Thanks for the wonderful comments and the well wishes! My dad's out of the hospital and on the mend, which is a good, good thing, but really bad pneumonia will still be a long recovery for him.
I love hearing your guys' theories and ideas on this. Meister's secret isn't too big seeing as it's on his tfwiki page, but I do have some curveballs I'm planning on tossing at ya! Warning on this chapter though. It probably should be mature because it is extremely dark. This chapter throws back to the original inspiration for this story, which was me visiting the atomic bomb museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few summers ago so... be warned.
It was a surreal experience, leaving HQ. He had barely looked out a window during his time in Kaon and had never been allowed outside so stepping out into the cool evening air was like walking out of a cramped closet. He allowed himself a moment just to soak it in and savor the feeling of freedom, even if it was only temporary. The horizon was a mix of purple and blue as the smaller of Cybertron's suns creeped to the other side of the planet. It was a rare time when it was fully dark, thanks to Cybertron's two suns, and Ratchet relished the coolness of true night on his armor.
"Think you'll be able to transform with that thing on?" Meister asked and motioned to Ratchet's collar.
Ratchet sighed and rubbed his neck. "Guess we'll find out," he muttered and activated his transformation sequence. His build had very little extra room when he transformed and his collar made something grind uncomfortably, but as long as it wasn't choking him, he could handle it. "Frag up my paintjob, but it's fine," he said.
He watched Meister dive into his transformation and couldn't help but scowl. Some modifications had to have been made for that amount of grace to be possible. Even as he looked at the mech's alt mode, he knew he was going to have a hell of a time keeping up. His model was built to withstand the elements, not shoot through them like a bullet. Besides, Ratchet was carrying his gun, and his rations on top of a large medkit in subspace and it weighed him down more than he had wanted.
"Let's go!" Meister called and shot into gear, peeling off down the street with a whoop of glee. Ratchet snorted but followed after him, barely repressing his own excitement. Ground models weren't nearly as finicky as aerial modes, but being cooped up for deca-cycles at a time without getting to run your engine was enough to drive anyone a little crazy. Ratchet's engine purred as he shot off after the other mech, pushing his speed a little as he felt the air rush over his seams.
They drove in silence, which Ratchet was just fine with. It was… eerily quiet as they headed out of Kaon, the bustle of the large city left behind as they neared the Rust Sea. It sprawled out under the highway like a living thing, swirling and crashing violently with the currents as the combined gravity of the two suns on the far side of the planet tugged their orbit a little off kilter. Ratchet followed behind Meister as they raced over the highway to the far bay of the sea, fighting off fatigue at the brutal pace the smaller mech set. They were making good time at least, but Ratchet found the complete absence of other mechs unnerving. What few mechs they did pass were always heading the opposite direction, racing away from whatever lay ahead.
They had just reached the far bay of the Rust Sea when Meister pulled over. Ratchet's vents were whirring loudly and he followed suit, wincing as his collar scraped. He looked down, seeing a nice scratch on his chassis. "Maybe if I transform enough this damn thing will fall off," he muttered.
Meister chuckled. "Yeah, and then you'll get a nice shock and a long recharge, if ya know what I mean," he said. "Best not try. There's a special tool ya need to get 'em off or else they fry ya."
Ratchet sat down on a ledge and took a good look at his broken wrist. Fortunately, the mech hadn't actually cracked anything, merely popped the joint out of its socket. He set about deadening the sensors even as he glanced up at the mech. "First time you met me, you'd never seen one before," Ratchet said. "How'd you find all this out?"
"I have my ways," Meister said with a shrug. "You wouldn't tell me anything so I did some research. Ya know how after ya notice something ya start seeing it everywhere? Ever since I saw your pretty piece of jewelry, I've been noticin' more mechs around wearing them. Can't believe I didn't notice 'em before, actually."
Ratchet's head jerked up. "Who else have you seen?" he asked, his thoughts straying to Wheeljack and Perceptor.
