Rivet froze in place.

Everyone did.

She didn't move even a single muscle or do so much as breathe, the tension in the room was so great.

She gaped at Alis- no… Kaden.

It was unmistakably Kaden.

He looked almost exactly like the photo she had seen on the ship. Sure he looked a bit worse for wear, the photo was decades old at this point, but behind his tired, green eyes and flecks of grey in his fur was Kaden's face. She stole a glance at Ratchet and saw him in a state similar to her and she didn't blame him.

Kaden staggered forward, like the step he took was the most difficult thing he had ever done. His helmet slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor, forgotten as he raised his shaking hands. His eyes looked tired, but also like they were reliving the greatest pain he had ever experienced a thousand times over.

Ratchet didn't seem to know what to do. He just stood there, frozen and waiting while Kaden slowly got closer. When they were finally face to face, Kaden's hands landed on his shoulders and then cupped his face, as though he was making sure he was real.

"You're here. You-you're really-" Tears cut his voice short as it hitched. They had been building on the corners of his eyes from the moment his helmet came off, but now they overflowed and stained the fur on his cheeks in waves. He suddenly pulled Ratchet into a hug that looked to Rivet like he was afraid the younger lombax would vanish if he let go. He clawed desperately at Ratchet's back, trying to pull him in somehow closer. In the dead silence of the cave she could clearly hear him muttering "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." through tears and gasps.

"Wha- I." Ratchet sputtered, his mind clearly struggling to find the right words while his arms stayed ramrod straight at his sides. "S-sorry for what?"

"I left you. I never should have, but I did." Kaden shook his head fiercely. Rivet thought that maybe this Kaden had left his Ratchet behind at some point during Tachyon's uprising and that led to his death. But then… "You must have grown up all alone on the other side."

"Wait…" Ratchet paused and made some distance between himself and the older lombax. He looked up at him, tears now building in his eyes as well. "You're... My dad? From my Dimension?"

They locked eyes and Kaden slowly nodded. "I'm so sorry I left you. But I didn't know what else to do. But you are…" He breathed deep, in disbelief that he was actually able to say these words after so long no doubt. "You are my son."

He paused again and pulled Ratchet in for another hug. "My son." He muttered again.

Ratchet's arms finally moved from his side, slowly wrapping around his father. "Hi dad." Was all he could say.

Minutes passed and the two remained locked in their embrace, Rivet not daring to interrupt them. Her limbs were screaming for her to move, the same way they always did when she stood still for too long, but this moment was far too precious to disturb. So precious in fact that she was tearing up herself. She had her fair share of questions for Kaden, but they could wait until he was ready.

Still, her leg was starting to fall asleep after several minutes of this. So maybe if she just shifted her weight- "WOAH" She shouted as she fell. Her foot had been right on top of some piece of scrap, so when she shifted it slipped out from underneath her. She landed on her back with her legs poking straight up and a loud crash from a collapsing pile of junk. Half buried, she heard the muffled sound of Ratchet calling her name before pulling some of the pile off her and helping her up. "Sorry." She apologized sheepishly to the other two. She saw them wipe tears from their eyes.

"Don't be." Kaden said from behind Ratchet. "As happy as I am to see my son again, I can't even begin to imagine the questions you two must have, and I think it time you actually got some answers. Wait here, I know I have chairs around here somewhere." He muttered to himself before disappearing deeper into the hideout to find something for them to sit on.

Ratchet gave her a once over after he left. "You alright?" He asked.

"Me? Ratchet, we just found your father who you thought was dead. I should be asking you that!"

He sighed. "Fair point."

"...Are you?"

He paused in thought and swallowed hard. "I… I don't know. It's still kind of sinking in, you know?" He glanced over to Kaden wandering between junk piles. "I never even dreamed that something like this was possible and now… Here we are. It's like, I know I should be focused on saving the universe, but I also feel like I'm suddenly a little kit, staring up at the sky and wanting to meet my family, and afraid of what that might mean all over again."

"Hey." She stepped over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder. "No matter what he says or how he feels about what you've done, you and I are in this together." However much that means to him right now.

While she couldn't be sure what was going through his mind in that instant, what she said took at least some of the sadness out of his eyes. His hand went up to land on top of her's. "Thanks. That means more than I think you know. Y'know, I don't think I've said this yet." Rivet's head cocked to the side. "I'm glad I got to meet you Rivet. No matter what happens or where this adventure might take us, I wouldn't trade it for anything."

"Not even Clank?"

