Sheer Dumb Luck Part 2
Sheer Dumb Luck
Part Two
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15
Series: Transformers 2007
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck, Part 2
It was a strange sort of pity, Ratchet thought. At the depth of their need, their dependence on the full team being there.
The whole matter was only complicated by the scans he’d done. With both of the Decepticons, he’d-
It was odd. He was a good match for them. Their memories sat naturally in his mind, weren’t unbearably foreign to his systems. He’d scanned before, but it had been more… Much more uncomfortable, both during the process and afterwards.
Maybe it was the difference between a gestalt-compatible spark and an ordinary one. That would make a certain amount of sense. As much sense as anything-it wasn’t a highly studied subject, and a lot of the research that had been done had been ‘inconclusive.’ Ratchet knew a lot of people, including some scientists, had written it off as an inexplicable mystery, something beyond what science could understand. He wasn’t sure what to think of that.
But they really weren’t interested in humans. They simply… Simply weren’t of importance to them. That would have worried Ratchet more if they hadn’t felt the same way about most Cybertronians, Decepticon or Autobot. They were insular. Apparently, seeking outside help was something they never did...
All they needed was the six of them. They were independent of the rest of the Cybertronian world-now, at least-but so very dependent on each other.
Gestalt.
Ratchet had been close to various Autobots over the course of the war, culminating with his current team. Jazz’s loss had been a blow to all of them. Certainly to Ratchet. He thought the hardest-hit had been Bumblebee-who’d found a friend in Jazz instead of a teammate, on top of being the youngest-and Optimus.
Optimus Prime. Leader of the Autobots. Ratchet strongly suspected that Jazz was-had been-the only mech he let himself confide in.
But Jazz was dead now, leaving behind the other four. They were all still grieving, in their own ways. And the five of them had had-the four of them left still did-a loose team bond. Not a gestalt-bond, which was much closer: not as close as it was possible to get at all, but still very close indeed. He couldn’t imagine what that felt like.
To the gestalt, it had felt like they’d lost Bonecrusher, at one point. Ratchet had purposefully left that memory alone, deleting it without viewing it. He wasn’t sure he could take it, and that sort of thing was private.
He shouldn’t be considering the privacy of an enemy Decepticon a concern. He shouldn’t be considering helping them at all. He should have contacted Optimus Prime immediately and turned them in.
They just wanted to survive. Human beings and faction lines were irrelevant. Even if that hadn’t been the case, they were willing to do anything to get their sixth-Bonecrusher-back. And at least some of them wouldn’t go back on a promise-and the ones who would were happy to go along with it.
Ratchet felt… Restless. It was unlikely that there would be an emergency call anything soon-that at least would have taken his mind off of everything, even if it was just another prank call.
It wasn’t like he could call up one of the team to chat about his little dilemma. Or, really, he could, and should, be doing just that. Not to try for guidance, but to get Bumblebee to drive over to figure out where they’d squirreled themselves and their injured companion away, and Ironhide to cause large, destructive explosions, and Optimus to lead and cause almost as much damage as Ironhide. And he would be there, with his saw and smaller cannon, fighting off the ’Cons with the rest of his team, the way it was supposed to be, and fixing whatever needed his fixing, if one of his wards got injured. Fixing his team, not the Decepticons. The way it was supposed to be. Autobots versus Decepticons.
How could he seriously be considering helping them…?
Optimus trusted him. So did Ironhide, and Bumblebee. He would be betraying that trust. Even if he didn’t actually lie to them-which would be hard-he would be betraying them. In the middle of the war, and the later stages, it would have been an unquestionable death sentence, the punishment for turning traitor. That was what he was contemplating. Debating. Thinking about actually going through with.
The war was over… There was no Allspark, not anymore. They were a dying race.
So the war was over. Optimus wanted to believe that, at least. Bumblebee did believe it. Ironhide didn’t. Ratchet knew a lot-maybe the majority-of the surviving Autobots and Decepticons would agree with the weapons specialist. Too much blood had been spilled for it to just end-
There was a chance the remaining five members of the Decepticon gestalt would die if their final member was lost. Ratchet had seen it happen with bonded pairs, when one had been lost and the other hadn’t, when the ‘survivor’ had been unable to take the backlash, or simply not strong enough to go back to living alone, or too devastated to want anything but oblivion. Twinned or split sparks always offlined together. Gestalt bonds were weaker than that, but he understood what was meant by the team ‘unbalancing’ itself.
