LoamyCoffee: OH YES! I damn near had a nerdgasm. What fantastic news and on my birthday no less~ Oh yes, I have longed for a Ratchet and Clank story. Strangely, I only know of one other story for our dear boys. Clank ended up with Izuku and they built so many gadgets, then they met Mei and she made the adorable craziness that is GIR.

Re: Like I said, it's a Niche category. It's more for you, my long-time Readers, than it is for "everyone". And also for myself~

Guisniperman: ...Why do I have the feeling Biobliterator is better known in our universe as Mass Effect? Saren was a pretty big hint. Also ouch. THAT had to be painfull. And yeah, I only played the 2016 game but it was awesome. Can't wait for the wacky weaponry... where are you going to find raritarium though?

Re: Thinking back on Ratchet & Clank, it only very recently occurred to me that what the Dragon Teeth in Mass Effect do is a slow-and-painful version of what the Biobliterator does in an instant.

S1m0nWr1t3: At first I was confused, because you have written a lot about yourself and then comes the death of "you" that confused me lot, because I fought that was just rambling

Re: It was internal monologuing, a commonality in Isekai-type story Prologues.

LuckyShadowWolf: I truly mean no offense but my first thought when I saw your username on this site was the same as your xbox user I honestly thought that: "This guy must get so much grief in online matches over his username!" I am sorry that for a site intended for the literate that the illiterate seem to have forced your hand!

Re: I actually did; had to change my username, at-cost, because of it.
As for the other thing, I've been meaning to do it for a while, but just never got around to it until my own mother found out and had that same misunderstanding.
All-honesty, I was largely inspired by the Sonic: Nazo Unleashed on Newgrounds back when I was a teenager, and Nazo's "Super Form" after absorbing the negative energy of 7 Chaos Emeralds was "Neo Nazo".

Silverscale: This sucks. Changing your pen/author name is a thing you should do because you want to, not because you were forced to by stupidity. I mean, this is cartoonishly stupid. And I hope that those who caused this will come to realize just how moronic and shortsighted that is. I have a friend who had the alias 'Reichmaster' nobody called him a nazi for it, but I could be wrong and he never told me. May common sense and decency preserve us before stupidity and shortsightedness destroys us.

Re: Well, like I told LuckyShadowWolf, it's something I've been meaning to do for a while but didn't feel it was necessary until my own mother spotted it and got confused.
As for common sense and decency preserving us… I wouldn't hold my breath.

*AHA*

"Ah, we have arrived," Clank hummed thoughtfully, stepping out of the dimensional gateway into Dimension KH-2014. Before arrival into the new "time zone", he had wrapped an envelope of dilated time around himself and Sigmund so that they would not be seen by anyone without fourth-dimensional senses; for all intents and purposes, everything else was moving stock-still.

"Um… Clank?"

"Yes, Sigmund?"

"He's… uh… kind of dead," Sigmund said pointing down at the body they were meant to find.

"No, medically speaking the specimen is comatose," Clank argued as he and Sigmund stood over a hospital bed in a room filled with primitive medical equipment.

Or at least, the medical equipment was primitive when compared to the healthcare available in an intergalactic community. For Dimension KH-2014, it was certainly top-of-the-line, at least by the standards of this one planet; a Ventilator to keep the specimen breathing, an Electrocardiogram to monitor his heart condition, a Vital Sign Monitor, an IV drip for nutrients, an Intramuscular Electrostimulation suite to stave off the onset of muscular atrophying, and a quasi-futuristic waste disposal apparatus less labor-intensive than a diaper.

Of course, no amount of 23rd Century medical care would heal these wounds.

"So… wait, this Philotic body… has no Aiúa? None at all?!" Sigmund asked confusedly.

"The only reason this intelligent Philote can be re-seeded at all," Clank hummed. "Whatever happened to this child, it drew his essence, his, 'soul', right out of him. As the saying goes, 'the keys are in the ignition but the warp drive is cold'."

"So there's a vacancy then…" Sigmund said holding the preserved Aiúa. "I suppose I have seen this archetype in a couple of timelines, but to see it in person…"

"Don't count your organic gestating cloning pods just yet," Clank hummed, giving the body a once-over as he compared it to the original body of the Aiúa slated to take up residence.

The Aiúa's old body was around "30 planetary cycles old"; though in galaxies with vast diversities of sentient life numbering in millions of species whose base genetic components stretched from one end of the Periodic Table to the other, that could really mean any amount of time. His skin had been lightly tanned, his dark-brown hair cropped short, eyes a shade of brown with bits of green here and there, and he had reached the end of his growing period. Ethnically, a blend of Asian and American features, and physiologically he was an above-average level of fitness and health. Not to the point that he could've used his body to make money- Athletically! -but had he been allowed to maturate to the end of his life, he would've been fully capable of caring for himself.

