It was finally June 11th, the release date for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a game I'd been looking forward to playing ever since its Announcement Trailer dropped at the end of June last year; especially with that last-second reveal of the new deuteragonist who I now know to be named "Rivet".

Now, I'm no Furry, not that I'm Kink Shaming, but I will admit her silver-and-blue fur and fox-like tail is quite striking.

No Furry.

Moving on, I'm curious to see how Ratchet composes himself long-term while Clank is walkabouts on the other end of the multiverse with someone new. Someone who might one day take over the mantle and inspire her own "Rivet & Clank" series; possibly with Ratchet becoming a mentor-type figure, a better version of Alister Azimuth, a mentor who learned from the past so it wouldn't be repeated.

Just a bit of wishful thinking. I didn't bog myself down with all the spoilers and leaks and trailers, so maybe all those questions get answered by the end of the game?

The last Ratchet & Clank game I actually played was its 2016 release, "The game, based on the movie, based off the game", which at the time I thought was really fucking funny, since it reminded me that DC Comics made Deathstroke, who Marvel copied to make Deadpool, whom DC Comics copied yet again to make Red Tool without being even the slightest bit vague about it.

Before that I played through the "Original Series" on the Playstation 2; Ratchet & Clank, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, and Ratchet & Clank: Deadlocked.

I'd have played the "Future Saga" and the Spin-Offs if I could, but after the PS2 I got the XBOX 360 instead of the PS3 and… well… life happens. When I finally got around to getting the PS4 I enjoyed the hell out of the 2016 release of Ratchet & Clank, and with how-imaginative the new weapons for "Rift Apart" seem to be, I'm eager to see what Insomniac Games has in store; plus, now that I've watched the cutscenes for the "Future Saga", I feel more-confident that I can recognize any references or Easter Eggs scattered about.

Hopefully Rift Apart isn't just another soft reboot leading up to another soft reboot.

Admittedly, I'll have to play it on my brother's Playstaion 5 until I get around to getting on my own since I'm not the sort of person who replaces their game console every year like most people replace their phones (as-often as people might replace socks), but with the backlog of games I still have to get through, a little waiting won't kill me, and I'm not one to one-shot my games through a long weekend with no sleep while hopped up on caffeine.

Although… it might not hurt to treat myself a little, I suppose~ I have been working hard at… work, after all, and I am eager to find out if Rift Apart is a continuation of the "Original Series", "Future Saga", and Spin-Offs, or if it's only a continuation of the 2016 "Reimagining".

Though me-personally, I feel like with the Dimensionator and "Into the Nexus" open-ended ending where Clank swiped the then-broken Dimensionator, it has to be a continuation of the "Future Saga", but that's just this guy's opinion. I mean all they really did was turn the Hat into a Gun, sooo… Wow my mind wanders into the weirdest places.

Just as I'm about to reach my car, I feel a weird… tingling sensation that made my hairs stand on end.

Of course that in of itself was secondary to the fact that God suddenly decided to screw around with the sun's "light dimmer".

"What the hell…?"

Hazarding a look upward, I see what looked like a solar eclipse, only the center was way darker than it was supposed to be. That and the corona of light surrounding it looked like a halo of everchanging colors from every end of the spectrums, and other colors that were an impossibility to describe…

And it was getting closer…

"Thaaat can't be good."

*AHA*

On June 11th, 2021, 17:42 CST in the heart of Tennessee, a 1 meter-wide pillar of the Earth from one side to the other, a distance of roughly 12,742 kilometers, was completely annihilated in all of an instant.

Scientists will spend years if not decades attempting to explain the Earth's sudden loss of mass, which in turn led to the brief manifestation of two micro-volcanoes. Though the mantle was able to briefly bubble up to the surface, the planet-spanning tunnel was quick to implode, and no further planetary damage ensued.

Witnesses would describe the event as a beam of swirling light, one composed of "billions of spinning crystals", drilling into the ground and searing a hole clean through. The vacuum that followed lasted only an instant, the ensuing thunderclap audible for hundreds of miles.

