About Time (Ratchet and Clank/Worm)

[Silver_Fox]

"Shit!" Cranking on the boosters into high gear, I work the gravity anchors to their limits as I dodge and weave between crystalline fragments and extra-dimensional cracks with nothing but experience and luck keeping us all from immediately becoming crushed in the infinite, trusting Apogee to make the minute calculations to just barely clip past those I don't take into account, as Cutie mans the turrets and launchers to blast through anything that blocks our path to relative safety.

"Class 8 Leviathan on our 6! Firing Antimatter bomb, prepare to adjust!" Cutie all but roars before the projectile is launched and the blast of its impact against the now atomised abomination gives us even more speed.

At this point there's more imaginary space than real, our options for getting home dwindling to near zero by the second, teleportation modules fucked in these conditions, shields near critical, dozens of plans are made and thrown away in a matter of seconds, before the only thing that might keep us all alive pops open like a can of womp womps.

"Gate open, go through or die!?!" I yell out to the two beings in the universe I could call family, already pathing the route and multitude of obstacles in the way.

"GO YOU SACK OF FLEAS!" "Calculating 2% chance of success, DO IT!" The two yell at me, and with that I slam the over-boosters and redirect power to the shields to max capacity and pray for dear life as we all but warp the distance to the gate in less than a second, vaporising the crystal limbs and bits of planetary crust in the way.

Through the Gate, there is everything, through the Gate there is nothing. Mirrors into our universe show collapse, giant cracks in reality sinking Oberon-4 into the aether, vector-9 splitting open like an egg, the delta-43 rings melting like cheese… is that a fucking clock breaking down? The entirety of Polaris, hell the universe is shattering, right before our eyes.

"While the sight of our dying universe is just lovely, you need to dodge Axle! We aren't safe just yet!" Cutie knocks me out of my shock, allowing me to focus in front of us…

"Fuck that's a lot of Crystal Leviathans." Letting out a stressed sigh, I refocus on dodging for our lives. "Cutie ammo report! Apogee Status!" I command, manually checking would take far too much attention right now.

"I can still shoot for another ten minutes without getting low Axle, don't you worry your furry ass about that." Cutie replies she's so far beyond stressed, you can audibly hear the terror shaking her down to her soul, not that your all to great yourself. Pulling into a semi-barrel roll, I angle Apogee directly in between a small gap between two of the Continent-sized Leviathans, Cutie firing two erasure missiles to safely let us through them.

"Damage report, thrusters damaged, impact on speed minimal, gravity stabilisers wearing down, power levels fluctuating within acceptable parameters, Cores nominal, reentry into real space effects unknown, brace when we find a new Gate. Axle, Cutie, I am… Scared." Comes Apogee's report, breaking your heart even more, but you push through it, redoubling your resolve to get through this.

"Don't you worry Apogee, Cutie, we'll get through this, no matter what!" And with that comes the longest three minutes of your lives, weaving and blasting your way through the screaming, wriggling tides of crystal Leviathans, banking and twisting Apogee around openings into your original universe, hoping beyond hope that a new purple Gate will finally open and allow you all to escape this mess.

That is until, from one of the shattered panes of reality depicting the crumbing clock, four cyan blurs shoot out, quickly circling around Apogee and Cutie destroys yet another stray fractal these abominations call a limb. Before any of you can really process the new development, three of the four shimmers before flowing into each of you, as the final one flies in front of Apogee, blazing in a corona of cyan as large as a star, before collapsing into a point and opening a Gate for you all.

All you can see as you immediately hit the life preservation systems online, is a blue and green planet, with a single moon orbiting it, before the Cyan… no, Zoni light lulls you to unconsciousness.

 

[Silver_Fox]

Crossposting this from SB as well. I honestly have no idea how to work with making spoiler/aurthor note boxes here. So I'm just going to copy paste the one on SB here, gonna slap myself if it's the same. Well hello there. This'll be my first ever try at making any type of story, so I'm not to sure on what I'm really doing if I'm being honest. This'll be following Axle as the main pov, an alternate version of a certain Lombax, as he and his found family are thrust into the worm verse. with only some mysterious gifts and what resources are left in Apogee's storage space.

