How it starts...

The heat of battle was truly intense. Adrenaline, excitement, sweat, the sound of wooden targets crunching under the swing of an oversized wrench. Okay, so it may not have been as intense as it felt but Ratchet was making a show of it.

The splintered wood remains of an army of training dummies lay scattered across the arena. When no more dared to enter his sight Ratchet finally relaxed. With a flourishing spin, his wrench was strapped back on its magnetic perch between his shoulder blades.

After the victory he just had he was a shoo-in for the Galactic Rangers, he had to be. He had conquered the entire recruit course and blew every other qualifier out of the water. Heck he must've looked like an orange furry blur with how fast he was moving.

Sure he was a little beat up, actually scratch that, his whole body felt like it was on fire, but he made it. He wouldn't show weakness to the rangers now. 'I'd like to see anyone else top that.' He mentally boasted, grinning ear to long fluffy ear.

Just as his heart rate returned to a steady beat, a booming voice recording sounded over the arena loudspeaker. "Recruit #2397, course complete."

Huh, lot less fanfare than Ratchet had expected. They must be too awestruck to give him a proper score yet.

"Qualifications not met. Recruitment program terminated."

"What?" He gasped to the empty arena. "I'm more than qualified! I aced that course!"

No reply came.

This had to be some stupid joke, right? No way he went through all that for nothing. "Hello? Can I talk to someone? Anyone?"

Finally, "Yeah what do ya want?"

The voice, a real voice instead of a robotic recording, sounded more annoyed than he did.

"I passed your course," Ratchet tensed his fist and jabbed a finger at the only visible camera droid.

"Uhm, not according to our data."

"Well you're data is wrong. I beat that whole thing under the time limit, by a longshot!"

As if responding to him, the droid twitched. A heavy, beleaguered sigh echoed over the P.A.

"Give me a minute," The announcer grumbled before returning with, "Here's what I got from your—eh, performance."

"Reckless behavior, little to no regard for innocent bystanders, unauthorized weaponized use of an omniwrench 2000-"

"I prefer to think of that as improvising the tools at hand." Ratchet cut in, not bothering to argue the other two points.

"Whatever kid. Point is you're too dangerous. Now get out."

He snapped, "I am not dangerous! I put in just as much effort as anyone else!"

There was silence. Then a buzz.

Two hefty security bots stormed in, each grabbing one of his arms and carrying him out as he struggled against them. He threw every obscenity he could think of at them but it only earned him a swift, hard landing on the dusty ground outside.

The door slammed shut behind him.

That was over a year ago now and the memory still stung to dwell on, but it was Ratchet's greatest motivator for finishing his latest project. Now, the skinny lombax's only concern was getting off this backwater planet as soon as possible.

He had poured months and months of work into his "new" ship, gathering scrap, bargain electronics, and busted parts from the junkyard that he had breathed new life into.

He feverishly looked over the final components of the ship's thrusters while monitoring progress via his decrepit gadgetron help-desk scanner. With everything looking up to snuff and the clear Veldin night skies above, Ratchet swiftly hopped into the ship's cockpit for her maiden voyage.

'Install Robotic Ignition System' Blared the monotonous tone of the scanner. He shrunk.

Oh great. Where the heck was he supposed to find one of those? He'd be lucky if any of the residents of Veldin would trust him with their toasters nevermind a helper-bot.

Defeated, Ratchet slunk out of the ship with a groan. There has to be a workaround for that, it'd take a bit of tinkering… And… Even more months and months and months of his time…

All he wanted was to get out and see the universe, was that too much to ask?

INITIATING STARTUP SEQUENCE

…

STARTUP COMPLETE

DOWNLOADING COMBAT TECHNIQUES

DOWNLOADING WEAPONS DATA

DOWNLOADING MISSION INFORMATION

DOWNLOADING WARBOT PROTOC-zzzt

*CRASH*

…

ADMINISTRATOR DETECTED

NEW DATA RECIEVED

…

*CLANK*

The first sound B5429671 heard was his own metal body hitting the floor of the assembly line. Though the room he was in was small, to him it felt cavernous. Something was not quite right here.

A small whirring sound to his left caught his attention. The bright blue optics of a commercial grade infobot stared back at him intently, beckoning him over.

