Chapter 1
The fall of the Emperor and his lesser copart had resulted in swift, yet relieving change in the collective galaxy. Rid of their oppressor, the torn and battered worlds had begun to lift their heads, fearful that their collective victory had been a fluke, much less a false ploy to lure them onto the chopping block.
When no executioner's blade had come falling, the celebrations erupted, loud, boisterous, and tired. A great weight had been lifted, and the small flicker of hope that had forever been on the horizon was now shining bright, blinding in radiance.
In the midst of this, Ratchet and Clank, Rivet and Kit, had been lauded, commended and recognised for their efforts. Regarded as heroes and saviours, they were awarded the honour of spearheading the recovery of a shattered empire, to further the peace they had fought so hard for.
However, the four found their new positions had become tenous, barely a moment to relax, always ten more things to do, ten more worlds asking for help, ten more days and nights of effort.
Rivet and Kit had been extremely grateful for Ratchet and his counterpart, providing guidance in manoeuvring a post-victory setting and helping prioritise where they could actually help, and where they could point those who they could not. Unlike her, it had not been their first world-saving victory, and the both of them were familiar with the tides of requests that often followed their triumphs.
Hundreds of video calls, requests for aid, pleading for weapons to mop up remnant forces, Rivet found it more than overwhelming, it was as if she had never led the resistance to victory, their fight still ongoing.
Clank deemed himself a grand administrator to these tasks, and took the challenge on with no more than a crack of the robo-knuckles. He knew Ratchet and Rivet worked much better with their hands and wrenches than they did with their words, and let them do the heavy lifting they so much more enjoyed. Kit followed closely by his side, her time with the archives providing adequate skills in organisation that he would have simply been overwhelmed with.
The pairs split often to tend to their own tasks, each employing their specialties as best as they could, where they could. The Lombaxes shared many skills, and often found themselves working together more often than not.
Seraakis was dry, hot, and dusty. It was an unappetizing world to Rivet, much preferring her own upbringing in Sargasso. At least there she didn't have to worry about shaking sand and dust out of her fur every time the wind gusted.
The dual suns had been high in the sky when her and Ratchet had touched down on the surface of the planet, finally locating the nefarious production facility that had been activated after the fall of the emperor.
The colonists and miners on the world had been one of the first to signal for help after their liberation, and the facility spewing forth fresh troopers and machines had compounded the urgency of the call.
The task-force, led by the Captain himself, had fought eagerly to prove themselves to the colonists, and had kept the emerging forces at bay long enough for the Lombaxes to make their way to the planet for the final assault on the facility.
Everything had gone to plan initially, a brutal infiltration into the surface components of the facility, followed by a shut-down of the base's force fields and a resulting orbital bombardment by the taskforce frigate to ruin the majority of the production facility.
However, Rivet had barely had a moment to warn the ship in orbit of the half-dozen Seekerpedes that tore from the dunes surrounding the base, immediately thrusting up into orbit to pursue their shipborne offender.
She stood idly in the mangled ruins of the facility, blaster at her side as she gazed up at the sky, watching a tense fight ensue between the frigate and its aggressors. The dual suns of Seraakis had begun to set, and with the evening quickly approaching, the explosions and laser-fire high above her had become more pronounced, easier to see with her own eyes.
Ratchet had decided there was nothing he could do for the taskforce in orbit and put himself to work, exploring further into the facility for a remote deactivation terminal, something they had begun to prioritise on these kinds of missions.
Rivet gasped as a large nova expanded outwards, encompassing the stars and the speck of light she assumed was the frigate. It had been fighting hard, agile as it was, against the seekerpedes. However, it was an imbalanced duel, and for every machine destroyed, the frigate itself lost more and more systems.
She listened to the communications chatter intently, admiring the bravado that Captain Qwark employed as he was pushed to the wall, but all the more frightened as the systems reports worsened.
