Boulder leapt forward as the comm flickered to life and the little human sitting on the oversized console came into focus.

"Blades! Or... Taylor...?"

Taylor's shoulders shrugged apologetically. "Still Blades. But Ratchet says it shouldn't be long now! There was only one explosion in Jack's lab yesterday, and that apparently means that they're almost done."

"An explosion means that? Is this a human scientist?"

"No. He's a bot. Wheeljack. But most of the bots here call him Jack when he's in mad scientist mode. Bee says he does that five or six times in a single megacycle when he's first starting out on a project. No one is allowed anyone near those decks when he gets a new idea."

"In truth it's more that we don't allow Jack anywhere beyond those decks when he gets a new idea. There was considerable effort invested in installing additional safety protocols across those levels to contain his... excess exuberation."

"Oh Boulder," Blades turned and gestured at the red and white bot manning the controls for him. "This is Red Alert. He's the head of security on the Ark. Him and Chase need to get a game of Cybertronian chess going. It would keep them both busy for for decacycles."

"Well that's good to know." Boulder smiled at the other bot and leaned back. "If he thinks you can come anywhere close to beating Chase, then I know you've got that place locked up safer than Vigil even."

"I have not seen the personnel file for this Vigil you speak of, but I thank you for your trust. The Ark is most assuredly secure, and not even Wheeljack can compromise that."

"Or at least not for more than a couple of breems..."

Boulder's optics widened as the little security bot snapped up and half dragged the cheeky red frontliner out of the room.

"That's Sideswipe. He's apparently a degenerate criminal mastermind."

"And they let him out of the brig?"

"I think they're trying to rehabilitate him or something." The little human's brow furrowed for a moment as he puzzled on it. "I mean, there's always someone assigned to watch him, and Red Alert almost always has at least two of the video screens dedicated to wherever he is at any given time. I think he's working as a janitor now. He's always scrubbing the floors with these really tiny brushes, or repainting the walls, or buffing out dents in Jack's lab. I guess they didn't bring any bot-sized scrubbing brushes with them from Cybertron."

"I... don't think that's it... But how's Bee?"

"He's great! I went drag racing with him and Raf last night and there's another race tonight. We came in second, but that was on purpose. Raf said the other guy pounds anyone that beats him into the ground so Bee won't do it when someone's riding along. I guess he works in construction or something. Although it's still really weird to be sitting inside of him when we go places... I mean... Do you think Dani and them ever thought about it really? It's just so..."

Boulder laughed. "Yeah I guess it would be kind of weird for us... I can't even imagine going for a ride inside Chase or Heatwave."

Too late, the names slipped out of his mouth before he could bite them back. He saw the little human's face fall as he was reminded, yet again, that they weren't in the room.

"Blades... I know they want to be here..."

"Then why aren't they? It's not like someone is forcing them to stay out..."

"Chase has been trying to get Heatwave to be reasonable, but well..." The big green bot sighed and raised his hands in apologetic resignation. "I think he's just too scared."

"Oh yeah, sure. Because 1.87 meters is sooo intimidating. There are microbots that are taller than I am right now. And I'm a few tons short of even being able to stand up to a stiff wind!" Blades scoffed, but the bitter sarcasm did little to hide the hurt and disappointment he felt.

"It's not that..." Boulder sighed, his mouth opening and closing several times as he vacillated on what to say. "I think... He's just too afraid to think about what if something goes wrong. I mean, what if Perceptor is too late? What will we do if it does become permanent? Or if... if... something... I mean..."

"If neither of us comes back at all." The little human stared darkly at the console he sat on. "I know. You think I don't think about that? Of course I think about it. What if the machine blows us up. What if we get turned into goo. What if both our sparks go flying off into space and you're left with two empties. What if only one of us comes back."

"Blades, I'm sorry..."

"It's not you. I'm the paranoid one, remember? I think I've already come up with every possible, farfetched, unreasonable, and just down right glitched outcome and then some. I just..." Blades sucked in a sharp breath to try and steady his voice, but it still came out as barely more than a cracked whisper.

"I don't want to have one of those things happen, and not have gotten to say goodbye..."

