Chapter Text

Prologue: Ripout

Ripout had never been closer to shooting a mech in broad daylight. 

4 cycles (solar), 2 cycles (quarter) and seventeen klicks on a train to some city-state on the outskirts of Cybertron to see one Diodus and the “perfect school of function” he had created, And fragging Delirium was here. The entire place was oil pools and shabby spires, a place overlooked by the crowded cities and their countless bureaucracy; because any bot who chose to stay here, amongst boiling oil pits and flat metal and oppressive heat was irreparably insane. 

There was no reasonable reason for Delirium to be here. 

“Hey, funny seeing you! What brings such a nice set of wheels to a scrapheap like this?” They were trying to poke his plates. He knew better than to fall for Delirium’s scrap. He’s been down this road and drove straight off the rail before. 

“My alt-mode is a Universal Vital Monitor and you know it.” 

“I suppose I’ll have to be your ride, then,” Delirium was on rickety foundation. 

“Since this conversation will serve no purpose beyond tempting my ire, I will be taking my leave.” 

If Delirium replied, It was lost to the clank of Ripout's prompt walk in the opposite direction. The path, fractured and dull from neglect, seemingly went on infinitely. No shuttles went through Metrahex, nor did they have any kind of inner city transport. Even The Walking paths were serpentine, winding in convoluted swirls branched off the Main Street like some organic flora. Thank Primus he wasn't going to be here indefinitely. 

Wire-puffs scratched at his leg panels, stretching from cracks in the ground. The timekeeper sun was directly over-head, confirming it was in fact midday. Ripout’s internal chronometer has been shot for stellar cycles (he really did need to get the thing fixed,) and the energon hills surrounding the town interfered with pretty much every device on the face of Cybertron. 

To put it simply, Metrahex was the pit. 

Perhaps Diodus was fond of his solitude. Perhaps he was hiding something. Either way, the distance between his habsuite and civilization (as much as the surrounding town could be called civilization) was blatantly unacceptable. By the time Ripout neared the spired building Diodus called home, the suns had stretched leagues farther. With his luck, the throes of evening would beset him by the time he could leave. 

As a work of architecture, the building was undeniably impressive. Carvings decorated every inch of the metal surfaces, with pearlescent crystals catching the light. Subjectively speaking, it was gaudy as the pit. An overstated, flashy, conspicuous waste of resources. It lacked the functionality of classic Iaconian transformational decor, nor the stark utility of a Kaon block. All it served as was a testament to the wealth the owner was able to burn to create it. Marbled Michate-energius paneling was a slag choice. The pearlescent shimmer may illuminate the halls with each beam of light from the glass skylight, the scratches and smudges on it prove that their atrocious fragility has already been proven repeatedly. Tables and shelves sit uselessly in the hall, doing nothing to display or store. In fact, the hallway wasn’t even useful- it contained just one door into the facility– unlocked. 

If Ripout didn’t immediately get bowled over by a yellow-red blur, he would have commented on the seating situation in the main hall. 

“Scrap! Didn’t know we’re having guests!” the speeder, to his credit, immediately sprang to Ripout’s aid. “I’m so sorry– the name’s Hot Shot! And you are?” 

“Ripout. I hope you don’t make running around like a maniac a habit of yours.” 

The bot, who seemed young, sheepishly rubbed the back of his helm. “Well, noooo the last time Di’ caught me running, he snapped my leg wires. Couldn’t transform or walk for a vorn. But Di’s in his thinking room! We’ve got the facility to ourselves!” 

“Well, I’m sure you can take me to him so I can speak with him. He is a fellow expert in my field, after all.” 

Judging by Hot Shot’s faceplate, Ripout had stumbled on some kind of great faux-pas. “You really aren’t from around here!” he laughed. “ Nobody interrupts him in the thinking room!” 

“Ridiculous!”

It was absurd! Surely, any professional worth his bots would spare him a klik! 

“It’s true! Nobody interrupts Diodus when he’s in the thinking room.” Hot Shot insisted with crossed arms. 

“Well, I’m sure he can make an exception.” 

Ignoring Hot Shot’s insistent protests, Ripout continued blindly. Naturally, he had never been in the building, but he could make a guess– the door to the left was ornate, encrusted in sterling quartz-esque energon (an abhorrent waste of perfectly good energon). A servo grasps one of his many exposed cords, but not before the door– not even an automatic– squeals open. Tablets and manuscripts lie scattered. The walls of the chamber, illuminated only by the infiltrating light of the hallway, showed splatters of some kind of liquid– likely spent energon. Under the long shadow cast by Ripout (and Hot Shot behind him), a grayed frame was sprawled. 

“Oh.” 

Hot Shot’s response was, understandably, shocked. Even Ripout, who’s seen many a corpse, was shocked. Given context, this was almost certainly Diodus. Or at least what remained of him. The body was torn, panels flared out and sent across the room. Whatever killed him seemingly tore through his plates. Ripout could count five arms ar–

“This is a problem that can be resolved without me.” 

Whatever was going on in that room, Ripout wasn’t the one who was going to solve it. He came here to learn Diodus’ techniques. Diodus was dead. He had no reason to remain in this Primus-forsaken backwater. Whatever grisly murder occurred here could be sorted out by the proper authorities. 

“Oh, Primus!” Scrap, a crowd was forming. Three bots surrounded his rear; one large blue racer type, a two-wheeler painted gaudy magenta, and a pink femme. Hot Shot must have gathered them here when Ripout was gawking! “That’s a dead body– but dead bodies don’t come out of nowhere– no no no and mister Diodus is all torn up and that's the worst a bad sign not natural at all,” the blue one sped, speaking far too quickly for Ripout’s preference, “no no because he was murdered!” 

So, he was fast in his processor too. “In a closed room? One that’s supposed to be locked?” The magenta one crosses his arms. “Right when a stranger shows up?” 

Oh, no, Ripout wasn’t doing this game. He was getting himself anywhere but this town as soon as possible. He had a practice to get back to. 

“Sideways, that’s going pretty far.” Finally, some common sense! You can always trust a woman to be a voice of reason. 

“Or maybe you’re just naïve, Arcee. But I rest my case.” 

With the crowd dispersed slightly, Ripout made his move. For about 5 steps, he was dashing away. 

“Oh no you don’t!” Somehow, the blue one caught up with him near instantly. “Mister was very very clear! If somebody dies nobody goes in or out and it’s up to the agents to keep everyone in and out so I cannot let you out absolutely not never it’s against the rules.” 

“I don’t know, I think people just do that sometimes.” 

HOW THE FRAG DID DELIRIUM GET IN HERE?! 

Ripout was surrounded. It was hot, miserable, and he was stuck in here with a bunch of strangers. And now, somehow, Delirium returned. At this rate Ripout was going to kill either Delirium or himself. “Get the frag off me! Do you know who I am? I will sue you all into oblivion!” 

They, unfortunately, were unmoved by his protests. “Sorry, uh,” 

“Ripout.” 

“Uh, Ripout, but Blurr is right. Until we can get an enforcer here, we’re staying put!” 

These people must either be insane or stupid or possibly both. “Well, get to your comm terminal.” 

Sideways had the gall to chuckle, although he tried to mask it. “No comm link gets through the hills; we have to send someone to Petrya.” 

“Zippy seems open!” Delirium’s comment went unappreciated. 

“First, my name is not Zippy! Second, as head of the agent trainees I cannot not not abandon my post. Whoever is going out, it cannot be me!” 

The girl piped up, cementing the strange power hierarchy they seemed to have. “We’ll have Hot Shot go. He’s the fastest if we discount Blurr.” 

Well, the enforcers will be here soon. Soon, Ripout would be back on the train and could forget this scrapshow ever happened. 

“It should only take him half a cycle.” 

Ripout expected to be joined by the others in loud, intense protest. Half a cycle?! This was absurd, how did these people live like this? “Surely, you’re kidding! This is an emergency; surely Metrahex has enforcers!” Kicking Blurr was completely justified. He was being restrained in a dangerous situation, everyone was bizarre and somehow Delirium was being more grating than typical. An impartial observer would see Ripout’s kick as both a provoked reaction and entirely justified self-defence. No such person existed. 

A swift, targeted blow to the helm knocked him offline. 

#

When he woke up in a dark room, Ripout was fairly certain he was going to be murdered. 

As it turns out, he likely was not going to get murdered tonight. He was not restrained to the berth, and the room was dark on account of it being nighttime. Feeling along the wall revealed the light switch, which he learnt to operate after some brief fiddling. The room was small, nearly cramped with minimal furnishings; just a berth and a workdesk. 

A small note was left on the desk, hastily laid crooked. The holopad containing it was cracked. Likely some kind of leftover.

“The front door is locked. There is a washrack and a galley in the opposite hall. Key is in the desk drawer.” -Arcee

Terse, but informative. It was a good idea to get some rest, but this was no time for reason. There wasn’t a particular reason why, nothing he could pin his unease over Diodus’ state to. Still, it burned at his spark. Slag, if he wasn’t getting rest, he was going to go poke at a dead body. 

Moonlight cast the unfamiliar halls in eerie monochrome. Navigating would prove largely trial and error, with swirls of logical thought as a treat. The windows proved he was still on the first floor, and given the ceiling looming over him it was quite possibly the only floor. Seemingly, he was in the back wings of the building– residential. Given he was wandering late at night, he avoided wandering down halls that wouldn’t lead to his goal, but he suspected the other halls he walked past– thinner corridors spurned off the “main” path– were classrooms of some kind. 

The front door was, in fact, locked. Surprisingly, the crime scene stood unguarded, door still slightly ajar. 

“Ripout? What are you doing?” 

Blurr was already in the room, seeming pacing… nervously, Ripout guessed. “I could ask you the same thing,” was his reply, quiet. 

“I’m doing my job which is being here– being here isn’t your job so you have no reason to be here.” Blurr’s reply wasn’t necessarily incorrect, but Ripout nonetheless couldn’t accept that. 

“I’m a doctor. Something here is concerning me.” 

Like fitting a key in a lock, Blurr opens up. “Well… I’ve been here all night and I just don’t know– I mean, who here could’ve done this? Mister Diodus was a great warrior could take me take any of us– but he’s ripped up like he’s made of mesh– it doesn’t make any sense not a bit!” 

It was strange. Diodus wasn’t a small bot, and he had millenia of experience on his students. Wounds like his were more characteristic of mechimal attacks– which begs the question of how a beast got in and left no evidence in the halls. 

At his second look, there was a glaring, obvious issue. The gaping, seemingly lethal chassis wound showed no evidence of energon bleeding– like it was already dead metal. “He was already dead when this wound was inflicted,” Ripout realized. Frag. Judging by the state of his metal (gray, but otherwise intact,) he died recently. “But if not from the wound, how else could he have died?” 