A lot of people had died. Did one or two more, or even six, make a difference? He had to believe that it did.
And they weren’t going to hurt anyone, unless he didn’t.
He should call Optimus. That was the right thing to do. The comm. lines were blocked, true, but he could probably figure a way around that.
oOo
He still hadn’t made up his mind. At least, that was what Ratchet told himself as he jounced his way over the rough road-if you could call it that-that led to where he’d stashed his emergency medical supplies. The materials that were only for Autobots, not people.
And now, the materials that were also for Decepticons.
He didn’t know where the gestalt was, but they wouldn’t be hard to find, he figured. They certainly wouldn’t have left, and his comm. line was still blocked. And they wanted him to find them, assuming he was willing to help, because they needed him. And if he wasn’t going to fix the injured one, because they wanted revenge, or at least spilled blood, or energon. Or both.
So he hadn’t made a final decision, but he was taking action anyway. This was irrational, unreasonable, crazy.
They needed help.
It was like… It wasn’t like he felt compelled to aid them. No, it wasn’t that. He felt… Obliged to assist them, or… It was that he wasn’t able to not help them. So he was going to. Because he chose to. Even if he didn’t know why. Why was he doing this?
The crunch of tires behind him startled him, making Ratchet whip around, weapons systems suddenly activating. He didn’t relax-didn’t let himself relax-when he recognized Long Haul.
“What do you want?” Ratchet asked, voice hard, glaring at the truck. “What are you doing here?”
“Scavenger found this place, and if you’re going to help you’re going to need supplies. So I’m transport. If you need it.”
Scavenger-the name rang a muffled bell for Ratchet, in the dim, deep-underwater way of encrypted data. He’d cut off most of what he’d gathered from Scrapper’s and Hook’s systems from his general consciousness, what he couldn’t let himself delete.
“Fine,” Ratchet said, voice icy, turning his back on the mech to pick up a box of basic supplies and his set of field tools.
When he turned back around, he had a distinct feeling that the mech was staring at him with something akin to surprise, even though he was in his vehicle mode, making any expressions impossible to discern. Long Haul didn’t say anything, though, so Ratchet was happy to let it go.
Long Haul brought it up once they were both back on the main road, moving swiftly but still close to the speed limit-it was unusual to watch a Decepticon obey human traffic laws. Ratchet had let him set the pace; he was leading the way, anyways. Ratchet still didn’t know where his ‘patient’ was.
“You’re helping,” said Long Haul at last, breaking the quiet. He phrased the fragment oddly, not making it a question or a definitive statement.
Ratchet didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“-if you’re doing this to get close enough to sabotage him, you will die, Autobot.”
He snorted. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t be here alone-I’d have the other Autobots and a human military squad outfitted with sabot rounds.”
“-So why are you helping us?”
“Because the risks outweigh the possible benefit.”
“Bleeding-heart Autobot sap-”
“Yes. And aren’t you glad of that? I can’t say that I am. But if I had the personality of almost any other Autobot I’ve met, certain as slag any Decepticon, you would be dead right now, or close to it. You certainly wouldn’t be getting help.” Ratchet’s voice was laden with scorn, and even he wasn’t sure how much of it was self-directed.
There was a long period of silence.
“Thanks.” The single word was said reluctantly, almost angrily, but it was still said.
Ratchet didn’t know how to respond to that.
oOo
They were underground. Judging by the confusing three-dimensional maze that Long Haul was leading him through, it didn’t matter to the Decepticons that he’d had one entrance revealed to him, because there were still a half-dozen more, and any number of traps around and just inside them. The base was, disturbingly, permanent-looking. It wasn’t a quick, bare-bones knock-up of a job. That fact set Ratchet’s nerves even more on edge-which said something, considering the situation.
