Chapter 2

Author's note Crud. I didn't intend to take this long updating this and the next part will likely take as long, if not longer. Most especially my problem will be in recapturing the tone of this story. I did want to get Blue to safety though. Also, angry Wheeljack. :D

Every step spiked through my system and I couldn't help the glitched cries that grunted out of my vocalizer. I clung to Jazz with my broken hands, the twisted metal leaving long scratches on his chestplate and shoulders, and I'm sure it hurt, but he didn't even grimace. Sunstreaker's constant sensor sweeps pinged off my own arrays, muddling the damaged sensors so that I no longer had any idea of where we were. Every time Jazz shifted his grip, and his fingers scraped against the remains of my doorwings, I had to stifle the urge to cry louder.

The last thing I wanted to do was to call any Decepticons nearby, to draw their attention. No, no no, I didn't want that. I didn't want to be back there with them again, impotent anger heating my circuits and pain knifing through my sensors. And before I knew it tears were running down my face, dripping into the rips on my cheeks

“Do ya know where we are, Blue?” Jazz's voice drew me out of my thoughts. When I shook my head, happy for something else to focus my attention on, he continued, “This is Center Scion, there used to be an open air gallery just a little ways from here. They displayed everythin' from gestalt-sized statues, to hanging paintin's. Sunny used to have a few pieces here, didn't ya?” Jazz suddenly turned toward the Toughline.

“Probably,” Sunstreaker answered, raising no objections to the subject matter being brought up, or Jazz's use of his hated nickname.

“Think I remember seein' some'a your pieces there.”

My memory drives whirred as I tried to remember if I'd ever been to that gallery before. Because anything was better than thinking about what happened. “Foun...tain,” I managed after a klik of silence.

“Yeah, there used to be an oil fountain in the middle of it, an' there was a big to-do about making sure the wind didn't blow in th' wrong direction an' ruin any of the artwork. They even had a shield that would shift to block the spray whenever th' wind blew. It was a genius piece of design.” Jazz continued to describe the way the the light hit the oil mixture at any time of the day. I let his voice roll over my audio sensors, delighting in the way it rumbled through his frame in a playful rhythm. Any time he paused, or faltered, I would encourage him to continue with what little I remembered of it. I think, I think I knew then why Blaster loved to listen to Jazz speak, because my limbs twitched with the lilt in his words, and it was soothing and it was calming.

And distracting.

The entire time I expected Sunstreaker to speak up and tell Jazz to shut up, or at least contribute his opinion on the way the colors conflicted with the artwork. But he didn't say a word, and as he moved around Jazz to scout the area I would catch glimpses of him, and catch him glancing at me. Was that concern? But it couldn't be, because this was Sunstreaker, and the only one he really cared about was Sideswipe. He told me I talked too much all the time and Sideswipe would tell him to shut up and they almost always ended up in a fight. What was Jazz talking about again?

He'd grown silent, I realized. The reassuring flow of words no longer there to beguile my fright, and hold my thoughts in calm waters. The most I could manage was a staticked moan, wanting him to continue in whatever it was he was talking about. He shushed me gently, his gaze following the sensor sweeps coming from Sunstreaker. He'd slowed down, his steps quiet, stealthy. I realized that he was almost scraping a building, pressing into the shadow it would create on sensors.

Sunstreaker was in front of us, gun in hand, peering around a corner.

“There's three of them. I can take them.”

Jazz sidled around the golden mech, keeping me behind the warrior's back as he peeked around the taller mech's arm. “Nuh uh. We're tryin' ta get Blue back in one piece. I ain't settin' him down fer nothin'.”

The thought of being left behind for even an astrosecond had me scrambling to grip the edges of Jazz's chestplate, my broken fingers noisy on his plating.

He hastily moved away, telling me to hush, his hands twitching on my plating. “Yer comm systems are workin', huh?” He smiled reassuringly as I nodded. “Don't worry, I ain't gonna leave ya.”

I knew that if Jazz said he wouldn't leave me, then I was safe. Jazz never let anyone down.

“They heard him.” Sunstreaker's gun hummed on. “Go. I'll be right behind you.”

“Who's in charge here again? ” Yet Jazz was moving away from the golden mech.

Sunstreaker slid a glance over his shoulder. “The one who knows how to fight.” A smirk pulled his mouth up and he turned his head and strode out to meet the Decepticons, guns blazing.

Jazz waited for a bare klik, before he moved down the alleyway, pulling me closer as he squeezed past large generators that no longer functioned, or debris fallen from the crumbling buildings. He edged around corners, clutching me closely as he peered around the corners.

