BAYUUUUM! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! Actually by the time this is out, my birthday would have already passed. But yeah, I just wanted to get that out, sorry that I have not done a typecast in a while. I was one, not in the mood for it. Or two, too lazy to do it. But I'll give you guys the rundown right now on whats going to happen for the next couple of weeks. As I said, work has been delaying these things. And I know I said the next chapter would be for One For All (Redux), but since these next chapters in Man Vs Machine were going to be short, that's why I wanted to put them out first. But I can gurantee you that after chapter 8 of Man Vs Machine is out, the next chapter will be for One For All (Redux). And speaking of my birthday, my birthday present was?.. You guessed it, another typewriter! Its more like my own personal birthday present after my parents ruined my birthday with what they thought was a good present. I'm not gonna talk about it though. So that should be it for everything in terms of Fanficion status. Now lets jump into this story.

I also want to thank Lucas FTW for following Man Vs Machine. Your support is much appreciated.

If you're enjoying the story so far, feel free to review, favorite or follow, and please know that any feedback is much appreciated.

Disclaimer:

Ratchet and Clank, associated characters, locations, weapons, etc. belong to Insomniac Games. Some real world companies and organizations belong to their respective owners, etc. I only own the right to some characters and some weapons and events introduced in this story.


Nebula 51-G7-D45

Starship Phoenix

9:35pm local time

Monster Part 1

Once Ratchet landed the ship on the landing pad, Ratchet and the group got out of the ship and Jordan immediately wanted the Plasma Cuffs off of him. "Alright now get these things off me!"

"Alright, alright." Ratchet said. Ratchet called for the robotic nurse from before and she was able to cut the cuffs off using a built in welding torch she had with her. After the cuffs were off of him, Jordan started smelling himself and he smelled just like raw sewage. "Now take me to the showers immediately."

"It's down the hall and it's the first door on the left."

"Okay." Before the Human could even walk to his destination. He saw Sophia immediately rush in and hug him with all her might. "Jordan!" she yelled with joy.

"Jeez. I was gone for like 5 minutes."

"You were gone for an hour. And I was worried about you. And…and…" Sophia took a couple of whiffs from the Humans jacket and immediately covered her nose. "Ewww! You stink!"

"I know, I know. It's kind've a long story and I'm really not in the mood to talk about it. Why don't you go see how Clank and Ratchet are doing while I get a shower okay?"

"Okay." Sophia quickly walked towards Ratchet and Clank, who smelled just as bad as the Human did. But Jordan quickly fled the scene and walked towards where the bathroom was located. Halfway down the hallway, he looked to his left and saw a door that had the label "Bathroom" on it and the Human quickly walked in. He saw that the entire room had a white tile pattern on it. And on the north side of the room on the far right was the sink. And on the far left was the toilet, right next to the bath tub. He then saw that in front of the tub was also a washer and dryer in the case he wanted to wash his clothes. Jordan did just that and took all of his clothes off and threw them in the washer. He then saw that there was a large cabinet over the sink and saw that it had all of the stuff needed to not only wash his clothes, but himself as well. Jordan grabbed everything he need to wash his clothes and turned the washer on. While his clothes were being cleaned, Jordan walked over to the bathtub and turned the hot water knob and started filling the tub with water. After five minutes, the tub was completely filled and the Human stepped in it. He instantly felt the warm sensation hit him and he laid down in the water with a loud sigh of pleasure. With the clothes washing and the Human laying in his own filth, he decided to step out and drain the now contaminated water and also heard the washer make a ding and his clothes were now done. While the water drained, he grabbed his clothes out of the washer and threw them in the dryer. He then refilled the tub with hot water again and stepped back in. Now the Human started washing his hair with shampoo, then washed his body off with body wash. Once he was done, he drained the water and grabbed a towel and proceeded to dry himself off. It was at that moment that his clothes were done drying and once he was completely dried off, he put his clothes back on and stepped out of the bathroom. He then walked back out to the main deck of the Phoenix and saw that everyone, including John was waiting by Ratchet's ship. Once he met up with everyone, he saw Sophia immediately run towards him and start smelling him. "Do I smell better now?"

