This chapter explains a lot of stuff, so I'm sorry if things get confusing or nonsensical. Just ask if something concerns you ^^ Enjoy this seriously long chapter :)

Also, thank you to Jadzia Dax (guest) for suggesting some cool names! :) I'll be sure to use them. Since I already wrote this chapter when I posted the last one, the names will not appear in this chapter. However, someone named Percival is going to show up... *gasp*spoiler...

Chapter 11: The Meeting


"Couldn't I have slept in Just a little longer?" Ratchet complained as his grey friend led him down the sidewalk. Clank had woken up early and decided to wake up Ratchet as well, much to the other's displeasure. He just didn't feel safe exploring the city on his own, as he was still fearful of the other lombaxes.

"No, Ratchet. You sleep in every day and you really need to get out of that habit," he replied in a scolding tone.

"Give me a break… I save galaxies…" Ratchet mumbled under his breath. Sure, it's been a month since their last advkenture, but he still believed he deserved to do whatever he wanted.

"That's no excuse," the grey lombax said simply. Ratchet sighed and remained quiet. Even though he was excited about seeing more of the city, he still wished he could have that extra hour to stay in bed.

It wasn't long before they ran into Kaden who looked relieved when he saw them. The older lombax waved and greeted them both with a handshake.

"Good morning Ratchet and Clank, I see you are doing a little site seeing," he smiled.

"Yeah, we just started actually. This place is amazing…"

"And you were complaining I woke you up too early," Clank rolled his eyes in slight annoyance. The gold lombax shoved him and laughed sheepishly.

"Hang on, aren't you supposed to be at that meeting?"

"Yes. I am here because you two have been requested to attend the meeting," he said formally, "the others wish to talk to you about your encounter with the enemy. They believe they could learn something from you."

"That makes sense… but why would they trust us?" Ratchet asked uncertainly.

"We are definitely not on this planets data base, so wouldn't that make us suspicious?"

Kaden nodded, "you are correct in assuming they are weary of you, but I have told them otherwise."

Ratchet and Clank shared a glance before agreeing to join the meeting. Who knows… maybe they will find out more about this reality.

Kaden lead the duo through the city to a huge building. It was a skyscraper about 120 floors high and looked as if it had reinforced windows. It wasn't the tallest building, but still tall enough to make Ratchet and Clank gawk in amazement.

When they walked inside, Kaden was greeted by, what Ratchet assumed, was another member of the C.A.L.R. He was a pale yellow, almost cream, in colour with darker stripes on his ears and forehead. His eyes were a light blue and he wore a similar uniform to Kaden. They both spoke in native lombaxian, most likely about the meeting they were probably late for, before the newcomer noticed the duo and looked at them with a raised eyebrow.

"You said the stowaways were adults. They're just kids!" he said incredulously, gesturing to a growling Ratchet. The gold lombax was really tempted to throw his wrench…

"Dante, calm your fur. These two will explain themselves soon. Now, meet Ratchet and Clank. You two, this is Dante, my co-worker," Kaden clarified quickly. Before they could respond, the cream lombax interrupted them.

"Nice to meet you. Now hurry up! Percival's getting impatient again…" Dante said as he hurriedly walked to the closest elevator. The others followed, also eager to get started. However, something bothered Ratchet when Dante mentioned 'Percival'.

It couldn't be Tachyon… could it? The thought caused the lombax to cringe, he was hoping to never see that traitor again.

When the elevator reached level 82, the four exited the lift and found themselves in a meeting room with a group of lombaxes and… the cragmite that Ratchet had just been dreading to see.

"So, you finally found… What!" Tachyon screeched in surprise and anger. Immediately Ratchet took a battle stance and materialised his wrench, which probably wasn't a good idea. The whole room stood and pointed their guns towards him, obviously threatened by Ratchet's hostile actions.

Kaden sighed and easily took the wrench from Ratchet, sending him a glare. Said lombax crossed his arms in irritation. So what if Kaden was his father, no one takes his wrench and gets away with it. Although, he wasn't in any position to do anything about it.