I muted my vocalizer, not wanting to distract Jazz as he slipped around the nearby battle. Though could it really be called a battle with those odds. I hoped Sunstreaker would make it out okay, he didn't say what models they were. If any of them were triplechangers... I hastily tried to turn my thoughts to something else, something that didn't involve the clanging of metal or the angry shouts that were so nearby.

Like the fountain that Jazz had been telling me about. I tried to pull it up from my memory banks, but the noise of the battle pulled at me.

The sound of gunfire multiplied into an endless cacophony in my processor. The battle cries turned into screams for help, and the buildings around me burned with missile fire, and glowed with spilled energon. Jazz's hasty, jarring motions became distant ground-shaking explosions.

My ventilator wheezed, and my vocalizer switched back on. A moan escaped my throat, leeching out from between my dental plates. The world shifted.

“Blue?”

I shook, not wanting to look up. I didn't want to see anymore. I didn't want to remember. I didn't want to watch it all happen again.

“Hey, hey now. Don't do this, Blue. We're almost there.”

I whimpered, unable to manage any words, but I wanted to make him understand. I wasn't here.

I was back on that building, watching the Decepticon triplechanger come roaring toward me.

I was back in my city, watching mechs and femmes I'd known my entire existence fall.

I was back there, with Starscream, and those two Cons who had their fingers digging through my every seam.

“'S okay, Blue. You're with friends. I'm here, I ain't gonna let any harm come to ya.”

Jazz's pace increased, and suddenly he swung himself around a corner, not even stopping to scan ahead. His ventilator rushed to cool his systems, and he pressed himself against the wall, peeking around the corner, back the way we'd come.

I could hear the muted tread of footsteps and Jazz scraped down the wall into a half crouch, freeing one hand for his gun.

“It's just me.”

Jazz's grip on the gun tightened, but he leaned further around the corner. A relieved sigh vented from his chest, the air rushing painfully over my frame.

My receptors were turning back on. They must have timed out after receiving no information for so long. Sensors were not meant to be turned off for an extended period of time. They stayed on for a reason, and Ratchet would always yell and holler if anyone tried to leave their sensors off for too long.

Sunstreaker appeared, his plating shredded and dented. The energon smeared across his frame gave him a feral look. He glanced at me, wiping at a pink spot on his white face, before he looked to Jazz. “We need to get out of here.”

Jazz nodded once, and he spared another look around the corner, before breaking into a sprint down the street. I knew he was keeping his gait as even as he could, but still knives of pain flashed through my damaged torso and legs. I had to click my vocalizer off again so I didn't cry out again.

The journey faded into a series painful runs, succeeded by terrifying clashes, followed by yet more painful running. It all melded together in my cortex, the damage too great for my processor to identify just one source, to separate it.

I didn't even notice when Jazz slowed down, until he started shouting at someone.

“I need a medic! I have wounded!”

I stared at the smoke-filled sky, my vocalizer long since activated and grating out noise after pitiful noise.

I caught a glimpse of a cross-bearing mech guiding Sunstreaker away, muttering about open leaks and torn pulleys, weighing them against what it would take to get the golden warrior fighting fit again. I knew they would take care of Sunstreaker first, get him patched up and send him right back out.

Jazz was following someone.

He talked hastily of what he saw, of what Sideswipe did, of the inhibitor that Prowl removed from my frame. He calculated just how much energon he had seen pooled around me, and how much he suspected I'd lost on the trip here.

I let Jazz's voice lull me into a comforting state, half into shut down, the pain the only thing keeping me online.

The mech he followed led him into a building, hastily fitted for the medics' use.

It stank of death.

I jolted online, optics flashing on in alarm to see a flash of a crowded room. I didn't want to stay here. Please don't leave me here, you said you wouldn't leave me.

But Jazz was pausing by a gurney, and I could see a body already on it. It lay silent and still, the optics dark.

The medic swept the lifeless corpse off, clearing the space for Jazz to set me down. I weakly swatted at his chestplate.

“Nooo.”

Jazz gathered my hands into his, a smile on his face as he looked down at me. “Don't worry, Blue. These guys'll take care'a ya.” With that he left, and I watched him go with a growing sense of trepidation until the medics blocked him from my view.

They muttered at each other, prodding my injuries with careless fingers, and drawing helpless cries from my vocalizer. They plugged me up to a monitor station and debated my status right over my head like I wasn't even there.

“Are you getting these temperature readings? The trauma from transporting him without proper care before has corrupted his circuits. He's suffering from stress.”

“His legs are slagged, they're going to require a complete fabrication. There is no way we'll be able to get him fighting fit in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Ventilator's ruptured. Scanners are detecting shorts throughout his systems. Energon loss is going to shut him down within the next megacycle. Do we have any to spare?”

