onepassingnight | Mission 001 || i can show you the world

She's not Clank, anyway. In fact, she's not like Clank at all. It's a dark-haired girl, carrying a part. It must be the turbo.

Now what does that mean for Clank? Ami doesn't seem perturbed by this question at all as she steps slowly closer. She displays what's in her hand, but doesn't hand it over yet. She fully intends to make herself part of this project, and this is the key to make it something Ratchet can't refuse.

"So," she says with a certain amount of satisfaction, "Shall we start?"

Edited 2011-11-22 00:22 (UTC)

Green eyes dart down to the missing part, but still no sign of his missing friend.

In fact, the arrival of someone else makes the disappearance all the more suspicious, and the Lombax is quick to click open his wrench in defense. Who-- or what was she? How did she even get to a backwater world like this without some method of transportation?

"Might help if I've got a name to go with a face." He responds, keeping his ground for the time being. There had to be some kind of explaination for all of this, right?

She has a method. She has the power of teleportation. Right now, however, it's the dream that brought her here.

"Mizuno Ami." She gives her name easily enough, but the drawing of Ratchet's weapon only earns a raised eyebrow. "And, if I intended to fight you, you'd already be defeated."

She maintains that easy confidence even as she glances towards the ship, more interested in that than asking for the other's name in return. Here and now, his appearance doesn't seem strange at all.

Ratchet was usually quick to act, but he wasn't stupid.

And though he could usually see right through a villain's cockiness, he could also see the seriousness underneath and that she meant what she said. So he lowers his weapon, but doesn't seath it completely, even as she turns her attention towards the ship.

But he's still got his eye on her, especially with Clank still gone. Maybe the other just stepped away to glance at the blueprints back home - Clank rode with him all the time, but it didn't mean his buddy couldn't have any freedom of his own.

"Thanks for the part, anyway." He shrugs, trying to brush off his previous... brashness. Turning back, he hops back onto the carcass of a ship, opening the compartment where the turbo drive was to be placed. "This actually popped up here a few days ago, you know. I'm surprised it even made it out this far! Veldin doesn't usually get too many visitors."

He pauses, suddenly making the connection. How she would know where it was, the missing drive...

"Waitasec, is this your ship?"

Her grin widens. "You figured that out?" Somehow, in the dream, it is hers, some remnant of her subconscious memories of when she was indeed familiar with the use of spacecraft.

"So do you plan to help, then? Otherwise, I'll need to ask you to get out of the way. I may have landed here, but I have no intention of being stuck here forever."

"Please. I was already workin' on it before you showed up!"

He waves a hand dismally, diving back into the twisted, broken heap of steel. For all sakes and purposes, it appeared completely useless at this point. But he had a way of doing the impossible, and this wasn't any different. "Transmission busted here, coil rotted there - I'll have this baby up and running in a day!"

The sound of a thruster snapping to the ground is enough to draw his attention, and the Lombax's head peeks up from the side of the ship again.

"...okay, maybe two."

"You're bold. I kind of like that." And it meant less work for herself, if they were both intending to do it. "Start with the transmission. I'll take care of the coil."

She doesn't precisely wait to see if this division of labor suits him, as if she simply expects her words to be carried out.

He couldn't lie and say he wasn't, but most of it was pegged down to an overeager mind and fingers that just constantly needed to be doing something. He could go beyond simply repairing the ship - he could make it much, much better.

"So it's a team effort now, huh? Alright!"

Sometimes, going it alone was just a little too lonely.

"Even if both of us work on this, it doesn't mean we're something that could be called a team." She does not exactly work well with others, apparently. Or perhaps more precisely, she has trouble acknowledging it.

"Why wouldn't you wanna be a team?" He has to snap back, perking up to look at her again. "Imagine all the things we'd be able to do together! All of the projects. Okay--" He shrugs here, wrench still in hand. "--so you're still not Clank. I'm sure he wouldn't mind at all!"

But this just gets the Lombax thinking again, and green eyes turn to the scenery around them.

"Sure would be nice to know where he is, though..."

"A 'team' can't be relied on. Knowing that from the start, I'd rather rely on my own power. That's all." That's all, and to her, it's that simple. Why wait forever to be let down?

"As for your friend," she says with the firmness of someone used to the dream world, "If he were nearby, he'd be here with you." She pauses, and her lips curve up because she loves sowing even the tiniest of doubts, as she perfectly shapes her next word: "Right?"

