Chapter 12- Hurt
POV: Twinwave
" " Normal talking
": :" Bumblebee talking
"Hi" over the comm talking
(Note: this chapter takes place during season 2 ep 12 "Hurt" Of TFP)
So, we were the first to be ground bridged back to base, there was nobody there but Raf and Fowler who was monitoring the computers and Raf was on his computer talking with Ratchet and typing away at something. I took the relic off Bee and deposited it into the storage units Ratchet had created for them. The storage was in the opposite direction to our rooms. I dropped the relic in its place and arrived back to the main room just in time to see Ratchet pop through the bridge.
"RATCHET COME HERE!" Raf yelled to him as he exited the framework of the ground bridge, the small boy lifted a hand and pointed towards the monitors to direct our attention. Lines and lines of code streamed onto the screen and went by, Ratchet and I were standing in front of the computers and Raf had come down from where he was sitting to share his jay. "The Iacon database?!" ratchet said in disbelief, my intake dropped a little.
"So that's what you were working on when we got back." I said to him, "Good job." and Raf smiled back at me, he and ratchet seemed more than happy. "It's downloading into our mainframe!" he said with joy and then Ratchet laughed, like actually laughed, I was pretty sure that was the first time I'd heard him do that since I'd joined the team a few years ago. "Rafeal, you are a genius!" Ratchet exclaimed and that seemed to make his little heart flutter with joy.
Before any further interaction, a signal beeped through on Raf's computer and he went racing back towards it before resitting down and powering up the ground bridge for transport. "Bulkhead's coming through Agent Fowler." he said as the machine whirled to life, the four of us turned our helms towards it to watch him come through and for Ratchet to "share the news" of our victory.
When we heard him come through the portal, instead of walking he came flying in belly first and crashed next to Ratchet and I. He was on fire at the back of him and wasn't conscious at all, "No.." Ratchet whispered. "BULKHEAD!" I yelled immediately kneeling next to him to check his pulse.
"He's barely clinging on." I said turing my helm Ratchet, then we heard tiny footsteps and big ones. Arcee, Bee, Jack and to my worst fears Miko had heard the commotion and had come running to see what happened. "We heard screaming is every one o-" Miko asked before she saw her guardian laying faceplates first on the floor, Ratchet who'd left my side seconds before they arrived came racing past her with an EMP (for those of you who don't understand what I just said, and I'm assuming you don't unless you took advanced first aid. And EMP is defibrillators and their controlled shock unit.) and knelt down to try and revitalize him.
He took the defibrillators and put them to the mech's chassis and shocked him, the electricity flowed out of the unit and across Bulkhead's body making it jump unnaturally. "COME ON BULKHEAD, RESPOND!" Ratchet yelled before shocking him again.
This happened twice more before we drew a crowd and Ratchet scanned him, Miko however had just now snapped out of chock and came running for her partner before Fowler stopped her. "BULKHEAD! What happened!?" she yelled to me and Ratchet, "Tox-en exposure, among other things." I replied as Ratchet scanned him.
"Bulkhead has suffered a complete systems failure." Ratchet reported to me, this was not good, very not good. We had a four minute window to get his spark beating again and his condition stabilized before we lost him for good, after that seven minutes of processor activity and then he was really gone. "Hold on. Tox-en?" Arcee interjected while Ratchet looked at vitals again after the scan.
"Help me get him into the medical bay." Ratchet said to me, Arcee and Bee ran to help and the four of us lifted his limp body and carried to to a med berth. As soon as he was down ratchet and I started hooking up vitals and an energon infuser because he'd lost a lot of it from the fight and on the way in, I plugged in the energon infuser and made sure it was actually doing it's job while Ratchet programmed the spark monitor.
I caught a glimpse behind us and released Optimus had come back sometime during the crisis and was now standing behind us waiting on Fowler for something. Then I looked at Miko, she was having a mental breakdown over the fact of Bulkhead's near demise. I couldn't imagine how she was feeling, a part of me wanted to in fact it almost knew remorse but after you've killed so many Cons and been at war for eons you kind of lose your emotions, you're humanity as the humans call it, it kind of just gets suced out of you.
"Wheeljack's on his way." Arcee reported from the computers, I nodded my helm, and saw Miko get up out of her sitting position to confront them. "I can't believe you're giving up on Bulkhead already." she snapped at Arcee, she seemed pissed at the Con that did this and tried to possess all of this at the same time, a complicated task to do
. "All she meant was, Wheeljack and Bulkhead are close, we thought he'd want to be here." I replied to Miko for Arcee, I tried to speak calmly because maybe it would help but it didn't seem to. "I KNOW WHAT YOU MEANT!" she said turning and walked towards the evivator, "Miko, where are you going?" Optimus asked the girl. Home, while Agent Fowler can still give me a lift." she shot back before the doors closed and she disappeared behind them.
