robothell | step one: stop fighting robots

Entry tags:

step one: stop fighting robots

Who: Verity and OPENish
Where: Autobot Clinic
When: Noooow??
What: The fallout of this
Warnings: Injuries, TBD.

[ Once she shook loose from Arcee, Verity bagged out. She was not inclined to trust anyone let alone someone closely associated with Prowl, on good terms or not, but she trusted Arcee to run interference long enough for her to clear out of there. Running away happened to be one of Verity's talents and one she took immediate advantage of when the opportunity presented itself. ]

Shit - shit.

[ Burning rubber screeched on the metal floor of the clinic followed by a loud crash when a disoriented Verity slammed into a nearby steel utility table; spilling all kinds of equipment onto the floor. The clinic was dark - of course it was, everyone was off getting stupid at that party at the forum. Verity swore louder as she staggered up and waved her arm wildly in front of a motion sensor near the doorframe that brought the lights back on.

I fucked up, was all Verity could think while stumbling through the clinic wildly searching for anything that looked human friendly. ]

Enough people on this rock they should have painkillers or someth- hnng.

[ Verity stopped near a minicon sized gurney. She pulled herself up and once she was sitting felt the full force of what a little scuffle with something rip snorting pissed off and over thirty feet tall did. The plates of her armor retracted back until she was down to her clothes. Stomach rolling as she took rapid shallow breaths close to hyperventilating, pulling her shirt up to find angry red and purple bruising covering her entire right side. She cringed, looking down to see the inflamed mess that was her foot that twisted awkwardly at the ankle.

Winded, Verity collapsed on her back. Leaving her armor in pieces around her on the ground as she tried to steady her breathing. ]

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There was some passing mention that Impactor had been brought in as something of a nursing assistant by First Aid. Word was the latter had been big on the Wreckers Declassified - particularly her and Ironfist's contributions. Still, the career change threw her for a loop. But then again, Megatron also worked here.

"In here, Ahab."

Back turned standing beside her gurney near a large metal sink built to human height, Verity didn't spare a glance over her shoulder for a couple of reasons. One, she was in the process of getting dressed and while her deep space adventures killed any care she had about giant robots seeing her in a grundies she was otherwise preoccupied. A data tablet was propped up on the table adjacent the sink; in between hooking her bra up and checking bandages she was swiping through page after page of something.

Edited 2015-06-07 19:38 (UTC)

Changing clothes were something new to him--sure, they had cloth imported, but the stigma behind it is lost as he walks in. Except for maybe an eyebrow raised. Humans were certainly strange, and the idea that he apparently had one on his team at one point...even stranger.

"It's Impactor."

But he pads closer, getting a bit more on her level as he watches, more looking for any injuries that may or may not be hidden. "Heard you picked a fight with one of us. Have to say I'm impressed."

[ it's fine, really. Bee understands the gesture and does his best to give that hug. sure, it's awkward. but at least he's closer to the ground than most. ]

Never said you were. I just know Ratchet.

[ he settles back, of course. Bee lingers as close as he can to keep that distance between them to a minimal. ]

Sure has. A lot has happened too. I know we kind of left in a hurry. Sorry about that.

Whatever dismissive reply Verity returned was was muffled through the fabric of the shirt she was pulling over her head. Cotton felt cool on her skin not wrapped up in bandages. She rocked her hips adjusting the hem and her belt before turning around and powering down the data tablet in the process all in one fluid motion.

"Nicknames not a thing on Cybertron?" She knew to an extent they were, but she was being an ass.

She makes a big show of how tough she is but sometimes I wonder. Verity flipped her ponytail her her shoulder, shaking loose something over heard a life time ago drummed up when Impactor gave her a verbal thumbs up for recent events.

"Save the applause - I didn't exactly win." Sparring Ratchet and Optimus the stress, beyond details that a fight broke out between a human and another Cybertronian the specifics were hush hush while the matter was being handled in house.

"How's the transition from miner to nurse going?" Not the smoothest transition, but where that conversation was heading was already exhausting her.

