We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
The Autobot base rumor mill maintained that it was possible to tell a mech's imminent demise by the twitch at the corner of Ratchet's optic. Steeljaw wasn't certain how much of that was truth - he had been willing to bet not a word of it, as the medic had never been anything but perfectly cordial if a little bit rushed to him, natural enough in a mech as busy as the CMO was - but at that moment he began to seriously wonder if perhaps he ought to call someone - anyone - else, preferably before they were once again down to one flier and Air Raid dismembered into his component parts.
The sounds escaping Ratchet's vents were reminiscent of the result of an Earth feline with its tail caught in a grinder. "What... you... Stop that!"
The laser scalpel made an abrupt change of ownership as Ratchet grabbed it away. "Give me that! It is not a toy! And you, Primus help me, are not a sparkling!" A shove of the medic's pede rolled the tray of tools out of Air Raid's reach, leaving the flier with nothing except a large and irate medic up in his faceplates. "Overclocked underregulated glitch! Downing a whole cube like that when your frame's still dumping heat - what did you think was going to happen? Primus save me from idiots." One blunt ended servo jabbed, first at Air Raid's chassis, then at the berth. "Lay down, tell me if you're going to purge, don't TOUCH anything, and for the love of Primus tell me you have an up to date copy of your medical records."
Air Raid blinked at his empty fingers as he was swiftly and unceremoniously disarmed. Aw.
The tray of tools rattled away next. Air Raid looked after them with regret as they were whisked away from him. The next moment he leaned subtly backwards from Ratchet as the medic loomed large and angry in his face, radiating irritation. With round optics he watched the medic jab one big finger into his chassis, making him sway.
"Boy, doc, you're tense," he said playfully. Then his expression grew a little more serious. "Yeah, feeling a bit like throwing up here. Lying down now."
With his tank churning, the Aerialbot lifted his feet off the floor and lay back along the berth. He shifted a little, trying to get comfortable. Frowned. Shifted again. Folded his arms behind his head. Nah. Laced his fingers together and rested his hands over his chassis instead. Crossed his legs at the ankles. Uncrossed them. Scratched his nose. Scratched some itchy paint on his arm. Made distressed noises at the ache in his midriff. Kind of wished he still had that laser scalpel. That had been sweet. Laid his hands back on his chassis. Laid still.
Then he propped himself up on his elbow. "Medical records?"
Ratchet shuttered his optics, pressed thumb and servo into the tension lines that gathered between them, and then slowly dragged his palm down his faceplates as he mentally ran through the lattice energies, thermochemical properties, and medical usage of all of the common transition metallic elements - then, when he still wasn't certain he trusted his own vocalizer, ran through the rest of the elements as well, rote base notation that every medic learned backwards, forwards, sideways, in or out of recharge, and then rarely actually put into use.
His voice was actually remarkable even, if scathing enough to strip paint off of the walls. "Are you actually physically capable of laying still, or do I need to break out an arc welder to enforce it?"
They said a lot of thing about the CMO - 'they' being mostly, so far as he could tell, large frontliners with more ammunition than processor threads who turned into terrified newsparks at the sight of a injector. Whoever 'they' actually were, they seemed to have a lot of gossip time on their hands, and nothing to do but paint the medical profession in general, and Ratchet in particular, in an unwarranted savage light. He had heard himself called a lot of things, not the least of which was 'terrifying' (this was a plus, in his opinion), 'savage' (utterly ridiculous, particularly in the medbay), 'sadistic' (even more ridiculous and anyone who said otherwise was lying - he had repeated that forensic dissection practicum lab at the Academy due to an irregularity in his records, not because he had wanted to), and 'more likely to take a patient apart than put them back together' which was so patently false that it didn't even bear addressing. One did not become CMO and personal medic to the Prime by throwing wrenches at people's heads.
On the other hand, a lot could be accomplished with a little healthily instilled respect. The heavy hand that slapped down did not - by a slim margin - do so on the Aerialbot's chassis, in no small part because a sudden assault like that on an already abused tank would almost certainly make the flier purge. The smack of his hand on the berth did make the larger mech jump, however, and Ratchet followed it up with a short, sharp growl that echoed through his own chassis. "Your medical records," he repeated, almost pleasantly. "The things the last medic who saw you would have sealed in your files. The things," he added with an expression that was not at all a smile, "which will tell me if some scrap sucking glitchspawn actually certified you on that clockspeed or if you're running on circuit-speeders that I'm going to need to scrub out of your system with a code flush. THOSE kind of records. Is this ringing any bells?"
