Through the Looking Glass: Chapter 5-A
Kazooie: Chapter 5
The one hundred laps had gone by without any event.
However, the difference here was that there was a strange kind of silence between the two. Kazooie was able to tell straight off the bat that something had been bothering Banjo. Since he had overslept that morning, she did not press the issue at all during breakfast, but it was something that had been bothering Kazooie during their laps.
Finally, after her talon trot laps the bird retreated back into her pack and rested her wings on Banjo's head.
"So what did you see in your dream last night?" she asked, for once trying to show a little reserve.
Surprisingly, the bird was met with Banjo looking up at her with a smile on his face. "Oh, Kazooie, it was great!" he said. "Rouge found Tooty!"
"She what?" exclaimed the breegull.
"Yeah," replied Banjo. "I took my portrait with me into my dream by accident, and then she recognized the bear as a teenager that she had saved two days ago! Oh, Kazooie, it was wonderful!"
"Whoah, whoah, wait!" replied Kazooie, waving her wings in front of her. "Are you saying that Tooty is with some slutty bat person?"
"Kazooie!" shouted the bear. "Rouge is not a slut!"
The breegull simply pouted. "Well, she may not be one, but she certainly looks like one, so you better start living with that or else," she said.
"Kazooie, don't," said Banjo. "She said she had recognized that the bear she had rescued two days ago was related to me!"
Kazooie was relatively unconvinced by this. "And how do we know she's not lying?" asked the bird flatly.
"I don't know," he said. "I had a little bit of a tough time believing it too. But everything will be answered during tonight's dream, I'm sure of it! She might even be in my bed tomorrow!"
Kazooie reeled back, actually jumping out of the backpack in her shock. "Banjo, are you nuts?" she asked. "How do we even know that we'll be able to get strange she-bear person over to this side of the world anyway?"
"Because she took my family portrait with her and it wasn't in my hands when I woke up!" replied Banjo, hoping this reply would be enough to shut Kazooie up. "Trust me, if she took that with her, I can take Tooty with me."
The breegull's glare only intensified. "You gave our family portrait to some lady that we've barely known for a day?" asked Kazooie. "And without any fight, either? Damn it Banjo, why the hell are you letting slut face shove you around?"
"Kazooie, please" replied Banjo, noticing how spiteful Kazooie's replies were getting and becoming very distraught by this. "I know what I'm saying here, and I'm telling you she's not trying to push me around. Please. Give me until tomorrow morning, and we'll know for sure who's right, okay? Just this one chance, please."
The bitterness in the breegull's expression wore off after Banjo had said this. She was still unamused, however, and so she crossed her wings in front of her.
"Well, all right," she said. "But if I don't see some bear looking almost exactly like your sister tomorrow morning, you're getting hell from me!"
Banjo nodded in understanding. "So, Kazooie, you want to go adventuring today?"
"Eh, I dunno, I think I want some time to, you know, think about this," replied the breegull. "And I'd like to do that alone."
This reply greatly surprised the honey bear. This surprise quickly gave way to apprehension. "Oh, no, it's nothing I said, is it?"
"Oh, trust me, it's everything you said," replied the breegull sardonically as she turned around. "I just need to think about it is all. I mean, how do you know this slut face isn't lying to you?"
"I... I just do..." said the honey bear, throwing his arms up in defeat. "I don't know. But Kazooie, please, trust me on this!"
"We'll see about that," she said briefly. "I'll be back before lunch, you can count on that. And if I'm not, well, you know."
Banjo was quite upset by this development, but knowing how Kazooie worked he decided not to argue about it. Simply he nodded.
"Well, all right," he said, turning around and walking back home. "I'll be waiting at home, Kaz!"
And the bear strutted back to the house, leaving the breegull to begin thinking.
Her 'thinking' had somehow brought her all the way to Bubblegloop Swamp. Banjo had repaired Grunty's old lair after they had defeated the witch; it was good nostalgia for them to just wander into the lair without any business to see old locales. For the most part, Bubblegloop Swamp had been deserted in the years since their first adventure, so Kazooie was free to avoid any contact as she thought about what Banjo had told her.
Of course, the breegull had no way of knowing if this Rouge person had been telling the truth or not. That was up to Banjo. But thinking a little harder about it now and how real Banjo had described the bat to be, she found herself doubting what she had said. Kazooie was only thankful she had not exploded at the bear; there was still plenty of room for the apologies afterwards, and the more Kazooie thought about the fact that the family portrait was not in Banjo's grip when she had woken up the more she realized that Banjo was probably right.
As she thought of things from Banjo's perspective, she was sure he was just looking for any kind of comfort he could find in terms of Tooty. Seeing how he had cried the day before at learning that Tooty had been raped repeatedly sometime during the ten years that she had gone missing, she figured this could certainly be the case.
