Thanks for the reviews and faves, guys! This is gonna sound super cliched, but I really appreciate the support. :)
I've been having a lot of fun writing this story, which really surprises me. Normally my attention span for my creative pursuits is limited to at most three days of work. But not in this case! My enthusiasm is still at an all time high! In fact, just today I actually sat down and planned out the rest of my story. That's right: my first three chapters were written with zero plot consideration whatsoever. :P
Anyway, I'm gonna stop rambling now. Once more, thanks for reading, and please drop a review if you can!
EDIT: In case you guys didn't notice, I slightly altered the ending of this chapter to foreshadow a new plot point I only just planned out.
Chapter 2
The first thing Ratchet noticed was the pain. Excruciating and disorienting, it seemed to be coming from everywhere: his head, his chest, his legs, his arms… He tried to move, to simply open his mouth and cry out, but he could not. He didn't have the strength.
For what seemed like eternity he lay there, helpless but to suffer in silence. Then slowly, the pain began to ebb away, leaving nothing but emptiness.
Gradually, his senses returned to him. He realized he was floating. He could feel it. His entire body felt weightless as he soared upwards. A gentle breeze brushed against his face.
Am I dead? He thought. Sure feels like it.
His eyelids fluttered open. He recognized the blurry form around him; he was still in the Chamber. Through the glass ceiling he saw the darkness of space, then the countless constellations and stars twinkling gently before him. It reminded him of the first time he'd taken his ship into space. Hours he had spent cooped up in that small cockpit, staring breathlessly in awe as he admired the sheer beauty of it all.
Little by little, his vision sharpened. A small white shape materialized before his eyes.
Clank?
His mind raced. If he was dead, and Clank was there by his side, then that could only mean…
Oh god.
Ratchet felt a small tear roll down the side of his blackened and bloodied face.
"I'm so sorry, Clank," he whispered.
"Don't be, Ratchet," the robot replied, a pained expression in his eyes. "It's not your fault."
The Lombax felt his strength leaving him again. He sighed deeply, then took one last sorrowful glance at his friend as his vision faded to blackness.
***
"How is your friend, Clank?"
"Not well at all. His pulse is weakening even further."
Orvus blinked his giant turquoise eyes and floated closer to Ratchet's battered form. He came to a stop next to his son and frowned deeply. "I'll make sure he gets looked after as soon as possible."
"Thank you, father."
The curious-looking trio was levitating in mid-air high over the Orvus Chamber, surrounded on all sides by quiet, empty space. From their position, the thunder and blinding lights that filled the Chamber seemed a lifetime away. Clank took a worried glimpse at the chaos unfolding below them.
"However, father, I am worried that if we fail to stop Alister, it will be inconsequential if Ratchet survives this ordeal at all."
The Zoni sighed.
"I am afraid so, son. But it seems to me that it might be too late to do anything. The execution of the time-reversal command that Alister gave to the Great Clock is already it full swing, and has been for quite some time. Far too long to cut off, certainly. Short of destroying the entire Clock itself, there is no way to rapidly stop the process."
Clank's eyelids drooped, a sign of resignation. "Does that mean the Universe is going to be destroyed?"
"Eventually? Highly possible. But immediately? No. And with some luck, we may to be able to save it. Just not at the moment, of course."
Clank raised his head in surprise. Orvus chuckled. Clank couldn't help but think it was a rather inappropriate time to do so.
"Alister's actions will definitely have severe consequences towards the progression of time, of course. They will eventually destroy the Universe if left uncorrected. However, I should say it's still too early for us to give up hope just yet. I promise you, Clank, that I'll fully enlighten you and Ratchet on the nature of the situation when the two of you have fully recovered from your ordeal. But for now, we have to leave this area. I have a feeling that something bad is about to befall the Chamber, and I do not desire us to be near it when it does."
***
Alister raised his wrench high over his head. He was just about to deliver the killing blow when a sudden, unseen force pushed him backwards. Then, Ratchet and Clank, without moving a muscle between them, inexplicably shot vertically upwards. He swung his wrench, but missed. Within seconds the duo was high up in mid-air, far beyond reach of his swing.
