TIME MEASUREMENTS:

Astrosecond: .5 seconds

Nano-klik: 1 second

Klik: 1 minute

Breem: 8 minutes

Cycle: 24 hours (one day)

Deca-cycle: 4 weeks (one month)

Mega-cycle: 96 hours (four days)

Meta-cycle: 12 months (one year)

Stellar Cycle: 6 months

Vorn: 83 years

Mega-vorn: 83,000 years (1000 vorns)

60 mega-vorns: 4,980,000years

O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

It takes a couple of klicks for Ratchet to snap out of his stupor.

Or rather the only thing that had snapped Ratchet out of his astonishment was the realization the sparkling was injured. (Ratchet had to wrestle sharply with an instant desire to take the cause apart for it in the most painful ways he knew how.)

On the heels of that realization was the next: Sunstreaker had claimed the little one as his own, and was very much in Gladiator mode. Ratchet would have to be careful. Especially considering Sunstreaker's twin was in the same room.

He approached the sparkling and Sunstreaker.

He made no fast, sudden movements, explaining what he was doing and what he was going to do as he went. He did not want an enraged Gladiator running on Guardian Protocols locked in the med bay with his injured sparkling, especially as he would need to get very much into servo range of Sunstreaker to get to the sparkling. (Ratchet was rather attached to having his spark within its spark-casing inside his chassis.)

That wasn't even including Sideswipe who had instantly shifted to be at Ratchet's back as soon as the medic made a move towards the sparkling and his twin. Sideswipe would very much form a Guardian Bond with the sparkling- was already forming one from being so close to the little one. As part of a set of split-spark twins, there was no way Sideswipe wouldn't form the same bond with the little one as Sunstreaker.

He carried the other half of the spark the sparkling had already bonded to after all. Taking the fact that Sideswipe also had Gladiator Programing- and was in fact Sunstreaker's Battle Partner-into account meant that if Ratchet made any sort of wrong move, not only would Sunstreaker rip through his chassis to pull his spark from its chamber, but Sideswipe would rip through his back-plating to do the same and Ratchet would live only long enough to see his spark separated into two parts and pulled from his frame to be crushed in front of his optics. (It wouldn't even be personal. It would be an automatic response to everyone until the twins' Guardian Protocols learned to recognize the other bots around them as 'safe'. It didn't matter how long the twins had known a bot, how much they trusted that bot. Everyone would have to earn the trust needed for the Guardian Protocols to relax in their presence.)

(It was a deep show of ultimate trust for a bot to trust another with their sparkling. Trusting their own lives to others was a show of trust of course, but to trust the life of a sparkling- who had no chance of defending themselves- with another? That was deeper.)

Ratchet would definitely like to avoid any outcome that resulted in having his spark ripped from his chassis.

So he would explain exactly what he was going to do before he did it.

O~O~O~

The sparkling was a seeker.

Ratchet shuttered his optics with surprise as he got his first honest good look at the little bot. It was a mech of course, mostly a deep almost black midnight blue, with silver accents. His wings were rather large for his frame, but that was a good thing.

Less of a good thing was the many, many injures Ratchet found, some new and others in various stages of healing. The sparkling's lack of any kind of medic showed in the scarring that had taken place on his frame- any medic worth their title would smooth out and take care of any injuries that resulted in scars where possible, and Ratchet could see many scars that little seeker did not need to have. As he examined the sparkling further, Ratchet found the signs of neglect on the little bot and very quickly had to back away from the sparkling and go to his office and break a few things. (If he had made that kind of threatening motion in the sparkling's presence the twins would have mauled him.)

He prayed it was simply due to his Creators dying and not because he was treated inappropriately. If he had been…nothing would stop Ratchet from hunting down the cause and picking them apart.

Then he'd put them back together and give the twins a turn.

O~O~O~

Once Ratchet had his moment of rage induced destruction, he went back to the little one and carefully began to treat what he could. When he could no longer allow Sunstreaker to hold the little bot, he instead had the mech place the sparkling on a berth.

He still explained what he was going to do as he hooked the little one up to all the proper equipment, and began to take deeper looks at the injuries, ignoring the way both of the twins hovered over him. (Ratchet wasn't stupid enough to demand new Guardians leave their injured sparkling alone with him, not when the Guardian Protocols had not identified him as 'safe' yet.)

They were numerous and had various causes. The more Ratchet observed, the more enraged he became. It was becoming very obvious that whoever had had the sparkling…they had not taken care of the little one. Some of the injuries even looked very…purposeful.

Ratchet made a wordless distressed noise he could not have contained if he had tried. The twins straightened sharply and Ratchet supplied the answer before they thought to ask. "He was not cared for. Wherever he was- whoever had him- he was not looked after as she should have been. There are marks of torture on the little one" Ratchet had to pause at the deafening roar of the twins' engines, and if he had pulled his optics away from the sparkling he would have seen both of the twins' optics were a pure bright white in their rage. "signs that he was neglected very soon after he was sparked, and continuously afterwards. I can fix the physical damage…but I do not know what will show itself emotionally and mentally for this sparkling."

Ratchet heard the sound of Energon Blades being pulled, but he made no move to defend himself. He knew he was not the target of the twins' rage. As the twins dissolved into a colorful description of exactly what they were going to do to whoever had had their sparkling before Sunny had found him, Ratchet took a moment to be glad he had injected sedatives into the sparkling's lines- otherwise the twins' rage would have definitely woken him.

And he wasn't even done with his report yet. "His processor shows signs of constant and forced hacking as well. I will take a closer look at that momentarily, but his firewalls were shredded by whoever attacked his mind. He…the mech-ling was not in a good place before you found him Sunstreaker. We will have to be on alert for anyone looking for him. He may have been…it may have been that he was experimented on."

Ratchet didn't flinch when he heard the sound of things breaking, and berths being flipped and thrown into the walls, when he heard the wordless enraged roars of two Gladiators. (He wasn't even angry about the destruction- he had done much the same in his office. He did take a moment to be thankful about the soundproofing that had gone up over this section of the med bay. Every bot in hearing range would have come rushing at the noise, which would have set the twins off.)

He prayed he was wrong, that it was not torture that caused the injuries on the little seeker,but it was the most likely scenario his processor came up with when faced with the many injuries the sparkling had both on his frame and to his processor.

It was enough to push Ratchet towards a rage.

(The last time Ratchet had gone into a rage had been on Cybertron in the middle of a battlefield where Prime had been bleeding life-Energon out under his servos and Decepticons had thought it a good idea to attack the two of them while they were cut off from the other Autobots.

They hadn't survived the foolish actions.)