I SAID I WOULDN'T DO IT.

Apparently, I'm a crappy liar. Or, more precisely, I got inspired by the end of 'A Crack in Time', which I beat for the first time this morning before work.

Spoilers for the Future games- Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time

Aphelion hovered in the upper atmosphere of the Great Clock, unsteadily on manual pilot.

"Are you deciding where we are going next?" Clank asked, curiously. Ratchet had been in a terrible hurry to evict himself from the Clock only moments ago, and now he'd stalled completely. Odd.

It was almost like… Ratchet had wanted to get away from the Clock as fast as possible… so he wouldn't double back and doubt his decision of leaving Clank behind.

"I have to go back," Ratchet finally voiced aloud, voice cracking.

"Ratchet, unless you left behind something, I highly advise against that. I gave up my position, but I will not stand by if you decide to turn back time to before…"

"I did leave something behind," Ratchet cut in, surprising Clank greatly. "Someone, to be exact," he continued, sighing. "I wanted to get out of there before I ran back in and grabbed you by the legs, hell or high water. But… but now…"

"You wish to remove the General's corpse from the Orvus Chamber, do you not?"

"He deserves a proper burial. On Fastoon." Ratchet slumped in his seat.

"Sigmund would let you in to retrieve it, if you ask. I would land now, however, before one of the Zoni decides to…" dispose of it in the incinerator, was the rest of Clank's unspoken sentence. Aphelion understood, overriding manual control and landing the ship back down on the main pad, opening the hatch.

"Do not make me utilize the ejection function, kit," Aphelion said cheerfully at Ratchet.

"I'm twenty-two," he grumbled back as he slid out of the ship.

"And Lombaxes live to be around two-hundred-and-fifty. So a kitten you still are," she crooned, before locking the hatch up. "I will not reopen until a robot and two Lombaxes are at my airlock," she commented with finality. Unless Clank tells me they've already taken care of the body, she added in her data log.

Ratchet nervously knocked on the chamber door, before Clank stood at the retinal scan, opening the hatch automatically.

"Adding lock picking to your skills now, huh?" Ratchet asked, flicking Clank's antenna as they walked side-by-side.

"It is not lock picking if you happen to be a key," Clank replied.

"Heeeeeeey!" Sigmund yelled at them. "No unauthorized access, Former Senior Caretaker!"

"That's Clank to you, Senior Caretaker," Clank replied, hands on what passed for hips. Sigmund grinned at the statement. "You should change the locks if I am now unauthorized."

"I think I can modify them to allow some interns to help now and again," Sigmund replied, cheerfully. "Ratchet, let me get a fingerprint and ocular sample and you can both come and go as you please. It would be nice to have some people bringing in news from time to time. The Zoni are great, really, they are, but you talk to one, you talk to them all, know what I mean?"

"Sigmun- Senior Caretaker," Clank corrected, making sure to use the title he so very deserved, "We need to retrieve something."

"Hmmm… the Zoni already did a clean sweep of the place. The main chamber room looks better than it did before! If you left anything in there after your run in with the wrench-wielding maniac, it's aaaaaaall gone now!"

Ratchet dropped to his knees, and Clank was almost positive he could hear a quiet "no" escape his lips as he sunk to the floor.

"What…? Wanted to keep one of your shells or some shrapnel as a souvenir or something? I can run down to the trash room and grab it before it's compacted and fried."

"Body," Ratchet croaked out.

Sigmund cocked his head, and spun in place. "Body?"

"The General's corpse," Clank filled in for Ratchet, who was actually on the verge of tears. Clank would give him the space he needed later, but they needed Alister's body now, before it was lost to them forever.

"There was no body. Hehehehe! Nobody!" Sigmund laughed gleefully at his own joke, before looking down and seeing Ratchet in a puddle on the floor. "What? I don't get it. What's the matter? It's not like he's dead or anything."

