Note: This chapter was updated 1/5/10, mostly as part of the effort to fix this story's overall narrative voice to make it consistently third-person. This chapter was already in third-person, but I made some minor changes to it, too. None of the changes are plot-significant. In fact, they're barely noticeable, except to to me since I practically had/have this whole damned story memorized now! *sigh*

4: Rejection

"So you're telling me that this has absolutely nothing to do with Starscream?" Optimus Prime asked, looking up almost in disbelief as he finished reading the brief summary report that Ratchet had plunked down in front of him before he'd flopped down into one of the chairs on the other side of Prime's desk. "You're sure about that?"

Ratchet sighed wearily and slumped down farther into his chair.

"Yes, Prime. I am 187% certain that Starscream has nothing at all to do with this," the medic confirmed with a deeply weary sigh. "He apparently did exactly what he needed to do. No more, no less. Didn't even try to kill her, which I still don't understand, but…"

"But who knows what goes on in his whacked little spark?" Prime agreed, finishing the medic's thought for him as his voice trailed off. "You," he added, in bemusement, "sound almost disappointed, though."

"That's because I am disappointed!" Ratchet answered, testy with frustration and fatigue. "Something like Starscream implanting a virus in Swoop's systems in order to crash her would likely be a relatively simple fix. But this…This, I'm afraid, is—"

"Not an easy fix," Wheeljack, sprawled dejectedly in the seat next to Ratchet, dispiritedly interjected. "If it can be fixed at all."

At that, Optimus Prime leaned tiredly back into his own chair and rubbed at his face with one hand.

"So let me see if I understand this correctly," he said after a moment spent gathering his thoughts. "When you two built the Dinobots, you used five of the sparks we'd brought with us from Cybertron."

Ratchet nodded, murmuring a "Yes" when it appeared that Prime was looking for a verbal cue in order to continue his summation.

"But since the sparks were damaged," he continued, "you had to fill in some holes, so to speak."

"Yep," Wheeljack tiredly confirmed. "I tried to make them true to what was known of the animals that they were based on. I grant you that it wasn't my most brilliant idea ever, in retrospect, but it seems to have turned out for the best in the end."

Prime nodded.

"Luckily for you," he grumbled. "And for them." Then he continued, "But now you're telling me that the spark you chose at random to use for Swoop used to belong to someone else. A royal."

"A royal daughter, to be precise," Ratchet clarified, nodding. "Who, just as she should now that her spark has matured and her mother is dead and she has no surviving female relatives, has arisen as the new queen."

Prime nodded.

"Which," he said, "would seem to make all kinds of sense, given that so far as we know queens only come from queens, and we all of a sudden have a queen on our hands."

"Mmmm," Ratchet murmured in agreement and then added, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Swoop used to be the queen's youngest daughter, who as I recall was a newborn when the massacre happened. Some loyal individual, one with extensive medical knowledge, must have removed her spark from her body. And then, since it was immature, they were able to hide her spark amongst the others in stasis without anyone knowing the difference. They were probably hoping that something like what happened would happen, thus restoring the royal line at some point in the future."

"All right, then," Prime said, nodding, absorbing the information. "Assuming that all of that is true, what I don't understand is why this is causing such massive problems for Swoop, why she's comatose now."

At that, Ratchet groaned in both frustration and exhaustion.

"It's precisely because her spark is royal," he said wearily. When Prime just regarded him quizzically, he further explained, "It's the one thing that her 'rescuer,' for all of his good intentions otherwise, didn't take into consideration."

Optimus continued to stare at the medic, still quizzical, but also expectant and slowly becoming less patient. Ratchet sensed the latter easily enough, so he launched into a weary explanation.

"Originally," Ratchet explained, sighing, "she was bred in both spark and body from the queen. So, her spark's energy, from its very first moment of existence, has been uniquely attuned to a body that, now, no longer exists. It's because of the unique nature of their birth that the sparks of royals are far less flexible than others and usually will not adapt to transplantation at all."

Optimus nodded in comprehension when Ratchet paused to see if he was following. This physical weakness of the royals, combined with the fact that they were the individuals who ensured the perpetuation of their species, was the reason why, historically, they had required a higher level of protection, thus giving the warrior caste its raison d'être. He knew all of this.

"So far as I've been able to tell," Ratchet continued, "the only reason why the spark that we used for Swoop was able to adapt to a new body at all is because it had been damaged. The 'patches' that Wheeljack coded allowed her to survive implantation and integration into a new body, but…Well, they're not allowing her to function perfectly well."

