Thank you all for the continued reviews and support! You're the reason I write!

I needed some more lighthearted ones after last chapter, soooo… well. There are a few here. Still some more depressing stuff though. I don't know. Ratchet's youth wasn't exactly the best, given what we can see in the older games.

Also Nefarious! I love writing him, and haven't really had him (or Qwark, for that matter) in here at all. Time to fix that.


Sleeping Under the Bed

Hulia had given eight-year-old Ratchet, on his first major growth spurt and finally just shy of a cubit, some warm milk and a thick blanket, carrying him curled up to the kennel half of the animal hospital to rest after his checkup and grooming. Her assistant was already tasked with sweeping up the pile of white, gold and brown lombax fur left behind after his trim.

Ratchet smiled and curled up in his blissful slumber; he never admitted it, even as an honest child, but he seemed to love getting groomed, whereas Hulia knew from experience that most of the animals she treated barely tolerated it; some even needed to be sedated to get their fur cut and styled. As a Veldinite, she had no hair to speak of, just scales, but if she remembered anything from her time on Kerwan for her veterinary license it was that furred people, like Cazars, enjoyed the process; there were spas on planets like Marcadia for a full day of bathing in hot springs, a massage, and fur styling for men and women alike.

With local bureaucratic tape preventing her from truly taking Ratchet out of the orphanage system, Hulia sighed and laid a clean pet bed on the floor of the kennel for Ratchet to rest in. She did the best she could, given the circumstances, and gave Ratchet a few last strokes with a wire brush for good measure.

How was this better for everyone than her eldest daughter sneezing on occasion (something an antihistamine could easily fix, and something Kyana willingly wished to take) when Ratchet came by?


Tackling Someone to Wake Them Up

"RATCHEEEEEE- oooooh Lance, I wish I could love you, hold you, forever…but!"

"But what?"

"I… I have become… a zombie!"

"Oh Janice, it was…"

"Ratchet, do you plan on sitting there with popcorn for the rest of the afternoon listening to Lance and Janice reruns?" Clank asked sarcastically as Ratchet stretched out on the floor of Nefarious's lair, tail unfurled behind him as he relaxed, listening to Nefarious malfunction.

"Meh. It's your turn anyway."

"Very well," Clank replied, propelling himself up to Nefarious's height and giving his head a solid thwack.

"EEEEET! Oh, hello idiots," Nefarious said, cocking a grin.

Ratchet raised an eyebrow. "That's eighty two minutes between outbursts," he commented, holding up his holoreceiver. "You sure you don't want me in there? I'd bet a thousand bolts you just have a loose wire in there. A bit of soldier and you won't have this problem nearly as often."

"I'm not letting some squishy touch my cranial sisterboards," Nefarious sneered. "I just need some more control."

"Well, I have to admit, you've definitely improved," Ratchet replied. "Suit yourself. But if I wanted to do some brain surgery, I'd check the wires around the auxiliary memory cartridge. Just saying. Won't totally solve it, but it should help you reboot yourself in future outbursts."

"You're not going to mess with my head?" Nefraious snarled.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Ratchet replied. "It's just the hardware, and I owe you one. I won't touch your processors at all. Honestly, software isn't my dig, anyway."

"Can I be awake?" Nefraious asked, grinding his jaw in contemplation as his tone lightened just a hair.

"As long as you have at least one other memory chip, yeah."

Nefarious snorted. "I'll go get my toolkit. But no funny business, squishy, or I'll throw you right out the airlock."


Hanging Out in a Neighbor's Garden

"Punk's been stealing my discarded parts again," Grimroth grumbled around the dinner table as he passed his brother Gaius some rice.

"Are you using them?" Hulia asked, as she took a plate of frog meat out from under her husband's nose.

"Tell the kid I'm leavin' 'em out on purpose to see what he does with 'em, and I'll have your head, sis," Grimroth shot back, playfully, snatching the frogs back from Hulia the moment she slid one on her plate.

"Why don't you invite him over?" Hulia asked, cocking her head, as she helped one of her daughters cut her frog into bite-sized pieces.

"I don' wanna be the town creep or nuttin'. But, damn, the kid's got skill. He made a workin' grappling hook with nothin' but scrap, his claws, and a screwdriver I actually forgot about in the yard- my favorite, too. Anyway, it's less than a month 'till he's twelve anyway. You pass him my offer?"

"I was planning on stopping over tomorrow, Roth, but why won't you tell him?"

"The kid likes you."

"If you actually talked to him, he might like you, too."


Meowing Just to Get Attention

"MrrrrRRoOoow." Ratchet whipped around, and looked at Qwark behind him attempting to whistle innocently.

Ratchet wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that Qwark thought that he could get away with the display, or the fact that Ratchet understood the meaning of the sound perfectly.

"The heck was that?" Ratchet finally asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Clank said you were finally getting the hang of lombax, so I wanted to test you. Ah, in my youth I-"

"Joy," Ratchet said cutting him off, reminding himself that Qwark, of all people, was somehow fluent in lombax. "How did you even learn it anyway?"

