thisavrou | [audio]

[Only the audio clicks on, and the voice coming through the MID is worn, thin with static and carefully controlled.]

This is Chief--this is Ratchet, giving notice that the portion of the inorganic clinic I was running is currently closed until further notice, as of... now, apparently somewhere around a year from when I last checked. I'll be resuming my duties as soon as--when it's possible for me to do so.

In the meantime, I'm referring my patients to the regular medbay or to Tony Stark, depending on the complexity of the engineering involved. If it's a serious emergency... I can't help you, but I'll try to consult via MID if absolutely necessary. I am not available to answer five hundred questions about why, so don't bother asking. I need to work. Kindly refrain from calling me unless you're actively leaking to death.

...Ratchet out.

[PRIVATE TO WHIRL]
I need to speak with you in person. I'm sending you my coordinates.

Please.

[Somebody's hands finally stopped working to the point where he actually has to quit using them all the time and attach new ones, and he is not having a good day. Feel free to harass him, but there's no guarantee he'll respond.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Normally he'd give Ratchet a hard time about leaving a condition like that for so long without immediately addressing it, especially given his line of work, but he's as bent out of shape about their unbeknownst year-long kidnapping as anyone. It's not like any of them intended to squander an entire year, even if it kinda sounds like Ratchet was procrastinating even before then.

He also skips the inevitable "can you even die" question, because Sans made sure that manner of query isn't fun anymore. Dick. ]

Yeah, yeah, I'll look after your brood. I've already fiddled with the parts of at least a couple of them.

Right now, I'm way more interested in what these "a few ideas" are.

I know. I heard you helped repair Bumblebee, during the mess with the Caducans. It was good work. Thank you.

[That is officially the highest compliment he has ever paid an organic in five and some change million years, Tony, congratulations.]

I have... substitutes. It's not the same, but I'll make do for now. I can't build a new set--not of hands like these. I don't really have a choice.

Well, yes, of course it was good work. I'm me.

[ Appreciation is appreciated, but he appreciates himself enough for both of them, so it all works out either way. ]

"Can't" build a new set. [ Sounds like bullshit to him, because there's no such thing as can't. ] Because of time, resources, expertise, or all of the above?

I've rebuilt plenty of parts when I've had a full medical suite at my disposal. But no, I don't have the supplies here, my hands have deteriorated to the point where they're basically useless so I suppose I'm out of time, too, and it's also... not that simple. It has to do with how Cybertronians are--well, born, I guess.

I won't give you all the excruciating details, but there are two modes of creation--we're either forged, or we're constructed cold. Forged Cybertronians are created in waves called 'hot spots' when Vector Sigma interacts with the planet's core to ignite patches of new sparks to be harvested along with the sentio metallico necessary to-- [They grow out of the ground like little robot potatoes, Tony doesn't need a blow-by-blow and Ratchet is painfully aware he's stalling.] Anyway, the important part is we aren't built, not in the traditional sense, not the way someone constructed cold is. They're put together deliberately and have a spark implanted after the fact.

My point is, we can build parts, whole bodies even, but I was forged as a medic. My hands are--were--extremely fine and complex precision instruments, and I might be able to build new hands but I can't build replacements. They just... aren't the same. Believe me, if I could slap put a new set together, I damn well would have done it by now.

[ What

the fuck did you even just say to him, Ratchet. ]

I can't believe you just told me you harvest little robot babies out of the ground. And it all sounded pretty damn scientific, too, like - I'm actually almost inclined to believe you. About baby robot harvests.

[ THIS PLACE IS BULLSHIT. ]

I--what?

[His entire life and five million years of a career are falling apart at the ends of his wrists but he's momentarily diverted by indignation.]

Well, you should, since it's true! As if that's any more ridiculous than a couple of organics getting their secretions all over each other and then sitting around for a while to see if anything happens, give me a break. And, for the record, it's extremely impolite to ask a Cybertronian their mode of creation, there's still a lot of prejudice against those constructed cold.

Anyway. [Back to his extremely important robot pathos.] Even if you were a better engineer than someone who was going to medical school back when your species was genus Australopithecus--and I'd be inclined to let you have a shot at it either way at this point--you wouldn't have a functional model to work off of. Most of the critical mechanisms in my hands are degraded to the point of being unrecognizable. I'm about a week and a half away from having to operate my MID with my damned elbows, so I don't exactly have the luxury of time just at the moment.

Okay, look, you don't get to nail me with the cultural insensitivity card when you volunteered the potato baby information. I'm just a helpless consumer of information, here.

[ God, Ratchet. GOD. ]

But, fine, let's say I'm willing to go along with the "literally impossible" explanation. [ And for the record, he doesn't sound convinced. ] How bad are these substitutes in comparison? Are they "give up the practice and move to the country to start a robo-potato farm" bad?

[There's a long pause, which is more telling than any denial he possibly could have made.]

They'll work. [Shortly.] And I'm going to make modifications once they're attached. I don't actually have time to explain the process of empurata to you, speaking of cultural insensitivity, but--they're functional. More than what I've got on the ends of my wrists now, at any rate.

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