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"Oh - hey, doc, you uh. Y'don't wanna try settin' up there, trust me."
Ratchet turned from where he'd been looking over one of the Dead End's empty buildings, a low-roofed little bunker he'd thought would be a good start for a clinic. Sure, he'd not actually been able to get inside yet, but like slag had he expected any of this to be easy. "Why not?" he asked anyway, curious, and the shabby Dead Ender gave him a lopsided shrug.
"Oh, y'know," ei said easily, and Ratchet's optics narrowed. Rust infection in at least three joints, probably on one of four different additive possibilities looking at the flicker in that optic band- "Just sayin'. Y'gotta know where's available down here."
"And how do I figure that out?" If there was a gang boss or something in the area that he'd need to watch out for - well, Ratchet'd known he'd have to cough up plenty of bribes to get in and out of the undercity, both to Iaconian Enforcers and those who actually lived down here. He just had to learn the tells.
The mech came a little closer, well out of arm's reach if Ratchet lunged but willing to point with an unsteady arm and crooked fingers. "There. See? Grey metal. No offence, but he won't like it. Not til he's sure'a you. Council's gotta okay it all, y'know."
"...right. Thanks for the warning. So who's the mech in question?"
The Dead Ender giggled, then hid it behind eir hand. "Nobody! Nobody. Only somebody if y'stick around. Bets are on y'won't, fancy paint like yours."
Yeah. He'd seen that coming, too. "We'll see how long my paint sticks around for," he said, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up and setting his jaw. "Now c'mere, I got something for that rust that doesn't need a building to treat."
*
Ratchet'd been in the Dead End for long enough that he should've been thinking about a break to defrag. He'd mostly got used to the feeling of sensors on his back - mechs here didn't trust medics, not the way they did in Iacon, and he couldn't argue they were wrong to look at him sidelong and bring someone to look out for them, not after coming down here and seeing what it was like for himself. But he was down here for a reason, slag it, and even if he couldn't fix systematic problems in his off-shift, he could do this.
He straightened, flexed the tensors in his back, worked his hands in and out of fists to loosen them up. There was so much more to do - but he couldn't afford to roll back up into Iacon General and drop into defrag mid-surgery. He'd do more good getting in a quick cycle somewhere secure, then he could keep going. Question was, where - he wasn't arrogant enough to think he could just take a nap on a park seat somewhere and not wake up in multiple different spare parts bins, and he'd been busy enough just standing on the spot that he'd not tried poking around the buildings he'd been warned away from yet.
A quick look back at the one he'd thought to use for a clinic - he'd not moved all that far, once word had spread there was a medic down here willing to treat people for free the braver or more desperate locals had come to him - and, nope, still locked up tight. Although...
"Hey," he said, and the dark spiky shape perched on top of the building's roof didn't so much as twitch. "You waiting to see me, or just getting a good look?"
Lowlight optics didn't waver, but they did reset in a slow cycle that Ratchet was pretty damn sure was sarcastic.
"Suit yourself," Ratchet shrugged, and cast about for options. He could just down a cube and get in a quick nap on the transport from lower Iacon back to the hospital - not ideal, but it'd get him back onto his next shift without a real hit to his performance. The last thing he planned on doing was fragging over his patients, either lot of them.
"Is it something you need, there?"
Ratchet turned, and - huh. Not the local gargoyle, but a tall, ground-framed mech that'd probably been a weight class less gangly before his armour'd cannibalised itself to keep him going. The mech smiled, and it seemed genuine even. "Could use somewhere to set up a decent clinic," he said, since he wasn't daft enough to turn down an offer, and if it got him into trouble - well, wouldn't be the first time someone'd thought medics were easy pickings and learned otherwise the hard way. "I hear the grey buildings aren't an option, but if there's somewhere else..."
"That does depend on whether you plan to stay." The mech tilted his head, and Ratchet looked him over - underfuelled and lacking plenty of essential minerals, probably in need of a decent systems flush and refill as well as checking over his nanites with his paint that patchy, but otherwise not too bad. "Medics have come here before, and left as quickly as they came."
"Yeah, well, I'm not gonna promise something I can't deliver, but I'm hard to get rid of when I'm set on something."
That, of all things, got him another smile, the kind that looked like the mech knew something he didn't and wasn't planning on sharing. "Well then," he said, optics sparkling. "We should get along very well. My name is Gasket."
