SOFAPOCALYPSE!
Ratchet grimaced, Clank hummed and Talwyn cursed. The reason for their disquiet was not the bloodthirsty charge of some new enemy, for all three were in the midst of the bustling Metropolis throng, and knew that the greatest danger they faced was of contracting salmonella from the hot dog vendor across the street. Neither were they angry about the weather, the sky was as blue as ever and Ratchet could feel the warm rays of the sunlight creepy between his thickets of soft yellow fur.
No, what truly galled them was what lay, tauntingly, before the doorway of their apartment.
Early that morning, the three of them had rose, ate a quick breakfast and hopped in Aphelion, setting course for the great Couchporium in Meridian City. It proved to be a building worthy of its grandiose name, being forged from sparkling glass that had been melted and moulded to resemble a gargantuan sofa, atop which was littered a spattering of tourists, begging their friends and families to snap their picture as they sat atop the massive chair.
The reason for their visit was, sadly, not as mundane as the old couch getting worn out and needing a replacement, if it had been Ratchet would not have made the drive to the City with his lips pursed and his tail hanging limply from his seat. Whilst looking for some spare bolts down the cushions, he had felt something strange brush against his fingers, and immediately recognised the cold, sleek feel of a gun barrel. After much monkeying around, and near-impossible physical contortions, Ratchet pulled out an old friend he had not seen in far too long.
"Clank!" He'd cried, jumping on the heels of his feet. "Tal! Look!"
"I swear to God," sighed Talwyn, "if this is another of those selfies you took in the shower, I'm going to muORPH-O-RAY?"
The Morph-o-Ray. A weapon he had earned what seemed like a lifetime ago, when things had been so different and he had to have his arm twisted before his every scrap and battle. It was the result of flawed engineering, and instead of unleashing a whirlwind of death upon the unfortunate shootee, would instead shrink down bone and organ, shrivel skin, pucker lips, and leave them as little more than a plump, clucking chicken.
Yet whilst Talwyn and Ratchet gawped at the gun, and looked ready to start French kissing the muzzle, Clank wisely stepped back, coughing nervously. "Ratchet," he shakily muttered, "be careful."
"Oh, loosen up!" He had laughed, waving away his little friend's concern and spinning the gun around and around on his finger. "I know what I'm doing."
"Then stop twirling it." The robot advised him, narrowing his tiny green eyes.
"Clank's right." Nodded Talwyn. "You look silly doing it, let me have a try."
Clank had sighed and shook his head, and Ratchet had made some glib remark about the two of them being terrified of his raw, natural talent. He had kept bragging right until he felt the trigger press down, was blinded by a flash of light, and heard the merry gibbering of a plump Hen.
By some miracle, his capering had not harmed either his lover or his best friend, but that poor, innocent sofa had paid a heavy price for his irresponsibility. Gone were the soft pillows and well-worn grooves, replaced by fine golden feathers and warm black eyes. Still, Clank seemed happy, and despite Talwyn's desire to shoot it, skin it and eat it, had grown quite attached to their new pet, though it would take Ratchet a while to convince him that chickens needed neither a scratching post or a litter tray.
So, they had gained a chicken, but lost a couch, a sad situation remedied only after being forced to endure the company of what Ratchet could only describe as a hideous combination of leech and scab, a creature with oily slugs for hair, a lice-infested pelt on his chest and teeth made of the cheapest, murkiest gold.
"What," Ratchet had whispered, "is that?"
Clank's eyes widened, swivelled and shrunk, but he had no answers.
"Stay sharp." Talwyn told them, speaking below even a whisper. "We've just walked into the mating grounds of the Salesmen. Their breeding rituals usually involve large quantities of bolts being inserted into their pockets whilst a five-inch long blade is plunged directly between your shoulder blades. What emerges can only be described as a three-legged, mooing donkey with no warranty and a payment plan that involves you losing your thumbs."
At first, he wasn't entirely sure what she meant, but then the creature sauntered over to them. His flamingo pink shirt bellowed in the early morning breeze, the gold medallion bounced and jiggled atop all those wiry curls growing on his chest, and the entirety of him reeked of cheap cologne and an online degree in economics.
"Whoa!" He bellowed, pointing a ring-flecked finger at Talwyn and arching two bushy black eyebrows. "Looks like we got a real looker here, a-heh-heh-heh, and what's your name lil' lady?"
Her eyes looked to her side, longing for the pistol she'd left back at the apartment. "Weeellllll," she had drawled, "it's not hard to figure out, all you've got to do is pawn that jewellery of yours, and use all two bolts of your earnings to buy a dictionary and right there, hidden between Screw and You, you'll find me."
Regrettably, he had not scuttled away and taken her advice. Instead, the Salesman had droned on and on, with his flea-hop laugh, talking about his mortgage repayments and troubled marriage until Ratchet discovered that he had not only purchased a sofa, but the optional instruction manual detailing how to properly sit down and stand up. Though, to his credit, the salesman had also thrown in a jar of expired mayonnaise he fished out of the lost and found, so the day wasn't a complete waste.