"Depends, do you plan on telling him my answer?"

"Only if it's suuuuper flattering." They both laughed at the joke shared between them right as Kaden returned with a large, old ottoman in tow.

"Sorry, but I don't get visitors often. Or, well, ever actually. All I've got is this ottoman. You two don't mind sharing, do you?" Both shook their heads and followed him to what seemed like the center of the room. He pulled a more proper chair over from one of the workbenches and sat across from them, separated by just a meter. Rivet was going to jokingly complain that he had kept the actual chair for himself, but then she saw the myriad different stains from oil, grease, soot and who knows what else and decided she'd just let him keep that one.

Once both parties were settled, an awkward silence settled bone deep on everyone. It seemed like no one knew where to even start. Thankfully, Kaden eventually took the lead.

"Both of you must have so many questions. But if you'll indulge me, I'd like to tell the story of the lombaxes from the time of the Great War. That should hopefully answer quite a few of them." Both of the younger lombaxes looked at each other, the looks between them acting as a silent conversation before they looked back to him and nodded.

"Alright then. Since you both seem to know about Tachyon and Alister, I'll abbreviate some parts. It's a long story after all." He took a deep breath, and then continued.

"A hundred fifty years ago, the Great War was consuming the entirety of the Polaris galaxy. Government after government, world after world fell to the onslaught of the cragmite empire and it seemed like no one would be able to stop them from conquering not just Polaris but many other galaxies as well. Times were dark, and the lombaxes knew they had no choice but to join the war effort.

"Before that decision, we were a solitary people. More concerned with the advancement of science than anything else. We were happy to leave the rest of the galaxy to their own devices, right up until the realization that they would come for us as well. So we joined, and immediately found ourselves thrust to the forefront of the conflict. Our weapons and ships ground the war to a stalemate, and for that we were made the leaders of the resistance effort. Suddenly our entire scientific consensus was working with one goal in mind. End the war."

"So they invented the dimensionator, right?" Rivet cut in. She couldn't help herself. But Kaden shook his head.

"Not right away. First came a mathematical proof of the existence of parallel dimensions, then experiments that directly showed their presence. After that it was a simple thing to invent the true beginning of the end of the conflict, inter-dimensional communicators. It was then that we realized that the Great War we were fighting wasn't the only Great War. Across every dimension that shared both lombaxes and cragmites a version of the war was playing out. At times one side was clearly the victor and utterly destroyed the other, and in a few we lombaxes were even the aggressors. Most of the time though, it was a stalemate. Same as in both of ours. It was with this information that the science of Dimensionology was born."

He paused for a few moments, seemingly to make sure they were both following along. When he saw the eager minds staring him down though, he continued.

"The science of Dimensionology proved to turn everything we knew about a possible multiverse on its head. You see, every dimension exists in parallel with each other, but not as reflections like we at one point thought, or examples of the supremacy and speciality of the lombax race like some others did. Instead they are more akin to altered timelines. A small difference in one part of the universe leads to cascading ones, thus ending with a radically different end product. How much the dimensions differed from each other was eventually narrowed down to a number that we call the 'Degree of Variation.' Each dimension we could contact was evaluated and a trans-universal dimensional mapping system was created, giving each dimension an I.D. in the form of a letter and a number, and another number signifying the variation.

"The dimension Ratchet and I come from was the first to create the communicator, so it has always been referred to as the 'Prime' dimension and the one all others are compared to. This dimension, or rather your's Rivet, is dimension A-03 and has a variation degree of one, which is very low. That is why there are so many familiar faces to you both on either side. The lower the variation, the more dimensional copies of individuals can exist."

"So, are we copies of each other then?" Ratchet asked, gesturing between himself and Rivet. Rivet nearly swallowed her tongue when he asked that. She had completely forgotten that there was actually a solid possibility that the two of them were technically the same person, which would make a lot of how she had been feeling even weirder.

"No." Kaden responded, leaving nothing to the imagination, and Rivet let out a sigh of relief. Maybe she did it a bit too loud though since she saw Kaden's eyes dart over to her for a split second. "I never had a child in this dimension, something I learned after some digging. No, you two are an example of parallel roles. Particular positions of importance in the universe that will always be filled, even if only briefly. They don't have to be filled by the same person.

"In effect, you both play the part in the universe of the last lombax, left behind by their people and a lone defender of justice. An unfortunate role to play, but apparently a necessary one. Now, after the map and sorting system were in place, we suddenly had a massive advantage in the war across every dimension. A massive intelligence network spanning hundreds of galaxies, all sharing information with each other.

