Standing alone upon the top of K. Rool's Keep, James sheathed his bloodstained scissors and gazed down from every direction he could on finding someway down to the crash site.  He remembered a long ropeladder had been attached to the Flying Krock, but it was nowhere to be seen, presumably having burnt with the rest of the ship in the unexplained explosion.  He did not put it past K. Rool to have done it himself as a final act of madness, yet a part of him hoped he survived, weak enough to be killed by the raptor's own hand.
As he sat down upon the cold castle stone, using up some of the last of his medicinal supplies from his satchel with no options available to him, he could only stare at the smoke rising from the jungle, a place he was sure he had never been to before.  A few minutes later however, he heard a strange squawking sound coming from behind.  Jumping up slightly in surprise, James was rather confused by the sight of a sizeable green parrot with orange-tipped wings and a huge yellow beak flapping before him, its eyes large and endearing like a child's.
	"Uh...hi?"
	"AWK!"
	"Woah woah hang on, I'm not a kremling or anything, look!"
He tried to indicate to himself and his differences, pointing over to Krook's head.
	"Me.  Not kremling.  Him.  Dead.  Me.  Killed him!  Get it?"
	"Uawk?"
The parrot tilted its head to one side, seeming to understand as it continued flapping in mid-air.
	"Me.  Kill K. Rool.  Need help to get down.  There."
He pointed down to the smoke, the parrot shaking its head.
	"What?  No?"
	"Uawwk uaaawwwk."
It tried to make its own motions by mimicking a crown, pointing at the kremling's bloodied head, then mimicking the sound of a monkey flawlessly.  It then pretended to slap and fight the air before spinning out of control to the ground.
	"Wait...monkeys?  Spinning...OH!  The Kongs?"  The parrot nodded excitably.  "So, the Kongs got here before I did, they fought K. Rool and took down his ship?"
	"AWK!  AWK!"
	"Hah, awesome!  ...so where are they?"
	"Awwwwk..."
A wing pointed out towards the smoke trail.  James felt disheartened, hoping that the apes were okay.  After all that he had been through, his growing prejudice against them had been stifled once again.
	"...maybe they're alright.  I mean come on, they're apes, they're not easy to kill right?!"
	"Uawk?"
	"Can you get me down there?  Down.  There.  We can find them.  Together."
	"Squaaaaa..."
	"Come on, you must have friends or something to fly me down there, you're a big guy!"

James wasn't even questioning the fact he was asking a parrot the size of his head to fly him down by the talons towards the crash site.  He was desperate to end the chase he had started, or rather what he believed K. Rool had started.  And he wanted to make sure that the corpusculent ruler was most certainly dead, if anything else.
	"Uaa?"
	"Please.  I want to kill that fat bastard before he can do any more damage to anyone else."
	".....squa-squawk."
The parrot nodded and whistled towards the brambles in the distance, where he was soon joined by other parrots both green and purple, five of them all flapping out of the other tower's thicket.  Not entirely sure where this was going, James allowed them to tenderly grab his arms and legs within soft talons.  One for each limb with two more putting their talons around the scabbard, lifting James up into the air well enough with a surprising amount of combined strength.
	"W-W-WOAH!"
	"AWK!"
	"H-hey take it easy, I'll be good okay!?!  Just...d-don't drop me okay?!?!"
	"Uawk uawk!"
With the closest thing to an okay he could get from a parrot, James trusted them with no idea why, other than the fact they seemed to be on the same side as they slowly flapped their way down to the ground.  In fact, they were glad they were going down for James was not exactly light despite their strength together.  All they had to do was control their descent and direction, rather than the more strenuous task of flying upwards.
The raptor at first was terrified of them dropping him, keeping himself perfectly still to let them fly him down towards the jungle, not even sure of where it was on the island since he had never even ventured close to one in his travelling with Kruz.  Briefly he wondered if his friend was alright with Klubba, the Flying Krock's explosion having no doubt resonated across the entire isle, both to the loyal crew and the deserters.
Soon the jungle was close enough to discern between different trees, and a small clearing within sight opened up amongst the canopy as a perfect landing pad.  The parrots eagerly flapped towards it and unceremoniously dropped James within a safe distance of it.  Not even bruised other than his previous battle injuries.
	"Ungh!  Uhhh bit of a hard landing there huh guys?  Well, thanks a lot for getting me dow-....guys?"
The parrots had disappeared, all flying away in several directions as they abandoned their passenger.
	"HEY!  COME BACK!  WHICH WAY IS THE SHIP THA-oh fuckit yanno what, I'll find it myself, screw you guys!"
And that was when he realised that he had no direction to go.  All of the trees looked the same to him, and he could do nothing but try to remember the general direction he saw the smoke from on his way down.

