Notes/ I've been in the mood to write silliness, and this chapter wound up being mostly exactly that. I has every intention of including a scene involving Soundwave again, but somehow he managed to avoid making an appearance this time. He'll be back! Meanwhile enjoy a little cute goofy silly-bot behavior, with undertones of friendship and fluff.
Grumbling to himself under his intakes, Ratchet wandered into his medbay, in search of a misplaced data pad. Walking quickly through the place, his optics scanned work tables and the tops of cabinets. After a moment of wandering around like that, he shook his head at finding the pad laying on top of an empty repair table, he had most recently cleaned.
The old bot turned to walk back out again, shaking his head again at his own absent mindedness, and holding in his hand, when he spotted Knockout parked on his cart in the farthest corner of the empty medbay. Seeing him, parked in one place, head best forward and perfectly silent, Ratchet's first reaction was to be alarmed. He took several hurried steps toward him. But slowed his pace greatly when he noticed the digital screen resting on the cart's tray, and the writing implement in Knockout's hand.
Hearing the approaching heavy footsteps, made the red bot look up and he turned his head to the left a little, with a slight nod in greeting.
"I'm… trying to relearn how to draw," he explained, answering a question the medic had yet to ask, and with a tone of obvious uncertainty in his voice.
"In the medbay?" Ratchet questioned. He felt on some level like perhaps he ought to be annoyed. But then really, it wasn't exactly hurting anything. Knockout had always been the slightly odd sort of bot, and one whose behavior never fully made complete sense to anyone else. His still relatively recent state of disability, had not changed that about his personality.
"Seems like as good a place as any," Knockout answered, with his usual variation of a shrugging motion. "Decent lighting in here, and if I'm honest Id like to equate the place again with more than just being a helpless patient."
"Fair enough." Ratchet stepped closer and stole a glace at the screen resting on Knockout's tray. "I was unaware you ever did any drawing before..."
Knockout said nothing at all and instead went right back to his drawing practice. Ratchet, watching silently over his left shoulder, looked over the image of something that was clearly meant to be the skyline of some Earth city, a street leaving a bridge and leading away from the city. He studied the rough idea of a shape at the front of sketched image, unable to discern the thing. But the poorly shaped figures that were clearly meant to be round, that he'd drawn underneath, made him assume it may have been a vehicle of some kind of other.
"That's very good," Ratchet commented, because it really wasn't a bad try at all. Clearly Knockout had indeed drawn a good deal before his processor had failed, and clearly he had never exactly been bad at it.
"It isn't," the red bot said. His tone was suddenly sharper. Hints of frustration shook his voice slightly, and he pushed the digital screen back a little on the tray before he looked up at the old medic. "Please don't lie to me like I'm some youngling that needs the confidence boost, and tell me this is any good."
"Considering your right hand is only roughly seventy-five percent functional and your fine motor skills could still use a fair bit of work, that is very good."
Knockout only mumbled something indistinguishable under his intakes, and looked back up at the medic again just long enough to cast him a glare the old bot had seldom seen since the early days after his malfunction. Looking down and the screen again, he tried to turn the writing tool over, with his finger tips, and instead sent it flying from his hand, bouncing over the tray and onto the floor, landing somewhere behind the cart. When the now fully aggravated red bot finally stopped glaring at his drawing screen, he found the old medic had quickly retrieved the writing tool and stood quietly holding it out for him to take it. The red bot snatched the tool back, and holding it upside down, the sat still glaring in frustration while it used the end to tap the screen, selectively deleting small sections of his prior work. He set the device down into the tray so that he could carefully pick it up again, pointed in the other direction, with its tip down, and when he glanced up for a second with the same glare of rage still on his face-plate, he was greeted only with a look in return that may just have scared the most vicious of any bot into submission.
