Baby Boom (or, Why you should always read the manual first) Chapter 16
Title: Baby Boom (or, Why you should always read the manual first) Chapter 16
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Characters: Sparklings. Ratchet. Skyfire. Perceptor.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
Thundercracker blinked at his trine leader.
“I’m not?”
“You’re not.” Starscream said flatly, arms crossed, and the other seekerling shrugged.
“Well, neither are you. Does this mean it’s wearing off, or are we just growing up like normal sparklings?”
“It’s happening too fast to be just physical maturation. Thank Primus, this can’t be over soon enough.”
“That’s good…” Thundercracker trailed off, shaking his head briefly.
“ ‘Cracker? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just… a little dizzy…” The blue jet swayed, then collapsed into the other seekerling’s arms.
= = =
It had not been a very good day so far for Ratchet.
First, Wheeljack had fallen quiet (a worrying occurrence, considering how the little engineer had not shut up ever since Ratchet could understand him once more), prompting the medic to abandon his paperwork and hasten to the baby Lancia’s side in double quick time. Then, the sparkling had looked up at him, optics dim and hazy, mumbling his name, before toppling backwards, sprawling lifelessly on the medical berth the CMO had set him on.
Ratchet had picked him up, frantically scanning the tiny mech when another voice sounded over his comm. The ambulance automatically started for the med bay doors to get to his other sparkling, but stopped in his tracks, torn between the one still in his care and the one who’d been calling for him, sounding terrified before suddenly cutting off.
Clenching his fists, he opened a line to Skyfire.
//Skyfire! Is Starscream with you?//
The shuttle’s reply didn’t come immediately, which did not make the medic feel any better.
//Sorry Ratchet, Starscream’s with Thundercracker. Perceptor’s gone to get them and bring them to you. Skywarp says something’s wrong with the both of them, I just got him calmed down. We’re headed to the med bay as well.//
//Understood.//
Casting one last glance at his med bay doors, Ratchet moved to start scanning Wheeljack once more. If something was affecting the sparklings, he’d best get started on figuring out what. But when he turned around, the sparkling was no longer there.
In his place, Ratchet saw a familiar looking youngling, white with green and red detailing, a youngling with a facemask and vocal indicators, optics still dark, but a basic scan indicated that his systems were working normally, thank Primus.
“Ratchet!”
Looking back, he noted that Perceptor had run in, a limp form in his arms while Skyfire brought up the rear with a similarly unconscious Thundercracker and a shrilling Skywarp. The medic gestured to the next two berths and the two seekers were carefully settled on the platforms.
“Did you see what happened?” Ratchet did a quick visual exam of Starscream, refusing to acknowledge the relief he felt when he found the seeker uninjured.
“No. Perceptor commed me after he’d reached my quarters for help carrying them over.”
The microscope nodded. “I found them in their current state and realised I would be unable to convey the both of them on my own.”
“Why did you go get them instead of Skyfire? Surely it’d be easier for him to carry two sparklings.” Ratchet wondered, even as he moved on to Thundercracker. The researcher’s answer was quiet.
“As you know, Ratchet, I am always armed. We were concerned that it might be necessary. I am gratified to report that it wasn’t.”
The red and white mech glanced at him, nodding before reaching out for the fretting seekerling still in Skyfire’s arms.
“Let me check you over too, Skywarp. It’s nothing to be worried about, they’re just offline and will wake on their own soon.”
The little teleporter chirred, visibly relaxing, and once he’d finished, Ratchet set him on Thundercracker’s berth. Perceptor had moved over to Wheeljack while Skyfire stayed by the blue seeker’s side, and the shuttle called out to the microscope looking at the no longer so little Lancia curiously.
“Any idea what just happened, ‘Cep?”
“An inkling. But I will need some equipment from my lab to be certain.” The mech turned on his heel and strode to the exit. “I will return momentarily.”
Perceptor had just cleared the doors when Starscream woke. The young seeker snapped upright, then wobbled alarmingly before Ratchet caught hold of him. Starscream swept his optics over the mech in front of him, then lashed out wildly.
“Where were you?! Wheeljack didn’t answer my comms! TC was unconscious!” White arms wrapped around the seeker as the medic held him close, and the youngling jet tried to jerk away, hissing angrily. “Bet you’d have come running if Wheeljack had been the one with Thundercracker.”