As for the new body… This one was "11 planetary cycles old" of a near equivalent planet, so the body would be slightly above a third the age of the mind. Ethnically, this body was a blend of eastern and western genealogies, but leaned much more toward east than west. Aesthetically, he had light-colored skin, dark reddish-brown hair, and green irises peeked between cracked lids as the odd muscle spasmed.

An obvious shortcoming of course was that this body had been resting in a comatose state for a little over a full planetary cycle, and despite what must've been a top-of-the-line Intramuscular Electrostimulation suite, at least for this planet, his muscles had atrophied significantly.

And if that wasn't enough, based on the configuration of the nearby equipment, blood and tissue samples had obviously been taken on a semi-frequent basis for some end he lacked the necessary context to understand if not speculate.

"So, how're we going to do this?" Sigmund asked worriedly. Thanks to the dilated envelope of time around them, the coma patient's body looked even more dead than usual, and since the Zoni were by and large energy beings composed of tachyonic particles, flesh and blood bodies were something he was unused to; let alone half-dead ones.

"Firstly, I'll have to bind the Aiúa and Philotic body with an envelope of temporal energy to prevent them from immediately separating," Clank began as the answers were made manifest to his quasi-fourth-dimensional essence, his eyes shining an ethereal blue. "After that, I'll have to make micro-adjustments to said envelope until the older Aiúa is no longer at risk of being rejected by a much-younger body. Following that… I suppose I'll just have to stick around for a while, make sure my work actually sticks. Once that is done, I'll return to The Great Clock, leave him to his own devices; for good or for ill."

"If you want, I can put a bookmark on his temporal field so we can observe him remotely," Sigmund said as he worked on his hip-mounted monitor.

"I suppose it would not hurt to observe, though outside interference should be kept to a minimum. Especially on such a primitive planet," Clank shrugged. "Now…" he said placing the contained Aiúa over the sternum of the Philotic body. "What moment of time should I use to weave this envelope together," he ruminated thoughtfully as he cracked his mechanical knuckles, his Chronoscepter self-standing at his side.

"You mean you don't know already?"

"Seeding a foreign Aiúa into a new Philotic body isn't something I'm exactly versed in," Clank quipped as he racked his memories. Temporal energy by itself wouldn't be enough; he had to use a cherished memory as the base of this energy manipulation, since time and space were closely interwoven. "Ah… I think I know what I'll need."

Taking hold of the Chronoscepter and holding the end above the Aiúa, its inner workings began to whirr and shift, quantum energies arcing along the scepter before threads of neon blue energy shot out, coiling through the time bubble and around the Aiúa itself before threading themselves through the Philotic body's nervous system. The Aiúa drawn slowly inward until it was settled nicely within the center of the Philotic body's being, a quasi-nervous system of quantum energy began to thread its way to every nook and crevice of the body until a webwork of fourth-dimensional energy had been formed, cradling a young soul into a much-younger body.

"There… It is done…" Clank sighed as he leaned against the Chronoscepter, wondering if his father felt this same sort of exhaustion after seeding his Aiúa in the body of a defective Warbot.

"Sooo… Now we wait?" Sigmund asked.

"As the saying goes, time will tell," the former Warbot Defect nodded. "Sigmund, if it's alright with you, would you mind watching over The Great Clock on your own for a while? I'd prefer to see this through in person, and honestly, it feels like an eternity since I just 'sat down'."

"Sure thing, boss. Take your time."

"Once again, that is in such poor taste," Clank hummed with a soft smile, Sigmund taking his leave with a wave, leaving Clank to watch over the new life he'd seeded in a new body.

*AHA*

After Sigmund had well and fully departed, Clank dispelled the envelope of dilated time surrounding himself, while simultaneously moving himself out-of-phase with the then-current timeframe. For all intents and purposes, he had made himself "desynchronized" from the nearby observable universe for a fraction of what passed for a second on that planet.

Functionally, he was little more than a shadow, immaterial but ever-present.

With the passage of time resuming, Clank settled himself into a vacant corner next to the room's security camera, putting his Chronoscepter away as he floated overhead like a guardian angel. As far as the surrounding spacetime was concerned, there had been a momentary flicker of quantum energy from behind the comatose body's eyelids, and a half-as-momentary spike in his vitals, but beyond that no other outward change took place.

