[\/] TRANSPLANTERS [\/]

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"The Decepticons have vanished into the concrete jungle, their warlord crushed and the death throes of a vicious race now nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they left this planet, fleeing back to their rusted space station and all the dying hatchlings within. Perhaps they hide in the cracks and the hollows, sifting through the dross and trash of New York as robotic rats until the last glimmer fades from steel bones. Perhaps they still seek fragmented remnants of the AllSpark.

But if there is one thing time has taught us, it is that a Decepticon will forgo anything, even the survival of countless civilisations including their own; for a single sweet drop of vengeance.

Our first reminder came on a simple summer day."

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Red oil, no, the boy had said it was blood; whatever the organic ones called it, was everywhere. A thorn by any other name will still prick as deep. And this rent was deep indeed.

-hoshit- whistled an FM radio voice box, tuning senselessly in and out of different frequencies as the Autobot panicked. –cannot-;-~fzzt#:~spannerfix-

He was no doctor, and certainly could not easily equate the strings of muscle fibre and clenching heart and sturdy grey-pink bones to the metal shafts and chains and whirring engines that drove himself.

In a single second the damage had been dealt, a further second and the attacker was crushed; one final moment more, and Sam Witwicky had collapsed nervelessly to the ground. Gouts of crimson fuel were spouting out of him, the flesh beginning to swell and constrict in an automatic tourniquet. Four seconds had passed.

Fearing for the life of the treasure he guarded, Bumblebee knelt down beside the fragile human, five seconds of costly time lost. The facets of his steel face twitched and flashed, reflecting summer colours; the car door wings for which they dubbed him Bumblebee trembled up and down in indecision.

-zztch((trust to your intincts…RUN FORREST RUUU-vkkkskkkr-eal – because you're worth it!::~::gjjjj---the current economic climate surely we must zizizizi;;eyow transplant kssshhhaaaaa\\\~ shake it like a Polaroid picture! ~- -

The random noises coughed out by his own vocal modulator were enough to spur him into frantic emergency action. If it worked, then it worked, if it failed…then Sam would have lost the survivor's luck that had carried him through his destiny without harm. Perhaps a hero once spent was thrown by the wayside, as blunted broken tools were.

But did the boy not still carry the knowledge of the AllSpark, micro-carved upon his retinas, burned into his hard-drive, his brain? A man may not be made of lasting substances, yet perhaps a fleshling too could fuse with a hint of Energon…

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"I don't want to know…" groaned Sam miserably, dragging his eyelids open only long enough to check he was still in the land of the living. He could remember the lancing agony, oh yes, but the arm that had been wounded felt like lead now. They must have injected enough morphine in there to stun an elephant – not that he was complaining. "I just don't want to know…"

But the treacherous eyes were widening again to ascertain his new surroundings.

"I preferred the explosions, you know?"

Agh, he was in some random scrap yard with a whole crowd of Autobots peering at him like worried mother hens. Not good. Not promising. Not what he needed right now.

"You…you could see them coming…" he explained listlessly, wondering if this was the kind of demented rambling people came out with after blacking out and under anaesthetics… he couldn't really tell, it made sense to him at least. "And you can dodge if you jump fast enough and the shockwave sometimes carries you a bit further which is nice," definitely suspect; "and if you're really good at them a buncha lanky robot royalty will…bring you back to life when you do get hit…you know?"

Yep, he was as crazy as a lunatic in a hospital gown running flat-out for the hills.

Sam flapped his hands at the alien robots. He heard a clanking noise close by, not sure yet which of the guys was on the left. "I think. I think. Cybertron should've stopped at the Marvins and the Asimovs and the electric whisks, right?"

Optimus Prime and his comrades took this piece of advice on board with due care.

"You know there's a robot in Japan that can play the trumpet? It's cute. I bet you'd love that Bee. Though I dunno, you seem like more of a saxophone guy to me."

The fizz of radio static, a burst of jazz music, and then the crackly words of Elvis filtered through Bumblebee's personal Hi-Fi system. –Thank you, uh thank you very much.-

Giggling despite trying fairly hard not to, the teen could feel his mind beginning to clear. "Alright guys," he took a deep breath; "what's the damage?"

Ratchet leaned a little closer, authoritative voice a shade less confident and also a shade more jocular than usual. "I would call it an…upgrade, young human male."

With foreboding welling up inside him like a bad horror movie, Sam sat up a little and scanned his body. Right arm, all there; torso, in one piece; legs, fully accounted for; feet, attached; privates, well he wasn't checking with a Autobot fleet watching but everything felt normal; left arm…

"…"

OhGod OhGod OhGod OhGod OhGod OhGod OhGod OhGod AHHH-HHH-HHH-HHH-

-

Optimus Prime growled out an enquiry as the boy moved seamlessly into a nervous breakdown. "You don't like it, Sam Witwicky?"

"HELL NO!"

Bumblebee lowered his yellow antennae and mewled pitifully. A mewl like a monster truck revving.

"I thought it was rather excellent work. The prosthetics are cunningly contrived to mimic the organic fuel injection systems." Ratchet was talking, but Sam was hardly paying attention. The thing attached to his arm seemed to have noticed him staring and was beginning to unfold and rearrange itself without any encouragement. "Luckily the plasma forms a kind of free-moving soup within the flesh, so even when blood vessels are blocked or amputated the circulation is fairly unimpeded. Useful when a Decepticon mini-droid hacks a limb off out of the blue. It was ingenious of Bumblebee to think of giving you a transplant. Having fused with the AllSpark yourself, Sam, you are perhaps the only person in your world who could sustain an Autobot attachment."

Holy shit was that a miniature gun it'd built?

"Why are you guys not freaked out?" yelled Sam, trying to hold his new arm as far away from himself as possible. "How do I control this thing?!"

The twenty-foot-tall robots glanced at each other and shrugged.

Jazz rapped out an answer. "You got the glyphs, yo, read the manual!"

Sam Witwicky flopped his normal arm across his face and resumed his mental breakdown, bewailing the curse of Sod's Law into the crook of his elbow.

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