Knockout rolled his cart along beside Arcee, as the pair made their way slowly, carefully, though a steadily growing mob of bots, shopping and browsing inside the large shop and busy shop. It was a store devoted home decorating and comfort needs, for the basic and run of the mill, to the fine and far higher end of items.
"Remember, we only really just need a new cover for the recharge station," Knockout reminded his mate, with mild amusement, as her optics, and then finally her whole body slowly turned in the direction of a display of colorful lamps topped by whimsical and over sized shades.
As he spoke up, he quickly lifted his right foot from the cart's power pedal, and moved his right hand to tap against the brake switch at the side of the cart, stopping just in time to avoid a trio of small younglings, running obviously unsupervised down the main isle and giggling loudly. The fact was, he did not mind at all that Arcee was browsing. He might typically have enjoyed some time to do so himself. But the place was just so crowded, and as much as he hated to admit it, maneuvering the cart, in that kind of chaos, thinking all the while that he may just accidentally hit someone with it, was more stress than he liked.
Arcee turned around again, nodding with a tiny laugh, as she smiled in the direction of the retreating younglings, entirely unaware of the near mishap. She walked forward toward of a section dedicated to recharge room supplies, and he tapped the power pedal again, to roll along beside her. Once he had the cart safely parked along side a shelf in the out of the way section of the shop, he let the growing tension leave his frame and let his optics stop watching for hurrying bots he might bang into.
"Which color do you like?" Arcee questioned, still smiling as her hands rifled carefully through the nearest stack of well folded covers on a shelf.
"It doesn't matter much to me," Knockout said with a smile back and his typical adaptation of a shrugging motion.
"Come on," Arcee replied. She held one up - a terrible far too bright green color - looked it over against the lighting above them, shook her head with an expression of disapproval and put it back where she had found it. "Help me with this, will you. It is our room."
"Are you alright?" She asked after a moment, in which he said nothing at all, and only sat staring at the stacks of folded covers. She stepped back to stand beside him, and the concern on her face-plate was just too obvious.
"I'm fine." Knockout smiled again. "I think I just need more practice on this cart in crowds."
He laughed loudly once and gestured with his optics toward the pile and the tacky cover now on the top. "And I can tell you I certainly don't care for that one you just held up."
When Arcee nodded her agreement and made another face over it, he said, trying to be far more helpful, "personally I think I'd prefer a darker color. Navy blue...?"
"That could work. Hmmm, we'll need some pillow covers too. White ones to stand out nice against the dark cover?"
When Knockout nodded his agreement, Arcee turned back to the stack of folded covers. She pulled out a few in similar, but still slightly differing shades of darker blues, and set them down, with a smirking look on her face-plate, right onto the tray of Knockout's cart. After a few steps from her toward the opposite shelf, and after another smirk and a laugh, a small stack of lighter colored pillow covers landed on the other side of his tray. A couple of them where white or barely off white, but a few more were in beiges and grays.
"I just want you to be happy with it," the red bot said, after a half sparked effort at leafing through the little piles with his good hand. He grinned at her and she instantly returned the grin. "Blue is blue. Covers are covers. What would truly make me happy is seeing how much you love the ones you pick out."
With several off white pillow covers on the tray of the cart, and a dark blue recharge station cover folded nearly underneath them, the pair turned back to the crowds of shoppers. Knockout braked fast again as a laughing bot ran out from between two side isles with his hands full, carrying three stacked storage bins. He braked again, after traveling only a foot and a half, when a second bot ran across his path obviously chasing after the first and laughing harder. With that Knockout pulled to the edge of the isle at the first chance he found after that, and parked himself in front of an empty wall, and in a wide gap left between a couple of shelves.
"I… I just need a minute," he said slowly, assuring Arcee, who had followed him closely with greater concern than before written on her face-plate.
"Later in the evening may have been the better time to come in here," Arcee answered in understanding at once, as she looked at the still growing crowd of shoppers.