The groundwork laid down, Clank proceeded to wait, and watch.

*AHA*

An "hour" or so passed before the near-vacant room admitted another occupant, a shapely nurse in clean white-and-teal colored clothes with her ebony hair pulled into a ponytail going down her back, who was moving in to tend to the room's only occupant. She carried with her a certain motherly aura that would've had anyone conscious liquefying into a puddle of goo on the floor.

Of course, it wasn't the shape of the nurse's body that drew his eye; more rather, the fact that this nurse, Hitomi if her nametag was any indication, had only one cyclopean eye dominating the space between her nose and the roots of her hair.

A quick scan revealed that she was, without a doubt, 100% Human, same as the coma patient he'd just seeded the estranged Aiúa into. However, what had allowed her to possess a fully-formed and fully-functional cyclopean eye without changing species, was the very same anomaly that had allowed aforementioned Aiúa to be "seeded" in the new body in the first place with the way its Philotic body had been destroyed by transdimensional "shrapnel".

The Quirk Factor, formerly known as a "Meta Ability", a genetic anomaly supposedly spread by mice that could grant lifeforms native to this planet "paranormal" abilities, ranging from elemental manipulation to full-body modification to mutating to a point one may as well transcend species. Not only that, but Quirks both similar and dissimilar could blend with one another through the random gestation of Human organic cloning, aka sexual reproduction, becoming more diversified and unique to the point that some would become bio-organic cyborgs.

Quirks, as they were called in this universe, were nonexistent in his own, but that didn't prevent extraterrestrial lifeforms from developing incredible adaptations for the sake of survival. Heck, Copernicus Leslie "Captain" Quirk was a prime physical example of a Human, if not mentally, and yet he had developed the ability to survive the harsh vacuum of space without a pressure suit.

He'd have been more intrigued by this "Quirk Factor" and how it compared to other similar power-granting genetic anomalies in other universes… were it not for the fact that its manifestation alone caused an almost complete and utter cessation of scientific advancement for the better part of two full centuries.

In the case of the X-Gene or Meta-Gene in other universes, technology there continued to advance, even if not by leaps and bounds, in an attempt to keep pace with the powers that could manifest through random genetic anomalies. But here, in this universe, on this planet, well… He supposed there was a reason certain controversial historians referred to the advent of Paranormality as the "Neo Dark Age", and why Retro-Futurists said if it weren't for Quirks that interplanetary travel would be a thing.

Part of him questioned if seeding this one Aiúa into a completely different universe, himself playing the role of "meddling deity", was in fact wise; but the only alternative was letting his essence return to The Outside, and given he hadn't interfered enough in one universe to prevent his death in another…

As the saying went, sometimes you have to have a little faith.

As for where he had learned about the Quirk Factor despite having never studied this particular universe in-depth, while the firewalls in place on the immediate computer network were no match for a Drek Industries Warbot Computing Suite, they were by no means insignificant in context of this planet. As a matter of fact, as he delved deeper with his Positronic Brain, he realized that this building was far more fortified than an ordinary hospital on a planet with a Technology Level of only 2, should have had any right to be.

Which of course might have explained why a certain amount of light Human experimentation was going on out in the open like this.

"Good afternoon, Takei-kun~" the nurse Hitomi greeted with a motherly smile as she came over to his bedside, fluffing his pillow and brushing his reddish-brown hair from his face. "Hmmm… Looks like we'll have to cut your hair soon."

'Takei-kun?' Clank thought with a blink, realizing that in all his haste to act quickly, he'd never actually bothered to learn what the coma patient's body was named.

Not that it would've mattered, he'd never bothered to learn the Aiúa's previous name either, but this segue presented an ample opportunity to do so.

While nurse Hitomi tended to "Takei-kun", speaking soothingly to him in the event he actually could hear her, Clank floated over to the Patient Chart at the foot of his bed and made a quick scan of the patient information form. What he was looking for was easy-enough to find.

Name: Takehiko, Tokei

It took only a second for Clank to grasp where "Takei" had come from; nurse Hitomi had obviously combined the first half of his Family Name with the second half of his Given Name, streamlining it into something more personable. Something that elicited a good-natured chuckle from the Zoni.

Not only that, but he felt a sense of relief wash over him as he learned that this Nurse Hitomi, likely his primary caretaker, genuinely cared of him; this as opposed to treating his presently-inert body like the contents of a petri dish. At the very least, she didn't have the countenance of a person who would willfully collect blood and tissue samples from a defenseless prepubescent body.

