SOE - Season of Repair

Season of repair

The faint sound of a hummed melody echoed through the narrow corridors of the underground clinic, shattering the depressing silence of this more or less secret place. The hum was coming from a storage room where the tall, insecticon-like medic worked on his precious spare parts collection – polishing old armor plates and putting them in the right order. He finally found the time for that since the number of his patients had decreased the last orns. This change wasn't unwelcome, not after the last deca-orn of helping so many Tox-En victims. This time the Cons had really gone too far, and as always it was Crosscut who had to clean up the mess afterwards. Pit! He didn’t even have an assistant or a medical drone. The clinic got its patients by hearsay and whispered directions, it was not prepared to cope with hordes of injured streaming in at once.

Sorting through the shelves with the different spare parts, he realized how many of them had disappeared lately. He had completely run out of large-sized chest-plates and medium-sized servos. The same was true for the basic supplies, he wasn’t sure how many mechanomiles worth of wires he had replaced, coolant and hydraulic fluid desperately needed restocking, not to mention that the container with the energon for transfusions was nearly empty as well. It almost made him wish for some hostile intruders showing up who he could offline and take apart.

As soon as the thought crossed his processor, the perimeter alarm announced the arrival of new guests with its loud buzzing.

“It seems that Primus listens sometimes,” Crosscut mused aloud and walked to the control room to view the feed from the security cameras.

Seeing two familiar faceplates at his door was not what he had expected. The majority of his patients were never coming back after a treatment – they rather used to run the Pit out of here as soon as they were able to walk again. Crosscut couldn't blame them, the underground clinic did appear rather grim and suspicious to the outsider. He himself didn't mind the atmosphere at all. The place was safe and that was what was most important to him. And the fear factor actually helped to keep unwanted visitors away.

Those two, however, had decided to return, which almost made the doctor feel flattered. Almost... Judging by the fact that they brought a third femme with a Decepticon insignia with them, they probably had nowhere else to go.

From what he saw on his monitor, all three of them looked rather terrible – not only because of their injuries but also because they were smeared with that hideous, organic dirt from some distant planet again. The sight alone could give every neat-loving bot a spark attack. Crosscut let out a long exvent. Did they really have to wallow in the mud before coming here? For a moment he wondered whether they had done that on purpose. If so, they would have to start looking for a new medic.

oOo

It had taken the purple Cycleformer one look at Crosscut and she had tried to bolt. However the two tanks flanking her were holding her in vice like grips.
“Hello doc, three patients asking for medical treatment,” Vault declared and Crosscut wondered whether that was to calm their panicking captive or to reassure him of their intentions. If the former, it had failed spectacularly as the tiny Decepticon kept struggling against her restraints and screeched out:

“That thing is no medic! That’s an illegal hunter-class mining sentry!”

Despite all this time Crosscut still felt a pang of hurt at the reminder of his origins.

“I don’t care what he looks like! Fact is, that he is the only medic I know who might currently be willing to treat a Decepticon,” Vault informed her sharply.

“And in my opinion he really shouldn’t. You would be more useful as spare parts, Con.”

Crosscut almost shuddered upon hearing that. Recycling an offlined opponent was one thing but a living prisoner?  

“Ah a..about that…”

His stuttered reply was cut off by the other tankformer:

“That won’t be necessary. We actually brought two deactivated frames with us and if that’s not enough for payment, there is a whole cargo hold full of other junk for you to sort through, too.”

That sounded almost too good to be true, he nodded his agreement. But at the same time it became clear to him that there were more than just physical damages to repair. He had only met the two tankformers briefly and didn’t know the third femme at all, however he could already tell that the Con was acting odd, Temper seemed surprisingly aggressive and grumpy while Vault tried to control and defuse the whole situation alone since who knew how long. It was obvious that something ugly had happened between the three of them. And as a medic it was his duty to help them to cope with it. Usually dealing with the emotional problems of his patients was not his strong side. After the last decaorn however…

“Vault, why don’t you take that Decepticon to the decontamination shower? Give her and yourself a good scrub, will you? You know the procedure.”

The black tankformer nodded and despite a nasty limp in her leg she more carried than dragged her prisoner out of the operating room.

Crosscut heard the Con-femme protesting all the way: “Put me down, I didn’t agree to this! I don’t need any showers! … What did he just call you?” – And so on.
“Why did you send them in there together? That shower room is tiny even for Vault to use alone, it would make more sense leaving the Con to me,” Temper regarded him with a suspicious glare.

Yes, something was wrong with her definitely.

“Several reasons,” he exvented, then turned around to fetch a cube of medical grade from a compartment and handed it to the scouttank “Fuel up while we wait,” he urged.

After casting him another stare Temper complied.

“Still waiting for an explanation,” she finally demanded after a few sips.

