Working Title: For Science!
It wasn’t at all unusual that Wheeljack’s lab was pitch-black but for the faint phosphorescent glow of a computer’s screen off in one corner. Ratchet had expected it to be that way. So much so that, as he’d entered his passcode into the door’s control panel with one hand while balancing a tray bearing energon against his hip with the other, he was already adjusting his optical inputs for the expected darkness. And sure enough, as the double doors parted, he saw that he’d guessed correctly.
Nor was it unusual that no one had seen the slightest trace of Wheeljack for the last three days. Ratchet had asked around after him. Thoroughly. No one had seen him, not even the more observant citizens of Autobot Headquarters. Still, there was no cause for alarm; such extended disappearances were typical of his slightly obsessive best friend. When an idea grabbed him and he sank his proverbial teeth into it in return, time became utterly meaningless to Wheeljack. He had an uncanny ability to completely lose himself in sketches and calculations and mechanical bits and pieces. Entire days, he had once told Ratchet, passed like mere minutes. Ratchet had known Wheeljack to disappear for weeks, on occasion, and Primus alone knew how he didn’t manage to starve himself to death during such stretches of time.
Well, actually, that wasn’t true. Wheeljack didn’t starve himself to death because Ratchet, Primus help him, had long ago assigned himself the task of making sure that Wheeljack didn’t kill himself via inadvertent starvation. Or by being frighteningly absent-minded when people were shooting at him. Or by being cheerfully gung-ho when greatly outnumbered. Or by simply blowing himself up. Or pretty much anything in between all of those things. Wheeljack was very creative when it came to damaging himself, and sometimes making sure that he stayed in the land of living was a full-time job. But someone had to do it because Wheeljack was too valuable to lose to self-neglect or absent-minded ditziness, and the task had ended up in Ratchet’s lap. Like most things usually wound up, it seemed, in either his lap or Prowl’s lap.
But, as much as the engineer had a knack for annoying Ratchet on an insane number of levels, the medic knew that his life wouldn’t be quite the same without Wheeljack’s regular injection of pure, unadulterated crazy into it. So as much as Ratchet griped - Must keep up appearances, after all - he appreciated the crazy, all the same. Really, he wouldn’t know what to do without it. It was that ingrained in his life. So, he almost cheerfully took on the responsibility of All Things Wheeljackian. Including bringing the crazy one energon when he went off on an accidental-suicide-via-absent-mindedness kick.
This was Ratchet’s mission at the moment.
Humming tunelessly, Ratchet pointed himself at the glow in the corner of the darkened lab and made his way carefully toward it. He used the glow of the energon that he carried as a makeshift lantern, and he cautiously shuffled his feet along the floor in anticipation of something being strewn across his path to trip him. Long experience had taught him to do this, in lieu of going to the trouble of giving himself infrared vision for just this purpose, and he made it across the room without incident.
As he approached the glow closely enough to see more detail that was bathed in its sickly glow, Ratchet half-expected to find Wheeljack sprawled on the floor in forced stasis. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d found him that way. But then he made out the outline of Wheeljack’s body against the brightness of the glow, as his optical inputs readjusted themselves to the increased but localized light. Wheeljack was staring at the computer screen in front of him, one fist resting against the mask covering the lower half of his face, his eyes narrowed in deep thought, his expression and his entire demeanor distant.
Which also wasn’t surprising. Wheeljack had been handed a heaping helping of intriguing work to do. Optimus Prime wanted robotic dinosaurs, and Wheeljack was geeky enough - and fascinated enough by the very idea - to put everything he had into the project. Hence, the disappearance. And the research that took him away from Headquarters for long stretches of time. And the distance, now, as he concentrated all of his formidable processing power on the task of creating what Optimus Prime wanted. With, no doubt, Wheeljack’s own trademark contributions; Ratchet didn’t even want to think about the weapons of mass destruction with which Wheeljack was liable to adorn these things, not to mention the sheer brute strength they would possess. Ratchet shuddered slightly, inordinately glad that these things would be on their side. He didn’t envy the Decepticons, no siree. Specifically, he didn’t envy their medics.
Wheeljack, unsurprisingly, didn’t acknowledge Ratchet’s presence, not even when Ratchet set the tray he’d been carrying on the corner of the desk with a soft clink and then stood himself unobtrusively behind the engineer’s chair so that he could see what Wheeljack was staring at with such utter absorption.