Ratchet didn't move from his spot, slumped down, but his ears shot straight up, before his head followed to look Sigmund in the face.

"He's…?"

"Being that close to the timestream does funny stuff to organics," Sigmund helpfully supplied. "He's in one of the guest rooms, resting. He'll wake eventually."

"How long is eventually?" Ratchet said, standing up and recomposing himself. Sigmund shrugged.

"Dunno. But messing with time always comes at a price. There's always something you lose when you fiddle with it. That's why us robots and Zoni are the ones who watch the Clock. Not much to lose when you can always replace it with something identical, no harm done. Universe has a weird sense of humor, you just need to learn how to take a joke- huh, weird, that just popped in my head somehow."

"Alister said that to me."

"Then he should be up, now. You know, he's going to have to live with what he's done. That's probably the payment that time is taking to fix everything."

"He won't be doing that alone," Ratchet insisted.

Clank knew Ratchet would keep his word.

Sigmund rushed off to handle a timestream dispute on a Polaris moon before it went out of hand, while a cluster of Zoni guided Ratchet and Clank to the guest center. Clank wondered why the place even had such a setup, when he realized just how long the Clock had been operational. From time to time explorers probably wandered into its halls by accident, and Orvus seemed the type to be hospitable to all.

Alister was laid in a plain bed, and Ratchet looked down at him. He still had neither pulse nor breath, but his body was still warm; impossible for having died over an hour ago. It wouldn't still be emanating so much-

Alister took in a giant breath and shot upright, breathing again in gulps. Ratchet took his neck with two fingers and noted the return of his pulse, although a bit erratic. Ratchet silently rubbed circles on the much larger man's back with one hand, holding him steady with the other.

"Janya? Is that you?" Alister asked hoarsely. "Please do not tell me you ended in the Land Below. Maybe my last act earned me favor in the Veldt?"

Ratchet did not know what the Land Below or the Veldt were, but he guessed from context that they were some traditional Lombax equivalent of Gehenna and Elysium.

"You're at the Great Clock, you massive idiot," Ratchet said, rolling his eyes as he let go, letting the General sit upright on his own. "You saved my life. All our lives."

Alister sniffed the air, biting his lip. "Ratchet?" he asked tentatively.

"What, I'm standing right in front of you. You can't see… you can't see, can you?"

"Just white, kid. Guess I'm going to be relying a lot more on the old Lombax hearing and smell." Alister's ears drooped.

"It must be the aftereffect of meddling with the Clock," Clank piped in. His own optical sensors had been dimmed considerably as he'd used his staff and bombs since waking up in the Clock. He could easily replace them, but… it would explain the issue of an organic using the device too much. And Alister had definitely done too much. He'd tried to go back twenty-one years in time… no, further than that, if he were trying to prevent Tachyon from using Lombax tech in the first place.

"I was… I was planning on making a graveyard," Ratchet finally admitted, as he sat down next to Alister on the bed. "I still need to bury my parents. Will you… uh… give me a hand?"

"I did that years ago, kid," Alister said, standing up, swaying his tail for balance. "But I can show you where they are. In a matter of speaking, of course. Come on, let's scram- I don't think I'm welcome here."

Clank's eyes brightened a little. "Meet me at the ship, you two. I do actually need to retrieve something before we leave. If you need food, just ask one of the Zoni."

"It's probably just MREs," Alister said laughing as he clutched Ratchet's shoulder for bearings. "I can't see these guys keeping fresh food for themselves at all. We're stopping at a Galaxy Burger outpost on the way. If I survived that," Alister said, waving a hand around as they both understood what that referred to, "Well, then, I can survive their Quadruple Bypass Burger combo."

"You're… very…" Ratchet started.

"Calm about this?" Alister finished for him. "I did tell you before. Universe's got a twisted sense of humor, kid."