"Ratchet. Nice to meet you." Ratchet considered, then mentally tagged it as hell with it, if blunt doesn't work I'll figure something else out. "You got time for a checkup? I could use a space for some privacy but there's plenty I can do without."
Gasket's helm tilted again, and Ratchet's entire sensor array shivered. Just for a click something was aware of him, some immense attention he couldn't explain, the sheer weight of it suspicious and disapproving.
I'm not going anywhere, he thought at it stubbornly, and propped his hands on his hips. The feeling faded, like he'd spooked it, and Gasket's smile brightened again.
"I have time," he said easily, and gestured towards the building Ratchet'd looked at first. "We'll see if you stay; I hope you do. It should be very interesting!"
As Ratchet followed, surprised and just a little wary of his good luck, he glanced up at the roof.
The mech perched up there had vanished.
*
Turned out Gasket was one of the useful people to know, down in the Dead End. After Ratchet'd talked to him, he'd got settled into the building and set out what equipment he'd managed to bring down himself - a couple of light panels, a fold-up medical berth, monitoring systems. Then he'd checked the lock on the door and got in a shallow defrag, light enough that he'd wake up if someone tried coming in through the door but enough to start packing away all of the new patient files he'd put together. The rest of his off-shift was filled with new patients, some propped up by other mechs, most only there on the strength of Gasket's word.
Well. Ratchet would take what he could get.
"I'll be back down on my off shifts," he told Gasket when he finally closed up, the other mech nodding like this was just what he'd expected to hear. "Every twelve cycles, minus the time it takes to get the hell down here."
Gasket clearly didn't entirely believe him, but Ratchet's teek of him was of someone always looking for the best in people - and sure enough, the next off shift he had, Gasket was there with a pleased smile and a not-so-quiet murmur of there, see? I told you so to someone on the other end of the comm. Whatever; Ratchet never had any trouble proving himself through living up to his promises, and the work down here was satisfying. He wasn't treating affluenza and squeaky joints, for all that brought in the funding that kept Iacon General running in turn; here he was actually doing something useful.
Even his mystery shadow seemed to think so. He'd perched on the broken-down stairs just outside the clinic and refused to move or come inside ever since Ratchet's current patient'd arrived.
"Ah, you should pay it no mind," one of the other Dead End mechs told him - older than Gasket by a wide margin, round-faced and smiling up at him despite ancient crushing damage to her hips and lower backstrut that both horrified and enraged him. Nonna Ora - Oracle - another one of the People To Know, and apparently long since come to terms with never transforming or standing or even sitting without being in pain-! "He cares, sweet thing, that is all. Much like you."
"I'm not sweet," Ratchet told her absently, and kept right on scanning through the solid lump of rust that made up one hip gymbal. "This'll take some heavy-duty surgery to get functional again - at least three rounds, I can't start on it without a lot of prep work that'll be uncomfortable at best. I can get started on removing the rust, and that'll give me a better idea of what I'm working with, if you don't mind being stuck soaking in a tub of chemicals for a while."
The silence that fell hit like a hammer. Ratchet looked up, resetting his audials, thinking something'd glitched along the line; Ora was staring at him, her mouth open, and behind her Gasket had reached out to lean against the wall. "What?"
"You can fix it," Ora said, soft, and Ratchet flicked his gaze back to her. "You - you would do this? All of this work, for nothing?"
"'Course I can," Ratchet told her firmly, not letting anything waver in his voice or his field, even when her smaller hands wrapepd around his. "It'll take time, that's all, and you won't be pain-free right away-"
Ora laughed, stuttering and wet, and shook his hands very gently in both of hers. "I never thought I would be without pain," she told him, like it was nothing, and Ratchet's optics flared with fury before he fought it back down again. "Ah, fierce one! I have lived like this for a long, long time - why would I not think nothing would change? I am happy, with my family, but-"
Her vocaliser hitched, and Ratchet scanned her again on reflex. "Even a little pain gone will be better," she said, and Gasket's hand curved over her shoulder, gentle.
"We can get started now if you're ready," Ratchet said, rough-voiced but trying for some of that bedside manner he'd heard so much about, and something eased over his sensornet like a sigh.
*
"Hey! HEY! Get the hell off him!"