"Well, you're not the only orphan," Qwark said, pouting. "I was sent away to boarding school. On Fastoon. Thirty-something years ago."

Ratchet frowned. How could he forget Qwark also had lost his parents at infancy? It was uncomfortably weird how similar the two of them actually were at times.

"Waitasec. You were on Fastoon as a teenager?" Ratchet pondered further. "Nefarious was on Fastoon as a teenager?"

Qwark stopped and gulped. "Hey, don't look at me, I graduated ten years before the lombaxes just… vanished. I kept in touch with some of my old classmates, and one day, the lombaxes just stopped writing back. I was getting pretty busy with the whole heroism thing… and it was a boarding school so it was a mix of people from a whole lot of planets…"

Ratchet shook his head. "Whatever. The past's in the past now, right?"

"That's right, cadet!" Qwark whooped, lifting Ratchet clear up and onto a shoulder.

"Ya puc'noi da ic!" Put me down! Ratchet cried out, fur ruffled. Quark let him off his shoulder and beamed.

"So you really are understanding," Qwark replied. "Illa zei de ar." That's good to hear.

"Just… do me a favor and never use that meow again."

"What? Why? I think it would be a great secret code! Like a bird call!"

"I am not allowing you to call me that. Ever. Code name or otherwise." Ratchet shuddered horribly. "I really don't want to explain the meaning of that to Clank." Ratchet rolled his eyes and trudged ahead. The fact that Qwark learned lombax as a teenager made his choice in vocabulary… well, certainly more interesting, to say the least.


Falling Off Tables

"Just a sec, Tal, I'll have that light fixed in an- OOOOOOW!" Talwyn and Clank heard a mighty crash, and Ratchet's meowing whine, as they both ran into the main atrium where Ratchet was doing some maintenance.

Clank quickly scanned Ratchet for injuries, and produced a vial of high-acting violet nanotech to repair a fractured collarbone. Listening to the devices repair Ratchet with an almost lunch-heaving squelch (saying something since Clank never had lunch), Ratchet laid prostrate on the floor until the bone was repaired.

"I swear, the table moved," Ratchet whined, as he heard the light tinkling noise of the nanobots completing their task.

"Ratchet, tables are inanimate objects and do not simply…" Clank started, stopping short, when the table in question backed up further, and embarrassingly curled up in the corner of the atrium. Clank squinted, his replacement for sighing.

"Let us find you a non-sapient stepladder, shall we?"


Active in the Dead of Night

It's always night in space, Ratchet mused, as he flattened the pilot's seat in Aphelion and curled up while she ran autopilot. He listened to the trail end of General Azimuth's latest request as he curled in the cockpit, ten Zoni giggling and floating around him in balls of light. One peered down at Ratchet as he tried to make himself comfortable.

"We are returning to Sire," they all said in unison.

"Soon," Ratchet, replied wearily. Another looked down at the lombax, and floated into his arms. Ratchet took it warily, hugging it like a stuffed animal. As a being of pure energy, the little creature had no heartbeat, but it began mimicking Ratchet's pulse and all of the Zoni surrounding him dimmed themselves as Aphelion dimmed her own cockpit lights. The Zoni was unsurprisingly warm, but surprisingly soft, gripping Ratchet tightly.

"We are retuning to Sire," they repeated, quietly, almost as if they were trying to calm Ratchet to sleep.

It was night when he slept. It was night again when he woke.

"We are retuning to sire," they monotoned to gently wake up Ratchet, slowly brightening themselves.

Hopefully the Great Clock had a nice warm sun; without Clank, Ratchet desperately needed a dawn.


Crescent Pupils

"Is it wrong of me that I enjoy dilating your eyes?" Hulia asked with a small smile to help ease Ratchet, as a small swarm of ophthalmologists surrounded him with their tools.

Ratchet's face fell. "Just be glad I owe you one. Well, a lot of ones," Ratchet replied, as he attempted to keep his eyes open while each of the doctors got a look. "Croid?" he finally sighed out, allowing the tharpod to force his eyelids open with his pincers.

Ratchet felt wet tears streak down his face as he sat uncomfortably in the paper-backed chair, tail squashed against his back as Hulia completed her examination while the other doctors observed. The minute she lowered her clipboard, Croid released his hold, and Ratchet squeezed his eyes shut, crying hard from the dilation, pin lights, and lack of blinking.

"Go rest up, Ratchet," Hulia said, kindly. "I'll be talking about what these results mean to the other doctors, and I'll give you your prescription later."

"Mph," Ratchet grumbled, as Croid offered him an arm to a bed in another room. Ratchet closed the door, shut the light, stripped down to shorts, and curled up on the guest cot, drifting to sleep.

X

A light rap on the door.

"Ratchet?"

"Mph."

"I'll come back later," Hulia said quietly.

"No, I don't really want to sleep all day," Ratchet mumbled in response. "Just… uh, keep the light off when you come in."

"You did well," Hulia said, cracking open the door and sliding herself in. She fumbled around Croid's guest room, before finding the cot, sitting down next to Ratchet.