Clank returned to Aphelion not long after the other two, carrying something taller than he wrapped in oilcloth. "We'll have someone come back for Chimera later, yeah?" Ratchet said, nodding at Alister's ship, as the older Lombax ungracefully rolled into the copilot's seat. Ratchet didn't want to treat Clank like cargo, but Aphelion was a battle cruiser and only had two seats with seatbelts. The cannon's jump seat wasn't belted or a comfortable option for long rides, but Clank didn't get bedsores and would be fine there or in the cargo space until Ratchet modified the ship for a third passenger- with Aphelion's permission of course. Aphelion made no comment about General Azimuth in her copilot's seat, other than a simple hum of approval.

Alister ran his hand down the side of the seat, pressing a button, before shifting and arching his back.

"What was that?" Ratchet asked. Alister blinked in surprise. Blind he now was, but some habits were well ingrained.

"Uh, the button for a tail hole in the seat? It slides some of the padding out of the way. Don't tell me you've been sitting on your tail the entire time you've been flying. You have, haven't you? That's murder on your sciatica, kid. You should see a physical therapist now before you get scoliosis or something, and get a back and tail brace."

"Why wouldn't a Lombax-made ship just have tail-holes?" Ratchet asked, as he sat forward to hunt for a similar button on his seat. "And, Aphelion, why didn't you tell me you had one?"

"One," Aphelion cut in, "I was originally operated by Colonel Lerata Myran and Colonel Destis Jin, the two best pilots on the force. Both women. And two, you never asked."

Ratchet pressed the button at the pilot's seat, and wiggled his tail through the hole before settling. It was a lot more comfortable to sit, if a bit awkward.

"Why would it matter that the pilots were women?" Ratchet asked puzzled, to dead silence between the two, before Alister burst out laughing.

"If I didn't know better, I really would have pegged you as a Veldinite in a Hologuise," he responded in between fits. "Female Lombaxes don't have tails. Evolutionary dismorphia or something from millennia ago. Shorter ears, too. And the fur on girl's heads grows similar to hair- it can get pretty long."

"Wait," Clank asked, tying himself into the cargo bay in back as Ratchet began preparing for liftoff. "That means that Angela Cross is a Lombax? You two might not be the only ones left in this dimension, you do know that."

"Huh," Ratchet said. "Maybe we should start sprucing up home for everyone's return, then, huh? I mean, there are no more Cragmites in this dimension. Maybe if we cleaned up Fastoon, more might come out of the woodwork."

Alister smiled as he pulled on his seatbelt and harness. "Let's bring back the Lombaxes, Ratchet. The right way."

"If either of you get sauce on my seats, boys, I'm sentencing you to a full wax before you can ever get back in my cockpit again," Aphelion cried as the two of them tore through Quadruple Bypass Burgers (and fried ruda-root wedges, and carob shakes, the pigs) in the cockpit instead of going inside the fast food restaurant like normal people. Granted, that would mean Ratchet guiding Alister through crowds to and in the food court during commuter lunch rush in Meridian City, so Aphelion wasn't too concerned. Alister wanted somewhere with minimal distractions to practice walking around unassisted before being jostled by crowds and hovercars. No sound, like on Fastoon, would be just as bad as learning in the center of Meridian during rush hour in the opposite direction, because he would have to rely on scent alone.

The desolate edge of a cliff would not warn him that he was on its edge.

Aphelion landed gently on the old Lombax landing pad at the base of the ruins. "The graves are over in Borey's Pass," Alister said, simply, as they got out of the cabin. Clank held out the oilcloth package.

"Reach out your hand, General," Clank said. "I m holding it as high as I can, but it is still 50 centicubits below you. There you go." Alister hefted the item.

"You didn't steal that Time Staff, did you?" he asked warily.

"Not at all. Unwrap it."

"I'm blind, Clank. You didn't need to cover it," Alister responded dryly.

"But it's nice getting a gift you have to unwrap," Clank replied. "Isn't it?"