Any critisism is helpful, don't worry about hurting my feelings lol. Chapter lengths are going to be variable for now, as I am kinda flying by the seat of my pantsto try and make this coherent, and new chapters won't have any sort of schedule for now, family is coming over so I won't have much time to focus on personal projects much. Still uh, thanks for reading, have a good one.

 

[Silver_Fox]

It was late, Dusk just starting to settle in as Armsmaster was riding down his patrol route, making sure to keep an eye out, but mostly focusing on centring his mind, listening to some engineering study about a meta-material inspired by an old hero called mischief, his power allowed him to permanently turn anything he touched into a rubbery substance with varying levels of traction and elasticity. 'Their results are pretty promising, might be worth donating to them, not like I use my paychecks for much nowadays anyway.' Noting that down with a few eye movements and help from his autocorrect software, his mind wanders to heavier topics.

Endbringer attacks always shift him off centre, whether it's because a colleague or friend was killed, something no one took into account being unleashed like when Behemoth set off that chain reaction underground in Russia, Leviathan weakening an underwater trench sinking a quarter of Melbourne, or the Simurgh's existence as a whole.

It's that last one in particular that's got his mind in a mess, it always does. Her ability to copy tinker powers stopping him from doing much of anything outside of rescue operations outside of her range. Another fight with her that drew on for far too long, another city to be walled off, thousands trapped because of that monster's sick games.

Shaking his head a little, Armsmaster refocuses on the road, quickly checking his alerts in the corner of his vision. 'Another hour to go before Assault and Battery take over, maybe tonight I'll be able to finally get those 8 hours of sleep Dragon's been hounding me to get for the past week.' Huffing out a little chuckle at the thought, he changes his audio study to the 'Tinker Studies' playlist hitting shuffle, before immediately hitting it again 'Chris's choice of music leaves… much to be desired.'

Thirty minutes, three drug busts, two attempted muggings, and one small group of colourfully dressed 'taggers' shooting at him later, Armsmaster was quietly seething as he waited for the cops to arrive. 'I can't have a single quiet night in this city, can I? This isn't even merchant territory for fucks sake.' Bellowing out the biggest sigh of the night, more of a growl really, Armsmaster could see the small group of foamed and cuffed gangers flinch, some with wide eyes, visibly high as a kite. 'Maybe a vacation, just a few days, Tess did say I could use her lab a while ago, maybe we can work on that implant. It'd be nice to do away with the face controls, and finally be able to smile without opening my calendar in the middle of a conversation.'

With another ten minutes of daydreaming and keeping an eye on the criminals, the paddy wagons finally arrive to take them off his hands, with the usual change of duty for the police taken care of, and just getting comfortable on his bike again the night sky lights up in a bright, yet… comforting? Cyan glow, only for a few seconds before it recedes into a small dot in the sky until even that is gone.

Immediately calling Dragon, Armsmaster keeps his eyes and scanners on the sky, it only takes a few seconds for her to pick up. "Colin, good, I'm going through the satellite data now, have you got anything on your end?" Her voice is strained, seems she was taken out of left field as well. Shaking his head, Colin checks his scanner readings.

"No Dragon, nothing, radiation levels are fine, not picking up any exotic known exotic particles either, note a possible master eff-" Before he could get that warning out, Dragon cut him off with panic in her voice.

"Fuck! Colin brace! Projectile heading towards Brockton!" Eyes wide, completely trusting Tess, he quickly deploys his bikes barricade function, hunkering down and bracing for whatever's about to come, teeth clenched and armour safeties deployed, it only takes a couple more seconds before his sensors pick it up as well, whatever it is it's visibly trying to slow down as much as it can, erratically swinging in the sky.

Mere seconds before it hits Armsmaster realises where it's going to hit. 'Boat graveyard, sh-' Before he can finish that thought the thing crashes onto the earth with an almighty clap, sending a dust cloud into the air and raining metal fragments and stone everywhere. Waiting a bit longer in case of any secondary explosions, he turns off his safeties, allowing noise in and opening his face guard just enough to let him talk. He's just about to contact the PRT as Dragon's voice returns.