Meister brought out a cube of energon and took a deep drink. "I dunno, some native Praxians—they're a couple being used as cannon fodder for the front lines," he said and shook his head. "I think I saw a couple down in engineering as well."
Ratchet's spark leapt into his throat. "What did they look like?" he asked instantly and Meister raised an optic ridge.
"Got friends here?" he asked and Ratchet nodded.
Meister shrugged and sat down, leaning against a piece of out-jutted metal as he sipped at his cube. "I dunno, ground model, shorter mech. I think his name is Reflector or something?"
"Perceptor?" Ratchet prompted, his spark leaping into his throat.
"Yeah, that was it," Meister said. "Nervous little red mech. Poor glitch is working with Landslide down near engineering."
Ratchet swore. "Is he okay?" he asked anxiously.
Meister shrugged. "As okay as expected, I suppose," he said.
"As okay as… What the slag does that mean?" Ratchet asked with a frown.
"Landslide's a crazy glitch," Meister replied flatly. "Guess who designed that little bangle you're wearin' around your neck? I'm sure your friend's learned how ta deal with him or else he'd probably be dead by now."
Ratchet shuddered and rubbed his neck under the collar. "Primus," he murmured.
"Hey, he's made it this far. Landslide must like him," Meister said with a shrug. "Look, at HQ, either you're useful or you're dead. He must be useful and as long as he keeps it up, he'll be alright."
Ratchet swallowed and nodded as he thought of his young friend, looking unseeingly at his wrist. "I hope you're right," he muttered. "Did you see anyone else in Engineering with a collar? I have another friend—glowing head fins, he's pretty distinctive."
Meister finished off his cube and slipped the empty container back into subspace. "Who—Wheeljack?" he asked. "Yeah, he's in Engineering but… he ain't got no collar."
"What?" Ratchet asked, optics wide.
"Yeah, I met him a deca-cycle ago when I was down there—he's never had a collar since I've known him," Meister said.
Ratchet looked down at his wrist in shock, optics bright. Without thinking, he grabbed his hand solidly and quickly popped the joint back into place, optic twitching at the sensation. He saw Meister wince out of the corner of his optic and couldn't even bring himself to feel satisfied about it. He was incredibly relieved that both of his friends were alive and at least as safe as possible, but the thought of Wheeljack switching sides was a bleaker one than he wanted to admit. Had Wheeljack found some part of the Decepticon cause he agreed with? Or was it simply a move of self-preservation? Until he talked to his friend, he couldn't be sure.
"So, he did have one," Meister said as he looked at him curiously. Ratchet nodded and Meister shrugged. "Well, so what? He ain't a slave anymore. That's more'n you can say."
Ratchet glared as he flexed his fingers, twisting his wrist every which way to be sure it was properly back in place. "I'm not a slave," he said sharply.
Meister barked a laugh at that. "Oh really? You don't call being tagged n' monitored n' forced to work for absolutely no pay other than enough energon to keep ya running slavery? Well mech, you are far liberal minded than I," he said and chuckled as he leaned back comfortably.
Ratchet seethed quietly, but knew the mech was right. He'd be dead right now if he hadn't earned his days of leave, and no one would have cared. Except maybe Spec.
"Is he alright?" Ratchet asked after a moment.
"Wheeljack?" Meister shrugged. "I've only talked to him a couple o' times, but yeah, he seems fine. Busy. War is a good time for weapons engineers."
Ratchet snorted even as he switched his dominance back to his left hand and grabbed a cube of energon from his subspace. He cracked it open and took a sip. "How far away are we?" he asked even as he brought up his GPS, tracking their location.
"We got another three cycles drive, but we'll be there before sun-up. It's a long night tonight," he said with a grin. "Both suns in alignment. A bad omen."
"Never would have pegged you for a superstitious mech," Ratchet murmured distractedly as he sipped at his cube.
Meister raised an optic ridge. "Superstitious? No—I can see the flames from here," he said and looked towards the dim red glow in the distance.