He shouted insults at the two as they ascended far over his head. Ratchet, who he presumed was dead, naturally remained silent. Clank did not respond either, simply closing his eyes and bowing his head in silence. His gaze followed them as they floated out of the Chamber and out of view.
The realization came to him that he was all alone in the Chamber. That was good, actually. With Ratchet dead and Clank having retreated, no one was going to stop him now. At long last, his years of research and hard work were coming to fruition. His plan was proceeding perfectly; the chaos around him was evidence of that.
Alister found himself being drawn towards the vortex of energy that now engulfed the centre of the platform. He walked slowly towards it, step by hesitant step. It loomed before him, undoubtedly lethal, yet mysteriously beautiful. It was blindingly bright, and his eyes hurt as he looked at it.
But he did not look away. Thoroughly awestruck by the deadly spectacle, he walked even closer. He was soon standing right in front of it, too hypnotized to retreat or turn back. He raised his arm, feeling the burning caress of the rising energy as it flowed around his glove.
A grin tugged at the edges of his mouth. Perfect…
The next thing he knew, there was an explosion right in front of him. Debris zoomed right towards him, slashing at his unprotected face. A blinding flash of light hit his eyes before he could even blink. He stumbled backwards in shock. He tried to raise his arms to shield his face, but a powerful shockwave walloped him in squarely in the stomach, sending him sailing through the air.
The Lombax landed with a loud crunch on the platform several feet away. Too stunned to move or even think, he simply lay there gasping for air. He was disoriented, half-blinded and his ears rung with a vengeance. As he came back to his senses, a horrible reality began to sink in.
Ratchet had been right. Something was terribly wrong.
It took him a while to catch his breath. When he finally managed to, a chilling sight met his eyes.
The controlling device had blown up. As he forced himself to his knees, a sparkling shower of bronze and shattered crystal cascaded on and all around him. But far from stopping the hurricane, the device's destruction only seemed to make it worse. More and more streams of blue energy flowed in from everywhere; above him, below him and from behind him. Every single one fused with the main pillar, ballooning it to terrifying proportions.
Alister leapt to his feet, furiously blinking to drive the oppressive whiteness from the corners of his vision. He looked around him in horror, eyes unclouded by his delusions and finally seeing the unfolding chaos as it truly was. "It's not working!" he yelled, to no one in particular. "Why isn't it working?!"
And of course, no one answered.
The glass pane beneath Alister's feet started vibrating. He looked down. Cracks were forming within it, branching and splitting as they darted like lightning through the glass.
The panicking Lombax made a mad dash for a nearby metal beam. After a few mere steps, the ground beneath his feet gave way and he dived, arms flailing. His hands missed the beam and instead grabbed the razor-sharp edge of the broken glass, piercing his gloves and cutting him deeply. Blood flowed down his arms as he dangled off the ledge, feet touching nothing but air.
Fuelled by rivers of energy that came seemingly out of nowhere, the vortex was beginning to expand outward, and within moments had engulfed the entire inner rim of the platform. Yet still it traveled, soon coming within mere metres of Alister.
Whimpering in pain, the Lombax was suddenly aware of how pathetic he must have looked. Great General and most revered Leader of the Lombax Praetorian Guard? Pah! He thought. There he was, swinging helplessly, and about to be swallowed and eaten like a wretched little…
He was never able to finish that thought. With a final crack, the glass pane he was hanging from gave way, sending him plummeting into the abyss. At that moment the energy vortex took a sudden lurch outwards, encasing the falling Lombax in a raging, pulsating waterfall of blue.
As millions of streams of energy collectively shot through his body, Alister opened his mouth to scream. But no sound came out as he did so, as his senses abandoned him and the world vanished before his very eyes.
***
Orvus floated around the circumference of the Chamber, observing the wreckage below him. After witnessing firsthand the chaos that had erupted within its confines, he couldn't help but find the scene strangely calm – almost forebodingly so. Apart from the gentle whoosh of solar winds that whistled through the broken windows, the area was completely quiet. The contrast truly was extreme.
