This chapter was originally gonna be a lot longer, but I decided to split it up. That being said, the next chapter won't take nearly as long to come out! Enjoy!

Waking up felt like breaking the water's surface. He gasped, vents choking as his optics flew open only to be blinded by a bright light above him. A hand on his chassis sternly kept him down, but dazed and disoriented, he shoved it away, only to have it push down harder. His vision slowly began to clear and he blinked, trying to remember exactly why he felt so panicked. And then it hit him.

"Bluestreak!" he gasped and forcefully threw the hand off of him, swinging his legs off of the medical berth before he even realized what he had been laying on.

That same hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back down onto the flat surface. "Don't make me sedate you, cause you know I will," a familiar voice growled.

"Spec?" Ratchet blinked again, his optics finally adjusting to the harsh light of the medbay. The Con slid into focus as he loomed over Ratchet.

"Who else would it be, dumb aft," the older mech snapped and even half conscious, Ratchet could tell he was not in a good mood. "Who else would have answered your emergency beacon and flown all the slag the way to the Rust Sea to drag your sorry skidplates back here, even after I warned you what a psychopath Meister was?"

Ratchet slumped against the medical berth, his hand going to his aching head. "Emergency beacon?" he repeated, only hearing every other word the fuming mech said. He didn't remember activating his emergency beacon.

"Yes, an emergency beacon!" Spec snapped and Ratchet winced as his voice shot daggers straight into his aching processor. He closed his optics tightly, the bright light not helping his condition either. "The one you set off after Meister must have clocked you. Go ahead—tell me I'm right! I find you lying on the side of the slagging road, dented to hell and redlining on most of your fluid levels with my gun in your damn hand! Tell me you at least managed to shoot the slagger?"

Ratchet rubbed his optics as he tried to think back. Muddled images of a gun, Bluestreak and the Rust Sea surfaced, but he couldn't quite string them together. "I don't think so," Ratchet murmured. The image of a red Autobot symbol floated into his processor and he frowned, feeling like he was forgetting something important. "He took Bluestreak."

Spec scowled even as he checked his readings. "Who the slag's Bluestreak?"

Ratchet swallowed. "A Praxian," he said. "He's a sparkling… and now Meister has him."

"Oh." Spec was quiet for a moment. "Is the kid family?" he wondered after a moment, his tone losing its harsh edge.

Ratchet shook his head and instantly regretted it. "I got his coordinates from a mech… didn't know what I was gonna find until I got there," he said. Already, guilt was starting to build in him like rust, processor automatically pointing out all the things he could have done to keep the young Praxian safe.

Spec stared at him with a sort of puzzled awe. "You went through all that trouble… getting those days off and driving all the way to Praxus… on some coordinates from a mech you didn't even know?" he asked.

Ratchet finally opened his optics to glare at the mech. "He said there was someone who needed help. Turns out he was right," he snapped with as much energy as he could muster. "Go ahead, call me glitched—I'd do it again if I had the chance."

Spec snorted. "I don't know whether to call you glitched or stupidly noble," he muttered. "Not many would do what you did." A scan blipped its completion and Spec checked the monitor, his scowl returning full force. "Frag it, I was waiting until you were conscious to be sure, but you're useless to me right now," he said through a sigh. "That blow to the head knocked more than just the common sense out of you. He dented hard enough to hit your visual processor and jostle the hell out of it. Autorepair will take care of it, but it's sparking like a hot wire. Enjoy the random blackouts."

A tremor of fear raced up his backstruts as Ratchet remembered past conversations about usefulness in Kaon. He swallowed, optics wide and alert. "What happens now?"

Before Spec could answer, a painful jolt shot through the back of Ratchet's helm. He yelped in surprise, even as the power to his optics cut off, plunging him into darkness. Gripping tight to the medical berth to anchor himself, he felt his system frantically trying to restore power to his darkened optics. Even so, it was a few long moments before his optical sensors flickered and powered back on.

