Archive of Our Own

::I’ve got visual on Officer.::

Ratchet’s voice is a grounding buzz as Meister takes in the area surrounding Tower Tectosilicate - Feldspar’s residence and seat of power in West Praxus. Rechecking, more than anything - he’s had most of an orn to observe.

::Understood, Medic. Let me know when they’re ready to move - Officer should signal. Once he does, loop cameras A1 to A12 for five kliks, A6 and A19 two joor, A12 ongoing, and I’ll move in.::

::Understood, Killer.:: Codenames only - the commline should be secure, the encryption should hold up to anything short of a technopath, but Meister’s met technopaths before. ::Standing by to call it; standing by for loop on A1 to A12.::

The street below is empty, this late at night. Only three guards, outside - a bruiser, some kind of large civilian frame and not a better-armored tank build, by the doors, and two faster light fighters keeping watch on either end of the street. Low ranked, probably not too skillful; their job is to die loudly enough that the real guard can hear it.

Meister unsubspaces a long rifle; sets it on a tripod. He takes his time lining up the shots on the two smaller mechs - they’re staying relatively still, no good cover available, but he’ll have only a few moments after his first shot to manage the second.

::Officer has signalled. Cameras looping in three.::

He counts down against his own chronometer, and snaps off the first shot. Before the other two mechs can reach, he’s pivoting, lining - taking the second shot - and then, without bothering to confirm his kills, he leaps.

Gravity drags him down, subspacing the gun as he goes, but momentum draws him forward - and by the time he lands, he’s within arms reach of the still-registering door guard, driving a vibroblade up and through lighter pelvic armor and into the other mech’s spark.He keeps moving, shoving the body through the door in front of him and into the antechamber beyond.

Two guards stare at him, wideopticked. Before they even have a chance to remember their weapons, Meister has swapped the dagger for a pistol, letting the door guard slump to the floor, and shot the leftmost one three times in the helm.

He drops.

The other manages to grab his weapon, but he’s shaking too hard to be a threat - his finger can barely keep purchase on the trigger. He’s young, much younger than most of Meister’s victims - barely out of his youngling frame, obviously, still clumsy with it, and the tip of his gun is wavering so badly that the assassin doubts he could hit him even if he could get a shot off.

“You.” He steps towards the mech, visor flashing. “You get to live.”

The mech actually squeaks at that, a high, terrified scraping noise all that he manages to squeeze out of his vocalizer. Meister flashes his visor, amused, and the mech shrinks back in fear, field near-blazing with it.

“Go. Find Nacre. Tell her what’s happened here. Tell her who I am.” He grins, baring his fangs, and the mech is scrambling around him, too afraid to break his gaze, clawing at the handle on the door. “She knows why I’ve come.”

He spares himself a silent laugh at the look in the other mech’s optics as he manages to get the door open, finally tearing himself away to sprint, terrified, into the night. He might return with help - Nacre’s lair is on the far side of the district, though. It won’t be in time. If he’s smart, the mech will take the chance he’s been given and disappear, instead - Nacre’s not completely unreasonable, but it never pays to bear bad news to the court of a Praxian ‘Lord’.

::You’re an aft,:: Ratchet, ever-helpful, gives his input. ::He’ll clear the end of the street before the cameras are back online.::

::Great. Loop B1 to B4; I’ll head west first. When I’m clear of B1 to B3, cycle the loop to B4 through 11 and keep it going. There’s nothing going on down there that’d blow a loop, right?::

::Shift change in a joor; you’ll be clear. Standing by for B1 to B4; standing by for B4 to B11. Hallways are clear on C-side, there’s no overlap on the doors.:: A pause, then: ::Surge map is showing something wired into the doorways on the left end of the far hall - B9 and B11. No sign of a solid mass; probably alarms.::

::Got it.:: He slips into the hallway with only a glance for guards - even with the cameras showing clear, there’s always that chance that someone with an inconvenient talent for stealth is lurking in a blind spot. But the hallway is clear, at least for now.