“Well, for one the solvent will make the ducttape come off, judging by size your companion will probably have less trouble handling an unrestrained captive.”

The empty cube was crushed in in the tank’s servo. At the glare the femme shot him, Crosscut realized he had once more trampled right into the grease pot so he hastily added: “And second? I’m not sure you wouldn’t have tried to drown her in there. While I have quite a good guess about your reasons, I don’t want my decontamination equipment damaged in the process.”

“What would you know about my reasons?”

Crosscut had some practice by now not to flinch at statements like that.
“I’m not that much of a hermit down here as you might think. I do know what’s happening on the surface.”

He took a quick glance at her before he carefully continued: “As your medic I advise you to talk about it. You can tell me how you feel, it will help.”

“Oh, I'll tell you! It’s very simple! I just want to offline that Con! Any Con! That's how I feel after what happened in Crystal City!” She hissed out full of hatred.

Yes, that much had been obvious, even to him, but there was probably more to it. Crosscut carefully probed further, remembering how Temper had tensed up when he had accidentally implied she wouldn’t be able to handle the Con: “You have already tried, haven’t you?”

Temper threw the leftovers of the crushed cube into the opposite wall and then slammed her fisted servo into the padding of one of the medical berths, Crosscut had to suppress another flinch.

“I failed! I wasn’t able to protect my clan! I wasn’t able to offline a damn Con femme who is even smaller than me! I couldn’t backstab a Primus forsaken bountyhunter!  SHE of all mechanisms had to help me with it! And to top that off, I can’t even watch her for FIVE slagging breems without her escaping! I'm a complete failure!”

~Oh, Primus below, this is even worse than I thought. Why did nobot ever program me to fix something like that?~

Crosscut tried his best to keep the professional front up. He wasn’t sure how to deal with the onslaught of self-loathing that came from the violet femme, though it was probably best to start like with everything – at the beginning.

“I take it your clan was in Crystal City then? I got neutrals coming in after that attack who lived two mechanomiles out of city borders and still got limbs molten off. I tell you what I told them: You only escaped deactivation because you weren’t within town limits during the attack. Your presence… Anybot’s presence would have only meant another designation on the deactivated list.”

“I know,” she muttered staring at her half-melted combat blade compartment, “perhaps it would have been better that way. I wouldn't have had to regret anything... My creator... he asked me to come back to Vos – we used to live there before the war – to take care of my little siblings. But I didn't want to. I thought that teaching sparklings would be a waste of my talent. I tried to convince him that my own caretaker Chariot would be a far better choice than me. And you know what he told me? That he had called me from the Allspark just for that one slagging task! He didn't see me in any role other than being a glorified sparklingsitter! We had a huge argument back then. I still remember how angry I was. In the end I decided to break off with my clan. I abandoned them. And now...” her voice was about to crack so she simply went silent without finishing her thought.

He could only guess what kind of expression she wore as she stood there with her helm down, staring blankly at the clinically clean table. Just as he had thought, it wasn't about the small cylceformer, it wasn't even about Crystal City – the thing was that Temper had made her choices and she blamed herself for choosing wrong.

Crosscut himself knew the taste of regret, he also had done a few things he wasn't proud of. There had been a time, when he thought that he could have a ‘clan’ too, but that was long in the past now. Nobot could change the past, no matter what.

“What's done, is done. The only way to move on is to accept that and to forgive.”

“Forgive the Cons? Are you mad?” The tankformer laughed mirthlessly.

“No, not the Cons. You need to forgive yourself. You did what you thought was right. And maybe a few good things came out of it. If you had gone home for example, you probably would have never met Vault, you see. And Primus alone knows with whom she’d have ended up as a partner then. She needs someone she can trust and she obviously trusts you.”

Crosscut was aware he didn’t know nearly enough about Temper for more assumptions but at least of this he was pretty sure. To his disappointment the femme only vented before dismissing the whole idea:

“Vault? You mean the same Vault who is always scolding me and accusing me of screwing up her plans? How can I be helpful to her when she is the one who keeps saving my sorry spark all the time? I'm clumsy and slow, I was called to be a teacher. I'm never gonna be a real warrior no matter my appearance.”

Crosscut let his gaze wander to the caterpillar tracks on Temper’s back. With her slim built and medium armor plating it was easy to forget that the violet femme was a tankformer. However even scouttanks came with relatively inflexible joints and equilibrium chips just one level better than that of cityformers. That was why Temper might appear clumsy and slow compared to hovercars or cycleformers.

“That is a problem of the frame and not of your programming or spark. Frames can always be upgraded, you know.”

That at least had definitely caught her interest.

“Are you saying... You know how to turn me into a better warrior?” She asked leaning forward, suddenly sounding eager to hear more.

“Well, I could perform some surgery and upgrade your joints and equilibrium chip but...” He paused as if looking for the right words. “Are you sure you want to do that? You tankformers are equipped with sturdier parts for a reason.”

