robothell | if you pray to god for rain, don't you complain about the lightning

Entry tags:

ratchet | asafepairofhands

if you pray to god for rain, don't you complain about the lightning

Who: Ratchet and YOU and also whoever else wants to set up threads in here
What: Ratchet's limping around on crutches, feel free to put yourself in the line of fire
Where: Red Alert's clinic
When: A little while after Drift is conscious
Warnings: YELLING? yelling probably

Well, it had been a few days and nobody had nearly died again so Ratchet starts to let himself relax a little.

Not much, mind--Drift and Nautica are still bedridden, if not critical, and there are people in and out all the time. This is completely ignoring the fact that Pharma and Tarn are wandering around out there somewhere, probably terrorizing the general populace or maiming things or doing whatever else psychotic killers do in their clearly abundant free time. Ratchet has no such luxury, and he works, maintaining the patients he already has on top of trying to handle anyone else who comes in the door. He's just not necessarily pleasant about it.

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There's a bug running about the clinic - no wait, it's just a really small robot, come to investigate what's going on in here, since it has such frequent activity!

Don't worry, Ratchet, this one isn't in need of repair. Unless someone steps on him. Then Spy Shot would probably be a bit beyond repair.

Ratchet doesn't notice him for a bit--he's finally letting himself sit for a few minutes, sorting through the motley assortment of supplies they'd managed to find and setting aside things that are useable. He looks down when he registers something else in the room, going very still.

"Can I help you?" he asks, dry and guarded but polite.

Val had gotten her more anti-social projects--which was to say weaponry--to the point where she was satisfied with her progress, so now she felt at liberty to turn her attention to things she had real interest in, like Cybertronian anatomy and physiology. Megatron had been useful enough, but he was just an intelligent lay...mech. It was time to visit the clinic and consult some domain specialists.

She'd programmed the circuitry in her bodysuit to talk to the city's giant doors, so now she could do things like mime palming the switch and have it actually work. The clinic door obligingly slid aside for her, and the little human in black and glowing green walked into the clinic, alert to but not worried about the possibility of being stepped on. She had a force field generator for that.

"Hello?" Val glanced around the room, gaze flicking quickly across everything yet missing nothing. Looked like it had been a busy few days on the medical front.

"Valeria," Ratchet says, twisting to look at her and... pausing, briefly, an extremely mild expression crossing his face. He hefts himself on his crutches and turns around properly, taking in the suit and leaning slightly to one side, considering.

"You appear to have been busy."

"Not as busy as you." Val looked pointedly at where his leg wasn't, then back up to his face. "You okay?" she asked with genuine concern.

Ratchet's optics flicker and his mouth twitches up at one corner, letting go of one of the crutch handles to flip a palm out in a releasing gesture.

"Don't have much choice but to be, do I?" he says, his voice dry. "It doesn't hurt or anything, though." From her angle, she probably has a better view than most of the hastily patched and soldered lines, repairs he'd done himself. "You seem to be doing all right for yourself, by comparison."

After her conversation with Megatron, June's taken to exploring the clinic a bit more, hoping to learn something she might be able to use -- or occupy her time, at least, until she hears from Megatron again. The other Megatron. The one who's supposed to be taking care of Tarn.

She knows that Ratchet's working here, figures he must be in charge -- but June doesn't imagine it's the Ratchet she knows. She really hasn't encountered any different versions of people she knows here except for Optimus and Megatron -- and while Megatron is radically different from what she's used to, and Optimus has his differences too, but he's strangely familiar. June has no idea what to expect of whichever Ratchet this is.

June looks up and sees a one-legged Autobot limping her away, and although it's far from the same face, there's something distantly familiar about it, and June recognizes the medic's red and white, and while he might be missing a leg, he definitely works here.

"I'm sorry -- are you Ratchet?"

"I don't have any four million year grudge matches going on," Val said with a shrug. "The worst thing you guys do to me is underestimate me." Which was totally fine by her. More room to work unimpeded, mua ha ha and other noises of Machiavellian satisfaction.

"Anyway, I'll fab you up a new leg, but it's kinda low on my priority list, since it's not a life-threatening injury." She pulled her datapad out from under her arm--still no augmented reality controls, speaking of priority lists--and made a note to that effect.

If Ratchet's work takes him out the back door, he's going to find a bit of a surprise.

Well, a big surprise.

A very big, green and white surprise, lying stretched out on the opposite side of the road on a pile of rubble. Sixshot had been here a while already and seemed about ready to doze off again.

Admittedly, he had originally avoided most of these parts, ridden with Autobots as they were. But his aimless wanderings had taken him close to the clinic today and curiosity and boredom got the better of him. He hadn't seen First Aid since that day at the crater and there was a scent here that he suspected belonged to the young Megatron that Tarn had spoken of.

And Ratchet, of course, was here. It's been a while, hasn't it?

Ratchet stops, his optics narrowing.

"I am," he says, looking curious as he clunks over to the counter she's standing on, a respectful distance away. The organics stuck here probably felt dwarfed enough--no need to loom. "Have we met?"

