The Diego Diaries: Phase Six 5 (dd3 507)
-0-Out there
Then a huge flash of light appeared out of nowhere.
Their optics flared, then settled as they watched the spectacle before them. The debris all over lit up like a Christmas Surprise tree, then trembled. For a moment it looked like it would melt, then it fell backward like it was being sucked up by something. The light swirled, then flashed out.
Ratchet sat still a moment adjusting to the flash, then darkness, then pushed off the shuttle. With his sensors cast wide, he began to slowly move back to the scene. The others who had less specifically developed optics that didn't allow for the recovery speed that Ratchet had sat a moment, then scrambled.
:Ratchet, what do you see? Hold and do not go further until we scan: Optimus said.
Ratchet halted, then checked his devices. :We have three bodies, scattered minute fragments of the ship and a lot of bio-hazardous liquids in both that form and solid. We have nothing that I can detect that shouldn't be there. All the rest of the debris is gone. Where did the slag go?:
:Check the star at 475.113 degrees to the galactic plane: Smokescreen said over the comm link.
They spun slowly to that point, then saw it. A faint star in the far distance winked at them through the infinite darkness of space. :Looks pretty good. Might keep that baby company. You never know with strange alien things: Ratchet said. :What now, Optimus:
:We want the Seekers to do a combined scan. Pull back from their magnetic field: Prime's voice commanded.
They did, moving back to the shuttles to sit and wait. The soft energy of the edges of the field generated by 300 plus Seekers focusing on one area bounced against them.
:What's it doing to those fraggers?: Drift asked as they watched the show.
:Well … not much that's good: Ratchet replied to general approval. :I'd say they'll have a hangover to end all hangovers later. I'll have to replace a lot of circuitry. Maybe. If I care:
They joked and chuckled until the all clear.
Then Wheeljack replied. :Ratchet, we see nothing. The fraggers are barely alive. Drag them in and we'll get on with the important stuff:
Ratchet chuckled. :Your command is my wish: He then pushed off the shuttle to buzz forward heading to a body that was floating on its back. They approached it gingerly waiting for something that never came. Ratchet pulled it toward him, then looked it over. :This is Kaon. He's electrical so we have to end that possibility now:
Ratchet examined the Tesla coils that figured into his frame. He noted that the coils were hardwired into his protoform. It would take a lot of surgery to undo what was obviously supposed to be a permanent reconfiguration of his former self.
He popped Kaon's chassis and looked inside. Reaching in to pull a large coiled piece of metal out, he also disabled a number of features. Tossing the coil to drift away, he glanced at Springer. :Destroy that would you, Springer? That's a good son:
Springer glanced at Ratchet sharply. :Son?: he asked before withdrawing his big, big gun. He blasted the piece and they all ducked as it shattered.
Ratchet glanced up staring at Springer closely. :A joke:
:Oh: Springer said backtracking. He was never good at that especially in the presence of a professional fragger like Ratchet. So he gripped Kaon. :Is he ready to bag, *DAD*?: he asked in the hopes that he could turn the joke back.
Ratchet smirked slightly, then nodded.
Springer pulled Kaon toward him, then shoved him to two others. :Take this fragger to Salton Sea:
The two grabbed him and floated to a nearby shuttle. As it pulled out three others moved up to wait their turn.
Ratchet stared at Springer a moment, then moved onward.
Sunstreaker who was also staring at Springer began to follow.
Drift who was hanging in the air next to Springer smirked. :I think you need to feel very sorry for yourself right now:
:I think you're right: Springer said with a grin. They both began to follow Sunstreaker and Ratchet.
Ratchet reached a huge mech and with Sunstreaker's help rolled him over. A large hole in his chassis revealed a horror. A stream of solidified slag trailed out of him like intestines, weirdly odd and branched where the liquid it once was had sprayed out as an energy beam nicked his chassis. Helex was one of the nastier members of this traveling horror show. With his alt mode he could fit even large mechs and femmes inside his enormous chest closing them in forever.
He had internal heating mechanisms that he would slowly turn up that would melt whoever was unfortunate enough to be placed there into slag, an excruciatingly slow and painful process overall. He was ruthless, conscience-free and finally out of commission. The trailing solidified debris that had leaked out of the wound in his chassis had once been someone and they all knew it.
This bot was a nightmare among nightmares.
Ratchet looked him over, crawling around his chassis to examine him. He'd found a few devices that activated his format including his t-cog which he removed as he had the other. When he was finished, four mechs dragged him to a shuttle, magnetized him to it, then it slowly began to go to Salton Sea. As they did, the other shuttle was returning.
Ratchet watched them, then began to look for the last one, Tesarus.
They floated to him, finding him oddly disjointed and battered.