The jungle was certainly far more wild and untamed than any other part of Crocodile Isle, a veritable explosion of undiscovered flora and fauna everywhere he looked.  As much as he was intrigued by the tantalisingly strange flowers and mysterious creatures, he kept walking onwards, finding signs of civilisation within the form of small bridges and terrible punji pits, with spikes made of sharpened wood stabbing upwards.  Sometimes he saw a skull or a few bones amongst them, and even a full kremling skeleton at one pit.
Regardless of the warnings, he leapt and ran across the strange traps, heading towards more muddy ground that turned the heat up to a normally more unbearable temperature, which James felt accustomed to with his reptilian ways somewhat moreso than others.  Soon however it became a little warmer, a little hotter than he liked, and it started to tire him out.  But he had to keep moving.  He didn't want to lose the opportunity of missing K. Rool, if he was still alive.
He felt like he was going in circles.  The trees all looking the same to him.  Punji pits barely giving him any sense of direction by the difference between their victims.  Animals continuing to piss him off, whether it was the buzzing poisonous zinger, or the waddling porcupine-like Spinies with lethal quills rustling back and forth upon their backs.  Soon however, a smell came to the raptor's nostrils.  A scent that for once he was actually delighted to smell.
Fire.  Smoke.  Smouldering.  With his strong nostrils guiding him true, he ran faster with determination towards the source, readily leaping over pits and bridges in order to reach a wide lake at the very centre of the jungle.  The lake was a perfect pure blue, somehow unspoiled by the pollution of the island.  In fact, the entire jungle itself seemed to live within some sort of protected zone for how unblemished it was, other than the burning remnants of the Flying Krock at the right side of the lake.

To the left, near the middle of the lake, was a large volcano, its front shaped like a kremling's face.  Even more strangely, it was pulsing out a strange ethereal beam of white and purple straight into the sky, rather than actual lava.  How it was even able to do that and not be seen across the isle baffled James.
But not enough to distract him from his self-proclaimed duty as he swam towards the airship's remains, paddling furiously despite the wounds trying to recover themselves in their now-soaking bandages.  James had no time, he was too eager to end this at any cost.  A battle lust of vengeance was gripping him by the throat, especially when he was now so close to finishing his short-lived retribution.
The Flying Krock was most certainly out of commission, its propellers either melted or completely gone and presumably left to rot somewhere in the sea, its engine completely shattered along with the glass that covered the central cabin now exposed to the air, peeled apart by flames that mostly began to cool down.  The once proud crocodile mouth that stood as the very cockpit of its operation, was now bent and twisted straight into the jungle mud.  And in the midst of the dying flames, within the central cabin surrounded by glass and debris tinted in smouldering amber lights, was its master.

Upon the ruins of the Flying Krock, King K. Rool gazed before the monolithic structure that was shaped in his form, resplendent in his brown tattered cloak and captain's hat.  When James finally reached close enough to see him yet again, he seemed to be talking to himself.
	"Yes...this shall be where I begin my new reign.  We must always start from the beginning."
	"R-reign?"
	"Indeed."
He turned coolly towards the raptor, a pure madness in his eyes, piercing without the slightest twitch.
	"My empire.  Once I gain the power of my ancestors, empowered by the purity of cold blood, those monkeys won't stand a chance."
	"Okay...I need to ask you ONE thing."
	"Very well," he said with little concern and a handwave as he turned back towards the volcano, "you may ask if that is how you wish to waste your time."
	"...what ARE you planning?"
K. Rool sighed heavily, before slowly turning once more to James.
	"My dear boy...back when your kind lived, reptiles ruled over all.  They were kings, gods even, striding across the world while the lowly furred ones scrabbled and scuttered between our footsteps, grateful for what remains we left behind in our feasts.  Then the apocalypse came, that great and terrifying cataclysm that usurped our clans from power, all for those filthy mammals to clamber upon our throne and become the dominant species, shedding their fur upon OUR rightful place!  They are not even mammals at all!"
	"Wait, what?"
	"They are cockroaches!  INSECTS!"
The captain snarled and stomped towards James.

