Justin's First Tool

Ratchet walked into the cabana with Talwyn, and Ratchet almost wanted to react to the sudden change in environment. He looked into the living room and saw that the hoverbike race was no longer on the Holo-vision. Instead, Cronk and Zephyr were still in there watching an old film that was apparently as old as the war bots themselves were. They were laughing away at it. They really didn't notice them until Talwyn walked over and snapped them back into the real world.

"Miss Talwyn," Cronk said. "We're sorry. We were just watchin' an old Holo-film. It's pretty hilarious. Anyway, what's new with you?"

Talwyn smiled as she remembered that they didn't know. She looked at Ratchet, and he slightly nodded as he blushed unnoticeably under his fur. She held up her hand to let them see the ring. The raritanium beautifully shined in the luminous light of the Holo set. Both the 'bots simply stared in awe, and then realized what had happened, and then both began to lightly smile. Ratchet chuckled under his breath, and began to blush even redder. He walked over to Talwyn and put her arm around her. Cronk began to laugh and said, "To think that I was going to tell our little girl that it was about time that she was gonna have to find a mate. Too late, I guess." Everyone laughed, and Ratchet and Talwyn plopped onto the couch to watch the movie with the old robots. They were right, it was pretty funny. But, usually the couple was too focused on one another to care. They only turned to watch when Cronk or Zephyr pointed out that the upcoming part of the holo-film was a 'real laugh.' And it usually was, due to the fact that they were seeing this movie for the umpteenth time. Ratchet basically kept doing that 'arm thing' almost all the duration of the film. Talwyn just kept her head lying against Ratchet's shoulder. He enjoyed the feeling of her head against his arm, and he wanted to make it last. Sadly, though, she yawned and said, "I'm going to bed." Ratchet felt almost heartbroken, but, that was followed by a quick wink, which renewed Ratchet's confidence. After all, she was unpredictable.

Ratchet finished the movie with Cronk and Zephyr, and when it ended, they went to bed as well. Ratchet sat in the room which was now rather dark, but a small glimpse of the sun still lingered over the horizon, allowing for there to still be light throughout the room. Ratchet began to think about what all had happened in the last forty eight hours. He had got one heck of a massage from a nice Cazar, went to a root beer pub where he had a reunion with his brother from Planet Veldin. Also, he had mated with the love of his life finally. He was satiated with this little fact. In fact, he was practically squeeing with joy. He was excited to get to bed. In fact, he didn't want to keep Talwyn waiting any longer. He started toward the bedroom upstairs, when he heard a familiar sobbing sound from a certain little Lombax upstairs. He walked up to the second level and turned into Justin's room. Sure enough, there he was, crying into the pillow. Ratchet looked down at his feet before walking in and sitting down on the bed. The Lombax ceased crying for a long enough time to utter, "Hey, Uncle Ratchet," from a breaking tone of voice. After this, he went right back to sobbing. Ratchet put a hand over Justin and tried to calm him by saying, "Don't beat yourself up. After all, you that I would never let a goon like Vorselon do anything that came anywhere close to hurting you. And, you know, you aren't helpless." Ratchet slowly reached for his manifestor.

"Yes, I am," He answered as Ratchet scrolled through the items bar moving to the bottom. "I have nothing to protect myself. I'm unarmed."

"Not anymore." Ratchet manifested a brand new, unused, and fresh out of the box, Omniwrench Millennium 12K. Justin stared in awe at the fact that his Uncle was giving him his first weapon. "No way," He said. "An Omniwrench? Just like you use!"

"Yeah," Ratchet said. "If you want, when we get back to the station, I'll teach ya how ta use it."

"Great. I can't wait."

Ratchet entered the room to find Talwyn lying in the well-made bed. She looked over to see him, and smiled. It was the heart-warming smile that any Lombax would expect from his mate (even if that mate was a Markazian). Ratchet walked over, pulled up the covers, and got beneath them before they could fall back down. There were noises coming from the other room below them, which was Justin's room. It sounded like he was practicing swinging his wrench. Talwyn rolled her eyes and said, "I take it that you gave him our little gift, hmm?" Ratchet looked over and replied, "Yeah. You should have seen his face. He was just too cute." Talwyn drew closer. "You're a good person." She leaned in and kissed him. Without a doubt, Ratchet returned the favor, only adding to the romance of it.

"You know, Ratchet," Talwyn said. "We do have to check out of this place tomorrow." Ratchet only chuckled and said, "Yeah, but they didn't say when. Or how we got there. So, we pretty much have all night."

They decided to watch a little late night Holo-vision. There were a few old comedies on that they both got more than a kick out of, not to mention some of the other things they may have found while surfing around, but all in all, it was all a little mild for them. They wanted something good. Eventually, they found a good action film. But, it proved to be more than an action film. It was a Secret Agent Clank film. Ratchet was a little embarrassed about the part that he played in all of the films. However, Talwyn always found a way to make it funny.

"You look so cute as the butler," She said with a smirk on her face.

"Ha ha," Ratchet said in return. "You're a comic genius."

"How did you land a job on that series?" Ratchet looked at her. "Well, besides being famous, you're Clank's best friend, and, well, to be frank, you're really awesome."

"Well," Ratchet said as if to activate a wavy flashback effect. "We had just defeated Chairman Drek on our first adventure, Clank broke his arm. We had to take him to the emergency Med Center. They said that his arm was severely damaged, and that it would take a lot o' doctors to fix properly. They asked me to help. They told me to feed liquid nanotech into his arm to kill the pain. The news crew came in as I was doing that, and they must have called the Producers from Clank's old show or somethin' like that for some reason. They got there about, like, ten minutes later. They said that they couldn't believe that the star of their show was injured. But, by then, the doctors had managed to replace all of the broken parts, and they told me that if I didn't stop giving him nanotech, he'd die of health overload."

"Health overload?" Talwyn asked. "I have never heard of anything like that before."

"You probably haven't," Ratchet continued. "It's a weird thing that happens when you take in too much nanotech at one time. Anyways, as I was saying, the producers said that their show was going down the drain, and the company was going bankrupt. They were practically on their hands and knees begging Clank to come back and do the show again. Clank hesitated, but he said yes. They even asked me to be in it because I 'saved an intergalactic hero.' I had to agree. I mean trillions of people across the Omniverse."

Ratchet and Talwyn soon fell asleep during an episode that was untimely boring due to the fact that there was no Ratchet in it ("Don't you hate it when life does that to you?" Ratchet said). Ratchet and Talwyn somehow both dreamt the same thing. They were seeing every little thing that happened in the last three days. They saw the pub, the reunion with Aphelion, everything. The only difference was that they were witnessing everything in second-person. Each of them liked what they saw the whole time, and they were egging on their past selves to do the things that happened before. Almost all those demands were met (they knew they would be. They just lived them seventy two hours ago to now.)