Strange neighbours

Chapter Ten: Success and failure

Rachel groaned getting up and dusting the dirt off her back. She looked at Megatron in annoyance, it had been a day since she and Timsy had fixed his vocal systems and they were now fixing his shoulders and arms after he had instructed them to.
Earlier that morning Timsy had gone out of town to find some materials they needed to fix Megatron that weren't available in town so Rachel had to continue his work on the electronic mechanisms in Megatron's shoulder. She wasn't confident with working on the electronics but Megatron had literally ordered that she do it because he didn't want to waste time waiting for Timsy to return with the spare parts. That was the most aggressive either of them had seen Megatron. Yet.

A small electric shock had zapped her hand and scared the hell out of Rachel which made her fall off Megatron's chest onto the ground. Megatron watched her get up with a twitching optic,

"I said do not connect the cable to the servo motor until you had connected the red plug to its socket Rachel." He said sighing at her human tendency of making mistakes and learning from them, a time wasting method of learning compared to how Transformers learnt.

"I did connect the damn cable to the servo motor! It's not my fault you can't give proper instructions for your own repairs." Rachel replied climbing back up to Megatron's shoulder. She was upset at not being skilled enough with electronics this advanced and having Megatron snarl and snipe at very slip up she made was really getting to her.

"Human you wear at my patience. Did you connect the little green and gold resistor the right way up before connecting the red plug to its socket?"
Rachel looked down at the electronic systems in his shoulder, she looked at the resistor she'd installed earlier and sure enough, it was the wrong way up. She sighed disappointed in herself, not for the first time.

"No." Megatron vented his cooling systems,

"Then reinstall it the right way up. Once you've done that you can connect the cable to the motor servo." Rachel followed his instruction and she looked at her work.

"Well everything seems to be in place. I'll put the armour back on then you can test my work."

"Oh I can't wait" Megatron replied sarcastically, Rachel glared at him.
"Look you know I'm rubbish at electronic systems but it was you who ordered me to repair you anyway. Sorry that we only have 'primitive earth tools' and that I keep screwing up so often but at least I haven't given up. Stop being such a whiny little pain and be thankful that I'm still repairing you okay!" Megatron let out a long growl.
"You dare call me a whiny little pain! I could crush you."
"Not in this state you can't so shut up." Rachel huffed and began reattaching the armour.

Megatron was irritated that the girl didn't respect him. It was out of fear that many respected him so much but this girl had no reason to fear him which was something Megatron was not accustomed to. It was unusual to see a single human fight back in his experience they usually just became submissive.

She reattached the last piece of armour and heard the hum of Megatron's electronic components starting up. She looked down at his right hand and saw his fingers begin to twitch.

"My repair work, worked! Can you fully move your fingers?"
"In time I'll be able to move them fully, along with my arm and shoulder assuming there are no other damaged parts within my arm or shoulder. I'm slowly starting up each electronic, hydraulic and mechanic component individually to make sure everything is running in proper order. If it is successful I will be able to help with repairing the rest of my frame."

Rachel was still smiling at her success of repairing his arm.
"That'll be handy. With you helping we can get you fixed sooner too."

"I can only hope, immobility is something I've had quite enough of in my lifetime."

…

As Rachel rested on the couch with her feet up on a plastic crate she watched Megatron move his arm around. He was checking his elbow and shoulder movement, testing the fluency and smoothness of the actions making sure everything was in correct order. It had been about an hour since his fingers had first twitched and Rachel could see Megatron's mood had lifted considerably despite the fact only his arm was mobile.

"Megatron can I ask you something about your frame?" Optics flicked over and stared at her.

"Yes?"

"I know you can see, hear and touch but do you have a sense of smell and taste?" Megatron had to admit it was a fair question, but unusual for a human to ask. Transformers were perceived as just drone like robots to most humans without emotion or sense.

"Yes my species do have a sense of smell and taste much like yours do but it's very complicated and I will not be surprised if you do not understand how our frames work."

"I'm still interested, could you try and explain it to me?"

"Well I'll start with our sense of smell as it takes place in the nasal cavity. As you already know the nasal cavity is used for resonance of noise and producing nasal sounds by opening the soft palate which connects with our vocal system. It's also used for venting our cooling systems, it's one of the various vent openings within our frames for ventilation but its main function is for smell. Within the cavity there are thousands of electronic nervous endings that respond to the chemical stimuli of gases. When nerve endings react to the stimuli of the chemical gas or gasses, they analyse the gasses and the results of the analysis are sent to our main processors of what the chemicals are."

