My friend Sezza is helping me edit the italics into some of the stories now, so there should be less lag in updates. He is cool like that. I'm going to be working on doing italics, too, so don't worry about that, either. I may recruit some other friends to help if they want to, so who knows. PUT THEIR LOVE OF READING OUR FIC TO USE. I mean, they have ffdotnet accounts. Why not docx it to me, right? Right.
Transformers belongs to Hasbro
Optimus stares down at the container he put the crystal growing solution in, and frowns at it. It continues to sit there and do nothing. He reads the datapad again, and it continues to tell him that it is now supposed to turn blue. Looking down at the crystal, it stays stubbornly white. "I think you're defective."
Perhaps Ultra would know why his crystals were refusing to react properly. It gave him an excuse to contact his beloved.
Pushing his failure off to one side, he settles down in front of the console, keying in Ultra's frequency, hoping to reach him. After a klik of waiting, and a generic recording machine message, Optimus admits his love must be at work still. "Call me when you get the chance, Ultra. I miss you."
He turns back to his crystal failure, prodding the liquid gently. He wonders if it is supposed to be so very hot.
There's a soft knock at the door, and he raises an optic ridge. "Come in?"
The door opens gently and Thrust sticks his head in. "Optimus?"
He smiles over his shoulder. "Did you need something?"
The cyclebot walks in cautiously, looking around for a place to sit that isn't covered in crystals or metal sheets. "Kinda? The Priestess isn't answering my com calls."
"She's probably ... busy." Optimus refuses to think with what. "Can I help you instead?"
The mech pushes a few bits of debris aside and settles down on the floor. "Cyclonus wants to bond with me, but I'm not really sure he understands what it means. Or that it's, you know, kinda permanent."
Optimus blinks at the cyclebot in shock, pushing the container with the crystal away. "... really?"
Thrust looks up at him with a worried expression on his faceplate, "Yes, sir."
He sighs, reaching down to pull the mech up, "Just Optimus. So he wants to bond with you?" The bot bites his lower lip and nods, so he continues, "What do you want to do?"
"I like him, sir, but," he trails off, staring down at his peds, "I've only known him a few sols. I shouldn't be trying to bond with him. And he shouldn't be messing with his sparkling protocols." Thrust frowns, "I keep having to upload them in his processor again."
Optimus joins him in the worried expression. "That's not good. Is he trying to trap you into staying with him?"
Thrust taps nervous fingers together, shuffling peds, "I... I think he just really likes me. Enough to want sparklings?"
"A bot that really likes you does not try to force sparklings on you, and does not pressure you into having them, or agreeing to have them." Optimus rests a servo on his shoulder. "We'll work this out. If nothing else, we can have Cyclonus's sparkling protocols locked on. He really isn't capable of caring for sparklings on his own."
Thrust whimpers sadly, "I want sparklings."
Optimus rubs his optics, trying to get rid of an incoming processor ache. "Do you want them with Cyclonus?"
The cyclebot shrugs, looking down. "I don't know. I really like him, but I ..." The bot trails off, looking uncomfortable.
He sighs looking down at the smaller mech. "You don't want them now, not when you've only just gotten off your home planet."
Thrust shuffles his peds and nods. "Yeah. It's a little overwhelming, and I mean, Cyclonus is living with the AllSpark Priestess. We can't just have kids like that. Not without her permission."
The idea of Thrust asking Sari for permission to be impregnated by Cyclonus makes Optimus's processor ache painfully. "You really shouldn't ask her that. Ever."
Thrust looks sparkbroken. "... really? Sh-she won't want me to have sparklings?"
He feels terrible now, and shakes his head. "I'm sure she does." He pats the cyclebot cautiously, "But I don't think she'll take well to being asked right now."
"She's the High Priestess." Thrust narrows his optics at Optimus. "She's the best bot to talk to about sparklings." He stands up a little taller at that, only to shrink back down, "But I still don't want sparklings yet. It's too soon, and Cyclonus-"
He's cut off by an explosion that knocks both of them off their peds, rocking the entire ship with its force. Optimus worries they're being attacked until his processor notifies him that the blast had come from directly where he'd placed his crystal.
