It's late here, and I want to sleep. But it was all my fault since I could've started writing earlier as such, but yeah. Thats just what I do :P

Thanks for all the support from everyone reading this! Only 15 more days, and 5 more chapters left ;D

Oh and to zenith88 in regards to your review - I wouldn't miss that bit out! ;0 *Spoiler for the chapter*

Enjoy it all guys! :)

It was late in the morning when I woke up, the fresh sunlight brimming through the cracks in the curtains of our small room Talwyn and I were put in. Unlike last week though, sleeping back at the Garage, Talwyn was the early riser, watching me sleep. As I opened my eyes, I was greeted by her brilliant smile from her sky blue eyes as well as her pale lips. I was still feeling battered from the events of the night before, and even though I was awake, I could still feel my brain inside my head slowly booting up, like only the key components was online.

"Hey there, sleepyhead," Talwyn spoke softly, her voice better than any alarm clock ever invented. Just the silkiness of her words made my brain wake up just to comprehend them and reply, though as I mumbled I found out my tongue was still in a peaceful slumber, adamant not to wake up without force. Eventually I got past the undecipherable mumbling.

"Morning, Tal," I forced my face to smile, effectively waking it up enough for emotions. I wondered what Clank was like after rebooting, because I felt slightly robotic.

I followed suit as Talwyn shuffled backwards to rest on the head of the bed, like a big chair, and we sat there for a moment - Me waking up, and Talwyn just waiting.

"How long have you been up?" I asked the young Markazian though a stifled yawn. She took awhile to answer, like she was tired herself, but her voice came out distracted rather than tired.

"A couple of minutes actually, just been sitting here in my own thoughts." No wonder she sounded distracted then. But now I was curious as to what she was thinking about. It was likely to include me, and our plans for today - the big step to taking Varl down. I'm sure he'd have at least a triple life sentence after what he's done.

"Like…?" This time her reply was more focused, like she was now focused on the real world rather than wherever her mind was before.

"I was thinking about yesterday. I didn't want to bombard you with questions and the like because you looked shattered. And considering you had a 26 hour sleep I wasn't wrong."

"What? 26 hours?" Thats insane! I've never slept that much before in my life!

"Yup. You arrived back on Veldin at about 2:30 in the morning, then went to sleep at about 3. It's now 5 in the morning so 26 hours."

"No wonder I feel so refreshed… What about you? Did you sleep as long as I did?"

"No, I was up yesterday for maybe 5 hours, but I thought I'd join you when it was 6 and fell asleep again."

26 hours… Wow, talk about hibernation. Also, hunger. I don't feel it now, but I'm sure it'll pop up soon. The last thing I had was some popcorn while watching My Blaster Runs Hot. Gosh that felt like ages ago…

"You were mumbling in your sleep." her statement caught me off guard. It was out of the blue, but it struck me that thats what she may have been thinking about…

"You were had a fitful slumber when I woke up yesterday, talking about tidal waves and death courses. Acid and fire… But what called me off guard the most was how you screamed my name… Did something happen?"

Sleep-me had given it away, and I look away as to avoid answering. Just another painful memory I didn't want to remember. The authenticness of the situation was horrid and Varl was right… Hallucinatory drugs are advanced these days. Too advanced for my liking.

"Ratchet?" she snapped me back out of my daze after I didn't respond, but I knew I would have to now.

"It's not something I want to remember, but…"
"I died, didn't I?" I could only nod as I pushed the horrible thought away. It did not strike tears in me anymore, only an uneasy feeling and a sense of dread to go with it, but she pulled me into a hug nevertheless.

"I can see why it's something you don't want to remember. But I am still alive, don't worry, there's still plenty of fight here." I smiled in her shoulder, as I knew she was still very much alive. I was smiling in her shoulder after all.

After that, and a little more idle chatter and speculation about today, she told me to hit the showers as she changed the bedsheets because I apparently 'Stunk worse than a hyper-tailed beaver from torren V after its 4 year hibernation period.' And smelling myself, I agreed to that fact. So I hit the showers and scrubbed from head to toe, leaving no trace of dirty fur - even if it wouldn't last the day since we had another mission planned. Nevertheless I smelt like a cluster of different berries when I stepped out of the bathroom and my fur was as golden as ever, which got me a sly grin from the woman in our now clean bed.

Whilst Talwyn was having her own shower, I took it upon myself to explore the building and find Clank… Or the cafeteria, whichever came first. But as it turned out I found Clank at the cafe, talking to the chef about todays morning meal. But when he saw me, he instantly turned round to say hello and the chef took this as a notion to start cooking.