Ratchet followed the mech's gaze and felt a rush of horror creep up his spinal struts. "Oh Primus," he whispered. The dome of red was visible, even from here. "That can't be Praxus—there's no way…"
Meister's visored optics looked at him before sighing and looking back at the distance. "Guess we'll find out soon enough. We should keep going," he said and slowly pulled himself to his feet, all grace and finesse gone, as though a heavy weight had just settled over his shoulders.
Ratchet looked at the mech, optics dim. "Why do you want to go to Praxus?" he asked. "Why come with me?"
Meister sighed and cracked his neck as he stretched. Ratchet could almost see the debate going on in the mech's processor. "I got… an old friend from Praxus—told him I'd check it out when I got the chance. See if anything was left," he said quietly.
"He's okay though?" he asked.
Meister nodded. "Yeah, he's far away from Praxus now," he murmured.
Ratchet nodded, no longer hungry. He closed up the half full cube and stored it back in his subspace for later before transforming. The collar scraped, but he barely felt it. Now that that red dome of light was in sight, he couldn't seem to look away from it as they continued to drive.
It was a long few cycles and his sense of dread grew with every passing mile. Soon, smoke was registering faintly in his olfactory sensors, growing more acrid the closer they got. Half a cycle later, he could detect a new smell, one he recognized from working on charred fluid lines—the sickly-sweet scent of burning energon. The light became brighter and brighter until the entire sky above them was lit up like a smelting pit, the heat following soon after, rising degree by degree.
Meister stopped and transformed at the base of a hill in the road. "We're on foot from here," he said and Ratchet immediately saw why. The road ahead of them was warped and splintered like some bizarre sculpture, the metal twisted up by heat and pressure. He transformed and stood, terrified beyond words of going over that hill and seeing what lay on the other side.
"Ratchet?"
He looked up and saw Meister waiting for him near the top, his frame lit from behind by the hellish sky. He looked down on the young medic, offering him a hand up over the rubble. From this angle, his optics glowed almost purple behind his visor. Ratchet took a shuddering breath, tasting ash and fire on the air before he took the other mech's hand and pulled himself up. Meister looked out and Ratchet followed his gaze, forcing himself to turn his head and see the destruction with his own optics.
Praxus was unrecognizable. Ratchet wanted to believe that they had made a mistake, that their GPS was wrong, that there was no possible way this was the city he had called home for ten vorns. Even though the ground sweeps had long since left and the firebombing had stopped days ago, the ruins of the city still burned and smoldered, turning the once proud skyscrapers into twisted skeletons, half melted from the intense heat. The saccharine sweet smell of burnt energon was so thick in the air that Ratchet nearly choked as he drew in one ragged breath after another, panting like he'd just run a mile. He tried to look down at the road below that stretched into the ruins, but it was too much to take in, too invasive, too utterly real that the split second of information was burned into his memory forever, no matter how quickly he looked away, choosing instead to look up at the sky that burned above them, mirroring the destruction below.
Ratchet thought he had become desensitized to violence. He thought that being surrounded by it would have lessened the blow. He was wrong.
The little energon he had drank came up without warning, forcing Ratchet to his knees as he retched, warnings blipping on his HUD. He wiped his mouth when it was over, his vents sputtering and heaving as they tried to regulate his system. His optics slowly travelled up, looking at the long stretch of road he had tried so hard to avoid. Lifeless shells of mechs and femmes and even sparkling littered the street like garbage left carelessly behind. Ratchet retched again, but there was nothing left in his tanks to come up and he just stayed kneeling, shaking too badly to move.
Praxus was gone. His worst fears had been confirmed.
Vaguely, he registered Meister speaking, but it took him a moment longer that it wasn't to him. His voice was laden with pain as he spoke quietly into his comm. "Prowler? I'm here," he said quietly. "It's… it's gone, man. It's all gone." The mech fell into silence soon after and Ratchet soon forgot that he was even there.
