Sheer Dumb Luck 5
Sheer Dumb Luck
Part Five
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15
Series: Transformers 2007
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
For snarechan! Hope your first day of school isn't too bad.
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck, Part 5
Ratchet looked up, startled, when Hook spat out a bitten-off Cybertronian curse, unexpectedly. He ran through a list of anything he might have done wrong-something to warrant an angry reaction-but came up blank.
“What?”
“Long Haul got himself stuck in a canyon. I need to go get him out-he can’t transform, there are witnesses.”
Scavenger laughed. “He got stuck?”
“It’s not funny,” iced Hook, presumably because his own work had been interrupted, as he stalked out of the room. Ratchet just shook his head, turning back to the capillary-sized net of energon, lubricant and coolant lines he was trying to piece back together. It was delicate, fussy work, the sort that took vast amounts of time and had very little effect.
And he was having trouble adjusting to the physical differences Bonecrusher had when compared to the Autobots Ratchet had worked on. He didn’t know whether it was a Decepticon thing, a gestalt thing, a Constructicon thing or just a Bonecrusher thing, but the mech had much more heat-sensitive lines than was normal. The thick armor was probably enough to protect them, usually, but now that he was actually working on the veins themselves, he kept on welding the wrong things on accident or overheating the little tubes, occasionally to the point where they collapsed in on themselves. And that was with his welder on the lowest setting.
There was another little vesicular cave-in, and Ratchet bit out a curse, flicking off the welder somewhat violently and stomping over to the counter his medical supplies were stored in and on.
“What are you doing?” asked Scavenger, coming up behind him-he moved remarkably quietly and Ratchet, who hadn’t heard him coming, jumped.
“Nothing exciting-I need a lower-power welder, but I’m not sure if I have one.” He flipped through another box. “And I’m right. I don’t. -Slag, it’s probably still back at the base-”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to find a welder that fits your hands,” Scavenger said unhappily. “Do you want me to ask Scrapper and Hook if they can make you a new one? They’ll probably want to look at your old one for reference. ...Well, Scrapper might, Hook usually thinks that kind of thing is ‘limiting...’”
“It’s fine, I’ll just deal with the inconvenience. It’s not a real problem.”
“But I’m supposed to,” Scavenger said, sounding honestly upset-Ratchet, surprised again, turned to look. “We all have our place on the team, and-”
He looked miserable. “And it’s all I can do for ’Crusher right now.”
Ratchet wasn’t sure how to be comforting, considering the situation, but somehow felt he should be. “The engine parts you found me, and the wire, and the cleanser have already been incredibly helpful.”
“The parts were easy, and Mixmaster made the cleanser-it wasn’t me. And you still needed to work on all the parts I found, to make them work.”
“What you found were pieces from Earth vehicles, which is what I would expect, so of course they’re going to need some altering to fit a Cybertronian body,” Ratchet snapped, voice waspish. He had very little patience for pussyfooting around emotional issues, outside of the most extreme situations.
-Damn, now Scavenger looked downright withdrawn, right down to the spikes drawn in close to his body. Ratchet was unsure what to do, lost, and he felt a wave of relief when the door to the room slid open, revealing a mech he identified as Mixmaster with second-hand memories. He didn't want to have to comfort an over-sensitive Decepticon.
Mixmaster ignored Ratchet, marching across the room to pull Scavenger to him, holding him protectively and glaring-with at least four of the six optics Ratchet could see on him-at the Autobot.
He was big, Ratchet realized faintly, big enough that the mixing drum on his alt form had to be solid, or partially solid, an outward disguise only. The number of spiky protrusions and blade-like extensions on him was unusual even for a Decepticon, which only added to his fearsome appearance, although Ratchet could tell that he probably wasn’t all that good a fighter, with the number of external sensors he had. They would make him more vulnerable-he’d feel more pain, take damage harder. He was also-
He was clinging just as hard as Scavenger was, and Ratchet should have known that that was the way to calm the mech down, the way they were all so unnaturally tactile. Of all things!
“Ratchet!” Scavenger said, shaking him out of his thoughts. “This is Mixmaster-he made the extra cleanser for you.”
