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All little joking aside, this chapter is been past due for almost three weeks now, and it hasnt been up for one simple reason. My cousin who I was staying with while I was going to college went bat shit local of a tiny little thing and kicked me out of the house while stealing my laptop. I got it back, but still, that took four days and since then I've been so focused on trying to find a safe place to live that getting online and uploading has been in the back of my mind. The place I'm staying at doesnt have a strong enough internet connection to support even logging into my account here, yet it can still log into my Xbox live account. Anyway, this chapter was going to go up as a good luck and a procrastination teaser to Agent Pointless but since its delayed, I hope you did good on your tests and all that. With that, I leave you to Chapter 23-The Sparks of Revenge

Veldin

Three weeks passed since the funeral, and Stella recovered quickly, she and Sky went out into their front yard and sparred for a little bit, after words they worked with their father to coordinate the counter attacks against the humans. Then they worked on upgrades on their fighters, their two personal fighters were already top of the line. But during the three weeks when Stella couldn't due much moving without pain, she sat at her work bench and designed. She studied video footage of the humans attack, she watched their initial attack on Marc1. Stella worked hard on her designs and was itching to try them out. Today was the last day of recovery, tonight they were taking their fighters to the air, and shortly after that, back into the fight.

Sky looked at her "Ready?"

Stella nodded and they fell into their separate forms, Sky was the better close combat fighter but Stella was no pushover either.

Sky made the first move, throwing a hard right towards Stella. Stella put her palm up and moved the blow over her shoulder, moving her head a little bit to fully avoid it. She made a sham move with her right hand and sent Sky stepping towards her left fist aimed at his side. Sky felt it coming and moved his body around the fist, as he spun around he brought a foot up towards Stella's head. Stella leaned back until she was almost bent over double backwards, Sky's kick ending where head had been. In the brief moment Stella had before she drew her head all the way back to complete her back flip she got an idea that would end the match. Something that would get her killed in a real fight, but would end the spar because Sky would never see it coming.

As she flipped over backwards and brought her legs up she wrapped her legs around Sky's still outstretched one. She completed her flip letting go of Sky's leg halfway through. Half was enough though, Sky was pulled off balance and tried to correct, his leg slid though and he slid into a full split with a small groan. Stella completed her flip and jumped forward putting her foot on Sky's neck.

"Game."

Sky moaned "Yep, Game, pull me up, now, please."

Stell grinned and held out a hand, helping Sky stand up.

"Well, I guess your back up to action."

Stella turned around to see her Father coming out of the garage. Stella nodded as he approached.

"Yea, she won with a dirty move though, would get her killed anywhere else." Sky said as he turned, very slowly, around.

Ratchet chuckled, "Maybe, but she did win."

"Is my exile over yet? Can I get back into the fight?"

"Not by yourself."

"Dad, you can't really stop me. When I was in pain sure, but now, I could get out of here easily."

"You could, but we're all leaving together, tonight, meet me in the garage at 10."

Sky straightened a little bit "Tonight? Where are we going."

Ratchet turned around and headed back fro the garage. "Earth."

Sky and Stella glanced at each other.

Stella turned back to watch their father walk into the garage and close the door. "I don't think he was joking."

Turns out, he wasn't.

They went going to just jump there, Ratchet planned on extracting as much revenge as he could on the humans who had caused him so much pain. He was planning on setting out with Sky and Stella and stopping at every planet along the way that the humans controlled and bringing down his wrath on them. Then he was going to Earth, he was going to find Zen, where ever that little coward was hiding and he was going to kill him, painfully, slowly, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

Ratchet knew that inside, he shouldn't look forward to killing Zen, he shouldn't want vengeance, that all his years should have quenched his vengeful spirit. But every time he though of his family, of the son in law he could have had, the wife he didn't get enough time with, and the third child he would never get to meet.

They were going to tell Stella and Sky that dammed day on the station, when his life went to hell. They had only found out a few weeks before. The names were already picked out, Celista, if they had another girl, and Arc if they were given another boy. Not even Clank knew, they were going to surprise their friends and family, instead...

Ratchet sniffed and focused on finishing his project, Stella wasn't the only one who designed in their spare time. Ratchet had quite a bit stockpiled from long trips through space. He may have just been a rocket mechanic, but he knew more then a lot of people realized. He had been working on something secret, Sasha knew and had helped from time to time, but by and far, the twins didn't know about it. He walked towards his starfighter and ducked underneath it, triggering the panel that disguised his private workshop that he kept hidden from the twins when they were too young to be helping, he still hadn't told them.

Inside was the ship he had been working on anytime he was on Veldin, for over 10 years. The ship started off as a small idea, a way for his family to get to fights together. A mini fighter carrier, designed to carry in three fighters, Stella, Sky, and...Sasha's. Now it had been modified, he had removed Sasha's dock area, and built a central cockpit, that could eject out of the frame and become a fighter all on its own. Then he tripled the armor that the fighter had and rigged four state of the art shield generators to run together and keep the craft protected. Anybody looking at the sleek heavy ship would think its not going anywhere.

But Ratchet had a secret design, he was still working out how to mass produce it, but for his own use, he had two models working. Two large engines were sitting in chains above their instal points, constructed from scrap that he collected over the years, these engines featured a smaller version of his gravametric warp drive as their thrusters. In other words, one of these could haul, two could rip a hole in time, and enough to power a cruiser, well, nobody would ever see it coming, or going, ever, again.

Zen wanted a war, Ratchet was more then ready to give it to him.

Stella watched Ratchet close the garage door behind him.

"I'm worried for him."

Stella turned around to stare at her brother "Why?"