He wasn't sure how long they stayed on the top of that hill, facing the destruction below. A gentle hand eventually rested on his shoulder. "Ratchet, we need ta go," Meister said and Ratchet detected a tremor in his voice.
Ratchet stared numbly at the destruction but nodded, his hand reaching for his subspace and bringing out the coordinates. He entered them into his GPS, his hands shaking almost too badly to type. Slowly, he got to his feet, wiping the soot off of his knees and out of his optics. "This way," he said hoarsely, though it took all of his resolve to step off the hill and walk down the broken road and into the city.
Meister followed behind him like a wraith as they slowly picked their way through the streets, mindful of whoever they passed. Every step they made, they took care not to disturb the final resting place of the mechs who had fallen. Ratchet soon felt the familiar numbness of shock creeping over him and he welcomed it. His shaking subsided, leaving him floating in a haze as he passed through the massacre, seeing it without actually seeing it. Instead, he focused on the gentle blip of his GPS, letting it lead him along like a leash. The streets he had walked so many times before had become completely alien to him, and even when he thought he had found a familiar landmark, he couldn't be sure his processor wasn't playing tricks on him in its haze.
The larger of the two suns began to rise as they walked, casting the long shadows of the dead against the walls of the charred buildings and giving them the illusion of standing once more. Fatigue tugged at him, but he didn't dare stop and rest and risk not being able to start again. He pushed through, Meister close behind, until his GPS blipped at him.
It had led them to a residential area of Praxus, close to the youngling quarters and only a few blocks away from where the main campus of the University had stood. His apartment had been just a few buildings down, though all the remained of it was a pile of rubble, twisted cross-beams sticking out like frayed wires. The building his GPS pointed him to wasn't much better off. The top had burned completely, but the bottom foundation of the first couple floors remained relatively in-tact.
"In there," Ratchet said, pointing the entrance where the large front doors had been blown open. "He's somewhere in there."
Meister swore as he looked at the building. "This is gotta be quick—this thing ain't gonna last long," he said as he looked at the crumbling foundation.
Ratchet nodded and ducked through the doors and into the building without hesitation, not out of any sort of bravery, but out of a numbness that was incapable of feeling fear. The building had once been an apartment complex similar to the one Ratchet had lived in, but now the expansive polished floors were littered with rubble and death. Ratchet say a greyed hand sticking out from under a heavy cross-beam and the rational part of his mind hoped that it wasn't the mech they were looking for.
Meister sighed as he looked around before cupping his hand to his mouth. "Hello?" he called, his voice carrying surprisingly well. "Is anyone there?" Both of them went silent, listening for any sign of a response. Meister sighed and checked his chronometer. "I'm giving us four breems. If we haven't found anythin' we're leavin', alright?" he asked. Ratchet nodded, even as he started digging into the pile of rubble. "And be careful—don't knock anything loose that's holding something important up."
Ratchet just nodded again and kept digging, uncovering the dead femme's face. It was a native Praxian, door wings and all, but there wasn't a shred of life left in her. Even though he was crunched for time, it didn't feel right just to leave here there. He carefully grabbed her and pulled her from the rubble, laying her out on the ground and folding her hands over her chassis. On the other side of the room, he saw Meister doing the same to a young mech he pulled from the ruins. It seemed that no matter how much of a hurry they were in, both of them, Con and neutral alike, knew to the honor the dead.
It felt like days passed as they searched, carefully laying out body after body, but every time he checked his chronometer, it read true. The air was eerily silent around them and other than the scrape of dead metal against the smooth ground or rubble being tossed aside, you could hardly hear their vents working. Meister carefully laid out a sparkling next to his creator and sighed before his head perked up.
"Ya hear that?" he asked quietly.
Ratchet looked up, optics dim. "Hear what?"