Examining the body was the natural course of action. With Blurr turning on the light (finally), the scene became clearer. Diodus’ body cavity was entirely exposed. His tanks were transparent (an uncommon variation) and completely empty. The transformation cog was dead, and grayed abnormally fast– even bots who’ve been dead for cycles had some energy lingering inside the T-cog. Most conspicuously, there were no fuel lines, no connective mesh; his ventilation system was missing any kind of filtration, the vents clogged by a gray sludge. 

In fact, the body was alarmingly slimy. All over the chassis wall, caked on junctures and line ports. The mesh of Diodus’ internals wasn’t torn asunder, it was melted. He went to open what little of his chestplate was still obscured by plating, only to have the armor slide off, only connected to his frame by tacky residue. 

Somehow, the spark chamber was clawed open. No energon was in the entire frame, apparently. Perhaps it had congealed with the liquified mesh. 

This wasn’t a murder. 

No weapon could do this to a Cybertronian. Natural decay didn’t do this. Nothing short of some kind of Unicronian curse could do this. 

Or a sickness. 

“Blurr, we are leaving this room and never returning.” 

That stain on the wall wasn’t energon, it was more of the sludge. His limbs weren’t torn off, his joints melted off his frame. Contamination was engraved in every nook and cranny of the room, in the building, in him. Ripout couldn’t wait for a response, pulling Blurr from the room. 

If it was contagious, they would all be dead by the end of the quartex. 

##

“Sick? No, no, he couldn’t be sick! His chest was torn open. Sicknesses don’t do that unless it was some kind of parasite! Oh was it a parasite, oh Primus what if it was a parasite–” Blurr really never shut up. He rambled, he was stubborn and obstinate, a prime candidate for behavior rehabilitation. “What if somebody else caught it what if I caught it–” 

“Then we will combat it with anti-parasitical systematic therapy.” A naïve condolence, bordering on a lie. Perhaps the slight hope in the young mech was worth it– and it was certainly preferable to blind panic. Blurr was annoying. He was frantic and annoying. He talked fast, moved fast, did everything far too fast and Ripout didn’t want to see that light blue lose its color, didn’t want to see him reduced to plates and sludge. 

His expertise could save lives here. Sure, most of them were saddled with significant defects, but a dead body cannot be mended. By the time a CCDV team would arrive, it would be too late. If that wasn’t the case, he’d be breaking through the door. He should be breaking through the door, shouldn’t be putting spark and strut on the line, but if his life would be saved buy abandoning his Primus-given responsibility, then his life would be forfeit. 

“Protocol, protocol; what was his protocol, there’s always a protocol–” No end to the pacing, it seems. The speed at which Blurr could nervously pace was astounding! By Ripout’s estimation, he could keep up in a wheeled highway on pede, certainly some kind of outlier ability– or an unprecedented augmentation. “Okay, we’re all infected– all act as if we’re infected, so we stay here and never ever ever go out until the last infected dies then we burn the body and never tell anybody no matter who asks–” 

Was Diodus a madman this entire time? No quarantine  system, no doctors, no authorities– like he was planning to lock everyone in here until they died. In what world did that make sense? He’d sooner have the infamous Tarantulas do his quarantine protocol than whatever Diodus thought this was supposed to be. Maybe the train crashed while he was riding and has been sent to the pit. 

“That would be absurd! Ridiculous!” Blurr looked like he teetered on the edge of a spark attack. Given the circumstances, it was hard to hold it against him– but Ripout was very skilled at holding it against people. If these people didn’t get their screws fastened it could quite literally be the death of them all. Before the agent could continue, Ripout had to take control. 

“If you want protocol, simple. Close your vents, take vornly sanitization showers and, by Primus, don’t touch anything.” 

Simple and scientific. The building was cold enough to keep them from overheating, but there was somehow no airflow to be discerned (how this was true in the oppressive heat of the surrounding heat was beyond him.) Amazingly, this didn’t spur some disastrous resistance based on whatever scrap he had drilled into his processor. No, Blurr seemingly was willing to bury the plasma-hatchet. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so difficult. 

“Besides myself, are there any doctors, medics?” Ripout’s question was met with a brief pause. 

“Well, no none of us are medics but we all know first aid– minus that other bot but he left a couple cycles ago– Mister Diode didn’t trust ‘establishment’ doctors although I don– didn’t know what he really meant by that.” Although Ripout had his own squabbles with the medical establishment of Cybertron, he doubted he and Diodus had the same complaints. “But the other outsider, the one with the creepy paintjob, didn’t they say they were some kind of doctor?” 

“Delirium may claim to be a doctor, but they are a fraud and a glitch. Their advice is not to be followed unless you wish to meet pain, misery, and death.” 

“Another glowing review from 5 time medical journal rejectee!” 

Primus– Ripout didn’t hear them coming! Which is relatively strange, their wiry limbs had to be quite stiff to hold up the weight of their frame. In a quiet environment, Delirium’s joints could be heard clicking. They were also totally, absolutely unwelcome and uninvited, and had no business being in any kind of crisis scene at any time. “And what is your advic–” 

Delirium cuts him off. This was going to be a long solar cycle. “Rub tainted energon in open wounds.” They manage to summon the most punchable smile this side of Quintessa while giving the worse than useless “advice”. 

“Blurr, I hope they have made my point cl– what the frag are you doing?!” 

The moment Ripout’s optics left Delirium, they made a beeline to the corpse room, the room containing a diseased corpse, the one containing an unknown disease that is likely new and has no known treatment. 

“I want to touch the body,” they say like that is an entirely reasonable request. 

“Mister Diodus died of mystery plague– you cannot cannot cannot go poking him for no reason!” The more used to his… eccentric speech Ripout got, the more he began to like Blurr. Smart bots were easily made useful; idiots needed a specialty. 

“Well now I want to touch it more!” Speak of the idiot– oh frag. Ripout touched the body. He was the idiot. 

In his 70,265 stellar cycles of life, Ripout hadn’t moved as fast as he did running to the washracks. Judging by the sound of Blurr yelling followed by a loud thump, Delirium was receiving the same surprise recharge Ripout got. “Don’t touch anything,” he’d said, “we might be dealing with a new epidemic on the scale of the great rusting of Iacon,” he rightfully feared while touching the dead body. When this was over, Ripout was going to report himself to the medical board and never touch a scalpel again in his shame-stained life. The solvents weren’t enough, and now he needed to sanitize all the surfaces he’d touched, and Blurr. Scrap, at this rate he may as well start flooding the place in hypochloramonate solutions and get an EMP bomb just to be safe. (Although the chances of it being a nanopathogen were small.) 

###

They regrouped in the galley, a thankfully broad room. 

“Hey, that’s Wasp’s seat.” A small bot– judging by her optics size and proportions, a developing bot as opposed to a minicon– tapped his arm. 

“Well, I’m sure they can choose another of our many seats.” 

Her rotor spins in response as she petulantly crosses her arms (her alt must be some kind of flighted craft, although he struggled to imagine why anyone with the capacity for flight would remain in Metrahex.) “It took us a decacycle to get him to sit there in the first place, and Wasp doesn’t like changes.” 

How Diodus didn’t find a way to nip that tendency in the bud was beyond him, but that wasn’t a mine worth dying in. Resignedly, Ripout went to another chair– only to get another easily interpreted look from the girl. Apparently half the seats (10 out of 25 more exactly,) were occupied. Why they opted against labeling said seats was beyond him. In a refreshing change of pace, someone clearly older than him walked in. The bot was a dull greenish-gray, with quite classic faceplate “drooping,” actually a buildup of living metal over eons of life. Guessing by the wear of their frame, they should be retired. 

“New kid? Don’t know if you heard about Diodus, but we’re got a situation.” He was looking at Ripout, despite Ripout being a highly respected medical professional. 

“I am a fully grown mech who came to visit Diodus prior to his unfortunate death.” 

Kup– activating what was a rather clever holographic nametag– scoffed. “Sure, sure. When you get to 80 million, everybody’s a sparkling.” 

More bots were filtering in; including Blurr, Arcee, and ugh. Delirium. If it was up to Ripout, they would have been taken behind a spire and put down like a turbofox with rage rust. Unfortunately, one cannot practise rehabilitationary therapy from that side of a prison cell. Overall, 9 seemingly juvenile bots and 3 older individuals– likely staff– sat around the square serving table. Echo crystals were laid in delicate patterns across the midtable. In spite of the name, the crystals actually had no effect on sound; rather the caves they formed in. If the name alone was annoying, that would be one thing. However, the crystals were also exorbitantly priced. Surely, the fortune put into this place could have been put into something– anything else. 

Blurr and Arcee stand up, exhaustion clear in their optics. Ripout could relate. 

“Everyone, we found Diodus dead last night.” 

It took about 5 kliks for things to go to the pit. “He did it!” One accused, pointing at Delirium (entirely reasonably.) Another pointed a blaster at Ripout’s spark chamber (irrational and deranged.) A red one sighed, but seemed rather unperturbed, while another nearly purged off the edge of the table. Curiously, a disgusting biomechanical abomination that apparently lives here; an affront to civilized mechs Ripout could never abide, seemed downright jubilant. 

“Does this mean Waspinator can leave?” Ah, and it spoke in the third person as well. Surely something as functionless as that should be shuttered off somewhere– he could tell “Waspinator” would only distract the useful bots. “We can talk about that later, Wasp,” Arcee replied. What was a Wasp anyway? 

Meanwhile, Blurr was holding 5 conversations at once. 

“How?” 

“Well we think it was a disease but we don’t know what disease so we must must must be careful.” 

“What now?” 

“Hot Shot is running to get help from Inex–”

“Who did it?” 

“–as I said it was a disease–” 

“But where did it come from?” 

Sideways’ question stopped Blurr in his tracks, and seemingly the others as well. The silence was tearing, a terse lingering implication. All optics went to Ripout. 

“Well? You’re the ‘real’ doctor, Rippy,” Delirium sneered with their infuriating elbows-on-table “I’ve done nothing wrong in my life” pose. How the frag was he supposed to know?! You may as well ask Primus, he was a doctor not omniscient! 

“There’s no way to know, unfortunately–” the rational, true answer went unappreciated. 

“Convinient.” Sideways was really getting on his nerves. Everyone here but him was stupid, with maybe the exception of Arcee and Blurr. 

“Ahem!” Arcee’s voice carries, saving Ripout from the most awkward conversation of his life. Blurr picks up where she left. 

“The good thing is we have protocol! If we didn’t we wouldn’t know what to do but Mister Diodus gave us all protocol and that protocol is very simple! We stay inside until everyone is sure we’re all healthy! In a few cycles everything will be normal except that Diodus is dead.” 

Everyone nods, although it seems to be more so out of bafflement than true agreement. 

That is, until somebody coughs.

“Oh Primus, I have it!” 

Whirl proceeds to stand up, clearly worried. “Red Alert?! Are you okay?” 

Arcee interjects as Ripout can feel a helmache come on. “Now, let’s not jump to concl–” 

“Well, there’s plenty of space out there for a burial!” 

Delirium needed to shut the frag up now. “You know better!” Ripout hated the sound of his raised voice. 

“Do I?” 