Alister fumbled with the oilcloth, before pulling it away. It was an ornate walking stick with…

"This is one of the ends of my war-wrench," Alister said, running his hands over the top of the staff.

"I couldn't pull out the entire piece, seeing as it is now what is keeping time in order. But I could ask the Zoni to remove the end and add it to a pole. It's a piece of the Clock… and a piece of you." Alister turned his head away from Ratchet and Clank, but Ratchet wasn't fooled. He heard a small amount of sniffling and smelled just the tiniest trace of salt. "It might help with more than just keeping balance, General."

"Clank, I am no-one's general any longer."

"You never retire from duty," Clank retorted in his plain voice. "Not really. I should know. But you might want to try tapping that on the ground as you walk."

Alister tapped the ground and Ratchet, Clank, and Aphelion saw his ears shoot skyward, Clank grinning as much as he was able.

"The universe has a funny sense of humor, indeed," Alister commented, as he held the staff in both hands. He'd seen the remains of Fastoon's capital for all but a flash in his mind's eye. Leave it to Clank to build an echolocation device in ten minutes' time from his old weapon and bits of broken clock.

"Well, come on, then!" Alister roared. We have some important people to meet, don't we? I'm leading the way!"

"Your mom's here," Alister said, leaning against his new pike. "But your dad… Kaden… he ended up somewhere in Solana. I never did get his body back. So there's a clay effigy there in his place."

"What was her name?"

"Dora."

"And mine?"

"Well, it's Ratchet now. Are you going to be The Hero Formerly Known as Ratchet?"

"Ha, ha," Ratchet said sarcastically as he sat down at the edge of the plot, flicking his tail.

"Joru… probably." Ratchet's ears perked.

"Probably? You were my dad's best friend and you didn't know?"

"In Old Lombax, Joru meant 'protector of siblings'. You… There's a third person in that mound, Ratchet. Your twin sister. She wasn't killed by Tachyon; she never even made it to her first birthday on her own. When that happens, and unfortunately, it's more common than you'd think, the living twin is usually named Joru, Kena, or Izia, which were all derivatives of the same original meaning. Lombaxes are born as twins about half the time; many don't survive the first year. There's a reason I just called you Kaden's boy when we met- I never learned what he ended up naming you."

"Lombaxes… don't name their kids at birth, do they?"

"Modern medicine never outpaced our biology. Hardy as an Argonian if we passed childhood, and long-lived, too… but we had to get there first. So no names until at least your first birthday. I'm sure Kaden and Dora had other names picked out for you and your sister, but… Kaden probably named you Joru after his own older brother, and I'm sticking by it."

"Protector, huh?" Ratchet sat there quietly for a while. " Could you read me the engravings on…" he started, before trailing off, feeling stupid.

"Ratchet. One. They're engravings. Two. I made them. Of course I can. It's an old ward of protection for the afterlife in the Veldt. You sing it." Alister leaned over, bumping the stick on the ground a few times to get a good mental picture of where Ratchet sat, and made himself comfortable aside him. A deep low rumble escaped Alister's throat as he began to sing the eulogy for Ratchet's lost family, and the new one he was creating in its stead.

That night, Ratchet and Alister curled up in the Aphelion. Alister long asleep.

Ratchet didn't need to worry about Aphelion's bright screens waking him, as he egan sending out mass emails to all of his associates.

Xerachnoid

Al's shipment came first, given that there was a Terachnoid outpost of his in close range. Electronic equipment, mostly used but all in excellent condition came pouring in. Ratchet made almost daily jaunts to Stratus City on Kurtog to buy needed supplies. Three Grummel traders also began setting up shop near the abandoned landing pads, and, within the month, tourists began flocking in to see the ruins, as well as a growing number of salvaged Lombax ships, with Aphelion and Chimera proudly providing information to visitors as they walked the shipyard (Sasha and her father had come all the way from Solana to fly in Alister's ship to great fanfare, even though it wasn't an election year).