“It's not about what I want, it's just what I need to do, if I want to become a real warrior. How could I possibly ever improve without it?”

Crosscut only shook his helm at that, not believing in what he was hearing.
“So you are saying that I am not a real medic because my frame wasn't made for that purpose?”

That made Temper look into his optics at once, which she had successfully avoided for most of their talk so far. She seemed to shrink a bit as her armorplates pulled tighter together on defensive instincts.

“It's not what I... I didn't mean to...” She wanted to explain herself somehow but the blue mech silenced her with a calming gesture of his servo.

“It's okay. You heard what that Con just called me, a mining sentry, that is what I was sparked to be. The miners weren’t much better off than slaves, the working conditions in the mines nothing but awful. I was supposed to make sure they didn’t run off more than guarding the ore or equipment. Then came the accident, a cave in during a shift change and the one mech on site who dared to call himself a medic refused to enter the unstable tunnels. But even an illegal mining operation can’t throw off profit without workers. I don’t know if the foreman was a genius, desperate or completely drunk but he uploaded some basic medical programs into me and ordered me to pull as many of the mechs out of the mines alive as possible. It should not have worked, the coding of a hunter is completely different from that of a medic but it just clicked together and the next moment I was down there, risking my spark, hunting for fading sparks, collecting living trophies and feeling alive like never before. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who you ask, the medical programming compromised my loyalty as a sentry. So the mine overseers planned to scrub it from my memory banks but I really didn’t want to revert back to what I had once been.”

Crosscut paused a moment to make sure his audience of one was still with him, he wasn’t used to talking this much with anyone. But the tankformer hadn’t interrupted him so far, she did seem to get a bit impatient though for him to get on with the story. So he rebooted his vocalizer and continued:

“Long story short I made a run for it. My medical skill back then was most basic first aid level, so I had to learn everything above that on my own without any teachers or quick downloads. But what made all of it even worse was my appearance. Who would trust a medic who looks like a monster, if not absolutely desperate or already in stasis. I could have changed my looks, gotten rid of all the lobsteroid frame parts: the extra arms, claws and tail, switched my antennulas to more standard audio-horns, but I would have sacrificed some of my strongest abilities as a search and rescue medic with them as well. I can sense where an injured mechanism is, I can fly, dig, or crawl through narrow passages to reach them, and once there I have four extra appendages with tools to treat them,” he vented deeply after that a long monologue, slowly realizing that he had left the safe road of professionalism far behind for the wasteland of awkward and creepy personal anecdotes. Only Primus knew what Temper – his patient he reminded himself, was thinking about him now.

He struggled a moment before he got his vocalizer working again: “The point I was trying to make is...”

“…that I should turn disadvantages into advantages,” Temper finished for him, her voice still a bit unsure but sounding somewhat hopeful.

“Something along those lines, yes,” the doctor gave her an – as he hoped – encouraging smile.

The tankformer leaned on the edge of the medical berth and pondered what she had learned for a while. Then something else seemed finally to occur to Temper and this time her expression was rather confused than angry and depressed: “Wait an astrosecond... Weren’t you surprised?”

“Surprised about what?” Crosscut inquired caught off balance by the sudden random question.

“That we are Autobots, Vault and I,” she clarified. “Everyone thinks we’re Cons meeting us the first time, even the Cons thought we were Cons. So how did you…?”

Crosscut suddenly felt relieved, for a moment he had feared she would hold his past as a sentry against him, but she didn’t sound suspicious anymore like before. He allowed himself another smile:

“As if I’d be one to judge a datapad by its dents, or two nice young ladybots like you by your colors. It was quite obvious you two were anything but Decepticons by the time I was done with your treatment during your last visit.”

The femme had to reboot her optics twice, hearing that, then she was apparently rerunning the memory files of that first encounter.

“How so? I thought at least Vault had the act up pretty well, actually it’s not even an act, she’s always like that.”

“Easy: Neither of you tried to deactivate me after you were repaired. Cons always attack me afterwards.”

~And they always end on my shelves,~ he added silently to himself.

“We’re gonna make sure this Con won’t give you any trouble,” Temper promised.

“Well I hope she isn’t giving your partner any trouble already,” at the tankformer’s questioning look Crosscut explained: “Vault’s leg looked quite bad, if the whole ducttape comes off …It might be a good idea if you go check on them. It’s your turn anyway once they are done.

“Yeah sure thing,“ there was a mischievous glint in the femme’s optics. “Better don’t get your hopes up though, Doc, Vault has probably found and destroyed any recording devices you had in there.”

