Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, I don't make any profit from this.

The medic, chapter 4

Odd, he thought fuzzily, staring up at the sky. An orn earlier, he had thought he had been in real pain. He knew better now.

True, this last part of his trip had been easier because there was a nice, well-maintained path around the outside of the city. But it had also been a good deal further to travel, he was still on foot since the damage was too extensive to attempt transforming into his alt mode, he had still not been able to rest, and his systems were beginning to shut down with exhaustion.

He was so low on energon that the fuel warning light on his HUD had gone out because there was not enough energy to maintain it. Actually, his whole HUD had had to be switched off leaving him only with bare optics.

Somehow that thought was vaguely amusing, although he was not sure why. Not that he had the energy to laugh right now.

Back to the point.

He had made it to the causeway and collapsed against one leg of a traffic control sign which flashed through a regular sequence of instructions about speed and approach vectors to incoming barges. Not that there were any. Or, at least, he had not seen any. Given that he lacked the energy to even sit up, he could not be certain that none had passed by unseen.

No, wait. That was not the point.

The point was, turning off so many of his programs had meant that there was no longer any distraction from the endless pain in his body. In fact, he was beginning to think that being still was worse than moving. He was definitely pleased he did not have to move anymore, was not sure he could if he wanted to, but at least while he had been moving there had been something to concentrate on.

Now there was just the pain.

Oh, and that noise.

Noise?

When had he closed his optic shutters?

Opening them again, he found himself looking up at a very concerned mech.

"...you still with us, lad? Primacron's mercy, what happened to you? Did the scavengers have a go at you? Slagging glitches. Easy there, I can see you're in trouble. Can you get this down?"

An ion stick was proferred.

Not his preference in this situation. He needed a high percentage boron mix of low grade energon to replenish his systems, or at least a half cube of mid-grade, but he would take what he could get. Taking it with a clumsy hand that did not seem to want to obey his commands, he ate it quickly. As expected, it disagreed with his near empty tank making him feel jittery, but at least it gave him a bit of energy.

"Thhhanks."

"No trouble. Come on - I think I'd better carry you. M'name's Slipshod, what's yours?"

Carry him? Was that what the mech had said?

"Uh, Ratchet. But... whoa!"

Slipshod had picked him up easily, clearly built for heavy loads, and now carried him somewhere. Ratchet barely noticed, since every step jarred the damaged connections in his legs. He was vaguely aware that his host was talking to him, and took in something about medics and construction and Ordan Helix, but none of it made much sense and then he lost the fight to stay online.

Online and still in pain. This was getting boring. Still, he felt more comfortable than he had in awhile, and the pain was slightly muted.

"Hello?" a hopeful voice called.

"Slipshod?" he asked, looking around, remembering his rescuer.

"No, I'm Fuselink. Pleased to meet you."

Ratchet frowned, peering at the unfamiliar mech before him and wondering if another of his systems had crashed because all he had received was the mech's vocalised designation.

"Sorry, I missed your des."

"Fuselink."

"No, your..."

"Oh, my full designation? Slipshod told me to use the colloquial one. It's ..."

Ratchet stared at him, dumbfounded as he received a vocalisation of a full designation. He had never before heard one sounded out into individual characters - it usually came as a sonic burst along with the spoken colloquial designation - and decided that he never wanted to hear one that way again. The mix of punctuation and letters made it almost unintelligible.

Then one of the codes registered with him.

"You're a medic?" Ratchet demanded.

"Yes!" Fuselink agreed happily. "Or, well I will be."

"Will be?" Ratchet echoed helplessly.

What did that mean? Then the last part of the designation came back to him. Rank zero-A-one?

The hope faded.

"You're newly sparked?"

"I'm supposed to be starting at Ordan Helix today."

Ratchet shuttered his optics again.

Just perfect. His host was delivering a brand new student to the infirmary for training. Not only was Fuselink not a medic, he had not been alive long enough to learn tact or manners or much of anything at all. Ratchet hated dealing with sparklings: their lack of knowledge was just frustrating; a bit like dealing with Dabble and Longsider, just without the paranoia.

"Where are we?"

"On the Tripdi. That's a barge. Slipshod hired it to bring me down here from Vector Sigma, but now we've gotten here we can't get in."

"Because of the Decepticons." Ratchet sighed. "Great."

"No, because of the virus."

Ratchet snapped his optics open in shock.

"Virus? What virus?"

Fuselink simply stared at him curiously.

"I don't know. But Ordan Helix is closed in quarantine because of a virus. No barges are allowed to stop there until it gets cleared. Slipshod's really upset about it because he hasn't been paid for the commission yet and he's got to get back to work so that's where we're going."

"Vector Sigma?"

"No, Iacon."

Was any of this conversation actually making sense? Ratchet wondered. Perhaps he was fritzing more than he had thought.

"How far away are we?"

"Not far now, you've been offline for more than three groons. Slipshod says he'll take you to the clinic there when we get there, so you can get fixed up. I think he's going to leave me there with you so he can get back to work. That's okay with you, isn't it?"

The clinic at Iacon would be closed, Ratchet realised. Everyone had been recalled for this Decepticon mess, and now if there was a virus it meant that every medic on Cybertron was trapped in the quarantine.

Except him.

"Ratchet? That's okay, right?"

He was still going to have to save himself. Primus help him.

"You can stay. I'm going to give you a crash course in anatomy. Specifically, mine."