Chapter 10. Time Travel and Research Camps.
Ratchet, Andy, Clank, Sonic and Amy had managed to catch up to Socrates and had made it to the camp. Now that they were in the camp they saw that the tents were ruined, random pieces of equipment were scattered and there were bodies scattered everywhere.
"Woah." Andy said. "Whoever was here really left in a hurry."
"Well they were being attacked so you can't blame them." Ratchet said.
As they walked around, Ratchet went to one of the bodies and picked up what looked like a datapad from it's hand and observed it.
Log Entry 0028: WE'RE UNDER ATTACK, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON! IT STARTED WHEN THE SKIES TURNED BLACK AND SUDDENLY THESE CREATURES SHOW UP AND START TEARING UP THE PLACE! SOME HAVE BEEN EVACUATED! IF ANYONE FINDS THIS IT'S TOO LATE TO SAVE US!
Ratchet switched to another entry of the journal.
Log Entry 0027: The excavation crew found some kind of artifact in the rock. It was described as a star shaped object with symbols on it, usual stuff. Also, I need to tell Clarance to tone down the scary noises. It's lowering morale.
Ratchet went back all the way to the first entry.
Log Entry 0001: Well, today's our first day here. People are already setting up tents and buildings. Don't know why, the CEO says we're only going to be there for about a year, so why put buildings here. My guess would be that in case they want to come back here, they could just reuse the buildings. Anyway Dale's calling to me, telling me to get back to work no doubt.
"Well that solves one mystery." Ratchet said putting the datapad away.
"What is it?" Sonic asked.
"This area was apparently a dig site for artifacts." Ratchet explained. "And they might have found a precursor star."
"Well what are we waiting for?" Andy asked. "Let's find it."
"Wait a minute." Clank said holding his hand up. "We don't know where the precursor star is. I suggest investigating more of this place and see where it is."
"That's probably a good idea." Sonic said. "Any suggestions on where to start?"
"Maybe that building over there." Amy said pointing to one of the buildings.
"Good idea." Socrates said.
They approached the building and tried to open the door, unfortunately it was locked.
"Hold on." Ratchet said getting in front of them. "This should take a minute."
Ratchet got out a tool and after a minute there was a click and the door opened.
"Well." Ratchet said turning to the others. "Let's go in."
Calvin began to wake up. The last thing he remembered was observing one of the chemicals in the secret lab, then suddenly he felt prick in his neck and fell asleep.
He looked around, he was inside a bathroom with no windows and one door. To his relief the others were with him and were also waking up.
"What happened?" Jak asked confused as he looked around.
"Isn't it obvious?" Sherman said. "We got put to sleep by someone or something and put in this bathroom."
Tails went to the door and tried to open it.
"It's locked." he said
"Already i'm having flashbacks to when the time Socrates mansion was haunted." Hobbes said.
"Relax people." Calvin said. "We have the MTM, I can just zap the door and it's unlocked."
Calvin reached into his pocket and to his surprise, The MTM wasn't there.
"They took my MTM?!" Calvin said in shock. "How could they do this?"
"Hey they took away my weapons as well." Jak said. "Probably so they can't make escaping this room easy."
Sherman suddenly interjected "I have a solution for the door problem, just get me to crawl under the gap in the door and I can unlock it."
After a moment of thought Calvin answered.
"Okay." Calvin said. "But be careful. Whoever put us in here might be outside."
Sherman nodded and squeezed through the door.
"Sorry for asking the obvious question but how do you expect him to get up to the lock?" Daxter asked.
"Well he managed to get me and some our friends out a locked bedroom when we had to deal with a haunted mansion." Hobbes said. "We should have no problem here."
After about a few minutes they heard a click and the door opened. Sherman was hanging on to the doorknob.
Don't ask me how he had the strength to do that.
Everyone got out, with Tails grabbing Sherman.
"Okay." Calvin whispered. "We need to get the MTM back. Remember someone is most likely home so be quiet."
Everyone nodded and began to walk slowly.
As they descended down the stairs, careful not to make a creaking sound, they began to hear a voice.
"So you want me to help locate your friend who is somewhere in time?"
"That's the MTM's voice." Hobbes whispered.
"Yeah, but who is it speaking to?" Sherman said.