"Hey, it was my idea to come shopping during hours I knew would be busy," Knockout said in reply. He shook his head a little, and gave a nervous laugh over it. "I can drive this so well on base… I guess I thought the crowd wouldn't matter. But this is a whole new game. The isles are too narrow… there are bots just running every which way… It's funny. There are somethings I truly believe I'll never be able to do, like rolling my body sideways, or pulling myself up. Other things, I things I assume I'll do just fine, and I get so overconfident..."
"Your whole situation is a huge learning curve for everyone, and for you more than anyone else." Arcee lifted his left hand from the control switch so that she could hold onto his fingertips in assurance.
"I want to be able to give you the closest thing I possibly can to typical in the way of a day to day life," Knockout said. He tried hard to hide his feelings of sadness and intense worry, though he knew it was no use at all. Surely she would sense at least a hint of it, and from there deduce far more. "If you say we need bedding, or anything really, and you want to go and shop together or it, I want to be able to take you out to shop. I fear that things like this, things that should be so simple for anyone else, will just become so much of a fuss and bother, that you may just take to leaving me behind to go take care of everything for us both on your own to save time, save the stress, spare us both the stares, the dirty looks… I see how so many of them look at me. So many have this crazy fear in thier optics and the rest just feel sorry for me. I can't say I've decided yet which is worse, and I know you see it too."
"You listen to me," Arcee said. Her tone was serious, but still she smiled, and she swung his hand back and forth lightly above the cart tray, in a variation of the way any pair might just do a similar thing out of simple happiness. "If you want to come out with me and do the shopping, or anything else for that matter, we will both go. If you want to stay behind, then I'll be fast and hurry back to you as quickly as I can. If you want to go off on your own for a while, then you go and I'll wait for you. I don't care how many bots give either one of us dirty looks, and judge, and laugh. You're a person. You can do what you want to do, go where you want to go, just as much as anyone can. And if someone doesn't like it, they can go dive into a smelting pit!"
Knockout smiled then, trusting entirely that she meant every word she had said to him. Slowly she moved his hand so that it rested on the cart's hand control. And it was with such obvious reluctance that she then let go of him.
"If you don't mind, I think I'd rather just sit over here out of the way while you go to the check out," Knockout said, confidant now with an understanding of just how much she truly wanted him to make his own needs known to her.
Arcee only nodded in response, with a smile of assurance on her face-plate. "I'll meet you right back here then. I'll be quick."
From his place on the cart, parked out of the way, knockout took some time to look around a little. Without the constant rush of bots hurrying past him, crossing his path and stressing him so badly with the risk of an accident, he found himself far closer to enjoying being out in the shop, simply looking around him at the colorful and creative collection of goods. After a moment of glancing around at as much as he could see from his safe and out of the way makeshift parking place, his optics fell again on the shelf filled with the lamps that Arcee had clearly been so fascinated by at the start of their shopping.
He imagined just how happy she might be if he were to pick one out for them to buy. Surely she would find him easily if he were to move himself that short distance. And when she did, he could easily already have the perfect one chosen for their room. He felt himself smile a little, and the idea gave him confidence, motivation to carefully move the cart froward again and back into the crowd. He reminded himself with a silent laugh, that he would have to learn indoor crowd navigation skills eventually, and firmly decided some practice with it was never uncalled for.
When he managed to keep pace with a pack of shoppers moving in the same direction as he was going, then to quickly move his foot off the power pedal, to let the cart stop without banging on the handbrake, as two bots turned to walk across his path, his confidence increased.