Looking at the damage to his room, most of it completely obliterated, he's slightly amazed how undamaged he is. He is hurt, no mistake, his servo is missing entirely, but he's amazed that's all that's wrong. Looking over at Thrust, he gasps at how damaged the cyclebot is.
The poor bot's wheels are broken off, and his back is pretty mangled. Picking the smaller mech up, he knows his door won't let him through, so he walks through the hole in his wall. "Ship, where is the medical bay?" He pauses. "... do we even have an on board medic?"
"The medical bay and medical drone are two halls to your left and one level down," the ship intones. "If your damage is more serious, it is recommended that you visit the nearby planet and see an actual medic."
He's certain a drone isn't going to be able to repair Thrust, so he opens a comlink to the planet's nearest hospital. "I have an injured bot with me, and I will be bringing him down for treatment." He gets assurances that they won't shoot his shuttle down, and he opens a much less pleasant comlink to Cyclonus. "There has been an accident and Thrust has suffered damage. Do you want to come to the planet with us for treatment?"
There's a surprised grunt, and Cyclonus sounds incredibly dangerous as he asks, "Did you hurt him?"
Optimus supposes he could say yes, since it was his crystal, but he decides to go with the less suicidal answer, "A crystal exploded. He was damaged more than I was, and I just thought that you would want to be with him."
There's an upset and wordless growl, then the jet bot asks, "Where are you?"
"I'm heading to the shuttles. You can meet me there. I'm going to call Grapple next." He suddenly realizes he's talking to the air, because Cyclonus cut the com the moment he said where he was going. Sighing, he coms Grapple. "We have an injured bot, you want to come with us to the planet?"
"Injured? Who got injured?" the bot asks, and his com gets cut off as Grapple appears in the hallway. Optimus blinks, and then continues towards the shuttle bay. Grapple must have been very close by. "Oh, Primus. Is Thrust online?"
Optimus shakes his head, "He was knocked offline. I'm hoping he stays that way until we get him to the hospital and sedated. I doubt he has much experience with pain like this."
The cranebot nods, "He was raised to be a pretty berth bot. I can't imagine him being able to tolerate it."
He nods, shifting the mech slightly in his arms, "I'll most likely repair myself on my own. I think I have a spare servo in my sub..." He trails off, frowning, "Sari emptied my subspace before we left, and I don't have any replacement parts. I hate going to a hospital for repairs."
They were always so adamant that his ability to tolerate pain and continue to function was some kind of terrible glitch. Optimus was fully aware of how much it hurt to be missing his servo-but he wasn't going to let it impair his ability to think, or fight. He would have never been able to defeat Megatron if he hadn't been able to ignore his own injuries.
It hurts far less at the moment than it otherwise would due to his systems adpating and his pain receptors settling down. Without Ratchet's little adjustment, the lost servo hurts several times less even when it is at its worst.
Grapple gives him a horrified look, "And you're carrying him with a missing servo?"
He shrugs, "I'm perfectly fine. I'll deal with it when we're down on the planet. Thrust is injured far more severely than I a-"
There's a sound of rushing air that can only be a bot in flight. The second strand of lights that come rushing down the hallway just prove his thought, and Cyclonus only just barely manages to not hit them. The cyclebot is yanked out of his arms, and he's hissed at angrily while the larger mech runs worried servos all over the bot.
Cyclonus narrows his optics, studying the damage on the cyclebot's frame. "Are you certain you did not cause this damage?" He makes a soft noise when he finds Thrust's tires missing. "We must repair him."
Optimus carefully herds the jet into the shuttle bay. "We will take him to a medic who can fully repair him. He'll be good as new, and all you have to do is let them work on him."
Cyclonus growls low in his processor, but doesn't argue. Optimus starts to head to the console, but Grapple shoves him in a chair. "Sit down, you glitch. If you're injured, I'm not letting you fly this thing." The bot glares at him and then Cyclonus, "I shouldn't be flying this thing, but our only uninjured bot is next to useless to us right now."
The jetbot growls dangerously, and Thrust makes a tiny hurt noise while still offline; Grapple and Optimus suddenly become the least interesting bots in the entire universe to the jet.
Cyclonus pets Thrust's uninjured places, and something like unhappiness passes over his face. "I don't know how to fix him. I never paid attention when they were teaching me maintenance." Thrust makes another little noise and Cyclonus clutches him closer, shielding his damage with his servos. "I don't like those noises."