"All of a sudden we knew where every cragmite fleet was going to be, where every attack would come from, and where every ambush was hidden. Battles that were a complete loss in one dimension became a draw in one, then a victory in another all over the course of a day. Using that network, the cragmites were pushed to the brink across every dimension. And in every one they refused to yield.

"Even once the dimensionator had been created and not just information but entire fleets and armies were being shared, they still refused to cease their aggression. So a council was called to determine their fate. We could have utterly annihilated them, but in the end it was the wisdom of thousands on the council that we could not stoop to their level. We could not appoint ourselves the judge, jury and executioner of a species regardless of the bounds we broke or the strides we made. So we locked them away, banished them from every dimension one at a time until they were completely contained.

"And as you both know, almost a century passed after that. We hid our dimensional technology from the rest of the universe for fear of the possible consequences and unknown ramifications of galavanting across the space-time continuum. We established a protectorate that secretly spanned every dimension and used that to create peace. Then… Then they found the egg." He swallowed hard and his eyes went somewhere far off again.

"When they pulled Percival from that comet, I was barely a year old. I remember sitting in the same classroom as him on Fastoon. I remember the lengths we went to to keep the truth of the past from him. But you both know how that ended."

"But, wait." Ratchet cut in. "How does something like that fall apart? If the protectorate spanned dimensions then some of them must have been able to help when Tachyon rose up."

Kaden's eyes grew somehow more sorrowful. "It fell the same way it was built. Dimensionology and communicators. Alister couldn't give him the dimensionator when he handed over our technology, only I could do something like that and I never trusted that bug. Instead he was handed a version of the communicator. With that he could contact the other versions of himself and spread the truth of who they were and what we had done to them. They all plotted and schemed in the shadows, building their empires in secret before one day they all attacked.

"All of a sudden, every dimension, every Fastoon was under attack from an army with some variant of Tachyon at the helm. There was barely a chance to fight back or resist and the panic and chaos from the communicators made it clear that no one would come to help us. The decision was made to evacuate every dimension to a safe one that the version of me from this dimension had located using a dimensional map made by a friend-"

"Mags" Ratchet finished for him. Kaden looked surprised and more than a little proud.

"Yes… how did you?"

"He left a bunch of lorbs on Savali, recordings from while he was doing the mapping."

"I see. He always was the kind to chronicle a story like that, or rather, everyone's story. I imagine it must have broken his heart to only visit and then leave them all." His mood became yet more dour as he continued the story. "During the first waves that hit our Fastoon I knew that not just myself, but my family would be a prime target for the attack. Tachyon wanted the dimensionator, that much was certain, and nothing would stop him in ours or any dimension. Luckily, myself and the other versions of me were ready for something like this."

"So, you were the keeper of the dimensionator in every dimension?" Rivet asked.

"Yes. And I was chosen in particular for several reasons, not just for my combat abilities. My judgment, morality, intelligence and mentality all played factors. Not to mention that in every dimension there was a version of myself in some way, shape or form. Between all of us, we began to suspect something was going to happen and so we came up with emergency plans. Places to hide the dimensionator if the worst should occur, methods of destroying dimensionators that slipped away from us. We wanted to be absolutely sure that the technology for traveling between dimensions would never fall into the wrong hands."

"Then why leave them behind after the evacuation? Why hide them at all?" Ratchet asked.

"For lombaxes like you. The ones left behind. Before Tachyon's attack, it wasn't just the dimensions we spread across, but also the stars. We scattered far and wide in search of adventure, glory and honor. There was no chance we could evacuate everyone if it came to it. So we decided we would leave it behind, in places only lombaxes could reach so they could join us if they wanted to. Not the best system, but we refused to leave anyone behind without any hope of reaching us."

Then the question popped into Rivet's head. The one she dreaded hearing the answer to. But still, they had to know, so she asked anyway. "Why were we left behind?"

Kaden took another shaky breath. He undoubtedly knew this had been coming. "In your case Rivet… I don't know. That's the truth. Your father, this dimension's version of Alister, didn't send you through the portal, and I don't know why. I couldn't find him to ask."

"Wait! My father is Alister!?" She shouted in shock, and Kaden nodded in response. Her world spun around her for moments on end. "Is he… I-" She sputtered and wound back on herself like a glitching computer or a skipping record.

"He is still alive and out there somewhere. But he's a member of the Praetorian Guard. If he doesn't want to be found, then there's little to no chance we ever will."

