Usual Standard of Quality

NCC Medical Ward

Like its previous incarnation, this medical ward was designed with the medic in mind, with all the modern advances to make the dirty work of repairs a world easier. It is well lit, the blue and violet metal of the walls and decor is a shade paler here, and the ubiquitous filigree is missing, all to assist in ease of cleaning. Still, the place veritably sparkles. In the furniture, there is a subtle motif of blades and sharp edges, as if to evoke the scalpel of a surgeon, although it is all quite safe. Around two dozen beds, more comfortable than their sharp looks would suggest, fill the medical ward, laid out in a tidy grid, and more can be flipped out of the walls should emergency demand it. A set of tracks on the ceiling mirror the grid of beds, allowing advanced scanning equipment and tolls to be swiveled around to the various beds. Computer terminals and cabinets are molded right into the walls at intervals, and while there are the normal medical security cameras, it appears as if someone has set some of the cameras specifically to watch the cabinets.

Contents:

Mixmaster Hook Hook's workshop &lt;HS&gt; Hackjob Grey Book Of Primus White Book Of Primus Medical Rules

Obvious exits: South &lt;S&gt; leads to NCC Spinal Pathway. West &lt;W&gt; leads to NCC Arena.

The medical bay is quiet today, and only a scattered few Constructicons are present. Mixmaster is working at a terminal against one wall, while next to him is a bubbling cauldron of vile brown sludge, from which he occasionally takes a sip.

Catechism looks about the medical ward nervously, which is odd. She usually laughs in the face of danger, but she isn't laughing now. Yes indeed, the Decepticons medical staff are far more scary than most enemies, and they aren't even enemies at all. Hypothetically. Repairs aren't that bad, but elective medical experiments... Catechism stays near the door, watching Mixmaster. Her left optic twitches as he sips whatever his work today is.

Mixmaster closes his sprawling, flag-filled game of minesweeper, and peers into the reflection on the monitor, looking at the slinking Decepticon that is revealed to him. "Ahhh, I've been wondering how long it would take for you to muster the courage to come and find me. I think I just won a bet!" He swivels around on his chair, staring at Catechism intently. "Well, are you goin to come in, or should we conduct our experiment in the doorway?"

Catechism grimaces as Mixmaster goads her. She grumbles, "Seems a lot of people are making bets about me, these days," but she enters the medical ward all the same, shooting the door one forlorn look as she approaches Mixmaster and his work. "Fine, I'm in. I have things to do aside from play lab rat, you know. It's not like I was avoiding this." Translation: she was avoiding this.

Mixmaster slurps thoughtfully on the unappealing sludge, and ponders continuing to tease Catechism, but he is eager to begin installing the harvested Unicron-derived material. "I have already begun machining the raw materials into the parts I recquire, although much of it had to be done by HAND... The metals were too strong and the additional compounds too... Icky for the automatic crafting system." He slurps again on the brown slime. "Tasty though."

Catechism's hand goes up to her mouth, to cover it, as her optics widen. Very politely, she tries to hide her abject horror and disgust. Yes, okay, so she did drink some acid and poison... twice... but she was already a bit toasted, and that was in a bar, a more acceptable setting for stupid behaviour. Her honour was on the line! Just eating random junk out of Unicron's head sound really.... urgh. She finally manages, weakly, "Oh. Well. Strong metals are good, right?" Newsflash: stars shine.

"Yes. That was the whole point in risking our necks going into unmapped catacombs inside a disarticulated evil god's /floating head/." Mixmaster replies dryly. "Have a seat. The procedure will begin momentarily." He says, curtly and professionally, and then leaves through a side door, the door closing swiftly behind him, leaving Catechism alone for the moment. Mixmaster can be heard giggling loudly to himself from the other room.

"The unmapped catacombs in the severed head of the dead god were the easy part," Catechism remarks, the side of her mouth quirking. The hard part is staying put when Mixmaster leaves her alone for a moment. Catechism looks over at the nearest exit wistfully, trying to calculate how fast she could get there. With a sigh, she forces herself down onto a table.

