So... this fic is totally getting longer than I wanted it to be.
I became stuck right towards the end of this section, and literally had a flash of inspiration at work. I don't remember the last time I froze as dialogue occurred to me, but I sure did run back to my desk and grab my notebook to write it down. *see the happy Okami!*
Edit: Bluestreak bunnies. When they bite. They bite hard.
Title Three Small Words
Characters Bluestreak, Jazz, Wheeljack
Okami's Multi-verse This loosely ties into Silver Purity, Cursed Crimson (loosely, because it's one of those things you just don't talk about), and in turn Privileges of Rank loosely ties into this. (it makes sense... really :/) Of note, this happens before Privileges of Rank (and there goes any sense of chronology).
Summary Bluestreak's bad day continues (summary will still be improved on)
Warnings Mechanical medical gore inside. I guess it's still a tad on the dark side. :/
Part 1
The mech he followed led him into a building, hastily fitted for the medics' use.
It stank of death.
“Nnooo.” I didn't want to stay here. Please don't leave me here, you said you wouldn't leave me.
But Jazz was pausing by a gurney, and I could see a body already on it. It was silent and still, the optics dark.
The medic swept the lifeless corpse off, clearing the space for Jazz to set me down. I weakly swatted at his chestplate.
“Nooo.”
Jazz gathered my hands into his, a smile on his face as he looked down at me. “Don't worry, Blue. These guys will take care of you.” With that he left, and I watched him go with a growing sense of trepidation until the medics blocked him from my view.
They muttered at each other, prodding my injuries with careless fingers, and drawing helpless cries from my vocalizer. They plugged me up to a monitor station and debated my status right over my head like I wasn't even there.
“Are you getting these temperature readings? The trauma from transporting him without proper care before has corrupted his circuits. He's suffering from stress.”
“His legs are slagged, they're going to require a complete fabrication. There is no way we'll be able to get him fighting fit in a reasonable amount of time.”
“Ventilator's ruptured. Scanners are detecting shorts throughout his systems. Energon loss is going to shut him down within the next megacycle. Do we have any to spare?”
“Surgery has the priority, and those who are fighting fit. I think we can spare a ration for anything three and under. What's his priority?”
I moaned at them. 'I'm right here! I can hear you talking about me.'
A brief pause in the conversation as the senior medic looked me over. His attention was suddenly drawn to the entranceway, as more casualties came in and I could almost hear his processor come to a hasty decision. “Four.”
I wanted to cry out, to object to their decision, but I couldn't manage more than a glitched whimper.
The medics left me without another look, already intent on the new arrivals.
I stared at the filthy ceiling, looking at the intriguing pattern of energon and other fluids spattered across it.
They were going to let me die. I was too damaged to be repaired without costing other mechs their lives. Too damaged to be repaired and put back out on the battlefield when there were other mechs who weren't so damaged, and would be able to fight more immediately.
A sense of panic seized me then.
I was going to die.
I sought something anything that would draw my thoughts from that prospect, from the incessant beeping of the monitor attached to my port.
I turned my head to the right, the rest of the room a blur of activity around me.
Yet right next to me lay another mech. I knew he was another Priority Four because no one was tending to him, and even to me his damage looked too grievous for anything but.
He was missing his arms and one of his legs was gone below his knee. Shrapnel decorated his torso and chestplate, pieces as long as my arm. Was that a finger lodged under his bumper?
Oh, Primus.
I looked away, my holding tanks churning as I realized that the shrapnel was the remains of his arms, the shoulder struts lodged deep into his thin chestplate. Energon pulsed from under his his plating, and I wondered how long he had been there bleeding his life away.
He stared up at the ceiling, his mouth moving in silent agony, sloshing oil and energon out of his mouth. His optics flickered as he valiantly fought to stay online.
My chronometer fritzed, it must have, because I wasn't staring at him for long before his optics flared in one final effort before they died completely, and in the middle of all the noise and hubbub I could hear the sound of his systems going offline with a soft whine.
I stared for what must have been several breems, waiting for him to come back online, but then the medics came, and almost without checking they began taking him apart. His parts necessary for the survival of another.
I scrabbled at my gurney, unable to tear my gaze away from the horrifying spectacle of experienced hands dismantling someone I had just seen alive. They took away the parts they needed and then cleared the remains off the table for the next patient.
When they glanced at me, I could almost see them calculating how much longer I would function before I too could be used for desperately needed spare parts.