Optimus rests a careful servo on Cyclonus's shoulder, withdrawing it quickly when the bot hisses at him. "It will be alright. It's still minor damage. Nothing structural appears to be broken, so it looks worse than it really is."
Cyclonus hisses at him wordlessly, and Optimus sighs. Walking away, he sits back down, and looks out the little window in the shuttle. He's glad the system is mostly automated so that an injured bot can drive it, but he is pretty bored with nothing to do. Normally he's filling out a report on how he got damaged, but there's no reason to here. He's just... on vacation.
A vacation where he was stuck on the ship and trying to avoid thinking about ninjabots.
So much for that plan.
Thrust is still blessedly offline when they hit the planet, docking the shuttle in the emergency port attached to the hospital.
Medicbots are waiting for them, and they immediately take Thrust – or try to, as Cyclonus hisses and curls around him protectively. Optimus has to intervene, promising Cyclonus that Thrust won't be injured by the medics. "He has to get treatment, and they can't repair him if you're holding him. Let go."
The jetbot still looks horribly indecisive, but good sense wins out and Thrust is handed over. When the mech tries to follow, they gently push him away, "Are you bonded?"
Optimus keeps from groaning, this isn't good. He walks over, "They aren't, but they are thi-"
He's cut off by one of the medics spotting his servo, or lack thereof. "You need medical attention, too!"
He's shoved off to a different room before he can finish telling them that Cyclonus wants to bond, not that it will really help the staff with letting the mech in to see Thrust any time soon.
"I'm fine, really, I've had far worse-" he's cut off by a medic taking one of his exposed energon lines and injecting a sedative in it.
Optimus blinks as his entire arm falls numb, and his processor fogs up a bit. He hates medical sedatives, even if they wear off quickly. "You're not fine. You are missing a servo," the medicbot informs him, as if Optimus is so daft he doesn't realize he's had his servo blown off. The fog in his processor passes, and he blinks again as he watches the medic pull up his schematics on a datapad and order a replacement servo from the supply storage in the hospital. "You're lucky that we have some in your size."
He blinks at the mech. "I was going to make a replacement."
The bot gives him a flat look, "No. You're not." The bot grabs his arm, and starts to clean off the soot and other damaged bits for clean connection. "You have one servo, and unless you're left servo dominant, then you'd have an even harder time."
He gives the bot a dirty look, but doesn't argue that. Instead, he asks, "How long will Thrust be here?"
The mech shrugs, "That's your cyclebot friend?" He nods, about to explain they aren't really friends, but the medic keeps talking. "I wouldn't know. I don't work on cyclebots here, and he looked kinda damaged. The bot is going to be able to visit in normal visiting hours since he's not bonded."
"Cyclonus is not going to be happy about that." Optimus's processor starts to ache fiercely, and he rubs his optics with his functional servo. "If you don't want the door to Thrusts's room broken down, it would be wisest to let Cyclonus have access to him. He intends to bond with him eventually."
Snorting, the medic tugs out a bundle of broken wires. "Kid, if we let every bot in who claimed that they were 'about' to get bonded, we'd never see the end of them. If he's not family, he's not allowed in."
His processor really hurts now. "Thrust was only in my room because he wanted to ask my advice on how to deal with Cyclonus continually wanting to bond with him."
The medic finishes up working on his arm. "That's nice. They still aren't bonded, so no go."
The medic starts to head out, and Optimus asks, "Do you know if...," he hates using her title, "High Priestess Sari is available to talk? She hasn't been answering coms."
"The High Priestess is very busy with blessings and entertaining her consort," the ninjabot medic says, lips quirked into a little smile. "If you cannot reach her, then she is still busy. I hear the resort they placed her in has a cluster of red cora in the garden. I'm sure she's enjoying that."
Optimus shudders at the thought. "I ... see."
The medic slips out of the room, a smirk on his faceplates.
He keeps from making a face at the door, and tries to com Sari. It doesn't get through, and he thinks she may have blocked him. He's not sure if he should be glad that he won't accidentally com her when she's ... with Afterburner, or irritated because he can't contact her in an emergency.