"Hello, Ratchet," Clank smiled as I approached and joined him at the bar. He looked happy to see that I was well, and I was happy to see him well. If anything happened to Clank… Lets just say the person responsible wouldn't live that long.

"Hey, Pal, how're you doing?"

"I am fine, thank you. Just sorting through everything for todays plan. We managed to bribe elected officials of the Frey for the ships structural plan. The ship itself can take almost any blow to the exterior… But the interior is sparsely defended. One blow to a vital motor will cause a chain reaction through the ship and it's life will end with a boom." The small robot giggle, his eyes animate as well as his hand gestures and I couldn't help but smirk at him.

"Sounds great, Clank. I'm glad its all sorted out, but I must ask. When is breakfast going to be served? I'm starving!"

"Soon. Vince is cooking up some pancakes and bacon, but it will not be ready till 7, so you have yet another hour to wait." I groaned at the idea of needing to wait so long.

Clank then asked me for some detail about yesterdays events after I was rendered unconscious by the drug filled dart. I told him about the cruel hallucinatory torture Varl put me through, and the escape which was literally the only two things I knew about. Not too much of a story to tell, but the time I spent there still felt like forever.

Talwyn came into view just as I finished telling Clank about stealing the old Cargo ship, and the looks on the faces of those two postmen. With three of us there, and I complaining loudly, Vince finally gave in and decided to give us an early cut of the bacon and pancakes. It was heaven in my mouth as I mixed the maple syrup with the pancakes and stuffed strips of bacon into my mouth almost simultaneously. Almost.

As the hours passed, so did any sign of leisure as the battle came nearer and nearer towards our time zone. We we're going to leave the planet at 3:30 to execute that plan… and the ship itself. Hopefully - Just hopefully - Varl wouldn't have planned for this sort of attack and we would have the upper hand, plus no more Varl if we were lucky.

If we weren't lucky, the whole situation would get a whole lot harder and I prayed to the cosmos that there wouldn't be a mass armada waiting for us. I'd seen too many of those in my lifetime.

As the final hours of the day before the mission passed, I found myself equipping some old armour Tal and I had found on a quick trip back to the garage. The Aegis Mark V armor represented a great breakthrough in armour technology a couple years back - and for the price of only 250,000 bolts, who wouldn't buy it. The green armour boasted a nice 66% damage protection rate, unbeatable for an armour of its price. Though more recently, stronger enemies have shortened the percentage down to a lower 44% damage protection rate, which was still decent, not to mention better than nothing.

As for weapons I was going to be packing the Arbiter. My v10 rocket launcher from my dreadzone days. And to accompany it, I was using my heavy lancer which I got from megacorp - Free - and I was even bringing my old Tesla Claw. I almost count wait to use that thing.

After a gruelling 8 and a half hours of the day had passed, it was finally time to load onto the dropship. Talwyn, Clank and I were accompanied by 6 Galactic Rangers that had 'Volunteered' to help us. And though they were programmed to act cowardly, I knew I could count on them in a fight, as annoying as they could be.

It was a rough ride exiting the atmosphere of veldin as the dropship used all its power to get out into space. From there on it was just simple space travel, but the minutes stretched on for what seemed like hours and the anticipation of battle was irritating, I wished it would just happen and get itself over and done with rather than making us wait a bit.

"How do you think it's all going to go?" Talwyn tried to started up a conversation. A simple question, but there was an infinite number of replies I could've chosen, though I decided to stick with a happier response.

"Theres going to be some battle at some point for sure. And I'm also sure we will be running for our lives at some point, but it'll end well." I hoped. But my smile did its work in hiding my small piece of fear for Talwyn. If anyone so much as touched her, they wouldn't live to tell the tale. I did not want my drugged up dream to end up being a fortune teller. I wouldn't let it be.

"We are 5 minutes away from the planets atmosphere. Prepare for cloaking in 3… 2… 1…" The computer spoke to the group as it did what computers do best - count stuff, with IRIS being the exception to that group. And now if you looked at us from outside the ship… Well, you couldn;t. We wouldn't be there, thats how good the phoenixs technology was. Top of the line government stuff.

And now it was the moment we had been waiting for all day. Since I woke up from my mini-hibernation, this was it. The dropship - still invisible - had pulled up against the Freys' Warship. And the dropships door opened to show us a window of opportunity, literally.

"You ready?" Talwyn asked me with a grin as I struck a pose with my wrench. And we all knew what my next two words would be before I smashed the window open with my wrench.

"Hell yeah!"

Boop. Done. Yes. I can sleep!