Tales from the Wild Side brief chapter
This little incident is set in the middle of chapter 19 of Beast Saga, when Miko has contracted a virus during a mission. (Because, being human, I feel like they should've gotten sick at least sometimes when running here and there with the 'Bots)
Musings from the Sick Room
"Well, she's finally sleeping."
Stampy shifted from pede to pede in the hallway and peeked around the corner, hoping to see Apache on his way. The mandrill had not yet returned from negotiating the hostage exchange with the mercenary, Archadis. The young Cybertronian shivered at the thought and found himself once more hoping that Jack was alright.
"Good. I wasn't sure she was ever gonna stop barfing!" Break announced, leaning on the wall beside him.
"Charming, Break. Just charming." Stampy groaned, ears twitching. The penguin shrugged, completely unapologetic.
"Well, what else do you wanna call it? Regurgitating?"
Stampy gagged and shoved the round bird away from him. "You're disgusting, you know that?" Break simply laughed and pushed back. Being larger and stronger than his friend, he sent the rabbit tumbling backwards. A door opened further down the corridor and Polar Claw stuck his blunt head out into the sickly white light of the hallway.
"Ey! Keep noise down, younglings," the bear warned, "If you wake lapushka, it is not just Lio that you will be dealing with!"
As Lio Convoy was currently the mech with the most medical experience on-base, given Apache's absence, he had been standing in as doctor until the mandrill's return. He had made a preliminary diagnosis of a virus, but did not want to prescribe any particular treatments as he was neither a registered medic nor an expert on human immune systems.
Knowing that Polar Claw's threat was not an idle one, Break and Stampy grimaced and tiptoed away down towards their "gaming" room. On the way there, they found Rattrap in the courtyard with Razorback and a rather shaken Rafael.
"Hey little bro, wanna play some vid games?" Break asked in a tone of feigned nonchalance, "Betcha can't beat Stampy's high score on Bubble Knight!"
"I don't play Bubble Knight!" Stampy squeaked in horror, "That game is for sparklings! Er...no offense, Raf."
The small human removed his glasses for a moment and roughly swiped his sleeve across his eyes. Razorback jolted back slightly. Having had little experience with humans, he had assumed that the glasses were attached to the boy's face like a Cybertronian visor, and was thus a little disturbed to see them so easily taken off. He stood and cleared his vents.
"It's going to be fine, little one," he said gruffly—a rare thing indeed, for Razorback to attempt to comfort a child. Small things made him uncomfortable if he were entirely honest with himself: they were so terribly fragile! That was one reason he'd stayed out of his customary corner in the med bay since the girl had been brought in.
Raf smiled up at the dusty red mech, and Razorback felt his spark warm at the sight. "Thanks, Razorback," he said quietly. Then he hopped out of Rattrap's loose grip and made a short leap to Stampy's hands.
"I've never played Bubble Knight," he said thoughtfully, "You guys will have to teach me."
As the three young ones left, Star Upper poked his helm into the courtyard. "Oi! Has anybody seen the new kid?" he called.
"He's hiding." Razorback stated flatly. Then he turned on his heel and left the other two Maximals alone among the plants.
As it turned out, Cheetor wasn't hiding. Not really. In fact, he hadn't even left the medical bay. The spotted youngling sat on the edge of one of the med berths and stared down at Miko, watching her shiver as she slept fitfully.
The kids and the two adults in the other dimension were the only humans he had ever seen, and he realized for the first time that he had no idea how their bodies worked. There seemed to be similarities to his own species, but all organic. So very foreign and unusual and yet somehow so perfectly designed to function precisely as it was meant to. Except for right now. Cheetor didn't know much about humans, but he did know that they weren't supposed to purge their tanks so often, if at all.
Cheetor frowned as the girl moaned in her sleep, unconsciously curling up in an attempt to alleviate the muscle pain in her stomach. Miko shivered in the chilly room, which made her look far smaller and more vulnerable than Cheetor was used to seeing her.
"Oh," he said aloud, "Your little spark-equivalent thing probably isn't enough to keep your whole frame warm, is it?" He looked around for something to heat the room, or at least the berth, but did not see any portable heating units. There were some odd, woven, fibrous materials stacked on Apache's desk, but he wasn't sure what they were and did not touch them.
"Um...what do I do?" he wondered, scratching his helm.
Surely there was some way to make the berth more comfortable for Miko's squishy human body! That's when it occurred to him: Star Upper had said that the stuff they called "fur" that covered his Maximal alt-mode would be very handy in cold weather, as it would insulate his systems. Why not use it to insulate a human?
With a little bit of effort, Cheetor took to his beast-mode and carefully settled on the flat metal shelf. He arranged himself in a sort of semi-circle around the shivering human so that she was mostly surrounded by gold and spotted fur.
"Apache will come back soon," he yawned, the stress of his last few days catching up to him, "He'll know how to make you better, Miko."
With a little sigh, the human snuggled closer to him and stopped shaking.
"Thanks, noraneko," Miko smiled, then promptly fell asleep again.
Which meant that Cheetor was stuck like that for a good half hour before Stampy, Break, and Raf came in with the brilliant idea of adding a television and game console so that Miko wouldn't get bored.
Of course, that was when Break saw fit to tell Cheetor that the odd fibrous materials were called "blankets" and were used by humans for keeping warm. Noting Cheetor's embarrassment, Miko had declared him to be fluffier and more comfortable, and half the blankets were hung up to make a makeshift curtain and canopy for the berth, while the others were folded to form a slapdash mattress.
When an exhausted-looking Apache returned an hour later, the young ones of the Maximal base had completely taken over half the med bay. The old mandrill hadn't seen that much purple in one place since the political fiasco with Optimus Primal and the Predacon who was convinced that he was Megatron reborn.
Both the sight and the memory it called up brought a much-needed smile to the mech's faceplate, and he chuckled as he pulled out his medical equipment. He suspected that over the next two or three weeks, until the infection was out of the poor little mite's systems, she was just going to end up taking over more of the bay.
Well, he reasoned to himself, At least this way you know she isn't running off into battle!