robothell | [open] There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members...

Entry tags:

nautica | quantumechanic

[open] There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members...

Who: Nautica, various TFP Decepticons, anyone else
Where: Around the city
When: Anytime after people are more or less settled
What: The planet's only appropriately-scaled engineer fixes things, makes friends with Decepticons
Warnings: My tendency to technobabble but ~~probably no blood~~ nvm megatron threw her into a wall

Nautica was keeping busy. Cybertronians were tough species, sure, but even they needed to power up sometimes--oftentimes, in the case of certain mechs who couldn't seem to stop punching each other--and that energon from the crater, while blessedly plentiful, wasn't going to refine itself. The process was a little outside her area of expertise, but the theory was straightforward, and her phenomenal breadth of reading and memory (with the occasional call to Brainstorm or Shockwave to double check the finer points) were up to the challenge.

Between that and the various side trips to assist the less technically adept (or the more technically adept, in the case of Brainstorm's communications network project) she didn't have a lot of downtime--and Nautica was fine with that. She preferred not to think too much about the extremely depressing larger picture. Optimus and Megatron would want answers soon enough, but she didn't have any to give them, so she threw herself into doing what she could. She was easy to run into around the city, working on getting a small energon refining facility up and running, repairing vital infrastructure, or just making less vital infrastructure more livable. And certainly not worrying about never seeing her friends again.

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There. That was it. He'd finally made it through Nautica's obliviousness. Horror spreading across her face as understanding dawned, she took a step back, no serious precursor to escape but simply an unconscious retreat from the strange new awareness that she was in grave danger.

Her voice sounded distant in her own audio receptors as the universe contracted to consist solely of Megatron and the noise of her own fuel pump, suddenly so loud she would swear he must have been able to hear it too. "I...don't know. He--he doesn't seem to like any of us very much."

Edited (nitpicky word choice) 2015-01-26 22:29 (UTC)

Ah! Understanding at last! As enjoyable as this ride had been, he's rather glad that it's coming to an end. He laughed, finally leaving behind his light and civil tone. When his laughter finally died down, and the echoes faded around them, he took a couple steps closer and bent down until their faces were only a bare few feet apart. His shoulders were set and his hands were hovering on either side of her, fully ready to strike.

"I hope you understand what's going to happen next, Autobot." His brilliant red optics bore into hers. Madness lurked behind them, forever fighting to break free. "This is how it's meant to be. Autobot against Decepticon in a hopeless war that neither can truly win." He leaned in closer, his pointed teeth clashing uncomfortably close to her visor. "Remember that, Nautica."

Slowly now, he delicately reached over with his pointed fingers and almost gently wrapped his fingers around her neck. He straightened up and brought Nautica with him, the tips of her toes now several feet off the ground.

"Any last words? I would take advantage of my generosity if I were you."

More used to war-hardened soldiers than bookish engineers, Megatron was seriously overestimating Nautica's ability to form a coherent thought at the moment, much less verbalize it. She could barely follow what he was saying through her rising panic. Her wrench clattered to the ground as her hands shot up to claw at his wrist in a gesture both wholly reflexive and wholly ineffectual, her whole slight frame struggling against a grip she had no chance of breaking.

"It's not a question of his competence, but his character. Starscream is without question cunning, his plots have often brought success to the Decepticons under his command. But he does not serve from loyalty, or solidarity. Just as often has he acted against our Lord Megatron in an attempt to gain power. Starscream acts only to promote his own ends, he is selfish, and would turn on his comrades without a second thought if it would benefit him!"

Dreadwing's voice had been rising this whole time, gesturing widely and aggressively as he ranted. He'd spent most of his time in this wretched city ruminating on Starscream's numerous shortcomings, and Nautica had just made the mistake of giving him a reason to voice them.

"Starscream is no leader, he has no respect for his followers, those under his command are merely tools in his eyes! Under Starscream's command, my own brother met his end at the hands of the Autobots. But that was not enough, no! He used dark energon to raise my brother from the grave in a grotesque attempt to turn him into a mindless slave for his own twisted purpose. And now he's doomed to an endless wandering, a grotesque husk of the warrior he once was, robbed of even the most basic dignity!"

He turned, slamming the counter he'd been working on with both fists, aggression and grief and wrathful disillusionment gathered into one directionless act of rage. The resounding crash and the clatter of radios and scraps onto the floor was just enough to bring him back to the present moment. He slowly unclenched his fists, steeling himself against the surface in an attempt to regain his composure.