Edited 2015-06-07 20:08 (UTC)

[ Verity leans back on the splayed palms of her hands, legs swaying languidly from side to side. Even after spending time with Ratchet - it's feels like an eternity since she just sat and had a conversation with someone. ]

I'm in no position to judge. A lot was going on then, too.

[ She really wasn't - Verity the Flight Risk. ]

Shame we didn't run into each other back then when I was kicking around in space.

A lot is always going on. Even during a time of peace it feels like people have to find new ways of screwing it up for everyone.

[ is he talking with some tension and frustration in his tone? you bet! it certainly feels like, at times, that Cybertronians have this innate need to continue to be at odds with each other.

Bee rolls his shoulders, scratching at the area that no longer contains his badge. they don't REALLY need to have that sort of conversation. he's here to try to bring some levity. honest. ]

Pfft. Definitely would have been a nice change from having to deal with you-know-who.

[ Prowl. but that might be a touchy subject too. BEE IS DOING GREAT TODAY. ]

To be fair, I really would have liked to stay on Earth. I feel like I left a lot of unfinished business behind.

Ratchet only barely manages to keep himself from flinching under the press of her soft hands. He would have felt it if she'd touched him with a single fingertip, and he shudders helplessly before pulling his hand away and clenching it until the welded seam of his wrist aches.

"They're his," he says finally, his voice a little choked, not looking at her. "He'd--hell. This is--" He gropes for a place to start, then gives up and shakes his head. "When we got to his post on Delphi, nine-tenths of everyone at the base was dead from this... rust virus. We don't get wasting diseases often, but when we do, best to just get the hell out of the way--we don't mess around. Except the other part of the reason we went to Delphi was because someone--First Aid, though I hadn't known it--had used the same frequency as the old Wreckers Declassified datalogs to send out a wave of semi-encrypted patient data detailing a rise of deaths at Delphi, and not because of the plague."

Ratchet cycles his vents, taking a rattling gust of cool air in and blowing warm out, trying to steady himself.

"Turns out Delphi was on Messatine, in the center of DJD territory, and Pharma had been murdering patients to give their organs to the DJD to keep them from slaughtering everyone. In the end, it drove him crazy. He knew he couldn't keep it up, so he cooked up the virus in the lab and let it loose on the base to try to cover his tracks. Pipes and Drift went with me to the base--they both contracted the virus, I contracted the virus. There was a scuffle with some Decepticons and First Aid woke Fort Max, Pharma made a break for the roof and I followed him. I was halfway rusted to death and we had it out on the roof like a couple of morons over the cure for the stupid thing, I nearly knocked him off the roof entirely and he tried to blow my head off. Drift--" He falters, stops. He doesn't even know how to begin to talk to Verity about Drift. He doesn't know how much of their strange, patchwork history is even his to tell, regardless of how open Drift had been about it around the table with Rung. His optics drop down to his hands and he's silent for a moment, trying again to find where to begin, then just gives up. "I don't know if you know him. But he somehow followed me up--he was worse along than I was, he nearly died, half his organs were rusted through--and he chopped Pharma's hands off at the wrists to cut him off the roof right before he could shoot me in the back. I only had one arm at that point, and we had a medical bay full of patients who were dying not to mention the one leaking out at my feet on the roof, so... I took them. They're--they were his. But they're the only reason I can still do my job--they're just as good as mine were. Pharma was just as good as I was, before... everything."

He flexes his fingers slowly, then very deliberately settles his palms flat against the table. Now that he's drawn attention to them, the chips and scuffs in the red paint, exposing the blue beneath, are more obvious. Ratchet cycles his vents again, then reaches out to touch a fingertip to the back of one of Verity's hands, almost an apology for pulling away before.

"It was a hell of a thing," he says finally, a little helplessly. He shrugs. "But everybody who was alive when we got there was alive when we left, so can't call it too much of a loss, I guess."

That's what they tell me.

[ The news coming out of Cybertron - 'their' Cybertron, not this sad abandoned thing, wasn't all good. Sure, the war was over and Megatron was apparently committed to the Autobot brand on his chest - but the transitional period was one big rough patch with its own casualties. Verity sees the tension coming off Bumblebee like warning lights and doesn't press. ]

Yeah, I hear he's around. Trouble?

