That was how, some little while later, Ratchet ended up in the med bay, at the mercy of a bright neon orange medic. The medic, Flashflare, hummed soft perplexity, and his patient scowled at this.
"Just give me a minute," Flashflare said, without fuss and without looking up from his examination. Duly chastised, Ratchet managed to quell his impatience.
Theoretically, Ratchet knew how this worked after all. Upgrades were a fact of life – everybody underwent them from time to time of necessity. There were the regular programming patches, system upgrades, component improvements. Some had some aesthetic complaint they wanted to address. Then, too, there was always the desire to optimize, to see whether one couldn't adapt oneself better to a particular aspect of one's work. Sometimes, a 'bot would be struck by some new idea that required tools he hadn't been built with, or that hadn't ever been designed, even – those were always the most interesting and satisfying cases.
But regardless of the motives, medical bays and the medics who ran them scarcely thought anything of the myriad upgrade requests that regularly filled their mail queues, save in a few rare instances. Upgrading a Cybertronian's tech base was about as routine as the thrice annual maintenance exam. More time-consuming, granted, and complicated, but a successful upgrade was simply a matter of planning, of assessing the patient, of discussion, and then of having the technical wherewithal, skill, and time to make the changes and oversee a 'bot's post-re-configuration recovery.
A medic's life consisted of the rhythm of such checks and repairs, research, design and upgrades. Ratchet had lost track of the number of times he had performed such work for others, and he knew without looking at his own file that he'd undergone seventeen significant upgrades since being sparked. He had never had much reason to be troubled by any of it. He'd been made for such: built and trained by Iacon's premier medical cohort, he was meticulous to a fault when it came to his work and rarely had reason to redo any aspect of a patient's reconfiguration. And as a patient, he'd never had any trouble himself that didn't resolve within an acceptable stretch of time. On the contrary, friends and brothers often had had occasion to envy him his recuperative powers that made for shorter than average recoveries.
However, previous upgrades had always been aimed at bettering his medical tech base, or else keeping up with his model's evolution. He'd never been terribly concerned with his color scheme and had no complaints about his general build – so there were models that were more striking to look at, but so what? And he wasn't the sort to be fascinated by every new gadget someone developed, not even the gadgets proper to his own field. He'd certainly never thought about getting upgraded to suit himself to a non-medical task. Hand-helds would do for that sort of thing – he was not some cross-wired conglomerate of jerry-rigged parts to any purpose whatsoever!
But even had he thought about it, he would never have imagined getting weaponry installed.
And that was the problem. Flashflare gave another hum and glanced sideways at the drone analyst that'd finished running Ratchet's weaponry protocols. Ratchet, who, granted, had less experience dealing with armament systems on a daily basis, nevertheless knew what blue lighting meant in any bay: clear.
"Psychosomatic effects are not uncommon," Flashflare told him, apologetically, which was hardly news to him, nor welcome. Flashflare canted an optical ridge, and his engine gave an inquisitive little whine: Do you want to continue? For answer, Ratchet simply held out his arm for inspection. Flashflare was too good to vent over that, but Ratchet was no slouch himself, and he imagined he could hear it nevertheless. And it wasn't as though he could blame Flashflare in any case.
For there was no reason he ought to be here. Most 'bots could learn to handle a weaponry upgrade in well under a month. Full outgrades to military models might be desirable, and ordinarily, the number of changers was low enough to make that feasible. But with so many abandoning their native cohorts and functions for a military life and task, production was suffering; productive capacity was suffering, even before one factored in the losses inflicted by Decepticon raids. A full outgrade took time and resources that could rarely be afforded anymore; hence the military preferred to install weaponry modules on its new soldiers. It was faster, and cost far less time and fewer parts to jerry-rig a 'bot and train the Jerry than the alternative.
Ratchet knew all of this. And he knew also that such "allo-modular upgrades," as such ad-hoc upgrade protocols were called, degraded directive and physical integrity, caused glitches, and neuropsychological conditions. One could compensate functionally for the foreign element in a 'bot's build and purpose, but when all was said and done, compensation was not integration – not in the truest sense. It was a distortion of form, and Ratchet despised it.