Lost in his thoughts and put too on-edge by the bad situation and the eerie, silent tangle of cramped passageways, Ratchet was startled when his guide finally stopped. Ratchet transformed, nervous, glancing quickly around the empty room before turning to quickly unload the supplies he’d brought off of Long Haul, who wasn’t verbally complaining-yet-but had his engine rumbling threateningly. Once the Decepticon had returned to his root mode, he started moving what Ratchet had unloaded, glaring slightly-Ratchet didn’t know why-when the medic moved to help him. They worked silently, and finished quickly.
Ratchet was surprised again when he turned to find a second mech-Decepticon-Hook-had entered the room, jerking desperately as he fought off to urge to bring out his weaponry and fight, for a few brief seconds.
The urge ended unnervingly quickly. He had no reason to feel this, this comfortable-
“Ratchet,” said Hook coldly. The Autobot simply nodded stiffly in return, in recognition of the greeting, barely pausing in the sorting-through of the medical supplies he’d brought.
“Where’s the- Where’s Bonecrusher?” he said finally, turning from his now-neatly-organized rows of laser scalpels, coils of wire and other materials and tools.
Hook didn’t give a direct answer, but nodded at Long Haul, leaning against a wall, who pressed a switch. There was an answering beep from a covered table-it looked vaguely like a stasis berth, to Ratchet-a little ways away, and the panels keeping the injured Decepticon covered folded and flipped away, compacting into nothing but a few inches more of table.
Ratchet had to work very, very hard to keep from yelling at the gestalt, even from a fair distance away and without augmenting his vision or performing any sort of analysis whatsoever. The condition Bonecrusher was in was just that bad.
He was a mess. A wreck. A heap of scrapped, oxidized, salt-encrusted twisted metal. His head had been placed next to him on the table.
He turned back to Hook, at a loss for words. The two Decepticons eyes him impassively. Was this some sort of twisted joke? Could losing a gestalt member have put them this far over the edge? Ratchet was going to guess ‘yes.’
“He’s dead,” he managed to get out, the words said flatly. There was no way a mech who had sustained that level of damage was still online. Not with those gaping rents in his armor, not after being soaked in seawater for who-knew-how-long…
“No,” said Hook and Long Haul simultaneously, their words blending together perfectly, and eerily. More proof of a twisted gestalt mindset? Or just the gestalt part? Or coincidence?
“He’s not,” finished Long Haul on his own. “We can feel him.” Almost subconsciously, as if he wasn’t really aware of the action, he pressed light nervous fingers over the lower part of his abdomen, presumably where his spark was.
“…What?”
“We felt him almost die, a hundred galaxies away. He was-gone.”
“We could feel him again, barely, when we arrived on earth. Now, it’s hard to sense him outside of a ten-mile radius, but I believe that we’d need to exit Earth’s atmosphere again to feel an absence.” Hook’s face and voice were impassive, contrasting with Long Haul’s still-hurting impassioned tones.
Oh, Primus. It couldn’t just be Decepticons that Ratchet had to deal with-that he could have handled-it had to be crazy Decepticons.
Hook, who’d been watching the medic closely, made a huffy, annoyed noise. “Check his spark.”
“He’s been hacked through, scrapped after death, then soaked in seawater for a few years. I’d be surprised if I find a single uncorrupted sub file.” Regardless, he walked over to the mangled, salt-encrusted body, fingers searching deftly for the spark chamber, olfactory sensors damping down their sensitivity as harsh salt and the chemicals of organic decay reached them, not necessarily unpleasant (he didn’t analyze scent that way) but far too strong.
The chamber was tucked in beneath the Decepticon’s neck, unnervingly close to where the head had been separated from the body with a single slash, almost definitely from Optimus’ sword: Ratchet had vague memories of the incident. It opened seamlessly, only requiring a little force once or twice where hinges and seams had corroded together, or simply stuck-which was a bad sign. A functioning mech had a list of subroutines, safeguards and warnings a mile long to protect the spark.
Once he got it open, though, there was clearly-something there. The humid, contaminated air it had in it had the typical high-energy flicker of gaseous substances that had been held close to a spark, and puddles of, presumably, more seawater were glowing. It looked remarkably like the plasma of a spark, but liquid-although that defied all logic.
“See?”
Ratchet ignored the probably-smirking Decepticon and tried a scanner.