“Yes, you do! Even for the likes of you, this is beyond the pale!” 

It was. Perhaps it was that they were surrounded by strangers, or the heat or the lack of consequences, but Delirium was acting outright strangely. To make his exhaustion worse, someone else spoke up to say something insane. “We’re all doomed.” It wasn’t necessarily wrong, but that was entirely unhelpful. 

“Red alert, you aren’t dying,” Ripout’s confidence was entirely undue, but it was better than pointless catastrophizing. 

“Ripout is right. He’s a doctor, we should heed his advice.” Finally, some respect! 

“What proof do you have? He could be lying.” 

Damn it. It was always Sideways or Delirium. “I will let you know I am well respected, and can be searched on any licensing database.” The crowd was mixed. Red Alert seemed to be on the brink of some kind of meltdown (while he was not so far off himself,) Arcee was desperately trying to keep the peace, the half-organic was glaring at Sideways, Whirl was still smiling somehow, and the others were all apprehensively looking around at each other. If it weren’t for the deadly virus situation, Ripout would take a deep vent to cool his rapidly heating systems. 

“If I may speak, we need to control the situation. Blurr, Arcee, is there an infirmary?” The two pause, clearly having to consider the question. 

“Not officially,” 

Blurr cut Arcee off mid-word. “But we do have an empty classroom and beds and if somebody broke into the old clinic but that’s illegal we can’t do illegal things even though it’s an emergency and nobody would know because we don’t have any enforcers but it’s still bad and Di–” By Primus it never ended. Thank the All-Spark, a white-green-red one piped up.

 “Blurr, we’ve got supplies! Well, okay, we’ll have to makeshift it, but there’s piles of scrap in the lab!” Blurr's response was incensed, to the point this couldn’t be the first go on this argument. 

“Oh, nonono we are not! Last time I let you ‘makeshift’ something do you know what happened? ‘Wheeljack blew up the east hall!’ I heard and there wasn’t any end of it– so no we cannot makeshift medical supplies.” Really, what was expected? Wheeljack may not be as clearly young as, say, Whirl, but he was clearly still in training. Worse than a sparkling, really; old enough to cause real trouble but too young to have the sense to avoid causing it in the first place. 

“I’ll sort out the supply situation,” he said, despite having no plan on how to do so. “Wheeljack… we can discuss that if it comes to it.” If we are fortunate, whatever Diodus’ cause of death was an internal fault and not a disease at all. For now, anyone with any symptoms of illness needs to isolate.” 

Almost certainly, there was some kind of protest, there was during the rusts, the slime infestations, wherever pestilence struck, so did the resistance to basic precaution. Ripout wasn’t going to be the one anyway, not when he had valuable work and limited time. 

Stepping into the hall, Ripout was met by a towering beast.

Chapter Text

The thing was lopsided, a mass of blighted, misshapen metal held together by tortured wires and exposed struts. Optics stared, open (actually, unshielded,) and somehow furious. As if Ripout failed some painfully simple exam one time too many. It was splattered in the same goop Diodus was filled with. But how? The creature lacked claws, nor did it have a jaw to rend Diodus’ plates with so it couldn’t be the culprit to his ripped frame. 

Perhaps Ripout would have less difficulty coming to a conclusion if he wasn’t currently running for his life while screaming. 

To put it kindly, Ripout struggled to read the fields of others. When it came to EM fields, he may as well not be able to sense them at all. Even he could pick up on the judgement. Was this how his patients felt when he accessed them? No, he was reasonable! He could be appeased and reasoned with– this thing was nothing like him. Ripout was running blindly– into a dead end. For a moment, he wondered exactly how the monstrosity would kill him– and he got his answer when the creature detached a section of its plating and slammed it in the vague direction of Ripout’s helm. 

If a spinning circular saw didn’t tear through the creature with a spray of morbid pink, Rioput would have died a slow and painful death. Disorganized wires and vessels continued to writhe from what should have been a lethal wound (if the creature had a spark,) and although it stopped actively charging at him the creature certainly didn’t qualify as dead in any way Ripout knew the term. 

After several more brutal cuts, it didn’t drop dead like any living thing should. However, it did run away, which was preferable to the alternative. When he got a good look at his savior, Ripout finally got out his gun. The bot staring back at him had a single, pink optic and no other facial features. Plenty of redeemed criminals held gainful employment. That being said; it wasn’t at schools. Clearly, this was some criminal miscreant! 

“How did you get in here?” They both asked simultaneously. 

An absurd question for a clear intruder to ask. 

“I know I ain’t a looker, but I work here,” she snaps (a wholly unsuitable attitude for any profession, let alone an educator,) and revvs her engine in annoyance. “Now I just got a message from Kup that Diodus jumped back into the well he came from, so don’t be surprised I’m in a hurry.” 

What a glitch! Who would treat him, one of Cybertron’s finest, like this? “I will have you know I came here to meet Diodus.” In response, she turns her helm. 

“You’re Ripout? Primus, that explains it.” she says, with a tone Ripout didn’t particularly like. Where was her stop, talking to him like this? “Look, I’m Sawtooth, security in this place. Now unless that thing tries to scrap you again, let’s stay in our own lanes.” 

Minor detour aside, Ripout was well on his way to scrounge through the drawers of the school for supplies. Illegal? Questionable at the least. Bound to get him into some kind of pointless argument? Undoubtedly, to his dismay. Going to be invaluable in the near future? Unfortunately, yes. He’s already made the choice to help, and he wasn’t going to let these fools get in his way. 

Often, people kept their surface cleaners in their washrooms, a natural choice if you hadn’t seen all the chemical abrasions and burns this leads to. Clearly, Diodus trusted his students to not be idiots, an assumption that unilaterally leads to disaster. Cleaning agents that would burn the lining from your vents were mingling with H2O, an uncommon but fairly harmless synthetic material with countless uses. Even worse, the labelling was entirely arbitrary, many marked with obscure janitorial terms, others in scientific notation. Harrowingly, one was completely unlabeled (seemingly some kind of scouring agent.) 

Was the janitorial staff here completely incompetent? Any medical professional in Adaptica had to take spacekeeping and sanitation to get a license, and this was baffling to him, let alone any student who wandered into this scrapheap. In the end, his requisitioning of the cleaning agents would be an immeasurable, unambiguous good. 

It admittedly took him a moment to recall which room was assigned to him. By putting his key in every door until one opened. In the vivid light of dawn, the room looked like slag. The walls were cheap, warped sheet tiles and the flooring was some kind of mystery plastic. In that vein, it was a Primus-sent miracle that the berth was still standing. Ripout must wonder if, at a certain point, shoddy craftsmanship becomes an art in its own right. If so, the furniture here belongs in a museum, behind glass so no bot would again be subjected to their machinations. Cross beams had many legitimate, practical uses. When installed properly, they are entirely competent as support. Even if the thin metal beams were installed correctly, which they clearly weren’t, the design was clearly ill-conceived. He was more than tired enough to justify risking a small fall. Pulling a cube from one of his many small compartments, he quickly refueled. On principle, Ripout never drank energon from sources he hadn’t vetted himself. Fortunately, he had prepared an orbital worth of energon out of an overabundance of caution (although he had imagined some kind of transportation breakdown or urgent business, not this.) 

Finally, Ripout could rest. Organize his acquisitions, vent air that’s uncontaminated, and sleep. Surprisingly, the berth didn’t immediately give way to his weight. The padding was thin, but not unbeatable. Ripout would say he has suffered worse accommodation, although that wasn’t strictly true. For a good stretch of time, he was left to rest. 

#

“Doctor, doctor, get up!” 

An insufferable racket was at his door. If not for the clear panic in Arcee’s voice he would have yelled at her to let him sleep. But he knew when he was needed. “It’s Strafe! He’s purging energon, and coughing up energon, and–” 

“I get the point, lead the way,” he responds, cursing himself for not bringing more supplies on him. 

Strafe was dying. There was no euphemism for it, no way to soften the painfully obvious. His plates were graying by the klik, vents audibly congested with liquid. Energon was draining constantly, small holes in his mesh linings. Frag. 

“Hey, doc,” Strafe laughs, likely delirious. Hopefully so. Then, somehow, Strafe sat up and tried to get out of the berth. 

“By the Primes, are you trying to get yourself scrapped?!” Ripout’s concerned shout was alien to him, unlike his usual composure. Strafe’s arm, chained to the berthpost, slipped in and out of place. 

“I don’t know why he’s acting like this, he just started purging and– well, now he’s like this,” Arcee fidgets, voice restrained despite the clear panic. 

“How long since he began doing this?” 

“I– about a cycle ago?” A cycle?! Frag. They were fragged. At this rate, Strafe would be dead by the next (worse, Ripout remembered that Metrahex was west of the cycle-orn split, a cycle here was painfully short.) 

“Everyone, away,” Ripout pushed down his concern. He was a doctor. “Strafe, you’re going to get through this,” he lied, priming his antivirus as he approached the medberth. A tank of energon was hooked up to an intra-line, but he was losing it by the klik. “Arcee, make yourself useful and get all the leak-stop you have.” The paltry amount by the side of Strafe’s berth wouldn’t be enough for one of his joints, let alone every opening on his frame. 

“Really, I’m fine,” Strafe said, a moment after purging what must have been a whole megacube worth of energon. He stamped down the urge to correct the ailing bot. Although Ripout was a bot of science, he knew the illogical power of hope. More than that, he knew the cruelty of running over a stopped bot. Nothing would come of him telling Strafe how dire his situation was, even if he wouldn’t reject it wholesale anyway. “Just stay there, I need to… help strengthen your joints with compression. It’s a new technique.” 

The leakage didn’t stop. It slowed, but not even a whole roll of mesh got the flow to cease. Up close, he could see the tensing of his cables and joints. His frame was registering pain, even if his processor seemingly wasn’t. 

“Recepti-block, recepti-block–” Ripout was talking out loud. Normally, he would use a terminal to mainline with Strafe and mute the pain signals that way. There was no medical terminal. Thankfully, transmitters were carried through the frame; through the magic of pharmaceutical chemistry many things were possible. 

“Are the pain pangs going away?” Adding (the concerningly abundant supply of) recepti-block into his line was alarming. The increase in pressure, which should have been near none, made some energon spurt out of the mesh surrounding the catheter. Ripout was beginning to wonder how aliens that believe in some all-mighty deity existed, given things like this happened. 

In the same way many grounders could ride on their wheels in robot mode, Ripout’s vital monitoring still worked while he wasn’t transformed. 

He did not want to attach his electrodes to Strafe. He didn’t want to touch the horribly dying plague victim, didn’t want to get sick and die in this pit. If he died here, so many cybertronians would never be rehabilitated into productive members of society. 

Strafe’s RPK was dismal. He initially thought he was misplaced, with how abnormal the results were. A healthy spark went through a full “rotation” two to five times a klik, up to twenty under stress. Strafe was reading negative point six. It was unprecedented, the graph readout on his HUD floated tauntingly, a testament to his pride as a doctor. He’s never seen a spark go “backwards”, if that even was what was happening. 