Another ten minutes and the sky grew quiet. Communications slowed, turning to post-battle reports and casualty readouts. Thanks to his expertise, Quark had kept his losses minimal, but the damage to the frigate was irrecoverable and had scuttled their transport bay.
Her comms unit squelched as an urgent direct-line was made to the ship, putting her in contact with the bridge.
"This is the Captain, calling Ratchet and Rivet."
The blue Lombax tugged at her scarf, pulling it from her nose and pressed a finger to the communicator near her ear.
"This is Rivet. I'm glad to hear you guys made it in one piece. That looked like a bloody fight."
A nervous laugh came through on the other end.
"Nothing my crew and I couldn't handle, but it's taken its toll. We're dead in the wate-er, I mean, space. Repairs will take hours, even a day to get mobility and life support back online."
Rivet bit her lip, looking down at the sand that had begun to gather around her boots where she stood.
She looked back up at the sky, flicking a ringed ear.
"Is there anything we can do for you down here? Maybe we can get some of the miner tugs to help out, there's bound to be plenty of mechanics on a resource world like this."
The Captain gave a sigh, a weary one she was not used to hearing from him.
"Those estimates included local support. We've got it covered, it'll just take time. There are more pressing matters at hand however."
"What can we do Cap?" Ratchet came through on the comms this time, mild blaster fire bleeding through his microphone. He was calm, in the middle of a fight, and still talking like they were working on a jukebox in his garage.
"Ratchet, good to hear from you! I don't really know how to, uh, explain this… We've detected more seekerpede signatures on the surface."
Rivet cut a gasp short, instantly scanning the horizon for further plumes of dust, part of her ready to warn them, the other hoping to the ends of the earth that she wouldn't have to. She began to walk further into the facility. She would do no good staring helplessly at the sky.
"That's not good." Ratchet responded promptly, the gunfire in the background of his microphone having died down.
"No. It's… It's out of my hands here. I need you to find the remote terminal, put them down before they can come after us again." The captain admitted, a tone of defeat threatening to pierce his usual boisterousness.
Rivet jumped over a mangle of steel beams, locking Ratchet's position on her headsup display. She put a hand to her ear one more time.
"We'll get it done Cap, you can count on us."
The remaining resistance at the facility had been minor, the occasional machine or laser trooper crawling from the wreckage to impede her progress. The Lombax dispatched of the stragglers easily, following the trail of blasterfire and wilting flames that Ratchet had left in his path.
He had made good pace in his search and had found the terminal room not too long after the Captain had made his call, but refrained from trying to access anything lest he start an ambush.
She ducked under a fallen beam, orange flames licking against the charred metal and infrastructure of the once active facility. Destroyed robots littered the torn hangar as she approached, marks of carnage and battle were obvious and scattered everywhere she could see.
Ahead, she spotted a familiar frame, a small silhouette next to a large archway that led into a glowing hall.
"Ratchet!" She called, lifting her steps and making a beeline towards him. The orange ears of the Lombax perked up at his name and he turned his head towards her, pausing his rummaging of a shattered crate.
"Hey Riv, glad to see you made it." He chirped.
Rivet stalled her response. He had said that line to her dozens of times, in dozens of places, but this time? He had sounded different, exhausted. More so than they usually were at the end of a mission.
She lowered her brow, spreading her ears back as she got closer, inspecting the damage. Ratchet held the same smile he always had, small, soft, but the carnage surrounding them had not been limited to just their foes. A gash had clipped the top of his left brow, soaking his fur in an amber she was all too familiar with.
"Ratchet! You're bleeding!" She yipped worriedly, speeding up her final few steps to him. He blinked, and looked up, as if he could spot the wound above his eye.
"Aw it's just a small cut Riv. Nothing some electrical tape can't fix." He grinned at her.
She could see it now. Deep bags under his eyes. A tired smile. Strong shoulders, slumping under the onslaught of weight he had been carrying.
