7R&C: Anomaly
Prologue
Disclaimer: I do not own Ratchet & Clank
His eyes open. With a jerk of his body and his nerves, he scrambles to get up but he's momentarily stopped as a large cloud of dust, dirt and sand. He lets out several coughs as he clears his airway and waves away the cloud in front of his eyes. A few seconds of doing so and he manages to finally get a clear look of his surroundings.
"What… in the absolute… fu-…?" He can't finish his question as his eyes gaze over the place. Last he remembers was vaguely walking home… in an urban city. He now finds himself still in a city, but this one is covered in a lot of dirt, cliffs and built into or near rock faces around. Stone floors and roads built into the base of the city. A far cry from the flat land of a city he was living in his whole life. He slowly pushes himself back onto his feet. "What… where am I?" He questions to himself. The buildings are grey, rounded in some areas, even circular but look completely like nothing he's ever seen before in modern human infrastructure. The buildings are dilapidated, broken, collapsed, swallowed up by piles of dirt, broken windows and just looks like something out of an apocalypse scenario. "This doesn't look… what the hell?" He mutters to himself and takes a few steps forward, his head swiveling back and forth, trying to see if there's anything that seems familiar to him.
There is not.
"Seriously how the… Eli what the hell did you get yourself into?" He begins to question himself. His sifting through his memories reveals nothing that could have indicated he ends up… wherever the hell he is. He shakes his head and pats himself down, looking to see if he has anything on him that would give him some indication to how he got where he was. Thankfully he finds no injuries on him, just his dirtied clothes. He is wearing a simple light grey t-shirt, some black cargo pants, some black and white skechers shoes, and to top his look off is the dark brown leather jacket he is wearing over his shirt. Hidden within his jacket is a holster attached, holding his Berretta 92FS. It comes with a couple upgrades he got, with an 18 round expanded magazine, and having lightened and smoothened out the trigger pull. He still has his wallet on him, his pocket knife, his flashlight connected to his belt loop and his phone, which has no signal. "Great, in the middle of a city with no service. This is getting weirder and weirder." He complains.
A gust of wind kicks up a large cloud of dirt over him. He grunts as he covers his head and face with his hands and arms. When it passes and he looks up, his eyes widen as he spots a truly massive dust storm starting to make its way through city, swallowing up the buildings and the city as it passes towards. "Oh come on now!" He shouts and looks around frantically for any sort of cover he can take. Most of the buildings around him are collapsed and have open holes in them, but he manages to spot one building that is relatively intact, minus several broke windows, a few holes blown through the walls, but still seems a good place to hunker down. It's a massive large rectangular like building with up to ten stories tall and more than ten windows going along each side of the building, which Eli thinks each window accounts for one room at least. With his destination in mind, he sprints towards the buildings front entrance, minding the piles of sand as he goes, trying not to—
"Oof!"
Trip.
Something catches his foot as he steps in one pile but not bothering to look at what it was he continued pushing himself forward until he slams himself into the double doors. Unfortunately, the doors are locked as tries to shove it open. "What?! Oh for fuck's sake!" He shouts and tries to shoulder it open a couple times but to no avail. "Open damnit!" He shouts and tries one more time. He turns around to look for another building to try to hunker down into but as he turns around he has to quickly cover himself and close his eyes.
The sandstorm coming up on him hits him at full force. He grunts as the rushing winds of the sand and dirt all around assaults his senses, making grunt out in discomfort. Any attempts to move in it amount to nothing and trying to see through it hurts his eyes. "Oh fuck this!" He yells before turning back to the door and slamming his foot into it. He does it a few more times until on the third one the doors finally breaks open. The rush of the sandy wind goes with him as he rolls inside. As he rolls on the floor he lands on a metal chain. Grabbing the item, he gets back up and pushes himself back to the slammed open doors and struggles to close them, having to use what strength he has to force the doors closed against the wind battering at him. When he manages to close them, he uses the chain he grabbed to pull on the handles of the doors, pulling tighter and tighter and forcing the gap in the doors to become smaller until finally barely a breeze can be felt coming through the doors gaps. He frantically begins to wrap the chain several more times around the handles and tightening them. He takes deep breaths once he's done, slowly and steadily stepping away from the door and waiting to see if the chain unravels.