Air Raid jumped when the hand came down on the berth beside him. He shrank back against the berth and went motionless, staring up at the medic with round optics. Did not budge so much as a single vent. Not the smallest linkage. His stillness was perfection. He scratched his nose again.
"Uh," he said. Medical records. Medical records. He tried to process that thought. Tried to remember the last medic he'd seen. When the last time he had been cracked open and repaired was. It was, uh. Back when, hn. After that time he, ugh.
The memory just wasn't coming. Weird. He had to have some kind of medical record, though. Everybody did. Didn't they?
Ratchet was watching him. He could practically hear the warning rumble in the medic's chassis.
Air Raid swallowed.
"So uh, here's the thing, doc," he said. He twiddled his index fingers together, looking nervous. "About those medical records. What would you say if, theoretically speaking, a mech didn't know exactly whether they were in his file or not, or where he would look to find them if he did?"
"But trust me!" he added hastily, before the medic could throttle him. He held up his hands in a warding gesture and grinned. "You'd know it right away if I was cracked up on circuit-speeders or something. I get hella fidgety when I get too many of those in my system. Like whoa. Really twitchy."
"Worse than you are now?" Ratchet snapped back, hand sweeping up to indicate the fidgeting flier. "Primus preserve us all!"
The move was, in truth, nothing but a simple feint - one which the Aerialbot missed completely, just as Ratchet hoped he might. It made it easy to grab the other mech's wrists, conveniently already outstretched. A sidestep around the head of the berth, twist and pull, and the larger mech was back flat on the berth, his wrists caught and pinned above his head by the medic's solid grasp. The next words out of his vocalizer were terse and flat, nothing of the grumbling outrage - real or played up - in it. "Steeljaw - the restraints, now, and two vials of the blue from the second shelf, third cabinet from the corner."
He didn't look up to see if the symbiont obeyed, though there was a telltale patter of magclamps along the wall as the quadruped hurried to do as asked. Ratchet had optics only for the flier on the medbay berth, half his mass leaned into securely pinning the mech's arms beneath one hand. The other he slipped beneath the mech's chin, holding his head steady so that the other couldn't look away. There was a cold, electric frission pooling through his own tanks - oh Primus, of all the times this could have landed it had to be in his lap, with no other officer on base! - but he kept it from voice and faceplate alike, a lifetime of practice keeping his hands perfectly solid.
"You will listen to me carefully, Aerialbot Air Raid," Ratchet told him flatly, "and mark my words. There were no orders regarding your deployment sent ahead to us. There was no warning prior to your arrival. Your ident codes check but it would not be the first time ident codes have been forged, nor would it be the first time Decepticons have tried to infiltrate this base. So you tell me - what should I say when a mech can't answer a simple question like where his medical files - which would be Pit damned difficult to forge with any accuracy - are kept?"
Air Raid did not have time to register the feint before he abruptly found his wrists snatched and pulled back over his head. His optics popped in astonishment, and for a moment he could do nothing more than gape as he was neatly laid out backwards on the berth, held down flat by the medic's weight against his arms.
Without thinking, he readied himself to gather his feet beneath him and kip up off the berth. An instant later he realised that Ratchet, perhaps anticipating this attempt at escape, had already grasped him underneath the chin to fix his head in place. The Aerialbot sputtered indignantly, his blue optics darting back and forth when he discovered that he could not budge his head one inch. He was not getting off this berth, not when he was pinned in such an ungainly fashion. Trapped!
Ratchet looked calm, stern. Propelled by flier indignance at being forced to hold still, Air Raid promptly kicked up a fight, red light sputtering from his heel thrusters. Four seconds later the energon cube had burnt itself through his systems and he flopped back on the berth, wheezing. Wow. Not one of his finest moments.
"I don't know!" he said. He stared up at the medic, unable to look anywhere else thanks to the firm grip under his chin. "Haven't seen those files in a long time! Don't even remember the last time I saw a medic! My ident codes are legit! Doc, I am trying real hard not to freak out here, but I am either gonna freak out or hurl in like, five seconds. Lemme go!"
