Sheer Dumb Luck
Part 7
By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by Mmouse15
Long Haul looked downright stormy as he waited for Ratchet just inside the entrance to the base. It gave him a brief thrill of fear as he pulled up—had something gone wrong…?
"Something's come up. There's arrows pointing to the med bay—don't give me that look, Scavenger put them up. I'll catch you later."
And then he was gone, accelerating away, leaving behind a bemused Ratchet, who hesitantly drove inside.
Sure enough, there were arrows. At least they know how hard it is to maneuver in this labyrinthine rat's-nest they've built, Ratchet thought as he finally slipped into the med bay. He was shocked, briefly, to find it empty, until realism set in and he remembered that the Constructicons always—always—had someone on monitor duty. He waved absentmindedly at the camera mounted in one corner before turning to his work. He hadn't gotten nearly as far as he'd wanted to, the last time he'd been to the base to work, and he'd need to make up for that—
He worked uninterrupted for hours, utterly absorbed, until he was interrupted by a private comm.
'Ratchet?'
'Scrapper. What is it?'
'I need to go. Don't try to reenter the base until one of use gets back in touch with you; there won't be anybody here to deactivate the internal defenses. You should be fine once you exit, though, if you stick to the roads. I hope to get in touch with you in a few days.'
—Within a few days. Hopefully. Ratchet tried to damp down his suspicions about that involving going after Autobots.
'—Be careful.' Scrapper's mental tone was slightly worried.
He was stunned. Maybe it wasn't Autobots. He knew there was no love lost between the Constructicons and their faction. Would they actually engage in a fight with them? Or worry that a fight would be started? There was a good chance humans would end up dead if there was a conflict started, unintentionally if not purposefully. There had been almost a hundred deaths at Mission City: only three had been Decepticons—not four, he knew now—and only one had been an Autobot. All the rest had been human...
Or maybe their 'something' was Autobots, and Scrapper had warned him not to get caught helping them. The rules regarding how traitors were dealt with were clear, and strict.
He had work to do. He had the rest of the night off, after all, and he was going to take advantage of that.
He'd been working another hour when he glanced at the camera again. He wondered if Scrapper had been telling the truth when he said there was no one else there. That made no sense. And yet—
At least the walls were still marked with arrows: if they hadn't been there, he would have found it impossible to get through the slagging maze that made up the excuse for a base.
Ratchet hesitated before he left, wondering how long it would take them to get back in contact with him, then forced the matter out of his mind. Worrying wouldn't do anything.
It had been four days. He needed something to concentrate on, something to keep his mind occupied, but he didn't know what.
There hadn't been anything suspicious in the news.
Five days.
Six.
A full week.
He needed to just let it go.
Ratchet had been in recharge, but one of his scans had woken him up with an alert.
An approaching Decepticon energy signal.
It only took a few minutes to slip out of town, speeding a short ways into the dark desert: it was a few minutes before three in the morning, and the light from almost-full moon was blocked out by thick clouds, unusual—abnormal—in the desert.
Ratchet pulled to a halt and transformed, the noise magnified in the empty silence. As it faded, he could pick up the sounds of tires crunching over the desert, and he thought about damping down his energy signal, then figured it was too late. At least the tires meant it wasn't Starscream. It could be Barricade, the only other Decepticon from Mission City still alive, though, or it could be any new arrival—
"Ratchet?"
That was a familiar voice. He relaxed. "Scavenger. What—"
"You need to come. It was Starscream—he found us—and it wouldn't be too bad but he had the rest of his wing with him. And it's Mixmaster—he got hit wrong, it broke some of the storage compartments he has built into him, for his chemicals—"
Ratchet cursed fiercely. "That's why it's such a stupid idea to keep that sort of thing inside you— How far away?"
"From here? An hour at my top speed."
Which was less than Ratchet's. "Give me the coordinates."
He was in motion before they finished transferring.
Ratchet was grateful for the rain as it pounded down on the six of them—not because it was pleasant—the way it dripped its way under armor plates most definitely wasn't, but because it was doing something to dilute the reaction that was eating away Mixmaster's internals.
Who the slag was stupid enough to carry around that much acid?
Mixmaster, apparently. And this was the end result: a hit from a Decepticon—from another Decepticon—in the wrong place, cracking one compartment open which broke through some of the other near-by chemical stores and weakened the rest so a second hit let all hell loose—
There wasn't even enough water to wash everything away. It would have taken some body of water big enough to dump the mech, who was by no means small, into bodily, and this was the Mojave desert…
Ratchet had had to make due by counteracting it with a strong base chemical he'd had on hand. Now, he was waiting for the reaction to run its course, and hoping that nothing had been too badly damaged.
He didn't think about why he was helping them. They hadn't asked him for his reasons—so far, at least. Because this was outside what he'd agreed to do.
The reaction was starting to subside. Ratchet added a little more of the base he was using and tried to agitate the mixture with an inert rod, stirring gingerly. He still wasn't being careful enough, and he hissed as a drop of active acid splashed onto one hand.
"At least it looks like all the really important systems are in his head," he muttered, mostly to himself, even though he knew the four conscious Decepticons were watching (and listening) to him. "He's lost a lot of short-term memory."
"He can get it back from one of us," Scrapper offered, and Ratchet nodded. It made sense, that a gestalt was able to do that—
The sky was beginning to lighten even through the clouds—they were thinning, the rain slacking off.