“I am the chemist.” The words were said slowly, deliberately, and his voice was oddly accented in a way Ratchet didn’t think was human, an odd tension underneath the words.
They also sounded-practiced.
“Ratchet,” he introduced himself, slowly. “Although I suppose you knew that. -Thank you for the cleanser.”
Mixmaster relaxed visibly. “If I tighten the molecule some and cut out the level of contamination I can increase effectiveness and intensity,” he said, optics bright. Personally, Ratchet was skeptical of his ability to do so, but he nodded. “That would be helpful,” he said neutrally.
“Yes-” Mixmaster muttered, apparently to himself, gazing off into the distance. “That-” he turned, abruptly, to the table he was standing by, producing a beaker and reaching for one of the bottles of cleaner. Scavenger pushed himself into his side, watching, and Ratchet bit back the urge to grumble at the display, irritated, as he turned back to Bonecrusher’s waiting shell.
He felt an unnerving kinship to Sisyphus. The unending task.
oOo
Ratchet cursed as he picked up the emergency call, immediately setting aside what he’d been working on. “I need to go,” he said, voice firm, and stood. “There’s been an accident.” It was on the other side of town from the Decepticon-Constructicon-base, but not too far-that was good. And he’d need to stop in town to pick up the on-duty medic anyways.
“I’ll show you the door,” said Scavenger immediately. “And I can clean up here for you.” He didn’t bother waiting for Ratchet to answer, something the medic appreciated, instead transforming. They moved quickly through the maze of tunnels until Scavenger paused, close enough to the outside entrance that Ratchet could pick up the change in air composition.
“Next time, just come to this entrance and someone’ll be waiting to take you in, ’kay? Hook says it’s stupid to keep on meeting up with you on the road. Well, he didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s the idea.”
“Alright,” Ratchet said, not really thinking about the implications of that sentence, about the change to the routine that had formed, too concentrated on the need to get moving.
“See you-” Scavenger said as they reached the door, Ratchet accelerating away: he wasn’t bothering to keep his speed limited to what his alt form’s technical specs were, since he was driverless, unobserved-
oOo
Ratchet was kind of unnerved to find Mixmaster the one waiting for him outside the hidden entrance he used, his engine humming impatiently-Ratchet could see the mech shifting on his wheels, even in vehicle mode.
“Fi-nally,” he growled, and Ratchet frowned inwardly at the odd catch he’d put into the word, but didn’t say anything. To start with, he was a Decepticon, and all that Ratchet himself was there to do was repair their sixth; to end, out of all the Constructicons he’d met-and that was all of them, excluding the one he was repairing-Mixmaster was the one who set him most on edge, partially because of an indefinable sense of unease and partially because of the trickle-down effect of holding someone else’s memories in his mind, even isolated memories-
There was a fair chance, judging from what he was getting, that Scrapper or Hook or both were afraid of Mixmaster-and they were gestalt. The thought was chilling.
They made their way to the med bay in silence, except for the occasional mutter from Mixmaster. Again, Ratchet kept to his vehicle mode, finding it more comfortable in the cramped corridor and making it slightly more acceptable to refrain from replying to the barely-on-the-edge-of-hearing murmurs which might or might not have been directed at him.
He was relieved to reach the med bay, flipping into a fast transformation before he’d even come to a full stop. Mixmaster edged away from him before he followed suit, then silently slunk into a far corner. Ratchet decided to put him out of mind and turned to his “charge.”
He was surprised to find Scrapper there, leaning over Bonecrusher’s body. His optics were off, and Ratchet had almost begun to think that he was in recharge when they flickered back on, snapping in his direction, showing none of the fuzziness or confusion restarting programs caused.
“Ratchet,” he said in greeting, surprisingly warm-not that that said much. “Thank you for coming.” The medic grunted in reply, increasingly unhappy with the way he kept on being thanked-the open recognition of his choice only made the guilt worse.
“Scrapper,” he said in reply, because he needed to say something.
“Scavenger said you needed a cooler welder. Will this work?”
He thought he hid his surprise pretty well as he took the tool, looking it over critically before he flipped it on, grabbing a piece of scrap to try it on.
“Thank you,” he said, a few minutes later, and honestly meant it. It wasn’t anything really necessary, but it meant that this part of the job would go much, much faster.