Finally, after circling the scene several times, Orvus came to rest upon a surviving metal beam and let out a deep sigh. Things were, indeed, as bad as he had expected.
After leaving Ratchet and Clank to rest and recover in a separate room of the Great Clock, the Zoni leader had personally come down to survey the damage that would inevitably have been done. He had not bore high hopes for the condition of the Chamber upon his return. Even so, he couldn't help but feel deeply dismayed at its present state.
The formerly magnificent Orvus Chamber, whose construction he had so carefully planned and overseen years ago, had been reduced to ruins.
For starters, the Great Clock's main control mechanism, the device he considered his second greatest brainchild, seemed to have been completely atomized; nothing existed in its former place barring a blackened patch of metal. The platform it had rested on still floated, but was little more than a skeleton now that its glass panes had shattered and some of the supporting beams had twisted and snapped. In addition, the majestic dome roof that encased the Chamber was gone. None of its fiberglass plates remained intact, and most of the bronze arches that held them up had caved in. The numerous ornamental fixtures formerly on the walls were also gone, apparently dislodged by the vortex and swallowed by the gaping abyss far below.
Orvus floated down from his perch and landed lightly on the ruined platform. He sidestepped the chunks of rubble that littered the area, peeking around quickly. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, scanning the area for any hint of organic matter. As expected, he detected nothing. Alister, whether he was alive or dead, was no longer physically with them. There was only one place he could have gone – the past.
A frown crossed the Zoni's face. The turn of events didn't really surprise him. He had somewhat expected the Lombax to succeed; the Clock's failsafe mechanisms did give him a reasonable chance of reversing time successfully. However, as with all actions that tampered with the natural flow of time, there were bound to be consequences. Very serious consequences. Alister had taken a gigantic loan from the bank of time, and now the Universe was bound by contract to pay – interest and all.
But no matter how much Orvus thought of the disaster Alister had engineered, he simply couldn't bring himself to blame him. After all, he did what he had done for a perfectly sound cause: he had done it for the sake of the people he loved.
Was it justified? Orvus was unsure. But was it understandable? Perfectly. Orvus, of all people, would know. After all, for Clank's sake, he, too, had violated the natural flow of time.
Technically, unlike the Lombax, his decision to do so had been completely spontaneous. He had seen the situation and acted solely on instinct alone. But that didn't change the gravity of his actions. The Zoni had stated before, with utter conviction, that time was a gift and never to be tampered with. But now, when he thought about it, he realized he wasn't so sure.
For a moment, Orvus considered going back to his proper time that very instant. A change in the continuum could be minimized by limiting its impact, and that would be done by going back before he interfered with anything else. Furthermore, now that he had already saved Clank, what was keeping him from doing so?
Everything, he realized.
He may have returned to save his son, but when the dust had settled, Orvus had found himself in a Universe desperately in need of help. Ratchet and Clank were brave and intelligent souls, but they were woefully inexperienced when it came to handling time. They could not possibly tackle the root of the problem by themselves. They would need a strong, knowledgeable leader to guide them through the mess. And that leader, he knew, could only be him. He was still needed at the time, and as long as he was needed, he would stay.
Forget the problems he had created, and the problems he inevitably would create. They were undoubtedly minor in comparison to the ones that would result if he left. When, and only when every other piece of the puzzle had been put into place would he fit in his own. But not now, when there were far more important matters for him to oversee.
Taking one last, sorrowful look at the ruins of his beloved Chamber, Orvus picked himself up and levitated away. There was no point in wasting time by mourning his loss. The Chamber could always be rebuilt, and furthermore, he had an entire Universe to save. And he didn't have long to do it, either.
A rescue operation on such a grand scale would require tremendous effort. Thankfully, he knew he had two extra pairs of hands to rely on this time.
A smile crossed Orvus's face. It was a long shot, but maybe with a bit of luck, things would work out okay after all.
And that's the end of the second chapter! In the next installment we move on to a different location, so stay tuned!
~misterhogtail