One... Steeljaw, pedes clicking hard against metal in the arrhythmic click-pop of magclamps set down and released at speed, bolted across the floor and swarmed up the side of the medberth by Ratchet's elbow. The symbiont's tool tendrils were shaken loose from beneath the overlapping gold plates of his neck to bob in a weaving swarm around his head, two vials of lurid blue clutched in knotted clumps while the quadruped's mouth was full of the heavier length of the restraints, Steeljaw's usual eloquence reduced down to rapid fire bursts of basic. ::Here/fast/now - what do you need?::
Two... There was a fine tremor running through the frame beneath his hands, growing stronger by the second. The flier's optics were spiraled wide and bright, twitching, wings shuddering against the berth. Ratchet held him tighter, fingers hooking into the edge of the mech's chinplate as he forced his neck taut, his own mouth a tight, ugly line. "Primary auxillary energon line is beneath the omohyoid hydraulic, second plate seam beneath his chin," he told Steeljaw grimly. "Angle the injection up and in. Both vials. NOW."
Three... The sound Air Raid made was pure 'freak out' and the flare of fear in his field burnt hot and scorching against Ratchet's sensors. Honest fear, optics bled white, frame arching, but the medic had his neck caught fast and Steeljaw, Ratchet knew, was not entirely useless in an assistant capacity for all that the symbiont lacked actual hands. The restraints dropped to the berth with a clatter and Steeljaw, lunging in, might almost have been going for the flier's throat with his teeth, only turning his head at the last moment to angle microtools into place, the first of the vial injectors sinking smoothly home.
Four... It was done in a flash, one, then two, the quadruped leaping clear of range as soon as it was over. Ratchet held one moment longer, every sensor tuned to the mech on the berth - sound, sight, touch and field, data bleeding across his processor in rapidly diagnosed waves.
Five. Ratchet let go, stepping quickly back around the berth to catch the larger mech around the waist and heave him up, one arm wrapped around Air Raid's frame, the other hand braced against the broad back between the wings as he tipped the other towards the edge of the berth, half supported against his own frame. "Easy," he barked shortly. "It's alright, it's an anti-emetic, it's for your tank, but if you have to purge do it in that direction."
Venting, he pulsed a low note of apology through the other's field. "You'll have to forgive me. I had to be sure."
With barely a drop of energon left in his system, Air Raid went limp against the medic. His optics flickered. His wings drooped and he nearly tilted forward right off the berth before catching himself.
He sat in a daze. Boy, he hated injections. Hated them. Passionately. Ugh. Awful things. The last time a medic had tried to give him a shot, it had actually been a nurse, and he had punched him in the face before even realising that his hand had even made a fist. It had taken three of the medical staff to wrestle him down that time and stick him with the horrid injector after he had flipped out. He'd yelled the entire time. Cursed and tried to kick someone. Fifteen minutes later Air Raid had walked out of that medical bay with a blacked out optic and a fistful of somebody's paint.
Being stuck in one place. Another item high up on the freak-out list. Had to be a flier thing. Maybe just an Air Raid thing.
"Okay," he said dazedly, when he had found his voice again. He swallowed heavily, wondering just what an anti-emetic actually was. Blue stuff, apparently. His tank made angry noises at him, and he swallowed again. Not feeling a personal best at that moment. Neck felt kinda sore. So tired. The low-fuel crash was finally hitting him. Wow. Hitting hard. Processor was of a mess.
"So... are you sure now?" he said. "'Cos, uh... not feeling so hot, Doc. Kind of hoping to lie down a while. Floor would be fine at this point. I like floor."
Ratchet swore to himself, easing the larger mech back onto the berth. The results of another scan made him scowl, stalking back to the storage cabinets to retrieve a drip pack - milky silver white, nanite rich - and another vial, this one pale yellow.
The vial went into the pack, mixing with the fluid already there, and the business end of the drip splice went, without hesitation or fanfare, into a medial fluid line at Air Raid's hip, Ratchet's hand snatching the flier's away before it could come near. "Don't," he warned sharply. "No, don't paw at it, and don't you dare rip it out. Leave it be! It's a sealant and a nanite infusion, that's all, and as soon as it's coated your tank I can give you another cube." He flicked a sharp finger at a sensor in the flier's side. "Don't be such a newspark about it. Just hold still, it won't take long. That anti-emetic should be kicking in shortly, you'll stop feeling sick."