It's known with some amount of certainty that it wasn't an Anti-Matter reaction, as a 1 meter-wide beam of anti-particles capable of lancing a hole from one side of the planet to the other would completely destroy it. Though the theories vary, at the very least, the origin of the anomaly is widely accepted to be extraterrestrial in nature.

And thankfully, for the public's peace of mind, no world-ending calamities took place, like what would've occurred in many Hollywood apocalypse in films. The most that happened was that the Earth lost a few thousand tons by estimate, with no permanent damage done to the world's biosphere outside a minor thinning of the atmoisphere.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you ask, beyond a temporary deafening of those in the immediate vicinity of "ground zero", there was only a single casualty of the "Piercing Void Event" that struck our planet; a young man who by infinitesimally-small chance happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In that moment, he was literally the unluckiest man in the world.

Lost without a trace, this young man left behind friends and family who will mourn him with no body to bury, only leaving behind the fruits of a life he'd managed to make for himself as any evidence he'd even existed at all.

The what, why, and how of what occurred, is never discovered.

*AHA*

The three dimensions that form the observable universe are Length, Width, and Height. Within only these three dimensions, the Piercing Void Event remains unsolved.

However, there is a higher dimension than that; a fourth dimension, the "Time Axis", through which many unseen secrets can be wrought bare.

In another universe, for there are as many in existence as there are stars in the sky and beyond, the Zoni, a mystical race of energy beings and keepers of The Great Clock, upholders of temporal normality across the universe and beyond, would-thus unfortunately fail to prevent the firing of a weapon based on the original Dimensionator; a "weapon" created by the Lombax race to halt the charge of the tyrannical Great Cragmite Empire across the Polaris Galaxy.

The universe/dimension in question was destroyed by this reality-warping explosion, the resulting "shrapnel" piercing into other universes both parallel and alternate. Of the 117,000 Zoni manning The Great Clock, their numbers replenished after Dr. Nefarious was evicted from it, 1,170 were on "shrapnel duty", combing the 108 dimensions affected by this cosmic calamity to remedy damages wrought.

Many-if-not-most of the "shrapnel" was able to be collected before it caused any further harm. Of the celestial bodies directly struck, the majority were uninhabited asteroids or otherwise-lifeless rocks in "the middle of nowhere space". One however made planetfall on an inhabited world, and though the damage was comparatively minimal to what it could've been, the event more mystifying than harmful, a single native to that planet was unfortunately annihilated, down to the last Philote.

In ordinary three-dimensional space, without a shell of Philotes to house it the Aiúa would've evaporated like morning mist, returning to the place from whence all Aiúa originated.

However, ordinary three-dimensional space, was not all that was considered.

At the precise moment of the "impact", on the higher Fourth Dimension existing within and above the first three, a cluster of Zoni twenty-four strong did appear through a nebulae of cosmic blues and purples. As they hovered about the gaping one-meter-wide hole in the parking lot of what appeared to be a second-hand digital media entertainment market, the rest of the world around them stood stock still, locked seemingly eternally in that one moment of concentrated annihilation.

"So this is Earth."

"Strange name."

"Sounds like 'Dirt'."

"Dirt planet," the gathered Zoni chittered in unison as they bobbed about, their bugging blue eyes peering into the gaping hole.

"The Shard."

"It has been through here."

"We must catch it," they continued, half of their number zipping into the abyss in pursuit of the crystallized dimensional energy that had broken free.

"We were too late."

"Not too late now."

"But too late to stop this," the Zoni present said in unison as they observed the only cosmic element unaffected; a single intelligent Philote that twinkled like a distant star.

"This one hit by Shard."

"Low probability."

"Very unlucky."

"Unluckiest in universe."

"Physical body destroyed."

"Aiúa intact."

"Unluckiest in the universe," they said in unison.

"We should go."

"Go to sire."

"Go to sire and get him fixed," they said waving their little arms, weaving a bubble of frozen time around the mote of light.

Once their precious cargo was secured, with naught but a thought, a swirling nebulae of color opened before them, and they departed.

*AHA*

Elsewhen in a galaxy far, far away….

Inside a marvel of science and sorcery constructed in the exact center of the universe, give or take fifty feet, was The Great Clock, also known as "The Keeper of Time".