"I was never exactly what Cybertron would have called a brilliant artist, but still I was decent," Knockout mumbled, looking down at his screen, beginning as he spoke, to redraw his deleted mistakes and to do some of it just a tiny bit better. "I might have perused it with greater interest once, if I hadn't been a medic instead. I was so much better than this."
"I can't draw for anything," Ratchet said with a slight laugh. His glaring look left his optics as soon as Knockout's had. "I could say I was never an artist, but that would almost be an understatement. However I do understand of course that drawing is a bit like handwriting in a sense. I didn't re-teach you write. You did that on your own. Ha, I remember the first day I saw you pick up a data pad and take down decent notes on the thing. I had no idea you'd ever be able to do that, and all the while you had already relearned."
"I'd assumed I should have been able to do it," Knockout mumbled, without looking up, still focused mostly on his work, while he conversed. The writing tool slipped in his grip and he let it fall lightly so that he could then pick it up from the tray and continue on. "I don't know whatever made me think I could draw again just because I can write. And I forget sometimes that my writing is still so bad… There are days it still feels to me like progress in anything really, is just much slower than I wish it could be..."
Ratchet only laughed slightly and shook his head, though he knew the motion had gone entirely unseen by the well focused bot he was speaking with. "It certainly looks like on whatever level, you still believe you can learn this again. If you didn't, you wouldn't have been busy drawing away the whole time we've talked."
"I just… thank you," Knockout answered, his optics widening a little and then brightening as he realized the medic's point. He looked up and smiled a second before his optics drifted to the screen again.
"Um hmm," mumbled the old medic with another little laugh and a knowing smile on his face-plate. He gave Knockout a friendly clap on his shoulder panel, only to find that even then he was not distracted from his intent sketching with a writing tool held awkwardly, far too stiffly, in a still unsteady right hand. "Well, you just keep right on drawing in here for a while if you want to. I'll talk to you again when we meet this evening for rehabilitation."
"Training gym again?' knockout questioned, still conversing awhile he sketched awkwardly. His momentary moodiness had clearly departed, and though he still gazed downward because he was hard at work, his expression showed a slight hint of enthusiasm.
"It sounds like you're getting used to working down on the floor mats," Ratchet commented back in place of a true answer. They had worked through the vast majority of their sessions over the past month or more in the training gym, and he had finally started to see the first real – if not silent- signs of any genuine interest in it, over the last week.
"I like working on the floor," Knockout admitted, nodding slightly as he finally looked back up again from his drawing and met the older bot's optics. He gave a tiny laugh. "You know all too well how much I hated it at first. I never was exactly perfectly quiet about that fact. I used to feel panicked, down on the floor, thanks suppose, to a sense of true helplessness. But then it got better. I learned that without a chance of falling I could really try moving far more. I'm so close to rolling now… I have a sense of how to pull myself up into sitting, even if I can't actually do it by myself..."
Ratchet smiled at that, and thumped a hand lightly against Knockout's shoulder panel again. He had intended to leave the red bot alone to finish his drawing. But instead, beginning to act on centuries of well trained instinct regarding his patients, he snatched up the drawing screen and the writing tool from the tray of the mobility cart, and turned away to set both carefully into a work table.
"You're very close to rolling over, yes," he said when Knockout stared at him, baffled and perhaps almost made nervous by the suddenness of his change in plans. "And sitting up completely unsupported, certainly getting yourself to sitting, will be a good while of work yet. But with something behind you to lean against, you can sit quite well now."
"Sure I can," Knockout agreed at once with confidence. He let his body lean forward a bit against the harnesses, as though to prove it to both of them. When he wiggled and turned his body just slightly – a learned motion resulting from the repeated trying at rolling – the harness only seemed to be in the way of slightly further possible motion. Ratchet moved to stand close to the side of the cart and he learned down to push up it's armrest and front tray.
"You balance in there just fine when we put you in and before we get you back out," he said. He felt like he was almost grinning with his own enthusiasm now. "The real problem is see is that you simply don't trust your own sense of balance, or the strength of your body. You say you want to see your next bit of progress?"