"But, he's alive. You're sure of that?" He nodded and she paused to take that in. She had a father. She had a name to put to the position, and from the picture Ratchet had shown her, maybe even a face if he looked about the same. Oh, sweet bolts! Ratchet! The things my dad did and said to him! Even if it was another version, who's to say this one wouldn't do the same? How… What must he think of me right now? She looked over at him, but rather than disappointment or regret from having known her, he seemed worried. For her. He was concerned for her at that moment, and his eyes told her everything she had said to him earlier. That he was there with her for better or worse, and that alone was comforting enough.

Though, to have someone she was so in tune with that he knew when she needed some comfort… Give a girl a break there, hotshot. She lamented to herself. She nodded to let him know she was ok.

"As for you… Ratchet." He said the name as though it still wasn't sitting well in his mouth. No doubt he wanted to call Ratchet by his original name, but that was something for them to sort out themselves. She could see the pain in his eyes though from the experience he was about to recount.

"I-" He took another deep, shaky breath and swallowed around a lump in his throat. "I lost your mother when Tachyon attacked Fastoon. She died, blaster in hand, to defend… you. To hold out til I got there to save you. I made it just in time to keep you from Tachyon's clutches, but I was too late to help her. Without her, without my guiding star… I didn't know what to do next." He was talking softer with every sentence and his gaze drifted downward. "There were so many unknowns, so many risks no matter how I thought about it. The only things I knew were that I had to keep you safe, and had to do my job as keeper.

"So I weighed my options. Alister had been banned from the evacuation, otherwise I would have left you with him, regardless of how furious I may have been with him at the time. He wasn't an option. I could have given you to one of the families passing through the evac portal, but then you would be lost in a sea of refugees. You would disappear amongst nearly five trillion faces, and the odds that I would ever see you again…" He trailed off, his point made clear.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't just give up my son and never see him again! Not willingly!" His voice rose now, before he quickly brought it back down. "So I ran. And I took you with me. Once I finished the evacuations on Fastoon I had to go to every colony, every outpost we still had contact with and evacuate them as well. And you were there for all of it, right in my arms. I can still hear how you cried from the explosions and gunfire from battle after battle. Eventually, all that was left was to hide the dimensionator, then I would use a personal device to take both you and I to the lombax dimension. But, I couldn't take you with me to hide it. Tachyon was too close for that. So, I brought you here. To Veldin.

"Back when things were peaceful I had worked in that garage for a time, for the previous owner at least. I doubt Grim recognized me when I showed up at his doorstep, beaten and bloody, clutching you to my chest while we both cried." He looked up from his hands, the tears having once more overflowed from his eyes. "But please, Ratchet. Please understand that I never meant to leave you all alone! I always, always, meant to go back for you! Not for one moment did I think I was leaving you behind to face the galaxy by yourself. Not for one. Moment. Did I ever think that might have been the last time I ever saw you." Kaden buried his head in his hands, the grief of that day overwhelming him. Ratchet seemed uncertain of what to do. He was frozen in place on the chair, and for once it was Rivet who knew what had to be done at a time like this.

She leaned to the side and bumped his shoulder with her's, knocking him from his stupor. When he looked to see what she wanted, she nodded towards the sobbing older lombax across from them and mouthed the word 'go.'

He nodded after some thought and carefully stood up. When he had trouble taking the first step though, Rivet gave him a little push to his back. Both to get him going and to let him know she was right behind him, all the way. He slowly stepped towards his father, still hunched down and oblivious, and then bent down to be on one knee in front of him. He hesitated again, but only briefly, before he embraced him, pulling him into a far gentler hug than what had been shared earlier.

"It's ok dad, really." He whispered, just barely loud enough that she could make it out. "I've never blamed you for that, and to know now that it was done out of love from my father who couldn't bear to let me go is more comforting than I think you could ever know. And it's not like I grew up completely alone. I had Grim who really did try his best to raise me, and while I may not have had many friends back in school, I've got plenty now. I've even managed to meet some pretty great lombaxes as time has gone on."

Kaden wrapped his arms around his son again. "I thought for so long about how to apologize to you. How to ask for your forgiveness."

"There's nothing to forgive dad. I've lived a great life, and the only thing I regret is that you didn't end up being part of it until now."

"Thank you. Son." Kaden tightened his grip on him so much that from a distance Rivet was afraid Ratchet might start to have trouble breathing, but if it bothered him at all he didn't let on.

