your Unintended Voyage Megatron/Ratchet are watching somebody make a complete mess of something and enjoying every second of it.
Sure! That sounds like something they'd get up to. This is a little canon blend-y since G1 doesn't explicitly have Cube (the sport), but here we are.
"Is this really what we should be doing with our time?" Ratchet asked, arms crossed as he watched Megatron fiddle around with the holonet receiver like he knew what he was doing. There was a 30-40% chance that Megatron would get zapped in the process. "We have a radio that works perfectly fine for the news."
Along with a console at their desks for reports with visual components.
"You'll see."
"I never took you to be the sort who'd want to laze around watching the holonet," Ratchet continued.
"No, this is for something more... active." The slag-eating grin on his face was enough on its own to raise suspicions. "I have discovered that there is an entire channel dedicated to...."
Ratchet felt his face heat up in embarrassment but before he could tell Megatron he ought to be ashamed of himself, the screen flickered to life.
Young mechs scrambled awkwardly across a cube court, tripping over each other and falling like utter fools. The cube zipped high and managed to collide with a flyer's face, knocking him out of the sky.
"Amateur sports."
If you have time and for the fic back-story ask: the implied cannibalism bit in ch 9 of An Unintentional Voyage and Ratchet's joke? Or anything else you fancy if that's not interesting to you...
Well, there's not really a lot of backstory to that one.
Watsonian Answer: Decepticons have a history of making due with whatever they have to survive as opposed to expected Autobot social norms, leading to Megatron being mostly amused whereas Ratchet thinks he's poking fun. Megatron is aware that Ratchet is joking and is happy to turn the joke around on him.
Doyalist Answer: And I thought it was funny and no one stopped me. I also thought it was a good chance to showcase the character's growing comfort with each other.
Summary: In which Ratchet and Megatron take the Hyperjump on vacation.
Crossposting: AO3 | Event Dreamwidth | Main Dreamwidth
Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.
“We should have sold this useless thing for scrap,” Megatron said, his head under the floor paneling of the shuttle’s cockpit as he searched for the fault in the impulse drive’s circuitry.
Presumably.
Ratchet honestly had no idea what the big fool was actually looking for or what the problem was. It was just as likely that Megatron was searching around down there for some piece of hardware to be mad at. It would explain all of the banging noises as he slapped around seemingly aimlessly under the floor.
“You still don’t really grasp the concept of sentimentality, do you?” Ratchet said, arms crossed as he stood nearby to “supervise” in case Megatron accidentally electrocuted himself for the umpteenth time.
It had been easy enough to get Prime to grant him the Hyperjump as a part of the peace arrangement he had forced everyone into.
With its now functional warp drive, the shuttle was also the perfect size to take for rare vacations with his partner. Neither of them were good at relaxing, but Soundwave had recently given them vouchers for a visit to resort world known for its geothermal hot springs. It was the perfect opportunity to dust the shuttle off.
Though, Ratchet too was beginning to regret telling Megatron they would be keeping the Hyperjump all those years ago after the glitchy experimental shuttle had been their only place of refuge for many months in unknown space. At the time, he had thought it would be nice to have something to remember their weird ordeal by, but, now as they orbited their vacation destination with a dead impulse drive, he was reconsidering.
“We warped all the way here,” Ratchet said, frowning at the floor where Megatron was wedging himself further into the maintenance crawlspace, “and now we can’t park.”
It was just their luck.
More banging echoed across the cramped cockpit, followed by a loud zapping noise.
Megatron recoiled with a frustrated grunt, clearly having been the cause of the zap.
“Could anything else possibly go wrong?” he growled, redoubling his efforts to do… something down there.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I can fix it!” Which is what Megatron said when the impulse drive wouldn’t start up after they came out of warp. The problem remained to be fixed.
Another zap. He caught the acrid scent of smoke.
The shuttle lurched downwards, Ratchet stumbling with it.
Rolling across the cockpit’s floor, he could hear Megatron madly scrambling out of the crawlspace.
The shuttle plummeted through the atmosphere; arms wrapped protectively around him as the planet’s gravity asserted itself.
This way they would at least arrive at their destination, he thought bitterly, though almost certainly not in one piece.