Optimus slips off the medical berth. He has no intention of waiting there for the megacycle or two it will take them to find the spare servo in storage and bring it up. And it's very likely he needs to prevent Cyclonus from attempting to wreak havoc on the medicbots for denying him access to the only bot he's ever shown interest in.
He follows the sound of yelling, and makes it to the waiting area where Cyclonous is holding a medic against a wall and hissing angrily. Sighing, Optimus waves an arm, "Put him down, Cyclonus. Doing this just shows that you're a Decepticon and dangerous. Do you remember why Sari even has you?"
The bot gives him a very dirty look. "I want Thrust."
He nods, "And if you do this, it means you'll never get him. Put the bot down, and be glad they aren't attacking. I imagine they only aren't because you were on a team with Oil Slick and because Sari technically owns you."
It's only the ninjabot's skills that keep him from landing on his skidplate when Cyclonus abruptly drops him. The medic slips out of reach, and Cyclonus turns frustrated optics on Optimus. "They won't let me see him." Those optics turn calculated. "I will make him bond with me when he is repaired. Then I can keep him safe."
Optimus rubs his optics in irritation. "No. You can not force a bond. That is the antithesis of the point of a bond. It is about choice. Forcing it is a terrible idea."
Cyclonus looks like he's just on the edge of attacking. "He is mine."
Optimus raises an optical ridge. "Is that all Thrust is to you? He's just yours? No love?" His tone turns scolding, "You need to think about how he feels. He does like you, quite a bit, but you're pushing far too fast."
"He is mine," Cyclonus repeats, optics narrowing. "He will do what I tell him to do."
It occurs to him that Cyclonus likely does not even understand what love is, let alone whether or not he is in love. His teammates would not prove as good examples. Even if Strika clearly loved Lugnut, and Oil Slick had feelings for Blitzwing, their relationships did not begin that way, and to a Decepticon, claiming comes before emotion.
He decides to take a different tack. "Lugnut and Strika aren't bonded, and they've been together for a very long time."
Cyclonus snorts, "Thrust is mine, and if bonding means I get to stay close to him, then he will bond with me."
"You've only known him a short time." Optimus is attempting to be reasonable, and Cyclonus gives him a look that seems to indicate that he believes Optimus is extremely dim-witted. "You shouldn't bond with a bot you barely know." When that fails to impress the bot, Optimus changes tack yet again, "You have an unhealthy spark still. If you tried to bond now, it would likely fail."
The mech pauses at that, then moves over to sit on the floor next to him. "Explain."
Optimus is pulled into the jetbot's lap, and he keeps from sounding irritated only through long practice. "Your spark is unhealthy. That will make it incredibly difficult to pull up the protocols for it, and since you haven't 'faced for very long, your sparks may reject each other."
Cyclonus gives him a very searching and dirty look, "You will be bonding with Ultra without ever 'facing him, and your door constantly declares you unhealthy. I should be able to bond with Thrust right away."
He rubs his optics, wishing he had a processor-ache cure. "We're going to be blessed by the AllSpark and we're going through a courting. It's entirely different."
"It is not," Cyclonus insists, claws pressing in on his sparkplates. "Let me see your spark. I am sure my own is just as healthy."
Optimus pushes his servos away, tanks churning a bit. He truly hates being held by large, winged bots. "Stop that. If your door was programmed the way mine was, it would never let you leave your quarters. Not even for a single klik this entire vacation."
Cyclonus looks like he's about to try prying him open again, only to freeze and tilt his head. The mech puts a servo to his temple, "No. I just want to see him prove his spark isn't as bad as mine." The bot scowls, "Because Thrust is in a hospital, and you won't answer your coms."
He frees himself from Cyclonus's lap, brushing himself off carefully. "You should inform Sari of our location. I believe we are not far from her hotel."
Instead of listening, Cyclonus continues to frown, claws pressed to his temple. "Thrust refuses to bond with me. The medicbots refuse to let me see him without a bond. Now Optimus says I am not healthy enough to bond. Decepticons did not bother with this nonsense."
He can imagine her irritated sigh.
Turning away from the one sided arguing, he is accosted by a medic. "You! What are you doing? You should be in the room we put you in!"
He dodges the mech's grab for him, glad of the training with Prowl. "I'm fine. I can help keep Cyclonus and Grapple company."
