Neos Mnestis

Part 9: Arobor Carn

        The first mech Blurr found was Perceptor, who had gotten trapped by a falling chunk of metal and was struggling to pull himself from under it. "Wait-wait-let-me-help." He insisted, kneeling to grab an edge and heave up. Blurr wasn't the strongest mech out there, so it took him a few tries to raise the metal enough to let the destroyer tank crowl out. The whole time Perceptor was murmuring something about uselessness; Blurr choose not to respond.

        "Let's-find-the-others." Blurr hurried down the tunnel, Perceptor following a little slower, dented servos sealing off a few ruptured energon lines in his side.

        The main cavern was a mess: former walls and ceiling collapsed from the blast, covering everything that had been on the floor, a few twisted pieces of lab equipment could be seen here and there--by the light streaming in through new holes in the top of the cavern--but little else. The pair spread apart to search for the others, Perceptor's paneled optic glowing with an intense light.

        Blurr found Bulkhead first. The big green bot was off line, trapped beneath such large chunks of what had been the ceiling of the cave that it took the pair's combined strength to free him. The Wrecker was lucky--for once--to have such thick armor, or he would have undoubtedly have been crushed in Blurr's opinion.

         "Bring him back on line." Perceptor ordered the blue courier, turning way. "Find out the lieutenant's spark signature." He threw over his shoulder, planled optic flaring to life again. The tank-alt returned to where he had been searching before Blurr called him over, scanning the ruble for the unique burning of Drift's spark. It didn't take much longer for the red mech's targeting system to lock onto the black mech, causing the cannon on Perceptor's shoulder sent a request to be powered on--a slight downside of using his fighting upgrades in a non-battle setting.

         The black Wrecker was fortunate enough to avoid being completely caught under the collapsing ceiling like Bulkhead; instead, a section of wall covered in nasty looking lab equipment--Perceptor wasn't in the mood to think back to his job before the war and name any of them--had crumbled on top of him, and as Perceptor cleared it all away he saw that one of the sharper tools had gone almost fully though Drift's abdomen, a few pieces of shrapnel--probably from the gun the strangely familiar jet had thrown--were also lodged in his chest plating. The red Wrecker knew how much pain his compatriot would be in and thus was silently glad that somewhere along the line he had been forced into emergency stasis.

        Careful not to aggravate his wounds further, Perceptor hefted the stasis locked mech and carried him over the clear area Blurr had made around Bulkhead, who was now slowly coming back online. Gently laying Drift down, he turned his frowning face plate and single optic capable of glaring onto the green mech, now fully alert--if with a terrible pain in his central processor.

        "The lieutenant's spark signature. Now." Perceptor demanded, servos clenching into fists as Bulkhead took a moment to remember Arcee's signature. Using his battle systems was really starting to shorten his tempor. When his fellow Wrecker finally recalled it all he whirled away, targeting optic once again flaring to life, searching for the commander of the ill fated venture.

        Blurr administered basic first aid to the mech who he had almost come to see as a sort of a sire figure during the long time they had spent in the escape shuttle after the fall of moonbase three--even though he had been a notorious Decepticon with a nasty interpretation of justice. He also kept a cyan optic on Perceptor; the speedster had also learned a lot about the scientist turned Wrecker, despite how hard the mech had tried to keep himself disassociated with most everyone on the shuttle but Drift. Blurr wasn't quite sure how Perceptor's targeting system work, but he had learned through hard experience that the red mech could quickly lose control of his anger when he engaged the system in a non-combative situation.

        He couldn't find the lieutenant! Arcee's signature seemed to have been otterly and totally blasted from the surface of Cybertron, leaving only ghostly reverberations amplified by the mettle surrounding them. In a last ditch effort, Perceptor extended all his sensor systems, along with his EM field, searching for the femme's life sign. And there, faintly emanating from near the epicenter of the blast, was the faintest hint of a spark.

