The Diego Diaries: Home Again (dd8 225)
=0=The City
Public Works moved down the streets with their trucks which held 'cherry pickers', platforms that could be elevated to address things higher than ground level. They were removing the banners for Festival and replacing them with those celebrating Cybertron, Mars and basketball.
The air was festive and light, the usual byproducts of Festival and The Blessings as pedestrians walked along coming and going into businesses or to places unknown. The traffic was brisk but not heavy as vehicles of all manner and size rolled along, a number of which were either driven by bots or non-sentient, following their programming on the invisible grid that covered the whole colony for such purposes.
The odd human buzzed along and there were buses from the Resort going about their business, taking mobs of humans about The City before heading out for more remote locations.
Rick Harris sped along with his 'friend', someone he'd found here and was having the time of his life with. His mother knew but sorta, maybe even 'conditionally'. She 'knew' but she didn't exactly acknowledge that her one and only son preferred men.
He told her when he felt she was ready to hear him. Looking back upon it, her overly bright smile and brittle expression of EXTREME surprise should have tipped him off that she heard with her ears and not with her mind. This sort of information was a process to assimilate and come to terms with. She was no exception. She never mentioned it again and when it would come into conversations, sexuality and especially male to male, she would change the subject with the same bright and brittle tone.
He didn't blame her nor feel badly. His relationship with both parents was a work-in-progress at the best of times. Given his father's behavior in relation to the bots, he felt a distance that he decided to cultivate for a while. He loved his dad but he knew him all too well. Hence, he had his own life, developed his own business and loved who he chose. His best ally in all of this was his sister, Rain.
Who knew?
He was on his way to the school to pick her up so they could run around and do things. He loved going to the mall as well. Eating fast food on a faraway planet was a kick and he liked listening to her talk about her friends, how great school was, how Barrett wasn't such a 'cringe machine' anymore and how she and her cliché were plotting against Tinsley and her cliché.
Classic teenage bullshit. It was hilarious.
The lights changed so he crossed the street barreling along to the Metro station nearby. Down he would go and off to Centurion to pick his sister up and goof around with his boyfriend in tow. It was the best of times, it was the 'bester' of times for Rick Harris, son of Owen.
=0=Out and about
They ambled out of The Paint Box, Ratchet and Halo. She glistened like a new penny with her copper, silver and white paint scheme that in a certain light gave a metallic glow. She was babbling about things and Ratchet was inching along as she chatted, listening with amusement to her goings on about 'kool' and 'dem kids dere'. As he mentally toted up the number and kind of speech lessons she'd be receiving perhaps FOREVER, he scooped her up. They'd reached the shop of Needlenose and Company, Fine Jewelers and Craftsmen as they walked along.
It was a classy joint Ratchet considered as they looked through the window. A number of what could only be high caste femmes were there huddled around a case of what could only be embellishments.
Ratchet glanced at his daughter who flashed him a giant smile when he did. Snickering to himself, Ratchet nodded toward the window. "How about an embellishment from me? Its my duty to give you the first one if you want one and someone took that away, too, the slaggers. Want a sparkly?"
Halo gripped Ratchet's face and smiled radiantly. "I LOVE LOU, ADA! I DOIN'?"
"Yep."
She smashed her tiny nose assembly against Ratchet's cheek in that manner that little kids who can't hold it all in do when they want to explode from excitement. "I DOIN'!"
Ratchet grinned as he gripped the door knob, a nod to the stores of Iacon who had ornate handles on their shop's finely wrought doors, some of which RTR had made. "Okay," he said with a smile.
They went in and after a bit came out with a sparkling little red ruby rosebud on Halo's shoulder. Ratchet also bore a matching one which on him was so small as to almost be invisible …
"ADA! LOU DOIN' DIS!" Halo had said as she pointed to the other one that was there in the display case.
Ratchet got it so they'd 'match … like sisters' he'd said with a snicker.
She hugged his face again in her own delight.
Stepping out sparkling brighter than when they went inside, the two ambled off into the day.
=0=Cybertron, the Manganese Mountains, a secluded mostly organic valley
He stood in a pool of water holding up a huge beam with his grandpa and his father. Working as fast as they could, a team of rescue archaeologists were searching in the mud for the entrance of what could be another ancient shrine put down by those enslaved in the past. It was with the weirdest feeling that Ironhide struggled.
A truck pulled up nearby and mechs leaped off. They began to drag off steel beams and welding equipment that would allow them to make a scaffolding according to the plans of the engineer brought in to help design this rescue. A huge sump pump waited to bring out all the musty smelly water that had accumulated from the sometimes constant rainfall in these parts. Cybertron's weather system was still sick.
"How you doing, infant?" Raptor called out from his position.
"Good, Appa. This shouldn't take too long," Ironhide said. He didn't say out loud the last part, "I hope" because family.
Mechs slid into the hole and began to ram the rods that would form the footing of the lift directed by the archaeologists and the engineer. The broken beams of a fallen shuttle from a long forgotten fire fight would have to stay a while until they could be cut and lifted out. The cliff side overhang made it impossible to fly them out altogether and eroding over eons had made the area unsafe to disturb without immense care.