However, training with a ninjabot is no match for actually being a ninjabot, and he's eventually captured. "You are still missing a servo, Prime. Now stop acting like a sparkling and let us fix you." He's dragged away from the bots, Grapple mouthing a promise that he'll keep Cyclonus under control until Sari arrives.
Optimus highly doubts that.
About a megacycle later, he's still in the room, and very happy that he had datapads in his subspace.
When Sari bursts into the door, he doesn't even look up, having expected this to happen the entire time. "Optimus, what the frag happened? Thrust is still offline, and they're dealing with him a little better now, but they say he's going to be here for five days."
"Half a decacycle," he corrects absently. "One of the crystals I was dealing with exploded, he was closer to it than I was."
"You made a crystal explode," Sari says flatly. "Was it one of the crystals from that 'learn to grow' kit designed for fragging sparklings?"
To his eternal embarrassment, it was, but he feels no need to mention that to Sari. "It doesn't matter. The point remains that a defective crystal exploded and damaged the both of us. The medics insist I need treatment too, even though my only damage was a bit of denting and a missing servo."
She smacks him on the head. "Missing a servo is a very good reason to be in the hospital, you idiot." She rubs her temples. "I was planning on leaving tomorrow, but the only way to do that is by letting the AllSpark heal him."
Optimus perks up, that will make it much easier. Sari seems to know what he's thinking and shakes her head, "Might accidently mark him. My energy is all over the place, and I don't want a cyclebot. After I get more consorts, I will be able to heal easier, but I'm not going to do that now."
Not to mention that if she marked Thrust, Cyclonus would demand to be marked in turn so he could stay with his precious cyclebot, and then Sari would be condemned to two consorts she has no interest in. "I understand. I hope you don't object to a bit longer stay."
Sari glances over her shoulder where Afterburner is hovering in the doorway, watching Optimus with distrustful optics. "I don't mind staying. The hotel is really nice."
He shudders at that thought. "That's fine. I'll just go back to the ship when I get my servo replaced. Take Cyclonus and Grapple with me."
She sighs, shaking her head, "Cyclonus will try to escape to get back to Thrust. He's also really not allowed in the room, not unless it's visiting hours."
Optimus blinks in confusion, "Even with you saying he can?"
She makes a face, "No. He really can't. This is a ninjabot planet, and they don't let nonfamily bots in. If they had a sparkling or something, they'd let them."
"That's a very unpleasant rule for them to maintain." Optimus wishes they would come and replace his servo faster. At this point, he's expecting that servo to come to him in perfect matching condition. There's no other reason for them to have taken paint chips from his functional servo if they weren't being afts about it and wanting it to look pretty.
She rubs her optics, "Hell, the only reason I'm allowed in is that priestesses can heal. The fact that I'm not healing him is immaterial; I could at a later time, and they don't want to piss me off."
He sighs softly, "Are you sure they can't just place the angry Decepticon on the floor at the foot of the medical berth?"
"And risk him 'facing Thrust and causing him all sorts of damage from overworking his frame before it's fully healed? Yeah, they're not going to do that, Optimus." Sari pats his head. "I'm going to go check on them, and you're going to stay here like a good bot and let them give you a new servo. If they want you to stay overnight for observation, you'll stay overnight. Got it?"
His optics narrow. "I would rather not have my evening chat with Ultra from a medical berth, Sari."
She smiles. "That's nice. You'll still do it if they tell you to."
"Sari, I'm n-"
She slams the door, and Optimus is not the least bit happy. He isn't even in a room with an actual berth. This is just a private waiting room, and he's been sitting on an exam table the entire time. He's not the least bit happy.
It is another megacycle later that a medicbot comes in, "We have your servo ready. It took a really long time to find one in your size. Someone had mislabeled the sizes, and it wasn't easy to get a matching shade of paint. You're kind of faded, and we had to custom blend the colors."
He gives the bot a flat look. "I could have easily gone with the wrong color. I would have happily left the moment you found the replacement."
The bot just stares at him for a klik, and then shakes his head slowly. "No, Optimus Prime, sir. We're not having you leave our hospital with a mismatched servo. Do you have any idea what that would do to our reputation? Even if you don't mind it, we'll lose business."
Optimus holds out his damaged wrist. "We could argue about this all evening, or you could fix me." He narrows his optics. "I do not intend to be here all night."
