Chapter Text
The arena was littered with chipped bits of decorative brass piping, pieces of carbon and wet patches of petrol. Above them the crowd roared, and even higher up, above the crowd a thick charcoal smog lingered like a widow's pelerine.
The voice of the referee boomed in jovial tone -" Annd the Colossus of Kaon triumphs over the silent Nautilus! What a battle!"
The words remained unheard by either gladiator now in the ring.
-"Soundwave, Soundwave!" The giant locomotive-former whispered as loudly as he could trying to get a reaction from his fellow mech. Stage names forgotten, the furnance in his chest burned angrily, he needed to posture for the crowd but he also needed to get Soundwave out as soon as possible. His damn blade had slipped and… now what?
Silvery white blossoms of nickelillies were thrown on the floor of the arena by exuberant spectators. A gesture reserved for occasions when one of the two high-ranking opponents fell. Before they would have fueled his winner's high, but oh how he loathed them now.
Soundwave tapped on his opponent's plating. A morse code he used to communicate and which the Colossus had learnt painstakingly.
::Let me die.::
-"No." The hulking locomotive responded simply and without flair, black smoke rising from his charred pipes being the only giveaway of his agitation. He hastily gestured the cleanup crew to prioritize bringing Soundwave away from the arena, promising to pay them generously if they got a medic and Soundwave was alive. There was nothing like a couple of rhodium coins to motivate the crew. He just hoped they would manage.
He could not spare another glance to his fallen comrade, not yet. He was bound to engage in arena courtesy. Each gladiator had their own victory move or prestige, as they called it. In case of Colossus it was releasing the bellowing sound of pressurized steam escaping through his blastpipe. The crowd cheered once more as he lifted one of the nickelillies to his face plate, as if in pensive reverie and then throwing it back to public. The wave of bloodthirsty adoration hit him and he turned his back to the crowd and walked out of the ring.
Once he heard the arena gates close behind him he broke out into a run. Darting towards the makeshift medical bay where Soundwave currently lay, steam escaping from the torn gash in his chest at an alarming rate. A small red ground-vehicle bustled around him, quickly applying copper stabilizing patches over the injured areas.
-" Are you the doctor?" The Colossus asked narrowing his burning optics at the carmine red vehicle. It was one of the new kerosene-powered alt-modes. Too sleek and modern to fit in the sooty confines of the arena backstage. The bot turned to him, his face did not deceive his expectations - nacre inlay and circular incandescent filament optics - all indicators of wealth and upper standing, it disgusted him.
-" Was it You who needed my help? I thought you were supposed to be the victor." The tiny grounder responded without lifting optics from his work. Meticulously he was patching up the severed pipes while still somehow avoiding the scalding blasts of the pressurized steam. The gladiator narrowed his eyes but let the mech work. It had been a stupid question but in gladiator pits one never could be too sure about who exactly was handling an injured and defenseless mech. Thankfully Soundwave was out cold for the procedure, probably having blacked out due to loss of pressure.
-"While you are at it how about you bring me some carbon and tell your little henchmen that I will need some coolant too." The locomotive tensed when the 'doctor' pried at Soundwave's spark chamber, it seemed to be stuck.
-"Excuse me, are you deaf?" The little mech now stared at him, servos on hips, tips of his claws curled inwards to avoid staining his gleaming paint. -"Do you want him to live or not?"
The giant brute, as Knock Out had named him in his mind seemed to go into some sort of stupor, probably never seen a spark chamber before, some gladiator he was. Knock Out had spoken deliberately slower so that the overgrown boiler would understand him and this is what he got in exchange.
-"Well? I do not have all day you know." Knock Out finished by applying the last patch, there, now only tiny streams of steam simmered through the gaps here and there. Then the medic nonchalantly opened Soundwave's chestplates to examine his spark. He cursed under his breath after being blinded by the glow. He rummaged through his subspace until he came up with a pair of dark goggles to dim the excessive corona of the spark. Luckily for the gladiator named Nautilus there were no irregularities.
-"Ok, looks like he is dying at a slower rate now. Where is that coolant and carbon?" The gladiator brought him what he had asked for and the medic was silent again, refueling the coolant tank carefully and adding just a tiny amount of carbon to rise pressure gently. Too much at once and the patches would go flying off.
-"How much?" The carmine grounder blinked at the imposing figure, his pretty optics shuttering in confusion. -"For your services." The Colossus added.
The grounder blinked again, then laughed. The locomotive ground his sharp dentae together, hydraulics screeching while he tried hard to refrain from punching that overgrown scraplet. The medic noticed Colossus' internal turmoil and composed himself. -"Ah, sorry, my bad." The grounder suppressed a hiccup of giggle and cleared his throat.
-"I am a medic in training. I can patch him up so that he is stable but this pipe here..." He motioned to the damaged connection, -"Needs to be completely replaced. I can't do it alone and my mentor is much better at it but for that we will need to transport your friend to his home. So we will only know the full price once the repairs are completed but trust me, my mentor is your best option now."
As far as Ratchet was concerned he lived in a madhouse. Not literally but he was renting out his home to a variety of nutjobs who did not care for vats of strange liquids bubbling right next to their living quarters and an occasional offlined mech being carried in or out by the undertakers. The involvement of his tenants in his shady activities was purely incidental, yeah, it was not like they have grown so close that one could consider them a team. No, not at all.
He told himself that his interest in the research of their bodies was purely scientific and totally legal and not at all at odds with the inquisition, nope. In the end it was going to benefit the entire society. Hopefully, if he was not executed as a heretic before then.
It was with these thoughts when he heard insistent knocking on the door of his lab, conveniently located at the back entrance to his house - not to aggravate the neighbors. He jumped, admittedly that last thought about inquisition set him on edge. Tarn and his ragtag gang of enforcers was not a source of happy thoughts and now Somebody had the audacity to disturb him. He waited for the knocking to go away, it didn't. A wave of panic rolled over him. What if they had been found out, what if it was Tarn?
-"Raaatcheet! I know you are in there!" Came the singsong voice of his apprentice. The older medic pursed his lips in a pained expression, knowing the red grounder he would not shut up until the rest of the tenants were up.
-"Your lights are on, I can see your outline!" Ratchet growled and opened the door. Before him stood his annoying apprentice/ social butterfly and two gladiators, one of whom was heavily injured.
-"Knock Out, how many times do I have to tell you not to bring work home?"
-"Aw don't be like that" Knock Out offered him the brightest of his smiles.
Ratchet slammed the door in his face.
-"They are not my clients, you rust bucket! They are patients!" He hammered on the closed door.