It was one of the dinosaurs, of course. Wheeljack had it half-detailed, and the computer screen was displaying a nose-to-tail-tip cross-section of what Wheeljack had so far designed and drawn of the beast. Even half-finished, it was impressive. And, sure enough, it had what looked to be flamethrowers capable of spewing… Yowch.
Indeed, Ratchet didn’t want to think about it.
“S’pretty much life size,” Wheeljack suddenly muttered to himself then.
The tone of his voice was as distant as his expression was, and the panels on his head blinked only very dimly in time with the slightly-slurred words he’d uttered. This indicated rock-bottom energy levels and confirmed to Ratchet that if he had waited any longer in bringing Wheeljack energon, he would have indeed found his friend sprawled insensate on the floor. It flitted whimsically through his mind that he was getting pretty good at determining exactly when Wheeljack would pass out, but he swallowed the chortle that chased the thought. Must keep up appearances, indeed.
“What?” Ratchet asked instead, his own tone a bit sharp so as to break Wheeljack out of his fugue in an efficient sort of way.
Wheeljack jumped slightly, confirming Ratchet’s suspicion that his friend had been entirely unaware that he was standing there. Wheeljack craned his head around to blink dumbly at Ratchet. His eyes, too, were dim.
“Oh,” he said vacantly. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” Ratchet responded gruffly, appraising the engineer with narrow-eyed concern. He swiped one of the containers of energon that he’d brought off the tray, unwrapped the feed hose that had been wrapped securely around it, and then unceremoniously thrust it at Wheeljack, who blinked dumbly at it, as if he didn’t know what it was.
“Take that,” Ratchet said firmly, brooking no argument. “Before you pass out on me.”
Wheeljack looked at the offered container with slightly renewed interest, but then his gaze inevitably strayed back to the computer screen.
“It’s not going anywhere, ‘Jack,” Ratchet pointed out exasperatedly. “C’mon,” he added when Wheeljack returned his gaze to him. “Take that in, and then I’ll let you work another three days before I bug you again. I promise.”
Wheeljack blinked dazedly at him.
“Three days?” he echoed weakly as he fiddled clumsily with the feed hose attached to the container of energon. Like a few other Autobots, Wheeljack had no mouth. So, he had to intake his energon through a port which was, in his case, built into the front of his right shoulder. He often joked that it was better than tasting the stuff that was made from Earth’s more unrefined energy sources. And sometimes, indeed, Ratchet envied him, occasionally entertaining notions of altering his own systems in order to set up an intake system similar to Wheeljack’s. He would have done it, too…if he had the time. Which he generally didn’t have, not with the pack of yahoos with which he was surrounded, at any rate.
“Three days,” Ratchet confirmed, meanwhile, watching Wheeljack’s energy-depleted clumsiness warily. “Not even close to a record for you, but-Do you need to me to attach that for you, ‘Jack?” he interrupted himself.
“No!” Wheeljack protested as he pawed ineffectually at his own shoulder, trying to get the armor panel that covered and protected the intake port to retract. “Not an infant,” he muttered indignantly.
“No, you aren’t,” Ratchet cheerfully agreed. “Infants are way better at taking care of themselves than you are.”
Wheeljack paused in his efforts to connect the container of energon to himself long enough to aim a reproving glare at the medic. Ratchet took advantage of the pause to grin triumphantly and then swipe the container back from Wheeljack.
“Gimme that,” he growled, and mere seconds later he’d made the connection and Wheeljack was sighing happily, leaning back in his chair and cradling the energon container on his lap as the energy slowly, so as not to overwhelm him, fed into his systems.
While Wheeljack “ate,” Ratchet took the opportunity to look over the drawing on the computer screen. Like all of Wheeljack’s designs, it was brilliant and complex and yet somehow managed to look simple, at least on the outside. It would be a tough build, but it would be well worth the effort. This was the conclusion to which Ratchet came as he took in the thing’s firepower and estimated its strength. And then, he noticed something: Down in the corner of the screen was the word “Slag,” written in Cybertronian glyphs. Ratchet laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Wheeljack asked curiously, his voice and his entire demeanor now far more alert as he re-energized.
“That,” Ratchet said, still chuckling, as he pointed at the glyphs. “Nice.”
Wheeljack shrugged silently.
“You are aware,” Ratchet pointed out, “that people use that word as an expletive?”