Ratchet broke into a run, charging at the couple of oversized thugs as they froze like naughty younglings. Both of them were strangers, too brightly-coloured and frankly in too good a state of repair to be locals, and the surge of outrage and fury scoured through Ratchet like a lightning strike. The grimy frame under their fists didn't move, not even when Ratchet went hurtling into one of the big mechs pedes-first; the other let out an outraged yell, one that cut off quick when his buddy slammed into the far wall, landed face-first on the filthy ground with a bounce-
-and said ground opened up and swallowed him.
"Oh slag," the other fragger blurted, and glanced at Ratchet in quick panic like he was checking someone else'd seen that.
"I'd run if I were you," Ratchet growled, squaring up and curling his hands info fists, and whether it was the faceful of Angry Medic or the threat of a sinkhole opening up under him too that did it, the gearhead took one step back, then another, then went bolting off at top speed. "And stay out, you-! ...hmpf."
Ratchet dropped to one knee, all of his sensors focussed on his patient, attention rapidly flicking back to what was important. Tinfoil plating already half-eaten away, ruptured lines, plating missing pieces where it's fractured. Lightweight speedframe, malnourished, likely tank constriction. Most of the damage was on his front and sides, where he'd fallen and where the oversized storage cans had been kicking him around for fun; Ratchet got him stabilised, then carefully rolled him over and into his arms, heading for the clinic.
His shadow beat him there. "Where the hell were you?" he demanded, then blinked as the door to his clinic slid open before he'd pinged it and, more surprising, his own personal observer darted inside after him. "...all right then."
In better lighting, his patient and his lurker had very similar frames, only some of the details in the paint swapped out and his shadow's armour more heavy-duty, if in no better state than his lighter frame-mate's - he couldn't pick up on either one's fields even up close like this, which was concerning to say the least, but he'd noticed something similar on Gasket and Oracle. The two of them seemed to blend into the general field effect that kicked in around certain parts of the Dead End, particularly around his clinic and other places with the grey and black paint. Must be some kind of affiliation thing, he realised, and briefly worried he'd accidentally allied himself with a particularly polite gang before partitioning it out of the way of the real problem. "Scoot," he told his shadow. "If you're gonna stay, you keep out of my way, understand?"
He got a nod, and a hint of a warning glare, but nothing over comms or vocaliser but a faint crackle of static. "...I can look at that later if you want," he said absently, and wasn't surprised when he received a blurted static-hiss and bared fangs. "Suit yourself."
Ratchet got to work, setting up a line that would coat his patient's tank and ease the constriction as the medgrade filtered through, then settling down to take care of the busted lines, cracked plating and worse. "Don't suppose you've got names," he added; his guest was ghosting around the clinic, looking everything over, like they were making up a mental inventory.
"Drift," came faint and shaky, and Ratchet cursed and tightened his grip on his scalpel out of sheer goddamn reflex. "He's Deadlock."
"How the hell did- no, never mind, I'm putting you under," he told foggy yellow optics flatly, and wasn't at all surprised at the wobbly little headshake he got in return. "All right, but if you're awake I'm cutting your motors so you can't move, and your pain receptors along with it. Understand?"
"Mm-hmh."
He was used to being watched as he worked - vorn of demonstrating for junior medics, teaching seminars, worried friends and partners on occasion, all sorts. What he wasn't used to was the eerie synchronicity between the two of them, Drift watching his face as Deadlock stalked around in the background, watching his hands. Drift was still and Deadlock moving, but they both watched him the same way, the little ticks and shifts of their frames matched up. He couldn't explain it, not without more reference materials on hand, but it wasn't like a twin bond or sparkbond - looking at the systems Drift had, he couldn't swear Drift had a normal spark at all, and maybe if his frame-mate was the same it would explain the hovering.
"All right, you're as patched as I can get without putting you on a course of mineral supplements," Ratchet said eventually, and watched Drift ease into sitting up with professional satisfaction. "Take it slow - anything pinching or pulling?"
"'S all fine, doc," Drift said, and Deadlock ghosted up to stand silently at his shoulder. They had the same face, Ratchet noted absently, the same mould and finial shape. It was only really the patterns of wear and paint colour that differed around their helms, and the different optic colours - Drift yellow, Deadlock red. "You really stayed, huh."
"What, you think I'd get run off by gearheads like that lot?" Ratchet said, twitching a thumb dismissively over his shoulder. "Nah, I'm too stubborn for that. If you need somewhere to go, though-"
Drift was already shaking his head, which didn't exactly surprise him. "We're part of this place," he said, which did. "They aren't. ...guess they kinda are now."