Venting, Ratchet eyed his newest patient with narrowed optics. "I'm sure that you're sure," he added steadily. "That kind of field signature is hard as Pit to fake. That still leaves us the question of how in frag you can not know your own medical history, though." Another scan, inbetween fending off the fitful motions of the flier's hands, and Ratchet made a low, disgruntled sound. "No sign of cranial plate trauma or processor rerouting. I'd have to do a more in-depth scan to get to your memory core."
Ratchet's instincts were spot-on. No sooner did the line go into Air Raid's hip than the Aerialbot was already making an unsteady grab at it, aghast to find himself still being prodded by things that looked like injectors. Ratchet's hand knocked his away and Air Raid gave up and lay back on the berth. So tired.
Still, he rolled an optic at the drip and studied it suspiciously. Sealant and nanite infusion. Sounded harmless enough. He hoped those were the good drugs.
At least his tank seemed to be finally settling again. Air Raid sighed, then flinched at the poke to his sensor. Annoyed, he made another clumsy swipe at Ratchet, unable to lie still even now. At some point in the near future he felt certain he was going to cycle down and hit up his sleeper mode for days. Just not yet. Why had he tried to fly all the way from the Alps to the American west coast in one day. Whyyy.
"'Cranial plate trauma' - is that nice doctor-speak for 'you cracked your head and lost five percent of your neural processing power, you dumb bastard'?" he joked, to disguise his relief. He watched the medic as he worked, lifting his head a little for a better view. "'Cos that's what it sounded like to me. Dunno, Doc, don't know what to tell you. Maybe I've just been lucky and haven't had to hit up a medic in a really, really long time, and that was so long ago I've forgotten all about it...?"
He trailed off. Squinted. Thought a little harder.
"Don't think I like the sound of in-depth scans and memory cores, Doc. Is this something that is going to give me a mild case of serious brain damage?"
"Brain damage? Don't be silly." Ratchet kept one optic on the last dregs of the drip, letting it filter through the splice before deftly removing it, the empty pack tossed towards the nearby tray. Satisfied, Ratchet ran another scan across the flier, huffing an exvent at the results. "There, that should sort your tank for the moment. Let me know when you think you can handle another cube."
He gave the other mech an absent pat on the shoulder. "'Brain damage' - hmph! What nonsense are they filling you lot with? No, of course it's not going to give you brain damage." A beat, just one nanoklik, before he blithely continued, his overbright optics the only give away to the smirk that didn't dare to grace his faceplates. "No, it's far worse than that. You're going to have to sit still."
Worse than that? Worse than that? What could possibly be worse than- holding still?
Air Raid stared up at Ratchet in horror, his optics wide. He would almost prefer to be irradiated by some kind of dreadful medical apparatus. It could strip paint off his frame and turn his optics green, he didn't care. Poke him with dozens of injectors. All good. But if he had to lie down and hold perfectly still so some machine could scan his brain module, then somebody had better be standing beside him with a lenth of steel pipe in hand, because he was gonna climb the walls. Holy hell, you know what- just hit him over the head now. Bam. Cruel mercy.
Feeling light-headed, he held up one hand.
"Cube me, Doc," he said faintly. "I think I need that drink now."
Ratchet exvented something very close to a snort. "If you're looking for something stronger than a field ration you'll have to ask elsewhere," he informed the flier. "I'm sure I don't have any idea about that."
Steeljaw was back up on the cabinet top again, tail twitching in a sharp, agitated rhythm. "Are you sure...?"
"That he's not a Decepticon and isn't going to attempt to kill you, me, and everyone else on this base?" Ratchet finished dryly, opening the cabinet. "Mostly. Maybe. Sure enough." Shaking his head, he took several more vials from the neatly shelved racks, upending two into a cube of energon. "It will be fine. Thank you," he added, optics flickering up to the symbiont, "for the assist, by the way."
Steeljaw flicked an audial. "It was a step up from sticking my face in someone internals, but I would prefer not to do that again if you please."
The medic waved him off. "Of course. You can go back to the monitors - I have things under control here."