Knockout only nodded mutely, his expression showing true confusion now combined with hints of obvious nervous fear, as Ratchet clipped the harnesses and moved them so that he could clip the set up together behind the cart's backrest and out of the way. When knockout was left still dumbfounded sitting up in the seat of his cart, leaning slightly to the left and searching for his own sense of balance, while held only by the belt that fastened around his waist, the old medic re-positioned the armrest and tray into its place beside and in front of him.
"Roll forward," Ratchet commanded, as soon as he had helped the now very anxious red bot to re-position his left hand over the control switch. "Go right toward the far wall, and try to make a turn somewhere if you want to."
Knockout still looked so clearly uncertain at first. He'd grown so accustomed to tightly fastened harnesses holding him firmly against the seat back, that even the slight jerking as the cart started to roll forward, made his optics widen slightly in reaction to a perceived chance of a fall. And he stopped again at once. Not a second later though, he had placed his right hand against the back of the tray in front of him, seeking some means to aid in holding himself up, and off he went again, finally daring to gain speed slightly and roll across the medbay. By the time he had turned around again and rolled back to the place he had started, he had moved his hand back from its place against the tray, and his initial nervousness was clearly close to gone.
"Take your time with this," Ratchet said, as he retrieved Knockout's drawing equipment from the worktable. He held it out to him mostly just to see if he could and would trust himself to reach out to reach out and grab for an object, without the safety of his harness set up. Sure enough, Knockout reached out to take the items from him. "Sit parked and practice drawing again for a while. Drive around a bit in low speed if you want to."
The old medic turned away for a moment, deciding that since the medbay was empty and he had the time, he might as well get busy with organizing his cabinets. But he turned back around instead after several seconds and stood watching as Knockout, having moved himself back into the far corner, straightened the drawing screen that lay across his tray, and picked up his writing tool again. The red bot sat up perhaps a little too straight at first, head tipped forward and focused on drawing lines that were so likely far from as straight as he may have pushed himself too hard to achieve. Gradually though his shoulders began to drop slightly, and he leaned forward just a little in his seat, as his attention went to his work and away from the fear that he might fall forward, which he clearly would not.
Ratchet let his mind wander back a while. He remembered so clearly, laying on the hard ground inside the maze of a Decepticon mining installation, badly wounded and bleeding, while this same red bot stood over him, taunting and mocking, with arrogance and anger on on face-plate. He recalled the gleaming of a well sharpened rotating blade, bright in the glow of raw energon, and the sure certainty that this then insane red bot clearly meant to hack him into scrap metal pieces. He gave a slight involuntary shudder at the suddenly far to vivid memory. He reflected in the present moment, just how hard it was becoming to believe that the bot who had behaved that way, was the very same one that now sat working calmly with a drawing screen in the corner.
Ratchet watched as Knockout dropped his writing tool again, sending it rolling across the tray of his cart, barely catching it in a still slow right hand just before it could fall to the floor. The still badly damaged bot clearly lost his still awkward balance on the cart as he reached a little to far, and he barely caught himself with this hand against the tray back once again, nearly dropping the writing took he had just retrieved. The red bot pushed himself back against the seatback again and rested a moment, doing nothing but staring forward, until he tipped his head down again and resumed his drawing. But though he held himself up in his sitting position, supporting his own weight, he began to sway and lean slightly, and it was all to clear that just holding his balance like that was exhausting. He could undoubtedly do it, at least a bit longer, and no doubt he wanted to, because he said not a word about his obvious tiredness at trying. But the old medic resisted the urge to shake his head in his regret at knowing full well he might just have to strap him back in soon enough in order to prevent him slipping from his seat and injuring himself.