Deadlock grinned, a click before Drift did, both their smiles sharp-edged and just a little nasty. Ratchet tried not to look appreciatively, but - frag. Okay.
"Don't suppose either of you are gonna tell me how likely it is I'm gonna fall through a pit trap," he said, only a little biting, and only marvelled a little at the identical considering headtilts he was getting from the pair of them.
"Nah," Drift said after a click's consideration, and something in the air hummed like a great machine settling around him. "Not you, doc. You're okay."
"Well that's a relief."
*
The thing was, Drift made a point of checking in once per shift after that. And when he wasn't there, Deadlock was, either keeping watch overhead but in a more - friendly way than before, or down on ground level trotting around with the Dead Enders and ambling up to Ratchet like a bodyguard on his way in and out. For all Ratchet knew he'd been doing it since the start, and now Ratchet had passed whatever test they'd been running - length of time before they accepted he really meant to keep coming, maybe, or willingness to knock the seven bells out of someone willing to beat another mech to death on the street - Deadlock let himself be seen. Checking in, that sort of thing. Ratchet wasn't exactly complaining.
"You don't have to, y'know," he said one shift end, Deadlock saundering along at his side like a particularly well-armed shadow. Drift didn't look like he was armed, but he was the one with the sharper claws while Deadlock's were shorter, more practical; Deadlock wore a long rifle at his back that looked like it'd survived at least two golden ages, and a couple of solid handguns that'd take chunks out of a tank if he aimed them at one. It was overkill, was the thing, even with murmurs of trouble filtering out through Iacon. "I can take care of myself." He could, he'd proved that already, but...it was kind of sweet, that Deadlock wanted the excuse to hang out with him in his own awkward way. Gasket seemed to find it funny as all get-out, every time he and one of the speedframes showed up helping Nonna Ora to her appointments, and Oracle kept dimpling at them all.
Deadlock shrugged - easily, now that Ratchet had fixed up a nagging little hitch under the back of his shoulder assembly - and looked up at Ratchet with solemn, thoughtful red optics. He paused, and Ratchet stopped a step ahead of him, turning back to look at him.
"What?" Ratchet asked, and Deadlock didn't look away - the air around them seemed to get heavier, like more than just a quick comm conversation was going on. Ratchet still hadn't figured out if Deadlock could use comms and just didn't want to, or if he was just being stubborn about repairs. Then Deadlock reached out, very gently hooked two fingertips around Ratchet's wrist, and drew him forward - off the erratically-lit rubble-strewn 'road' that led back up to the lift into Lower Iacon.
"Is this a metaphor or something, or-?" ...but Ratchet followed, his pedes crunching after Deadlock's quiet ones, intrigued. Whatever it was, he could make up on lost recharge when he made it back top-plate.
Deadlock led him into a part of the Dead End Ratchet hadn't even found his way to, not that he'd done much exploring when he arrived - just plonked himself down and started working where he found his first patients, pretty much. The buildings around him gave way to more of the grey and black that matched his clinic, that poked out through the slapped-together patchwork of fixes and scrap metal piled up around the place - probably remnants of the layers overhead when they were built, eventually encasing the Dead End in its own little hollow, the topmost layer both far distant and crushing down everything below in the dark. Deadlock kept leading him up, up and around, up one side of the space the Dead End was smeared across, until Ratchet could look down and see all the stumps of old structures from a whole new perspective, and a building gently slide sideways into a heap when something gave way in a slump of dust and iron filings.
"Not that I don't appreciate the view," he said, and Deadlock turned back to give him a questioning headtilt. "But where exactly are we heading?"
Deadlock, the snarky little script, just pointed. Ratchet peered around him, exaggerating the movement just to carry on the nonverbal back-and-forth, and caught sight of a grimy spot of off-white on a flat outcrop not far ahead. Drift.
"...oh," he said, and Deadlock gave him a smug little grin before hupping himself onto the next chunk of rubble.
Drift was well aware they were coming - he had to be, him and Deadlock moved like an extension of each other the few times Ratchet'd seen them in the same place at once, they had to have some kind of linked system - and patted the ground beside him without looking around as they reached the flat plane.
"Y'll like this," he said, and Ratchet eased himself down with more care than Deadlock, mostly because he was a lot heavier than Deadlock was and couldn't get away with just plunking himself down in a heap of sleek legs.