The cockpit heated up as the ablative heat protection panels on the hull were pushed past their limit.
The warning alarms sounded, lights flashing.
:: Imminent collision detected ::
Ratchet turned off his optics and waited for impact.
:: Warping to a safe distance in three… two… one… ::
“Warp?”
Suddenly the alarms stopped.
The intense heat began to dissipate.
Were they dead?
:: Collision avoided. Orbital stability re-enabled. ::
No, not dead.
Ratchet onlined his optics and twisted in Megatron’s firm grasp to peer out of the viewport.
They were in orbit above the resort world once more; the plumes of some of the massive geysers were visible from their vantage point.
“I’m calling for a tow; they’ll fix the damn thing in port.”
Megatron sighed in defeat, arms still wrapped tightly around Ratchet.
“Agreed.”
Continuity: G1
Rating: Teen
Relationship: Megatron/Ratchet
Characters: Megatron, Ratchet
Warnings: Mild gore. Serious injuries. Suggestive themes/content. Fade to black. Please see AO3 entry for full applicable tags.
Summary: In which an injured Megatron steals and promptly breaks an experimental Autobot shuttle and in which Ratchet has more adherence to ethical codes than is strictly necessary.
Crossposting: AO3 | DreamWidth
First chapter under cut, originally written as part of a rare pair week event. Please see AO3 for the complete version.
The situation during the raid on an Autobot supply depot had gone… south, to say the least. In the evacuation, Megatron had been somehow left behind. How dare they leave him behind! Him of all mechs. Left on the battlefield behind enemy lines.
Cowards.
Of course, he expected Starscream to leave him behind. That would simply be a normal business day. Soundwave, however, could usually be trusted to haul his unconscious frame off the field. This time, for whatever unknown reason, that didn’t happen.
He would deal with the lot of them when he returned to the Nemesis. Teach them to leave their leader behind. Maybe a few weeks in the brig (for Starscream) or extra patrol duties (for everyone else, except Soundwave) would remind them who was in charge in this void-damned army. Leave Megatron behind on the damn battlefield, would they? Well, he would be making sure that won't be a mistake anyone but Starscream would be keen on repeating.
Now here he was, trying to jump-start this Autobot shuttle that he had managed to sneak his way onto, having left a purple trail of dripped energon with blackened oil smears in his wake. Waking up on an abandoned battlefield, alone and bleeding fuel and oil from his chest, had definitely not been ideal.
The last thing he could recall before waking was Prime impaling him through the chest with a piece of steel pipe he had pulled from somewhere. Megatron could only assume it had come from some part of the supply infrastructure that got destroyed in the raid. The damage had probably forced a full system reboot. Unfortunately, Prime had made the mistake of not ensuring the injury was fatal. It might have been if the pipe had been pushed all of the way through the other side of his frame as opposed to merely halfway. When Megatron had woken up, he’d snapped off the bulk of the pipe, leaving only the remainder that was lodged tightly inside the wound itself. He had crushed the exposed end of the pipe closed in an attempt to staunch the flow of fluid and buy more time.
If he wasn’t quick, the trail would lead the Autobots right to him so they could finish the job. They should have done it earlier while he was still down and out cold, unable to fight back. Big mistake.
Barring that, if he wasn’t quicker, he ran the not-insignificant risk of succumbing to his injury if he couldn’t either access treatment or treat it himself somehow.
Megatron had made the decision that since he wasn’t dead quite yet, getting underway first was the wiser option. That would solve at least one worry. There were probably medical supplies on this shuttle somewhere. While he was no expert, he had patched himself up on occasion before, though nothing quite this extensive.
It was strange though, that even the Autobots had left him there on the ground in front of their oh so precious supply depot.
If they had thought he was dead, wouldn’t they have wanted to make sure? Maybe remove his head to display as a grotesque trophy and use what was left of him to make armor if they didn’t melt his remains down for resources.
If they had thought he was alive, wouldn’t they have captured him? Maybe throw him in a cell to either bleed out (a death on the order of hours) or suffer the horrors of starvation after patching him up (a death on the order of weeks or months), if they were feeling particularly cruel about it.
There was no reason for him to think Autobots would treat their prisoners with dignity, especially not the leader of the enemy army.