He was genuinely insanely terrible. He was a sadistic beast among sadists. His function was especially terrible not just because it was so slow. It was. The agony of the one being tortured was more public, more knowable, more visual than any of the others.
Vos could drill your face but the face of the victim was covered. The victims of Helex melted down behind the door of the smelter format of that psycho. Tarn's high pitched attacks on sparks ended the victim's torment usually rather swiftly. Kaon might drag out your electrocution but at some point systems failed and you died. With Tesarus, the torment was different.
His chassis opened to a grinding device that made big metallic features into tiny brittle shavings. It was like nothing Ratchet had ever heard of in a lifetime of seeing horrible things. Tesarus liked to feed his victims in with his own servos, peds first to prolong their agony. He almost never dropped them in at once. It was always a slow terrible grinding down until the spark was finally lost.
:I hear that he can cut through phase six armor. How the frag does he do that, Ratchet?: Drift asked as they looked into the grinding pit of Tesarus's chest.
Ratchet considered that, then scanned the blades. He glanced at Drift. :The armor of phase sixers like Sixshot and Overlord is treated with ununtrium. He gets around it by having these blades treated the same way: Ratchet said pointing to row upon row of glistening edges. :He can cut them up because his blades are equally if not more strong than they are. It would be like diamonds being able to cut through other diamonds. They're nuts, these fraggers. These are to me manifestations of Megatron's psychosis because these are among his most favorite mechs:
They watched as Ratchet disabled the white mech with a red X covering his face. :He can go:
Springer gripped the big mech and with Drift and Sandstorm they pulled him to a shuttle, magnetized his aft and then it began to move away.
Ratchet looked around watching as a science recovery team downloaded the drifting mainframe. They signaled to Ratchet, then all began to float back to the shuttle. As he did, Ratchet rolled over, subbed his gun, then shot the mainframe full of holes. When he magnetized to the hull of Kup's shuttle he felt infinitely better. It was a short ride to the Salton Sea.
-0-In the med bay of Salton Sea
Scientists, medical personnel and the command staff of the migration rescue gathered along with all the humans who had come for the ride. Prime had given the go ahead to begin and the rescue was underway outside. Ratchet was here with Wheeljack and Perceptor to supervise the denaturing of the dangerous mechs lying on five tables. Standing on a shelf with a clear view, the humans watched with solemn expressions.
Prime watched as Ratchet gathered his tools, then turned to Tarn. "Optimus, I'll explain as I go," Ratchet said.
Ironhide moved closer, his weapons online as he stood by to watch.
"This is Tarn. He's a huge mech with an addiction to transformation. He likes to do it. He needs it like he needs to kill. It's overriding in its intensity. What his original protoform looked like no one remembers or knows. He has such an addiction that he burns through T-cogs," Ratchet said. He looked at the humans. "Its the bio mechanism that allows us to transform."
He looked back at Tarn. "This dolt got addicted to transforming, burned his, then used his victims' cogs. He'd get them from doctors, unscrupulous doctors or increase his body count to feed his addiction. His vocal processors were redesigned to modulate frequencies that can explode spark energy inside chambers even from a distance. He is a psychopath, has a love for music and culture that appears to me to be a cover for his evil manner and enjoys pain.
"They're all sadists who derive enormous pleasure from the suffering of others. They're all fanatical Megatron fanboys. Tarn even put an Deceptibrand on his face. They're phase sixers. I concur with Prowl on each of them. These mechs meet the level of the sixers and the Reapers in my opinion. I disabled his vocal capacitors by sticking a sharp tool into them and they're fried. I didn't have time to be gentler," he said with a smirk. "Our psycho here won't ever be able to speak without replacement parts."
"He's going into the freezer," Ironhide said. "Doesn't need one."
Ratchet put him into deep stasis, then examined the missing legs, dents and other wounds elsewhere. "Easy repairs. We won't replace the legs. He doesn't need them."
Prime watched stoically as Ratchet moved to Vos. He looked at the fragger, then carefully removed his face plate. Turning it over, everyone gasped or shifted uneasily. It was a hellish scape of demonic horror that only the most insane mentality could concoct.
Ratchet turned to Prime and showed him. That mech stared at it stoically as his energy field shrunk to his surface armor. Ratchet turned to the humans, then stepped closer. "Vos likes to put his face plates on his victims. When I show you, you'll understand something of what you face with Megatron and the Decepticons. Are you ready?" he asked.
They looked at him, then each other. Rather than want to look weak among each other they all nodded as they fortified themselves for something awful.
Ratchet held up the mask.
They stared at it, their minds trying to understand the landscape of densely packed drills, screws, nails, sharp thin blades, saws, spikes and other implements of impalement that filled the inside areas. "He likes to fix this on a bot's face and let it slowly sink in. It was never intended to be fast. Imagine what they could devise for humans," Ratchet said quietly.
