Twilight's scream of pain petered off as the shadow expanded, taking form over her as it finished manifesting. Its legs were longer and thinner relative to Twilight's proportions, and its coat a much darker shade of purple. Its large purple eyes surrounded cat like slits braced against a gray cornea. Bony armor gripped its barrel, back, and head in place of a mane, as well as surrounding its horn, which was a twisted mockery of Twilight's. The tail was a whip-like shadow stretching back from its body. One wing was a shadowy birds wing, but the other was a rotting bat wing. A purple jewel was embedded in its forehead just below the horn.
As the figure rose to its steel shod hooves, it seized Twilight's omniwrench in a magical grip. The wrench warped and twisted, and a dark sword blade erupted from the head, taking shape as a wicked weapon of destruction. As the shape stabilized, Twilight's color started to fade, and the marks on her flanks vanished. A single purple star appeared on the flanks of the creature, almost completely consumed by shadows.
A Nightmare was born from agony. A Dark Star had risen.
"What have you done?" Ratchet demanded of Qwark, rushing to Twilight's side.
Dark Star hissed, swinging the sword at Ratchet, positioning itself between him and Twilight. Twilight herself remained unmoving.
"Get out of my way!" Ratchet roared, pulling out several of his weapons to open fire.
Most of the weapons fire was either deflected magically, sidestepped, or blocked with the sword when Dark Star wasn't swiping at him directly. A few blasts, however, did impact against Dark Star. It flinched back at each impact, hissing defiance, but showed no sign of injury.
Qwark staggered back from the conflict, the Helix-o-Morph falling from his grasp. "No..." he whimpered. "This wasn't supposed to happen. She was never supposed to get hurt...this wasn't...Twilight..."
Taking advantage of Qwark's distraction, Clank raced forward and snatched the Helix-o-Morph. He then rushed back to Angela Cross. "Is there any chance you can fix this?" he asked her.
"What is this?" Angela demanded in fear, hyperventilating. "What is this-"
Clank slapped her across the face. "Hysterics later," he directed sternly. He handed her the Helix-o-Morph. "Science now."
Angela took the Helix-o-Morph, struggling to focus on analyzing it. "This isn't science!" she snapped angrily, turning it over and over as her brain went into overdrive. "What is that?" she demanded, pointing at Dark Star.
"I am not entirely certain," Clank replied, turning to watch the battle for a time. "However, whatever it is appears to be drawing power from Twilight. At best, I would guess that your Helix-o-Morph interacted with her magic and, for some reason, resulted in the generation of...that."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Angela proclaimed. "My Helix-o-Morph was designed to reduce hostile behavior and mutations! What did Qwark do to my Gadget?" Angela shivered all over. "I don't do well under pressure! It could take months of research and-"
"The battery is in backwards," Clank pointed out.
Blinking, Angela turned the device over. "Huh, so it is." She quickly turned the battery around. "But what now? The battery is nearly drained! I don't think it has enough power to reverse this...not if it drained the battery this much!"
Meanwhile, the battle raged on. Ratchet was rapidly going through much of his ammunition trying to blast his way past Dark Star to get to Twilight. He had already lost all his Tesla Barrier ammunition deflecting fireballs, blasts of ice, and bolts of lightning. The barriers proved to have no effect on the waves of shadows thrown at him, so Ratchet had to either dodge or shoot those, and only energy based weapons worked. The frustrating part for him - which left him blinded by rage - was that Dark Star continued to show no reaction to any impact, taking no visible damage from the barrage.
Qwark's eyes hadn't left Twilight's recumbent form the entire fight. He saw her twitching as the fight went on, and desperately wanted to find some way to help her, to save her. However, his mind had never been strong. It had taken him nearly a year to come up with this insane plan to get Twilight away from Ratchet and make Ratchet look bad while he looked good, hoping that would lead Twilight to follow him instead. He couldn't think quickly in an emergency like this one.
It had taken him this long to realize that Twilight flinched every time Dark Star took damage.
Blinking at that, he pulled out a pair of magnifier goggles to look closer. His eyes widened as he saw the nanotech readout on Twilight's armor. He knew it had been full near the start of the fight, even after Dark Star had formed, but now it was nearly empty. When the next blast hit Dark Star, the gauge went dark, Twilight flinched and whimpered, and a burn wound appeared on her side just under her wing, right where Dark Star had been hit.
Qwark's mind put those pieces together so fast it actually hurt his brain. He spun to the battle.
Ratchet growled, pulling out his RYNO II. "Get out of my way!" he roared, opening fire. The rapport as the weapon discharged its entire payload of 100 missiles towards Dark Star was deafening.
