"So…are you the new nurse?" nervously, asked the vehicon. Ratchet was currently welding the vehicon's chest plates closed – twice over, for double the integrity.
After an organ transplant.
Without painkillers.
And this particular vehicon he was currently working upon displayed an impressive, yet disturbing tolerance for pain.
The vehicon wouldn't stop spouting gibberish into Ratchet's audials.
As if it were a regular occasion.
Typically, Ratchet wouldn't have tolerated chitter-chatter during such a delicate procedure.
But Decepticons held entirely unconventional ideas about what constituted as urgent or severe, when it came to medical care.
Ratchet thanked his lucky stars that vehicons were budget-models, and easy to repair.
"Soo, you're the nurse?" asked again, the vehicon.
Ratchet thought the answer was obvious.
But then again, vehicons weren't known for their processing power.
"Yeh-yes?" Ratchet answered politely, as best he could – as if he were actually keen to keep up such a distracting conversation.
Which was borderline infuriating.
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever." Ratchet replied automatically, not even hearing the vehicon's next spamation of words – if only to keep "his patient" calm and proper beneath his servos.
But of course, nothing could prevent the vehicon from screaming obscenities.
The agony must've been overwhelming.
So, Ratchet's hand remained steady.
Quickly, his blowtorch welded the frame shut.
But inside, Ratchet was shaken up. His joints had long seized with pent-up emotional whiplash.
Vehicons were all the same.
But each repair differed severely with every surgery.
It was like a battering of tests.
Ratchet felt like he was back in med school, back when he'd been a mere protoform undergoing his most basic of gauntlets.
Each Decepticon was a reminder.
Of his ability.
Of his – creativity.
Ratchet's legs were bleeding, having cannibalized his frame in order to acquire a fresh supply of healthy, semi-sanitized metal.
Little strips of white armor clippings feed through the bottom of one of his fingertips like the back of a glue gun – reloading his welding needle-finger with sentio metallico as if it were a mechanical pencil.
"Medic!" a random Decepticon shouted to get his attention, but he refused to look up from his patient.
From the corner of his optics he saw as another vehicon clanged onto the nearby surface of a boulder.
His sorry excuse for a workstation.
"We've got another one!" the Decepticon declared, with a chipper expression – as if he expected to be thanked by Ratchet.
For pointing out the obvious.
Or for giving him another additional round to his endless list of surgeries.
And the mech kept standing there, behind him – testing the very last vestiges of Ratchet's patience.
A very finite resource.
Perhaps the random delivery-mech wanted to ask him a question, as the Decepticon glared holes into Ratchet's backside.
But thankfully, the mech left after a few spark-hammering clicks, having eventually gotten the message that Ratchet was unavailable for random back and forth banter.
Or the questions.
Dear God, the questions.
'Primus above, was the Decepticon-clinic actually a gossip house or something?" theorized Ratchet. He thought a moment longer, twitching his already stiffened and stern eyebrows.
'Knockout seems just the type of mech to ignore patient confidentiality.' Perhaps it was unprofessional of Ratchet, to make such baseless claims.
But he hadn't forgotten that Knockout was responsible for his ill-gotten situation.
It had been dumb.
Pure foolhardy, tomfoolery.
His biggest mistake in a very long time.
He had trusted Knockout to teleport him back into Autobot-headquarters – via a groundbridge portal – when he'd panic-ran to drag Jazz back to base – to help him with Optimus Prime's pending surgeries.
All it had taken to solve the issue was one measly portal.
But ultimately, Knockout hadn't helped.
And Ratchet had been humbled and disappointed all at once.
He had dared to give the benefit of a doubt.
To the enemy.
And got burned.
Flambéd.
'If I ever see Knockout again – I'm going to cut his head off.' Ratchet thought, genuinely enthused by the idea.
Of revenge.
His work hastened. His chatty patient was quickly dismissed with a wavey, livid servo.
Replaced with a much quieter patient.
Perhaps, close.
To offlining.
The boulder's surface cracked a hairline fracture, with the weight of yet another vehicon.
Ratchet's eye twitched, imperceptibly.
A giant uneven rock was the worst medical berth imaginable, and Ratchet was happy to soon step away from it.
The "berth," was soon humming with the passive ventilations of a stasis-locked vehicon – and it was perhaps the two hundredth surgery Ratchet had performed for the Decepticon-refuges.
And he persisted in the entirety of his operations – unperturbed, like the professional he was.
His bedside manner was terrible.
But it was a necessary evil.
Eventually, he had no more patients in critical condition – and each had been haphazardly sprawled across a grotesque, lumpy rock.