Meister held up a finger even as he tilted his head, frowning. Ratchet quieted his system as much as he could, trying to hear to no avail. Meister frowned even as he slowly walked across the room, aiming at a small door that must have been storage to a cleaning drone. Ratchet joined him, still not hearing a thing, even as he drew closer. The little door was cracked, just slightly, and Ratchet jumped as whatever was inside quickly closed it as they got near.
"Slagging Primus," he swore and Meister spared a wry grin even as he grabbed the little handle on the door and tried to tug it open. Whatever was inside put up quiet a fight trying to keep him out, but Meister tugged hard and the door finally swung open.
Inside, huddled behind the cleaning drone was a tiny mech, barely out of his sparklinghood. He cowered against the back wall, curled up tightly with his hands held protectively over his helm. He had the door wings of a native Praxian, though one was dislocated, hanging painfully by a few wires. Ratchet couldn't see much of his coloring in the dark little closet, but he could make out a bright red chevron, sticking up from his helm.
Ratchet knelt down, optics wide. "It's a sparkling," he said quietly. Help him. It all made sense. The mech wasn't trapped, but it didn't make him any less helpless. Judging by his size, the little mech should still be connected to his creator's spark-energy and frankly, it was a miracle he had survived this long without it. Young sparks like his needed to feel another's energy to help their own stabilize.
At the sight of Ratchet, the little mech looked up, his dim blue optics widening. Ratchet winced—the glow in his optics was almost non-existant and he knew the poor thing must be near starvation by this point. "It's okay, we're not gonna hurt you," Ratchet said gently even as he reached into his subspace and pulled out the half full cube he'd been unable to finish. He opened it and set it in front of the door and the sparkling's intact door wing stuck straight out at the sight of it. Meister ducked down to get a better look and the sparkling immediately cowered back against far wall, churring in fear.
Ratchet looked at Meister and frowned. "He's scared of you," he said and pushed the mech away.
"Me? Why?" Meister asked, sounding almost affronted.
Ratchet snorted. "Chances are his entire family was just murdered by a mech with red optics. He's a little too young to make much more of a differentiation than that," he said. Meister scowled but obligingly backed off. Ratchet looked back at the little mech and scooted the cube a bit further into the closet. The sparkling looked warily at him before he darted forward and grabbed the cube. He tried to drag it back into the closet, but he was too weak to even lift it, his arms shaking with the effort and nearly tipping the cube in his haste. Ratchet quickly grabbed him, careful of his dislocated door wing and pulled him and the cube out of the closet.
The sparkling instantly started sobbing and fought against Ratchet, but his little hands and feet couldn't do much as he kicked and thrashed. Ratchet held onto him tightly. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay," he said soothingly, but he had to just wait for the sparkling to tire himself out before he stopped struggle. A loud crack sounded and Ratchet's head jerked back just in time to see another part of the ceiling collapse.
"And that's our cue," Meister said quickly and made for the door. "C'mon, we gotta go!" he called to Ratchet. The medic carefully picked up the sparkling and the half full cube of energon before following him as fast as he dared. That dangling door wing had to be excruciating and he didn't want to cause the little mech any more pain than he had already experienced.
They passed the mechs who they had pulled from the rubble and the little sparkling suddenly perked up. His optics brightened as he looked down at the line of bodies and he suddenly froze. A moment passed before a low keen rose from the sparkling's vocals, a sound so full of pain and sorrow that Ratchet stopped dead in his tracks. The sparkling began struggling anew, tiny hands grabbing and reaching towards one of the bodies and Ratchet shuddered as he realized he was aiming for the first femme he had pulled from the rubble.
He heard another loud crack from above and tightened his grip on the sparkling, holding him close against his chassis. "Shh, it's okay, it's okay," he lied quietly even as the sparkling continued to sob and wail, struggling to reach his creator. Ratchet carried him out of the building and found Meister waiting for them, even as he heard a loud crash from inside the building.
He wasn't even sure if he was talking to himself or the sparkling, but he just kept saying, "It's okay, it's okay. It's gonna be okay."