Both attempts using it, with a recalibration in-between, showed the little liquid puddles were sparkmatter, mixed with saltwater and the remains of plankton, plus trace elements regularly found in ocean water and some minor sedimentary particles. It was impossible-
“This makes no sense.”
“No, it means the theory is flawed,” Hook said smugly. Ratchet bit his tongue, figuratively speaking, finding the human saying having an entirely appropriate element of pain to it. “Are you going to set up an energon feed?”
“I don’t know,” snarled Ratchet. “I don’t know if improving conditions will send it-him-into shock and actually kill him this time, or if not doing anything-for now, at least, the spark will need energon before I attach it-hook it back up to the body-will kill it because it’s survived this long but it’s a tenuous state or even if it’s the slagging phytoplankton and embryonic crabs that have miraculous curative properties that have let this happen at all-” And there was a very good chance that the crazy Decepticon gestalt would kill him, instantly or very slowly and very painfully, if he did end up permanently off-lining Bonecrusher.
When he turned to face the two Decepticons they were clearly talking on internal comm. systems, whether just the two of them or with more, their eyes dark but for the occasional flicker. After an interminable minute, Hook spoke.
“Try the feed. You’ll need to either way.”
Ratchet nodded firmly, not willing to give either the satisfaction of seeing his nervousness. “I’ll need a monitor, processed energon and a closed-coil circulatory mock-up.” He had isolation valves already, to keep the spark contained during the transfer, and afterwards.
He waited for the monitor instead of starting to stop up and cut away the energon lines immediately, unwilling to risk so much as jolting the spark when he didn’t have a feed going on its condition-although he wasn’t sure that the monitor would help much. The case was breaking virtually every medical rule he’d though existed. Although his scan had recognized the puddles as sparkmatter…
He was just fumbling around in the dark with this case. Experience, training and access to reference material didn’t give him much of an edge in this sort of situation.
‘Here,” Long Haul said shortly, reappearing with an armful of supplies, which he placed on the table. Ratchet bit back both a thank-you and a sharp comment, both wanting and not wanting to say both.
Why was he so conflicted? Why was he doing this at all? Because he was a medic.
But right now, he had work to do.
First, attach the monitor. Second, begin isolation. Ratchet tried to ignore the way Long Haul and Hook shuddered whenever he ended up banging his hand too hard against the wall of the spark chamber, vibrating the material side. It made him feel slightly sick; he was an Autobot, and a medic. The gesture was only superficially intimate.
Third, close the spark chamber and move it. Attach it to the energon feed, start up the mechanism in the preliminary stage. Add the energon. Turn it on.
Ratchet counted the seconds, knowing how long it would take for the first energon to hit the spark without thought, from long practice and familiarity. He turned to face the two expectantly waiting Constructicons a moment before-
(There was a very good chance that they would kill him, if he killed their teammate. Very, very good.)
Long Haul was knocked to the floor with the sheer ferocity of the sensation-fire burning along every inner wire, grinding into armor plates and sensor nodes-the overload of information cutting his control over his own body. Hook gave a low Cybertronian scream, a babble of static too low for human ears to pick up, clinging briefly to the table next to him for support before crashing to his knees, shaking helplessly.
Ratchet was frozen. The scan said nothing had changed to Bonecrusher’s spark, but he’d known a false reading had been a risk. He’d just killed Bonecrusher, destroying the gestalt.
He was going to die.
He hadn’t made it past the crippled Deceptions, both motionless and looking almost dead, before Long Haul stirred and Hook pulled himself back and into a sitting position, optics glowing too brightly with the remains of the feedback.
Neither moved to attack. Ratchet thought about fleeing while they were still incapacitated, or at least weakened. If he did find his way back through the maze of tunnels, it would be mostly through blind luck.
“The others can feel him again,” Long Haul said thickly through a voice that crackled with white noise. “Even though Scrapper’s almost fifty miles away.”
But-that meant that Bonecrusher wasn’t dead- Ratchet reached a hand to the table for support, head reeling.
“Thank you,” said Hook, sounding almost-giddy. That was unnerving. “It-he-it’s better.”
“I thought he was dead,” Ratchet said out loud, stupidly.
Long Haul responded. “But he’s not.”
And that made the difference.