"Which explains a lot, actually," Wheeljack quietly put in. When Prime just looked at him, he added, "If you'll recall, Swoop's always been kind of…glitchy. Like for instance there was that time she experienced near-terminal cascade failure when she was only a few years old, and even to this day we couldn't figure out why it happened. And then there's the way she's always had random systems failures here and there ever since then, for no apparent reason. It's never been anything as catastrophic as cascade failure, but still…"

Ratchet nodded in agreement as Wheeljack's voice trailed off and added, "We always figured there was something wrong with her body or its programming somewhere and that it was randomly triggering the systems failures, even though every deep-level diagnostic I ever ran turned up nothing. Even the code-level diagnostics that Wheeljack ran showed nothing wrong. But it turns out we were looking in entirely the wrong place. It's not Swoop's body or its coding that's the problem. It's her spark. Or rather, it's the interaction between the two."

"So what you're telling me," Optimus clarified, "is that there's some sort of incompatibility?"

"Yes," Ratchet confirmed. "We never looked for something like that before because we had no reason to suspect that Swoop's spark was any different from any other non-royal's. But now we know that's not the case at all. So now, it's like a human's body rejecting a transplanted organ. Only in this case, Swoop's spark is trying to reject her entire body in favor of one that no longer exists. And I'm afraid it's only going to get worse."

"Worse?" Optimus asked. "As in…?"

"As in we could very well lose her, yes," Ratchet announced bluntly, in answer to Prime's hesitant, unfinished question.

"That's not an option, Ratchet," Prime snapped, stabbing a demanding finger at the medic. "We need her. Without her, we're…"

"I'm well aware of that, Prime," Ratchet acidly answered around a jaw that was suddenly clenched as lingering, latent anger bubbled to the surface. Then, forcibly calming himself, he growled, "And for your information, as far as I'm concerned, Swoop's not disposable, and her value has nothing to do with her social status. As much as she's apparently a queen's daughter, she's also my daughter. And Wheeljack's."

Optimus blinked at Ratchet's sudden anger, but then realized that he shouldn't have been so surprised. Ratchet wasn't as openly devoted to the Dinobots as Wheeljack was, but the parental-esque concern and protective tendencies were still very much there in him, especially where Swoop was concerned. Usually, they were dormant, lurking just under the surface, but they most definitely arose when Ratchet deemed it necessary. Such as when one of the Dinobots was injured. Or when an Autobot was, in Ratchet's estimation, unnecessarily or unthinkingly cruel to one of them. Or now, in the wake of Optimus's own comment. So, as usual in these situations, Optimus found himself sighing apologetically.

"I know, Ratchet," he said quietly. "I know. And…I'm sorry I snapped."

Ratchet's anger bled from him as quickly as it had appeared, and he waved aside Prime's apology.

"It's all right," he said quietly. "Understandable, even," he added tiredly. Uncharacteristically, he further added, "And I'm sorry I snapped. I'm just…tired."

Optimus nodded in acknowledgement, even though the apology wasn't really necessary as far as he was concerned. He knew that it had been a long stretch of days for Ratchet and Wheeljack, as they had puzzled out what was wrong with Swoop. She had gone fully comatose, her systems beginning slowly but surely to shut down, mere hours after they'd gotten her to the medbay. That had been three days ago, and Ratchet and Wheeljack had spent that time running every scan and test that they could think of and then spending endless hours interpreting the results until it had all started to come horrifyingly together. Simultaneously, they'd been fighting a constant battle to keep Swoop's vital systems online; without them, her singular spark would fade, and if that happened then their species's only chance at natural continuance would fade as well. Ratchet hadn't taken a break, much less fully recharged, since Swoop had gone completely unresponsive, and it had been even longer for Wheeljack. So, they were both feeling utterly drained, stretched almost to the breaking point. This tended to make Wheeljack depressed and convinced that he was utterly useless as a part-time medic; it tended to make Ratchet much touchier than usual.

"So what's the bottom line here, Ratchet?" Prime wanted to know. "What are we looking at?"

After taking a moment to pinch tiredly at the bridge of his nose, Ratchet answered, "The major problems started right after Swoop returned from her…uh, sojourn with Starscream, so the rejection appears to have greatly intensified as a result of the maturation and…er, mating…of her spark. At the moment, I'm fresh out of ideas as to how we might address, much less fix, the problem. She's stable at this very moment, and her spark is beginning to undergo the division process as it should even though her body is slowly shutting down, but…"

Ominous silence fell in the room as Ratchet's voice trailed off. Eventually, though, Wheeljack pushed up out of his chair and began to pace around Prime's office. After a minute or two of pacing, he turned to face Prime and the medic, leveling an uncertain look at both of them.

"I think I might have an idea," he tentatively announced. Then, noticing the look that Ratchet was giving him, he pointed an accusing finger at him and added, "Don't look at me like that, Ratch. I just now thought of it."