By now, his less than graceful entry into the world had garnered the attention of a few of his, much more imposing, robotic kin. They looked between each other and back to him as they began to realize something he had yet to grasp. When the infobot opened its screen for him to view he caught a split second image of what that was.

He was small, barely coming up to the "ankles" of the other warbots. His large green optics contrasted the red of his brethren. Where the other robots had plated armor around their limbs shaped to mimic organic muscles, his were more comparable to toothpicks.

'Defect' his CPU told him.

Though he had little time to dwell on that as the infobot played its contents on the screen, and he recoiled in horror.

This information had to be delivered to the proper authorities as soon as possible.

"Another defect?!"

The high-pitched, nasally voice that rang out over the intercom would have sent chills up the spine of an organic.

"Feed that hunk of SCRAP back to the machine!"

B5 could feel the other warbots' curious glances turn into sinister glares. He bolted.

Ducking and weaving and dodging laser blasts, B5 finally made it to what was probably his only way out, the ventilation shafts. He pulled the metal grate open and hopped inside.

Only to be yanked back out by his legs.

"Where d'ya think you're going, defect?" Despite the voice being synthetic, the last word had been spat out with enough venom to make B5 tremble. He was face to face with the biggest, meanest, and oldest of the warbots. Victor Von Ion chuckled, holding him up like a metal piñata over the other bots.

"Wish the old girl would stop churning out so many worthless toasters. But," Victor held B5's small head in his large hand and smirked, "at least this part never gets old."

B5 screwed his optics closed as the hand started crushing him.

The whirring of a rogue infobot approached. Something knocked him loose from Victor's grasp and he hit the ground again.

Above him, the infobot fluttered around Victor, flashing its screen in a desperate distraction attempt.

"Get it off! Get it off me!" Victor swatted at the nuisance but barely missed each time.

B5's jaw dropped at the chaotic scene until the infobot flashed toward him.

'Go'

That momentary pause was all Victor needed. In a split second the diminutive infobot was nothing more than crushed metal between the warbots fingers.

B5 wasted no more time and hopped back into the vent. Darkness enveloped him as he slid down, down, down into the unknown. Another grate crashed open and he tumbled out into the factory's ship hangar.

'How fortunate,' he thought.

Alarms began to blare around him. He pulled himself up and raced for the nearest ship as a few warbots marched into the hangar. The ship roared to life as he hopped in and he silently thanked his lucky stars that his creator at least installed a robotic ignition system in each bot that came out of this forsaken place.

"OUT OF MY WAY!" Victor bowled over the few warbots that made it close to B5's ship before the defect floored it out of the hangar.

Soaring upwards, B5 could see the pristine night sky, thousands of stars and some distant planets. But he could not allow himself to relax yet as the laser blasts coming from behind him told him he was still being pursued.

They followed him past the planet's atmosphere, creeping closer every second. A blast caught the left wing and sent the ship spiraling.

"WARNING: LEFT THRUSTER OFFLINE"

B5 pulled up the navigation and frantically searched for a planet under the protection of galactic authorities.

"Destination selected. Setting course for planet Ke-"

Another blast cut the computer short. All systems crackled out, sparks fizzled through the air and smoke obscured his view.

B5429671 never saw the surface of the planet he was rapidly hurtling towards.

Alright so this idea has been done a lot from what I can see but I wanted to toss my two cents out there anyway. It's pretty much me cherry picking the bits I liked best from the original 2002 game, the 2016 remaster/movie, and a few improvised bits. Then I fused them together to make a self-gratifying fic that's mostly just being written to kill time before Rift Apart releases and, fittingly, rips my heart to pieces.

This is also a test to see if I can write a fully fledged story that isn't just a oneshot. (SPOILERS: I can but no one gets to see that yet) I want to push myself a little. So reviews, comments, rants, follows and what have you are all appreciated. I'll take constructive criticism but I also reserve the right to ignore said criticism and do what I want because it makes me happy. That said, updates may be infrequent as I work two other jobs and I'm not really sure if this will even get any traction given how common this idea seems to be. But I look forward to uploading none-the-less.

Oh yeah and the chapter titles are songs I listened to while writing the chapter, This one is How it Starts by The Features.

Peace y'all.