Talwyn didn't see it that way, though, and neither did Clank, with both of them spending the long drive back to Metropolis with their arms folded and their voices lowered.
"That," sighed Clank, "was an unwise purchase."
"What?" Ratchet spluttered, trying to keep his eyes straight ahead. "What d'you mean?"
"He means you just got hosed." Huffed Talwyn.
Ratchet's eyes, green as the scales of a great Dragon, squinted in annoyance. "If Clank wants to tell me I got hosed, Clank'll tell me I got hosed, but as he didn't tell me I got hosed, there's no hose."
"Oh," she scowled, "I think there is, and it's moving higher and higher. It's a miracle you can talk without gagging on the damn thing."
"I'm detecting a great deal of hostility." Stammered Clank, moving his little grey head forwards, as though buffering himself between them. "Let's all calm down, and attempt to focus on the positives."
"What positives?" Snapped Talwyn.
Clank shrank backwards, hummed, and tapped a small finger upon his chin. "Well," he ventured, "I suppose one could argue that us buying the sofa removes the possibility of anyone else being forced to take it. Considering the high levels of asbestos, enterobacteriaceae and stale cheese on the cushions, we should be proud to bear this burden and save others from a slow, lingering death."
"Slow, lingering death." Talwyn's nod was slow, damning. "Unbelievable."
Ratchet, stubbornly refusing to believe that he had been conned, tried to look on the bright side, and with typical flair, reasoned that, at the very least, they had gotten out with a free jar of mayonnaise. He grinned and kept grinning, even when Clank's finger tapped the glass and he muttered about the danger of exposing such a volatile substance into the air.
"Why d'you care?" Asked Ratchet. "You don't even have a nose!"
"It's not my sense of smell at issue here, Ratchet." Clank fretted, giving a small shake of his head. "What concerns me is the probability of the vapours contained within that jar igniting the oxygen around us, melting down my circuitry and rendering you and Miss Apogee to nothing more than blackened bones and jellified flesh."
"Well," he persisted, coughing awkwardly, "at least it was free."
And so it was, that after being thoroughly flimflammed, scolded by his girlfriend, chided by a robot and palmed off with a jar of exploding mayonnaise, Ratchet discovered that the sofa which had caused all his problems wouldn't even fit through the door. Worse, the rich shade of burgundy that looked so elegant in the shop was, upon closer inspection, nothing but a collection of dark stains. Patches of blood, soup and paint had merged and moulded into a quivering scab that actually seemed to pulsate as it slowly ate the cushioning beneath.
"Hosed." He lamented, feeling his sharp eyes droop.
"Sorry?" Blustered Talwyn. "What was that?"
"Nothing." Ratchet lied, painting a smile and attempting to give the sofa a hearty slap, a task that became far more difficult when one considered the very real possibility of it eating your flesh. "So! How we gonna' do this?"
His girlfriend looked to her lover, to the writhing sofa and back again, and gave an irritated sigh, folding her arms and squinting at his question. Even Clank seemed perturbed, bouncing a tiny black foot off the ground, his every gaze a wagging finger and scolding word.
"'We'?" Talwyn almost snapped. "Oh, suddenly it's 'we', Clank. Funny how you and me only come into the picture when there's heavy lifting to be done, isn't it?"
"C'mon, Tal! It's not that heavy."
"Believe you me," she scoffed, "it will be when all that...stuff gets in our pores and eats away our muscles."
"Okay, okay," his hands rose, fending off all her barbs, "you've got it all twisted around. It's fine, Tal, we all get confused sometimes, right? See, the thing is, that stuff came with the couch! I know it looks like mould, and smells like mould, but it's not. It's just, just..." Bereft of ideas, Ratchet bore his fangs and set his head upon an uneasy see-saw, desperately trying to put the best spin on his foolishness. "Flavour." Was what he settled on. "It's just flavour, that's all. Normal wear and tear."
"It just belched." Observed Clank.
"That's just air escaping!"
"No," Talwyn frowned, "it belched. The cushions there opened up whilst you were yapping and it gave us all a nice whiff of beer and month-old kebab."
Oh, God, they were right. He had tried to ignore the low burp, and pass it off as one of the many daily vulgarities of so many passing motorists, but the stench was harder to overlook, and had already begun to fill his eyes with nettle-flavoured tears.
"I," he sniffed, "don't know," he snuffled, "what you're - KOFF! KOFF! - talking 'bout!"
But he did, and Talwyn was determined to prove it.
With a snarling whisk of dark hair and a pink tail, she stormed across the road, dodging traffic and repaying every threat and jeer with curses of her own, in the loud, mean voice reserved purely for those rarely breached recesses of her anger.