There was no way to say how many Decepticons would survive their numerous, precarious conditions – past and beyond a single solar cycle.
But Ratchet had tried, which was the most important thing.
"Alright, break time." He muttered outloud, to himself. He looked around for the closest equivalent to an energon dispenser within the ramshackle camp of stacked boulders and logs.
But there was nothing of the sort to give him a clue as to where it was.
There weren't any light sources illuminated around the camp, besides the military-grade headlights from his ambulance alt-mode.
And the hungry, blinking red-eyes of countless hurt Decepticons…
He stalked towards another overturned boulder – the closest equivalent of a bench and table he saw – and he slumped over it, ready to pass out into recharge.
The "table," was already occupied by two vehicons, with name badges scribbled atop their chest plates – in charcoal – labeled 02car and B3nt1y respectively.
Ratchet blinked his optics.
'Since when did vehicons show off their designations, so wantonly?' he asked himself.
"Thirsty?" the one named B3nt1y asked – and the vehicon read the room spectacularly, as it pushed towards a hopefully normal cube of energon.
Directly into Ratchet's tired, quivering servos.
"Hungry already?" Swiping his fingers across a datapad, 02car was visibly annoyed. "Someone should've brought you fuel already." He tisked.
"At this rate we are going to run out of rations sooner than expected." Said 02car, turning to address B3nt1y, who shrugged his shoulder-plates.
"Someone delivered the cube earlier; unless, they took it for themselves?" concluded B3nt1y.
02car growled in agitation. "Well, don't let it happen again. It turns out the new nurse refuels twice as often as the old one."
"I'm not a nurse." Ratchet grumbled, with equal measurements of agitation.
Both vehicons looked at one another, their commlink lights blinking as if sharing a private joke.
"Whatever you say – nurse." They said, in unison.
It tasted like rotten bodies.
The extra energon cube delivered to him earlier was the lowest grade of the low.
Ratchet wasn't surprised.
Just.
Disappointed.
'I expected these guys to be a bit more grateful to me – saving their lives and all. Ha ha, silly me.' Ratchet meant the thoughts to be sarcastic, but the words still scratched something fierce against his spark.
Truly – Ratchet had expected to be treated better.
And ultimately, he'd expected many things to occur, during the times of his functioning.
Like for the war, to be over.
But such a dream was wishful thinking, as he downed a cube's worth of corpse water directly into his intake.
There was no need to be picky.
Suspicious energon was far from the worst thing Ratchet had ingested during the course of the war.
But it was still notable.
He hadn't tasted energon that bad since the Fall of Cybertron.
If the Decepticons didn't find another source of fuel soon, they'd starve to death. Grimly, Ratchet side-eyed the rather impressive display of stasis-locked patients he'd since treated.
He loathed the idea of all of his surgical efforts becoming undone, due to a dire incident of cannibalism.
But the Decepticons were spiraling towards that dark, looming path…
Soon.
Refueled enough for cycles, and ideally enough for Ratchet to forget the horrendous matter entirely – he stood up to return the cube.
The glass containers were steadily becoming scarcer by the cycle, and without the Nemesis-hardware required for seamless cube-production – it would inevitably become an issue.
And with many injured, slippery-limbed mechs about, glass had inevitably – casually, been left scattered across the ground.
Like the world's shittest carpet.
The Decepticon camp was quickly becoming what Ratchet and the humans would lovingly call — a "shit hole."
He approached what passed as the camp's commissary – a sad, hideous boulder just as pathetic as his own workstation.
The vehicon stationed there accepted his glass wordlessly, not even looking over as it was deposited atop a pyramid of dirty, empty glasses.
It was pretty.
A pretty bad omen.
And again, terrified by the prospect of cannibalism, Ratchet decided to evaluate for himself where exactly the energon was coming from.
Approaching a station sequestered purposely away from the camp, he noticed a handful of vehicons optimistically picking away at a cascade of rocky rubble.
To his surprise, he found the Winglord there as well – hacking away at a cliffside, with his gargantuan hands.
"How goes the search for energon?" he asked. The Winglord looked at him strangely, in what might've constituted his own brand of amusement.
"Oh no, we aren't digging for energon."
Ratchet held his tongue, urging the Winglord to continue.
"If we find the correct tunnels, there will be enough energon cubes for everyone!" happily declared the Winglord.
Tunnels.
What?
Ratchet wanted to ask specifics, but before he could, a rotten smell hit his olfactory-nerves.
It was as if a stink cloud of sulfur had whipped past, wrapping around his neck like a scarf.
There was the unmistakable, putrid scent of raw iron oxide.