The other vitals weren’t any better, just easier to understand. His line pressure was tanking, electrical signals were constant and inappropriate, temperature extremely hi– 

Everything suddenly flatlined. Strafe was notably not dead, given his vaguely annoyed face. The metal Ripout attached the electrode to disconnected from Strafe’s frame. Not external armor. His plating. Struts and cables collapsed under the pressure, melted. Strafe was melting. 

“Hey, I can’t see! Strafe chimed, trying to sit up. Ripout was able to push the primus-damned bot back, but not before a small snap caught his audials. 

Somehow, Ripout quelled his scream when an optic landed on him. 

The next few things happened quickly. Arcee returns, with boxes of things that could be turned into dressings. Strafe lets out an agonized screech, voicebox nearly devolving into fractured noise. Finally, the patient caves in. 

There wasn’t a better word for it. Metal plating slips free, ripping through half liquified flesh and weakened metal supports. It was a sea of energon inside, obscuring the contents of the inner torso. The glow was almost blinding– it wasn’t bodily energon. The energon they pushed into him was collecting here. Who even set this? Deliriu- no. This was inevitable. Strafe’s lines weren’t in a state to hold much of anything. 

Strafe was dead. It took a few kliks for his spark to collapse, but he was dead the moment he started bleeding. The second he caught the thing. He heard Arcee drop the box and leave. 

Ripout couldn’t do scrap. If he did better, figured out how to stop the leaks, would Strafe had gone on to live a good life and furthered the greatness of Cybertron? 

The door slammed behind him. 

##

His electrodes were separate from the rest of his systems. As a doctor, he had extra systems for fighting infection (at the cost of his ability to process energon.) Nothing had popped up on his HUD. Ripout was fine, but he couldn’t get the feeling of filth off his servos. 

It wasn’t like he could do anything. Illnesses have incubation periods. If he was going to get infected, he likely already was.  Besides Strafe, nobody else was showing symptoms. Maybe, hopefully, the outbreak will die with him. 

“You done in there?” A voice complained, Delirium in their typical exaggerated way. Typical. 

“Shut the frag up!” Ripout burst from the washracks, quite literally. The door knocked Delirium to the floor. His sympathy for their beady optics was already limited; and the situation wasn’t helping. 

“You’re so mean! I just asked a itty-bitty quest–” 

“You are never this insufferable!” Ripout’s accusation prompts a dramatic sigh. 

“Truly, your kindness knows no bounds. And here I thought we were close after all those dates!” The what? Did Delirium always think those long fights in the library and their occasional bar arguments over medical ethics as dates, or were they also delusional? 

“I’ve never enjoyed a single outing with you– and that’s beyond the point!” Curses! Delirium never failed to derail a conversation. “You’re infected!” 

For once, Delirium was taken aback. Surely, they had noticed some kind of symptom and shoes to hide it to their own nefarious ends. They were obtuse, not dense. Unless the only symptom they developed was psychological. Were they just having some kind of event? 

“No I’m not! You’re infected!” Delirium leaped at Ripout, baring their teeth. 

“Did you just try to bite me?!” Incensed, he fortunately managed to dodge the maniac. “I take it back, infection or not, you belong in quarantine!” Truly, Delirium must have been overtaken by the spark of a mechnimal, biting blindly like a mechacat declawed. He doubted Delirium had a processor to lose, but the universe was vast with awe and terror. 

“Can you prove it?” Delirium challenged with a scrap-rending grin. Of course he could! He would just go and tell… He would…

“Frag.” 

“Exactly. I don’t know if you’re right, Rippy, but I know you can’t prove it.” They tapped Ripout in the middle of his chestplate– scandalous. “Good luck.” 

###

Ripout was going to kill himself. 

First, Strafe died, died while Ripout couldn’t do a thing. Now Delirium, plausibly infected, was wandering loose to do Primus knows what. He stared up at the somehow scuffed ceiling. This should have been a simple, boring visit. And now? 

The ceiling sneered down at him.

Chapter Text

 “Everyone, I’m sorry to say Strafe has returned to the Allspark.” The next day, Arcee stood in front of the table. Clasped servos, spinal strut straight and tall, optics dim. A strong front. 

People began crying. Red Alert looked about ready to purge and/or start screaming. Whirl and Wasp looked downwards, making themselves small. Kup made the kind of face you see on someone who’s seen one too many gray frames. Sawtooth’s helm was lowered, but her antennae screamed murderous rage. Ripout didn’t belong here. He didn’t know Strafe, didn’t live with these people. He was an interloper in some great tragedy that he wandered into by horrible random chance. 

“Normally, we’d have a funeral, but we’ve buried him for safety.” They what?

“Are you all fools?! Strafe is a valuable research subject! Without his body–” 

“Strafe is our friend!” Arcee protested, sparkbroken, wrathful. Sentimental. That sentiment would get them all scrapped. “Strafe” is with Primus. The frame left behind? It was just metal and highly valuable scientific knowledge. “...and you! You’re just sitting there like this is some big joke!” She points at Delirium, who was sitting there like this was some big joke. At least Ripout had the decency to be solemn. Pit, even Sideways wasn’t being intrusive with his obvious indifference. No, they had a stupid grin on their faceplate, the smug aft. They crossed one leg over the other, with a dismissive wave of the servo. Surely, if there wasn’t a crowd of sparklings, Ripout would vault over the table and beat Delirium into slag. 

“Well, he had to die sometime! You all are so dramatic,” as they spoke, Sawtooth evidently had the same idea as Ripout– but she didn’t have the same reservations. 

“Don’t you fragging talk about my bitties like that, you half-bolt glitch.” Ripout hadn’t heard somebody this angry. She was on the verge of introducing Delirium’s throat to her blade, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to stop her. Then, Kup places a servo on her arm, face serious yet calm. 

“Sawtooth, it’s not worth it,” he says. In spite of Ripout’s expectation, she didn’t turn her saw on him. No, instead she lowers her helm, lets out a vent, and backs off. De-escalation had never worked that well for Ripout. He was certain she would have needed restraining, but Kup somehow got through. One of them had a far stronger spark than Ripout gave them credit for. 

“That’s your warning,” she said, begrudging. Delirium apparently learned nothing, still keeping that unbearable, immensely punchable grin. Sideways piped up, just calmly enough to not start a riot. 

“Touching, but I must ask what we’re planning to do about our problem?” A fair question, if bold given the general atmosphere. Sideways may be a little scraplet, but he wasn’t entirely running from his spark. Everybody stared at Ripout. 

“We were too late on Strafe. If you have any symptoms, you cannot hide it. I promise to do everything in my power to keep you all alive.” In a valiant attempt to get themselves trashed, Delirium leaned back to speak. 

“Well, you didn’t do much for Strafe. Perhaps if they called on me, he’d still be on the surface of Cybertron and not the core.” Nobody would blame Sawtooth if her composure failed. (at least he wouldn’t,) but it somehow did not. She clenched her good servo tight and managed to not commit assault. 

“Neither of us are miracle workers. Nothing short of Prime intervention would have save–” 

“Take this outside.” Arcee cut through the room. Her voice carried like a shout, loud. She was reaching a boiling point that Ripout knew not to push her over. He looked around him, at horrified and testing stares. He forgot that everyone heard him. It was a waste of his time, anyway. Arguing with a wall was preferable– walls didn’t go out of their way to insult you. 

“Big Stick!” Waspinator shrieked as Ripout opened the door. The monster was back. 

“What is that thing?!” Arcee yelled while getting out a gun about two thirds her size. 

“Big Stick!” Waspinator repeated. He was best ignored; Ripout could tell the bot had no understanding of the situation. Likely, he understood little at all. 

Whirl, confusingly, interjected with “But Diodus is dead!” 

The monster was just watching. Perhaps it was due to Sawtooth’s presence– the gaping hole hadn’t changed since it was inflicted– or perhaps it was stunned by the new environment and people. Whirl’s attempt to explain Diodus’ passing to Waspinator failed in the background as Arcee took the situation into her own servos. Well, into her own megablaster. Blasters over 9 volts and .5 amps were profoundly illegal. Naturally, a thousand volt blaster was not something a civilian was supposed to have. Although it fell short of the name (he would concede that kiloblaster lacked a good ring to it), a blaster of that caliber could turn light armor into scrap with a single blast. If an enforcer was given one, their entire precinct would be investigated for breaking the separation of civil and martial law. A soldier could be enlisted, fight, and die in battle without ever seeing a blaster of that caliber. How the frag did a child get that? 

Naturally, the blast did some damage. A hole large enough to fit Ripout’s helm went straight through the monster’s central mass. Said hole also extended through the wall behind it, although it was one of the shoddy internal walls. Waspinator found this a fitting occasion to clap. Somehow, the monster wasn’t dead. 

Arcee clearly was aiming to remedy that. Quite literally aiming. All this time, the monster stood still, vaguely judgemental. “Listen to Waspinator!” Whirl forced her way to the forefront. For such a small bot, she could be amazingly loud. “That’s Diodus! Wasp can smell it!” 

“Absurd! It’s clearly just from it getting into Diodus’ body!” Clearly, this was some kind of natural phenomena. The dead did not rise or transmogrify, and he was not going to entertain notions otherwise. 

“But it looks like Diodus! How many bots are transparent?” the girl whined pointlessly. Even if that thing counted as a mech, it couldn’t be Diodus! How was he even supposed to explain such a basic concept? 

“Dead people don’t come back.” The words were heavy with terse annoyance. 

“Waspinator knows! Big Stick-bot not with big sparky place! Body in ground– Big Stick-bot here!” Primus, he was surrounded by hopeless cases. 

“Well, if you’re done wasting time, ‘Diodus’ is still ready to kill us!” The lump of metal rose unsteadily, as if it just recalled that it was alive. Sawtooth had placed herself between the kids, Ripout, and the monster with clear killing intent. Metal screeched on metal as she pinned it down with her substantial weight. While her left “servo” cut the being into shreds, her good hand ripped at the exposed wiring and viscera. 

“Kids, look away!” She said, rather pointlessly. None of them looked away. Liquid that definitely contained things that weren’t energon pooled on the floor as parts were forcefully removed from the whole. Optics got removed and smashed into warped shards and wrecked components. Ripout couldn’t guess what was behind that grey slab of a face, but he knew he didn’t want to know. Sawtooth was clearly some kind of crazed killer on a far too long leash! 

“Nobody threatens them when I’m around.” The creature stopped moving. Dead? Primus, he hoped so. Perplexingly, Sawtooth began marching to Arcee. 

“Arcee, how did you get my blaster?” Ripout wasn’t sure if he was less or more disturbed at the idea of Sawtooth owning the blaster. On one hand, Sawtooth wasn’t a child. On the other, Arcee wasn’t a convicted criminal. 

