0.5-Mind the Splatter-Closed-

[acidstorm]

One of the drones noticed something rather odd, bending over the bot scanned the floor of the ship. The bot's systems detected small holes in the floor, something that one didn't often see in the hallways of the Nemesis. Carefully the drone followed the little holes, which seemed to lead down the hall and to the medbay where he heard cursing in low tones. Right away he recognized the owner of the voice and made a quick retreat, the drone ran away from the medical room as quickly as he could. While Decepticons didn't normally worry about another bot bleeding out their fluids, there was one who everyone looked out for when he was cut open and he was shockingly easy to damage.

It seemed that Acid Storm had wounded himself.

Inside the room the seeker was using his remaining hand to use a pair of clamps to pinch off the acidic coolant line running through his other arm, hoping to minimalize the collateral damage. Acid Storm was missing everything below his wrist, his hand claimed by a failure of his lab equipment that exploded in his face-plate. He had lost his hand and suffered quite a bit of damage to the rest of his forearm, which had created the deadly bleed-out which was now slowly eating away at the med-table he was pressing his slagged arm against so he could work on his damaged part. While Acid Storm didn't know how to fix something like this, he was well versed in diverting and patching up acid leaks so the medics wouldn't be so whiny when they did get around to fixing him.

"Just another wonderful day in the life of a Decepticon..." The Seeker muttered to himself as he made sure the leak was patched before sending out a short signal indicating that he needed medical attention and was already in the medbay.

[Deleted]

Knock Out sighed at the ping. Some day, he thought. SOMEDAY he would be on a ship with more than one medic and he wouldn't be playing this wonderful game of Always On Call he had going here.

Honestly, he thought as he left his quarters, he needed to be MORE frightening and inhospitable just to make the others less likely to bother him. He considered making his erstwhile patient wait, but he was looking forward to a nice buffing and a long recharge, and from the code the patient (he had skimmed past the ident, other than verifying it wasn't anyone higher ranked than him) had given, he MIGHT be making more work for himself by making him wait that long.

So, frightening. Inhospitable. No time like the pres--

Why was there ACID GOO eating its way through the medbay floor?

Knock Out narrowed his optics at the medbay's sole occupant.

Ah. Silly question.

"Acid Storm." Knock Out sighed as he entered the medbay, stepping around the corroded patches. "Was this an accident, or should I be expecting some idiot with acid damage to show up soon?"

[acidstorm]

"I had an accident trying to use some sub-par equipment. No doubt it suffered damage through the moronic actions of the drones or Serotype in her botched attempt to blow her lab." It seemed that Acid Storm was in an odd sharing mood as he bled all over the little table, though he had the leak mostly under control by the time Knock Out showed up.

He then slowly turned about and raised his slagged stump of an arm, the vary same that held most of his weapons. While he wasn't a warrior, the Seeker felt much better when he could melt or rust someone who might try and take him off-line. The Decepticon hadn't survived this long just to be taken out in a rare moment of weakness.

[Deleted]

Knock Out tsked, heading immediately for the chemical shelf and pulling off a canister of basic liquid neutralizer that he'd cooked up after the last time that Acid Storm had visited the lab. "I see." He squirted some of it on the larger floor patches that he was likely to step in, then set it on the medberth next to Acid Storm's arm.

He came around so he could see the injury, carefully not touching it. "It looks as if the equipment won. Tilt this way, please...hmm, yes, definitely won. That can't be pleasant." He tilted his hand back to extend his plug toward Acid Storm's medical port. "One neural block, coming right up. Trust me, you're going to want it by the time I'm finished picking the debris out of your sensors."

[acidstorm]

Acid Storm met Knock Out's gaze with his own, the normally dim optics glowed a toxic bright green as the Seeker glared back. He then quickly reached up and grabbed the medic's wrist, slowly pushing it away "I'll either 'grin and bare it' or have my limb detached. I do not trust nor want you loose in my systems, regardless of how strong my firewall may be." the flier stated as he showed a very rare outburst of Decepticon like violence. There were few things Acid Storm valued more then his privacy and it was something he was ready to melt a few faces over.

The mech then took his hand from Knock Out, showing that it left no marks, though Acid Storm knew he could have easily melted the limb if he wanted to. "Now doctor, if you could please continue your work." And just like that the flier's optics dimmed back down as Acid Storm slumped back a bit and slowly tilted the damaged limb about to give Knock Out full view of it.

