Chapter 1
The Aphelion was drifting through space, its destination being nowhere in particular at the moment. Its pilots were the dynamic duo who had saved at least six different galaxies, and at one point, the fabric of time and space. They had decided it was about time they took a much needed vacation. Problem was, they had yet to pick a vacation spot.
"Perhaps we could stay on Pokitaru?" Clank suggested, having already gone through a list of seventy-two different planets, none of which suited the adventurers' desires.
"That resort planet’s still infested with mutant wildlife, remember?" Ratchet said, recollecting on one of the many journeys he’d had with Clank, this one involving a peaceful resort turning into an entirely different kind of tourist trap. “And last time I went there, I was tricked into becoming a cloning experiment! I'd rather not relive that. Or the hallucinogenic nightmares that came with it."
Clank was, and he knew it, a mistake. Or at least that’s what he had believed. He had thought for a while that instead of becoming a missile-shooting, invasion stopping brute, a glitch in the production of brainless sentry-bots had churned out a small, apparently harmless, sentient metal robot. Thrust into artificial life, his only concern was for it not to end. He stole a ship and flew it away from planet Quartu, a barren desert of a world, and after sustaining minor rocket and laser damage, crashed on Ratchet’s homeworld of Veldin. And so, armed with only his unique adaptable intelligence, he had escaped the clutches of guarding a planet destroying megalomaniac, and crash-landed near the organic life-form who would not only save him from certain doom, but go on to become his best friend. He remembered that day well. They day of his birth... well, creation.
Despite being another desert world, Veldin had sustained life. After being pulled from the wreckage of his ship by Ratchet, the duo had set off on a quest to stop Drek, the planet-destroying entrepreneur, and had saved the galaxy from his ‘deplanteizer’.
It had turned out much later on however that Clank was not a mistake. He had not only a mother, the manufacturing computer that had apparently conceived him to stop Drek, but also a father, the apparent leader of a hive mind of highly advanced energy based beings, who had created him to carry on his work as a caretaker of the Great Clock, a massive structure built at the center of the universe (give or take fifty feet) that was designed to maintain temporal stability across the entire universe.
Ah, Clank. Ratchet had always found it difficult to make friends, and was surprised when a robot became his closest companion yet. Secretly, he was thrilled. Lombaxes had always had a natural gift with technology and machinery, and since he was one of only three lombax remaining in this dimension (well, he was one of the three, but now there was only him left), he knew he could make Clank the best he could ever be. In fact, it was thanks to some of Ratchet’s improvements that Clank had become even more dangerous than the robots sentinels he was born alongside. The five-foot, yellow haired lombax looked out of the window of the Aphelion, and scratched behind his large pointed ears, trying to think of a destination for their well-deserved holiday.
"Maybe we could go to Aquatos?"
"Ratchet, the surface of Aquatos is approximately 99.999% water, the only habitable island on the planet measures a mere fourteen feet across. Also, your O2 mask cannot go on recycling air indefinitely; no matter how many times Gadgetron’s advertisements claim it can."
"Man, we finally get an opportunity to take a break from the hero business, and we can't even decide where to go!"
They could travel to anywhere in the known universe, and we still can't find out where -
*fizzle* *clunk*
"What was that?"
"I believe that was the main thrusters, that’s usually the sound made by a newly broken rocket." Clank pointed out.
“Like we don’t hear that very often.” commented Ratchet sarcastically, as he remembered all their crashes that had led them to conveniently find useful equipment and a new ship.
"I am detecting a rather large dimensional distortion ahead, appears to have a gravitational pull." The AI on board the Aphelion had pointed out "Turning on the auxiliary thrusters. Oh nevermind, neither the main engine or the auxiliary thrusters seem to work. This may be a problem."
Clank, having spent a good amount of time inside the great clock, had a knack for identifying irregularities in the quantum fabric of space. "It would seem the distortion has slightly altered the laws of reality." Clank explained. "Most combustible materials appear to unable to catch a flame."
