Surviving Changes

By: MyNameIsJag

Disclaimer: I own…NOTHING! Do you know what would happen if I did own it all…nothing good that's for sure! Is this thing even necessary anymore? …I EATCHA SOUL! *NOM*

Chapter Twelve: It's All A Matter Of Perspective

The whole medbay seemed to have taken on a disheartening aura around it as the bots barely spoke, the news catching up to them. It wasn't everyday an important member of the Autobot Command was taken by the Pit Bastard himself.

Prowl sighed as she glanced around, though darkened, the air also carried a the familiar tint of determination, such an example would be the Twins and Wheeljack arming themselves and huddling close where they thought no one would see them and coming up with their own rescue mission.

Which probably involves bombing the entire Decepticon ship back to Cybertron with such a display of explosions that the human holiday celebrated on the fourth would look like child's play and of course the Lambo's would 'just have to' do some ridiculous poses while dropping some cheesy pickup lines while rescuing the medic.

She was sooo tempted to just let them have at it…it would be so worth it to watch the Cons flail around trying to figure out how to stop the bombards of heavy fire coming down on their helms but…she also knew that the plan was more then likely to backfire and cause something to go horribly wrong and she did not wish to not only lose her CMO but her CME and two of the best frontliners that the Autobot army has.

No…she had a better plan then that…she was just missing one key piece for it all to come together…

"Care to share with a fellow tactician?"

She glanced over her shoulder, letting her unemotional mask stay in place as it had been since she had came back from the field after her chat with Jazz, "No."

Doorwings gave an amused flap as Smokescreen chuckled and shook his helm lightly, "Blunt as always," he raised an optic ridge, "you have a plan?"

She turned back to watch the others, Hound was arguing with Trailbreaker about staying still in the berth, the tracker ready to go even though her side was still a fresh grey, plating that was just replaced not taking color yet, though she never really cared for her looks before, why start now?

Her attention went back to the waiting Datsun, "Perhaps I do," a loud thump from the corner of the room announced Grimlock stomping his pedes against the ground as Optimus tried to convince him not to storm the underwater base to save his 'Momma', "yet it seems that everyone has their own plans as well."

The mech just chuckled and gave a look over to where the Arielbots and Protectobots were huddled together and seemed to be playing a game of paper, rock, and scissors…he got a little worried when Slingshot won and preceded to do a victory dance…that couldn't be good…

The two Praxians gave each other a look before the gambler rubbed the middle of his chevron, "This is all gamble that is going to pieces before the dice even is rolled," he motioned to her, "please tell me you are going to do something before some bot here decides to go off with their own 'plan' and causes more problems."

She hummed, "I believe I-"

"ANGEL!"

The whole room seemed to turn their helms to watch Tracks run in and swing the SIC in a crushing hug, "My love, you have returned to me," he rubbed his nose plating against hers in a Eskimo kiss, "tell me you have missed me as much as I have missed you!"

"No."

He grinned, "Oh, is it because you believe that you have missed me more, such silliness, oh, I have brought you a little something, courtesy of Red Alert, her and Inferno are busy at the moment to deliver it herself, the poor mech look like he was about to faint."

A quick spin around and he was showing her the doors he just came through just in time for them to open up, "She said you needed these."

Servos flew to shapely hips and a quick smirk was sent to the whole medbay, "Second in Command of Elita-1's unit, Chromia," the blue femme titled her helm up giving her a smug look, "you wanted the best, now you have it."

Prowl felt her lips quirk as she nodded, the last piece of what she needed for her plan was finally here, she glanced over at the Corvette, who was smiling as he threw an arm over her shoulders before turning back to the group of battle ready female warriors, "Why, it's exactly what I needed."

-*-THIS IS A BREAK-*-

"Fragging Unicron spike sucking glitching MORON!"

Ratchet kicked one of the bars to her cell, continuing to curse in the only way she knew how, loud and continuously for them even daring to even think that just because she was captured and a femme now that she would act like a 'good little captive.'

She'll give them 'good little captive' alright and then shove it all up their exhaust ports, fraggers think she should behave more 'lady like', glitches please!

What were they expecting, energon cookies and pats on the helm, pfft, might as well wear a pink frilly apron and start kissing booboos.