"You also can't get much done all by yourself. Believe me, I know."

Ratchet wouldn't be where he was without Clank, and they wouldn't have gotten as far in their friendship as they were now. Heck, they probably wouldn't be here, in the Bogon Galaxy, tracking down some experiment for Megacorp. "Sometimes you just need a little boost, that's all."

The wrench twists in his grasp, the wielder not at all affected by the accusation. "And c'mon, it's not like he's strapped to my back all the time! If he wants to go off on his own, he can."

"Then you're saying he went off? He's not nearby? Even though you were expecting him, and thought I was him?" This is practically a pastime for her. She doesn't really know Ratchet, or the person he was waiting for; she has no reason to truly invest herself in this.

"Where else is there to go on Veldin?" He admitted, finally having installed the proper part and moving back to wipe his gloves with a rag.

"And I know darn well Clank can handle a few toads out there. He'll be fine!" There's only the slightest lilt in his voice, determining that it wasn't quite one hundred percent 'fine'. There would always be that worry for his little buddy - something that just came with their friendship.

"You, on the other hand, sure seem eager to think we'd just up and fall out. We haven't even met before today." A smirk, but also a smidgen of suspicion in his tone. He knew Clank better than anyone else, much less a stranger he'd known for about twenty minutes.

"It has nothing to do with you, or him, at all," she answers. "It's what you're relying on that's hopeless, whoever it involves."

She doesn't really believe in 'friendship'. Not as it should be understood, anyway: people watching for each other, being there for each other, wanting to be with each other.

He pauses in his tracks, about to hop off the shattered mess of a vehicle to find his other toolbox when her words finally register. Granted, he was doing this to help her out, since it was obvious she needed it - these sudden accusations and doubts weren't making his day look any brighter.

"Do you know what it's like?" He finally says, tone quiet and serious. "To be a kid with nobody else around? To have to survive all on your own, and finally getting a buddy to share things with? Loneliness is a lot more hopeless to me. And it's a lot more pointless, if it's deliberate." And now he looks a little sad, glancing at her over his shoulder.

"You don't know anything about me, okay?"

Oh, she knows what it is to be a lonely child. To have no friends, to come to an empty apartment and make your own dinner even though you're only seven years old, because Mama works late at the hospital so often. To have your father gone because no one could ever want to stay for you.

It's normal. She's used to it. She knows what it is never to meet anyone she could call a friend until she was fourteen - and to have that go so wrong that she's never called anyone that word since, no matter their relationship to her.

But at those last words, whatever might have made her sympathize with a similar loneliness is gone. She smirks coldly.

"I have no interest in knowing you. I don't need to. You make it clear in every word." And now he's simply open for her to open up the wound.

For whatever reason, Reno isn't too concerned about the strange world she finds herself in, swinging her Electro-Mag Rod carelessly, looking for Rude (who should be around here somewhere, right?), but she draws up short when she catches sight of Ratchet.

She blinks. She doesn't have experience with a lot of catlike people. "What are you? Some kind of robot?"

Ratchet couldn't help the small twitch of his tail at being called a 'robot' - he knew he wasn't a common breed, but really! - though he keeps his cool as he looks up at the woman, squinting a bit himself in trying to figure out what she was. Something closer to Qwark? Except she had the same amount of fingers he had.

Shrugging it off, he grins and settles right back to work, not stopping her if she wanted to examine further.

"Funny, I didn't think robots had skin and fur." He shoots back, twirling the wrench to take care of another creaky bolt. "I mean, of course, if you're just going off of those cheesy b-rated movies on Holovision."

"Nah, they can. I know a furry cat robot. Some guy I know made it. So I'm going off life." She's an expert in robotics, obviously.

She comes a little closer, because whatever it is, the thing doesn't seem dangerous, and she's not worried. There's not much else to do around here. "If you're not a robot, what are you, then?" Reno is a very polite young lady.

He's seen a lot of weird things in the past year - power hungry corporate figures willing to rip off chunks of worlds to build their own, false superheroes, a tiny talking robot that would help him travel the galaxy... but never a robot wearing skin. Unless it was some kind of Hologuise, but even then it wasn't actual skin and blood. He gives an awkward laugh at that, knowing that those kinds of things existed.

"Rrrrright. Robot cats. I'm guessin' it poops and meows, too?"