"That's just great! At least I don't have to worry about spontaneous lombaxian combustion anytime soon!" Ratchet remarked sarcastically.
"Perhaps now is not the time for making sarcastic remarks." Clank said. "We need to find a way out the distortion's field of gravity! However, I see no clear way we could possibly do that."
The ship continued to be pulled into the center of the distortion, and at its center, was a great wormhole.
Through the wormhole could be seen a distant, rather bright planet. The ship drew ever closer, it accelerated towards it; much how an object falls faster the longer it's in the air. At great speed they passed through the wormhole, reality almost tearing itself apart, and all the secrets of the universe being revealed to them. Upon exiting the tear in space, the two heroes both decided they would forget that the inner workings of reality had ever been revealed to them.
In front of them was the weirdest solar system they’d ever seen. At its center was a planet, a really big one. Well, there’s a first time for everything, I suppose. A planet being orbited by a single grey moon and a yellow micro-star, which was much further out. They could see now that the world was largely covered in forests and grassland, with about fifty percent ocean and a single small-ish desert visible.
Attracted to the body of greatest mass, their ship began to drift into the planet. Clank jumped on the ship’s controls and began tapping buttons. A beeping sound was heard and a quick scan was performed, then the Aphelion responded.
“This planet does in fact contain intelligent life! Good thinking, Clank.”
“Great.” deadpanned Ratchet. “Most intelligent life in the universe seems to want to kill us, eat us, or sell something to us. I think I'd rather be stranded."
“Well...” started Clank: “If the planet is as green and blue as that, either the life is primitive, cares about its environment, or lives entirely underground. All three conclusions are good, as they indicate that the species is not war-mongering, greedy, or by some stretch does not venture to the planet’s surface. Besides, do you really wish to be stranded alone on a planet with no technology, no way of returning home?"
“Point taken.”
They then entered the atmosphere of the planet.
“...We can’t land safely can we?”
“No, Ratchet. The thrusters still won’t ignite, Not this close to the distortion at least."
With the Aphelion's thrusters offline, a crash landing was inevitable.
Closer the ground came, they braced for impact... By screaming the entire way down.
At the last possible second, the Aphelion’s thrusters came back online. She pulled up, just avoiding a fatal collision with the planet's surface. Unfortunately, the Aphelion was going too fast to react in time to the obstacle ahead of her, and crashed right into the side of a rather large tree. The impact knocked Ratchet and Clank out of their seats, the cockpit flung open, and the two went hurtling through the air. They would have landed with a great splat if Clank hadn't caught Ratchet in time.
"That's odd." Clank thought. "I could swear your overall mass was significantly heavier then this." He looked down at his Lombax friend; too find a yellow colored equine with large striped ears in his arms. "Curious... this civilization doesn’t seem advanced enough to create any form of semi-transmogrification technology. Judging from the fact that the nearby structures are made of more primitive building materials such as wood, glass, and concrete, I don't think they are the ones that did this."
"Semi-transmogrification? What are you talking about Clank?" Ratchet asked as they landed, next to the unfortunate tree they had just crashed into. "Why does my body feel all weird? And did you get taller?"
"Try wiggling you toes." Clank suggested.
"My toes? Why do I-" Ratchet looked down at his toes. He saw hooves, not the normal claw-like stubs that would have been on his feet. And he seemed to have an inconvenient lack of arms as well. "Oh you’ve gotta be @#$%ing kidding me! *sigh* Great, just great, I've been turned into a- what are these things called again, horses? And my clothes don't fit anymore either, great This day is going to be perfect." He said grumpily.
"I don't think the residents will mind much." Clanks said, pointing out the fact that almost all of the people here wore no form of clothing.
"Oh great, now I'm a horse and I'm stuck in a colony of nudists. Ah well, it's not like I have anything to wear like this." Ratchet removed his clothing (except of course for his cap), although it took a few tries, as his clothing acted much more like a tangled up blanket then anything else at the moment.
"Ratchet, I suggest you stop goofing around, we've already attracted a rather large crowd. It would not be wise to draw any more attention to ourselves."