The Great Clock had had a number of caretakers across its existence; the original Senior Caretaker was a Zoni by the name of Orvus, who was also the original architect/designer of The Great Clock. After many eons of dutiful service, his intention was for his son, XJ0461, serial number B5429671 aka "Clank", to inherit the mantle. Through happenstance, Junior Caretaker Sigma 0426A otherwise known as "Sigmund", was given the mantle by Clank instead; an act that Orvus accepted with all the love a father could give. This had allowed Clank to go on many adventures with his lifelong friend, "The Last Lombax", Ratchet.

Time however wears down everything, and everyone; Ratchet might've been an impressive specimen by the standard of his own species, but even he got old.

Of course, well before he could start to feel his age, he'd settled down and started a family with a lifelong friend and sweetheart, putting his galaxy-saving days behind him and leaving it in the hands of the next generation, some of which he'd trained himself as the Head of the Galactic Rangers.

Time of course, was kinder to robots than it was to organic life, and once certain inevitabilities occurred, Clank thusly returned to The Great Clock where he was welcomed back with open arms by Sigmund and the Zoni. Sigmund had been ready to return to his initial role as Junior Caretaker, but Clank having treasured their friendship in his time of need made him "Full Partner" at The Great Clock. Though Clank mourned the passing of the Lombax who had given him his name and helped him become so much more than a mere Warbot Defect, there was a certain fulfillment to be found in maintaining the normalization of time and space in any and all of The Great Clock's adjoining dimensions. Sometimes it was something as simple as closing up a hole. At others, it was getting to the root of a cascading paradox spanning centuries.

Something he had to accept, having learned from the mistakes of Alister Azimuth, was that he couldn't "save everyone". What had recently occurred in Dimension X-731 was similarly unfortunate, though not all dimensions could be so-blessed as to have its own version of Ratchet, or some other brave hero, who could save it from all its perils.

Tragic as it was, creation and destruction were just the ways of the universe. Order would fall and give way to chaos, which would herald the rise of order, which gave way to chaos and then order again. One man can't be expected to move the weight of an entire universe, no matter how well-placed the fulcrum, or how much force applied to the lever; and The Great Clock for all its power wasn't a time machine, only a time keeper.

Segregating a contingent of Zoni to clean up the damage inflicted on Dimension X-731's surrounding universe/dimensions following the misfiring of the "D-Bomb" by the nefarious Dr. Qwark, Clank returned to his longest pastime; pondering the mysteries of the universe as he oversaw The Great Clock.

Despite all the adventures he'd been on across numerous galaxies, both real and fictional, it still came as a surprise to him when part of the contingent of Zoni sent to Dimension NN-356 returned with a masterfully preserved Aiúa, completely detached of any and all Philote that had once housed it.

"Oh dear…" Clank hummed as he made his way over to the approaching Zoni and the orb of halted space-time held in their hands. "I assume that is a victim," he said coming to the logical conclusion.

"We were late to catch the Shard."

"This one was struck."

"This is all that remained," the gathered Zoni chittered in unison.

"And you believe I can do something?" Clank questioned.

"Sire fix the Great Clock."

"Sire fix worlds."

"Sire fix time."

"Sire fix this one."

"Hmmm… Well, I suppose it isn't completely out of my wheelhouse," Clank admitted as he accepted the intelligent Philote, his Chronoscepter standing on its own as emerald optics gave the Aiúa a proper once-over. "Still though… it isn't like I can just whack this with my Chronoscepter… Sigmund!"

"Yeah boss?" the former Cleaner Bot asked, looking up from a personalized work station.

"Pause what you're doing."

"Aw, but I'm at the best part…"

"Sigmund, you can watch your space operas later; we literally have all the time in the universe," Clank chided good-naturedly. "Right now we have a pressing emergency."

"Oh alright…" Sigmund sighed, hitting the pause button right as the lone space marine stood on a final crossroads, moments away from deciding whether he would control, destroy, or synthesize. "Ending's a little controversial anyway."

"You've watched dozens of iterations of that universe and I'm telling you, one man can't move the weight of an entire universe," Clank chided.

Honestly, how his partner could find a space opera about a slow-and-massively-painful version of the "Biobliterator Episode" so-fascinating, he'd never know.

