Chapter 2

Lavender came out of recharge early, a habit leftover from the days when she would help in her family's bakery, and then she went to find the washracks since she hadn't had a good cleaning since she had left Cybertron. After all, it wouldn't do for a team medic to inadvertently spread disease around. She walked to the end of the hallway to find Elita and Emerald already there and preparing to turn on the water.

"Good morning Lavender." Elita said smiling a little bit. "Did you recharge well?"

"Yes I did recharge well ma'am." The light purple femme answered, returning the smile. "You can wash up first."

"Nah, we can all wash up together; we're all femmes here and it will save water." Emerald insisted. "We're not as wasteful as humans can be with resources."

With that said, Lavender reluctantly agreed. Yes, none of the mechs would see her but still-the new Autobot stopped that thought and just went into the washracks with her 2 same gendered teammates. Elita shut the door behind them and turned on the water. The 3 then removed their armor and began scrubbing themselves off, making small talk while doing so. After a couple of minutes, they heard someone banging on the door.

"Air Raid, stop that. It's not going to make them finish any faster." Jetfire said in a scolding tone of voice, before changing it. "Sorry about the interruption ladies."

"No harm done; we're almost through anyways." Emerald replied as she rinsed off, Elita and Lavender doing the same. They then dried off themselves, then their armor and put it back on and walked out. Just after this, the Aerialbots all rushed in to get themselves cleaned up since Jetfire was taking them on a training mission today.

It wasn't that she hated mechs but sometimes Lavender wondered why they had to act certain ways. "How do you deal with all 5 of them?" she wondered.

"Jetfire being a flyer himself is usually able to keep them calmer than they would be otherwise." Elita One explained. "They are very young and have much to learn."

"Oh, well I better head into the medbay." Lavender quickly ran towards said location and went in, the doors closing behind her.

"Lavvy was always rushing around and wanting to get things done ever since we were sparklings." Emerald commented. "I was the lazy one so we complimented each other in some ways."

"Does she realize that she can not rush certain medical procedures?" the femme commander wondered.

"Yes, she does know that, I think." The green femme replied. "It's her taking care of the human kids that I'm worried about especially since she's never handled them. Yes, she's my friend, I still trust her but I'm still worried if that makes any sense."

The 2 then went into Elita's and Optimus' office to discuss the matter privately, wanting a better place to do so…

Meanwhile, Ratchet was showing Lavender the human medical supplies for in case something happened to one of the Wilson siblings.

"Humans seem to be so fragile." The femme medic commented.

"Physically they are but emotionally and otherwise are different stories." Ratchet said. He then checked the schedule. "Prime better be here soon for his maintenance check or I'll have to go and find him."

Lavender was shocked; she had not expected to have to help work on the leader of the Autobots himself first as a way to start her career during this war but she silently panicked; what if she did something wrong? What would the Wilson siblings think? And Elita…she did not even want to think of what the femme commander would do if any harm, intentional or otherwise, came to her sparkmate.

"I know you are worried Lavender but please put it aside. Just do what needs to be done. I'm sure you will do fine." The main Autobot medic told her as he began preparing the tools the 2 would need.

"All right; I will do my best." The purple femme said, switching her thoughts to focusing on her job.

Optimus came in a few seconds later and greeted them. "Good morning Ratchet and Lavender."

"Good morning sir." Lavender replied politely.

Ratchet's reply was quite different. "Thank Primus I didn't have to go looking for you like I did last time." He muttered before switching to a more professional tone of voice. "Lavender, if you'll please take that anesthetic and give it to him while I get the last few tools I need, we'll be ready to get this over with."

The light purple femme medic didn't reply; she grabbed the needle and gave Optimus a shot on his arm. The Autobot leader of course didn't scream "Ouch!" like a sparkling would have. He had been through much worse pain than that, Lavender realized as she removed the needle and put it in a box of things Ratchet would need to destroy since used syringes were not any better for Autobots than they were for humans. She then kept an eye on the monitor displaying her leader's vital signs to make sure that nothing went wrong during this routine procedure.

Ratchet began his work, removing some plating and reconnecting loose energon lines and wires. Lavender of course did not look since it was not part of her job description to do so and because she wanted to be polite.

The femme medic kept an optic on the screen for the whole 40 minute procedure; the last Prime's vital signs stayed in normal range throughout the whole thing, much to her surprise. Ratchet would have had to stop working if they had gotten too low and nobody wanted that to happen. All too soon the procedure was finished and her leader's armor back on, so Lavender picked up the tools that Ratchet had used so that she could wash them.

"All right Prime we're done now." Ratchet said.

"Thank you" Optimus Prime said in that soothing baritone voice of his. "And thank you to you as well Lavender; you seem to be doing well on your first day."

"You're welcome sir." The light purple femme replied, very relieved and going to the sink and putting the tools beside it. She then turned on the water and mixed the right amount of cleaning solution with said water, then turned off the faucet and began washing the tools, not noticing when Optimus got up and left to return to his normal duties.

When all was said and done, Ratchet couldn't help but smile. He knew not every day would be like this but it was still nice that this first day of Lavender's had gone well…

After the medbay itself was scrubbed clean, Lavender was allowed a break so that she could have some energon. She sat in the main room, politely chatting with Ironhide and Bumblebee while the Wilson siblings played a card game since they had already eaten and it was raining outside; it tended to rain a lot more than other places on this part of Earth, Darcy explained to Lavender. "We do get snow too but it doesn't last long." The human girl was saying.

"That's very interesting." Lavender commented, looking at info on the Internet regarding Earth's weather.