Hammering, then the sound of welding could be heard as the three behemoths struggled to hold the weight. More steel was slid in, welded and consultation with the engineer created even more footings. Bars were laid down, welded and tested.
The engineer, D-433 or Threes as he was called glanced at Raptor. "We want to lower them onto the platform. It'll hold them without causing shifting, General. We'll direct you."
Mechs took up position and directed them to slowly lower the beams they were holding up until they came to rest on the platform built over the entrance. They screeched on contact, then it was silent.
Threes inspected, then stood again. "Step back. I think we're good."
Raptor, Blackjack and Ironhide gingerly let go, then climbed up the muddy sides of the gully where the entrance was until they were on solid ground again.
Everyone stared at the platform, then the engineer sounded it again. He glanced back to a group of mechs nearby. "We need this slag pumped out. The framework will hold. But I'm going to see if clearing this area is a problem. If I say hold, then turn it off. Okay?"
Everyone agreed as the mechs began to unfold, then insert the large suction end of a sump pump into the black and brackish water in the hole. It would take a while as it spewed nasty liquid down a cliff side nearby. It world loudly to get it out but it would leave time for Optimus, Sela, Hercy and Lissie to come.
Prowl would be with them.
=0=Elsewhere
She stood by the mech on the couch holding a toy version of a Cybertronian stethoscope in her tiny servo. Ratchet carried a stash of toy medical instruments to give to the kids when they came with him on home rounds. The patients loved it. Halo held it against the mech's foot listening intently.
The mech who was one of Ratchet's private home visitation patients smiled at her with delight. He stroked her brilliant hair. "What do you think, Doctor Halo?"
She glanced up at the mech, then smiled brilliantly. "LOU GOOD, LOU! I LOVE LOU! Sayed dis thing." She stared at the end of the stethoscope, then him with a giant smile.
He reached down and gently picked her up as Ratchet with a grin wrote up his notes for the mech's progress. "I wouldn't be without you, Doctor. You're very cute." He glanced at his beaming son and bond. "Do we have cookies?"
His bond got them both one, then sat with pleasure at the idea of his bond eating something happily. Food was difficult with the medications he was on for the next few and this was a pleasure to witness.
They sat together eating their cookies, chatting together about life in general before parting reluctantly.
Halo at the door: "I LOVE LOU, APPA! LOU DOIN'! Doin' wif cookies. I say doin'," she said wagging her tiny digit at the big grinning mech.
The mech who was enchanted glanced at his family. "You heard it here. Cookies are an order. The doctor has said so."
It would be a happy farewell before the two walked out to meet two more elders, then go to the food cart center at the city plaza nearby.
All was well in their world.
=0=Manganese Mountains in a highly inaccessible place
Prime and the others watched as the crew below shored up the entrance, then made way for the archaeologists. They carefully recorded, tested and searched the entrance which was sealed with a boulder.
Glancing upward, the leader, a mech named Typo stood. "This boulder is placed."
"I know."
Everyone glanced at Hercy.
"I helped put it there," Hercy said. "I was assigned to this area for resource clearing, then transferred to Iacon where I met up with Delphi and Hardie. I helped roll that there."
"Then you know what's in there?" Typo asked nearly breathless with the idea of discovery.
"I was lookout," Hercy said. "There were a bunch of things being put there but they didn't tell me. Only the one who gathered things up knew. There was a sort of arrangement so that fewer could be harmed if this was discovered. Plausible deniability by everyone but a couple of mechs or femmes doing the hard work."
"How can we take it out without making things worse?" Typo asked.
Hercy thought back through deeply faded memory. "It can be rolled out. Optimus can do it easily. Just grip it on the sides and slide it back. This mud should help."
Optimus waited until the others climbed out, then climbed down himself. He knelt noting the chisel marks someone made eons ago when they were still slaves of the Quintessans. A pang for their plight gripped him again, then he noted the boulder. It was densely fine grained granite wedged into the hole that looked designed for it. He gripped the sides, then gently (for him) began to pull the rock back. It slid on the mud, then freed the hole. Dank air filtered out, acrid and smelly.
Typo sniffed, then frowned. "We're going to have water damage."
Optimus climbed out, then Typo slid down, lit up the area with his lights, then gently began to ease into the hole.
=0=Elsewhere
She sat on the table eating an onion ring. Her tiny hamburger was sitting on a plate beside her with more tiny onion rings. Dipping it into Cybertronian ketchup, she took tiny bites.
Watching her with deep and abiding fascination, Ratchet ate his mech-sized version as well. "So what do you want to do next?"
She smiled then told him.
=0=Inside the hole
He crept in and as he did his lights emblazoned the space. He sat back on his heels and glanced around marveling at the simplicity of the space. Then he saw it.
=0=At the Autobot City Public Library, Children's Reading Room
They sat on the floor together, a tiny copper and white sparkling femme and her ada. Ratchet was reading.
"Clifford was a big red dog …"
Halo was enraptured.
=0=TBC 8-7-2021