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

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Mission 001 || i can show you the world

Autopilot was a wonderful invention when one travels for days on end, because he certainly needed the rest. Sleep came quickly to one certain Lombax, and the enviroment around him changes drastically.

Except now he's not sleeping. Under the crimson sky of the Kyzil Plateau, the cat-like alien is hard at work on something spread out in front of his garage, tail swishing happily as he's lost in the project. But then he pauses, puzzled by something, and the Lombax crawls back out, glancing about.

"Huh."

He hops off, scratching the back of his head before walking around to the back of the ship.

"Hey Clank? Did I leave the turbo back here?"

Except the little robot wasn't there. In fact, for all sakes and purposes, he was alone in the desert wasteland.

"--did I leave you back here? Clank? ...Clank?"

The only response he would recieve is the shuffling of someone else, drawing nearer.

"Hey! Who's that?"

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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.

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Mission 001 || i can show you the world

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