[ Only one person short of wearing a Decepticon brand could suck all the joy out of a conversation, and that was Prowl. Verity reasoned not to be forthcoming with the details of their fight, even to Bee, but she worried all the same. And speaking of brands.. ]

You're, uh, missing a little something there, Bee...

[ Verity motions to her chest where on Bumblebee there should be a familiar red mark where a scratched up patch of nothing stood like a scar on his yellow frame. ]

Verity watched the soft red welts form in uniform lines along the palm of her hands from the friction of Ratchet yanking back at what was only a small touch. Not enough to break the skin, but it all happened so fast she doesn't register the slight burn right away. It just shocked her that he would recoil like that. That kind of closed off, cagey behavior she expected from - from, well, the likes of her. She looked back up at Ratchet, thrown that buried underneath all that heart and bluster was the kind of pain she recognized. It shouldn't have surprised her that Ratchet carried himself better than most that you forgot a lot of it was a front.

"Delphi?" Verity echoed after her mind stopped doing cartwheels and somewhere in that long overdue, pent up confession did she latch onto something familiar. "That is way beyond mere coincidence that the lead into the goings-on in Garrus-9 from the DJD double-agent came out of somewhere so far flung off everyone's radar like Delphi - and for it to keep coming back around in the last five years. No one in high command could possibly have such a bad sense for real estate. They wanted it at the epicenter of that shitstorm."

Pad of her thumb pushed up under her lip against the teeth, she chews over everything Ratchet said and indirectly implied through either artful dodging of peripheral information or shared context. It was...a lot to take in. And even more to consider.

"Drift, huh? Sounds like a real character with that glowing testimonial." It was more of an outward thought smashed together with a half-hearted attempt to diffuse the stress coiling up tight inside Ratchet. It didn't work, but she would have said something less inoffensive failing that. And then she grew quiet for a while.

"Ratchet..." Verity put one hand over Ratchet's; splayed open and barely even covering one tenth the surface of that bright, warm red hand. "I don't know if telling me this is supposed to be cathartic or if you've left kind of pain hole up inside you for that long thinking even someone like me could make sense of it or offer absolution you do not need, but..."

The hand Ratchet gently covered with his own turned over so she could squeeze the fingertip.

"This Pharma shit the bed on that one and now no one is going to give a good goddamn that those hands are back to doing what they were meant to. Every life you've saved since, and the fact some poor S.O.B orderly isn't stuck holding my ribs together with tape while I bleed out right now is enough for me that what happened on Delphi wasn't a loss for you. You have First Aid now. We still have you."

And then she looked at him, hard. There was more to this.

"But it's not what you did to him that has you jumping at shadows, is it?"

Ratchet's whole body goes tense at the mention of 'absolution', but he doesn't pull away again, his optics narrowing.

"You're the one who wanted to know what the 'fresh hell' was going on," he snaps--as close as he ever gets to snapping, with her. "If you want to hear a 'glowing testimonial' on Drift's behalf, I'll tell you his name used to be Deadlock and you can let me know if that means anything to you. And when I say that everyone who was alive when we got to Delphi made it out, I meant everyone. Pharma showed up a few months later, on Luna-1. Tyrest had picked him up and given him new hands, so when we showed up he kidnapped and--" He hiccups over a word, one hand coming up unconsciously to press over his windscreen, protective against scratches he can't still feel but that he knows are there, through layers of metal and wires and glass.

"And tortured me," he continues, his vocalizer only slightly frayed, "murdered Ambulon and left his leaking corpse for me to try to 'fix', then apparently laughed about the whole thing--Delphi, Ambulon, all of it--to First Aid, who blew his head off. And rightfully so--it's something I should have done then, instead of leaving him to fall like a coward.

"So, if you wanted a quick rundown of what's been 'going on' with me in particular, there you have it. That's it." His voice is almost savage, but he doesn't really sound angry with her--just... angry in general. Grieving in general. Hurt in general, refusing to allow himself to focus too acutely on any one wound, too used to not having the time or the luxury to reopen any of them, even to let them heal properly.