"Let's just be quiet and listen." Jak said.
"That's correct." another voice said, this one they didn't recognize.
"Sorry mate, but I have a few conditions if i'm going to do that."
"Such as?"
As the MTM began to explain its conditions to whoever it was speaking to. Calvin and the others slowly approached the door. Jak grabbed a coat hanger and Calvin pulled the transmogrifier gun from his hair.
Hobbes stared at it. "You mean you had that thing all along? Why didn't you you use it when we had to escape the bathroom?"
"And not give Sherman a thing to do?" Calvin whispered, raising an eyebrow.
"Thanks for thinking of me." Sherman said
They approached the door, with Calvin putting his hand on the doorknob.
He turned to the others and held up his three fingers and counted them down. As he did the MTM continued speaking.
"For more details on any of these you need to ask Calvin."
"ATTACK!" he yelled as he opened the door.
Everyone ran into the room, and promptly stopped.
Inside they found a turtle wearing a safari hat, glasses and was in a wheelchair. They also found a tall, muscular pink hippo, wearing a light blue shirt, red cap and gloves, and goggles.
They both turned and saw the group. Calvin aimed his transmogrifier gun at them, and Jak gripped the coat hanger like a baseball bat.
"Oh there he is." The MTM said. "I'll leave the talking to you."
Calvin turned the transmogrifier gun at the turtle. "Give us the CD player."
"Wait." the hippo said putting his hands up. "We can explain."
"Explain?" Daxter said angrily. "You put us to sleep, took away our stuff and locked us in a room. And you expect us to listen to what you have to say?"
"Look, I didn't know you weren't intruders." the turtle said. "If we did, we would have thrown you out of the house."
Just then Tails and Sherman hit a realization.
"You're the owners of this house. Aren't you." Tails said quietly.
There was a brief pause as the two groups stared at each other.
"Yes that is correct." the turtle said.
"That doesn't explain why you took the MTM." Calvin said still aiming the transmogrifier gun at the two. "To you it looked like a CD player. Why would you take it in the first place?"
"When we were putting you in the bathroom, I heard static coming from the CD player, we thought it was still playing music. But when I opened it, I found that there was stuff that seemed way too advanced to be in a CD player. So I repaired it and found that not only it could talk, but do things such as time travel and store an infinite amount of objects."
"Yep that's the MTM for you." Hobbes said. "A mechanical swiss army knife."
Calvin was now a bit confused. "So you repaired the MTM for me?"
"Yep." the turtle said. "Wasn't easy, but I managed."
"Just lower your weapons and we can explain our situation." the hippo said.
Reluctantly Calvin put the transmogrifier gun away. Jak dropped the coat hanger on the floor.
"We didn't really introduce ourselves." The turtle said. "I'm Bentley, and this is Murray."
Bentley pointed to the pink hippo who waved to them.
"My names Calvin." Calvin said and he motioned to the others. "And this is my tiger Hobbes and my friends Jak, Daxter, Tails and Sherman."
"Nice to meet you." Bentley said. "Now allow us to explain our situation. It started a few months ago..."
Meanwhile in Ratchets universe. The group had entered the building and were now looking around.
It wasn't as damaged as they expected. But it wasn't clean either as broken glass and paper were scattered on the floor.
Andy picked up some of the papers and went through them. On the notes was the information of several artifacts, the most recent one seemed to be on the star shaped object.
"Guys look at this." Andy said.
"What is it?" Sonic asked.
"I've been reading these notes, and judging by the most recent one, the people here might have found a precursor star."
"Might?" Clank said.
"Well it has a pretty good description of one." Andy explained checking the notes. "A six point star shape, reddish brown color and symbols that judging from the drawings is probably the symbols from Jak's universe."
"But did they find it?" Ratchet asked. "If they found it why didn't they bring it here."
"Well they couldn't exactly remove it from the rock it was apparently in. As for where it is, its about 100 miles east from here."
"We can't walk 100 miles obviously." Socrates said.
"I might be able to get there quickly considering my speed." Sonic said. "But that would probably be an unfair advantage."
"Well you could try picking one of us up, run to where they found the star, running back here and grabbing another." Ratchet suggested.
Before Sonic could speak they heard something
THUMP THUMP THUMP.
"What was that?" Amy asked.