“It would have done neither of you any good for me to have left one for the other without having the first idea of what was wrong. I chose to stay with whichever sparkling that was with me at the time and make sure that he was alright. I would do the same thing, no matter if that sparkling was Wheeljack or yourself.” Ratchet said, tone as resolute as his grip on the flier. “I do the same on the battlefield; sticking with the mech I’m working on instead of running all over the place and being no use to anyone.”
Starscream crumbled, pressing his face against the mech’s windshield, even as he hammered weakly at the medic. “I called and called, and you never came. Do you have any idea how scared-” He broke off, trying to regain some control. “How concerned I was?”
“I’m here now, I’m sorry you were worried.” The CMO murmured soothingly into his audio. The jet’s intakes slowly eased, and Starscream looked up when someone nudged his shoulder to see Skyfire holding out a ration of energon.
“Refuel, you sound like you need it.”
The young seeker took the cube, shooting the larger flier a querying look. Skyfire chuckled, politely not commenting on the coolant tracks the jet swiped off his cheekplates as he drank.
“I’m very familiar with your temper, Starscream. Youngling or not, you weren’t hitting Ratchet hard enough for how ticked off you were.”
“Thanks a lot, Skyfire.” The CMO sighed with a half-sparked glare, and the shuttle smiled benignly back at him. A chuckle from behind him had the chevroned mech glancing in that direction, and Wheeljack slowly pulled himself upright, gripping the edges of the berth tightly to stay that way.
“You’re a tough mech, Ratchet. You can handle it.”
Ratchet snorted and Starscream smirked into his cube as Skyfire drew more energon and brought one portion to Wheeljack. The youngling engineer accepted the bright pink cube, then flickered his vocal indicators hopefully at the shuttle.
“Do I get hugs as well?”
Skyfire laughed and acquiesced, giving the Lancia a quick hug before heading back to Thundercracker’s side with the remaining energon, just in time to see the blue jet wake and help him sit up on the berth. Still a little disoriented, Thundercracker fixed upon the one thing he could make his fuzzy CPU focus on.
“Skyfire?”
The shuttle clasped his shoulder, sounding relieved (even though Starscream and Wheeljack seemed none the worse for wear after their own blackouts, there was still that faint concern lingering in his mind while Thundercracker was still offline). “Glad to see you awake, Thundercracker. Drink, you’re probably low on energy too.”
The seeker nodded, unable to reply out loud due to the cube he was already draining. Something smacked into his middle, and he looked down to see Skywarp clinging to him like he was magnetised there. Thundercracker polished off the last of his energon, then rested a hand on the smaller jet’s back.
The little teleporter chirred sulkily at him, and the blue flier sighed, petting his trinemate’s helm. “It’s not like I could have stopped it from happening, you know. Anyway, we’re fine now, and well on our way back to normal, I hope.”
Wheeljack sat up straight, looking alarmed. “Frag. Jazz and Prowl!”
“We haven’t heard from the others, they might not have reached the same phase as you, Starscream and Thundercracker yet.” Ratchet headed for his console. “All the same, I’ll check in with Prime. Skyfire, can you get Mirage or Bumblebee? Since Jazz isn’t surveying the Ark’s nooks and crannies any more, they should know where he is. And if that Porsche knows what’s good for him, where he is ought to be in recharge.”
The CMO called up a vidlink to the Prime’s quarters, then paused when a dimly lit room appeared, followed by a mech sized doorwinged form. Rebooting his optics, the medic immediately recognised that Bluestreak was the Datsun waving at him, not Prowl. The gunner held a finger to his lips, then whispered into the connection.
“Hey Ratchet. Can this wait ‘til later? We kinda just got him to recharge and waking him up so soon would be shame.”
“We? Where’s Optimus?”
“I just told you. In recharge.” Bluestreak moved the camera unit so that Ratchet could see the large mech laid out and unconscious on his berth. The medic stared.
“How did you manage that?”
“I volunteered to read Prowl a story and Optimus was listening in and he fell asleep partway through. Pity, he missed out on a really good ending.” The grey mech grinned. “Look at it this way, it’s probably not going to work once Prowl gets back to normal, so we might as well take advantage of such tactics while we can, hm?”
Grey doorwings flickered jauntily, and Ratchet felt his processors start to ache. “I… nevermind. Where is Prowl then?”
