Ep0.5 - Cleaver's ship - 'Reliance' - Closed

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Surfacing from an extended recharge cycle, Cleaver hadn't finished booting all of her systems up before she was gritting her denta with a sigh. Four solar cycles had passed since Megatron had put his hand through her sideseam and torn gouges through her protoform, and though autorepair had healed the mechanical damage, the deeper wound was still burning.

Sitting up on the berth, the femme unbolted the temporary patch covering her side and grimaced at the fluid that had amassed since she'd last looked. Holding the patch-plate in place, Cleaver took a slow walk to the other side of her quarters to the sink to rinse the wound out. She did so with a hiss, helm resting against the wall as she sprayed cleanser in to get every trace of the silvery infection out. It didn't make sense. She'd decontaminated it with surgical-strength cleansers eleven times already, and still it wouldn't heal.

An investigation was called for before it spread through more of her protomass, and as had been the case before, she'd need assistance because of the placement and depth of the injury. Moonshot had steady hands as a sniper, and they'd known each other long enough now for him to trust her talking him through a medical procedure. Decided, Cleaver fixed her arm across the patch and left her quarters, heading straight for the medbay to set up the equipment.

She stopped abruptly in the doorway in sheer surprise at finding the room inhabited. It ought to have been by the injured mech - and that he was actually there stunned her. "Figures you're here when I actually want you off the berth," she remarked dryly, her tone particularly sharp with the pulsing throb of pain now running up her entire right side. "Go on - clear off for a bit. I'll comm. you back."

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Barricade – who’d been lying on the berth, arms crossed behind his helm, doing a defrag – sat up and swung his pedes to the floor with an expression that was a cross between query and rage. His optics were not what they’d been, but he still had basic scans and someone had royally slagged the ancient femme, punched a massive puncture into one of her sides seams which continued to leak transfluid and nanite sealants. A frisson of anger terminated through his spark and he was up instantly, stalking toward the medic with and EMF black as his plates.

“What the frag did you do to yourself, medic?” The infiltrator was at the copter’s side immediately, gripping her under her arm whether she liked it or not and helping her toward the newly-vacated berth. Close range he could smell the corruption in the mesh, a thick chemical stink that was not natural Cybertronian alloy. There was a weird EM field around the wound… dark and the mesh look necrotic. “Who did this? What the slag is this?”

And why does it feel familiar?

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Between absorbing the stark change in his field, the flare of pain at being forcibly guided up onto the berth and the barrage of questions, Cleaver had little choice but to go along with his manipulations until she was sat glowering at him. She jerked her arm out of his hand, regretting it immediately when static fritzed her vision. Perhaps she'd left this too long...

"Got slagged negotiating - it's not as bad as it looks," she snapped back, a reassurance and a dismissal delivered with less impact for her beginning to curl over herself. "No reason for you to get involved. You're still a patient here, Barricade."

When he didn't move and she was beginning to feel her tanks clench, Cleaver pressed a hand to the patch to keep it in place and rolled gingerly onto her back. Definitely left this too long. Stupid proud glitchscrap of a medic. "Just, get Moonshot in here to help me scour this out and then we can all get on with our fragging lives."

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“I’ll be as involved at I fragging want and negotiating what, exactly?” Barricade demanded, perfectly furious. He opened a comm. to Moonshot snarling something to the effect of Hey, stupid fragging glitchhead! Get in here and help me right now or I’ll rip your face off and put it through a compactor then turned back to Cleaver and her disapproving stare. She had quite a stare that one, 1000 yards and two tons in weight but Barricade had had worse

“Oh cram it up an exhaust, medic.” He moved to grab a patch and weld kit from the supply racks off to the side, bringing her the tools and glaring at her. “You’re the one who came back with a fraggin Primus slotting, glitch-humping hole in you’re fragging framework.”

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Getting unexpectedly commed by Barricade was about as pleasant as getting poked in the optic and only marginally less distracting. Only familiarity with his weapons and a heaping dose of dumb luck kept Moonshot from discharging a blaster square into his own pede. Why, in the name of everything good and explosive in the universe, was the big black pain-in-his-aft comming him- and more importantly, why did he sound ever-so-slightly worried?

'Torque it down, slag-sucker, I'm coming.'

Ten minutes and a near-collision with an overgrown cactus later Moonshot came tumbling aft-over-teakettle into the (startlingly empty, and quiet) base. The relative silence unnerved him. Where was Cat, and Reflector, and for that matter where the Pit was Barricade? Voices sounding from the medbay answered that particular stupid question for him. Whatever he'd expected to find in there, Cleaver prone and oozing nastiness all over a berth wasn't it. Moonshot's indignation vanished as suddenly as it came, replaced by an ugly tangle of cold anger and resignation.

Fraggitall, this isn't *fair*.

"...I won't ask. Just tell me how to fix it."