"Yes you do."

"Good." Jordan then walked over to John and saw that Ratchet and Clank were nowhere to be found. "Where's Ratchet and Clank?"

"They went to the Captain's deck to give Sasha his report on what you guys found on Aquatos."

"Well I guess I'll go wait for him in the quarters until he's done."

"Actually Jordan, there's something I've been wanting to tell you since you've showed up."

"Alright. What is it?"

"It's about the men we're training."

"What about them?"

"We're getting into more complex things and I'm almost out of what I was trained to do."

"What exactly do you mean?"

"She wants us to train them in more advanced battle tactics and she wants us to train them in things that I don't even know about."

"Okay. I'll have a talk with her and I'll try to think of something."

"Okay." Jordan started walking to the Captain's deck and saw that it was separated by a bridge. Jordan got on the moving platform and was taken directly to the main deck. Once the door opened, Jordan stepped in and saw that Sasha Phyronix was debriefing something to Ratchet. Once she was done and Ratchet started walking away, Jordan approached her. "There you are. I have a task for you."

"I know, John told me."

"Oh."

"I just wanted to ask. What do you exactly want me to do now? Because we're approaching the point where John can't teach the soldiers anymore things."

"I want you to teach them more advanced battle tactics and teach them more advance ways to take out the enemy."

"Well I'm not so sure I know enough about advanced battle tactics."

"Like I said. Just use your imagination."

"But-"

"Alright let's get this map decoded quickly!" Sasha yelled to her team of engineers (Mostly just Al) and they immediately got to work. Jordan knew that Sasha probably wasn't going to answer anymore of his questions at this point. So he decided to go back to the landing bay where John was and see what battle tactics he exactly explained to the rangers. "So John what have you exactly taught them?"

As they started walking down the hallway to where the recruits were, John started telling Jordan all of the different battle techniques and strategies that he taught them. And according to him, they were all pretty similar to the same kind of things that his race does back on Earth. What could possibly be more advance than that? Now the Human had to come up with a way that was different from the tactics that John taught them, but at the same time, they must be extremely different from the others. But the only battle techniques that Jordan knew were from his races past ancestors 200 years ago.

Civil War strategies.

Jordan really hoped that the soldiers would think of this as advanced and not primitive. Once Jordan and John walked into the room, the soldiers greeted the duo and were curious about what they were going to learn today. "Hello Sergeant." Private GUMP said.

"What are we going to learn today sir?" Private FIN added.

"Today we're going to be learning a few battle techniques that some of you, if not all of you have probably never heard of in combat. We're also going to be practicing these moves and making sure you get to use them when you first go out in combat in the real galaxy. Understood?"

"Yes Sir!" they all yelled.

"Good now let's do this." Jordan pulled out a blackboard from the other side of the room and started writing a few things down. He then started forming formations that civil war soldiers would make during the civil war and they all saw it, even John, who was a little skeptical about it being advanced. "Alright. So you guys are going to form a line like this. Then the commander, which is me or John, will order you guys to carefully aim, then fire. That's the first battle line. The second line would be for you to take cover anywhere, but you will still have to form a line. But when I yell fire at will, then you would fire as you please. But remember to take your time before you fire. You want to make every shot count. Now, is there any questions?" one of the soldiers raised their hand, and that soldier happened to be Roland. "Yes private?"

"Don't you think these formations are a little, I don't know, primitive?"

"It might be. But this is how my people have done things."

"But you said we're here to learn more advanced battle techniques."

"Private." Jordan walked over to the recruit and stared him directly in his LED lens. "Who is your sergeant here?"

"You are sir."

"Who has more battle experience in here?"

"You do sir."

"Who is the one that is teaching you all this so that you'll walk back with his tail still attached to his backside?"

