"You can do that for him?" Prowl said, with disbelief, cutting across Optimus, who had been going to say something.
"Easily. I have the specs and I have the parts. It won't even take the ten orn I told him it would, and I won't have to use Jazz."
Silence fell over the meeting. Optimus finally broke it by saying, "I confess I'm glad to hear that. I wasn't ready to see Jazz, someone identifiably Jazz, walking among us again."
A general murmur of assent ran around the table. Cybertronians had very long, and almost perfect, memories; the great-great-great-grandchildren of the current crop of humans now alive on Earth would all be dead before the pain of losing Jazz was fully gone for the Autobots.
Ironhide's memory was of course fresher, and more painful still. But very little was left of his body to use, and even that cosmic rust had made unsalvageable.
Prowl said nothing, only shuddered.
"I couldn't bear to part him out," Ratchet said. "And for the record, I would make quite a few cosmetic changes before I used Jazz to reformat someone."
"Best we don't until we have to," Optimus murmured. "But so far as Barricade's upgrade goes, what do we need to do to make it happen?"
"Assign Sunstreaker and Skyfire to me for the day before and three days after the reformat, that's all. The sparklings like them."
"Give me a couple of orn notice on that one, will you?" Prowl said. "I'll have to juggle some schedules."
"Sure," said Ratchet.
"Wow," Barricade said. "That was fast." He put the sandpaper down.
Ratchet smirked, self-satisfied. "Consider it a sketch. I want your input; if you want to make changes, now's the time to suggest them."
An adult Cybertronian frame, a Praxian door-wing model, lay between them on the berth. It was covered in gray primer at this stage, which left the immobile faceplates a brooding mask.
Still, it was a handsome visage, managing to keep the proportions of Barricade's helm roughly intact.
Barricade said with a stoic calm that Ratchet saw right through, " Can it stay on the berth today? I'd like to come and look at it a couple of times." He was silent for a few moments, and then said, "What a relief it will be not to limp anymore."
"Hurts, huh," Ratchet said. These tough guys.
"Yes, almost all the time. Only when I've finished the exercises at night does it stop."
"Do you need a pain chip for it right now?"
"I'll let you know if it gets that bad. There's something else I want to talk to you about, though."
"Well?"
"A couple of mecha were talking about you teaching field first aid. Can I join that class?"
Ratchet cocked his head. Was he really willing to work with an ex-Decepticon, when his fellows might be at risk from said Decepticon's ministrations? Still, he had a sense now of who Barricade was at spark, and that mech, suddenly saddled with duties the mech would have unhesitatingly described as "unwanted," had risen to the challenge, and fulfilled them well. Had continued to do so with patience and grace. "Yes. I'll put your name on the class roster."
"Thanks."
"Are you interested in medicine? As your job?"
Barricade startled him by saying passionately, "It's all I've ever been interested in. I was saving up to put myself through the training to be a medic when the war broke out, and it was pretty obvious that even if I'd somehow gotten the money together right away, I wouldn't be able to finish the course, probably wouldn't survive to finish the course. Iacon was already under siege. So I bought the interrogator programming, which covers a lot of anatomy and physiology, instead, and here we are."
"Far too many thousands of vorn later."
"Yes. And while I wouldn't say I prospered as a Decepticon, I survived."
"That you did. Let me think it through, okay? If you really want it, I'll do my best to see you get the training."
"Thanks, Ratchet."
"No, thank you. I'm going to start assigning you patient duties. Even before we get the programming installed, you can take histories, and sort for triage."
"Triage?"
"Two mecha come in at the same time. One has a wound that's pumping energon in discrete spurts, one is in considerable pain from a deep, slowly-leaking wound. Who gets treated first?"
"The one whose wound spurts. A main line's been compromised."
"Good. I'll also sit down with you and we'll find out how much else you know already. – If your physical condition is such that it's too painful for you to work on a given day, I expect to be told that. We'll cope when you need to be our patient instead of our co-worker." Skyfire, across the bay, made eye contact and a "Come here" motion to Rachet, who nodded in acknowledgment, and finished up with, "So. Any last questions?"
"No." Barricade paused, and added formally, "Thank you, Ratchet. I appreciate the trouble you're going to for me."
Ratchet gave him a buffet on the shoulder, and betook himself to Skyfire.
Who told him something, ten breem later after the emergency had been dealt with, that made Ratchet blink and reset. "You what?"
Skyfire patiently repeated, "I've heard that you're looking for quarters large enough to support Barricade and the hatchlings. I've got a lot of extra room in mine, and I'd like to volunteer it."
"Where would you be, then?"
"If you just let me keep my recharge berth in there, I'll be fine. I don't need a lot of space, otherwise. Most of my life's in the lab or in the sky." Skyfire paused. "And that way, I'll be available to the hatchlings, and to Barricade, if I'm needed."
"Hm," said Ratchet. "You willing to get the sparkling-protocol upgrade?"
Skyfire said, "Yes, so long as it doesn't compromise my flight protocols."