"Could you tilt him to one side to help drain this off?"
Hook, Scavenger and Scrapper managed to tilt him to one side, between the three of them—one of Hook's arms was nonfunctional, and Mixmaster outweighed all of them. That left Ratchet to try and help bail out the deepest puddles. It left his hands coated with a thin layer of acid, not enough to be an immediate problem but enough to prickle—he'd need to wash them thoroughly later, as soon as he had the time and the water, but for now the only damage was to paint and the finish on the metal, purely cosmetic—
Ratchet looked up again. "Is there any way at all to get water here? A lot of it."
"I'll try," Scavenger said, which didn't surprise Ratchet at all. He was the one in the best shape, out of all of them—most of the damage was to his sensors, his spikes—or maybe 'antenna' was a better analogy—which would be excruciatingly painful unless he could dull the feedback from them.
Long Haul made as if to follow him, but Hook reached out a tired hand and pulled him back down. Scrapper left instead. None of them said a word.
Ratchet turned away from the unconscious chemist, unable to do much more, and was hit with the in-your-face electrical charge he'd come to associate with heavy energon loss.
"Who else is hurt?" he demanded. "And when where you planning on telling me? Sometime after you keeled over in emergency stasis lock?"
"It's not too bad," said Long Haul immediately.
"Yes, it is. Don't even think about telling me I'm wrong—I am a medic. I am a medic—you are not." He paused momentarily. "What are you waiting for? Lie down." Maybe it was the snarl, or his position of power (because he was a medic, after all) or because of everything he'd done for them or simply a reflection of Long Haul's weakened state, but he obeyed him without a word.
Ratchet didn't let that faze him, kneeling next to the prostrate mech to investigate the damage. There was very little—comparatively speaking—visible damage, certainly not enough to explain the huge energon loss. The dust around him was dark and compacted, heavy with shed fluids.
"I'm going to jack into your system, okay? Take down as many firewalls as you can."
Again, Ratchet was surprised by the level of compatibility he had with all the Constructicons he'd hooked up to—it had to be a gestalt thing, to facilitate the six (in this case) minds combining. This time, he was relieved—it was much, much easier to run diagnostics when you weren't fighting the mech at the same time. The relief was enough to completely overpower the unease that was invoked by feeling so comfortable with a Decepticon.
Although it had been feeling more and more normal, as time went on.
Ratchet pulled out quickly once he'd identified the damaged areas, realizing the urgency.
"You're good at that," said Long Haul, sounding surprised. "That didn't hurt at all."
Hurt? You had to be a truly bad match and a completely insensitive and unpracticed medic for a basic diagnostic scan to hurt. Maybe he'd been wrong about the gestalt mind making things easier—or the Decepticons just had truly awful medics.
"He's having trouble concentrating," Hook said quietly.
"Slag! Long Haul, I'm going to shut you down for a while. You've lost too much energon; there's a leak in your central reserve. It'll help you conserve energy."
"Okay."
"—Alright. You know, it's a good thing you're one of the ones who get calm with energy loss..." He pinched the necessary wires, turning off Long Haul's higher functions.
"He's usually not," said Hook. "He usually gets unreasonable and angry with energon deprivation."
"Then we're lucky. Can you open up his core energy circuit while I—who's that?" Ratchet spun around as he caught the approaching Decepticon energy signal, combined with the noise of an engine running hard.
"Scavenger. He's got water."
"—Good. Good. Open up the main energon store and pump—tear the armor off if you have to—while I take care of Mixmaster. Most of the damage to him is best handled by self-repair systems, except for lost data, and that's up to you. I can repair the damage to the storage spaces faster than his personal systems, but that needs to wait—or it can wait, and it'll be much easier, later—"
"I understand."
"Good. Scavenger! Thank you—here." Ratchet really didn't think about how the Constructicon had gotten a hold of the bottles of water, just putting the matter aside. Pretend it's Smokescreen, he told himself, cracking open the first bottle and pouring it over the downed Decepticon.
He was careful to rinse the body cavity perfectly clean before he moved on to his own hands.
At last he turned back to Long Haul, sitting down on the other side of him, across from Hook.
The damage wasn't hard to repair: it was just welding shut the cracks in his main energon pump and cavity. The problem was all the energy that had been lost already. "Scavenger. Go back to the base and bring me back five basic rations of purified energon—please."
"Okay. And do you need more water? Scrapper found some too."
"Yes—thank you." Ratchet was only half paying attention.
"Great—"
Ratchet fumbled his way back into Long Haul's system, and winced at the myriad of urgent warnings. They didn't have time. "I need to run a transfusion. Keep Mixmaster offline until I'm back up, and give me some energon once it's available, or regular unprocessed fuel if you want to save it. I—"
"You're taking it from your own system?" Ratchet had the distinct feeling that he'd managed to honestly shock Hook for the first time.
"Yes, you're injured. Once Scrapper gets here with water, finish rinsing Mixmaster off, but be careful—there's a good chance that a lot of his structure's been weakened. And I might be out for a while—my fuel levels aren't all that good right now. Force me up if it's a real emergency."
Hook protested, but Ratchet ignored him, focused on finishing up the repairs—there wasn't much sense in giving an energon feed when it would all just leak out again.
Ten minutes later he finished repairs. Five minutes past that, he passed out.
--End chapter 7--
(We're halfway there!)