"Actually-"

"WHO!?"

"You sir!"

"Good. Now that you understand who your commanding officer is. John! Take these men out and practice these battle formations."

"Yes Jor-, I mean, yes sergeant major."

"Good." As the rangers were walking out of the room, John walked up to Jordan and told him something. "I don't mean to agree with the rangers, but they're right. All of this stuff is primitive. Do you know any more advanced tactics that the soldiers don't know?"

"No. You pretty much covered it."

"Well why don't you tell Sasha that you don't know of anything else."

"Like she said. She wants me to use my imagination."

"Okay but-"

"Don't worry. As long as she see that we're making progress. She'll know what I'm teaching them."

"Alright, if you say so." Once John and Jordan met with the other rangers outside of the classroom, Jordan left John to teach them the battle formations and he didn't even bother searching for Sophia, Clank, or Ratchet. Jordan immediately went to the the ranger quarters, went into his military backpack and pulled out his Hermes 3000 typewriter and made another journal entry

28th of October, 2015

Well. I had it again, I keep hearing the voices of the ones that I could not spare or protect. I feel like I'm going mad at this point. But I can't believe that John is with the Galactic Rangers of the Solana Galaxy. Now a Cazar called Sasha Phyronix wanted me to train these rangers in more advanced battle techniques. But all I have trained them was civil war battle formations. I really hope that we can get this done sooner and stop this so called Dr. Nefarious. Seriously what kind of name is Dr. Nefarious anyways? Is he really a doctor? Why would he name himself out of something out of a word in the English dictionary? I really don't get it. Well, as long as no one knows about my condition, then everything will be fine and under control-

"What condition?" a voice said behind the Human. Jordan jumped when he heard the voice and saw that it was Sophia, holding her protopet Sarah. "What are you talking about?" Jordan said.

"You said you are in some kind of condition. And what about all the voices you keep saying in your journal." Sophia started looking through pages and pages of Jordan's journal. This obviously made the Human very angry and he snatched the papers from the Lombax. "Who gave you permission to read these?!"

"You read mine."

"That doesn't mean you should be going through my bang and reading everything that's on it."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Sophia listen. Sometimes, a person has to have things that are kept for themselves and not others. They need privacy sometimes and keep that kind of stuff to themselves. See what I mean? If you want to look at my stuff, you're gonna have to ask, okay?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well you guessed right."

"Sooooo…Can I see the stuff in your backpack?"

"Well you already read my journal. So what else do you want to see?"

"I just want to see what's inside."

"Well alright. But don't expect to find a lifetime supply of candy bars or anything like that."

"Alright." Jordan pulled the backpack close to the Lombax and started unzipping all of the pockets and showing her what's inside. Sophia saw that the bag only consisted of survival based stuff. Like a canteen, a tent, a blanket, and a hell of a lot of emergency food and water. But this made the Lombax curious. Why does Jordan have all this? Is he going on a very long camping trip or something? She just didn't understand. "Why do you have all this?"

"I don't know, I just do." Jordan lied, knowing that this kit was for post-apocalyptic purposes only. But he didn't want to tell her that.

"Is it for camping or something?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"Okay." Sophia then started looking at her protopet while Jordan zipped up all of the pockets of the backpack. Once he was done, he placed the backpack by his bedside and wrote the rest of the journal entry on the typewriter.

Sorry about that. I was just talking to Sophia about what was in my bag. But I'm done with that now and now I will say what I have to say. Like I said, I feel like a monster. Huh, sounds just like that song by the band Skillet. But yeah, I just hope I could keep this to myself. I hope I can find some way to stop the madness. You wanna know something? It actually looks like the madness seizes when I'm around my friends. This is just a theory, but hope it's a true one. So it might be an objective to stay around my friends as much as possible. Well, that's about all I have to say for now. This is Jordan Thompson, signing off.