--End Chapter 2--
Part Two
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15
Series: Transformers 2007
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck, Part 2
It was a strange sort of pity, Ratchet thought. At the depth of their need, their dependence on the full team being there.
The whole matter was only complicated by the scans he’d done. With both of the Decepticons, he’d-
It was odd. He was a good match for them. Their memories sat naturally in his mind, weren’t unbearably foreign to his systems. He’d scanned before, but it had been more… Much more uncomfortable, both during the process and afterwards.
Maybe it was the difference between a gestalt-compatible spark and an ordinary one. That would make a certain amount of sense. As much sense as anything-it wasn’t a highly studied subject, and a lot of the research that had been done had been ‘inconclusive.’ Ratchet knew a lot of people, including some scientists, had written it off as an inexplicable mystery, something beyond what science could understand. He wasn’t sure what to think of that.
But they really weren’t interested in humans. They simply… Simply weren’t of importance to them. That would have worried Ratchet more if they hadn’t felt the same way about most Cybertronians, Decepticon or Autobot. They were insular. Apparently, seeking outside help was something they never did...
All they needed was the six of them. They were independent of the rest of the Cybertronian world-now, at least-but so very dependent on each other.
Gestalt.
Ratchet had been close to various Autobots over the course of the war, culminating with his current team. Jazz’s loss had been a blow to all of them. Certainly to Ratchet. He thought the hardest-hit had been Bumblebee-who’d found a friend in Jazz instead of a teammate, on top of being the youngest-and Optimus.
Optimus Prime. Leader of the Autobots. Ratchet strongly suspected that Jazz was-had been-the only mech he let himself confide in.
But Jazz was dead now, leaving behind the other four. They were all still grieving, in their own ways. And the five of them had had-the four of them left still did-a loose team bond. Not a gestalt-bond, which was much closer: not as close as it was possible to get at all, but still very close indeed. He couldn’t imagine what that felt like.
To the gestalt, it had felt like they’d lost Bonecrusher, at one point. Ratchet had purposefully left that memory alone, deleting it without viewing it. He wasn’t sure he could take it, and that sort of thing was private.
He shouldn’t be considering the privacy of an enemy Decepticon a concern. He shouldn’t be considering helping them at all. He should have contacted Optimus Prime immediately and turned them in.
They just wanted to survive. Human beings and faction lines were irrelevant. Even if that hadn’t been the case, they were willing to do anything to get their sixth-Bonecrusher-back. And at least some of them wouldn’t go back on a promise-and the ones who would were happy to go along with it.
Ratchet felt… Restless. It was unlikely that there would be an emergency call anything soon-that at least would have taken his mind off of everything, even if it was just another prank call.
It wasn’t like he could call up one of the team to chat about his little dilemma. Or, really, he could, and should, be doing just that. Not to try for guidance, but to get Bumblebee to drive over to figure out where they’d squirreled themselves and their injured companion away, and Ironhide to cause large, destructive explosions, and Optimus to lead and cause almost as much damage as Ironhide. And he would be there, with his saw and smaller cannon, fighting off the ’Cons with the rest of his team, the way it was supposed to be, and fixing whatever needed his fixing, if one of his wards got injured. Fixing his team, not the Decepticons. The way it was supposed to be. Autobots versus Decepticons.
How could he seriously be considering helping them…?
Optimus trusted him. So did Ironhide, and Bumblebee. He would be betraying that trust. Even if he didn’t actually lie to them-which would be hard-he would be betraying them. In the middle of the war, and the later stages, it would have been an unquestionable death sentence, the punishment for turning traitor. That was what he was contemplating. Debating. Thinking about actually going through with.
The war was over… There was no Allspark, not anymore. They were a dying race.
So the war was over. Optimus wanted to believe that, at least. Bumblebee did believe it. Ironhide didn’t. Ratchet knew a lot-maybe the majority-of the surviving Autobots and Decepticons would agree with the weapons specialist. Too much blood had been spilled for it to just end-
There was a chance the remaining five members of the Decepticon gestalt would die if their final member was lost. Ratchet had seen it happen with bonded pairs, when one had been lost and the other hadn’t, when the ‘survivor’ had been unable to take the backlash, or simply not strong enough to go back to living alone, or too devastated to want anything but oblivion. Twinned or split sparks always offlined together. Gestalt bonds were weaker than that, but he understood what was meant by the team ‘unbalancing’ itself.