No matter. Megatron had a shuttle to steal—Zap!
He jerked his hands back from the uncooperative control panel with a snarled swear.
“Blasted heap!” Shaking out his left hand since it had taken the brunt of the arcing charge, he waved his right one, fisted in threat, at the panel. He knew, of course, he couldn't intimidate it into compliance but it was at least a little cathartic. "I ought to—”
“You ought to what?” said a voice behind him.
Megatron whipped around in the chair, raising his right arm instinctively towards the intruder. Not that it mattered. He had lost too much fuel to power the cannon and, in truth, he felt rather dizzy. That probably wasn’t helping him jump-start the shuttle either.
The intruder, when his optics finally focused, was that grouchy red and white Autobot medic, pointing a handheld welder right at him all while carrying a medical kit in his other hand. A scowl was set firmly on the medic's determined face, lined with age and experience. The welder sparked menacingly.
“And just what are you going to do with that, medic?”
“Originally, I was sent to pick up your sparkless corpse. Unfortunately for the both of us, your sparkless corpse can walk.”
“Oh really.” Megatron lifted one of his optical ridges in doubt, but the medic only pointed with the welder to the trail of energon and oil along the floor, leading from the back of the shuttle to the navigator’s chair where the warlord was currently seated.
“And, worse, your sparkless corpse can also talk.” The medic sighed and lowered the welder, clicking it off before chucking it in the medical kit. “Power down that void-damned cannon before you hurt yourself. We both know you don’t have the energy right now to use the stupid thing.”
“How dare you.”
Just for that insolence, he began powering the cannon. The low whirl of it charging filled the air for a brief moment, before the entire weapon hitched and sputtered, yanking his arm back into the control panel with an echoing crunch.
The charge in the cannon died as the shuttle around them roared to life, shaking the floor underneath them.
“You idiot!” the medic snapped, struggling to stay on his feet as the shuttle trembled. Megatron for the moment considered himself lucky to have the only seat in the house, not that he had had the wherewithal to remember to buckle himself in.
“Me‽”
“Take-off sequence initiated.”
A calm, synthesized voice called announcements through the shuttles internal speakers.
Take-off? Perfect, it seemed he would be getting out of here after all. Unfortunately, now he had a passenger but what was one Autobot prisoner?
"Look what you've done, you tin-pot tyrant!"
“Warp destination auto-selected.”
“What? Warp?” Megatron floundered. As though yelling at the shuttle would do anything beyond making him feel a little better. "Where?"
“Warp drive activation in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”
Before more complaints could be leveled at this infernal Autobot machine, the entire shuttle shuddered and Megatron’s optics offlined from the pulse of bright blue light that surged through the cabin. One final tremor from the vehicle and he was thrown from the chair, splayed on his front on the floor.
Megatron wasn’t sure how much time had passed when everything went still and his systems finished rebooting. Well, he hadn’t died yet. Unfortunately for that medic, if he was still in one piece. He groaned as his optics flickered back on, the images pixelated and indistinct. Maybe that was from the fuel loss. Maybe that was from the fact that he was staring at the floor of the shuttle. Or maybe—the thought was cut off as red hands entered his vision briefly before he was forcibly flipped over onto his back, further smearing escaped fluids on both the floor and his frame.
How dare the Autobot lay hands on him! He would show that pathetic—
“Good job.” The sarcasm, palpable in the medic’s voice as he looked down at the injured warlord, gave Megatron pause. “Your cannon backfired and activated the shuttle’s experimental warp drive.”
Warp drive?
What warp drive?
Wait.
Ah, yes, now he remembered. The shuttle’s system announced something about that before he’d been knocked down.
“Then,” he started, before being cut off with a cough. Perhaps clambering into this particular shuttle had been more serendipitous than he’d originally considered. Then again, why did a random, unassuming shuttle at a half-destroyed supply depot have an experimental warp drive? “Then I will… return to my ship more quickly than I had thought.”
“Not a chance. You broke the damn drive so it warped us to Primus knows where and won’t power back on.”
Dammit.