"Tarn's here, and Pharma's here and he remembers all of it, and instead of trying to make up for the dozens--hundreds--he murdered outright let alone everyone he tried to slaughter with the killswitch, the first thing he does is go and hack First Aid's arm off, for some stupid, petty 'revenge.' So, yeah, forgive me if I'm 'jumping at shadows.' It's been that kind of year."

Edited 2015-06-08 21:50 (UTC)

The abruptness of the his outburst with everything he had let haunt them for the course of 'this kind of' year pouring out hit Verity like a truck, so to speak.

"Ratchet-"

Her throat seized and the name she, the empathy and shock in her voice broke over her lips like glass. Verity takes a wobbling step back, knees shivering witH one leg balanced on a twisted ankle, and her hands drawn up close to her own chest, squeezing them together tight enough that her knuckles were bloodless. It's a miracle she can look him in the eye; she hates when her eyes string. Heart beating against her ribs like a songbird raging against its cage. Taking the wheel over her own difficult to navigate emotions, but when it was someone else. Someone else, she-

-wants everyone to think she's tough and independent, but you wonder sometimes.

Like ice freezing in the hard fissures of these fronts they put, ripping them open wider over time and eroding them away from the inside. She knew that act and the consequences of it better than the back of her hand. She swallows what feels like a mouthful of sand and steps forward again.

"It's okay to be scared."

People have been telling her for years, and it was shame she never bothered to bend an ear in the right direction until now when someone else needed to hear it.

"It's okay to be scared."

Verity didn't apologize - it wasn't her place to, and neither did she press for details. Not yet. Instead she hobbled over and mindful of the gap between Ratchet and the table slowly leaned against his arm. The best she could do in the way of a hug when the one breaking open in front of her was thirty something feet and made of metal.

Ratchet stares down at her with a helpless, unreadable expression expression on his face and for a truly awful moment his optics flare, bright and hot, light barely spilling from the edges--then he shutters them, and warm air hisses from his vents in a long, shivering gust as he relaxes, deliberately releasing the tension in his limbs, his face easing. He shifts slightly, scooping her up in one hand and almost cradling her.

"You shouldn't be on that leg," he says roughly, but all of the thin, ragged tension is bled from his voice, and his optics are clear when he onlines them again. He just holds her for a long moment.

"I still have scalpel cuts on my spark casing," he says, almost thoughtfully. "But I'm not scared of--of Pharma hurting me, or anything stupid like that. If I cared about that, Tarn would have a new t-cog by now and I wouldn't be hobbling around on these damn things. I guess I'm more afraid of failing. Failing the people at home, failing Drift, failing everyone here. Failing you." He smooths down the back of her neck with his thumb, careful of her head injury. "You scared the hell out of me with that seizure garbage, I'm not kidding. Knock it off."

His mouth tilts a little, lopsided, not quite a smile.

"But... sorry, kid. I know it hasn't exactly been one long party for you, the past five years. You don't need my mess on top of it. It's just--a lot has changed. It's hard to describe, otherwise."

Verity makes a soft oof sound when Ratchet lifts her off the table single-single-handed. Nothing about being cradled by someone who was comprised almost entirely of hard edges and only somewhat malleable metal was exactly comfortable, but Verity felt more aafe here than anywhere else in the big wide universe. She was just glad the sound and fury of Ratchet's long overdue eruption didn't come with an explosive aftershock.

"Idiot." She breathed out, knocking her forehead gently against the side of Ratchet's arm. "You're the only one with millions of years of experience keeping the wayward misfits and suicidally optimistic alive and together."

Tarn and Pharma, even Prowl, were all just distant names unattached to any more nightmares right now. Verity smiled back and for once, actually relaxed.

"I already died once, remember?" It was true - she and Jimmy were clinically dead for a harrowing six minutes and would have stayed that way without Ratchet's intervention. Her suit was originally designed to insulat her from the hazards of an organic in orbital jump. "Not much else but time and universal apocalypse keeping me out of your hair. Someone has to make sure you don't burn out worrying about all of us."