Ratchet does go outside to set a pile of unusable parts and tools by the door, and stops when he sees Sixshot there, staring for a long, horrible second. He backs up a step, managing not to trip on the broken ground in his crutches, before he gathers his bearings and straightens up, his jaw clenching, and just turns around and heads for the door again. If Sixshot wasn't tearing the clinic apart, Ratchet isn't going to deal with it just now.

The sound of someone shuffling out of the clinic rouses Sixshot somewhat. He relights his optics in time to see Ratchet's horrified expression before the medic regains his composure and starts heading back in.

There's the quietest little chuff of amusement from behind Ratchet.

Well. A very brief reunion then.

Ratchet stops and drags in a slow, hissing vent of air at that laugh, keeping careful hold on his rapidly fraying temper--but despite the initial, instinctive flash, he finds himself strangely unafraid. He shifts on his crutches for a moment, then turns back around, his jaw set.

"Can I help you with something?" he says irritably--then shifts, optics flicking over Sixshot's frame. "Are you injured?"

He's been spotted! Not that he was trying not to be spotted, he's just... very small. He turns his attention to Ratchet, and answers succinctly, "No."

Then he waves in greeting, and says, "Hello."

Not that he was maintaining them by himself, of course, as Red Alert was there too. Somehow she's managed to avoid being a part of the worst of the drama, and instead focused on keeping her head down and her patients alive. Considering how few of them there were, she wasn't entirely surprised that her medical clinic saw so much use.

"Have you slept?" She asked, her voice as curt and cold as usual as she glanced Ratchet over.

"Enough," Ratchet replies, nodding. He feels a little guilty--he's grown accustomed to maintaining a medibay almost by himself, with First Aid's habitual moping and Ambulon's... absence. Having another medic constantly present is throwing him a little, but the more he works with Red Alert the more he likes her, and her no-nonsense attitude is more refreshing than it is anything else. He doesn't stop cleaning the tools he's working on. "Have you run into Pharma yet? I figure I should warn you."

"I only came to visit." Well. Kind of. Sixshot's definition of 'visit' seemed to be a little off as he's waiting in the back of a clinic instead of actually... visiting. Not that the latter would be very well received.

Ratchet will note that there is a fading black mark burnt into Sixshot's right shoulder, but it was superficial at worst. Most of the burn damage seemed to have been taken care of with Sixshot's own self repairs.

Speaking of injuries however, the Sixer turns his attention to Ratchet's missing leg. "Tarn?"

Ratchet's lips peel back from his teeth in something that only bears passing resemblance to a smile.

"However did you guess?" he asks sweetly. "Yeah, he seems to be making the rounds--I'm not the only one he's roughed up, and I got off light." He nods to Sixshot's shoulder. "Who was dumb enough to try to do that to you?"

Likewise, Red Alert approved of Ratchet's obvious medical skill and attitude. She even admired his ability to care about the patients, something she was not so good at. Bedside manners was never a top concern for her. It was very lucky for her that he was here.

"Pharma? I don't know anyone by that name. Someone I should be concerned about, I assume?"

A medic, she figures, with a name like that.

"Tarn." Sixshot's own teeth flash in a strange beastial expression of amusement. "He loses his head a bit when he's being temperamental."

In this instance, it was Tarn who got off light, really.

"He's trying to punish Megatron by ruining the lot of you." The giant death wolf dims his optics again, seemingly ready to doze off once more. "How futile."

"Yeah. Used to be, anyway." Ratchet snorts, looking away. "We went to school together. I--"

He stops, pauses, struggles for a moment, shakes his head.

"Look, I won't get into all the gory details, but he's killed patients since then. A lot of them. I don't know if he'll come sniffing around, but he's bad news. I wanted to let you know before you found out the hard way. ...he killed a colleague recently, one he'd worked with for years, and left him for me to try and fix. He's not pleasant."

Overcoming depression was a huge hurdle, even when things were to be done. Seeing Trailcutter, alive and whole, had helped somewhat, but First Aid still was struggling to find his motivation when his head was full of his failures and the ghosts of all those who he couldn't save. For the most part, he just tried to keep out of Ratchet and Red Alert's way.

Even laying around recharging gets old eventually though, and First Aid eventually forces himself to participate in some semblance of usefulness. The clinic is filling up with more and more injured by the day.

He's gathering up trash to bring out when he bumps into Ratchet. He doesn't say anything, and instead First Aid just stares with disdain across the room at the crutch and the medic's missing leg. Stupid. So stupid.

"Hello," Ratchet says, shifting on his crutches and looking entertained. "What brings you here, then? Usually you don't find people hanging out in a medical facility for fun."

"I'll figure something out," Ratchet says, shifting on his crutches. "I'm definitely not the most critical patient in here. And we're working on bringing our equipment online. I'd say to worry about yourself and the other organics here, first, but you seem to have things mostly covered."

"Considering the fact that I sincerely doubt that Megatron gives a single damn about any of us, yeah, that doesn't sound like a particularly airtight plan," Ratchet says, his anger mounting steadily. "Why the hell is he still conscious and walking around, in that case?"

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