When one lone bot, a white and pale yellow neutral, came across his path and stopped in the middle of the isle to stare at him with wide and baffled optics, Knockout first felt a flash of embarrassment. He considered his own broken disfuctioning form, and just how it must looked to someone else. His left hand was barely mobile enough to drive the motorized cart in a way that still must have looked positively awkward to anyone who didn't understand he found it far easier than it looked, while the arm rested horribly against the support frame. The right arm and hand could move far more, could bend, could reach. His right leg was at least decently strong, the knee bent just as it should and his foot worked the power pedal, but the left leg and foot both just kind of sat at an odd angle, resting on the cart's footrest and placed so as not to be uncomfortable or dangerous, but still so clearly without any real function. He understood just how much the restraint harnesses pulled over his shoulder panels, to fasten somewhere in front of his body, could only have looked both shocking and concerning to others.
His reaction immediately following embarrassment, might once have been anger, a boiling and blinding rage, that might so recently have made him wish he could knock the staring bot flat onto the floor with the energized staff he could no longer come close to wielding, for daring to think it was fine to stare like that. But he could not find it in himself to feel that rage now. Instead the embarrassment faded into an understanding that the staring bot was only staring – no, not even staring so much as just looking intently – out of concern, mixed with a good deal of curiosity. Neither of those was a bad thing entirely. Knockout gave a slight nod of acknowledgment in the direction of the bot that still stood looking at him with that strange concerned curious expression on his face-plate, and carefully rolled the cart past him, noticing as he did, that his polite nod was casually returned.
"Yo, Red," the voice of a bot nearby caught his attention, as soon as he had stopped the cart in front of the shelf filled with lamps. But he ignored it for a second without realizing that someone was clearly speaking to him. "Get out of the way."
He looked around quickly, deciding which way to move, so that he could get the cart out of that bot's way without blocking someone else's.
"You stupid or something?" the same bot said, far more aggressive now. He was small but he was certainly loud and so clearly obnoxious. Knockout looked at the small blue and green frame that stood in front of him, and then glanced upward to look into a pair of optics that scowled with disgust at him. The obnoxious little bot shaved his knee against the frame of the cart. "I said move it."
Much of the lost confidence he had just began to regain, was long gone again, as moved forward, silent but shaking his head a bit in apology. Almost immediately he bumped the front of the cart lightly against another bot, who it was instantly obvious, had deliberately moved to stand in his way. The bright purple paint-job and laughing face-plate stayed put, in his way while the blue and green bot beside him repeated his demand to move. A second later both of them were laughing. The pair were young, likely each one barely an adult, but certainly old enough that both should have known better than to behave that way.
Knockout never had been one to keep his mouth shut, and certainly not one to sit quiet and take abuse he knew he did not deserve. He may have have been lacking in so much of the confidant self assurance he had once taken for granted. But he still knew full well those young bots were out of line, and he was fully prepared to stand up for himself. He opened his mouth to speak, after forcing himself to intake twice slowly to assure he was more than calm enough to avoid shouting with anger, more than willing to give those two a piece of his mind.
A terrible and unfortunately all to familiar wave of lightheadedness swept over him, before he could form a sentence. The lightheadedness fast become nearly uncontrollable dizziness, and with his right hand beside the seat of the cart, he struggled to hit the brake switch in order to safety lock it into place, in fear of an uncontrolled roll in some direction or other.
Please not now – he thought to himself desperately, as though strong will might actually help him, when he knew it would not. Struggling to find his voice, he tried to tell the young bots to please back of and leave him alone, tired to explain that he was unwell. But he heard only sounds so mumbled it was barely language from his own vocalizer, and to his sinking dead, that was met only by laughter from both of them.
"He's slow as they come," laughed the purple bot, who was now little more then a spinning blur of color. Knockout felt him jostle the cart roughly. "Who let this busted scrap pile out without a handler?"
"Ha. Who let him live?" the green and blue blur of the other young bot laughed close by.
There was a loud metallic tapping noise very close by, and it was only a second later that he registered that one of the young bots was actually tapping a couple of finger tips against the side of his head.
"Anybody home in there?" one said. It was no longer clear which one it was that was speaking, but both laughed hard before the bot spoke again. This time he was talking impossibility slow, mocking. "can… you.. hear… me..."