"This was certainly unexpected…" Clank said, nervously fiddling with his tail.

"What is the meaning of this?! There are strict rules and regulations stating that-"

"Percival, what have we talked about?" Kaden cut the cragmite off. Ratchet could tell this sort of thing happened a lot, due to the look he was giving Tachyon. Perhaps this reality's Kaden didn't trust him as well.

Tachyon mumbled something incoherent that sounded lombaxian. By now, the rest of the room had holstered their weapons and took their seats again, much to Clank's relief.

"Good, let's begin with what we already know," Kaden commenced the meeting. He stood in front of a holo-screen with a presentation clicker in his hand. He waited for Ratchet, Clank and Dante to take their seats before continuing.

"It has been approximately seven years since the first attack and we still have no idea on who or what is behind this declaration of war. Fighting the enemy head on could only give us so much information, but even then we only found very little."

Ratchet gave his full attention to his father, not wanting to miss a single piece of information. It also helped that Clank was writing important stuff down.

"We know that the enemy has a leader, presumably male, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. This leader has been using our own forces against us by using some type of 'mind control' to build an army. We know this because lombaxes who are labelled as deceased in the system were 're-killed' on the battle field."

Clank couldn't tell what Ratchet was thinking, but the grey lombax had some sort of idea of what they were talking about. His mind travelled back to when Kumara, the niffrin, told them about the 'curse'. The enemy must somehow transmit energy signals that imitate brain waves, causing immense confusion and possible mind control…

"We still don't know how this phenomenon works, as all scientists of the C.A.L.R. who specialise in biological investigations cannot find anything in the minds of those 'revived' lombaxes. But we do know that whatever it is that does this, changes the way organics think and process information. But even so, that is just a reasonable hypothesis."

Clank smiled, at least someone was smart enough to figure something out. Being stuck with Ratchet seemed to make him forget there are others with more intellect.

"We have also found that the enemy is attacking other planets, more specifically, Niffiria and Cobalia. Why they attack undeveloped planets is still unknown."

Ratchet began thinking of reasons that could explain this choice in planets. He was leaning more to the fact that they could have valuable resources that are exclusive to those planets. Maybe the enemy needed those resources.

"Recently, we have been sending lombaxes from the Praetorian Guard to seize ships that could hold dire information. This has proved to be an effective way to collect their plans and transmissions. So far I have been unable to decrypt them. They're using a highly sophisticated system that I have never seen before…"

Kaden then gestured to the two guests, "These lombaxes were the ones who were found in the ship we retrieved yesterday. We have reason to believe they were on Niffiria before we arrived on the ship. They're going to tell us what happened in case they found something new."

The duo hesitantly made their way to the front of the room. They weren't sure on what they should talk about, so Ratchet decided he would just tell them what he thought was important.

"Introduce yourselves first. They're still a little bit… uncertain of you," he whispered as they passed each other. Ratchet nodded in understanding and faced the crowd confidently, trying to hide his sudden fear. He'd done speeches before, but he didn't think standing in front of his own kind would be this scary. He dismissed the feeling, it was probably because no one knew him as a hero here.

"Alright! My name is Ratchet and this here is my best friend Clank. We come from the Solana Galaxy and we're both 23."

"You're from Solana? Would that have anything to do with how short you are?" Tachyon sneered cruelly.

"I would like to start by talking about how we got there," the gold lombax continued with a slight edge to his voice, "I was flying my ship, Aphelion, on my way to Axiom City to pick up a new upgrade for her, when suddenly a wormhole of some sort opened up right in front of us!"

He left out the fact that it was actually a dimensional breach that transported them to another reality. He didn't want them to know just yet. On the other hand, his nerves were gone and replaced with exaggerated boasting.

"It was too late to do anything so we ended up being sucked in and spat out on the other side of the galaxy, just above the atmosphere of Niffiria. The wormhole had drained Aphelion of all her power, so we had no way of escaping what was surely going to be our end…"

Clank sighed and looked at the other lombaxes in the room. To his surprise, most of them were enjoying his overly exaggerated story, while a few were just staring at him oddly, namely Tachyon.