"No!" Qwark shouted out, lunging forward. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion to his senses. The missiles flew towards Dark Star. Dark Star reared in response, hissing defiance, its sword swinging into position. He wasn't going to make it in time.
He refused to accept it. He had failed to be the hero Twilight wanted in Solana. He had made himself the villain to try and be her hero here in Bogon. He would not fail her again.
His eyes closed as he ran, and he remembered how it had felt when she had first turned that idolizing gaze upon him. She saw him as he had always wanted to be seen: a hero, a symbol of courage and hope. He probably would never be such a hero again. But he hadn't been lying when he'd said Ratchet and Twilight possessed the qualities to be true heroes.
He would not let his mistakes destroy them both!
He felt his arms wrap around a large equine form, heard a hiss of surprise and defiance. He heard Ratchet's scream of shocked confusion.
He felt the barrage of 100 destructive missiles slam into his arms, back, head, and legs, and the agony of their detonations tearing at his flesh.
As the noise faded, his eyes opened. Looking up, his vision blurry, he saw Dark Star looking down at him in confusion and disdain. Looking over the wing, he saw Twilight's recumbent figure, still breathing. He smiled in relief, only to be smacked away by the sword. He landed painfully on his back near Ratchet.
"Qwark, what are you thinking?" Ratchet demanded angrily.
"Twilight..." Qwark gasped out, his wounded flesh flinching against the ground. "That thing...she takes its damage..."
"What?" Ratchet demanded, spinning to glance towards Twilight. His eyes widened in fear as he saw the scorch across her side, where he'd scored Dark Star with his Lava Gun in desperation. "T-Twilight..." he gasped, realizing what would have happened if his RYNO II barrage had hit Dark Star.
Dark Star hissed in fury, and launched a wave of shadows at Ratchet and Qwark.
Ratchet lifted his hand defensively, closing his eyes against his own fear. He was all out of weapons. His Megacorp gadgets were useless here. Clank was out of reach. He was going to die.
He was going to lose Twilight.
The surprised turn of Dark Star's vocalizations caused his eyes to snap open. The wave of shadows was held at bay, a blue glow surrounding them. "What...?" Ratchet began in confusion.
"Ratchet!" Clank called out. "Do not lose focus!"
Blinking, Ratchet's eyes fell on his outstretched hand. The Power Gauntlet glowed with the same blue light that held the shadows at bay. "What...?" Seeing the blue light start to flicker, he discarded his questions and doubts and focused.
Dark Star roared in rage and swung the sword up to bring it down upon Ratchet...only for both sword and beast to be knocked back by a sudden barrage of Protopets. The blue fuzzballs piled onto the beast, gripping gently everywhere their mouths could find a hold, weighing the beast down through sheer mass of fluff.
Dark Star dropped the sword, which reverted to the Omniwrench. Snarling in fury, it struggled against the weight of the beasts. Letting go of the wave of shadows, Dark Star fired off a blast of raw power against Ratchet.
Not knowing what else to do, Ratchet held up the Power Gauntlet, focusing all he could on pushing the blast back. The Gauntlet glowed blue, and the blue light pushed against the blast, but it quickly started to fail. The Power Gauntlet shook violently from the stresses put on its circuitry. Ratchet closed his eyes against the inevitable.
The Power Guantlet shattered, the fragments tearing at Ratchet's arm. As his blood flowed freely, it dripped into the sphere of blue light that still emitted from the focus crystal that was the only piece that still held. The focus crystals of the mass produced Power Gloves and Gauntlets were of mass produced crystal formulated specifically for the purpose. But Twilight had found a natural gemstone that occurred only on Veldin in very small quantities for use in Ratchet's. It was a crimson gemstone that was not quite a ruby.
Twilight had called it a Carbuncle.
As Ratchet's blood dripped onto the gem, the blue light flared even brighter, pushing Dark Star's attack back. Dark Star's eyes widened in shock, and it screamed in fury, thrashing against the mass of Protopets holding it down, until the blue beam of light pushed all the way back to its horn, snuffing out the attack.
A desperate stratagem occurred to Clank as his sensors struggled to make sense of what he was perceiving. Trusting to his circuits, he seized the Helix-o-Morph from Angela and hurled it into the blue light.
The Helix-o-Morph shattered, and the blue light erupted into three bolts of lightning. The first shot straight through Dark Star's horn before anchoring in Twilight's, while the other two repeated the action with the wings. Dark Star screamed in rage, defiance, and agony as the shadows that made up its form began to dissolve. The darkness faded, purple light taking its place before flowing into Twilight. As the light flowed into her and the lightning faded, her coloration returned to normal. Last of all, the marks returned to her flanks.
"Twi...light..." Ratchet gasped out. Falling forward, he slumped into unconsciousness.