Alister, Clank and Ratchet now shared a not-so temporary shelter in the Court of Azimuth, the one place they'd actually managed to keep the tourists away from. Several others were being built, under Alister's direction, as a small number of Lombaxes had started coming from deeper corners of the galaxy. A few were born on Fastoon, but many were the children or grandchildren of explorers and traders that had spread far enough away from Tachyon's grasp that they had never been found. Knowledge of culture and Lombax language varied wildly between, but all of them wanted to see Fastoon returned to the glittering city Alister described.

"Ugh," the very man grumbled, as he rolled in his hammock trying to get comfortable after a long day of juggling architectural plans to revive the massive crank fountain in what had been the city square, zoning issues for the merchants squeezing in, immigration paperwork, which was in a makeshift Braille he'd haphazardly designed with Clank one afternoon, but did the job, and trying to keep some semblance of order. Ratchet was seeing less of General Azimuth and more of Statesman and Architect Azimuth each day, eyesight be damned. He could still build models, and shout at people, and that was more than enough.

"Ugh?" Ratchet asked, leaning over from his alcove near the ceiling.

"Yeah, kit, ugh. Too many goddam tourists."

"Well, it's bringing in money, and letting more Lobaxes know the place is safe. In a few years, this should be a real city again. Not just some old ruins. Would you rather there be ruins?"

"Course not. You should have seen Torobi City in its heyday, Ratchet. Entire communities built into the cliff walls- floating platforms between the districts! And this area here, the Court, was a grand plaza for the main citadel. Filled with people!"

"Were all these people Lombaxes?"

"Of course not! This was our home world, but Torobi used to be a major culture center for pretty much everyone in west Polaris," Alister responded with pride.

"Sooooo… it was full of tourists."

"Great, now you and the tin can both are beating me down with logic."

"Get some sleep, old man. And take a day off once in a green moon."

"You yourself, kit."

"Once that opera hall over in the Eastern district gets its two story theramin back online, I'll think about it," Ratchet responded, throwing a pillow at Alister, easily caught from hearing the wind whistle past.

"Would you two infants stop fighting?" Clank joked from his space on the workbench below, as he installed replacement optical nerves sent by Sigmund. "Before you fall asleep, Ratchet, how do I look?"

Ratchet peered over at the work station, squinting his eyes for clarity. Clank replaced his green sensors for yellow ones with black pupils. They looked like Alister's eyes.

"Looking good, tin can. But what's your director going to say? You've got an image to keep, Secret Agent."

Clank laughed his distinct giggle, before making a clicking noise; the sensors shifted to a plain green overlay. "This one has multiple lenses. Sigmund's been reading those holobooks on engineering Alister recommended since there aren't as many time anomalies as there used to be."

"Those were Kaden's. If there's one thing I was never, ever good at… engineering. Oh, a building is fine. Buildings don't move or grow or shrink or radiate color or talk back. A statue is fine. Robots… spaceships… that's all outta my league."

"Hey, why didn't you give them to me?" Ratchet fake-pouted, already knowing the answer.

"When you can read at some level beyond a third grader in Lombax, then I'll get you copies too. The original, real, parchment books. Kaden's notes still in them. They're hidden safe in the plaza under one of the old mosaic tiles. Everything I could salvage is in a storeroom hidden behind the sun- art, sheet music, books, you name it. It's not coming back out until we have a proper museum or permanent homes. Don't want the tourists messing with our stuff. But if you want a peek, I'll show you how to move the stuff tomorrow."

"If you take the day off."

"If I… wait a sec."

"You already said if. Sleep in. Clank, you keep him to it."

"Ehehehehehehe."

"Go to sleep, Ratchet." Alister sighed and rolled over. He really wanted to set up elections soon. He needed a cabinet beyond a robot and his… adopted son.