"What am I looking at?" Ratchet asked, because frag if he wasn't game for most things, and this was - this was kind of fascinating, in an awful way. From up here you could see that at one point the Dead End had been laid out like a real town, before streets and plazas had been lost under some great collapse. But Drift wasn't looking out, he was looking up, and Ratchet couldn't tell what-
...oh. Oh. He followed where Drift was looking, squinting up into the dark, and over their heads seeming almost close enough to touch...
A patch of the layer built over the top of the Dead End had flaked away, rot and rust and acid rain all working away on the metal plates, and through the gap they'd left Ratchet could see the stars.
Drift let a happy little hum, his shoulder brushing against Ratchet's arm. On his other side Deadlock was a small, quiet warmth. "Council comes up here sometimes, so's not too lonely," Drift said, "but we wanted t'show you. ...'s nice up here."
"Yeah," Ratchet said, soft and wondering - the sky over Iacon was usually hazed with light, the stars blotted out by its own glow, but down here... "...thanks, kid. This was definitely worth the trip."
They sat quietly together a few clicks more, Ratchet stuffing the part of his processor that tracked how long he had until his next shift out of his priority queue for just a bit longer. Deadlock shifted, and Drift turned to look at him, and for a click Ratchet wondered if-
"We want y' on the Council," Drift said straightforwardly, and Ratchet had to reset his expectations, hard. "If you'll stay. You help. ...'s not all why we like y', but it's a reason."
"What Council?" Ratchet asked, just a wisp of suspicion creeping in as he whisked away thoughts of maybe-kisses as ridiculous pining, shoving them away in the same mental box as his chrono. "If this is a gang thing, I'm not gonna be anything but neutral down here."
Rather than getting disappointed or angry or clattering into denials, both of them just - smiled at him, both the same, their fields either lost entirely in the area effect or the biggest conjoined field Ratchet had ever encountered, and he'd seen cityformers. Fond, like they hadn't expected anything else out of his mouth, and - maybe liking it anyway. Liking it because. "Yeah, we know," Drift said, and Deadlock bumped his arm with one blocky shoulder affectionately. "That's why. Gask 'n Ora vouched first. We weren't sure, but - y'kept comin'. Y'helped Nonna Ora. 'S gettin' better here. Maybe - maybe we can be a home again."
Oh, kid. The phrasing was odd, the way it sometimes was with Drift, but the sentiment came through just fine. "Lemme think about it," Ratchet croaked, and mercifully neither of them pressed him. Just - leaned against him again, twin helms resting against his shoulders, until Ratchet really, really couldn't leave it any longer. "...next off shift?"
"Next shift," Drift confirmed, and followed then down when Deadlock led the way back to ground level and to the lift platform. Ratchet looked back as it rose, the bored Enforcer stationed there complaining half-sparked at having to haul him back up and the words not registering at all, his attention all for red and yellow optics glowing like stars in the depths.
Ratchet didn't get the chance to think up questions for the two of them, or for Gasket and Ora either. The ancient rattly lift wheezed up to Lower Iacon, clanked gradually to a stop, and the security railing opened up and Ratchet stepped through onto solid ground; someone called his name, and he turned to look-
There was a brief instant of white-out pain-
And the world went black.
*
"-bunch of overclocked, arrogant, sparkless gearheads!"
Ratchet's vents blew heat in all directions, seething and raging up at the ranks of Senators staring down at him like he was a vaguely entertaining gearbug. He snarled, hauling again on the cuffs that locked his gauntlets together, and dug into the block keeping his comm locked down. Slag if he knew what he'd do if he managed to break it, but slag if he'd lie down to get stepped on like a good little dissenter either!
"Medic Ratchet," the Senate spokesmech droned, sounding just as bored as the rest of them. "This hearing finds you guilty of sedition, and the crime of aiding and abetting dangerous underground elements-"
"For frag's sake, they're just people! They're just mechs in pain and you've abandoned all of them, you-" One of the Senate Enforcers shoved him, and Ratchet rocked but stayed on his pedes, much to the mech's annoyance. Medics are built sturdy, you aft, and we're built stubborn! "If you leave them to die down there, someone's gotta help them!"
"Aiding and abetting dangerous underground elements," Senator Sherma said smugly, the slagger. "He admits it."
"Providing medical care to those who need it isn't a goddamn crime!" Ratchet roared, and the Enforcer swung at him and meant it. He caught the baton on his shoulder, gritted his jaw, glared up at all of them. Ratchet opened his mouth again-
And anything he might've said was lost as the entire building shuddered.
