The scrapper group are out collecting parts at the edge of a police/android firefight. The side of a nearby building explodes and the entire city block shakes. Minnie and Shelby skirt along the street edge, retreating from the heavy fire ahead, “Vick! Fall back! The fucking buildings going to give any second! Bullets, Vick!” Shelby bellowed down the block but you do not turn around. You stay, boots rooted to the spot because nearly a hundred feet from where you stand you see a face in the flames, electronic faceplate flickering momentarily and a slender gunmetal hand, reaching in earnest for you. Everything goes quiet and still, you can hear your own breath, your blood pumping in your ears. “VICK, DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” Shelby’s voice boomed down the noisy block. Before you can process anything else your legs are sprinting, carrying you past the groaning smoking building, into the flames, into the firefight. Your vision is a bouncing blur as your boots make heavy clapping noises as you move. You duck behind a car to avoid police fire, three bullets zinged past you, one hitting your arm and your shoulder blooms into white hot pain. You clap your hand to the gash and gasp as blood spills over your fingers. You look up, just beyond the car you are hiding behind is the android, faceplate flickering dimly as it reaches for you. You get to your hands and knees and crawl along the curb to it, reaching out a hand to grab its extended hand, “I got you, okay? Don’t worry, I-” before you could finish your sentence the world explodes into light and noise and heat, your hair whipping around your face violently. You cough, feeling static clinging to your skin and blink and look around, the car you had been hiding behind is on fire and there is a high pitched ringing in your ears that drowns out everything else. Your heart hammers as you frantically look around for the android. A few feet away you see it, arm still extended limply towards you laying on the sidewalk, faceplate flickering. You dive forward and snatch at its hand and recoil quickly as the sound of your sizzling palm was lost to you under the ringing in you ears, you scrub your charred palm on your thigh aggressively, “Fuck!” You shout, looking around panicked. You yank off your jacket and throw it over the androids head, “I’m sorry, Man. I gotta.” You grunt as you wrap your arms around the metallic skull under the jacket and yank with all of your might. At first nothing happened, except for heat bleeding through the leather of your jacket. You try again, leaning your weight against it and you feel tiny snaps of wires giving way. You wrap both arms around it and give one final tug and pull the head from the mangled body. You cradle it in your arms, heart pounding, ringing screaming in your ears, you turn and sprint back down the street and out of the firefight.

Thirty minutes later at the garage Shelby is beside himself as he watches you being stitched closed by Arthur. Despite the bottle shattering nearby Arthur’s hands are steady and you don’t jump.

“For a fucking TOASTER, Vick?! A TOASTER! You took a bullet for a toaster!” Shelby bellows as he paces, snatching a random chair and hurling it easily at a wall. He spins around, pointing at you, chest heaving, “You think radio repair guys take bullets for boomboxes!?” He shrieks.

“Boomboxes don’t have opinions on art and music, Shelby! Jesus! It was reaching out for me! It was a battlefield! What did you expect me to do!?” You bark back, sitting on a stool as Arthur fusses over you.

Shelby throws his arms in the air and roars in fury, “NOT GET FUCKING SHOT!”

Puck enters the room frowning and looking flustered by all of the noise carrying a wooden spoon. He’s sweating in an apron and his dark hair is a mess, “HEY!” He shrieks at an earsplitting volume, eyes wild as he pivots slowly pointing the wooden spoon around the room at each of them. He glowers for a moment, eyes narrowing as if gauging whether they all heard him and then his expression clears and he puts his balled fists on his hips like a toddler announcing something big, “I’m making soup.” He says with a small chirp and a vague wave of his spoon and then he leaves the room again. Shelby blinks at the news of soup and you turn in your stool squinting at where Puck just walked out.

On the other side of the room Minnie is bending over the android head with a screwdriver and a diagnostics system, “I mean… this thing survived a bomb, literally. You both did.” Minnie says casually, gesturing vaguely to the damage to the outside of the android head.

“A FUCKING BOMB, VICK! A. BOMB.” Shelby bellows and paces again huffing, jabbing himself in the chest with a thick finger, “I WATCHED YOU GET SHOT AND BLOWN UP OVER A TOASTER!” Shelby shrieks running his hands aggressively over his hair.

No one seems to notice the volume Shelby is projecting at or at the damaging he is causing as he moves.

