The Diego Diaries: Clubbin' (dd8 368)
NOTE: Well, I've been exposed again to Covid, the Omicron. I had to run around getting things done yesterday and didn't get this posted. Here we go as I sit out five days (of pure bliss I have to say. Its nice to have a bit of time to myself). The kid I work with was melting down from his symptoms so I gave him a covid test and he was solid infected. As for me, nothing yet. I feel fine on day 2 here. Hugs to all out there. Be careful. He had what looked like the worst cold I've ever seen.)
:D:D:D
=0=Getting on late or as 'normies' call it, early morning, prior to arrival at the apartment ...
"Its about to get light again," Edict said as he sagged on a Metro seat. They were getting to the end of their debauchery and it was nearing time to go.
"How about coming to my place for a nightcap," Ratchet asked with a gigantic smile. One could almost see glints off it.
"What's a nightcap?" Joon said as she lay cradled in Kestrel's arms. She was so blotto she couldn't put one tiny ped ahead of the other.
"I don't know. I just saw it in a movie and it entails a lot of booze," Ratchet replied.
"COUNT ME IN!" Joon said as she fought recharge with a very bemused Kestrel.
Their arrival at the Central Labor Hall Metro #5 would be raucous and riotously fun for all. The Squad would enjoy themselves as well.
=0=Home later on
It was dark in the apartment as the early morning wore onward. Mechs sat and lay everywhere as Hard Drive, Tagg and Venture snoozed in chairs having watched over them all night long. The Squad had wandered in staggering toward a place to recharge and settled pretty quickly. The night would pass and soon the mob would awake.
=0=Around the colony
"This is one wild aft night and there's two more to come before things get back on track," Lon said as he sat on his horse beside Bezel.
"The attack caused a lot of this," Lon said. "Whenever there's one this is always the result."
The bar fight was brutal enough that runabouts were here to transport two of the fighters to the hospital for their injuries. It landed on the street, loaded up, then lifted off for Autobot City. A commotion nearby drew their attention as several big mechs were loaded into a policing van. Nearby in cuffs, several femmes glowered at the Watch matrons who were there to haul them in a van coming down the street.
It would be continuing all night long.
=0=Morning at the hutch
They staggered out of rooms into the main area which was filled with hungover mechs and dancing children. Sending everyone a WIFI-ed cure, the relief that greeted that was long and loud.
Ratchet grinned. "What a mess. You have to clear it before you go. How about breakfast at The Diner?"
That met everyone's approval as the mechs gathered litter, dead bottles and empty food trays. Pushing them down the recycler, they gathered up the kids and staggered out. The apartment hotel room would look spotless when they did.
=0=Earlier than this out on the trail
Springer watched as more mechs and a femme were stashed into a police van to go to the Jail at Iacon. It was nearing early morning and the roads were filled with trucks and vans taking supplies and this and that to businesses all over the colony. It was still dark but would soon be alleviated a bit with the rise of the sun, weak as it was sometimes this time of year, the 'dust season, over the dome of Olympus Mons.
The night had been long, filled with fights and disagreements many of which ended in arrests as all as accidents and the odd lost elder ...
"Appa, what are you doing out here?"
Drift jumped down from his mount. He was riding Yancy again. The big horse had passed the testing that came with his injuries to see if he was still fit to be on a horse patrol. After an initial spate of nervous rearing and sun fishing, Yancy fell into his usual good steady nature partly due to missing riding with Drift. The two were almost supernaturally good together.
A little mech was sitting on a light post island in the middle of the highway leading to Aerie Hill. There was no one around and the cars and trucks passing didn't seem to see him. He looked up at Drift with a slightly vacant expression. He held up a servo, then looked at it.
Drift knelt. "Appa, are you lost?"
The little mech stared at him without reply. He had tattoos of the military, the Navy, and he looked very old and small.
Drift scanned him picking up his transponder code. "Central Emergency Services, I'm sending you a code. Please identify quickly. We have a lost elder here."
A pause occurred as they waited, a number of mechs on horses staring at a tiny old mech who was obviously impaired. It was hard to see, reminding too many of them of the End and the Wilderness dumping grounds.
:Boss, we have a missing elders report. A mech and a femme. This is the mech. His name is Mercury. His bond is missing, too. Her name is Jezzy. They're both extremely impaired with situational dementia and have a high alert notice out from their family: the return reply said.
"We have the mech. We're going to look for the femme now," Drift said as a runabout landed nearby.
A group of mechs hopped out and ran forward toward the group.
"What do you need, Drift?" Partition asked, then he saw the little mech. "We're out looking for this one and a little femme. Is she around?"
Everyone glanced around, then Drift mounted up. "We're going to find her now."
With that, Springer, Drift and the group began to ride down the road toward the town spread out in an array as they scanned the area for a tiny demented little femme.