His face quietened to reflect her frown, he had gotten to know her well enough that his facade was beginning to crumble. She removed the glove from her hand and reached out, laying a soft palm against his forehead and gently stroking the cut with her thumb. The wound was deep, a gash that had scraped against his skull. It had mostly coagulated and dried up the flow, but a smear of red on his fur had creased down the side of his face.
She looked down at his armour, battered, burnt and scratched to oblivion. She hadn't noticed it clearly, but shrapnel had pocked some of the thinner portions of his attire.
"Ratchet…" She started.
He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning into her hand gently, putting some of his weight behind it, almost as if she was keeping him standing. He relished the texture of her soft hand, wishing they could stay like this for a bit longer.
He opened his eyes, pupils sharpening, and stepped back, turning his gaze back down to his weapon atop the shattered crate.
"We're almost there, Rivet. Command centre is just across the bridge, just need to run glitch and press some buttons…" He loaded more ammunition into his cannon, topping it up as best as he could. "And maybe, just maybe… go on vacation for a week after this."
He locked the weapon and hefted it up to his waist, running the load cycle and letting the barrels twirl. A small grin, HIS grin, painted his mouth as he looked at her again.
Rivet still held her frown, looking him over. His cheeks had begun to hollow ever so slightly, his fur, signed, bloodied and clumped. He looked horrible, she realised.
"Ratchet-" she started again, he lifted an arm and grabbed her hand, leading her under the archway to the glowing room.
"We're almost there, Riv. One last push. I'm gonna get you to the finish line."
He nodded forward, and hefted his weapon up, checking the corner.
Rivet stowed whatever she was going to say and put her glove back on, unholstering her blaster for combat.
She followed his steps quietly, watching as his ears flicked every which way, listening for more machines, sniffing for an ambush. Sometimes he would stop, the fur on his neck standing on end, his head and eyes darting every which way to verify his subconscious concern. His tired eyes would alway come to rest on her for a moment, and she would always return his smile. She wished she could see more of that smile, maybe while they weren't slinking around ruined bases, holding guns, ready to shoot all the time.
The two exited the archway and came upon a bridge, massive in scale, it ran nearly a hundred metres across towards a tower sitting in the centre of an overly large hall. The space was awash in a sickly yellow and orange glow, harsh smells of burning coolant permeated their sensitive noses, washing out whatever smell that had before.
Ratched gazed across the expanse, the run to the control room would take less than a minute, but the bridge was bare, save for the occasional stack of crates and haphazard barrels. He peaked over the edge of the platform, watching a roiling ocean of boiling coolant slosh around violently below them.
This was the heart of the facility no doubt, the tower across the way resembled the many that he had come across before. He paused at the start of the bridge and turned to Rivet behind him.
"There it is. That's the off button." He pointed across the way. "The sprint across looks clear, but don't dilly dally." He poked.
Rivet had already prepared a snappy retort, but the exhaustion on his face gave her pause. She didn't feel like poking him, getting into quips and the like that they usually did. They hadn't for a while.
Rivet holstered her weapon and closed the distance between the two of them. Ratchet gave a confused look as she approached and grabbed him by the biceps, holding him steady.
He had begun to speak, but the blue Lombax gave him a curt "Shush".
They looked at eachother, for what felt like ages.
"Why are you doing this?" She asked, staring at him closely, almost as if she was trying to see under his fur.
Ratchet looked to the side, and back to her, his ears tilting.
"Becausssse… it's the right thing to do?" He answered meekly, straight out of the textbook.
Rivet creased her brow in annoyance.
"No you goof! I mean this- You! Here! Now! You look tired, Ratchet, the most tired I've ever seen. Just as bad as when I got you in and out of prison."
Ratchet let a low breath hiss from his lips, his shoulders sagging slightly more than they already had been. He looked up at her eyes, studying her expression.
"I am tired, Riv. Most tired I've ever been in my life, if i'm being honest."
He let out another sigh and shrugged out of the hold that Rivet had put him in. She loosened her grip, but her hands stayed on the fabric of his shoulders.