A lot of people had died. Did one or two more, or even six, make a difference? He had to believe that it did.
And they weren’t going to hurt anyone, unless he didn’t.
He should call Optimus. That was the right thing to do. The comm. lines were blocked, true, but he could probably figure a way around that.
oOo
He still hadn’t made up his mind. At least, that was what Ratchet told himself as he jounced his way over the rough road-if you could call it that-that led to where he’d stashed his emergency medical supplies. The materials that were only for Autobots, not people.
And now, the materials that were also for Decepticons.
He didn’t know where the gestalt was, but they wouldn’t be hard to find, he figured. They certainly wouldn’t have left, and his comm. line was still blocked. And they wanted him to find them, assuming he was willing to help, because they needed him. And if he wasn’t going to fix the injured one, because they wanted revenge, or at least spilled blood, or energon. Or both.
So he hadn’t made a final decision, but he was taking action anyway. This was irrational, unreasonable, crazy.
They needed help.
It was like… It wasn’t like he felt compelled to aid them. No, it wasn’t that. He felt… Obliged to assist them, or… It was that he wasn’t able to not help them. So he was going to. Because he chose to. Even if he didn’t know why. Why was he doing this?
The crunch of tires behind him startled him, making Ratchet whip around, weapons systems suddenly activating. He didn’t relax-didn’t let himself relax-when he recognized Long Haul.
“What do you want?” Ratchet asked, voice hard, glaring at the truck. “What are you doing here?”
“Scavenger found this place, and if you’re going to help you’re going to need supplies. So I’m transport. If you need it.”
Scavenger-the name rang a muffled bell for Ratchet, in the dim, deep-underwater way of encrypted data. He’d cut off most of what he’d gathered from Scrapper’s and Hook’s systems from his general consciousness, what he couldn’t let himself delete.
“Fine,” Ratchet said, voice icy, turning his back on the mech to pick up a box of basic supplies and his set of field tools.
When he turned back around, he had a distinct feeling that the mech was staring at him with something akin to surprise, even though he was in his vehicle mode, making any expressions impossible to discern. Long Haul didn’t say anything, though, so Ratchet was happy to let it go.
Long Haul brought it up once they were both back on the main road, moving swiftly but still close to the speed limit-it was unusual to watch a Decepticon obey human traffic laws. Ratchet had let him set the pace; he was leading the way, anyways. Ratchet still didn’t know where his ‘patient’ was.
“You’re helping,” said Long Haul at last, breaking the quiet. He phrased the fragment oddly, not making it a question or a definitive statement.
Ratchet didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.
“-if you’re doing this to get close enough to sabotage him, you will die, Autobot.”
He snorted. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t be here alone-I’d have the other Autobots and a human military squad outfitted with sabot rounds.”
“-So why are you helping us?”
“Because the risks outweigh the possible benefit.”
“Bleeding-heart Autobot sap-”
“Yes. And aren’t you glad of that? I can’t say that I am. But if I had the personality of almost any other Autobot I’ve met, certain as slag any Decepticon, you would be dead right now, or close to it. You certainly wouldn’t be getting help.” Ratchet’s voice was laden with scorn, and even he wasn’t sure how much of it was self-directed.
There was a long period of silence.
“Thanks.” The single word was said reluctantly, almost angrily, but it was still said.
Ratchet didn’t know how to respond to that.
oOo
They were underground. Judging by the confusing three-dimensional maze that Long Haul was leading him through, it didn’t matter to the Decepticons that he’d had one entrance revealed to him, because there were still a half-dozen more, and any number of traps around and just inside them. The base was, disturbingly, permanent-looking. It wasn’t a quick, bare-bones knock-up of a job. That fact set Ratchet’s nerves even more on edge-which said something, considering the situation.
