Sooo. Yeah! This is a thing I thought I might do. An adaptation of the first Ratchet and Clank game that came out for PS2 in 2002. I never really considered adapting ANYTHING canon to prose before, but for some reason this seemed like a fun idea. Hopefully I can stick with it.
First things first! And feel free to skip this part if you just wanna read the story.
This is not a transcript of the game's dialogue with descriptions thrown in between. Rather, I wanted to adapt the story of the game into a narrative. Because of this, changes are made, details are added, and some things left out. The overall plot is the same, but the telling is different. So if an exchange of dialogue seems unfamiliar or different, there's your reason. One cannot just use a script for a video game verbatim in prose, I thought I'd get that out of the way before I got notes asking me about it.
And, on a more personal front, I have not forgotten 'Blood for Oil'. I am unsatisfied with the plot structure I'd lined out for it, so I'm basically gonna have to replan the entire thing from scratch. It's a daunting mission and I'm a little overwhelmed by the idea, so I haven't gotten to it yet. But I do not plan on abandoning that story altogether.
So here we go. Hopefully I can stick with this. Please leave feedback if you have any because sometimes that's all that keeps a story alive for me.
Chapter 1
Veldin 11:45am
Veldin is a very small planet.
Not really in size, but definitely in importance. It's very close to its sun, making the entire planet one large, orange desert only broken up by small blue-black seas. Now, I personally don't mind the heat, but it's pretty clear I'm in the minority, because the harsh sun and endless stretches of sand, rocks, and canyons meant that few people felt Veldin was anywhere to call home. The people that actually lived there were part of families that had been around for generations. Simply accepting that this was life, and without any real desire to find anything more interesting out there. It was easier just to stay put. The only other kinds of people on Veldin, were what I thought of as 'the humble settlers'. People who had come from who knows where, brought very little with them, and who only came to Veldin because you could survive here with very little.
Nothing ever happened here.
I had lived on Veldin my whole life. Or at least, that was the easiest way to put it when anyone asked. Some unwanted space-rat who was easier to dump on Veldin than deal with, I imagine. I dunno. I was too young to remember, and no-one I've ever talked to seemed to have even seen whoever dumped me. So saying I'd lived on Veldin all my life was just easier to explain. And during my whole life, nothing, had ever happened on Veldin.
I knew things happened on other planets. Heck, compared to Veldin, just seeing the thick forests other planets even had seemed like an event to me whenever I saw them on TV. Other planets out there had their entire surfaces covered with trees, and they had snow covered mountains, and there were planets flooded with warm tropical oceans filled with jewel-coloured fish, or choked in burning hot steam from active volcanoes, and some planets, the ones the TV showed most often, were covered in cities. Cities so huge you couldn't see the planet part of the planet! Buildings, and machines, and ships, and robots so thickly packed together it was like a world of steel had grown into existence all by itself. And these cities were swarming with people! People who actually did things! People who were famous all over the galaxy, because they could sing, or they were excellent on a hoverboard, or because they would risk life and limb to save people from monsters and bad guys.
Things happened on other planets. But not on Veldin. Nothing would ever happen on Veldin.
I finally made up my mind one day that I would leave. It's not like I really had anything keeping me on Veldin anyway. I mean sure, it was my home, I guess, but one good thing about being dumped on a ball of dirt alone was that I didn't have anyone tying me to the place. I didn't have any family and, in all honesty, I didn't really have anyone I'd call so close a friend that they would make me want to stay. People on Veldin were nice, for the most part, but I just… didn't fit in. I never really did. I was always 'that weird one' who never seemed satisfied with how anything was, and only thought about how things could be better. Whether it was machines, ships, or just life in general.
Somehow, I was in that weird position of being a complete, unimportant nobody, and yet Veldin still felt too small for me.
So I made a decision that I was gonna leave. I didn't really know for how long, or where I would go. It didn't really matter that much. 'Anywhere but here', seemed the only thing on my mind. I had no idea what I thought I'd actually do somewhere else. It was a scary idea at first. Maybe I'd fail even harder than I ever could on Veldin. Heck, maybe I'd get eaten by a fish, if I was so eager to see what an ocean was like. At first I almost called the whole idea off. But time went on, and my restlessness to just leave never went away. Eventually, wanting to leave was stronger than being scared of what would happen if I did.
I had a small garage attached to a house on Kyzil Plateau. It as a little out of town, but this suited both me and the neighbours fine. I could work on whatever invention I wanted in peace, and they didn't have to worry about me accidentally blowing up their backyards. Again.
