Thundercracker's Fate
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Chapter 3: The Toshers
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"W-We need h-help!" cried the mech—a pitiful dark brown figure, stooped and heavily tarnished. Against his shoulder was a second mech, supported by him and a third.
The guards at the gate goggled. The second one was unconscious and bleeding transfluid, lubricant, and energon. All three of the strangers were heavily scorched by weapon fire.
"Oh my goodness!" gasped Blastshield. He'd worked many gate shifts, and was accustomed to seeing the miserable inhabitants of the nearby bombed-out city come begging for fuel or medical charity, but none had been brought over in this bad of a state.
"This isn't a public hospital. Take him elsewhere," snapped Hardline, coming over to see who had appeared at the gate of the Autobot camp.
"It w-was your b-battle that did this t-to him. And th-there aren't any h-hospitals around h-here," stuttered the first.
Hardline folded his arms over his chest. There had been a confrontation not too far away earlier that day—two patrol groups had met and a firefight had ensued. Everyone knew that this was a war zone. Any damage was their fault for not getting out of the way.
"Please, if you can just stabilize him, we can handle the rest of the repairs," pleaded the third in a deep gravelly voice. He was the largest of the three, but had the same tarnished brown appearance and hunched over posture. In his free hand were clutched three hoe-like implements on long handles.
"This is an Autobot installation. Not a charity ward for Empties. Leave!" was Hardline's misanthropic response.
The first was undeterred. "B-But it was Autobot f-fire that h-hit him. Or th-the r-retaliation fire of the D-Decepticons"
"Please, in the name of Primus, have a little sympathy for your fellow Cybertronians," the large one again pleaded.
"W-We didn't want this w-war, and yet you've b-brought it upon us. And w-we're not Empties!" snapped the first, annoyed by the cold attitude of the Autobot gate commander.
From inside the camp, a white ground-shuttle suddenly zoomed up and unfolded into the form of the head medic. "I'm told there's a dying mech out here," he said on straightening. Though as soon as he asked he spotted the terribly damaged stranger held up by two others.
Hardline glared at his guard unit. One of them had to have pinged Ratchet. Someone would be suffering extra duty later when the call was traced.
Ratchet immediately went toward the bleeding mech and motioned for the other two to lay him down. "Pull him off to the side. Open his chest," he barked, and they did so.
A second ground-shuttle appeared and halted next to the first, unfolding into Ratchet's second, an accelerated mech who'd gone from being a racer to an overwound medic. Torque was known for his speed in closing off broken lines. And if more than closing off broken lines was called for, he was regularly breaking records, usually his own, in getting injured mechs back to the field hospital where he could perform serious repairs.
"I must protest. This could be a Decepticon trap!" Hardline snarled.
"You're right," Ratchet responded, his hands already at work inside the chest of the injured stranger sealing fluid lines to stop the bleeding. "Or it could be a dying mech."
Hardline sneered. These soft-hearted medics.
Torque moved in and began to assist Ratchet, three hands and a welder attachment now at work on the bleeding. "You're toshers, aren't you?" Ratchet asked, scowling as he scraped a layer of crud off of a hose connector before Torque moved in with his welder.
"Y-Yes. S-Sorry."
"It's all right. Just takes us longer as we have to keep cleaning as we go. And I'll probably have to redo a number of these patches once I've got him stabilized, because of contamination."
"J-Just get him st-stabilized. Th-that's all we ask. Tosher s-self-repair s-systems and nanites are strong and w-will t-take care of the r-rest.," said the first. Ratchet was unsure if the stutter was a defect in his vocalizer or just nervousness at work. "W-We can p-pay you something f-for it." He opened up a piece of mesh onto the ground next to the prone mech, revealing it to be full of coins, data chips, and nuggets of more valuable metals. None of the contents were very valuable in and of themselves, but as a whole they had some worth.
Ratchet glanced over at the money, and then looked up at the two heavily discolored mechs, their appearances bearing witness to the unsavory work conditions they endured. "Do you ever come up with copper or copper wire down there?"
"W-We do, on oc-occasion."
"I could use some—always need it. Mind finding me some?"
"We should be able to..." The large tosher put his hand upon Ratchet's shoulder.
"Do so. Leave your friend with me. Bring me back as much copper as you can get a hold of. Come back tomorrow afternoon."
"C-Copper. C-Copper wire. All r-right." The stuttering mech folded up the mesh and tucked it into a storage bin conveniently built into his chest. Thanking Ratchet exuberantly, the two toshers left.
Ratchet nodded at Torque. "Let's get him into my shop. We'll do better there."
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Once the critical damage to the tosher was seen to and the continuation of his life was no longer in question, instead of bringing him online, Ratchet summoned Greenburst.
The femme came immediately to his call. She was a neutral, but as Ratchet's favorite pleasurebot, she was allowed into the camp provided she had been summoned. "I've got a big job for you, sweets," he said.
"Oh?" She smiled seductively. "Need an extra-long bath? Extra-deep circuit rub?" The shutters over her green eyes, imitations of eyelids on organic creatures, blinked slowly... suggestively.
"I do, but not for me."
"Hmmm?"
"It's not going to be pleasant work, and you'll actually have to work hard. But I'll pay you double, and I'm going to be helping you."
"Oh? What exactly will I be doing?"
"Someone brought in a tosher a few cycles ago. I need him cleaned up before I can do much more with him."
"A tosher?" Her face fell.
