Title: Five Times Ratchet Blew Up (and One He Didn't)
Characters: Ratchet, Wheeljack
Rating: PG
Summary: 5 times that Ratchet blew up, both literally and figuratively.

1) It's all Wheeljack's fault.

Wheeljack happily poked a few wires back into place, while Ratchet looked on skeptically.

"'Jack, what are you doing to your welder attachments? If you jammed them again, you should have come to me!"

Wheeljack waved a hand dismissively. Ear-lights glowing a cheery cyan, he explained. "Oh, nothing's wrong, Ratch! I'm just fiddling with them!"

Ratchet raised an optic ridge in confusion.

"But there's nothing wrong with them?"

Wheeljack nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, but I'm making 'em more efficient! See, if I change the way that the electrical input is translat-"

Ratchet cut in. "So you're experimenting. On yourself. For no reason. Except to stave off boredom."

Wheeljack rubbed the back of his head and glanced up at Ratchet, confused.

"Um... Yes, I guess you could put it that way."

"And your experiment is liable to explode in your face and take a good chunk of your hand off with it."

"Well, the welder does emit bursts of concentrated electricity to produce heat, so I suppose so?" Wheeljack idly pulled out a few loose wires and poked them together. Every now and then they'd spark, causing Ratchet to instinctively flinch away and prompting Wheeljack to coo and lean in closer.

"And the only reason you're doing this is the off chance that you might be able to improve ... something."

"Err... ooh, if I connected those two together..." Wheeljack pulled out his soldering iron and started using it on his wrist, attention diverted from his friend's questioning.

Ratchet twitched. Warning lights were starting to go off in his brain.

Wheeljack yipped as a cherry red fist clanged down on his helm.

"IS EVERYONE ON THIS PRIMUS-FORSAKEN SHIP TRYING TO BLOW MY CIRCUITS?! BECAUSE, FRAGGIT, IT'S WORKING!"

With a snarl, the angry medic stormed out of Wheeljack's lab, leaving behind a confused, droopy-winged engineer who tentatively started sealing his wrist shut. It wouldn't do to actually blow up, not when Ratchet was going to be too upset to fix his hand back on if something happened.

Haha, you thought I meant literal explosions, didn't you? Well, there will be those, but they're not scheduled until later.