The first Engineering Symposium for Polaris Youth went off without a hitch. The town square was bustling with life, and President Azimuth strode through the displays, amking sure to talk to as many of the students as he were able, even when the entire high school division's work was beyond his understanding. Clank graded the hard science exhibits with a keen Lombax-colored eye, and Ratchet, now officially Ratchet Azimuth with dual citizenship on both Veldin and Fastoon, demonstrated shipbuilding and repair techniques to the work-study trades track.

After the closing ceremonies ended, and Ratchet put away his formal traditional Lombax suitdress (now less costume and more clothes, plus Clank had shown genuine agreement in how good the rich orange and navy blue looked on him), changing back out into rough work pants and boots to go plaster a canyon wall for the kids' mural painting the following week (Lombax population now hovering around 1,500, all immigrants, with about 40 children of school age- but Fastoon was waiting with baited breath as Anja was only weeks away from having children), he was stopped by a Kerchu in the square.

"What can I do you for?" Ratchet asked casually, mimicking the typical Grummel greeting, as he hauled cans of plaster behind him in a hovercart.

"Would you like a hand?"

"Nah, you're a tourist, can't bug you none," Ratchet replied. "Enjoy the rest of the night. You a teacher? There's a thank-you party behind the merchant square."

"Chaperone, actually. But my duties are elsewhere tonight."

Ratchet's hackles were raised. He knew an ambush. He could smell one from a mile-

That Kerchu did not smell like Kerchu.

"You're in a Hologuise." Statement, not a question, because Ratchet knew.

"You recognized my voice?" she asked.

"Should I? I do know you smell an awful lot like a Lombax who put on way too much perfume."

"I thought it would mask it. Guess not. You're good, Mister Megacorp Commando."

"A… Angela?" Ratchet stopped in his tracks.

"Cross my heart," she replied, tilting her head and using their code sign he hadn't heard in nearly… how many years? He was sixteen when they met, so…

"That's a pretty good holo," Ratchet said, after some silence, as he kept walking towards Borey's Pass. The little graveyard was going to be a proper park and memorial, the way Lombax cemeteries were meant to be.

"Think I'd like a new place to stay. First it was subzero cold, then it was wet icky deep jungle. Dry plateau sounds like the perfect change of pace."

Ratchet stopped the holocart in front of the future mural site, and began opening cans, handing a paint roller to Angela. "We've got tents, grub, and lots of work."

"I'm young, hungry, and bored," she replied, taking the roller from his grip.

Every Lombax, tourist, and resident citizen in the Ruins of Fastoon stopped what they were doing, and waited with baited breath.

"Their names are Ratchet and Clank," Anja said over the loudspeaker, as her husband held two swaddled toddlers, both green-eyed and yellow-furred, old enough to have opened their eyes, but still too young to have stripes crisscrossing their bodies. "We wanted something a little more fitting than traditional." Confetti cannons erupted on the biggest birthday celebration ever held on Fastoon.

After ten years, the Ruins of Fastoon were renamed Ratchet Falls, the only unanimous decision ever in the planet's long history. Ratchet and Clank had a modest residence in the Court, although Aphelion wasn't docked on the planet nearly as often. There were always planets that could use a little boost, and Fastoon was doing just fine, the population slowly fanning out to rebuild three more cities on the planet's surface.

Alister was placed in the same mound as his son's other father, at the ripe age of 283, dug up by his own son and his best friend themselves, in a park of brilliant purple flowers and a mural of the first one hundred Lombaxes to come home, Ratchet, Alister, Kaden, Dora and Clank at its center. The city stretched kliks overhead and thousands more in each direction, hovercars whizzing by the tiny park showing just how much the world had grown in the past one hundred some-odd years.

The stubborn bastard outran Death, they'd said. It was only when he'd played a game with the rusted red Devil himself did he get dragged down below.

Sigmund clasped an oddly shaped staff with a wrench affix on one end later that night, all the way back at the true center of the Universe (give or take fifty feet).

The last piece of the Clock was finally home to rest.