Whatever it was, Kazooie realized then that she did not have anywhere near enough details to come to the same conclusions Banjo had. She then made it a point to ask Banjo as she manouvered around the various natural catwalks in Bubblegloop Swamp, being careful to avoid the pirhana-infested waters whenever she could.
After she had gotten to the island that Tiptup used to frequent, however, the breegull paused, getting the feeling that somebody was watching her from somewhere. Her head darted around quickly as she thought of this. When she saw nobody, she simply shrugged and dismissed this as a case of her imagination playing tricks on her.
Right when she had landed after gliding to where the yellow flibbits had attacked Banjo and Kazooie in their first adventure, however, Kazooie instantly noticed a figure with grey fur on the island where the giant turtle used to be before he left the swamp for some inexplicable reason. The figure had almost ethereal grey fur on his person that had obviously endured a great number of cuts from some source as some parts of the fur were stained red. He also wore gloves that had turqoise circles that were clearly visible even from a distance. Kazooie was quite shocked by this appearance of the figure, but upon seeing its many cuts she knew that something had happened.
"Hey!" she called out to him, before running to the edge of her island and gliding the rest of the way to where the strange figure was.
The stranger turned his head just as Kazooie landed on the island, his amber eyes looking at her in some strange kind of relief. It was only then that the breegull got to see the figure up close as a strange blue aura she had just noticed slowly fizzled out. The person was then leaning on his other leg for support, and at this Kazooie couldn't help but feel concerned.
"Oh, dear, are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," replied the stranger as he limped over to the breegull. "I just twisted my ankle is all."
"Well, those cuts are not really caused by twisted ankles, yeah?" replied Kazooie.
"I know," replied the figure. "I was just talking about my leg."
When Kazooie looked at him a little longer, however, she suddenly realized that the figure standing in front of her looked remarkably similar to one of the characters that she and Banjo had read about a few days earlier. Looking at the pattern of quills on his head, she suddenly realized that she had bumped straight into Silver the hedgehog in the most unlikely of places. She would've had a difficult time hiding her surprise, but thankfully she suddenly noticed a faint yellow glow from within one of his clenched hands. Within that clenched hand, she noticed the distinct daimond cut of a Chaos Emerald, and then her eyes went wide.
"Wait..." she said. "That jewel... Oh, you were fighting robots just now, weren't you?"
The hedgehog raised one of his eyebrows, pulling at some of his white chest hair as he did. "How did you know?" he asked.
"Because you're cut, you're holding a Chaos Emerald, and various other things I don't feel like talking about, parrot hog," replied Kazooie dryly.
The stranger wrinkled his nose in distaste before continuing on. "Oh, you should've seen me when I got here last night," replied Silver, sitting on the ground. "I don't remember how I got here; I must've passed out or something. I guess I warped here... and..." He trailed at the end of his sentence, his amber eyes widening in shock.
"And what?" asked the breegull.
The grey-furred hedgehog shook his head. "I had a friend who got kidnapped," he said, limping towards the edge of the island a little faster than before. "I've gotta find him!"
"What, with those cuts and your ankle the way it is?" asked the breegull. "Oh, no, you are not doing that, even if I have to tie you down to the chair and remove all sharp objects from the room, psycho man!"
"Are you kidding me?" retorted the hedgehog. "If I don't find him soon, then who knows what'll happen?"
Kazooie crossed her wings in front of her, trying to think of a way to bring Silver to Banjo's house before lunch came around. "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure Shadow wouldn't like it if you pushed yourself too much, especially with that ankle of yours."
The hedgehog was about to reply when he suddenly realized something about the way Kazooie had said the sentence. He did a double take before leaning towards the breegull and promptly falling on his stomach from leaning too far on his twisted ankle.
"Ow..." he said as he propped himself up on his arms, amber eyes looking straight into emerald ones. "How did you know his name was Shadow?"
The breegull snickered briefly. "Actually, you just confirmed it for me," replied the breegull. Silver blinked a couple of times as Kazooie continued. "But yeah, I know a certain computer head who knows everything. He told us some things. And yes, he actually does have a computer for a head."
The hedgehog looked at Kazooie with a bewildered expression on his face. "So you know my name is Silver then," he said.
"Yup," replied the breegull. "I know a lot more too, like how you're from the future and all that."
"Really...?" asked Silver uncertainly. "Then... you know my mission?"
"Whatever it is, it's gonna have to wait until we get that ankle taken care of," replied Kazooie as she walked over to Silver and knelt by him. "Come on, get on my back. I'll get you over to my house where me and my friend can take care of it."
With a great deal of effort, the hedgehog crawled onto Kazooie's back, feeling himself getting supported by the weight of the breegull's legs as he adjusted himself to a more comfortable position.
"Are you sure you can just carry me like this?" he asked uncertainly as crimson feathers brushed against silver fur.
