• Published 1st Sep 2014
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The Sparkle in his Eye - Tatsurou



Ratchet balances saving the galaxy with being the father to a purple alicorn foal. Adorable shenanigans and explosions ensue.

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Commando: Yeedil, Nightmare

Twilight's scream of pain petered off as the shadow expanded, taking form over her as it finished manifesting. Its legs were longer and thinner relative to Twilight's proportions, and its coat a much darker shade of purple. Its large purple eyes surrounded cat like slits braced against a gray cornea. Bony armor gripped its barrel, back, and head in place of a mane, as well as surrounding its horn, which was a twisted mockery of Twilight's. The tail was a whip-like shadow stretching back from its body. One wing was a shadowy birds wing, but the other was a rotting bat wing. A purple jewel was embedded in its forehead just below the horn.

As the figure rose to its steel shod hooves, it seized Twilight's omniwrench in a magical grip. The wrench warped and twisted, and a dark sword blade erupted from the head, taking shape as a wicked weapon of destruction. As the shape stabilized, Twilight's color started to fade, and the marks on her flanks vanished. A single purple star appeared on the flanks of the creature, almost completely consumed by shadows.

A Nightmare was born from agony. A Dark Star had risen.

"What have you done?" Ratchet demanded of Qwark, rushing to Twilight's side.

Dark Star hissed, swinging the sword at Ratchet, positioning itself between him and Twilight. Twilight herself remained unmoving.

"Get out of my way!" Ratchet roared, pulling out several of his weapons to open fire.

Most of the weapons fire was either deflected magically, sidestepped, or blocked with the sword when Dark Star wasn't swiping at him directly. A few blasts, however, did impact against Dark Star. It flinched back at each impact, hissing defiance, but showed no sign of injury.

Qwark staggered back from the conflict, the Helix-o-Morph falling from his grasp. "No..." he whimpered. "This wasn't supposed to happen. She was never supposed to get hurt...this wasn't...Twilight..."

Taking advantage of Qwark's distraction, Clank raced forward and snatched the Helix-o-Morph. He then rushed back to Angela Cross. "Is there any chance you can fix this?" he asked her.

"What is this?" Angela demanded in fear, hyperventilating. "What is this-"

Clank slapped her across the face. "Hysterics later," he directed sternly. He handed her the Helix-o-Morph. "Science now."

Angela took the Helix-o-Morph, struggling to focus on analyzing it. "This isn't science!" she snapped angrily, turning it over and over as her brain went into overdrive. "What is that?" she demanded, pointing at Dark Star.

"I am not entirely certain," Clank replied, turning to watch the battle for a time. "However, whatever it is appears to be drawing power from Twilight. At best, I would guess that your Helix-o-Morph interacted with her magic and, for some reason, resulted in the generation of...that."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" Angela proclaimed. "My Helix-o-Morph was designed to reduce hostile behavior and mutations! What did Qwark do to my Gadget?" Angela shivered all over. "I don't do well under pressure! It could take months of research and-"

"The battery is in backwards," Clank pointed out.

Blinking, Angela turned the device over. "Huh, so it is." She quickly turned the battery around. "But what now? The battery is nearly drained! I don't think it has enough power to reverse this...not if it drained the battery this much!"

Meanwhile, the battle raged on. Ratchet was rapidly going through much of his ammunition trying to blast his way past Dark Star to get to Twilight. He had already lost all his Tesla Barrier ammunition deflecting fireballs, blasts of ice, and bolts of lightning. The barriers proved to have no effect on the waves of shadows thrown at him, so Ratchet had to either dodge or shoot those, and only energy based weapons worked. The frustrating part for him - which left him blinded by rage - was that Dark Star continued to show no reaction to any impact, taking no visible damage from the barrage.

Qwark's eyes hadn't left Twilight's recumbent form the entire fight. He saw her twitching as the fight went on, and desperately wanted to find some way to help her, to save her. However, his mind had never been strong. It had taken him nearly a year to come up with this insane plan to get Twilight away from Ratchet and make Ratchet look bad while he looked good, hoping that would lead Twilight to follow him instead. He couldn't think quickly in an emergency like this one.

It had taken him this long to realize that Twilight flinched every time Dark Star took damage.

Blinking at that, he pulled out a pair of magnifier goggles to look closer. His eyes widened as he saw the nanotech readout on Twilight's armor. He knew it had been full near the start of the fight, even after Dark Star had formed, but now it was nearly empty. When the next blast hit Dark Star, the gauge went dark, Twilight flinched and whimpered, and a burn wound appeared on her side just under her wing, right where Dark Star had been hit.

Qwark's mind put those pieces together so fast it actually hurt his brain. He spun to the battle.

Ratchet growled, pulling out his RYNO II. "Get out of my way!" he roared, opening fire. The rapport as the weapon discharged its entire payload of 100 missiles towards Dark Star was deafening.

"No!" Qwark shouted out, lunging forward. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion to his senses. The missiles flew towards Dark Star. Dark Star reared in response, hissing defiance, its sword swinging into position. He wasn't going to make it in time.