Megatron tried to sit up, only to be pushed back down. He felt rather numb, a bit tingly. His frame seemed to be heavier than usual, endoskeletal hydraulics unwilling to effectively move his limbs. It was almost as though—
“Don’t move. I already injected you with a liquid analgesic solution. That’ll be why you’re amica endura with the floor right now.” The welder from earlier reappeared in his hazy vision, once again sparking in menace, an ominous promise of health.
If Megatron was unable to move, this medic must have been quite strong to toss him over like he weighed hardly anything at all.
“You’re just barely online. It’s a small miracle your spark hasn’t extinguished from insufficient fuel supply. Either that or you’re just too obstinate.”
“And let me guess, medic, you’re about to change that.” It would certainly be an easy feat. Megatron hardly had the strength to move with all of the fluid loss and this medic had a wealth of the medical knowledge that could easily be used both healing and harming. Which was that welder now meant for, he wondered.
What a way to lose the war. At a medic’s mercy in the middle of nowhere, dying from purposeful malpractice as opposed to dying in battle.
“Don’t tempt me.”
“…What?” Then what in the hell was this fool doing if not offlining the enemy in a vulnerable moment of weakness? That’s what he would have expected. That’s what he would have done if it would end the war.
Apparently that welder was meant to heal. For now.
Then again, even if Megatron died here, that wouldn’t necessarily end the conflict. Starscream could galvanize the troops in the name revenge for their beloved, fallen leader—what a funny thought, but that treacherous seeker knew how to use politics to his advantage. Megatron expected nothing less. On one hand, he was almost proud that the movement would surely outlive him. On the other, he wished he wouldn’t be leaving it all in Starscream’s slippery, self-serving little hands.
Perhaps very little would be gained by the Autobots with his death. Perhaps this medic was just as calculating as any of his or Prime’s strategists.
Fascinating.
The thought brought an amused smirk to his face, even as he was laid out on the floor in a sticky, drying pool of his own bodily fluids.
Disgusting.
Apparently the medic thought so too, given the displeased scowl on his otherwise handsome, white facial plating. Well, if Megatron were to die here should the medic change his mind, at least the last image he would process would be that. And he would be leaving behind one hell of a mess to be cleaned up with how much he had leaked fuel all over the cabin. One final inconvenience to the Autobots just to rub it in.
“And don’t call me ‘medic.’ I have a name.” The crushed pipe in his chest was pulled free with an effortless, wet-sounding pop, as though the medic had done this a thousand times before on a thousand other injured mechs, as though Megatron was merely another unruly patient to be pacified. The tip of the welder was stuffed inside the newly reopened hole, quickly sealing leaks with loud fizzing noises. “It’s Ratchet.”
“Ratchet?” Fitting name for a medic, though perhaps a bit on the nose.
“I won’t be called by my title the entire way back. It’s already a long trip with the normal FTL engines that are still working. Another miracle given how you crushed the void-damned console beyond recognition.”
“Ratchet,” Megatron echoed quietly, committing the designation to memory as he relaxed against the floor, no longer fighting against the analgesic medication that had been administered before he finished rebooting.
Rules: Share five of your works (art, writing, etc.). Then tag five people to share the things they made.
1. Something you absolutely adore.
2. Something that was challenging to create.
3. Something that makes you laugh (or smile).
4. Something that suprised you (in how it turned, in how much people liked it, etc.)
5. Something you want other people to see.
An Unintentional Voyage - A short MegaRatch novel loosely-based on the broader G1 setting where Megatron and Ratchet, through acts of stupidity and chance, are isolated in deep space on a shitty space shuttle. They have to work together to slowly make their way back to known space.
It explores their personalities, how they relate to people broadly, how they relate to each other, and how they approach problem-solving and cooperation, all while exploring alien worlds and the challenges of being cooped up in the Cybertronian equivalent of a souped up Volkswagen bus.
I absolutely adore this. It's the second fic novel I started, but the first I finished (because it's only 44k words). There isn't much MegaRatch content out there to start with and this one started as a challenge prompt, loosely inspired by The Way Forward by KottonKat, which you should also read.
2. Reforged - This is a very long MegaRod novel, inserted into the IDW1 MTMTE/LL timeline during the tiny "victory lap." It contains canon blending features and draws from various continuities for some of the lore.
