Ep. 0.5 - Walk-In - Closed

[Deleted]

Oh Primus, Ratchet had walked directly into that one, weapons down and optics open, and he had no one to blame except himself. He would have rolled his optics ceiling-ward, but he was focused on disassembling the micro components of Jazz's knee joint, sweeping the tiny (and filthy) parts into a tray for transfer to the autoclave.

Well, in for a shanix. "THAT," he corrected Jazz, flicking a very light vibration deliberately along the other's strut, "wasn't kinky. If you want kinky, wait until I've stripped you to your protoform and left you like that for a rotation. Glitch."

Tink-tink-tink went the small parts, until the fluid lines were hanging free, jury rigged repairs disassembled, and the primary rotor joint decoupled from the struts, tumbling into Ratchet's palm. "Do NOT move," he told the other seriously. "I mean it. If I turn my back and find you trying to hobble anywhere on one leg, you won't be getting the other one back for a very long time." He swept the last of the parts up, fixed one more stern look and set of glyphs on Jazz, and took them to start cleaning.

"Your last medic," he added over his shoulder, "needs to be shot. I'm going to be rewiring that knee. As to Optimus, he's neither into toasters or sandwiches. Or medberths, unless I clamp him to them - which I'm sure you have plenty of vids of already - or unless he's slagged up his joints again, and believe me, I've rebuild HIS knee so many times I can do it in freefall vacuum with my optics and sensors off." Ratchet shot Jazz another irritated look. "If you're looking to do the same, I'm just going to weld the both of you to each other and spare myself the processor ache of trying to track you both down."

[Deleted]

Jazz wiggled in exaggerated excitement at the mention of further kinky medical activities. It was always fun to banter with Ratchet.

"My last medic I paid with HIGH GRADE in ADVANCE, and I think ze tested the goods before ze worked on the knee." Jazz shuddered. "I didn't have much choice." He looked up at Ratchet seriously. "I didn't let zir talk me into full maintenance. First, I didn't have enough high grade to pay for it, and second, I was half afraid ze'd accidentally replace my coolant with hydraulic fluid."

Jazz settled back to obediently Stay. "I got no place else to be, don't worry. And I make it my goal to NOT get slagged, really. I'm not into pain, thanks, though hey, I'll try anything once, twice, maybe three times juuuust to be sure. And I have never been welded to Optimus before. Sounds like fun. Is this going to be before or after the stripping me down to protoform, because it sounds a little hardcore, but I'm game if the big guy is...."

[Deleted]

The clang of something small bouncing off of Jazz's helm was loud, making the saboteur flinch. "I'm sure he isn't," Ratchet said without looking, tone dry, "but it wasn't meant as an optional or enjoyable alternative. Though having you attached to his plating might be more then Optimus deserves."

Parts sifted easily through his hands, sorted almost by touch - that one to the autoclave, this one to soak, another tossed towards disposal as Ratchet made a list of what needed replacing. Only when the tray was empty did he scoop up another set of supplies, mostly for gentler and more finicky cleaning then what had been done so far. Bringing these back to the berth, he plunked the lot onto the table and reached again for Jazz's leg. "Your last medic - and I use that term very loosely - was only a bare step above you trying to repair it yourself, and that only because you probably couldn't reach what you needed to. And NO, I don't need a display of that vaunted flexibility, thank you very much. Hold still."

The repeated caution preceded a spray of fine mist solvent into the stripped upper joint cup, followed by a fine mesh cloth that Ratchet worked quickly up into the exposed components. "We'll have you up and running again," he added a bit gruffly. "This is nothing I can't fix, but Primus help you if you floor it before I tell you to."

[Deleted]

"B'leive me, Ratch, I'm not goin' anywhere. Would have given almost anything to have a real medic with me in the black. It was such a long, quiet stretch here...got to thinkin' too much about what would happen if a line burst or something went wonky when I was stuck in that shuttle all by myself."

It wouldn't even have had to be lethal to be lethal, really. A minor problem right before he blundered into a Decepticon patrol would take care of it. Jazz had been around long enough to know that battles were lost by less, and he knew Ratchet knew, too.

"I'd like to see you TRY to get me off this berth before I got everything done you want done. S'part of my Autobot membership perks, right? I'm paid up on my dues, honest!" Jazz grabbed onto the sides of the berth dramatically in demonstration. "I'm grateful, really am."

And, because honest appreciation just made Ratchet harrumph in embarrassment, Jazz flickered his visor at Ratchet flirtatiously. "And any time you want that demonstration, big mech, you just let me know."

Ratchet scoffed at that, making a derogatory remark about Jazz's ability to show him anything he'd find impressive, and the two of them continued bantering for awhile longer as Jazz's knee joint was meticulously cleaned. Eventually Jazz let the conversation lull into a comfortable silence that he allowed to go on for a bit before breaking it entirely with a quiet, "So. Not sayin' that finding all these folks alive isn't a miracle, but this ain't exactly Iacon, either. How bad are we doing here, all things considered?"

