Ep0.5 - Outside Jasper - 'The Pick Up' - Closed

[Deleted]

Cleaver walked through the ground bridge from the Nemesis unaided, leaving the Eradicons on the other side to step out onto the dry earth. She stood waiting, staunching the flow of energon from her side with one soaked hand, until she heard and felt the vortex collapse behind her. Then, with something like relief, the femme crashed to her knees with a hissed grimace.

She shuttered her optics, drew in a full vent of air and cycled it out again slowly. Forced away the image of Megatron's talon against his mouth, slick with her energon. That sudden, terrible moment when she knew that he was so far removed from the mech in Kaon that the label 'monster' fully applied. Casual violence and sadistic insanity had moved like oil in water through his field, and she felt dirty now for having had it against her plates.

And frag he'd made a mess of her side.

Another cycle of air, helm tipped back towards the sun, and Cleaver started to get her processor straight. "Okay, femme... Prioritise. Danger."

She onlined her optics and made a quick, rough scan of her surroundings. Empty desert. Single two-lane road a few miles off. Minimal traffic and too far away to be spotted with her colouring against the soil and sand. City even further off - Jasper. Long way from home. The medic huffed, torn between a fresh spike of anger that Megatron hadn't returned her to the same location she'd bridged in from, and quiet gratitude that at least she was secluded.

"Location's fine enough. Not gonna get snatched by the natives." It was an old habit to fill the quiet like this on the occasions when she was alone and really, truly wished she weren't. She turned her attention to the gored wound in her side. "Just the leaking out, then..."

It wasn't life-threatening, but it would have to be stabilised before she moved again. Cleaver dismissed Ironhide and Moonshot in her mind without thought. "Can't be doing with the fussing, and got the kit and skills to do this. Lock off the leaks and get back to the ship. Can decontaminate there. Throw the mechs out so I can ‘charge."

A deeper scan of the wound - six fuel lines torn, hydraulic cabling snagged around two transformation cogs and bare protoform torn deep enough to seep protomass was the worst of it. The rest could take care of itself over time with self-repair nanites and rest. "Alright then. Get on with it."

Still resting on her haunches, Cleaver used her free hand to dip into her subspace and pull out a silvery length of fabric. A quick charge from her fingertips electrified the material and it snapped outwards into a stiff, perfectly reflective board. Stabbing one end into the sand so that it stood upright, Cleaver maneuvered herself onto her back with the wound parallel to the mirror.

The angle made it awkward, but by extending the micro-tools from her hands it was workable. Welding and sealant filaments warmed, Cleaver gently began to salvage the mess.

[Deleted]

Optimus was going for a drive. The last three months, while quiet on the Decepticon front, had been wearing in their own way and had not afforded the Prime much time to himself. Optimus departed from the base by groundbridge, logging a patrol of Jasper Nevada on the record for bridge use before pinging Ratchet and Jazz his location and intent. He got two casual ‘aye-aye, sir’ pings in response and with that the bridge spun up. Optimus rolled his right shoulder slightly, ex-venting before the Prime’s plating desegmented, dropped, and folded instantly into his massive red and blue Peterbilt alt. He revved his engines once, then took off at an easy clip through the bridge and came out into the dark outskirts of Jasper Nevada.

It was a usual ground-bridge point, far out of human sight in the safety of cliffs and overhangs that made satellite visibility impossible and human contact high unlikely. Optimus accelerated easily out of the cliffs, engines reverbing off the high walls of the sand stone crags and canyons. The area was not a ‘high risk’ contact area as the Decepticons seems to have pegged it as a regular ground bridge point… that said they dropped their own Vehicons in the surrounding foot hills as well, for the same reasons: keeping their cover.

Optimus kept his sensors flung wide as he drove, initialized a secondary thought string to deal with keeping look out while the rest of his mind turned to the events of the last three months, a small portion of him physically enjoying the feel of his engines opening up, his frame buzzing alive as energon hummed through him. The feel of Earth’s cool night atmosphere against sensor panels was always amenable to sorting one’s thoughts. The Prime drove and planned to keep at it… probably for hours as he was allowed.