"I don't know." Andy said. "Maybe it's a umbra."
They heard the noise again.
THUMP THUMP THUMP.
"Should we go check?" Sonic asked.
"Wait." Socrates said. "Don't you know if there is a noise and you don't know what's causing it, it could be someone trying to kill you?"
Everyone stared at Socrates for a long moment.
"You do realize we have ways of defending ourselves." Ratchet said showing his wrench.
"Oh." Socrates said. "Well then we might as well investigate."
THUMP THUMP THUMP.
Everyone stared at a locker. Which they presumed was making the noise.
Slowly they approached it and when they were close enough, Sonic reached for the handle that would open the locker.
Before opening it though he looked at the others.
Ratchet had his wrench out, Amy had her Hammer, Andy got a piece of wood that had once belonged to a chair and Socrates had a rubber chicken.
Don't ask about the last one.
Reassured that everyone was prepared Sonic opened the locker.
It happened almost immediately
"DON'T TOUCH ME!"
A figure came out, swinging a pole wildly at the group.
Now a moment to describe the figure. He was a rather short fellow who was wearing a lab coat, had blueish skin as if he held his breath for too long, his head was round in shape however he had grey metal and a green cybernetic eye on the right side of his face. He also had an arm that was also robotic.
"Woah, calm down." Ratchet said putting his hands up.
Almost immediately the figure stopped swinging when he saw what was in front of him.
There was a long pause as he processed the people in front of him.
Finally he spoke. "You're not one of them are you?"
"Obviously. Do we look like evil dark creatures that are out to attack you?" Andy said.
The man flinched when Andy indirectly mentioned the umbra.
"Sorry." Andy said almost immediately. "Didn't mean to alarm you."
"You've seen them too?" the figure said.
Everyone nodded.
"Okay, enough with the cryptic talking." Sonic said. "We have a few questions for you. First off, Who are you?"
"My name is Garrick." the figure said. "I'm one of the people sent here to search for artifacts on this rock."
"Okay Garrick." Ratchet said. "Tell us what happened here."
"Well I don't know." Garrick said nervously. "A couple of days ago we uncovered an artifact, however we couldn't remove it, so we called in some tools to remove it. The next day the skies turned black. We at first thought it was the weather, when suddenly these black creatures came and started attacking us. I managed to escape and lock myself in here."
Garrick shuddered. "I can still hear the screams of my companions."
"Was the artifact in the shape of a star?" Amy asked.
Garrick looked up. "How do you know that? You're not a rival corporation sent to wipe out survivors are you?"
"No we aren't." Sonic said, slightly annoyed. "In fact we just arrived here."
"To answer your other question, we found out about that with these notes." Andy said showing him the notes.
Garrick stared at him for a moment before responding. "Yes, it was something like that."
"We need to get there." Clank explained. "Do you have any mode of transportation?"
Garrick nodded. "There's a hovercraft outside, but you need a key to activate it."
"Do you have one?" Sonic asked.
"Yes." Garrick said as he dug through his pockets before finally getting a blue keycard.
"Wow cards as keys." Socrates said grabbing the keycard. "Wonder what they'll think of next? Fingerprint scanning."
"Use this card to activate the vehicle." Garrick explained. "It should be next to the last tent on the right."
"Thanks." Ratchet said. "What about you?"
"I'm gonna stay here." Garrick said looking out a window. "I managed to survive this long here. I can survive a few more days."
However as Garrick was talking, Socrates noticed something outside.
White eye's were peering at them.
"Um guys." Socrates said pointing to the window. "I think the umbra found us."
Everyone looked and their eyes widened. There wasn't just one pair of pure white eyes, there were many.
And they saw hands reaching for Garrick.
"Why is everyone staring at me?" Garrick said nervously.
"GARRICK, LOOK OUT!" Ratchet yelled.
The glass broke and the hands grabbed Garrick, who promptly screamed as he was pulled outside.
The screaming kept going as the umbra began crawling through.
"Guys." Andy said terrified. "What do we do?"
Back to Calvin's group. Bentley had finished telling his story.
"Okay to sum it up. Your friend and teammate known as Sly Cooper, got trapped on a time traveling blimp that crashed." Jak said processing the story.
"Correct."
"You didn't find a body so you presumed he traveled to the past."