“Oh, he’s over here.” The scene shifted again to show a black and white sparkling going through a datapad, before Prowl looked up and chirped curiously at the CMO.
“Ratchet?”
“Are you feeling alright, Prowl? Any dizzy spells?”
The baby tactician shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Is something wrong?”
Ratchet sighed. “I don’t think so. But get Bluestreak to take you to the med bay. It’s important.”
Prowl clicked an agreement, then the connection ended and Ratchet rejoined the rest of the mechs in the med bay where Skyfire was just ending his own conversation with Mirage.
“Jazz is offline. Mirage has him, but it seems to just be normal recharge. I’m getting him in here just in case.”
The ambulance nodded, and Perceptor returned just then, arms laden with miscellaneous objects and devices, with Bluestreak and Mirage a half step behind him, both carrying black and white sparklings and looking anxious. Gunner and spy stalled when they saw the younglings with Ratchet and Skyfire, but hurried forward when the medic raised an optic ridge at them expectantly. Mirage set a still recharging Jazz down on Wheeljack’s berth, then spoke to the microscope.
“Perceptor? Have you found a cure already?”
“Their change in state is not my doing, but I’m hoping that by comparing the younglings to the mechs who are still sparklings I might be able to derive a means of returning them all to mech form.” The researcher replied distantly as he powered up one of the devices, handing another to Skyfire and a third to Starscream.
“Why not just let them grow up on their own?” Bluestreak asked, and Ratchet answered this time.
“Too big a risk. We don’t know when that will happen for the rest of our mechs here, and sparklings and younglings are still no match for grown bots.”
“Tell that to Dirge and Ramjet.” Wheeljack chuckled, and the seekers smirked at each other. The medic vented air in exasperation at them.
“Yes, you beat the ever loving scrap out of two full grown mechs. Good job, well done, etcetera etcetera. Regardless, risk your afts like that again and I’ll tan the paint off them, you get me?”
There was a dutiful chorus of “Yes Ratchet” and the medic glowered at the still grinning younglings.
“Don’t you take this lightly!”
“Yes Ratchet.”
“I mean it!”
“Yes Ratchet.”
“Primus. I give up.”
“Yes Ratchet.”
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Characters: Sparklings. Ratchet. Skyfire. Perceptor.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
Thundercracker blinked at his trine leader.
“I’m not?”
“You’re not.” Starscream said flatly, arms crossed, and the other seekerling shrugged.
“Well, neither are you. Does this mean it’s wearing off, or are we just growing up like normal sparklings?”
“It’s happening too fast to be just physical maturation. Thank Primus, this can’t be over soon enough.”
“That’s good…” Thundercracker trailed off, shaking his head briefly.
“ ‘Cracker? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just… a little dizzy…” The blue jet swayed, then collapsed into the other seekerling’s arms.
= = =
It had not been a very good day so far for Ratchet.
First, Wheeljack had fallen quiet (a worrying occurrence, considering how the little engineer had not shut up ever since Ratchet could understand him once more), prompting the medic to abandon his paperwork and hasten to the baby Lancia’s side in double quick time. Then, the sparkling had looked up at him, optics dim and hazy, mumbling his name, before toppling backwards, sprawling lifelessly on the medical berth the CMO had set him on.
Ratchet had picked him up, frantically scanning the tiny mech when another voice sounded over his comm. The ambulance automatically started for the med bay doors to get to his other sparkling, but stopped in his tracks, torn between the one still in his care and the one who’d been calling for him, sounding terrified before suddenly cutting off.
Clenching his fists, he opened a line to Skyfire.
//Skyfire! Is Starscream with you?//
The shuttle’s reply didn’t come immediately, which did not make the medic feel any better.
//Sorry Ratchet, Starscream’s with Thundercracker. Perceptor’s gone to get them and bring them to you. Skywarp says something’s wrong with the both of them, I just got him calmed down. We’re headed to the med bay as well.//
//Understood.//
Casting one last glance at his med bay doors, Ratchet moved to start scanning Wheeljack once more. If something was affecting the sparklings, he’d best get started on figuring out what. But when he turned around, the sparkling was no longer there.
In his place, Ratchet saw a familiar looking youngling, white with green and red detailing, a youngling with a facemask and vocal indicators, optics still dark, but a basic scan indicated that his systems were working normally, thank Primus.