"He seems, cut off, distant, I'm worried that hes letting his anger get the better of him, that all he cares about is revenge."

"So what, the Terrans, and Zen, deserve pay back, they took Tran away from me," Stella stepped forward "They took our Mother Sky. You just want to leave them be, just let them kick us around?"

Sky stepped back "What, No, Are you telling me that you think the only way to end this is to kill every Terran you can?"

Stella said nothing, just stared hard at her brother.

"Wow, your supposed to be the smart one."

The hardness in Stella's eye's spread to the rest of her face.

"I thought you would understand Sky, I thought you would want to avenge our mother. I guess I was wrong."

Stella didn't give sky a chance to argue back, just walked off towards the garage as well, leaving Sky behind, hurt look on his face. Stella wasn't really thinking about what she had just said to Sky, or what it might have done to him. She opened the door to the garage and went to ask Ratchet if he needed any help only to have her bad mood be replaced by confusion. Her Dad was nowhere to be found.

She glanced around and noticed flashing coming from underneath her dads covered fighter.

"What the..." She muttered lifting up the cover.

Ratchet was standing on the left wing of his carrier, welding the engine into its place. He didn't notice Stella coming down the stairs behind him. He finished his weld and lifted his mask, turning to jump down and get the next piece of armor. As he landed Stella spoke.

"Wow Dad, how long have you been working on this?"

Ratchet turned to face Stella, "A long time, what are you doing down here?"

Stella was looking around at the workshop "Was I not supposed to see this place, if so you might want to lock that trap door of yours next time."

"Heh, yea, anyway, I've been meaning to tell you guys for a while, it was only to be a secret while you guys were too young to be around while I was working. I guess I always forgot to show you."

"Got to say dad," Stella started walking around the ship "I'm kinda mad at you, you've been working on this for-"

"-Ten years."

"Ten, Years, and you never once asked for my help?"

Ratchet chuckled ruefully "Yea, I could have used it from time to time."

"I see how you balanced the weight of the fighters, and a eject ship of some kind, but I just dont see how those two engines will actually be able to lift this massive thing off the ground. Most Carriers this size would need at least five, plus the fighters engines themselves to even break orbit."

"Yea, normal engines would."

"Normal?"

"Custom designed, hand built, these bad boys will have no trouble powering this. Take look at the blueprints." Ratchet pointed to a table which Stella went over too, while she was busy Ratchet worked on getting the armor piece into position.

"Dad, this engine design is really unstable, If the inner mechanism gets damaged in anyway it'll blow up like a reactor."

"Yep, that's why I cast the entire thing out of Carbonx Alloy and this extra thick armor."

"Impressive, So, when will it fly?"

"Soon."

"This is what you meant when you said we were going to Earth right, using this thing to carve our way through."

"Yep."

"I got one last question."

"What's that?"

"Have you thought about any arms for this thing, I don't see anything obvious."

"Didn't plan on weapons when I built it, mainly a carrier frame."

"You know if you diverted power from the engines you could turn this thing into a heavy weapons platform."

"Yea, but what could I arm it with, all of our weapons don't even mark their shields."

Stella smiled and pointed to a computer "That has access to the house?"

"Of Course."

Stella walked over and called up a file "Your not the only one who's been working on something big." She said as a video started playing.

"Whats this?"

"I've been analyzing what video footage there was of the Marc1 attack."

Ratchet willed himself not to think to hard on that day. "Yea, found something?"

"It took me a while, but I finally realized where I had seen this type of weapon before."

"Wait, you've seen those beams before?"

"Yea, when I was looking into the past of laser technology for my own weapon designs, I didn't catch it because the technology was from before I was even born. In fact that last place this technology was seen was on the Phoenix."

"Wait..."

"What was odd was that I found a file associated with the weapon, but I couldn't access it, apparently it had been purged. I've been meaning to ask you about that one for a week or so now."

"I think..."

Stella plowed on, "The file was coded K4858FNC Any Ideas, things you might be keeping from us?"

"Yea, I get it, look that mission was classified, the only living people who knew about it were you mother, the president at the time, and myself."

"What was it?"

"Marc1, wasn't the first time we encountered the Terran's, your mother and I were the ones who lead the scouting mission to see if they should be pulled into the galactic community."

"Didn't go so well, huh."

"Nope, ended up destroying a shuttle that was left behind on the planet, and lost some Rangers as well."

"How did you destroy it?"

"Put a pair of missiles in it."

"Some of it could have survived then."

"Yea, but lasers weren't equipped on that one."

"Yep, but it was equipped with prototype engines, ones that could be used to power lasers."

"So if the humans already had some lasers, of any sort..."

"They could use the engines to power them."

"Yea, but how did they get so strong, not to mention those shields."

"They out simplified us."

"Simplified?"

"Their shields aren't designed like ours, they operate on the same frequency as the engines and as their lasers, which currently happen to be the same frequency as our lasers. So our weapons get nulled out. Our shields operate on a different level then our weapons, leaving them vulnerable to old laser technology, but since nobody uses old laser technology. The designs worked-"

"Until Slade sent Zen to attack us."

"No idea who Slade and Zen are, but yea."

"Damn, so if we retool our lasers to a counter frequency, our weapons will pass right through their shields."

"Exactly."

Ratchet put a hand on Stella's shoulder. "Go get your Brother, and Clank, We've got work to do, this is no longer a single person project."

Stella nodded and ran out of the garage.

Ratchet turned to face his ship, he nodded as he started to see how it could be changed, one thought put a smile on his face.

"Look out Slade, Look out Zen, I know your weakness, and I'm coming for you."

Were Approaching the end, Ratchet has set his sights on Earth, and nothing is stopping him.

Peace,

Emile.