	"Pathetic little beasts that we did not even bother to make extinct, when they were weak and pathetically small!  How I wish I had lived back in that time, to have been my immortal ancestor whose form I have retained from generations of pure breeding, just so I could exterminate every single scrap of hair I ever saw.  But I cannot blame our ancestors for their ignorance.  When I obtain the power of the Lost World, the central font of all that is Reptilia, we shall regain our throne.  Our power.  Our supremacy!  No more will those filthy mammals be allowed to even stand upon two feet.  We will make them our slaves, our prey, our examples!  The will and purity of the reptile shall NEVER be destroyed again, my dear boy!"
He grabbed James maddeningly by the shoulders, gripped within the lust of his dream.  His eye throbbed dangerously to the point of making the raptor panic that it would pop, the captain's claws tight around James' skin as he continued with a whisper.
	"And I, the purest of all our kind, our one TRUE kind, shall rule over all, and I will ensure that we never lose our place again.  Imagine...a world where we shall stand alone.  A world built for reptiles when I cleanse the sea of hair and fur.  All I need...is the essence of their finest warrior...that loathsome ape."
	"N-no..."
	"Hmm?"
	"You...you're just...no."
James began to realise the true madness of his former captain.  The hatred in K. Rool's eyes was phenomenal, unnatural, vile.  He may not have liked humans, sure, but not THIS much.  He began to have second thoughts about wanting to fight him, and he considered running away.  But he also worried that the "good" captain would succeed in his ambition, as well as the fact that his presence was intimidatingly spellbinding.  The kremling leader raised a scaled brow.
	"...what do you mean no?"
	"Captain I..."
He did not seem to recognise James as a traitor, so the raptor tried a different means of persuasion.
	"I can't follow you like this, your ideas are...they're...u-u-uh..."
	"You are frightened I see.  Do not fear, for it is only natural that you are hesitant to step into the waters of fate.  You are my brother.  My dear...scaled brother."

He tenderly cupped the raptor's cheek.  Once upon a time he would have been honoured by that same tender caress.  Now, he shivered in revulsion.
	"I know we have had some misgivings, a small miscommunication in the past few days that was...unfortunate.  But I should have realised that it was because you were so WILLING, truly that was why you followed me, becoming my shadow back upon the ship!  All you had to do was ask dear boy."
	"Th-that's not why I-"
	"But of course, such hesitation is only natural when you have never before been in the presence of one as pure as I.  Whereas your ancestors have changed their forms over time, mine have remained unchanged since our very existence.  Evolution was not necessary for me.  It shall never be necessary again, when I make sure that only the reptiles remain."
	"But what about those guys that aren't reptiles, the bugs and birds and rats that are helping you!?"
	"Hahahaha, oh yes...we will allow them a place within our utopia, within reason.  The birds may take the sky, the insects too, for they are harmless and lack the intelligence to create plans or revolutions.  The mammals...perhaps some of them can be controlled and...properly maintained.  Controlled.  Maintained.  To ensure they remain where they belong."  K. Rool looked back towards his destination as James tried to explain his fears, his confidence daring to wilt as he spurred himself on, his anger rising back up.
	"N-no!  No, I...I can't do this, I can't let you do this, I'm not a racist, I don't MIND mammals that much!"
	"Hhhahahahaha, don't be so shy James, your fear is getting the better of you!  I know Krook had his doubts about you and your scent but I KNOW I can trust you, you swore your allegiance to me for Sebek's sake!  You cannot break such a promise to me...can you?"

