#no offense to folks who believe minerals have metaphysical propertise

[notwhelmedyet]

Dratchtember Day 7

Prompt: free space! Ratchet accidentally summons a demon and then falls in love, part 3/3. This time featuring the Dead End clinic and the DJD as demon hunters. (cw: violence, torture) ...and yes, if you were wondering I did look up a directory of the supposed metaphysical properties of minerals for this fic (also on ao3 here) (demon summoning part 1 here)

Ratchet sighed. His patients didn't like it when there were cops lingering outside the building, even if Orion was his friend and didn't mean any harm. "I promise, Orion, first sign of trouble I'll call you up," he said, patting his friend on the shoulder. "You and Roller."

"I know, it's just - " Orion gesticulated at the surrounding street with its broken buildings and shuttered shopfronts and Dead End inhabitants. "Response times getting out here aren't great. It'd make me feel a lot better if you kept the clinic locked and hired some security. You've got a lot of valuable medicines in there and people are desperate."

"I heard you the first time, Orion, and I'm sorry but it's not going to happen. If I lock up the clinic it ceases to become a community space that people living here are willing to interact with. It starts looking like a predatory research lab or worse, a body-stripping operation. There's no point in running the clinic if nobody goes."

"Well, what about security? Just one guard - "

"I'll think about it Orion," Ratchet promised. "It's a good idea and I promise I'll think about it. Now, I really do need to get back to work," Ratchet hooked his thumb over his shoulder. He and Orion made their goodbyes and their promises to definitely hang out more and find the time to meet after work when they were both free - Ratchet was expecting be at least a couple of months but stranger things had happened to him lately than syncing schedules with Orion Pax.

Someone draped their arms over his shoulder, melting into him like a Cyberlynx seeking out warmth on a cold day. "You gonna hire security?" Drift whispered into his audial, clearly amused. "You need some tough mech to look after you, keep you safe?"

Ratchet rolled his optics. "I assumed you had it covered."

"Mm, I suppose I could be tempted into taking the position," Drift murmured. He kissed the back of Ratchet's neck, trailing kisses down to the sensitive spot where it joined with Ratchet's shoulder.

Ratchet tried not to squirm, hooking his thumbs into his hip plating and pretending he was surveying the city skyline contemplatively. "Not in front of the patients," he hissed under his breath.

"I want a nice rock in exchange for taking over security," Drift said. "Two rocks, actually. Tourmaline quartz, for sure, to clear the clinic of negative energies. And rainbow moonstone - meditating with a charged rainbow moonstone is supposed to help you find feelings of inner peace, I read."

"I'm not buying you magic rocks," Ratchet grumbled.

---

Drift looked at the rocks in his cupped hands and then squinted at Ratchet. "Are you dying?" he asked, sounding suddenly very concerned.

"Why would I be dying?" Ratchet asked.

Drift stared at him in 'I have been requesting nonsense spiritualist crystals for a year and now you are suddenly giving them to me and there is no alternative explanation that makes sense'.

"I'm not going to be attending at the hospital in Iacon anymore," Ratchet said. "I've been requested as the attending medic for the Prime."

Drift smiled. "No more Panax? That's great, Ratchet - I knew someone was going to see how talented you were soon - "

"I don't want you to come with me to work any more," Ratchet said. "The clinic is fine, we'll still have the clinic. And I want to spend as much time with you as I can. But it's too risky to have you in the presence of the Prime."

Drift looked down at the rocks and then looked back at Ratchet. "This is an apology, then?"

"I am sorry. I couldn't turn down this appointment - he's the Prime, you don't say no to him. But I'm not so dense that I couldn't put together the pieces of what you've said about your previous summoners; they were government, weren't they? Maybe not at the Prime level, but certainly at the level of the Functionist Council."

"Not all of them," Drift said.

"But enough of them," Ratchet finished. "We can't risk that someone there has a way to detect slivers, that there are people in the Prime's inner circle who are observant enough to realize that you exist and what you are. I said I would keep you safe and the best way I can think to do that is to keep you far away from those people."