Jordan then put the typewriter back in the backpack and decided to sit on the sofa and waited for Ratchet and Clank to come. As Jordan was sitting there and looking at the blank holovision screen, he felt something get on his legs and wrap around his neck. Once Jordan noticed this, he looked and saw that it was Sophia wrapping her arms around the Human's neck and resting her head on his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Jordan?"

"Yeah?"

"I never did thank you for saving me a year ago. Actually I never did thank you for everything you've done for me. You've given me more than I could ask for."

"You don't have to thank me Sophia." After he said that. Sophia started moving her lips closer and closer to the Human's cheek and…

She kissed him.

She then looked towards the Human's face to see his reaction. But all he did was stare blankly at the holovision screen with his eyes wide open. She then started calling the Humans name after seeing this for ten seconds. "Jordan?"

"…"

"Jordan are you okay?"

The Human quickly shook his head "Huh, what?"

"I said are you okay?"

"Y-yeah I'm fine."

"Okay. Just making sure." Sophia then began to rest her head on the Human's shoulder and started to fall asleep after ten minutes. Once her eyes were closed, Jordan felt the cheek that Sophia pecked her lips on and his face instantly turned red. Why would she do that? Why would she kiss him like that? Jordan really wanted her to answer his questions, but he decided to leave her alone as he heard her start snoring. "Oh god she's a snorer too." Jordan quietly said. Jordan then picked her up and decided to carry her to bed, as he brought her to one of the six beds, he saw Ratchet walk through the hallway that led into the quarters. Jordan approached him. "She fell asleep on me."

"I can see that." Ratchet responded.

"What. You don't think it's adorable or anything?"

"Well I kind of saw it coming. Knowing how much she likes you."

"I don't think so."

"Are you kidding? She's crazy about you. You won't believe how much she talks about you and thinks about you when you're not around"

"Really?"

"Yeah really."

"Oh. Well, okay the. I'm just gonna put her to bed and I'll see what I can do in my spare time."

"Okay. Maybe you should get some rest."

"Ratchet, I'm fine. You heard what the nurse said. My heart is fully healed."

"I know that. I just wanna make sure it is. I worry about you."

"Well, if you're that concerned about my health. Than fine. I'll go to bed."

"Okay, goodnight buddy."

"Goodnight." Ratchet and Jordan parted ways and Jordan carried Sophia into the first bed and slowly set her down. He then laid a blanket over her and slowly closed the little pod. Once he was done, he started climbing up to the highest bed and he tuck himself into bed.

20 minutes later

After Ratchet was done talking to Sasha about his next mission. Ratchet decided to chill in the ranger's quarters until the whole facility shuts down for the night. As he was sitting on the sofa, he immediately started to get bored. He looked around for anything to do. He looked to his left, and saw nothing. He then looked to his right, and saw nothing. That is, until he eyed his Human friends backpack. Ratchet really wanted to know what was inside of it. So Ratchet walked over and put a hand on the bag. He then looked up to where the Human was sleeping and made sure he was still asleep. Ratchet saw that he was and he dragged the backpack across the room and over to the couch. Once Ratchet picked it up, he noticed that it must've weighed about 20 pounds. But Ratchet quickly started opening the pockets of the backpack and looked to see what was inside. He saw that it was mostly filled with camping essentials. A mini camp stove, matches, ramen noodle packs, paracord, and somehow, a whole week's worth of dried up food. Ratchet then saw his typewriter and a small folder. He took the folder and opened it, and saw many pieces of paper in it that were composed of all of his journal entries that he had ever made. Ratchet started flipping through them and saw his daily life on Earth. He saw that it mostly consisted of his time in school. And it turns out that it was his birthday a couple days ago. Ratchet reminded himself that he'll have to tell him happy birthday later. But Ratchet really turned his attention to the Humans most recent entry. He saw words like "monster" and "nightmares" and "voices". He even saw that this was consistent throughout all of his entries. Was something wrong with the Human that he was not aware of? Maybe Sasha could do something about it.