Sliding down the hall, he moves quickly - the longer the loop, the more likely it is to be noticed, and the B4 to B11 loop is going to be long enough already. Two doors at the corner have mechs behind them - he attaches a mag-clamp to the door of one, and readies himself outside the other. ::Loop B6 and B7 now. The last five kliks, if they’re not too remarkable - I’m gonna need to hide bodies.::

::One moment.:: Ratchet goes silent. ::Standing by for five-klik loop on B6; standing by for four-klik loop on B7. They were getting rowdy about something on the vid-feed five kliks ago. Three targets in B6; two in B7, but one’s a tank. No collateral.::

::Understood.:: He checks against his own map; B7 is the room he’s locked down. Good. ::Proceed; I’ll be off-comms until I’m done..:: He reaches into subspace, palms a static grenade - it’ll be enough to fritz the comms of everyone in both rooms for at least the length of a reboot, which will have to be enough.

::Looping in three.:: Ratchet’s voice is all business in the moment before he goes silent, Meister offlining his own comms to insulate them as he readies the grenade.

At the one-drop, he bursts through the door, targeting systems already bringing his gun up as he takes in the scene. Videofeed is too data-intensive to share during a mission - shows up too obviously to anyone monitoring for comms chatter, even encrypted - but Ratchet’s a good spotter: all three of the mechs have the colors of Feldspar’s sworn men, and Meister’s blown two of their helms open before the third can return fire.

The gangster’s gun isn’t silenced, and even as he dives forward and slides a knife between the mech’s lines, Meister can hear shouts of alarm from the next room. He’s already moving, moving - the walls here are thin, and he lets infrared guide him as he lines a shot on the smaller of the two mechs. The frame crumples as heat bursts from a fresh hole in his plating, and the tank-frame roars.

By the time he reaches the hall, the door is shaking from the weight of the frame slamming into it.

He brings comms back online as he reequips the rifle, slotting high-caliber shock rounds in as he watches the door rattle - as soon as they’re online, he sends a signal to the clamp, letting it tumble to the ground as the door blows open. He doesn’t hesitate - a tank is no small challenge, given the chance to build steam, and only the relative narrowness of the doorway has prevented this one from transforming into a nearly-impenetrable threat. He fires all five rounds into the larger mech’s chest, watches as blue charges of electricity detonate against thick plating, and dives forward before they’ve even stopped rippling across the armor - he can feel them tingling across his own plating as he hacks at the other mech’s cables.

It’s not a pretty kill, but it works - he catches a line, and pink energon sprays across the floor as static convulsions turn into death spasms.

::Nicely done.:: Ratchet sounds… not pleased, but impressed, as he lugs the tank’s frame back into the side room, unsubspacing a cloth and a bottle of solvent to wipe the worst of the mess from his own frame.

::Let me get the doors, and then kill the light in this section of hallway.:: He steps back out, grabbing his clamp and shutting the two doors as best he can - the one the tankformer was behind is visibly bowed, but on camera, it shouldn’t be obvious unless someone’s looking for it. ::They’ll send maintenance eventually, but they won’t think slag about it. Should be enough to hide the door, and the fuel.::

Fortunately, he took the worst of the energon spray - only a few smears are on the walls and floor. He has better things to do than tidy it up.

The light overhelm dims, then drops out entirely, bulb flaring for just a moment as it burns out.

::Done. Keep moving - I can’t cycle the cameras until you’re in B4, and we’re already thirteen kliks on this hallway.:: Meister pushes along, pulling his pistol back out, as he clears the midpoint of the hallway, and reaches two rooms. ::B9 and B11?::

::Two targets each, and six collateral - sixteen mechs total. Targets are the only mechs standing; collateral is lying down.:: Ratchet’s voice takes on a deeper note, almost a growl. ::Two collateral in B11 are injured badly - against the far left wall. A Praxian missing a wing, and an Urayan someone’s carved up. Urayan’s not gonna make it.::

Meister hesitates, at that. ::I’ll do what I can for them, Medic.::