"Oh okay, How long do the nerve endings function for?"

"Our frames have a number of specific components that manufactures specialized nerve endings depending on where they are within our frame, when a nerve ending stops functioning due to overuse a new one is installed and the old one is removed and destroyed."

"How does it do that?" Megatron was silent for a moment before replying,

"It is very complicated to explain, and some words do not translate into English. It would take several hours to explain the process."

"Oh fair enough. What about taste then?"

"We have a sense of taste but it is only for energon and raw metals. Energon can come in different forms but we only consume it when it's in liquid form. What acts as the tongue for our vocal systems is not the tongue we use for taste.
Unlike your human models of a robotic vocal system ours has another valve. This particular valve is larger and blocks off the vocal cylinders and opens a channel that leads to our fuel tanks. The tasting process takes place in a chamber on the other side of the valve, this way we can spit out what we're consuming if we need to. With raw metal we chew them up into small pieces before they go into the chamber. We taste to access what type of metal or what grade of energon we're consuming.

"So energon is graded like how gas for cars is graded?"

"Yes, only we have a higher spectrum of grading for our energon. Within the chamber there are electronic taste receptors which are made up of many nerve endings clumped together only these ones are specific to taste. These receptors analyse the matter within the chamber then send the analysis to our main processors before chamber expels the substances to our fuel tanks in case we need to expel the substances."

"The solid metals, do they break down or something? Do you have the equivalent of stomach acid?"

"Yes, we only use the substances in our fuel tanks when we need them so the solid metals have time to break down. The acids within our fuel tanks are highly concentrated and if our tanks burst or leak it can lead to our frame being eaten away by the acids.
Our fuel tanks and any pipe connections to it are made extremely strong and sturdy to avoid bursting, cracks and any kind of leakage. Luckily mine was not damaged from the ambush, if a human were to touch the acid it would burn their flesh and they'd be killed."
"Oh. Well yes that escalated quickly." Rachel said with her eyebrows raised.

She heard the rumble of Timsy's truck before she saw it roll up the drive way with their load of parts needed to fix Megatron. He jumped out and looked at Megatron's moving arm,
"Wow you fixed it, nice work babe." He said walking up and sitting by Rachel.
"He was so shit to work with." She muttered to him. Megatron growled indignantly and Timsy laughed holding his sides.
"You two act like siblings. I love it"

…

Samantha climbed out of the truck quickly and winced when pins and needles ran up her bare feet as they hit the cold ground. She only had roller skates the night she'd had snuck out and had lost them during her run in with Bumblebee.

She followed Sam into a building marked N3 which Optimus had told them was where the cafeteria, bathrooms and sleeping quarters were. The pair walked inside and down a hall where a door on the left stood open. They walked in to the cafeteria and two soldiers sat casually at one of the tables, four dishes of hot and steaming food sat on the table. The two soldiers looked up and smiled,
"Sam! What's up kid?" Sam walked forward with Samantha closely following him.
"Epps! Lennox! Hey guys." Sam walked over to them and greeted the soldiers like old friends. Sam introduced Samantha and much to her surprise the soldiers greeted her just as kindly.

…

:Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch! OUCH! Slag it Ratchet! Stop digging so hard!:

Bumblebee spoke through a personal wave on the comlink to the medic who was working wrist deep to remove a large build-up of grime and muck from the base of Bumblebee's door wings. Bumblebee lay face down on a medical berth with his arms propping his head up. Ratchet continued to dig around under armour pulling out handfuls of grime ignoring Bumblebee's twitching door wings.

:Shut down your sensory systems properly then, I know it takes longer to start it back up but at least then I don't have to put up with complaints that I'm being too rough! This is a mess Bumblebee you need to maintain proper maintenance of your frame. Primus this is disgraceful:

:I do try to clean out my frame but you know how hard it is to clean those hard to reach places by yourself. I've kept my frame in fairly good order considering my circumstances:

Ratchet wiped the last of the grime off his fingers and Bumblebee sat up.

:Yes I will admit you have maintained fairly good health Bumblebee. Now we need to find out what's happening with your battle computer:

Bumblebee's door wings dropped and guilt was etched into the scout's faceplates. Ratchet placed a hand on his shoulder and looked at the scout caringly.

:Tell me what happened Bee:

"I thought the soldiers here would be mean and scary but you guys are actually really nice." Samantha said to the two soldiers she was sharing a meal with. Epps and Lennox had come off their shift of patrolling the boundaries of the base when they'd been told of visitors that were due to come. Naturally they both had volunteered to be the ones to meet them as they knew Sam and hadn't seen him in a long time.