…Well, she did have a pink apron…but it was something the Dinobots gave her a few years ago for Mother's Day during when she was still a he…and she only wore it ONCE!

Maybe twice…okay so it might have been higher then five…but no one knew about it and if there wasn't pictures, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!

She growled at her current guard, what's-his-face…did it matter? No, she was too busy being pissed to care! She deserved to be in a foul mood, there was no reason to knock her out, why do it? She didn't care if it made it more 'dramatic', it was retarded!

'Oh, I know, I'll knock her out and make a cool exit with something witty being the final word!', Primus damned egotistical…FUCKER! Just had to be so damn cliché didn't he!

Then get's mad when the first thing she does when she wakes up is punch him in the face, hate to break the news to you Megsy, you are not what anyone wants to wake up to and see first thing! Especially if you just kidnapped them!

She kicked the bars again, act like a lady indeed! What the frag does that even mean!

Did he want her to start crying like off of one of those human movies where the damsel get's taken? She snorted, oh, she could just see herself playing the 'oh, no save me' type and what? The Twins were going to swoop in dramatically and pronounce their love for her while sword fighting with the enemies?

…Oh, Primus…please don't let that happen…she didn't think she could take it if they did that…and knowing them there was that chance they would just because…

No reason…just because they can…

Why couldn't she get some of the semi-sane mechs to 'magically' develop crushes on her…better yet, why couldn't she just reverse the whole 'turned into a femme' thing and have everything go back to how it was!

Which was practically the same only with flirting to minimal…fraggers…

A small whimper echoed through the brig and she shuttered her optics, it didn't come from her…then where did it…she gave a glance over to her guard…ah, now she remembered who this was.

"Breakdown."

The mech twitched and stared at her with wide optics, looking very much like a scared rabbit and doing a very good job of emulating it before returning to stare at the floor near his pedes.

Why would they have someone as paranoid as him to guard her…then again, considering the other options he was probably the better choice…

She gave him a questioning look and he whined like a lost puppy, she would have yelled at him to grow some ball bearings and was just about to when he let out another whimper and she was reminded of exactly how old the bot was…just only abit older then the Ariels…and she knew exactly how young they were…she helped create them…

Though none of her creations had his…caution…they were all relatively young in the sense of how old their sparks were…younglings…sparklings stuck in frames that were made for a war they were just thrown into without any real direction to know what to do.

The Autobots weren't exactly innocent on that charge either…what was called necessary for war…was the destruction of future generations.

So no, she couldn't just yell at the mech…he was just doing what he was told like a good youngling, even if he really didn't want to and was forced into it because disobeying an order was worse then order itself…which in this case wasn't so bad.

If you can take watching over the known to be hostile and hissing fury that oh so happen to have the nickname on both sides as the Medic of Doom that had a quirk for hitting her patients with wrenches while using curses that would make the lowest of Cons faint at the vulgarity in them as the lesser of two evils then the poor sportscar's punishment must have been something that couldn't even be described in words if he failed to maintain his post.

No wonder the poor thing was two kliks from a spark attack!

She groaned and rubbed the edge of her chevron, a gesture she had seen the humans do when they got aggravated and rubbed their foreheads in the same action that was supposed to relieve abit of the stress. Did it work? No, it was in fact a useless gesture but she had picked up the habit anyway.

She glanced back over at the bot, his frame seemed as though it was trying to disappear into itself as he tried to huddle away from her view without actually falling to the floor and curling into a massive ball of panic.

Okay, Ratchet, time to drop the 'I am medic, hear me commit attempted murder' act and pretend your dealing with one of the gestalts back at the ARK.

She took a deep intake and put on the 'face' she used when tending to the younger ones, "Breakdown, what's wrong?"

Primus, she thought doing the 'sweet voice' as a mech was bad, doing as a femme was 10x worse! She sounded like she should be handing out cookies! She retrained from gagging at that image.

His helm whipped toward her and he just stared at her, his mouth partially opened making him look oddly like a child caught doing something wrong, "What!"

The CMO raised an optic ridge at him, wondering if perhaps he was little more off then what she had originally believed but she returned to her 'dealing with a youngling' mode, "What's wrong? I'm not going to hurt you."

He scoffed and pointed at her accusingly, "Yeah, that's what you want me to think! You just want to lure me in with a false sense of evil kindness and when I'm close enough, you'll devour my spark, sucking it out like jello!"