The way he smiled so harmlessly at saying such a thing made James all the more frightened, frightened enough to not even dare ask what Krook was talking about before.  He tried to back away, but he didn't want to, either frozen by fear or standing his ground out of bravery, conflicting with himself.  The king and captain merely smiled with a single command.
	"Come."
A large clawed bloated hand reached out to the raptor, offering a new world.
	"Come with me....my brother."
	"I...I'm not your brother."
	"Do not be afraid.  The world I shall create with you and all of my subjects will be beautiful.  All of reptilekind shall be free of mammals.  A pure world.  We shall rise again."
	"I am NOT your brother!"
	"Don't be so prudent boy!  Join me!"
	"I SAID NO!"
He violently slapped his captain's hand hard to the side, which at first surprised James immensely before he tensed himself up and sticking to his refusal.  K. Rool slowly looked at his hand, as if not realising what had occurred, before glaring with an unrepentant fury upon his former crewmate.
	"You...dare defy me?"
	"I'm not like you.  I'm not like you at all!  I was just going along with you guys because I wanted to find someone able to get me home!  Sure I enjoyed being a pirate, it was crazy and fun in a sort of 'stealing for shits and giggles' way.  But I am NOT some kind of crazy racist fuck like you!  So what, the monkeys keep getting in your way, maybe it's 'cause you keep invading them, ever thought about that?"
	"Watch your mouth, boy.  I will not give you another chance."
	"NO!  FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOUR SHIT!  I killed ALL your elites, just to get here, INCLUDING Krook whose head is on top of your castle and his body beneath it, and I'm gonna make damn well sure that nobody will EVER see the likes of you ever again!"

The captain became almost feral in the way he glared at James.  Reddening pinpricks within his violent gaze before bellowing out a furious roar that shook the very waters around the wreckage, his eye pulsating with rage.
	"How DARE you mock the dreams of your ancestors!?!  You are nothing but a spoilt child who doesn't realise that he stands upon the edge of glory!"
	"What glory!?!  It's fucking genocide!  Killing an entire species just cuz they don't have scales!?"
	"BECAUSE THEY ARE SCUM!  ALL OF THEM ARE VILE HAIR-RIDDEN SCUM!  And if you won't join me...then you are scum like the rest of them."
The king and captain of the Kremlings brought out his large gold-hilted cutlass from his belt, one just as large as himself, almost the size of a claymore.  James hopped back and brought out his own weapon, the captain reacting to such.  His opponent was thankful that he had somehow lost his blunderbuss.
	"So you ARE defying me...yet another of my many former subjects to do so.  They called me the same.  They called me insane, twisted, hateful."
	"You're not my captain anymore, not since you tried to kill your whole crew.  I thought you were just some crazy paranoid guy, but now I know you're nothing but a twisted psycho."
	"Then you are no different from the rest of those fools.  You call my dreams of a world where our species shall reign as twisted?  You decry my wish to establish a new order that was destined to be since the dawn of time!?  Then you will never live within my kingdom!  Instead, all you shall receive is DEATH!"

The huge crocodile charged towards the raptor, who dodged and slashed through the longcoat cutting some of the scaled side.  The captain's natural skin was far tougher than his minions' however, as he barely felt the pain and swung his cleaver.  He almost caught James' protected left shoulder, but struck it hard enough to unbalance the raptor, who struggled to regain his stance.
Rushing towards his foe, James slammed his blades against the cutlass to gauge K. Rool's strength, who was indeed powerful enough to resist the clashing of steel upon steel and swung back at the raptor with some recoil.  The captain soon met resistance with another less powerful striking of blades, as he knocked down his foe with a furious swing.
The cutlass was certainly strong enough to resist the scissors' swings, and the hand that wielded it was even moreso.  But that did not deter the vengeful raptor who charged forwards once again towards his taller mightier opponent, then made a feint up high before slicing a low kick across the leg.  Using his natural raptor claws like a dagger, he barely did any damage to the thick warty skin.
	"VERMIN!" roared K. Rool as he slammed his cutlass downwards.
He almost missed James, who received a deep cut to his tail which snaked violently in pain, blood spraying across the floor from its movements.  Despite the wound to his sensitive tail, he did not falter and circled around K. Rool, hoping that he was only as fast as he looked.  The raptor succeeded somewhat in managing to run fast enough around to the side and stab through one of the flanks, deflected from his original target of the kidneys by a tremendously strong downwards backhand that knocked him to the floor.
James stumbled somewhat from the blow to his head, slowly getting up and backing away, but smiling at seeing his handiwork.  Despite the piercing wound in the captain's right thigh which bled well enough, he was not deterred and merely cackled at the sight of it.
	"DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HURT ME!?!"