Crosscut watched the scouttank retreating with a perplexed expression on his faceplate. Just when Temper left the room he managed to mutter: “Why would anyone want to install monitoring devices in a shower?”

oOo

Mayday had thought the orn couldn’t possibly get any worse, she was supposed to meet the Autobots’ interrogation officers after all. But instead of being delivered to some high security prison, Blackbox or Vault - or whatever the treacherous femme really was called – had landed the ship between a bunch of bombed out buildings, unlit empty windows, scorched walls and crater littered roads had been the only things visible for mechanomiles in any direction as they travelled the short distance to yet another crater.

Her internal GPS-device had some difficulty at pinpointing her exact position as apparently several of the satellite and groundbound locator beacons were no longer operating but she was supposed to be somewhere near Tyger Pax. The Tyger Pax she remembered was one of the most important Autobot strongholds on Cybertron. Now this place was completely levelled – not one readable road sign left to tell the name of the once bustling city. Had there not been the two familiar moons up in the sky, Mayday would have even doubted to be back on Cybertron. As much as she hated to admit it, it gave some credit to Blackbox’s claim that the Decepticon faction had destroyed Crystal City. Or at least it meant the war had gone far worse than she had expected during the vorns she had been away.

Then the traitor and her little Autobot friend had dragged her right into the smelting pit! The so called medic there looked like he had crawled right out of a horrorvid and then had been upgraded to become even creepier.

While the clinic per say hadn’t looked that much worse than the medbay aboard the Dirge, Mayday had been able to glance into one of the siderooms as she was dragged off to the showers. The sight of the aperture inside had made her whole frame freeze up and the shouts, insults and wails of her friends were echoing through her helm in a not ending cacophony. The medberth and the wall monitor were nothing out of the ordinary but Mayday would be able to identify neural connector cables by now with both optics offline. How was it possible that the freaky sentry had a psychic patch in his lair? Shockwave was still working on his for Primus’ sake! There was no logical explanation and her processor hurt from trying to come up with a reason.

oOo

Mayday was oddly unresponsive as Vault dragged her along. It was such a stark contrast to her former behavior that it would have been impossible for Vault not to notice. She gazed down at the Con-femme in a mixture of confusion, worry and distrust. Was this part of another escape attempt? Had the Cycleformer’s low energy-levels finally dropped her into stasis? Or was it the wounds taking their toll? But a quick scan showed that the energy levels were stable just Mayday’s fuelpump was running at triple speed. It actually looked like a full out panic reaction.

Vault discarded the idea of calling Crosscut over for this. He wouldn’t even run a scan over either of them before they were cleaned up. But as she had set down the cycleformer in the shower cabin and the solvent started pouring down on them, the other femme had still not reacted.

Vault hated to admit it but she was getting worried, more so as she had no idea what had triggered this reaction. The tankformer couldn’t help but ponder it again.

Neither meeting a lobsteroid nor seeing his collection of frame parts had disturbed the tiny Decepticon all that much. She had only fallen silent in the corridor. However compared to the operation room said corridor and the adjacent rooms were outright boring, most doors had been closed anyway. Only a closet with cleaning supplies, a storeroom full of nondescript boxes and a side-room for processor checkups had been open.

~Maybe the Cons don’t get regular processor checkups?~ The idea that had just popped up in her cpu was laughable actually, with all the viruses the Cons or rather Soundwave dealt out it would be suicidal not to… Vault interrupted that path of thought as she absentmindedly peeled the soggy ducttape of hers and Mayday’s plating. As she carefully cleaned as close to the Cycleformer’s wounds as she dared, she realized where the fault in her logic had been. Sure highly sensitive databanks were always protected by some real nasty stuff but the Autobots weren’t using malware on open transmissions as the Cons did. So aside from some comms-specialists the normal grunts wouldn’t have any need to let a Decepticon medic poke around in their processors.

Still that didn’t explain why Mayday should lock up just by seeing such a setup.

~What ARE the Cons doing with neural scanning equipment?~

Vault had a sneaking suspicion that she already knew the answer to that. And if she was correct, Mayday would never agree to have Crosscut take a look at the cause of the ‘voices’ she was hearing. The Con would probably try to bolt again. With a frown the tankformer pulled another set of cuffs from her trunk compartment, luckily there had been plenty of those on the bountyhunter ship.

oOo

When Mayday found herself back in the here and now, she was in the operation room again, sitting on a medberth with her hands cuffed. With a yelp she tried to jump off and make a run for the exit, cuffs or not. But an invisible force was holding her down.
“Sorry but you are not leaving before you are repaired.”

Mayday turned her helm to stare at the mining sentry that posed as a doctor, who’s arm currently was elbow joint deep in a wound in Blackbox chassis. The tankformer herself obviously serenely in stasis.

Mayday felt a mixture of fear, nausea and bewilderment at the scene. She had assumed that Blackbox would have her own wounds treated later by a real medic but no, here she was, trusting that trophy seeking monster near her spark with a whole collection of sharp and pointy objects.

