Author's NB: I never really liked the idea of writing Transformers into an actual disaster; I always considered it cheesy and a tad offensive - but I thought I could do it tactfully and this idea kept bugging me.

On 22nd Feb, 2011 at 1251hr a 6.3 quake struck Christchurch, New Zealand. It was more devastating in terms of damage and sadly, loss of life than the quake on 4th Sept. last year.

Its been a few weeks since it hit, now, and names and faces of those who have died and are still missing [probably dead] are all over our media. Its quite tragic. I personally know at least three people who are gone. As a nurse I just happen to be in the middle of it given the speciality I work, so I've heard stories and seen injuries that are going to haunt me.

I hope this serves to provide, if anything, a moment where people outside this small country can consider us and those in the most dire of circumstances in their prayers, and by extension consider others around the world who through natural disaster have lost family, friends and livelihoods. They think the death toll here will reach 220, whereas in Haiti at least 90,000 lost their lives.

Also, thanks to the various countries around the world who are assisting - Australia, America, Britain, Singapore, Japan and probably many others, it really is immensely appreciated.

ooOOoo

Hoist

I don't think its important to recall, or even to determine the time when I heard of the disaster. I was watching When the Kitchen Sinks, a completely asinine piece of garbage, I assure you, but something to pass the time – and I know my good friend Grapple enjoys it. Who am I to deny him the ability to watch unmolested by those holding a low opinion of Earth culture?

It was a breaking news bulletin. Like the time, I don't place too much clout on the particular news show that interrupted the extravagantly scripted slag. A human female informed, quite calmly, that there were reports coming in of a building dropping earthquake in the small island nation of New Zealand, a country I myself have never been too. In fact, I don't think many Autobots had actually visited before this. Details presently were scarce.

We grumbled over the irritation that an earthquake in an earthquake part of the planet caused to our daily routine. There had been one the year prior and despite its magnitude and damage no human life was lost, of course there had been mentioned of injuries.

Beachcomber entered at that stage, in his casual laid back sort of way. He asked for the use of Teletran much to our protests, his senses more keenly tuned to the ways of geography and instruments he had meticulously placed around the globe had picked up the quake. We shooed him away. Before he could leave the control room another bulletin interrupted, this time with the unwelcome news that humans had died, no word on numbers at that time – not even Grapple could argue with Beachcomber's desire at that point.

Things moved swiftly at that time. Optimus was soon there, watching intently the incoming images of devastation, his arms crossed over his chest, his optics locked. He turned to Hot Spot and gave the order.

From there it was all go, as the humans say, even we have a similar saying in our lexicon. I don't think there's a species that doesn't. Skyfire was boarded quickly by a first response team.

ooOOoo

On arrival to the shores of New Zealand we were greeted by an official. Their accent something completely foreign to us, Jazz was in his element. The man told us, with that potentially irritating inflection that several buildings had collapsed, that he'd received a briefing on our ability in regards and that we had been assigned in small groups to these sites. The medical bots, Ratchet and First Aid at this point, would be placed at two locations, Ratchet in the field somewhere and First Aid to the local hospital. I knew Ratchet was up to date with human anatomy and function given the many, many shenanigans Spike had gotten into, but I wasn't so sure about First Aid, but he wouldn't be here if he didn't know, I suppose.

There were several Autobots assigned to security and maintaining cordons until the human militaries that had offered support would arrive.

The official, a male, was an interesting fellow, there was something about the way he spoke to us, like we were equals. So many of the humans would speak to us like we were mindless machines without thought or feeling outside of some original programming created by some equally mindless and thoughtless computer. They'd stare up at us with a mixture of disgust and sometimes awe… which for all intents and purposes was usually bred from some fear. But this chap? He spoke to us like were some long lost friends, like we were just some more people showing up to help out. I could see the gratitude in his eyes, the humility.

I suppose that's the first point. Gratitude.

It always caused a grumble through the ranks followed up with a lecture, of sorts, from Optimus, when we risked our linkage to go into battle with the Decepticons to save some human factory or fuel processing plant or city or forest or whatever, what did we get in return? Some nasty comments about being soulless, about how we can't be trusted and a decent string of profanities. I think it's only been twice since we became knowledge to the humans that we've been thanked.

But here was this man, early 50s perhaps, tired despite it being early evening, a coffee stain on his collar, his sleeves rolled up, his shoes dirty with silt and pant legs sporting a few small rips, talking to us as equals, and then before we left for our assigned tasks:

"Thank you so much, I can't tell you how much this means to us right now. We really need help, and us here, we're all thankful that you came".

