I was bored. I'd been sitting in my room with a PlayStation 2 but I'd played all the games and beaten them several times. I live alone, but I used to be an orphan. I ran away from the orphanage when I was fourteen years old, and bought an apartment in a desert neighborhood in Arizona, called Johnson Ranch in the city of San Tan Valley. I used to go walk around a lot, but I've seen it all. And my job as a mechanic wasn't fun either. But one day, my life changed entirely. A new kid sort of… appeared. I don't entirely know where he came from, but he was somehow different. Smarter. And he was really kind of short and scrawny, too. He said his name was Robert, but his friends and mother called him Clank. He got the nickname because he liked to build things and often used a small hammer that made a "clank" on the metal he was building with. We shook hands and I told him I didn't really have a name at the orphanage, but they called me Ratchet because I liked to work on cars and I needed a ratchet tool to do that, even though the tool I used most was a wrench. But we kind of became friends, especially after he helped me fix the starting mechanism in my car that I'd built.

I didn't know what was wrong, but he took a look at it and said, "You're missing a piece of the ignition system. You need an ignition switch, and I've got one. I'll give it to you if you take me here." He pointed to an area on the GPS system in the car. It was near California, about 3 hours of travel.

"Deal," I said, and he put the ignition switch in place.

"Ready?" I asked Clank, with a set of tools in the back, mainly a giant wrench that I'd invented, called the Omniwrench. Clank got in the passenger's side and I left the driveway. We started a conversation, and after a while, I sort of forgot we were in a car.

I took both my hands off the wheel to help me talk, and Clank said, "Please, Ratchet, return your hands to the steering wheel. You are making me uncomfortable." I looked over at him and noticed, for the first time, his freckled face, black hair, and bright green eyes. He was wearing a gray shirt with jeans and small black shoes. I looked back at the road, but I'd stared at him so long that he'd noticed. In turn, he stared back at me, probably looking at my blond hair, grease-stained shirt and greenish cargo pants, and possibly even my green eyes. They were darker than his, but still green. I couldn't stand this awkward silence anymore.

"So where are you from?"

"I… don't know," Clank said. "The last place I remember was a factory where I found a flash drive with something strange on it."

Clank and I drove in silence for a while until my stomach grumbled. I stopped at a Quiktrip to get some food and got Clank a drink and a pretzel, per his request. When I got back to the car, Clank was waiting for me and we drove off again. We finally got to the small town around noon. The place seemed pretty welcoming, with a sign that said Welcome to Tobruk Crater. Enjoy your stay!

"Why are we here again?" I asked Clank.

"Oh, I almost forgot. Sorry," Clank said. He put the flash drive in a slot I had installed while I was building the car. A video played on the navigation screen. I watched as a rather short man in a neatly pressed brown suit addressed his audience – us. He had greasy black hair that was tied back in a ponytail, and he had a huge, smug grin on his face. He looked like a typical businessman. I could already tell he was up to something.

"Hello, citizens of Tobruk Crater," he said formally, "I am Chairman Drek. The people of my country have a small problem. Our cities are polluted and overpopulated and have become virtually uninhabitable. My troops will be evacuating your city and taking it over so that it may become the capital of the new country I am creating. Then, using technology you couldn't possibly understand, we will be moving choice cities from around the world to this location. Thank you for your time."

"Cut!" someone screamed from behind the camera.

"And if you don't like it," Drek continued, "You can take your whining, sniveling, snot-nosed populations, form a line behind me, and kiss my – Is it still on? Well turn it off, you idiot!"

I looked at Clank.

"The people in those cities are hosed!"

"I know," Clank said. "Will you help me attempt to stop Drek before he can carry out his plans?" I heard gunfire and a few fighter jets overhead. One of them peppered my car with bullets and launched a missile straight at it.