::Don’t.:: Ratchet’s words have the steel of a battlefield medic, of someone used to making the hard calls. ::Stasis the Praxian, if you have time, but there’s nothing you can do for the Urayan - I can see the blue from here. Just make it quick.::

Blue means a breached spark chamber, and Meister almost winces - it’s a painful way to go, if it’s not enough damage to kill quickly, energy wicking off into nothing until the spark loses containment and collapses. He lets infrared mark his targets again - no particularly notable frametypes among them, three midweight racer-frames and a small flier. The hallway wall is too thick to shoot through, so he clamps the near door locked before turning his focus to the alarm woven deftly into the doorframe.

A high-powered jolt from his magnets is enough to fritz it, and the lock. The alarm itself offline, he follows the cables, striking the wall with a dagger when they finally run out from behind the doorframe and through the less protected wall - the cut is enough to sever power to the whole door.

::Any alarms?:: he asks Ratchet, almost as an afterthought.

::You’re good. Keep moving.::

With the lock offline, he can burst into the room almost unhindered. The two shots he needs snap off quickly enough that the guards don’t have a chance to react - but their victims do: panicked shouts from the slaves are enough to grab the attention of the guards a room over.

Cursing under his breath, Meister takes the shots through the thinner interior walls, and vents relief as the two frames collapse.

::They’re grey.:: Ratchet confirms his kills impassively.

The slaves are wide-opticked and staring, and Meister knows he’s the furthest thing from a comforting sight right now - plating the dull matte black of an assassin, face hidden beneath a battlemask, covered in energon from the tank. Still, he raises his hands - not dropping the gun, but not threatening.

“Ain’t here for you, mechs. Sit tight - I expect the cops will be along for you shortly.” He speaks loudly enough for his voice to carry to the next room, and sees the hot blurs of the mechs there still in mirror of the ones surrounding him. “Anyone injured?”

He can see the scrapes on all of them - warped plating from beatings, cracked paint from neglect - but they don’t respond, hesitant - and then the mech in the far right hesitantly rises to his pedes, holding his hands up and plating close in submission. “Alkali and Pyrite. They were trying to escape.”

The minibot leads him over to the two frames - both badly injured, but online, dumped in the corner without any sort of medical attention, a warning, no doubt, to the others. Alkali - the Urayan, no doubt, it’s not a Praxian name - is already fading; this close, Meister can see the breach itself, barely-hidden where the mech’s thin plating has been warped so badly by a blow it pierced the chamber. Pyrite is in better condition, but only just - the ragged edge of the brutal amputation is obvious, and the femme’s optics are incandescent with pain.

::Watch them.:: Leaving Ratchet to keep an optic on the other slaves, Meister drops to his knee beside the two damaged mechs. He unspools his cable as quickly as he can, prying the femme’s wrist port open when it doesn’t release for him, and jacks in, tearing past already-damaged firewalls without pity. Knocking her into stasis takes only a moment; she’s in too much pain to resist, and the moment reminds him, suddenly, of Prowl.

He brushes the thought aside, unhooking from her and storing his cable as he straightens to his pedes.

“Look away.” He’d be gentler about it, but there is no time, and he’s already running behind. He doesn’t bother to check if the slaves have listened as he aims his pistol, fires - as the Urayan’s helm collapses with the force of the shot, frame greying in moments.

By the time he does turn back to them, the slaves are wide-opticked with horror, pressed as flat as they can be to the far wall of the room.

“He wasn’t going to make it. Nothing you or I could have done, not without a medic with spark-support equipment. Ain’t gonna hurt any of you.” He moves towards the door as he speaks, keeping a careful distance; they flinch back as he gets closer, but even the minibot who had shown him to the injured mechs doesn’t say anything. “Stay here. Like I said, the cops will show up eventually - I’m sure they’ll take care of you. Don’t leave the room - Feldspar’s men will shoot you even if I don’t.”