With a demented grin, he hobbled over to a small fire, grabbed a piece of burning wood and stabbed it straight into his wound without hesitation.  He roared with a lustful anguish as he forcefully cauterised his wound, stinging wooden embers sizzling in his scales, shivering a strangely pleasureful grunt as he stood his ground once more, cutlass at the ready.
	"Holy...shit..."
	"Hhhha ha ha ha ha...Krook is not the only one who can heal thyself, boy.  I have lived far too long to let a filthy hair-licker kill me, be it you or those knuckle-dragging apes."
	"Hope you remember that when I give you your 'resignation', captain!"
With scissors scraping across the ground, James charged forwards to try and stab him through his gut, but was blocked by the cutlass slamming him down as K. Rool moved his lower body away, slashing immediately at James' arm.  Blood quickly turned into tributaries across his scales as he cried out with a spasming hand.
Keeping himself under control, he forced his hand to grab the scissor handle and keep it there as he went fully two-hander, swinging it like a longsword back and forth, continuously blocked or deflected by K. Rool.  He waited to be deflected too far so he could counter, knowing the captain would do so.  Eventually his battle instincts ran true as he was thrown off to one side, but unfortunately he was thrown off too far by the captain's sheer force, and narrowly avoided another brutal injury by quickly spinning himself away with his scissors.
Balancing himself, he swung himself into a half-circle motion around the scissors like a maypole, as K. Rool dared to get close.  The momentum of his spin created enough force to slam the blade back and to the side, enough for James to jump and spin forwards with a powerful slash.  Heaving his blades from behind him, the raptor cleaved straight down the captain's belly, not fatal but deep enough to bleed.
The king staggered back with a roar of pain and surprise as James took the opportunity to quickly regain his balance, thrusting straight towards the lowered head and managing to scrape across K. Rool's jaw.  But not enough to hurt him bad, and he only put himself dangerously close enough to be given a decapitating swing of the cutlass.  James was only saved by the fact that his thrust had overbalanced him as he fell to the right, moving out of the way of the swing, but not enough as the left side of his body was caught.

He felt some of his skin slice off from his body as he screamed, pain exploding from his ribs as he quickly moved away, clutching with his wounded hand.  While a little blood came through, it was not enough to be deemed fatal, not gushing from him.  His flesh had been merely skinned from his body to leave a red meaty welt on the left side of his body.
	"Had enough boy?" mocked K. Rool.
	"NNNGH...FUCK YOU!"
	"HAH, so vulgar in the face of death, no wonder you are not worthy of joining me."
	"I'LL KILL YOU FOR THIS!"
Regaining his wind, James roared once again and brought up his scissors to guard himself, pushing K. Rool back hard with his blades, but the captain kept his blade up in turn.  The two snarled against each other, snouts barely touching.  One snout facing up, the other facing down, breathing hard across their crossed blades, gritting their teeth from both pain and strength.
	"Pathetic boy!  Nothing but a mammal-loving SMEAR!"
	"Shut up, you fat FUCK!"
	"Hhhh...hehehe...I should have expected as such...you're not even pure like me."
	"Whatever, you'll make up any reason to hate someone!  Even if they were the same as you!"
	"Says the tainted lad who laid with a mammal."
	"...what?"
	"Don't lie...I smelt it upon you, even when we first met.  Krook did too.  At first I let it slide because of your willingness and appearance, that perhaps it was from a feud or such.  But not any more.  That stink of a canine against your body.  It's old, but unmistakeable.  He was right.  That is the scent of warmth...not blood.  She was there, embracing your scales...sickening."
James forced his blades harder, dismayed as his anger turned to caution.
	"Don't...even-"
	"To think you lied with a dog, a bitch.  I can't say I was not disgusted upon further reflection.  I thought you were better than that, back when I had hope for you.  But instead, you're nothing but a filthy beast who slept with a large rat."