But it worked most of the time. Ratchet, who was quick to adapt to new hardware and fairly versatile with software patches anyway, should have shrugged the upgrade off and adapted inside of a week. Yet three weeks after adding a gun to his tool-suite, he kept popping the damn cartridge when he tried to activate his amp-meter. Or his welder. Or any of a half dozen other instruments installed in that arm, if he wasn't careful. Which was why he was here.
Although medics tended to make terrible patients, and Ratchet knew his own tendencies in that direction, he did like to think he wasn't stupid. Barrage's accusation – You didn't even fake it and form a meter, either – go through the medical motions – had hit home in a way that even the sergeant's sharp claws could not. Amtek's worried questions in the wash rack had been but a mirror to his own doubts. Three weeks – it had been three weeks of exercises like this afternoon's, where he couldn't even go through the motions of his profession, because he literally couldn't go through the necessary motions to form up what he needed, and no sign of an end to it. An injured 'bot could short out or run dry because of this stupid glitch. Or worse, Ratchet could end up pointing a machine gun at him, if he didn't get his triggers straightened out. And what if he accidentally shot someone...?
His horrific imaginings were interrupted by a low hum and series of clicks as Flashflare carefully retracted a set of digital probes from his patient's forearm and reformed his fingers. Ratchet flexed his wrist, reached and rubbed gently along a tensor line – the same that Barrage had lately abused. It was a habit he'd acquired since the gun had been installed, a sign of the changes that went with the decal: one part futile effort to ease the painful sense of offness that never seemed to subside, and one part – a large part – anxiety.
Flashflare, who could hardly have failed to notice, and who undoubtedly knew well enough what that habit meant, asked, "And you're sure you haven't been tinkering yourself? No self-modification?"
Ratchet gave him a look. "I know how to deal with upgrades – if I had tried to adjust something, I wouldn't have done it blindly, or left it unlogged. And I wouldn't use anything that could damage circuitry or other parts. It's not self-injury!"
Flashflare gave him an apologetic shrug and simply turned his attention to running a scan over the affected area, palm held low over Ratchet's arm, slowly following the varied surfaces of armor and exo-structure. Ratchet watched the numbers pop up on the medic's holo-screen, interpreting them automatically, and he vented gently over the results. His colleague gave him a sympathetic hum.
"I'm sorry, Ratchet," he said, and shook his head as he lowered his hand. "I'm not picking up anything physically wrong – no tensors on the verge of snapping, no overly pressurized hydraulics, no surgical debris. Your neural read-out didn't show any energy spikes, and I don't see any mistakes in the coding. You just need to give yourself time to adjust. You've had only a few weeks to get used to the weapons upgrade."
"Right," Ratchet grunted, running his own fingers lightly over reconfigured structures, micro-scanners engaged, which sent a little electric thrill along sensitive neural pathways. Flashflare watched him a moment, then said gently:
"Weaponry doesn't sit well with medical programming – less well than it sits with most programming."
"I know that," he growled, with a derisive flare of tones for the medical pedantry.
"And you know I know it, too," Flashflare replied evenly. "Everybody on this ward knows it, and that you can't live in the conflict. You've got to resolve it: you need to realize what you are now, or it's going to kill you one day." A pause, then, quietly: "Are you certain you want to do this?"
At that, Ratchet gave him a glare, and a rumble of his engine, though he was hardly surprised by the question. It'd become a sort of refrain to his existence of late, and the irritating thing about it was that although his answer never changed, the question itself was enough to guarantee another hour spent battling his doubts back into submission. Granted, he won the battle: the fact that he was still here and giving the same answer testified to that. But it wasn't a fight he enjoyed, and it didn't help that his own body was fueling the side of doubt.