His glyphs made it clear that "we" didn't just mean him and Ratchet.

<<Nudge delivered! >>

[Deleted]

Ratchet was swiftly reassembling tiny parts which formed the core of the joint relay that the fluid lines fed through, micro tools testing pressure and hydraulic sensors that would ding the saboteur if something was wrong. He let that occupy his processor for another klik before he answered, only sparing the other mech a glance when he was satisfied with the feedback being generated from the reassembled inner core. "At least you have the sense to realize it's 'bad'."

He took another swipe of degreaser to the joint cup, probing a gentle touch around the metal to scan for fractural weaknesses. "It's an organic planet, as I'm sure you've noticed," Ratchet huffed at last, his tone the flat one used to deliver unpleasant news in the midst of officer meetings that he never had the time to do more then bomb with more bad news. "One principle sentient species with class-three pre-planetary spaceflight - they've landed pedes on their own moon, but that's it. Rudimentary tech, seeded gamma class organic mineral deposits, which means I'm mostly making do for supplies with what we brought. We're in contact with and here-by-leave of the local government - by which I mean the immediate local government, which is only one out of some 196 independent sovereign states worldwide, and the number of wars they have going on at any given time puts the pre-faction skirmishes on Cybertron to shame."

The medic vented, meeting the bright blue of Jazz's visor. "Some of the natives are perfectly decent, but they have all the societal flaws of any pre-contact class three, and they're organic besides, and Optimus has his hands full negotiating us any support at all. And frankly, we need it. Megatron has the Nemesis in orbit and he has miners with pedes on the ground scraping up every scrap of energon this planet was seeded with. There's a bare squad of us - BARELY - and that's recent enough we're still shaking it down; it was nothing but Optimus, Arcee, Bee, Bulkhead and I at first. We have this base, and a groundbridge I've cobbled together from scrap, and no means of even breaking atmo while the Decepticons go where they please."

His hands kept moving as he talked, slotting pieces back into place, until the rudimentary skeletal structure of the knee joint was back in place. "Don't move that yet," Ratchet warned reflexively, never mind that Jazz couldn't feel it to move it if he wanted to. "But yes - if you're asking my personal opinion, things are somewhere between 'bad' and 'slagged'."

[Deleted]

Jazz sighed, wiggling parts that were definitely NOT the leg that Ratchet was working on. "Frag it all, it's enough to make me wish that homicidal shuttle I came in was still operational. Or any of the others that we keep slamming into the crust here. Honestly, it's like we've got a problem with LANDING." He huffed. "MY shuttle was trying to kill me. I don't know what everyone ELSE's excuse is."

A klik's thought, and Jazz said, seriously, "Bad-to-slagged. That's about what I figured. Dare I say it could be worse?"

Jazz's optimism, such as it was, was born out of stubbornness. You couldn't win if you didn't keep fighting, and you couldn't keep fighting if you didn't think you could win. He was one of the fraction of a percent of the Cybertronian race to survive the Great War to this point, and there were any number of times that he could have died simply by letting overwhelming odds overwhelm him. So he didn't.

"I imagine we're lucky that Megatron thinks so poorly of the humans and isn't trying to play politics against us. And point in our favor that you've gotten so many new folks lately. Engineers are good. Big horking fighters are good. And you've got me!" He flashed a nova-bright grin for a second before flitting on to the next point on the checklist. "How bad is the materials issue?"

Jazz gestured at his leg and then at the rest of him. "Do I owe you a few Eradicons for this overhaul?"

[Deleted]

There was a fine line of psychology in the medical profession when dealing with patients and commanding officers, especially when the two overlapped. It had to do with how much to reveal - what was actually needed versus the thin margin of being able to get by on scraped plating and repurposed parts that was a raw enough line most mechs, no matter their rank, could recharge easier not knowing about. Soldiers fought worse when they knew they didn't have a medbay to come back to, the fight for survival a null point when they knew there wasn't enough to patch them back together with. Ratchet usually straddled the line with strident admonishments to not get slagged - just over the top enough to be written off as his usual growling, but with enough edge that they knew better than to test it. It kept their systems primed but not despondent.

Jazz was one of the few who honestly did want to know, but even if the situation was not THAT dire Ratchet had been playing it close to his chassis for too long to give a completely up front answer. "I've never said no to a few spare parts," he said instead, tone brisk as always. "This planet is metal-poor in some of the elements we use. Most of it we can get from the humans but they can't supply what they don't have."

He huffed an exvent, hands stilling for a moment on Jazz's knee, optics slitted narrow as he considered the pieces. "Not that I've ever seen an Eradicon with your particular grade of hyperflex joint configuration before. Which you've lost a piece of, by the way, or that hack you has working on it kept a little souvenir to sell later. Hold still, I need to see if I have anything I can tool into a replacement."