The mech shakes his head. "You're staying the night for observation."
He looks at the medic, and stands up. "I see."
The bot gives him a slightly confused look, "I'll have an intern show you your room."
He nods, and watches as the mech leave. Counting slowly to ten, Optimus walks out of the room, and heads to the exit. He's not going to be spending the night, no matter what Sari told him to do.
He has to duck into a few shaded hallways to avoid interaction with any of the medicbots, and he's nearly out the door when strong claws wrap around his frame, and Cyclonus lifts him up. "They won't let me see Thrust. Not even when I told them I intended to bond my spark to his so their rules would allow me to visit." He narrows his optics. "Now they say I cannot see him even during visiting hours without a guard."
He wishes the mech would set him down. "Maybe they're right about that. Thrust doesn't want to bond to you just yet, and you should respect his decision."
He's carried to the front desk, and the mech shoves him at the bot there. "I have Optimus Prime, that means you should let me in to see Thrust."
The bot looks utterly shocked, "Did you steal him from his room?"
The jetbot snorts, "He was trying to escape. That's not important. What is important is that I know you'll let him visit any bot he wants, and I have him. Take me to Thrust."
"Sir, I'm afraid we're still not going to let you in to see him. He's still offline, and once you made your rather loud declaration that you were planning to have him while he was offline and couldn't complain, we decided not to let you into his room. We frown on that, I'm afraid." The bot smiles in a deceptively friendly way. "You can see him, guarded, during normal visiting hours. Or if he onlines and wishes to see you, we will make an exception."
A bot comes over, and Optimus is pulled from Cyclonus's claws. "Optimus Prime, sir. I'm to escort you to your room. It was quite ... rude of you to leave the room we had you in."
He raises an optic ridge. "Just as it was rude to leave me in there for several megacycles without a servo or information on how much longer I had to wait?"
"No. That's not rudeness." The medicbot smiles disarmingly at him. "That's how a hospital works. Chronically understaffed, networked systems that refuse to actually network efficiently, and always short on supplies. Waiting in a quiet, pleasant room isn't bad at all, sir."
He waves a servo. "You fixed me, I don't need to stay any longer. I know for a fact that this isn't what normally happens. When I was working my way through the academy, I lost a ped, and they just slapped a new one on that was red and told me to get out." He gives the bot a flat look. "I'd have preferred that now."
The mech takes his servo, and pulls him away. "That's not how it works for bots that are so very high profile as you have become between your victory in the war and your engagement to Ultra Magnus, nor for those who have the AllSpark High Priestess looking over them."
"I'd prefer to be treated like a normal mech. I am a normal mech, and this special treatment is fragging pointless. You're wasting time and effort that could be better spent on a bot who actually needs it."
Bright white walls dominate the room he's taken to, and Optimus, momentarily blinded by the sudden change in lighting, doesn't fight back when he's pushed onto a medical examining table again. "You do need this. Forgive me for being blunt, but you look slagging awful. You've clearly had a work-up at a spa recently, and you're still looking half as healthy as you could be. Your paint is dull, one of your optics has a bit of cracking on one side that's going to splinter at some point, and half of your joints look like they are misaligned still." The bot laces his fingers and then cracks them, "So lay back and let me get to work on you."
He gives the bot a dirty look, "Then replace the optic, and we can go to another planet for alignment. I need to go back to the sh-" His optics widen, "Oh Primus, I hope nothing happened to my turbofish."
The medic doesn't look the least bit sympathetic, pushing him flat on the berth, "We will have the jetbot sent away with the cranebot, and they can check on your pet. Now is the time to fix you completely."
He pushes the servos away, sitting back up, "I'm going to head back up. I don't need to have this, and I can replace the optic on my own. We have a medical bay on the ship."
The medic taps his temple, and speaks slowly and respectfully, "Yes, High Priestess, your Prime is being resistant to medical treatment. I request permission to put him in temporary offline so we may repair his damages." A long pause, "Yes, thank you. We will notify you when it is finished."
Panic fills his spark, and Optimus starts to get up again, only to feel a datapad click into an exposed port and knock him offline.
Please Review
I don't even remember what most of this chapter is abouttt. I need to get to work on the next one. I'm sure you like this one. Onto the next.