And as gruesome as it may have looked, the insecticon was not ripping the tank’s internals apart but very carefully patching up damaged support struts, tubing and wires that selfrepair hadn’t managed to deal with. Even Mayday could see that he seemed to be doing a far better job at it, than the Con-engineer who worked as medic aboard the Dirge ever had.

Her friends had stopped screaming for now, giving her a moment to embrace the new situation.

Thinking about it, the annoying drone-clone wasn’t around, Blackbox was in stasis – it would have been the perfect time to get away, if she wasn’t magnetized to the berth. Mayday cast another glance at the so called medic who was now completely ignoring her again in favor of his work. He had no faction symbols, his optics were a neutral white and this was definitely not an Autobot stronghold. If she played it right, he might be swayed to help her instead of the two tank-femmes.

“Why don’t you just let me go?” She carefully asked.

“You said you know what I am, didn’t you?” Was his reply, he didn’t even look up from where he was poking around inside of Blackbox’s leg now. “My hunter coding got warped but not deleted by the medical programming. In other words, you try walking out of that door before I made sure the very last wire is attached in your frame and you see how far you get.”

“And once I'm repaired?” She inquired. “Will you let me walk out of here then?”
While the idea of being ‘repaired’ by him still wasn’t overly appealing, it at least seemed like the mech knew what to do. And if his medical programming really made him help anybot, no matter the faction then why not trying to convince him to rescue her from falling into Autobot's cruel clutches.

“If not, repairing me would be a waste of your time and supplies. Those Autobots will drag me off to be tortured for information. They are both sparkless and treacherous.”
Finally she got his undivided attention, the look he cast her was disconcerting somehow though.

“You don't believe me? And where do you think all those wounds on my frame came from? They were trying to scrap me and when they failed they took me prisoner and tormented me all the way here! You've heard the Droneface, she'd be glad to see me in parts on the shelf!”

“Don't take it personal, Temper doesn't hate you. Neither does Vault. She wouldn't ask me to do something about your 'voices' if she didn't care for you at all,” he paused as if waiting for some reaction but Mayday wasn't going to comment on that nonsense. “I'm not an expert but I could check your cpu for malfunctions when I'm done with Vault's pede.”
That was the moment when her friends chose to cut in, both shouting their protest.

“No!” Mayday repeated after them without even thinking. “No-no-no-no-no, that is NOT going to happen! No one is touching my helm!” She screeched and struggled desperately to get herself free.

“Allright, allright,” the mech backed down at once. “I'm not gonna force you, calm down.”
He didn't seem to try anything funny, he didn't even get anywhere from where he stood before. Seeing him getting back to his work helped Mayday to regain her composure but just when she started to cool down, he started all over again:

“As strange as it may sound to you, as long as you're my patient you're safe here. No one is going to hurt you. If you don't trust me with that, then try trusting Vault.”
“Vault?” She laughed bitterly. ”That's not even her true name! Can't you see that she is tricking you? Or waaait... Don't tell me, you really thought that two young ladybots would be all nice and sweet to a monstrous-looking thing like you without wanting something in return. They’re gonna use you just like they used me and they’re gonna get rid of you as soon as you're not needed anymore. You should know there is a bounty on Blackbox helmet. Help me to offline her and you can have all credits just for yourself.”

“Enough.”

He didn't have to raise his voice for Mayday to understand that she had crossed a line. She knew very well what hunter-class drones were capable of. Shutting her mouth for now was her only choice. Still, she could hear one of her friends laughing at his anger.
:The eight-legged freak thought they were innocent. The eight-legged freak doesn't like being proved wrong.:

Meany shut up pretty quickly though as the ‘Eight legged freak’ suddenly stepped back from Blackbox’s medberth and turned towards Mayday, staring at her with white emotionless optics. A shudder ran down her backstruts. Instinctively she tried to make herself appear even smaller than she already was. It just made the mech frown even more.

“I can’t work if you are cowering and flinching like that. Let me do a proper scan so I can get those repairs be over and done with.”

“The Con giving you trouble doc? I can easily knock her out for you so she stops moving.”
Mayday hadn’t heard the Droneface approaching. The wannabe medic didn’t even twitch.

However his voice obviously strained from not yelling at the tankformer as he replied: “You will do nothing like that, Temper. Sit down and stay out of the way until I’m done here. Or I’ll magnetize you to a berth as well.”

To Mayday’s surprise the other femme actually complied to that and just continued staring at her without rebooting her optics even once.

:She hopes you will make a suspicious move so she has an excuse to offline you.: Cutie helpfully supplied.

:Want to try see if you can make her attack? The freak might actually slice her up, if he’s riled up enough.: Meany provided.

Mayday thought about it for a moment, the idea quite delicious. There were just two obvious flaws in that plan.