"What is it!" one Senator cried, high and panicked, and nobody stopped to make fun when they were all looking around in a mess of alarm and wide optics. "What is it? Are we under attack?"
"It's the revolution! I knew this was coming!"
There was a tearing, jolting string of shocks, the floor juddering underneath them, and Ratchet went down hard on one knee trying to keep his balance; the Senate hall had no windows, an enclosed dome filled with rings and rings of seats only interrupted by immense double doors, and he instinctively looked back to see what was coming. If there'd been an emergency he'd be getting pings bouncing off the blocks hard enough to feel despite the Senate trying to keep him contained, Iacon General's comms were no joke, but-
An immense thud, the sounds of compressed metal. Then another, shaking the world around them, swaying what felt like the entire goddamn Iacon cliffside.
An immense, familiar field hit the building like a freight transport, smashing into Ratchet's and making him gasp. The Senate Enforcers were already rushing to barricade the door, shouting into their comms for answers. The barricade lasted for maybe three clicks before massive, claw-tipped fingers pushed through the doors and most of the fraggin' wall, metal shrieking and shredding in long rippled pieces, and the Senators all dove to the floor in a mad scramble as the entire Senate Dome tore away from its moorings and vanished out of sight.
Ratchet stared up, up, up at a severely fragged-off Titan, filthy and torn up with amber optics blazing down at them like wrathful stars, and thought - holy slag, I know that face.
"Kid?" he breathed, and couldn't've said which one he was thinking of first.
"Oh no," moaned one of the Senators. Ratchet didn't bother looking around to see who. "Oh no, oh no, oh no..."
"Where is he," the cityformer growled, low and slow and unstoppable as the stars turning, and Ratchet slammed the volume right down on his audials. "Where's Ratchet!"
...holy slag. "Here!" he shouted, shoving back up onto his pedes and lurching a step forward; despite all the ruckus the titan's head swivelled, spotlight optics landing on him instantly. "I'm here!"
A hand the size of the Basilica descended, the Senators cowering and more than a few Enforcers firing wild in a panic. Ratchet ducked, then made a graceless scrambling leap into the tilted palm and - oh slag, that was urk.
The cityformer lifted him up and out of the chaos, up and up higher than Ratchet'd ever been in his life, above the glare of the spotlights on the Senate compound and into cold, clear air, wrapped around in a field he'd known the click he set pedes in the Dead End. "Holy slag," he blurted with all the elegance of a charging warframe. "You - you were there the whole time, weren't you. How the hell - why didn't we - How long were you down there?"
The titan bowed its head, cradled Ratchet close in both hands against his chest, and this close Ratchet could recognise - plating, buildings, colours, bits of graffiti from around the clinic marking up grey and black, all chopped around where the Dead End had transformed. A pale shape came scrambling down the cityformer's arm, clattering and fearless and cannoning into him - Drift, optics wide and wild, hands patting him down and touching his face and claws digging into the cuffs.
"You're here, you're here, you're okay," he rattled out, Ratchet bending his head so Drift could reach without a second thought. "Frag Ratch we thought they were gonna-"
"I'm okay, kid, I'm fine, it's okay," Ratchet said, and Drift bit his lip before tearing at the lock on the cuffs like it'd personally offended him. Ratchet looked up, and - there, a tiny black shadow on the giant's shoulder, Deadlock scanning the torn-open Senate hall with his rifle tucked into his shoulder. Holy frag, they'd come to get him.
They'd come to rescue him.
"You abandoned us," the cityformer rumbled, low and dangerous. The cuffs clicked and fell away from Ratchet's arms, and Drift tugged him up as the cityformer lifted his hands to his shoulder. Up, over the edge of that massive hand, onto a shoulder as broad as a highway, and Drift tugged him over and down next to where Deadlock held motionless but for the steady back and forth of his rifle. "Rodion waited. We waited. For help, to be free. We held up Iacon, and we waited. And you. Left. Us."
"What?" Ratchet hissed. Drift's hand was still wrapped around his wrist, but he reached out and tapped against the port cover at Ratchet's side, a plug peeking out at Drift's wrist. "-hold on, I'm not a guardian or a cityspeaker or anything, I'm not specced for-"
"Please," Drift said, soft, and Deadlock took a brief click from his relentless scanning for danger to look back over his shoulder. Red optics and yellow, both asking him. "Y'need to understand. Won't hurt. We're all - we're all one system. We won't hurt y'."
