Rung's Reports: Ratchet, Session One

[bumblemusprime]

Rung’s Reports
Ratchet: Session One

The medibay hummed, a soft steady note that was oddly soothing. A gentle irony, Rung thought, for a place defined by pain.

Two of the victims of the Lost Light’s initial jump remained on their slabs. One was linked to an auxiliary fuel pump. The other was in greater danger; innermost energon flowed from an IV down a snaking plasticene cord, into the glowing heart of his spark.

“Spawn of a glitch,” Ratchet cursed, from behind his workstation. “Damn it, First Aid. No one needs new medical software.”

“Can I help?” Rung asked. “I’ve been in my share of clinics.”

“You won’t have used this. It’s the interface First Aid developed on Delphi. Supposed to help locate every possible resource within the nearest five systems, whether in crude form or refined, that could be useful. He swears by it. But now I can’t even get back to the page—” He slammed his hand down. “Primus burn this thing to the depths of space.” After a moment, Ratchet looked out from behind the screen. “Don’t tell Drift I said that.”

“Everything’s confidential. Especially swear words,” Rung said. “Is this a bad time?”

“Every time is bad for an Ultra Magnus-mandated head-shrinking session, Rung.” He peered at the screen. “And the background, a repeating set of discarded Autobot symbols. This kid.”

“Magnus feels that, after Delphi, you could use a consultation.” Those hadn’t been Magnus’s words—rather, holding his datapad in front of his face like a shield, he had read all three pages of the Autobot code mandating brain module analysis after severe battle stress “affecting mandated non-combatants.” He’d followed that up with an offer to “convince” Ratchet, First Aid and Ambulon to sit in Rung’s office. I’ll take it, Rung had said, from this point. Magnus looked disappointed. Rung had made a note to use in Magnus’s next session—sessions that were far too infrequent for the Duly Appointed Enforcer’s behavior.

“Couldn’t you at least have started with Drift?”

“I’m mostly concerned with you and the other medics right now,” Rung said. And besides, Drift comes in twice a week. They were going to need to ramp up to three times a week if the new meds didn’t help.

“I don’t have time for this slag,” Ratchet muttered. He looked up at Rung. “Combat is stressful. Then you drink. Look, I’m cured.”

“I don’t mind just talking,” Rung said. “I’m quite an admirer of your work, Ratchet. Please tell me a story. An old war story.”

“Once, I bravely shot a computer because it ran software that was worse than the D.J.D.”

“Really, Ratchet,” Rung said. “I need to make a report.” It was a low blow to use with a fellow medical professional, a guaranteed way to get a reaction.

“You know, the inhabitants of Earth had this thing called a turtle. Water animal. Legends abound, across Earth cultures about how all the land on their planet sat on a giant turtle, which sat on another turtle, for infinity. I always thought they got it wrong. If anything could hold the universe up, it would be unread medical reports.”

Rung found himself laughing, which he did rarely with patients. But then, this was Ratchet.

Ratchet stood up, came around the workstation, and sat on the slab next to Rung. “All right, since I don't want to shoot my own workstation, what do you want to hear?”

“Tell me more about Earth,” Rung said. “It seems to me that little planet changed the course of our race.”

“It did, and it didn’t,” Ratchet said. “After Thunderwing, the war only had so much time left. Prime and Megatron, forced to work together?”

“Earth was crucial, though. No one has ever been able to explain to me why.” Rung waited. Ratchet had picked up one of his scalpels, and was flipping the controls, testing its battery. “You broke ranks there. As I heard, you made first contact.”

“Eh, Prowl was sitting on his metal as usual,” Ratchet said. “Humans were in danger, but you know Prowl. Everything’s a number.” Ratchet put down the scalpel. “I suppose there were a few things different. For me, anyway. You know the story? The human they binary-bonded?”

Rung knew more than Ratchet suspected. Four years ago, when the Decepticons had launched a massive, successful strike based on intel that came from a top-level Autobot, a thousand rumors had circulated as to its cause among the beleaguered, casualty-ridden Autobot forces. The most accurate, Autobots seemed to agree, was that an Autobot, unnamed, had been forced into a co-organic relationship with a human, and wanted revenge enough to compromise the entire cause.

Rung knew, because Sunstreaker was a regular patient. No one else on the ship did.

He had tried to comfort Sunstreaker in their last session by giving context. That great blow against the Autobots had turned out to be the death of the Decepticons, whether Megatron realized it, and whether the official histories would, either. The final Decepticon offensive had been so successful that minor officers had been left with massive swathes of territories. Infiltration units went from phase one to phase six in days. The Galactic Council intervened, the Autobots gathered forces, but they’d hardly needed to; internal dissent, rebellion amongst conquered planets, and, most of all, stretched supply lines broke those successful Decepticon units, scrapped the cream of Megatron’s command, and the death of Megatron—at the hands of a human!—fired the killshot on Decepticon morale.

“I know the story.”

“You know his name? The human, I mean.”

“No.”

“Hunter. Hunter O’Nion. Crazy sort. A bit like Drift.”

“I see.” Did Ratchet know? He waited for Ratchet to say the name. It would make sense that the entire infiltration unit knew Sunstreaker had been binary-bonded. More than one Autobot would have figured it out. “Tell me about Hunter.”

“I saved him from Thundercracker. Back before Thundercracker lost it, too. I was violating Prowl’s orders at the time.” He let out a gruff laugh. “Violating Prowl’s orders just feels so good.