"Colin! You're okay! Oh… Thank goodness." Colin smiles a bit at that, quickly sending a thumbs-up emoji to her, before focusing on getting his bike back to normal and contacting the console.

"Armsmaster reporting, unknown projectile has hit the Boat Graveyard, send police and medical personnel to the perimeter of the blast zone, permission for Clockblocker and Vista to support has been granted. I will investigate ground zero, standard ten-minute check-up, if I do not respond you know what to do." With a final flick of a panel, his bike folds back into shape, quickly hopping on as he continues. "Projectile seems to have originated from that burst of light, be advised of possible master effects involving it, at a low priority for now, immediate evacuation of the affected area is paramount." Pushing his bike to its limits, Armsamaster rockets down to the Boat Graveyard in less than two minutes.

Arriving to carnage, bent pieces of ship hull sticking out of the ground and surrounding buildings like pin cushions, Armsmaster has to abandon his bike and clear the way on foot, using his halberd to cut a more or less straight path to the crash site. All sensors running as Dragon analyses it all in the background. With the first check-in working fine, he relaxes a small bit, with confirmation from Dragon as well.

It takes another ten minutes for the dust to finally settle, allowing Colin to see the devastation around him. "Well, at least the ships are gone, one good thing about this." With a forced chuckle from Dragon, Colin does another sweep of the area. Before a dull signal is picked up by his receiver.

"Colin… It's a distress signal. Careful, I'm sending the coordinates now, it could be anything." With a quiet thanks, Armsmaster opens up his map, finding the signal coming only a few hundred metres away. Carefully making his way to it, cutting a path to retreat if need be, he sends another confirmation to the console before finally coming into view of it.

It was deep within the channel, the displaced ships being the only reason it wasn't already underwater. Black and orange, wings, thrusters still bright red, what he can only assume to be weapons systems bent, and the hull remarkably intact considering the damage to the area. Colin can only stare dumbly at what is in front of him. Trying to get back into gear, he shakes his head and barely manages to croak out some words. "D-Dragon… you seeing this?"

"Colin… is that a spaceship?" Is all she can return, equally shocked, before a call request breaks them out of their shared shock. "Okay, pick it up Colin, I'm not picking up anything malicious."

"... %$^^#&%... *&#^%... #&$^#(... &$&(%... &#^!?" Colin jumps as a foreign noise comes through, definitely a language of some kind, but nothing he can recognise. "%*S&! Da!(#*, )#rk Y@(... Is i@ W*rk^ing? W^a&..." Slowly, the voice is becoming more and more legible by the second. "D-damn it, translation software WORK DAMN YOU!" At the sudden shout of what can only be desperation from the now understandable woman on the other end, Armsmaster quickly gets the unknown person to focus on him.

"Reading you perfectly clear miss. I can understand you now, please breathe and explain what happened, I am here to help." With that, Armsmaster signed up for the longest and most stressful night of his life, not that he'd ever regret it.

Spoiler: Authors Note

Might as well try to see if this works. If so I'm going to pull through with my promise of face slappage

Spoiler: Authors Note #2

Face has been slapped, lmao. Copying from SB's AN again. Wow this one kinda wrote itself. Not the biggest fan of emotional robot Armsy so I tried my best with making him capable of being human here. Gonna sleep now I need to do as Colin wishes he could lmao

 

[WastelandGrunt]

You have my attention. Watched.

 

[Silver_Fox]

Cutie has been through many things with these two, that one-time Apogee smack-talked his way into an interstellar drag race through a black hole network, ending in outrunning a supernova, Axle's fixation on gladiatorial combat arenas whenever he's not saving planets from annihilation or blowing up pirate armada's, hell even she has rope everyone into trouble her fair share of times. How was she supposed to know that the vault held actual undead in it? There weren't exactly any warning signs on it!

But never like this… They always came out on top, no matter what, as Axle loves to say. Not this time though, they failed, utterly and completely. 'Fucking Asmodeus, you just had to spite us, didn't you? You just had to unravel the universe because of your neurotic ego. When we find a way into hell, I'll beat you to death again with your own goddamn SPINE!'