Lost in his thoughts and put too on-edge by the bad situation and the eerie, silent tangle of cramped passageways, Ratchet was startled when his guide finally stopped. Ratchet transformed, nervous, glancing quickly around the empty room before turning to quickly unload the supplies he’d brought off of Long Haul, who wasn’t verbally complaining-yet-but had his engine rumbling threateningly. Once the Decepticon had returned to his root mode, he started moving what Ratchet had unloaded, glaring slightly-Ratchet didn’t know why-when the medic moved to help him. They worked silently, and finished quickly.
Ratchet was surprised again when he turned to find a second mech-Decepticon-Hook-had entered the room, jerking desperately as he fought off to urge to bring out his weaponry and fight, for a few brief seconds.
The urge ended unnervingly quickly. He had no reason to feel this, this comfortable-
“Ratchet,” said Hook coldly. The Autobot simply nodded stiffly in return, in recognition of the greeting, barely pausing in the sorting-through of the medical supplies he’d brought.
“Where’s the- Where’s Bonecrusher?” he said finally, turning from his now-neatly-organized rows of laser scalpels, coils of wire and other materials and tools.
Hook didn’t give a direct answer, but nodded at Long Haul, leaning against a wall, who pressed a switch. There was an answering beep from a covered table-it looked vaguely like a stasis berth, to Ratchet-a little ways away, and the panels keeping the injured Decepticon covered folded and flipped away, compacting into nothing but a few inches more of table.
Ratchet had to work very, very hard to keep from yelling at the gestalt, even from a fair distance away and without augmenting his vision or performing any sort of analysis whatsoever. The condition Bonecrusher was in was just that bad.
He was a mess. A wreck. A heap of scrapped, oxidized, salt-encrusted twisted metal. His head had been placed next to him on the table.
He turned back to Hook, at a loss for words. The two Decepticons eyes him impassively. Was this some sort of twisted joke? Could losing a gestalt member have put them this far over the edge? Ratchet was going to guess ‘yes.’
“He’s dead,” he managed to get out, the words said flatly. There was no way a mech who had sustained that level of damage was still online. Not with those gaping rents in his armor, not after being soaked in seawater for who-knew-how-long…
“No,” said Hook and Long Haul simultaneously, their words blending together perfectly, and eerily. More proof of a twisted gestalt mindset? Or just the gestalt part? Or coincidence?
“He’s not,” finished Long Haul on his own. “We can feel him.” Almost subconsciously, as if he wasn’t really aware of the action, he pressed light nervous fingers over the lower part of his abdomen, presumably where his spark was.
“…What?”
“We felt him almost die, a hundred galaxies away. He was-gone.”
“We could feel him again, barely, when we arrived on earth. Now, it’s hard to sense him outside of a ten-mile radius, but I believe that we’d need to exit Earth’s atmosphere again to feel an absence.” Hook’s face and voice were impassive, contrasting with Long Haul’s still-hurting impassioned tones.
Oh, Primus. It couldn’t just be Decepticons that Ratchet had to deal with-that he could have handled-it had to be crazy Decepticons.
Hook, who’d been watching the medic closely, made a huffy, annoyed noise. “Check his spark.”
“He’s been hacked through, scrapped after death, then soaked in seawater for a few years. I’d be surprised if I find a single uncorrupted sub file.” Regardless, he walked over to the mangled, salt-encrusted body, fingers searching deftly for the spark chamber, olfactory sensors damping down their sensitivity as harsh salt and the chemicals of organic decay reached them, not necessarily unpleasant (he didn’t analyze scent that way) but far too strong.
The chamber was tucked in beneath the Decepticon’s neck, unnervingly close to where the head had been separated from the body with a single slash, almost definitely from Optimus’ sword: Ratchet had vague memories of the incident. It opened seamlessly, only requiring a little force once or twice where hinges and seams had corroded together, or simply stuck-which was a bad sign. A functioning mech had a list of subroutines, safeguards and warnings a mile long to protect the spark.
Once he got it open, though, there was clearly-something there. The humid, contaminated air it had in it had the typical high-energy flicker of gaseous substances that had been held close to a spark, and puddles of, presumably, more seawater were glowing. It looked remarkably like the plasma of a spark, but liquid-although that defied all logic.
“See?”
Ratchet ignored the probably-smirking Decepticon and tried a scanner.