"To be honest, I don't really know. Maybe it's because everyone needs help, or there's always more to do, to fight. I keep thinking if I just push a little harder, go a little faster, we'll get to the end. Kick our feet up and sip on some lemonade." He chuckled, the thrum in his chest transferred to her hands.
" I wanna get there too hotshot, I really do. But not if it means watching you throw yourself into the fire every time."
Ratchet winced, looking down at some of the scorch marks on his armour.
"You got a point there," He admitted with a sheepish grin.
"Cmon, I'll really tell you why I'm doing it after we put this place down for good. Promise."
He slid out of her grasp, reaching a hand up to squeeze hers, fast enough that she could barely reciprocate the gesture. He hoisted his cannon up and made way to the start of the bridge, giving her a glance to follow.
Rivet was annoyed, but stuffed the argument back down into her stomach. She was going to wring some answers out of him for sure, whether he liked it or not.
The bridge had turned out to be a lot longer than they both realised. The patter of their boots echoed soundlessy across the hall, often drowned out by the boiling chasm below them.
Ratchet kept his eyes scanning the walls and path ahead, but their talk had put some spring back into his posture, his ears perking up a bit more than they had before.
"You know a good vacation spot? Velden. You'd like it! Hot, barren, devoid of people." he chuckled, dodging a broken crate on the ground. Rivet jumped the obstacle and continued, barely out of reach of his swishing tail.
"Why Velden?" She asked, confused by his sudden remark. "It's an airless hunk of rock, barely worth mining on."
Ratchet barely gave pause, directing a frown at her.
"Maybe yours is, mine's nice. Home sweet home, a cold oasis, and a well stocked garage. The occasional bazaar too. We can use the dimensionator to get there."
Rivet came to a halt, staring at the back of his ears.
Ratchet carefully paced forward a few more steps and slowed down, realising he wasn't being followed anymore.
"What?" he asked innocently, turning his head to her.
Fury was painted across Rivet's face as she stomped towards him, watching as he shrinked ever so slightly at her approach.
"You told me the dimensionator was broken! That clank was repairing it!" She stuck a metal finger into his chest, garnering a wince from the slightly smaller Lombax.
Ratchet lifted a hand in surrender, smiling nervously.
"He is!... Was. He did repair it." He confessed, ears flattening ever so slightly.
Rivet poked harder with her steel digit, getting another wince from him.
"When!?"
Ratchet looked side to side, finding no other allies or means of escape on the bridge. Only a very angry, blue Lombax. Sometimes he found her anger cute, when it was over trivial things. He couldn't figure out what kind of anger this was, and decided he didn't want to find out the hard way.
"Uhh… About three and half months ago."
Rivet crossed the wires in her brain, keeping her finger on his chest as she did the math, gave an incredulous gasp, then redid the math.
"...Three and a half…" Her pointed finger retracted and instead cuffed the collar of his shirt.
"Ratchet, we brought down the Emperor four months ago! Are you telling me Clank had it fixed two weeks later and you just decided to stick around instead of going home?!"
She regretted saying it.
A hurt look spread across his face, his ears drooping deeply, the weight of his collar in her grasp deepening.
"Did you… Did you not want me here anymore?"
Rivet bit her tongue, her own expression of anger melting instantly. She loosened her grip on him, ashamed.
"No! Never! Of course I don't want you gone dummy! You're the best thing that's ever happened to this universe! To me-"
She cut her speech short, a rash of crimson on her cheeks turning her once blue fur a vibrant pink.
Ratchet gave her his signature smile, genuine, lacking the exhaustion he had carried before. The expression was short lasting as Rivet pushed on her line of questioning.
"But still, you've been out every day, always on a mission, always having ME tag along and meet you somewhere in progress. You haven't taken a break since you got here, what gives Ratchet?"
The orange Lombax was beginning to realise he had been backed into a corner, his escape routes were starting to vanish and he didn't make for a good liar, according to Clank.