As Clank, Angela, and Abercrombie Fizzwidget - who had been released from the supply closet by a swarm of Protopets during the ruckus - rushed forward to tend the wounded, the Carbuncle fell to the ground, its surface cracked, its glow faded. Pushed beyond the jewels integrity and ability to handle the forces that had run through it, the crystal crumbled into dust, blowing away on the wind.
intense, and quite interesting to see Qwarks reactions here
Oh man! I wanted Twilight to actually turn into a nightmare version of herself! I feel cheated Oh well. At least everything ended well...right?
..... That was epic, and a full FUBAR situation.
-.....*hasnt begun reading*YAY
http://prntscr.com/6t582d
....umhhh is this me or does this happend everytime a new chapter/Episode comes out
ohh yeah and when we one day get to the "into the nexus" game part..... im guessing that "Dark Star" will appear again....
Well now! That was a rather unexpected ending to this part. :)
5859907
im getting pictures of what this story is like but first....could we mayby see things from ratchets POV while twillight was in "containment" on his mission? like the tombli (wow cant think i just remembered that place) or when he first see that the Masked theif is in fact a woman...(as twillight said)
5859899 Why just Nexus?
Tools of Destruction has a time-space tearing device and A Crack in Time has the colossal device that keeps time in the universe.
5859963
...Um. Sorry, but why are you directing that comment at me?
I am wordless
Surprising turn of events indeed
5859977
yeah that was just the one whit the probably best chance for it
5860005
....wooops........no one noticed it other than you right...????......
5860022
I don't know who may or may not have noticed it.
Whoa... Real heavy, man. And awesome chapter. Though I wonder if Twilight will get a replacement for the Carbuncle soon, considering they're in another galaxy now which means new minerals somewhere.
Would like to the Qwark after this and Fizzwidget's reaction and actions here.
Well, that happened.
QWAAAAAAAARK!
5859963
<Yeah, maybe Rachet Journal or something?
5859888 actualy yes it is happening every time.
CONGRATULATIONS QWARK!
YOU HAV NOT SHAMED YOUR FAMILY!
EEEEE-YIKES!!!
Well now... hot freakin' damn. Quark just about redeemed himself right there with what he did. Though I'm even more happy of what happened to make it quite different from how it would usually go.
Bravo author, bravo indeed!
So would the Carbuncle count as a Final Fantasy reference?
Also, this chapter was so epic and rife with feels with just a hint of comedy
5861384
Actually, it was referencing that most explanations for how unicorn horns work involve their being a biologically generated gemstone in the center of the horn - called carbuncle - that acts as the catalyst for generating the magical energy.
In essence, because she used a Carbuncle as the focus crystal for Ratchet's Power Glove/Gauntlet, it was actually capable of interacting with magic. However, since it wasn't designed to do that, both the Gadget and the gem were strained beyond their limits when Ratchet unwittingly forced them to do so.
5861393 Okay, that makes sense. Man, if I thought I was lacking in knowledge now...
wow dude, great chapter! keep it up!
interesting chapter I can't wait for the next one!
Tatsurou, you clever, magnificent, bastard! Dark Star was the name of Ratchet's team in Ratchet: Deadlocked!
I was having such a nice day....until I saw the picture.
Why do you think I'm on the toilet?
I am aware that this is rude, but MOAR.
5865207
What? Being able to teleport back to the ship is game breaking? You do that several times later in the game, and in later games.
5864784 in what way? I have not revealed any of the major plot for all 4 one, I have simply highlighted a quark line that gave me desturbng mental imagery... Which you promptly reminded me of...
... Ohhh im depressed and excited at the same time!!! This chapter has given me depression equivalent to the feels felt while reading fortresshy! But! I can't WAIT until we get to see the interactions between nefarious and twilight!!!! Because she has made quark into a actual good guy!!!
Sorry to say it, but this story has come off as a little underwhelming. There is no challenge or real reason for me to care about the main characters, they all seem pretty static and any challenges that come up are quickly solved. The divergence from the usual story line of the Ratchet & Clank series was good, but again, the struggle seemed to brief.
The technical part of the writing is sound and I can find no issue with it but the story itself just doesn't have any life.
5865239
I don't mean game breaking as in the actual games. I meant it more as that the challenges of having to move up a slope or get across platforms is trivialized. Even more so than having a Swingshot or magnetized boots.
Dang. ...just dang!
5868189 did it never occur to you that the conflicts in this fanfic are NOT based in the games, but rather in Twilight's development? She has not been static...
alright that was awesome and Dark Star so badass loving it
5868189
Dang 42 dislikes...people must hate your comment so much then again I hate it too so