Chapter Text
Nefarious at this point in Ratchet and Clank's "career" (in so much as intergalactic heroism was a career and not an act of goodwill with added benefits) rubber banded between unwilling teammate and broken-clock-that-was-right-twice-a-day villain.
Unfortunately for the duo, everything was coming up Grok-fertilized roses today, that is, big, mean, and mutated in deadly and awkward ways.
"Laaaaaaawreeeeeeence!" Nefarious screeched. "Prepare… the Soul Ray."
"Extra funk not included?" Ratchet quipped, as he kept an eye on the precarious ledge behind him, backed pretty squarely in a corner. He was out of almost all his ammo and none of his polymorph guns had any affect on those with independent thought. Damn Grummels and their vague sense of ethics. Oh, shooting a bomb that exploded into a ballfull of smaller bombs to explode some dude's face was A-OK, but turning him into a chicken violates intergalactic code?
Nefarious shot himself backward behind Lawrence's forcefield, and tossed out a tiny, squeaking, fat toad into the chamber. The fields were locked down to Lawrence's and Nefarious's signature (and probably the damn toad's as well), otherwise Ratchet would have followed him through and done some creative 'upgrades' to Nefarious's and Lawrence's faces with his wrench. Or just jet-boot backwards from whence they came and forget the whole damn affair with an oil smoothie (Clank) and a Double Bypass Burger (Ratchet) at the nearest Galaxy Burger drive-thru, Aphelion's protests of eating in the vehicle be damned.
Actually, scratch the quote marks on 'upgrade'. Given Nefarious's face and mental condition both, he could use a little blunt force trauma.
"Soooooo… what do you plan to do to me?" Ratchet asked, praying Nefarious, even with the upper hand, would remain as intelligent as he normally was. That is, beaten handily in a trivia contest against a bag of rocks and a wet noodle.
"I am soooooo glad you asked, squishy! A Soul Ray is a device of my own design." Ratchet internally breathed a sigh of relief.
"With extensive modifications, of course," Lawrence piped in, causing the duo to rethink their previous stance on the whatever-it-was.
"Yes, yes, right, of course," Nefarious replied over Lawrence, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. "Well, the point is, Ratchet, for a squishy, you're unkillable. My Soul Swap swaps the closest two souls with each other, just like," Nefarious held up one metallic hand, rubbing fingers together to make a dull snapping sound, "that. And what are the two closest organic life forms? This isn't like your polymorph guns, fur brain. You'll have your memories, but you'll be stuck in a toad! Try holding a gun or talking back like THAT!"
"Exceptionally witty remarks, sir," Lawrence droned, sarcasm not lost on Ratchet or Clank.
"Thank you, Lawrence. Is the beam ready?"
"As ready as you seem to be sir, so, another minute or two would do it."
Ratchet looked around in a panic. He was trapped in this room, and Nefarious was right, the nearest other thing with a soul, a real soul, would be that damn fat toad hopping around and shooting out its tongue. Ratchet's fur fluffed up in irritation.
This was not good.
Something tugged gently at the elbow of Ratchet's thick Leviathan-hide protective suit and gripped on. Clank. He squeezed Ratchet lightly on the forearm, and Ratchet clamed down, ears slowly lowering on his head. That symbol never failed Ratchet, because it meant Clank had a plan.
Ratchet smirked momentarily before the beam finished powering up, hitting him square in the chest.
With a force vaguely reminiscent of that massive glowing blue alcoholic beverage the Q-Fore chipped in to get him on his twenty-second birthday (that is to say, like being punched in the gut by Qwark's robotic stand-in).
And everything faded to black.
Nefarious watched from the other side of the forcefield practically exploding with glee. No matter what he tried to do to the fuzzy little Lombax (when he wasn't begrudgingly assisting him for some inane reason usually involving the protection of his own chassis), he always survived. Better to swap his soul into something that couldn't carry a gun, or, heaven forbid, smack talk, before trying to do the squishy in again. He vaguely considered the toad, now in Ratchet's body, unable to feed himself. He'd keep the furball as a pet, at least. The toad didn't do anything wrong, and he could have fun every morning taunting what had once been Ratchet with its morning organic sustenance needs.
He'd offer Clank a position on his team, a reprogram, or a trip to the trash chute. It was only sporting.
