The ride to their next destination, Orxon, was in an awkward silence as both Sunset and Starlight kept what they had witnessed on Gaspar to themselves. Sunset was still in shock to discover that she not only had the ability to absorb the excess magical energy of Starlight's spells, but that she could also use that energy without any training... allowing her to perform magical acts like her sister could. She stared down at her bracelet for a moment and flexed her fingers for a moment, remembering the sensation of the magical aura that had been swirling around her hand for a few moments before she, at her sister's encouragement, had released the energy.
She hated to admit it, because of the devastation she had caused to the compound and the surrounding area on Gaspar, but she had actually enjoyed the rush of power she had felt. She could have sworn that she felt a part of her, one that had been dormant her entire life, awaken when Starlight had her try to use the bracelet's magic for the first time. She knew that this new feeling didn't make any sense, as Cazar's didn't have the ability to produce the same feats of magic that Starlight was capable of creating, but yet she had been able to do something with the power she had already absorbed. It felt strange, wrong even, for her to even use magic, but she had the strangest feeling that she would tap into this new power multiple times in the future... even if she didn't want to use it.
She did wonder if it was possible to understand the power that she now had access to, though she determined that time would tell what was really possible and what was impossible.
Starlight, on the other hand, was keeping her mind busy by working on the RYNO II holo-plan, determining what type of missile it should use, though if that type of missile didn't exist she decided that she would just make that type of missile a reality. There were too many variables that she needed to work out before the weapon could be manufactured, which was why the original weapon had been created by a group of weapon designers. Even remembering the original weapon made her remember that one of her co-workers had delievered the weapon to the Blarg, by use of the salesman she found in Blackwater City, made her want to make sure that no one else worked on it besides her.
She was, however, determined to figure out who had told the salesman about the location of the holo-plan and bring the person, or the group she reflected, to justice.
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When they actually arrived at Orxon, however, Clank's readings went off and warned them about the toxic air that rested outside the ship, to which Ratchet knew what to do.
"Hey Starlight," Ratchet called to the back seat, causing his sister to look up from her holo-plans, "Could you throw up a small barrier around the ship when we land? Maybe make one that keeps the toxic air out long enough for Clank to exit the ship?"
"I... I can try," Starlight said, not really sure if it was possible to do what her brother was asking, but she was determined to try something new as her horn lit up, "just let me know when we've landed and I'll cast the spell..."
Sunset could tell that her sister was unsure of her capability to perform the spell that Ratchet had requested, which she was also sure that both Ratchet and Clank had noticed her lack of certainty as well. However, she could still feel the power of the bracelet, as if it had recharged during the journey between Gaspar and Orxon, so she decided to see if she could aid her sister. She simply placed her right hand on her sister's shoulder and closed her eyes, allowing whatever magic the bracelet still had to surge into her sister and empower her spell. As the ship touched the landing pad a barrier phased into existence around them, one that surrounded the entire landing area and gave Clank more than enough room to safely get out without endangering his companions.
As Clank exited the ship, and Ratchet closed the hatch behind him, Starlight stared at Sunset for a moment, telling her that her sister had felt the rush of power empower her shield as well.
"Well then, we had best move into the cargo area while we wait for Clank to return," Ratchet said, moving into the back seat and opening a door that allowed him to enter the area he had mentioned, to which Starlight and Sunset followed after him... after making sure the barrier was down first.
There was enough room for the three of them to spread out and stretch their legs, allowing them to relax from the travel they had sat through and talk about whatever was on their minds. Sunset, remembering the helmets they had recovered from Gaspar, pulled out her tablet for a moment as Starlight sat down, as she needed to make some modifications to the helmet so her sister could wear hers without any problems.
"Hold still for me while I take your measurements," Sunset said, pulling out a few tools and making notes on the tablet as she went to work, "I want to make sure that this helmet fits you perfectly."
"I still can't believe that you pulled off such an impressive barrier back there," Ratchet commented, watching one of his sisters work, while the other seemed to be lost in her thoughts for a moment, "I mean, I only asked for something small so you didn't burn out your power, but you proved that I shouldn't worry about that."
As Sunset moved to her workbench, with the tablet in her hands, Starlight wondered if it was time to reveal that it was because of them that the compound had been destroyed. She really wanted to talk with Sunset, alone anyway, but it seemed that it might be that they informed their brother of what Sunset was capable of doing as well. She hated making these types of decisions, because she didn't know if her sister was going to be mad at her or not, but she sighed and decided that she was going to have to roll the dice this time. She only hoped that everything went smoothly and that she didn't set off some sort of bomb with her news... though one could only imagine Ratchet's reaction to this news.
