Step to the Beat
Chapter 3: Time to Upgrade Everything
Rating: PG (referenced racism)
Setting: Polyhex Medical Facility; Prewar
(Jazz aged equivalent to 6 years)
Wheelwell's sensor-panels were hiked high on his back, optics cycling and darting about the hall as he moved through it. He held Ricochet at his hip while Fuse, trailing a little way behind the sire, held Jazz. The twins clung tightly to their creators, tiny doors quivering and optics wide. They'd never been in a building like this.
"Shhh," Fuse soothed, rubbing his hand over Jazz's back. All four mechs were clearly on edge as the sire led them through the medical facility to the room he'd been directed toward.
Patients and medics alike who passed the Dead End residents looked down on the four of them. Their dirty frames, accents, and just the way they held themselves, ready to flee in a moment's notice, gave away their status as poor, likely guttersmechs. They didn't belong in such a sterile environment. They belonged in the gutters, barely scraping by. The twins eventually hid their faces at their creators' necks to avoid the dirty glares cast the little group's way. Wheelwell hurried along as quickly as he could, but he didn't know the facility at all. He wound up leading them down the wrong hall more than once.
By the time they'd reached Room 6F, they were late. The mech inside the room was clearly agitated with the tardiness, but didn't comment. Instead, he just placed two blueprint datapads on the table, and two documents between them.
The sire set Ricochet on the edge of the table when the medic reached a hand out. The mechling proceeded to look over the blueprint with his designation on it. Wheelwell, on the other hand, eyed that hand a moment before looking into the younger mech's optics and taking it firmly. "Wheelwell, right?" The sire nodded. "My designation's Ratchet. I'll be in charge of your creations' procedure."
The medic was young. Maybe only recently earned his Medical Seal, or was at least close to it. "Are the blueprints satisfactory?"
Fuse set the smaller twin on the opposite side of the table from his brother, and Jazz tipped his helm to look at the upgraded frame shown on the large datapad with his own name on it. The twins then looked at each other and grinned. Their fields sparked with a mixture of excitement and nervousness.
"They're perfect!" Ricochet chirped.
"Yeah!" Jazz agreed.
Both creators smiled, but it was the sire to answer, "They're satisfactory."
Nodding, Ratchet pushed the documents toward the creators. "Then if you could both sign these, I can have my team prep the protoforms for the transfers."
Fuse signed both documents first without even read through them. His glyph was done sloppily, but was at least legible. Wheelwell went next. Unlike the carrier, he skimmed through the documents carefully before signing his own, longer, glyph. It was done neatly, with a Towers-like flare that had Ratchet raising an optic-ridge. The medic didn't say anything about it though, and instead signed his own glyph in the designated spot for a medic. The documents for finances had already been handled by an anonymous party among the Dead End's Watchmechs, so the finances didn't need to be brought up. Ratchet really didn't want to know where the illicit group had gotten the credits for this.
If it became a problem, he knew the Polyhex Enforcer Division would look into it. That wasn't a job for a medic, let alone one relatively knew to his job.
"Sire?" Ricochet pawed as high on Wheelwell's chest as he could to get the older mech's attention. "It ain't gonna hurt, is it?"
Instead of the sire answering, Ratchet spoke without looking up from the documents as he reread them. "You'll both be in stasis and won't feel a thing." He glanced over a spectacle-like visor he'd put on that was magnifying the words more than his optics could. He raised a digit to stop either of the mechling from speaking. "Ah-ah. You'll be kept in the same room. Doing so will keep your twin-bond calm, and as a result, sparks stable." He went quiet again and continued to go over the documents.
A few words, a wrong turn, the twins getting lost because nerves dictated they tried to hide, and a few muttered cusses from creators and medic alike later, and the group of five, led by Ratchet, entered a bigger room than the first one. There were four berths, two of them larger with the twins' upgraded frames laying. The position of the berths left the empty frames head-to-head to keep them as close to each other as possible without one being in the way of the other.
A few of the medics present glanced up from whatever they were checking or reading over, one or two sneered at the guttersmechs, while one, a young femme, smiled brightly at them. Jazz and Ricochet both offered her a pair of identical grins.