"No," he said with a breathless pause, the resignation of a passionate outburst having run it's course. "Starscream has no right to lead, and no right to live. I'll tear out his spark myself, and rejoice in doing so."

Nautica listened to the litany of Starscream's faults that she'd inadvertently provoked, eyes growing ever wider, then jumped at the noise as Dreadwing pounded on the counter.

It seemed like he'd needed to get that out.

"...Oh." She didn't approve of premeditated murder, but even Nautica had the sense not to say that in the face of Dreadwing's obvious wrath, and she let the silence stretch for an awkward moment as she tried to decide what she could say.

"I'm sorry about your brother." She couldn't imagine Windblade or Chromia dying, and it lent genuine empathy to her somewhat belated reply. Despite the fact Nautica was separated from them right now, they were still alive--her thoughts shied from the alternative--and not without the hope of reuniting. Losing either of them forever would be unbearable.

Well, that was. Sudden.

"Um, all right..." she said to his retreating back, uncertain of what had just happened. It didn't stop her from waving, though. "'Bye."

Well, he had expected something a little more than that. A heroically defiant speech at the very least. Megatron was hardly disappointed. It's been quite some time since any Autobot had looked at him like this. Those kind died pretty early on in their war.

But there was no time to waste. Megatron pulled his arm back, his movements exaggerated, and promptly threw Nautica into the wall with what looked like all of his strength. That was hardly the case, however, as Megatron could have done quite a bit more damage if he had wanted to, but doing anything permanent to her wasn't his intention. To follow up on his attack, he raised his fusion cannon and fired three shots into the wall above her head, deliberately missing her by inches.

"This has been a good talk Nautica." He chuckled as if he had just told a subtle and amusing joke, "I have places I need to be. Here's hoping we get a chance to... chat... again." Another burst of laughter, and then he was gone.

Lacking as she did the others' wartime armor upgrades, Nautica was lucky Megatron was only trying to cause chaos rather than an actual funeral. Her impellers hit first, the housings cracking along the transformation seams and driving into her back, but her scream at the sudden, sharp pain cut off when her momentum carried her helm backwards into the wall with a metallic thud. A blinding flash in her optics preceded the blackness that rushed in from the corners of her vision.

Awareness and agony returned with merciless speed, accompanied by the tang of fuel in her mouth, a dozen urgent diagnostic alerts competing for her dazed attention, and the unfamiliar sound of a fusion cannon firing. Metal from the wall, merely liquefied rather than vaporized by the heat at the edge of the blasts, spattered across her face, and she whimpered at this new source of pain.

Megatron seemed even bigger from the ground--how did she get on the ground?--and his voice echoed tinny and hollow over the roaring of energon in her audials. Stunned as its target was, his parting threat missed its mark, the words creating no meaning in her mind beyond the instinctive knowledge that her tormentor was still there.

And then he wasn't. That was one problem solved easily, since she'd had nothing to do with solving it, but her remaining ones weren't going anywhere as she lay slumped at the base of the wall in a haze of pain and shock. After an indeterminate period of staring somewhere in the vicinity of her knees, mind blank but for the pain, Nautica managed to pull together enough coherence to call Chromia, hoping the damage to her antenna wasn't bad enough to keep the call from going through.

The signal received no response for several long moments before she remembered her antenna wasn't the reason it was going unanswered. Suddenly feeling even more alone and afraid, Nautica heaved a shuddering sob and unwisely curled up on herself, the motion causing fresh spikes of pain to shoot through her. She gasped, and then coughed, energon leaking from her mouth. Dabbing at her lip with her fingertips, she stared at the pink stain, barely managing to cut off a groan in case that made things worse, too.

She would have to call someone else, she decided at last. Someone...on the crew? Yes, that seemed right. The Captain would know what to do. And he might well have, except, in her confusion, she called the wrong Megatron.

After what must have been fifteen minutes of nothing, the first thing that Nautica would hear is the roar of a tank engine and the crunching of gravel. Looks like her call, as hastily made as it was, made it through.

The deep indent in the wall and the fuel seeping from the engineer made Megatron's energon freeze in its lines as he shifts back into into root form. It takes a moment to swallow the flooding outrage at realizing she was attacked to the point of delirium.

A shadow falls on the Camien's frame as Megatron approaches, remembering his initial lesson in checking for vitals. He goes down on one knee and looks into her optics. Lacking any sort of medical scanning equipment in his body, he had to do this the low-tech way.

A light in his hand is shined into each optic, one after the other, to check their function.

"Nautica, can you hear me?"