"I'm pretty sure it would have failed in twenty or thirty seconds if Sunset hadn't empowered it," Starlight said, though as she looked up she found that Sunset had ignored the conversation, but Ratchet was tilting his head sideways, "Wait, you seriously didn't notice that she had placed her hand on my shoulder?"
"I was piloting the ship," Ratchet pointed out, but he had actually seen the gesture and had wondered what that had meant, "I assumed that it was to make you relax and take away the pressure."
"She lent me her strength, if I can be totally honest with you," Starlight replied, pulling out her tablet and flipping to a video that showed the excess magic of her crystals being absorbed into the golden bracelet, "Apparently Sunset's bracelet has the ability to absorb magic, though we only figured this out back on Batalia... and we decided to test her magical abilities back on Gaspar."
She could tell that Ratchet, upon hearing of their testing Sunset's new abilities on Gaspar, had set his wheels in motion and that he was already piecing together what had happened. She also realized that he was much smarter than she had given him credit for, though she determined that it was his desire to keep up with them at all times that allowed him to do this.
"So... its our fault that the compound was destroyed," Ratchet said, his eyes widening as Starlight merely nodded, "Well then, I guess that means that you'll have to teach her on how to properly use magic. Wouldn't want another accident to happen on another planet."
"Wait, so your fine with what happened?" Starlight asked, wondering if she had actually heard her brother right for a moment there.
"No, not when the area began to destabilize like that." Ratchet replied, frowning at her for a moment, "Starlight, you and Sunset could have died out there! Those volcanoes were dormant until you tried to test Sunset's magic, not to mention that you could have killed yourselves while trying to satisfy a simple curiosity you both shared. Look, when Sunset's done with the helmet I want you to talk to her about this... just explain my concerns and try to stress the fact she's dangerous without training."
"Very well," Starlight said, sighing as she looked over at her sister, who was still in the 'zone' and likely hadn't heard a single word they had said, "I'll do what I can when she's finished with her project."
"And finished!" Sunset exclaimed, turning around in her chair and holding up the Pilot's Helmet she had been working on, reshaped to fit on Starlight's head while retaining the same color it previously had, "Come on, let's see if this fits or if I'll have to work on it some more."
Starlight nodded and moved over to Sunset, where she gently moved the helmet over her sister's head and slipped it on, allowing her horn to fit through the hole she had added to the top of it. The two of them fiddled with it for a few moments, making sure that Starlight was comfortable with wearing the helmet, before they determined that everything was okay. When Starlight used her magic to lift something for a moment, which was merely lifting a can on the other side of the cargo hold, both she and Sunset discovered that the helmet actually increased her abilities just a bit... to which they decided that they had to test it on some enemies later on.
During their time going over the capabilities of the Pilot's Helmet, which took roughly an hour that Ratchet fell asleep while they spoke, Starlight went over the rules of magic usage with Sunset... and the various things that Ratchet had said to her earlier. Sunset wasn't too happy with the rules, but she wasn't sure what to do with the bracelet and determined that she needed help in keeping herself under control. They still had no idea what Sunset was even capable of, so the two of them agreed that she needed to learn the basics... which caused Starlight to grin at the thought of being the teacher for once.
Once the hour had passed there was a knock on the door that allowed the previous owner to move cargo into this area without going through the pilot's seat, to which Ratchet stirred and opened the door to allow Clank to enter.
"So, what did you find out there?" Ratchet asked, stretching his arms as the door closed behind his companion, "Anything useful or interesting that we can use against Chairman Drek?"
"Magneboots?!" Sunset exclaimed, looking at the boots that Clank pulled out, knowing what the item was because she had seen them in a report from Gadgetron not too long ago, "These are supposed to allow you to walk on any metallic surface... so they should definitely come in handy later on."
"Sweet," Ratchet said, though he had some trouble pulling them off of Clank, as the moment they were given to him his robotic companion flew to the bottom of the boots, "Did you find anything else out there?"
Clank picked himself up and dusted himself off for a moment, before opening his compartment once more and pulling out an Infobot he had found near the ship. It played a message about the resort on Pokitaru, highlighting the helmet that was responsible for allowing customers to breath underwater, before Chairman Drek's ships appeared in the background. As the Infobot ended Ratchet looked at his sisters for a moment, but he didn't need to be told what was on their minds as they were all thinking the same thing. Once the Infobot was back in Clank's storage area the four of them returned to their seats and set off for Pokitaru, where they would stop Drek once more and recover some of those O2 masks the resort people had.