Ratchet looked around to see a large gathering of multi-coloured equines around the two.
“What do you think you’re doing?! You could have injured somepony!” shouted a rather cross looking purple horse with a horn growing out of it’s head, and wings on it's side.
"Uh, hi. Sorry about crashing into your tree-" He checked behind him, the tree he had crashed into had a front door, and a sign with a picture of a book on it. "-erm, Library. Hey, you wouldn't happen to have any form of advanced space travel would you?"
“Advanced space what now?! Look, it’s going to take me weeks to re-grow this section of the library and now I’m going to have to sleep in a house with three walls!”
The residents of the town looked on this argument in curiosity, some in fear.
"Yeah, didn't think so..." said Ratchet idly to himself whilst scratching the back of his head with a hoof.
Clank took his time to examine the surrounding area. The town seemed to be populated by many variants of equine based life. They all seemed to have biological differences to each other. Many of these aliens looked a lot stronger and heavier than the rest. A good number could be spotted with a single horn on top of their heads, and other sported wings, which seemed a bit too small to allow flight. Visible evidence suggested otherwise however, as a large amount of the winged variant was seen flying around. A few were actually flying rather quickly.
Hold on, his built in speedometer was tracking one of them moving at speeds almost fast enough to break the sound barrier! It must be malfunctioning; there was no plausible way that these creatures could move at that speed! Based on visual evidence, it seemed the creature was headed... right for them!
"Ratchet!" Clank called out to his friend.
"Yeah buddy? What is i- Woooah!" Ratchet dodged out of the way just in time to avoid a rainbow coloured hit to the face. His attacker missed, and impacted with the ground. She quickly got up, and prepared for another charge, but she seemed to be aiming for Clank this time.
The townsfolk backed away from the action, yet making a circle around the three, and making it difficult for Ratchet and Clank to escape. They would have to stay and fight, or try to push through the crowd of gawking or conversing residents.
Rainbow Dash readied herself; she crouched down, prepared to leap forward and take out the wrong-doers who had attacked Twilight's house. She saw the entire thing! The villains came down from the sky in their metal machine, and shouted a mighty battle cry as they were about to ram into her friend’s house! And when they came out of the ship she saw the large one take off his clothes, trying to hide in plain sight! But it was too late! She had seen their heinous crime, and she would stop them before they could act again! She lunged forward; she would take out the shiny one first.
It would take more than just speed to defeat Clank however. Quickly, he readied the Zoni Blaster, a highly advanced weapon invented by the Zoni. These mysterious energy-based beings were responsible for the stability of the universe. A single shot with the Zoni Blaster towards the his aggressor caused her to slow down tremendously. Clank, completely unaffected by alterations in the flow of time thanks to his quantum actuator, had plenty of time (metaphorically speaking of course) to sidestep out of the way.
Rainbow Dash was completely baffled. The little bucket had moved surprisingly fast with its little legs. It would be difficult for her to take on someone who could move as fast as she could, so she charged after his striped cohort.
It was difficult to pull the trigger (let alone hold the weapon in the first place) of the Doppelbanger without any hands, but he had managed to pull it off using a small twig and a piece of string. The distraction worked, and the rainbow haired equine charged straight after the dummy instead of him.
Rainbow dash had thought she had tackled him to the ground. But no, somehow she had been tricked, it was a dummy! But this decoy was nothing more then a vague resemblance, how could she possibly have fallen for that?
The distraction caused by the strangely convincing decoy gave Ratchet just enough time to grab the Walloper, a metal boxing glove with enough force to smash through a brick-wall. It was tricky to use without hands, but it would work. When Rainbow Dash came charging again, he punched her back. The impact knocked her into the tree, and severely injured her. Ratchet had also been blown back a few feet by her speed, but quickly recovered from the impact and was back on his hooves.
This was it, Dash thought. This was the end of Rainbow Dash. She had been defeated, and now they were coming to finish her off. She hadn't even got into the Wonderbolts...
"Need some help getting up?" The striped one asked.