At that moment, his eyes very briefly reflected K. Rool's, perhaps even moreso, tensing up into thin green bloodshot pupils.  It had been years since he had felt such a feeling this powerful.
With a lung-shattering scream he shoved his former king hard and began to slash away with furiously swift swinging strikes of unmitigated fury, burning through his strength.  The captain blocked most of the attacks, but quickly started to wear out from the enraged strength and rapidity of the raptor.  He was tiring out enough for James to deliver a brutal thrust straight into his gut, shoving one-third of the scissors' length inside.  The captain roared a deep bass cry of anguish as James roared his latent fury in return.
	"YOU WANNA KNOW WHO SHE WAS!?!?  HER NAME WAS DAISY, YOU FUCKING SHITSCALE, AND SHE WAS MORE PURE THAN YOU EVER WILL BE!"
	"AAAUUUK...ggghhhhk!  You...cur..."
	"She was the sweetest girl I ever knew, and if you say another word about her I'm gonna make damn FUCKING sure that your "pure bloodline" stops dead, RIGHT HERE!"
Pulling the scissors from the belly, he slashed across the chest in a striking blow to make the cutlass fly from K. Rool's weakened hand far into the water.  His furious swing made him spin round to turn once again towards his foe, and stab him through the gut once more, making him roar louder.
	"THASSIT, BEG!  BEG YOU FAT CUNT!  YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT I DID TO THE LAST GUY WHO BADTALKED ABOUT DAISY!?!  I FUCKED HIS ASS, HUNG HIM BY HIS OWN GUTS, AND I FUCKING LOVED IT!"
Despite the pain searing through his portly form with unimaginably agonising strength, the king merely laughed with shaking gasps as he stared down towards the raptor.
	"Hhhhhh...hahaha...ha ha...aaah ha ha ha ha haaaa, HA HA HA HA-"
	"WHAT!?!?  What's so funny!?!?"
	"You!  Ha HA!  Such hatred in you...your eyes were almost like mine, you truly ARE a brother to me, how ironic!"
	"NO, NO I'M NOT!  I hate you, and ONLY you!  I hate you and what you stand for!"
	"And you...are nothing but a vile urchin."
Crocodile blood slowly oozed down the scissors, the raptor keeping them buried inside K. Rool.
	"You'll find someone to despise...soon enough."
	"Oh yeah, I will.  But I kill single file, one guy at a time, someone like you, someone like Bob, people who fuck with me PERSONALLY!  I am nothing like you, with your twisted racial purity bullshit."
	"Except...you can't kill me.  Hhha ha...I...am a god."

