She wanted to delete his soul.

He dragged that line out of his body, overwrote N. Trice’s throne room with it, and slammed it into her clock-face eyes.

He stood on the cliff’s edge, toes curled over the abyss, fur matted with sweat and swamp water. His usual vacant, goofy grin was gone. In its place was a tight, trembling line. His eyes, normally the size of dinner plates and full of cartoon confusion, were now slits of electric green.

Crash Bandicoot scratches his belly, burps, and goes back to sleep, oblivious to the ticking time bomb of broken code still spinning quietly at his core.