A/N: So, I really, really, really, really, really wanted to read a fic about sparkling Skyfire. I only found three that even mentioned him and none were really what I was looking for. For a while I was kinda like, darn, I wish someone would write that; and eventually decided to take my own crack at it.

I don't own Transformers (and every last one of you should be thankful for that) nor will I own Transformers. I'm not going to repeat the disclaimer again for this story because I'm going to assume you all have common sense and will choose to exercise it.

On with the Story!

It was two am local time and the halls were empty as Skyfire walked towards the science wing. Most of the 'bots here on Earth had adjusted to the native timetable; as a result spending the local nights in recharge.

Skyfire had just gotten back from an off world mission and while according to Cybertronian standards it hadn't been that long, it had been to Earth standards. Which is what the Aerialbots measured time with. They had been thoroughly displeased when they had learned that their adoptive caretaker was leaving and had made him promise to comeback with something for each of them. Even if it was only pictures and stories.

Knowing that once the sparklings learned he was back he was going to have five clingy fliers for quite some time, he decided to drop his samples and such off in the lab first and then make for their shared hanger.

The lab was surprisingly empty. Skyfire could see various projects strewn across pretty much every surface with the exception of his single, admittedly large, table towards the back. Spending most of his time in the field, he didn't need nearly as much space as the others did. There was a single device on a table that was blinking, but other than that all was still and quiet.

The samples and notes he'd collected were neatly but quickly laid out on his table. Excited to see his adoptive sparklings again, Skyfire accidentally bumped the table that held the blinking object on his way out. There was barely enough time to register the light flaring before his world went dark.

XoXoXoX

Ratchet was in a bad mood. Actually, no. Ratchet was in a very bad mood. He just knew something bad was going to happen, but he couldn't figure out what. He had the brief image of Sideswipe saying his 'medic senses were tingling' and had the urge to throw a wrench at him. But no, the twins had already done their stupid for the orn and were spending a full three joors on punishment detail. That also meant it wasn't a prank from them. The Dinobots were behaving themselves. Even the Aerialbots were on their best behavior, being careful not to give anyone any reason to have them on punishment detail when Skyfire got back.

The relations with the humans were going well. Prowl and Perceptor had been refueling and recharging lately without being dragged out of their respective lab or office. The Decepticons had been quiet, but not so much as to worry anyone.

Even Wheeljack's latest project was not only going well, but shouldn't have adverse effects if it were to go off. Ratchet didn't know all the details, nor did he want to, but from what he understood if it did go off it would simply revert any nearby bots to sparklinghood. Meaning that all memories and any gained coding would be repressed or locked away while the basic protocols they onlined with would take prevalence. Time consuming to fix, yes. Not a hard problem to fix though.

Everything was going far too well and any second now he would get a com that someone was horribly maimed and that-

::Hey Ratch?:: Wheeljack, of course. Ratchet was out the door in an instant. He had already gathered a good amount of tools in subspace, just knowing that something bad was going to happen.

::I didn't hear an explosion, what happened?::

::Well… You see, um, do you think you could come down to the lab for a few kliks?:: Wheeljack sounded nervous, but not like there was an emergency. Ratchet slowed his pace a little. His invention had probably gone off while Perceptor was in the lab and Wheeljack was nervous Ratchet would be upset with him.

::On my way.:: By the time Ratchet made it to the lab he had convinced himself of this and had slowed to a brisk walk. Upon entering he was greeted with the sight of Perceptor, on his hands and knees, half under the very large set of cabinets in the back corner, whispering encouragement and reassurances. Wheeljack was crouched down a little ways away.

"What are you doing?" Ratchet got two very different responses to that. Preceptor absolutely froze while Wheeljack shot up, whipping around to face him.

"Ratchet, you're here! That's good because, um…" Wheeljack was babbling. Though, unless Perceptor had come online with a very strange set of original coding, it didn't seem to be Perceptor that he was nervous about. "Fun fact; Ironhide wasn't the oldest mech on the Arc." Ratchet's processor stalled at that. Wasn't. As in, didn't used to be but now is.