Ratchet closed the folder and zipped up all of the zippers and left the room. Ratchet knew they had a fully functioning hospital on this ship. But did they have a special MRI scanner that can detect any psychological conditions with a certain person? Once Ratchet reached Sasha, he asked her that very question. "Hey Sasha?"

"Yes Ratchet?"

"Do you guys happen to have some kind of scanner that can scan for anything wrong with the brain?"

"We so have a small MRI scanner that we used to scan the psychological conditions of our rangers. But that was years ago, even before I became captain."

"Well do you think it will still work?"

"I hope so." Sasha and Ratchet walked out into the main section of the phoenix and started walking down the hallway that led to the ranger quarters. They then went through the first door on the right that was labeled "Storage" and opened the door. They saw that the inside of the room was riddled with just about everything you could imagine. Spare robotic parts, robotic galactic ranger prototypes, spare ship parts, and old vintage tech used in the Phoenix's heydays. "It's probably best that you wait here. I'll fetch the scanner for you." Sasha said. Ratchet listened and stood where he was standing while the Cazar went inside and looked for the scanner. After waiting for two minutes, she walked out with the machine and started to get the machine up and running. She pressed the power button and the machine roared to life. "Yes it works!" Ratchet said. "So what do we do now?"

"Let's just go to Jordan and I'll read the instructions for this."

"You mean you've never used this thing before?"

"Like I said. This was way back in the early days when the Phoenix was made. I think it was last used ten years ago."

"Okay. Let's just go to Jordan then." Sasha and Ratchet walked over to the ranger's quarters and saw that Jordan was still sound asleep in his bed. "Alright, so what do we do first?" Ratchet asked.

"Well according to the instructions. You have to attach these six electrodes to Jordan's head." Sasha handed the six sticky pads to Ratchet.

"Alright." Ratchet started climbing up all the beds until he reached Jordan. He then slowly opened the pod up and was very careful not to disturb the Human. He then started sticking the pads on the Human's forehead and face. Once he was done, he slowly partially closed the lid and climbed down where Sasha was. Ratchet saw her read the instructions and started pressing buttons on the machine. Once Ratchet saw a green light emit from the device, that meant the machine was now scanning the Humans brain. Slowly, a large roll of paper started coming out of the machine that looked like a bunch of gibberish, consisting of numbers, figures, and letters. Once the machine emitted a red light and beeped twice, Sasha pulled the paper out and both she and the Lombax read it. "What do all these markings mean?" Ratchet said.

"I don't know. But I might know someone who does know."

"Who?"

"The NurseBot. She's been here for as long as I could remember. I'm sure she could read this."

"You think so?"

"Sure." Ratchet and Sasha walked all the way to the hospital wing where the robotic nurse was resting peacefully in recharge mode. But once Sasha turned the robot on, she immediately came to life and stood in front of the two organics. "What can I help you with today Miss Phyronix?" the nurse said.

"We need your help with something."

"Help with what?"

"It's about Jordan."

"He's not hurt again is he?"

"Actually it's something else." Sasha handed the roll of paper to the nurse. "We recently scanned his brain and are currently unaware of his current psychological condition. Can you read this for us?"

"Why of course." The robot took the paper and quickly took it to a nearby computer and started decoding what was on the paper. And once the entire sequence was ready, the results they got shocked the nurse. "Oh my!"


Now I know what you're thinking. Why would the title be called what if it is if its only called it because of the word used once or twice in the journal? And what about voices? I didn't read anything about him hearing voices? The only reason I called it "Monster" was because I virtually had no title ideas for this story at all. And even though I didn't write anything about him hearing voices in this chapter, there were delusions. And they all took place while Jordan was taking a relaxing bath, I just didn't write it. So now the group knows what he has and now the next step is curing it, or at least temporarily and make sure it doesn't happen again. So all that will be in the next chapter.

If you're enjoying the story so far, feel free to review, favorite or follow, and please know that any feedback is much appreciated.

Thank you for reading.