Healing Hearts

Chapter 15

Harry grunted as he apparated onto a cliff side, slipping from the sudden lack of level ground. Landing back on his butt, the slender man stared down at the scuttling rocks around him dumbly. He knew he was a bit clumsy, but to fall after apparating onto actual ground was a new occurrence.
Picking himself up, Harry quickly realized that the rocks that kept rolling past him were not moving because of his fall. A horrible sound, a loud rumbling, the screeching of metal, and the crunching of glass, alerted him that something was coming. Harry turned to look up the cliffside as the noise kept getting louder, and his green eyes widened comically behind his glasses. A mangled red sports car was tumbling side over side towards him, approaching fast.
"Fuck," was all the Arcane Healer could utter before the car hit him, knocking all the breath from his lungs, and sending them both flying towards the surf below.
Thinking through the pain was something Harry had basically been trained to do, but cars hitting him at high speeds was not something he'd ever thought to be ready for. However, this did not stop the wizard from knowing that once the car hit the water, retrieval of whoever was inside was going to be a lot more difficult, even with magic in his arsenal.
While his body was being thrown around and smacked by the car, Harry tried to keep his head together enough to call upon his magic and force it to stop his and the car's momentum.
Within a minute, Harry's world suddenly jerked to a stop around him. A scream tore from the Hufflepuff's mouth as he smashed through the broken driver's side window to slam his head against the passenger side door. Slumping to the ground, unconscious and bleeding, Harry was unaware that he was the only human in the area.