I moaned as loudly as my vocalizer would go without breaking into static. I didn't want them to think I'd expired. Maybe some other mech would happily shut down and and let them strip him of gears and circuits, but I couldn't be that unselfish. It was the Autobot thing to do, and I knew that I couldn't do it. How pathetic was that?
They left without bothering with me again, and the new mech babbled incoherently at the air, his optics wide and frightened. My muddled processor couldn't make sense of the passing of time and before I knew it, he'd gone quiet and still.
And the medics were taking him apart, and sweeping him off the gurney.
The desire to shut down pulled at me, my systems whining unhealthily as they slowed down.
But I couldn't shut down.
Because beside me, on either side, mechs were dying and being replaced with other mechs who were also dying. Their circuitry, and hardware disassembled for spare parts. And every so often a medic would stop by me, and touch my arm, and I would moan as loud as I could because I didn't want them to start taking me apart while I was still online.
And I couldn't shut down because if I shut down they would take me apart, and I didn't want to come online with pieces missing, receiving fatal errors from all of my primary and secondary systems.
I didn't want to die.
I don't know how long I lay there, my chronometer had long since given out. My systems hummed unsteadily as I fought to keep them on, but still nonessential systems shut down from lack of power, and a dull ache spread down from my fuel tanks. The unsteady thrum of my fuel pump and the distinct feel of something dripping down my spinal strut told me that my holding tanks were leaking.
I hated my helplessness. I hated being subjected to this humiliating, lingering death.
I had no more fluid to cry as tears, and the empty tubes burned with their effort to expel something.
My vision flickered in and out, I could no longer keep track of when the bodies on the tables around me were picked clean, or swept off, or when new mechs arrived to take their place.
I hated this burning desire to go out and take out those Decepticons that did this to me.
I hated that I didn't want to do it for the dying mechs around me. But for what they did to me, to make me suffer like this.
I hated that I wanted to live so bad, when others could use my parts to bring justice to the Decepticons.
Still they came, I could feel them touch me, or wrench at my frame, intent on whatever piece of me they desired. When I heard them, felt them, I directed power desperately needed elsewhere into my vocalizer to ask them to leave me alone, though it only came out in a moan.
Static became a constant companion, blurring the room, and filling my audio sensors until it became a ceaseless droning that overlaid the voices. I watched my reserves slowly decrease, my body spending too much on self repair, and maintaining the few systems I had left, even as energon leaked out of my holding tanks.
Hands gripped my head, turning my face one way and another, indecipherable murmurs rumbled through the dexterous fingers as the mech spoke to himself. My mouth sagged open, as warnings flashed across my HUD about low fuel levels and inadvisable activity.
Pain spiked through my cranium, a burst of static in my audio receptors and I cried out, my fingers clenching weakly at nothing.
“-the slag?”
My optics flickered on and I stared up at an engineer, familiar vocal indicators glowing dimly. He stared down at me, then his gaze swept up to the monitor attached to me. His optics blazed white with fury.
“Rail!” the engineer's voice cut through the noisy room with surprising ease.
“What?”
“Get your slagging aft over here now!” The engineer's gray hands released my head and plunged into my damaged side.
He was taking me apart!
“I'm a little fragging busy, right now,” Rail shouted back.
I strained to jerk away from the mech who was so determined to deactivate me.
“Get over here, now!”
His optics turned to me as I tried to make sounds, tried to speak, unable to manage anything more than static. I tried to direct power into my lifeless hands to grab at his arms, and push him away, but I couldn't manage more than a twitch of my fingers.
Static overlaid my vision, and the engineer continued his prying at my internals. Panic seized me as I lay helpless under his hands. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. Were they so desperate for parts,that they would take them from the functioning?
A hand touched my shoulder, and the mech spoke to me, but I could make no sense of his words, except for the soft request to shut down.
No!
Don't deactivate me! Don't turn me into spare parts!
“Who the slag do you think you are, ordering me around my med bay?” Rail snarled, his frame leaning over me to glare at the engineer.
“Your med bay?” A short, sharp question and the hands paused in their work briefly before starting again with increased fervor. “Last time I checked, Ratchet was the CMO. And he's here.”
I could barely make out the engineer inspecting something in his hand, a piece of me he had removed, but I couldn't tell what it was, not that him removing anything was good, because it meant that he was taking me apart.