Ironhide had been onlined around when resources were just getting scarce enough that laws were being passed against onlining new sparks via progressive frames. You'd have to find someone closer to Kup's age to find mechs that started in a first frame; but anyone older than Ironhide would have most likely gone through at least a second frame before a final.

Ratchet pushed passed Wheeljack, dropping down to peer under the cabinet. There, huddled and trembling pitifully in the corner, was a first frame winglet. Who… Skyfire, of course. Skyfire had been an adult mech nine million years ago when he'd been buried in the arctic. He didn't act it because of all the time spent in stasis, but Skyfire was probably a good amount older than even Kup.

"He had been coming out." Stated Perceptor. Ratchet rebooted his audios a few times. Perceptor sounded extremely annoyed with him.

"We scared him when we came in and he ran under the cabinet. Then claustrophobia kicked in and he wasn't able to get out again." Wheeljack sounded torn between nervousness and worry. Ratchet frowned. Turning to Perceptor he said,

"Obviously I'm not going to be much help here. See if you can get him out and down to the medbay." He slowly backed off till he was next to Wheeljack. Grabbing him by an audio fin Ratchet dragged him out of the lab. He was not explaining this to Prime alone.

XoXoXoX

It took a while to get Skyfire out from under the cabinet, but once he was he absolutely refused to let go of Perceptor. Not that this bothered him.

Perceptor doubted Skyfire remembered, but they had briefly met back on Cybertron. He had been sparked in a frame specifically made for a mech pursuing electrical engineering. As a newspark, mechs had seen all the modifications he had onlined with and assumed he was merely a new transfer. He hadn't been ready for them when he'd first onlined though and this had led to a lot of stress and many unpleasant situations for the first several vorns of his exsistance. One particularly bad day he had gotten lost. It was actually one of his most vivid early memory files.

He was standing in an unfamiliar hallway. He was late again, and he didn't have all the research he was supposed to. This was the final straw. Professor Photon was finally just going to give up on him.

As Perceptor looked out the window to his left and realized he'd somehow gotten several floors higher he could feel the block on his emotions crumble. He dropped to his knees as he struggled to maintain his tight hold against feeling any emotions. It must not have been a very often used corridor because he was able to sit undisturbed for quite some time. He actually didn't know how long he sat there before a pair of large white arms wrapped around him; picking him up and cradling him like one of those old first frames he wished he'd been sparked into.

"Now what's a youngling with so many electrical engineering modifications doing in the xenobiology sector?" The voice was warm and kind and had immediately recognized that he was just a newspark floundering in a final frame. The block completely fell away and eight vorns of emotions came rushing to the surface. Part of him was extremely embarrassed with himself; keening in the arms of a stranger. The large white mech let him keen as long as he needed, not moving till he was done. Standing up the stranger said,

"Come on, Photon probably knows where you belong."

"No!" Perceptor immediately jerked, gripping the stranger's chest plates. "The next time I see him he's just going to get rid of me. He's going to transfer me away and I'm going to do even worse."

"Why?"

"I'm not good enough! I'm not even in the top ten of my batch of newsparks."

"Do you want to be here?" Percepter gaped at the mech.

"Of course I do!"

"Do you want to continue in your field?"

"Yes!" The mech looked him straight in the optics.

"Then don't worry about being the best. You just need to be your best. Mech's are going to notice if you truly do your best. And if that still doesn't work you come find me." He wanted to protest. How could his best possibly ever be good enough if it wasn't the best? But the mech, a flier, he now realized, began to walk in the direction he had just come from. Perceptor stared at the set of wings that extended behind the large mech.

"You're a shuttle frame!"

"And you're a civilian class ground frame."

"What are you doing here?"

"Well, my main specialty is xenobiology and this is the xenobiology sector."

"But you're a shuttle frame!" A sad look tinted the mech's optics.