The red bot set down his writing tool then. Leaving it to rest on the tray of his cart, on top of his drawing screen. And slowly he began to roll forward across the medbay again. He stopped after a couple of meters and pushed himself against the seatback again with his functional hand. The left hand, still barely functioning and likely never to be again, had slipped from the position it had remained in resting over the control switch, as the bot shifted himself with greater force, so determined to stay sitting unsupported by his harness straps. Centuries of medical practice and the well learned good sense that a damaged bot needed to be allowed to push himself a little, as the only thing that stopped Ratchet from walking immediately to his aide – though he did of course continue to watch with vigilance for any sign of that still present slipping danger. Knockout lifted his still barely functional hand and arm slightly, the short and nearly insignificant distance he could, and when that was not enough to re-position it, he reached over with the right to aide himself in doing it.
Ratchet set about the task of organizing that now nearly forgotten cabinet. Watching with half an optic and unspoken pride, as Knockout rolled forward again, still so unbalanced but further now from a falling risk then he'd first feared. The younger bot showed his determination when he clearly thought the old medic was no longer paying attention to him in the least. He picked up speed on the cart, turning to follow the far wall, and finally letting a slight smile replace the look he'd been giving of almost too intense focus.
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"What is it that's far far too easy to get into, but usually so much harder to get out of?" Knockout questioned, grinning stupidly, as he lifted his head slightly off the recharge station.
Arcee, momentarily busy at the wash station, peeked around the open door, chuckled loudly and rolled her optics at the look on his face-plate. "I have no idea. What?"
"Trouble." Knockout answered, laughing a little. He did the best he could to bend and wiggle the fingers of his left hand, working to relieve the tension of constantly straining wires. He bent the arm at the elbow the little bit he could bend and move it on his own.
"Ha. Now that's got to be something you learned from Miko." Arcee shook her head, but she laughed a little again at the same time, and disappeared back behind the door. "Do you want a washcloth?"
"Yes please, and thank you, meine Dame." Knockout lay quiet on the recharge station for a moment, listening the sound of the wash station's tap running. When the noise stopped and Arcee promptly peeked back around the door again, he gave another bright grin and asked, "ever hear the one about the two bots that walked into an energon bar?"
Leaving the wash station, Arcee shook her head, as she paused to unplug the mobility cart, while holding a wet rag in her hand.
"Well, the first bot hurt himself, the second hurt himself just a little worse than the first, and the gathered crowd couldn't help but wonder as to why on Cybertron the second would walk right into that bar, after having just seen the first one do so and injure himself!"
"You're ridiculous this morning," Arcee commented with another good natured laugh.
Knockout only looked up at her with his optics bright and a look somewhere between grinning, smirking and trying hard not to laugh. "So?"
"So nothing. Just… You have such a beautiful smile. And its great to hear you laugh like that."
"I do try my best." Knockout grinned up at her and raised his right arm, hand extended and optics gesturing to the washcloth still in his mate's hand.
Arcee looked at him a moment confused, uncertain as she understood what he meant for her to do. With her voice perhaps slightly too uncertain she cautiously asked, "you think you can catch a thrown object?"
"No idea. Never really tried before. Probably not."
She tossed it. He missed it by a mile, his arm far too slow. The damp rag fell, quite comically over the front of his faceplate. He reached up to retrieve it, lightly laughing off his badly missed catch.
"I'll raid the medbay for one of Ratchet's physiotherapy balls, sometime. We can play catch with it outside if you want to practice," Arcee suggested, helpful, positively. She pulled the cart over to park it next to the wall closest to the recharge station. "Ready to get up?"
"Yep."
After a quick comm to Ratchet for assistance, Arcee turned back toward her mate again, in time to see him throw his right arm forcefully across his chest panel, with his hand extended out as far as it could reach. The momentum and force behind that movement allowed his body to follow the direction his arm had moved in, and with some effort, he rolled himself into his left side. Arcee's optics opened wide in shock and amazement, before she gave a huge grin to match the one he was now giving her.
"Knockout… You did it! You can roll sideways."