“Surgery has the priority, and those who are or can be made fighting fit. I think we can spare a ration for anything three and under. What's his priority?”

I moaned at them. 'I'm right here! I can hear you talking about me.'

A brief pause in the conversation as the senior medic looked me over. His attention was suddenly drawn to the entranceway, as more casualties came in and I could almost hear his processor come to a hasty decision. “Four.”

I wanted to cry out, to object to their decision, but I couldn't manage more than a glitched whimper.

The medics left me without another look, already intent on the new arrivals.

I stared at the filthy ceiling, looking at the intriguing pattern of energon and other fluids spattered across it.

They were going to let me die. I was too damaged to be repaired without costing other mechs their lives. Too damaged to be repaired and put back out on the battlefield when there were other mechs who weren't so damaged, and would be able to fight more immediately.

A sense of panic seized me then.

I was going to die.

I sought something anything that would draw my thoughts from that prospect, from the incessant beeping of the monitor attached to my port.

I turned my head to the right, the rest of the room a blur of activity around me.

Yet right next to me lay another mech. I knew he was another Priority Four because no one was tending to him, and even to me his damage looked too grievous for anything but.

He was missing his arms and one of his legs was gone below his knee. Shrapnel decorated his torso and chestplate, pieces as long as my arm. Was that a finger lodged under his bumper?

Oh, Primus.

I looked away, my holding tanks churning as I realized that the shrapnel was the remains of his arms, the shoulder struts lodged deep into his thin chestplate. Energon pulsed from under his his plating, and I wondered how long he had been there bleeding his life away.

He stared up at the ceiling, his jaw working in silent agony, sloshing oil and energon out of his mouth. His optics flickered as he valiantly fought to stay online.

My chronometer fritzed, it must have, because I wasn't staring at him for long before his optics flared in one final effort before they died completely, and in the middle of all the noise and hubbub I could hear the sound of his systems going offline with a soft whine.

I stared for what must have been several breems, waiting for him to come back online, but then the medics came, and almost without checking they began taking him apart. His parts necessary for the survival of another.

I scrabbled at my gurney, unable to tear my gaze away from the horrifying spectacle of experienced hands dismantling someone I had just seen alive. They took away the parts they needed and then cleared the remains off the table for the next patient.

When they glanced at me, I could almost see them calculating how much longer I would function before I too could be used for desperately needed spare parts.

I moaned as loudly as my vocalizer would go without breaking into static. I didn't want them to think I'd expired. Maybe some other mech would happily shut down and and let them strip him of gears and circuits, but I couldn't be that unselfish. It was the Autobot thing to do, and I knew that I couldn't do it. How pathetic was that?

They left without bothering with me again, and the new mech babbled incoherently at the air, his optics wide and frightened. My muddled processor couldn't make sense of the passing of time and before I knew it, he'd gone quiet and still.

And the medics were taking him apart, and sweeping him off the gurney.

The desire to shut down pulled at me, my systems whining unhealthily as they slowed down.

But I couldn't shut down.

Because beside me, on either side, mechs were dying and being replaced with other mechs who were also dying. Their circuitry and hardware disassembled for spare parts. And every so often a medic would stop by me, and touch my arm, and I would moan as loud as I could because I didn't want them to start taking me apart while I was still online.

And I couldn't shut down because if I shut down they would take me apart, and I didn't want to come online with pieces missing, receiving fatal errors from all of my primary and secondary systems.

I didn't want to die.

I don't know how long I lay there, my chronometer had long since given out. My systems hummed unsteadily as I fought to keep them on, but still nonessential systems shut down from lack of power, and a dull ache spread down from my fuel tanks. The unsteady thrum of my fuel pump and the distinct feel of something dripping down my spinal strut told me that my holding tanks were leaking.

I hated my helplessness. I hated being subjected to this humiliating, lingering death.

I had no more fluid to cry as tears, and the empty tubes burned with their effort to expel something.

My vision flickered in and out, I could no longer keep track of when the bodies on the tables around me were picked clean, or swept off, or when new mechs arrived to take their place.

I hated this burning desire to go out and take out those Decepticons that did this to me.

I hated that I didn't want to do it for the dying mechs around me. But for what they did to me, to make me suffer like this.

I hated that I wanted to live so bad, when others could use my parts to bring justice to the Decepticons.

Still they came, I could feel them touch me, or wrench at my frame, intent on whatever piece of me they desired. When I heard them, felt them, I directed power desperately needed elsewhere into my vocalizer to ask them to leave me alone, though it only ever came out in a moan.

