Hello again! Chapter 4 is here! Well it's sorta obvious I guess. Enjoy it because you will most likely be reading it in 3... 2... 1...
The butterflies in my stomach were having a riot as I looked into Ratchets eyes for the next three minutes… The kiss we just shared was the second best thing to happen to me in the past three weeks, the first being actually finding him. I was still going through the recent memory of our kiss. The smells, the silence, the taste… Everything about it was wonderful. I felt like a kid asking their mum for another ride on the rollercoaster, but no. We had to get home. He needed to relax and get better. If his adventure was anything like the last one, it must've been big, not to mention tiring. My best guess is that he has saved another part of the galaxy from threat at the same time as finding Clank, but even knowing that we should be getting on our way, neither of us moved or broke eye contact. That was until…
"Ratchet, I - Oh. My apologies. Am I interrupting something?" Clanks voice broke the silence as he popped his head over the front seat and we both turned to look at him, jumping apart.
"Oh, hey Pal. We were just.."
"Catching up?" The robot finished for him and smirked at both of us.
"Yeah, you could call it that…" Ratchet spoke as he rubbed the back of his neck and I could swear that he was blushing under his golden coat of fur. I could also swear that Clanks smile got bigger as he nodded. How much did he know, I wonder?
"I register 84 hours and 42 minutes missing from my memory banks. Was I shut down?" He looked at Ratchet, who then looked at me.
"You know more than I do. Tell both of us. Two birds with one stone."
"Okay. Well, where to start…
After you two called, I waited three days for the two of you to come home, getting more and more worried as the two of you didn't show up and especially when you didn't answer my flurry of calls I sent you. So at midnight about 4 hours ago I thought I would come after you, having already tracked your route and call coordinates. When I got to this area, I saw a massive silver orb in the distance… When I got closer, I saw that the massive orb was where you guys should be. In the cockpit of Aphelion. I also noticed that there were a tonne of these silver tentacle like things that had sprouted from the ball and clung all over Aphelion. When I eventually got to your ship, I cut them off with your Shredder Claws that I took with me. When that was done, I pushed the ball away and found you two. Ratchet with a lazily equipped O2 mask on and Clank sprawled out on top of him with three holes on him from some of the tentacles. Then I proceeded to wake you up…"
"Well that sounds… Interesting… Wait. You said you found 3 holes in Clank, but when you cut the ones on my ship, the stumps were still there. Did something else happen?
"Oh yeah. At one point I was overwhelmed by the tentacles and they pulled me inside sphere. It was like an escape pod from the inside. Once I was in there, I just turned it off… After screaming at the dead cragmite I was sitting on"
"Dead Cragmite? What? Why did you leave that bit out?"
"I forgot… Sorta. But its fine. I overrode the controls and short circuited the system so that it can't happen again."
"Good, but that still doesn't explain why a dead cragmite was in a metallic tentacle spawning pod."
"Yeah, I know. Do you have any ideas, Clank?" I turned to our robotic friend who like us answered with uncertainty.
"Perhaps like Alister and yourself, this Cragmite was an outcast?" Clank suggested and left me thinking who the hell Alister was. But I decided not to ask when Ratchet blatantly shut down Clanks suggestion.
"This is different Clank. This was a Cragmite who was still going around killing everyone. Alister and I weren't doing that."
"I suppose you're right" the silver bot glanced at me for a second as he spoke. What was going on?
"Ratchet, is there something you're not telling me?" I asked him, keeping a sweet voice on to try and sooth him into talking about what has happened… Nevertheless, he still snapped at me.
"Remember what I said earlier, Tal? I don't want to talk about that right now."
"Oh c'mon, Ratchet. It's best to talk about these things. I can help you" I gave him a smile… It didn't work. But a loud beep followed by a booting sound filled up the ship broke the tension and the three of us turned towards the monitor on my ships dashboard. Was someone trying to contact us…?
'Hello.' the black screen flashed with white text.
'This is starship 3371 Alpha.'
It was Aphelion! She had finally booted! Ratchet almost jumped onto the front seat and began to search frantically for a keyboard. After me telling him to look a bit more to the left, he began to type frantically.
"Aphelion! It's Ratchet here. Are you alright?"
'My memory and hard drives are intact, but everything else seems to have suffered severe damage. I doubt I will be able to fly any time soon.'
"Don't worry. We can tow you home and I'll fix you up there :)"
"A smiley face?" I laughed at him which he responded with a light punch to my shoulder. The screen quickly blinked white again.
'Thank you, Ratchet.'
' :)'
"Aww! She sent one back to you!" I taunted him even further earning me a small shove back into the seat, and I could not help but laugh.
"Do you know anything about the attack? We found a big metal sphere had smashed through the windshield." Ratchet typed quickly, the green text emitting a faint light which made his green eyes stand out even more…
'Yes, I have detailed information on these sorts of Cragmite Ambushes'
"Great. Spill the beans"
'Cragmite Assassin Pods; silver spheres which are equipped with a Hex J 32 sisterboard, 360 terabyte hard drive, 16 terabyte X 13 ram and many other smaller technical features. The pods would ram themselves into unsuspecting enemies, knocking out the pilot and in some cases killing them. Up to 64 tentacle receivers are able to sprout from the pod and latch on to enemy ships, sending certain electric waves to continuously short circuit ships and robots to keep them shut down. Once captured, the ship would create a small atmosphere out of oxygen and cryosleep so that the hostage would not die if they survived the impact, but they would also not be a hassle as they would be sleeping. The pods pilot would then take them away for hours of interrogation and torture, usually leading to death. If attacked from the exterior, the tentacles could also engage in combat, pulling the attackers into a small cell inside the pod. If engaged in a space battle, the pod would use evasive maneuvers and a hyper drive to flee the scene. In their free time, the Pods would be stationed at a Supply Vessel which could hold up to 12 pods. The Pods normally would not stay too far away from the station as the Tentacles would use up the battery within 5 hours, unless latched onto a ship.
I was able to hack the Pod as it had no antivirus protection as well as being unpiloted. I have the Supply Vessels location and I have uploaded it to Talwyn's ship.'
It took me a couple of minutes to read all of the information. It was almost like it was taken of a Lombax holopedia page… Come to think of it, it probably was. I was just about to celebrate to the fact that I had Ratchet back, and we were going back home, but now it seems like…
"We should quickly go and check out that Cragmite Space Vessel."
Great Ratchet. Out of one death scenario and into another.
"Don't you think you should rest up a bit first? You're as thin as a stick, and you haven't had a shower in three days!"
"Heh, 5 actually. I was busy…"
"Ratchet, you're missing the point."
"No, I'm ignoring it. Don't you think it would be best if we took down this threat before it got big. Even if they are all dead, It still means we didn't just wait around for something to happen."
I thought about this for a bit, and in a sense he was right. If there are 23 living Cragmites in an old Vessel that is used for charging up metal balls of death. Give it a year and there will probably be some trouble. Plus I'm sure the Lombax would love to show of some of his new weapons.
"Fine. But I'm going with you. I'm not letting you out of my sight again."
"It'll be fine, Tal. We'll just stop there long enough to clean the place up and make sure nothing bad will try and take over the universe."
"Yeah, but what if we find ourselves a small army there?"
"I have a, certain, weapon for that. Just stop worrying, Tal. Everything will be fine."
'You think it's that easy to just ignore the fact that we might be heading straight into the middle of a space armada?' I thought, but I kept quiet. Lets just get this over and done with.
So, what did ya think? I'm always keen for reviews :3
Oh and there will me more action later in the story, not just another 21 chapters of mushiness ;)