Ratchet cleared his intake and the femme darted up, followed at a more leisure pace by a smaller mech wearing both a visor and mouthplate so they couldn't make out his expression. Despite that, his stance wasn't threatening or showed that he thought himself better than the poor mechs. "These are the mecha who will be aiding me. Though I'm in charge of the procedure, I can't keep up with both of your frames at once. Minerva," the femme bounced on her toes, "will be heading Jazz's procedure. First Aid," the visored mech nodded his helm, "will be heading Ricochet's. I'll be back and forth between the two of them to ensure everything goes smoothly."
Ratchet gestured to a side room with no door. "Ricochet, Jazz, if I could have you both go clean up in the washracks? It will prevent contamination to your sparks." A deep frown had fallen over his face as he said it, scanning the mechlings' filthy frames. He looked to the creators' even worse frames then, and tipped his helm toward the washracks. "You two as well."
Wheelwell's sensor-panels perked a little, but then he dipped his head in a manner more than a little grateful to the head medic's offer. In truth, he should've already sent the creators to a waiting room. Instead he sent them to a luxury they didn't have at home first.
Carrier and sire followed their creations into the washracks, Jazz and Ricochet with their arms locked together.
It was only after Jazz had slipped on the wet tiles, Ricochet had gotten solvent in his optics, and the creators had held the mechlings still to clean them properly, that they'd been able to dry themselves and exit the racks. Wheelwell exchanged some words with Ratchet, then led his mate out of the room after they'd both given the twins reassuring grins. They grinned right back, gazes lingering on their carrier until he'd disappeared through the doorway. They'd never seen him sober for a whole cycle, and he'd done it just for this occasion. It was nice to see, even if it made him a little twitchy.
Turning to the head medic, the mechlings scurried toward their respective medical berths. Ricochet helped his smaller brother climb up, then pulled himself up onto his-neither of them accepting the help offered from Ratchet, Minerva, or First Aid.
Ratchet nodded to his primary assistants. Minerva and First Aid hooked up cables to the back of the mechlings' helms, then they were both brought down to stasis.
...
"Very good, Ricochet. Jazz, can you do the same?" The smaller mechling nodded at Ratchet and slowly started touching his left digits to his left thumb, one at a time, and did the same with his right after he'd finished. "Very good." The medic scrawled something on a datapad before looking up again. "Now. Are either of you picking up any problems? Error messages in your HUD, or something not feeling right?" The twins looked at each other, grinned at their first clear sighting of the other's frames, then shook their heads at the medic. "No fritzing vision or pain in your chests?"
"Nope!" they both chirped. The voices seemed to startle them both as they stared at each other after speaking. They weren't the high-pitched, squeaky voices of their sparkling frames, but more matured.
Minerva giggled at the reaction from where she hovered at Ratchet's right shoulder.
"Can we get up?" Ricochet asked, already kicking his legs off the side of the berth. Jazz didn't take long to copy his brother.
"You may. But take it slowly." Ratchet nodded to his primary assistants, and they guided the younglings off the berths carefully. Minerva caught Jazz, and First Aid caught Ricochet, when both twins tipped backward. The head medic didn't seem concerned with the action at all, as it was common for winged frames.
"My doors are so heavy!" Jazz said. They were somewhat sagging behind him as he tried to look at them.
"Yeah!" Rico agreed, though his were held higher than his brother's with some effort.
A smile, very tiny but still there, came across the young medic's lips. It was gone just as fast. "Your doors are average to your frames," Ratchet said, "but yes, compared to your previous pair they're heavier. Take it slow until your equilibrium sensors can adjust to how you're balanced differently."
Both mechlings nodded. They were too excited about their new frames to care about the fact they'd have to adjust a little.
Jazz's optics widened when a thought struck him, and his grin soon followed. "Wait...we can transform now!"
The head medic nodded. "Yes," he said, "but take it slowly, and allow your creators to guide you through the process when you're home and have rested up. Don't attempt it on your own. Am I understood?"
"Yeah." Ricochet answered now, but his twin nodded vigorously in agreement.
A nod, and a tiny smile played the corner of Ratchet's lips. "Good. We just need to check over a few more things, then you two can be on your way."