Edited 2015-01-29 07:39 (UTC)

A vehicle passing was unremarkable--or would have been anywhere else, and Nautica couldn't exactly be considered oriented at the moment--so it was the sound of transformation that drew her attention from drifting wherever the pain took it. With visible effort and equally visible fear, she focused on the mech looming over her, flinching from but not protesting the bright light in her optics. She didn't want to get tossed around like so much debris again, not that compliance had helped the first time.

The clear concern in this Megatron's voice, so different from the other's false friendliness, made her relax and uncurl slightly, but her difficulty concentrating was obvious. Even a trainee would have no problem diagnosing a head injury.

"...Captain?" she finally decided. An understandable mistake--she was only off by four million years.

"Not quite," his touch is careful, almost nervous, as he physically checks her current and fuel line pressure at the wrist and other more exposed joints, trying to determine whether or not she was well enough to be moved, "But I'm going to get you to the medibay."

Megatron steps to Nautica's side to get a look at the damage to her impellers. The junctions that connected to her back looked badly damaged by the impact, and seemed to be where most of the energon was bleeding out of. Carrying her in bipedal mode would be a bad idea and would probably jostle them too much - not to mention it'd do a poor job of keeping her head still

"I need you to lay down on me when I change shape. On your stomach. Can you do that?"

Nautica looked at him, uncomprehending, while the instructions percolated down through the layers of mental fog making it so hard for her to think, but after a long moment the blank expression on her face gave way to trepidation. The idea of staying here did not appeal to her in the slights, but neither did the idea of moving.

Besides, there were other complications. "...Make a mess," she objected, holding up her pink-smeared fingers to illustrate her point. She didn't want to bleed all over his plating when he was being nice enough to give her a ride.

"It's fine. We can clean it later."

A bizarre point to make, but he figures mentioning it's more important for her to seek medical attention would receive the same confused stare.

Best placate the question and have her come with.

He shifts back into his vehicle mode, his profile lowering to about waist height. Not exactly an ambulance, but the flat surface of his tank mode should make do.

"Lay down - stomach first," he insists, hoping the instruction will make it through the delirium.

Nautica's priorities weren't always the best, and a concussion did not help with that tendency in the slightest. Still, despite the disorientation, she was an obliging sort, and the younger Megatron did speak with her commanding officer's voice, even if he couldn't yet manage the tone of implicit command four million years of faction leadership would teach him.

She reached up to pull herself to her feet using one of the protruding elements of his blocky altmode, gasping as the motion tugged at her wounds and expanded a few of the cracks. Barely had she gotten upright when the pain and a wave of vertigo conspired to bring her near to blacking out again, and she collapsed. Fortunately, she managed to do it forward onto Megatron, but her legs were still dragging on the ground.

"...Dizzy," she told his armor where her cheek was pressed up against it. He was warm.

Even if she was only doing so out of politeness, Nautica was the first person who had shown any sympathy for what became of Skyquake. Not that Dreadwing had explicitly expected it, but compared to the ease with which Megatron dismissed it as inconsequential he couldn't help but appreciate the gesture. Even if it was not easy to accept. He was silent for a few moments before responding.

"Yes," was his only reply, a caged agreement to the depressing reality of events.

He started collecting some of the electronic pieces he'd scattered, returning them to his pile of foraged scraps.

There's a little doubt at the decision after the clear gasps of pain from the engineer. But she makes it - mostly, and that was good enough to work with. He backs up, careful in maneuvering his alt mode so that the wall nudges Nautica up a little further along. Just enough for her feet not to be dragging into debris

Megatron's engine revs just underneath the armor as he pushes forward. The top of his alt mode wasn't much in terms of patient comfort, but it was very stable, even in the destroyed terrain of the decrepit city.

"You're going to be fine." Clambering onto what remains of the street, he picks up some speed over the flat ground.

Nautica didn't say anything for a while, but there was no question that she was still conscious, since she whimpered with every bump. There was the constant dull throb in her helm, and the pain of her damaged propellers flared up sharp and hot and radiated through her chest every time she moved, and it was all complicating the already taxing exercise of trying to figure out what was happening. Thinking felt like trying to move through the water in her root mode--everything pushed back against her and progress was agonizingly slow. She knew it should be easier than this, and her fingers scraped against Megatron's plating as she balled up her fists in frustration.

In the ruined maze of the city, signals like the one Nautica sent would usually die before reaching anyone. Signal interference was one of the main enemies, since while most of the tech was non-functioning, the EM fields they still produced swallowed up most communications.