Prime smiled under that battle mask of his, for those who had come to know Prime over the years you learnt two things – that he didn't smile often, and when he did it was a site most people couldn't pick. We could see it now though. Prime responded kindly and then told us to follow out the man's instructions.

ooOOoo

Her name was Suzie, she was tall for a human female, had light brown skin – half Maori she told me; long black hair tied back in a scruffy "bun", I believe the term is. Identifying her clothing style from my data banks told me her pants were "scrubs" and her top was a singlet top. Black, with a small silver fern imprinted above the right breast. Over the top of that she wore a florescent yellow vest. She was one of the workers from this building, a fire warden – she was telling me the building's lay out. I already had access to the schematics but I wanted her to feel as if she was assisting – she seemed to need that.

She told me her story rather quickly – one thing I had noticed about these humans was they didn't "muck around"; Jazz had given us a database of their slang, and told us to expect a lot of it.

Suzie worked in a job that really didn't mean anything to me by way of explanation. It was a job. She liked it. She got paid for it. That's all that mattered really. She was nominated as a joke by one of her co-workers to be the "safety rep" for their small business located on one of the top floors of this now pancaked structure. She said she had never been a leader, and was always panicking over the smallest shake – she'd come down from the North Island, a place in this country more well known for Quakes, Wellington I believe; hence the reason she came to Christchurch, fewer quakes!

The woman was inside when the quake hit, one moment standing by her desk, on the phone to a friend of hers on another floor, discussing when they could get out to lunch. The rumbling started, each making a joke about 'not another one'. Suzie recounted to me that this one was different, she didn't know what it was about it, but when part of the ceiling caved in she realised it was time to take cover. Her eyes lost a little of their light as she informed me of the screams she heard as she cowered under her desk, the crashing of construction materials, the falling of furniture, at one point she was aware that she was falling, she clasped her hands around the legs of the desk and held on.

"At that point I must of blacked out".

She had said. She woke to find herself in a small air pocket, reaching up she pushed the top of her desk, it didn't budge, at least not under her arm's power; she rolled onto her back and in the cramped, dark space she braced her feet and pushed it off enough that she could see light. The woman clambered out and out her self three metres horizontally and one metre vertically from the footpath. Once across the road to safety she realised how lucky she had been. The only injury a small cut on her forehead which some medic had cared for. She couldn't recall where she got the vest or the scrub pants from – but she did know she had been wearing a skirt that day. A new skirt. Worth two hundred dollars. A treat to herself after all the stress the insurance company had put her through after the September quake the year prior.

Second point: getting your priorities straight.

I try to recall what I was like before the war, what I felt about life, my friends, family, what I felt about politics, what I felt about myself, my possession, what I put priority on, what I assigned value to. Of course, war changes that. What I valued before the war is not what I value now. And I'm ashamed to say that what I valued previous was petty and materialistic. I was selfish and self-absorbed, I only gave concern to my friends and family… and only then sometimes. Politics? Pfft. What a waste of time that was. I had heard of Megatron, his ideals, his goals, his methods, and I just didn't care, for me he was an abstract.

Suzie told me about her house.

It was a four bed room built on a "lifestyle block" in a rather posh part of town. It had an ensuite with marble floors. The kitchen was modern, with the latest in food preparation and storage technologies. There was an inside spa pool and an outside pool. A lovely garden that she paid someone to come and weed, she didn't want to get her hands dirty or damage her manicure. She told me about her expensive carpet and the sort of construction materials used to build her house. She told me the cost; she told me the prestige that came when people recognised her as the owner of such a magnificent structure.

She told me about the expensive Italian leather lounge suite, about her King size bed with Egyptian cotton sheets and 100% wool underlie. The silk pillows with duck feathers. She told me about the numerous art works that dotted those finely crafted walls. Then there was the expensive Mercedes parked in the shed.

Suzie, from what she told me of her house, was a woman of wealth and owned what so many humans placed great value on.

On the 4th September, that didn't matter.

The expensive stain proof carpet, the oak floors, the leather lazy boy, the expensive porcelain dinning set, the silverware, the Mercedes.

She had woken to the shaking, in her half asleep haze she was not entirely sure what was happening. Of course, that moment was fleeting. When a huge crack tore up her bedroom wall she realised she had no time to contemplate on her expensive bedding. She was up and out of that structure faster then the blood took to get from her heart to her toes.

Once outside she lost her balance, an aftershock knocked her down. She turned in time as she fell to see in the dim moonlight her house split down the middle, one side sinking at least a metre into the softening ground it had once stood n, the other side continued to crack and bend, submitting to the violence of nature until finally it caved in on itself.

Her entire life, from a possession point of view, was gone.

A fire started then, so whatever was left of her broken life was now burnt to a cinder.

Her neighbours were in the same situation, their homes broken and in tatters.

She had grieved for so much that day. And with the knowledge no one had actually been killed in that quake, it almost gave her a moral prerogative to grieve for lifeless things of wood and plastic.

