Going Green

Chapter 33: You Stupid Bird!

After another day of bedrest, and a few more days full of physical therapy and testing his new servo, Ultra Magnus seemed like a new bot. It wasn't just Verdant who noticed, but an unspoken agreement passed between each member of Team Prime that their strict commander had changed after his injury.

There was more... leniency.

That was about it though. Ultra Magnus didn't change that much. He still has a stick up his aft.

Verdant kept herself calm and collected, optics offline and appendages hooked up to the computer. She was trying to go gray again, but so far, she wasn't having much luck.

Especially since Wheeljack thought it would be a good idea to paint her tentacles pink last night and she couldn't get over the feeling of dried paint in the crevices of her armour.

She had felt tremendously happier once she sedated him and splashed the bucket on his unconscious frame. The fragging wrecker got exactly what he deserved.

And he couldn't even clean it off because the Team got called to go investigate some signals.

"Still no luck?" Ratchet asked.

"Nope," Verdant onlined her optics and looked at him. "I've nearly downloaded every file in this computer without a single hint at going gray."

"Hmm," he walked over. "You really should let me take a look at your systems in case this is the work of Soundwave. We don't know what else could be hiding in there."

"I've checked my systems," Verdant pinched between her optics in annoyance. "There's nothing there."

Ratchet crossed his arms. "Soundwave is a skilled officer. He's Megatron's first choice as a third in command. If he didn't want you to know, he would have hidden it."

"Ugh, fine," Verdant rolled her optics. "You can check once the others get back. We're needed to man the groundbridge and Raf is sleeping."

"You're right," Ratchet backed off. "Until then, how would you feel about looking over my synthetic energon equations? It's going slow."

"Just equations?" Verdant questioned, standing up and following him to his work station. "I'm not the most proficient scientist."

"Neither was I," Ratchet sat down. "And I'm still terrible at physics."

She smiled. "Well, that's something I can do."

"Oh, and—" Ratchet reached over and pointed at a set of numbers on a datapad. "These are the constants around Earth. For example, this universe has a gravitational constant of 6.67×10-¹¹, which makes a massive impact on the structure of their elements, which we'll need to use in order to make the synthetic energon on Earth."

"I hate that gravity is different everywhere," Verdant frowned. "It's unnecessarily complicated, especially when I have to calculate how far Commander Magnus and I need to go in order to avoid the pull of black holes and Arathnezian crustaceans."

Ratchet nodded. "Speaking of Ultra Magnus, you both seem to be on much better terms now."

Verdant hummed and started working out the math. "Yes, well, there isn't much that a sensible conversation can't fix."

The comms crackled to life. "Autobot control," Optimus called through the comms. "Open the groundbridge, but ensure that the humans are kept at a safe distance, for we are bringing back a Decepticon prisoner."

Ratchet and Verdant's helms snapped up, and they looked at each other, optics wide with surprise.

"Quickly, get the humans," Ratchet ordered as he ran over to the bridge controls.