[Deleted]

Everything that Ratchet was and wasn't saying told Jazz more than any flat report. Things weren't all happiness and light and energon gummies in the parts department. Not that they had been for a long time, but being locked onto an organic planet was a whole new wrinkle in the sheeting. Medics, especially medics with Ratchet's experience and frame modifications, had been known to produce miracles and entire frames' worth of parts given enough time. That only worked if you had the raw materials for it, though. Jazz had hoped that maybe he'd missed something when looking at the planetary composition, but evidently not.

Jazz was fairly sure that if they were one battle away from someone bleeding our for lack of a whatsit that Ratchet would tell him. The feel he got was that it wasn't that bad yet...though they were getting there.

Jazz tucked dealing with that into his to-do list.

"I think that piece was uh...melted by the energon blade that took the leg off. No replacement to be had, so I was told." Jazz grinned brightly. "What can I say? I'm one of a kind."

Well, one of a custom production run, at least. Nobility built their servants top of the line and custom if they could afford it. Jazz imagined that Ratchet had been around long enough and gotten a good look at most of Jazz's innards to probably guess roughly where Jazz had come from...or at least where he hadn't, which definitely included the streets of Kaon.

Jazz just breezed on past that. "Oh, and Rhinox is, I think, welding together an oil bathtub as we speak. I think all three of them are. Rattrap wants to know what grade of oil we want in it."

[Deleted]

Ratchet narrowed his optics ominously. "I should tell him extra virgin olive oil," he vented in a huff. "It would serve you both right. Tell him to find a 100% synthetic oil - I know the humans make them and I don't want to be scrubbing anything organic out of you afterwards."

"You," he added, leveling a finger at Jazz, "lucky you, are going to be dunked in that up to your topmost intakes, and I want you to stay there until everything that can fall or wiggle off of you has come off." He turned his glare on the components of the saboteur's knee joint. "In the meantime, I'll start refitting that replacement piece." His tone dropped a little, less sharp, more sympathetic. "We should have you up in a few rotations, tops. I know the kind of stress you put on your frame and I don't want to rush this."

He ran scanners over the smaller mech's whole knee, optics dimming thoughtfully as he recorded proportions and measurements of the needed parts. "What," he asked after a moment, almost idly, "were you thinking with that alt mode? Were your optics bigger than your processor, or is it just wishful thinking for a bigger size class?"

[Deleted]

Jazz had queued up a whole SLEW of retorts about the appropriateness of virgin ANYTHING but then got distracted by the idea of an actual OIL BATH. How long had it been? Since Cybertron? No, there'd been that one colony he'd happened upon, but after that.... Yeah. A whole lot of oil-bath-less nothing.

The very idea of lounging about in oil, in letting it soak away the grime and gunked oils and lubricants from his joints and under his plates was HEAVENLY. Jazz melted down onto the berth at the very thought and promised that he would stay there as long as Ratchet wanted, yes, SIR.

He turned his helm to smile at the medic, especially after the assurance that Ratchet didn't want to rush. Ratchet was a good mech. He really was. And some cycle soon, Jazz would have to get Ratchet good and drunk and embarrass the Pit out of him by telling him so.

"What, you don't like it? I mean, I know it makes my aft look like the Arc's back bumper, but the LINES! C'mon, admit it, it's hot."

[Deleted]

Ratchet vented a short, sharp sound of disbelief. "Hot?" he echoed. "Yes, I'm quite sure you'd have all optics on you... at a human car show. It does make your aft look like the Arc's back bumper, yes, and you're rattling around in it like a loose ball bearing." He tapped a knuckle lightly against the saboteur's leg, glyphs communicating less offense then his words might have implied. "You give yourself inertia torque from pulling some crazy stunt in an alt two sizes too big for you and I'll fix you - but only after I've laughing my aft off."

He frowned down at the other for several nanokliks, engine rumbling the hum of a mech in thought. "Alright," he said at last. "You're not putting any weight on that leg just yet, and since I don't see Rhinox and his crew assembling the bath right here, I assume we have to go to it." He rolled his optics ceilingward briefly, then quickly brought out several sheets of a heat flexible polymer that served as a quick support wrap around the half disassembled joint. "There. That should keep you from dropping any more bits along the way."

Ratchet leaned in, getting one of his own thick shoulders underneath Jazz's arm and the other arm beneath the smaller mech's uninjured knee. "Count of three, then - one, two - and not one word out of you, slag it, or I'll make a point of dropping you in the middle of the control room - three!"

The medic's frame could and had hauled the weight of the Prime - Jazz's mass, in comparison, barely required his heavier hydraulics as he lifted the other mech up. And really, Ratchet reflected, it was his own fault - he had specified no talking but hadn't said a slagging thing about Jazz's broad grin or the hilarity being broadcast far and wide by the smaller mech or, Primus help him, about the ribald commentary going on via comms.

Worth it, and then some, to have the saboteur back. Ratchet kept up his end of the snark and carried his patient to the promised oil bath - and if he dropped the other mech in, well, accidents did happen.


<end>