• 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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Size: Horror

When Clank awoke, he found himself on a barren world surrounded by other robots blasting away at each other. "Where...am I?" he asked, confused.

A nearby robotic head the size of Clank's whole body bounced back and forth. "They must have blasted you good, soldier!" it barked out. "You're on planet Metalis in the middle of Robot War III!"

Clank blinked for a time as he saw other robots homing in on him in what looked like combat vehicles...though the more he looked, the more this all began to resemble Old Earth battle bots matches. Seeing a scoreboard, he made a quick connection. Reaching into his chassis, he pulled out Ratchet's old Blaster, promptly blasting the vehicles around him to bits.

"Hey!" one of the robots shouted. "That's against the rules!"

"I do not have time to play!" Clank barked out. "I need to get off this planet as soon as possible, and find Ratchet and Twilight. If you cannot assist me, then you are in my way."

At that moment, Skrunch landed in a monkey shaped rocket, squawking about having seen Ratchet and Twilight on Medical Outpost Omega. He even was able to provide video footage of what was being done.

Clank could only stare at the video of Ratchet and Twilight laid out on twin tables on two sides of the video screen. "Processing of subjects 261595 and 261596 are now one third complete," Luna's voice stated in a voice over. "Begin internal examination of subject 261595. Begin harvesting of internal samples of subject 261596." The robots on screen raised drill arms towards the apparently unconscious subjects.

Working quickly, Clank downloaded the coordinates. Since Skrunch's rocket was too small for passengers, Clank made his way to a transformation platform, letting him shift to Giant mode.

He paused as he looked upward along his projected flight path. "...I cannot risk not making it," he said simply. "I shall simply have to risk internal damage instead." He activated an internal circuit.

While he hadn't let Twilight do any work on his internal circuits since she wasn't a registered roboticist, that hadn't stopped her from constructing various devices to amplify his functionality, both in normal size and Giant. And Clank, being the most cautious member of the group, had installed the inactive upgrades in his chassis, just in case. And now he was activating all of them.

Instead of his usual energy pulse blasters on his wrists, his entire hands converted into massive buster guns. Instead of the secondary barrage of auto lock rockets, he could charge up a massive laser blast to obliterate everything he swept it across. An energy deflector shield reflected laser or plasma blasts away from him, and a gravimetric coil caused missiles aimed at him to loop around him to fly back at those that launched them. His boot rockets and back jetpack had been similarly augmented, tripling his speed in flight.

The one drawback he noticed to all of this was the strain it put on his power core. If he took more than a few hits, his core would rupture and he would explode. Thankfully, the design was efficient enough that, as long as he was even moderately careful, he'd take no hits.

As such, he blasted off without hesitation.


After literally carving his way through the space defenses, Clank made it to Medical Outpost Omega. Shrinking back down to normal size, he took a few moments to realign his internal systems and plan a new approach. After how he'd blasted his way in, he knew that the defenses would be high. The Technomites would do everything in their power to stop him from getting to Ratchet and Twilight. Every tactical instinct in his mind said to sneak in and locate them.

However, a deep rage was burning inside him. Seeing Ratchet and Twilight laid out like that...imagining the horror they were being put through, especially little Twilight, who was only just overcoming the horror of the Dreadzone... That rage was bursting at his circuits, begging to be let out.

He also knew that, whatever Twilight was going through, she would need at least one of them to be calm, cool, and collected. He could not count on Ratchet to do that. He would need to purge his rage before he got to either of them.

As he saw the defense robots approaching, he almost pitied them. Almost. He activated all the normal size upgrades he'd installed of Twilight's work, and he saw the fear in his targets' eyes as his new armaments unfolded. "You should have researched us more thoroughly," he stated firmly. "Then you would know the mistake you have made." He leveled his guns. "You do not mess...with Agent Clank!"


Ratchet staggered out of the wavering lab where the Dreks in lab coats and Blahrgian nurses tried to cut him to pieces, bursting out the door to find a beach that looked like a part of Pokitaru. The lab vanished as the door closed behind him, fading into the ether.

Another door appeared before him and opened, revealing Clank and Twilight...but they looked odd. Clanks eyes were red, and his head floated independent of his body. Twilight's eyes looked bloodshot, like she was stoned, and she giggled as her wings flapped around her head, detached from her body.

"It is okay, Ratchet," Clank stated. "You can come in. It is safe inside this door."

"In here, everything is perfectly fine!" Twilight assured him with a strange giggle as the door closed in his face.

"Twilight...Clank..." Clenching his teeth, he stormed forward through the wavering vision, trying to find the door again.

As he continued, visions of enemies of his past, allies, Twilight's inventions, and other things assailed him. At one point, he found himself walking through a colorful land filled with candy colored horses. He could have sworn it was a piece of Twilight's home world...but a tiny pink pony, the same size as Twilight was right now, told him he wasn't supposed to be there yet, and to say hi to her Daddy. She then promptly pushed him through another door, leaving him on a massive platform in front of a Giant Clank made of butterflies. The pony stuck her head through the door and blew on the Giant Clank, causing it to fly apart. The pony then ducked back through the door, and the door vanished.