"Bah, you're nothing," she boasted. "I've carried people heavier than you are before! But why didn't you use your... well... powers?"
"I already used them trying to keep myself standing up," replied Silver. "And if I overuse them, well, I'll pass out again. What's your name, by the way?"
The breegull simply shifted her feet. "Kazooie," she replied simply. "And you better not forget it either. Now hang on tight, 'cause this is going to be pretty fast!"
And with this, the breegull took off with the hedgehog hanging on as she moved out of Bubblegloop Swamp and back in the direction that she knew Spiral Mountain was in.
"And I turn it around, one, two, three, four..."
"You really don't have to go to this, you know. I... I can handle myself."
"Look psycho boy, you can yell all you want but we're not letting you go without doing this first!"
"Please, Mr. Silver, even if you'll be fine, just go through it for our peace of mind."
"Well, all right."
Banjo nodded and continued wrapping a bandage around Silver's twisted ankle as the hedgehog looked up at the ceiling. Banjo had been cooking lunch when the breegull had walked in with the hedgehog riding on her back. Instantly, the bear had paused what he was doing, preparing the couch and a few medical supplies. After the bear had tended to all of Silver's cuts, he had then wrapped a bandage around the twisted ankle, all while applying some ice to the injury. When he had wrapped the bandage a certain number of times, he then elevated the foot rest on his couch.
"There," said the bear. "Now I just need to find a cast, and you won't have to use your psychic energy to hold yourself up."
"And where do you plan on getting that?" asked the hedgehog.
"Oh, I'm not telling you," said Kazooie with a shrug. "But since you're coming along anyway you'll see the place, so it's not that important, now, is it, spike face?"
"Kazooie!" exclaimed Banjo as he returned to cooking lunch. "Be nice to this guy."
The silver hedgehog nodded before adjusting himself in the couch. "Yeah, please," replied Silver. "I just got out of a dystopian future two weeks ago..."
Kazooie and Banjo both glanced at the hedgehog in a great amount of surprise. "Oh, come on," replied Silver. "You know I came from the future, so why shouldn't I say anything?"
The bear continued cooking as he spoke. "Well, Mr. Silver, it's not that so much as... well... dystopian?" he asked, stirring something in a pot. "In what we read about you, there was some Iblis thing running around killing everything, so I'm sure it's quite different. When you add in that the events that led to that timeline were erased from existence..."
The hedgehog shrugged a little, seeing the bear's point. "Oh," he said. "Well, when you put it that way I should tell you how my future goes right now."
"And what's it like?" asked Kazooie.
Silver sat up in his chair, being careful not to roll his sprained ankle off of the footrest by accident as he did. "Well, I was born in a small colony of people," replied the hedgehog. "I say small colony, because that was really the only thing left on our planet. Like, we were the only life on it."
Kazooie gawked at this, the shock very evident in her expression as she looked to the hedgehog in disbelief. "Whoah, what?" asked the breegull. "You're saying you and a few others were the only things left on the planet?
"How the hell did that happen?" asked Banjo, surprising Kazooie with his use of non-dignifying language.
"Well, I was told that somebody by the name of Dr. Eggman had taken over the world here in the past with some mind control machine powered by the Chaos Emeralds," replied Silver. Banjo nodded to this, listening intently. "And what happened then was that somebody else took over the system after he did. From what I heard, he got out of the mind control because he was a computer..."
Kazooie's green eyes narrowed before she rubbed her beak. "Let me guess," replied Kazooie. "Was it the Lord of Games?"
Silver's yellow-orange eyes lit up. "Why, yes!" replied Silver. "From what I hear, things got worse when he took over; he took everybody off of the mind control first."
"Well, isn't that a good thing?" asked Kazooie.
"Yeah!" replied Banjo. "I'm sure everybody would like to be taken off of mind control to get their freedoms back, right?"
The hedgehog shook his head. "I wish that the way things had happened were different," he said. "They did get our freedom back, and for what was said to be a week or so everything was rather tense. But then... everybody started fighting against each other."
Banjo turned around upon hearing this, almost knocking a pot of soup over in his surprise. "Don't tell me..."
"They waged a world war?" asked the breegull.
Silver nodded somberly. "It was terrible," he said. "It only lasted a year, but the loss of life was so bad..."
Kazooie shook her head. "Damn, that's terrible!" she said.
"It was a nuclear holocaust for the ages," said the grey hedgehog. "Bombs had gone off absolutely everywhere, and my world was an absolute wasteland. We had to live underground because there was no place we could stay on the surface without running into radiation."
"Oh, no..." said Banjo softly, his mind having been taken off of food as he heard Silver's story. "So that's why you're here?"
"I didn't have a choice," replied Silver softly. "This colony... It was slowly dying off. By the time I came back to here to fix everything, it was me and maybe four, five people. As far as I know, we were the last five people on the planet..."