“How did you get that blaster, Ms. No-face?” Sawtooth clearly hears this often, going by her long and deep sigh. “I was acquitted. They lost my helm.” Laughter was an entirely inappropriate response to such a dire story, and yet Delirium had no reservations in making their amusement clear. The more the punishment of Emputata was actually implemented, the less he supported it. In theory, it was a resource efficient, easily reversible way to mark, track and reform problem elements in society. If the powers that be were competent and sane, it would be a flawless system. He would admit that the assumption of “competent” was naïve. Somehow, they lost an entire helm. The whole thing. Judging by the altered servos (another practice he had strong opinions on), they lost those too. Ripout couldn't imagine being separated from his servos. Discomfort was inevitable in rehabilitation, but… perhaps this was too far. How did he not see these issues from the start? 

That was beyond the point. Kup volunteered to dump the body outside– although Sawtooth claimed she could, she chose not to fight him on it. While Kup had his arms full of monster corpse, Hot Shot and Blurr walked through the front door. 

“Hey, what're you… doing?” Hot Shot's confusion was understandably clear. His presence was not understandable! This place was a death trap, and pit no bot could climb out of, a– 

“Guys, guys, it's spread the illness is all over Metrahex and Inex and– well that's not the problem, the Cybertronian Guard has put us in quarantine so we can't go or leave here so!” Blurr gestured rapidly, even given his baseline. “We're scrapped. Nobody can help us so we're on our own.” 

“What? We can't be alone– I mean, none of us are sick– and what about–” Hot Shot stops. Sees the grimaces around him. “and– uh, what’s with the thing? I was gone for 2 solars, how much could have happened?” Nobody wanted to tell him. Surely Blurr told him when Blurr ran out to grab him, right?

“Hot Shot, Strafe… Strafe died last solar cycle.” Arcee struggled. 

Hot Shot froze. 

“You’re kidding. He can’t be dead, he was here a few solars ago! He wasn’t sick! He was perfectly fine and now he’s supposed to be dead?” A small laugh escapes him. Denial. Yet again, the medic stood there like an unplugged lamp; entirely useless and somewhat conspicuous. The haters were right, his berthside manner did reach desperately for acceptable and fall short by stellarmeters. 

“We did what we could,” Ripout’s assurance fell entirely short. The bot didn’t respond, just staring at the floor in seething silence. It was hard to blame him. 

But it wasn’t hard to blame Blurr. How did he not warn Hot Shot?! It was irresponsible, it was foolish, it was cruel. Shocked people were illogical and impulsive, and now that Hot Shot would be an unpredictable and directly obstructing important work. And if Ripout pointed this out he would be rightfully labeled an aft. 

“You know, it’s strange Blurr didn’t bring this up before now.” Sideways’ willingness to be the villain was useful, if a concerning trait. Then again, for adolescent mechs, that kind of behavior wasn’t rare. Learning to be a sentient being wasn’t simple, after all. He’d grow out of it by the end of the century. 

“Yes! I will let you know I had very very very good reasons to not tell Hot Shot, even if it was on purpose which it wasn’t because the–” Sideways’ curious horn structure (not handlebars, he also had those in a less visible spot) made an annoyed flick. 

“Or you think Hot Shot is an idiot.” 

The words hit like a stone tossed off a hill. For half a klik, it was silent. Nobody spoke, like the relatively innocuous comment was some dire insult. He didn’t understand scrap about these people. Waspinator began buzzing. 

“Double-bot wrong!” Ripout had to disagree with that assessment, but he was hesitant to put himself in this clearly loaded conversation. The accusation was shrugged off by the two wheeler. 

“Am I? It’s not like Blurr would go to bat vouching for you either. I really doubt Blurr thinks highly of any of us.” 

“If you all would listen!– I had a very bad good reason!” Blurr was shaking, rolling on his wheels. Ripout never saw a root mode with that kind of wheel placement– giant wheels jutting through the structure of his pede. They were downright disproportionate compared to the rest of him, a sign of the last stages of protoform struggling to catch up with the quicker-growing elements of the Cybertronian frame. (Curiously, his color was oddly subdued. Possibly paint, but where one would go to get painted in Metrahex was a question in itself.) 

“The guards tried to kill us!” 

“What?” 

The speed at which Sawtooth was able to place herself in front of Blurr was astounding. A crowd quickly formed around the bot as Ripout stood in silence.

“If they hurt either of you–” Sawtooth’s threat was cut off by Waspinator’s threat– “Waspinator sting!” 

Belatedly, Ripout notices Kup’s faded Cybertronian guard insignia. Suddenly, antagonizing this group seemed like a terrible idea. 

“No, no! Metrahex is full of the sick! Nobody is supposed to go in or out and the guard thought we were sick too so I lied and said we weren’t going here but that’s a lie because we do live here and you’re not supposed to lie– but they pointed a blaster at us and said ‘anyone from that Primus-damned place should die before they get us all sick,’ and I couldn’t let Hot Shot die!” 

Oh. 

“Kid, that was a brave lie. If it was me, I’d do the same thing. In fact, back in—” Kup’s soothing voice, one nearly enough to pull Ripout from his hurried processor, was cut off by a groan. “Not the time? I won’t be around to give my stories forever. I’m just glad you made it back intact.” Ripout couldn’t bring himself to be glad. Things were dire enough when it was confined to the building– but now? It could, likely would, wipe the entire town. Not that Ripout’s had any luck up until now. 

It was hard to keep catastrophizing, not when there was a conversation happening behind him. Sideways had switched targets in his lapse of attention, accusing (well, snidely implying) that Blurr very well may be infected. It was a possibility, but it wasn’t particularly helpful. They had no transmission method, no methods of damage, nothing. Even the possibility of this being some kind of divine punishment was entirely possible, albeit unhelpful. Corporal punishment is largely ineffective, but perhaps a swift kick to the helm would get Sideways to shut the frag up. 

Too late. Hot Shot charged at Sideways in an admittedly skilled mid-motion transformation. Although the other tried to dodge, he failed and was pinned to the floor. 

“Shut! Up! For a relatively small bot, Hot Shot could deliver a punch. Cracking plates, he kept hitting Sideways. “You’re always doing this!” Over and over again. “Always trying to tear us apart, make us fight, why are you even here?!” As a fully-grown mech, Ripout should intervene, but as an individual he really didn’t want to. For one thing, it distinctly was not his vein to mine. Whatever clearly long-running conflict they had wasn’t something he had a place butting into. Most shamefully, he didn’t entirely have an issue with this particular child getting beat up. Of all the adolescents he had met, Sideways was likely the post punchable from an emotional standpoint, which is quite a feat. 

Thankfully Sawtooth saw fit to perform his societal expectation for him. “Kid, let go of him, it’s not a hill worth dyin’ on.” Apparently she was wiser when it wasn’t her doing the assault. Hot Shot flailed like a newspark pulled from the well, while Sideways laid on the floor strangely indifferent to him getting assailed. From what he could tell, he simply laid there waiting for Hot Shot to finish. 

“Your processor runs quicker than I gave you credit for,” he sneers, unexpectedly. 

Did Sideways get hit in the helm when Hot Shot ran him over? What kind of response was that? 

A small trickle of energon escaped the corner of his in– Huh. That was- That’s not what energon looked like. He’d never seen any bodily fluid look remotely like that. Not coolant or cleaner or wiper fluid or viral isolate. Not even liquid with particulate could look like that; it didn’t make sense. The… fluid– at least in the way it moved– moved and flickered like a holoscreen picking up garbage data. It was the remnants of nothing, and it was wrong. “Heh, that’s new,” he said. It proliferated to his voice, warping if beyond comprehension, and as he spoke a panel fell off his arm. “Ah, well, it’s curtain time I see.” Ripout didn’t understand. Strafe was halfway back to the well by the time he was losing plates, but nobody noticed Sideways until now. How was he not bleeding all over the– 

Oh. It was the static. The static began– he didn’t know what he was looking at. Vines? Tendrils? Wisps? It was spilling– stretching, no, tearing apart Sideways’ chestplate. 

“You! You made that monster!” Sawtooth accused, prompting a laugh. 

“Which one? Not like it matters– I didn’t But please, keep finding someone to blame!” His response was flippant. The awful cracking noises waxed and waned. Somehow, Sideways could laugh and talk at the same time. “It’s been fun, watching you fools squabble over the pettiest slag. Shame how long it’ll take to form another frame, but this one’s at it’s limit.” 

“What are you?!” Hot Shot shouted. 

“Just like all of you, more or less, just a little different; Really– all of you are the same as I am. You’ve just not had Unicron give you your cue. Just wait until you all see what I already have set in store.” Finally, Sideways hatched. Frame cracked open and sent shards across the room in an explosion of static. 

The last thing Ripout heard was his own crushed frame hitting the floor.  

Chapter Text

Waspinator watched Chart-bot crash. Chart-bot was a meanie and a glitch, but he tried to help Blast-bot, so Waspinator wasn’t sure how to feel. Waspinator’s spark hurt too much. Blast-bot was gone and everyone was in danger– and Waspinator couldn’t sting viruses. Saw-bot stared at Double-bot (frame) and Double-bot (fuzzy stuff) as Double-bot (fuzzy) slipped out of the window. It wasn’t fair. Waspinator always said Double-bot bad, Double-bot talked to Big-Horn-bot when Double-bot thought nobot was looking. Now Waspinator was proved right. 
 Waspinator didn’t feel like Waspinator was proved right. Whirly-bot held Waspinator’s servo, but Waspinator could tell Whirly-bot didn’t know what to do. Big Stick-bot would have ideas. Would call Waspinator “scrapheap,” “defect,” “useless,” “idiot,” “mistake,” but Big Stick-bot would know. Goopy Big Stick-bot didn’t seem very helpful. Other-bots thought Goop-bot (good name, short, easy to remember,) was dead, but Waspinator knew better. 
Goop-bot was patrolling halls like Big stick-bot. Waspinator knew because Waspinator forgets what time it was and would get caught by Saw-bot or Dust-bot if lucky. If Waspinator wasn’t lucky, Big Stick-bot would find Waspinator and hit Waspinator until Waspinator run to class. Waspinator never saw Big Stick-bot hit other bots. Chart-bot same as Big-stick-bot, same scary optics. 
“Come on, Wasp, let’s go fly in the south chamber!” Everybody but Waspinator and Whirly-bot left. 
“Blast-bot died!” Waspinator shouted– no, no! Waspinator didn’t want to push away Whirly-bot, Waspinator didn’t know why Waspinator’s optics leak, why everything was happening to friend-bots and enemy-bots. “Waspinator want to help, want to understand, want to go normal!” Whirly-bot shrunk back. Waspinator ruin everything, now Whirly-bot would leave Waspinator foreve–
“I’m sorry.” Whirly-bot’s wings went low. Helm tilt to floor. Whirly-bot apologize? 
“Waspinator defect, why Whirly-bot sorry?” Waspinator always defect. Whirly-bot not same as Waspinator, Waspinator know. Not understand why, but know. 
“Because I didn’t think about how you felt! You’re not ‘defective’, we’re just scared!” 
“Whirly-bot scared? But Whirly-bot brave and smart!” Whirly-bot was everything Waspinator not, every-bot what Waspinator not. But Whirly-bot nice anyway, not put Waspinator down or call Waspinator names. Whirly-bot play cube and read holopad comics with Waspinator. Whirly-bot treat Waspinator like real bot. 
“Of course I’m scared! But… I need to steel my spark. One cycle, I’ll get big Whirl out of prison and all his cool criminal friends!” Whirly-bot’s smile was too bright. Even without death-virus-monsters Waspinator have no future. Hope for good bots, smart useful bots. Not Waspinator. “And I’ll bring you with me, too!” 
Waspinator wanted to speak, but no words came out of Waspinator’s voicebox. All Waspinator had? Buzzing. But Whirly-bot understood Waspinator’s thank you. 
“How about we go help Sawtooth bury Sideways out back?” Help. Waspinator could help. 