"First time I've ever done that unassisted." Knockout's grin became instead just a content and happy little smile, and in his red optics there was a clearly thoughtful contemplative look. "I suppose the next step from here would be to drop both legs over the side and pull up to sitting on the edge… But that's a ways away yet."
Knockout was clearly slightly tired out just from the effort of rolling himself, and he lay still in his new position. But he was clearly content just to lay in his new position resting a moment while he mate carefully moved his left arm out of the slightly too awkward position it had landed in.
"You recharged much better last night.," Arcee commented. She sat on the edge of the recharge station. He nodded his head silently at her, the relief a good night's rest had brought, clear in the brightness of his optics.
The returning memories of his own processor malfunction, had been a considerable set back physiologically. And Knockout, whose nightmares and disturbed recharge had been slowly improving as he moved on from his old life, and began to except that he too could be truly happy and productive, had regressed considerably because of the new memories. More often than not, he would mumble inaudibly in panic, while he trembled against his bondmate's frame in recharge. So many nights, she would shake him awake, trying helplessly to save him from his inner terror, only to see coolant tears pour from his optics, as he begged then only slightly more coherent, for her to please not let him die.
The red bot, was obviously not the only one on base to be in an exceptionally good mood that morning. Ratchet was humming a simple tune under his intakes when he came to get Knockout up from the recharge station. Arcee smiled a little, sure she recognized a hint of an old Cybertronian folk song, however off tempo it may have been. And Knockout only lay still another moment, optics narrowed a little in thought, trying with some difficultly to place the song.
The old medic stopped his humming once he realized that knockout had manged to roll himself sideways. He gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder panel and a cheerful grin, before he carefully took the red bot's already extended arm and from there, quickly transferred him to the cart next to recharge station. He left the harness straps fastened out of the way behind the cart and secured him in using only the seat belt again, obviously confidant in letting him sit mostly unsupported as the three of them headed toward the common room for morning energon.
"I did some research on this last night," Ratchet said, sipping his energon and sitting on a bench in front of the far wall of the room. "There's something I want to show both of you. Looks like the place survived the war intact. I wonder if it might still be as nice a place as I remember it."
"What place is that?" Arcee questioned. She leaned forward on the bench with curious interest. Knockout, sitting on his cart, parked facing them both, drank from his own fuel container, leaning back against the seat of the cart, tipping his head forward a little in his own curiosity.
"You'll see it when we get there," the old bot answered with a wave of his finger to deter further questions.
"I asked Bumblebee and Speedbreaker to go out there with us to check the place out," he continued. His optics moved in the direction of the pair of young bots that sat on another of the benches, conversing intently and both of them laughing with smiles on their face-plates.
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
Leaving the ground-bridge, the bots found themselves in the midst of the small clearing amid high cliffs of tarnished copper and lightly rusting iron. The sun, almost directly overhead, shone onto smooth many colored crystals that littered the ground. A short way across the rocky ground, a pool of thin dark oil had formed in a large natural basin, fed by a stream of the stuff, which poured in a steady stream over a cliff above. A delightful chemical order filled the air around them and the pool bubbled and rolled a little at its center, from an active thermal vent below.
"This is a beautiful place," Arcee commented, not bothering to hide the amazement in her voice, as she looked around a bit.
"I remember this place from way back in my academy days," Ratchet said. He stood looking out over the lightly bubbling pool as he went on, "A whole pile of us young ones – back when I was still a young one mind you- used to come out here every chance we could outside of study hours. There used to be so many of those oil pools on Cybertron. Amazing that this one, the nicest one of them all as far as I'm concerned, survived centuries of war."
"It is safe to go in there?" Speedbreaker stepped closer and gestured toward the pool.
Ratchet chuckled lightly. "Perfectly safe. It should be nice and warm too. We used to jump in there all the time."
The little refugee promptly jumped right into the pool, with 'Bee following not far behind her. Both of the young bots laughed, which made the others laugh too.
