koilungfish | Time for dinner now (Reply)

23/1/07 - Five Hangovers and a Trumpet

          Mixmaster couldn't hold back a giggle as he peeked into the repair bay. The debris of last night's "First Time Forming Devastator In Our New Earth Bodies" party were still scattered liberally around the room, and in the category of "debris" he fondly included his five gestalt-mates.
          Scavenger was curled up on the left-hand plinth, little buds of luminescent crystal still glued to his hull, one hand trailing over the edge of the repair table to rest on Long Haul's head. The transporter was sitting upright, legs stretched out in front of him, an empty energon cube in his lap. Hook was lying almost on top of Long Haul's legs, himself half-hidden under Bonecrusher; they both had purple streamers still tied to their ankles. Scrapper was sprawled on the right-hand repair plinth in an uncomfortable-looking muddle.
          Mixmaster was still chuckling as he raised his trumpet to his mouth.

          Scrapper startled into consciousness as someone blew a loud, off-key reveille call into his audio, and from the sensations that shot through his life support systems, they were blowing it through a cannon barrel.
          Through the cacophonic ringing in his audios, he could hear Mixmaster giggling. Curling up in a ball of pain, Scrapper dragged his painfully sensitive hands over his painfully sensitive optic band and groaned. His internal diagnostics assured him that no, his joints were not broken in several places, but that wasn't what it felt like. "Why do you not get burnout?"
          The response was another variation on the reveille call, this time in an entirely new shade of off-key, making him bury his head in his hands and wail, then another giggle. Mixmaster suddenly climbed onto the repair plinth, curling up around Scrapper and jolting his aching body in all sorts of broken-feeling ways.
          "Because I'm a genius of a chemist, you duridium dolt," the wretched genius said, and nuzzled the agonisingly sensitive teeth of Scrapper's shovel.
          Scrapper screamed.

          Scavenger sat up at the sound of a comrade screaming, then wished he hadn't. The room span around him, the ceiling wobbled and whatever he was sitting on tried to slide out from under him. He flopped facedown on the plinth and whimpered, shutting his optics and his gyros off completely, and contemplated the possibilities of staying in this nice dark place for a long time.
          His hull itched.
          He reached out carefully, walking his fingertips across the plinth, found his side and felt around. Almost immediately he felt something sharp and brittle and pointy sticking out of his plating.
          "Why am I covered in crystal buds?" he wondered aloud, lifting his head a little way off the plinth.
          "Because you said the crystals I'm growing were pretty," Mixmaster said from somewhere nearby - and somewhere close, Scrapper groaned, "so I grew some on you."
          That was kind of him, Scavenger thought. "They itch."
          "That'll be where they're growing into your hull."
          Scrapper groaned again. "Mixmaster, take Scavenger somewhere and wash him, before your crystals do any more damage."
          "Spoilsport," Mixmaster pouted.
          Scavenger was in the process of sitting up very carefully when Mixmaster blew a loud, awful tune on his trumpet, startling Scavenger. With his gyros switched off, he lost his balance and fell on Long Haul.

          Long Haul was half-woken by something falling on him. This wasn't uncommon. People dumped things on him on a regular basis, so for a moment he half-dreamt Megatron had just dropped a mountain on him and told him to carry it to the other end of Cybertron.
          The mountain said "Sorry!"
          Long Haul activated optics and went "Aaaaaugh!"
          In his lap was a luminously spotted, frighteningly green Scavenger. The light from his optics cut into Long Haul's brain like a pickaxe. The green of his hull was so bright it felt like his optics were being ripped out. The twinkling little blotches stabbed needles into his optic core.
          Long Haul went "Aaaaugh!" again and shut his optics off. "I'm not carrying him anywhere! He can walk!"
          He heard Scrapper moan softly. "Mixmaster! Don't do that again."
          "Can I do it a different key?"
          "You only know one key," Long Haul grumbled, tipping his head back against the repair plinth, "Off-key."
          "At least I can carry a tune!" Mixmaster replied, sounding horribly perky.
          "I'm not carrying anything anywhere until my optics finish auto-repairing," Long Haul said weakly. Scavenger patted him gently on the smokestack.
          "Mixmaster. Wash. Scavenger," Scrapper repeated, sounding very broken.
          "All right, all right," Mixmaster replied, walking over to Scavenger - Long Haul felt every footstep as if it were landing on his face - and helped the spotted miner up.
          Somewhere in the process, Scavenger stood on Hook's hand.