Mixmaster reappears, pushing a hover-pram full of parts of unpainted metal, each piece nestled safely in a support of molded foam. The metal seems normal enough, but has a dark, dim cast to the reflection cast upon it. Mixmaster appears calm and collected, as if his burst of laughter had not occured, and pushes cart of hard-earned gains towards Catechism. He taps a few keys on a bedside computer, and a glowing wireframe 1:1 scale hologram of Catechism's vehicle mode appears in the room, and a few more keystrokes show the parts dissassembling themselves, stripping down the key areas to thier understructure. "Here we have your design, and the modifications I plan to complete by integrating the new materials."

Catechism peers at the wireframe with interest but no real understanding. She squints at the reflection of the metal, wondering if perhaps this is evil soul-devouring armour that Mixmaster has created, given the source of the alloy additives. What she asks, however, is, "Is this going to explode?" A soul, she can do without, if she even has one. Being exploded is more inconvenient.

"Explode? Don't be silly!" Mixmaster replies with a laugh. "You will need to have your micromanagment self-repair and self-recognition systems disabled until your system adjusts to the materials. Wouldn't want your body rejecting the armor as a foreign contaminant, now would we?" Cheerful. He begins arranging the sheets, bolts, tubes, and other assorted bits and pieces.

Catechism looks around the medical ward and asks, clearly worried, "Is this sterile? Could I catch something off wi-fi while my micromanagment self-repair and self-recognition systems are disabled?" She brings up her settings control panel, mentally, but she hovers over unchecking those boxes, waiting for the reply.

"Software isn't the problem, it's your hardware self-repair system. BUT there shouldn't be anywhere on the base more sterile than here!" He replies excitedly, while interspersing himself between Catechism and the bubbling pot of smoldering brown goo.

Catechism does not do science. It shows. She looks over at the bubbling pot of brown goo and sighs. Catechism unchecks those boxes and applies the new settings. She reports glumly, "All right. Done." Catechism keeps a weather eye out for scraplets crawling about or other machine pests that might take advantage while she's basically immunosuppressed.

Catechism transforms, and the table is handily large enough to support her jet form. Of course the Decepticons would have jet sized tables. Catechism locks her landing gear, so she won't roll off the table. Laser cutter? That's a little more civilised than the chainsaw she sometimes sees, but it doesn't exactly even out the bubbling cauldron.

Catechism transforms to her jet mode, which is quite astoundingly simple for the coneheaded model that she is.

Mixmaster does miss his chainsaw, but this is a bit of a more delicate operation. Besides, big rusty chainsaw plus Deception with no immune system isn't a great idea. He begins to remove much of the jet's exterior, as each piece removed dissapears from the hologram projection.

XF-35B Astral Lightning &lt;Catechism&gt; watches the hologram dourly. She inquires, voice quavering a little, "Is it just me, or is it a bit drafty in here?" Catechism has been operated on before, extensively. It doesn't ever make it pleasant. She tries to be a good patient, though, staying still. Squirming will just make everything take longer.

"Yes, well, you'll want to look out for drafts. Wouldn't want to catch a cold!" Mixmaster replies, finishig the job of removing Catechism's old armor plating, leaving her looking far less aerodynamic and threatening. "Now, I'll begin implanting the new alloys. Let me know if you feel any strange sensations, but that won't stop me from finishing my work!" The constructicon says, and carefully, slowly, begins laying in the new armor plating over Catechism's frame.

XF-35B Astral Lightning &lt;Catechism&gt; is an ugly mess of green-painted support struts and rainbow-wire bundles, with various bypass ducts, turbomachinery, and tanks nestled in between - a tank for her acid, a tank for her jet fuel, and tanks for her rocket fuel. The hydrogen tank is freezing cold, and the lithium tank is boiling. She grumbles, "Oh, great. You know, this /all/ feels strange!"

"Oh. Well. Strange is normal, you're fine." Mixmaster says in a distracted tone, as he continues to carefully lay in the new armor plates, and paying special attention to the moving parts and other aerodynamic surfaces. "Nearly complete! My first successful integration of a normal Cybertronain frame with Unicron-derived mettalurgy!"

