It took Starlight and Sunset twenty minutes to make sure that every piece of their broken ship was accounted for before they could actually get to work on repairing it. Once they were sure that they had all of the pieces Starlight downloaded a holoplan of where the pieces went and how to attach them, so they wouldn't make any mistakes. As they worked Sunset noticed that Starlight happened to be using the wrench that Ratchet used back in Solana, so she asked about it while they pieced together the ship. Apparently they found another wrench during their trek through the underground cavern, one that was much stronger than the one that Ratchet had been using, so Ratchet grabbed the new one and handed the other to Starlight.
Sunset found it odd that there happened to be a wrench sitting in the middle of a underground cavern, but she decided not to worry too much about it as she worked.
During the next hour they received a stream of constant updates from Ratchet, to which he would tell them about the enemies he was fighting and what he was discovering. He made a few comments about the creatures that he discovered, which happened to be a sort of mutated sand fly and a mutated lizard that breathed poisonous fumes on their enemies. He also mentioned that he found some sort of glider that had been forgotten about, though he collected it in the off chance that it would actually be important in the future. The last thing he mentioned was a large creature that slept beneath the sands, ones that attacked if someone like him came in the immediate vicinity of where they were resting.
Starlight seemed impressed by the amount of enemies that Ratchet had reported, though she knew they needed to get the ship fixed before they could leave the planet. One thing that did distract them from their work, however, was an old man who might have been a hippie or some kind of mystic, though they really weren't sure what to make of him. What really distracted them was when Sunset needed to take a break and switch off her magic for a few minutes, which was when the man decided to speak with her.
"Your chi is out of balance," the old man said, holding up Sunset's right arm and motioning to the bracelet for a moment, as if he knew exactly what the heart of the problem was, "You are in control at the moment, but there is another force inside of you that is vying for control. You must learn to control 'Pride' before she asserts herself over you."
"She's called Searing," Starlight commented, sliding a piece of the ship into place, though while she had originally been interested in what the man had to say she now found that it was what she and Ratchet had been telling Sunset all along, "and Sunset hasn't had any urges where that creature might resurface... or even come close to coming back."
"Just because 'Searing' has been caged at the moment does not mean that she's defeated," the old man said, looking at Sunset for a moment, or more like he was staring inside of her very soul, "and sooner or later that cage will open like a floodgate. One day you and your counterpart will settle this with each other, but you won't be able to get to that point without transportation."
A few seconds passed before the old man pulled something out of his pocket, which happened to be a crystal of some kind, and then held out his hands as it floated into the air. Nothing happened for a minute or two, besides the two sisters staring at him as if he had lost his mind, before energy moved out of the crystal and wrapped around the broken ship. Starlight quickly grabbed her tools and backed out of the energy field, surprised by what the old man was doing and interested in what would happen to the ship at the same time. Another few seconds passed before the pieces of the ship spun around and pieced itself back together, slowly reconstructing itself until all of the pieces were gone and it was a whole ship again.
"It has been healed," the old man said, putting away the crystal before turning back to Sunset, "Remember, keep your emotions in balance and you'll remain in control... anger will only lead you towards destruction."
Sunset felt that she should say something to the old man, or even question the fact that he had harnessed the power of the crystal without any effort on his part, but before she could say anything the man merely bowed his head and walked out of the settlement. Then she assumed that she lost the old man due to the heat of the surrounding desert, because one moment she was sure that he was standing there and the next he was gone.
"I doubt that's that last we'll see of him," Starlight commented, hopping into the ship and checking the systems that she had access to without Clank to power it on, "I just hope that he managed to put the ship back together in the right way, otherwise we'll be here even longer than before."
Sunset nodded and let her sister check the ship, making sure that there was nothing else that could possibly make them stay on this planet any longer than necessary. Ratchet eventually returned to them, to which he told them that he had encountered a strange man when he came back for ammo some time ago and that he sold him a bunch of crystals he found out in the desert. Sunset assumed that it was because of her brother that the old man had the crystal that allowed him to rebuild their ship, which Starlight eventually declared was safe for travel once more. Once Starlight had given the okay to move they all boarded the ship and departed for Dobbo, where they knew that they would find Angela waiting for them.