For though he knew very well that signal confusion was not unusual after an upgrade, this was different. Beyond the frustration with loss of control lay the only thinly-covered fear that somehow, this was a sign that he had no business here – that he should've stayed in Iacon, in the familiar confines of Paraprax District's Emergency Repair Bay. It wasn't as if Ratchet had wanted to be a weapon, after all. That wasn't what he'd volunteered himself to be when he'd volunteered himself to the Autobots. That wasn't why he was here.
Forty years it had been since the war had exploded in Kaon, and it was hard to say anymore that Megatron's fighters were "rebels" and not choke on the word, which made of them but a small faction on the fringes of a society. In those forty years, Megatron had won or made enough converts to put all of Cybertron, and by extension every one of its colonies, in convulsions. Production was down; supply lines were chancy, and an ever-increasing percentage of what was made in the way of medical supplies and energy rations went straight to the front. Life behind the lines was growing more and more strained, and only the horror of life on the lines could possibly hold anyone to the rationing schemas, to this level of frustration of need. Even so, every year, more and more changers left their places and swelled the ranks of the Jerries, whether they fought for Cybertron or Megatron.
Ratchet could tolerate the changers who leapt to fill a need, even if he cringed at the cobbled-together upgrades that didn't quite equal a fully thought-through outgrade. And he could tolerate the supply drawdown for himself. But what was he to do when a needed shipment of medical supplies didn't arrive, because it'd had to be diverted at the last minute to the front? He couldn't even always get the raw materials to fashion what he needed himself to treat his patients.
Still, he might have borne with it – like all cities, Iacon's outlying districts had suffered from missile attacks that even the orbital stations couldn't wholly shield, but it had been far from the brutal close-quarters combat that other cities had succumbed to. Or it had been, until Praxus. And that had been just the last crack in the casing. Two hellish weeks of triage and surgery on the med-evaced wounded of Praxus and almost no rest, and the pretense of neutrality had gone the way of entirely too many of his patients. He'd put in for transfer to a military medical cohort as a full-fledged combat surgeon.
Given that the Autobots were in dire need of front-line field medics, of whatever grade and ability, he ordinarily would've been snapped up immediately. However, when Ratchet had requested transfer, he'd requested it as a medic, seeking a medical posting. A medic was meant to preserve life – that was as basic as bedrock. It was built into him – it was what he was here for, first and last. It was nothing he'd ever wanted to deny or get around, and he had no intention of being anything other than a medic. He had no intention of becoming a soldier – of becoming a weapon.
Ratchet hadn't made any secret of any of that to the Autobot medical board assigned to assess his capacity to bear up to military needs. Were it not that his record was more than just sterling and that everyone knew that the military was short on combat medics, that avowed pacifism probably would've merited declining his offer to serve. As it was, it had still taken six rounds of interviews and arguments to obtain a release, and that only to a back-line ERB, despite his wishes.
He understood the reasoning. He'd read the reports and knew the stats on the schizophrenia that medics were prone to who spent any length of time on the front-lines. There was a reason for that shortage of medical personnel, and why even within their ranks, those permanently assigned to field positions – true combat medics – were few. Not even those new models who were built for combat stations tended to last – in fact, for reasons not well understood, they tended to break sooner than the medical Jerries – the converted civilian medical personnel recruited to combat posts – which took an enormous toll on a cohort. Nor was it only a psychological toll; there was a sizable material toll to consider, too.
Quite simply put, building those new combat medics was an enormous investment – more so than was usual, even for sophisticated medical models. They were not just a new design that put tools in different places or that had somewhat more powerful and diversified tool-suites and heavier armor – they were a prototype model designed to meet combat-specific needs.
For the same war that had ravaged Ratchet's orderly life in Iacon's ERB had wreaked havoc on supply lines that front-line medics depended on absolutely to function. Even with all the diversions to forward units, Decepticon raids had gutted anything resembling certainty on the supply front. Between irregular resupplies at base and the ever-present threat of being cut off behind enemy lines, combat medics had concluded that they needed a more "resilient" parts-supply than carry-kits alone could provide.