---

Sometimes Ratchet’s patients at the clinic were reluctant to invite themselves inside. So when he saw a minibot huddled up by the entrance, Ratchet detoured to check if they were in the midst of a medical emergency.

"Hey kid, you here for the doctor?" Ratchet asked, crouching down a few feet away. Never get to close to a Dead Ender without permission, he'd learned that the hard way. Some folks didn’t want his help and he wasn’t going to force it on them. Even on his new CMO’s salary, he didn’t actually have the funds to take care of the entire Dead End. He needed to get himself a wealthy patron like Orion had.

"Hey medc Ratchet," the bot said, wiggling their fingers in a little wave. "No, I’m good. You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?"

"The street’s a public place, last I heard," Ratchet said. Technically Dead End was divided up into the territories of various street gangs and syk-pushers but Ratchet didn’t pay that any mind. He looked around, taking in the stillness of the street that night. It was too early for this deathly calm. "Something happening out here tonight?" He asked lightly.

"Someone got Theo," they said.

Ratchet raised a brow. Theomus was one of the most well-respected flophouse managers’s in Dead End. He ran one of the few buildings where a mech could rent a room and find a safe place to sleep off the streets and he was known for being both fair in his prices and unwilling to take sides in inter-gang disputes. If Theo was dead, that was going to have a seismic impact on the neighborhood. "They know who yet?"

The kid shook his head. "Whoever got him is still out there and - bad things don’t happen near your clinic."

"Is that right?" Ratchet asked.

"Proctor told me he nearly got disappeared a few days ago but he ran to the clinic and the mechs chasing him disappeared. They found them the next morning with their sparks ripped out, down by the Old Gate. Whoever got Theo, I don’t think they can touch me here. This place is protected."

"Sounds like superstitious nonsense to me," Ratchet said. "But come inside. There’s plenty of chairs in the waiting room, won’t hurt to have you taking up one of them."

After Ratchet worked through the patients who’d been waiting for him to show up, he headed of the back stockroom in search of Drift. They’d put a cot in Ratchet’s office but Drift had decided he preferred to set up a nest of towels and other soft things and sleep on the floor. Ratchet turned on the light and shuffled sideways until Drift winked into view.

Drift made a sleepy noise and stretched out, blinking at Ratchet. Ratchet sat down and spread his arms, "Hey sweetspark, I missed you."

Drift threw himself into Ratchet’s arms, knocking them both onto the floor. "Ratchet!" He pressed his helm up against Ratchet’s, brushing their noses together. "How was your day?" He asked.

"It was fine," Ratchet said. "Better now." He kissed Drift, then got an arm around his waist to lift him as they stood up. Drift wrapped his legs around Ratchet, laughing into the kiss. Ratchet walked until he bumped into the table, then let Drift go to cradle his helm in his hands.

They wound down eventually, Drift still peppering Ratchet’s collar with kisses between words and Ratchet petting his finials as they talked.

"I heard some bad business went down in the Quarter today," Ratchet said. "Felt real tense out there tonight."

"Mm. I didn’t hear anything," Drift said. "But I did notice it seemed tense. Not a lot of foot traffic."

"I heard something else interesting," Ratchet said.

"Oh?"

"Apparently someone saved Proctor - you know, the kid with the fuel tank replacement surgery - from some body snatchers the other day. Right outside the clinic. You know anything about that?"

"How toothless do you want me to be?" Drift murmured into his shoulder. "I know you don’t like violence."

"I’ve never had any illusions that you were harmless," Ratchet said. "You’re going to start some urban myths if you keep it up."

"There are some people out there who think they're monsters and that they can do whatever they want without consequence," Drift said. "I’m just...correcting those misapprehensions."

---

Ratchet had always thought he’d hated parties, but he hadn’t realized the depths of loathing he was capable of experiencing until he was asked to attend one of the Prime’s "banquets". Hundreds of rich bots and senators swirling about, trying to one-up each other and buying and selling influence over ritzy energon spritzers. People felt the need to talk to him because he was Chief Medical Officer and somehow they thought that translated into some sort of influence with the Prime. If he’d had any sort of influence at all he would have been safely home at his apartment watching cheesy movies with Drift. He wondered what they’d think if they knew he still lived in his run-down apartment block with his college roommate.