[Deleted]

"Scrap and slag it... Please, just..."

The shaved ribbon of metal from a piston casing that Megatron's claw had buckled back into her protoform snapped back down, resisting the pulling and straightening she'd been attempting for over an hour now. Cleaver had suceeded in sealing off the leaks, untangling the lines that would snap and send a transformation sequence out of control, but she couldn't hook the spike out of the deepest part of the wound.

She'd tried getting up with the intent to have one of the mechs back at the ship do it, but after all the work she'd already done, the spike was positioned such that just kneeling made it tear that bit deeper. The light was gone, she was tiring, and the steady dexterity of her hands and tools had deteriorated into a thin tremble and too-clumsy jerks.

Too-bright optics turning away from the mirror, Cleaver dropped her hands with an ex-vent and bit the tip of her glossa. She needed help. Her fingers dug into the energon-tacky soil, optics scanning across the stars. Could comm. the ship and fetch Moonstrike out, but somehow she doubted that the mech would take well to triage. Reflector couldn't - not on her, not after all this time and everything they'd been through together. Barricade, much as she was content to house him for now, she wouldn't trust with a sharp stick let alone a groundbridge.

Ironhide... Didn't need to know about this. Had the tanks for it, no doubt, but Cleaver could well imagine the expression on his face, and even better visualise him stomping off through a groundbridge to take on Megatron himself. Stupid to get him worked up over it, though the thought of his immense protectiveness brought a smile to her faceplates.

Another jab of pain as the spike moved in relation to some pump, some shift in hydraulic pressure that had her cut her protoform that bit deeper took the expression right back off again. Sending a quiet prayer up to Primus for just a little help, Cleaver flung her sensors wide, searching for living energon.

There. Doing a good speed down that road she'd been keeping half an optic on, but not so fast that they were on a mission. Big signal, but it didn't have Ironhide's frequency, nor Bumblebee's from what she remembered.

Wary but needing, Cleaver sent out a basic burst of a distress signal. ::Neutral/Unarmed/Injured/Seeking Assistance::

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Optimus was lost in thought when he got the ping, startling him slightly with the sudden intrusion of crisis into what he’d assumed to be quiet night. Before he’d even fully processed the identification glyphs in the message, he was pulling a hard U-turn and accelerating into the gap between a high rock face a clutch of trees he’d all but raced past. The Prime responded immediately.

::Location received. Optimus Prime en route. What is your condition and designation?::

Not that he needed to ask. Moments later he rolled up to the clearing behind the trees and saw for himself, a frisson of cold horror terminating still through his fuel tank at the brutality of the damage. Silver slicks of moonlight caught wetly off spilled engeron and coolant, the stink of raw fluids and hot metal in the air. The Neutral was a chopper, comfortable enough to ping an Autobot on an Autobot frequency… Optimus transformed slowly, standing only quick enough to crouch down beside the other Cybertronian, engine rumbling low with concern.

“Are you Cleaver?”

[Deleted]

Unfortunately.

Though he was crouched, pedes sunk into the ground stained thick with her energon, Cleaver was still struck with the impression that he perfectly looked and exuded the part of 'living incarnation of Primus'. However, leaking protomass and aching throughout from endless hours of self-surgery, reverence was about the farthest thing from the femme's mind.

"Not how I was planning to meet you," she replied, forcing some of the roughness out of her vocaliser in the confession. She wished she could at least sit up, but knew that antyhing other than lying prone right now was a bad idea. "Just hit a point where I needed another pair of hands. Thank you for coming. Know from the way Ironhide's spoken of you that you wouldn't do otherwise, but all the same..."

[Deleted]

“Do not concern yourself with formalities of station,” murmured Optimus, moving to kneel at Cleaver’s side. “I assure you I care nothing for them.”