A chorus of terrified nods. Good enough. He pushes back out into the hallway, sealing the door behind himself. ::Keep an optic down here, Medic. Let me know if they try to leave; be ready to loop the cameras if they do. I’d give it fifty-fifty they stick around for the cops.::

::Standing by for B10, B8, B5, B4, B3, B2. Standing by for A1 through A22, depending where they go. Where are you heading next, you massive aft?::

::A little professionalism on the line, Medic!:: He keeps his tone light, teasing. ::What’s Officer up to?::

::Already making his way into his objective. Moving pretty slow, as far as I can tell, but I don’t have optics inside their objective.::

::Up the vents, then. Gonna skip the second floor and head straight for Feldspar, unless you see any other big groups of collateral.::

Ratchet is silent for a moment, scanning. ::A few scattered around, but no concentrated groups. Most are working - not under direct guard. They should have a decent shot at getting away.::

::Good enough. I’m going in at V23; make sure the sensors are offline.::

He waits for Ratchet’s confirmation before approaching the vent. It’s on the ceiling, almost inaccessible were it not for the magnets in his palms and pedes - instead, he just shimmies up the nearest wall, carefully working his way across the metal panels to the grate. It unscrews easily, dust showering him as he works - clearly not well-maintained, but not in such disrepair that it’s been neglected. He subspaces the vent, rather than letting it drop to the floor - it’s too wide to be put back in place from the far side.

He has to dislocate his shoulders to fit. Even so, it’s a tight squeeze; the vents are roomy enough for the minibots who service them, but he’s no minibot. Still, with his mods, he can make it work, flexible enough to push himself through the vents and work his way around corners until he reaches the vertical drop of an elevator shaft.

::Ratchet, do we have the elevators? The controls should be in the same set of files as the lights.::

::Yes. You’re in E2-a, right? Should be spray painted on the wall above each set of doors.::

It takes a bit of twisting to check. ::2-b, it says.::

::Got it. You could have popped out in either; looks like you went about ten meters past where I thought you stopped. Not a problem.:: Another silence, as Ratchet works. ::I’m going to register a brakes fault, let the system shut itself down. Unless you still think you’ll be kicking around when the mechanic arrives?::

Meister doesn’t dignify that with a laugh.

::Go up the wall, two floors. No one’s by the doors - I can let you out onto the hall from here, no problem. Standing by cameras G16 to G20; standing by cameras G20 to G24, and that will have you in the room with him.:: Ratchet pauses. ::There’s gunfire at Officer’s objective. No reports of enforcers injured, no visuals. Feldspar knows - he’s got additional guards inbound. Six targets in the room with him, no collateral - four more moving up to him. They don’t seem to realize what a mess you’ve made on B-side. No movement in that direction.::

Meister is already moving up the wall. ::Ten mechs ain’t bad. Rest of them staying put?:: He’s already planning the exfil - kill Feldspar and his guards, then work his way down the building, eliminating anyone foolish enough to get in his way. There are only supposed to be thirty-three targets in the building, including Feldspar - he’s killed fourteen. It’s not great odds, even once he’s taken out Feldspar’s guards, but… walking out the front door sends a message, and with what he’s seen so far, he’s eager to send it.

::Sitting tight. Basement level’s empty, first floor has two targets - recharging over on C-side. Second floor has three targets in a room with two collateral - collateral’s in no shape to go anywhere, and cuffed to a berth, but the targets should come after you if they hear you coming, and I doubt they’ll kill the collateral first. One more target who’s isolated himself - repairing some bent plating, it should keep him busy unless he’s called for specifically. Everyone else who was on the floor moved up to guard Feldspar. Last two are two rooms over from Feldspar, talking - they’ll probably come running when the shooting starts.::

::Wait, all ten guards are in the room with Feldspar?:: An idea begins to form. Not a nice one.

::All but two - he’s got them guarding the door outside.::

::Window access to the room?::

Ratchet hesitates. ::Yes. No balcony. Clear line of sight into the room, and out of it.::

::I have a bad idea, Medic.::

A long, long, pause, and he waits, hanging just below the elevator doors.