She let them have their catharsis, and only when they separated once more with dry eyes did she speak."Can you tell the rest of the story now? I wanna know how you ended up here. And why you never came to find me."

She had tried her best to keep the anger out of her voice as she said the last part, but did a poor job. She never had been good at hiding her emotions. Guilt was plain as day in Kaden's eyes.

"After I left you on Veldin, it was like I said. My plan was to hide the dimensionator, lose Tachyon and then double back for you. I had been given a one use, one way personal device that could open a small portal, and only to the lombax dimension. I succeeded in the first part as you no doubt know since you're here right now, but the second part was where things fell to pieces. I knew he was tracking me somehow, but I couldn't figure out precisely how he was doing it. I must have scanned my ship fifty times trying to figure it out, only for him to just spit it out when he finally cornered me.

"He was tracking me using the phase quartz shard in the device I had. When powered, which the device always was, phase quartz emits a unique energy signature that he was able to hone in on and use to follow me anywhere he had satellites. So while you were safe in Solana, the moment I went back to Polaris he knew my every move. Thankfully, I had fully powered down the dimensionator before hiding it, so he had no way to track it. While he had me cornered, I had to make another choice. And it hurt me greatly to do it.

"I couldn't let Tachyon get the device. He could have used it to reverse engineer an actual dimensionator, and then everything we had done would have been for nothing. So, I destroyed it. Smashed it against a rock as I was captured. The phase quartz ruptured, and since it was powered, it released a massive amount of energy instantaneously. The result?" He brought up his left hand and pulled away the glove that covered it, revealing a robotic prosthetic from the wrist down. "My hand was atomized and my body caught up in a space time rift. When I came to, I was here, in this dimension.

"Once I was here, I immediately started to look for a way back. That first meant tracking down this dimension's version of myself to find where he hid the dimensionator."

"You didn't know where he hid it? I would think you would have told each other something like that." Rivet pointed out.

"It was a safety measure in case one of us should be captured. The less we knew about where the others hid their dimensionators the better. Unfortunately, that meant that when I found out this dimension's Tachyon really had killed me, I had no way of knowing where he had hid the dimensionator. So I tried for the next best thing and started looking for Alister. There wasn't much of a trail left from him, but for someone who knew where to look there was enough to get started.

"His trail took me all over Polaris and beyond. I spent the better part of an entire year chasing after him, and in the end the only thing I found was a note, and a two year old lombax girl on a backwater world." He looked forlornly at Rivet.

"So you've known about me for more than twenty years? Why is this the first time we've met then!? Where have you been!?" She couldn't stop her anger from rising in her chest. For her entire life she had been convinced that she was alone in the universe, that there were no other lombaxes anywhere. Before she knew it she was standing, and her voice had risen with her.

Kaden hung his head. "I… Thought it best if you didn't know I existed."

"What? Why?"

"Because I'm not meant to be in this dimension, and my intention has always been to return home. I didn't want to reveal myself to you, then possibly leave you the next day."

"So you found me and then left me!? Just like that, you decided you knew what was best for me and let me think for my whole life that I was alone! Do you even have the slightest idea what that's like!?"

"No, but I thought-" He tried to start making some excuse but was cut short.

"I don't care what you thought! You. Were. Wrong!" She was face to face with him now and jabbing one of her mechanical fingers into his chest. He stayed silent for a time, looking between her eyes for what to say. When he finally did move, he brought his own mechanical hand up and placed it on her's.

"I'm sorry. I made a mistake." He looked past her to Ratchet for a second before going right back to her. "One of many. And I'm more than ready to do whatever it takes to make it up to you."

She pulled her hand away from his with something akin to disgust. "Then you're going to be at it for a long time. For now though, finish your story." She told him and went back to her seat. Ratchet continued to look at her concerned, but he seemed to know well enough to let it lie for now.

"Right." Kaden started again with a sigh. "The note from Alister I found was addressed to me, and by that I mean me specifically. He knew he was being chased by a version of me from another dimension, and what I was after. He told me to make sure you got to safety in exchange for the only clue he had to the dimensionator's location, and that he was sorry we couldn't speak face to face. He didn't want to put himself through talking to a dead friend.

"I did as he asked and took you from the planetoid and to a safe place in Polaris. You were so young that I'm not surprised you don't remember it at all, but there were a few close calls. Tachyon's drophyd forces were still the dominant power at the time, so we had to jump from one smuggler ship to another pretty much daily. Eventually I got you to an orphanage on Corson V that was low profile enough that you'd stay under the radar. Then I went to look for the dimensionator. The only clue Alister could give me was 'Navos' since it was all the other version had given him in case he should need to protect it in his place.