“I ended up protecting three humans. Verity, Jimmy and Hunter. Contrary, crazy sorts, so brave they were stupid. They would have made good Autobots. Verity did a couple of tours with the Wreckers, if you can believe it. Magnus thought it would give Springer good perspective.”

Rung made a note to ask Magnus about this Verity. Assigning an organic to the Wreckers was far out of jurisprudence.

“Jimmy, I believe, found a decent gig on Hedonia fixing up less violent robots. He had a real knack for wires and pistons. Could use him in this bay, truth be told. And Hunter…”

“Hunter was binary-bonded.”

Ratchet nodded. “Poor kid.”

“How did you feel about losing Hunter to the Decepticons?”

“I hate every loss.” Ratchet picked up the laser scalpel, juggled it from one hand to the other. “Good hands, these. Have their odd tendencies, but they do the work well.” He smirked. “No, I won’t give away Sunstreaker’s secret. I’m sure that being on the same ship with Rodimus's ego is penance enough for him.”

“Ratchet,” Rung said, “what’s so special about those humans?”

“I’m just trying to fill this time so wisely mandated by the Duly Appointed.”

“No, really.”

Ratchet flipped the scalpel idly in his hands. “Okay, fine. Here’s something. I don’t think I’ve ever met a race as short-lived as humans. About ninety years each. Their written history is shorter than the Warworld initiative. The main points of their evolution have lasted half as long as our entire war.

“In a few hundred years, they’ll be running the Congress of Worlds, if they don’t kill themselves.

“That short life gives them an appreciation. For everything. They can’t be stripped to a spark and rebuilt. You shoot a human in the heart or the head, they stay dead. They’re horrified by the contradictions of war, especially the deaths of innocents. The kinds of things that you and I would write off as typical Autobot behavior are war crimes to them. They’re desperate to learn from their wars—which, by the way, actually end. Most Autobots just don’t understand how precious life is. Not after four million years. Probably because they all think they’ll take a hit, put their spark on ice, and come back eventually.”

“I think some Autobots understand,” Rung said. “Medics, for instance.”

“Eh,” Ratchet said.

“If I may, I think that perhaps you connected with the humans more deeply than other Autobots. Because you understand Transformers.”

“Oh yeah? That’s news to me.”

He would have to go carefully here. Ratchet had a forged-in tendency to dismiss deep self-analysis as psychobabble. He worked so close to the edge of life and death that he thought he saw everything in stark terms. From Rung’s observations, that was what gave him such a nuanced view of the universe. “You see us die and come back. You know that no Transformer is the same once he’s been reduced to just a spark. If I may…” Rung built a small pause into the phrase, to give Ratchet a chance to talk, but Ratchet said nothing. “…if I may, each one of us has changed as much in four million years, inwardly, as Drift has.”

“I’ll give you that,” Ratchet said. “Except for Rodimus.”

Rung didn’t contradict him, but he knew Ratchet didn’t believe that. Rodimus had come to believe, over four million years, that command would finally validate all his bad decisions.

Ratchet continued. “You spent that much time with a race on the verge of contact, with such short lives, and you start to realize that the Transformers are stuck in a bit of a rut. To Prowl, those three humans had such short little lives that they weren’t worth protecting. To me… I had a duty to keep them alive, so they could live in what time they had.” After a long moment of silence, Ratchet added, “Call me a skeptical bastard, but that’s why people like Drift and Swerve go looking for religion. That’s why Optimus broke so completely on Earth. We don’t remember what it’s like to really die.”

Rung realized that he had set his datapad down. His hands were locked together, in a way he only did when he was thinking deeply.

First Aid’s voice carried down the hallway. “Fisitron’s last transmission? Oh yeah, definitely his best work. Spelling was off, though. And what was up with that huge font?” Whoever he was talking to said something, and First Aid answered, “I couldn’t bring myself to read the part where he described his own death. Just too… too close to home, I guess.”

“First Aid!” Ratchet shouted. “I need you in here.”

First Aid rushed to the door. “What is it? Are we losing them?”

“I need you to fix the damn computer.” Ratchet stood up. “Thanks for stopping in, Rung.”

“You’re welcome,” Rung said. He didn’t leave, though. He let his gaze settle on Ratchet and First Aid, on their puckered expressions as they stared at the viewscreen, listened to the medical jargon passing between them.

These two Transformers represented something different about their race. Something that was just beginning to emerge. A new kind of life, lived for the sake of life itself.

Ratchet said, out of the blue, “Rung, between you and me, Fortress Maximus is going to need a lot of work. Meet with him as soon as you can.”

“Noted,” Rung said. He looked around the medibay, taking in the soft note of the machinery, the clatter of First Aid’s fingers on the keys, the soft whirr of the servos, still adjusting, in Ratchet’s wrists, to those precious hands, the hands that waited for a generation of the wounded. “Thank you.”

End of Session One

[Best First]

Wow. This almost moved me to tears. I am baised as i think Ratchet is the best TF ever but you nailed it, especially in the second half.

Hate the phrase "spawn of a glitch" tho - sooooo forced.

[Computron]

We don’t remember what it’s like to really die.”

Haunting is the only word I can use to describe that. Wow, really, really well done.

Ya know...assuming you keep going on this project and write a few more, it would be quite epic to publish these...I know I'd love to have a compendium of these sessions. Heck, I imagine Roberts would get a kick out of them too.

Seriously, this is some really good stuff. If someone told me that this was written by Roberts and every comic had a session at the end of the book, I'd believe it.

[Best First]

Word.