Mission 001 || i can show you the world

[mr-fix-em.livejournal.com]

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?"

Comments

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"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.

[mr-fix-em.livejournal.com]

"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..."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[mr-fix-em.livejournal.com]

"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."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"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.

[mr-fix-em.livejournal.com]

"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.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"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.

[mr-fix-em.livejournal.com]

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?"

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

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.