"Listening to what others have to say is good. But letting yourself be ruled by that isn't. They told me that shuttles are far too dumb to be anything but transport. I listened, but decided that I was going to be a scientist anyways." Now Perceptor felt guilty. Shyly leaning into the mech's hold he let himself be carried through the maze of corridors to where he was actually supposed to be. They walked in companionable silence. The large stranger set him down just before the office, leaving a guiding hand on his back instead.

Professor Photon had not been happy when they made it to his office, but he made no comment till the shuttle left.

"I don't know what that shuttle told you but don't listen to any of it. There's no way a mech of his frame type is here without a heap of plagiarizing and fraud." Percepter nodded, but chose to take what the large mech had told him to spark. Even if he didn't believe it, there was no harm in trying.

Perceptor looked down at the first frame cradled in his arms.

"It seems our positions are reversed does it not?" The winglet made no sign that he understood. "You were correct you know." Perceptor continued. "My best indeed turned out to be preeminent." The winglet rested his helm against Perceptor's shoulder. "Did you know? I became so implicated in metallurgy because of you?" Wings drooped and optics dimmed. "I took a few learning courses with the prospective desire that I would be included in one of the classes you taught. When I ascertained that you were gone on an extended expedition I continued because I enjoyed it." Skyfire fell into recharge but Perceptor continued to say all the things he'd wanted to tell him pretty much his whole life, but hadn't had the nerve to since the shuttle had been rescued from the ice.

Perceptor stopped just before the medbay and in a rare moment of sentimentality struggled with whether or not to put Skyfire down. Eventually coming to the conclusion that Skyfire likely wasn't going to let go willingly Perceptor carried him in.

Ratchet was alone setting up various scanners and monitors. He didn't even spare them a glance as he began ranting,

"I wasn't even sparked when first frames were around so there was never a need for me to have any medical knowledge about them. Between how long it's been since any existed and loosing so much information to the war Prime is worried even teletran-1 isn't going to have much information on them, if any." From there Ratchet mostly insulted a certain suspiciously absent engineer. Eventually Ratchet waved them over.

"All right, set him down." Perceptor moved to do so but Ratchet's voice had woken him up and Skyfire clung to Perceptor. "It's ok, I'm a medic. I'm here to help you." Skyfire just stared at Ratchet uncomprehendingly. Ratchet sighed "Sorry Perceptor, but it seems you may be stuck here for a while."

"That is acceptable." He replied, sitting on the berth. Skyfire quietly stared at Ratchet from Perceptor's lap while he was examined. Ratchet looked pretty angry by the time he was done. "Well?" Asked Perceptor.

"It's not that much different than what would have happened to anyone else; his memories are locked away, his gained coding was repressed, and the original coding he onlined with is now front and center. The very important difference seems to be that his frame was reformatted to what he onlined in. Everything extra seems to have gone to the same subspace his extra alternate mode armor goes into while he's in bipedal mode.

Unfortunately this stupid first frame is preventing me from doing anything about it, even with my medical overrides. There isn't enough space on the processors he's currently using for all his memories and the information he's acquired. The protocols and specific coding he had isn't compatible with this frame either. His subspaces are all locked. And to top it all off, unless he was purposely put in a very defective frame, first frames apparently didn't transform, so I can't just solve the problem by having him do so and messing with him then." By the end Ratchet was full on ranting and looked like he was exercising extreme self-control not to hit either of the mechs in front of him with the wrench he was fingering. Wheeljack was in so much trouble.

Suddenly the medbay door opened and five worried young fliers burst in.

"Wheeljack said that Skyfire was back but he was in the med… bay…" Airraid trailed off when he spotted the little flight frame in Perceptor's lap; unable to finish and settling with pointing a finger accusingly. Scratch that, Wheeljack was dead.

A/N: This story will be a mix of sweet, fluff, and an undecided amount of crack thrown in for good measure. Please don't take it seriously, because I'm not.