Minnie continues as if Shelby hadn’t just been shrieking, “This thing is RATCHET.” She says using the screwdriver to neatly etch the word RATCHET into the android’s head casing, “but” She says as an afterthought, “There’s definitely somebody home.” She says tapping two wires together and the android’s faceplate lights up momentarily.

“Give it a body.” You say without preamble looking up, smoothing your hand over your freshly finished stitches as Arthur finishes snipping the thread of the last stitch.

Shelby lets out an incredulous bark of laughter “And now we are just donating a body to that thing!? No. Absolutely not. We can drop it at a Grace4Tech station later. This isn’t a goddamn charity!” He barks.

“I said, Give it a body!” You bellow, Minnie jumps, Shelby takes a half step back, looking at the floor and the room goes suddenly quiet. Minnie nods once without speaking. You are already moving across the room, boots clapping loudly. Shelby barks a scathing laugh, “A loaner. It can have a loaner but the moment we get that thing up and talking? It’s off to whatever institution for metal boys with broken hearts! You hear me, Vick!?”

But you don’t hear him, you are already pushing the doors open at the top of the stairs to get to the rooftop and was lighting a cigarette. The ringing in your ears was still there but far away now. You look down at your right palm and perfectly burned there is the waffle iron pattern of an androids palm. You run your fingers lightly over the burn, exhaling smoke as you look up and out over the city lights, the bustling people, the cars on the street, the sounds of explosions in the distance.

It might have been five minutes or fifty, it was hard to tell but your cigarette burned down to the filter while you were outside and a chill was settling in the air when the door to the stairs opened again. As you turn and look behind you Minnie is stepping tentatively across the rooftop toward you, “I can have a body on it by tomorrow morning. We have plenty of cheapo blanks. Easy peasy.” She says smiling warmly, she reaches out to you, not quite touching your shoulder, “Don’t be mad at Shelby, okay?” She says tucking a lock of perfectly coiled hair behind her ear, “You didn’t see it but me and Shel’ did, alright? We saw that bullet hit you and when that bomb went off? Shelby made this… this sound.” Minnie’s face does something horrified and wounded, “I thought… we thought… but then the smoke cleared and you were still on your feet and then you were running and I thought this sturdy bitch, you know?” She says with a bubbling laugh, her breath hitching half way through before it could escape her chest fully, “I’ve literally never seen anything like it. It was…. scary, Vick. Thought you’d be dead, for sure. FOR SURE. Dead. We can’t… can’t lose you. Can’t lose anybody in the family. Tables don’t work without their legs.” Minnie’s voice breaks on the last word and your eyes move from the cars below to her face. Her sweet, precious angel face and your stomach drops when you see her eyes are sparkling with tears in the shadows and neon lights.

You’re moving before you fully register that you are and your hands come up quickly to cup both sides of her jaw just as tears fall from her eyes and splash, glittering onto her cheeks, “Hey, hey, hey.” You say soothingly as you quickly brush the tears from her cheeks, “I’m fine. I’m fine. Table still has all of its legs. Just a scratch.” You say nodding slowly and she gives you a watery chuckle, leaning her face momentarily into your touch like a cat and she begins to nod with you. She wipes her face on the back of her sleeve, still chuckling, blinking leftover tears from her eyes, “Yeah, This time, Vick, but don’t do that again. You can’t be running into hot zones for surprise rescue missions, leaving the rest of us to watch you get blown up.” She says in what is meant to be a stern voice but simply sounds shaky. You look at her seriously and nod, feeling exhausted, “Swear it, Min. I will make sure to schedule all future rescue missions. Or at least pass around a memo.” You say grinning wryly. Minnie grins at you sarcastically, “Thank you, and seriously about what I said about Shelby, he was just scared, okay?” She says to you tilting her head. “Yeah but toasters, Min? How does he do this work and still call them that? How’s he going to have a fit at me over my instincts to protect a person?” You say using your hands dramatically to illustrate your point. Minnie grins at you and shrugs, “I don’t know, Shelby’s stubborn and passionate, you know that. Why don’t you get some sleep? You look exhausted. I’ll make your excuses for you… and I’ll have Puck save some soup for you. Squash and Lima bean.” Minnie says flourishing her eyebrows once dramatically.

“What in the fresh hell?” You say in a quiet, horrified voice.

