Prowl broke optic contact with Hot Shot, his grim expression unchanging as he surveyed the panicked bustle of incoming troopers all around the two. "So Saber says. But no Cybertronian has ever survived their spark being removed outside of surgical and experimental procedures - and the subjects were rendered mere machines by the process. There must be something else to this. Ratchet will know; he always does." He shifted his gaze back to Hot Shot, the top left of his visor arching inquisitively. "And what of the whereabouts of the Matrix?"
Ironhide would be moving people out of the way. Even throwing people, and trampling over others. The mech was in a panic. He didn’t know how to process this. For now anger will do.
Ratchet stood at the medbay door, tools in hand, wearing a plastic medical apron over his armor. He was prepared for a mess. When he got a good look at Prime, however, he dropped those tools to the floor. Ratchet wasn't gonna be able to help him. That kind of damage... there was no coming back from that. He motioned over to one of the beds in the medbay, shouting at those carrying Prime. "C'mon, Just... C'mon, get him on over here. Let's just... let's just try and make him comfortable." "All of you except the ones with Prime, get outta here! He doesn't need this kinda crowd suffocating him like this!"
Ironhide would find his destruction midigated by an orage dome made up of interlocking hexagons suddenly appearing around him. "Ironhide," The sharp abrasive voice of Trailbreak would belt out. "What in the pit do you think your doing! Settle down there's nothing breaking everything is going to do! Ratchet will do his job and we'll do ours, if anyone can pull through this it's Optimus."
Hot Shot opened his mouth as if to answer, hesitated, and shut it again, bowing his head. “No idea,” he murmured, shaking his head.
Star Saber looked back at Prowl and spoke. “I don’t know what happened to the Matrix, but when I looked at Prime’s wound, I saw it was missing.” He replied. “It wasn’t there. It was just...gone.” He sighed. “Prowl, if I may, I am going to be honest.” He said as he looked at the black and white mech again. “I don’t think Prime will make it.” Saber hated to be blunt, but this was one time where it was needed. “That wound...is not one any mech can recover from.”
“Boy....you bring this field down or I do it for you. Only and final warning.” Ironhide says as he starts flexing his hands. Steam coming out of him a bit.
"It comes down when you calm down and stop breaking everything," Trailbreak replied coldly. "Prime is in the medbay already. Just call down."
As Ratchet was bringing Prime up onto the bed, trying to make the mech comfortable, he yelled out "IRONHIDE, TRAILBREAKER, WILL YOU IDIOTS STOP IT AND GET OUT OF HERE IMMEDIATELY?!? PRIME IS GOING TO DIE, AND DO YOU GEAR-GRIDING KNUCKLEHEADS REALLY WANT THE LAST IMAGES HE SEES TO BE THAT?! "S-sorry about that, Optimus..." Ratchet walked over to a table, picking up a tray and bringing it on over to Optimus' bedside. "I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, Prime. You are going to pass on into the afterspark... To be completely blunt, I don't even know how you're still even holding on right now... Your spark is practically non-existent." He picked up a syringe, flicked it a bit, and then stuck it into the armor on Prime's arm. "This should make you more comfortable, commander..."
On the exterior, Prowl remained coolly neutral. Nothing new there. But internally, he had to resist the surge of anger and frustration that pulsed through his spark. Prime was a friend, a close friend. Not to mention the Autobots' greatest leader and the driving motivational symbol for the entire faction, without which the droves would crumble. But the Matrix? An ancient source of timeless power, able to reshape and reform Cybertron via the Well of All Sparks if the user so desired - at least, according to the legends. An older Prowl would've put aside such superstition. But he'd seen enough in his time to consider it more likely than not. And now the best case scenario is that the artifact was lost... the worst is that the Decepticons had taken it. "We'll see," was all the mech offered to Star Saber as he turned his back to him and went to enter the medbay, neither offering an invitation to follow nor commanding them to stay put. It was their decision, not his. "Your bedside manner never was the greatest, Bones," Prowl murmured as he slowly circled Prime's table, offering a gentle nod in greeting to his dying commander. It had been months since the two had last seen each other.
Star Saber walked in as well, keeping an eye on Prime’s condition. It was clear to him Prime would not last much longer and he didn’t know how to react except by remaining silent and keeping vigil. “Well, Ratchet?” He asked the medic. “Is Prime really not going to make it?” He knew the answer from what he had seen of the wound from the beginning, but he wanted to hear it from possibly the best medic ever to exist on Cybertron as well. For if Ratchet couldn’t do anything, then no one could.
"Truth be told Star Saber, I don't know how he's even alive right now. His spark might as well be non-existent. I dunno, I've never really believed much in religion, the Matrix of Leadership being a divine relic and all that, but maybe there's still residual energy from it left within him, keeping him online... All I know is, this is beyond even my abilities... While for some reason, he isn't dead yet, operating on him would be like operating on a corpse. "I just don't like lying to my patients, Prowl. If they're not gonna make it, I'm not gonna hide it from em'. I'll do my best to make them comfortable, sure, but I... I don't want them to live their final moments hearing lies."
Hot Shot hovered by the door, unsure if he should leave, but not willing to do so of his own volition. The bluntness of Ratchet’s report staggered him, but he tried his best to conceal his distress; no one in the room or outside it would benefit from seeing him in a panic. Besides, there were more important things to focus on, like the whereabouts of the Matrix. As he ran down the list of possibilities—captured by Megatron, destroyed, buried on the battlefield—he made a mental note to scan the site of Optimus’ last stand as soon as he could. He refused to admit to himself what he was waiting to occur before he would take action.