He refused to accept it. He had failed to be the hero Twilight wanted in Solana. He had made himself the villain to try and be her hero here in Bogon. He would not fail her again.

His eyes closed as he ran, and he remembered how it had felt when she had first turned that idolizing gaze upon him. She saw him as he had always wanted to be seen: a hero, a symbol of courage and hope. He probably would never be such a hero again. But he hadn't been lying when he'd said Ratchet and Twilight possessed the qualities to be true heroes.

He would not let his mistakes destroy them both!

He felt his arms wrap around a large equine form, heard a hiss of surprise and defiance. He heard Ratchet's scream of shocked confusion.

He felt the barrage of 100 destructive missiles slam into his arms, back, head, and legs, and the agony of their detonations tearing at his flesh.

As the noise faded, his eyes opened. Looking up, his vision blurry, he saw Dark Star looking down at him in confusion and disdain. Looking over the wing, he saw Twilight's recumbent figure, still breathing. He smiled in relief, only to be smacked away by the sword. He landed painfully on his back near Ratchet.

"Qwark, what are you thinking?" Ratchet demanded angrily.

"Twilight..." Qwark gasped out, his wounded flesh flinching against the ground. "That thing...she takes its damage..."

"What?" Ratchet demanded, spinning to glance towards Twilight. His eyes widened in fear as he saw the scorch across her side, where he'd scored Dark Star with his Lava Gun in desperation. "T-Twilight..." he gasped, realizing what would have happened if his RYNO II barrage had hit Dark Star.

Dark Star hissed in fury, and launched a wave of shadows at Ratchet and Qwark.

Ratchet lifted his hand defensively, closing his eyes against his own fear. He was all out of weapons. His Megacorp gadgets were useless here. Clank was out of reach. He was going to die.

He was going to lose Twilight.

The surprised turn of Dark Star's vocalizations caused his eyes to snap open. The wave of shadows was held at bay, a blue glow surrounding them. "What...?" Ratchet began in confusion.

"Ratchet!" Clank called out. "Do not lose focus!"

Blinking, Ratchet's eyes fell on his outstretched hand. The Power Gauntlet glowed with the same blue light that held the shadows at bay. "What...?" Seeing the blue light start to flicker, he discarded his questions and doubts and focused.

Dark Star roared in rage and swung the sword up to bring it down upon Ratchet...only for both sword and beast to be knocked back by a sudden barrage of Protopets. The blue fuzzballs piled onto the beast, gripping gently everywhere their mouths could find a hold, weighing the beast down through sheer mass of fluff.

Dark Star dropped the sword, which reverted to the Omniwrench. Snarling in fury, it struggled against the weight of the beasts. Letting go of the wave of shadows, Dark Star fired off a blast of raw power against Ratchet.

Not knowing what else to do, Ratchet held up the Power Gauntlet, focusing all he could on pushing the blast back. The Gauntlet glowed blue, and the blue light pushed against the blast, but it quickly started to fail. The Power Gauntlet shook violently from the stresses put on its circuitry. Ratchet closed his eyes against the inevitable.

The Power Guantlet shattered, the fragments tearing at Ratchet's arm. As his blood flowed freely, it dripped into the sphere of blue light that still emitted from the focus crystal that was the only piece that still held. The focus crystals of the mass produced Power Gloves and Gauntlets were of mass produced crystal formulated specifically for the purpose. But Twilight had found a natural gemstone that occurred only on Veldin in very small quantities for use in Ratchet's. It was a crimson gemstone that was not quite a ruby.

Twilight had called it a Carbuncle.

As Ratchet's blood dripped onto the gem, the blue light flared even brighter, pushing Dark Star's attack back. Dark Star's eyes widened in shock, and it screamed in fury, thrashing against the mass of Protopets holding it down, until the blue beam of light pushed all the way back to its horn, snuffing out the attack.

A desperate stratagem occurred to Clank as his sensors struggled to make sense of what he was perceiving. Trusting to his circuits, he seized the Helix-o-Morph from Angela and hurled it into the blue light.

The Helix-o-Morph shattered, and the blue light erupted into three bolts of lightning. The first shot straight through Dark Star's horn before anchoring in Twilight's, while the other two repeated the action with the wings. Dark Star screamed in rage, defiance, and agony as the shadows that made up its form began to dissolve. The darkness faded, purple light taking its place before flowing into Twilight. As the light flowed into her and the lightning faded, her coloration returned to normal. Last of all, the marks returned to her flanks.

"Twi...light..." Ratchet gasped out. Falling forward, he slumped into unconsciousness.

As Clank, Angela, and Abercrombie Fizzwidget - who had been released from the supply closet by a swarm of Protopets during the ruckus - rushed forward to tend the wounded, the Carbuncle fell to the ground, its surface cracked, its glow faded. Pushed beyond the jewels integrity and ability to handle the forces that had run through it, the crystal crumbled into dust, blowing away on the wind.

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