The IF-SSR medical model – which all and sundry agreed sounded like a bad logic loop to nowhere – answered to that need. Internal fabricators coupled with strategic systems redundancy took advantage of a sophisticated advance in molecular regeneration, making it possible for a field medic to cannibalize his own redundant parts at need, and to regenerate them, provided a sufficient chemical and energy matrix was maintained. In other words, the IF-SSR model gave combat medics a basic parts supply that could be renewed without returning to base or any civilized center.
But it was a very costly solution, not only for a strapped society, but for the individual. To build in that level of redundancy meant the IF-SSR modification needed a high-mass model, which simply took more energy in the first place to sustain and much more material to build. Nor did the problems end there. The unpleasantness of pulling internal parts in the hurry and chaos of battle all aside, stripping out parts caused mass variability that strained the limits of a Cybertronian's transformation system, and could easily go beyond them with catastrophic results for a medic who tried to transform. It could cause serious power and energy fluctuations, both of which just put more of a strain and drain on a 'bot's overall organism: failure to respect spec requirements could cause a total systems failure if the medic wasn't careful. And there was still that unexpected propensity towards schizophrenic breakdown in the prototype models...
Were circumstances any less dire, there likely wouldn't be any good excuse to produce a model with so unstable an anatomy, let alone deploy it. As it was, medical command preferred to produce prototypes where it had to and otherwise seek its combat medics from the ranks of conventional medical line models who enlisted. An outgrade-upgrade protocol did exist that could convert them to carry the new technology in modified, time-tested models, and for whatever reason, the incidence of schizophrenic breakdown was significantly lower.
But even so, it was a painful, resource-intense reconfiguration, disorienting in the extreme to the convert, and dangerous. High-mass models were harder in any case to adapt to than moving from high to lower-mass models, but the regenerative process and the systems redundancy required by the IF-SSR modification forced converts into mass ranges up to four times that of their original model. Body processing and self-sensing were enormously complicated, overwhelmingly so for a time, and it could take close to a year fully to adapt. As a result, only combat medics were currently eligible – indeed, mandated – to make the conversion; it simply wasn't worth the price in misery and resources, otherwise, to outfit 'bots with a doubly reconfigured form that most of them couldn't handle.
Ratchet, who kept up with new models and with line model evolution as a matter of course, was well aware of the risks and trials associated with the IF-SSR outgrade. He therefore wasn't looking forward to that conversion, but he trusted his own tolerances and was willing to go through with it to get to the entirely too many 'bots who died on the front for lack of medical attention before they ever saw a back-line ERB.
However, the Autobot medical board assigned to Ratchet's case – a board that included the Prime's CMO, Flicksaw, given the circumstances – was not convinced that anyone needed a committed medical pacifist serving as a field surgeon. Even having him on the back-lines was a risk that might cost more than it was worth, even without the outgrade. But putting him through one of the most difficult reconfigurations one could undergo short of outgrading from wheels to wings or from transport to structure...?
"Your capacity for modification isn't simply a question of your physical capacity to handle the IF-SSR reconfiguration," Flicksaw had said, again and again. "A reconfiguration intended for purposes that you disagree with is less likely to take. We can't justify the investment – not unless you give us a reason to think you'll defend it."
So long as Ratchet held to the purpose of medical models, that guarantee was beyond his power to give, though he'd at least managed to talk them into taking him on provisionally, for a probationary period. Weaponry upgrades being relatively minor, they could certainly justify installing them even on a pacifist, and, as he'd pointed out, it would be a baseline by which to evaluate him. If he couldn't handle that, obviously there was no reason to consider any of the more extensive modifications, and at least they'd have one more surgeon to staff a base hospital.
That was a risk the board could see its way to taking, and so Ratchet had bent to the requirements of military regulations in exchange for a chance at the assignment he was looking for. There was, at least, a goodly amount of flexibility in terms of what sort of weaponry a 'bot could take on: so long as he had at least one decent ranged weapon, the rest was a matter of choice. Thus the pulse-taser that had gone in on his left arm had been a concession to Ratchet's medical sensibilities, and he'd gone with the lightest machine gun he could get away with on the other.
