Part three. Another shortie.
Angela landed her ship softly as close to Ratchet's garage as she dared. Not on the pad where his own ship rested, or where the noise of her engines, designed for stealth as they were, would alert anyone present to her, but nearby, hidden behind a few rocks. She stood for a moment, stretching her cramped muscles. "I've got to get a bigger ship." The Protopet churred softly and cooed at her, but she shushed it and told it to stay put; it did. She was glad she had given it enough intellegence to understand commands and enough desire to please to obey. Picking her way across the plateau, she found herself looking at the door to his underground home. She wasn't sure of the time, but it must've been late. The Kyzil Plateau was located in the northern-most latitudes, the only part of Veldin cool enough to support a comfortable life besides the shores of its oceans, and therefore summer evenings lasted until eleven or twelve at night, and morning began not four or perhaps five hours later. The starry sky, however, showed no signs of either dawn or dusk.
'I could just lay down on the couch in his garage,' she thought to herself. Ratchet had once said that she was free to stay any time Greblin got too cold for her. 'But that's not what I came here for. I came here to...to... ' Her thoughts would not complete themselves. The truth was that she had merely wished to see Ratchet, but that seemed so silly and sentimental, as if she were infatuated with him. Well, what if she was? Why did that matter? Who cared that she was a good ten years his senior, perhaps even more? They hadn't exactly sat down and compared ages - in fact, their dialogue was severely restricted - but she guessed him to be around seventeen or eighteen. That was just her guess, though; he could have been any age and simply looked young, and therefore acted as others expected him to based on appearances.
Lifting the door to his house gently, so as not to allow it to creak, she let herself in. It surprised her that he didn't lock his door, but then, when you slept with a wrench in arm's grasp at all times, you didn't exactly fear intruders. She watched her step and made sure not to fall or make a sound. 'Now, which way...?' She stepped gingerly on the metal floor, wondering why she wore boots with steel toes and heels. Clink, clink, clink, clink. One foot in front of the other; no tripping, no loosing her balance. The air was thick and uncirculated, and Ratchet's scent hung heavily mixed with oil. Ratchet himself did not smell so bad, but the suffocating smell of engine grime nearly choked her. Luckily, his house was as small as hers, smaller, even, and she knew her way around from the single time she'd come inside before. A simple living room, kitchen, laundry room, and bedroom were all she could find in the dark. On the other side of the bedroom, she reasoned, must have been a bathroom, but she didn't need a toilet. No, it was the figure in the bed, slowly breathing, that held her attention.
Ratchet did not stir when she knelt by the bed, watching his unchanging face. He did not roll or respond at all when she placed her hand on his cheek and stroked the fur with her glove. In fact, were it not for the rhythmic up-and-down movement of his chest under the thin sheet and the soft sigh of air through his mouth, he would have seemed dead. She noticed the photo beside his bed; it was the same one she kept on her nightstand. She smiled behind her mask, the blue glow of her eyes squinting slightly in pleasure. They had something in common, it seemed, beyond having worked for Megacorp at least once and being lombaxes. It was a small, silly thing, but somehow it made her happy. That was all she needed. She left his bedside as quietly as she'd come; she'd greet him properly in the morning, as if she'd just arrived.
However, she was also slightly thirsty. Ratchet wouldn't mind if she got a glass of water, she reasoned. No harm in it. She could take a glass from his kitchen cabinets and place it among the other dirty dishes that were piled in his sink, and no one would be the wiser. But, as she reached to take a glass, it knocked against another, and this second glass went crashing to the floor where it shattered into a million tinkling bits with quite a lot of noise. Her gentle touch, it seemed, had indeed roused Ratchet from his normally deep sleep, as the sound was enough to wake him fully. "Clank doesn't usually get up at night," he mumbled, taking his Omniwrench from under his pillow and going to investigate.
In the dim inside light provided only by the glow of a computer from the next room, Ratchet made out the shadow of a tall figure in his kitchen. He tightened his grip on his wrench and leaped at the burglar, deathly silent in his attack. The intruder seemed to sense him anyway, though, and turned in time to have the small male lombax land upon its gut, the force knocking it down.