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They reached Pokitaru much quicker than they were actually expecting, though Ratchet grinned at the thought of being able to deal another blow to Chairman Drek's plans on ruining every planet in the galaxy. Unfortunately Starlight was more annoyed with Drek's activities on this planet... which was the dumping of toxic waste into the water and turning the wildlife against the people who called the planet home.
"He's despoiling planets that he, and the rest of the Blarg, have no interest in!" Starlight fumed, hopping out of the ship while the rest of her family followed suit, "Why doesn't he just dump his waste on a moon that no one's going to live on? Better yet, why doesn't he just dump the waste in a black hole? I mean, there's two black holes that he could be using instead of soiling other planets!"
"What I want to know is why he hasn't bought a barren planet and started the process of terraforming it to meet the needs of his people." Sunset commented, staring up at the ships as they approached the vendor to see what weapons might be available, "Makes no sense as to why he'd want to rip the rest of the galaxy apart like he is..."
Before they reached the weapons vendor they came across the man that they had seen in the Infobot commercial, though he was definitely more stressed than he had been when the commercial had been created. He was still wearing his Hawaiian shirt and sandals, though he nervously glanced at them as they neared him, as if he believed that they might be part of the invasion that was happening around the resort.
Hey, you guys are the first friendly faces I've seen in weeks." he said, before pulling back a little bit, which only furthered their thought that he was hesitant to believe they were going to help him, "You are friendly, aren't you?"
"To you, yes." Ratchet said, to which the man seemed to relax for a moment, which only told them that he was glad that some form of aid might have come after all.
"To them, no!" Sunset and Starlight said, both of the speaking in unison as they pointed at the ships that were dumping toxin into the water around them.
"Well that's wonderful!" the man happily said, before pointing to a building that they could see in the distance, "Down at the visitor's center, we've got a atmospheric gunship. We used to use it for tourist stunt flights, but if you know your way around the controls, you could probably use it to take out all these ships dumping waste into the waters and turning the wildlife vicious! If you can escort me to the visitor's center safely, I can give you the keys and you can use the gunship to shoot all those Blargian dumpships out of the sky... and I'll even throw our last O2 Mask in free of charge! How's that for the deal of a lifetime?"
"Wait, you only have one of those masks left?" Ratchet asked, surprised that the resort didn't have a stockpile of them laying around for the man to give out to new visitors.
"Well, one fully functional mask and a bunch of parts laying in a box," the man replied, shrugging for a moment, "I'm sure that someone could find enough parts to make one or two more masks, but there's no one at the resort that's capable of doing that besides our robotic expert and he's already tired of fixing them up. You'll have to find someone else that's got the ability to recreate the masks."
Sunset didn't actually like the idea of salvaging through scraps of broken masks, because that's what she assumed the man was talking about, but she decided that as long as they had a working on she could replicate the mask once or twice. Now that they had something to do, which meant escorting the manager to the hanger so Ratchet could use the ship, they returned to the vendor and purchased the next two available weapons. The first weapon was the Decoy Glove, which was actually one of Starlight's joke weapons, one that wasn't supposed to be taken seriously considering it was a blown up version of whoever threw the sphere out, but Mr. Gadget seemed to like the weapon idea and produced it anyway. The second weapon, on the other hand, was the companion weapon that Sunset had made to go with Starlight's Devastator, the Visibomb Gun, which was designed to launch a missile that the owner could steer into an enemy from afar.
With these two new weapons each purchased by the group, and the manager now officially scared of the people he had chosen to escort him to the locked up ship, they pressed onward and came across their first enemies. They were puffer fish that could apparently breath on land, though the moment Ratchet took a step on the sand spikes popped out of their bodies and they began to move towards him. Ratchet, however, was expecting something like this to happen, because the moment one of the fish came near him he pulled out his Pyrocitor and started burning all of the fish around him into charred corpses. There was also a strange pink creature that glared at them as they approached, but a Devastator shot from Starlight sent the creature back into the water.