Not that the weapon class seemed to make any difference so far as adapting to it was concerned. He really hadn't expected his own body to stymie him in this – not to this degree, not given that he usually had so few problems with upgrades. And the direction of the stymying was worrisome – since when did an upgrade module, however ill-fitting with the rest of his person and purpose, function in itself but interfere with his regular transformations...?
Flashflare was still watching him, he realized, waiting on a more substantial answer. And so: "Yes," he said shortly, irritation rife in his undertones. "I'm sure."
In response to which the other 'bot simply dipped his floodlights in a conciliatory manner. But he didn't back down, either.
"Look, Ratchet, I sympathize, I do," his colleague insisted. "But if you're going to go through with this, then you need to come to terms with the fact that you are what you are. Don't give yourself a case of schizophrenia about it by chasing after what's gone." And when Ratchet still said nothing, just continued to stare at him, Flashflare vented a bit.
"Just spend some time on the practice ranges," he cajoled, changingtacks. "There's plenty of space on the ranges for newcomers and regulars getting used to upgrades, and if nothing else, you'll frag your sergeant off less during practice."
At that, Ratchet flared his vents slightly, even as armo angled defensively. "Has he complained?" he asked.
"Barrage was in here a day or two ago for maintenance," Flashflare allowed. Then: "He said he had some concerns about your progress – about medical reservations you have that are interfering with your ability to act on the field."
"I'm sure he does," Ratchet grunted, but offered nothing further. After all, it wasn't news. Ratchet's particular principled commitments might not be widely known outside the med bay, but anyone would pick him out in a flash in an exercise as the worst soldier on the field, even without his color scheme. There was a reason that he was Barrage's favorite 'demonstrator' – the sergeant probably could qualify as an EMT with the amount of time he'd spent with his hands wedged between the various plates of Ratchet's armor, demonstrating kill-zones that Ratchet had failed to take advantage of on other the other Jerries during drills.
For his part, Ratchet was willing to testify to the sergeant's knowledgeability and general trustworthiness – after all, he joked in his moments of black, self-deprecating humor, Barrage hadn't killed him yet, despite having had a grip on several vital parts, and he knew exactly how much heat or pressure to apply to make matters uncomfortable without causing Ratchet to twitch in some fatal fashion. That had to be worth something, medically speaking, even if Barrage's educational torment was hard to endure – almost as hard as it was to watch, not that saying anything would help. Ratchet ought to know – he'd tried, and after Barrage had run his squad 'til they'd dropped as an 'alternative', his squad mates had quietly but firmly insisted they would rather put up with being made an occasional example than spend their down-time laboring under the sergeant.
"It's not that we like it," Amtek had tried to explain, "and it's not that we don't get what you're saying, it's just the way you roll here: path of least resistance."
The entire affair had left Ratchet deeply disturbed, but faced with a united front and the guilty knowledge that he was mostly the cause of Barrage's dissatisfaction with their performance as a unit, he'd acquiesced. And admittedly, he could at least tolerate his own status as prime target – he might end the day in pain after the sergeant was done with him, but he knew very well that he was courting the chance of suffering far worse. So every practice day, he steeled himself to endure and stepped onto the field, because for someone with his commitments, there were only two choices, and he'd already foreclosed on one of them. He couldn't complain overly of the consequences, therefore.
But other than the occasional joke, Barrage's lessons, and his own central role in them, were nothing he wanted to discuss, and Flashflare, after a few moments, mercifully let the subject drop.
"You know as well as I do that with any modification, whatever it might be, use makes for familiarity," he said instead, "and familiarity decreases these kinds of effects, regardless of the larger picture you're dealing with. All right?"
It was sound advice, and Ratchet knew it, even if it was the last thing he wanted to hear. He therefore thanked Flashflare for his trouble, if with less grace than was deserved, and left the medical wing of the base, glitch unfixed, problem unresolved.