The uneven ground was a challenge for the mobility cart, but Knockout, ever determined to get exactly where he wanted to be, managed at low speed, to carefully navigate the rocky surface, choosing a clear path across without getting the small wheels under the cart without becoming stuck even once. He'd been strapped in with the restraint harnesses again, only because of the slight roughness of ground-bridging, and the restraints served just as well to keep him steady while he rolled unsteadily over the ground. Arcee promptly unfastened the straps though as soon as he had parked by the pool, overjoyed to see his smile at simply being free of his harnesses.
For many long moments the pair stayed beside the oil pool, with the old medic, enjoying the strong smell of clean oil and its warming vent. They watched the younger bots splash around in the
middle of the pool, both entirely coated in a good layer of oil by now. They watched, exchanging looks of amusement as Speedbreaker repeatedly scooped the glossy liquid up in her cupped hands, before throwing it at her friend. 'Bee stood for that several times, before he lightly grabbed her, lifted her from the pool and tossed her right back in laughing. The little orange bot disappeared from view, under the surface of the pool, but quickly she surfaced again behind him. He clearly did not notice her reappearance, until she jumped him from behind with enough force to dunk them both.
Ratchet got onto his knees on the ground and investigated the pool with both of his hands in the clean liquid. He nodded silently to himself, so obviously pleased with whatever it was he had found. He looked up at the pair that stood and sat by the edge with something close to a laughing grin on his face-plate.
"Yep. This will work just fine," he mumbled aloud, before his optics met of both of waiting bots. "It's definitely warm enough too. In you two get."
Knockout knew full well he would never be pushed and pressured unfairly to do anything he truly did not feel safe in doing. And the past many months had been more then enough to reach a point of complete trust in the old medic. It was only because of that, that he calmly allowed himself to be lifted from the cart again, and placed into the warm pool, as Arcee climbed in carefully nearby, just as careful not to splash. Being in the pool, gave the badly damaged bot the great benefit of something close enough to weightlessness, and his optics widened at first with anxiety, and then quickly brightened when he realized how well he was floating in the pool.
At edge, not to far below the surface of the oil, the now smooth crystal ground had long ago been eroded away into a decent and almost even type of bench, perfect for sitting on. And Arcee sat on it, taking a second to enjoy the warmth of the pool, and the feeling of the liquid swirling gently against her armor. Then following direction from Ratchet, she reached out to place her hands gently on Knockout's side panels, holding him lightly under both his arms, steadying his body so that he could move both of his arms as well as he could though the pool.
The right of course moved well enough to paddle and even to splash a bit. But with the left, he was gaining far more motion than he ever could have before. The left leg could do almost nothing in the way of motion, even with the great benefit of the pool. But the right was still reasonably strong – he'd taken to frequently moving it away from the cart's power pedal, to push against the frame of the machine, to help shift his position on the seat, or just to lightly kick low cupboards closed – and he presently did well at bending and kicking with it in the pool, while his mate held him safely floating.
After a good while of practicing simple movement, at a low stress and slow pace, Ratchet and Arcee carefully and quickly helped the red bot to re-position his body, and to turn so that he was facing toward both of them. Knockout's optics opened wider than before and lit up with amazement and happiness, as the simple laws of buoyancy pulled him into a position somewhere close to standing with his feet just barely reaching the still relatively shallow bottom. He stayed like that somewhat awkwardly treading thin oil for a while, and even succeeding in turning himself so that he could join the other two in watching and chucking at the pair of younger bots as they continued their goofing off in a much deeper part of the oil pool.
Even with the benefit of a near weightless state though, staying afloat upright, and continuing to tread like that, was becoming physically tiring all too quickly. And Ratchet pulled Knockout into the natural bench, so that he could sit between him and Arcee, and rest awhile. He sat leaning back against the edge of the pool, and smiled with his mate at watching the pair of young bots who continued their silliness further out in the pool.