#

“Sparklets, you don’t need to help, ol’ Sawtooth has it covered,” Saw-bot crouched, holding Double-bot. Double-bot’s head was gone, so Head-bot (the black one) not dead. Didn’t know what happen to grey Head-bot. Faces difficult for Waspinator, but Saw-bot’s antenna hung low. Waspinator needed to help. 
“Well, Double-bot super mean, so it not so bad.” 
Waspinator didn’t help. If Saw-bot didn’t like Double-bot, Saw-bot didn’t have to be so sad. But maybe Saw-bot not understand. 
“Wasp… you know I couldn’t love any of you less.” 
“But that mean Saw-bot keep getting hurt.” 
Waspinator didn’t make a joke, but Saw-bot laugh. Saw-bot weird. Always say Waspinator understand when older. Waspinator can’t imagine older. 
“Isn’t that a servo of scrap? But pain’s the price for failure. No spark of Primus does what Sideways did. Not straight from the well. I couldn’t protect my bitty from ‘imself.” 
“Saw-bot wrong. Waspinator know Double-bot for lots cycles– always mean.” Saw-bot nodded sadly. Whirly-bot patted Saw-bot on the shoulder. Waspinator was hungry but forgot where his crystals went. Whirl-bot and Saw-bot started talking, but Waspinator not pay attention. Crystals. Waspinator not able eat cubes– cubes make tanks purge. If crystals not in frame-pocket, where else? Big Stick-bot take crystals sometimes, but Waspinator not bad last cycle. 
“Hey, Wasp,” Waspinator jumped when Whirly-bot wave hand. “Hungry? You gave me your crystals, remember?” 
No. Before Whirly-bot speak, Waspinator not remember crystal stash change. Waspinator’s face warmed with energon. Embarrassing, stupid, defect. Waspinator forget something so simple– not deserve energon crystal. Big Stick-bot always say bot need earn energon. 
Whirly-bot give Waspinator crystal anyway, blue and shiny. Before Whirly-bot ask question, Waspinator crunch. Waspinator liked the lights in corner when Waspinator ate. Didn’t know where the funny lights came from, but Waspinator think they’re pretty. Sometimes, the lights say weird things, but Waspinator not worry too much. 
“Waspinator, Whirl, you two okay?” Saw-bot asked. How Waspinator answer? Blaster-bot dead, stranger-bots are in home, town dangerous. Nothing okay. But Saw-bot needs not worry. 
“Waspinator okay,” Waspinator said brave lie. Felt a little bad. Still worth it for Saw-bot. 
“If you say so.” 
For rest of day, Waspinator and Whirly-bot played. Whirly-bot was good at fly. 
“Waspinator felt more scared, not want Whirl-bot or Sun-bot or Zip-bot or Pink-bot to die. Didn’t want anybot dead. 
But Waspinator happy. Whirly-bot alive, Whirly-bot listen to Waspinator. Whirly-bot make sky seem bright big. 