“While Ratchet's in surgery, this is my med bay. What are you doing? Barbarian!” Metal clanged as Rail grabbed the engineer's wrist. “He's not deactivated yet! Ratchet'll have your cranium for this!”
The white mech wrenched his arm out of the medic's grasp. My engine whined as sparks flew from the area the engineer worked at.
“Barbarian?” The gray hands pulled out again, and the object he held sparked. “Why don't you tell me why this mech is lying here with failing systems?”
“He's a priority four, that's why. We don't have-”
The optics blazed impossibly brighter. The familiar engineer glared down at me. “Bluestreak, shut down now, or I will shut you down myself!”
Rail slapped his hands onto the table, jostling me painfully. “You can't let him shut down. He's too damaged! His spark will extinguish if he does.”
“Then fix him so he won't,” Wheeljack growled, vocal indicators flashing angrily.
The medic's white hands cut the air with the force of his refusal. “We don't have the staff-”
The gray and white mech jerked something within me, pulling a weak whine from my vocalizer. “I see mechs doing nothing but checking on dying soldiers.”
“He's a priority 4!”
I can hear you!
The engineer's vocalizer buzzed and hissed. “He shouldn't be, Rail. He's clearly a three.”
Stop talking about me like I'm not here.
The senior medic snarled, his own optics blazing. “How dare you! Don't tell me how to do my job.”
“And just what is your job?”
Please...
“To get soldiers back on the-”
Don't take me apart...
The engineer cut the senior medic with a hiss of static. “No! Your job is to save lives. Now get your staff over here and save this mech's life.” One of the gray hands pulled out to beckon the attending staff over.
Please...
“Ratchet will be hearing about this, engineer.”
Oh please...
The familiar mech leaned forward, the light of his optics dimmed as he narrowed his lens. “Considering,” his voice rumbled through the hand in my internals, “he's the one who taught me, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to yell at you too.”
Don't...
Rail grumbled, but gestured his staff over. The white and gray mech stepped away as hands plunged into my torso, and pried at my legs. I felt it all; blades of pains that swept through my sensory net. I was surrounded by the silence of medics concentrating on all but the messages they sent each other. I don't know how long it was until of the of the staff finally reached into my chest, and unplugged my main data cable.
Don't let me die!
My vision went dark, and the pain went with it.
End Part 2
Part Three
eloquencelost and dinogrrl have shown us the awesomeness that is a mad Wheeljack. It's perfect for what I needed.
Edit: Bluestreak bunnies. When they bite. They bite hard.
Title Three Small Words
Characters Bluestreak, Jazz, Wheeljack
Okami's Multi-verse This loosely ties into Silver Purity, Cursed Crimson (loosely, because it's one of those things you just don't talk about), and in turn Privileges of Rank loosely ties into this. (it makes sense... really :/) Of note, this happens before Privileges of Rank (and there goes any sense of chronology).
Summary Bluestreak's bad day continues (summary will still be improved on)
Warnings Mechanical medical gore inside. I guess it's still a tad on the dark side. :/
Part 1
The mech he followed led him into a building, hastily fitted for the medics' use.
It stank of death.
“Nnooo.” I didn't want to stay here. Please don't leave me here, you said you wouldn't leave me.
But Jazz was pausing by a gurney, and I could see a body already on it. It was silent and still, the optics dark.
The medic swept the lifeless corpse off, clearing the space for Jazz to set me down. I weakly swatted at his chestplate.
“Nooo.”
Jazz gathered my hands into his, a smile on his face as he looked down at me. “Don't worry, Blue. These guys will take care of you.” With that he left, and I watched him go with a growing sense of trepidation until the medics blocked him from my view.
They muttered at each other, prodding my injuries with careless fingers, and drawing helpless cries from my vocalizer. They plugged me up to a monitor station and debated my status right over my head like I wasn't even there.
“Are you getting these temperature readings? The trauma from transporting him without proper care before has corrupted his circuits. He's suffering from stress.”
“His legs are slagged, they're going to require a complete fabrication. There is no way we'll be able to get him fighting fit in a reasonable amount of time.”
“Ventilator's ruptured. Scanners are detecting shorts throughout his systems. Energon loss is going to shut him down within the next megacycle. Do we have any to spare?”
“Surgery has the priority, and those who are fighting fit. I think we can spare a ration for anything three and under. What's his priority?”
I moaned at them. 'I'm right here! I can hear you talking about me.'
A brief pause in the conversation as the senior medic looked me over. His attention was suddenly drawn to the entranceway, as more casualties came in and I could almost hear his processor come to a hasty decision. “Four.”
