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[quantumechanic]

Who: Nautica and whoever is not going to start shit
Where: the clinic
When: after she gets hurled into a wall (thx tfp megatron) and before she's off the robot drugs
What: drugged-up Nautica is even friendlier than regular Nautica
Warnings: shameless fluff?

A docile patient, particularly in comparison to the other people around here likely to end up in the clinic, Nautica was curled up on her side in a berth, uncomplaining despite the fresh welds spidering silver across her back and impeller housings. The circuit dampers keeping those welds from bothering her might have been slightly miscalibrated--she was a small mech, and didn't have a tolerance built up from a lifetime of hospital stays over the course of an unending war. It was hardly the medics' fault they'd erred on the high side, especially considering the scavenged supplies they had to work with.

It did mean, however, that she was feeling no pain, either literally or in the colloquial sense, and for the moment was quite involved in watching her fingers as she repeatedly flexed them into claws or drummed them somewhat less than rhythmically on the edge of the slab. Hands were so complicated.

Comments

[luckyfaceplate]

Optimus had only just gotten back, and his original intent was to see Ratchet. With...things the way they were (everyone was pretty scattered, and considering what the planet had told him, that was worrying), he trusted Ratchet to be the most honest with him on what exactly went on. Lo and behold, when he walks in, he sees...quite a number of people in the medical bay. Okay...that certainly wasn't a good sign.

"You've been busy." Whether or not that was to the patients themselves or Ratchet was unclear. And probably for the best. His eyes scan, seeing familiar and relatively new faces....before resting on Nautica.

He knew that Nautica's forte wasn't exactly fighting, so he can assume that's how the injury happened. Not exactly what he wanted for an ambassador of Caminus, that's for sure. He strides over, keeping himself as professional as possible as he looks at her lying on the bed, staring at her fingers.

...Okay. Where does he go from here.

"It seems you hit some bad luck. Or rather, bad luck hit you."

SMALL TALK. HE'S TRYING.

[quantumechanic]

Nautica caught his hand when Trailcutter made the mistake of bringing it close enough, then realized she didn't have any plans after that. Devoting several seconds of deep thought to the problem of what to do with her prize, she reached a decision and started trying to thread her fingers between his so she could ask him if he was chirolingual. That project ended abruptly at the revelation she was getting a present.

She loved presents.

"Really? What?" Nautica tried to drag him closer by the hand she was still holding, which was not a very effective tactic for someone her size to use on Trailcutter.

[gimmicky]

Thankfully that's a subject change, because Trailcutter wouldn't know the first thing about magical hand speak. Although, with her drastic tug of his arm, he nearly topples forward. But thankfully with being sober comes quicker reflexes, and his magnawheels instantly activate to keep him grounded.

Flattening Nautica like a pancake was not on his to-do list.

"Ah!! Well...it's not much."

He didn't want her to get her hopes up. Because...well, she'd probably be disappointed. He couldn't find much in the wreckage, but he'd certainly looked. And when he reaches into his plating just under his windshield chest...

He pulls out a little miniature pocket dictionary datapad. The screen was slightly cracked, and it was the same size as a regular pocket dictionary in proportion.

"You like reading and...well, this was the most-intact one I could find."

[quantumechanic]

Not everyone has hands. Check your non-empurata privilege, Rodimus.

"I've had optics for a few million years, too, and I'm still fascinated by the mechanics of vision." Nautica tried to point at one of hers for emphasis, misjudged the distance, and poked herself in the optic with a clink. No harm done, but she looked terribly offended for a moment before she realized she had no one to blame but herself.

[quantumechanic]

Megatron totally started it.

"No, Megatron works here. He's gonna be a doctor." That was a generous assessment of how far the young Megatron would get in medic training, but Nautica was nothing if not an optimist.

[quantumechanic]

Nautica waggled her fingers at Optimus in a sloppy wave. At the best of times, it wasn't a sure bet she'd notice someone feeling awkward. She certainly wasn't going to pick up on it now.

"It depends on your frame of reference," she said, sounding for a moment a lot like Perceptor, "but setting the wall as the static frame and me as the moving body makes the math a lot easier."

More things she wasn't going to pick up on: other people's jokes.

[quantumechanic]

"You got me a book!" Even in her impaired state, a split-second glance at the datapad was enough for her to read the title and reveal it wasn't a very interesting book. Didn't matter. Pushing herself up on an elbow, Nautica snatched it from Trailcutter's hand and flipped through the first few pages.

Yup, that sure was a dictionary in which she probably already knew every word, but her delighted smile didn't dim. Granted, the drugs were fueling it a bit, but as far as Nautica was concerned, it was the thought that mattered. (Unless you were Brainstorm, in which case not building horror weapons into her wrench was what mattered.)

"Thank you, Trailcutter!" With a concerted push, she got herself sitting fully upright--probably not the smartest idea in her current condition, but damn the torpedoes etc.--and threw her arms around his neck in an enthusiastic but not very coordinated hug. "That was so sweet of you."

[towardspeace]

Megatron looks surprised, at first, to see her here, and then stern – not angry per se, but it's the look of someone who anticipates having to give someone a talking-to over what he's being presented with. He's still bearing the marks of his own run-in with Tarn, but the worst of it's been repaired by now; he just looks a little rough around the edges. No painkillers for him, though.