"Ugh, what is that smell?" he asked.
The Winglord shrugged. "Probably what's left of Sky-Byte."
Ratchet felt his recent meal curdle within his tanks. He felt heavy, laden with rancid sludge.
Sky-Byte was a Decepticon's name.
'No! They can't be resorting to cannibalism already!'
The panic must've shown starkly across Ratchet's faceplates, because the Winglord was quick to correct –
As if, eerily reading his mind.
"Oh no, he's been dead for maybe half a year." He pointed out.
As if such a fact was somehow better.
"Explain." Snapped Ratchet.
The Winglord grimly pointed a finger, leading towards a pitiful crater.
It was dark evidence.
The site before him had been obscured by mining vehicons – but now that the Winglord had pointed it out, it was obvious to Ratchet
He looked down into the unassuming pit.
Sky-Byte the variant sharkticon – had been sawed apart.
And split open.
Like a pinata.
"Primus, what sick bastard would do this?" asked Ratchet. He looked up at the Winglord, as if to accuse him of said crime – but the giant bird looked just as disgusted as he was.
"Gruesome, isn't it?" idlely commented the Winglord. "The sharkticon had been chock full of energon crystals." He crossed his arms as he shrugged. "It's how I fed the camp for so long."
And he continued.
"It was a pleasant surprise donation from Deadend, though I almost strangled him when I found out that the outer shell and innards used to be a functional cybertronian – not just the deep sea mining drone he had initially proclaimed the shark-submarine alt-mode to be." The Winglord prattled on, and Ratchet naturally, grew confused.
Ratchet didn't know enough about the mech Deadend to hypothesize any solid conclusions about the matter.
Was Deadend a maniac who simply turned mechs into drones?
Was Deadend in charge of a secret underwater mining operation?
How did Deadend become a nurse?
All were useless questions to answer.
And Ratchet didn't have a clue what to think.
All he knew – was that he'd been stuck with the mech's initial workload and responsibilities as the camp's only healthcare option.
And Deadend's unqualified, unpracticed, and unproven surgical parameters – suddenly, made a gruesome amount of sense.
And the sooner Deadend came crawling back to camp, the better Ratchet could rest easy.
By beating him senseless.
Most of the botched surgical-sites Ratchet had had to address on many a vehicon had been downright horrific.
It was…ridiculous.
The entire situation.
To Ratchet.
Owed entirely to Deadend's amateur butchery.
"Excuse me, Winglord – errh Sunstorm, was it?" Ratchet spat the title as if it were a curse word.
"I don't understand. Sky-Byte is obviously a cybertronian – or, well, the remains of one. Why turn him into a lobotomized drone? Wouldn't it have been – easier to keep him alive, so he could mine energon more efficiently? I mean, this is —"
Ratchet had begun to openly ramble.
Instinctively, he had approached Sky-Byte's remains, sliding down into the crater without hesitation.
As if there was a chance in hell he could fix him.
'It's just so awful.' Ratchet thought, shaking his head. Sky-Byte had clear diagnosable evidence of a struggle before he had died. There wasn't a single inch of metal not mangled by a surgical scar, or the tiniest patch-jobs he'd ever seen welded…
As if done, by a child's hand.
'Did humans do this?' Ratchet asked himself, and curiosity almost got the better of him.
Out of habit, due to his obsessive knack for healing, he'd almost touched the rust-stained corpse with outstretched fingers.
Before pulling away, thinking better of it, as a medical professional.
"It could be contagious." Ratchet muttered aloud, drawing the Winglord's attention.
Winglord Sunstorm paused to gesture towards the particulars of Sky-Byte's remains.
"At first I thought it was the work of Shockwave. He loves loves gross little experiments like this." Commented Sunstorm, a bit too confidently. "But – then I noticed – via a scan – the tiny clawprints."
Sunstorm hummed to himself, his wings ruffled a bit with pride. "It's obviously the work of sparkeater juveniles. What other creature on this planet would have claws so small, with the knack to use them?"
'Certainly, not humans.' The Winglord thought.
And the Winglord passionately prattled on, like a misplaced tour guide – and Ratchet hung onto his every word, tired and impatient as he was.
"Sky-Byte was gutted – probably alive – by sparkeaters. They twisted him into a thrall, and to them – a drone was much more convenient to command – to mine energon crystals from the oceanic depths."
At first Ratchet didn't understand…
"Sky-Byte was a slave." Sunstorm bluntly said.
Ratchet's grumbled, as if he understood.
His mind was soon reeling from the surface-level implications of Sunstorm's explanation.
Right, slavery.
That made perfect sense.
And deep sea mining?
