Broken
Optimus stumbles out of the tree line and sees a large warehouse structure ahead, only a few hundreds of feet away. He holds a tree trunk for a moment as he sways on his feet. Taking a painful breath he starts walking towards the building. Each step is harder to take than the last and after a few steps his right foot drags, digging into the soft earth and catching. He stumbles, tipping to the right. He throws his hands out to try and break his fall as he collapses heavily on his right side. Agony grips him and he clenches his jaw to stifle his cry of pain.
Optimus forces his arms under him and pushes himself back onto his feet with quite a bit of effort. Looking up towards the warehouse he starts to trudge onward. Only a few hundred more feet. The end of the building facing him is wide open and just tall enough to accommodate his 35 foot tall form. He takes one last stumbling step, reaching out and taking hold of the edge of the building's roof with his left hand, leaning heavily forward on it. The corrugated steel roof and it's supporting trusses groan and bend under his grip as he ducks under and shuffles into the mouth of the warehouse, still gripping the trusses above him.
The floor is dry hardened dirt and Prime bends his knees, ungracefully lowering himself on his right knee, before he lets go of the roof. He pivots down to a seated position before leaning over achingly to the left and he collapses heavily on his left forearm, barely able to hold himself upright. His spark races in his chest and his cycling comes in heavy, panting breaths. Blood still seeps from some of his more grievous injuries.
He attempts to hail Autobot HQ to no avail, finding now that his communications system was damaged. His vision swims with an apparent concussion. His right arm reaches out in an attempt to steady himself against a nearby vehicle. But with a groan he loses consciousness, collapsing heavily on his left side.
Optimus' cycling is shallow and labored as he comes to three hours later, still laying on his left side, his right arm draped across, and crushing an old rusted pickup truck chassis. Fluid rattles in his intake system with each breath. He is very much aware of his spark beating out a rapid and weak rhythm in his chest and he manages a groan, forcing his optics open one at a time, painfully lifting his head to look around. He is in what appears to be a warehouse amongst old human vehicles in various stages of completion and all quite rusty. Some of them are covered in tarps, others with big heavy duty canvas, all stained with oil and grease. He vaguely recalls stumbling into this place before blacking out.
Prime's right hand twitches a bit, his battered fingers clenching briefly and he winces at the grit grinding in his joints. He lets his head thud back to the ground. He knows he has lost a great amount of blood from the wounds he sustained, and is quite surprised that he even made it from the forest to this facility. The night air is soothingly cool at least, and he pulls his knees a little closer to his body and drifts into unconsciousness.
Optimus is roused by his self-preservation sub-routines, warning him of the proximity of an unidentified, foreign entity in contact with his carotid artery. He becomes aware in the next beat of pressure against the side of his throat in that same location. He swallows involuntarily and the pressure ceases for a moment. He lets out a soft breath and shifts his whole mass slightly, bringing the feeling back to most of his body, some areas having lost sensation from being slept on.
Drawing a tentatively deeper breath, he opens his optics to find a blurry human reaching out and pressing their hands into the weak pulse in his neck. "Optimus Prime?" They whisper, looking into his heavily lidded optics as he struggles to keep them open.
"Mhh." Optimus rumbles with as much of a nod as he can manage, weak as he is.
"What happened to you?" the woman asks, backing away to make better eye contact with the Cybertronian.
"Ambush," Optimus breathes, his voice rough. "Eight...attacked. Made it here..."Optimus clenches his optics shut for a second before continuing, "lost consciousness. I have lost much blood… I need your help." Optimus grimaces as he rolls painfully onto his back and the human backs away a bit.
"What can I do?" She whispers before stepping closer to Optimus' chest and taking in all of his bloody wounds. She can hear the rattle of fluid in his intake manifolds and under that, in the stillness of the warehouse, she hears the racing zap-snick zap-snick zap-snick of his spark.
Optimus closes his optics, "Do you have a cell phone?" he rumbles softly, tilting his head to the side and opening his optics to look at the human tiredly, his cycling labored.
"Yes," she replies quickly, pulling out an iPhone 5s and holding it up so that the Cybertronian can see it.
Optimus blinks slowly, analyzing the human device. His left arm shifts, sliding across the dirt floor a little bit away from his body and he turns his hand over so that his palm is facing up. The human walks down towards his palm and places the phone on the center of his hand. In a few seconds, fine, faintly glowing tendrils of fiber emerge from around the plates in the Cybertronian's palm and carefully poke and prod about the phone before engulfing it entirely. His fingers carefully wrap around the device and he initiates contact with the human piece of technology.