Throwing that particular pile of Grunther shit into the back of her thoughts, Cutie refocused on her little family's current predicament. "Axle's past out and… glowing, well that can't be good, ah, Apogee is… haha, uh, A-Apogee? Buddy?" Running a manual scan on his systems, she tries to focus on the outside situation.

'The gravity anchors lasted long enough for me to point us to… wherever this is, at least we missed most of those civilians… I hope.' With a shake of her projector, Cutie refocuses on Apogee's readings. 'Cores are… stressed, somewhat fractured, but in rest mode. And repairing with some nano and, ah, that same glow again? Looks to be augmenting him, strange, .' With a relieved hum from her inner processing units, she focuses on the far more replaceable aspects of his systems.

'Gravity anchors are barely functioning, actual hull damage is minimal, and auxiliary systems are all in differing states of disrepair. Weapon storage pockets are all stable, and nano-ammo storage is fine, at least we won't accidentally blow a hole through the sun any time soon. Engines are totalled, and Hyperdense BH power supplies are well protected, as seen by our continued existence on the mortal plane. The sensors are fucked, and… fuck communications array's down. All other systems are either fucked or barely useful. Mostly internal damage then, Axle can fix that up in a few days at most.'

With her friend's status check done with, Cutie moved on, jury-rigging her communications module to send out a basic SoS signal. 'Damnit, my range is still shit.' Spinning her projector a little, she decided to take a look through Axle's vitals, she hadn't gotten any alerts, but better safe than sorry when involving Asmodeus.

''Let's see here, vitals are all good, breathings fine, body structure's fine, no broken bones or ruptured organs, low on nutrients and water though. Now for this… glow. Centred on his brain and, ah, navel? What the hell? No changes to biological functions found eh? Probably some sort of magic quantum bullshit again." Noting everything down Cutie moves on to the last thing on her checklist before boredom sets in.

"Okay then, time for the self-diagnostic, fun." Turning her focus inwards, she combs through her being, looking for any signs of tampering or damage. 'Systems fine, no damage sustained to central processing units, sub-units all fully operational, auxiliary systems still need to be checked up, long and short ranged communications lacking, really should get Axle on to that, foreign energy detected in memory and modular banks, music pl… Wait, WHAT!'

Quickly focusing on the anomalies, Cutie finds the same type of glowing energy affecting both Axle and Apogee, sitting snugly in her memory banks partitioned off from her greater whole, only a small crack letting minute amounts of data through at a time. 'What the hell.' trying to parse out the small amount gathered from the leak leaves her even more confused than before. 'What the fucks a Zoni?' Seeing that it's not immediately harmful, she focuses on her modular systems. 'What is that? Some sort of… weapon? No, manipulation device? It involves this energy definitely, but like, fucking why?'

Finishing up the rest of her self-scan, finding nothing else of note, Cutie settles down for a long wait, doing her best to connect to the local holo-net with little success. She can certainly detect it, but she couldn't receive and send information from this far. 'Just couldn't give us a break, could you Asy? No time for RnR when an egomaniac is committing universal genocide.'

Thankfully for her sanity, Cutie noticed something picking up her distress signal close by, placing all her attention on them, she watched as they… slowly… approach… 'Holy shit, please walk faster than an amoeboid.'

It takes the person close to ten minutes before they finally get into the oh-so-small range of her uplink module, quickly sending the call request to them. 'Please be anything but a pirate, please just one break.' With that quick prayer, she connects to its channel.

"Hello, QT-0783 alias Cutie requesting immediate evac for my pilot and ship to the nearest docking station for repairs and refuelling." With the being so close to her, she could see it jump a little in its unique-looking powered armour, some sort of polearm clutched in its hand. Posture indicating… confusion? "Fucking Damnit!, why isn't the damn system working!" Fiddling with the settings a little more she tries again. "Is it working now?" Seeing the armoured person relax a small bit she changes a few small settings and tries one more time. "D-damn it, translation software, WORK DAMN YOU!"

Seeing the figure nodding calms Cutie down a little more, it's always stressful getting the quantum language software to work when encountering new species. "Reading you perfectly clear miss. I can understand you now, please breathe and explain what happened. I am here to help."