“It wasn’t for you,” Scrapper said, and Ratchet looked down to see his hand resting gently along the curve of Bonecrusher’s shoulder armor. He suddenly felt isolated, the outsider- He’d never understand what they felt for each other, what made the six Decepticons so trusting, accepting of each other-
And needy. That was the downside. Resolutely, Ratchet switched his attention back to where he’d left off, the last time he’d worked on Bonecrusher, and prepared to start working again.
He was so absorbed in the job that he almost cut through his finger with the laser scalpel he’d been working with when Mixmaster-who had apparently been watching him for a while; Ratchet hadn’t even heard him approach-suddenly stuck a bottle into his field of vision.
“He can’t feel you waiting,” Scrapper said shortly, briefly looking up from what he’d been working on. “Or tell you’re there.”
Well, of course, thought Ratchet, somewhat dumbfounded. Was Mixmaster honestly so unused to interacting with anyone outside of the gestalt that he didn’t know how to do so normally?
Mixmaster appeared to ignore Scrapper, although he shifted slightly, his jumbled armor extensions scraping together lightly. His hand was still outstretched, so Ratchet took the bottle, looking at it with a certain measure of confusion.
“It’s cle-eanser,” he said, that hitch in his voice obvious again-and, yes, he did remember asking for a changed version that the chemist had said he could make- “Twenty percent more efficient at eight percent lower concentration.” He produced a second bottle, this one a light green color. “This one will also break down organic material, but has only two percent improved efficiency for mechanical build-up.”
“Thank you,” Ratchet said, accepting the second bottle.
“You are welc-com-m-”
That was a processor glitch, Ratchet suddenly realized, and probably not a mechanical one, like Bumblebee’s problem, still not fully eradicated. It explained the odd quality to his speech. And possibly it explained what was wrong with him, or at least gave a clue into the matter. Often, a speech impediment, or any sort of social tic, was a sign of something much worse having gone wrong than a few speech patterns.
Then again, there was the chance he was wrong, and it really was just a quick glitch-they didn’t have a medic with them. Well, other than Ratchet, now. And Hook could manage some basic repairs, but Ratchet doubted he could manage much beyond fixing simple wounds to the point where self-repair functions could take over. Complicated processor work was undoubtedly outside of his skill level: even Ratchet didn’t take something like that lightly.
“What-t? Don’t like the way I sp-eak, Autobot?”
“That’s just stupid. What do you think I am, a Decepticon? And I’m a medic. How stable are these?”
Ratchet felt a certain amount of satisfaction at the confusion stamped across Mixmaster’s face, even his posture off-balance-at least he could manage that much, even if Mixmaster set him on edge in a way none of the other Constructicons did, in a way that had very little to do with him being a Decepticon.
Although some of that was fading, even with the knowledge that he had a glitch, on an unknown scale. Which made no sense.
“-avoid heat and cold with both, but -more so with the organic-contaminant one.” He cocked his head to one side, the move oddly birdlike on his hulking, bristling frame. He rattled off the exact temperatures, to three decimal places each, then started in about how such exposures would change short term and long term effectiveness. He was certainly-thorough, Ratchet thought.
“-And maybe fifty years in ideal conditions before there’s a noticeable degradation,” finished Mixmaster, voice oddly happy. “Ten years past that until that degradation shows in practical applications.” He paused, the joy seeming to drain away. “Is- ’Crusher-r do-ing well?”
His voice was worse when it wasn’t a technical matter. Ratchet hadn’t heard of anything like that before.
“He’s probably hovering at the edge of death.” His voice was flat. “Although I believe the spark is still stabilizing-that’s good. Another five to eight hours of work and I’ll have the circulatory system in good enough shape to start the final check for leaks and then try flushing it clean. There’s only the left leg left to clean, because Hook’s been helping with that. I’ve made minimal progress with the databanks, which is slightly better than what I expected-that will be my main focus after I finish this.” He waved a hand at the plate of armor he’d just finished reattaching lubricant lines to. “The final stage will be sensor networks, and double- and triple-checking everything.”
Mixmaster looked somewhere between hopeful and hopeless and looking over, Ratchet realized Scrapper looked the same.
