny before he could start the chainsaw. They may not look it but they have immense strength that can take down the muscular tiger, just an arm reach he can see the chainsaw just an arm length away from him. He reaches out, trying to grab a hold of it, but with his middle finger, he managed to grab it and pull it towards him. He struggle to get his other arm free but with all his strength managed to break free and turn on the chainsaw and saw all the zombies into little bits and break himself free with a mighty roar. He charged through the door, sawing all the zombies that gets in his way, purple blood spraying everywhere. He looks around at the carnage, thinking all the zombies are dead when he sees more purple vein decayed hands coming out of the ground one by one. He tries to turn on the chainsaw ready to fight them but everytime he starts the chainsaw, it fails completely, not wanting to start. Tiny's ears went back, completely scared at the eyeless figures staring at him….or staring at something behind him. He looks behind to see some sort of purple light getting closer and closer until he hears high screeching scream fro the zombies and see them running away at full speed. Tiny looks around in a panic who can't find a suitable hiding space in this wasteland and just crouch and bury his head in his hands, bracing himself for any pain, but instead of feeling pain, he just feels warm, like he's feeling a hug. He looks around to see nothing but bright purple, not hearing the screams anymore which makes Tiny feel at peace like he doesn't have to be afraid anymore. Then slowly, the purple light slowly fades away to revert back to the wasteland but instead, Tiny doesn't see any zombies, instead just been greeted by the wind that sends a shiver down his spine and see little shiny particles blowing in the wind past Tiny and uphill which Tiny can't help but be enchanted and follow the shiny little particles.
"THEN TINY KEEPS WALKING AND WALKING UNTIL I ENDED UP HERE WHERE TINY DON'T SEE PRETTY LIGHTS ANYMORE." N. Gin pats his arm as Tiny puts Crash down.
"And I'm glad you managed to get out of that alive but where have you been before that?" Tiny stays silent with a sad look on his face. Crash looks confused while N. Gin gathered where he was based on his expression.
"Were you with Neo Cortex?" All Tiny did was nod his head depressingly.
"How is he?" Tiny just burst into tears again, crying loudly making Crash jump back then slowly inches closer towards Tiny and pat him on the arm. Crash doesn't normally feel any hatred on anyone, not even Neo Cortex but for N. Tropy it's an exception. Here he is, comforting his strongest enemy who is crying over his father figure, while he can only imagine what Tropy is doing, Tiny himself witnessed it as well as Nadia, and maybe Coco seeing it through Nadia and for the first time in his life, he's angry and starting to see red.
"Hey Tiny, why don't you go out and see the others. Pinstripe and Dingodile are here as well as Nina. I'm sure she would like to see you." Tiny gave a weak smile, gets up and slowly walk out the room when N. Gin turns back to Crash.
"Alright, let's keep looking for the ammo." N. Gin continues when Crash just stands there with his eyes shadows over, clutching his fist to try and keep his anger under control. He takes a deep breath and marches to the back of the room where he throws boxes everywhere, not caring where they land. N. Gin can't help but look at Crash, feeling the tension from him as pushes the boxes away with full force until he sees something that's glowing bright green. The very box containing the ammo that says P.L.A.S.M.A on it in black letters. He immediately took it by the handle and make his way straight for the door.
"Oh, well done Crash. That's great….work." Crash took no notice of them as he walks past like they're not there. N. Gin looks confused and even a little scared of Crash's obvious anger and can't help but look at him as he walks out the door. N. Gin just sighs and follows him, hoping now with Tiny joining the crew and got the ammo that they need, they'll be able to get their best friends back, even if it's taking an obvious toll on the others.