"It's just an eye exam," Ratchet mumbled. "It's not like it's even needles or anything." He groaned into a pillow. "I can fall from a five-story building and just fracture something, but this kills me. Fastoon is crazy-bright, why can't I handle that much light in my eyes?"

"It's because lombaxes are nocturnal, Ratchet. You know how well you can see in the dark. Did you not notice that there wasn't a single ambient light fixture anywhere in those city ruins?" Hulia helped Ratchet sit up, feeling his hot fur press against her scales and seeing the reflection in his now crescent-shaped eyes in the near darkness. "And it seems to me like someone is long overdue for a trim."

Ratchet growled. "Why didn't you tell me? Why do I just learn everything second or third hand now that I'm an adult?" His tail twitched in irritation, before softening slightly. "Sorry, Hu, didn't mean to yell at you."

"Well, as a child, what would you have done knowing you were supposed to be nocturnal?"

"It wouldn't really have changed much," Ratchet sighed, sitting upright as Hulia reached out in an awkward hug that he accepted, curling his tail around Hulia's back on the cot. "I would have still been on the same schedule as everyone else. It just bothers me, you know? Purring. Having this weird want to be groomed or petted. Just, little habits and tics. Now that I'm older, I'm seeing that this is just because of my species and not some weird thing unique to me. I just really wish I got to talk more to Angela before she vanished. Heck. I didn't even know she was a lombax herself back then."

"Angela?" Hulia asked, holding him gently and offering a few light ear scratches, listening quietly to Ratchet's breathing and heartbeat slow down to a relaxed state.

"Another lombax that stayed behind in this dimension. She was- is- about fifteen years older, so she's almost forty now. Talwyn's father helped get her to the dimension with the lombaxes, and the only other two who stayed behind when the Dimensionator was used…" Ratchet paused, digging his head into Hulia's shoulder, as she offered another hand to stroke the top of his head. "I guess I'm number one on Polaris's endangered species list, then, huh? But yeah… I didn't even realize that female lombaxes looked like her until Talwyn showed me some old photos. I guess I never bothered to look or ask."

"If she left, for the other dimension, I mean, you could," Hulia mused quietly, listening to the start of Ratchet's purr and feeling it through his neck pressed on her shoulder.

"I'unno. I mean, if I did, Tal and Clank would probably go with me. But… I'm worried about everyone else?"

"You don't have to worry about other people, Ratchet. You've done plenty of that already. Honestly… you've done three galaxies a world of service, and inspired many to join their respective defense forces. I'm not saying we'd be fine without you, but… you've started the ball rolling on better, more responsible intergalactic defense and talks between the galaxies and races that barely existed before. And I couldn't be prouder."

"But you…"

"Owe me nothing. Circumstances notwithstanding, Ratchet, you. Are. My. Son. I would move galaxies for you. Heck, honestly, the rest of my kids have left the nest long ago. Maybe it's time you did so, too? Stop trying to clear out this invisible ledger you've put up in your mind about things you owe me for. If you really must, saving Veldin thrice over- my home, our home- should have cleared that up."

"Are you…"

"Ratchet, if you want to stay here, it should be because you want to, not that you need to."

Ratchet squeezed a little tighter. "Let me let my eyes adjust a bit longer. Then… then I'd like a shave, if it's okay... mom. After… I might call up Tal and Clank about, y'know… a little road trip."

"Fair deal, fuzzball. I'll go bring those numbers to Croid so he can make you some contacts. And I'll ask if he can add in a slight tint, too. Come out whenever you're ready."

"Sounds good."

X

"Is he all right?" Clank asked off the commlink from Igliak, head currently separated from the main chassis body as one of Al's RoboShack Polaris-branch employees was digging around in his insides. Clank seemed nonplussed about being spread into seven different parts on the workbench, remotely flexing his right hand's fingers, sitting a few cubits away on an opposing table in the background.

"Well, he's not scattered over several benches with one leg in a pair of clamps," Hulia replied.

"Pipe down, tryin'a work here," one of the mechanics muttered.

"I do recall your a'cappella rendition of Courtney Gear's most recent single, Grind My Gears, not five minutes earlier. Please do not be hypocritical," Clank said calmly. The mechanic blushed and suddenly found Clank's fuel ignition system exceedingly fascinating, busying himself again in his work. "Anyway…" Clank began, directing himself towards Hulia.

"You were correct, and have an excellent eye," Hulia responded, crossing her arms. "He's developed a minor form of myopia, easily correctible. From what literature I can gather, it's fairly common in lombaxes who spend too much time out in daylight."

"That is good to hear. He has been relying on me for sight more and more of late, but only on observing distant objects. Is it reversible?"

"Yes, but it's not something I feel confident or comfortable doing. He'd need surgery. Lombax specific surgery. When he wakes up proper I'll bring it up to him. Croid is likely the only person in the universe I'd even suggest, but…"

"I do think it is about time for us to be moving on to other places, anyway," Clank said, wincing slightly and raising his voice a few decibels. "Sir, just because I do not have pain receptors does not mean I wish to be manhandled as such. Please be a little more careful."

"As long as you keep him out of trouble, Clank."

"I cannot make any promises on that end, Doctor Bolide. I can only attempt to try."