--End part 5--
Part Five
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15
Series: Transformers 2007
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
For snarechan! Hope your first day of school isn't too bad.
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck, Part 5
Ratchet looked up, startled, when Hook spat out a bitten-off Cybertronian curse, unexpectedly. He ran through a list of anything he might have done wrong-something to warrant an angry reaction-but came up blank.
“What?”
“Long Haul got himself stuck in a canyon. I need to go get him out-he can’t transform, there are witnesses.”
Scavenger laughed. “He got stuck?”
“It’s not funny,” iced Hook, presumably because his own work had been interrupted, as he stalked out of the room. Ratchet just shook his head, turning back to the capillary-sized net of energon, lubricant and coolant lines he was trying to piece back together. It was delicate, fussy work, the sort that took vast amounts of time and had very little effect.
And he was having trouble adjusting to the physical differences Bonecrusher had when compared to the Autobots Ratchet had worked on. He didn’t know whether it was a Decepticon thing, a gestalt thing, a Constructicon thing or just a Bonecrusher thing, but the mech had much more heat-sensitive lines than was normal. The thick armor was probably enough to protect them, usually, but now that he was actually working on the veins themselves, he kept on welding the wrong things on accident or overheating the little tubes, occasionally to the point where they collapsed in on themselves. And that was with his welder on the lowest setting.
There was another little vesicular cave-in, and Ratchet bit out a curse, flicking off the welder somewhat violently and stomping over to the counter his medical supplies were stored in and on.
“What are you doing?” asked Scavenger, coming up behind him-he moved remarkably quietly and Ratchet, who hadn’t heard him coming, jumped.
“Nothing exciting-I need a lower-power welder, but I’m not sure if I have one.” He flipped through another box. “And I’m right. I don’t. -Slag, it’s probably still back at the base-”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to find a welder that fits your hands,” Scavenger said unhappily. “Do you want me to ask Scrapper and Hook if they can make you a new one? They’ll probably want to look at your old one for reference. ...Well, Scrapper might, Hook usually thinks that kind of thing is ‘limiting...’”
“It’s fine, I’ll just deal with the inconvenience. It’s not a real problem.”
“But I’m supposed to,” Scavenger said, sounding honestly upset-Ratchet, surprised again, turned to look. “We all have our place on the team, and-”
He looked miserable. “And it’s all I can do for ’Crusher right now.”
Ratchet wasn’t sure how to be comforting, considering the situation, but somehow felt he should be. “The engine parts you found me, and the wire, and the cleanser have already been incredibly helpful.”
“The parts were easy, and Mixmaster made the cleanser-it wasn’t me. And you still needed to work on all the parts I found, to make them work.”
“What you found were pieces from Earth vehicles, which is what I would expect, so of course they’re going to need some altering to fit a Cybertronian body,” Ratchet snapped, voice waspish. He had very little patience for pussyfooting around emotional issues, outside of the most extreme situations.
-Damn, now Scavenger looked downright withdrawn, right down to the spikes drawn in close to his body. Ratchet was unsure what to do, lost, and he felt a wave of relief when the door to the room slid open, revealing a mech he identified as Mixmaster with second-hand memories. He didn't want to have to comfort an over-sensitive Decepticon.
Mixmaster ignored Ratchet, marching across the room to pull Scavenger to him, holding him protectively and glaring-with at least four of the six optics Ratchet could see on him-at the Autobot.
He was big, Ratchet realized faintly, big enough that the mixing drum on his alt form had to be solid, or partially solid, an outward disguise only. The number of spiky protrusions and blade-like extensions on him was unusual even for a Decepticon, which only added to his fearsome appearance, although Ratchet could tell that he probably wasn’t all that good a fighter, with the number of external sensors he had. They would make him more vulnerable-he’d feel more pain, take damage harder. He was also-
He was clinging just as hard as Scavenger was, and Ratchet should have known that that was the way to calm the mech down, the way they were all so unnaturally tactile. Of all things!
“Ratchet!” Scavenger said, shaking him out of his thoughts. “This is Mixmaster-he made the extra cleanser for you.”
“I am the chemist.” The words were said slowly, deliberately, and his voice was oddly accented in a way Ratchet didn’t think was human, an odd tension underneath the words.