~Are you bolts? I don’t want to be anywhere near a sentry drone going into a battle frenzy, especially not while my aft is still magnetized to the damn berth! I’d rather play the little muster patient for now and drive the Droneclone up the wall with that. And if the freakmech thinks I’m not a threat, there may still be an opportunity to escape later.~

Decision made she relaxed her frame and nodded towards the ‘medic’ to begin the treatment. She would wait, patiently.

oOo

After reprimanding Temper, the rest of the repairs had gone relatively smoothly. As Crosscut had half expected though, both the Bot and the Con had refused to be put in stasis for their repairs in favor of continuing to glare at each other. However the silence until Vault had finally booted back up and requested a status update had been exceptionally awkward. Crosscut exvented, he couldn’t afford to display his inner turmoil right now, he had patients to deal with. The next part of the treatment would probably not go over well with them.

“Follow me.” Without checking whether they were indeed behind him, Crosscut keyed the door to another room open. Five offline pods were cramped into it. Even though he had started cleaning up, it was still easy to see that this place had seen several visitors recently with the way tools and supplies were scattered across the room.

He approached the first pod and opened the hatch. It automatically powered up.

“I have repaired what I could, but you two,” he pointed a clawed digit at the two Autobots “are poisoned with Tox-En, and it is wreaking havoc on your energon tubings. And you,” he gestured at the Decepticon femme “are so recharge deprived that your self-repair is barely operational. You all need a good regeneration bath.”  

He had tried to sound as calm and commanding as possible but apparently none of his patients had been fooled.

“So what’s the problem?” Temper inquired the other two femmes staring at him expectantly as well and Crosscut almost squirmed at what he had to say next.

“I’m basically out of energon, it’s just enough for this one,” he didn’t give his patients time to let that completely sink in, continuing hastily: “Even if I had more, I only have regeneration fluid to fill one single pod by half, the circulation won’t operate unless the fluid reaches the 3/4th marker.”

“Please tell me you’re not suggesting what I think you are suggesting.” Vault groaned, slapping a servo over her optics, as if hoping for the problem to go away, while she wasn’t looking.

Unfortunately Temper had caught on as well by now, the scouttank was hissing in denial: “No! Absolutely not! I’m not sharing a pod with that Con!”

“As if I would ever agree on sharing a pod with any of you two scrap-piles!” Crosscut’s third patient screeched as well.
 
~Oh Primus, why can’t anything about femmes ever be easy?~ He cast a silent mix of complaint and prayer downward.
 
“Look, I’m not asking any of you to donate organs for each other. This is just for filtering your energon and making sure the fresh welds don’t reopen. Please be reasonable. You’ll all be in stasis for the entire time, you won’t even notice the others are there.”

”Oh, for Primus’ sake! Let’s just get this over with,” the black tankformer exvented, climbed into the pod and sat down in it. “If the two glitches aren’t both in here in five breems, just toss in some weights so the fluid hits that marker and start the procedure, doc. I don’t mind having the pod all for myself.”
With that she let herself sink completely back into the regen fluid and shut her optics preparing for recharge.

“You big, selfish magnetleech! You think you can just claim it for yourself?” The violet tankformer growled and without wasting another thought about it climbed into the pod too. “You can stay out, Con!”

And with those parting words Temper fell into recharge as well.
Crosscut looked expectantly at Mayday.

“You really think I would join them?” She asked, disbelieve thick in her voice.

“True enough. Well you can spend that time on that recommended processor checkup instead if you stay online anyway…“ the medic wasn’t even able to finish before the tiny Decepticon practically dived into the pod. Crosscut couldn’t help but chuckle as he closed the hatch, activated the stasis mode and initiated the filtering and regeneration sequence.

The whole process would take several joors, suddenly a bit nervous he studied the settings again, the machines were not supposed to treat more than one individual at a time. But no, it should be perfectly safe, he had been forced to recycle the regeneration fluid before and there had never been any side effects. Nevertheless…

~I’ll keep an optic on them the whole time, if something looks even remotely funny I’ll stop the whole process.~  

And if he was already here anyway, he could finally get to tidy up the room too. The idea of getting everything clean lifted his mood significantly and humming a merry melody he set to his new task, preparing for a rather long and uneventful wait.

oOo

~Nononononono!~

A small blue and white hovercar scraped along a wall at a speed that would have been too fast already on an even and straight road and not on the debris and pothole cluttered path between the bombed out buildings. Yet the noise of fliers above urged the mech to redline his engine even more. He took another turn at far too high speed, wanting to howl in pain as the jagged metal scraped the paint of his derma-plating in a shower of sparks.

~I’ll never make it to the coordinates.~

Neon had absolutely no delusions that he could possibly successfully shake off the Decepticons. If not for them wanting him alive for whatever reasons, they’d probably have blasted him to shreds several times over already.