"A-ah yes, hello, sorry about that, fucking software's bitch with new languages. Anyway, I am QT-0783 alias Cutie, along with my partners Axle, and Apogee. The full explanation is within our databanks, but the short of it is, that we were running away from a dimensional collapse caused by a Cazar named Asmodeus. In the process we managed to fly through a Gate, an entrance to the void, we were lucky and armed enough to survive the horrors within until we found another Gate leading to just outside of your planet. The rest is, well you know, crash landing and all. Before we continue, would you and your assistant introduce yourselves? Can't keep on calling you Being and Creature in my head" With a weary chuckle, Cutie waits for the being's response.

Ah yes, there's the visible confusion in its posture, not that she can blame them, it's batshit insane to her as well. "That is… quite the story, thank you for your cooperation Cutie, my name is Armsmaster, I'm a Hero and leader of the local Protectorate. With me is my friend Dragon, another hero from the Guild. Do you or your company need any medical attention or help evacuating from your… ship?" Cutie's got to give them props, it's taking this far better than most would. She watches as they jump from the high ledge almost right next to Apogee.

Laughing a little, she can't help her sass. "Unless you're an engineer, you won't be able to patch up Apogee, the bucket of bolts didn't take the crash too well, as for Axle, he's just passed out like his twenty-first, reentry into real space doesn't seem to be kind to organics. And yeah, if you come up to the cockpit, see that little silver latch? Press that for a few seconds." Watching an orange light slowly fill up into a circle, a small hole opens next to it with a small handle. "Good now pull that handle up with a right twist." As it's going through the process of opening the emergency outside lock, Cutie notices that this Armsmaster seems to be a little unfocused. Is it scanning Apogee? Huh.

Once the cockpit finally opens, Armsmaster finally gets to see Her and Axle. Cutie's small hard light projector deployed, hovering on Axle's left shoulder. Her miniature Cazar-like form of preference awkwardly held Axle's constructo pistol defensively towards Armsmaster.

Axle, on the other hand, was still passed out, decked out in his customised nether armour with his head resting at an odd angle. 'Oh sorry Axle.' keeping her sights on Armsmaster, who seems to have dropped his weapon and raised his hands, she softly pushes Axle's head onto his shoulder with her tail, no need for him to wake up with a sore neck. And she's cyan now, great.

"Miss Cutie, please lower the firearm. I understand that you're in a stressful situation, but I'm not a threat to you or your friend." He tilts his head a little, seemingly listening to someone, probably that Dragon person. "Yes, I can do that, Cutie? You said that this Apogee needed an engineer's help? I happen to know a thing or two about machines, perhaps you could help me fix them a little while we talk? Build some trust between us?"

At that, she's silent for a few seconds, before slowing sending the pistol back into Axle's weapon's catch. "Y-yeah, okay, but any funny moves and I'll turn you into chunky grub feed!" With that promise made, she slowly moves towards Armsmaster, before turning to move towards Apogee's engines. 'If we can get the gravity anchors working at least a bit, we can at least move to a better position than the bottom of a hole.

Getting to the module, Cutie uncouples the hinged plate protecting the module. "Okay, I don't exactly have fingers to work this so follow what I say." At that, Armsmaster smiles a little, before kneeling and taking a look at the gravity anchors in all their burnt-out glory. "Okay, these are gravity anchors, They're the main turning and precise movement systems for space and terrestrial flight. They also happen to be the main towing tool for when the thrusters bust. As you can see, shits fucked, but we should be able to jury rig something workable so that Axle can properly fix it when he wakes up."

---

He wasn't sure what he was expecting inside that ship, but it sure wasn't a small foul-mouthed cat hologram. And an armoured large-eared humanoid fox person. To be fair to the… robot? Ai? Woman, to be fair to the woman, she's been remarkably conscious of her actions, compared to his average panicked brocktonite, only a short-armed standoff and a single threat of bodily annihilation.

Now here he is, arms deep within this 'gravity anchor' doing his best to follow Cutie's instructions while Dragon documents the process. The shard of… raritanium was it? Slowly being converted into wiring by Cutie with some sort of beam to connect the system to some sort of raspberry pie, scans of it coming out as gibberish. 'I'll have to ask this Axle person about that later.' Moving on to the next step, Colin carefully lifts some sort of small box back into alignment on top of the raspberry pie, then using the leftover raritanium to weld it into place.