Blue optics flashed a basic structural scan that targeted half a dozen critical system errors even to his non-medical subroutines. She’d been attacked… and intimately so. Someone got close and punched through the plating at her sideseam, denting in the alloy ther with expert lethality. Decepticons no doubt. Optimus suppressed a seethe of anger at the thought, keeping the control frequency of his EMF even and calm, syncing slightly to hers to match and ease as he took in the damage. She’d lost a lot of energon despite her self-repairs which were, he could tell, pain that was not blockage.

“What do you need me to do? I can call a groundbridge and have Ratchet here immediately to get you to medical. I am trained in basic field repair only, I fear.”

[Deleted]

She twitched her helm in the negative, instantly connecting a trip to the Base with Ironhide and then to all the needless fallout that just wasn't called for. Cleaver reached out and touched the edge of the mirror, re-absorbing the charge so that it collapsed back into fabric, and then subspaced it with ingrained-habit not to leave anything useful just lying around. It gave the big mech room to kneel in the right place, with access to her torn side.

"Rather Ironhide didn't find out about this," she admitted, finding it easier than it ought to have been to relax a little against the Prime's field. Cleaver transformed out the sturdy tweezer-like tools she'd been working with, taking a moment to detach them from her systems and let them drop to the ground from her hand. "And I've tended the worst of it. Just a shard got punched in that I can't pull out myself. I can talk you through it, if you're alright getting her servos dirty."

[Deleted]

Optimus glanced at Cleaver, not quite arching a brow ridge through sheer force of habit, but allowing a small query flicker through EMF that boiled down to ‘You are bleeding out in the desert. Ironhide’s opinion, surely, cannot mean so much’. But Cleaver was old enough to know her mind, he supposed, so Optimus made no comment on her insistence on secrecy. A highly trained medic would know when her own life was in danger. He doubted she would be taking Hide’s approval or disapproval into consideration if she was critically hurt so, that in mind, Optimus picked up the tools from the sand and leaned down slightly to get a better look at the damage.

It was… bad. Expertly patched but Optimus could see the issue. The angle and depth of the shrapnel was making it hard for the medic – in her current condition anyway – to get at the shard without causing herself extreme pain. It was embedded directly next to a major neural cluster. Blue optics flickered up from his assessment. “I see it. A shard of exo-plating laterally positioned to the third layer oblique node.” He hummed slightly, more a steadying sound than anything. “Walk me through it, Cleaver.”

[Deleted]

Cleaver smiled, near enough grinned at his assessment, and despite the pain and the fuel warnings she felt a great deal of the worried tension in her lines ease out. "Grab and pull, near enough."

She hesitated a moment, quickly assessed the state of the wound after her repairs, and finally concluded that the risk of moving onto her side was relatively minor - certainly with a proficient mech on-hand. Cleaver did so gingerly, one leg bending to provide the force and she felt Optimus's hand on her hip carefully but confidently helping the motion. The position was much better for him to work with, and thus infinitely better for her.

Cleaver drew her arm across her chassis, out of the way, and shuttered her optics as she reviewed her last view of the wound in the mirror. "The metal's been curved and there's some spring in it. You need to extract it as close to the wound as possible, and unfurl it on the out. Once you have it, twist and snap it off at the root where it's sheared off from the piston casing. If it leaks bad, we can cauterize after."

[Deleted]

This was going to be more a matter of doing this well or doing this quickly. Optimus could see that pulling the shard immediately would fix the issue but cause the pain that had prevented the medic from doing it herself. There was no immediate danger, however, and given the opportunity to not rush a field patch for once, the Prime decided he was in no hurry. Setting his hand against her side and leaning down over the gaping fissure in her armor – Primus, all the way into protoform – Optimus very slowly reached into the gap, sensors mapping the internals as he so, so carefully angled to remove the shard.