It was already a scandal that Ratchet was so young. The Prime hadn’t chosen Ratchet out of any special regard for his skills, he’d told Ratchet as much. He’d selected Ratchet because he didn’t give a damn about politics and had no political connections to any of the Prime’s rivals. That, a general competence and the Prime’s apparent grudge against Panax (really the one political opinion they shared) had been enough to catapult Ratchet from obscurity.

Ratchet made awkward excuses to the senator who’d cornered him to try to ask about "you know, this noise when I bend my elbow. It goes ‘creak, creak’, I swear it does, I just can’t seem to make it do it just now." Spotting an unoccupied doorway out onto the balcony, Ratchet lifted another flute of engex from a serving droid and slipped out of the crowd.

There were still people out here, just fewer of them. And since the balcony was only lit by the decorative floating lanterns it was nearly too dim to recognize people. Hopefully that would stop people from locating him for a few minutes.

"Excuse me, Medic Ratchet?"

Ratchet sighed, then squared his shoulders and turned to face the speaker. Large frame, tank alt, probably a dark blue or purple but it was hard to tell in the lighting. Long clawed hands gripped a delicate flute of engex. He was wearing a mask.

Ratchet hadn’t realized this was a masquerade. "That would be me," he said, then offered the mech a hand to shake. "And you are…"

"My name is Tarn." The mech lingered on the handshake just a shade too long. Ratchet’s plating crawled. "I run a...team, one of the Prime’s pet projects. We seek out occult beings and those dangerous persons who would try to harness that power to their will. We call it the ‘DJD’."

Ratchet didn’t like where this was going, but he had a part to play. "Can’t say as I believe in any of that, but the Prime is free to spend his money where he wills. What is ‘DJD’ supposed to stand for?"

"Oh, it’s a joke - we call ourselves the Demon Justice Division. And I assure you, doctor, the creatures we seek are very real indeed."

"You would be the expert on that, I suppose," Ratchet said with a tip of his glass. "Forgive me if I remain a skeptic; they drill it into you in medical school. Was there something you wanted to speak to me about?"

"Ah, yes. I understand you live with a certain Trefacto of Iacon at," Tarn rattled off Ratchet’s address. "There were several books inside your residence as of three days ago that would fall under the purview of my unit. I had my agents take the liberty of removing this contraband from the property. I decided it would be best to speak with you in person, rather than bringing you and your roommate in for official...questioning. Often it’s simplest to take a light touch with these matters."

Ratchet’s spark was stuttering in his chest, a sickly mixture of rage and fear. How dare… He tried to quash that response and decided there was no way he could do that convincingly. "You had my apartment searched?" He asked in a voice on just this side of civil. Maybe slightly beyond it, but quietly enough that he didn’t attract the attention of the surrounding socializers.

"Yes."

"On what grounds?" Three days ago...Drift had stayed at the clinic that day because Ratchet had been doing a showcase surgery, he didn’t like being alone in the apartment when Ratchet wasn’t there.

"I don’t believe you’re understanding the depth of the Prime’s trust in me. He is concerned that others may attempt to use powers beyond their control to tilt the planet away from its proper course," Tarn said. "You weren’t singled out, doctor, you were one of many. Now, the books. Do you know why they were there?"

"My roommate believes every conspiracy on this side of Luna II," Ratchet said, trying to figure out how to phrase this so that Trefacto would sound thoroughly unthreatening. "He believes in crystal healing, he believes that people have auras, he believes that Luna I was eaten by an invisible space whale. He had a passing fancy in the occult and got a few books on the subject. Nothing came of it. As far as I know they’ve been sitting on a shelf ever since."

"You don’t believe he’s implemented any of the techniques in those books?"

"I don’t believe he could implement any of the techniques in those books," Ratchet said. "Because it’s all slag. But no, I don’t think he’s actually tried any of it. He got the books from a street vendor or something, tried reading them and complained that the writing was impenetrable and gave up."

