The Thing in the Valley

Chapter 1: Doctor's Check Up

Disclaimer: If it's in this story, I don't own it.

The hangar rang with the tones of falling metal, parts clanking carelessly against the table, bouncing off elbows and bellies, just barely avoiding the tiny human head underfoot. Not on purpose, mind you, Ratchet just couldn't find time to care about the little team's pet human ("Cody," said Blades) while he had a patient on the table. Parts fell where they wanted to fall, and preferably, they fell within his peripheral vision. If the human ("Cody," said Blades) wanted to stay in the danger zone, that was his problem.

Blades was just happy to have someone to talk to who wasn't grumpy, wasn't a superior officer, wasn't a hero of the Cybertron Wars, and wasn't elbow deep in his internals. Cody ("The human?" said Ratchet. "Right.") was good company while the rest of his team flocked around Optimus Prime. Their internals were already cleaned or replaced. Optimus Prime kept them occupied with stories while Ratchet did his work. Blades, in turn, kept Cody occupied with his version of what had happened that day.

"... and that's when all the sand got in," Blades finished, wincing automatically as Ratchet wrenched his main gyroscope out of his back. Cody flinched full on, covering his eyes as Ratchet dropped the gritty, greasy component between Blades's legs. It fell down to the floor, but Cody couldn't see where exactly from between Blades's shoulder and neck. The helicopter smiled a tiny grin, being careful not to nudge Cody accidentally. "Sorry about that, again."

"Doc Greene meant well," said Cody. His hands fell away while Ratchet cleaned the sand out of Blades's spinal struts. "It wasn't your fault, he just did the wrong stitching. Punching bags are hard to make."

Ratchet made an unhappy noise and flexed his fingers. The gears within crunched, gummed up with the sand he'd been digging out of the Rescue Bots for the last 3 hours. Ground bridge him away from important work in Jasper for this... "Stupid humans and their stupid festivals..."

Cody nodded, "The Boxing Festival isn't exactly my favorite either." He gave Blades a fond smile. "But like I told Boulder, at least we're all prepared for the Sandcastle Festival next week!"

Heatwave, having heard Cody make that same stupid joke three times before, growled in agony from the other room. Ratchet laughed at the fire truck's discomfort and began to install Blades's new gyroscope. Cody hopped across Blades's neck and onto his chest, watching Ratchet work from a new vantage point. The medic's fingers were constantly moving, always touching something even if it wasn't the part being worked on, checking temperature and location and tension of the various parts.

The top of the gyroscope clinked into place with a spurt of energon. Cody had quickly grown used to the sight of his friends's bright blue "blood", as odd as it seemed now that he thought about it. Something about it, maybe its bright color and its oddly burnt smell, removed the initial "gross" factor he felt whenever he saw Heatwave bleed for the first time. It reminded Cody that he was sitting on something amazing and otherworldly, not just one of Doctor Greene's crazy inventions. These were his robots aliens in disguise.

Ratchet reached into his subspace and came away with a handful of dirt. It was the purest soil Ratchet could make, all organic compounds, no sand or silicon, which he used to collect energon spills like Charlie Burns did with oil stains and sawdust. It didn't scrape and gum up gears, like the sand did (Cody had asked several times to be sure). Ratchet dropped it onto the tiny leak; the energon soaked into the soil like water before disappearing into the air with a crackle of electricity. Ratchet flipped up the tip of his ring finger and vacuumed up the rest of the soil to be used later, the energon completely gone.

"It's so weird how that works," Cody stated. "It's like dirt was made to soak up you guys's blood."

Ratchet made a face. "Yeah. Strange."

The hangar door opened. Charlie Burns shouted to the medical table, "We're back from the clean up!" Charlie let his three children file past him while he left his sand-covered gloves by the door. "Mayor Lusky isn't complaining about the sand. He says-"

"If I hear ONE MORE THING about that dumb sandcastle festival!" Heatwave roared from the other room. Charlie could just barely make out Boulder and Optimus having a good laugh in the background. "ONE MORE THING."

Meanwhile, Kade found himself at the base of a pile of parts, dropped carelessly beneath the table and sprawling out as wide as Boulder was long. "Woah. Did you take all this out of Blades?"

"Primus, no!" Ratchet growled. "That'd be nearly all of his internals! Those came out of all of the other bots."

Blades chirped, meekly, "And some from me."

"And some from you, yes." Ratchet began to seal Blades's many panels back together, mindless of the grease smears he left on Blades's otherwise pristine shell. "I couldn't salvage most of those parts, so I had to replace them outright. That's what happens when you get sand inside of a complex mechanism."

From the other side of the room, Optimus Prime entered, following by the Rescue Bots. Optimus looked saintly beside his comrades, all of whom were covered in scratched paint and Ratchet's fingerprints. Charlie and Optimus shared a quiet nod of greeting, and with a simply gesture of the hand, Optimus had the hangar's attention. "As much as I have enjoyed this visit, I recognize that stealing our Chief Medic away from his work for several hours, unannounced, is not a good idea."

"There's a massive understatement," griped Ratchet.

"I believe it is time the humans gained knowledge from us. The people of Griffin Rock have proven to be trustworthy allies to our species." Optimus turned to Heatwave. "Heatwave, with your permission, I would like to donate your scrapped parts to the humans for study."

Heatwave replied, "... ew."

"It'd be for science, Heatwave!" Boulder pleaded, joy in his optics. "Just like how humans study fossils!"

"I know it'd be for science," said Heatwave, "But the idea still rubs me the wrong way." Something close to disgust curled in Heatwave's tanks. Some of those parts were his, and something in him absolutely knew those parts were going to Greene, and the thought of Greene digging around in his discarded components- eugh. Now it was actual disgust churning about in Heatwave's tanks.

Chase added, "We have no need for the parts otherwise. They are contaminated and irreparably damaged by the sand, and there are no facilities to melt them down and forge them into fresh protoforms."

Heatwave gritted his teeth. "I'm not sure..."

Charlie held his arms open, friendly, welcoming. "Heatwave, if it helps, we're all organ donors, too."

Dani shrugged. "Well, Cody's not."

"But I will be!" Cody helpfully yelped. "When I'm old enough!"

The fire truck crossed his arms, optics locked on the floor. "I don't like it... but I'm outvoted." Heatwave nodded to the Burns family (sans Cody). "The parts are yours."

Optimus laid a gentle hand on Heatwave's shoulders. "The humans will achieve much, in time. I thank you, Heatwave."

Optimus gathered Ratchet to his side and addressed each Rescue Bot in turn. "Mechs, you are almost entirely new. Your bodies are fresh and young. Take care of them well, and go with Primus."

The two left on the ground bridge back to Jasper, Nevada, and Charlie reminded himself to call Doctor Greene about the parts later that night.

NOTES JUST TO BE SAFE:

1. This takes place... after Season 1. As of this moment, Season 1 of Rescue Bots is not finished, so I'm just making sure it's after season 1.

2. The "earth absorbs Energon" thing is lifted from Transformers: Prime, although indirectly. If the surface of the Earth cocooned Unicorn for that many millenia, it had to have something in it that cloaked him from people looking for him, mechanical or otherwise.

3. Although Prime and Rescue Bots do, according to the writers, take place in the same continuity, you won't be seeing Optimus and Ratchet again in terms of the main plot.