[Deleted]

Knock Out froze at the grab, knowing well what it could do but also knowing Acid Storm's temperament. He'd never have pushed with one of the more volatile Decepticons. When Acid Storm let go Knock Out held up his hands in a placating gesture, his plug disappearing into its housing.

He was less interested in mucking about in processors than most of his patients seemed to think, really. Code wasn't his specialty, for all that he could repair it if he had to. He didn't have the training to do much else without leaving medical scripts all over the place and making it obvious as slag that he'd gone diving for treasure. Such scans could be useful, Knock Out admitted, but there was no better way to burn one's bridges with a mech than to rifle through their memory banks unbidden. The Nemesis was too close, too isolated a space for Knock Out to start making enemies over such things unless it was absolutely necessary.

It made Knock Out wonder, idly, who USED to be the Nemesis' medic, and what he or she had done to make the whole crew convinced that medics bearing medical codes were not to be trusted.

Still, medical code was there for a reason, and it was often the easiest way for him to get access to what he needed: a nicely compliant patient who wasn't TWITCHING. But if Acid Storm wanted to play that way, then fine.

"Fine, then," Knock Out said, voice neutral. It was no scratch on HIS plating, after all. "Hardware motor and neural blocks to paralyze and anesthetize while I work, or...hmm, yes, I suppose the whole thing could come off, if you really WANT to wander about with no arm for a few days." Normally Knock Out would just give the mech a replacement, but Acid Storm's highly customized coolant made that impossible.

"Leave it on and give me a few breems and I can at least give you something functional." Knock Out shrugged. "Your choice."

[acidstorm]

"Good...just get it working again." It was an odd feeling, Acid Storm had never needed a weapon before becoming a Decepticon, but now that he was without it he felt rather naked. Perhaps he had been armed for far too long, he would be quite happy to finally see the end of this war and take apart his weaponry and go back to the quiet work of making his beloved compounds once more.

[Deleted]

"Very well. Lie down, please." Knock Out headed over to the storage shelves, pulling out the supplies he'd need. Including two protective forcefield generators: one for each arm. He hated using the things, as the extra millimeters they added to his grip always made him clumsy and negated his tactile sensors. But it was certainly better than the remnants of acid goo and whatever new spurts he'd get from poking around Acid Storm's arm.

He did a few in-depth scans of Acid Storm's mostly-arm, plotting his course through melted and missing components. When ready he popped open a medical access hatch in Acid Storm's upper arm and reached in with a circuit tuner. "This will hurt, briefly. Don't twitch.... There." Acid Storm's arm went lax on the table, numb and paralyzed.

As Knock Out went to work with his finest manipulators, pulling debris out of the slagged limb, he got bored. As the light in Acid Storm's chest was distractingly scintillating on the edges of his vision. "So, out of purely professional interest...." He flicked a free manipulator at Acid Storm's chassis. "How in the Pit did you get your spark IN there?"

[acidstorm]

Doing as he was told, Acid Storm still didn't much like the medic, then again no one liked the medic. Laying down on the table he watched and waited as his arm was stabilized with a little pain. Of course after having it blown to slag 'pain' was a very relative term at the moment. But what the Seeker did not expect was for Knock Out to begin asking questions about the scientist's body modding.

"I didn't. My creator placed it there of course. I simply surrounded it in a pool of acid." He explained before shaking his head "No one will be able to take me off line without dealing with my defenses first. If they manage it they will be missing a limb of two, possibly more depending on the splatter."

[Deleted]

"Hmm. I assume you had a more...CONVENTIONAL coolant in your lines then?" Knock Out pulled a large chunk of what used to be armor plating out of one of said lines. It dribbled a drop of acid before he clamped it off. He dropped the acid-smeared debris in a tray of strong base.

"And yes, of course, I certainly wouldn't try to take you out at close range. As your medic I must say, however, that you are one..." He braced Acid Storm's arm with his own weight, yanking hard at a fused connector in a way that would have been incredibly painful had Acid Storm's pain sensors been actually communicating with his processor. "...fraggit...one patient I hope never gets seriously injured." He case a wry look at Acid Storm's chest. "And Primus help you if you ever have spark trouble."

Another part hit the neutralizing base with a hiss of acrid smoke.