Stepping back and waiting for Cutie to finish up her scan gives Colin a little time to think. 'Aliens, actual aliens. An incredibly personable AI and technology so far outside the realms of conventional science that I would've assumed it was tinker tech if not for how… logical it is. Even in that single Gravity Anchor module, each part ran into another, no steps cut out to make it work, just pure points A to B. Incredible, and her partner was the one who built it?' Shaking his head in wonder, he watches as the sailor-mouthed cat's tail starts to sway faster, seemingly happy with whatever repairs they've made together.

"Fuck yeah!Good job Armsy, I don't even think Axle will throw too much shit about this type of work. He's a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to Apogee, not that I blame him, the bucket of bolts really saved our asses more times than I can count." With an odd gentle sway of her core projector, the cat turns towards him. "Okay, I've decided to put a modicum of trust into you Armsy, so I'll connect our comms again and then raise Apogee up to the top of this pit, then we'll connect a Grav beam to whatever ride you've got, and we can get to this 'protectorate' thing you talked about."

With a nod, Armsmaster accepts the call request and then, pointing his halberd to the edge of the pit, shoots his grapple at it and quickly ascends to a proper ground level. "Sounds good. We'll be driving through town towards base so be careful, some of the more stupid gangs may try to pick a fight." Quickly running towards his bike, and bringing it to the now hovering ship above the pit, still truly impressed by the vessel.

"Oh, don't you worry Armsy, Apogee's blaster turret is still fully armed, sure it's the only weapons system I can use without killing us all, but I'd still like to see them try and hurt my friends!" The savage protectiveness in her voice doesn't put Colin at ease at all, he knows she's not bluffing in the slightest, just looking at those rocket tubes sends his mind into a panic, something deep within him quaking in fear at their payload.

Thankfully, nothing comes of it, no one picks a fight with Armsmaster and the heavily equipped spaceship as they make their way to the rig. The slow twenty-minute ride is filled with small talk between Armsmaster, Cutie, and part way through Dragon even connects to introduce herself properly to the Ai.

Small, inconsequential things, like our species, how to tell between male and female humans, confirmation on Cutie and Apogee beings Ai's, if far more different than any fictional ones from old horror movies. We even got a small of of her understanding of the Gravity Anchor we were working on, though she differed to Axle on the specifics.

Just as we were coming to the end of the light bridge of the rig, Cutie let out a happy squeak. "Oh, Axle's waking up! Thank goodness, the furball's okay. Oh, you two will love him, he's a giant nerd just like you guys! Just ah, don't set him off yeah? We did just get out of a combat zone, don't want to accidentally die by combat high Lombax, not a fun way to go I've observed."

With a strangled chuckle, he can only give a quick "That's great Cutie, try and update him on what's happened yeah? Don't want any accidents." At her confirming chirp, Colin can only pray that Dragon updates his colleagues on that. He does not want an Antimatter cannon blowing a hole in the middle of his city, thank you very much.

Spoiler: Author Note

These are getting progressively larger lol. Tried my hand at switching the pov mid chapter this time, not sure how well it flows but eh, still learning this whole writing thing. I misspell the MC's name, I've gone back to edit it, but damn that's kinda embarrassing. It's Axle not Axel, come on fingers. Anyway, I won't be updating as fast for the next few days, if you care, IRL stuff. If you're reading this, have a good one

 

[GeekGod_of_Speed]

I still have no idea what any of the characters really look like,

I know armsmaster and dragon, and could deduce axle as the Lombax pretty early but I still don't understand what the other two are beyond artificial intelligences, but what kind eludes me based on given information

 

[bladewolf]

Yeah, I hit up the Ratchet & Clank wiki thinking I missed something from the new games, lol.

There is actually a character with the last name Apogee, so I was thinking it was Talywn in the ship with them and get more and more confused about what was going on.

As an aside, I can't help but imagine the ship looking like the Apogee from Starsector for the first parts of the story (one I understood it was the name of the ship), maybe add some descriptions to chapter 1.