While the A plot focuses on a very slowburn romance, the B plot focuses on unraveling a religious conspiracy and what it means to process guilt, all while expanding on and exploring Caminus as a setting, which did not get much canon development. It also contains Prowl painfully growing a conscience.
This one was difficult. Two years of "difficult." It was hard to juggle plot threads and keep a consistent narrative with appropriate pacing because I did not expect it to take this much space to develop this particular story.
But I'm glad I did it. I really enjoy the final result, despite the two major style changes that occurred in the course of writing it. The first 11 or so chapters even got full rewrites partway through to make the style changes less jarring. I'm proud of it.
3. Courtship Dances - A short quintuple TaraProwl drabble based on the mating dances of peacock spiders. This one cracks me up every time I look at it. It's just fucking ridiculous and I love for that. Read it and have a chuckle at Prowl suffering.
4. A Thousand Years - I made this as a one-off for MegOp Week one year. That year, I challenged myself to do a different continuity each day and I find TFP (and Aligned in general) pretty difficult to write for.
I was really surprised how much people really enjoyed it and apparently continue to enjoy it. It only just now got kicked off my "top 5 most hits" graph. I thought of it as a fun challenge, but then more than one person told me it was one of their comfort fics.
That's insanely flattering!
And a good reminder that you never know who is going to love your creations.
5. The Hollow Man - I wrote this horror novella at a fever-like pace in under a month like a lunatic. It addresses the implications of "what if the Magnus armor is Ultra Magnus's original body and what if that body is haunted?"
Readers inform me that it is spooky and unsettling.
I love it and want everyone to see it. I want to do more horror pieces and this one was so fun. It's one of the few pieces of my own writing that I actually go back and re-read for the pleasure of it.
It was inspired by headcanons from @tangentially-displaced & @decepti-thots
Tagging: (I'm trying to tag this time, please ignore if you do not wish to participate) @starvonnie, @bitegore, @tarklesbehindthescenes, @dramamelon, @weapon-up-wallflower
Time for another promo post as we’re up to chapter 7.
Continuity: G1
Rating: Teen
Relationship: Megatron/Ratchet
Characters: Megatron, Ratchet
Warnings: Mild gore. Serious injuries. Please see AO3 entry for full applicable tags.
Summary: In which an injured Megatron steals and promptly breaks an experimental Autobot shuttle and in which Ratchet has more adherence to ethical codes than is strictly necessary.
Crossposting: In a reblog
First chapter under cut, originally written as part of a rare pair week event. Please see AO3 for most recent updates.
The situation during the raid on an Autobot supply depot had gone… south, to say the least. In the evacuation, Megatron had been somehow left behind. How dare they leave him behind! Him of all mechs. Left on the battlefield behind enemy lines.
Cowards.
Of course, he expected Starscream to leave him behind. That would simply be a normal business day. Soundwave, however, could usually be trusted to haul his unconscious frame off the field. This time, for whatever unknown reason, that didn’t happen.
He would deal with the lot of them when he returned to the Nemesis. Teach them to leave their leader behind. Maybe a few weeks in the brig (for Starscream) or extra patrol duties (for everyone else, except Soundwave) would remind them who was in charge in this void-damned army. Leave Megatron behind on the damn battlefield, will they? Well, he'll be making sure that won't be a mistake anyone but Starscream will be keen on repeating.
Now here he was, trying to jump-start this Autobot shuttle that he had managed to sneak his way onto, having left a purple trail of dripped energon with blackened oil smears in his wake. Waking up on an abandoned battlefield, alone and bleeding fuel and oil from his chest, had definitely not been ideal.
The last thing he could recall before waking was Prime impaling him through the chest with a piece of steel pipe he had pulled from somewhere. Megatron could only assume it had come from some part of the supply infrastructure that got destroyed in the raid. The damage had probably forced a full system reboot. Unfortunately, Prime had made the mistake of not ensuring the injury was fatal. It might have been if the pipe had been pushed all of the way through the other side of his frame as opposed to merely halfway. When Megatron had woken up, he’d snapped off the bulk of the pipe, leaving only the remainder that was lodged tightly inside the wound itself. He had crushed the exposed end of the pipe closed in an attempt to staunch the flow of fluid and buy more time.