When they finally arrived on Planet Dobbo, and landed on the landing pad, they found that Angela was indeed waiting for them, though she seemed to be checking out a weapon that reminded Starlight of her own Devastator. Both she and Sunset were happy that Angela was going to be aiding them, because with even teams of two they wouldn't have to worry about Ratchet going overboard at all. They didn't see her carrying a handheld weapon, like the wrench that Ratchet carried or the staff that Starlight had, but that didn't mean she didn't have one somewhere on her person.
"Nice weapon you got there," Ratchet commented, after having landed the ship and turned it off, before leaping out and approaching Angela, "I take it this is one of the latest Megacorp weapons?"
"This is the Minirocket Tube," Angela replied, a smile on her face as she noticed something that Ratchet was interested in, which allowed her to remain calm and not be blushing all the time, "it fires rockets at whoever your targeting... much like the Devastator that Starlight built back in Solana. I did some research on a few of the weapons that Megacorp recently released and I can tell that they're identical in function to your sister's weapons, minus the new looks and the ability to evolve into a new form later on."
"Nice. I'll be sure to add that to my collection," Ratchet said, noticing another vendor not far from where the weapon vendor was resting, "I take it Megacorp released a new suit of armor to go along with their latest weapons."
"They did indeed," Angela said, waving a hand for a moment, as if she was dismissing the notion of the armor, "Look, we had better get underway before someone notices that we're together... and I know exactly how we should separate."
"Oh really?" Starlight asked, curious as to what Angela found in her research of the planet before they arrived, "What were you thinking about before we arrived?"
"Ratchet, Clank, and I should take the main Megacorp building over there," Angela replied, pointing to the building that they had landed near for a moment, "As an employee for Megacorp I should be able to get us through all of the defenses and show Ratchet what I was referring to back on Siberius. In the off chance that the defenses don't let us through... well, that's why I came prepared for a fight. While we're doing that the two of you should head down the walkway and make your way to the edge of the facility, where you'll find someone with an interesting piece of technology. He'll be able to send you to the moon, where I have it on good authority that the Leader of Thugs-4-Less is waiting for a decent challenger to appear... instead of listening to the person who employed him."
"So you want us to take him out?" Sunset inquired, not that she was against taking the man out of the picture permanently, to which Angela nodded once, "Well then, you might as well consider him taken care of."
Sunset grinned and started down the path that she and Starlight would be heading down, though as she passed by the armor vendor she spotted robotic chickens, more armored than the ones that they had already encountered, waiting for intruders to arrive. The instant that she touched the ground near where the robots were waiting Sunset drew forth her sword and cut one on their heads off, forcing the remaining two to attack her. She spun around and took their heads as well, clearing the way for them to move forward, where she spotted a pair of sentry bots waiting for action. Sunset jumped out of the way as the robots fired at her, to which Starlight appeared where she had been standing and loosed a missile from her new Minirocket Tube, blowing the pair of robots to pieces.
As the robots fell to pieces the door beside where they were standing opened and another pair of robots came out to fight them, but Starlight didn't give them a moment to fight back as she loosed another missile and tore them to pieces. Once they were taken care of they turned to the left and spotted a gap in the walkway, which apparently was intended for someone with a Dynamo to cross, but they merely engaged their magic and crossed to the other side. As they landed on the other side Sunset kept her magic going for a few more seconds and threw the enemies that were sitting around them into the water below. The moment that she had taken care of the robotic chickens they climbed up to the next platform and spotted more of the sentry bots waiting for them... and between them and the next building was what appeared to be a flying tank of some kind.
Sunset called upon the wind that she had used a few times before, mainly to push her enemies back so her siblings could tear their enemies down, though this time she had something different in mind for the magic. The wind whipped around the robots in front of them and tore into the circuits that were powering them, causing them to explode in midair and clearing the way so Starlight could have a better chance at hitting the tank. Before she could loose even a single missile they noticed that two more doors opened and six more sentry bots stepped out to oppose them... to which Starlight moaned as she noticed that they were all standing together and were making no motion to move apart.