The king's smile was strangely insane, moreso than usual, the pain not even registering to the beast which frightened James somewhat.  Just enough for him to falter, his rage ebbing away and making him unconsciously back away slightly.  K. Rool took the chance of his opponent's faltering to pull the blades forcefully from his stomach, and barge past the raptor in a furious shoulder charge.
Running towards something he had spied just at the side, he grabbed his huge Blunderbuss from the wreckage with a painfully grating laugh, as he aimed the beast of a weapon at his enemy.  He staggered and tried not to slip on his own blood, chuckling shakily.
	"Hhhha...ha ha..so much for s-sodomising and hanging me by my own guts, you sick little boy.  Not even I would s-s-stain myself with such a ghastly act."
James didn't put his hands up, he merely stood waiting to dodge a cannonball, but K. Rool held his weapon still, straight towards the raptor with an amazingly steady hand, waiting while he bled openly in small regular drips.  His words were only broken by deep breaths, struggling to keep his composure.
	"To think...you had s-so much potential...the day you first barged into my c-cabin, trying to take your weapon back.  All to throw it away because your first love was a f-f-feeble mammal...and you let her musk taint you.  So sad."
	"Keep talking dipshit, you'll bleed out eventually, don't try to be better than me."
	"HAH!  I told you...I am a god.  You cannot kill me, and that is PRECISELY why I am better than you.  I...am what generations of perfection has s-s-sculpted, to the point that...evolution...has not occurred within my lineage for millennia.  All to one day...reclaim...the destiny of my people.  You...will die with the mammals, lying in the dirt with them just as you've done so before, with your furred whore.  You may not burn as well as fur...but I will make certain that your memory shall become nothing but ash."
	"Fuck you, I'm gonna kill you somehow."
	"Too late.  Maybe you should have t-tried harder, instead of allowing your...pride...to-"
He was soon cut off by a rumbling fury of the earth itself, shaking both reptiles from their stand, the wreckage of the ship tearing itself asunder amidst the sudden quake.  K. Rool gazed towards the source of the noise, the crocodilian monolith, seeing his destiny as they both witnessed the stone snout open wide with an island-deafening groan.
	"It's time.  Your end will come soon enough."
Barely staggering at the powerful vibrations, he abandoned his foe upon the ship and dived into the water, wounds still bleeding slowly as he swam towards the island without slowing down.  James felt a cataclysm about to unfold, and pondered upon leaving this place behind in the hope that K. Rool would die before he achieved his destiny.  But he worried far too much upon the chances of success that the captain could have upon completing his reptilian ascension.  With his mind pulling him towards responsibility, he dived in to follow after him, scissors in his scabbard, swimming desperately towards the central island pillar.

It took him a while to catch up to the king, but he managed to enter the now-opened stone snout and find himself within a strange inner temple.  Shimmering bronze walls where shadows danced unceasingly, flickering purple flames that swerved back and forth almost seductively above a black polished floor.  Two large ancient marble statues of gladiatorial kremlings stood guard before the very core of the island itself.  A clawed font where a pulsing column of purplish-white energy unceasingly flowed upwards into the sky.  The austerity of the sanctum was broken by the battle that ensued in front of the core. 
Standing in the middle of the room, glaring furiously at two little monkeys, was K. Rool.  His hat was soaked, his cloak dripping, and seaweed hung off of his body which barely covered his wounds as he roared:
	"YOU BASTARD APES!  HOW DARE YOU SET YOUR FILTHY LITTLE FEET WITHIN MY ANCESTORS' SANCTUM!?!?"
The fury in the crocodile's eyes turned his bloodshot one to an almost bursting point as it twitched insanely.
	"WHEN WILL YOU REALISE THAT YOUR TRUE DESTINY IS UNDERNEATH US, AS OUR PREY!?!?!"
Wielding his Blunderbuss which now began to glow with a ghostly purple essence, he aimed at one chimpanzee who wore a cap and a red shirt, blasting an ethereal smog formed of several tormented looking faces, skulls clamouring for release which the chimp dodged over.
He was not yet done however as he fired another blast of his ghost cannon, which missed as the monkeys dodged yet again.  Though one of them, a pink-shirted chimp with blonde hair, almost had the spectral essence singe their fur.
	"I WILL NOT LET YOUR FILTHY PAWS STAIN MY HERITAGE!  DO YOU HEAR ME, SCUM!?!"
	"Rex!"
A quieter voice near James made him turn.  With a quickly-stifled cheer, he saw Kruz, hiding behind one of the columns and looking better than before.  At least he had recovered enough to walk and swim all the way to this island.
	"K-Kruz?!"
	"Shhh, cummere!"
Moving over to beside him, the two hid together to watch the ensuing battle.  K. Rool stood his ground in the middle of the grand hall, violently blasting a mixture of ghostly fog and spiky cannonballs, roaring with vehemently blind rage.  He was blasting at the walls to the point of making them crack, constantly missing the far more agile primates with little regard for his sanctum's condition.