Arcee and I looked at eachother and she went to get up so we could follow her but Optimus stopped the two of us, "She needs time." he said. I knew it was true but I still wanted to help, in any way I could.
Ratchet was finally done working on Bulkhead and summoned all of us to the medberth's side to speak, "Bulkhead is stable for the moment, but we've had to induce stasis." Ratchet said. He nodded his helm towards me when he said "we", I nodded my helm in response ad the others sparks seemed to lift but not by much.
Then we heard Wheeljack's engine coming down the corridor from the main entrance. I assumed he'd taken his ship but why didn't he come down the elevator? Still confuses me. He untransformed when he made it into the main room and took a leaping jump as he did so towards us, "What's the damage, Doc?" he asked Ratchet.
From what could tell there was remorse in his voice, but it was masked by something else, most likely anger for the Con that caused this mess.
"Bulkhead suffered massive trauma to his central nero conduit." Ratchet responded quickly, Wheeljack pushed past Bee and Cee to get closer to where Ratchet and I stood now. "I've watched you work, you're a maestro." he said with a little bit of hope in his voice this time, "Except the tox-en exposure caused a system wide shut down. He was barely pulsing when he came flying through the ground bridge." I replied.
It wasn't going to lift sparks but it was going to tell everyone what we could do given the circumstances we'd been dealt. "I can't even begin to operate until Bulkhead reagins some strength." Ratchet finished for me, I knew I was going to take partial help in that operation but that was if Bulkhead woke up first.
Wheeljack turned his helm to Optimus, "you going to tell me who did this to him?" and Optimus shook his helm. "At the moment I believe it is best to focus our attention on Bulkhead's recovery rather than revenge." Optimus replied, Wheeljack moved his helm sharply away from him to scan the rest of us, to see if we wanted revenge too. And I mean of course we did, the Con was going to the pits for this but we needed to make sure Bulkhead was stable and on the road to recovery before we started any Con hunts.
"You do that." he said before turning to leave our small gathered group, "Wheeljack, please stay. Bulkhead would want you here when he wakes up." I said trying my best to convince him not to do something reckless, revenge was something I think I and others in this room knew a little too well.
"I can't, the Jackhammer needs repairs after Laserbeak blew her out of the sky." and that was all he said before he transformed and sped out the same way he came in, wait. Didn't he take his ship here? Or did it need more repairs on the inside of it? "Wheeljack will most likely do something rash, you know." Ratchet said to Optimus as we watched his alt disappear around the corner from where we stood in the med bay
. "And I am not sure we could stop him if we wanted to." Optimus replied, I sighed he was about to make a big mistake and revenge didn't feel as good on your conscience as you would think. "No, but maybe he'll be back soon enough to be here when Bulkhead wakes us." I added turning away from the rest of them. I walked over to the berth side to check on Bulkhead's condition, someone needed to be watching him in case his condition worsened or destabilized again.
Ratchet, somewhere while we were distracted with Miko, managed to patch the leak the fire had caused. Other than him not being conscious at all and having minor processor activity, Bulkhead looked perfectly fine almost as if he was just in recharge instead of being in stasis. Somewhere in the background I heard ringing, like from a cellphone one of the kids had.
Jack picked it up and answered with "Hi mom." and then a pause. "No she isn't…. Well we watched her leave, and no she said she was going home and that Fowler was taking her… alright I'll let them know." Jack said to his mother and then hung up. "What was that about?" Arcee asked him, "Miko's missing, her host parents called my mom to asked if she was hanging out with me because she isn't at home. My mom said she'll cover for us but I don't know how long she'll be able to hold them off." he continued.
"What? Well where could she have gone!?" Ratchet asked, "The only other person that was here that could've possibly taken her anywhere is-" I started before Optimus cut me off. "Wheeljack." he said, Ratchet hustled himself over to the computers opposite med bay and commed the Jackhammer. "Wheeljack? WHEELJACK!? ARE YOU THERE?" he yelled frantically, "He isn't responding." Ratchet said after a few seconds pause in a huff.
"We didn't tell him who did it, right? Or else he would've brought her back if she is with him." Arcee reasoned, "Not if he didn't know but Miko did, Fowler probably let it slip while we were getting him to medbay." I responded. Great now we had something else to deal with, a missing Miko and a critical Bulkhead, this day just kept getting better and better.
"Optimus, I'm picking up a huge energon sugre. One like when Starscream blew the energon mine up when Meagtron returned for the first time." Ratchet said suddenly and he was right. I could hear the beeping from you here, ":You don't think-?:'' Bee started. "Wheeljack is blowing Decepticon energon mines? Yes I do." Arcee replied.
