Wild Ride (Cyberverse Mech!reader X Hot Rod)

31: Macadam

After some time, I felt Hot Rod stir against me, and I looked down to see him drowsily open his optics and blink a few times before slowly pushing off of me and stretching.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" I asked.

"Better, but we should get out of here and catch up with the others." Hot Rod said. I nodded and stood with a hiss of pain and weakness, Hot Rod catching me and stabilizing my slightly wobbly body. "You don't look too good, Y/D."

"I'll live. Let's move." I said as I shook off the weakness. As we climbed out the way we came, there was no sound of battle or anything really. It was eerily quiet and I didn't like that.

"Where is everyone?" Hot Rod whispered as he helped me out of the tunnel.

"I don't kn- no..." I gasped as my optics laid upon a familiar and dreadful sight. Just like the vision I had, towering in all its horrific glory, was the Quintesson ship. "Hot Rod, we have to move. Now!"

"What is that?" He asked.

"No time! Quickly before they -" I was cut off by a horrific sound for metallic tentecals and hovering bulbous forms, my head slowly turning to see a group of the Quintessons staring directly at us. "Hot Rod. Run!" The pair of us darted away from the Quintessons and down into an alleyway, the horrendous creatures zipping past us and disappearing down the streets.

"What the slag were those?" Hot Rod whispered.

"Quintessons. Nasty bastards. We need to take cover and figure out what t-" Suddenly a tentecal lunged out from a crevice and snatched my frame out of the alleyway.

"Y/D!" Hot Rod called out to me.

"Hot Rod! Run! Get out of here!" I cried to him as I struggled in the tightening grip of the Quintesson. My vision darkened as the life was squeezed out of me, and I remembered nothing more.

-----
"Easy there." A familiar voice said as my optics slowly opened, and I stared up at the gentle and friendly face of Macadam.

"Mac?" I asked as I tried to sit up from the bench I had been laid down on only to wince in pain.

"I wouldn't move so quickly. The Quintesson did some heavy damage to you." He said. "Surprisingly, it left you behind instead of taking you like the others."

"What about Hot Rod?" I asked fearfully as I looked about for him. "Is he okay? Have you seen him? Please tell me the Quintessons didn't snatched him! Oh Primus -"

"He will show up here eventually and will have a few friends with him." Macadam said with a smile and a gentle pat on my back. "Do not worry. I promise he will be safe and in one piece." For some reason, his words reassured me, and I let out a sigh of relief as I rested my back against the bench I was seated on. "You care about him quite a lot, don't you?"  He asked as he grabbed a thing of low-grade energon and handed it to me.

"I do. More than life itself." I said as I gingerly sipped the liquid. "But you already knew that."

"Believe it or not, Y/D, when it comes to you, I know nothing." I looked up from my drink and gave him a confused look.

"I thought you knew everything?"

"I do. Everything of this universe that is." He said. Macadam then pulled up a seat and sat across from me with a curious expression on his face. "Something which you are not."

"So I've been told." I muttered. "Yet none of it makes sense."

"A lot of things in life don't make sense because of what we don't know, and I can tell you don't know quite a bit."

"That's an understatement." I said as I stared into the blue liquid in my cup. "I've walked so many different paths that... I've lost my way. I was a killer, a prisoner, a student, a victim, an anomaly." I looked up at Macadam before speaking again. "I don't know what path I walk on now, I don't know anything."

"You do. You just haven't asked the right questions. But I know you will figure it out just like how many others like you did."

"How am I to ask the right questions if i don't know what I'm supposed to do?" I asked with a rather disheartening expression. "I'm just... I'm just so confused."

"Sometimes the answer is in the most obvious of places, yet we do not see it until the time is right. Take that energon for instance." Macadam said as he gestured to the drink. "I struggled with that mixture for quite some time, and I began to doubt myself and believe that there was no solution, but I found it in an unlikely place. The answers you seek will come. They just may not arrive in a way you'd expect."

"How did you find the solution?"

"I simply looked at things from a different angle, and there it was. We get so focused on viewing existence from one point of view that we forget that other versions exist."

"I never thought about it that way before." I said as I finished the drink. "But what should I do in the meantime?"

"You can help me clean this place up a little before your friends arrive." Macadam suggested. "It will give you a break, and I find that simple tasks like this help with clearing the mind." I cocked an optic ridge but chuckled and nodded as I agreed to assist the older bot.

He was right as always. The simple cleaning tasks that he gave me did help clear my thoughts. It was oddly therapeutic  how something as simple as sweeping away debris on the floor or wiping down tables could be. It took several days, but I had the place cleaned up and repaired enough so that it wasn't as much of a disaster as it was before. I felt oddly proud of my handiwork.

"Your friends should be here soon." Macadam said. "Why don't you go to the back and grab some energon before they arrive." I nodded and went into the back storeroom where he kept the low grade. I only took as much as I needed since I did not want to drain his stock. I took the quick swig and cleaned the glass before pondering what Macadam had told me. Things started to make sense now that my mind was clear.

'Everything will work out, okay?' I thought to myself as I tidied up some random things in the storeroom. 'It always does.' While I was putzing about Hot Rod, Clobber, Perceptor, and Dead-end came barreling inside after being chased by one of the Quintessons, the sound catching my attention.

"Why didn't they follow us?" I heard Hot Rod asked.

"Because Quintessons aren't allowed here." Macadam said as he stepped to the bar. "But you are, and I believe you are looking for someone." As Macadam said this, I stepped out from the storeroom and gave Hot Rod a soft smile.

"Y/D?" Hot Rod asked in almost disbelief. "You... you're alive?"

"I hope so." I chuckled as I approached the group. Hot Rod then ran to me and flung his arms around my shoulders, and buried his face into my chassis.

"I thought I lost you!" He sobbed. I then returned the embrace with a warm and gentle expression on my face.

"Are they a thing?" I heard Dead-end ask Clobber in a hushed voice.

"They should be."

-----
A/n Clobber ships it