Firehoses and Tiny Noses (Rescue Bots Fanfiction)

1. A Trip Up the Mountain

The garage was quiet that morning, which was probably because Salvage and Blurr had gone to the Rescue Bot Training Center to make sure nothing needed repairs after a storm had hit the coast. A lot of storms had been hitting them, but that was typical of springtime weather. It had kept the Rescue Bots increasingly busy the past few weeks, which enabled Blades to get back to full functionality after what the island was calling the 'Egg Incident.'

That morning had started out like almost any other morning; Heatwave was sparring with his dummy, Chase and Boulder were both sitting and reading their respective favorite genres, and Blades was trying his hand at painting, since the weather had temporarily taken out the TV reception.

"How's the painting going, Blades...?" Boulder murmured.

"...I believe humans would call it 'abstract.'" Blades replied with a grimace. "You don't mind having a big helm, do you?"

Boulder chuckled, "Why paint me when you have your own tiny model there?"

Heatwave smirked as he paused in his sparring, "Snowblast's not really in the mood to pose right now..."

Blades looked away from the canvas and over to his son, who was slumped on top of the freezer, wings drooping on either side of it. "I'm sorry, Snowy...!" He cooed, "You look miserable..."

Though he couldn't fly or walk yet, the tiny pterosaur could crawl and most definitely climb. He'd dig his little clawed fingers into surfaces and shimmy up like Mr. Pettypaws into a tree, which kept Blades' anxiety up, because he'd lose track of the tiny bot and then find him dangling from the rafters like a bat. He liked to hang from things, and Blades dealt with this by letting him wrap his wings around his neck and just dangle when the helicopter was at the Firehouse.

When the team left for a rescue, however, Snowblast would sit in the Command Center with Cody; a solution they'd decided on after the first time Blades left him, and Snowblast wailed for hours in the nest because he was all alone.

But as the weather had slowly shifted from cold to warm, there'd been a change in the youngest member of the team as well. As it turned out, he didn't take heat very well, and most of them suspected that it had to do with the abuse his egg had taken before he hatched. Some mornings, Blades would wake up and find Snowblast curled up on the cool, concrete floor of the garage below where the nest was situated off the ground.

Boulder predicted his systems would eventually adjust to cope with it better as he got older. For now though, they just did what they could to keep his tiny frame from overheating.

Blades walked over to the freezer and collected his son into his arms, stroking his crest and earning a soft squeak in response. "I know... It'll be chilly here again soon."
Snowblast squeaked to his parent, who chirped back in response. The helicopter-bot couldn't explain how he was able to translate his son's sounds, just that it must be a side-effect of the Budding process.

The loud blaring of the Rescue Alarm caught their attention, and Blades looked at the wall. "...All of us are up." He announced, looking back down to his son. "Da will be back later, okay?"

As the Burnses exited the elevator, Blades slipped Snowblast into it and waved to him before the doors closed back up and it moved up the shaft.

"What's the emergency?" Heatwave inquired.

"Snowmelt has washed out some of the hiking trails and started a mudslide. We need to get those hikers out of there." Chief informed.

Heatwave nodded, "Rescue Bots, roll to the rescue!"

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As the caravan of energency vehicles made their way up the hillside, they could see the massive amount of melted snow from Mount Griffin had diverted the river somewhat, washing out some of the trails, as the Chief had said.