Going Green

Chapter 21: Unravel & Snap

"Good morning, Little Ms. Potty Mouth."

Verdant rolled over and shoved his face away. "Go away, Wheeljack, I don't wanna deal with your scrap today."

The wrecker scooted closer and nuzzled her arm with his forehelm. "No? I thought you liked me?"

"I hate you," Verdant told him venomously before reaching over and lightly kissing his cheek. "Now get up before I slag you."

"What would Ultra Magnus say if he knew all the mischief you do behind his back," Wheeljack teased.

Verdant glared. "Ultra Magnus has no problems with fraternizing as long as it's not during missions, his time, or with him."

"But does he know who you're fraternizing with?"

"He will," Verdant stood up. "Eventually."

"Well, would you look at that," Wheeljack whistled. "The intelligence officer can stand again."

Verdant took a few experimental steps around the room. "Add walking to the list."

"You shoud let me carry you anyway so we can still have an excuse for you to recharge in here," Wheeljack told her.

Verdant scoffed and pushed open his door. "Not happening. You'll be alone tonight."

"How rude of you."

Verdant pushed open the doors to the med-bay. Ratchet was awake, inspecting an unconscious vehicon. Wait, no, the vehicon was terminated.

"Pulled out his intake?" Verdant asked. "You noticed that poor soul was already missing a spark, right?"

Ratchet frowned and looked down at the chassis. "Oh."

"How long have you been at this, Doc?" Wheeljack asked, looking at the four cubes of drained high-grade on the lab desk.

"Since you both left yesterday."

Verdant took a seat in her chair. "Let us take over for a while. You've been keeping note of observations, right?"

"Yes," Ratchet pointed at a datapad. "Go over them before you do anything."

"Mhmm," Verdant picked it up and looked at a few lines before tossing it back on the table.

Normal reading was way too slow. She didn't have that kind of patience.

In fact, now was as good a time as any for her to try going white again. Verdant's optics brightened into white and she sunk into the corners of her massive processor.

"Are those white optics I'm seeing?" Wheeljack questioned.

"Yup," Verdant accessed the recordings from Knockout's lab. "Comm Optimus and Ratchet."

"If you keep tellin' me what to do..." Wheeljack grumbled but did as she said.

Verdant watched as Knockout continued an average experiment with synthetic energon, but he was interrupted by Starscream, who, after some waiting, added dark energon to the mix.

Her optics turned blue and widened. "Dark energon!"

Ratchet must have just walked back in. "Dark energon!?"

"Dark energon?" Wheeljack asked in confusion.

Ratchet strode forward. "I flushed out most of their infected energon, but dark energon lingers in the most annoying places. If we could get Optimus to shine some matrix of leadership over them, there would be no place left to hide."

Verdant nodded. "We'll need to remove the new glossas before then, or else it could protect strands of infected synthetic energon."

Ratchet nodded and began to pace. "All traces of contaminants need to be gone."