"Phew." He sighs deeply when it stays, the door just barely moving amidst the winds outside. After taking some steady breaths he walks closer to the door and looks out one of the windows. He stares at the sandstorm going crazy outside, allowing for virtually no visibility to be seen through it. "That… was way too close." He quietly mutters to himself. Just the feeling of the storm he was hit with was harsh. He can't imagine the full force of it if he had stayed out in the open. "Probably would have been buried by now if I stayed on the spot." He shakes and pats his clothes of any loose sand and grabs his flashlight. Thankfully the device is still working as it illuminates the darkness around him. He's not sure what building he's taken cover in but the walls are a drab grey, the floor is light grey, and he sees a few doors on the side with generic nature pictures and other miscellaneous items littering the dusty floor, from can's to shattered glass, some pictures frames broken on the ground with pieces of the ceiling tiles having broken on the floor.
He walks up to one of the doors and finds a small plaque with some words on it.
Only he can't read what it says. "What?" He mutters quietly as he brushes the dust off it. Even as he wipes away the grime, it's still some weird garbled letters he doesn't recognize anywhere. "That can't be right." He goes to another door and looks for another plaque to it as well. Again the same weird letters but in a different way. Worry starts to creep even more into him as he goes to the end of the hallway, finding himself at a T-section of the hallways. Looking left and right with his flashlight, the place is still in disrepair and looks bad all over the place. He decides to take the gamble and make his way in the right hallway. As he walks through the dark hallways though, he keeps his head on a swivel as he continuously looks left and right, trying to see if theirs anything that looks familiar but a lot of the stuff he's finding looks really odd to him. The fact that the place looks like it's been abandoned for several long years and almost completely dark, save a few spots of light pouring in from the windows and cracks in the building, shifts his nerves into overdrive and just giving him some really bad vibes all around.
And just plain freaking him the hell out.
"Easy Eli. Just take it easy." He takes a calm steady but quiet breath of air. "Hrhk!" He has to muffle his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket as a putrid smell hits his nose and hits his mouth. He steady's himself a little as tries to suppress his gag reflex from throwing up all over the floor. "Ugh… oh god… what the hell?" He questions to himself once he's not threatening to hurl anymore. He blinks his eyes a few times, trying to bat away the stinging tears of having to stop himself from throwing up. He shakes his head a couple times and straightens himself up, this time taking shallower breaths so he's not hit as hard by the smell. Thing is though, as he makes his way through the building, theirs a question on his mind.
What is that smell?
He can't really place it what that smell is but knows he probably doesn't want to find the source. With that in mind though, he decides to try to look for some rooms that maybe have something that can help him out, or maybe some stairs so he can get to higher ground and get a better understanding of his bearings. Problem is he has no idea what the language is and has no indication what any of these rooms are or could contain. He opts instead to focus on looking for any room that has a look of importance. He continues making his way through the building, his flashlight moving this way and back, illuminating more and more of the dilapidated building with dirt and other bits of junk scattered all around the place. The place is just giving him all kinds of bad feelings and the smell is only adding to it. He surmises the smell probably had to be from some animal that probably got in an died there. 'This place is abandoned. The front door was locked. Maybe it got in, couldn't find a way out and starved to death.' The hallway is long but eventually he comes to another T-section, a path forward and another to his left. Stepping into the middle of the section, he looks further down the hall and manages to just barely make out what looks like some stairs. "Perfect."
*Crink*
His flashlight whips around to the side, looking down the hallway to left. His light illuminates a single open door at the end. His curiosity getting the better of him he slowly makes his way forward, his light training on the slightly ajar door. His steps are measured and slow, stepping lightly as he edges himself ever so closer to the door. As he goes though, he notices scratches and dark patchy marks going along the floor heading straight for the door but can't make out who or what made them. When he stands right in front of it, he still can't make out the writing or near the door but it's a metal door with a dusty covered window in the middle of it. Shaking his head at the potentially bad idea, more so wishing to find answers, he places his free hand on the door and begins to push it open.
*Squeak*
"Arh!" Eli nearly yelps as a rat runs out past his feet. He suppresses his shout and shines his light back onto the rat as it scurries on the ground. "Stupid rat." He mutters as he stares at it. Before it completely gets out of sight though, he notices that the rat looks like one of the most freakiest type of rats he's ever seen. Almost like it has… frills on it. "Wha-…? Oh god." He interrupts his question at the odd rat when the smell from earlier hits him like a truck, even worse than before. Like something died in a rancid sewer and stayed there to decompose for several days. Focusing back on the door, his light now illuminates the open doorway. He covers his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his arm and steps into the door way.