"So then you found the Chaos Emerald and you went back to the past?" asked the honey bear.
"Yes," said Silver. "I heard the stories of Eggman and all that, so I figure that if maybe Dr. Eggman had been taken down before then, the world would be safe. But the problem is, I'm wasn't sure where to start."
"Hm..." said Banjo, rubbing his chin as he thought.
The breegull had a faster mind, and so she jumped right into the questions. "So you know that there were people who were trying to defend the world, right?"
"Yeah," said Silver. "I had heard all about them when I had come here. But by the time I found out who it was, I heard he had been captured. And shortly after that was when I had met Shadow."
"Hm..." hummed the honey bear, thinking about this. "Maybe that was what changed the future, you meeting with Shadow."
"W-what?" asked the hedgehog, quite surprised by this line of thought. "What do you...?"
"Well, if you hadn't met night face, then maybe he wouldn't have been able to send you away with your Chaos Emerald," replied Kazooie. "And maybe that would have meant that Eggman would've found our emerald and the Master Emerald earlier. So, your appearance here essentially bought us some time."
"I see..." said Silver.
Banjo was surprised by this explanation that Kazooie had given, not just in the fact that she basically read his mind, but that she displayed more knowledge than she typically did to other people. "But it isn't over yet," replied the bear. "There might still be a chance that the L.O.G. would have to come and take over the system."
"Exactly what I thought," replied Silver. "So we still need to find Eggman."
"And neither of us know where he is," added Banjo as he looked at the food he was cooking and then began to turn off the stove. "But I've got a feeling we'll find out soon enough."
"Yeah," replied Kazooie. "It's good you were able to buy us some time."
Banjo then grabbed some oven mitts, and he pulled the pot with the soup over to the nearby table. Grabbing some soup spoons, he poured some soup into three bowls first for himself, then for Kazooie, and then another for Silver. He handed Silver's bowl to the hedgehog first. Confused, the silver hedgehog looked at the soup and back at Banjo.
"What's this?" asked Silver.
"Oh, good ol' vegetable gumbo," replied the bear as he sat down at the table facing Silver. "You'd like it."
As Kazooie sat down on her side of the table, the hedgehog looked into his food nervously before looking over to Banjo.
"And what am I supposed to eat this with?" asked Silver. "I've never had anything like this!"
The hedgehog heard a whizzing sound in the air, and he was able to raise his hand just in time to psychokinetically stop a spoon from hitting him in the eye. The turquoise aura surrounded the small metal eating utensil let off a strange kind of glow as Kazooie looked at him with a bewildered expression on her face.
"That's what you use, psycho boy!" replied Kazooie. "You figure it out!"
"Kazooie!" replied Banjo.
The breegull glared at the honey bear playfully as Silver looked at the spoon. He telekinetically drew the spoon to his hand, the aura dissapearing as soon as his hand had gotten a hold of the object. He then dipped the spoon into the bowl of gumbo, noticing some of it settling inside the little pit in the spoon. Gingerly, he brought the soup to his mouth, and when he tasted the gumbo he unintentionally burned his tongue.
"Ow!" replied Silver, jerking violently as he brought the spoon out of his mouth. He would have sent the bowl flying from his lap if not for the fact that he had involuntarily used telekinesis on the bowl of soup before he had jerked violently. "This thing is hot!"
"Try blowing on it first," said Banjo nonchalantly as he put a spoonful of the stuff in his mouth. "That should help."
The grey hedgehog looked to Banjo first before looking back down at the soup bowl. He took some soup in the spoon again, and this time he took Banjo's advice to blow on it. When he brought the spoon to his mouth again, he found that whatever vegetable gumbo was actually tasted quite good when he took the heat out of the equation.
Later that evening, everybody was slowly falling asleep in the house. Silver was already fast asleep on the couch that he had sat in since he got there, and thanks to a few donations from Banjo's spare bedsheets the hedgehog was sleeping very soundly and comfortably. As Banjo hung his rucksack on the hat rack for Kazooie to sleep in, the breegull tugged at his shorts.
"Kaz?" asked Banjo softly.
"I should've said something earlier, but..." began Kazooie. "I did think about what we said before I found Silver. And... I'm sorry for yelling at you. I don't think I should've. I mean, I wasn't the one having those dreams, so..."
Banjo patted Kazooie's head affectionately after he heard this. "Hey, don't worry about it," replied the bear as he sat on his bed. "Now all we have to do is wait and see what happens."
"That's true," said the breegull as she jumped into the backpack. "And if she's here when I wake up, well, you'll know it."
"Okay," said Kazooie as Banjo pulled the covers over his person. "Night, Banjo."
"Night, Kaz," replied the bear.
The both of them drifted off to sleep shortly afterward, although Banjo really had to concentrate on breathing slowly so he could keep his anticipation to himself.