Ratchet shot a look at them, then up at the cityformer - huge, grimy, optics a mingling of Deadlock's red and Drift's yellow, wearing the same damn face. They'd never lied to him yet; the worst they'd done was hide a few things. Okay, one of 'em was a particularly big thing, but...
"...hell with it," Ratchet said, and clicked Drift's plug home.
Rodion. They were Rodion, they were the mechs clustered in the safe spaces inside and the Council-friends-speakers tucked safe at his shoulder, the small-selves that run and spoke and saw and the full-self that braced against the long-ago slide of levels that would no longer hold. They were tired, they were so fraggin' tired, and fuel was running low. Their place was dark and growing dimmer, but if they held on then help would come.
(Ratchet sat, frozen, sorting through the slow drift of massive complex thought strings and quick-darting impressions that made up a whole city)
Mechs came and went, and went, and went, and they had space for them all. Even if it was only space to curl up and dream into peace, quiet and undisturbed, as their town grew quiet and dim. They kept Rodion as safe as they could, as far as they could reach with only two small-selves to help and only so much energy to spare. They wouldn't have Enforcers, not like the Iaconian mechs who came into their territory, stomped around and damaged or killed their People. Those ones got dropped down whatever hatches they could reach before they could do any more harm.
(Ratchet cackled, couldn't help it, feeling the strut-deep satisfaction of twitching a hinge and dropping the mech who'd dared to attack their smallself into a maintenance shaft. He didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for someone who'd kick around a foil-plated mech half their size)
Help would come. They just had to hold. The layers solidified, built up around them, and rumours of cruelties dripped down from Iacon. Their chosen Council talked where they couldn't reach, organised relief as much as they could, kept their secrets; scavengers had tried to pull their wires before. Checked, when fleeting medics came and went, made sure that none of them were doing more harm than good past being condescending fraggers.
Then...then one stayed.
One returned, and returned, and helped. One kept coming back.
They remembered help was supposed to be coming.
The only help coming from Iacon was a small, fearless medic, and he was doing it all by himself. He was a secret they wanted to keep. But Iacon...
Iacon wasn't coming.
Then Iacon took Ratchet.
(They just - folded around him, so easily. Making room for him, same as they had for Gasket and Ora and the half-dozen other mechs on the Council that he could see through their memories, their optics, their sensors. Just because he helped. Slag, they deserved so much better, and Ratchet's stubborn spark swung around to help haul for this new cause, same as the old one in everything but scale. He would help, and all through him Deadlock and Drift and the Dead End murmured we know.)
Ratchet reset his optics, his audials, remembered how his own small frame worked even as the echoes of Dead End's voice died away. Drift was right, the flood of data was manageable if he partitioned, but holy frag. "When were you gonna tell me you lost half your plating getting up?" he hissed, and Drift pulled a face. "Don't think I can't tell, especially not right now!"
"Kinda stuck on options, Ratch," Drift hissed back, and Ratchet ran a quick and dirty diagnostic on them and braced for the stacks of data coming back in reply - as much plating as they could afford to sacrifice still holding up the base of the cliff past the docks like old foundations, rust and degraded panels torn away in the transformation and the push out through the flimsy top of the cavern, and every single mech inside Dead End who'd go safely tucked away inside the safe rooms in their titan frame. Running on empty, vorn of inactivity and now this...
"We won't go back underground," they said, and Ratchet could feel how they needed to hold onto the Senate compound's walls to stay upright. "Supporting the cliff is your responsibility. It always fraggin' should've been." They straightened, leaned forward a little, deliberately, and just over the edge of their shoulder Ratchet saw the Senate gaping, tiny optics and tiny open mouths. "And if you won't help the docks, we will." Their voice dropped, that low, dangerous growl again, fit to shake the walls - "We know where you are, now."
"Okay," Ratchet managed, as Dead End took a long, careful step back, their fingers leaving deep grooves in the Senate walls. "How ethical is it to think that was actually insanely hot, is that the kind of thing that disbars you from Council seats? Only - frag."
Drift laughed, and Deadlock glanced back to give him a soft, fond smile. "Nah," they said, Drift's voice and Deadlock's smile and Dead End's warm, affectionate field. "Pretty sure it'll be just fine."