Ratchet felt a great weight lift off his and (though he didn't know it yet) Wheeljack's shoulders. "All right. Let me run it through the senior staff meeting tomorrow. I can't imagine they'll say no, if you're willing to get the upgrades."
Optimus shook his head. "This is all coming together almost too easily."
"Yeah, I'd say," Wheeljack muttered under his breath. The time he'd spent going over blueprints of the Ark, trying to find space that had to be there somewhere, was beginning to gnaw at him; he hadn't blown anything up in joor.
Ratchet ignored him. "It's an extraordinarily generous offer on Skyfire's part. He's also willing to accept sparkling-protocol programming, so long as it doesn't interfere with his flight protocols, which is relatively easy to ensure."
"Since it's pretty unlikely he'll be doing both at once," Wheeljack said.
Prowl said, "Outfit him with a holoform generator. If worse somehow comes to worst and he's by himself trying to evacuate the 'lings, he can corral them into a crib, use the holoform to load it, and be gone."
Ratchet nodded. "Easy-peasy. I'll schedule it with him."
Wheeljack shrugged. "Okay. I'll comm Skyfire for a time to see his quarters, and we'll find out if they can be made to work."
Grapple said, "Pretty sure they can be. Skyfire's size meant that he needed a lot of room. If all he needs is the berth space, you've got almost as much floor space as the med bay to work with."
Nineteen orn later, Skyfire's quarters had been revamped. A washrack had already been installed, sized for Skyfire; it was a small matter to Grapple and Hoist to add another three shower heads in descending heights, and a tub at a height convenient for washing hatchlings. Skyfire's own room had been soundproofed but otherwise left intact; another for Barricade, equally soundproofed, carved out of Mt. St. Hilary beside it. Cubes and bins lined the walls of what had been Skyfire's sitting room, and things to climb on, hide in, sail off, and contest ownership of had been erected in the center.
Fourteen small recharge bunks, staggered in lines of three and four, lined one wall. An energon dispenser with multiple settings, storage for bottles, and a cleanser mechanism lined another.
"Wow," Barricade said, on limping in. His arms were full of crib, which in its turn was full of 'lings.
Sideswipe, sent to escort him, poked his helm in, opticked it all, said, "Wow, cool," and left.
Skyfire smiled. "Welcome," he said.
"Thanks. Really appreciate that you're willing to share." Barricade set down the crib near the middle of the room, and removed its top. Fourteen hatchlings streamed out, surrounded him, and then thirteen of them went immediately into the floor-level space designed to hide in. Skyfire's owner went to him, and cheeped imperiously to be picked up. Repeatedly.
Skyfire did, more to hit the off switch on the noise than anything else. His owner surveyed her new surroundings from on high, uttered a four-part phrase that was clearly part scolding, and fell silent.
"Have you decided on a name for her?" Barricade asked curiously. "Ratchet asked me to name them, but I've come up blank for most of the hatchlings."
"Sonata," Skyfire said.
Barricade blinked. "That was fast. I don't have that human word. What does it mean?"
Skyfire remembered that Barricade's comms were still locked down. "It's a musical term. When she has something to say, it usually comes out as a complete sonata - three or four parts of contrasting tone."
Barricade grinned and reached down to pick up the rust-red hatchling, who had trundled over to his foot, cheeped once during the conversation, and then patiently waited to be picked up. "It's a nice name," he said.
"So she's the only one who has a name right now?"
"No. Sunstreaker's taken to calling his 'Nator,' which he says is short for 'Terminator.' They showed that movie in the rec room a couple of orn ago; first time he'd seen it. Gotta say it fits."
Skyfire grinned. "Yes, it does."
"I'm going to sit on the floor for a while, so that they can get used to their new place. If you had something else to do ..."
"No," said Skyfire, "I'm actually on duty with them, and you, for the first half of my shift today. If that's all right with you?"
"Better for them to have us both here, I think." Barricade bent to the floor-level cube, and held onto it to get himself down to the floor, letting his good leg do the work of lowering him.
"When do you get your reformat?" Skyfire said, following suit much more easily.
"Week from today. I didn't want to change too much for them all at once. Ratchet said I wouldn't have to wait for more than three days, but ..." the former interrogator shrugged.
The hatchlings had swarmed him once they realized he was available. About a quarter of them had returned to the play area after touching Barricade-base, and another quarter were investigating Skyfire, apparently reassuring themselves that this Skyfire-shaped object was in fact their Skyfire. The other half were making wider and wider circles of discovery, although those circles tended to be Barricade-centric.
Skyfire turned his head away from Barricade to smirk. This was the dangerous Barricade, who had interrogated him to within an inch of his life when Starscream first brought him to the Nemesis? Whose very vibes had frightened him when they passed in the halls during the brief time that he, too, had been a Decepticon? This tired, patient, kind gravitational center to the hatchlings' universe, who thought of them first and himself, apparently, not at all?
Skyfire stroked his owner with a pensive finger slightly larger in the first joint than her whole body. Life leads us into some strange places, he thought, very far from where we thought we'd go.