"Mm-hmm," Tarn said. He lifted his mask slightly with one hand so that he could take a sip of his drink.

"Is it illegal now, having books?"

"Oh no, we’re not discussing a violation of the law. We’re discussing the potential violation of the natural order of things, of the will of Primus." Tarn reached out and brushed the underside of Ratchet’s chin with his claws, tilting his head up. "I think it would be for the best if you were to find a new roommate, doctor. I would hate to have to bring you in for interrogation. The Prime is very fond of his new pet, after all." Tarn stepped away, raising his glass slightly in acknowledgement. "Travel safely tonight, doctor. And watch your step."

---

"Are you going to need help carrying any of this down?" Trefacto asked, pausing in the doorway of Ratchet’s room. Ratchet grimaced, looking around a the chaos. He’d hoped to get everything packed up before the van came, but they’d messaged him that they were waiting downstairs and he was still bundling up his datapads into stacks.

"Yeah, that’d be helpful, actually," Ratchet said. "I’m sorry to leave you in a lurch like this. I’d planned on moving out at the end of the lease, but…"

"You’re the Prime’s CMO now, it was weird they didn’t order you to move out sooner," Trefacto said with a wave of his hand. "I’ll just sublease your room out until the trimester ends. Got a few boxes prepared? I could carry those down for you while you’re packing the rest."

"One second, let me check these to make sure they’re ready," Ratchet said, climbing over the stack of datapads to open up one of his finished boxes.

"Is that a moonstone?" Trefacto asked. "Oh gosh, is that cuprite? Ratchet, you never told me you were into the metaphysics of crystal energies. We could have been having so many interesting conversations."

"Oh, that’s not mine actually," Ratchet said. "It’s a gift. For my sparkmate."

"Woah!" Trefacto gasped. "You’re dating someone? Primus’s fuelpump, that’s wild. For how long?"

"Uh, awhile. A year or so."

"And you never mentioned anything?" Trefacto smiled. "Wait, why am I even surprised, this is you we’re talking about. Congrats. You should definitely introduce me to your sparkmate sometime, though. If we ever hang out after this. You do have my comm frequency?"

Ratchet dutifully pretended he would ever call Trefacto again and checked that he had his comm frequency written down. The rest of the time they were packing, Trefacto continued to ask Ratchet questions about Drift. Ratchet absently invented answers, most of his mind on packing. The rest of his concentration was on the anxious knot in his spark, which was growing harder and harder to ignore. So he got a little threatened by some theatrical weirdo with his own secret police force. That was no reason to freak out - no reason to freak out more than he already was.

By the time he’d said his goodbyes to Trefacto and sent the van off with his stuff towards his new apartment, the knot was beginning to become physically painful. Ratchet decided to walk it off, but the pain kept building and eventually he had to sit down. It felt like spark pain, but Ratchet’s indicators all looked steady. The only time he’d expect to see pain like this in a healthy patient was if they were a split spark and something was stretching the bond between them and their resonant partner -

Wait.

"Orion, Roller, I’m going to need you at my clinic," Ratchet snapped into his comm as he dropped into his alt mode.

"What’s going on?" Orion asked.

"Someone’s about to get murdered at my clinic and I can’t wait for backup," Ratchet said. "So, uh, get there fast or hopefully avenge me. You’re looking for a guy about Roller’s size, wears a mask, talks like a creep, thinks he’s lord of the universe. Tarn."

"Ratchet, wait for us," Roller said. "We’ll get out there as fast as we can."

"Sorry, I can’t promise that," Ratchet said. "He’s got my sparkmate."

Ratchet turned off comms and switched on his locational beacon. How could Ratchet have been so stupid as to think Tarn wouldn’t know about the clinic? Ratchet hadn’t even warned Drift about his encounter with Tarn the night before - he hadn’t wanted to make him so worried that he insisted on shadowing Ratchet at work and get caught.

Ratchet hit the streets of Dead End at a speed he hadn’t realized he was capable of. People ran to get out of his path, streets flying by until he got to the block where his clinic was and had to screech to a halt because of the mass of people blocking the road.