-

Knockout struggled to keep his processor online as he crashed down the Primus-forsaken cliff. The damage he was accumulating was extensive, but it would be a whole lot worse if he didn't get out of there quickly.
Warning signs and dangerous symbols flashed across his optics at the speed of light, and the Decepticon cursed the young scout. If one of those warnings said his t-cog was damaged, he'd be scrap metal.
It was then that a new alert popped up on his optic field of vision. A squishy had just appeared below him on the cliffside. How had it gotten there?
Knockout barely had time to contemplate the human's strange cloaking device before he hit the squishy and continued his descent downwards. Vaguely he registered the scout's broken warbling in his audio receptors.
Too bad the squishy couldn't have survived that. The medic sighed at the lost opportunity before he shifted focus and prepared himself to try to transform as soon as he hit the water. It would only be a few moments before Bumblebee followed him down the cliff, ready to finish him off.
Suddenly, the many messages flashing across Knockout's optics froze.
His vision abruptly much clearer without flashing systems everywhere, the Decepticon could see the squishy he had hit was thrown across his demolished cabin. Glass, metal, and blood was everywhere. It was then that Knockout realized that the human was actually not dead. Blood was still pumping out of its wounds and its chest was still rising and falling.
As his systems started to calm down and reboot, Knockout was able to turn his vision outward and immediately was struck by a sight that made him hastily reboot his vision, only to see the same picture.
Knockout was floating upside down in the air, hovering some ten feet above a frozen wave of water. Rocks were scattered in the air around him, and, when he extended his vision behind him, Knockout could just make out the stationary figure of the yellow Autobot at the top of the cliff, one ped hovering over the edge.
Checking his internal systems quickly, and realizing with relief his t-cog was not damaged enough to prevent a transformation, Knockout triggered the change. He wasn't about to let a golden opportunity like this pass him up. The only problem was... he didn't change modes.
Knockout's optics widened internally as panic began to churn in his energon lines. He quickly searched through his systems for the reason behind his frozen state, but couldn't find anything giving off any relevant warnings. He knew that certain parts of his armor were shredded, his inner plating was bent, his energon levels were rising, his internal wiring had a few leaks...
Knockout's processor froze. A few seconds later, it rebooted. The Decepticon then quickly rebooted his energon systems, thoughts firing madly as he waited.
In a few seconds, the systems were back online, and Knockout couldn't believe his optics. There was no fault in his system, his energon levels were rising. It was minimal, but the medic's systems were top of the line and easily detected the small amount of life force he was receiving. But from where?
Sending out his Allspark scanner, Knockout received a hit immediately. The source of his energon was right...
Turning his optics to his cab, the Decepticon scanned the human laying there. Any traces of it's wounds were gone, though it was still unconscious. The medic felt his internal systems heat up in excitement as his scans picked up trace amounts of energon leaving the squishy's hands and flowing into his body.
Abruptly, the trace amounts became floods as blue energy started pouring out of the human and leaking into himself. Knockout watched, enthralled, as his systems' cautions and warnings started disappearing one by one. First, any liquids his internals had leaked reversed their course, returned to his wiring and tubes, and sealed shut. Then, his inner paneling was delicately reshaped. Knockout would have shuddered at how soft the ghost touch felt if he could actually move.
His outer armor was quickly pieced back together, reshaped, and smoothed after that. Rocks and dirt that had made its way into his cab suddenly disappeared. And finally, pieces of broken glass flew from where they were scattered around him to rejoin and slot back into their respective places in his windows, making them look as if they had never been broken.
It was then, as Knockout felt the last of his pain bleed away, that the blue energy pouring from the fleshling stopped, and the Decepticon started to fall.
Processor quickly kicking into high gear, Knockout activated his t-cog and finished transforming into his main form less than two feet from the surface of the water. The medic braced for impact and smacked against the water with a mighty force before he sunk beneath the waves. He quickly input the coordinates for a random patch of dessert a good distance from both where he and the Nemesis were to his connection with the bridge and activated it. He had precious little time before Bumblebee joined him in the water, and he'd prefer to not waste his newly replenished energon on the annoying Autobot scout.
It took two minutes to remotely activate the bridge, and less than that for Bumblebee to get down the cliff face. Knockout cursed as he saw the yellow Autobot crash through the water a few yards from where he was. At least he wouldn't be able to use those fragging electric charges. He reluctantly had to give it to Wheeljack; those were a good offensive weapon for the lean young bot.
It was really the only weapon that could fit on his frame, besides a small blade which left Knockout with the pleasure of boxing out a fight with the yellow Autobot. He had never included any strong weapons on himself mostly due to vanity, but he did have his retractable, circular saw and wickedly sharp digits.
Ducking under flying fists and a sharp blade, Knockout tried to get a few scratches and scrapes in, but the lithe bot was better than him at dodging. It was just the Decepticon's luck that Bumblebee had gotten a grip of his non-saw fist when the bridge opened and activated, depositing them both on the open sand, freeing up the bot's electric charges again.
It was as the two Cybertronians sprang away from each other to regain their footing in this new terrain that Knockout registered the water leaking from his spark chamber. His optics widened as he realized the squishy in there could very well have drowned from being under water for too long. Cybertronians could easily stay underwater without a need for oxygen, but that did not mean that their bodies were impervious to the water. It commonly seeped in through strategic slits in their armor.
He needed to check to make sure the squishy was not dead. It may be one of the last sources of energon left after the destruction of the Allspark. But how could he get the Autobot too... oh.
Knockout straightened up, with his servos and regular digits in the air reminiscent of the humans the Autoscum were so fond of. "Bumblebee, the human that I crashed into is in my spark chamber. However, I do not know if it is still alive due to our prolonged time underwater. I require a ceasefire until I, using my skills as a medic, can check its vitals."
The yellow and black bot locked his narrowed, bright blue optics onto Knockout's own red ones, before, after a moment, he nodded and relaxed his stance. It was all the Decepticon needed to kneel on the ground and open his chamber, a servo protecting his spark just in case the Autobot decided to go for a cheap shot.
A great deal of water poured from his chamber, and Knockout had to fight a wince as the fleshling plopped into his other open servo. It's body was cold. That was not a good indicator.
Closing his spark chamber and placing the human on the sandy ground, Knockout scanned the fleshie's body as quickly as his advanced scanners could.
Data flew before his optics as he expertly picked through the information, filing some away for later while ignoring others. It was as he read the data on the being's life force that Knockout received another surprise. The human had a spark- not a small pump, as was customary of a human's biology- but a Cybertronian spark. What was even more alarming, however, was that from all the other pieces of information he could gather, the human was dead and alive at the same time. The heart was not pumping blood and the lungs were not receiving air, but the life force of the squishy was still strong.
Annoyed and concerned, for of course the Decepticon medic did not know more than rudimentary information about the blasted humans that he would never need to treat, Knockout quickly scanned the internet for what was common to do when a human had drowned.
Frowning at all the pieces of data that felt foolish, Knockout went with the logical option and picked the human up, turned it to lie on its side, and gently tapped on its back with his smallest digit.
Immediately, water spurted from the fleshling's mouth and it began to cough. Knockout started scanning it again, watching curiously as its data started to change. As more water left it's lungs, the spark started to flutter in what must have been similar to that of a human heart beat. The squishy's body temperature started to rise, and Knockout leaned backwards in relief, nodding in approval. The human would be alright. But then again, of course it would be. It was treated by himself, the best Cybertronian medic since the Primes themselves roamed Cybertron.
But, Knockout's optics opened abruptly to focus in on the approaching scout, he wasn't only a medic anymore.
A crackle over an open channel caught the Decepticon's attention. "Is the human online?"
Knockout huffed, tilting his helm up haughtily. "Of course it's online. It's simply in recharge. What kind of a medic would I be if I couldn't keep a little human online?"
"Thank you, Knockout," crackled over the com channel as a different sort of crackling filled the air.
Knockout's optics widened again as he cursed. He had momentarily forgotten he was facing an enemy. How did he forget?
Before the Decepticon could get up on the slippery sand, Bumblebee had shot him with a supercharged bout of electric currents. Knockout slumped to lay on the ground, his systems jammed as the electricity coursing through his circuitry interfered with any signals he tried to fire.
The Autobot scooped the little human off of the ground as Knockout watched in frustrated helplessness. The scout quickly transformed and raced off with the precious energon source. All Knockout could do was watch the yellow Camaro quickly disappear while waiting for his systems to properly reboot.