Hi there everyone, and welcome to the prologue of my new story, epilogue. For it is the beginning of the end.

Ratchet does not appear yet, since this story started much earlier in Ratchet & Clank's adventures.

Now, without further ado, let's begin our story.

Prologue

It was going to be a cold day on Grelbin. In fact, it was going to be one of the coldest days of the year.

Angela Cross knew this, and had closed off all windows and doors to prevent heat leakage, since energy was expensive: Grelbin was cold due to it being far from any star, so solar energy was almost absent. You must grab what you can get. This challenging living is what Angela loved about this place, and that when she slipped and fell, she could blame the ice rather than her clumsyness.

Angela was lonely, too: there were almost no people that had the guts to challenge the cold. She had been away from home, trying to prevent some psycho from flooding the galaxy with protopets and trying to frame her and her two new friends, Ratchet and Clank, and on this adventure she became used to having people around her, friend or foe. But back on Grelbin, in her small home, she was lonely. Mr. Fizzwidget offered her a cured protopet, but due to the aggresive nature she knew it once had, and all the trouble she got around and about the protopet, such as being fired and hunted, she couldn't stand the small creatures, friendly or not.

She sure was tired, too: three hours earlier she and Ratchet fought a monstrous protopet, like the loads of tiny protopets were not annoying enough. The tiny ones died quite quick, however, and the giant one did not, so it took a lot of effort to defeat it. She was exausted. At least she got a moment of rest in the appartment of a new friend, Ratchet, but after all, all she wanted was a good meal, a warm bath, and some good nightrest.

She had just finished her meal and stepped into her warm bath to relax a bit, when she thought she heard something.

"Gah, must be one of those annoying Tundorian Yeti's. Really, those suckers don't know ways to die!", she thought, and ignored it.

After a good ten minutes, she fell asleep in the warm water, just forgetting everything and getting what she needed most: a nice, comfortable rest.

A loud bang woke her up, and she realized that there was no way that could've been wildlife: Y.E. were strong but stupid, and there was no way one could have fiqured out how to break open a door.

Angela jumped out of her bath and quickly put on some clothes and grabbed a weapon, ready to attack, but in all the haste she forgot about her clumsyness, and her foot got stuck behind the carpet, tripping her over. She wasn't hurt, but the noise alarmed every intruder, and thus, when she finally got up, she was staring down the gunbarrel of the intruder: a thief, who seemed ready to kill. She could hear him mumble something about some emperor, and she saw his finger tightening on the trigger. It seemed Ratchet would be the last Lombax again.

She braced herself for the inevitable, when she heard a shot.

Angela was afraid she was dead, but to her suprise she didn't feel any pain. She had no idea if she was dead or alive and she was determined to find out, so she slowly opened her eyes.

She saw the thief, lying motionless to her left, and she realized that either his gun had backfired, or someone else shot the thief just in time. When she heard a cough, she knew it was option number two: someone else shot the thief.

When she looked up to see who it was, she saw a strange figure:

He was strongly built and had a long brown beard, and she could see some light-brown colored furless pointy ears sticking out from under his hat, the hat that hid most of his face from view.

"Need a hand?" he asked and helped Angela get up. Before she had the chance to say anything, he quickly dragged her out of her house and into a spaceship of some sorts, and flew off at an incredible speed.

"Great, from almost being eaten by a giant protopet, to almost being shot, to being abducted. I can't catch a break, can I?" she asked herself, before the 'abducter' spoke up: "You probably have a lot of questions, so let me answer some of them on the way".

During the long flight he told Angela that his name was Max Apogee, and that what she had thought to be a thief, was in fact a mercenary of a man named Percival Tachyon, the 'emperor' she heard the thief/mercenary mumbling about, and was there to capture her and bring her to Tachyon, so Tachyon could kill her. This Tachyon figure was the last of the Cragmites, ugly creatures that ruled Polaris Galaxy before the Lombaxes made an end to their domination, and imprisoned the Cragmites in a parallel dimension. Years later a Cragmite egg was found in Lombax trillium mines, and that egg was Tachyon. Instead of killing him, the Lombaxes raised him like one of their own. Sadly, Tachyon found out about the Cragmites and somehow got access to the Lombax technology, hired an army of ugly weak fish-like creatures called Drophyds and launched a surprise attack with thousands of Drophyds in armored mechs made of stolen Lombax technology. The Lombaxes fled to another dimension, but Tachyon was not happy: he wanted all Lombaxes dead as a rock, and that included killing Angela. However, the device the Lombaxes used to prison the Cragmites and to flee from Tachyon was still in this dimension, and Max had it in the back of his starship, flying to planet Jasindu to hide it there.

Long story short: Max was there just in time to save her from Tachyon, and was planning to hide her from him, though they were making a quick stop at Jasindu to hide the dimensionator. Luckily that Max was one of the few persons that was not allergic to the Kerchu and was actually a friend of them, so the Kerchu made a guardian, one that would keep the dimensionator safe. Now Max still had to hide Angela.

Just as they were finally near the one place where Angela would be safe, Max' ship's engines started to break down and he went into the engine room to fix the problem, having Angela take over the steering wheel. They were almost out of the Cerullean sector when a message arrived. Angela opened up the message and saw a space pirate, saying that they had to stop and hand over their ship, or else they would die. Angela wanted to speed away, but knew that there was no escape possible with broken engines. She stopped the ship and let the pirates come, hoping that they kept their promise of not killing them. All of a sudden, twenty space pirates entered the ship trough the back, and a pirate quickly blindfolded her. She wanted to fight, but she knew she would piss off the pirates that way, making them more willing to just stab them and let them die. She could hear a pirate conversation in the back of the ship:

"Arrr, that Markazian's strong, take him to the engine room. That furry lassie... let's just prison her in cyrosleep for now, she might be useful."

The last thing Angela felt was a hard object hitting her on the back of her head, knocking her out.

Now that is a hard start! What will happen to Angela? Will she survive? And how is Ratchet involved in all of this?
Find out in the next chapter of Epilogue, which I will post after a week.

Reviews are always very welcome, but please, be polite.