So, First Aid had never gotten it. Lucky Megatron had.

It's mainly happenstance he was in the path that Megatron decided to take, searching for anything that may be useful to bring back to the medibay. Really, he never thought he'd ever be in a situation where he would be scavenging for supplies. He doesn't even really know where to begin, just aimlessly rustling through abandoned buildings.

The sound of Megatron rumbling through the streets draws him out, although cautiously. The whole situation still strikes him as all too familiar-- the image of Kaon, pressing Trailcutter's brain against the energon spattered wall of his forcefield in the ruins of the lecture theater, still raw and vivid in his mind.

He doesn't recognize the mech in altmode, but he does recognize the mech on top of him.

"Nautica?" he calls softly, stepping out into the street. He gets one look at the seep of pink over the tank's plates and his lines go cold. "I'm a doctor! What happened here?"

The large vehicle stops as Megatron spots the red-and-white of an Autobot medic's colors. He maneuvers himself to give First Aid clear view and reach to examine Nautica from a little under waist-height while she lay on the flat roof of his alt mode.

"It looks like she was thrown into a wall. She sustained a head injury and damaged the joints in her back."

Not the strangest thing to come out of Megatron's vocalizer, surely. Nonetheless, what he said appeared to be true, should he take a closer look to confirm the injury.

At the sound of her name spoken by a voice she recognized but couldn't quite place, Nautica lifted her head, working to focus her optics and with them her thoughts. Megatron's status report gave her enough time to work through the problem of identifying the newcomer, who wasn't Ratchet. Fortunately, 'not Ratchet' narrowed things down.

"First Aid..." she trailed off and laid her helm back down on Megatron's armor. Having it raised was not helping with the vertigo in the slightest. Granted, resting it in the sluggishly spreading pool of her own energon wasn't the greatest, either, but at least it didn't make things worse.

"All right, Captain," First Aid murmurs, getting up close to Megatron. He's so focused on Nautica he didn't even notice the slip.

He did recognize the voice, but he doesn't really recognize the mech. Not that it really matters-- he climbs up onto Megatron's roof as well and curls one of his hands around Nautica's own, trying to comfort.

"Don't move," he murmurs to her, looking her over while trying to keep her as still as possible. "You're losing quite a bit of energon."

There were a few things he can do. He could donate, but he had already donated some to the DJD member a few days ago. This would be worth it, though.

"You know where the clinic is?" he asks, the tankmech while he unfolds a diagnostic scanner from his chassis, holding it up over Nautica's frame.

First Aid wouldn't be the first one to make that mistake. At this point, there's no point in correcting it, really. As long as Nautica made it back to the medibay on time, he could be mistaken for his older self as many times as needed.

"I was on my way there."

The engine beneath them growls as Megatron accelerates again, treads crushing debris and smoothing out the bumps on the old road ahead of them. A few paces down, he broaches the question:

"How is she?"

Whatever manual readings he made would never be as accurate as a specialized scanner, so he was anxious to know.

Nautica was not doing well. She'd hit her head hard enough to black out and cause a concussion, and the force of impact with the wall had driven her impellers and their housings through her back and into her chest cavity, fortunately missing the spark chamber but unfortunately wreaking havoc around it.

"Think I hit my head," she told First Aid, already having forgotten that Megatron had just said the same thing. Her fingers, smeared pink with her own energon, curled weakly around First Aid's, but she made no other motions, not even to track the movement of the scanner with her optics.

Look okay maybe it was but it wasn't personal towards Dreadwing it was personal towards Skyquake and his stupid insubordinate corpse.

He seems to puff up with offense at her query, lip curling with mild disgust. "Defect? Primus no. I was assuming that given the dire circumstances in which we have all found ourselves, factions would be something of a non-issue."

Not that he's much for rubbing shoulders with Autobots, or particularly hopeful for the chance to make nice. He's just willing to do whatever it takes to save his own chassis.

Oh. This was terrible. First Aid doesn't say anything for a moment, just putting away the scanner so he can hold Nautica's hand tighter, giving it a good squeeze.

"She hit her head," he repeats, but his tone says that it's way worse than he's actually saying. Better not freak out Nautica. His voice had that underlying note of hurry.

He braces a hand over her to try and keep her a bit more still. Riding on the back of a tank wasn't exactly the smoothest of emergency recuse travels. He has to let go of her hand after a moment, fingers folding into various, tiny tools.

"I'm going to try and close some of the leaks. I may need to give you active energon if you keep up this loss rate."

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[open] There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members...

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