"I uhh… I do it because I care Riv. I care a lot. Everytime I take a seat, I'm always reminded of what I could be doing, what needs to be done. I see you out there, fighting your whole life, and I feel like helping. I have to."
They held a stare for what felt like ages, studying each other, ears occasionally flicking, chests rising and falling. Rivet felt the knot in her gut loosen, then tighten, then loosen again. She had butterflies, and the idiot in front of her was stirring them up with a big, broken net.
It had taken a moment, but the instinct was true, even with all the chemicals and smoke, something smelled. It was him. It wasn't rancid or sour, but it was him. Something about him.
"Your pheromones are leaking." Rivet thought, realising the source of her swirling emotions. She'd caught a whiff of it on occasion, and it had driven her up the wall and across the ceiling. He was usually careful about it, hiding it whenever he could, usually under a layer of armour. But when they got to talking, really talking… It would begin to seep out, just a hint. And it made her go nuts.
She let out a huff of air as she let go of his collar, worried that peeling open his shirt any further would let the noxious fumes out even more.
"You big, orange goof. Why can't you ever just go with the simple ans-"
It hadn't been a loud sound, but to the Lombax ears, it ringed out across the hall.
The two cut their conversation short and bolted for the end of the bridge, eyes glancing wildly, ears pointed every which way and that.
They were about to be intruded upon.
Ratchet reached the archway to the control room first and spun around, putting his shoulder into the nook of the wall and bracing his weapon. Rivet followed closely, ducking under his line of fire and beelining towards the rack of screens and keyboards at the centre of the console. When she turned to look at him, he had already sent Glitch flying into the air towards her.
She snatched the chip and immediately got to work, typing away at the board and letting the small bot get on its way. Ratchet peered out further, then glanced to his side, spotting a small security panel, a row of words blinked up at him.
FORCEFIELD: OFFLINE
He pulled his gaze from the panel and listened as hard as he looked, the barrels of his cannon pointed across the bridge. The hot air continued to roil, the bubbling coolant below them lapping at the walls, sending surreal echoes throughout the spacious hall.
Something didn't belong.
It was quiet at first, light droning, tips and taps.
Ratchet tuned out the frantic tapping and light cursing Rivet applied to the terminal, the occasional spark of electricity resulting from Glitch's work, his own heartbeat.
He had already spun up the barrels of his cannon when the nefarious troopers rounded the archway at the opposite end of the bridge. The Blackhole Vortex hummed in his hands as it spat forth a searing volley of bolts, slamming into the front line of machines as they worked their way towards the control centre. The firepower was overwhelming, satisfying even, but sooner or later he had to give pause and vent heat off the weapon. The return fire was equally kind but heavily diminished.
Rivet hissed as a stray bolt zinged past her ear and flickered through the holographic terminal, she turned for a moment and let loose a burp of rounds from her blaster. The shots hit home in the scattering wave of machines and dropped a few of them. Ratchet mopped the rest up.
"How's your end going?" he asked, pulling a spare rack of munitions from his belt and slotting it into the cannon with practised ease. Rivet barely gave him a glance, focusing intently on the screens in front of her.
"Computers… Have never really been my strong suit. I wish Bolts or Kit were here, they'd peel through this in a snap!" she hissed. The Lombax was hot on Glitch's tail, every encryption broken, she moved a step closer, but the programs kept getting more and more complex.
"This fraggin computer! It wasn't built for furry hands!" she fumed, thumbing a key and repeatedly tapping through a dozen was about to let out another roar of frustration when a new screen popped up. She skimmed it and plastered a smile on her face.
One button press later and she jumped with dizziness.
"Seekerpedes are offline!"
She spun around, expecting an equally giddy reaction from Ratchet.
Instead, she found a husk of a Lombax, eyes wide, ears slick back. He was panting, the gash on his head pumped fresh blood down his face and a few new nicks had formed on his armour.
He tore his gaze from the bridge, meeting her concerned eyes. Another meek smile, something he had been giving a lot.
"Hey Riv?" He started, ears beginning to twitch. The other side of the bridge was beginning to ramp up with activity again.
