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War Tales

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What the frag is going on?” Ratchet’s demand silenced the medbay as every helm turned to regard the CMO. And this is why he didn’t like leaving his medbay for large periods of time; something always went wrong while he was away.

“We were just doing our job and this lunatic goes absolutely insane.” “He just attacked us.” “You didn’t say you had any violent patients.”

The voices overlapped as Ratchet strode across his domain. “You must have done som... slag.” He froze as he realised who was laid out on one of his berths.

“From the moment you walked in, report.” He said as he glared at the medics from the units and battalions passing through Iacon’s central base. Slaggers did nothing but clutter up his medbay, he’d be glad when they had moved on to their next post and Hoist was back from his assignment.

“Well, he asked for you, but we can deal with processor glitches so we offered to take a look into his coding and that’s when he tried to attack us. We sedated him before he killed us.”

“Did you not read the report before you tried to treat him, or am I wasting my time keeping my medical logs up to date?” For those well versed in ‘Ratchet’ speak, now was the time to be running. “Never mind. Get out.”

He allowed a brief smirk to cross his features as all three of them scrambled for the exit.

Turning back to the still form of Red Alert he huffed in resignation. This was not going to be fun.

He unhooked the restraints that had been looped around his limbs, awakening to that wouldn’t help. His scans showed that the sedative had been isolated by his system and was being filtered out of his energon, in fact, he should be returning to his senses around now.

But this wasn’t the first time Red had ended up in his medbay like this and probably wouldn’t be the last. He was going to have to draw Red out of his own processor. If they had just read the report...

He pulled a stool over to the berthside and made himself comfortable as he pinged the door to close and lock and sent out a basewide notice to stay away unless spark extinguishing is imminent.

‘Just offered to look at his code,’ indeed, perfect thing to say to a mech who is terrified of medics. It had taken Red long enough to even sit with them outside of medbay, let alone consent to be treated without completely glitching. But at least Hoist and Aid know well enough to call for help rather than send him into a panic.

He unravelled his datacable and ran a hand round Red’s neck, finding the hidden medical port with an ease of long practice. Pausing he took a moment to set an automated message in the medical logs, just in case, before pushing the connector in.

He mentally stumbled as the processor he was connecting to had stronger than average firewalls than the majority of mechs. And this was only the outer layer.

It was a good thing this wasn’t the first time he had done this, as it meant he was expecting the coding which attempted to insert itself into his with malicious intent. There was a reason even Soundwave stayed out of Red’s mind.

The first firewall dropped as he fought his way through, glad of the long ago classes when he was training that had taught ways to bypass firewalls known only to medics and hackers.

A pity that Red was an expert hacker.

Despite the gravity of the situation Ratchet felt a brief moment of excitement. It was a pity Red was not one to engage in strategy games, for he had a quick mind with a flexibility even Prowl was lacking.

“Out!” The glyphs seemed to appear amongst the coding as another firewall dropped. Red was aware of his presence. He had withdrawn into his own personality programming, better to protect himself and the coding for his core systems.

The next barrier dropped far too early, removed from within rather than disabled by Ratchet as Red realised that his mind was being invaded by a mech skilled enough to navigate even his defences.

“Who?” The question was accompanied by a quick mental probe, lashing out at Ratchet’s processor, withdrawing abruptly when he ran into Ratchet’s own firewalls.

Firewalls which included the glyphs denoting Ratchet as a medic. Usually they reassured mechs as they realised that Ratchet was not a threat. That he was trying to help.

It was not in any way reassuring to a mech who hated and feared medics for exactly this reason; their ability to get into a mechs processor, to change coding and protocols without any warning, without any consent.

“Get out, get out, GET OUT!” Ratchet strengthened his own firewalls as Red Alert lashed out at him, trying to break through his defences, to make Ratchet withdraw to protect himself.

But that wouldn’t help, as Red would withdraw into his own mind again as soon as Ratchet left. No. he needed to force Red to realise that the only way he was leaving was if Red separated the data cables, manually ejecting Ratchet from his processor. To do that he needed to be online and aware.

Ratchet had to give Red Alert credit for being able to go from buried in his processor to online in only a few seconds. He barely had time to react to being unlinked as Red ripped the connection out of his dataport with a feral snarl as he hurled himself at the medic, his cannon already charging as the two mechs hit the floor in a clanging of metal limbs. Ratchet hissed in pain as his helm slammed into the ground, the muzzle of the cannon being jammed under his chin not a second later.

“Ratchet?” Red sounded confused as he moved the cannon and scrambled to his feet, his optics darting around the empty medbay.

“I sent them away.” Ratchet said, correctly guessing who Red was looking for as he probed the dent in the back of his helm.

“I’m sorry?” Red Alert said as he offered a hand to Ratchet.

“S’okay Red. No harm done.” He flicked his scanners over the mech, glad that he appeared to be running normally. “Go on, you’re fine.” He waited till Red Alert had left the medbay before sitting down heavily on a berth, rubbing at the paint at his neck that had melted with the heat of the cannon.