          Hook woke up screaming.
          Something had just crushed his hand, he was sure of it. Something had crushed three of his fingers into broken little flat ... flat things.
          Hook was suddenly aware he had a terrible headache, and something very heavy was pinning him to the floor.
          Oh no. Not another of Mixmaster's experimental cocktails.
          "Where am I?" he asked himself, carefully touching his mangled hand with his sound one.
          Pain and light exploded in his fingers, up his arms, and for a moment he swooned. His hands felt like they were being dipped in high-strength acid at the slightest pressure. Hook whimpered and looked around.
          Scavenger's feet were right in front of his face.
          "Scavenger, did you just step on my fingers?" Hook asked, blearily aware that the universe seemed to hate him.
          "I'm sorry!" Scavenger insisted immediately, stooping down to fuss over Hook, grabbing the offended hand in some misguided attempt to repair the damage.
          Hook wailed in pain and lapsed into unconsciousness for a second.
          "Stop screaming," Scrapper said, sounding feeble, "you're making my head hurt."
          "Your head? What about my hands?"
          "What about your hands?" Scrapper replied weakly.
          "I trod on his fingers," Scavenger admitted sheepishly, giving Hook's poor, poor fingers a gentle squeeze.
          "Let go, will you, let go?" Hook whimpered.
          "Oh!" Scavenger abruptly did.
          Hook cradled his abused hand in his other hand, gritted his jaw and tried not to pass out again. The need to bathe his hands in micro-repair solution was foremost in his mind, so it wasn't until a second or two after he'd crawled out from under Bonecrusher that he remembered the demolitionist got excessively awful headaches when he'd been drinking.
          He turned around just in time to see Bonecrusher's forehead strike the floor.

          Bonecrusher became dimly aware that he was in terrible pain. Then he became aware, in a distant sort of way, of other things. Mostly, though, it was pain. His head felt like he'd dipped it in molten lead, then head-butted an impact detonator. The pain spread out from there, down his neck, down his back, all through his joints and his struts and his tensors.
          Grimly, he pushed himself to his hands and knees. The world spun, his vision crackled and faded to monochrome, at least a dozen minor joints in his back insisted they were about to split. Bonecrusher set his jaw, refused to give in to the pain, and forced himself blunderingly to his feet.
          His gestalt-mates were staring at him with wide-opticced, worried faces. Except Scrapper, who was curled up in a ball with his hands over his face. Scavenger was covered in spotty little lights. Mixmaster had a trumpet in his hand. Hook and Long Haul were in a muddle on the floor in front of him, Hook trailing cloth streamers from his ankles.
          A wash of static passed across his vision, inverting all colour for a second. Bonecrusher realised his feet hurt. He looked down, clenching his fists and ignoring the vertigo. He had bands of purple cloth tied around his ankles. There were bells on them.
          "Was I dancing with Hook last night?" he asked, forcing the words out through surges of pain he refused to acknowledge.
          Nobody replied.
          He looked at his gestalt-mates. Mixmaster's grin was all the answer he needed. The chemist looked about ready to flee the room, or bust out a tune on that trumpet. Scrapper looked half-dead. Hook was cradling one hand in the other and grimacing.
          Bonecrusher gave a satisfied grunt, shaking his head just to prove he could without passing out, although his vision went dark for a few seconds and the pain was intense.
          "That was a good party!" he said loudly, watching Scrapper ball up. "Let's do it again!"

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