"Medic!" Someone whispered frantically and the crowd converged on him, mobbing him so he couldn’t move forwards. Ratchet transformed back to his root mode and tried to push past them.

"Medic Ratchet, you can’t go in there! They’ll kill you!" Someone whispered and Ratchet paused. He looked around. These weren’t just any Dead Enders. These were his patients, the ones he’d left at the clinic when he’d gone into work the night before. Even his long-term care patients, who couldn’t walk on their own, had been dragged out into the street.

"What’s happening?" He asked.

Everyone tried to answer him all at once and Ratchet had to throw up his hands to stop them. "One person," he said. He pointed at a grounder with green paint and a bad case of peripheral rust infection. "You. What’s happening in my clinic."

The mech explained, haltingly. Five mechs - one of whom was definitely Tarn - had shown up at the clinic. They’d ordered everyone out and, when some of the patients tried to fight back, one of them had transformed into a sniper rifle and Tarn had started picking off patients.

"He got Sleek," the grounder said. "But before he could shoot anyone else your demon showed up to fight them."

Drift had rushed in, in all his idiotic heroic bravery, and thrown himself at Tarn, buying the patients time to evacuate.

"Before we left, I saw them trap him," one of the other mechs in the crowd said. "The three of them used these lasers to make a light trap and pinned him in it. We haven’t seen anything since - they’ve got two guards on the door. One brute with a grinder in his chest and the one who turns into a rifle. But we could hear them for awhile." The mech shuddered. "It sounded horrible."

Ratchet’s fuel ran cold. Five mechs, all built for combat. No, not combat. From what his patients had seen, they were built for torture. "I can’t leave him there," Ratchet said. How was he going to take down five mechs? What if Drift was already...no. If Drift was gone it would stop hurting, and it hadn’t. "I need more information," Ratchet decided. "And if anyone’s got one, I need a gun."

The buildings in this section of Dead End had largely been gutted in the fires and the riots. To a mech that knew their business they were porous - you could follow a path through broken windows, half-collapsed staircases, walls with secret tunnels and jury-rigged catwalks. Ratchet’s patients knew their business. Ratchet found himself in the building opposite his clinic, using a mirror to look through the window while he crouched below its frame. Sure enough, the two guards at the front door were exactly as described. Ratchet watched them for a moment, trying to turn the sludge in his brain into a plan. He had a bad habit of going into things without a plan and it had, historically speaking, rarely ended well for him. And most of those times he hadn’t been trying to take down five fanatics-slash-professional torturers.

Drift screamed. Ratchet flinched, but he kept his optics on the mirror. The larger guard turned towards the clinic for a moment in response to the sound, a sick smile on his face. And then, just for a moment, his optics disappeared from behind his armor. The guard turned back and his optics lit red again. Ratchet snapped the mirror closed. "Those people aren’t mechs," he said. "They’re demons painted to look like mechs."

Ratchet and Drift had realized, a while back, that if you went through the effort of applying body-paint, Drift would be visible from all directions. It was useless for blending in with a crowd because they couldn’t paint over his optics, not if Drift wanted to see. And so you’d have a perfectly visible bot whose optics were pools of impenetrable darkness from every angle but one. Apparently Tarn’s DJD hadn’t found this to be a problem.

"Okay," Ratchet said. "Can someone help get me to the back entrance? I’ve got a plan."

From inside the building, the sounds of what they were doing to Drift were inescapable. Ratchet shuffled through the back hallway to his storeroom, quivering with anger. He couldn’t do anything about that yet, he had to wait. Ratchet’s tank wanted to purge itself but there was no time to waste having feelings. He had a demon to rescue.

In the dark he gathered up his supplies. Then he climbed onto the table to reach the hatch that led to the crawlspace above the ceiling. He’d spent plenty of time clambering around in here when he did the wiring for his lights and surgical equipment, but when he’d been doing all that it hadn’t mattered how much noise he made. Now what mattered most was silence and the silence let him hear all the louder what was happening downstairs.

"Do you repent, Sliver?" Tarn asked. "Do you repent for your crimes against Primus, do you welcome your damnation?"