"Wha- Why are you helping me, aren't you attacking Ponyville?" Dash said, bruised by the high-powered punch the Walloper dished out on a regular basis.
Ratchet facepalmed/hoofed. "You thought we were attacking you?"
"Ma’am, I believe there has been a misunderstanding." The robot told her. He was significantly calmer than his friend was at the moment. "You seem to have come under the conclusion that we intend to do harm. I understand it may seem like otherwise, but please, I ask you trust us so we may avoid any further conflict."
“The bucket can talk?! Now I know that punch did more damage than it should...” Rainbow moaned, quietly.
“Hey! Clank here is my best pal, don’t compare him to a bucket!” laughed Ratchet in protest. The villagers around them looked in on Clank with renewed interest, especially the purple one, who seemed to have almost forgotten about the spaceship embedded in her wall. Murmurs broke out, they asked each other how a little piece of metal could talk, walk and do all this other stuff. Clank merely waved awkwardly at them.
Rainbow Dash didn't trust them a single bit, but they had completely beaten her. She wasn't normally one to give up like this, but that glove hurt, and the little guy was pretty fast.
"Fine" She groaned. “I’ll trust you... for now.” She would ask for a rematch later. Ratchet helped the cyan mare to her hooves but she quickly flew off. The rest of the village was silent for a moment, then a million questions came pouring out at once:
“How do you get metal to speak?”
“Have you tried my apples?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Can we have a party?”
“How did you get your cutie mark?”
“What’s up with your ears?”
“What’s your name?”
“Those clothes, what are they made of?”
“CAN WE HAVE A PARTY?!”
*-*-*-*
Elsewhere, in a deep, dark, undisclosed part of the universe...
"Where did they go!?" Dr. Nefarious shouted at Lawrence, his rather fat robotic butler, demanding answers. "That stupid Lombax's nav-unit should let me track their location at all times!"
Doctor Nefarious. Only one of the most villainous robots ever created. This evil genius despised all organic life forms with a passion, referring to them indiscriminately as ‘squishies’, despite once being one himself. Even if it was many years ago.
He’d sworn vengeance on the people who’d defeated him, but was unable to do so in his own lifetime. But an accident had through some miracle transformed him into a blue and red robot complete with jet boots, sharp claws, lasers, the lot. And after his latest defeat at the hands of Ratchet and Clank, he was livid. The mad robotic scientist now wanted nothing more than to completely ANNIHILATE the yellow-furred squishy and his metallic counterpart.
"It would appear they've gone out of range, sir." replied Lawrence, carefully stowing his bass guitar in the trunk of their ship and straightening his suit and tie.
"Gone out of range!!? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-" Nefarious froze up. The gears, tubes, and pistons that were visible through the green tinted glass dome on his head began skipping, sparking and smoking. In times of great mental stress, he would occasionally freeze, and begin picking up transmissions from one of the universes more popular soap-operas, namely ‘Lance and Janice’. This was by far one of Lawrence's favourite times of the day, when he had to give the doctor a good smack to the head to snap him out of his lock-up. But not before hearing Lance dramatically announce his love for Janice... Manly robotic tears were shed that day...
*clunk*
"-aaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Find them! Where was the last place they were at before they went out of range?
"I believe they were on route from planet Kerwan. It seems they headed into a large dimensional anomaly. It's highly possible they went through a wormhole. If that were the case, there's no telling where they are without an eight thousand six hundred year long Total Universe Scan."
"Let me see!"Nefarious ordered childishly. He snatched the screen Lawrence was holding out of his hands. Nefarious' eyes widened as he read what was on display. The readings from the anomaly were insane. Not only was the anomaly itself huge, but it was powerful enough cause major changes to the laws of physics. Anomalies like that didn't just happen. Any form of dimensional distortion like this was likely created by something... something powerful. Nefarious evilly wondered if he could harness such power. He laughed maniacally as he ringed his hands together in a menacing fashion.
"Start up the ship Lawrence; we're going on a little trip... MWAHAHAHAHA!”