On Earth?
What?
Ratchet refused to make sense of it.
The Winglord was screaming nonsense.
Ratchet hated to entertain the notion of a secret third faction of cybertronians.
Sparkeaters?
What.
Were.
Those?
And why was the term somehow familiar to his processor?
"What is – a sparkeater?" asked Ratchet.
The Winglord smiled, a bit toothily, as if he'd known the question was coming – and he spoke cartoonishly quick, towards Ratchet.
"Sparkeaters – they're monsters." He paused to flap his wings for emphasis.
"They're monsters, which live deep beneath the crust of this planet. They have tunneled into Unicron's flesh, feasting upon him like parasites."
And he continued, and continued.
"Those filthy whelps eat whatever mech they can get their grubby little paws into." Sunstorm smirked darkly. "They don't discriminate between factions, I assure you. They eat everyone equally."
Sunstorm clasped his hands together, and then shut his beak of a mouth closed – not really having answered the question: "What is a sparkeater?"
Much to Ratchet's wide-eyed aggravation.
'Sparkeaters. Sparkeaters.' Ratchet racked his processor for an answer – but despite Sunstorm's eccentric explanation, any reliable info remained as elusive as ever.
The term sparkeater – was familiar somehow.
And it was driving Ratchet batty to not have a clear definition of the term.
"You'll understand if you ever come across one. As much as I'm loath to admit it – they are weirdly cute – the majority anyway." He said, with a twinge of reluctance.
It was unhelpful information to Ratchet.
And to his horror, Sunstorm continued making zero sense.
"Sparkeaters – they're monsters stuck in the frames of babies – sparklings. And they are always hungry – just like the real thing." Sunstorm bent down ominously, staring into Ratchet's half-lidded optics. "Don't be fooled by appearances. They. Will. Eat. You."
And he talked, and talked.
The dear Winglord.
"It is my Primus-given duty to stop them – those nasty little savages." He projected a proud and confident bellowing voice. His kingly stance was unwavering as he continued to point out the flaws within the Sky-Byte drone.
But all Ratchet continued to see was the corpse.
"We are trying to find an entry point into one of their tunnels, hence the digging." Said Sunstorm.
Ratchet shook his head, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.
But.
He knew one thing…
…That the Winglord was crazy.
And he was proven right!
When the Winglord snatched him suddenly, into an enclosed fist.
And promptly palmed him back and forth, as if undecided what to do with him.
"What. The. Frag!" Ratchet yelled, but the sound was muffled as Sunstorm's palms enclosed around him.
As if he were a bug.
"Oh goodie." Sunstorm said sarcastically. "According to reports it looks like you're all up to date with surgeries." His helmet flashed with several commlink indicators.
"That means your schedule is free – free enough to come with me!" He stated, rather chipperly.
Eventually, Ratchet managed to weasel free – from out between Sunstorm's servos, only to be captured again by an open fist.
Ratchet had jumped, catching air for a few precious seconds – desperately trying to get back down to the ground.
But the Winglord openly laughed at him, toying with him like a cat would a mouse.
Ratchet opened his mouth to say something.
Anything.
Like "Let me go!" or any other sensible words.
But he was freaking out.
He was freaking out bad.
Ratchet bit down hard – into Sunstorm's closest finger. His small teeth were like paper mache against cold butter.
Useless.
Pathetic.
Ratchet was furious – how dare ANYONE manhandle him like a hamster!
The disrespect.
Drove Ratchet crazy.
Sunstorm playfully waved the minutely small cut around, teasing Ratchet as he rabidly tried to stab sterilized scalpels into Sunstorm's armored skin.
But it was pathetic.
Useless.
Scalpels warped and bent, flopping down against the ground as ugly glistening specks.
The scalpels weren't even sticking where Ratchet tried his hardest to puncture the blades through.
In the end, Ratchet could only openly stare.
"My, let's hope you don't become a sparkeater." Sunstorm had the audacity to laugh. "You'd be a particularly nasty one for sure."
Ratchet eyed the minute cut he'd been able to make against Sunstorm's finger.
Slowly, his mind clicked together – what exactly, a sparkeater was.
Somethingt hat bit.
Something like Blurr.
Who killed Bulkhead.
It would gnash its teeth.
Like Arcee.
Like the jet-twins.
Ratchet was exhausted. It was tempting to fall asleep into recharge, welcoming the potential to slip through Sunstorm's fingers – particularly when the mech enviably became distracted.
But any plan Ratchet tried to cook up, was thoroughly replaced by his spark-hammering rage.
He couldn't focus.
He couldn't sleep.
He could only gnash his teeth.