"I'm tempted to out and jump in the mud puddles." Brandon commented. "I'm sick of being stuck in here."

That caused the femme medic to run a scan on the youngest boy of the Wilson family; his vital signs were all normal as was everything else which was confusing.

"It's a human expression." Ratchet explained to his assistant having heard the conversation as he walked into the room.

"Is all human slang this confusing?" Lavender wanted to know.

"It can be, too much so in my opinion." Ironhide grumbled.

"I'm going out with Brandon to jump in the mud puddles." Marcy declared, interrupting the 2 Autobots.

"Aren't you a bit old to be jumping in mud puddles?" Bumblebee asked.

"Just because I'm 13 doesn't mean I have to stop acting like a kid right away." With that, the brunette human girl followed her blond-haired younger brother and put on their raincoats and rubber boots and went outside to begin playing in the mud.

Lavender shrugged this off and finished her energon; she had a lot to learn about the human children and wasn't so sure she wanted to learn any more about them just yet. She returned to the medbay with Ratchet to do some more work afterwards.

"Don't you worry about the human children; they know how to keep themselves healthy and are very intelligent despite their ages." The older medic reassured his assistant. "It's Ironhide that I worry the most about since he keeps putting off things like maintenance and whatnot."

20 minutes later, Optimus rushed into the medbay with Marcy, who was muddy and bleeding from both of her knees but still conscious.

Oh my, Lavender thought, a little shocked that the human girl was in this shape.

"I tried to jump over a mud puddle with my bike over a homemade ramp I made but it went wrong because it was too slipper and I scraped my knees on the road when I landed partially on it and partially in a bigger puddle" was the explanation that was given through tears as Optimus carried Marcy over to the sink so that she could be washed before her wounds were bandaged.

"Let's get you cleaned up Marcella; Optimus can lecture you later." Ratchet replied reassuringly, as he did not ever feel the need of criticizing the Wilson siblings unlike when say Ironhide or Bumblebee or Jazz did something stupid and got hurt while on the battlefield.

Optimus Prime left the medbay, relieved that the pop culture loving teen would be fine.

Lavender helped Marcy undress then turned on the water, only filling the sink part of the way. The femme then set the human girl down and gently began scrubbing her off, as if she was a sparkling, but especially her 2 wounds while Ratchet got bandages and antibiotic ointment. Marcy was then rinsed off and dried off carefully and set on the examination table so that Ratchet could bandage her up while Lavender turned off the water and drain the sink. She was then poked by someone, and knew it had to be one of the human children. "Yes Kayla?" the femme medic asked as she turned to look at the youngest girl of the Wilson family.

"I've got clean clothes for Marcy; I'm going to take her dirty ones to Kyle so that he can put them in the next load of laundry." Kayla explained, putting the clean clothes in a neat pile near Lavender's feet and picking up the dirty ones which had been tossed on the floor in haste.

"Thank you Kayla." Lavender replied.

"You're welcome; ask someone else to explain why we humans have to wear clothes." The young human girl called over her shoulder as she ran towards the human side of the base where the laundry room was.

By now, Marcy's scraped knees had been bandaged up so Lavender handed her the clean clothes.

"Don't look while I'm doing this!" Marcy quickly said.

Ratchet turned around and Lavender finally asked "Why do humans cover themselves like that?"

'It's a complicated explanation but I will tell it to you." Her boss said then proceeded to do so.

After this, Marcy was dressed again and said "You can look now" in a tone of voice that showed she was impatient about getting down and getting out of the medbay.

Lavender turned around and chuckled a little bit. "Eager to get away from us are you?" She then walked over and picked up Marcy carefully.

"Yes." The human girl replied as she was set down on the floor; she then went out as quickly as possible.

"Marcy generally knows better than to imitate things from TV or try to do some other crazy stunt without knowing if it's safe." Ratchet said, as he sighed. "She is a teenager though so it might have something to do with it. Teenage humans are the most difficult humans to be around in my opinion."

"She reminds me of when Emerald tried to climb to the top shelf of my home when we were younger to get down energon treats just because she wanted to show that she could actually do something; we were very dumb so to speak." Lavender smiled at this memory as she went to put away the box of bandages that Ratchet had gotten out…

(Flashback)

"Emmy, what do you think you're doing?" a young purple femme asked when she saw her green friend climbing some shelves.

"I'm proving to you that I'm not lazy all the time." The about 10 in human years Emerald said in reply as she finally got to the top shelf of four that were in the room, standing on the 3rd shelf to support herself as she reached for the energon treats. The shelf broken away from the wall and fell, the green sparkling falling with it and screaming as she hit the floor with the said shelf.

"Lavender, Emerald what is going on in here?" Lavender's femme creator wanted to know as she walked into the room and then gasped when she saw what had happened.

Thankfully, all injuries had been minor and Emerald did receive a lecture about asking for help with things and everyone agreed that it was good that things had not been worse.

(End flashback)

Ratchet couldn't help but chuckle; he wanted to hear more of Lavender's stories of her sparkling days but she was not willing to tell him any more of them at the moment.

"Give it an Earth week or so; maybe I'll tell you another one." Lavender couldn't help but giggle a little, trying to relax after a weird first day by doing so.

Ratchet sighed and shook his head; why did femmes always have to giggle? He had never found that out and perhaps it was best that he did not know; right now, Optimus was calling every Autobot present to inform them that a Decepticon attack was happening and for the main Autobot medic and his assistant to have the medbay ready. Ratchet knew it would be a long night but at least he would have help…