"Yes."
"And you've been spending the last three months looking for clues to what time period he might be in."
"That's right."
"So that's why you need the MTM." Hobbes said. "Because of it's ability to locate any person no matter the time period you can find your friend and bring him back home."
"That's right." Murray said.
"Alright." Calvin said stepping forward. "We'll find your friend, just give me the MTM and I can locate your friend in about a minute."
"Before you do, I want to know something." Bentley said. "You're obviously not from around here."
Calvin looked at the others. "Yes, you guessed correctly."
"Where are you from?"
Calvin shifted nervously. "You're probably not going to believe us but…"
Calvin took a quick look at Hobbes before finishing his sentence.
"Me and my friends are from different universes."
There was a long pause between the two as they thought of what was spoken.
Finally Murray spoke. "I guess that explains it."
"Wait." Tails said. "So you believe that?"
"Well I had my suspicions." Bentley said. "First off, I detected a sudden spike of electricity about a few hours ago, so Murray and I investigated hoping Sly had managed to come back."
"That was probably my teleporter." MTM said.
"The second was when we got a good look at you. It was obvious you weren't from around here because in our lives we've never seen anyone like you."
"Hey." Calvin interjected. "I'm proud of my appearance."
"Finally, if time travel was possible here, I guess universe travel is possible." Bentley concluded.
"Now that we have that out of the way." Calvin said walking to the desk. "On to the thing I was gonna do. MTM."
"Yo."
"Locate this Sly Cooper person please."
"Where he is in the world or What time period he's in?"
"Time Period." Bentley said.
"Very well, Processing."
After about a minute the MTM beeped.
"You found him?" Jak asked.
"Yes." The MTM said. "He's right here in the present."
"What." Murray asked. "Then why haven't we seen him?"
"Kidding, he's actually in Ancient Egypt."
"Oh."
"And I didn't tell you this but because Calvin hasn't updated my time traveling software in a while, I'm unable to use the time travel feature."
Bentley thought for a moment. "Well we could use my time machine." he said. "But that requires a item from the time period you want to travel too. If Sly was here he could grab a artifact, but he's not here. I might contact her, might give her the good news…"
"Sorry to interrupt." Calvin said raising his hand. "But I do have a time machine."
"I thought the MTM was your time machine." Murray said.
"Yes, but I use this one a bit more often."
Calvin got out his hypercube and pulled out the cardboard box.
Bentley and Murray stared at it for a while.
"Okay, I can buy the fact that you're from different universes." Bentley said staring at the cardboard box. "But this is a bit of a stretch."
"Very well." Calvin said pulling out some goggles. "Allow me to demonstrate that I am not crazy."
Calvin put the goggles on, got in the cardboard box, pressed a few buttons and the cardboard box lifted off.
Bentley and Murray watched in amazement, but Calvin wasn't done yet.
A vortex opened and Calvin in the box flew in it.
Not long after Calvin came walking to the door.
Naturally, Bentley and Murray were a bit confused as Calvin had gone through the vortex a second ago.
"In case you're wondering, yes, you did see that." Calvin said calmly as if he'd done it before. "I simply traveled a minute into the past and waited until my future self took off in the vortex."
Finally Murray spoke. "It's amazing what you can do with cardboard these days."
Calvin began to dig through his hypercube again. "Also, I think I have a Egyptian artifact in here somewhere. Ah here it is."
He pulled out a chunk of stone with hieroglyphs written on it.
"Hopefully that's enough."
Bentley approached Calvin. To Calvin's surprise, a pair a mechanical arms sprouted from Bentley's wheelchair and grabbed the stone.
Bentley examined it and after about a minute nodded in approval.
"That should do." He said. "Oh, and Jak."
"Yes." Jak said.
"I believe this belongs to you."
One of Bentley's mechanical arms got Jak's morph gun out and threw it at him, with Jak catching it perfectly in his hand.
"Thanks for giving it back."
"Your welcome."
He then turned to the group. "I'll be getting our time machine ready, so come with me."
With that everyone left the room.
Back with the other group, things could have been going better for them.
Ratchet was doing his best holding off the umbra with a flamethrower. It was pretty effective as the umbra burned away quickly. But he was running out of ammo and there were more umbra coming in.