It could have been worse. Last time he had ended up making use of one of his own berths while Hoist patched him up.

A dented helm and ruined paintjob were a small price to pay.

Chapter Text

"That's not good." Ratchet: master of stating the obvious.

"No, I would say it is not." I have to agree as he holds his hand up, energon staining his fingers a faint pink. It is at this point that I am so glad to have battle protocols running and the emotional impact of having the medic slowly bleeding out has been tuned down from a hysterical 'oh frag, oh frag, oh frag, what do I do?' to a 'I should probably patch that up.'

And from the detached expression I'd say Ratchet's also still running under battle conditions. Either that or the rumours that the Decepticons seem to pass around about him being a merciless spark extinguisher with no emotions except rage is actually true. And how that one got started I have no idea, but it still makes us all laugh whenever captured decepticons plead to have Hoist see to them rather than Ratchet.

"You're going to have to tell me what to do." The faint whirr of his systems is the only thing to respond and I don't need to look up to realise that he's slipped into stasis.

Peering into his side I have to make several grabs for the two ends of energon tubes that I can see, pulling them back together and then winding emergency binding from my small medical kit around it. I have no idea how Ratchet does this all the time. Processed energon is foul stuff, sticky and slimy at the same time, and with a faint sickly stench that makes the tanks heave.

When we get back to safety I'll be having a word with him about throwing himself over his patients. While I understand the reasoning, next time I will suggest that he rolls us away from the missile rather than him simply bracing for impact.

Slagging self sacrificing medic, leaving me to play doctor. Peering into his side again I can only hope he won't mind if he ends up with a few crossed wires.

Chapter Text

"What did we do to deserve this?" Because really, as far as I know, I'd done nothing to warrant being put on meet and greet duty. Nor, as far as I know, has Jazz, who is looing just as bored as I am as we wait for the shuttle to arrive.

"Finally." Jazz muttered as he straightened, his gaze unerringly fixed on a distant point in the sky. It took a while for the shuttle to come close enough for me to make it out as I got up off the crate I had been sitting on.

Jazz Waited till the boarding ramp had touched down and three mechs had started down the ramp before he launched into his welcome to Iacon spiel. Occasionally he gets to the end before any of the new arrivals asks questions, usually he gets interrupted half way through. Pit, Smokescreen takes bets on how soon into the greeting he gets.

But I don't think he had odds down for being literally swept off his feet by one of them and being rather thoroughly groped.

Jazz to his credit didn't do anything other than give a startled squark of static before obviously deciding that the greeting wasn't important and starting to give as good as he was recieving.

No, Smokescreen definitely hadn't had 'groped and overloaded by new arrival after only two sentences' on his books.

And the other two mechs didn't seem overly concerned by their companions behavior, the green and bronze one clearly asking for credits which the grey mech with strange flashing audial protrusions handed over with a resigned clatter of armour plates.

"Uhhhm?" Was all I managed as the mech levered himself off Jazz and turned to me, leaving the smaller mech as a puddle of happily purring metal.

"What?" The red and white mech asked as he buffed out a black streak from one thigh.

"Do you always do that to mechs you've never met?" I wasn't sure whether I wanted the answer to be positve or negative as his face finally filled with comprehension.

"Oh. No, don't worry. We know each other."

Chapter Text

Oh. Slag. Yes. Was about the only coherent thought Jazz's processor managed to come up with as he rolled off the berth he had been recharging on and crept over to the medic. The very much offline and deeply recharging medic.

A chance like this would probably never come up again.

This would require all his stealth abilities to complete.

First, the medic needed to be arranged. Jazz delicately straightened out the curled up form, pausing whenever there was a particularly long or deep vent from the prone form.

Second, he had to attach the restraints without waking the medic. Ankles and thighs were easiest, and then the wrists. So near to the extremely sensitive hands was the most likely way to wake him up.

Indeed the thrum of rousing systems was growing as he finished with the second wrist.

Humming an old Cybertronian tune Jazz calmly hacked into the door and locked it.

“Lights, forty percent.” He grinned as they dimmed, the growing blue glow on the berth becoming more visible. “Morning Ratchet.” He said cheerily as the optics snapped up to focus on him.

“Jazz. I see the stunning effect has worn off.” Ratchet said before trying to sit up.

Trying being the operative word.

Jazz cackled gleefully as the medic realised exactly what was going on. He trailed one hand along a pale white thigh, playing with the band wrapped around it as Ratchet glared.

Oh, the medic wouldn't be upset about the proposition, such as it was, to interface, no, he was annoyed that he had been caught in the same trap that he had used on Jazz far too many times.

“Relax, Doctor Jazz is here to give you a full check up.”

Ratchet didn't answer, his helm thudding back onto the woven mesh pillow. “Slag it all, you fragged up shard of a rusted motherboard.” The cursing didn't stop the medic's fans from roaring online as Jazz hopped up to straddle his frame, fingers roaming in a very unprofessional manner for a so called doctor.