It's in the eyes. Always the eyes.

Chapter Twenty-seven| Snow Way Out

Hi.

I've been abscent for months now and with good reason! Life had other plans—good plans for me and I'm very glad to admit that I have since gotten a raise at my passion job and have been working my butt off while offline. I had to put my current stories on hold due to my full-time job and slowly gaining back my spark for writing after going HAM back in the months of april and may. All the chapters of this story have already been written, all that it needed was to be editted and then published. Yeah, I kinda got sidetracked with that—BUT, I'm back, still alive and breathing! For anyone still reading this self-indugent story, thank you for being here. It means alot. ❤️

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         There was an audible rip as a dimensional tear opened, and out came Lani-Loli, Kapuna-Wa, and Akano, floating through first. Moments later, Coco and Aku-Aku followed, with Coco skillfully landing on a wooden bridge. Penny arrived next along with Crash, landing softly in a patch of snow with a quiet crunch beneath her feet. Crash, however, wasn't as lucky—he landed on a slick sheet of ice right beside her. Losing his footing almost immediately, he let go of Penny's hand, not wanting to drag her down with him, as his arms flailed comically before he fell flat on his stomach, skidding across the ice and coming to a halt a few feet away.

"Crash!" Penny called out, worry lining her voice as she carefully made her way over the ice toward him. She slid cautiously across the slick surface until she reached him, kneeling down beside him. Gently, she placed a hand on his back, checking if he was hurt. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Crash, his face slightly flushed with embarrassment, groaned but assured her in his familiar broken English, "I'm... okay..." This caused her to let out a relieved sigh.

As the rest of the group gathered around, a strange hovering device zipped past and stopped in front of Crash and Penny. Before they could react, the device flashed a green light, projecting a hologram of a man they all immediately recognized. He had a massive head with a large "N" symbol on his forehead, a spiky goatee, and a thick strand of black hair on top—Doctor Neo Cortex.

"Crash Bandicoot," Cortex's voice dripped with malevolence, his piercing gaze focused solely on Crash. "You banished me to the past, but all it did was give me more time to plan your doom."

Crash, with Penny helping him to his feet, stood stunned, his expression one of genuine confusion at seeing his old foe once again.

"You'll find me up on the mountain," Cortex continued smugly, ignoring the rest of the group. "Don't freeze on the way." With that, his hologram flickered out, and the device zipped away, disappearing into the cold landscape.

Lani-Loli floated over, hovering beside Crash and Penny as he observed the exchange. "Wow, I'm sensing some serious history here. How many times have you beaten this clown?" he asked, turning to Crash and Coco.

Crash looked over at Coco, who rolled her eyes and replied, "Three."

"Only three?" Lani-Loli blinked, clearly surprised. "Huh. Feels like it would've been more."

While the group pondered Cortex's return, Penny's eyes narrowed as she watched the direction the device flew off to.