If he wasn’t quick, the trail would lead the Autobots right to him so they could finish the job. They should have done it earlier while he was still down and out cold, unable to fight back. Big mistake.
Barring that, if he wasn’t quicker, he ran the not-insignificant risk of succumbing to his injury if he couldn’t either access treatment or treat it himself somehow.
Megatron had made the decision that since he wasn’t dead quite yet, getting underway first was the wiser option. That would solve at least one worry. There was probably medical supplies on this shuttle somewhere. While he was no expert, he had patched himself up on occasion before, though nothing quite this extensive.
It was strange though, that even the Autobots had left him there on the ground in front of their oh so precious supply depot.
If they had thought he was dead, wouldn’t they have wanted to make sure? Maybe remove his head to display as a grotesque trophy and use what was left of him to make armor if they didn’t melt his remains down for resources.
If they had thought he was alive, wouldn’t they have captured him? Maybe throw him in a cell to either bleed out (a death on the order of hours) or suffer the horrors of starvation after patching him up (a death on the order of weeks or months), if they were feeling particularly cruel about it.
There was no reason for him to think Autobots would treat their prisoners with dignity, especially not the leader of the enemy army.
No matter. Megatron had a shuttle to steal—Zap!
He jerked his hands back from the uncooperative control panel with a snarled swear.
“Blasted heap!” Shaking out his left hand since it had taken the brunt of the arcing charge, he waved his right one, fisted in threat, at the panel. He knew, of course, he couldn't intimidate it into compliance but it was at least a little cathartic. "I ought to—”
“You ought to what?” said a voice behind him.
Megatron whipped around in the chair, raising his right arm instinctively towards the intruder. Not that it mattered. He had lost too much fuel to power the cannon and, in truth, he felt rather dizzy. That probably wasn’t helping him jump-start the shuttle either.
The intruder, when his optics finally focused, was that grouchy red and white Autobot medic, pointing a handheld welder right at him all while carrying a medical kit in his other hand. A scowl was set firmly on the medic's determined face, lined with age and experience. The welder sparked menacingly.
“And just what are you going to do with that, medic?”
“Originally, I was sent to pick up your sparkless corpse. Unfortunately for the both of us, your sparkless corpse can walk.”
“Oh really.” Megatron lifted one of his optical ridges in doubt, but the medic only pointed with the welder to the trail of energon and oil along the floor, leading from the back of the shuttle to the navigator’s chair where the warlord was currently seated.
“And, worse, your sparkless corpse can also talk.” The medic sighed and lowered the welder, clicking it off before chucking it in the medical kit. “Power down that void-damned cannon before you hurt yourself. We both know you don’t have the energy right now to use the stupid thing.”
“How dare you.”
Just for that insolence, he began powering the cannon. The low whirl of it charging filled the air for a brief moment, before the entire weapon hitched and sputtered, yanking his arm back into the control panel with an echoing crunch.
The charge in the cannon died as the shuttle around them roared to life, shaking the floor underneath them.
“You idiot!” the medic snapped, struggling to stay on his feet as the shuttle trembled. Megatron for the moment considered himself lucky to have the only seat in the house, not that he had had the wherewithal to remember to buckle himself in.
“Me‽”
“Take-off sequence initiated.”
A calm, synthesized voice called announcements through the shuttles internal speakers.
Take-off? Perfect, it seemed he would be getting out of here after all. Unfortunately, now he had a passenger but what was one Autobot prisoner?
"Look what you've done, you tin-pot tyrant!"
“Warp destination auto-selected.”
“What? Warp?” Megatron floundered. As though yelling at the shuttle would do anything beyond making him feel a little better. "Where?"
“Warp drive activation in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”
Before more complaints could be leveled at this infernal Autobot machine, the entire shuttle shuddered and Megatron’s optics offlined from the pulse of bright blue light the surged through the cabin. One final tremor from the vehicle and he was thrown from the chair, splayed on his front on floor.