I wanted to cry out, to object to their decision, but I couldn't manage more than a glitched whimper.
The medics left me without another look, already intent on the new arrivals.
I stared at the filthy ceiling, looking at the intriguing pattern of energon and other fluids spattered across it.
They were going to let me die. I was too damaged to be repaired without costing other mechs their lives. Too damaged to be repaired and put back out on the battlefield when there were other mechs who weren't so damaged, and would be able to fight more immediately.
A sense of panic seized me then.
I was going to die.
I sought something anything that would draw my thoughts from that prospect, from the incessant beeping of the monitor attached to my port.
I turned my head to the right, the rest of the room a blur of activity around me.
Yet right next to me lay another mech. I knew he was another Priority Four because no one was tending to him, and even to me his damage looked too grievous for anything but.
He was missing his arms and one of his legs was gone below his knee. Shrapnel decorated his torso and chestplate, pieces as long as my arm. Was that a finger lodged under his bumper?
Oh, Primus.
I looked away, my holding tanks churning as I realized that the shrapnel was the remains of his arms, the shoulder struts lodged deep into his thin chestplate. Energon pulsed from under his his plating, and I wondered how long he had been there bleeding his life away.
He stared up at the ceiling, his mouth moving in silent agony, sloshing oil and energon out of his mouth. His optics flickered as he valiantly fought to stay online.
My chronometer fritzed, it must have, because I wasn't staring at him for long before his optics flared in one final effort before they died completely, and in the middle of all the noise and hubbub I could hear the sound of his systems going offline with a soft whine.
I stared for what must have been several breems, waiting for him to come back online, but then the medics came, and almost without checking they began taking him apart. His parts necessary for the survival of another.
I scrabbled at my gurney, unable to tear my gaze away from the horrifying spectacle of experienced hands dismantling someone I had just seen alive. They took away the parts they needed and then cleared the remains off the table for the next patient.
When they glanced at me, I could almost see them calculating how much longer I would function before I too could be used for desperately needed spare parts.
I moaned as loudly as my vocalizer would go without breaking into static. I didn't want them to think I'd expired. Maybe some other mech would happily shut down and and let them strip him of gears and circuits, but I couldn't be that unselfish. It was the Autobot thing to do, and I knew that I couldn't do it. How pathetic was that?
They left without bothering with me again, and the new mech babbled incoherently at the air, his optics wide and frightened. My muddled processor couldn't make sense of the passing of time and before I knew it, he'd gone quiet and still.
And the medics were taking him apart, and sweeping him off the gurney.
The desire to shut down pulled at me, my systems whining unhealthily as they slowed down.
But I couldn't shut down.
Because beside me, on either side, mechs were dying and being replaced with other mechs who were also dying. Their circuitry, and hardware disassembled for spare parts. And every so often a medic would stop by me, and touch my arm, and I would moan as loud as I could because I didn't want them to start taking me apart while I was still online.
And I couldn't shut down because if I shut down they would take me apart, and I didn't want to come online with pieces missing, receiving fatal errors from all of my primary and secondary systems.
I didn't want to die.
I don't know how long I lay there, my chronometer had long since given out. My systems hummed unsteadily as I fought to keep them on, but still nonessential systems shut down from lack of power, and a dull ache spread down from my fuel tanks. The unsteady thrum of my fuel pump and the distinct feel of something dripping down my spinal strut told me that my holding tanks were leaking.
I hated my helplessness. I hated being subjected to this humiliating, lingering death.
I had no more fluid to cry as tears, and the empty tubes burned with their effort to expel something.
My vision flickered in and out, I could no longer keep track of when the bodies on the tables around me were picked clean, or swept off, or when new mechs arrived to take their place.
I hated this burning desire to go out and take out those Decepticons that did this to me.
I hated that I didn't want to do it for the dying mechs around me. But for what they did to me, to make me suffer like this.
I hated that I wanted to live so bad, when others could use my parts to bring justice to the Decepticons.
Still they came, I could feel them touch me, or wrench at my frame, intent on whatever piece of me they desired. When I heard them, felt them, I directed power desperately needed elsewhere into my vocalizer to ask them to leave me alone, though it only came out in a moan.
Static became a constant companion, blurring the room, and filling my audio sensors until it became a ceaseless droning that overlaid the voices. I watched my reserves slowly decrease, my body spending too much on self repair, and maintaining the few systems I had left, even as energon leaked out of my holding tanks.