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Cleaver rolled her optics at both mechs, a habit she'd picked up from Cat that seemed the only fitting response right then. The mix of irritation and concern was not uncommon to her, though it hadn't been levelled at her for a long time. Certainly never inside this ship. Her plan to clean the after-effects of her time with Megatron up without any fuss now fully blown out of the airlock, she thunked her head back on the berth with an overheated huff.

Uncomfortable as this had become, the medic was painfully aware that she did need help. Finally, Cleaver flicked a hand at the patch kit that Barricade had assembled. "Not a patch job - I've been patching and cleansing for a while, and it's gone past that. Some contaminant's in there needs cutting out. Needs an excision now, and I'm... past doing that as well." She arched an optical ridge at Moonshot, who happned to be closest to the relevant supply cabinet. "Laser scalpel's in the top drawer, there. Numbing agent in the bottom right."

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“Oh good,” said Barricade with a level of cynicism that had to be toxic to a mech of less irritable constitution. “Let’s have the touch-phobic glitch-wit and the brain-damaged amnesiac do mesh amputation and sterilization on the medic oozing Primus-know-what from her semi-mortal wound. Excellent. Moonshot, do you agree that this is the finest operation that you have ever had the pleasure to be apart of because I myself am all a flutter with admiration.”

Then having delivered that line with a face perfectly unreadable, he rolled his optics heavenward added, “Fraggin’ smelt-sucking shareware son of a glitch. Give me that laser scalpel before you kill yourself with it, Moonie. I’d hate to see you trip yourself to death.”

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"Best fragging thing I've seen all vorn," Moonshot muttered in agreement, reemerging from the supply cabinet with hands full of medical miscellany. Well, this was one way to deal with a phobia of all things related to repair... "Ranks right up there with crash-landing on this Primus-forsaken mudball and tangling with *you* for sheer stupidity."

Neatly evading Barricade's grasping hand, he fixed the black mech with a Look equal parts stubborn determination and entreaty. Gone was the shaking sparkling of their first meeting, the mech who'd give a mile when asked for an inch. There wasn't time to be properly intimidated by Barricade, by Cleaver's apparently arrival on death's doorstep, or even by his own growing sense of impending doom.

"No." Clear, concise, totally calm- who the frag was this strange mech and what had he done with Moonshot? "You're still half-slagged yourself. If you fritzed halfway through she'd be fragged, and so would we."

Fairly certain he'd signed his own death warrant, the gunner-turned-impromptu surgical aide turned his attention to Cleaver and promptly wished he hadn't. Gunners either grew accustomed to ugly injuries or went batshit insane, to borrow the human phrase, but a lifetime of popping off shots at distant enemies couldn't have prepared Moonshot for a wound gone septic. The white mech gulped hard, warding off ill-timed nausea, and closed the small distance between cabinet and berth.

"Walk me through this, Cleaver."

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Cleaver couldn't overlook the queasiness in Moonshot's field, and as pleased as she was at his finally standing up to the other mech and taking charge, she didn't want to force him into doing this. "If you're gonna purge on me, let Barricade do it. Either way it's a straightforward job - cut out the necrosis and an inch or two of healthy protomass, then put a soft seal over the site and close up. Unless either of you outright stab me, I'm not in any immediate danger."

She watched both mechs silently for a moment, trying to work out who wanted to be here less. It seemed to be about equal, though Barricade was more irritated whereas Moonshot was more nervous. Neither of them were the perfect choice for surgeons either - both likely to glitch out for different reasons... Oh to Pit with it - just so long as someone does something.

When nothing happened, Cleaver looked to the scalpel still in Moonshot's hand. "Not to be a thin-plated femme, but a few sprays of the numbing agent would be appreciated before you go cutting up my protoform. Just sayin'."

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“I’m a sparked enforcer, mech, sepsis and energon won’t make my hydraulics shake,” said Barricade utterly coldly.

While part of him was less contemptuous of Moonshot for showing some indication of a back-column, he was less impressed with the fission of discomfort in the gunner’s EMF. Snipers, long rangers, gunner-builds – they didn’t have to deal with the up-close and personal. Infiltrators dealt in nothing but. Before the war, Barricade had ripped open more than his fair share of mechanisms, gutted a few, spark-shucked a couple more. In regards to bots he actually had concerns over, he’d field patched more than a few of his own, cut and sealed bleeder lines, shoved internals back into split mass and armor. This didn’t bother him and it was in his EMF. He picked up the numbing agent from the counter and moved to spray the wound and the mesh around it, waited for the neural deadeners to kick in.


“And glitched or not,” he added, plae optics flashing toward the mech, “I can still put your face through a likely looking wall if I want and then I really will be the only capable mech for the job. So gimme the scalpel.”

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Whether it was Barricade's threat- and what a welcome return to normalcy that was- Cleaver's bluntness or simple common sense prevailing at last, Moonshot forked over the scalpel. As much as he would've liked to dig in his heels just to prove a point, as much to himself as to his erstwhile companions, there was a time and place for making statements. This was definitely Not It.