"What did turning off the Seekerpedes do to the rest of the facility?"
Rivet was torn between asking about his health, what he meant by that question, and why the other side of the bridge was getting louder. Instead her comms unit beeped, and Captain Qwark's voice came through once more.
"Ratchet? Rivet? You've done it! Those signatures went offline as soon as you ran the commands… but, we're still seeing readings of activity down there, converging on your position. Please tell me you have an escape plan?" he pleaded.
Rivet looked down at the terminal, reading the screen. Half of it was blinking green, and the other flashing a deep red. Word's she wished she hadn't read were popping up, and she knew that everything was about to get really, really bad.
"We'll make one Cap." Ratchet boasted, wiping a bloody wrist across his eye. He checked his ammo counter and looked across to Rivet.
"How bad is it?" he asked quietly, recognizing her horrified expression.
Rivet didn't speak for a while. The number was staggering, almost as if the earlier orbital bombardment hadn't even put a dent in the numbers the facility housed.
"Bad." Was all she could say. She wanted to say more, to tell him how much was coming their way, but the numbers kept going up.
"Is there anything we can do from here?" He asked, risking another glance across the bridge. He didn't want to look again.
Rivet bit her lip, one of her canines threatening to draw blood. She was about to give him the bad news, when one of the screens cleared. She glanced at it, a chain of ideas forming in her head. Her fingers followed a second later, tapping away commands.
"What do you got?" Ratchet asked, almost giving her a jump. He had approached her side, looking at a screen he could barely understand. He watched her hands work instead, pressing, tapping and flicking across the interface.
"Something, something that might just work. We CAN initiate a remote killswitch from here, it's just a complicated process. However, I think I've got i-"
A new window popped up, one with words and commands simple enough for even Ratchet to understand.
/REMOTE SYS DEACT/
/MANDATORY LOCKDOWN REQUIRED/
/60:00/
/[Y/N]?/
Rivet's ears fell as she read the prompt. The solution was right in front of them, but it was an hour away. So close. So far.
"Cap, can we get any backup to our location? Now's the time we could really use it." Ratchet asked, tilting his head into his shoulder.
"We're mobilising what we can Ratchet, as fast as we can. Our transport bays have been scuttled, I've ordered all remaining fighters to regroup and commandeer what transport they can find. I'm… Sorry, that's the best I can do."
Ratchet swallowed a very dry played around with the thought of asking for an orbital strike, but shelved it as his eyes focused on Rivet.
"We'll hold out then. As long as we can."
The comms went silent, Rivet turning to meet his gaze.
"Godspeed, Lombax. We're on our way."
The two held each other in their eyes, hundreds of thoughts streaming between them.
Rivet wondered how they were going to get out of this one, if they were going to get out of this one.
Ratchet thought she smelled good. Really, really good.
He kept his gaze on her big round eyes and small tuft of hair, noticing how her dusty scarf clung to the sweat on her neck. He reached a hand out and pressed on the ENTER key on the terminal. Alarms began to howl, and the countdown started.
It had only been twenty minutes of fighting and Rivet was out of ammo. Her guns were spent, arsenal depleted. The horde of metal and machines was unending, but they came in waves, the stragglers always retreating to patch their wounds and regroup to join the next horde.
Both of them were panting heavily, out of breath from dodging, swinging and shooting. She looked over at Ratchet, spotting more and more heat welts and gashes on his frame. He was beat up, bad.
"I don't know how much longer we can last, hotshot." She gasped out, checking another one of her empty weapons and discarding it. It clanked off the metal plating under her boots. She reached for another from her back and found the solid grip of her hammer instead, the only thing she had left.
"We'll make it." Ratchet gasped back, loading his worn blaster and unsheathing his glistening Omniwrench from his back.
"I promise." He grinned at her, a smile she's seen a hundred times now. She felt her hope flare from just that.