Hands gripped my head, turning my face one way and another, indecipherable murmurs rumbled through the dexterous fingers as the mech spoke to himself. My mouth sagged open, as warnings flashed across my HUD about low fuel levels and inadvisable activity.
Pain spiked through my cranium, a burst of static in my audio receptors and I cried out, my fingers clenching weakly at nothing.
“-the slag?”
My optics flickered on and I stared up at an engineer, familiar vocal indicators glowing dimly. He stared down at me, then his gaze swept up to the monitor attached to me. His optics blazed white with fury.
“Rail!” the engineer's voice cut through the noisy room with surprising ease.
“What?”
“Get your slagging aft over here now!” The engineer's gray hands released my head and plunged into my damaged side.
He was taking me apart!
“I'm a little fragging busy, right now,” Rail shouted back.
I strained to jerk away from the mech who was so determined to deactivate me.
“Get over here, now!”
His optics turned to me as I tried to make sounds, tried to speak, unable to manage anything more than static. I tried to direct power into my lifeless hands to grab at his arms, and push him away, but I couldn't manage more than a twitch of my fingers.
Static overlaid my vision, and the engineer continued his prying at my internals. Panic seized me as I lay helpless under his hands. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. Were they so desperate for parts,that they would take them from the functioning?
A hand touched my shoulder, and the mech spoke to me, but I could make no sense of his words, except for the soft request to shut down.
No!
Don't deactivate me! Don't turn me into spare parts!
“Who the slag do you think you are, ordering me around my med bay?” Rail snarled, his frame leaning over me to glare at the engineer.
“Your med bay?” A short, sharp question and the hands paused in their work briefly before starting again with increased fervor. “Last time I checked, Ratchet was the CMO. And he's here.”
I could barely make out the engineer inspecting something in his hand, a piece of me he had removed, but I couldn't tell what it was, not that him removing anything was good, because it meant that he was taking me apart.
“While Ratchet's in surgery, this is my med bay. What are you doing? Barbarian!” Metal clanged as Rail grabbed the engineer's wrist. “He's not deactivated yet! Ratchet'll have your cranium for this!”
The white mech wrenched his arm out of the medic's grasp. My engine whined as sparks flew from the area the engineer worked at.
“Barbarian?” The gray hands pulled out again, and the object he held sparked. “Why don't you tell me why this mech is lying here with failing systems?”
“He's a priority four, that's why. We don't have-”
The optics blazed impossibly brighter. The familiar engineer glared down at me. “Bluestreak, shut down now, or I will shut you down myself!”
Rail slapped his hands onto the table, jostling me painfully. “You can't let him shut down. He's too damaged! His spark will extinguish if he does.”
“Then fix him so he won't,” Wheeljack growled, vocal indicators flashing angrily.
The medic's white hands cut the air with the force of his refusal. “We don't have the staff-”
The gray and white mech jerked something within me, pulling a weak whine from my vocalizer. “I see mechs doing nothing but checking on dying soldiers.”
“He's a priority 4!”
I can hear you!
The engineer's vocalizer buzzed and hissed. “He shouldn't be, Rail. He's clearly a three.”
Stop talking about me like I'm not here.
The senior medic snarled, his own optics blazing. “How dare you! Don't tell me how to do my job.”
“And just what is your job?”
Please...
“To get soldiers back on the-”
Don't take me apart...
The engineer cut the senior medic with a hiss of static. “No! Your job is to save lives. Now get your staff over here and save this mech's life.” One of the gray hands pulled out to beckon the attending staff over.
Please...
“Ratchet will be hearing about this, engineer.”
Oh please...
The familiar mech leaned forward, the light of his optics dimmed as he narrowed his lens. “Considering,” his voice rumbled through the hand in my internals, “he's the one who taught me, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to yell at you too.”
Don't...
Rail grumbled, but gestured his staff over. The white and gray mech stepped away as hands plunged into my torso, and pried at my legs. I felt it all; blades of pains that swept through my sensory net. I was surrounded by the silence of medics concentrating on all but the messages they sent each other. I don't know how long it was until of the of the staff finally reached into my chest, and unplugged my main data cable.
Don't let me die!
My vision went dark, and the pain went with it.
End Part 2
Part Three
eloquencelost and dinogrrl have shown us the awesomeness that is a mad Wheeljack. It's perfect for what I needed.