"Well that's one way to get megatron's attention and the Con he wants." I commented, it was a little risky to get in and out of those things. "Is he really using Miko as a scout?" I thought angrily as Optimus checked out the spike with Ratchet, I couldn't hear what they were saying but I knew neither of them wanted to check it out. Our concern right now was contacting Wheeljack and making sure Bulkhead lived through the day.
"We should just let their plan carry out. Wheeljack won't get Miko hurt; he knows Bulkhead cares about her far too much. He won't respond to any of our calls on the comms system, there was going to be a Con hunt anyways we might as well let them take him out. We all know they won't come home until it's done. She survived an insecticon and a deadly warship without our help before, at least this time she has someone with her." I said done with it, to be fair it was probably the best option. Yes I was against the bit hunt but it was going to happen sooner or later and it might as well happen while Miko had someone to protect her, let the whole thing ride out and then yell at the two of them when they got back.
"WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT?!" Ratchet yelled, "Because it's just about our only option." I shot back at him before turning from the computers and looked back towards Bulkhead. I could understand why he was angry, I mean one of the kids was at risk of getting squashed or squished by what they called aliens here that were more than twice her size in the lease but I still felt that waiting for them to come home was the best course of action, it's not like they had any better ideas anyhow.
The room dropped to silence after my small argument with Ratchet, the only noise was his rhythmic typing and the beating coming from the spark monitor strapped to Bulkhead's chassis. Everyone just stayed like that for a while or a long while. War ment cost and sacrifices, from all of us every one.
Miko was willing to do what she could to get some vengeance for Bulkhead in case he went under, why didn't the others see it the same way as Wheeljack and I did? I don't know, maybe we just understood her cause more than the others, even if I'd cautioned against it and knew it wouldn't help with the pain. I shook my helm to get out of my own thoughts again, it was happening a lot more than I would've like it to lately.
Mostly dreaming off about my life with Rain after this was all over, that was if we ever got to have our happily ever after. At the rate this war was going it seemed it would never happen.
I turned myself back into Ratchet's typing, expecting it to still be there after my five or so minutes of being tuned out to the world around me. Expect it wasn't and the hushed whispers he and Optimus was sharing were gone to, in fact. Nothing moved around behind me, I moved my helm from Bulkhead's direction to where the other's were and noticed they had gathered themselves around the computer, not talking.
It was a little creepy actually, I got up from where I was and walked over to them to see what was happening. A small blip, fluttered around on the computer screen, it was coming closer and closer to base. "Miko and Wheeljack?" I asked breaking the silence around me, "It appears so." Ratchet replied quickly.
When the small signal was right on top of us the proximity sensors went off, indicating that they'd landed safely and now we waited for them to come walking back in for the beat down of their long and short lives.
Eventually we heard their foot and ped steps and turned in their direction, everyone gathered silently to watch them come in. Wheeljack was scaring one ped on the ground, he was hurt and Miko. she just looked sad, more so than when she'd left. We waited and watched until they got close enough to touch, Arcee and I immediately knelt down to see Miko while Wheejack stood as tall as he could favoring his good leg and clutching his arm. "Miko you okay?" Arcee asked her, she didn't reply. All she did was drop her head a little more.
"She's fine, kid's a pro." Wheeljack cut in, "She wasn't talking to you." I shot at him, yes I was happy it had run its course and I stood by revenge but she needed to tell us if she was okay, not him. "How is he?" she almost whispered ignoring the question, she looked to Bee and me for answers on her partner.
Bee beeped in his own little language and dropped his helm, Ratchet instead answered. "Bulkhead will survive….. But he may never be fully functional again." Ratchet said dropping his helm too, I watched the tears well up in her eyes as she took in the reality of the situation.
I went to bring her in for a hug but she bolted towards med bay, and Bulkhead. "Miko, I don't think it's wise you-" Ratchet started before Optimus looked at him and he cut himself off, I got up from kneeling and walked after her as she approached. "I'm not sure I want to see Bulk right now… not like this." I heard Wheeljack say to the rest of them before I saw him turn, transform and leave the same way he came out of the corner of my optic.
I let him be and got closer to med bay, in the time I was distracted Miko managed to climb onto Bulkhead's chassis and sit in the fetal position. I heard her whisper something but I was still too far away to hear her, but she tightened the ball she'd made herself into and I heard her start crying. I wasn't going to comfort her, I felt she'd had enough of that from the rest of us.
Instead she needed time to heal and grieve while everyone in base waited for Bulkhead to wake up from stasis. I turned and looked at the others, in a way they were grieving too much more than I was. They'd been a family here since way before I'd gotten here which was who knows how long, they had this family bond I'd been kind of accepted into.
They would wait and watch for signs of Bulkhead recovering and waking up, if he ever did. Until then, a thick cloud of sorrow and despair would hang over the base and our helms. Bulkhead would live Ratchet said, but we would be down a warrior possibly forever.
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