Suzie then told me how she had to go live with one of her friends, closer to town, but in a somewhat more stable section. With only the nightdress on her back and a cheap necklace from her first love around her neck she moved into a part of town she had always considered a bit… drab. She spoke about how she was outraged over the mess of her house, over all her hard earned money basically sinking into the ground and then burning into ash, she told me how she had railed against the banks and the insurance companies over TVs and over drafts and credit ratings. All the while she had a warm bed to sleep in, food in her belly and friends to offer comfort.

Today, today was different. She told me her priorities had changed faster then the collapse of the building. Somewhere in that rubble was her friend. The friend who offered her a bed in a part of town she'd never be otherwise seen dead in.

That's why she couldn't leave. That's why she stood outside this devastated pile of concrete and steel, of glass and sorrow.

Her colleagues were still inside. She hadn't seen anyone else walk out under their own power since she had. A few dug out alive and carried quickly to medics and hospitals, but how their lives would venture from this point she didn't know.

She turned and began walking back to where she had been sitting, watching, she muttered in farewell:

"I don't care about my house; I just want my friend back".

ooOOoo

Humans aren't that different to us. We both have our sins, individual and collective; we both have our dreams and our desires for the future. What do I want? What I'd wager most humans want. A life partner, children, a home, a stable job, friends. We're not all that different.

We also hurt like humans. When we loose our friends, our families, our partners, our children, it hurts. A lot.

I try to stay upbeat, there's enough misery in this universe without adding to it. The war has taught me that much. People who gripe and moan and carry their pain so visually don't help others. There are exceptions, of course, Gear's bellyaching tends to come from a light hearted spark that so few know about, his complaining he seeks to amuse others with. I think deep down we all know this about the mini bot.

Point three: Hope.

Its what gets us through this mess with the Decepticons, the hope that one day that it'll be over, either through force or by them tiring of the same violence. The hope that one day we can go back to our lives, our friends and families safe from such horror, that we can focus on our careers and our culture and enjoy our homes secure in the knowledge that fire raining down from the sky won't reduce them to slag.

I look around this devastation and I see not a lot of room for hope. Some amongst my number would scan angles, materials, forces involved, the fires burning under those broken, heavy slabs of concrete and say there's no way a human could survive that. There can't be any hope, they'd say. Time to accept it, don't fall into the trap of denial.

But these humans, these men and women I see, clambering over the rubble, calling to each other, to those under the rubble, trying desperately to find someone, anyone, in any condition, as long as they're alive. Where there is life there is hope I hear one of them say, another looks at me and says "there is always hope", but I wonder about the conviction in his eyes. He's a member of one of the urban search and rescue teams, his accent tells me he's from America, but he could have been a local, humans don't seem to be entirely bothered by uprooting their lives and settling down somewhere foreign.

I like that about them. Their curiosity.

Its what's pushing them here.

And that hope.

My role in all of this? Well, I'm a medic first and foremost, not as high up the food chain in either rank or knowledge base as say someone like Ratchet, my knowledge of human anatomy is rather lacking comparatively, I'm here more for assistance with search and rescue. Despite my size I am delicate footed in such environments. I can move with ease seldom seen in mechs, my role here is to help the humans, they tell me where to dig, what piece of masonry they need moved and I facilitate that.

I had been working on a section close to the road, where part of the wall had crumpled bringing down several stories into this spot. I can't quite see any human life sustaining itself under this segment, the fires burn fiercely beneath which is why Inferno and I have been assigned here. We're not as susceptible to flame as the humans. I was part way through lifting a large section of a twisted steel beam, Inferno spraying a foam that will extinguish what smoulders when a tiny human voice cries out over the eerie landscape.

"I'VE FOUND SOMEONE!"

I look up, for a moment unsure if they mean alive or otherwise, the other humans working around me, those waiting on the footpath, Suzie across the street, they all look up, thinking what I am, did we hear correctly?

I find myself called, I tread delicately over this mess until I reach one of the search and rescue teams, now four men standing over a section of concrete and metal, a sniffer dog scratching and barking. A good dog indeed if he is correct. I hear it, I hear what the dog heard, I smell what the dog smelt, a small scratch, a whiff of blood, of sweat.

I lift the obstruction and there within a small hole, created by a metal filing cabinet and a solid desk sits a small human male, I'm unsure of his age, or perhaps fear, or maybe the shock of survival in such a place has humbled him to the point of some such cowering.

I can't help at this point, the medics step up, they assist this man, I watch as he is carefully strapped into a stretcher, spoken to, comforted, taken to the best care those doctors and nurses waiting can muster.

In the eyes of the humans around me, I see it, that glimmer, ever so small, they hold onto it, because really, they know that young man will be a miracle, one of a very slight few.

We find no more living that day.

Suzie remains at her vantage point, her vest still hanging from her frail form. She smiles at me. I apologise that we haven't found her friend.

"You found someone's friend".

She replied, selfless of her, really.

There's a slight smile on those dry and cracked lips, a glimmer of something in those dulling eyes.

Even if her friend is never found, she found hope in a stranger.

We all did.