Lennox laughed and Epps chuckled at Samantha's comment,
"No way man, we're not like that. During a mission we are a lot different but it's a different atmosphere where lives' could be on the line so we can't afford to stuff around."
"Fair enough. How did you two find out about the Autobots?"
"We found out when we got caught up in the middle of a battle. We were trying to get civilians out of the battle zone when we and some other civilians, Sam included, were almost crushed by a flying truck. When I say flying I mean it was soaring through the air straight for us-"
"It had been tossed by a Decepticon when they were running at Optimus" Epps cut in,
"Yeah, well Ratchet saved us by jumping in front of it and cutting it in half with this huge rotary saw. After that we got offered a job to work with them. By that time we'd gotten to know the Autobots pretty well and we accepted." Lennox answered finishing his meal.

"We heard about your first run in with them." Epps said from across the table,
"Yeah it wasn't all that pleasant." Samantha said looking down at her now empty plate.
"That sucks. I can promise you though that the Autobots are only here to protect you. They'd never intentionally hurt you."
"Yeah they've saved us on the field more times than I can remember." Lennox added.

He noticed that everyone had finished their food so he stood up and showed Sam and Samantha to their temporary rooms. Sam's room was in between Epps's and Lennox's room and Samantha's was on the left of Epps's.

Samantha and Sam slept until late the next morning and met up in the cafeteria for morning tea. Samantha was a lot happier when Lennox gave her some clean clothes to replace her dirt covered attire and a pair of shoes that fit her pretty well. She didn't mind that the clothes were slightly too big or the fact that the shoes were like hiking boots. She put on the murky green shirt and camouflage trousers then threw her tangled hair up into a high bun before finding Sam filling a second plate of food in the cafeteria. He looked up and laughed,
"I almost didn't recognise you!"

…

Ironhide walked into the medical ward and stopped completely stunned at the sight before him. Bumblebee lay face down on the ground next to the berth and Ratchet was hanging face down over the short end of the berth with his legs hanging off one side and his arms drooping off the other dangling close to Bumblebee's frame. Hardwire cords ran from one mech to the other.

Ironhide heard Optimus walk in behind him and stop.

:What…happened here?:

:I don't know if I should laugh or…what did happen here?: Optimus chuckled at Ironhide then walked up to Ratchet and pulled him up then lay him down on the berth and Ironhide followed suit and picked Bumblebee up off the floor.

:I think they've short-circuited one another:

:Sure looks like it. I think Ratchet tried to stop Bumblebee from falling off the berth but they short circuited before he could. I didn't know they felt that way about one another:

:No not like that! Primus Ironhide. Let's just wake them up:

:Sorry Prime, but let's face it. This looks quite odd:

Soon enough Bumblebee and Ratchet both sat next to each other on the berth, hardwire cords still were attached to Bumblebee and Ratchet snarled at the two mechs when they tried to remove them.
"I have found the problem with Bumblebee's battle computer. Its rogue coding and if I disconnect from his processor I'll have to re-track it which will take hours and I'm not doing that again. I can't destroy the coding unless Bumblebee's battle computer is fully online.
I'll need to force activate his battle computer, destroy the coding then his battle computer should shut down by itself as there won't be any threat around and he should be able to process this. During the procedure I'll need both of you to hold Bumblebee down as everything he processes will be a potential threat to him and he will attack."

Bumblebee listened to Ratchet with growing fear. He looked at Optimus and Ironhide.

:For the sake of Primus do not let go of me!:

Bumblebee said over the comlink with fear in his optics. He didn't want to cause any more damage or hurt any other humans. Ironhide placed his hand on the scout's shoulder
"Do not worry Bumblebee, it will be fine both Optimus and I will be here."

"Assuming that Bumblebee is restrained throughout the whole procedure everything will go fine." Ratchet said carefully standing without pulling any hardwire cords.

"We'll being the treatment in an hour, I'll have everything ready by then."

…

Optimus had left the medical ward when the sirens went off. Head spinning at the wailing he took to towards the main hangar. He burst inside avoiding a number of soldiers underfoot asking what the scanners had picked up.
"Our atmospheric scanners have picked up an incoming signal. It's going to touch down in 15 minutes 10 klicks north of the base. Its transmitting this signal."