What he finds is the stuff of nightmares.
His light slowly trails along the floor, a fine layer of black dried splotches can be seen amidst the smell. Looking to the left, he freezes as he spots something.
A skeleton. A stripped of all its flesh, the skeleton lays sprawled out on the ground, bones broken and curved puncture marks can be seen on the limb bones. Weird thing is though that the skeleton body looks similar to a human, but the feet and skull are completely different than what a humans is. Almost animalistic in nature. However as much as the weird skeleton is, a sinking bad feeling begins to make its way known to Eli as he notices some of the bones are broken or have marks on them. Familiar… puncture… crescent marks. On nearly all of the bones. He has to keep his breathing steady but its getting really hard to as his light slowly trails around the room. More bodies, some that look even more animalistic, and others of the weird skeleton he first saw but these are wearing some kind of clothing or armor but some that he doesn't recognize. These ones though seem to be much… fresher in comparison, if the rotting looking corpses are any indication to him on just how fresh they are. Seeing the culprit behind the smell he covers his nose again before looking as the room just becomes a massive amalgamation of rotten, decaying and decayed bodies ranging from animals that he doesn't recognize to the human-like bodies he doesn't recognize either.
"…"
His light panning from the side stops as he spots a shoe in the middle of the room. Craning his light up just a little, his heart just about leaps out of his chest as he spots a leg, then as its next to another leg. He doesn't want to but he continues to drag his light up, his heart beating harder and harder in his chest, threatening to break out from his ribs as more of a body begins to reveal itself to him. It's covered in a weird type of armored suit, with black and brown undersuit and plates covering most of the body, even with some black shoulder plates. Eli has to stop breathing as his light stops on the upright body's head, which is definitely not human. Two long ears and a head of fur can be seen adorning the head, at least theirs one ear. The others seems to have been torn off long ago as it's scarred over. His moment of examination comes to a stop as Eli looks down at the hands, or claws to be more specific. Yellow fured clawed hands can be seen… with them stained red with blood.
Fresh blood from the dripping.
Deciding that things are completely not what he was expecting, he slowly cranes the light back down the body and makes to step back and find another—
*Clink*
Like your average horror movie cliché, the second his foot moves he hits something, making an audible clinking noise of metal. His eyes widen as he whips his flashlight down to see he hit an old and opened food can. He silently curses in his head before looking back at the person he saw.
He about freezes as he see the side of their face. Just like he thought, they aren't human as the slightly extended muzzle on the face is a big indicator. What's even more horrifying for him though is the fact that the teeth and lips are stained red with fresh blood. Eli is stunned and shocked in place as he stares at the creature in front of him, even as it ever so slowly continues to turn around. There is one very telling and very glaring thing he notices about the creature when it finally turns around.
It's eyes. Theirs no color to them. Just a shroud of cloudy milky grey orbs.
"Oh fuck." He all but whispers under his breath.
Its enough though, because the creatures ears perk up and pretty much looks directly at him, making him flinch and step back. It's ears slowly fall against it's head, like a cat getting ready to attack, as it lets out a low growl, followed by it baring its claws in front of it… then its mouth opens.
"REEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH!"
And so begins this story. I have to admit, for a long time, a really long time, I had completely avoided looking at any sort of spoilers for R&C: Rift Apart because I was hoping at some point, at some time, I would be able to play the game myself instead of just looking at a walkthrough online.
Of course the only means I had of playing was to either buy an entire PS5 specifically for the game, which was an absolute no go, or try to play it on PC. For a bit I had hope I would be able to when I found a release date for Steam some months ago for October… but when the day actually came the date changed to next year instead so I just gave up, gave in and watched a 16 hour walkthrough of the whole game over the course of several days.
Needless to say it was a fun watch and for quite awhile I had a major breakthrough of inspiration for the game, among discussing it with others, and this story was born. Unfortunately, this is the only chapter I have for this story as this was a sort of last minute write up and planning I did in the heat of a time of inspiration.
Even so, I'm not sure how much work I'll put into this story but at the very least I want to show what I've got so far.
Regardless, thank you all for checking this story out. I greatly appreciate it. Go ahead and fave, follow, review and I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. Have fun reading, but most of all have a great day and a happy new year.