After fleeing the caverns that Vendra and Neftin were working in, and picking up Pollyx since his part in this seemed to be over, the siblings departed from Yerek without delay, finding that Qwark had even brought the Helios with him, allowing the two ships to dock for a time. Autumn engaged the cloaking device, so Vendra didn't find them, before Ratchet contacted Talwyn and informed her and Qwark about the situation, that the sector wasn't haunted, it was remnants of the explosion that the Great Clock was built to contain, including the possibility that the Twins were being used by the true villain. None of them were surprised to find that Talwyn didn't totally believe the story, in fact most believed that the Twins were monsters, but she trusted the siblings to do what was necessary to stop someone from breaking the barriers between dimensions. In addition to that Qwark escorted Pollyx back to his ship, after allowing him to take a shower since it had been some time since he last had a chance to do so, before they departed from the sector to show people that he was fine, allowing Ratchet, Clank, Autumn, and Starswirl to focus on their next objective.
While they knew that they should head to Silox, to see what in the world Vendra and Neftin were planning with their makeshift Dimensionator, the siblings decided to head to Kragg first, as the gadget for Clank would no doubt be needed to bypass some obstacles on the next planet.
"We're going to go to Kragg, beat the challenge, claim the prize, and get out to catch up with Vendra... yeah, that's not going to happen, is it?" Ratchet remarked, where he piloted Aphelion to the planet in question, which looked like a molten world and not an asteroid, like Annihilation Nation had been, while his siblings were readying themselves for whatever might be on the planet in question.
"Give our experiences of the other arenas, we'll be here for some time." Autumn answered, in fact she would be a tab bit disappointed if they didn't clean out the Thugs of everything that they had to offer them as rewards, just to make sure they had everything for their assault on Silox and the city that the Twins were working in.
"We'll likely be able to convince them to allow us to do everything in one visit, since they're being paid to take us down so the Twins can work in peace." Starswirl added, as he agreed with his siblings on the matter, there was no way they would just finish one cup and then leave the planet, to come back whenever the next ones were available to be challenged, and he found that his siblings agreed with his reasoning.
Clank didn't have anything else to add to their comments, not that it mattered since Ratchet found Kragg and took them in for a landing, where it was easy to find the massive arena the Thugs had set up, the Destructapalooza, only to find that a contestant was launched out of the arena by a challenge. Such a thing caused them to chuckle as they landed on what had to be the outskirts of the area, where Ratchet ensured that Aphelion was safe as his siblings climbed out of the ship, as he didn't trust the Thugs to keep their hands off her, but she insisted that she would be fine, causing them to approach what looked like the terminal to access challenges. After using the conveyor belt to reach the terminal Ratchet found that there were two Vendors waiting for them, one for weapons and one for armor, where they found the Winterizer, a weapon that was designed like a Morph-o-Ray, and Mr. Zurkon were available for purchase, which Autumn claimed without delay, as it boosted their arsenal for whatever the challenges had to offer them. The armor Vendor had what critics had dubbed the 'Thug' armor, even though it was made from Sargassian Troglosaur hide and metal, hence why Autumn decided to call it the 'Troglosaur Armor', but the critics won that brief argument, not that she cared too much, to which they purchased the light blue pieced attire to help them in the future.
With that done the siblings entered the Bronze Cup, finding that the first challenge the Thugs had for them was simply a fight against three waves of Thugs and dodging the various hazards, though as Ratchet and his siblings tore through their enemies they found that the hazards part was more like a typo, as there were none. With six of the twelve seventh tier weapons in their arsenal, a feat for sure since Autumn wasn't expecting to have half of them so soon, it took them no time at all to crush the first challenge, claim the reward, which was just Bolts, before they moved into the second challenge of the four that were in this cup. The second was them surviving against the Mangler, a death trap that was designed to take out anyone and everyone that happened to be in the area, even though it was a circular device in the center of the arena and they avoided it's hazards with ease. After that they found that the third was just culling Serathoids, like Kragg had an infestation of sorts and were using them against challengers, though, just like before, the siblings crushed them with their weapons, won the challenge, and moved onto the fourth and final challenge of the Bronze Cup, fighting what the Thugs called the 'Blazebot'.
Upon finding that it was just the robot they had fought on Yerek, however, the siblings found themselves disappointed just a bit as they fought and crushed it with their weapons, earning them the Jetpack, which happened to be what they were here for and Autumn added it to Clank's systems, before modifying her and Starswirl's boots to do the same thing that he could now do for Ratchet.
The Silver Cup started with a time limit where they had to fly through rings and take down a number of Thugs, which was far too easy for the siblings to do, because none of their foes really moved from their positions, opening the way for them to take down each one before reaching the end. After that it was another fight against multiple waves of enemies while dealing with the Mangler once more, which the announcer had claimed had been boosted in power, meaning some of it's safety restrictions might have been undone, but it was single in one spot and they won in no time. The third was more of a repeat of the first challenge, flying around and defeating moving Thugs, while finding that the fourth was five rounds in a specific time limit, though both challenges were finished in no time at all, much to the amazement of their foes. After that the Thugs sent out a Gargathon, a massive ball shaped creature with a serpent tail and tiny wings that lifted it into the air, at them, where Autumn informed them that it came from the planet Thram, which they might visit at some point during this adventure.
The Gargathon was tougher to fight since it was flying through the air, requiring them to use their new devices to follow it to some degree, but, in the end, they brought down the massive being and caused all of the observers to cheer for them, showing that they approved of the battle.
After that many of the Thugs persuaded the officials to allow the siblings to compete in the Gold Cup, the last of the three they had, and the first challenge was a trek through Doom Canyon as the Thugs tried to stop them in their tracks, even if all of their enemies failed in the long run. The second one this time around was using weapons to knock enemies back into the Mangler, an interesting twist that they quickly passed through with blazing colors, while the third challenge was more about surviving two rounds of Thugs while using their new toys. After that the fourth challenge required that they use no weapons, save for their melee weapons, to fight through their enemies, before discovering that the fifth one surviving two waves of enemies and the Mangler. If the siblings were being honest with themselves there was no reason for the three of them to be involved in a challenge, because there were times where Ratchet was more than enough to deal with their foes and other times where all three of them were involved in crushing the challenges.
The last one involved them fight the 'Prog Bot', a metallic robot that resembled Neftin and wielded two maces that were actually flails, which told the siblings that the Thugs must have invented the bot to get some enjoyment out of beating up their boss, without actually approaching him, but, like always, they took it down and cleaned up shop, adding more Bolts to their total as they returned to Aphelion.
"You know, after the Agorian Battleplex, I was expecting something... more." Autumn commented, as while the nature of the Destructapalooza was interesting, and some of the challenges were sort of neat, it was nothing compared to the rest of the arenas they had been to in the past.
Ratchet chuckled as they climbed into Aphelion and set off for Silox, as it was time to see what Vendra was up to and what they could do to bring her down before she accidentally set of a dimensional cataclysm and destroyed everything in the entire multiverse.