He continues working, not at all bothered by the question. "A Lombax! It's alright if you've never heard of 'em - people say I'm one of a kind." He actually seems pretty pleased with that statement, grinning a fanged grin.

"How 'bout you? You're definately new to the galaxy."

"Like I said, it's a robot. It's got gears and who knows what else inside, and it walks on two legs, like you do. It also talks. A lot." Too much, and too loudly, in her opinion. She and Cait Sith don't get along that well.

"A Lombax? Nope, never heard of you. I'm a human." She pauses at the fanged grin, but shrugs it off. He doesn't seem like a problem, and she's confident in her ability to handle herself. "There's lots of us." She considers her surroundings anew, though she is still mostly nonchalant. "You've never seen one before?" That's weird. "Where is this, anyway? It's a real dump, wherever it is." She's not particularly impressed by the scenery.

"...there's plenty of robots in the galaxy that walk on two legs and talk a lot, buddy, but I've never seen any cats." The Lombax rubs his chin now, genuinely curious. "You got a name to go with this guy? Maybe I've seen 'im before."

So maybe they're both one of a kind... or these 'humans' were so secluded that they reached far beyond both the Solana and Bogon Galaxies. He still would have liked to know what happened to any other creatures like himself, but having been raised alone, he never quite put that much thought into it. Any negative thoughts or feelings were always directed into his projects, and Ratchet had to admit - he didn't have all too great an attention span for drama in the first place.

"Nope! You're the first I've seen. Well... okay, so Qwark looks a little like you. Kinda acts the same, too." He continued working, digging deeper into the carass of a ship. "--and by the way, it's not a dump." Too much. "We're on my home planet - Veldin."

"I'm not your buddy." But she says this without any malice in her tone, just an easy statement of fact. "His name's Cait, Cait Sith." She's not that interested in talking about robot cats, though. It's just that he looks like one. A little kitty man-thing.

"Your home planet? Sorry about that. It's a dump." She repeats this assertion. She's not too emphatic about it, but she nonetheless seems rather sure of that fact. Maybe her own Planet isn't looking too hot, after nearly getting smashed up by a meteor, but it still looks better than this. She guesses this must be another of those weird dreams, since she knows she sure as hell didn't get sent to some other planet overnight. ShinRa doesn't have a space program. So she relaxes even more. What's the worst thing that could happen to her in a dream? "I don't know any guys named Qwark."

She comes in closer, peering at whatever it is he's doing. "This thing's in bad shape."

He shrugs again, this time not even looking in her direction. "Nope. Never heard of the guy." If he had, he most certainly would remember someone like that. "Unless you're from Bogon somewhere - in that case, I've never heard of him. I've only been in this galaxy about two weeks or so."

Alright. So Veldin wasn't beautiful. In any case, it was one of the most backwater worlds one could even find in the Solana Galaxy. But home was home, and he'd missed being here after the whole situation with Drek. "Home is home, y'know. I can't help the way it looks." He smiles softly, pausing in his work to lean against a part of the broken-down scrap heap he was situated in. "It's kept me alive all these years, and that's all that matters."

Still... something felt off about it, even past the dream itself.

Of course, his attention turns back to his latest project when she comes closer, and the Lombax hops off to gaze at his work so far. "Yeah, it is. I found it way out in the cliffs, and it looked worse than this before." Placing one hand on his hips, the other rubs at his chin.

"No clue where it came from! Or who's it is, even. I'm thinkin' the pilot might've gone over the cliff when this thing hit land, and I'm not about to go looking for the body."

"Yeah, I didn't think so, but you asked. Believe me, you'd've known who I meant if you knew him. Loudmouth cat riding on a Moogle all the time." It was real hard to miss that.

"I know it ain't your fault what it looks like. There's parts of my world that look even worse. But I'm stuck with it." She shrugs. "And it's not all bad. I sure couldn't live without it." She couldn't exactly float around in space. All the monsters that kept trying to eat her world (and ShinRa itself almost destroying it) made her feel even more attached to it, not to mention fond of it.

She doesn't have any interest in looking for a body either. That's work stuff, and she's off-duty. She's more interested in the ship. "I'm a pilot myself, but I've never seen a ship like this."

"Oh, oh, no one!" Aerith called out, jumping and spinning around, tucking her arms behind her back to hide how she'd wanted to pet him. He was so...soft. And fluffy. "No one you need to mind, anyway."

Well, there's something you don't see everyday - a young woman, out wandering Kyzil's wilderness without even a weapon on her. Didn't she know how dangerous it was?