=0=Central Emergency Center, Fortress Maximus, The City, Mars
The center was busy with calls as the colony began to come apart at the seams. On a good night they would have 200-500 calls to check on, most of them ending peacefully through the community techniques that Springer enacted among the emergency departments that were under his command or aligned with them. Tonight, it was approaching 2,000.
"That little mech was found near Aerie Hill sitting on a light platform," a mech at a station said.
The group expressed relief.
"I want the femme," Inferno said as he fretted at his command station nearby. Plugged in beside him, Inferno was searching madly through all the channels and sensor set ups for find anyone who was hurt or lost. "I want her found."
They would be hard at it for a while.
=0=On the trail
They rode along with their sensors interlinked believing that they were heading in the right direction to find her. What they didn't know what that Jezzy had meandered away from her bond as they walked along the highway lost in some memory of a long ago time. They wouldn't know that she had gone in the other direction and had fallen into a hole. She struggled at the bottom before giving in to her fatigue. She curled up in a ball against the cold and darkness.
=0=Partition and Mercury
He lay on the stretcher in the runabout staring blankly at the ceiling. He was tiny, had a shiny paint job and the look of a battered elder who had been lovingly restored by someone, perhaps family. He was plugged in and the usual was seen. He had significant dementia, protoform wasting and battering to his body from a long time neglected on Cybertron during The Fall and The Occupation. He was obviously cared for but by who? Partition had little time to check as he worked to stabilize the tiny mech.
It was a good thing that Partition was the medic of record. He'd been accepted into the Elder Medicine program at the University of Mars where he would become a full fledged doctor of elder illness and diseases including mental conditions. When he would eventually graduate he would stay with the Watch and Army, his first loves and work on the second one, elder care as a medic like he'd promised Ratchet long ago.
The search would continue for the little mech's little femme.
=0=Later that morning
They filled The Diner on the Corner, the whole group. Orders were made, children sorted and grins had.
"Well, the apartment looks good," Ratchet said. "Good thing. I'd hate to el kabong you with my best wrenches."
"Eat and drink, mech. You have screws loose," Ironhide said as he dug into his own breakfast.
The food was good and plentiful, the drinks hot and soothing. Children were comical and the night was discussed and judged as best anyone could remember it. All in all, it was a good start to the second orn of weekend.
=0=Darkness and cold descending much earlier in the morning
"I don't fear ordinarily the cold but this femme is impaired," Springer said as they gathered to regroup. "We have to go in different directions. You three, go that way. We'll go this direction. Look hard. She needs us."
The patrol broke up and with two others who had joined them along with a Watch runabout scanning the ground from above as well, they rode on into the night to find Jezzy.
=0=The Hourly News: Emergency Alert!
"We have just received a report from the Central Emergency Services Center and the Watch of a vulnerable elder who is lost and presumed highly endangered from Autobot City. The femme was with her bond, Mercury of Uraya and her name is Jezzy of Uraya. She's ten feet tall, very petite and is colored in white with blue accents. She suffers from situational dementia and level 3 protoform wasting. Her bond, Mercury has been found and is currently being cared for in the Autobot City Medical Center intensive care for elders.
"The Watch is searching with expanded surveillance capacity in the general area of Aerie Hill. Mercury was found sitting alone on a light platform on the highway that leads to Aerie Hill. His bond is still being hunted and if you spot anyone walking alone in the area or anywhere else please contact the Emergency Command Center on the emergency line, 919. If there are others about this time of the night Commander Inferno said they would send officers to do wellness checks. We are hoping greatly that the search is a success."
=0=Watch Runabout
Partition sat on the runabout as the on scene medic after delivering Mercury to the Med Center. Sitting next to him was Lancer who had heard about the search and came to join it. She was attending college as well as being a part of Army Special Forces as many other were. She was working toward an advanced science degree, picking up her interests before war had made her a dangerous special operative.
The ship scanned a wide ranging area before picking up on a signal from a rough stretch of open terrain.
"I think I have something," Taro, the pilot said. He angled the ship downward to settle near the signal after alerting Springer and the search team.
The hatch opened as Partition jumped out with his kit followed by Lancer and an orderly from the hospital who came to help. He ran toward a deep hole and slid to a stop. Turning his lights downward he saw a dust covered figure curled up below. Sliding down the side of the hole, he walked toward the figure and knelt. Putting his servo gently on a small slender arm, he patted her. "Amma? Are you ok?"
=0=TBC 02-15-2022
Notes:
sun fishing: a term for a bucking horse where they rear up in back and twist around into a 'C' shape from one side to the other trying to throw the rider. Its a really, really hard thing to compensate for if you're a rider. My mom's family ranched in Oregon and they were involved in rodeo for about 120 years. My cousin Cheer was a rodeo queen in the 1920's when the women had to rope, ride bulls and bucking horses and show all around skill just like the boys. All hail Cheer! RIP, my darling. :D