One of his pursuers lost their patience and shot the road right in front of him, molten metal and smoke hit his windshield just before the new formed pothole threw him of balance.

With a high pitched shriek the young mech swerved and forced himself into another almost 90 degree turn.

They couldn’t get him, not now! He dodged deeper between the ruins and changed the direction another few times in a seemingly random pattern.

Bad things would happen if he got caught. He never forgot anything – what the Cons would do with all his knowledge about Iacon… he didn’t want to find out.

But for once his gift was proving to be useful, the map of the area as well as recent satellite pictures locked in his cpu enabled him to edge closer and closer to his destination without fault. Neon wouldn’t be able to get lost even if he wanted to.  

That was when he spotted something resembling a huge, metal lid deep down in a crater. If there was a lid there also had to be something hidden behind it. Without thinking twice, he transformed and rushed forward. This had to be it! The place that the coordinates had been supposed to lead him to!

The Cons seemed to be surprised by his strange actions, they circled high above his helm as if waiting for Neon's next move. It gave him just enough time to reach the heavy metal plate, pull it away and take a look inside.

A pitch black, bottomless hole awaited him under the trapdoor. Neon felt his energon turning into ice. He knew, he had to jump down into this dark, scary pit. And the fact that the Cons now opened fire on him encouraged him only a bit. Offlining his optics he took a deep vent and made a step forward.

It wasn’t a long fall. In the contrary, almost instantly his back-plating collided painfully with a metal surface that had to be steps of the spiral staircase that Neon had completely failed to notice. The young mech rolled down with a lot of “ouch!”-s and “argh!”-s that could be heard in between the sounds of his poor armor getting dented. He was stopped by a closed door at the very bottom. The hope of being rescued reawakened inside him at once.

“Let me in! Please!” He shouted as he hammered at the gate with all he got.
Whoever this place belonged to, they didn't exactly hurry to save Neon's spark.
Hearing the fliers landing and pedesteps closing in from above, motivated the terrified mech to try even harder.

The Cons hadn’t given up on catching him and decided to get down here as well, the purple light of their glowing laser-guns already pierced the darkness of the staircase. Neon wished he was invisible but his designation hadn't come from nowhere, with all his bright blueish armor-parts he looked like a giant glow-stick. The only thing he could do right now was to start praying to Primus for the host of this place being willing and able to help him.

Then the doors gave way at last and Neon stumbled inside. Only an empty dimly lit corridor greeted him. Wasting no time he turned around to shut the doors and looked around on the keypad for the button to seal them. With rising dread he realized that there was none, the locking mechanism had to be automatic but it didn't seem to have engaged for some reason. He had to find cover before the Cons came in and then... Then he would have no other choice but to fight them. A narrow space like this should give him a small advantage, he also might use the element of surprise. Still, he was alone and behind the door there were three eradicons and one Decepticon seeker trying to get him.

Neon switched off his blue optics and drew out his disruption blaster. When he switched them back on, he felt ready for whatever was going to happen. Quickly he ran for the room in front of him intending to hide behind the corner and wait for the enemy to show up.

Soon enough the heavy door was pried open and voices echoed through the corridor walls.

“Check every room, drone! Find where he hides and shoo him out! You two, stay close to me!” Somebot, probably the seeker, ordered.

Neon held the air inside his vents readying himself for the battle. The drone was getting closer to his hiding place with every cautious pedestep. One more mechano-inch and...

BAM!

A sudden noise made Neon's spark skip. It sounded as if something extremely heavy had fallen down on the eradicon. The mechling could hear the yelp of pain uttered by the drone before it was cut off to eerie silence. Did it go offline? But how?

Carefully he peered around the corner. One of the Cons lay on the floor in a puddle of their own energon while some big, monstrous-looking frame towered above it, its giant pincers tainted in the deeper blue of spilt energon. Neon froze, the monster reminded him of a lobsteroid he had seen once on a picture from the database containing the list of Cybertronian wildlife. That long tail, eight insect-like legs and a pair of scary pincers – it all fitted the description, only the size was messed up. The 'thing' was far too big and the remaining Decepticons also seemed to be shocked by that. They didn't even start shooting yet.

The seeker was the first to grasp the situation.

“Kill it!” He shouted and the remaining drones finally fired their guns.

The monster covered its helm with the claws and charged at them completely ignoring the laser rays. Seeing that shooting didn't slow it down, on the contrary it was enraging it, the two drones panicked and tried to back off but the corridor was too narrow for any possible maneuvers. The beast reached the first eradicon before they could even take a defensive stance. Its crushing claw clinched one drone's servo and pulled on it with terrible force. The arm-plating cracked like fragile glass plates and only the inner wiring kept the limb from falling apart. The helpless Con screamed in agony but his voice was soon choked off by the other claw that went straight for the faceplate.