—
Megatron wasn’t sure how much time had passed when everything went still and his systems finished rebooting. Well, he hadn’t died yet. Unfortunately for that medic, if he was still in one piece. He groaned as his optics flickered back on, the images pixelated and indistinct. Maybe that was from the fuel loss. Maybe that was from the fact that he was staring at the floor of the shuttle. Or maybe—the thought was cut off as red hands entered his vision briefly before he was forcibly flipped over onto his back, further smearing escaped fluids on both the floor and his frame.
How dare the Autobot lay hands on him! He would show that pathetic—
“Good job.” The sarcasm, palpable in the medic’s voice as he looked down at the injured warlord, gave Megatron pause. “Your cannon backfired and activated the shuttle’s experimental warp drive.”
Warp drive?
What warp drive?
Wait.
Ah, yes, now he remembered. The shuttle’s system announced something about that before he’d been knocked down.
“Then,” he started, before being cut off with a cough. Perhaps clambering into this particular shuttle had been more serendipitous than he’d originally considered. Then again, why did a random, unassuming shuttle at a half-destroyed supply depot have an experimental warp drive? “Then I will… return to my ship more quickly than I had thought.”
“Not a chance. You broke the damn drive so it warped us to Primus knows where and won’t power back on.”
Dammit.
Megatron tried to sit up, only to be pushed back down. He felt rather numb, a bit tingly. His frame seemed to be heavier than usual, endoskeletal hydraulics unwilling to effectively move his limbs. It was almost as though—
“Don’t move. I already injected you with a liquid analgesic solution. That’ll be why you’re amica endura with the floor right now.” The welder from earlier reappeared in his hazy vision, once again sparking in menace, an ominous promise of health.
If Megatron was unable to move, this medic must have been quite strong to toss him over like he weight hardly anything at all.
“You’re just barely online. It’s a small miracle your spark hasn’t extinguished from insufficient fuel supply. Either that or you’re just too obstinate.”
“And let me guess, medic, you’re about to change that.” It would certainly be an easy feat. Megatron hardly had the strength to move with all of the fluid loss and this medic had a wealth of the medical knowledge that could easily be used both healing and harming. Which was that welder now meant for, he wondered.
What a way to lose the war. At a medic’s mercy in the middle of nowhere, dying from purposeful malpractice as opposed to dying in battle.
“Don’t tempt me.”
“…What?” Then what in the hell was this fool doing if not offline the enemy in a vulnerable moment of weakness? That’s what he would have expected. That’s what he would have done if it would end the war.
Apparently that welder was meant to heal. For now.
Then again, even if Megatron died here, that wouldn’t necessarily end the conflict. Starscream could galvanize the troops in the name revenge for their beloved, fallen leader—what a funny thought, but that treacherous seeker knew how to use politics to his advantage. Megatron expected nothing less. On one hand, he was almost proud that the movement would surely outlive him. On the other, he wished he wouldn’t be leaving it all in Starscream’s slippery, self-serving little hands.
Perhaps very little would be gained by the Autobots with his death. Perhaps this medic was just as calculating as any of his or Prime’s strategists.
Fascinating.
The thought brought an amused smirk to his face, even as he was laid out on the floor in a sticky, drying pool of his own bodily fluids.
Disgusting.
Apparently the medic thought so too, given the displeased scowl on his otherwise handsome, white facial plating. Well, if Megatron were to die here should the medic change his mind, at least the last image he would process would be that. And he would be leaving behind one hell of a mess to be cleaned up with how much he had leaked fuel all over the cabin. One final inconvenience to the Autobots just to rub it in.
“And don’t call me ‘medic.’ I have a name.” The crushed pipe in his chest was pulled free with an effortless, wet-sounding pop, as though the medic had done this a thousand times before on a thousand other injured mechs, as though Megatron was merely another unruly patient to be pacified. The tip of the welder was stuffed inside the newly reopened hole, quickly sealing leaks with loud fizzing noises. “It’s Ratchet.”
“Ratchet?” Fitting name for a medic, though perhaps a bit on the nose.
“I won’t be called by my title the entire way back. It’s already a long trip with the normal FTL engines that are still working. Another miracle given how you crushed the void-damned console beyond recognition.”
“Ratchet,” Megatron echoed quietly, committing the designation to memory as he relaxed against the floor, no longer fighting against the analgesic medication that had been administered before he finished rebooting.