She laughs warmly as she pulls the door open and shrugs again, looking over her shoulder as she walks through the door, “Whatever. I’m eating it. I’m starving. That lentil meatloaf he made last night wasn’t bad if you put soy sauce on it.”

You consider it for a second and nod, following behind her, “No, you’re right. That was an achievement for Puck. Have him save me some.” You say as you turn down the hallway to the bathrooms, “Good night!” She whispers loudly after you.

You climb into bed after kicking off your boots and yanking off your clothes, falling asleep almost instantly.

Almost an hour later you hear a tap on your door and Shelby’s whispered voice, “Vick? You wake?” But it barely registers and the next thing you register clearly is a booming thump on your door.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

You jerk awake, “What?!” You snap only half coherently.

“Breakfast, Vick!” You hear Puck bellowing through the door. “I am making omelettes! Ratchet helps, he is delight!” You hear him add as he moves away from your door. You groan and roll over, looking at your clock. 8:13 You grumble and sit up, pushing your hair out of your face and swing your legs off of the bed, pulling on random black jeans and a black tshirt from the dresser as you get to your feet, rubbing your eyes and opening your bedroom door to the bustling hive sounds of the life in the garage.

You blink at the harsh industrial lights of the hallway and stomp heavily down the metal stairs to the floor below where you can hear laughter coming from the kitchen.

When you enter the kitchen it’s already full of life. Puck is dutifully making breakfast and to your astonishment, the android is helping whisk eggs. You blink, furrowing and look around the room feeling half asleep and slightly grumpy at all of the light and noise. Minnie and Arthur are sitting at the counter watching breakfast being made, both laughing joyously at something Puck had just said that you missed, the android laughed loudest, sharp and tinny above the noise. You wince and notice Shelby leaning against the doorway grinning broadly at your expressIon, he holds out a cup of coffee and you nod graciously and take it.

He points with his beer bottle to the scene in the kitchen, “Do you see what you’ve done, Vick? There’s a fucking android in our kitchen making fucking eggs.” Shelby says shaking his head with a dry, sardonic laugh.

The androids head immediately lifts, turning to look at you and Shelby, its face panel bright and alert, “My name is Ratchet. Minnie has named me.” Ratchet says in a bright, exuberant voice. You watch the android, Ratchet for a moment as it watches you and your eyes move to its hands. Hands it did not have mere hours ago, hands now being used to learn to make breakfast for a family. Your mind moves instantly to a gun metal hand extending from flaming rubble and that same face looking at you. You absentmindedly run a finger over the waffle iron scar on your palm. You can hear the explosion and the faint ringing of the aftermath. You see the androids face but you are no longer in the kitchen, you are standing in a smoky street and you can hear gun fire. You can hear your boots on the pavement and everything suddenly feels far away.

“Vick?….Vick!” You hear Shelby’s voice from far away and then suddenly you feel yourself being shaken roughly.

You blink and look around wildly for a moment “Jesus! What?!” You bark instinctively and then realize everyone is staring at you. “Sorry. No. I’m fine. Sorry.” You snap quickly, “You… you look good, Ratchet. Making eggs then, huh?” You say quietly to Ratchet feeling something massive swelling in your chest that presses at the back of your eyes. Ratchet immediately nods sharply once, “You saved me. You ensured that I had a body. Now, Puck teaches me to make omelets, with cheese and peppers. I’m grateful for these things.” You feel the words press suddenly against your rib cage and you clear your throat and quickly wipe the sudden tears on your cheeks with the back of your hand and laugh dryly, “It was nothing.” You say quickly waving a hand dismissively, everyone turns abruptly to look at you but before anyone has a chance to argue Ratchet does, “It wasn’t nothing.” It says simply, “You did what soldiers do. That isn’t nothing. My first omelet will be for you, Victoria.” Ratchet says in a simple, pleasant voice. At the counter Minnie’s bottom lip trembles once and she looks down at her hands. The rest of the kitchen moves back into the motions of making breakfast and soft laughter.

Shelby claps you roughly on the shoulder and looks at you seriously, laughing incredulously, “Jesus, Vick. Maybe I should get you a beer instead of coffee?” He’s joking but he’s also dead serious.

He waits for a moment tilting his head, waiting to hear if you want to swap your morning coffee for a cold beer.