Static became a constant companion, blurring the room, and filling my audio sensors until it became a ceaseless droning that overlaid the voices. I watched my reserves slowly decrease, my body spending too much on self repair, and maintaining the few systems I had left, even as energon leaked out of my holding tanks.

Hands gripped my head, turning my face one way and the other, indecipherable murmurs rumbled through the dexterous fingers as the mech spoke to himself. My mouth sagged open, as warnings flashed across my HUD about low fuel levels and inadvisable activity.

Pain spiked through my cranium, a burst of static in my audio receptors and I cried out, voice glitching and shaky, my fingers weaklyclenching at nothing.

“-the slag?”

My optics flickered on and I stared up at an engineer, familiar vocal indicators glowing dimly. He stared down at me, then his gaze swept up to the monitor attached to me. His optics blazed white with fury.

“Rail!” the engineer's voice cut through the noisy room with surprising ease.

“What?”

“Get your slagging aft over here, now!” The engineer's gray hands released my head and plunged into my damaged side.

He was going to take me apart!

“I'm a little fragging busy, right now,” Rail shouted back.

I strained to jerk away from the mech who was so determined to deactivate me.

“Get over here, now! Someone grab me fragging cube!”

His optics turned to me as I tried to make sounds, tried to speak, unable to manage anything more than static. I tried to direct power into my lifeless hands to grab at his arms, and push him away, but I couldn't manage more than a twitch of my fingers.

Static overlaid my vision, and the engineer continued his prying at my internals. Panic seized me as I lay helpless under his hands. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. Were they so desperate for parts,that they would take them from the functioning?

A hand touched my shoulder, and the mech spoke to me, but I could make no sense of his words, except for the soft request to shut down.

No!

Don't deactivate me! Don't turn me into spare parts!

“Who the slag do you think you are, ordering me around my med bay?” Rail snarled, his frame leaning over me to glare at the engineer.

“Your med bay?” A short, sharp question and the hands paused in their work briefly before starting again with increased fervor. “Last time I checked, Ratchet was your chief medic.”

I could barely make out the engineer inspecting something in his hand, a piece of me he had removed, but I couldn't tell what it was, not that him removing anything was good, because it meant that he was taking me apart.

“While Ratchet's in surgery, this is my med bay. What are you doing? Barbarian!” Metal clanged as Rail grabbed the engineer's wrist. “He's not deactivated yet! Ratchet'll have your cranium for this!”

The white mech wrenched his arm out of the medic's grasp. My engine whined as sparks flew from the area the engineer worked at.

“Barbarian?” The gray hands pulled out again, and the object he held sparked. “Why don't you tell me why this mech is lying here with failing systems?”

“He's a priority four, that's why. We don't have-”

The optics blazed impossibly brighter. The familiar engineer glared down at me. “Bluestreak, shut down now, or I will shut you down myself!”

Rail slapped his hands onto the table, jostling me painfully. “You can't let him shut down. He's too damaged! His spark will extinguish if he does.”

“Then fix him so he won't,” Wheeljack growled, vocal indicators flashing angrily.

The medic's white hands cut the air with the force of his refusal. “We don't have the staff-”

The gray and white mech jerked something within me, pulling a weak whine from my vocalizer. “I see mechs doing nothing but checking on dying soldiers.”

“He's a priority 4!”

I can hear you!

The engineer's vocalizer buzzed and hissed. “He shouldn't be, Rail. He's clearly a three.”

Stop talking about me like I'm not here.

The senior medic snarled, his own optics blazing. “How dare you! Don't tell me how to do my job.”

“And just what is your job?”

Please...

“To get soldiers back on the-”

Don't take me apart...

The engineer cut the senior medic with a hiss of static. “No! Your job is to save lives. Now get your staff over here and save this mech's life.” One of the gray hands pulled out to beckon the attending staff over.

Please...

“Ratchet will be hearing about this, engineer.”

Oh please...

The familiar mech leaned forward, the light of his optics dimmed as he narrowed his lens. “Considering,” his voice rumbled through the hand in my internals, “he's the one who mentored me, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to yell at you too.”

Don't...

Rail grumbled, but gestured his staff over. The white and gray mech stepped away as hands plunged into my torso, and pried at my legs. I felt it all; blades of pain that swept through my sensory net. I was surrounded by the silence of medics concentrating on nothing but the damage under their hands, and the messages they sent each other. I don't know how long it was until one of the staff finally reached into my chest, and unplugged my main data cable.

Don't let me die!

My vision went dark and the pain went with it.

Author's Note Part 2 Please keep in mind that this ties into Silver Purity, Cursed Crimson, and I want my 'Datsun' trine in there. Bluestreak will be fine... physically at least.