"Navos is a rocky and highly volcanic planet that Alister and I would go to when we wanted our hoverboot stunts to be a bit more… dangerous. When I went there in this dimension though, it was a cold, desolate world with no activity at all other than a deep, underground mining facility. I searched it and found a lorb left by the other me that gave access codes to the data pyramid that would show where the dimensionator was hidden, but no hint as to where that pyramid was. And since Alister had already up and vanished, I had firmly hit a dead end. So I embraced that I would be here for a while and when I wasn't searching for the pyramid I started to do small strikes on Percilla's forces. When Nefarious came out of nowhere and pushed her out here to Solana, I decided to change my tactics.

"I posted up here so I could strike at both Nefarious and Percilla to keep them from invading each other. That started to take up so much time that I couldn't properly look for the dimensionator between missions, so I changed that strategy as well. I started to try and recreate the personal device from memory but…" He glanced behind him to a workbench where a weapon glove was stripped down to its bare components, random wires and parts soldered or welded to it at odd angles. As if on queue one of them sparked and popped, the fire it started quickly going out. "It turns out recreating a device capable of tearing time and space from memory is rather difficult."

He turned back to the pair, mainly to Rivet though. "When you started to act as part of the resistance, I felt I should help at least a little bit. So I sold myself off as you whenever I pulled off a mission. I wore a mask at all times outside and used a voice changer to convince people."

"How is that the solution you arrived at?" She asked with a hefty amount of derision.

"It made sure that neither ever really knew where you were. You were making a name for yourself, and it was only a matter of time before Percilla found out about you. Better that she not know where to look when she did. And even before that, I pulled my fair share of attention from Nefarious. His assassin squads have left their fair share of scars." He rubbed and rolled his shoulder in its socket.

Rivet found herself curious just how her life might have played out if he hadn't done that. The emperor's assassin squads had certainly found her more than a few times and she had scars of her own, but she might be dead by now. She wasn't about to thank him for the act, but she could at least appreciate that he had been trying to help.

"Then after you two brought down Nefarious, I knew it was only a matter of time before Percilla invaded to find the dimensionator. I tried to send warning messages but none of them made it. While I was doing that, I tried to get ahead of her occupation and targeted infrastructure that she might be able to use. And that leads us to today, where the universe continues to show me just how little I truly know."

The younger lombaxes looked at each other. The story they had just been told had answered so many questions they thought would go untouched for their entire lives. They still had plenty more, and for Rivet even more than she had started with. For now though… "We've been looking for the dimensionator too to make sure that the empress can't get a hold of it. In the process we found this."

Both produced the shards of the pyramid they had brought from the ship. Kaden's eyes went wide as he shot up from his chair and ran over, gathering the pieces from their hands. "What happened to it?"

"It uhhhh… hit the ground. And a wall. And a few other walls too." Ratchet said, his hand rubbing the back of his head with a nervous grin. "Can you fix it?"

Kaden sifted through the pieces, probably trying to determine the answer to that question. "I don't think I can, no." He said, but before the other two could despair, he continued. "But, with a good enough AI to sift through the data fragments on the storage drives I think we can pull what we need. We'd need a pretty robust platform though for it to work from. At least ten terabits of tri-directional memory bandwidth for the data flow, preferably split across synchronous platforms and multiple CPU's."

"We know just who we need then!" Rivet jumped up excited. "Kit and Bolts blow those requirements out of the water! If we go get them, we'll be able to finally go get the dimensionator!"

"Who are Kit and Bolts? Friends of yours?"

"Yeah. Partners too. Bolt's name is actually Clank. He's been with me for years and is my best friend." Ratchet answered with pride.

"And Kit's been with me for a few months now. They both got taken when the empress invaded Corson V."

Kaden smiled and tucked the pyramid shards into one of his armor's pockets. "Then we'll have to find where they've been taken first. Luckily I've got bugs in every one of the empress's systems, so all we have to do is give my computer the command and wait for it to narrow down where they are."

He explained all this while moving towards a cleaner desk with a disabled monitor on it. He slapped the side unceremoniously to turn it on and typed a command string into a prompt, highlighting key words in the communication system based on a description of the bots that the other two happily provided. Once the command was running, he synced it to a PDA and turned to the other two. "It will take time for the track to turn up anything. Until then, I saw the ships you two arrived with on radar. They've seen better days, so how about I go ahead and take a look?"