Talwyn then marched to the scrawny hotdog vendor, laid down a palm of bolts and ordered his biggest dog, stacked high with every topping. Globs of ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise, bushels of lettuce, grated masses of onion and radish, all built to a gigantic, stinking pyramid.
Through some miracle of balance, she managed to wiggle and shimmy herself back over to them without dropping the whole thing. But before Ratchet could even compliment her, those full lips pursed, tooted a high whistle and told the sofa it was time for dinner.
The hot dog flew high in the air, spiralled down and was swallowed in a cushion-shaped maw, the flapping mouth of a sickly beast.
They all watched, with numb amazement, as the sofa shuddered, mumbled uneasily and began to wretch and convulse, clearly in the midst of the most awful food poisoning.
"Well?" Growled Talwyn. "Still think it was a good idea to buy this thing?"
"It's just the big-city climate!" His shriek was a dying, desperate thing, falling apart like a shoddy rocket reaching for the stars. "It's too humid out here!"
"It appears to be vomiting." Observed Clank, taking a rather tactical step backwards.
"Clank." Ratchet grumbled. "Buddy. Pal. Confidant. Chief backscratcher. It's a couch. It's not vomitiOH MY GOD!"
Damn it, he was right. He was always right.
The couch lifted up a drooling cushion, coughed, choked and let forth a spray of pale bile, sparkling with colourless wads of white fat, stale bread and bones far too big to belong to mere poultry.
"Well," he observed with a smack of the lips, "it eats people. How 'bout that?"
"Yeah, how 'bout that?" Snarked Talwyn. "The salesman with the chest-pelt and pink polyester turned out to be a total scuzzball. Whodathunkit?"
It had been a long day, and somewhere between the chicken currently tearing up their furnishings and the projectile vomiting, the two of them seemed ready to rip one another to pieces, and had the couch not spoken first, perhaps that is what would have happened.
That great mouth, caked in spittle and chunks of chair-puke, seemed to stretch into a tipsy, lopsided grin. "Oi, oi!" An awful, sandpapery voice drawled. "Which onnuvya mugs woke me up, eh? Which one did it? I swear down, I'll knock you out, innit, I swear on me mam, innit?"
"You catch any of that, guys?" Whispered Ratchet.
"Very little." Mumbled Clank, unusually baffled. "He seems to be communicating in some unknown tongue."
"He's drunk." Talwyn declared, simplifying things somewhat.
"You all getting lippy?" The couch squawked with the high, reedy soullessness of a rat, or one of those washed up soapstars reduced to made-for-TV docudramas. "You all giving it? Like you the big I-AM? Nah, nah, don't be bigging yourself up, mate, don't be eyeballing me, blud, I'll shiv you up your sodding jonesey, innit?"
"No." Wailed Ratchet. "Really. WHAT IS HE SAYING?"
The only answer the couch gave was a deep, feral snort. "Oi, what smells so minging?" It asked, inching itself sideways, looking across the street to that poor little hotdog vendor. "Me gut's rumbling. I need sumun' to eat."
Someone, not something. Ratchet looked at the bones lying in that drying puddle of vomit and knew what he meant to do.
The sofa began wiggling, shuffling across the road like a crab, forcing every hovering, smog-stained car to veer high just to avoid crashing. Ratchet knew he had to act. That whole awful ordeal had begun because of his irresponsibility, and because of him an innocent man was about to die. Not by being 'shived up the jonesy' as the couch may have threatened, but by being eaten, devoured, and probably thrown up again.
But what to do? His wrench was all the way up in his apartment, all his guns, too. He had very little time, and no weapons.
No, a voice hectored him, none?
None.
Well, what about the mayonnaise?
The mayonaise? He jeered. You're gonna' kill him with a condiment?
A condiment, the voice maintained, that's HIGHLY explosive.
The Lombax just smirked. Between Clank's logic, and Talwyn's ruthlessness, Ratchet had somehow acquired just enough common sense to get by. Actiung swiftly, he squatted down, flipped open Clank's chest-plate and, despite his friends yelp of protest, fished out the greasy glass jar.
His arm, tight and wiry, reared back, trembled with fear and launched forward, tossing that toxic green stew straight at the back of that snarling, slobbering beast. The glass exploded in a snowfall of clear diamond, and the discoloured gloop clung to the chair like hot tar, sizzling smoking and alighting with the first lick of flame.
The blaze spread, charring wood and fabric, burning every ounce of sentient, mouldering fuzz, destroying not only the sofa, but Ratchet's hopes of ever getting back the twelve thousand bolts he'd paid for it.
The hot dog vendor looked oblivious to the whole thing, as did every successive motorist, who, one by one, nudged and knocked the wreckage until all that remained was a series of ugly black smears on the tarmac.
"Oh, dear." Croaked Clank, rapping a finger against the cool of his chin. "I believe we are in need of another visit to the Couchporium."
But Ratchet just shook his head and ushered them inside. "Nah," he shrugged, "right now the floor's looking pretty good to me."