::Sure. I’m listening.::

::What’s the fastest way out of here?::

::This is going to turn into you climbing around on the outside of the building. I’m going to tell you, right now, that I disapprove strongly. That I, in fact, hate this idea. We’ll revisit this topic, at volume, in person.:: Ratchet’s voice drips disdain, and Meister almost - almost - flinches at the thought of that conversation, but the medic is a professional - now that he’s expressed his disapproval, the topic is shelved until the mission is over. ::There’s a window to your north once you get out of the elevator. You’ll have to move quickly - the guards won’t see you, but they might hear the doors open. There’s a cart thirty meters down the hall in that direction - if you can get out, move, and get behind it while I get the doors shut, you might be able to make the timings work.::

::I can take one guard, if he gets too close. They’re gonna know, though. If they realize, drop the loops on this floor and B6 and B7; the surprise might give me the edge.::

::Mhm.:: Ratchet gives an annoyed hum. ::If he doesn’t?::

::Going out the window.:: Meister grins beneath his battlemask. ::Didn’t think I’d get a chance to use them. I brought grenades.::

Ratchet is silent for a moment, processing that. ::I… hate this idea only marginally less than I did a moment ago. The window is probably bulletproof. How are you getting the grenades inside?::

::Don’t worry about it. I’ll need Cameras G12 to G16.::

::Standing by, G12 to G16. Doors opening on a three-count on your go. Closing immediately, be ready to move. Cart is 32 meters north, on the right side of the hallway. No obstacles - good luck.::

The comms go silent, waiting for his command. He gives a last check, hauls himself into position...

::Go.::

Three-two-one, and the door starts to slide open, not silently, but not a loud noise, either. Light cracks into the darkness of the elevator shaft, and as soon as there’s space, Meister is moving - pulling himself up and over, ducking low, half-sprinting down the hall. He barely bothers to register the hallway as he moves, following Ratchet’s directions near-blindly; it’s only once he’s safely behind the cart, elevator doors slid shut behind him, that he bothers to let his focus stray.

::Anything?::

::One of them heard.:: Ratchet’s voice is terse. ::He’s called it in, and is checking it out. His partner is moving up with him - keeping him in sight.::

It’s not good news - he won’t be able to kill both of them with the knife. Two mechs means that, whatever he does, Feldspar’s men will know - and while he’s still confident he can handle it, fighting eight guards in a hallway won’t be fun.

He can hear as the guard crosses to the elevator, examines it, pushes the button. Can almost feel his gaze as he examines the hallway, a psychosomatic pricking against his plating. He stays perfectly, perfectly still, letting his mods hide him as much as the cart - muffling even the faintest frame-sounds in a way that no other mech can.

The guards aren’t looking for assassins. They’re expecting cops - and that’s the only reason that the one looking for him turns away.

Meister waits for a long, long moment before moving again.

Thermals show no signs of an alarm on the windows - here, almost sixty meters off the ground, it’s not surprising. He pops it open carefully, slipping out to dangle by a palm as he closes it behind himself, and makes his way across the steel outside of the tower.

::Not far - forty meters to go.:: Ratchet’s voice is relieved. ::They’ve gone back to the door. They aren’t expecting you - mind filling me in on the plan?::

::Depends. Where’s Feldspar, relative to the window?::

::Far left, towards the building’s interior. The walls are reinforced, if the schematics are accurate - three, four inches of steel.::

::Enough to take a grenade, then. Gonna blast the window with my sonics, then toss in a couple grenades. I’d rather not blow him up, but I’ll take what I can get - clear out the room, and take anyone else at the doorway.::

::Toss in a couple -:: Ratchet trails off. ::How many grenades did you bring, Killer?::

::Enough.:: He keeps the response flip, sensing Ratchet’s growing frustration as he works his way over the wall.

::How many grenades is enough, Killer?::

::Enough.::

There’s a frustrated blat of static across the comms, and Ratchet doesn’t reply. Meister doesn’t let it bother him as he angles himself into position, grabbing a bandolier with a half-dozen grenades out of his subspace as he does. Ratchet won’t stay silent if he spots a threat, no matter how annoyed he is.