“Ratchet!”
Looking back, he noted that Perceptor had run in, a limp form in his arms while Skyfire brought up the rear with a similarly unconscious Thundercracker and a shrilling Skywarp. The medic gestured to the next two berths and the two seekers were carefully settled on the platforms.
“Did you see what happened?” Ratchet did a quick visual exam of Starscream, refusing to acknowledge the relief he felt when he found the seeker uninjured.
“No. Perceptor commed me after he’d reached my quarters for help carrying them over.”
The microscope nodded. “I found them in their current state and realised I would be unable to convey the both of them on my own.”
“Why did you go get them instead of Skyfire? Surely it’d be easier for him to carry two sparklings.” Ratchet wondered, even as he moved on to Thundercracker. The researcher’s answer was quiet.
“As you know, Ratchet, I am always armed. We were concerned that it might be necessary. I am gratified to report that it wasn’t.”
The red and white mech glanced at him, nodding before reaching out for the fretting seekerling still in Skyfire’s arms.
“Let me check you over too, Skywarp. It’s nothing to be worried about, they’re just offline and will wake on their own soon.”
The little teleporter chirred, visibly relaxing, and once he’d finished, Ratchet set him on Thundercracker’s berth. Perceptor had moved over to Wheeljack while Skyfire stayed by the blue seeker’s side, and the shuttle called out to the microscope looking at the no longer so little Lancia curiously.
“Any idea what just happened, ‘Cep?”
“An inkling. But I will need some equipment from my lab to be certain.” The mech turned on his heel and strode to the exit. “I will return momentarily.”
Perceptor had just cleared the doors when Starscream woke. The young seeker snapped upright, then wobbled alarmingly before Ratchet caught hold of him. Starscream swept his optics over the mech in front of him, then lashed out wildly.
“Where were you?! Wheeljack didn’t answer my comms! TC was unconscious!” White arms wrapped around the seeker as the medic held him close, and the youngling jet tried to jerk away, hissing angrily. “Bet you’d have come running if Wheeljack had been the one with Thundercracker.”
“It would have done neither of you any good for me to have left one for the other without having the first idea of what was wrong. I chose to stay with whichever sparkling that was with me at the time and make sure that he was alright. I would do the same thing, no matter if that sparkling was Wheeljack or yourself.” Ratchet said, tone as resolute as his grip on the flier. “I do the same on the battlefield; sticking with the mech I’m working on instead of running all over the place and being no use to anyone.”
Starscream crumbled, pressing his face against the mech’s windshield, even as he hammered weakly at the medic. “I called and called, and you never came. Do you have any idea how scared-” He broke off, trying to regain some control. “How concerned I was?”
“I’m here now, I’m sorry you were worried.” The CMO murmured soothingly into his audio. The jet’s intakes slowly eased, and Starscream looked up when someone nudged his shoulder to see Skyfire holding out a ration of energon.
“Refuel, you sound like you need it.”
The young seeker took the cube, shooting the larger flier a querying look. Skyfire chuckled, politely not commenting on the coolant tracks the jet swiped off his cheekplates as he drank.
“I’m very familiar with your temper, Starscream. Youngling or not, you weren’t hitting Ratchet hard enough for how ticked off you were.”
“Thanks a lot, Skyfire.” The CMO sighed with a half-sparked glare, and the shuttle smiled benignly back at him. A chuckle from behind him had the chevroned mech glancing in that direction, and Wheeljack slowly pulled himself upright, gripping the edges of the berth tightly to stay that way.
“You’re a tough mech, Ratchet. You can handle it.”
Ratchet snorted and Starscream smirked into his cube as Skyfire drew more energon and brought one portion to Wheeljack. The youngling engineer accepted the bright pink cube, then flickered his vocal indicators hopefully at the shuttle.
“Do I get hugs as well?”
Skyfire laughed and acquiesced, giving the Lancia a quick hug before heading back to Thundercracker’s side with the remaining energon, just in time to see the blue jet wake and help him sit up on the berth. Still a little disoriented, Thundercracker fixed upon the one thing he could make his fuzzy CPU focus on.
“Skyfire?”