Chapter Text

Ripout was being stared at. 
Laid out on a medberth, that’s all the doctor could process. The pressure of a thousand optics, all aimed straight at him. He was supposed to be doing something, and he was failing– everyone would find out he was failing and burnt energon dust was filling his intake. 
“Hey, Doc, you’ve been out for a good klik.” 
Oh Primus, it was that afthole. At the very least, their insufferable grin was enough to jar most any bot back online. 
“Nice to be looking down at you for a change, though I’m–” Delirium interrupts themselves with a vicious cough. The discharge sputtering from forcibly opened vents was disturbing in viscosity, texture, color, amount, and force with which it was expelled, like slime being blown through a suite conditioner. “Likely not standing for much longer.” 
By the Primes, was this plague-bug looking after him?! 
“And you’re doing this instead of finding a good corner to die in because?” 
Ripout’s entirely genuine query was met by a grossly wet laugh. 
“Oh, my dear friend,” incredibly strong word for the relationship between Delirium and the sane, competent, rational, non-fraudulent hack doctor. “I’ve got a request– cut me open!” 
What the frag? 
“While my spark spins, of course,” 
Dying patients often made uncomfortable, personal requests of Ripout (a large part of his disdain for responsive medicine), but in no situation did he imagine ever having a patient request to be vivisected. 
Perhaps he would understand if it was a scientific request. Asking to use their body to find a prevention or solution. This was Delirium. It was not about that. 
“What is your malfunction?” 
“If you vivisect me, you’ll find out~” 
“Delirium, we have no anesthetic. No antiseptic. You will die slowly, painfully, and consciously.” 
“No scrap. I’ll be exiting stage left either way– and I’ve never been vivisected before!” Of course there was no way Ripout was going to do something so self-evidently, obviously, undeniably unethical. “Besides, think about the knowledge! Samples! I managed to break into Wheeljack’s room– he has all sorts of equipment. Think about the fame if you come up with a filter– with a cure!” 
“Frag, you’re right,” they, Primus-damn it, had a point. The knowledge would be invaluable. Delirium, despite the unfortunate name, was relatively coherent and orientated. Frag him, he was thinking about it. “I am going to kill you.” 
“That’s often the end of it, isn’t it?” That smug grin was going to kill him one of these cycles. “Really, there’s no way I’m letting you rearrange my guts without me being there!” 
“You’re impossible.” As if to prove his point, Delirium winked. 
“Really, vivisection is rather simple, once you’ve got them restrained. I have plenty of experience tying bots down. Always wondered what it was like on the other end.” At this point, Ripout felt entitled to a drink from Maccadam’s (he didn’t trust high grade from anywhere else) with how loaded this conversation is. If nothing else, at least he was outliving the glitch by a cycle or two. 
He grimaced. Really, Ripout only felt a little bad at the prospect of causing Delirium unmitigated agony. With the sheer number of helmaches they served Rioput in the last thousand stellar cycles, he had trouble mustering sympathy. Metrahex was nowhere, and the body would likely be indistinguishable from a legitimate autopsy. Other than himself and Primus, nobody would know. 
He could live with that. 
“I’ll do it.” 
“Slag, really?” After all that, he had to respect their audacity in looking surprised. By this point, Ripout had stood himself up. Delirium nearly toppled over themselves, their face leaning agonizingly close to his. They had no place being so giddy about their upcoming torture, but this wasn’t exactly abnormal behavior for them in spirit (if not intensity). 
“That was way easier than I thought it would be,” they say, as Ripout represses the urge to rescind the offer and smack the spindly scraplet driving him to the precipice of some great and terrible madness. “So, what are you waiting for?” 
“For me to muster the resolve to not tear out your voicebox,” is what Ripout wanted to say. Thankfully, his self-restraint was as remarkable as the rest of him. “Where, exactly, will we do the procedure?” 
“Well, we could do it in the middle of the hallway,” Delirium said, gravely overestimating Ripout’s supply of patience. Ignoring the colossal odds of a child walking in on that, the lighting was more or less uncontrollable for the purpose. As crucial, the other makeshift room was a nightmare to clean, and Strafe’s bleeding was relatively controlled. “I’m joking– I know a place.” 
Delirium proceeded to stumble, holding Ripout’s servo in theirs as they lead him through the facility’s branching halls– like the veins of some strange being. They had never been terribly strong; understandable for their frame, but Delirium’s trembling grasp was glaringly, unignorably weak. Finally, the unbearable slagheap was dying, but Ripout struggled to rejoice as he should. 
Surely, it was the situation. A tiny, cyberoid figure flickered in and out of his periphery. Possibly a minicon. Probably his processor screeching for a damned break. He was not receiving a damned break, let alone a non-damned break. Ripout felt that nagging stare come back, and swore static was bubbling at the corners of his vision. 
Vivisection. He had to focus on the task at hand. He could have a mental breakdown on his own time, right now he had information to gather. Delirium’s behavior change seemingly started before Ripout arrived to Metrahex, which was extremely bad if they arrived on the same cycle. 
“I can’t say I imagined dying here last orbital! Life’s funny, isn’t it?” Last orbital? 
“How long have you been here?” Ripout naturally assumed Delirium was at the train station because he was boarding or disembarking on a train– given Delirium had no reason to expect him. Normal bots don’t usually loiter around train stations when there are other, far more interesting places to be. 
“Half an orbital or so. Lost my HUD right around then, too.” 
Delirium was not a normal bot. If Delirium hadn’t stopped with a flourish, they would have received a long tirade about reporting abnormal symptoms. 
In their defense, the room Delirium brought him to was better than doing it in the hall. Seemingly a retrofitted washroom, the drainage was more than enough to completely exsanguinate a grown bot. Lights were directly overhead, cold and near blinding. Most notably, there was an entire OR’s worth of supplies. The room was remote, off in a corner, but someone had to know about this. 
“Like it? I stole it for you!” Well, that answered one question with two. Theft wasn’t unthinkable, but also what? Why? As Ripout stood dumbfounded and questioning the path that led him to this situation, Delirium stretched out on what was clearly just a gathering table. “From that clinic! I wanted to see everyone’s faceplates, but yours is good enough.” 
Ripout was not going to process what that tone made him feel. 
“Are you sure you want me to, and I must repeat, torture you to death?” 
“Rippy, must I get on my knees?!” The insufferable twig responded. “The well takes us all, and although I would love to do this in public, I respect your prudish whiles enough to settle for an audience of one.” Punctuating their own point, they gestured to the mirror above them, tirelessly reflecting the “operating” table. 
Surely, with 13 Primes, one must be able to end his suffering. At this point, he wouldn’t be particularly upset if Unicron took sight of Cybertron as long as he ate Metrahex first. 
Repeating the motivation of once-in-an-eon knowledge in his mind, Ripout reluctantly secured Delirium to the profoundly uncomfortable shackles hammered into the wall. If Diodus was still alive, he would not be happy about that. Only under the stark lighting could he see the slight discoloration of Delirium’s plating. They already were rather dead looking, with sickly lavender and grey tones, but whatever luster they had was entirely dulled. 
Professional. Amazingly, Ripout’s handy holopad was in fine working order (although, it naturally had no kind of signal.) Record, like a normal surgery. Keep notes. Be professional. “This is Ripout of Adaptica, on the… 67th solar cycle of 7321y in Metrahex.” His taciturn, formal words swirled around his audials. Did he always sound like this? 
“Never thought you’d be into recording,” Ah, yes, his patient. 
“Recording is standard procedure. Patient: Delirium. Procedure… exploratory cavity scouring with biopsy.” 
“Oh, Doc, you don’t need to make it so boring! He’s cutting me open and taking a little peek!” Primus, they made it sound so gross. 
What he was doing was gross. Cutting open a living mech. “Although Delirium is of compromised processing, the necessity of the procedure is such that their consent it–” 
“Don’t be fooled, I am all for this!” If only he and Delirium never met, how much frustration would Ripout have been saved from? Surely, all these strange feelings, the arguments in public libraries and crashed lectures, all that energy could have been placed somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“Overruled. Metrahex, and Delirium, are currently host to an unknown pathogen. This procedure aims to make clear the mechanism of of di–” 
“You get all melty and die!” Sweet Solus Prime Delirium needed to relearn the divine gift of tact. 
“Of disease and capture valuable specimens and diseased tissue samples.” Delirium’s faceplate was searing as Ripout placed an electrode. He had learned from Strafe. Like him, Delirium’s vitals were abhorrent. Another negative pulse reading, and instead of low line pressure Delirium was seemingly on the verge of exploding. “Vitals are all indicative of malfunction. Spark rotation is at negative 2 per klik. PSI is at 172, which is extremely high–” 
“Hey, is that a record?” 
“...I would need to check the records. Why you would seek to break said record is beyond me.” Delirium laughs, like that was in any way amusing. Why were they like this? 
“Isn’t it interesting? ‘Delirium: highest line pressure on Cybertron!’” 
“Because that kills people!” Really, they had to have some kind of self-preservation instinct… although the illness must have taken that from them. “Ahem. I will now begin the operation.” 
Like any surgeon, he had an inbuilt suite of surgical blades. Akin to any other surgery, he started by deforming his left servo, pressing the hand panels into his forearm and popping out the armor saw. The serrated edge, pulled by a loop of chain at high speed, hovered over their chestplate. It trembled. 
“Well, doc? What’s the holdup?” Their ability to gesture exaggeratedly and flamboyantly with all 4 limbs bound was admittedly impressive. He agreed to do this. Ripout had no place in hesitating. This was normal, he had no care for Delirium. Delirium was a dead mech walking anyway. He had no reason to hesitate. 
Like the glitch they were, Delirium screamed the second Ripout made the first incision. 
Any idiot could tell the scream was fake, given the hysterical laughter that followed. “You should see your faceplate right now!” They said like he could not quite clearly see himself in the awful mirror Delirium set up quite clearly. Once Ripout quelled the urge to plunge his saw directly into Delirium’s spark, he continued cutting off the external shell. 
“You know, you’d think getting cut open would hurt more,” they said. Oh, Primus, they were never going to shut up for the entire procedure. Perhaps it was better than incessant tortured screaming, but Ripout knew this wasn’t much better. “There’s a real upside to this whole deadly plague thing!” 
“Clearly, the illness has some effect on pain processing. This is quite fortunate, given our lack of effective anesthetics without risk of bot-to-bot transition via medical port. There are no hospitals in Metrahex.” Saying it out loud made Ripout wonder what the people living here exactly did if they were critically ill or injured. Air evacuation? Other remote settlements had more reliable entrances and exits– a natural disaster would turn this place into a death trap. 
Oh. This was that situation. 
This place was a disaster waiting to happen, and now Ripout had to clean up the wreckage if he ever wanted to call himself a doctor and not be a fraud. 
“Outer armor is about a negative 5 on the Cutter-Splicer Integrity scale, indicating extreme brittleness,” he said, as a small chink of Delirium fell directly on Ripout’s pede. A fantastic cycle to have the extensive anti-virus system available to medi– 
Wait. Didn’t they also have those firewalls? 
“How’d you get infected anyway? What happened to your anti-virus?” 
“Oh, it made me sick so I deactivated it back when it was installed.” 
…
They what? 
“By chance, are you a malformed spark?” 
“Actual–” 
“No! That is the most glitched, half processed scrap I have heard since Sentinel began his Primacy! I cannot begin to describe the sheer shortsighted impulsivity of what you’ve done! Do you not think before you do anything?!” Delirium shrugged. Shrugged. 
“Nah, not really.” 
In his sheer baffled, disgusted amazement, Ripout nicked an energon line. Energon, agitated from the intense pressure, splattered on Ripout’s visor. If he was not fuming with wrath, he would have asked how Delirium managed to create a clapping sound with their voicebox. 
“Internal energon is desaturated, indicating internal processing. Luminosity is typical for line pressure.” Ripout’s voice, terse but miraculously not outright hostile, rings. 
“Are you calling me typical?” They ask, as Ripout clamps the bleeding line– which, impressively, works. 
“In one and only one way.” Truly, little was normal about the fragger terrorizing him at any given opportunity. Quite possibly, they were the smartest idiot on Cybertron. If Ripout were allowed to ask one thing of Primus, it would be how someone as infuriating as Delirium could exist. Even Unicron would have no cause to make such a mech, but Ripout could not envision a secular process that would arrive to such an unnaturally awful bot.
“At least tell me you regret that choice now,” he said, doubting that they did. 
“Eh, still had some stuff to do, but there’s worse ways out. Besides, I’ve never seen the inside of the Allspark!” Bashing his helm into a wall would be a less painful use of his time than this. There had to be something! Something that made sense about this bag of bolts! Nothing was beyond him, he was an accomplished doctor, an author, one of the greatest minds of Cybertron! How was this scrapyard reject beyond his understanding? Delirium’s chassis unfolded, muddled and stained by pestilence. Their tanks were still churning, their struts still held structure, yet it all stood on the precipice of ruin like a city working dutifully through its routines under the gaze of the Unmaker. Normalcy on the verge of collapse.
 “Like what you see, Doc?” A clear trap, one Ripout knew by now to avoid falling into. 
“I have gotten a clear visual of the internal cavity. By my professional judgement, a generous prognosis would be another stellar cycle at best. Although Delirium shows greater mesh integrity than subject S, vent congestion is near overwhelming. Collaborating, the patient is about 5 degrees above the threshold for degenerative overheating.” 
“I feel fine!” Delirium chirps before promptly coughing up a large amount of liquefied mesh. 
“I am collecting 15 microunits of the material no longer in Delirium’s vents.” He said, picking up a syringe. Despite the gauge of the needle, the material threatened to clog the syringe. With no small difficulty, Ripout got the first of many samples. 
“Bleeding is limited. The armor lines have seemingly either atrophied, hemorrhaged into the armor’s protoform binding mesh, or likely both. As a result, the armor layer is seemingly necrosed metal. It is no longer a part of the frame, only loosely attached by the diseased mesh. As I saw with subject S, plate sloughing is unavoidable.” 
Delirium hums, still smiling. 
“The spark chamber is perplexingly still intact. Although strangely shaped, this very well may be natural variation.” 
“Hey! At least take me out before you say my spark chamber looks weird.” They really had a lot of audacity for someone being vivisected. 
“Your are aware I have a giant saw?” 
“Oh, are you going to kill me, Rippy? Better make it hurt, better get me in one shot.” Naturally, they were having far too much fun with this. Delirium wasn’t wrong, but they didn’t have to be so annoying about it. “Truly, struck through the spark by my greatest rival? What a way to go!” 
“Is there a way you could be more normal about this?” Seeing their grin, he knew that the answer was a definitive no. 
“Am I normal about anything? Let me enjoy my last moments! How cruel you are, trying to deny a poor, dying, plague-stricken mech that!” If one could be overdramatic on their deathbed, this would be a prime example. Unable to shut up to the very end, Delirium continued. “But that suits you; all you care about is you.” 
Oh, that was rich! “And you’re spewing a lot of smoke while calling me a tailpipe! My work is to help Cybertron, to further the entire species–” 
“Do you really believe your own scrap?” They ask, horribly smug. 
“Of course! I’m not some mad butcher!” He says, as he grabs a twitching, energized cable to get at Delirium’s filters. “Everything I do is rehabilitation! I take useless burdens and turn them into contributing, useful members of society.” 
“Somehow, I doubt all the people subjected to your ‘care’ would agree~” they trill. “Don’t tell me all those mechs you mutilated and imprisoned on the judgement of some senators with wheels too big for their axles came out on the other end better– and that you didn’t enjoy watching them squirm.” 
“I trusted the judgement of my superiors.” He says. 
“So you didn’t have to judge yourself,” they replied. Correctly. 
He couldn’t refute it, couldn't reply. Damn them. Damn them to the pit. 
“Maybe you’re right,” he hisses. “Maybe I did enjoy it, maybe I allowed myself some self-indulgence, some enjoyment in the work. At least I’m not a blind sadist.” Delirium looked upwards at him with a smile, like they knew better than he did. 
“We aren’t that different. That’s what hooked me, why I needed to figure you out.” They claimed. Madness. An absurd idea, nonsense meant to distract him. Holes ate through the tightly packed filters, pocked like the samples of stone imported from neighboring planets. 
“Both filtration organs, primary and auxiliary, show marked deterioration. Effect on the functionality is unknown, as line energon analysis testing is unavailable and the time elapsed is insufficient for filtration failure to become symptomatic.” 
“You’re dodging,” they said instead of shutting the frag up. “It’s so much more fun when you stop pretending to be a good person. We could have seen such fun things!” 
“I’m not pretending!” Metal clangs, energon staining Ripout’s servos as a strut collapses (ripping a hole in a line). Because Ripout slammed his servo against it. Delirium’s laugh bashes through his audials, hysterical, nearly euphoric. He was the biggest joke they’ve ever heard. 
“Oh, that’s a squirter! Do it again!” Insistent. Taunting him. “It’s impressive how good you are at lying to yourself! Bravo! 10 out of 10! What a shame I don’t get to see more.” Primus, Primus, what did he do to deserve this torture? “I know you know that your actions have consequences.” 
No. 
No, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t go there, it wasn’t– there wasn’t anything Ripout could have done to prevent it! How dare they?! 
“But how funny was it, that someone killed themselves the klik they left your ‘care’, ‘doctor.’” How dare they look so smug? How dare they mock him when they’ve done worse, when they didn’t even care beyond holding it over Ripout? 
“You filthy hypocrite! That death was an unfortunate coincidence– unrelated to my care!” He knew it was scrap, they did too. Filthy hypocrite. One of them sure was. Spark thudding, Ripout averted his optics from Delirium’s. Moving wires. Watching mesh crumble at his touch. 
“It was inevitable. Eventually, a patient would be unable to withstand my methods. Mortality is unavoidable–” 
“Oh, Primus, don’t tell me you actually feel bad!” They laugh, surprised. “I thought lower of you, really!” Wires jiggle as they talk, which cannot be good for them long-term. Then again, it wasn’t looking like they had a ‘long-term’ to be concerned over. 
“I hate you,” he lied. (?) 
“Oh, Rippy, I’m flattered! Can’t say the feeling is mutual, but it sure is fun to watch.” Their vitals were slowly deteriorating, which was in no way a surprise. Alarmingly squishy, a chunk of filter easily sloughed off the whole with a wet glorp. In another repulsive move, it continued to twitch and wriggle as Ripout put it into a small beaker that now could never, ever, ever be used again. 
“I almost like you! You should be impressed with yourself.” Oh, frag no. He was not entertaining that. Sure, Delirium may be one of the few minds able to compete, maybe even match his. They were a constant driving force, a peer, a menace, one of the few bots that understood him (unfortunately(?)), but the only feelings between them were hatred and contempt. Ripout may have occasionally considered… things. That was an entirely normal response to a bot so perplexingly insufferable. 
“Rippy, you’re denting my torso strut,” they said, as Ripout realized he had unthinkingly grasped onto a rib. Metal shrieked as he promptly swapped his servo to a size 2 saw. They barely managed to quell a yelp. 
“Getting a sample of internal hard metal.” Delirium was unconvinced. 
“Sure you were, and I’m getting a new layer of paint! Make my spark chamber fluorite green, please!” Despite himself, a laugh escaped Ripout. Fluorite green, like Ripout. Hmm.
“Well, well well, your voicebox can make that sound!” They returned to annoying at record speed. And wait, what the pit did they think they were saying?! 
“Go back, where do you get off talking about my mortalities?! You missed your station back where you murder people! On purpose!” Delirium hummed. “I don’t go out of my way to kill, disable, and cause pain!” 
“But you enjoy it. That’s all I’m saying.” 
When they died, (something far more imminent than Ripout was able to get through his threads,) no spark would mourn them. As opposed to Ripout, a valuable member of society whose death would be widely remarked upon. 
“Subject is showing significant physiological signs of pain.” 
“Ah ah ah! You’re dodging the question!” Technically, they hadn’t asked a question. They had a point, but if Ripout didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t his problem. 
“Anestetic is unavailable, and recovery is near impossible. As such, euthenasia is both ethically and legally permissib–” 
“You’re not putting me down like a cyberdog! Let it be said I am pro assisted suicide, but dying by a needle is far too boring!” He really shouldn’t be surprised with anything that comes out of Delirium’s voicebox. Did they want to be shot? In what way was dying cut open and bound to a filthy table preferable? Were they stupid? 
“Well, Delirium, your body has outlived its usefulness–” 
“Well, Doc–” 
“Don’t finish that sentence or I’ll pump you full of magnetostasis liquid.” 
Delirium gasped, scandalized. “Quick and painless! You wouldn’t! Doesn’t even look interesting!” 
“And I’ll shut your chestplate to hide the incision–” Despite his best efforts, a slight smile escaped him. 
“Besides, there’s something you forgot, my darling doctor,” they said, incredibly smug. “My spark chamber is right here!” 
The flatline beep that Ripout produced was humiliatingly loud– splitting both his and anyone on their side of the building’s audials. Medical! This was medical, and entirely professional procedure that was in no way intimate, embarrassing, or emotionally fraught! Other any other circumstance, this would simply be obnoxious flirtation, the amount of stray processes he’s had regarding opening Delirium’s chest and seeing what was inside? Purely intellectual curiosity on what the spark of such a maddening bot would look like. 
Nothing else. 
“Subject Delirium–” 
“Stop talking about me like I’m dead! I’m only most of the way there.” Delirium may be the most lively terminal patient known to Cybertron. For a dead bot walking, they had some nerve being so alive with awful, infuriating, maddening life. 
“Currently living subject Delirium is showing an abnormal spark signal. Although spark inspection is contraindicated in pathogenic illness, it is of interest given the unprecedented reading.” 
Brilliant light spilled from the center of Delirium. Like any, the luminance overwhelmed even the stark lighting of the room. Yes, it was, somehow, a slag-standard spark. Indistinguishable from any others, yet perfectly unique. 
The way it shuttered and shook was completely fragged, though. A “healthy” pattern of spark motion was surprisingly broad, both rotation and pulsation being benign. Determining a disordered sparkbeat was quite difficult as a result; even rather strange patterns were often harmless. 
Nothing about this was benign. 
Like opening a patient and seeing nothing but disorganized metal overgrowth where healthy protoform belonged, all he could muster was the useless assessment that Ripout couldn’t do scrap here, minus maybe, prolong the inevitable. Not exactly news, but still, it made every speck of him recoil in frustration. 
“Hey, it wasn’t that shape last time I checked!” Saying their spark wasn’t lopsided prior didn’t reveal some great hidden truth. No scrap their spark wasn’t lopsided, they weren’t supposed to do that. 
They still smiled, nearly genuine. Like they were helping. 
Clicking panels back into place, Ripout’s helm hung low. His visor obscured even more of his faceplate– his unseemly emotions, his unpalatable faceplate, the utterly pointless sentiment. 
“Spark is, as previously noted, lopsided. Movement is best described as stuttering. Scrap if I know why.” Defeated, he trudged across the room. Samples slid into a downright archaic analysis station, somehow still in working order. Delirium stared at him as the timer began– almost a dozen kliks. This was going to be the worst 11.6 kliks of his life. 
“Well, it looks like I’ve got a few before these vitals crash,” they say, clearly aware of Ripout’s status as a captive in this conversation. 
“Come closer, Rippy, it’s not over yet.” 
There was an old holovid for newsparks, where one bot would set up a cube for the other to kick, but yank it away right before the kick made contact; and they fell for it every time. 
Ripout moved himself back to Delirium’s bedside– well, tableside. 
“Your clamp work is sloppy,” and as if to punctuate Delirium’s point, a small squirt of energon erupted from a cut line. It was inevitable, with how high their pressure was, any attempt at line closure short of cauterization would be a temporary patch. Nothing Ripout could do would improve the prognosis, anyway. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault, nothing here was his fault. Delirium’s death would be a massive net gain, even if life had intrinsic value, they had long since spent that and racked up an unsurmountable debt. He had no reas– 
“You’re moping again, Doc.” 
They weren’t wrong, but Ripout wasn’t happy about it. 
“Don’t you have shame or a conscience or something? Why do you insist upon making my life a nightmare?” At this rate, Ripout was about ready to start a bout of hysterical laughter with them. Why? Why him? 
“Oh, Rippy, how many times must I tell you? It’s because you’re fun. Why else?” It cannot be just that. Scrap on a shuttle, it couldn’t just be that. “You’re interesting. You always fall for it. What other reason do I need?” 
There was no other way to describe the sheer irritation going through him “There has to be something!” he repeats. Over and over, he’d ask, and he still never believes the answer he got. Couldn’t believe it. All this scrap had to be for something. “You– you keep flirting with me! That– it can’t be just ‘fun’ to you!” 
A pause. A knowing look and a pause of consideration. “Dunno,” they shrug. 
They shrug. They had the fragging gall, the audacity, the madness, the absurd spark at their core to say that and shrug. 
“Never thought about it. Fun? At first– it still is. But I think I mean it now. Maybe.” 
“I hate you,” he lied. 
“I know– oh, and Doc, when you end up back down there, you better tell me how this plays out! What a powder keg: fear, resentment, drama, death!” They laugh, smile. Of course. The core of one’s spark is unchanging. “Will they all die in this tiny pit, or will the big city doctor save the day?! What a thrill!” More bleeds pop up, lines failing. Not catastrophic, but constant. Death carried on the struts of attrition. 
“What is this to you, some kind of trashy vidserial?” 
“Yeah, actually.” 
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. It would have been well within Ripout’s place to tell them off, if not for the violent cough– 
Expectedly, it was uncomfortably wet, producing chunky slime. The general goopiness– for lack of a better term– of Delirium was lesser than he expected from Strafe. Delirium was all plating, though. Most mechs were about 75% plating, 15% mesh. If Ripout were to guess, Delirium was about 5% mesh, even. If not for their vents and filters, they wouldn’t be symptomatic at all. 
“Ah, there goes the eyes!” Fortunately, Delirium wasn’t thrashing around. In fact, they were seemingly going limp. Exhausted? They shuffled a little. “Oh, nevermind, they’re back!” Strange– a loose connection. If he had to guess, the visual wire was losing contact– perhaps it was touched up with lead solder instead of bioconductive mesh. Not exactly a useful hypothesis, but a good distraction. 