Booting his sonics takes a klik - the power draw is substantial, necessitating his frame to rewire itself in a rapid sequence of micro-transformations to accommodate it. It’s not painful, but he can’t transform directly into his alt without undoing the changes - an inconvenience at the best of times.

Still, the deep-seated speakers are perfect for this.

He reaches out, carefully keeping his frame out of sight, and touches the glass. It’s heavy, thick stuff, sturdy enough to block a bullet, possibly even an explosion - but that’s not the plan, not at all, and he lets the sonics rumble a sub-audible frequency. It shakes his whole frame, the baffles that silence his movements enough to protect him from the worst effects of the vibration - this is what they were designed for, after all.

The glass vibrates back, and delicate sensors in his fingers pick it up. Delicate calculations, careful calibrations, offlined audials -

And the world explodes with noise.

It’s a deep, base roar, too loud for the shattering of the window to even register by comparison - loud enough to stun the mechs standing in the room, to daze anyone in audialshot. He flips up onto the windowframe, shards of glass crunching underpede, and lets out another rumble, tossing a grenade into the room as he does - the base is enough to wash out even the sound of the explosion in a sea of deafening white noise. The grenade explodes - everyone in the room is just staring, as he chucks another, and another, and draws his gun -

The door bursts open just as the next grenade goes off, and he can see two bodies being tossed away through the flames. The third launches one mech out the window, frame contorting wildly as he falls, burning, to the ground - it tosses three other mechs back into the wall, their frames landing at odd angles but not yet graying. He’s up, and moving, letting noise move with him, a constant subsonic wail that disorients the deafened mechs around him, shakes their sensors in their frames, damages even the delicate mechanics of optics -

He shoots the three mechs on the floor - they’re too dazed to fight back; even the tank greys quickly when he closes with it, jams the pistol beneath heavy armor, and fires. The mechs caught in the first blast are worse off - two are grey, one more struggling to rise on legs that his frame hasn’t yet registered aren’t there - he finishes that one quickly, two shots to the helm. The two outside the door have been flung away from it - either dead, or dying, he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t have time to go check as the last guard standing rallies, draws a gun, and fires -

He dives under the shot even as it goes wide. The other mech is half-blind, all-deaf, dazed with the force of the noise still assaulting him - Meister trades his pistol for a knife, closes, and cuts the guard’s cables before he can even register that the assassin has moved.

Then it’s just Feldspar.

Meister lets the noise quiet, sonics dampening even as he begins the microtransformations to take them back offline. He onlines his audials to silence, save for the whimpering of the badly-damaged mech in front of him, and a soft, pained groan from the hall. A quick scan via infrared is enough to tell him that there are only three mechs left alive on this floor - the two in the room next door have fled.

He grabs Feldspar by the throat, and drags him to his knees.

The gang lord is badly, badly damaged - frame warped by heat and the force of the blast, optics shattered by sonics. He barely reacts to Meister’s touch, whole frame barely-functional - audials definitely offline. Meister grins, and unspools his cable.

He finds an undamaged port with a little effort - the first one he tries is too heat-scarred to use, but the other wrist is fine, with a little delicate bending. Feldspar’s processor is a mess, ablaze with agony - it’s painful to touch, to hack, but he wants the other mech to know.

Firewalls crumble before him - Feldspar is in too much pain to defend himself. Meister doesn’t go in far, though - doesn’t need to. There’s nothing in the other mech’s mind he wants, except for Feldspar to know exactly who he is before he rejoins the Well.