A mountain of torn and melted scrap had begun to pile at the entrance of the control centre, impressive in the least, but knowing that they still had hundreds of more machines to face… it quickly became another part of the scenery.
Ratchet blew an exhausted lungful of air and stepped forward, peeking out from the bulkhead across the bridge. It was empty, save for the odd dying robot sparking out the last seconds of its life.
But he could hear them. More, many more, coming for the next push.
The hero looked down at his tools, his weapons. He had done his best to conserve what he could, but he knew well that there wasn't nearly enough ammo in his arsenal to shoot his way out.
He turned his attention to Rivet, watching as she fiddled with a kink in her robotic arm. It had served her well, but the wear and tear of their fight was taking its toll, and the machinery was beginning to fail. He glanced at the terminal screen, watching the countdown tick another second, too slow, much too slow for his taste. It was almost taunting to have it hang above them like that, like a cruel challenge to see which one of them could outlast the other.
Ratchet kept his eyes on the female Lombax, watching her work. Beads of blood and sweat littered her once blue fur, now grimy and dusty, singed in some places and scraped in others.
He wished they weren't here.
At the least, he wished she wasn't here, wasn't in this overwhelming danger he had been downplaying. It was bad, worse than he would admit, because he wanted to give her hope. Something to cling on to.
He had to be strong.
Not for the universe, but for her.
Rivet smacked one more bolt on her prosthetic and gave it a flex, unhappy with the diminished results. It would get the job done, it had to.
Ratchet was standing just outside the centre entrance, at the foot of the ruined bridge. He was gazing across, ears listening to the whirrs, clangs and grinding of fresh machinery ever so slowly making their way towards them.
The sounds were familiar, something she had faced dozens of times before, but now? She was scared.
She was about to cross the threshold to the bridge when Ratchet's hand shot out, poking at a panel on the side of the doorway. A dense wall of energy erupted from the floor and ceiling, forming a heavy forcefield. The event was sudden enough to knock Rivet back onto her tail, stunned and confused.
"Ratchet! What the hell are you doing?!" She yelled at him, scrambling up from the deck plates and banging her steel fist against the barrier. It dappled harmlessly under her blows.
The orange Lombax watched the opposite end of the bridge a moment longer, then turned to her.
"Turn this fucking thing off and let me out!" She screamed, banging against the forcefield again. He took a step closer to the barrier, eyes locked on her. He lifted his blaster and sunk a burst of rounds into the panel, destroying it completely.
Rivet's jaw dropped.
His face was a mix of emotions. Tired. Angry. Disappointed. Relieved. Happy.
"Have you gone insane you idiot!?" She screamed, pounding fruitlessly. "You're going to get yourself killed out there!"
The words gave him pause. He looked down at his hands, turning his beaten weapons over, before continuing forward to the barrier. They were nose to nose now, separated only by a few inches of pure, impenetrable energy.
He never took his eyes off her, her face contorted in rage, in confusion and fear.
"You're gonna be ok." He whispered, unsure if he was really saying it to her or himself.
Rivet pressed herself against the wall, pushing as hard as she could, hoping she could break through. He had gone insane, she thought. Maybe it was the bloodloss, or the exhaustion, or just the stress of it all. This wasn't normal.
"Ratchet…?" She finally whispered, unsure of him. Unsure of herself.
His eyes were fixed to hers. Not a hint of malice or pain laid in them. Instead, his eyes were curious and admiring, filled with wonder.
He looked her over once more, and brought up a hand. The glove that once covered it was mere scraps now, torn and burnt, soaked in blood. He placed it against the barrier, overlapping where she pressed hers.
"You asked me why." He started, his eyes softly wandering across her features, taking in every detail of her.
"Why I'm still here, why I do it?"
Rivet had nothing to say. Nothing she could say or do, she felt powerless. He had put her in the safest box in the world, all by herself.
The clunking and scraping of the enemy machines was beginning to get louder, even through the forcefield. They were already on the bridge, crawling and stomping over the ruined corpses of their cohort.