        Perceptor strode over, his optic and targeting system fixed on the point where he could sense the lieutenant. Crouching, he began yanking away the chunks of metal crushing the femme. In a moment Blurr was at his side, adding his lesser strength to that of Perceptor. At the price of having the protective plating of their servos scrapped off, exposing the sensitive circuitry beneath, and a few leaking energon lines--these little injuries were completely ignored by the two mechs--they were able to uncovered the lieutenant's battered frame.

        The blue two-wheeler had been the closest to the gray jet when he threw the incendiary device, and while the others had only really received damage from what happened after the explosion, it was obvious that Arcee had been caught in at least some of the blast. The blue paint she had acquired during her time on Earth had been completely burned from her frame, along with a goodly portion of her outer armor. Then the falling debris had done a thorough job at smashing any remaining armor and slicing through the protoform beneath.

        Energon was everywhere. On the rubble the mechs moved, their servos, the floor of the cave, Arcee's battered and broken frame, and, as Perceptor carefully lifted the seemingly lifeless femme, all over him. Hurrying over to where Bulkhead was struggling to stay online and Drift lay motionless--still securely locked in emergency stasis--the Wrecker lay Arcee out, quickly sealing the slowly leaking vital energon lines--a testament to how much she already lost--as Blurr sped out of the cavern to com. for a ground bridge to be sent, explaining at near supersonic speeds what had happened, because energon shortage or no energon shortage no one wanted anymore Cybertronians to lose their lives.

        Flashing back to Perceptor's side, the courier helped carry the three injured 'bots out to where the ground bridge could reach them, then, he realized something. Something important. Looking up at Perceptor as the larger mech gently set Drift, next to the two they had already hauled out, on the ground, he blurted, "we-forgot-about-Fillup!"

        The Wrecker stared blankly at him for a moment before processing exactly what the speedster said. Rolling his optic, Perceptor lowered himself until he was sitting between Arcee and Drift before responding. "So what? It's a disposable, we can get another." He then preceded to start rubbing drying energon from his frame.

        "How-can-you-say-that-he's-a-living-being!? We-can't-just-leave-him-behind-he could-still-be-ali-live-down-n-there-ere-r!" Blurr's voice cracked at the end and he had to shut off his vocalizer to keep it from overheating and possibly melting them. So, rather than continuing his Autobotlike rant on equality and that sort of thing, the courier glared at his companion's back.

        Once the ground bridge materialized and Autobots ran out and began lifting their injured compatriots Blurr tried to reboot his vocalizers to tell the mechs, who he didn't recognize, about Fill-up. To his horror when he did, all that come out was a scrambled stream of unintelligible sounds. His vocalizer had glitched, he was incapable of speaking, and of course Perceptor wasn't interested in saying a word about the missing Vehicon. So as they all hurried to the medical wing of the new Autobot base he could do nothing but continue to glare at the red mech.

        Blurr didn't understand how anyone could be so unfeeling about life, the fact that any Autobot would be willing to discard one in the way Perceptor had appalled him. To keep from being too riled up by Perceptor's callousness, the youngish mech thought of something Jazz told him in one of the deranged bot's more lucid moments.

        "We all joined for different reasons Blurr. Not all of us Autobots are as idealistic as the Prime would wish, and we have to live with that." Blurr had to remember this, especially when it came to working with Perceptor. He had to remember that the tank alt could hardly care less for the moral thought and code, which Burr himself cared so deeply for. Perceptor preferred Cybertron's old way of life.

        As impromptu medical assistants tended the relatively minor injuries and the Autobots' red doctor began stabilizing Arcee and Drift with a firey passion. Blurr didn't recognize the bot and he wondered where Ratchet was. He was sure he'd heard the crusty old CMO survived the war with Team Prime. Once the assistants finished checking him over and found nothing amiss other than the glitched vocalizer--they said the doctor would get to it as soon as he could--Blurr was told to just lie back and rest. As the courier did this, he faintly noted that the doctor was absently speaking to Drift as he worked on cleaning the gaping hole in the mech's midriff after he had removed a surprising amount of plated armor. For some reason the red mech kept referring to him as 'Locks.' Blurr momentarily wondered why before he slipped of line from exhaustion he hadn't felt.