Optimus groans softly, "Thank you." He lets out a sigh and patches his communication system into the device and hails HQ, sending a distress signal containing his approximate coordinates and alerting the Autobots to his severe injuries. He terminates the transmission and the delicate neural filaments withdraw back into his hand. His fingers unfurl and he lets out a sigh. The human woman takes her phone from his palm and replaces it in her pocket looking up at the weakened Cybertronian with concern on her face.
"Is there anything I might be able to do to help you while we wait?" She walks up closer to the Autobot's big face and he turns his head to the side to look at her, optics dim.
"Fuel…" he growls, brow knitting together for a moment. He quickly looks away from the human as his intakes hitch and he coughs violently once, twice, he lifts his right hand to cover his mouth as he coughs a third time. Coagulated blood spews into his palm.
The human woman sees the dull-ly glowing blue liquid splatter on his hand and her eyes go wide. She knows nothing about Cybertronian physiology but she has seen enough TV to know that coughing up blood is a bad sign, regardless of species, indicative of severe internal damage. "Fuel?" she repeats, stepping closer to the Cybertronian's head as he looks over at her.
"Yes," he says softly, "Diesel...if you have it. I need to start converting it int-to energon so that my body can...stabilize unt-til I can get a transfusion. I will ... most likely lose consciousness... I will also require," he pauses; doing a mental calculation takes more effort than usual, "three 12-volt car batteries, connected in series, just in case." He breathes heavily and the woman nods, departing to collect what the Cybertronian requested.
Ten minutes later, Optimus wakes to a truck engine approaching. The vehicle pulls up near his head and he turns his gaze towards the vehicle to see a large fuel tank in the back. The door opens and the woman gets out. "This is all of the diesel fuel we have. It's nothing really special, but it has a cetane number of 55, if that helps. I'll get you the hose." She walks around to the side of the truck and climbs up into the bed beside the tank and unwinds the long thick hose from its rack, jumping down and holding out the hose. Optimus' left arm bends up and he lifts his hand up near his shoulder, resting the back of his hand on the ground there.
The woman walks over and puts the hose in his hand. "Hold it for a moment, I know you can't operate it, I just need to turn the pump on." Optimus' fingers tiredly curl around the hose as the woman climbs back up into the bed of the truck and fires up the pump system. The motor whirs to life and the hose jumps as it is filled with fuel.
The woman jumps back down, walks over and takes the hose from his hand. Optimus lets his arm fall back down beside his body. The woman steps closer and looks up at the Cybertronian for direction. "So how do you get the fuel into your system?"
Optimus swallows, "Orally. My fuel tank is internalized when I transform, so there's no other way to access it. Climb onto my hand." He says, stretching his right arm across his body. He turns his hand so that the backs of his fingers are on the ground so she can climb on to his hand.
The woman obeys, taking the hose in her left hand and holding on with her right, sitting down and gripping the hose as Optimus lifts her to his sternum where he carefully deposits her. His hand falls exhaustedly to his stomach and he heaves a sigh. Then he is suddenly gripped by an intense cough. He turns his head to the side and he hacks another mouthful of blood-tainted saliva onto the dirt floor. He groans, looking back up at the woman on his chest with a little blood on the corner of his mouth.
The woman grimaces and pulls the hose up a little more and steps closer to the Cybertronian's head, taking a seat against his sternal plating above the hollow of his neck. Optimus' whole body groans as he shifts his position slightly and looks down at the small human perched on his chest for a moment before laying his head back down and opening his mouth.
The woman leans forward a little more, and as strange as it feels, rests the nozzle on his bottom lip and pulls the trigger, slowly filling his mouth with diesel fuel. She rises and falls with his shallow breathing and she feels that twinge of empathetic pain tighten in her stomach as she gets a real good look at just the damage to his face. The metals of his cheeks are gouged and scratched, dried blood covers about 80% of his face and neck. He is covered in dirt and mud. She can only guess at what he went through.
Sudden motion beneath her gives her a start but when she looks down, she realizes it's simply the movement of him swallowing. Another fifteen seconds or so, he swallows again. After another two mouthfuls, the woman looks over at the tank which before, was full, but now is at nearly half. She keeps filling the Cybertronian's mouth and he keeps gulping down the fuel.