"Sometimes they make things too easy for me," Starlight said, loosing a missile that tore into the group and blew at least three of them to pieces, to which Sunset caught the ones that survived and tore into them like she had done with the previous group, "Now then, let's see about removing that tank."
Starlight cycled through her weapons and drew out her Pulse Rifle, to which she leaded the bottom of it on the boxes that were resting in front of them and followed the tank through the scope. She waited a few seconds, making sure that she had the tank's weakness in her sights, before she took a deep breath, pulled the trigger, and listened to the sound of the tank exploding. Once she was sure that the tank had been removed, and that it was a pile of scrap metal, she and Sunset teleported to the next platform and moved onto the next enemies that were waiting for them. That was when they discovered a large group of sentry bots that were armed and prepared for combat, which was just fine with Starlight as she pulled out her RYNO II.
Sunset backed up as Starlight unleashed the power of her weapon, watching the missiles tear into their targets with ease and quickly clearing the way for them to move on. She assumed that Starlight wanted her to deal with the Leader of Thugs-4-Less when they met him, which was why she was tearing into their enemies and making sure that none of them escaped. Sunset didn't mind, because she had no idea how they were going to get to the Leader if the device that Angela mentioned was the same one that they used to enlarge Clank back in the Solana Galaxy.
The next building they came to happened to have another group of sentry bots waiting for them, though before Starlight could put them down she spotted another tank moving into position. She waited a few seconds, letting both the sentry bots and the tank get into position, before she pressed the trigger and started blowing all of them to pieces. The good thing was that she managed to clear the way to the next building, though she ended up using all of the RYNO II ammo in the process, so she cycled to a new weapon as more enemies showed up on their radar. Before she could fire a single shot at their enemies, however, several of them seemed to malfunction, as they turned their weapons on their allies and started firing at them.
Sunset and Starlight watched as the rest of their enemies tore each other to pieces, both of them wondering what had happened to cause such a change in their behavior.
"Do you think we have an ally that only Angela knows about?" Starlight asked, making sure that they walked through the wreckage as they looked for the man that they had been informed about.
"We might," Sunset replied, stopping as they came to an end of a walkway and spotted someone standing next to something in the distance, "but we'll have to ask her another time... we've got someone to deal with at the moment."
They engaged their magic for a moment and teleported across the gap, appearing before someone that looked like they were an accountant of some kind... if an accountant was dressed like a wrestler.
"Nobody - I mean NOBODY - gets by the Mathematician." the man told them, even pounding his chest a few times to prove that he was someone that they shouldn't take lightly.
"I take it that all the good names were taken?" Starlight asked, because she was sure that she could come up with something different that would make the man sound more menacing than the 'Mathematician'.
"Watch your mouth zero, before the Mathematician subtracts your head from your shoulders!" the man roared, pointing his calculator at them while punching some buttons on it, as if he believed that it might do something, before turning their attention to Dobbo's moon, "That moon is where we divide losers from winners, before adding them to the Megacorp Games! There's a challenger up there waiting to reduce you to nothing!"
Starlight grinned and leapt onto the machine that was sitting to their right, to which Sunset stood beside her sister as she wove her magic into the device for a moment. A few seconds later they disappeared in a flash of light, surging through space until they appeared on the surface of the moon that the man had been pointing to. When they appeared, and shook off the effects of the spell, they noticed the battle mech that was standing before them almost immediately, though it took them a few seconds to realize that their target was actually piloting the machine.
"Oh, its you two again!" the Leader exclaimed, moving his robot's arms and putting them in a fighting position, "I guess I get to settle the score from Megopolis. You did a pathetic job trying to kill me the first time, though that makes sense considering your first foe is still alive!"
"I'll have you know that Qwark is dead!" Sunset replied, crossing her arms for a moment, though she could feel her anger flare for a moment thanks to the brief mention of the man who betrayed them, "And soon you will be as well!"