She didn't know whether to laugh or be angry at such an accusation, so she just shuttered her optics at him before shaking her helm to rid the confusion, "Okay…probably not the weirdest thing ever said to me," she has lived with Wheeljack most of her life cycle.

It's was kind of hard to beat the weirdness of having the engineer run up and demand to chew on her helm so she could think better because she couldn't concentrate. Why any of that had to do with chewing on her chevron while firmly attached to her back like some kind of leech and going 'nomnomnom' helped with science, she had no idea. She just dismissed the whole thing under the category, 'Jackie's quirks' and continued with her own day with her newly acquired parasite.

The ambulance gave a once over at the Con, slowly decide ding on how exactly she should retort to something like until she was sure she could say something without freaking him out more, "Why would you say that?"

Breakdown fiddled his thumbs, "Um, because that's what femmes do, they lure you in and then take out your spark," he glanced down at the floor again, his face showing exactly how confused he was, "at least that's what we've heard from the older mechs."

"Pfft…what?"

He frowned up at her as she suddenly burst into laughter, "I don't understand why you're laughing!"

"Oh, youngling, they were speaking figuratively, they probably got dumped for being idiots and they said that so they wouldn't look foolish," she tilted her helm at him, the smile on her face full of amusement, "did you honestly believed that femmes ate sparks?"

"…yes…"

She let out another bark of laughter while he pouted, crossing his arms over his chassis and tried to glare at the laughing healer…she just ended up laughing more.

"It's not funny! Why else would there be no other femmes around here, because they sneak into others rooms and try suck on them!", he paused and shifted, "That's what we heard anyway."

She stopped laughing and just stared at him, "I don't think they were talking about what you think they were," she coughed, "umm, listen," she pointed at herself, "is there really a difference between how I was and how I am now?"

"…", he closed one optic and seemed to study her like some creature he had never seen-wait…he really hasn't seen a femme before…

She internally groaned at the realization, no wonder he believed all that slag! Really, did someone skip out on the 'talk' with the all of the Stunties…oh, yeah, she can really see Megs or Starscream sitting them down and explaining to them about the 'nuts and bolts'.

Oh, she would pay to see that, their faces would be so worth it when the questions started flying…she already had to go through it before…and managed to scar Bumblebee when he was younger and had asked her what was interfacing.

Maybe she shouldn't have went into full detail but he could have asked Jazz, the others would have ran for it…in fact she clearly remembered Ironhide making an escape out of the medbay when the topic came up.

Though that might have been because her sis decided to actually grab a nut and bolt for demonstration and preceded to play with them like they were dolls…who decided to have baby screws…

In fact she was a little scarred from the whole thing…but this wasn't the time to be thinking of things like that, no, now she had to deal with a confused Decepticon.

"I don't…you look prettier and skinner…but I don't see what the big deal is."

Scratch that, she now had to give 'the talk' to a confused and somewhat paranoid Decepticon youngling.

She banged her helm against one of the bars, why her, when she got out of here she was going to strangle some mechs for not explaining things sooner…

"What's a valve have to do with anything? Isn't that some kind of engine part or something?"

Oh…dear Primus…

A special thanks to: Katea-Nui, Blitz-Krazi-1, Firestreak and IceKage, fanfictionlover23, Zea T, Luna Prime-Awesomeness, TfJazz, hummergrey, Darkeyes17, Botosphere, smoking caramels, 1HotRod, Vigatus, Prowls-little-angel, electro moonlight

More on Inferno and Red in the next chapter, also more with Elita-1 and Optimus.

A big thanks to Katea-Nui for wanting the Stunties to play a part. *Throws Breakdown plushi at her*, behold! He is yours now! XD Probably not how you thought I was going to bring them in!

A shout out to Prowls-little-angel, who mentioned me in a story! So I mention you!

Writing Ratchet raving is so much fun and the entire time I was writing Breakdown, I kept thinking of those little kids that say and ask anything even if it's inappropriate because they don't know better. I know most write them being somewhat older in mind but I thought this would be cute and it would torture Ratch. XD

If you ever want the truth to something, ask a kindergartener…they have no morals yet to consider and will happily blurt out the truth.

*Bows politely* Till Next Time!

Quickly! In your review, tell me your favorite quote from this story so far!