"Oh gosh, is that a-"

"-a detached Aiúa, yes," Clank nodded. "We can't re-seed it back home, so unfortunately we'll have to relocate it to-"

"-another world? You got it!" Sigmund said excitedly as he went to another work station, his fingers rapidly typing an number of keys as he booted up a magi-tech telescope.

"I will never understand how you find transmigratory dimensional phenomena so fascinating," Clank sighed as he set the Aiúa down on a pedestal, a number of scanners folding out to analyze its inherent properties before going over to the work station next to Sigmund's. "Seeking nearby dimensions for quantum equivalents… now," he said activating a battery of simulations, rows of numbers and calculations dancing across his screen. "How are things on your end?"

"I'm cutting out any of the more hostile dimensions from the cue," Sigmund said working furiously. "You would not believe where some of these physically or emotionally unprepared humanoids get sent. Honestly, it's like the universe has a sick sense of humor or something."

"I'll have you know the universe has a wonderful sense of humor," Clank quipped in turn. "The trick is learning how to take a joke."

"You can only say that because you don't watch Interdimensional Cable like some of us," Sigmund said jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to a number of Zoni huddled around a futuristic-looking holovision. "Oh…! Oh, oh, oh! I think I've got a hit! How's it look on your end?"

Quantum Equivalency Quotient: 99.999%

"A near-perfect match," Clank said with a nod of his head. "The Philotic body is younger by a significant margin, but-"

"Ha! Like that's ever been a problem!" Sigmund chuckled.

"Oh, so that's why you were staring so-intently at those infants," Clank hummed. "Here I was worried I'd have to put you on a watchlist."

"Not that I want to prove your point, but how-much younger are we talking?"

"At least half. However, I won't know what kind of shape the body is in until we're planetside."

"Well, if the body's a wash, you could always put that Aiúa in a robot."

"No," Clank said shaking his head. "After that episode with the Biobliterator, and… whatever it was I saw on the tail-end of your space operas, I wouldn't want to subject anyone to being a robot if they weren't always a robot."

"Fair enough. Didn't end well for the other guy, I'll tell you that."

"Technically Saren was a cyborg, not a robot or an android."

"Tomato, tomatoe."

"All this time serving at The Great Clock and I still don't know who invented that word," Clank sighed shaking his head. "There, I have a lock on Dimension KH-2014. Hm. This took far less time than anticipated."

"Ha!"

"Sigmund, you know I find time puns to be in exceedingly bad taste."

"Hey, you already banned me from the 'or rather, when are we' jokes. Let me have the rest of them."

"Oh, very well," Clank said entering a final series of commands, the archway reserved for transdimensional gateways filling with nebulous light. "Transdimensional gateway is stable and Dimension KH-2014 meets all criterion for our precious cargo."

"You hear that little guy?" Sigmund cooed excitedly as he cradled the intelligent Philote like an infant. "You're going to reincarnate in another world!"

"You know he can't hear us, right?"

"Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?" Sigmund asked shielding the intelligent Philote from Clank's judging gaze.

"Come on. Let's leave before we're late and miss our window."

"You can travel through time. How can you be late for anything?"

"A quandary that has plagued time-travelers since the invention of time travel," Clank hummed as they departed The Great Clock, precious cargo in tow.

*AHA*

AN:
Celebrating the much-anticipated release of the new Ratchet & Clank game, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, is my second My Hero Academia story, but my first explicit Self-Insert; most people assume my other OC-based stories are SIs, but no, those aren't me. Here, will be "me", but with caveats.

Originally I was going to go with a bundle of "Isekai Road" troupes to poke fun at all the nonsense that's become standard fare; one where a truck driver gets killed by God by mistake and the SI gets hit by said truck and reincarnates because of God's mistake with the other guy and offers to Reincarnate him. But, my Beta Spaceman helped me link the Zoni from the "Future Saga" into this "Isekai Road" instead, and I'm infinitely more-satisfied with this more Ratchet & Clank-centric version.

I hope that those of you who like the wacky and imaginative weapons found in the Ratchet & Clank series will enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoy writing it. Plus Ultra!