"Great for 'Bee just to be able to be a young bot for a while," Arcee said, looking out over the oil as it shimmered a little in the sunlight above. 'Bee had been an Autobot since he was newly out of his youngling frame. He'd barely seen a real existence at all outside of fighting for a cause, and endlessly training so that he could continue that endless fight. And with the war effort down to it's last whimper so quiet it was laughable, he had thrown himself fully into the first of his studies to one day be a medic-bot. And that would now take up much of his next century or so.
Ratchet nodded a little, with a noise of approval. "Good for Speedbreaker too. She'll get to spend the best years of her young adult life on Cybertron now, working hard, playing harder, learning what her home can be when we're finished rebuilding. That kid's a bit of an odd one, I've gotta give her that. But she'll certainly go places, and she's not unlikable."
"Well 'Bee certainly appears to like her," Knockout chimed in. Trying his strength and balance a bit, he leaned forward a little, managing to hold himself up sitting away from the wall for the moment. "And Speedy certainly doesn't seem to be complaining about that."
"Bumblebee and Speedbreaker?" Arcee questioned his implication at first in disbelief. She didn't know the little refugee all that well of course. But she did know 'Bee. And to her it seemed the two were just far too different.
She shook her head at the notion, but Knockout only laughed a little, as he leaned back again, successfully re-positioning himself comfortably and without assistance.
"Hey, too very different worked out for us," he said, leaving her to marvel at the idea that he so clearly knew her thought. She smiled to herself when she understood that he truly did. She let the smile show outwardly when she realized that he was very right.
"You'll see," Knockout continued quickly. He smirked at her, kicking his right leg through the oil a bit, slowly. "I'm certain I'm right about this. The way those two look at each other… and they have for a while, its just the same way I looked at you."
Arcee laughed at that, smiling as the noticed the younger pair again, looking for something she had missed before, and he clearly had not.
"So, your old hang out, huh?" she questioned of Ratchet, after the conversation had died out. She chuckled, slightly as she dropped off the edge of the bench so that she could float and tread oil for a while. "Never saw you as the fun outside of studying type."
"Ha," Ratchet huffed, as he threw his head back slightly. "I wasn't always a cranky old bot, you know." He roughly gestured behind him with one arm, in the general direction of a small hole eroded out of cliff face at nearly the level of the ground. "I can't count the times we all got way to drunk on far too much high grade. We used to have that little space so full of hidden empty containers."
"No," Arcee said, shocked and disbelieving. When the old bot only nodded his head at her affirming the truth of his tale, she laughed loudly and shook her head.
"You can't forget about the music either," Ratchet said. He laughed a little, as he remembered. "Oh we'd blast our old tunes down here so loud over portable speakers. Our audio receptors would ring and vibrate for hours after the fact, most of the time. Most of us would sing along with it all, and the more we drank the worse we all sounded, but the funnier we all thought it was just to laugh at each other. It was kind of a thing back then too, to jump from the cliff tops, right into this pool. Brilliant way I must say, to succeed only in snapping yourself in two, hitting the bottom hard. But no one ever did get hurt and we were all just young and careless once."
The old bot sat quiet for a moment in the pool, while both Acree and Knockout waited for him to speak again. Finally he continued on his slightly sad now. "We all grew up of course. Graduated. Moved on to our practices in medicine and science. I lost track of most of those bots. Kept in touch with a few. Then the war started. Many of them became Decepticons. Most bots did. A few left Cybertron I suppose, and a couple were Autobots, now long dead."
"Sad to think that bots that were once your friends could end up on a very different side of the war," Arcee commented sadly. During a long pause in conversation, she stopped treading, flipped herself forward, and dove underneath, for the simple sake of fully submerging herself in the pool.