After about three minutes, he looks down and makes eye contact with the woman and she releases the trigger lock and the fuel stops flowing. She withdraws the hose and Optimus swallows what was in his mouth, "Thank you, I'll need more but…" he pauses to take a few breaths, "I need to breathe for a moment." He says softly, his voice vibrating deeply underneath her. He lays his head back and takes a moment to just breathe.
The woman watches the exhausted Cybertronian breathe through his slightly parted lips, rising and falling with his quickened breaths.
"Okay," he rumbles in his deep baritone, "you may continue."He opens his mouth a little more and the woman places the nozzle back on his lower lip and starts pumping again.
Five minutes later, the tank is empty, it's entire contents in the belly of the immensely grateful Cybertronian. He rumbles his thanks before his optics dim and close. He lets out a soft huff as he loses consciousness And his head lolls to the left.
The woman sits on his chest for a moment, at a loss for what to do. Cautiously, she scoots down the massive being's chest to his neck and slides down to the ground. She wraps the hose back up on the truck and sits down against one of the tires facing the Cybertronian.
She watches the giant mechanoid's chest slowly rise and fall, the sound of his intakes still rattling with the fluid in his manifolds. Never in a million years did she think she would ever get to actually meet one of the Autobots. Let alone meet their leader, Optimus Prime.
Sirens suddenly pique her ears and she sits up a little straighter as they draw nearer to her location. Suddenly, a bright yellow search and rescue hummer pulls quickly into the large warehouse. The vehicle skids to a stop near Optimus and breaks apart, swiftly transforming into a bipedal mechanoid like Optimus.
"Primus," the yellow mech rumbles, "I see you at least managed to get him some fuel before he offlined. Thank you." He kneels by the Prime's right side, putting his left palm on the other bot's sternum. "He is fading quickly though. It is likely that the fuel will not be converted fast enough and his systems will lose charge." He pauses, seeing the car batteries sitting beside the human behind him by the truck. "I see that he anticipated that, and asked you to get three car batteries. Thank you. You have certainly made my job easier." The bot rambles quietly as he cleans wounds and preps an IV in Optimus' left arm. "Sounds like he's aspirated blood too. Slag, those 'Cons really beat him up."
The human watches the medic work silently, cleaning and mending his superior's injuries as the IV hangs from the ceiling by a rope.
Suddenly the yellow bot pauses. The warehouse is dead-silent. The medic makes a gruff sound before dropping to sit on his rear. He reaches back towards the truck where the woman now gets to her feet. Scooping up the batteries in one hand, he pushes apart Optimus' chest armor with the other. He sets the batteries on the unconscious Bot's sternum and hunches over the leader's chest.
His hands move swiftly about and the human can't see what's being done. After a few moments the yellow bot leans back and carefully connects the batteries to something deeper in his commander's chest. A jolt surges through Optimus' body and it seizes up for a second before falling limply to the ground with a muffled thud. The huge bot takes a deep breath and let's it out in a huff, his limbs shifting to be more comfortable.
"Snuck that one in there didn't you, Prime." The medic muses.
"What did I do?" Optimus rumbles groggily.
"Slipped into suspended stasis. Your systems shut down on me. I had to jump you back."
"Explains the tingle." The bigger bot growls tiredly.
"You're slagging lucky this human found you and got some fuel into you when she did. Your systems managed to convert a small amount to energon before you offlined, but I gotta get you moved to base quickly so I can get you patched up and get a transfusion going."
Optimus nods and closes his tired optics. Confident in his medic's ability to keep him alive, he loses consciousness shortly thereafter.
Awareness returns to him with a painful stab in his right side. He is awake in the next split second, crying out in pain. He tries to sit up but cannot due to the combined agony of motion and Ratchet's firm hands pressing against his aching chest. He grimaces and clenches his jaw to stifle a second pained snarl. His optics open and he can tell that he is back at Autobot HQ. He looks up at Ratchet with the question 'what happened' written all over his face.
"You have been out for five hours. I got your wounds tended and managed to get your blood volume back to normal. Your intakes have been cleared, drained, repaired and recalibrated. The worst wound is on your right side and will take longer for the nanites to repair. It will be painful for a few days. That being said, you ended up killing six of the Decepticons that ambushed you. The two that were still alive, I had Sideswipe put out of their misery. You did some serious damage, Prime. I'm just sorry it took is so long to reach you."
Optimus cycles a deep intake and releases it through his nose. "I would expect nothing less from you, old friend." Optimus lies his head back and closes his optics to rest his battered body.
~end~