Angela Cross

"Wow, she's got a few bolts loose."

- Ratchet

Angela Cross, also referred to as The Unknown Thief was a Lombax who appeared in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, where she disguised herself as a masked thief for roughly the first half of the game. She was prone to having minor, clumsy accidents, such as tripping over rugs.

In a news broadcast in A Crack in Time, it was claimed that sometime after Going Commando she went missing, fleeing from persecution by Emperor Tachyon. She had been seen fleeing the Cerullean Sector in Max Apogee's spaceship.

Employment
Angela used to work at Megacorp in the Bogon Galaxy in the Genetics Department. She worked on the original Protopet, but was kicked off the project after Megacorp decided to release the Protopet before its flaws could be corrected.

Thief
With the Protopet on the loose, Angela assumed the role of a thief, where she wore a mask integrated with a voice-distorting device and a hooded cape. With this disguise, she stole the Protopet in hopes of obliterating it before it could be mass-produced. Following these events, Abercrombie Fizzwidget, owner of Megacorp, summoned Ratchet and Clank to retrieve the experiment. Once Angela assumed the guise of a thief, she hired Thugs-4-Less for assistance in her ventures to retrieve the Protopet (but was later betrayed by them once they had a better paying employer). After her first encounter with Ratchet, Angela temporarily abducted Clank from his apartment. However, Clank escaped and rejoined Ratchet. Later, on planet Siberius, Ratchet was able to defeat Angela and take hold of the Protopet, returning it to Fizzwidget. Later Angela approached Ratchet on planet Tabora, demanding the experiment, not realizing that Ratchet didn't have it anymore. As the thief, Angela served as the game's main antagonist for the first half of the game, until her true indentity and intentions were revealed, and Qwark was unmasked as the real main antagonist.

Unmasked
As she fell from her ship on Tabora, Angela's mask fell off and her true identity was revealed. She immediately informed Ratchet and Clank that the Protopet may ultimately doom the galaxy and joined the duo in hopes of warning Fizzwidget about the experiment's true potential.

She later sent a Galactic Greeting as a message to Ratchet and Clank, requesting help on her home planet of Grelbin, where the Protopets had begun to infest the facility where she lived.

Angela invented a Helix-O-Morph to control behaviour, when Qwark stole it to control the Protopets himself. After Ratchet defeated the Mutant Protopet, she kissed Ratchet and Clank. She then demutated the Protopet and made it harmless. When she was in Clank's apartment; she told her friends that Qwark started working at Megacorp.

Current status
It was initially unclear what had happend to Angela after the events of Going Commando. Comments made by the Insomniac staff in interviews seemed to imply that she was no longer a part of the Ratchet & Clank universe as part of a retcon by the writers, possibly because she was never an especially popular character among fans. Teasers for A Crack In Time created further speculation that the she had indeed been erased from continuity, as time travel could easily enable changes.

In Ratchet &amp; Clank Future: A Crack in Time a news broadcast on Aphelion's radio says that Angela fled the galaxy with Max Apogee to escape persecution by Emperor Tachyon. Not only did this statement say she was a Lombax, but also implied she had been removed from the Ratchet & Clank universe. As later stated in The Full Moon Show, "Angela's gone, she's out of the universe". Also, the fact that Ratchet is referred to as the last Lombax in the universe in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools Of Destruction hints that Tachyon managed to hunt her down.

Behind the scenes

 * Angela was voiced by Kath Soucie.
 * The main antagonist of Going Commando, was thought to be the thief (Angela), until Qwark was unmasked as the real villain behind it all.

Trivia

 * Ratchet may have had feelings for Angela, because his actions on Aranos after learning she was kidnapped by the Thugs-4-Less was incredibly concerned for her; and perhaps more than usual, as Clank found Ratchet's reaction odd.
 * Despite her being a very important character, Angela was not featured in the end cutscene of Up Your Arsenal, even when other more minor characters were, such as Abercrombie Fizzwidget and The Hypnotist. This may have been to avoid spoilers.
 * A skin for the Constructo Bomb Glove in A Crack in Time is called the "Angela Special", it is a mix of pink and white.
 * It was confirmed in "A Crack In Time" on a radio station that Angela was a Lombax. The news readers also questioned the face if she was really a Lombax, a reference to the speculation amongst fans.
 * Angela is one of the four characters to have sworn in a Ratchet & Clank game (the others being Ratchet, Chairman Drek, and Gleeman Vox). However, due to Insomniac Games wanting to keep a family-friendly age rating, it was censored.
 * It is possible she was wearing a holo-guise for her thief costume because when her mask fell off there was no trace of her thief costume.

Appearances

 * Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
 * Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (mentioned only)