Chapter 13 – The Ratchet Chapter...
20 Good Reasons
By Thirsty Merc
And at that point,
There was no pain,
There was no sky,
There was no rain.
For all there was,
Was you,
And your sweet face.
Armage— er... Acheron's POV
Optimus stared at me, opened mouthed. Apparently he was just as surprised as I was. He sent a message to someone called Ratchet to come here.
"Who's this Ratchet guy?" I asked.
"He's the medic," Optimus answered, "one of the best, actually."
We waited about a minutes before the doors to the hanger and a red and white robot walked in, Ratchet. He looked older than Optimus, way older. He clanged them shut behind him and came over to us, asking Optimus, "What's the problem?"
"She's forgotten everything that's happened involving us," Optimus stated, "the last thing she remembers is early 2007, when she was first introduced to Grim."
Ratchet stiffened, shuttering his optics (I think that's their term for eyes) briefly, as if trying to keep an old memory at bay. Then he said to Optimus, "I'll have to have a look at her CPU, see what caused it and how I could fix it," before kneeling next to me, a device appearing out of his lower left arm and said to me, "This is an electromagnetic pulse generator. I'm going to put you out for a while so I can have a look in your CPU and see what's going on."
I nodded. What was a CPU? Must be some kind of robot brain. The device emitted a wide, golden beam and I blacked out.
oOo
I woke up some time later. My internal chronometer told me that I had lost 2 hours. My CPU had downloaded all the robots' terms for stuff. Well, they were Transformers, TFs for short.
I on-lined my optics and saw the grim face of Ratchet. He looked like someone had died, someone close. I swear I saw tear trails, but I couldn't be sure.
"Ratchet? What's wrong?"
He looked away, as if contemplating whether to tell me or not. He sat beside me with his back to the wall. Finally he stated, "I found something, maybe what made you forget."
"You did?"
"It's called a Black Chip II."
"What's that?"
He swallowed and said sadly, "A Black Chip is a controlling mechanism. It has a wireless connection from the host, in this case you, to whoever planted it. It is impossible to remove them without killing the host. They can override your CPU for a period of time and make you do terrible things. This one malfunctioned and repeated the order to empty your fuel tanks to feed. You were evidently under the influence of the Chip when you... when you..." he trailed off.
"What did I do?" I demanded.
He was silent for a moment, then said, "You... ate humans alive. Over 500 of them."
My jaw dropped, my optics widened, and horror filled me. What?! That was foul! I would never do that! Although, whoever was at the other end of the Chip connection obviously would.
He looked at my stasis cuffs and said, "I can't stand to see you in those, now that I know why you did what you did." He removed them. Being able to feel my body and move again felt great.
I opened my arms and asked, "Hug me?"
He embraced me and I felt all of my emotional barriers crumble to dust. I clung to him like everything would vanish if I let go, letting myself sob violently. I buried my face into the curve of his neck, the tears streaming down my face. He held me to his chest, rubbing my back.
"I'm a freak!" I moaned, "I killed all those innocents! How can I forgive myself? How can anyone forgive me? I should just die now and face my eternal punishment before I do anything worse… please kill me, Ratchet."
He held me closer, "No, you don't deserve that. No-one does. We can fix this—"
"No you can't!" I cried, "You just said it yourself: 'it's impossible to remove the Chip without killing the host'. It's better for me to die than anyone else."
"Acheron—"
"Just do it! You know there's no other way!" I pulled away just enough to look him in the optics with my arms still around his neck and said softly, "Please Ratchet. I don't want anyone else to get hurt and neither do you."
He must've seen the pained look in my optics. He was silent for a moment, mulling it over in his CPU. Then he said, "I don't want to, I really don't want to, but I will, only because I have to."
I leaned my forehead against his and shuttered my optics in relief. Soon my pain would be over. My lips briefly brushed against his. I was surprised to find that they were soft, sinfully so.
I wanted to double check, to see if I was imagining things. I kissed him, very quickly. I wasn't imagining anything; his lips were soft as velvet and sweet as honey. My first kiss, well, as far as I knew anyway.
(Whoa! Lots of fun. Give me a bell if you wanna read ;) Time skip!)
His chest plates slid aside and revealed a beautiful crimson spark with white snaking across it.
I was stunned. It was… "So beautiful…" I whispered, gently stroking it.
He screamed again and his arms gave way. He collapsed on top of me. We would've bonded if my hand wasn't there, the only thing between our sparks. He had gone into overload, so he was unconscious. My hand was curled up slightly, so the fingertips, which were nasty claws, were digging into my spark, tearing holes in it.
I screamed in utter agony. I couldn't move; his body was blocking me from any movement. I couldn't stop screaming, the pain was unbearable. I could feel my life draining away, darkness clawing at the edges of my vision. Tears started streaming down my face. I didn't want to die this way, although I wasn't scared of death. Seriously, who died like this?
I heard someone bashing on the doors and screamed for help. The door burst open and Bulkhead came rushing in. I screamed louder, as Ratchet jerked in his state of unconsciousness and my claws were wrenched to the side, effectively tearing my spark.
I saw Ratchet come on-line and his cry of anguish before the darkness enveloped me.
A/N: Yeah... when my friends read this, they were mentally scarred for life. Now, whenever I say "Ratchet..." they either shudder or run around in little circles, screaming their heads off.
As you can see, I have a sick and twisted mind. Review! Who wants to read the gap? Heh, heh, heh...