Ratchet pushed himself from the barrier, fighting hard not to look at the onslaught barreling towards him, keeping just the tips of his bloody fingers against the wall.
"I do it out of love, Rivet. I do it for you."
Rivet crumpled at the words, sinking to her knees, holding her head against the field and watching as he began to turn. The Lombax released his fingers from the wall and reached up, pulling the beaten leather cap from his head. He let it drop to the ground, flicking his ears as he did so, senses beginning to tune.
Ratchet felt his heart beginning to pulse, his muscles pumping. His pupils were as wide as they could be, and his fur was on end. He bared his fangs and clenched his weapons, his claws beginning to erupt from the points of his fingers.
He was tired of playing defence, tired of hiding, protecting. He would stop them, on his own terms.
For her.
For Rivet.
She screamed.
All she could do was watch, slamming her fists against the barrier.
Dread welled up like a caustic bile in her throat as she watched the orange Lombax leap into the fight, enshrouded by the tendrils and plates of robots and war machines.
It was violent, incredibly so. He was a blur, a lethal speck among the towering troopers who swarmed him. Every manner of weapon was fired, deployed, emptied and discarded. After a while, the only thing left was the wrench.
Rivet had closed her eyes, holding her head against the barrier. The injuries were piling up, and she couldn't bear to watch. He had begun to yell and roar on his own, purporting a battle frenzy she had never witnessed before.
She was terrified.
She didn't want to watch him die.
She hadn't noticed the silence, only realising how quiet things had gotten when the barrier finally deactivated. She looked behind herself, up at the terminal. A set of zeroes were blinking back, the deactivation had completed.
She bolted from her spot ambling over the wreckage and hot shells that littered the destroyed bridge. Slag and shorn metal was everywhere, machine oil mixed with blood. It was pure chaos.
"Ratchet!" She yelled hoarsely, her voice had not survived her earlier protests.
Everything was unfamiliar. Things were quiet, in a way she hadn't felt for a long time.
She screamed out his name again, stumbling over a hunk of plating that had fused to the floor.
Tears began to well in the corners of her eyes, dampening her fur.
She continued forward, scanning every pile of wreckage, smelling every streak of blood.
She heard it then, her ears swivelling near the edge of the platform.
A heartbeat. Faint. Dying.
Rivet pushed towards the sound, finding a crumpled heap of plating. She plied at it, grunting as it took all of her strength to lift and toss off the bridge.
The wind left her lungs as she looked down.
"Oh no…"
He was almost unrecognisable.
Every inch of his body was covered in either burns, cuts, gouges, or bruises. There was blood everywhere. One of his eyes was melded shut and bruised horribly. His opposite ear had been sliced long, splitting it.
She couldn't tell what was broken. The bile in her stomach returned, threatening to erupt from her throat. She fought it down, doing her best to analyse, and figure out what she could do.
"Ratchet? Ratchet, can you hear me?" She asked, wondering if she was already talking to a dead friend. She leant down, tearing whatever fabric she could from her own garments, struggling to form bandages and knots with the material.
Raspy, bloody breathing was the only response she could hear.
Her fingers began to cramp and malfunction as she panicked, dropping what rags she had torn. The tears were flowing hard now, soaking her face, dripping off her chin as she cried.
A bloody cough pierced the air, his chest heaved, punctured in too many places, the armour all but dissolved. His hand twitched, bloodied and broken fingers reaching out.
She pushed the battered limb back to his chest and dropped to her knees, scooping up his head and holding him as tight as she could. Her cries were deep now, uncontrollable sobs that wracked her whole frame.
He could feel her heartbeat. At least he thought he could. He wasn't sure what he could feel.
"...I told you Riv-"
"Shhh!" she snapped, wracked by another sob. "Help's almost here, just stay alive. Please." Stomping boots and frantic, organic, yells were beginning to echo throughout the facility, the taskforce had made it.
Rivet looked down, seeing just a sliver of an open, bloodied eye within her arms.
"You're going to be ok."