"If he can hear you, he'll never tell you so," the second of the young bots laughed. "He can't even talk."
Knockout still struggled with the brake beside him, as he hand started to shake badly. Desperately afraid of a sure mishap, he tapped his hand against the switch to the right of the seat, only hoping one of the bots would take the hint and help him. Two vocalizers only responded again in laughter.
"Unwell… I… stop please… brake..." Knockout tried his best to explain, but he could hear his own words and he knew full well it barely made sense, and it sounded almost nothing like language at all. For all of his effort at speaking clearly now, it was simply not going to happen. Both of the young bots laughed yet again, loudly this time.
"Knock it off!" a new voice cried over the laughter and mockery. "For Purims sake. Back off. He isn't slow at all. Can't you tin heads see he's become ill?"
The troublesome pair must have finally fled then, because Knockout heard the noise of running feet clanging against the floor as they hurried away. But he could not make out their retreating forms among the faster whirling blur of colors from the various panted bots and the inside of the shop. Beside him he saw a blur of a white and pale yellow painted bot, kneeling on the floor to be down at his level. He was conscious on some level of the stranger lifting his shaking hand into his lap, so that he could get to, and activate the cart's brake.
"Hey Buddy," he heard the strange bot say in a voice that now came through a haze of fast fading awareness. The bot spoke slow, clearly and calmly. "Can you talk to me?"
Knockout tried to speak, but he knew his vocalizer was only making little more than mumbled noise as he tried hard to explain that he would be okay in a moment – or least he thought and hoped so. Everything within his field of vision faded for a moment to blackness, and he struggled to fight off a wave of panic at the same time as he struggled once again to make his optics work. The scene reappeared around him, still blurred and spinning and he made out a small cry of distress that he only just barely understood to be his own. He was strapped securely onto the mobility cart, but still he was vaguely aware of his body shifting forward slightly so that it the tension pulled against the harness straps. He struggled to move, to shift himself a little within the limitations of his function. But he couldn't make even his functional limbs co-operate.
"Okay, back you go, Buddy," said the fading voice of the bot still beside him. He barely registered any of it, as a firm pair of hands shifted his position gently so he leaned back a bit against the back of the seat of the cart, so that it instead of the harnesses, held his weight. With another rapid panicked blink of his optics everything faded to blackness as all sound died around him.
When Knockout blinked his optics again, this time repeatedly and fast for a second or two, his vision locked at once on Arcee, who stood facing him while leaning against the front of the cart. A quick glace to his right after a weak smile at his mate, revealed the white and pale yellow stranger, now on his feet again and standing beside him. He glanced around a little more, a sinking dread in the pit of his tank as he recognized the inside of the home decor shop, and a small crowd of bots milling about with confusion clear in their expressions.
"How long was I..." he mumbled without bothering to finish asking the question.
"Not long." the white and yellow stranger said, with an assuring and confidant hand placed on his shoulder panel. He chuckled slightly. "Several minutes at most. You didn't miss much."
"I can't thank you enough for stepping up and helping," Arcee said to the stranger, as Knockout listened and resisted the urge to stare down at the tray at the front of the cart, humiliated by his own condition, while his tank rolled and flipped with the discomfort of returning from a reboot. Arcee had obviously only just returned from the checkout seconds before, to find that potentially disastrous situation thankfully well under control. She lifted her mate's hand from his lap and up over the top of the tray in front of him. Then she just stood holding it tightly with relief clear on her face-plate when he squeezed back, if not more weakly then usual
Knockout wanted to thank the stranger himself, and he did try, but his some of this thoughts seemed to race ahead of him, while others lagged. He could barely form a coherent sentence inside his own head, let alone try to speak one. Finally he managed a still badly mumbled thank you, while the stranger, who had clearly seen – and heard- it all before only nodded his understanding and tapped him kindly on the shoulder panel again. The strange bot walked away then, disappearing into the dispersing crowd without another word.