"Yes, I remember, and I expressly forbid you to even consider doing it again," Ratchet says severely. "And we've had two of those apocalypses since leaving Luna-1, so I'll count myself lucky you're still around to keep me in line."

He watches her go limp in his grip, watches the tension ease on her face, and it makes him relax further too instead of tensing up, though his grip shifts to hold her a little more securely. He nudges her cheek with his thumb.

"And, I'll worry if I want. Like you could stop me, especially if you're going to go around picking fights with people five times your size and made of much denser and more solid materials."

"Usually they make sense." it's a blunt reply, but Verity would certainly recognize it as being oh-so-very Impactor. He might still have to learn about Moby Dick, but if it's anything like Megatron's writing, consider him already trying to get out of it. Although, the moment he says it, he's trying to figure out if there is a correlation between him and the word.

Nope.

But at that statement, he smirks, leaning back a little to get a better look at her. "You're alive, right? That's victory. At least...to a miner it is." Life was so touch and go, and with everyone at rock bottom, they had nothing left to lose. Winning meant seeing another day. Although any rebuttal was halted at the question to which his eyes shadow under the helm.

"Ngh." A grunt was telling enough. "Can't say I'm the star pupil here."

Usually. I think the guy has more machinations at hand than the Decepticons ever did. Made it all too easy for us to fall into one of Megatron's traps.

[ because Prowl had become such an ass it was hard to discern his true self from the one under Decepticon control. it's something Bee still feels bad about. he'd explain that, but Verity is gesturing to his chest.

Bumblebee doesn't have to look to understand. he doesn't want to talk about that either. not in length. how do you tell someone that you died? Verity has had enough loss in her life. she doesn't need to mourn another.

so he shrugs. ]

It's not missing. A former Decepticon decided to wear it instead.

[ three guesses as to who. ]

"Because of the-" Verity motioned to her right arm with her hand in the crude shape of something spiked, mirroring where Impactor's harpoon is - or, was because now it was a drill, "-you know what? You're right, nevermind."

Better to start Impactor off slow, Verity thought. Little House on the Prairie? Too bucolic. Maybe Goosebumps. Were it an option she'd march him through a Scholastic book fair. Make a regular egghead out of him yet. She almost forgot they were still having a conversation and her mind jolted back to the matter at hand. Heh - 'at hand.'

Anyway.

"You're not a miner anymore." Somewhere in the back of her head, Verity's thoughts are frantically reviewing every second of the last five or so years to figure out where exactly the script flipped that she was concerning herself with seeing that Megatron let alone Impactor were adjusting to their career change.

"Back on Earth at a minimum becoming a nurse most places is a two year stint of hitting the books. You'll get it."

Okay fine but he draws the line at Twilight, Verity. Even emotionally stunted robots are a better love story. But her words hit him, although not quite with the tone she probably meant. His eyes further hide themselves under his helm, as if he could make them disappear. "Yeah." That's all he's got for the moment, before he'll elaborate.

"Megatron, he's pretty bright, you know. Don't let him know I said that--if it's the last thing that bot needs, it's an ego." And he knew that especially with finding out about their future. Keep him humble, so to speak. Maybe it'd avoid...well, what everyone thought was inevitable.

But that's just as scary.

"He can be a doctor. Damn, he could be anything. Guy like that's got ideals, and a future."

Which leads him to his next, and worst part. "Some of us just didn't get that. Maybe some of us were just...meant to be a miner." He didn't believe in destiny, but he knew what he was good at. Fights and mining were the big two, and nothing seemed glamorous or something he could proudly show his best friend. Not without seeing that smile fade from the poet's face.

"I'm here because they want me here. And maybe a part of me DOES."

A pause.

"Doesn't mean I should be."

"You care about him." Verity said, "Of course you do - he's your friend."

