Disclaimer: I do not own Ratchet and Clank or any of its characters. Mina belongs to wherearetherobots of FFnet and Instagram.

I absolutely had to make this running joke between us into a fic.

A Tragedy in Three Acts

Part 1: Ace Hardlight is Hot

"Okay, Al, come on. You gotta admit, like… he's a little hot."

A splashing sound came from Big Al's workbench as his coffee shot up his nose. The engineer spluttered, his hand yanking the mug away from his face before any more damage could be done. After the mug was off to the side, his arm stretched out full length away from his body, eyes blinked rapidly before looking over to the Markazian's workbench.

"I…" Al blinked a few more times, utter shock amplifying the flutter of his eyelids. "I beg your pardon?"

Mina nodded her head towards the holo-vision screen in the Dreadzone Engineers' Station. Her right hand, fingers tight around the Vox Industries coffee mug she had been given by the guards, gestured to the screen after another beat of confused silence from Big Al. "Al, seriously, like… Ace Hardlight?" She tucked her other hand, her free one, under her chin. "Come on. He's a complete dreamboat."

Al's brow furrowed. His lips pushed into his mouth and hooked under his teeth as he stared at his assistant. "Mina," he started. "You… you are aware this Ace Hardlight is the one trying to get us and Ratchet killed, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not as oblivious as Qwark is." Her free hand stopped waving dismissively at the other engineer. As she settled back in her chair, nothing more than a glorified bar stool provided by Vox, she jerked her hand up. "Alright listen. He's got the hair…" a finger curled into her palm "…abs…" another finger curled into her palm.

Her face froze, her hand swinging back and forth. A huff left Al as Mina scrunched her face before moving it back to her original overconfident expression. "He's got that… aura…" she said, her voice trailing off into silence.

Palm hit forehead as Al heaved a long and heavy sigh. He dragged his hand down his face, pulling at his eyes as they looked up to the ceiling for answers. Once his hand fell, he spoke. "I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, but. Ace. Hardlight. Is. Trying. To. Kill-"

"Allllllll!" Mina rolled her eyes, slouching over in her chair. Her head shook as she looked off to the right of her before her entire posture changed back to something more argumentative. "Okay, fine, let's say, like, this guy's trying to kill us."

"Which he is."

"What if I flirted my way close to him and bought us escape that way?" Mina made an L with her thumb and index finger on her free hand and waggled it at Al. "That's solid logic, right?"

Al crossed his arms over his chest after he plopped his coffee mug onto his separate workbench parallel from Mina's. "There's another reason you would want to flirt your way to Ace, and I know you're not that altruistic." One of his brows lifted higher than the other. "Cough it up."

"Al…"

"It's because he's a rich gladiator, isn't it?"

"What? Nooooooooooo…"

"If that's not the real reason, then why aren't you meeting my eyes?"

"I just like… guys with… good… chests…"

"You just want his credit card!"

As their argument heightened, Mina's voice pitching higher and higher per each point she lost in her side of the argument, Ratchet shuffled at the entrance to the work station.

"Hey, Clank?" he asked over his comm. "How good are you at fixing armor? Al's a bit busy at the moment trying to convince Mina to not do her Bad Decision of the Hour."

A mimicked sigh echoed in the Lombax's ear as Al threw his arms into the air in frustration and Mina got up to grab a whiteboard she could write on to show her plan. "I shall see what I can do," the little robot said.

Next part will be up in just a second! :) Thank you for reading this first part! Song Inspo for all the drabbles will be at the end!

XD