Amy and Andy did their best to hold them off but it was a losing battle as some managed to get through.
In both instances, whenever one of the umbra died the other would absorb its remains and get stranger and bigger.
"We need to get out of here." Sonic said as he punched and kicked an umbra.
"How?" Ratchet asked. "They've probably crowded around the door."
"There's always another way out. We just haven't looked hard enough"
Andy looked around, looking for something like a emergency exit. He then spotted a hatch with words on it.
EMERGENCY EXIT.
PULL HANDLE FOR LADDER.
Andy knew he couldn't reach the hatch on his own, so he called on someone he least expected.
"Socrates." he called.
"Yes." Socrates said turning to him as he wrestled a umbra away.
"I need your help."
"Just a moment please."
He then got a bouquet of flowers out and squeezed the bottom. Causing water to spew from the flowers.
This blinded the umbra giving Socrates a chance to escape.
"What do you need me for Andy?"
"Well I need you to give me a boost to open that hatch." Andy explained pointing to the emergency exit.
"Very well, get on my shoulders."
Andy did so and Socrates lifted him up slowly.
"Oomph." Socrates grunted. "I think I popped something in my back."
Andy reached for the hatch, which wasn't easy as Socrates was swaying.
"Andy, hurry up and open the hatch." Socrates said.
"I'm trying."
He could just feel his fingertips on the handle.
By then Ratchet had run out of ammo for his flamethrower and was now blasting away with his Combuster.
Finally, Andy grabbed the handle and pulled on it. By then Socrates could take much more and left him hanging.
A ladder then came down to the floor. Andy put his feet on one of the rungs and pushed on the hatch, which opened.
"Guy's up here." Andy said.
Everyone looked at where Andy was. Quickly figuring out what it was, the heroes made a mad scramble for the ladder.
Because no one was now holding off the umbra, they were now flooding into the room.
When Amy was on the ladder, a umbra grabbed her by the foot and began pulling.
"Get off me." she cried as she stamped her foot on the umbra.
Socrates got a water balloon out and tossed it at the umbra.
It landed squarely in it's face, covering it with glue. Causing the creature to screech loudly and let go of Amy.
Once she went through the hatch, Sonic kicked the door shut.
"How many close calls have we had so far?" Ratchet asked as he caught his breath.
"I don't know." Sonic said. "Maybe four or five."
"It doesn't matter now." Clank said. "We just need to find the vehicle that could get us to where the precursor star is."
Socrates looked around and saw the vehicle exactly where Garrick said it would be.
"Found it." Socrates said pointing in that direction.
"Where?" Andy said.
"It's exactly where that fellow Garrick said it would be." Socrates said grinning. "In front of all those umbra."
Socrates grin dropped.
He was right, there was hundreds umbra surrounding the building and they were quickly surrounding the building.
"We just can't catch a break." Ratchet said.
Back with Calvin's group. They had just finished preparations to travel back in time and were now in the garage.
Bentley's time machine was a van that was blue, had a racoon logo, and had some painted on flames. On top of it was a giant yellow clock.
Inside, Bentley had put the stone Calvin gave him in a glass dome. The machine recognized the stone as from ancient egypt, and was ready to go to that time period.
Calvin had set the time period to egypt and had expanded the cardboard box to fit Hobbes, Jak, Tails, Sherman and Daxter. Right now he was waiting for the ok to lift off.
Murray, who was in the driver's seat of the van, gave the thumbs up.
Calvin nodded and pressed a few buttons.
The box lifted off and flew through the open door. While the van drove to the street.
"Do we have enough road Murray?" Bentley asked.
"Looks like it." Murray said.
Bentley nodded. "Do it."
Murray hit the accelerator and the car began to gain speed. Suddenly the back of the van lifted revealing a rocket booster, the wheels of the van lifted causing it to hover, finally it vanished in a flash.
"Great Scott." Sherman said in awe as he watched what happened.
"Figured you were going to make that reference." Calvin said. "Vortex goggles on everyone."
Everyone did so and Calvin pressed more buttons. A blue vortex appeared.
"Hang on boy's."
With that the cardboard box entered the vortex.
However no one noticed the black clouds approaching over Paris.
Author's Note: To answer one reviews question. Playstation move heroes is non canon here. So no Jak and Daxter would not recognize Bentley.