The first thing she heard when she surfaced again, oddly enough was a loud shrieking scream somewhere behind her. Arcee whirled around fast, looking for the source of the sound, and with ever battle learned instinct she had triggering in under a second. But a second shriek so soon after the first one was filled with obvious undertones of laughter, and the bot let her guard down at once. She gazed out over the pool, just in time to see Bumblebee now standing on the opposite ledge at the far side of the pool, toss a wiggling and playfully kicking Speedbreaker, right into the pool.
"That does it," the little orange bot laughingly yelled, loud enough to be heard across the pool, as soon as she surfaced again. "Now you'll never catch me."
The little bot was certainly fast. She was quickly near the three remaining bots on and near the ledge. She immediately went to frantic and furious splashing, sending thin clean oil in all directions around her. Obviously Bumblebee, who was coming closer to her, was the intended target of her splashing attack. But no-bot was safe from the spray that covered faces and flew at optics, rolling and churning the liquid in the pool roughly. Ratchet huffed in annoyance about it and sat frowning on the natural bench. Arcee laughed once, perhaps too loudly, at the old bot's reaction, and moved, probably quickly wisely to get herself at least slightly out of Speedbreaker's line of fire.
Knockout, sitting up on the bench, and still doing an impressive job of maintaining his seated balance, was being splashed relentlessly, first by the little refugee, and then finally by 'Bee, who did that quite clearly by accident while trying to herd Speedy back toward the center of the pool. For less than a second Arcee was alarmed and more than slightly concerned for his safety, given his lack of strength, poor co-orientation, and dysfunctional limbs. But when she saw how hard her mate was only laughing over it, she laughed too.
Arcee laughed harder when Knockout managed to fling a decent handful of oil right at the little orange bot, with a right hand propelled forwards through the pool. He had always been encouraged, pushed a little bit when it was needed, to do whatever he wanted to do – to try and to never stop trying. And in that moment, he was so clearly determined to simply goof off in the oil pool with the young bots. His balance was reasonable, but still far from great. And with all the splashing, the increasing motion it caused in the pool near him, and his own movement, he lost the balance he'd been holding thus far, falling forward with his body leaving the bench below the surface.
Arcee, still treading oil and floating, moved fast to his aid, trying to hold him under his arms to steady him. But his entirely body and his head fully submerged, pulling her with him. He resurfaced himself quickly enough, just as anyone would, by letting out his intake and floating back upward. Speedbreaker stopped her splashing at once, her face-plate displaying an expression of concerned fright as she realized she had caused him to overbalance and fall in. Near her, 'Bee watched a second with Ratchet and Arcee, ready to act and quickly.
But Knockout was only laughing with a grin on his face-plate, as oil ran off his head and over his optics. His arms went back at once tot heir uneven, determined treading motion, and another louder laugh showed that he simply thought it was funny.
"Is that how it's going to be then?" he asked, smirking as he flung as much thin oil as he could with a not fully functional right hand at Speedbreaker. She splashed back, barely bothering to even do so carefully. A moment after, 'Bee had joined in, splashing at both of them as hard as he could. The pool rolled and churned harder than before and all three of them, treading in the whirling oil partially submerged more than once.
"Stop, stop," Knockout exclaimed after a good while of this. And 'Bee and Speedy both paused quickly, dead in their tracks, with alarm of their face-plates.
"It looks like Arcee needs some too," the red bot cried, laughing hard, as he flung oil toward his mate.
"Frag off," Arcee answered back, flicking small drops of it from her face. But she immediately joining in with the silliness herself, laughing too.
Still seated on the natural bench at the edge, Ratchet went right back to his huffing grumpily, as he shook his head and scooted away from the line of fire.
Notes/ I thought a bit about the logic of this and I realized that yeah… I had NO idea if transformers should be able to swim or not. On one hand I fear its ridiculous to assume so. But on the other hand, vehicles don't generally sink like stones in seconds, so… yeah. And of course the properties of oil, would be different from water. But there is NO WAY bots would logically like to be in a lake of water. (rust, lol) I just had fun with this one.