"I already said yes," Drift stammered. "I’m a practicing spectralist, you know."

There was a crackle like an arc welder and Drift screamed again, voice ragged.

"You are nothing," Tarn hissed. "You are not fit to speak Primus’s name. You are not fit to speak. You’re place is to serve and to scream."

"Fuck you," Drift growled.

Ratchet tried to tune it out again as he reached the space over the entryway. Two slivers, watching the road and not the ceiling. Ratchet vented slowly, trying to steady himself. One of his patients, who was definitely a gunrunner, had lent him a bandolier to carry his supplies in. Ratchet took out a roll of tape, some wire and a handful of small lenses. He assembled the components of his trap first, then started lowering them into place. He started with the corner by the door - lifting one of the small ceiling tiles beneath the crawlspace and hooking the wire with the mirror taped to the bottom over the support beam. Four mirrors, suspended exactly the same distance from the ceiling. He wasn’t going to have much wiggle room. Finally, he powered on the little laser pointer he’d found and lowered it down on it’s own hook until he could see it refract off the mirror. The beam bounced from mirror to mirror and the trap closed. The slivers didn’t seem to notice, at least not yet. Ratchet moved on to the main room.

Slowly, carefully, he unscrewed a bit of ventilation piping and moved it aside so that he could use the ceiling vent as a peephole. Be strong, Ratchet. You’re going to save him. He forced himself to look.

There were a pair of light circles - one that encompassed most of the room and one that was encircling a single berth, with just enough space for a slender red and gold sliver with electricity sparking over his plating to stand at the head of the berth without exiting the circle. The other sliver was huge, larger than tarn, with an open barrel chest full of liquid metal. They were standing close, but carefully outside the circle. Tarn paced back and forth, crossing over the light beam of the inner circle with little care.

Drift was on the berth.

You could make a sliver visible by painting them, Ratchet and Drift had figured that one out on their own. Apparently you could do the same thing by pouring molten metal over their frame. Drift shook and shuddered on the berth, frame streaked with lines of grey cooled slag.

"Feeling warm yet?" Tarn asked lightly.

Drift glared at him.

Tarn snapped his fingers. "Kaon."

The sliver with the electricity powers - Ratchet’s patients had warned him about them - grabbed Drift by the finial. There was a crackle and then charge arced between Kaon’s shoulders. Drift writhed on the berth.

Ratchet focused his fury into his hands. He laid in another trap encircling the sliver with the smelter and then carefully lowered in his laser pointer. The mech didn’t seem in a hurry to move, hopefully Ratchet would have time before he noticed.

Tarn walked over to the smelter and filled a ladle with molten metal before walking back to the berth. "Sit up," he commanded.

Drift stared at him, sullenly. Tarn snapped his fingers and Kaon shocked him again. Drift still didn’t move to sit up, possibly because he couldn’t. Ratchet knew that Drift was stronger and considerably faster than most mechs, and given some of the stories Drift had alluded to from his time before Ratchet he must have been able to withstand more damage than most Cybertronians could survive. But still.

Ratchet began to mix the vials of chemicals he’d brought with him, tamping the container closed with his thumb. He needed to wait for the right moment.

"Lift him," Tarn ordered and Kaon wrapped his arm around Drift’s shoulder to shove him to a sitting position. "Would you care to tell me your name? I’m offering you one last chance to give me your name and your bond. I want you to understand - this is your very last chance. I would be happy to have you join our ranks, but if that’s not a possibility...my directive from the Prime was to purge all unholy creatures from the planet. And that I will gladly do."

Drift didn’t say anything, which Tarn clearly took as an invitation to monologue. "You might believe that you can outlast me. Primus knows you slivers can survive a great many things. I once had Tesarus grind a sliver down until it was only a head and it could still cry out in pain. But I was chosen for this role for a reason. I was forged with a gift beyond that of my peers - the ability to break any machinery, snuff out any spark, extinguish any demon. All by the power of my voice."

"That sounds about right," Drift said. "I bet most folks want to die, if they have to listen to you too long."

Tarn reached out and grabbed Drift’s face, forcing his head back. "Your name," he roared.