The symbiont made a show of rolling his optics. "Yes, of course... yell if he tries to take your head off." A quick leap took the quadrupede from the cabinet to the wall and in two short steps be was gone, tail disappearing around the edge of the door and footsteps retreating back to the control room. Cycling a heavy ventilation, Ratchet swirled the energon cube to disperse the additives, frowning.
Turning back to the berth, he held it out - but just out of reach - to Air Raid. "NOT," he instructed firmly, "so fast as last time. SIP it, or we'll be doing this all over again, and next time I won't bother giving you anything to keep you from purging." Relenting, he handed it over. "There's a tank cleanser in it, just something to finish settling your internals." And a mild sedative, but he didn't think that really needed pointing out.
"Air Raid," he continued, once the cube was handed over, "I really need you to think. You can't recall anything? None of your medical records, ever? It's... well, I suppose it's not impossible, but it's certainly highly unlikely and any reason I can think of isn't a very good option."
Air Raid mournfully watched the golden cat pad out of the medical bay. Now he was alone with the medic. He briefly wondered just whose head Steeljaw had meant, and who would be the one taking it off.
Nervously, he watched Ratchet work at the cabinet. When he saw the energon cube he eagerly struggled upright. When it was safely in hand he allowed himself to sink back on one elbow. This time he took the medic's advice to heart and took a careful sip from the cube, savouring that tiny sample. Tasted good. A little funny. Must be the tank cleanser, he decided.
When nothing under his armour at his midriff growled at him he took a bolder sip. His empty lines sang with the energy infusion, making his neural net buzz in a pleasant way. Whew. It was going straight to his head. It had been a long time since he had run himself down to fumes. It didn't help that his high-performance jet build tended to process energon and other such chemicals at a rapid rate. Even a drop of liquid sustenance hit his circuits like a bolt of lightning.
Woo! Feeling a little better now. He took another sip and tried not to look shifty. Perhaps after this cube he would feel well enough to deke out Ratchet and attempt an escape. Boy, you know, this energon tasted really good. What had the medic stirred into it anyway?
Air Raid blinked and rubbed his optics. When he realised that Ratchet was speaking to him he looked up in muggy surprise.
"Eh?" he said. "Uh... well, I remember getting my tail kind of trashed during the Exodus. That was a two-day trip to a medbay in one of those little field camps still running outta Dead End back on Cybertron. And I was in and out of the medics' hands back in Kalis and Iacon before that. So I guess I must have official records somewhere. I haven't touched them in like, ages, I guess."
He scratched the side of his head. "The last few hundred years have been pretty boring. Huh."
"Then you've been incredibly lucky," Ratchet told him with a short huff. "More than any twenty Aerialbots combined worth of luck."
There was a passive scanner bult into the medberth; Ratchet flicked it on, keeping one optic on his patient and the other on the readouts that flickered across the small monitor set into the berth's side. Deplorable energon levels, minor toxic buildup from running on what amounted to fumes, high performance system already starting to cannibalize fluid levels to keep going. He'd need to put more than one cube in the flier to get him anything like steady, and combat fliers were the worst for fuel conservation, overclocked so much they couldn't help it.
Waste. It made the medic twitch, even if their situation wasn't as dire as it had been at first on the organic planet, part of his processor automatically ticking over base personnel versus supplies, how much everyone needed, how little they could sustain on, what the frontline needed for optimal performance, and how much the support could spare them. That the results came out closer to black than deep into the red now was only a small consolation with vorns worth of low fuel levels worn in ridged grooves in his own fuel tank and that of most of those on base.
Still, there was no denying they needed the aerial support, even if aerial troops were costly. Ratchet flicked the monitor off, turned away to collect another cube, and offered it to Air Raid. "Finish that, then as much of this one as you can." Because that sedative ought to be hitting your empty tank right about now and this is going to be a lot easier if you're more than half out already.
"It may be entirely possible that you really are that lucky," he told the Aerialbot. "But it's also equally likely that you're one of those that took some damage that you never noticed." Or one of those who have had portions of their memory banks erased for good reason, following a too close brush with 'Cons, but there was no reason to mention THAT out lout either. "That kind of thing, left unchecked, can slowly degrade. It's a weak point - take a hit in the same region, it could do you real harm."