#

As a doctor, Ripout knew death. It was just as often silent and dull. The curtain didn’t always crash off its rail and crush the stage amps with it; more often than not, it was mundane. They stopped talking, stopped venting (which was in no way lethal, even at their temperature now that their interior was exposed to the exterior,) and stopped moving. Line pressure plummeted, processor activity flattened, (which was generally lethal without spark support and frame transplantation, which was practically like shooting blindly into the sky hoping to hit Unicron’s right horn.) 
The spark was still going, but that was a matter of time. He didn’t retract the electrodes for the remaining kliks on the machine. 

##

Well, that wasn’t good. Not good at all. 
The machine had separated the sample of filter into 3. One, put into flash freeze, the other two gone into computerized analysis. The magnified sample was obvious. That was fragging nanobots! Any dipslag with access to a medical textbook could tell you that. They were, thank frag, dead. 
This was, in some ways, lucky. Ripout was immune. Everyone else was scrap, but he was fine. 
Nanobots could be vaccinated against, could be filtered out and avoided, but treatment? MsFeP. Manage symptoms, filter externally, and pray. Once someone was symptomatic, they died or they didn’t, and there was slag anybot short of Primus could do to change that. It was a stupid acronym for a stupid treatment that he hated. 
The gears shifted into place. The sludge was deconstructed mesh mixed with energon; waste from the nanobots spilled back into the frame. Waste that got circulated by the body and clogged organs. Eventually, the body falls apart. At this point, Ripout felt ready to fall apart. 
Halls cage him in as he passes through, lights sneering down at him. He was useless. Stupid. Leaving would be cowardice, and staying would be pointless. No way back, no way forward. Ripout needed to think, needed to get out of that room with the three fourths dead Delirium and the energon he spilt. Metal creaks as he slams himself onto the berth in the cramped room. 

###

“Bypass! Get your aft in here!” In another eon, long ago in the spiraled despair of lower Adaptica, Ripout’s designation was different. The suns’ rays never stretched down into the layered walls, rendering day and night arbitrary. 
Bypass was pathetic, so lowly that Ripout could hardly fathom he was once him. A snivelling, incompetent glitch. Rivet, his mentor, was more than reasonable in wanting to give up on the incompetent, bumbling half-glitch. Aimless, skilless, useless. 
Still, she was wrong. “Disorganized scrapheap?” “A useless box of wires?” “May as well not have an alt?” No, they simply lacked his vision. If he couldn’t turn into something useful, he’d make what he was useful. A new medical solution, a new system for monitoring, all from his own servos. 
Even if he wouldn’t sleep for the next 100 cycles, he’d prove them. Same strange emotion, misplaced certainly, scratched at his spark as Ripout surrendered to recharge.