"We need to get you home," Arcee said, and Knockout only nodded silently. She put his hand down again, fingertips next to the control lever at the front of cart. But instead of pushing his hand against it, he only let it flop to the side, while his optics half shut. His right foot tapped against the floor, missing the foot pedal by inches, and it was only then that he remembered the brake was still locked.
"Sorry, Arcee," he said still mumbling a little too much while trying hard to speak clearly. He tired to look at her, to maintain optic contact, but he could barely hold his optics open, and the still bad flipping and rolling of his tanks made him less inclined to try to. "You drive, please. I trust you."
Nodding, Arcee quickly set the control of the cart over to manual mode, so that she could easily push it forward using the almost never used hand holds behind it. Knockout barely noticed much at all, as she placed both of his hands carefully into a resting position on top of the cart's tray, but he smiled weakly in assurance as soon as he realized she had done so. He barely saw her smile back as she leaned over to release the brake switch.
"Excuse me!" An urgent, nearly shouting voice made him struggle to look around again, as his tank flipped once more uncomfortably, and the room faded away for a second, as his optics involuntarily blinked. A familiar purple painted bot run up beside the pair, one that had so recently laughed at him, and whom Arcee could not possibly have recognized. The young bot smiled now instead of his earlier scowling and laughter. He gave a nervous glace in Knockout's direction and his head fell slightly in what might have been regret for his earlier behavior.
"You forgot your purchases. I saw you drop this right over there," the purple painted young one said hurriedly. He held out a brown paper wrapped box to Arcee, who nodded, and took it from him. "My… my friend and I… we were being stupid. Is… is he alright…?"
"Thank you," Arcee answered back at once. If she was confused by what he had said, she'd only wait to question it later. She quickly placed the package into her storage compartment, and was already walking forward as fast as possible when she hurriedly assured him,"he'll be fine."
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
Snapping back into consciousness, suddenly and fast, Knockout blinked in confusion, because he didn't remember ever going to sleep in the first place. With his optics still closed, he detected light, doing its best to shine through from above. And that made him all the less inclined to open them, even if the light was relatively dim. He understood that he was obviously laying down, limbs arranged into a comfortable resting position, and he wondered, confused, over lacking any memory at all, of ever having been transferred off the cart, though he obviously had been at some point. A steady, irritating beeping sound, made his tank drop again in it's familiarity, and he finally opened his optics, blinking a little at the light overhead.
The view of much of the inside of the medbay as he could see from his position, made him groan out loud in annoyance, and when he finally recalled that the last place he had been before losing consciousness was inside the shop and still sitting on his cart, his earlier forgotten embarrassment returned. The steady beeping persisted and it was only then he realized with both dread and frustration, that he had at some point been connected again to monitors. Unable to sit up, or move half as much as he may have liked in that moment thanks to the limitations of his dysfunctional body, he settled instead for a disbelieving and annoyed shake of his head, and another groan of irritation.
When Arcee crossed the room from somewhere outside of his field of vision, presumably having come into through the doors he could not see from there, holding a fuel container in her hands, he couldn't help but smile at him, he couldn't help but smile at her though his growing moodiness.
"I sensed that you had woken up," she said, smiling as she set the container down on a little wheeled table she reached out to grab from behind her, and then pulled over closer to them. "I brought you fuel. You probably need it by now. Are you ready to sit up a bit so you can drink it?"
When he only nodded a little, afraid of what may just come out of of his mouth if he spoke that second, she reached behind the recharge station he lay on, and used the controls to incline its top section up to a decently comfortable angle. He reached out with his right hand, taking the container she offered him. Taking a couple of sips from the fuel container, he realized that he really did need it.
"You look far better," Arcee said, with her hand placed comfortably on his shoulder panel. Her optics held a strange look, but she smiled a little in assurance anyway.