They also sounded-practiced.
“Ratchet,” he introduced himself, slowly. “Although I suppose you knew that. -Thank you for the cleanser.”
Mixmaster relaxed visibly. “If I tighten the molecule some and cut out the level of contamination I can increase effectiveness and intensity,” he said, optics bright. Personally, Ratchet was skeptical of his ability to do so, but he nodded. “That would be helpful,” he said neutrally.
“Yes-” Mixmaster muttered, apparently to himself, gazing off into the distance. “That-” he turned, abruptly, to the table he was standing by, producing a beaker and reaching for one of the bottles of cleaner. Scavenger pushed himself into his side, watching, and Ratchet bit back the urge to grumble at the display, irritated, as he turned back to Bonecrusher’s waiting shell.
He felt an unnerving kinship to Sisyphus. The unending task.
oOo
Ratchet cursed as he picked up the emergency call, immediately setting aside what he’d been working on. “I need to go,” he said, voice firm, and stood. “There’s been an accident.” It was on the other side of town from the Decepticon-Constructicon-base, but not too far-that was good. And he’d need to stop in town to pick up the on-duty medic anyways.
“I’ll show you the door,” said Scavenger immediately. “And I can clean up here for you.” He didn’t bother waiting for Ratchet to answer, something the medic appreciated, instead transforming. They moved quickly through the maze of tunnels until Scavenger paused, close enough to the outside entrance that Ratchet could pick up the change in air composition.
“Next time, just come to this entrance and someone’ll be waiting to take you in, ’kay? Hook says it’s stupid to keep on meeting up with you on the road. Well, he didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s the idea.”
“Alright,” Ratchet said, not really thinking about the implications of that sentence, about the change to the routine that had formed, too concentrated on the need to get moving.
“See you-” Scavenger said as they reached the door, Ratchet accelerating away: he wasn’t bothering to keep his speed limited to what his alt form’s technical specs were, since he was driverless, unobserved-
oOo
Ratchet was kind of unnerved to find Mixmaster the one waiting for him outside the hidden entrance he used, his engine humming impatiently-Ratchet could see the mech shifting on his wheels, even in vehicle mode.
“Fi-nally,” he growled, and Ratchet frowned inwardly at the odd catch he’d put into the word, but didn’t say anything. To start with, he was a Decepticon, and all that Ratchet himself was there to do was repair their sixth; to end, out of all the Constructicons he’d met-and that was all of them, excluding the one he was repairing-Mixmaster was the one who set him most on edge, partially because of an indefinable sense of unease and partially because of the trickle-down effect of holding someone else’s memories in his mind, even isolated memories-
There was a fair chance, judging from what he was getting, that Scrapper or Hook or both were afraid of Mixmaster-and they were gestalt. The thought was chilling.
They made their way to the med bay in silence, except for the occasional mutter from Mixmaster. Again, Ratchet kept to his vehicle mode, finding it more comfortable in the cramped corridor and making it slightly more acceptable to refrain from replying to the barely-on-the-edge-of-hearing murmurs which might or might not have been directed at him.
He was relieved to reach the med bay, flipping into a fast transformation before he’d even come to a full stop. Mixmaster edged away from him before he followed suit, then silently slunk into a far corner. Ratchet decided to put him out of mind and turned to his “charge.”
He was surprised to find Scrapper there, leaning over Bonecrusher’s body. His optics were off, and Ratchet had almost begun to think that he was in recharge when they flickered back on, snapping in his direction, showing none of the fuzziness or confusion restarting programs caused.
“Ratchet,” he said in greeting, surprisingly warm-not that that said much. “Thank you for coming.” The medic grunted in reply, increasingly unhappy with the way he kept on being thanked-the open recognition of his choice only made the guilt worse.
“Scrapper,” he said in reply, because he needed to say something.
“Scavenger said you needed a cooler welder. Will this work?”
He thought he hid his surprise pretty well as he took the tool, looking it over critically before he flipped it on, grabbing a piece of scrap to try it on.
“Thank you,” he said, a few minutes later, and honestly meant it. It wasn’t anything really necessary, but it meant that this part of the job would go much, much faster.