The door from earlier opened up, with the odd looking Clank and stoned looking Twilight inviting him in, and he started to follow. However, another door opened opposite it. Clank stood there, looking normal but smoking, bits of his chassis fluctuating and cracked. "You must wake up!" he begged Ratchet. "There is still so much to do!"

As Ratchet glanced back and forth between the doors, the damaged looking Clank sighed. "I knew there was something off about that Luna girl...but I said nothing, because Twilight needed the adventure..." He hung his head in shame. "This...is all my fault..."

"Hey, it wasn't your fault," Ratchet reassured the damaged Clank. "I'm the one who's supposed to be her Father." The other door closed when his attention left it. "I'm the one who's failed her...again..."

"You can hear me?" Clank gasped in shock.

"Yeah," Ratchet pointed out. "You're standing right here."

Clank promptly grabbed hold of Ratchet and yanked him through the door.


As Ratchet slowly opened his eyes, he saw Clank standing over him, his chassis cracked and smoking. "It is good to have you back," Clank said warmly, the sentiment only somewhat marred by the smoke that poured out of his mouth.

"Clank?" Ratchet asked, shocked. "What happened to you?"

Clank smiled with his eyes. "You should see the other bot." He tried to laugh, but it was interrupted by smoke.

Staring past Clank's shoulder, Ratchet's eyes widened. "I...think I can..."

Bits and pieces of robots were scattered around the room, several spots were charred and smoking, the doors of the chamber were hanging off their hinges, the hallways outside were filled with wreckage and broken robots...one of which was actually impaled on a broken piece of wall, sparking and smoking.

"What happened?" Ratchet asked in shock as he sat up.

"I...lost my temper," Clank replied sheepishly.

"Remind me not to piss you off in the future," Ratchet replied nervously as he got to his feet.

As one robot that was still somewhat functional staggered to its spindly legs, an agonized scream echoed through the facility...a familiar scream.

"Twilight!" Ratchet yelled out. Lunging forward, he tore the front of the robot's torso off and stuck his hand in, squeezing something. "Where is she?!" he demanded angrily.

Clank gasped. He recognized what was happening to the robot. Ratchet had grabbed hold of several of the pain management circuits and the robot's CPU. If he squeezed hard enough, the circuits would become permanently entangled with the CPU, and the robot would be in constant agony as though every part of its body were in endless pain...and the damaged pain management system wouldn't be able to trigger a shut down into unconsciousness.

When the robot hesitated, Ratchet started to squeeze. "Where?!"

The robot babbled in code.

"He has transmitted a map of the facility with Twilight's location!" Clank said quickly. "I have a path determined."

Growling, Ratchet clenched his fist, dropped the robot, and stormed off. The robot writhed in agony.

Following along behind, Clank shut the robot down. He made a mental note to call Ratchet to task about this and reel in his temper...after Twilight was safe.


Twilight lay curled up inside her shield spell, cutting herself off from everything else in the universe, shivering and crying, wishing that the world was not as it was.

She had watched, frozen, as she had woken up on the operating table. The robots around her were examining her, and there was talk about how she was under anesthetic and wouldn't feel a thing, would sleep right through it completely unaware. But she wasn't asleep. She wasn't unconscious. She was aware...but frozen, paralyzed, unable to move, and only able to breathe through the tube she couldn't cough out of her throat.

She couldn't flinch as the needle jabbed into her leg, drawing blood. She couldn't wince as a thicker needle bored into her bones, extracting a sample of marrow. She couldn't cry as another needle jabbed into her back between her wings, digging into her spinal cord and extracting fluid from there. She couldn't scream in pain when feathers were torn out of her wing at the roots, blood and other tissues stuck to the quills.

And she could only stare in horror as they shaved a sample off the tip of her horn, drilled into the base, extracted a crystalline sample from within, and then sealed the hole with a laser.

After a time, the tube was removed from her throat and she was left there. And when the anesthetic agent they had given her - the one that, for her species, turned out to only be a paralytic - finally worked its way out of her system, her body finally flexed in response to the agony she'd been through, and a tortured scream ripped its way from her throat.

And then all she could do was curl up. She wanted to curl up in her wings, but her wings had been used to hurt her. Even her horn had been hurt. All she could do was activate her Tesla Shield, supercharging it with whatever magic she could bring to bear...and then weep.

She wasn't aware of her shield falling, or of Ratchet scooping her into his arms. She wasn't aware of much of anything as she escaped...until she heard something from a recording...Luna's last transmission from the base.

"Twilight's samples are incompatible with our process. We are unable to create a viable control sample."

"Then she is useless to us," a cold voice replied. "Dispose of her."

Useless...

She buried her face once more against Ratchet's coat, weeping.

Author's Note:

When I first started this story, I plotted out several major points that would be pivotal to the flow of the story, and how the characters would be shaped.

Twilight's section of this chapter was planned out from day one...and was the reason why, way back then, I gave serious consideration to giving this story a Dark Tag. Just for one section of this chapter. I thought it was Dark enough to qualify for the tag.

Thoughts?

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