When the laser fired, and Ratchet doubled over backwards, Nefarious let out a whoop of glee. The toad nearby croaked angrily, and began hopping toward the field. Nefarious realized a minor problem. Ratchet had fought these creatures plenty of times before; he probably knew they shot acidic bile. Metal-dissolving acidic bile. And this toad, as Ratchet had observed, could pass through the force field, shoot him and Lawrence, and have Clank reverse the process before he could say…
"Stop him! Stop Ratchet, Lawwwww~ oh, Lance," his soap opera memory banks began to moan out lustfully, as a bit of steam pooled out of Nefarious's own cranium dome. "Love me like you meeeeeean it, Lance!"
"Oh, darling, I'm not Lance," Nefarious continued to croon in another soap actor's voice. "I am…" Lawrence smacked Nefarious square on the head, causing a soft reboot. "wwwwwwrence!"
"Yes, sir?" Lawrence asked plainly, giving his incompetent boss the side-eye.
"Stop. That. Toad."
"Yes, sir. Straightaway." Lawrence pulled a Liquid Nitrogen Gun out from one of the panels and shot an icy stream out, instantly freezing the toad solid, the toadsicle immediately shattering into a billion fragments of frozen amphibian.
"No kill like overkill, huh?"
"Of course Law- wait. Ratchet?" If Nefarious's eyes could pop from his sockets, they would be, as Ratchet unsteadily lifted himself off the ground, wobbling on his legs. Ratchet grinned, a little lopsided.
"That wasn't… you weren't…"
"Shall I fire again, sir?" Lawrence asked, before looking closer at the armor. "Or perhaps not. We would have to disrobe the organic first, and I am more than intelligent enough to get into wrench-swinging-range to subdue him."
Nefarious was in a state of shock so strong that his processors did not even have the chance to short out and cycle to soap operas again, or he might have actually tried to take up Lawrence's idea.
"Well, this is an interesting predicament," Lawrence stated, addressing Ratchet. "Clearly my calculations were… off. Why don't I call today a truce, and we can try again next week or so? I could go for a spot of warmed engine fluid myself right now." Lawrence lowered the field from the passage Ratchet and Clank used to enter, waving his hand to shoo them off.
"Y'know what, sure. I'll take you up on it. Next Tuesday?"
"Three PM sharp, don't be late."
"Yeah, thanks, Lawrence," Ratchet said, wearily, as he hobbled out of the doorway, seemingly disoriented and in quite a bit of pain, Nefarious slowly coming back online as Lawrence re-raised the forcefield. Next week, indeed.
Ratchet wobbly walked himself back out to Aphelion. His legs were too tall, his perspective was too high, and he couldn't mentally parse all of the new sensory input. Thank goodness Aphelion had autopilot; he needed it right now.
He stared at the cockpit door.
"Retinal scan, tin can," came Clank, no, 'Clank', from behind him, wriggling in the harness. "Oh, just let me off. You're programmed in, too."
"Certainly," came Ratchet's voice from Ratchet's body that was, well, not Ratchet. "I currently feel as though the contents of your stomach are about to rise through your digestive system. I think."
"Sick bags in the glove compartment, pal. Just keep it down another min- OK." Ratchet said, in a mid-range monotone despite any amount of emotion he tried to have in his voice, as Aphelion clicked open. Ratchet scurried in his tinier-than-before metallic body into the copilot's seat, as Clank hoisted himself up, in a movement that was the exact antonym of grace.
"Nice acting, by the way. Guess those Agent Clank holovids are paying off in more ways than one," Ratchet said, honestly, as he pulled out a wax-lined paper bag from the shelf in the dashboard, passing it to Clank. "Hey, Aphelion? Meridian City. And look up the address of a doctor familiar with lombaxes. Vet if you have to. And… thanks."
Aphelion hummed, taking off in a swift motion while Clank pried open the bag.
"How do I…?" he asked, trailing off.
"Breathe- y'know, draw in some air, through your nose, bag over your mouth. If you actually do puke, though, you'll know." Ratchet reached over, buckling Clank into his seat as he sat heaving. "Don't answer this now, but, uh, getting us shot was your plan?"
Clank nodded slowly into the bag.
"That means… you knew you had a soul. Nefarious said a swap between the two closest things."
"I knew you two were acting strangely," Aphelion chipped in.
"And yet, you still let us in, thanks," Ratchet said, gently stroking the dashboard with his metallic three-pronged hand, in an odd mix of appreciation and sarcasm.