“No!” Wheeljack responded explosively, sarcastically. “Really?” And then he sighed, leaned back in his chair again, and added with a shrug, “He needs a name, Ratch. And it suits him, I think.”
Ratchet stared at Wheeljack for a long while after that, not certain that he’d heard Wheeljack correctly at first. Then, after determining that he had indeed heard him correctly, he wondered if the engineer was simply using those particular pronouns in a metaphoric or generic sort of way, like the way that humans referred to inanimate oceangoing ships as “she.” But something in the way that Wheeljack was looking at him - the stubborn set of his shoulders, the way that his arms were folded tightly over his chest, the way that his eyes were narrowed challengingly at Ratchet - told Ratchet that he’d understood Wheeljack perfectly well, in all particulars, and that he most certainly wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
And on schedule, there was that sinking feeling again.
“’He?’” Ratchet echoed quietly, just to be absolutely certain that he hadn’t misinterpreted his crazy friend. “’Him?’”
Wheeljack just continued to stare at Ratchet, his expression if anything even more resolute.
“’Jack, you were told to create drones,” Ratchet said then, lowering his voice as if afraid that someone would overhear. He leaned closer to Wheeljack as well, as if that would somehow better telegraph his sudden sense of impending doom. “These are supposed to be drones,” he repeated, clearly enunciating each word as if he thought repetition and pedantically proper diction might somehow get through to Wheeljack in Stubborn Crazy Mode.
“Not if I can help it,” Wheeljack muttered.
Ratchet blinked at him stupidly, for a long while having no idea what to say. And then he simply asked the question that was uppermost in his mind.
“For the love of Primus, why?” he demanded to know.
Wheeljack said nothing for a long while. He took to toying with the hose that connected him to the container of energon, about three-quarters of which was gone now. After what seemed like hours, he met Ratchet’s gaze.
“Because I’m tired of creating weapons, Ratchet,” he said simply, his limited expression still managing to be pained and nakedly honest. “I want to create something the sole purpose of which isn’t to kill.”
Ratchet sighed, tapping at the computer screen, indicating the flamethrowers.
“I’d say,” he said quietly, “that this…he…is going to do quite a bit of killing, Wheeljack.”
“Yes,” Wheeljack agreed quietly, sadly. “I know. Because we need that right now. But if…when…the war ends, he won’t end up deactivated, disassembled, and tossed in a refuse smelter like most everything else I’ve ever created. He’ll have a life. He’ll be a life, Ratchet. And so will the others.”
Nor was it unusual that no one had seen the slightest trace of Wheeljack for the last three days. Ratchet had asked around after him. Thoroughly. No one had seen him, not even the more observant citizens of Autobot Headquarters. Still, there was no cause for alarm; such extended disappearances were typical of his slightly obsessive best friend. When an idea grabbed him and he sank his proverbial teeth into it in return, time became utterly meaningless to Wheeljack. He had an uncanny ability to completely lose himself in sketches and calculations and mechanical bits and pieces. Entire days, he had once told Ratchet, passed like mere minutes. Ratchet had known Wheeljack to disappear for weeks, on occasion, and Primus alone knew how he didn’t manage to starve himself to death during such stretches of time.
Well, actually, that wasn’t true. Wheeljack didn’t starve himself to death because Ratchet, Primus help him, had long ago assigned himself the task of making sure that Wheeljack didn’t kill himself via inadvertent starvation. Or by being frighteningly absent-minded when people were shooting at him. Or by being cheerfully gung-ho when greatly outnumbered. Or by simply blowing himself up. Or pretty much anything in between all of those things. Wheeljack was very creative when it came to damaging himself, and sometimes making sure that he stayed in the land of living was a full-time job. But someone had to do it because Wheeljack was too valuable to lose to self-neglect or absent-minded ditziness, and the task had ended up in Ratchet’s lap. Like most things usually wound up, it seemed, in either his lap or Prowl’s lap.
But, as much as the engineer had a knack for annoying Ratchet on an insane number of levels, the medic knew that his life wouldn’t be quite the same without Wheeljack’s regular injection of pure, unadulterated crazy into it. So as much as Ratchet griped - Must keep up appearances, after all - he appreciated the crazy, all the same. Really, he wouldn’t know what to do without it. It was that ingrained in his life. So, he almost cheerfully took on the responsibility of All Things Wheeljackian. Including bringing the crazy one energon when he went off on an accidental-suicide-via-absent-mindedness kick.