Both attempts using it, with a recalibration in-between, showed the little liquid puddles were sparkmatter, mixed with saltwater and the remains of plankton, plus trace elements regularly found in ocean water and some minor sedimentary particles. It was impossible-
“This makes no sense.”
“No, it means the theory is flawed,” Hook said smugly. Ratchet bit his tongue, figuratively speaking, finding the human saying having an entirely appropriate element of pain to it. “Are you going to set up an energon feed?”
“I don’t know,” snarled Ratchet. “I don’t know if improving conditions will send it-him-into shock and actually kill him this time, or if not doing anything-for now, at least, the spark will need energon before I attach it-hook it back up to the body-will kill it because it’s survived this long but it’s a tenuous state or even if it’s the slagging phytoplankton and embryonic crabs that have miraculous curative properties that have let this happen at all-” And there was a very good chance that the crazy Decepticon gestalt would kill him, instantly or very slowly and very painfully, if he did end up permanently off-lining Bonecrusher.
When he turned to face the two Decepticons they were clearly talking on internal comm. systems, whether just the two of them or with more, their eyes dark but for the occasional flicker. After an interminable minute, Hook spoke.
“Try the feed. You’ll need to either way.”
Ratchet nodded firmly, not willing to give either the satisfaction of seeing his nervousness. “I’ll need a monitor, processed energon and a closed-coil circulatory mock-up.” He had isolation valves already, to keep the spark contained during the transfer, and afterwards.
He waited for the monitor instead of starting to stop up and cut away the energon lines immediately, unwilling to risk so much as jolting the spark when he didn’t have a feed going on its condition-although he wasn’t sure that the monitor would help much. The case was breaking virtually every medical rule he’d though existed. Although his scan had recognized the puddles as sparkmatter…
He was just fumbling around in the dark with this case. Experience, training and access to reference material didn’t give him much of an edge in this sort of situation.
‘Here,” Long Haul said shortly, reappearing with an armful of supplies, which he placed on the table. Ratchet bit back both a thank-you and a sharp comment, both wanting and not wanting to say both.
Why was he so conflicted? Why was he doing this at all? Because he was a medic.
But right now, he had work to do.
First, attach the monitor. Second, begin isolation. Ratchet tried to ignore the way Long Haul and Hook shuddered whenever he ended up banging his hand too hard against the wall of the spark chamber, vibrating the material side. It made him feel slightly sick; he was an Autobot, and a medic. The gesture was only superficially intimate.
Third, close the spark chamber and move it. Attach it to the energon feed, start up the mechanism in the preliminary stage. Add the energon. Turn it on.
Ratchet counted the seconds, knowing how long it would take for the first energon to hit the spark without thought, from long practice and familiarity. He turned to face the two expectantly waiting Constructicons a moment before-
(There was a very good chance that they would kill him, if he killed their teammate. Very, very good.)
Long Haul was knocked to the floor with the sheer ferocity of the sensation-fire burning along every inner wire, grinding into armor plates and sensor nodes-the overload of information cutting his control over his own body. Hook gave a low Cybertronian scream, a babble of static too low for human ears to pick up, clinging briefly to the table next to him for support before crashing to his knees, shaking helplessly.
Ratchet was frozen. The scan said nothing had changed to Bonecrusher’s spark, but he’d known a false reading had been a risk. He’d just killed Bonecrusher, destroying the gestalt.
He was going to die.
He hadn’t made it past the crippled Deceptions, both motionless and looking almost dead, before Long Haul stirred and Hook pulled himself back and into a sitting position, optics glowing too brightly with the remains of the feedback.
Neither moved to attack. Ratchet thought about fleeing while they were still incapacitated, or at least weakened. If he did find his way back through the maze of tunnels, it would be mostly through blind luck.
“The others can feel him again,” Long Haul said thickly through a voice that crackled with white noise. “Even though Scrapper’s almost fifty miles away.”
But-that meant that Bonecrusher wasn’t dead- Ratchet reached a hand to the table for support, head reeling.
“Thank you,” said Hook, sounding almost-giddy. That was unnerving. “It-he-it’s better.”
“I thought he was dead,” Ratchet said out loud, stupidly.
Long Haul responded. “But he’s not.”
And that made the difference.
--End Chapter 2--