Blades reached down and flicked the viewscreen to black before Boulder had a chance to answer, but the sparkbroken look in the green bot's optics emoted volumes more than his vocalizer ever could have.

Blades sighed shakily, before he climbed down from the console and left the comm room. He felt lousy for lashing out at Boulder like that. He was the only bot who was really trying to keep his spirits up throughout this whole mess and it certainly wasn't his fault Heatwave had gone and relapsed to his aft-headed jerk alt mode.

He rubbed idly at where his chest panels should have been. Ever since Perceptor had mentioned that their sparks were adapting he'd become keenly aware of the lessening pains. The first few days had been horrific. He had felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to his spark chamber and mashed it three sizes too small.

Naturally, he had recalled stories of bots who had been unable to get their frames upgraded appropriately as their sparks grew, causing them to overheat their frames, short out their neural nets, crash their processes and glitch out in terrifyingly psychotic ways.

Now he wasn't sure if that wouldn't have been the preferable thing to be afraid of compared to his spark shrinking to fit this miserable carbon frame.

"Ah Blades... Perfect timing."

Startled, he looked up as the white medic loomed over him.

"Hound has gone and cracked his axle, and all the mess that goes along with that. Care to observe? Might be useful to get one of you better trained. Slagging stasis pods can only be counted on for so much." The medic's eyes were sharp as they appraised his reaction. It was a far more complicated repair compared to the minor patch and maintenance jobs Blades had been shadowing him on up to now.

"Will he mind?"

Ratchet snorted. "Like I give a slag. He did it to himself off-roading before I cleared his upgrades and Earth mods as being sufficient for his intended use. I'll make a case study of him if I frag well please."

"I heard that you old coot!" The tracker hollered back from the medbay.

"Good! Maybe you'll remember it next time if you have even half a processor to stay active a quarter as long as I have!"

Blades cringed, both hands clapped over his audials, and Ratchet grunted and rubbed his chevron in consternation when he noticed. "Right... lower volume. I forget you can't dial down those audials if you want to, and with their school schedules we don't usually have organics around at this time."

"That's ok." Not really. He was still hearing that odd tinny ringing that happened whenever one of them yelled in the same room as him, but at the same time it was nice to be around bots who actually forgot that he wasn't a bot at the moment.

"Well?" The medic stooped and extended his hand, which Blades eagerly scrambled into. By far, the old medic was becoming his second favorite bot on team Prime. He'd already shown him how to perform full spectrum resonance spark scans, replace a shattered ball joint and re-attach the arm, ranted over routine doorwing maintenance after Bluestreak snagged one of his energon lines because he got something caught in one of his hinges, gone over nanite infusions, and had been allowing him to assist with measuring out the specific supplement blends for each bot's energy rations and explaining the reason for each. He might not be able to do much, but nothing prevented him from learning, and he was grateful beyond words for the distraction during the day cycles.

Bumblebee was still way cooler, but that went without saying. He was Bumblebee after all.

Ratchet stood and deposited him on his left shoulder, waiting for the small human to settle down comfortably and get a secure hold of his neck guard before he continued on to the medbay and the irate tracker slung over the examination table with his mud-splattered aft in the air.

Blades made a mental note that if he ever got his programming on a ground alt-mode again, to never, ever, crack his rear axle.

"SERIOUSLY?!" Raf wailed, a combination of dismay, disappointment, and definite envy in his voice.

"It's really not something to be jealous of... I mean, Ratchet even had to get his hands all up in his exhaust pipes... The trans fluid was just everywhere, and it had kind of burnt onto the pipes and was a real mess to get off."

"You think that's weird but I think it's science. Did you get to replace his entire transmission? It seized up from the cracked axle losing all the trans fluid right?"

Blades frowned. "No. Why would you think that?"

"Because- WOOOOOOH!" Raf hooted as Bee drifted through a turn with a squeal of tires, then gunned ahead and past the lead car. "GO BEE, GO!"