"And I feel perfectly fine," Knockout answered, perhaps a little too close to snapping without meaning it. Instantly he felt bad for his harsh tone and he smiled a little in apology. Lifting the container again to drink of it, he frowned in annoyance at the little monitoring band fastened around his wrist and connected to some machine behind him, by a wire he could easily imagine he may just tangle himself up in.
"Is all this nonsense really all that necessary?' he questioned, his tone softer now. His optics moved mostly toward the little wrist band. But just as determinedly, his look questioned the entire monitoring set up.
"It's never exactly unnecessary to be safe rather than sorry," Ratchet huffed as he entered through the same doors Arcee had just used. He picked up a hand held scanner on his way across the room, and glared in a silent look that said 'don't even try it' when Knockout rolled his optics at the device.
Arcee took the container from him, so that the old medic could scan and then immediately re-scan his body from head to foot. He nodded slowly and made a sound of wordless approval as he did so, and then repeated nearly the same thing on the repeat scan.
"Do you remember what happened?" Ratchet questioned. He set the scanner down on the nearby table. "Any idea what you were doing before you lost consciousness and then woke up here?"
"Sure," Knockout said with his approximation of a shrugging motion. He took the container back when Arcee offered it again and took a couple more quick sips of the fuel. "We, Arcee and I, were just shopping for some bedding. While I waited for her to pay for our things, I suppose I must have started to go into a reboot."
He finished the fuel and reached over, managing to set the empty contain down onto he table himself, before he held up his right arm again, glaring at the band and wire. He looked then at the old medic with another optic roll and a mumbled, "is this really necessary?"
"I realize how much you really dislike and even dread being on monitors," Ratchet said. His tone was softer now. Understanding. "Another half hour or so to monitor your stats while you are awake and talking, and I think it should be fine to disconnect everything."
"I have an evening duty shift," Knockout muttered, displeased. As much as he had once held the mostly exaggerated and misunderstood reputation for being somewhat of a slacker, back in the old life he was trying so hard to forget everything about, the truth of the matter was that by now he had come to pride himself on reliability.
"Well you certainly won't make it tonight," Ratchet said seriously. "Not tomorrow either, I'm ordering a short medical exception. Day after tomorrow we'll talk about lifting it, and I'll carefully consider."
"This is ridiculous," Knockout protested, in a voice so close to a whining pout. He waved his hand about in complaint, trying all the while to avoid tangling the monitor wire. "It was just another processor reboot. This has been happening for the past nine months. Give it a little while and I'm always fine again..."
Ratchet exchanged glances with Arcee, who still stood where she was, with her hand on Knockout's shoulder panel. The sad and serious expressions on both of their face-plates was suddenly unmistakable and for the first time Knockout's frustration gave way to a sinking feeling as he looked from one of them to the other.
"You have no real idea just how bad your condition was when you were brought in this afternoon" Ratchet said. He stepped closer and spoke in a tone of completely seriousness, while his optics were sympathetic behind his professionalism. "Both of us are more than used to finding you sleepy after a reboot. That's normal and yes we let you just sleep it off a while. But Knockout, today Arcee called me for help outside the base. I found you still strapped into the cart's seat completely unresponsive."
"I knew you must have been pretty bad off when you asked me to push you," Arcee explained, picking up where the old medic had left off. "But you are often so tired and out of it after rebooting, it still seemed okay. I must have gotten about half a block from that shop with you half asleep on your mobility cart, when you clearly rebooted again. For a minute after that happened you were wide awake and talking to me just fine. Speaking clearly. Making sense. You were understandably a bit upset about having gone into reboot inside a shop. But you insisted you felt just fine and you certainly looked it..."
When Knockout looked from her to Ratchet and back again clueless and confused, the two other bots exchanged looks again, and Arcee's optics suddenly looked so close to crying in terrified despair.
"You… don't remember any of that at all?" she questioned.
When he shook his head a little, sad mostly because she so clearly was, she continued on explaining. "You wanted to drive the cart yourself again and it seemed like you probably could have. That's when a third reboot happened, and from there you were just gone. I comm'd Ratchet for help. That was nothing I could handle myself and I knew that."