The shuttle clasped his shoulder, sounding relieved (even though Starscream and Wheeljack seemed none the worse for wear after their own blackouts, there was still that faint concern lingering in his mind while Thundercracker was still offline). “Glad to see you awake, Thundercracker. Drink, you’re probably low on energy too.”
The seeker nodded, unable to reply out loud due to the cube he was already draining. Something smacked into his middle, and he looked down to see Skywarp clinging to him like he was magnetised there. Thundercracker polished off the last of his energon, then rested a hand on the smaller jet’s back.
The little teleporter chirred sulkily at him, and the blue flier sighed, petting his trinemate’s helm. “It’s not like I could have stopped it from happening, you know. Anyway, we’re fine now, and well on our way back to normal, I hope.”
Wheeljack sat up straight, looking alarmed. “Frag. Jazz and Prowl!”
“We haven’t heard from the others, they might not have reached the same phase as you, Starscream and Thundercracker yet.” Ratchet headed for his console. “All the same, I’ll check in with Prime. Skyfire, can you get Mirage or Bumblebee? Since Jazz isn’t surveying the Ark’s nooks and crannies any more, they should know where he is. And if that Porsche knows what’s good for him, where he is ought to be in recharge.”
The CMO called up a vidlink to the Prime’s quarters, then paused when a dimly lit room appeared, followed by a mech sized doorwinged form. Rebooting his optics, the medic immediately recognised that Bluestreak was the Datsun waving at him, not Prowl. The gunner held a finger to his lips, then whispered into the connection.
“Hey Ratchet. Can this wait ‘til later? We kinda just got him to recharge and waking him up so soon would be shame.”
“We? Where’s Optimus?”
“I just told you. In recharge.” Bluestreak moved the camera unit so that Ratchet could see the large mech laid out and unconscious on his berth. The medic stared.
“How did you manage that?”
“I volunteered to read Prowl a story and Optimus was listening in and he fell asleep partway through. Pity, he missed out on a really good ending.” The grey mech grinned. “Look at it this way, it’s probably not going to work once Prowl gets back to normal, so we might as well take advantage of such tactics while we can, hm?”
Grey doorwings flickered jauntily, and Ratchet felt his processors start to ache. “I… nevermind. Where is Prowl then?”
“Oh, he’s over here.” The scene shifted again to show a black and white sparkling going through a datapad, before Prowl looked up and chirped curiously at the CMO.
“Ratchet?”
“Are you feeling alright, Prowl? Any dizzy spells?”
The baby tactician shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Is something wrong?”
Ratchet sighed. “I don’t think so. But get Bluestreak to take you to the med bay. It’s important.”
Prowl clicked an agreement, then the connection ended and Ratchet rejoined the rest of the mechs in the med bay where Skyfire was just ending his own conversation with Mirage.
“Jazz is offline. Mirage has him, but it seems to just be normal recharge. I’m getting him in here just in case.”
The ambulance nodded, and Perceptor returned just then, arms laden with miscellaneous objects and devices, with Bluestreak and Mirage a half step behind him, both carrying black and white sparklings and looking anxious. Gunner and spy stalled when they saw the younglings with Ratchet and Skyfire, but hurried forward when the medic raised an optic ridge at them expectantly. Mirage set a still recharging Jazz down on Wheeljack’s berth, then spoke to the microscope.
“Perceptor? Have you found a cure already?”
“Their change in state is not my doing, but I’m hoping that by comparing the younglings to the mechs who are still sparklings I might be able to derive a means of returning them all to mech form.” The researcher replied distantly as he powered up one of the devices, handing another to Skyfire and a third to Starscream.
“Why not just let them grow up on their own?” Bluestreak asked, and Ratchet answered this time.
“Too big a risk. We don’t know when that will happen for the rest of our mechs here, and sparklings and younglings are still no match for grown bots.”
“Tell that to Dirge and Ramjet.” Wheeljack chuckled, and the seekers smirked at each other. The medic vented air in exasperation at them.
“Yes, you beat the ever loving scrap out of two full grown mechs. Good job, well done, etcetera etcetera. Regardless, risk your afts like that again and I’ll tan the paint off them, you get me?”
There was a dutiful chorus of “Yes Ratchet” and the medic glowered at the still grinning younglings.
“Don’t you take this lightly!”
“Yes Ratchet.”
“I mean it!”
“Yes Ratchet.”
“Primus. I give up.”
“Yes Ratchet.”