[Ratchet stares down at the mangled, detached remains of his hands, wishing stupidly for a medical bay full of dying patients to worry about. It had been so much easier on Delphi--he'd helped Ambulon prep and dismantle one hand as much as he could while First Aid cooked more antidote, and had dismissed Ambulon entirely for the second once the first was in place to have him free to take care of patients while Ratchet stripped and replaced his other hand himself. But it had happened in a flurry of pain and fear, the tang of rust sharp in his throat and the whole of him stretched thin, entirely too aware of the ill around him that needed care, of Drift and Pipes, barely hanging on, of the repairs that would have to be made once the antidote had been administered. It had helped that he had been laboring to attach hands that actually worked.

[This process, having to sit and wait while Whirl works at an excruciating snail's pace to pull away--again--the hands he'd used for five million years to keep as many people he cared about alive as possible, only to replace them with... well. He doesn't begrudge Whirl his slowness, and he's grateful beyond measure to have something to replace the useless, twisted chunks of metal on the ends of his wrists with in the first place, but none of that makes this any easier. Ratchet shoves those thoughts aside and bends every last piece of his will to the task of trying to twitch his fingers. Nothing.]

That's all of them. The hard part of this half's over, it's just the rest of the hardware now. Start with the bolts at the sides of my wrist and work in.