"You must not be keeping up to date on a show that's airing across both Solana and Bogon," the Leader said, a grin appearing on his face for a moment, "Qwark was arrested for selling bogus Gadgetron merchandise, though he escaped the authorities and is supposed to have come to Bogon... which means that you failed to kill him the first time."
Starlight noticed the brief flash of red energy around her sister for a moment, so she teleported to the top of a nearby building and opened her communications link to their brother. The Leader of Thugs-4-Less had just pressed what she and Ratchet referred to as the 'Qwark Button', which was any mention of the man who had betrayed them, as it seemed to annoy Sunset each time he was mentioned. Ratchet needed to know what was going on, so that he could prepare himself and Angela in case the incoming attack also happened to have an effect on the planet they were on.
Ratchet mentally moaned when he and Angela entered the building, because the instant they did so Angela discovered that none of the robots liked her anymore than they liked him. She had said that this could be a possibility, though he almost wished that she hadn't mentioned it when they were talking outside the building. The moment she stepped near one of the sensor bots that floated in the air it turned red and started firing at her, which forced Ratchet to blast the machine out of the air as she backed up to him. Once they knew that they definitely weren't welcome in the building, and that anything they came across was going to be hostile towards them, Ratchet didn't waste time going to war against the first group that was standing in front of them.
He loosed a few missiles, that were joined by Angela's, and they took out the flying sentry bots, leaving him to cycle to the Lancer to take care of the floating spheres that had been resting below the sentries.
"I hate being right." Angela moaned, switching to her own Pulse Rifle, which Ratchet didn't even know she had, and took aim at the next sentry bot that was blocking their path, "Well then, seeing how we have no choice in the matter, shall we get started?"
"Are you sure that you know how to use these weapons?" Ratchet asked, recalling that Angela had missed him and his sisters quite a number of times back on Siberius.
In response to the question Angela got the sentry in her sights and pulled the trigger, blowing it to pieces before it had a chance to register what happened to it. Even the robots that had been standing further along the path they had to take seemed shocked that the sentry had been taken out, judging from how fast they were approaching the wreckage.
"I took some lessons before I tried to take the experiment," Angela said, cycling back to her Minirocket Tube and pointing it at the enemies that were slowly noticing that they were standing there, "Come on, let's take care of business and then I'll tell you anything that you might want to know the answer to."
Ratchet nodded and the two of them moved forward, firing at their targets and removing them from the walkway that they had to follow, allowing them to move towards their destination. When they reached a elevator that would take them to the next area they found what appeared to be a large group of robots, sentry bots and soldiers alike, that were waiting for them. Ratchet knew that whatever was in here that Angela wanted to show him had to be important, but to require so much security meant that it was more important than he was thinking it was. For once he wished that he had Starlight or Sunset with him, because even with Angela he had no idea if they could cut their way through their enemies and survive.
He was about to say something about their chances, but then he noticed that Angela was holding a weapon that appeared to be different than anything he had in his arsenal.
"I managed to convince my friend to loan me this 'Zodiac' weapon for some 'testing'," Angela explained, noticing Ratchet's look for a moment as they rode the elevator down to the lower level, "Now we can see if this weapon is as powerful as he promised."
Angela leveled the weapon with one of the enemies that happened to be waiting in front of them, but when she pulled the trigger the weapon powered up for a few seconds before releasing a charge that tore nearly every enemy in front of them to pieces. The only ones spared were the three soldier bots that were waiting on the elevator in front of them, though Angela quickly put the weapon away. Ratchet was amazed and disturbed that Megacorp had made a weapon that was almost as powerful as Starlight's RYNO weapons, or more accurately the one she was currently carrying.
As they finished off the last of their enemies, and walked along the path that would take them to their destination, Ratchet noticed something was bothering Angela and asked her about it.
"That weapon is too dangerous for the public to be wielding it," Angela said, sighing as she made a note to tell her friend about the weapon's power, "and I wasn't even warned about it. We could have been seriously hurt if something went wrong with that attack... I'm going to have to give Ivan a piece of my mind when I next speak with him."