This was Ratchet’s mission at the moment.
Humming tunelessly, Ratchet pointed himself at the glow in the corner of the darkened lab and made his way carefully toward it. He used the glow of the energon that he carried as a makeshift lantern, and he cautiously shuffled his feet along the floor in anticipation of something being strewn across his path to trip him. Long experience had taught him to do this, in lieu of going to the trouble of giving himself infrared vision for just this purpose, and he made it across the room without incident.
As he approached the glow closely enough to see more detail that was bathed in its sickly glow, Ratchet half-expected to find Wheeljack sprawled on the floor in forced stasis. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d found him that way. But then he made out the outline of Wheeljack’s body against the brightness of the glow, as his optical inputs readjusted themselves to the increased but localized light. Wheeljack was staring at the computer screen in front of him, one fist resting against the mask covering the lower half of his face, his eyes narrowed in deep thought, his expression and his entire demeanor distant.
Which also wasn’t surprising. Wheeljack had been handed a heaping helping of intriguing work to do. Optimus Prime wanted robotic dinosaurs, and Wheeljack was geeky enough - and fascinated enough by the very idea - to put everything he had into the project. Hence, the disappearance. And the research that took him away from Headquarters for long stretches of time. And the distance, now, as he concentrated all of his formidable processing power on the task of creating what Optimus Prime wanted. With, no doubt, Wheeljack’s own trademark contributions; Ratchet didn’t even want to think about the weapons of mass destruction with which Wheeljack was liable to adorn these things, not to mention the sheer brute strength they would possess. Ratchet shuddered slightly, inordinately glad that these things would be on their side. He didn’t envy the Decepticons, no siree. Specifically, he didn’t envy their medics.
Wheeljack, unsurprisingly, didn’t acknowledge Ratchet’s presence, not even when Ratchet set the tray he’d been carrying on the corner of the desk with a soft clink and then stood himself unobtrusively behind the engineer’s chair so that he could see what Wheeljack was staring at with such utter absorption.
It was one of the dinosaurs, of course. Wheeljack had it half-detailed, and the computer screen was displaying a nose-to-tail-tip cross-section of what Wheeljack had so far designed and drawn of the beast. Even half-finished, it was impressive. And, sure enough, it had what looked to be flamethrowers capable of spewing… Yowch.
Indeed, Ratchet didn’t want to think about it.
“S’pretty much life size,” Wheeljack suddenly muttered to himself then.
The tone of his voice was as distant as his expression was, and the panels on his head blinked only very dimly in time with the slightly-slurred words he’d uttered. This indicated rock-bottom energy levels and confirmed to Ratchet that if he had waited any longer in bringing Wheeljack energon, he would have indeed found his friend sprawled insensate on the floor. It flitted whimsically through his mind that he was getting pretty good at determining exactly when Wheeljack would pass out, but he swallowed the chortle that chased the thought. Must keep up appearances, indeed.
“What?” Ratchet asked instead, his own tone a bit sharp so as to break Wheeljack out of his fugue in an efficient sort of way.
Wheeljack jumped slightly, confirming Ratchet’s suspicion that his friend had been entirely unaware that he was standing there. Wheeljack craned his head around to blink dumbly at Ratchet. His eyes, too, were dim.
“Oh,” he said vacantly. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” Ratchet responded gruffly, appraising the engineer with narrow-eyed concern. He swiped one of the containers of energon that he’d brought off the tray, unwrapped the feed hose that had been wrapped securely around it, and then unceremoniously thrust it at Wheeljack, who blinked dumbly at it, as if he didn’t know what it was.
“Take that,” Ratchet said firmly, brooking no argument. “Before you pass out on me.”
Wheeljack looked at the offered container with slightly renewed interest, but then his gaze inevitably strayed back to the computer screen.
“It’s not going anywhere, ‘Jack,” Ratchet pointed out exasperatedly. “C’mon,” he added when Wheeljack returned his gaze to him. “Take that in, and then I’ll let you work another three days before I bug you again. I promise.”
Wheeljack blinked dazedly at him.
“Three days?” he echoed weakly as he fiddled clumsily with the feed hose attached to the container of energon. Like a few other Autobots, Wheeljack had no mouth. So, he had to intake his energon through a port which was, in his case, built into the front of his right shoulder. He often joked that it was better than tasting the stuff that was made from Earth’s more unrefined energy sources. And sometimes, indeed, Ratchet envied him, occasionally entertaining notions of altering his own systems in order to set up an intake system similar to Wheeljack’s. He would have done it, too…if he had the time. Which he generally didn’t have, not with the pack of yahoos with which he was surrounded, at any rate.