"That bot in the shop," Knockout mumbled, his tank rolling with dread, as realization began to set in. "He said something about it being several minutes… It's… It's usually only seconds."
Ratchet nodded. "So far just under under minute at most, for you to regain consciousness after rebooting. And three within such a short time, followed by complete unresponsiveness… you stayed unresponsive like that for just over three hours."
"You've been monitoring processor activity," Knockout muttered. "Do you have any saved readouts?"
With a barely noticeable nod of his head, Ratchet glaceed toward a worktable to the right. Taking a couple of steps, he reached it and pulled open a drawer to retrieve a data pad, with he started to hold out hesitantly, before he instead held it at his side.
"You'll understand of course, exactly how to interpret this," he said. His words were just as obviously hesitant now as his motions. "These reading were strange, and you'll know immediately, exactly what I mean by that."
When Ratchet once again hesitantly held the pad out to him, Knockout stanched it quickly with his right hand, before he could change his mind and decide to set it aside.
Holding and reading from datapads was always much simpler for him to do sitting, strapped onto the cart – where he would simply read the thing on the tray in front of him and use his right to flip through pages or write in it. But he could, do it, and had before, laying in various laying position he was placed in too, if not far less efficiently. Now he rested the pad flat on his lap, and read from it at an awkward angle. When Arcee, smiling a little, lifted the pad, and the right hand that held it steady, and shifted his body a little so that the left arm rested under it, across his chest panel to balance the pad, he smiled back weakly in thanks. Where he knew full well so many bots might just have grabbed the pad to hold it for him, she had instead only helped him to do it well himself.
"I saved that set of readouts, minutes after I got you onto the monitors," Ratchet said. He waved a hand toward the datapad.
"It's… These readings are all over the place," Knockout mused. A right fingertip navigated the touchscreen, as his optics scrolled over the readout. "Part or it, most of it, is exactly what I'd expect from a bot that unresponsive. With that low level of activity it would be impossible to be anything but completely unresponsive. But these readings for background functions… they're all over the place. Sudden energy bursts, and they are way too high..."
"And that was a forth reboot," Ratchet said when Knockout had flipped the page. "That happened maybe half an hour after the third. Because we were of course still entirely out, we only knew about it at all because it registered on the monitor."
"So… where do we go from here?" Arcee spoke up in a voice that nearly trembled a little for all of her efforts to hide it behind confidant calmness. She looked to the old medic, so obviously trusting in his answer. Knockout looked up too, setting the pad aside on the recharge station again, and letting his expression turn back to his earlier glare of frustration because he could not think of a better reaction.
"Well," Ratchet took a step forward and reached to retrieve the pad as he spoke quickly, confidently. He looked mostly in Knockout's direction, in a way of including him in the conversation, while he spoke about him in the third person. "I just need a minute to disconnect a monitors and such, and then I'll get him transferred back into his cart, so you can both get on out of here. I'm confining him to the inside of the base for the next couple days, and I know you'll be the first to comm me at once if anything goes wrong."
"I'll be giving you quick scans daily with the hand held," Ratchet went on, speaking to Knockout directly now, as he finished disconnecting equipment. His tone was not unsympathetic, but a the same time, it was clear that his decision was entirely nonnegotiable. "We may as well just do that every morning when we transfer you off your recharge station. And once a week you'll be spending some time in here for monitoring."
Notes/ Twenty-five chapters now. Yeah, I'm both amazed and impressed actually. Thanks again for continuing to read this and for the comments. Those are becoming even more helpful now because I'm starting to find inspiration in them now for bits of future chapters.
Yeah, I know I just posted something about trouble in a store, and now I've gone and wrote another chapter where sure enough, bots start carrying in another store. But since they are obviously very different, I figure its fine.
A review recently hinted at wondering about future possible sparklings for Arcee and Knockout. Haha. I haven't decided yet.