The speakers sounded a signal that Optimus hadn't expected to hear in a long time. Around him soldiers were preparing to set out with tanks and explosive's ready for a battle. He urgently called Ironhide through the comlink.
"Stop! Wait! Soldiers stand down!" Ironhide burst through the door with his cannons humming,
"What is it Prime?"
"That signal is not a threat, that is an Autobot touchdown signal." Ironhide stood shocked for a moment as he listened to the still playing signal and he uttered one word staring at Optimus.

"Perceptor."

…

Ratchet stood with his arms crossed staring Optimus. The leader grew more and more uncomfortable as he told the silently glaring medic what was happening.
"So while you're out getting Perceptor who is going to help me with Bumblebee?" Ratchet asked simply.
"Ironhide will be there and there are chains on base you can use to tie him down to the berth and if the procedure can be postponed Perceptor can help." Bumblebee sat on the berth listening to the idea, he was fine with postponing the procedure but he could tell Ratchet was not.
"The procedure cannot be postponed Prime. I need to you here to help."
"And what of Perceptor?"

The medic vented angrily.
"He's a smart mech, send out a location ping for him to come to us."
"The human Government feel that he is a potential threat to their national security and we must access him when he lands, human orders Ratchet." The medic turned away snarling wordlessly. He finally did give Optimus a proper answer,
"Perceptor is the last 'bot they should be worried about. Go get him and I'll have to use the chains to tie Bumblebee down."
"Thankyou Ratchet." He nodded wordlessly and Prime left with a fast walk. Once he was out the door he started running to where the humans were already to leave. Transforming in fluent movements and heading for the gates the humans followed. He hoped he was making the right decision.

:Ironhide get to the medical ward. NOW!:

The weapons specialist flinched at the temper in the medic's voice. He made his way to the medical ward and walked in to see Bumblebee being chained down to the berth. The scout looked at him with a surprising smile in his optics.
"You're looking happy about this." He said to him,
"No I'm slagging not now get over here!" Ratchet snarled with his back turned. Ironhide sniggered and walked over and started following Ratchet's instructions.
"Do you think this will work without Optimus?"

"Well if it doesn't work the humans could possibly have a new threat on their hands." Shocked, Bumblebee tried to sit up but the chains forced him down. Ratchet ignored him, there was nothing he could say to comfort the scout, either the procedure would be a success or it wouldn't.
"Oh."
"Yes so hold him the slag down!" Ratchet turned and walked to the top of the berth so he was looking directly down Bumblebee.
"Okay Bumblebee we're starting the procedure now."

…

Optimus pulled up and transformed at the edge of the crater, he peered down and saw the new Autobot transforming. The humans he noticed seemed tense and on edge. The small amount of weaponry they'd brought was loaded and ready to fire.

Perceptor climbed out of the crater and steadied himself, dirt still clinging to parts of his frame. His sight fell on Optimus and he practically ran over to his leader,
"Optimus!" Perceptor placed his hand on Optimus's shoulder in greeting and Optimus returned the gesture.
"Perceptor, it's good to see you old friend. What happened to you? Last I heard you were with Ultra Magnus, Prowl, Cosmos and Blaster."
"I was." He said sadly,
"But I was separated from the group when we got hit by a meteor shower, I was drifting through space, lost until I picked up your signal. It was the only signal I'd picked up since being separated. I have no idea where the rest of my team are." He said unhappily.

Optimus's spark twisted imagining how many other Autobots had been separated and lost like Perceptor.
"I'm sorry to hear of this Perceptor. Come with me, Ironhide, Ratchet and Bumblebee are on this planet under my command."
"I haven't seen any of them in such a long time! What planet is this anyway? What are they?" He said looking at the humans interested. They didn't seem as threatened by Perceptor at this point but they looked between one another uncomfortable with the way the new Autobot looked at them.
"They're humans, the indigenous species of this planet. We have an alliance with them. I'll explain everything to you on our way back to the base where we are currently residing."

Optimus was not surprised at how interested the new Autobot was with the planet, and the ecosystems and the various forms of organic life he was seeing and hearing about on the way back.
He was surprised at the panic and destruction of the base that they rolled up to. His spark twisting in fear, guilt and panic he transformed and ran to the medical bay to find it destroyed. There had clearly been a fight, Sam was sitting with Samantha, she had an arm around him and he kept his head low.
Ironhide was holding a severed left arm in his right and Ratchet was holding his own wounds while roaring at the human leaders who were clearly panicked and holding weapons to the two injured Autobots. Ratchet's pained optics landed on Optimus and instantly he knew what had happened.

A/N: I haven't edited this chapter as much as I should have but I wanted to post it today and get on with the next chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviews, it's so good to get feedback and really motivates me. Sorry for any typos etc.