	"How did you get here!?" whispered James.
	"Klubba guards the Lost World remember?  We saw the Flying Krock crash an' I had to see if you were alright."
	"Really?  ...thanks."
	"Did you get a chance to talk to him?"
	"Enough to gut him and find out about his plan."
	"I gathered.  Saw yer fight but wuz too late to get involved, shit bro you coulda been killed!"
	"Doesn't matter now...I just wanna see him dead."
	"So you gonna help those apes or what?"
	"They seem to have this covered, this is their fight now."
Afraid of interrupting the fight in their enemy's favour, the ex-riggers watched K. Rool continue to fire spirit after spike after phantom after cannonball, snarling with indiscriminate aim all over his ancestral lair, starting to tire out clearly, but far too persistent to give in.
	"I swear...one day...your island will be no more, Kongs.  THIS is our destiny!  You primates, you...abominations do not deserve the intelligence, the dexterity that the heavens have blessed you with!  We struggled for millennia to become kings of this world!  And YOU!"
He violently threw a claw out towards the cap-wearing chimp, who stood defiant in all of his pint-sized bravery.
	"Your loathsome uncle is nothing but SCUM, simply snatching away our destiny as if it was NOTHING, like the thieves you were born to be!  I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!  DO YOU HEAR ME, KONG!?!  I WILL MURDER EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU WARM-BLOODED WHORES OF FUR FROM THE FACE OF THIS EARTH!  Starting with YOU, and your filthy little mate."
With that, K. Rool fired another blast, revealing a perfectly smooth unspiked cannonball.  The male chimp rushed quickly towards it, picking it up and flinging it straight back into the blunderbuss itself.
	"WHAT THE!?"
That one single unblemished cannonball would signal the end of his reign.  First it drummed with a metallic sound, then the gun started to backfire impressively so, the fuse on the back of it already lit by the impulsive fury of the captain.
	"WHAT!?!?  DON'T YOU DARE-"
Before he could threaten his own weapon, he was blasted backwards as it exploded in his hands, backed up majorly by conflicting shots, his face burnt blackened with gunpowder as he roared in a burning anguish.  It was not the end however, until he fell backwards into the very core of the island itself that he had already been propelled towards.

The island did not take it lightly.  With a foreign presence interrupting the power flow of the very land itself, a tremendous shaking began, far greater than anything James or Kruz had ever experienced.  A violent surge of energy that made their vision triple and their balance suffer to the point of drunken stumbling.
	"H-H-HOLY CRAP!"
	"WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE, COME ON!"
The primates ran one way while the reptiles ran the other, both leaping into the water to escape the core.  Despite his best efforts amidst the furious earthquake, James was slower than Kruz as his wounds started to catch up to him.  Kruz looked back to his friend desperately trying to paddle away from the volcano, which began to crumble and split into several pieces.  Enormous cracks running across the very rock like thin ice, before splitting and causing the rocks themselves to fall into the water.
James did all that he could to avoid them, crying out to Kruz as the water turned frantic with waves from the tremors and falling rocks.  Scrabbling up towards a floating rock with exhaustion, he shouted to his friend:
	"GO!"
	"BUT-"
	"SAVE YOURSELF, DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME!"
James was too tired from his own battles to even try to swim, and with a solid place to focus upon, he began to focus in teleporting somewhere.  Somewhere far away, away to another world, frantic with his life in danger, only further fuelling his need to escape.
"Come on, think think, get me out of this fucking place, fucking rocks gonna crush me into the earth...earth.....earth."
The word clicked in his mind, a keyword.  It fit a title that made no sense to him, but he didn't care.  It was a word and he could escape with it.
He felt the portal swirl around him, slowly wrapping him within its dimensional embrace, fading before Kruz's very eyes despite James telling him to save himself.  He could barely make out a blue light that covered his friend, almost imagining he disappeared before a shower of rocks completely crushed where he once was.
	"JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMES!"
Despite his friend screaming in disbelief and forced to swim away on his own, the last thing the raptor heard upon this island was something else.  Another voice to haunt his unconscious memory.
The echoing cackle of his former Captain, fading away with the destruction of his heritage.