"Go, Wheeljack," Optimus said, somewhat urgently, attempting to stave off a potential bickering session between the two. They happened more frequently when one or the other of the two was weary beyond words, and right now they were both weary beyond words. Prime knew that he needed to keep them focused so that Wheeljack's formidable processors could properly nurture his seed of an idea, whatever it was.

Wheeljack was silent for a moment or two, gathering his thoughts. Then he announced, "The problem here is basically energy incompatibility. Swoop's spark is 'expecting' her body to resonate and operate at a certain baseline signature frequency, the only frequency it's ever really known. Since it's not finding that signature, especially now that she's mature and undergoing the…uh, royal transformation, it's freaking out. Right?"

"Essentially, yes," Ratchet agreed, nodding.

"So," Wheeljack continued, starting to meditatively pace again as he spoke, "it would seem to me, not being a medic but a mere lowly engineer, that what she needs is a body whose signature frequency matches the one that her spark is expecting to find. If we can somehow make that happen, then things should be just peachy, right?"

"Yes," Ratchet agreed readily but skeptically. "Theoretically. We could construct a new body for her easily enough, sure. Sludge has already conceptualized an exterior redesign for her, thinking that she might want one now; you'd just need to engineer it."

Wheeljack nodded.

"Sludge gave me his drawings. I've got it 97% engineered already." He shrugged sheepishly at the tiredly amused look that Ratchet gave him. "It took my mind off things while she was…away."

Ratchet snorted and continued, "It'll be tricky, not to mention risky, transplanting her when her spark's already under stress. But…I don't think we have a choice, and it's probably doable if we do it quickly, before the physical divisions start in a week or so. But the odds of finding the precise signature her spark wants just by trial and error before it's too late are—"

"Astronomical, yes," Wheeljack supplied agreeably, nodding. "But," he added, holding up a finger to forestall the argument that he knew Ratchet was about to lob at him, "we don't have to do that totally by trial and error."

Both Optimus Prime and the medic just blinked at him, not following him.

"And how do you figure that, 'Jack?" Ratchet eventually asked.

"Because," Wheeljack concluded, "we have access to someone who can give us a very good idea of where to begin."

Ratchet blinked at Wheeljack again, but then he realized exactly who Wheeljack was talking about.

"Primus!" Ratchet explosively responded, smacking his own forehead with one hand, not believing he'd completely missed what Wheeljack was suggesting. He decided to chalk it up to exhaustion and being entirely too emotionally close to the situation. "Mirage!"

Wheeljack nodded.

"Their signatures shouldn't be all that different," he said with a shrug. His voice took on a note of tired but ironic amusement when he added, "They are brother and sister, after all."

Optimus Prime made a sudden choking noise at that.

"Oh, he's going to love this," he said, chuckling. Then he abruptly sat back in his chair when Ratchet swiftly turned away from Wheeljack and gave Prime a ferocious glare.

"Where is he?" Ratchet growled demandingly at Prime, leaning almost threateningly across the desk that separated them. He didn't care one whit about what Mirage was or was not going to love, nor did he much care for protocol at the moment.

"On Cybertron," Prime replied, unimpressed with Ratchet's urgent ire, blinking as he accessed the information. "Long term intel-gathering assignment. Jazz will know how to reach him."

"Then you need to get Jazz's aft working on that right away," Ratchet ordered brusquely. "We need Mirage back here yesterday."

"I'm on it," Prime replied, already stabbing at the controls of the comm console installed in his desktop. At about the same time, Ratchet's own comm beeped at him.

"You're needed, Ratchet," was all that First Aid said over it, and his voice sounded strained.

"Dammit!" Ratchet explosively responded, knowing that First Aid could only be calling about Swoop; he'd told his younger colleague that he didn't want to hear about anything or anyone else. Launching himself out of his chair, he headed for the door, Wheeljack hard on his heels.

"I'll comm you when Jazz has news," Ratchet heard Prime call out as the door slid closed behind him and he began to run for the medbay.

Review Responses! :D

Shadir: It's all coming together according to my insidious plan! Or at least, it's starting to… ;) It's far too much fun to torture these two…

mdnytryder: I'm glad you're enjoying the story and that the "pair" seems to make sense to you in light of the backstory I gave. And I guess we'll see if your guesses are right… And I'm glad the smex was good! HAH! :D (And on another note, I just now figured out what your name actually says. I was like, "Oh! Midnight Rider! I get it!")

Katsuko1978: Oh, but that would be far too obvious, now wouldn't it? MWAHAH! But seriously, there is definitely weirdness going on and things will definitely get "interesting times" interesting, indeed. Especially for poor Starscream, bless his little spark. I'm glad you're enjoying, and I hope you'll stick with me. And speaking of Starscream…

Next time: Meanwhile, back at the ranch – I mean, Decepticon Headquarters…