"With my quick thinking, I jettisoned the excess cargo to decrease our weight and just managed to angle the ship into a more endurable position, before BANG! We made contact with the ground and slid a fare distance before ultimately stopping in a forest. Luckily, we weren't seriously hurt, but Aphelion was in shambles."

"Not wasting anytime, I activated a tracker in my ship before we both travelled in a random direction hoping for the best. After a day had passed, we found ourselves in an old bunker that the niffrins were using. We had eventually befriended them and they told us about random attacks against them."

Now the crowd was serious, paying attention to everything Ratchet said as if it was vital.

"I have reason to believe that the enemy leader is, in fact, a lombax. I got this impression when Kumara, a niffrin, told us her father spoke to the leader. I'm guessing that he was a lombax because she made no hints that another creature was behind the army. I'm pretty sure she would have said that it was strange that a race was being led by another creature. I'm not positive, but that's the impression I'm getting."

Dante rose his hand to his chin, "it makes sense in a way. But why would a lombax attack us for no reason?" Murmurs of agreement could be heard from the crowd.

"What if there is a reason? What if the leader has a grudge against us because of something that happened in the past?" Kaden added. They had never thought about it like that before. They always had thought a psycho was just doing this for fun.

"Ahem… I would like to speak now," Clank said nervously, "While we were talking to Miss Kumara, she mentioned a 'curse' that messes with one's brain. I assume this 'curse' is what forces lombaxes to attack you. But that you already know."

He turned to Ratchet and asked for the Medallion he was holding on to. The gold lombax nodded and took off the Medallion that was around his neck, but hidden under his shirt, and gave it to his friend. He had actually forgot he was wearing it until Clank brought it up.

"We were told that the gem situated in the centre of this Medallion protects the wearer from the 'curse' and neutralises it. I haven't been able to experiment with it yet but I'm assuming it works since the niffrins use it."

Ratchet felt his head begin to throb with pain from an incoming headache. It wasn't severe, but it was uncomfortable and caused him to have a hard time concentrating. Clank had noticed this when the gold lombax lifted his hand to his temple.

"Um, Ratchet? I think you should take this back now…" he said with worry and slight fear. Catching on to the tone in his voice, Ratchet began to piece together what was wrong.

"Th-thanks. Tell them the rest of what happened, I have to go to the bathroom…" he said albeit forcibly. Clank knew his friend had just figured it out, but he continued with the meeting, being sure no one thought of them as suspicious.

The crowd was confused of the sudden change in Ratchet's behaviour, but thought nothing of it as Clank continued.

"We were then notified that our ship was being stolen, so we quickly left to confront them. When we saw the number of lombaxes on board we waited for an opportunity to sneak inside. We had no other choice, since Aphelion was our only way off the planet, and it was actually quite easy to infiltrate."

"Once aboard, we heard some of the lombaxes talking to their leader about Aphelion. Now that I think about it…" his eyes widened, "I think I know where their leader is!"

Kaden stood up and ran to Clank in absolute shock, "Where! How do you know?!" he demanded.

"Th-the Breegus S-system…" he stuttered in slight fear, "they said they w-were returning there."

He heard the lombaxes around him talk amongst themselves at the new information. Clank didn't tell them exactly where he thought they were, since he didn't want to put this reality at risk. He wasn't sure, but he had a feeling he was right. He hadn't noticed before, but when he and Ratchet listened to the transmission on the enemy ship, the background looked a lot like the Clock. He would talk to ratchet later about the matter.

"This meeting is dismissed," Kaden said before leaving hurriedly. With all the new information, he had a lot of investigating and researching to do, especially on the Breegus System.

Clank watched the others leave the room as well, all except Tachyon, who looked back and glared at the silver lombax with utter distaste.

"I've got my eye on you and your stupid friend," he snarled threateningly before leaving along with the others.