“Three days,” Ratchet confirmed, meanwhile, watching Wheeljack’s energy-depleted clumsiness warily. “Not even close to a record for you, but-Do you need to me to attach that for you, ‘Jack?” he interrupted himself.
“No!” Wheeljack protested as he pawed ineffectually at his own shoulder, trying to get the armor panel that covered and protected the intake port to retract. “Not an infant,” he muttered indignantly.
“No, you aren’t,” Ratchet cheerfully agreed. “Infants are way better at taking care of themselves than you are.”
Wheeljack paused in his efforts to connect the container of energon to himself long enough to aim a reproving glare at the medic. Ratchet took advantage of the pause to grin triumphantly and then swipe the container back from Wheeljack.
“Gimme that,” he growled, and mere seconds later he’d made the connection and Wheeljack was sighing happily, leaning back in his chair and cradling the energon container on his lap as the energy slowly, so as not to overwhelm him, fed into his systems.
While Wheeljack “ate,” Ratchet took the opportunity to look over the drawing on the computer screen. Like all of Wheeljack’s designs, it was brilliant and complex and yet somehow managed to look simple, at least on the outside. It would be a tough build, but it would be well worth the effort. This was the conclusion to which Ratchet came as he took in the thing’s firepower and estimated its strength. And then, he noticed something: Down in the corner of the screen was the word “Slag,” written in Cybertronian glyphs. Ratchet laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Wheeljack asked curiously, his voice and his entire demeanor now far more alert as he re-energized.
“That,” Ratchet said, still chuckling, as he pointed at the glyphs. “Nice.”
Wheeljack shrugged silently.
“You are aware,” Ratchet pointed out, “that people use that word as an expletive?”
“No!” Wheeljack responded explosively, sarcastically. “Really?” And then he sighed, leaned back in his chair again, and added with a shrug, “He needs a name, Ratch. And it suits him, I think.”
Ratchet stared at Wheeljack for a long while after that, not certain that he’d heard Wheeljack correctly at first. Then, after determining that he had indeed heard him correctly, he wondered if the engineer was simply using those particular pronouns in a metaphoric or generic sort of way, like the way that humans referred to inanimate oceangoing ships as “she.” But something in the way that Wheeljack was looking at him - the stubborn set of his shoulders, the way that his arms were folded tightly over his chest, the way that his eyes were narrowed challengingly at Ratchet - told Ratchet that he’d understood Wheeljack perfectly well, in all particulars, and that he most certainly wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
And on schedule, there was that sinking feeling again.
“’He?’” Ratchet echoed quietly, just to be absolutely certain that he hadn’t misinterpreted his crazy friend. “’Him?’”
Wheeljack just continued to stare at Ratchet, his expression if anything even more resolute.
“’Jack, you were told to create drones,” Ratchet said then, lowering his voice as if afraid that someone would overhear. He leaned closer to Wheeljack as well, as if that would somehow better telegraph his sudden sense of impending doom. “These are supposed to be drones,” he repeated, clearly enunciating each word as if he thought repetition and pedantically proper diction might somehow get through to Wheeljack in Stubborn Crazy Mode.
“Not if I can help it,” Wheeljack muttered.
Ratchet blinked at him stupidly, for a long while having no idea what to say. And then he simply asked the question that was uppermost in his mind.
“For the love of Primus, why?” he demanded to know.
Wheeljack said nothing for a long while. He took to toying with the hose that connected him to the container of energon, about three-quarters of which was gone now. After what seemed like hours, he met Ratchet’s gaze.
“Because I’m tired of creating weapons, Ratchet,” he said simply, his limited expression still managing to be pained and nakedly honest. “I want to create something the sole purpose of which isn’t to kill.”
Ratchet sighed, tapping at the computer screen, indicating the flamethrowers.
“I’d say,” he said quietly, “that this…he…is going to do quite a bit of killing, Wheeljack.”
“Yes,” Wheeljack agreed quietly, sadly. “I know. Because we need that right now. But if…when…the war ends, he won’t end up deactivated, disassembled, and tossed in a refuse smelter like most everything else I’ve ever created. He’ll have a life. He’ll be a life, Ratchet. And so will the others.”