"Nautica." He looks down at her, frowning. "What happened?"

[quantumechanic]

For once, it wasn't Tarn's fault.

"Hi, Captain!" Granted, absurd good cheer was normal for Nautica, but given the circumstances, it didn't take Nightbeat to figure out that powerful painkillers were involved. She propped herself up on one elbow and waved at him. Then she remembered he'd asked a question, though it took her a second to also remember what that question had been.

"I got thrown into a wall." Not really a useful status report, but she was trying.

[towardspeace]

Good grief, he manages not to say, with no small amount of effort.

"I see." He is really, really glad that he just put Tarn in the hospital. He pauses thoughtfully. "And what... led to you being thrown into a wall?"

[quantumechanic]

"I really, honestly don't know," Nautica said, exasperated, but not at him. Between the head injury and her general tendency to miss social cues, the entire encounter with the other Megatron was a jumbled mess in her memory.

[towardspeace]

Megatron frowns. He pulls up a chair, and sits down, his hands clasped in front of him. "Do you remember where this was?"

[quantumechanic]

With more painstaking effort than was usually required, Nautica finished pushing herself upright. Those new welds hadn't seen much action yet. She sat on the edge of the berth, feet dangling and attention focused on evaluating whether being vertical was a good idea.

Well, the world wasn't swimming, so, progress, and on to bigger things, like answering Megatron's question. That much she could remember, at least. "It was at one of the power substations I was repairing. A few blocks south of the forum."

[planate]

So many Megatrons, how many are there. Pipes only knows of two.

"Well, it's better than trying to kill everyone, I suppose..."

[quantumechanic]

Nautica knew three, and had been attacked by two of them. Gosh.

"He only wants to kill Sentinel, mostly." She didn't exactly approve, but Sentinel was pretty unpleasant. Plus there was that whole pre-war crushingly unjust social order he'd been at the top of.

[gimmicky]

He didn't expect such a reaction. Even he knew it was a boring book--then again, his frame of reference on 'boring' was much more broad than hers. His visor lights up slightly as she flips through it, the smile on her face giving him the slightest bit of hope.

Yes, Trailcutter. You did good.

But then her arms go around her, and he can feel himself heat up from being flustered. What should he do? Return it? That'd be the polite thing to do, yes. Those arms settle around her, pulling her into the gentlest of bear hugs he can muster.

First Aid, Rodimus, now Nautica. Maybe he'd been too drunk to realize just how well he was treated before now. But if this is what it was like, maybe life wasn't so bad after all.

"Heh, you're welcome. I promise, I'll bring something better next time. ....Not that I want you in the medibay again! Just...you know."

He pulls away to look at her, smiling apologetically.

"I'm not good at this, so....good thing you're not going to remember any of it."

[planate]

Fuckin' Megatrons, man.

"I thought he already did..." Isn't that the guy who was before Zeta and super duper dead???

[towardspeace]

"Hm," says Megatron, tapping his chin with his thumb. "What about when?"

[quantumechanic]

Implying the timelines make any sense Harry you're killing me.

"I don't...properly know how long I've been in the medibay." Nautica reached up to rub the back of her neck sheepishly, but then the welds tugged and she thought better of it, letting her hand fall back into her lap with a clank. "A few days at least. First Aid would know."

[towardspeace]

Ha Ha Ha Ha :')

He nods thoughtfully, a deep frown still in place. "And you don't know who attacked you." He can only assume it must indeed have been Tarn, though.

[quantumechanic]

"Oh, no." Nautica shook her head vigorously to correct the misconception. "It was Megatron."

Wait, that sounded accusatory. Well, it did inside her head, though the inside of Nautica's head wasn't exactly the most reliable when it came to reading a room. Better not to take chances. "Uh. Not you, obviously. Or the cute one." Ha ha she just called pre-war Megatron cute that sure was a thing that happened. She gestured to her shoulder. "The spiky one."

[quantumechanic]

"I thought so too, but then I met Sentinel in the crater." And he was a jerk about her altmode, but it had been weeks and she was over it. She shrugged. "He's okay, I guess. I can see why Megatron hates him, though." A ringing endorsement of Sentinel Prime, there, Nauts.

"Oh, gosh!" she said suddenly as something occurred to her. "I have to give him his gun back."

[towardspeace]

Megatron sits up in surprise. He still hasn't met the 'spiky one', just heard about him from the others... Unless Nautica means Megatronus, which he rather doubts. He should have anticipated he'd be trouble – had assumed he would be, sooner or later, but he'd been anticipating something more calculated than this.

He frowns. There's a little pause.

"... The cute one."

[quantumechanic]

"Your younger self is adorable!" Guileless as she was, Nautica would likely still have informed him of this sentiment without being all fucked up on robot drugs, but she would have been less enthusiastic about it.

"Don't worry, I like you, too." She leaned in to pat his hand reassuringly. Because clearly that was the problem here.

[towardspeace]

He draws his hand away a little, looking kind of baffled and slightly offended by where this conversation has ended up going.

"I sincerely hope you don't think I'm 'cute', Nautica."