"Okay, okay, you win," He growled, sidestepping out of the enforcer's path. Mild annoyance banished his lingering unease. Curiosity, too, but he'd never own up to it. Somehow admitting that this was the first time he'd sat in on any sort of procedure seemed like a very, very bad idea given the gravity of what he'd been about to attempt. "But you'd fragging well better explain what you're doing."

He didn't verbalize any of the particularly-unpleasant thoughts curling through his processor like choking vines, nor did he let them cloud his field. Because I don't want this to ever happen again, because I can't stand being helpless, because *I need to learn*...

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Pulling the temporary patch fully away from her side, Cleaver tucked her arm behind her helm to fully expose the wound and set about shifting the exposed mechanics between her protoform and the outside world out of the way. Whilst the minute transformations and shunts were taking place, she caught Barricade's watchful blue optics. "Let me synch with your visual feed for this so I can see what you're doing. Talk you through it properly."

With a grumble and about as much grudgingness as an assent could possibly hold, the enforcer allowed the link and obligingly stared at the septic wound whilst Cleaver got her bearings. Running the shared feed through one optic whilst the other monitored the room, she frowned as she catalogued the strange colouration and texture of the necrosis against her own databanks. "Use the tweezers to extract the excised matter, Barricade, and neither of you touch it. Collect what you take out in a tray and I'll look at it later. Can you give me a depth and composite scan?"

Barricade did so silently, leaving Moonshot to gather the necessary equipment whilst she assessed the damage. The three gouges from Megatron's claws gave breadth to the site, and were shallow compared to the deep puncture wound just beneath them from her own sheared metal. It was from there that fluids were escaping, a mix of rotted protoform being flushed out by leukocytes, transfluid and nanite sealants that the necrosis were keeping from closing the wound.

"Deal with the wider lacerations before you dig into the puncture wound," she finally instructed, the blade of her left hand pressed tight to her side and thigh to keep from twitching. The neural dampeners had had plenty of time to work now, but stil... "Set the scalpel at an inch and shave away at it, taking out what comes away as you go. Can flush it out with cleanser afterwards."

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Barricade followed her direction to the letter, expression never quite losing that sour tension of a mech who had some bad words in the waiting but he was too busy just then to vent them. The laser scalpel in his grip moved smoothly enough, the mech being very familiar with the give and temper of external mesh and protometals. The finfiltrator briefly laid a servo against the bigger mechansism’s chassis, bending close to shear dead and (somehow) rotting alloy from the medic’s body. Whatever poison it was that got into the wound it was almost organic, corrosive, the alkali stink of the corruption was enough to prompt him to close his battle mask because even the fumes from it seemed polluted.

So it was with some wary concern that he noted that some of that scent, the base chemical odor, was familiar for some reason. It was a bizarrely… intimate chemical composition registering in his sense memory bank but without any real context… more mass memory than actual memory. Was this a poison he’d used in his line of work before? And if so, why would that be comforting. He mused. Maybe I killed someone I really hated with this stuff.

On that note Cade spoke up finally, still cutting, chucked of the matter falling into a waiting medical tray. “What the slag is this in your wound?" He shoved the tray at Moonshot's torso area, not looking at him at he did so. "It’s killed all the color nanites and stripped the charge from the metal itself.” Like it’s feeding on her… sucking the life out.

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Moonshot was nigh-certain ventilation systems weren't meant to click or chunter or wheeze the way his were. He also didn't have time to care. Every process he had to spare was directed towards one single, all-consuming need: Don't purge all over the poor downed medic. She's been through enough already, you don't know what that would do to her wound, you really, really don't want to deal with the cleanup, you really, really, *really* don't want to deal with Barricade, don't you fragging dare-

Interruption had never been so welcome. It didn't particularly matter that said interruption came in the form of a rough shove, a growled order and a sudden handful of something that had once been but was no longer protoform- it gave him something besides his own misery to focus on, and that was enough. Systems still revving unsteadily, Moonshot nevertheless dutifully staggered across the 'bay in search of a disposal unit or, better yet, some sort of collection dish. If Cleaver didn't want to study the everloving slag out of this... foul corruption he'd eat his own skidplate.

"Primus, Cleaver, how do you find anything in here? It's all so... eerily neat."

Moonshot: As good at starting conversations as he was at playing medic's aid. It's the thought that counts, right?

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Cleaver jerked her helm to see Moonshot wandering, the other half of her vision composed of Barricade's poised hand, paused now with the scalpel inside her side. "Don't try to get rid of it, and just stand still so you don't fritz and get it on yourself. I don't want either of you touching whatever Megatron's been lacing his claws with."

With Moonshot obediently back to one side of the Infiltrator, Cleaver settled back into the berth's padding. "Barricade, if you'd be so good as to get on with this."