::Meister.:: The gang lord’s mental voice is weak. ::Who hired you?::

Meister laughs, forcing the other mech’s mind to writhe beneath his. ::You did. Wrote me the check the moment you decided that just cheating and robbing weren’t enough for you. Lotta mechs are gonna breath easy with you dead, mech.:: He grins. ::Prowl’s gonna breath easy. Gonna tear everything you’ve built apart - you should see him talk about it. ‘S a thing of beauty.::

Feldspar’s processor reels under that. ::You work for -::

::- the cops? Nah, never. Pit, I’d’a left you alone, if you hadn’t touched what was mine.:: It’s a lie, but he can feel the way it makes terror shoot through Feldspar’s processor. ::You’re gonna die slow, mech. Cops ain’t coming for a long time. Bleed like yours… I’d reckon you’ll have, what, a joor? Think about that while you hurt, mech. Try an be sorry, maybe.::

He withdraws, leaving the other mech trapped - unplugs, and Feldspar is alone in his own frame once again, unable to move, unable to hear or see the outside world, with nothing but his pain for company.

Meister regards the limp frame before him for only a moment before cutting it’s lines. The fear is enough - he’s not unprofessional enough to leave a target alive just because it’s a sure thing. Then he grabs the other mech’s helm and pulses magnetic charge through it until he can feel the shielding fail around Feldspar’s memory cores - putting the mention of Prowl beyond the reach of even the best mnemosurgeons.

He strides out into the hallway over a sea of broken glass and energon, onlining his comms as he goes.

::Ratchet, what’s the situation?:: He finishes the mech in the hall, too, heading to the stairs. He’s not worried about cameras anymore - he wants to be seen. Wants mechs to know he’s coming for them.

::Slagging pit, mech, everyone’s gone. The rest of the gang ran for it as soon as you started blasting - collateral’s still up and about, but they’re mostly hiding under desks. Head for the street - mechs probably heard that in slagging Simfur, Meister, what the pit were you thinking -::

::It worked. They didn’t even get a hit on me.:: It’s a better outcome than he was expecting.

::And you blew out half your own sensors and burned through all your energon in the process, I expect! Speaking of - vitals! What are you at?:: Ratchet half-snaps the word at him, and Meister lets his frame sag a little in anticipation of the medic’s reaction.

::Not too bad on the sensors - three major arrays and I’ll need all new baffles on my left side. 18% on energon - I topped up before coming here, was at 89% before I turned on my sonics. Not bad consumption for just over twenty kliks with them.:: There are safeties in place to prevent him from knocking himself into stasis, of course - but they leave precious little fuel for anything else, like escaping. Still, it’s been a long time since he accidentally reached that point, and Ratchet’s disapproving snort does grate.

::You have a cube on you? Drink it.:: The medic’s voice brokers no argument. ::I’m not having you get caught because you ran out of energon halfway across the city and fell on a cop. Then swing into that door on your right - don’t stay long, but I’d rather those mechs not still be tied up with their panels off when the cops show up.::

He obeys almost on automatic - in the post-combat haze, with all of his targets either dead or fled, it’s easier to just listen as Ratchet talks him through his escape. Experience is enough for him to keep moving, to get him out of the building, as Ratchet keeps up a running stream of orders, questions, updates - until at last he’s out, in the open air, and can feel his mind clearing as if from a Rust Sea fog. Ratchet goes quiet as he makes his ascent to the rooftops, giving him a chance to collect himself.

He’s calm, frame loose with the satisfaction of a well-done hit, by the time he comms the medic again. ::Alright. I’m free and clear - I’ll head back to the clinic.::

::Glad to hear it - I’ll be waiting.:: But Ratchet’s tone takes on a teasing lilt. ::Not gonna go visit your cop, first? See if it was as good for him as it was for you?::

Meister laughs, letting his voice carry, finally, on the night breeze. ::Nah, mech. Never gonna see him again, if we’re both lucky - this was a one-time thing. He’ll have me in cuffs if he ever gets sight of me again, I promise… Better for us both I keep my distance.

::Shame.:: Ratchet chuckles. ::He was cute. Thought I might finally get some sparklings to coo over.::

That’s enough that Meister almost misses his next leap, scrambling desperately for the ledge as he nearly face-plants against a wall.

::Ratchet!:: - he half-wails the medic’s name in a burst of static, but the older mech has signed off comms with a cackle, and there’s nothing to do but pull himself back onto the wall and laugh as he makes his way across the city, spark lighter than it’s been in orns.