"Oh, I know how to deal with stowaways," Aphelion chirped back, a smile in her voice without the visible means to articulate it.
Clank heaved again, realizing only too late that the first thing he ever tasted in his life was Ratchet's own hydrochloric acid mixed with a half-digested protein bar.
Clank winced at the smell. Smell and taste were new and overpowering. Hearing was as though he had his sensors stuck on max, with no means to tune things out. Only his sight was tolerable, as well as touch, but Clank knew most of the latter was from wearing the full bodysuit between him and anything he was brushing up against or handling, from the comparable sensory overdrive of his exposed tail swishing methodically. How was Ratchet so… calm?
"How are you functioning?" Clank asked, feeling considerably better as he rolled the top of the bag shut and passed it to Ratchet to incinerate.
"Well, I'm not yakking up your breakfast."
"It would be difficult, seeing as I do not possess a stomach, nor a breakfast to have had. I was referring to how you handle my processes so well."
"Meh, been a robot plenty before. Remember the Biobliteratior exhibit in the Meridian City museum? I'd been back a bunch to spar in a no-grav environment while you were off on supply runs to Sigmund. After the tenth time of getting hit, I got used to having a microprocessor for a brain, and the only thing that's throwing me for s loop is your height. You, on the other hand…" Ratchet trailed off. "You have vertigo like nobody's business."
"That does seem to be the case, yes," Clank said, feeling his- Ratchet's?- his tail thump indignantly. He breathed through his nose again, an odd feeling of wind rushing in, causing his entire core to expand like a balloon. He could feel his stomach beginning to settle as he shifted in his seat, realizing yet another new sensation, that his own brain must have blocked out due to the rush of adrenaline and other chemicals organics poured into themselves in times of dire survival.
He was in some form of severe discomfort that he could not put a finger on.
"Everything seems to be in pain, Ratchet. Now I finally begin to understand what the sensation actually means."
"I have already found suitable medical assistance, Clank. Please just relax until we reach Meridian," Aphelion hummed.
"Need another bag?" Ratchet asked helpfully.
"I think the worst has passed- quite literally, I might add- but it would not hurt to have another on standby."
"Done," Ratchet said, passing Clank another bag. "So… I know I asked this before, but, uh, you have a soul? Like, not just your programming continuing to run over the Wi-Fi after your chassis erodes, but a real soul?"
"You are aware that the Zoni are beings of pure energy that must wear some sort of armor as a shell to be visible to the naked eye, correct? It seems as though I am one of the logical end results of that."
"A Zoni inhabiting a Blarg-made robot instead of those weird metal armor things?" Ratchet asked, head tilted. "Huh. It makes the fact that Orvus was your dad make a whole lot more sense, at least. Wonder if you look like a Zoni," he added, shaping his hands into an invisible outline of a massive head and tiny body as he talked, "out of your, ahem, shell. It also makes a lot more sense how you can enter the Netherverse. Didn't they try a test run with a bunch of bots in Kerchu after you?" Ratchet shuddered. Both of them had read the news reports following the incident; it wasn't pretty.
"I do not have the deigns to answer that question. Either of them," Clank responded dryly. "But if I ever just get ripped from my chassis, I should just be able to re-bind with it. At the very least, Sigmund would know."
Ratchet shook his head low, unable to sigh. Not breathing was still the most awkward result of robothood. He reached over, and slowly slid the heavy helmet off Clnak's head, mindful of his gigantic ears. Clank blinked, realizing how much lighter his head had become, twisting his neck.
"Y'know what? Let's get all of that armor off you, and then you should flatten the seat and nap the rest of the way," Ratchet said, unbuckling Clank's seatbelt as he began unhooking the latches on the armored plates. Clank felt lighter and lighter with each plate of the armor removed, realizing just how small he was for an adult organic (or, in Ratchet's case, still a kit for his species, but an adult by intergalactic law standards).
Clank was now stripped down to just the jumpsuit, and the thin cloth he could feel between the jumpsuit and his fur that was some kind of undergarment. Clank slipped off the gloves and boots, flexing his fingers and massive toes, before pressing the seat controls and curling horizontially.
By the time Ratchet had stowed the Carbonox plates, Clank as already sound asleep, making long, low noises from his snout.
"Hey…" he hissed quietly at Aphelion. "I snore? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Find me a lombax who does not snore, and I promise to sell you a lovely bridge in Tyrrranosis," she cooed, as she dimmed the cockpit lights.