One of the toads could have blindsided her, easy!

"Come on in, then! You shouldn't be standing out at this time of night, believe me." Ratchet had his own fair share of injuries from those little monsters, and he wasn't about to let someone else take the brunt of it while he was there.

Hopping over, the little Lombax pulls her nearer to the broken spacecraft, the worry of Clank still being missing in the back of his mind, but another part telling him that his friend was just fine. Once that was done, the wrench was right back out, a hatch being opened on the vehicle's side and the alien settling right back to work.

"What brings you all the way out here, anyways? I didn't think people could just hop on Veldin whenever they wanted."

"Is this a dangerous place?" she asked curiously, looking about before she ducked inside. His attitude was certainly suggesting it. She hovered by the toolbox, thinking maybe she could help him as he worked. What a busy--not-beaver, working even in his dreams!

He could already see blobs of spiky-brown flittering about, so the monsters were already beginning to crawl out. But for now, they kept their distance, and Ratchet kept his Omniwrench on hand in case one - or several - ventured too close.

"It's my home planet." He replies easily, a grin on his furry face. "I know, I know, it's not much. Not like the cities they've got on Kerwan, that's for sure! Home is home is home, though." Turning back to the toolbox, the Lombax pulls out a spare wrench (http://images.wikia.com/ratchet-clank/images/b/bb/OmniWrench.png), handing it to the newcomer.

"So, how long you been here?"

...What a funny looking tool. Aerith turned it this way and that in her hand, trying to figure out what it was. She'd almost thought it was a hammer at first, but that didn't seem quite right...

"Just got in," she replied, taking a break from her puzzlement to smile at him. "And Kerwan can keep its cities. People need places where they can get out and breathe, too!"

"Different people have different tastes."

He shrugs, placing a corroded shard of metal on the roof of the mess. "I used to think that all I wanted to do was leave, see the universe, meet new people. Then after awhile, it just got too repetitive." Leaning back, the Lombax plops on the side of the vehicle, leaning on his own wrench.

"But it's not too boring. I've still got Clank, after all this time!" Years of living on a desolate planet, and it probably would have stayed that way had the little robot not crash-landed on his little neck of the woods - or lack thereof. "I dunno where I'd be without him, yanno? Probably still on this rock, still wondering what other worlds were like. Still... alone."

He perks back up, abandoning the project for now. "Anyway! Can I get you something to drink?"

"Oh..."

He did sound lonely in that moment, and his perk brought him right in reach of Aerith's hand--it kind of happened by impulse, Aerith gently ruffling the top of his head without thinking. So she wasn't ready to answer the question he asked. "Um. To drink?"

Hand not quite removed yet.

Ratchet has to pause a little at the touch, looking up at the woman curiously, then to the hand on top of his head. He didn't... quite understand what the gesture was supposed to be about, and all that comes out of his mouth is a confused, "...uh."

And yet, he doesn't try to push it off or tell her to stop.

"Yeah, uh. It's a fruit blend you can't kind anywhere else but Kyzil. I whipped it up myself!" And then he grins, that friendly grin back in full force. "If you want, I mean."

"Uh" meant "do what you want" in the ancient Cetran tongue--okay, it was just Aerith's dialect. She'd gotten awkward reactions from Red before but knew he liked them, so she just gave Ratchet's head another quick pat before she dropped her hand behind her back to clasp the other, giggling quietly.

"Sounds interesting! I'll give it a try. I'm Aerith, what's your name?"

His ears fold back at the pats, tempted to swat her away. It'd felt... nice, for a little while, even if he wasn't yet used to that kind of display of affection. Oh, the cruelites to being so furry!

The Lombax still grins back, however, bit bothered by the company in the least. "Ratchet! Should've menation that right from the get-go, huh?" He gathers up his wrench, hopping off the crinkled, broken heap to head back to his garage, taking a glance over his shoulder to see if his friend was tailing.

"And you're... Aerith? Weird. Can't say I've ever heard of that name before!"

"And I've never heard anyone named Ratchet," she tossed back. "But it sounds perfect for a mechanic!" She was indeed following... though she waggled the omniwrench that had stayed in her one hand. "Should I leave this here?"

Mission 001 || i can show you the world

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MY MOM'S THIS WAY, KITTY bhbhfbh if she said that 'kitty' aloud...

Give her time! She has a big mouth.

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