“It wasn’t for you,” Scrapper said, and Ratchet looked down to see his hand resting gently along the curve of Bonecrusher’s shoulder armor. He suddenly felt isolated, the outsider- He’d never understand what they felt for each other, what made the six Decepticons so trusting, accepting of each other-
And needy. That was the downside. Resolutely, Ratchet switched his attention back to where he’d left off, the last time he’d worked on Bonecrusher, and prepared to start working again.
He was so absorbed in the job that he almost cut through his finger with the laser scalpel he’d been working with when Mixmaster-who had apparently been watching him for a while; Ratchet hadn’t even heard him approach-suddenly stuck a bottle into his field of vision.
“He can’t feel you waiting,” Scrapper said shortly, briefly looking up from what he’d been working on. “Or tell you’re there.”
Well, of course, thought Ratchet, somewhat dumbfounded. Was Mixmaster honestly so unused to interacting with anyone outside of the gestalt that he didn’t know how to do so normally?
Mixmaster appeared to ignore Scrapper, although he shifted slightly, his jumbled armor extensions scraping together lightly. His hand was still outstretched, so Ratchet took the bottle, looking at it with a certain measure of confusion.
“It’s cle-eanser,” he said, that hitch in his voice obvious again-and, yes, he did remember asking for a changed version that the chemist had said he could make- “Twenty percent more efficient at eight percent lower concentration.” He produced a second bottle, this one a light green color. “This one will also break down organic material, but has only two percent improved efficiency for mechanical build-up.”
“Thank you,” Ratchet said, accepting the second bottle.
“You are welc-com-m-”
That was a processor glitch, Ratchet suddenly realized, and probably not a mechanical one, like Bumblebee’s problem, still not fully eradicated. It explained the odd quality to his speech. And possibly it explained what was wrong with him, or at least gave a clue into the matter. Often, a speech impediment, or any sort of social tic, was a sign of something much worse having gone wrong than a few speech patterns.
Then again, there was the chance he was wrong, and it really was just a quick glitch-they didn’t have a medic with them. Well, other than Ratchet, now. And Hook could manage some basic repairs, but Ratchet doubted he could manage much beyond fixing simple wounds to the point where self-repair functions could take over. Complicated processor work was undoubtedly outside of his skill level: even Ratchet didn’t take something like that lightly.
“What-t? Don’t like the way I sp-eak, Autobot?”
“That’s just stupid. What do you think I am, a Decepticon? And I’m a medic. How stable are these?”
Ratchet felt a certain amount of satisfaction at the confusion stamped across Mixmaster’s face, even his posture off-balance-at least he could manage that much, even if Mixmaster set him on edge in a way none of the other Constructicons did, in a way that had very little to do with him being a Decepticon.
Although some of that was fading, even with the knowledge that he had a glitch, on an unknown scale. Which made no sense.
“-avoid heat and cold with both, but -more so with the organic-contaminant one.” He cocked his head to one side, the move oddly birdlike on his hulking, bristling frame. He rattled off the exact temperatures, to three decimal places each, then started in about how such exposures would change short term and long term effectiveness. He was certainly-thorough, Ratchet thought.
“-And maybe fifty years in ideal conditions before there’s a noticeable degradation,” finished Mixmaster, voice oddly happy. “Ten years past that until that degradation shows in practical applications.” He paused, the joy seeming to drain away. “Is- ’Crusher-r do-ing well?”
His voice was worse when it wasn’t a technical matter. Ratchet hadn’t heard of anything like that before.
“He’s probably hovering at the edge of death.” His voice was flat. “Although I believe the spark is still stabilizing-that’s good. Another five to eight hours of work and I’ll have the circulatory system in good enough shape to start the final check for leaks and then try flushing it clean. There’s only the left leg left to clean, because Hook’s been helping with that. I’ve made minimal progress with the databanks, which is slightly better than what I expected-that will be my main focus after I finish this.” He waved a hand at the plate of armor he’d just finished reattaching lubricant lines to. “The final stage will be sensor networks, and double- and triple-checking everything.”
Mixmaster looked somewhere between hopeful and hopeless and looking over, Ratchet realized Scrapper looked the same.
--End part 5--