His vision cleared and Spec was waving a hand in front of his nose. Ratchet jerked back in surprise and the older mech snorted. "That's going to happen. A lot. I got no use for a partially blind medic and neither does anyone else for that matter," he said even as he pulled out his datapad. "I'm putting you on the injured roster until you stop glitching."

Ratchet suddenly felt foolish. Of course they wouldn't kill a mech off just because of a minor injury. He ran a hand over his head, feeling the warped metal where Spec must have popped the dent out. "Thank you… for coming to get me," he said.

Spec smirked and raised an optic ridge. "Oh, you'll make it up to me when you're fixed," he said. "Do yourself a favor and stay in your berth. I'm not fixing you if you black out and fall down a flight of stairs."

Ratchet tried to obey, he really did. He thought that his exhausted system would welcome the idea of near infinite recharge time, and for the first day, it did. But then, he started to get anxious. It always felt like he had something he needed to be doing—after the constant motion of the medbay and his little vacation to Praxus, he realized he had gotten used to running himself ragged, and now, with nothing but rest awaiting him, he was getting antsy.

It was only when he couldn't stand another moment of sitting still that he started taking short trips out of his barrack. With one hand on the wall for stability, he would venture out into the expansive Kaon HQ, just for something to do. During his long walks, he began to realize just how little of the base he had actually seen.

He discovered a functioning armory, riddled with guards and Decepticon soldiers alike who cleaned and charged the various weapons. Near that, he found an entire level dedicated to a shooting range. With how useless he had been in defending Bluestreak, he was tempted to pick up a gun a try, but then the back of his head had sparked and his optics went out for nearly a breem and he decided to try it later, when he wasn't glitching.

It wasn't until the third day of his recovery that he stumbled upon a sign listed in one of the many lifts. Ratchet did a double take. The small plague read "Engineering." Without a second's hesitation, he pressed the button and the lift took him down farther than he had ever gone before. As soon as the doors open, he realized that the engineering deck was located below the surface, nestled in the metal caverns under the planet's crust.

It was oppressively loud and hot in the large, enclosed space, the product of numerous different construction projects and as Ratchet stepped out onto the loft that looked out over the chaos, his hopes of finding Wheeljack plummeted. It was a busy area, comparable to the medbay after a fight in terms of mech-power, but the automated machinery that was constantly welding and setting made it seem that much more chaotic.

Hesitantly, Ratchet walked down the rickety metal stairs into the mess of it. The temperature rose even further as he cautiously made his way across the floor, carefully stepping over thick cables and ducking hanging wires, and though it wasn't nearly as hot as the vent had been, coolant still beaded on his armor. Mechs were pouring of design schematics, yelling at each other over the din and pointing at parts of whatever monstrosity it was they were building. Ratchet couldn't tell what it was and couldn't bring himself to care as a painful spark shot across the back of his head and his optics shorted out.

Cursing into the racket, he blindly stumbled for something to hold onto that was hopefully out of the way, vowing to stick to the wall when his sight came back. The last thing he wanted was to step on something important and get himself fried. There were too many live, sparking wires down here for his comfort. His hands met something solid and slightly rounded and he leaned against it, praying he was far enough out of the way. He stayed pressed against the thing for a few long minutes, waiting for his optics to reboot as they flickered and struggled to regain power.

He heard a shout from somewhere above and suddenly, the metal under him started thrumming, heat building inside of it until it was hot enough to burn. Ratchet jerked his hand away and he heard another, more panicked sounding shout though he couldn't make out the words they were saying. His optics started to fuzzily regain their vision when something hard hit him from behind, tackling him to the ground. A hand on his head kept him pressed to the ground and he felt a weight of another mech settle over him. There was the distinctive whirr of a charging weapon and Ratchet braced himself before the explosion of it shot over them, so close he could feel the sizzle of heat and the shockwave of displaced air as the bolt passed over.

Ratchet blinked, his vision finally clearing. He didn't have much time to enjoy the sensation before he was roughly yanked to his feet by a very upset, soot covered mech. It took Ratchet a long moment to recognize the stern blue optics and the distinctive paint job hidden under the weeks of grime and ash.

"Wheeljack?"