"I know. If you don't need the money, there are others who do..." As the war had dragged on, ready cash had become far more scarce.
She vented. "I'll do it."
"Thank you." Ratchet led her to the washracks where Torque had taken the body on a gurney, and wheeling it into a washbay, Ratchet hung the showerhead over it, setting the spout for a slow, steady flow.
Greenburst grimaced as Ratchet began detaching armor plates.
"I know," smiled Ratchet on seeing her reaction. "It's not exactly the glamorous job of polishing up an officer. But I appreciate you coming."
Ratchet and Greenburst began to scrub away the deposits of filth that had built up inside of the mech, layers of grime that had sedimented into areas away from moving parts where they could accumulate undisturbed. Torque looked on, noting further repairs that needed to be made. "So what's a tosher? Why's he so filthy?" he asked in time.
"A scavenger that works the sewers. It's disgusting and often dangerous work. But it's better than being an Empty."
"Well that explains the smell."
"So why are you working on a tosher? Or are the Autobots that desperate for troops," Greenburst asked, her lovely frame now well-flecked with splashes of dirt that had sprayed from their brushes.
"Good karma. This one was hurt in the crossfire of a battle."
"I see."
Several cycles later, the tosher actually looked clean. Not pretty, but clean. His paint could be seen to have once been a lovely luminous red, but was now much scratched, pitted, and simply worn away in places. And more than that he was clean inside. Returning him to the medbay, Jetty and Whipstar, Ratchet's newest interns, were given the list of needed repairs that Torque had compiled. He paid Greenburst as promised, and immediately hired her again to help clean him off. "I'll be gone a few cycles," he said. "Shouldn't be anything you three can't handle. And if you can't, just wait for me to get back, because I won't be answering any comm's for the next three cycles either, unless it's Optimus fraggin' Prime himself." With that, he opened the door, gestured Greenburst out, and followed after her with a tired smile.
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The next day, Ratchet brought the tosher online—a clean, fully repaired mech, and he began to check over Jetty and Whipstar's work.
"So what's your name?" he asked the tosher as he tested an ankle joint by manipulating it in his hands. It had been found to be barely movable in the course of the previous day's examination, but now—cleaned, repaired, and lubricated—it was nearly as good as new.
"My name's Duster. Where am I?"
"The Autobot camp, in the medical ward. A couple of your buddies brought you in yesterday."
Duster's head fell. "There was a battle. We couldn't escape it like we're usually able to."
"You barely escaped death. You were leaking transfluid and energon pretty badly when they brought you in."
"Who brought me in? Chunk and Stellaris?"
"I didn't catch their names. A big guy and a guy with a stutter to his vocalizer."
"That would be them." And then he lay back and sighed. "I'm glad they survived," he said with certain relief int the tone of his voice. "I wasn't sure that any of us would for a while there."
Ratchet moved on to examine the areas where he'd stopped the bleeding the day before. "We've patched you up and made a lot of repairs. You had a lot of damage... old and new."
"Yeah. It's a tough life these days. And... you've cleaned me." He held up his arm and studied it. "I've lost my patina," he sighed. "The others aren't going to let me live this down."
"We washed so much dirt out of you, you probably weigh half of what you did when you came in."
"Probably," he chuckled. "And the patina will come back. It's a mark of pride for a tosher, you know, that rusty-brown cast that builds up. Shows you know your job and are good at it."
Ratchet gave him a look. "I'm sure it won't take long. But for now, you're repaired, clean, and smell a whole lot nicer than you have for what I imagine is quite some time."
Duster lifted his left arm and bent his elbow. "You even fixed that tick in my left upper-arm servo."
"I did that," beamed Whipstar. She'd been standing quietly to the side waiting for instructions from the CMO.
"Thank you," he said graciously, nodding to the intern.
"Your buddies will be coming back later for you, but until then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn you over to our intelligence office," Ratchet stated, folding his arms over his chest.
"For what?" Duster's easy-going smile had turned into an expression of nervousness.
"Whatever information you can provide us on Decepticon activity in the area. Think of it as paying for the work we've done on you."
"I don't have much to say. We don't see other mechs down in the sewers, besides other toshers. But I can report on the battle we got caught in, and anything we saw there."
"That will help. Whatever you can give them." He patted Duster on the arm. "Get up and I'll take you over there now."
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"Thundercracker's Fate" continues in Chapter 4: "Something Beautiful"
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Author Notes:
Time Setting – I set this chapter (and the next) at some mid-point of the war. Ratchet has not been assigned to Optimus Prime's immediate command yet, but he has established himself as a top-end medic and is in charge of repair operations at a significant base.
Toshers – appeared in London in the 1600's and were around until law forbid their trade in the mid-1800's. They combed the sewers and closed-in rivers beneath the streets, scavenging for lost articles of value. Wading through the filthy water and using a hoe-like implement as both a probe and a digging tool, they found coins and still useful articles, which could be sold in many of the city's markets. The work was dangerous, and toshers rarely worked alone. Rats, flooding, and cave-ins were the greatest threat to their lives, but the money (apparently being above average for a poor man) kept them working in such obviously dark, smelly, and dirty conditions. According to them, the unsanitary environment only strengthened them against disease and infirmity.
I've tried to incorporate much of this into the story, adding in the idea that a mech working down in the sewers would built up a patina on his plating that would eventually replace their original paint. And the reason for their appearance in this story will become obvious in the next chapter.