I made my cash by fixing whatever needed fixing. Usually it was ships, which was fine by me. Fixing a ship meant both some cash was coming my way, as well as getting a free lesson in how to handle the things. Now, technically I didn't have a pilot's license, but when you're just fixing the things, and part of fixing a ship includes flying it across the plateau to make sure it was working properly, no harm was really being done, right? Sure, when I first started there were some… rough landings, but hey! I happened to be the best mechanic in town! So whatever I damaged I just fixed again, no extra charge! All nice and fair. They get a fixed ship, I get a free flying lesson.
Slowly, I managed to scrape together enough cash to start buying used ship parts. It was slow going, but it was at least happening. The people in town didn't have the newest ships to begin with, so any parts I could get from them were borderline trash. A lot of it I only managed to buy because the owner was convinced it was broken and wouldn't work at all. Sometimes they were right, but I was a really good mechanic.
I finally managed to build my own ship, piecing it together slowly over months of work for bolts to buy parts, as well as work to actually put it together. Eventually, it was right on the verge of being spaceworthy. It was almost noon the day I felt I could put the finishing touches to it. The very last details needed before she might actually fly. In all honesty, I would've been more excited if it wasn't for one tiny setback.
The only ignition I was able to get hold of was originally from an old junker built on the cheap for robots. Basically, it was a death-trap of a ship which didn't have things like life support. Or air. Of course, not exactly necessary if you're a robot, but not the best kind of ship to sell to someone who might actually enjoy breathing. To cover up this potential lawsuit, the designers had put a fail-safe in the ship's ignition so that only robots would be able to turn-over the engine. Great for the original ship and stopping some sap from accidentally suffocating. Not so great for me trying to work with spare parts and who happened to not be a robot.
Basically, there was no way for me to turn on my own ship. Which was kind of a problem. When I'd originally bought the ignition to go with my engine, I figured that was a detail I'd work around when I got to it. Now the ship was almost finished and I still hadn't been able to 'work around' it. The wiring of the thing was way out of my league to try and fix. My guess was, the original ship designers had figured at some point that making the robotic ignition something you could just rewire might be bad for business. Again, good news for their insurance, not so good for me. Not helped by the fact that, at some point, it was discovered that if you actually got hold of an ignition switch, it was extremely easy to rewire the thing into some kind of spaceship skeleton key. You could basically get the thing to unlock any ship you wanted. No key needed. This meant that these things were really difficult to buy legit even if you were a robot. And if you weren't? Good luck.
I stared at the open hood in front of me, going over the engine for the hundredth time that day alone. Everything was in place, just as it had been for days. Out of habit, or maybe somehow thinking something might've changed, I used the Gadgetron link on my glove to scan the ship once again. And, as always, the female voice helpfully informed me that my ship needed its 'robotic ignition switch' if it was gonna fly anywhere. I sighed to myself, picking up my wrench and uselessly tightening a few things, wondering where I was gonna get my hands on anything that could fix this.
The idea that there was nothing I could do did occur to me. But I was stubborn, and refused to accept it. I'd worked too hard and too long for a small detail to trip me up right at the finish line. I didn't expect life to be kind, but I refused to accept it could be that ironic.
I wondered, once again, if there was someone in town I could ask to help me out. Maybe buy one of these things when they went off-world and I'd pay them back somehow, but I knew it was useless. People on Veldin were simple and generally nice, apart from the handful of guys I did my best to avoid, but they weren't the kind of people who stuck their necks out for the weird kid who occasionally blew things up and didn't have any parents to 'keep him out of trouble'. No. No-one was gonna help me. I'd just have to work things out on my own, like always.
I was going over this in my head, only half focusing on the engine in front of me, when the sound of another ship broke my train of thought. The first thing that caught my attention was that the ship's noise was cutting through the sky in that way ships only did when they'd come from off-world. Off-world visitors was weird to begin with, but I also noticed it didn't sound so good. The engines sounded too hot and were coming in too fast. Not a good sign.
I snapped my gaze up to see the very thick, dark line of smoke tear across the sky, the sound of tortured engines trailing behind the visual by a fraction of a second. I spotted the dark speck leading the tail just as it disappeared behind an outcropping of rocks.
There was an explosion. A ball of smoke and flame plumed from where the ship had disappeared and the ground shook under me. A nearby collection of ferns exploded with activity as several toads ran from their cover in a panic at the noise.
I stared at the now pillar of smoke in horror. From sound alone I knew it was bad. I grabbed my wrench from where I'd dropped it, more out of instinct than thought, as my legs broke into a run, my heart hammering in my throat. The crash was closer to my garage than the town. I was the nearest person around for at least a mile. What I thought I could do to help, I have no idea. But the black smoke billowing ahead of me told me only one thing; fire. Fire and ships never mixed well. With that being the only clear thought running through my mind, I let panic carry me towards it, the idea that there might not be anyone left to help never even occurring to me.
Let me know if you guys spot any typos and such. I miss them sometimes and try to fix them as much as I can. Thanks :)