With that in mind, Clank returned to his original vigil, Hitomi chatting animatedly "with" him until duties called her elsewhere. The nurse vacating the room a while later, leaving the room better than she had found it with freshened flowers in the nearby vase amongst other things, Clank returned to the patient's bedside.

"Hmmm… Takehiko's body likely won't be in any real shape to usethis new Aiúa, even if he regains consciousness in any timely manner…" he realized, given the primitive state of the medical technology he was equipped to. "Well… in for a penny, in for a pound I suppose."

Floating up to Takehiko's bedside, opening up the storage compartment in his torso while his antennae blinked red and the nearby security camera entered into an imperceptible loop, Clank released a cluster of Nanomites which, by their very nature, sought out the nearest wounded body.

Takehiko's body released another momentary flash of light, this time from the entirety of his body, and another brief spike of his biometrics occurred. While infinitely more-advanced than anything that could be found on this backwater planet, because they were out-of-sync with the surrounding time like Clank himself was, they were largely imperceptible to this planet's 23rd century technology, but would still be able to remedy repairs because of the quantum energies now flowing through this body to hold a foreign intelligent Philote in place.

"There. I think that, should well and truly be 'enough'," Clank hummed as he returned to his original posting, one half of his dual processor suite keeping watch, while the other studied up on this world's history, in the event a space/time-bending Quirk required him to interfere at some point in the future.

The fewer sentient lifeforms he need to "reincarnate" into another world, the better.

*AHA*

Hours quickly became days as Clank observed "Takei" in his hospital bed, and it only took a single rotational cycle to learn what constituted "a day" on this planet. As he waited and watched, he took note of nurse Hitomi's routine, and her countenance only further reinforced the sentiment that Takehiko would be in good hands once he departed this universe.

Nurse Hitomi would enter Takei's room first thing in the morning, every morning, giving all of his life-sustaining equipment a once-over before cycling his intramuscular electrostimulation suite to stave off his muscular atrophy. Following this, she would return to check in on him every few hours, exchanging kind words with him and replacing his bedside flowers as necessary, and each night before leaving she would ensure he was tucked in and his pillows fluffed, the kiss she pressed to his forehead with her fingertips likely the only socially acceptable form of affection she could express for the comatose patient. The ease and precision through which she carried out this routine gave off the impression she had repeated the motions enough for it to become second nature, and at every chance she would make the attempt to reach out to him, ask if he could hear her and never giving up hope.

Ordinarily, this would have been a losing battle, since no amount of external muscular stimulation could match the act of a living body getting up and moving about on its own. However, with the recent introduction of a Nanomite colony to his body, it was now recovering at a much-accelerated rate, his health steadily improving; something which nurse Hitomi spotted after a couple of days before reporting to her superiors.

A more-senior doctor in the hierarchy begrudgingly entered the room, giving Takehiko's biometrics a once-over, but for all of his alleged experience, all he seemed to notice was the steady paling of Takei's dark reddish-brown hair into a near-shade of white; likely a consequence of the quantum energies serving to reinvigorate him, as well as the "moment of his time" he'd used to imbue that energy with quasi-sentience, and the new Aiúa itself.

As nurse Hitomi continued to care for him, visiting with greater frequency and utterly convinced he would return to wakefulness "any day now", Clank noticed that Takehiko's hair didn't stop paling when it had turned white; instead, it darkened once again into a different part of the color spectrum becoming a bright shade of gold. What was even more shocking, to him more than Hitomi, was that a few days later his golden blond hair began to develop streaks of dark orange-brown; an impossible-to-deny reminder of Ratchet's own coloration.

It made him feel quite nostalgic, to be honest.

"Hmmmmmmm…" Clank hummed a long time later, eyeing Takehiko's biometrics. "I think my time here is almost at an end."

The Aiúa he'd planted had taken root in its new body, to the point that he no longer feared one rejecting the other, even if he left this universe entirely. In addition, the Nanomites were doing their job of bolstering his recuperating body, which had made significant strides in his recovery. Soon he would wake up, grow old, and pass away.

That was what made ephemeral creatures beautiful, no matter how sad it was…

Some might see those qualities as weaknesses; Victor Von Ion, Courtney Gears, and Dr. Nefarious to name a few. But the life he would lead, would be all the more precious and honorable because of those weaknesses. It was why no matter what sort of fantastical adventures he had as "Secret Agent Clank", they could never even hope to compare to the adventures he had with Ratchet, and Rivet, and the others.

Because a story is only beautiful if it has an ending.

"I should go," he said aloud as he took his leave.

As soon as he'd left, lungs that had long since ceased to breathe on their own, took a shaky inward breath.