Neon had never seen anything this brutal before. He wanted to turn his helm away but he didn't dare to move, not if that might draw the lobsteroid's attention to him. The last drone had to know this too because it stood there motionlessly while the monster was finishing his comrade off.

The seeker didn't have this much patience. Without batting an optic he pushed the eradicon forward, right into the waiting claws, they sliced through the armor plating down into the protoform below as if cutting through a layer of mercury. It didn’t even slow the monster down as it discarded the greying frame and went straight at the last of the Cons. The seeker took aim to fire a missile but the lobsteroid was too fast, closing the distance between them and pushing the arm with the missile launcher up.

Out of sheer reflex Neon dove to the floor, covering his helm as the missile screeched overhead. It hit somewhere at the back of the room the following explosion made the already dim lights flicker off completely, Neon whimpered as first the heat, then the blastwave rolled over him. Next something heavy slammed into him and the darkness grew even deeper. The strangled cry of the seeker was the last thing he heard before his processor shut down.

oOo

“Come on you rusty piece of bulk trash, power up!”

Neon sighed inwardly, he had been called that and a few far worse things already in his short lifespan, he hadn’t yet numbed enough yet though for it not to hurt.

“Note to self: Salvage a better backup generator, no matter how slagging heavy it is,” the voice sighed - an unknown voice, didn’t he know every Autobot in Iacon?

“Oh for Primus’ sake! How much energy can it take to power a simple control panel?” The unknown mech wasn’t speaking to him, Neon suddenly realized, the other probably hadn’t even noticed he was conscious again. Carefully, very carefully the young mech onlined his optics… and flinched back so hard he almost fell off the makeshift recharge berth he was lying on.

The room was only lighted by a few transportable lights, even the emergency power – if there was any – was apparently down. So most of the place was obscured in darkness, aside from a single pod and the mech standing right in front of it. And if the bluish, mottled paintjob hadn’t already given it away, the two large pincers and the extra limbs, currently extending from his back would have easily spelled out lobsteroid monster to him, root-mode or not.

The monster’s antennulas twitched, but it didn’t turn around, even though it obviously had heard Neon.

“Sorry, I’ll look after you in a breem, son, I just need to make sure there is no complications here first. The missile did a real number on my clinic. You are not in pain right now, yes?” The lobsteroid spoke with a surprisingly soft voice, displaying obvious concern for his wellbeing. Caught completely off guard by the sudden switch in the creature’s behavior, Neon couldn’t help but relax fractionally. But everything else he could have asked or done was interrupted by the pod’s control panel lighting up and giving a confirming beep.

The scary mech was at once all over the machine tapping and prodding at the keys until the pod’s hatch finally slid open and the fluid within drained with a gurgling sound.
Despite the urge to move as less as possible to not draw unnecessary attention towards himself, Neon couldn’t help but sit up fully and lean forward to observe what was happening.

Well for half a breem nothing did happen. Then there was a low groan from inside the pod, followed by a sudden audio piercing screech. A few hissed curses by two different voices were highlighted by the sound of someone struggling and things hitting the pod walls. This was cut off by another louder clank and finally an annoyed voice commanding:

“Oh for the sake of Primus! Will you two dimwits cut it out already?”
The young mech was at the pod so fast he almost stumbled over his own pedes.

“Vault?” He asked, staring down through the opening.

Said femme finally sat up, holding her partner Temperance and an unknown decepticon by their respective collar struts in an effort to separate the two smaller femmes. Said two squabblers were still trying to strangle each other, liquid was slowly dripping from all three frames – Neon was sure most mechs would pay a handsome amount of credits to see that. Well maybe aside from the weird monstrous mech who was occupied running a medical scan over them. Vault seemed unfazed by his presence, so probably the lobsteroid wouldn’t kill them all in the next breems.

“What are you doing here, kiddo?” The young mech was startled out of his musings by the black tankformer’s question. The other two femmes finally noticed his presence as well.

“Neon? Right! Just the perfect mech to witness the end of this fiasco.” Temper’s voice dripped with so much sarcasm it could have burned through the floor panels.

“The Autobot army now drafts newsparks? I knew they were a bunch of losers but I wasn’t aware they were that desperate,” the unknown Con gave the young mech a disparaging once over, chuckling to herself.

“Laugh as long as you can Con scum, that ‘newspark’ there is the mech with the biggest long term memory cache and the loosest glossa in the entire Autobot-army. So if you thought your rep went down the drain after your last deal with us, better prepare for a rude rebooting – we’ll never hear the end of this.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Vault prompted more seriously, having noticed all the scrapes and dents on the bots frame. “What are you doing here, soldier?”

And with that everything crashed back on him and with it the panic returned.

“Vault!” He stammered through the next sentence:

“The Cons … they have Counter!”

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Sorry about the late new chapter. We had some trouble finishing this.
Reviews and comments would be very welcome.