The light trill from the intercom in the dash was laced with amusement. Raf bounced and yipped and cheered over the speed and inertia pulling him on the curves, while Blades did the very opposite. He sucked in a sharp breath each time, braced his feet firmly on the floor to shove himself back against the chair as hard as he could, and clutched at the armrests with white knuckled hands.

"You're doing this on purpose!"

More trills and bleeps answered him and he pouted sulkily at the ever rising needle on the speedometer. Beside him Raf laughed again. "That's why it's a race Blades! If you don't like them, you don't have to come... I mean, it's really swell of you since I only get to come along if Jack or an older adult is along too, but if you don't like it we could stay home and game instead."

Blades laughed tensely. "I like it... just not at the curves... or the straightways really... and it's kind of unnerving to pass other cars at this speed..."

He glared at the gleeful trills from the dash. "You are not helping."

Raf laughed again. "Really though, don't you have transmissions?"

"Of course!"

"Well then didn't his seize without his trans fluid?"

"It's not the same for us." Bee chirped in agreement, a few more light trills following. "Your transmissions are kind of stiff. They have to go in the exact order of steps, and you can't skip any, and without the fluid they can't move at all. We don't have a transmission per say, but we do have something that helps modulate our speeds. But we can jump levels if we need to in emergencies and it doesn't really shift parts like yours do to let us do it. Low fluid levels would hurt like the pit, but they wouldn't all leak out over a crack. You'd have to blast a major hole in the system, and if that happened, honestly I think speed would be the last of a bot's worries."

"Why's that?"

Blades felt his face heat up. "Just... because..."

"Because why?"

"Because!" His face was really burning now and even Bumblebee had bleeped into a shocked silence. "It's... personal..."

Raf rolled his eyes. "My uncle runs a garage. I already know about transmissions. How can gaskets, gears, seals, valves, and shafts be personal? Wait..."

The boy's head swung around, his eyes wide. "Isn't that what you call your... OH... oh... I didn't... I mean..." Bee's engine revved through another turn, and Blades yipped in surprise again, though Raf remained mercifully quiet for the rest of the race and the drive back home. They all did until Bee pulled up to the Ark and opened his doors to let his two occupants out before transforming to follow them.

"Blades..." Raf hesitated, just outside the doorway. "I'm sorry about... before... I mean... I didn't think that it might be those parts..."

"Well..." Blades shifted uncomfortably and looked up at the yellow scout for help, who bleeped again and hastily waved his hands in front of him. Blades scowled back at him. "Some help you are!"

"It's okay. I understand. I guess "the talk" is just as hard for bots as it is for parents." Raf laughed.

"Well, if it's just a talk you want, then just ask Ratchet. He can tell you anything about just about everything. And even if he grumbles about it, I think he really enjoys teaching others about things they want to ask him about."

"I don't want to make him upset too." Raf murmured apologetically.

"Oh he won't be. He's way too old for that. Plus I have heard a lot of rumors about him so there's just no way he would be embarrassed talking about this." Above them Bee trilled in agreement.

"Wait..." Raf stared at them slack-jawed. "Are you telling me Ratchet is some kind of Mech-Daddy player bot?"

"Well no... I mean... I never heard anything too weird or anything..."

"But when you outlive as many mechs as I have you get to know more than a few of them."

For the first time, Blades was actually happy to be a carbon and not a bot because if he had been a bot, he would have glitched himself straight into long-term stasis."

The medic's optics glittered at them in wry amusement as he leaned against the doorway, his arms folded across his chest plates making his frame even more imposing. "Don't you have some testing scheduled in a few joors?" A single optic ridge arched smugly in Blades' direction.

Blades nodded wordlessly and bolted for his quarters, dragging Raf along after him.

Ratchet smirked after them before turning his cool optics on Bumblebee. "And you are overdue for your maintenance checkup..."

Bee's helm bobbed up and down in silent agreement.

"Good. Now that we're all understood, I'll see you right after you get him to his testing in the morning you bunch of rumor mongering ungrateful glitches."

Bee's helm bobbed again in silent agreement before he bolted off after the two humans.

The medic watched him disappear down the halls, then chuckled wryly to himself as he went back to his medbay.

Getting old certainly had its advantages.