Chicane had by now gotten one of her legs repaired, but she couldn't get her left leg fully operable, and had thus made a makeshift crutch and was wobbling over to the medbay. She stopped near the entrance, and saw the crowd gathering. "Wait, wait, what happened? Whats Prime's status?" --- Spitfire reached the Bridge, and looked to Starscream. "Sir, how much time till we lift off? I don't see many other troops entering the ship, and I believe we are safe for lift off."
Whilst Shockwave had his qualms and would have expressed them without hesitation any other day, particularly after seeing that buzzsaw of his coming out, the chief science officer knew that this wasn't the time to argue with Wheeljack over what tools he used in the medbay, if it meant saving Megatron's life and keeping him stable. "Very well. Once the original leg is removed, you will need to access the desk behind you and utilize the sealant stored there to put a stop to the bleeding. At least until I can call upon a suitable replacement leg." From there, Shockwave raised his tree-trunk like forearm into view. The blunt, stump like appendage that hung quite a bit lower than the "normal" arm on the opposing side shifted a surprising layer of metal plates to make way for a strange emitter, one that would begin to faintly hum as golden energy manifested from the hole in the confined form of a scalpel. Shockwave knew that the chest plate had taken too much damage from the Matrix, jagged, semi-melted shards threatening even now to poke into Megatron's spark if he took too deep of a breath. With careful precision and close inspection to rediscover the ever faint seamlines where his chest plate connected to the rest of his body, Shockwave set to work delicately cutting through the connecting pegs that held Megatron's chest plate to his torso, prying the piece off once the connection had been severed and quickly casting it aside to a nearby table. Accessing some sort of device on his "gauntlet", Shockwave activated key mechanisms in the array over his and Wheeljack's head, apparently drawing from some hidden reserve of spare parts as an older, somewhat plain bit of armor from a past design Megatron had used would descend slowly from the ceiling by means of the mounted arms. "I will have to completely reconstruct his current chest plate, but this older armor will at least keep his spark protected." He noted, looking to Wheeljack. "How much of his leg will require amputation?" The faded red mech at last responded to stimuli as he felt the syringe enter through his armor, a wince triggering his dull optics to briefly glow just that much brighter as they threatened to close. Prime had been in a passive state in a vain effort to conserve energy, but by some uncertain means, enough of his senses had returned that he was unfortunately able to hear quite a bit of the recent commotion. Were he in better spirits, he would openly express his displeasure over such chaos occurring because of him, but he knew that he was on borrowed time even before reaching the med-bay. "R...Ratchet..." He uttered in what could barely be classified as a whisper.
"Joints are thoroughly fried, basically liquidated... up to and inside his pelvis, looks like," Wheeljack replied, carefully peeling back damaged panels on Megatron's thigh and rotating the leg to get a better look at the intricate workings. He was no doctor and knew very little of actual medicine, but even he could tell the damage was so extensive that it this point it didn't seem worth bothering with. But he wasn't about to believe what his optics were telling him, and he certainly wasn't going to articulate that to Shockwave. "If it were up to me, I'd get rid of everything from the waist down... it's all a wreck. But if I take it off at the top of the thigh and can hold off the leaking for long enough, we could feed some nanobytes inside before sealing it. The lord's self-healing systems aren't gonna help him at this point - and I reckon they won't for awhile - but the 'bytes will at least get things started. It's a long shot, and a tad risky, but it's better than nothing." Prowl folded his arms defiantly. "Well, if it's residual energy from the Matrix keeping him alive, perhaps there's some way to replicate that energy and use it to stabilize Prime until we can figure out something permanent."
“I, uh, can’t say,” Hot Shot mumbled. It wasn’t really a lie or a cover-up; he really had no way to explain Optimus’ catastrophic-yet-miraculous condition. “Not good right now. Sorry,” he sighed as he stepped inside and sealed the door behind him. Optimus’ death shouldn’t become a spectacle.
Ratchet leaned in upon hearing Prime's voice "Optimus... Good, that injection worked, reduced the pain enough for you to be coherent... Gah... if I only I had been in the field when this had happened, perhaps I could've saved your spark before it shrank like this..." Turning back to Prowl momentarily, Ratchet put his hands on his hips. "Believe me, the thought went through my mind. But the Matrix has always been such an enigma, so unknowable... If I had the likes of Pharma, Hoist, Ambulon, and Perceptor here, a full lab and about a stellar cycle of time, I could see us maybe being able to replicate the Matrix energy, but Prime... he's got mere moments left..." Ratchet turned back to Prime, a grim look on his face.
Star Saber frowned, it showing clearly in his blue and gold optics. “I’m not sure how he’s still alive either.” He admitted. “But I’m not a medic.” Looking at Prime, his gaze became sad and sympathetic. “He’s been with us the whole war and now...” Prowl’s defiant words made Star Saber look back at him, but while the sword-wielding mech wanted to get into a shouting match, he kept his temper. “Prowl, you’re typically a logical mech. So, face the facts. Prime is dying, and his spark is almost non-existent. The residual Matrix energy is no doubt fading, so there is nothing we can do.” He said calmly. “I’m sorry to say it, but Ratchet is right.” Outside the med-bay, Jetfire was listening in and felt his spark almost stop beating. It was hard to hear it, but he had been too curious and now he was hearing the worst news possible. Prime was...dying...