They stared at it in horror, then the white faced bot on the table with black holes where his optics were supposed to be. His empty optics sockets mocked them with their staring soulless darkness. Ratchet tossed the mask into a box. "That'll be ground up and smelted. It has a number of triggers and doesn't have to be in servo to activate. There will be no souvenirs," he said pointedly to his crew who nodded solemnly.
Ratchet deactivated a number of devices inside Vos, then put him into deep stasis. Turning to the next table, he began. "This is Helex. He's a fragger's fragger. His alt mode is a smelter. He puts his victims inside, then melts them. That small part here," he said tapping a trail of slag that had solidified in vacuum as it oozed out of a wound in his chassis, "was very big out there. It once was a bot. Someone had been smelted inside this mech. That once was a sentient being," Ratchet said with no small amount of heat. He disabled the bot and put him into deep stasis. He was wheeled off, too, and another one brought forward.
"This is Tesarus whose 'specialty' is grinding bots to shards of nothingness. He has an alt mode of a chipper or grinder. His chassis has blades made of the strongest stuff possible. He can even grind phase six armor. He likes to do it slowly because the screaming makes him happy. Start at the peds, end at the helm. He has no mercy and we'll give him none back." Ratchet deactivated his control mechanisms, then put him into deep stasis. He was hauled away. Another table was pushed into place, then he looked at the body.
"This is the last one, Kaon." He considered something a moment. "My grandson is named Kaon." He mused, then returned to the task at servo. "This mech can generate obscenely powerful amounts of electrical energy and plasma. He uses it to kill. His alt mode is an electric chair. Sometimes the massive jolts he gives kills. Sometimes they don't. But they always change you. He makes it happen with these Tesla coils as I believe humans call them." He took a meter and scanned the bot, then glanced at a medic. "Get me a cutting saw, one with the ununtrium blades."
The mech moved to comply as Ratchet glanced at Prime. "I'm going to have to amputate the coils, Optimus. They're deeply embedded into his frame, to the point where they can't be detached. This is the only way to prevent him either generating a charge or gathering static electricity to himself to make one."
Prime nodded. "Do what you have to do, Ratchet."
The humans listened, then moved closer together unconsciously as Ratchet took the saw to start it. It gave no sound when powered up. When it was at peak, Ratchet moved to the front of the table near Kaon's helm and lay the gleaming edge on the first coil. A soft grinding sound emanated rather than the high pitched scream everyone feared.
Ratchet moved it slowly, then finally the body part fell to the floor. Energon dripped but was stanched, then sealed off by a medic. Ratchet made short work of the other, then it and several bits of internal gear were dumped into the box. Ratchet put him into stasis as well. He turned to Optimus. "We're done. They can't do anything unless someone has my codes and brings them out of security stasis."
Prime felt relief flood back. "Thank you, Ratchet. Put them in the cooler, then head back. We can take it from here."
Prime and the crew left for the command deck and their various ships. Ratchet paused in front of the humans. "You look terrible."
The Majority Leader of the Senate looked at him silently a moment, then said, :I am. Thank you for what you've done. I know I don't have the courage to go out there and face such adversaries:
Ratchet grinned, then looked at the Speaker of the House of Representatives, no friend of the Autobots or their predicament. "What say you, Mr. Speaker?" Ratchet asked quietly.
He looked at Ratchet, then the bots being wheeled out. :I have no words yet, Mr. Ambassador. But I have to say thank you as well. You have more courage than me this day:
Ratchet grinned. "This was nothing. You should see what real combat is like."
They blinked at him, then climbed onto his servos. With the help of an aide, Ratchet carried the humans back to the bridge and their perch next to Jazz. With a nod and grin, he walked back to the bridge room and his duties on Phobos.
The humans watched him go, then walked to their chairs to sit. They'd stay there for the duration of their visit in the reclamation.
-0-TBC November 10, 2013 12-23-2020
NOTES: Fortress Maximus has a number of different incarnations of which I combine two for this story. One of them is this from TF Wiki:
"Fortress Maximus is a colossal Autobot guardian hidden on Earth to protect the planet from evil. Immense in strength, unmatchable in firepower and impregnable in durability, Fortress Maximus's only weakness is his compassion for children.
"Fortress Maximus does not appear to be sentient in and of himself (In this universe-Me), but rather is controlled by Cerebros. Even Cerebros himself does not make his own decisions, instead operating on a tri-lateral recognition program that defines the actions he will take. Cerebros on his own will only respond to an Autobot energy signature and when combined with Fortress Maximus (Robots In Disguise) will react only to the bio-energy of human beings.