XF-35B Astral Lightning &lt;Catechism&gt; deadpans, "I haven't died, so I guess this counts as successfu-choo." She does not actually sneeze. What actually happens is a bit more like an engine backfire. In a small voice, Catechism asks, "Is that normal, too?" She feels really cold and shovery inside, even though she knows, rationally, that it isn't that cold. There is something screwy in the temperature evaluation and perception routines, she thinks.

Mixmaster isn't really listening to Catechism's questions, he just nods in agreement. "Yeah, don't die. That's why we're giving you new armor!" Which has nothing to do with what Catechism is saying. The final welds are made, returning Catechism to a fully plated jet instead of a naked one. "THERE! Your new plating it complete, and it should perform well under high stress and in a temperature range up to hundreds of degrees." "You might want to get that engine checked, though."

XF-35B Astral Lightning &lt;Catechism&gt; would appreciate not dying, yes, and provided that the new armour is superior to the tinfoil she had before, the new armour is nice, too. The vague, nagging full-body ache, however, is something quite unwelcome. She mumbles, "I'm feeling kind of crummy," she forces her voice louder, "But thank you. Your work is... what I would expect of you." Catechism leaves that ambiguous as to how she intends it to be taken.

"A mild side-effect of the inclusion of the Unicron-sourced metal. Your system will adjust, should only take a solar cycle or two." Mixmaster replies absently, tidying his tools and tossing thme onto the hover-cart with the excised bits of Catechism's original armor. "Get a few cubes of fresh high-grade to pep you up."

Did the doctor just prescribe booze? Oh yes! Catechism transforms cautiously, and then she air punches and exclaims, "Yes! You are officially the best doctor, now!" Until the next time. Something is nagging at her, however, something that should be very important... "...a solar cycle or two. Do I have to leave my self-repair off that long?"

XF-35B Astral Lightning transforms into robot form. Catechism's feet unfold, her arms unfold out of her body, her nosecone rotates through her body and ends up on her shoulders to expose her face, and her wings rotate into position.

"Hey, it's your skin. Turn it on now, if you like, but then the new parts will probably turn green and fall off." Mixmaster replies with a shrug. "Just go get drunk and forget about it."

Catechism claps her hands over her mouth as she thinks about what all might just be in her energon. She stutters, "I... right. Gonna go get one of those face masks. And hand wipes. And uhm." Her wings sag, and she sighs. Then her engine backfires again. Oh blast.

================================= Decepticon ================================= Message: 2/159                    Posted        Author Inquisitor's Orders               Sat Jan 09    Catechism -- Someone appears! Oh, it just Catechism with a mask over her face and over her jet intakes, too. She seems to have a bit of a drip problem, energon slowly drip-drip-dripping out of the chinks in her armour, reminiscent of the SR-71's famed condition. Catechism dabs at the drips with a package of wipes and directs, sounding just a bit hoarse and tired, "Intel. Provided that Soundwave doesn't have you running about and doing anything more useful, I want you on clean-up duty! Go find the most disgusting areas in our bases, take samples, and then sanitise with extreme prejudice. It's been too long since the Autobots came down with Cosmic Rust or scraplets. We need a new malady to menace them with->kerblam<!" That would be her engine backfiring. Her voice lowers, "Don't ask. Anyway. Right. Take the samples and forward them to the tech guys to see if they can't work out something more virulent. Catechism, out."

Spinny

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&lt;Decepticon&gt; Astrotrain says, "You're a dirty mech, Catechism."

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Catechism says, "Dirty isn't the iss-/shoo/!"

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Astrotrain says, "You're leakin worse than a shot-up fleshbag. DIRTY!"

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Catechism says, "N-no, that energon is quite clean!"

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Astrotrain says, "So wait, you're wasting good energon? That's even worse!"

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Catechism says, "I'm really just happy it's the energon and not the acid leaking, to be honest."

&lt;Decepticon&gt; Astrotrain says, "Acid's no good for that. I tried it in a mixture once to give it more punch."