When they boarded the nearby ship, allowing the manager to take control and get them underway, they were assaulted by a steady stream of puffer fish mutants, though the three of them blasted the mutants back into the water and didn't let them get anywhere near the manager. It was a short ride to another island, where the three of them climbed off the boat and immediately started firing more shots at the puffer mutants that were waiting for them. They also encountered another pink mutated creature, though they removed it from their path and walked over the water for a moment so they could approach the waterfall area. There were more of the puffer fish waiting under the waterfall, though they proved to be no match for the combined might of Ratchet, Sunset, and Starlight.
Sunset, upon seeing that they were decimating their enemies, sighed and put away her weapons, to which her blade sword appeared in her hand and she attacked with it.
When they reached the second boat they repeated the process they had used on the first one, defending the manager from the puffer fish until they arrived at their next destination. Upon arrival Sunset leapt up onto the walkway and activated the bridge connecting their area to the next one, before striding forward and leaving her siblings on the boat.
"What's wrong with her?" Clank asked, wondering why Sunset suddenly went further ahead without discussing anything with the rest of her family.
"She recently learned that she can use magic as well," Starlight explained, determining that her sister had simply grown tired of overpowering their enemies with three people using weapons and was planning on studying her innate magical powers, "Her bracelet has the ability to absorb my excess magical energy and, in turn, allows her to use it as her own. From what I can gather from our experience on Gaspar, and the destabilization of the area around the compound, her bracelet has been absorbing pieces of my magic for the last ten years or so, thus increasing the amount of power behind her first attempt at magic."
"Wait, she knows magic as well?" Clank exclaimed, somewhat disturbed by the fact that there was a second magic user in the galaxy, while overlooking the fact that she and Starlight had been responsible for the destruction of Drek's compound.
"Yes, and she's got a decent amount of power stored inside that bracelet," Starlight said, as she had felt the power of the bracelet for a brief moment, though she had no idea how much power it actually had inside of it, "Come on, we had better see what she's doing to her enemies."
They followed the path that Sunset had taken and found her standing before a large group of puffer fish, though after a moment flames erupted from her sword as she ran forward. Starlight watched as the flames cut into the fish, cutting them down as if they were merely wheat and burning them like Ratchet had done earlier. Instead of extending the next bridge Sunset approached the edge and leapt across the gap, as if she had engaged a teleportation spell and crossed the distance with ease. Starlight was kind of surprised that her sister was using magic without falling over, but as they opened the way forward they watched Sunset either cut down her enemies or burn them with a simple fire spell.
When they reached the hanger Sunset took a breath and sat beside the robotic shop, allowing them to catch up and marvel at the destruction she had left in her wake.
"Tired?" Starlight asked, knowing that her sister might have overdone the amount of magic that she poured out, because she was already starting to show signs of exhaustion.
"Yes..." Sunset admitted, pulling out her tools for a moment, "Now, while Ratchet deals with the ships we can work on fixing those masks... if the manager lives up to his end of the deal."
The manager, true to his word, gave them the O2 Mask that he carried, had the crate of parts brought out to them, and moved out of the way as Starlight opened the hanger, allowing Ratchet to climb into the ship and take off to deal with Chairman Drek's troops. Sunset and Starlight focused on figuring out how the O2 Mask had been made, which they were glad to have the parts nearby as it allowed them to figure it out much quicker. Within ten minutes the two of them had a second functional O2 Mask sitting next to the original, this one twisted into the look that would allow it to fit around Starlight's head, before they focused on the third one.
As Drek's ships started falling from the sky the two of them continued with their work, finding just enough parts to make a third mask for Ratchet, before they worked on integrating the function of the O2 Mask with the Pilot's Helmet. The design was actually quite simple, as all they had to do was think a command through the helmet when they were about to go underwater or were about to walk out into the vacuum of space. Once Starlight's helmet had the mask added to it, and that it was actually coming out of its compartments like it should, she went into the water and moved her head under the waves, only to discover that the mask worked and that the helmet was fully functional.
By the time that Ratchet returned to the hanger, which was after destroying all of the tanker ships and the fighters that were protecting them, Sunset and Starlight had finished their work on their helmets, to which he handed his over and allowed them to add the mask to it. Once the third helmet had the O2 Mask added to it, and it also worked like a charm, the group started to bid the manager of the resort goodbye, but before they left he promised them that they were welcome back whenever they wanted. Ratchet didn't know what to say to that, so he merely nodded his head and followed his sisters through a teleportation pad that took them back to their ship.
With the O2 Masks in hand, and the resort saved from Drek's minions, they boarded their ship and set their course for Orxon, where they would finish what Clank had started earlier.