"Drift," Ratchet whispered, coming to a realization he should have had a long time ago.

Drift’s optics flicked towards him and Ratchet knew he was right. Drift had lied when Ratchet had first summoned him - he’d given Ratchet his actual name. The ability to order him, to bind him and to banish him. That meant that Ratchet could break the binding on Drift, right now, and he’d be able to leave Cybertron.

"I may die," Drift spat. "But I will always be his."

Tarn poured the ladle of molten metal over Drift’s face. The pain echoed through the bond to Ratchet’s spark so intensely that he thought maybe he was dying too. When he forced his optics to focus again Tarn was pacing, ladle halfway across the room where he’d apparently thrown it in a fit of rage. Kaon had released Drift and was looming over him, charge building on his plating.

That was Ratchet’s cue. He lifted his thumb off the vial in his hand and dropped it against the vent grate. Smoke poured out and a few moments later Ratchet heard the sprinklers start as the siren kicked on. Someone screamed, hopefully Kaon. Ratchet was already scrambling back towards the stockroom entrance, dragging open his own internal protocols and scorching ground as he went.

He dropped down into the stockroom in perfect silence. He’d been hoping for a pistol, but the patient who’d loaned him the bandolier had handed him off both a laser pistol and a rifle. Ratchet checked each of them again and then stomped into the main room and shot Tarn.

Tarn was armored, so he wasn’t expecting to bring him down in a single shot, but it was still disappointing to see him shrug off the shot with a shake of his head. At least Kaon and the smelter were down - Kaon on the ground, plating smoking and the smelter hammering on the invisible walls of his laser trap. But Tarn was still in play.

With his faceplate on it was very difficult to tell if Tarn was speaking. Ratchet fired another shot at him, nearly hitting him in the throat. Not that "nearly" did any good. He’d never been any good at shooting, Roller had pointed this out numerous times throughout his attempts to train him. Tarn drew his own gun and Ratchet dove behind the life-support console, feeling the shockwave from the impact against his back.

Barring some freak accident or an actual miracle, he wasn’t going to be able to bring down Tarn, Ratchet realized. Thinking otherwise had been an act of hubris, brought on by rage. Drift was too weak to even lift himself and there was no way he could stop Drift from hearing Tarn’s voice. Tarn could be killing Drift even now, and there would be no way for Ratchet to know.

There was only one option: breaking the bond so Drift could escape.

Ratchet stepped out from behind the console and fired a shot, not at Tarn but at one of the mirrors making up the circle around the berth. "Drift!" He yelled. "I order you to save yourself! Go home!"

Drift stared at him in shock. Ratchet felt a pressure on the sparkbond again, this time different than the others, a vibration of what could only be described as laughter. He looked at Ratchet and then he was gone.

Ratchet had known Drift could move more quickly than was physically possible for a Cybertronian. He hadn’t realized until he could see it in the traces of melted iron fused to his frame that Drift was using magic to do it.

Drift threw Tarn to the ground and sunk his claws into Tarn’s frame. Tarn struggled and then slowly began to melt into sintered sentio metallico. When Ratchet tore his optics away from Drift the other slivers were already gone, unbound with Tarn’s death.

Drift hauled himself to his feet and began to stagger towards Ratchet. Ratchet ran to him, digging back into his protocols to enable his hearing again. "I told you to go!" Ratchet yelled, scooping Drift up into his arms and burying his face against his chest. "I told you to go so you’d be safe."

Drift’s vocalyzer crackled and hissed, melted beyond function. But then his voice echoed against the sparkbond, perfectly clear.

>>You told me to go home, Ratchet. You’re home.<<

"What in the pits is going on?" Orion shouted, throwing the door to the clinic open. Roller staggered in behind him, looking around frantically.

Ratchet looked at them across his ruined clinic, sprinklers still pouring water from the ceiling, Drift’s mutilated frame clutched in his arms. "It’s a long story," he said. "This is my sparkmate. He’s a demon. I don’t suppose either of you have some green tourmaline on hand? I think we’re going to need all the healing energy we can get."