"Its almost as powerful as the RYNO II," Ratchet commented, activating a set of platforms that they needed to jump across, until they reached one that they rode to the top of the room they were in, "Gadgetron only makes the weapon, one of each model anyway, for Starlight, to use against whoever her enemies are and record her findings so she can build an even better one in the future. She's already said that no one else is to own a RYNO weapon, as she is sure that some criminals might do harm with them... which Sunset agrees with. The best thing to do is make sure that no one else has the weapon, which means we'll have to take to Mr. Fizzwidget about it when we're done with the experiment."
Angela nodded and they approached the terminal that she wanted to access, but when they stopped in front of it she found that it was currently offline at the moment and called a maintenance bot to fix it. What ended up happening what that the robot did nothing besides show up and then depart, to which Ratchet pulled out the glider he found on the previous planet, told her to wait near the terminal, and then took off after the robot. Angela then waited a few minutes before the terminal's screen came online, which told her that Ratchet had reached his destination and had restored power to the terminal that they needed to access, before he appeared in the teleporter pad.
When he noticed that the machine also required payment for viewing what they needed, on top of everything that they had gone through to get there, he exclaimed that the galaxy 'blows', before saying that the only good thing in it was that Angela and his sisters were there with him. Once the machine had been paid they watched the recording that they had come for, which verified everything that Angela had warned him about back on Siberius, before he downloaded it so he could show his sisters later on. Before he could place a call to Mr. Fizzwidget, in an attempt to make him see how dangerous the experiment actually was, he received one of his own, to which he discovered that Starlight was calling him.
When he accepted the call the screen lit up to what appeared to be a small city on a moon, a large mech that appeared to be looking down at someone, and Starlight watching the entire thing.
"What's up Starlight?" Ratchet asked, though he had to wonder where Sunset was at the moment.
"Unfortunately nothing but trouble," Starlight replied, sighing before tilting the screen down to show Sunset, who had a red aura surrounding her at the moment, "The Leader of Thugs-4-Less pressed the Qwark Button."
"I did what?" the Leader said, zeroing in on Starlight while she was speaking to her brother, though he was glad to have an audience watch him smash the cazar's head in.
"You pressed the 'Qwark Button'," Starlight repeated, sighing as she braced herself for what was to come, because she knew something was definitely coming, "You shouldn't have done that."
Before the Leader could make a retort, or do anything for that matter, his view of the surrounding area shrunk and forced him to look down, to which he discovered that the lower half of his mech was now missing. It was almost as if the legs had been cut off and discarded, though now he got a good look at Sunset as she slowly approached him... with the ground around her feet cracking just a bit. As Sunset drew closer to the mech energy began to gather around her left hand, in the same fashion as what had happened on Gaspar, though this time she fully intended to shatter her enemy. She called some magic into her right hand and used it to push the mech onto its back, making sure that her target couldn't go anywhere until after she delivered her attack.
She then leapt on top of the mech and pulled her arm back for a moment, allowing the power to build for a brief few seconds, before swinging her arm towards her target and releasing the power.
"Gekishin," Sunset said as her fist stopped in front of the mech, cracking the air as the power she had been building was released into the world around her.
The ground around the mech cracked and shattered as the power rushed out in all directions, though at the same time pieces of the battle mech shattered under the intensity of her attack. Parts of the ground surrounding her heaved themselves upwards, just like in an earthquake, while several of the buildings were completely destroyed in the process. As the destruction moved across the moon Starlight surrounded herself in her magic and lifted herself into the air, allowing her to bypass what was happening and keep an eye on her sister. To Sunset's annoyance, however, the only other damage the mech sustained, besides a damaged power core, was a few cracks to the glass that separated her from the Thugs-4-Less Leader.
Before she could permanently put an end to her target he flipped a switch and the compartment he was in ejected itself from the mech, allowing him to escape into space for the moment. Sunset let him flee from the moon, because she knew that they would cross paths again one day... and when they did she would be sure to put him down.