With the starship it didn't take the group long to reach the area that Kalidon was resting in, though instead of positioning it close to their enemy's position Ratchet stopped it some distance away before they took the Star Explorer and landed on the outermost landing pad.
"I am worried. This has been too easy... far more than our other adventures." Clank commented, as they were able to land without any defenses coming online and attacking them, which meant either this villain was incompetent or he was trying to lure them into a false sense of security.
"I know we only just started this adventure, but you're right... something about this doesn't seem right." Ratchet said, as he was immediately on guard after discovering that nothing tried to blast them out of the air, though he turned off the ship once they reached their destination.
Based on what they were seeing it looked like the coordinates brought them to a factory, which was weird, especially since it seemed weird for the Technomites to make it so easy for someone to find out where they were hiding, while they got a brief message from Qwark revealing that he might have a lead on his family. The odd thing about his message was that he said he got a post from a company called 'Faux-Family', meaning it had to be a fake, especially since the timing of it was too odd, so the villain had to be making their move. Of course knowing Qwark there was a chance that he was being fooled into doing something stupid, but given that he wanted to be a hero there was a good chance he might be following along to turn the tide, but the siblings weren't expecting him to do much this time around. Other than that the other weird thing was that it looked like there were no guards outside the factory, which was just plain weird when they thought about it, to which they started to move as Autumn found the Scorcher in the Vendor, another weapon she claimed.
As the group explored the area Ratchet found someone tinkering with something, a board by the looks of it, though the person in question was a humanoid lion person, minus all the fur and missing the mane and tail, though while Autumn made a note about him Ratchet approached the figure.
"Tweaking the old engine, eh?" Ratchet inquired, something that immediately caused the figure to jump up and hide the board behind his back, followed by a barrage of questions as he asked who they were, what they had heard, and what all of them were doing here, causing him to hold a hand up, "Calm down, we haven't heard anything... we're just a group of traveling heroes, taking care of danger and righting wrongs so people can feel safe again."
Apparently someone accused him of being a cheater in the past and Ratchet figured that he'd be nice and say he didn't look like someone who cheated, which ended up in him being challenged to a race by the lion guy and two of his friends, he even gave Ratchet his spare board, since it was different from his Hoverboard. Ratchet, however, showed them just how good he was and was able to beat the team before they were able to best him, allowing him to earn the group a new gadget, the Shrink Ray, and a pair of Grindboots, not that anyone really needed them since they already had them, but he took them anyway. Of course the lion guy didn't have enough and challenged Ratchet to several more races, earning them a lot of Bolts in the process since he was able to overcome anything and everything that was thrown at him, showing Nika that each of them had their own pass times and that hoverboarding was Ratchet's, in addition to tinkering. The fourth and final race ended up earning them the gloves to the Sludge Mk. 9 armor set, which was odd when he thought about it, but he accepted the prize and gave it to Autumn as soon as the lion guy departed with a frown on his face, annoyed that he lost so many races in a row.
There was also a weapon modification vendor, something they didn't need even though Ratchet did check it out, just to see what it had to offer, before they moved along the empty path and used the Hypershot to reach the front door of the factory, before they discovered something interesting.
"There's a slot we can use the Shrink Ray to enter... talk about a lucky coincidence." Ratchet remarked, as it seemed odd that they would get the gadget that was needed to enter the structure on the same planet it was needed on, given what he and his siblings had seen in the past, to which he glanced back and the others nodded, "Be right back."
As it turned out if he used the gadget on the terminal he could shrink himself down to an incredibly small size and leap up into the lock, allowing him to disappear for some time, though when he returned and enlarged himself the door opened, allowing them to enter the factory. Inside it they found some red robots in glass cages, where Ratchet, his siblings, and the others tore through the area, Clank explaining that most of the time they ended up facing slumbering foes that woke up as a fight broke out, so this cut down on the number of enemies that would be in their way. Nika was surprised by that, as it wasn't reported in everything that the group did, but she understood their reasoning and joined in, because she had the feeling that this was tied to the villain Ratchet and his siblings were currently tracking. Their tactics eliminated a number of robots that would have ambushed them once they passed through the area, before they reached the construction part of the factory and started to demolish everything around them, cutting off their foe's ability to make new robots, before they found that it brought them to a circular arena.
Once more this seemed far too easy for the siblings, hence why Autumn and Starswirl started to form a getaway plan, just in case this was a trap of some kind, though it turned out to be a platform that descended into the ground and stopped a few times, at doors that dispensed more enemies for them to fight, but it posed little threat to them. When the elevator reached the bottom of the shaft, however, they had to jump off of it and watched as it fell into a hole, the end of it, where they focused on a terminal and Clank had Ratchet activate it. Such a thing caused some foul green liquid to fill the shaft, rising to where the group was standing, before they found a set of platforms that they could use to get back up to the top of the area, so that was what they did as Autumn and Starswirl kept their magic at the ready, in case someone missed one of the jumps or something. When they reached the top of the room, however, Ratchet found that the shaft sealed once everyone beat the acid to the surface, though his sister also recovered the boots to the Wildfire armor and stashed it away as they headed deeper into the factory so they could figure out what was going on.
From there they slashed and blasted their way through a few more groups of enemies, using Hypershots to traverse some of the hazards that had been placed in this factory and the Shrink Ray to deal with a Grind Lock, not to mention using their Gravity Boots to cross another area, before finally reaching what had to be the end, a large central area that looked like a combat arena.
"Okay, now where's the creature we have to fight?" Autumn inquired, as this foe was rather easy to predict, in fact if she or Starswirl did something like this they'd make it harder to figure out when powerful foes were ready to be fought, before a section of the floor rose up and revealed a purplish beast with claws for hands and feet, not to mention sharp teeth that it showed off as it roared at them, "Good. Now, let's take it down."
Nika found that while the beast was rather impressive, especially when she thought about the sea serpents and enemies she fought under the water, the family of heroes that she was traveling with were far more impressive, moving around with a shocking display of accuracy and hitting the beast without slowing down, allowing them to win and claim the armor of the Sludge Mk. 9 set as Clank opened the door to where Luna was resting.
"Thank you guys. You are truly heroic!" Luna said, though her words, without the lisp, were all they needed to hear, due to the fact that Autumn and Starswirl had their magic at the ready, as they had walked into a pretty obvious trap and now it was time for them to break it.
"Yeah, had a feeling this would happen... you forget the lisp." Ratchet remarked, where Luna realized her blunder as soon as he said it, in fact she didn't even seem to realize that she had done it, though at the same time she decided to skip the script she had prepared and tapped a button.
In that moment his siblings revealed their plan, warping everyone out of the area with ease, teleporting them back to their ship, though they also left behind a rather convincing decoy that would have been rendered unconscious by whatever the flash of light was, to which they returned to the Star Explorer and waited on the starship, just to see what happened with Luna and the fake Ratchet his siblings had left for her to take.