[acidstorm]

While he didn't bother to answer Knock Out's probing about coolant lines, Acid Storm did however find it highly offensive that the medic thought he didn't design a way around something like that. Ignoring the mech as he piddled around with his medical mess, the Seeker narrowed his optics on Knock Out. "Do you take me as a fool? I can access my spark easily and if the situation calls for it, I can subvert the acid and open my spark. Of course it hasn't happened since the start of the war and I have seen no reason to take it from it's 'bath' since." while he didn't mean to implicate it, this also hinted that Acid Storm hasn't known the touch of another Cybertronian's spark in over a thousand years. It was strangely hard to grow close to a bot who was a walking bio weapon after all.

[Deleted]

Knock Out's optics irised to focus in on his work. "Yes, YOU have access. However, I do not, as you've been QUITE reticent to give me the required permissions. If you were offline--which, really, major spark damage or failure would do that--my choices would be to drill through, drain, and risk you overheating while I mucked about dealing with your spark, or attempt to hack through your firewalls to get at the codes to open your chassis the way you're designed to. Neither are particularly EFFICIENT."

Knock Out stilled his hands in Acid Storm's arm, looking over at Acid Storm's face with every trace of honest weariness. "I honestly couldn't care less what's in your processor, Acid Storm. The Nemesis is too small a world to risk making enemies out of one's patients. You do outnumber me, after all." He went back to pulling out shredded coolant line. "I'm not making judgments on your design. Your frame mods are quite unique and fascinating. But your paranoia could get you killed."

The medic gestured offhandedly with a laser scalpel. "Your choice, of course."

[acidstorm]

"Sanity and odds have not stopped many Decepticons before." Acid Storm countered with a small sigh in his vocals. "When the time comes I'll either be torn up enough that you or some other medic will be able to find my spark or I'll just go off line, it's not as big a deal as you make it out to be and I have been functioning quite well since the beginning of the war when I put these defenses in place."

The Seeker did not like to be chatty, in fact on top of his list of things he found annoying were chatty Seekers, which included just about every Decepticon flier that was ever put into construction. But when a bot kept being pressed like this, he wanted to just get this inane conversation over with and his main acid blaster back online.

[Deleted]

Knock Out stared at Acid Storm for a nanoklik. "Well, yes, if you count your own death as 'not a big deal', then I retract my concern. It's a medic instinct, what with everyone always demanding that we NOT let them die."

The medic pulled the last large piece of shrapnel clear and pulled a light closer so he could get a good look at the remains of Acid Storm's complicated arm mods. He pulled up the schematics he had on file to compare, murmuring half to himself, "Let's see...coolant ruptures here and here, which I can reroute. Fuel lines a bit more of a hash, but nothing I can't fix. Hydraulics...not too bad, actually. And...looks like your ammunition assemblies got away unscathed. Actual weapons system...needs a few standard replacement parts, and...hmm...well...I can get you to the point that you CAN transform your weapon out, though I doubt it'll be particularly COMFORTABLE."

Knock Out straightened, looking down at Acid Storm. "I'm assuming you're more worried about the blaster than the blade and the hand. I can get it operational again right now. Again, it won't be fun to transform and the recoil will hurt like the Pit if you use it, but it'll be an option. Blade and hand I'll just have to fabricate to spec. Will take two cycles or so, longer if I need to bump it to refab something for the officers."

A red helm tilted, processor considering Acid Storm's schematics again. Even with his main gun, the seeker was still no match for someone with determination and an actual warrior's weapon. He wasn't sure why he was bothering. Boredom, he supposed. "If you want a replacement beam weapon in the meantime, I could probably hack something together that would slot into your right arm weapon socket in place of your blade laser." He made a face. "It won't be the most aesthetically pleasing mod, but I suppose I could stand you walking around with it for a few cycles."

<<I hope I'm reading Cid's description right. Knock Out's assuming that the blast took out the blade and the hand in the bottom half of Cid's forearm, but left the blaster in the top of the forearm. Also, at the end he's saying that he could give Cid something that would power a laser off his undamaged arm like I believe Cid's blade can do when transferred there? Let me know if I messed anything up and I'll fix it. >>

[acidstorm]

((OOC: Nah, you pretty much got it. And sorry for the wait.))

Acid Storm was silent for a moment, listening to the medic;s pitch before finally leaning forwards to focus his tired green optics on Knock Out. "Listen here. I will not take a replacement. I do not care much about life or death as, Primus knows, the Well Of All Sparks has got to be better then this sort of slag. And I want my original weapon back or at least my arm fixed to the point I can re-mod it myself." With that little explosion of annoyance Acid Storm seemed extremely keen on getting his point across, one it seemed he would have o make several times if the flashy racer would listen to a single word he said.