“What happened here, Cleaver?” The Prime did not look up from his work. “Were you attacked?”

[Deleted]

She frowned a little at the question, finally deciding that she hadn't been 'attacked' in the meaning that Optimus, as an Autobot, was accustomed to. Cleaver had, whatever spin she elected to put on it, accepted this as the price for a haven. Had perhaps even asked for it in just going to Megatron, in person, with such an audacious request.

"More having a price extracted." She felt the tool in Optimus's steady hands make contact with the shard, and the minute vibration it caused made it feel like a steel beam had been shoved into her protoform. She clenched a fist, pressed it to her cheek, and went on tightly, "Audience with Megatron's gotten expensive."

[Deleted]

Optimus nearly fumbled the pull. But like everything else close to his spark, there was a trained barrier of control in place that muted the fission of outrage the leapt instantly through the locus of his core and rather than reacting he refocused and quickly, but cleanly, tugged the shard from the medic’s endo-structure. He did not touch the neural cluster and with surgical calm he pulled his energon-slick servo from her side, hydraulic fluid dripping from the metal as he set it aside and finally, finally looked at Cleaver and allowed the anger to crawl across the interior of his thoughts.

“You sought an audience with Megatron?” he demanded, keeping his tone severe but baffled. “For what purpose would you put yourself in such danger? Megatron has eradicated Neutrals in the history of the war. What evidence did you have that he would not do the same to you?”

[Deleted]

The shard gone, Cleaver pressed her hand reflexively to the wound and forced herself into a sprawled seated position, one fist in the dirt behind her keeping her upright. Optimus's tone rolled flat over her field much like Megatron's had, and her plates tightened even as her denta clenched. He may be her Prime, but he was not her commander, and had no doubt that what she'd done was for a higher good than his anger suggested.

"I was his medic in the Arenas - he owed me at least my life," she bit back, in a tone that she'd later be mortified by as being wholly inappropriate for addressing a Prime. Even one who did not stand on ceremony.

Cleaver cycled a vent, found some composure, and did another scan of her internals. Leaking protomass - cauterizing would be necessary, but not necessarily now. "He's gotten... Stupid to say that he's not the same, but there's something even more 'not right' with Megatron now. And I didn't think he'd do this to me. And enjoy the doing..." Her optics dropped, banished the thought of his claw across his mouth again, her fluids on his lips. "Worth it, though. Got what I went for."

[Deleted]

Optimus’ EMF softened then, optics flickering.

“You knew Megatron before the war,” he said softly

He set a hand at Cleaver’s back and helped her sit up slightly, steadying her. She was still hurt, badly, just not critically or in such a way that she was incapacitated. Nevertheless, Optimus did not want to suppose that she would try to fly herself back to her safe haven. Optimus regarded Cleaver with a new set of eyes now, recatagorizing the whole of her story and who she might be in that one instant where she admitted that she knew Megatronus. The mech as he was before.

There were a rare few that knew him well enough to call in favors from that bygone time. So if Cleaver supposed he owed her any protections at all then she must have known him and well to some degree... and whatever she had expected to pay for her request, Opitmus supposed that being ripped open like this... He paused a moment before deciding to address the immediate, rather than the past.

“What did you ask of him?”

[Deleted]

Cleaver let some of her weight move into his hand, felt the solid strength in him when he didn't move a micron, and shuttered her optics in relief when his field ebbed back. She smiled a little, not with pride but with genuine pleasure at having achieved such an impossible goal that would make her life, and countless others, so much easier. Worth living again, like they'd always longed and struggled to do.

"His word that he'd abide by a demilitarized zone." She met the Prime's spark-bright optics, suddenly pleased as well that she could give him this precious news in person. He'd led the Autobots in the mutual destruction of their homeworld by not bowing to Megatron, but always he'd fought for peace. "He agreed. I'm building a base for Neutrals, somewhere that won't be touched by this war. A haven from his violence."

And yours...