An innocent enough comment, but not a factor she had known let alone scarcely considered until very recently. Privately, Verity knows she would have condoned more extreme measures at keeping in check. Thing was she knew nothing about him beyond some old poetry about the 'bot he used to be. It was disquieting to think what private hell Impactor fought through knowing his best friend who was there for him under Nova Point. And turning that hate and pain into one of the most feared, brutal Autobot in the long war.

"Hey," Verity pushes her legs over the side of the gurney until she's sitting closer to Impactor. "You want advice from someone that went from living on the streets; whose mantra was 'If I'm moving and useful - I'm alive, if not I'm dead' to a regular astro girl keeping pace with your lot out?"

She holds Impactor in a level gaze. It wasn't just Megatron who had a second chance.

"You're not going to do shit alone. And alone is what you're not right now."

"Someone's got to look out for him in this--the other world." There's a vague gesture, knowing full well that Megatron's making quite a future for himself here. But back there? He was shoved around like no one's business, his gentle demeanor more of a target there than something of praise.

And what that caused Megatron to turn into..and how maybe some of Impactor's advice in a dog-eat-dog world might have condemned his friend. How maybe that in proving that you had to fight, he'd encouraged Megatron to, in some way. The questions never ended with this one, and he wasn't one for questions. So for now he'd willingly block them.

But his eyes focus on her when she speaks up again, the yellow optics just as hardened by fighting, although much less traumatized than she remembers. It's hard to break eye contact with her with those words, and they're something he wants to believe.

"That's what he said too--Megatron, I mean." His head tilts back, optics now casting up to the ceiling. "Amazing how all options open up to me...and I can't think of a thing."

She just started - glitching.

[For lack of a better word in the robot vernacular.]

[Megatron looks over Ratchet's shoulder, concerned, but careful not to get in the way.]

She'd drank some water a few moments prior - but this is the first time it resulted in this.

I fainted.

[ Her throat was tight, she felt like she was trying to talk while someone was half-heartedly attempting to strangle her.

Then she looks down and notices there is a significant distance between her feet and ground, and begins to pieces together those dizzying moments where Ratchet plucked her off the ground. Something about Megatron clicked. Eyes narrowing to take in the bewildering sight of Megatron who, if human, would be looking pale and fit to pass out himself. ]

I fainted right?

I can never tell if we're insulting or complimenting him.

[ Because Prowl. ]

What?

[ She leaned forward as if taking a closer look would suss out exactly what had happened, and coming up short. ]

A former Decepti- [ And then it clicked. ]

You've kidding me. [ Her voice was thin somewhere between disbelief and outrage on Bumblebee's behalf. ] Which Megatron just up and decided that was an okay thing to do? My nurse, or the bigger one that quit the field? Because if the former even I could probably twist his arm to cough it up.

This is bullshit. Those things can't be hard to find.

No, you had a seizure and then you fainted.

[Ratchet's voice is sharp, but he still holds Verity carefully as he balances on one crutch, his remaining keg aching and a delayed wash of fear dragging through him as he cradles her.]

The water didn't cause it, it was the head trauma. She'll need to be monitored more closely in case it happens again--I'll let June know what happened.

"Hmpf. And I'm the one who needs to be watched?" Verity pulls a face - touched when Ratchet held her but as her default setting was prickly she was like a cat pretending it didn't appreciate the affection.

"Put me down - I'm not a little kid that needs a boost every time it has a tantrum." Verity was in higher spirits when she said that, although her argument was somewhat dampened by how she squirmed out of his arms much like an agitated child. And, if she really wanted to think too long about the ludicrous lifespan of Cybertronians, she was a child. At least with Ratchet the age disparity didn't feel like he was talking down to her.

Joints pop as she stretches her arms up after she settles back on the desk, mindful of how she sits on her still healing ankle if just for Ratchet's sake.

"Optimus alluded to as much, but I can always just jack the details from after-action reviews with sloppy encryption. And speaking of worrying..."

Verity looks down at Ratchet's leg - or rather, the lack there of, then back him. Then back at his leg and back at him again. The comment on if and when he would see to his leg's repairs non verbalised but transparent.

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Page 4 of 5

step one: stop fighting robots

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