Drum Roll, Please

Chapter 19: Martyr

Ultra Magnus rolled into the base with Wheeljack on his aft. The two of them transformed, trying to decipher the chaos of their team.

"What's going on?" Ultra Magnus demanded.

Bumblebee beeped rapidly. "Optimus is back! Summer is back! They're both almost dead!"

"Agent Fowler, get Nurse Darby over here now," Arcee ordered into a speaker. "Summer is dying!"

"Summer is back?!" Fowler demanded. "I thought we were supposed to kill her!?"

"Change of plans," Arcee told him. "We just watched her reignite Optimus's spark."

Arcee turned around and placed her servo over her chassis, trying to slow down her breathing. Things were getting a little hectic. She was about to lose Optimus for the second time. She'd already been through this with Tailgate and Cliffjumper. She couldn't do it again.

Ultra Magnus put his servo on her shoulder. "It's going to be okay."

"How do you know?" Arcee looked up quickly. "Did you get news from Ratchet?"

"No," he looked toward the closed medbay door and inhaled deeply. "I have hope."

Arcee bit her derma and nodded.

"He turned a leaf," Wheeljack said randomly as he passed them.

Whatever that meant.

Ultra Magnus pulled away as the human doors in the corner were shoved open. Agent Fowler and Nurse Darby came charging inside, both of them carrying an armful of white boxes, probably filled with medical supplies.

"Medbay?" Agent Fowler shouted.

"Yes," Bulkhead opened the door for them.

Ultra Magnus followed after them. He'd nearly forgotten he was the leader here. He needed to be there for Ratchet should the medic need him to make a difficult decision.

"Magnus, help me," Ratchet had Optimus laying on his stomach, displaying the Prime's heavily damaged back.

They got to work.

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It wasn't until a few hours later that the two patients were stable and their procedures finished. Both of them looked a lot better and both of them were hooked up to energon and blood tubes, respectively. Aide from that, both of them had been patched up.

Ratchet had to replace most of the armour on Optimus's back. Some of the protoform beneath was torn, which was really bad, but Ratchet managed to keep it from getting any worse. Optimus's leg was mangled too, but Ratchet managed to pop out the dent in his armour without major adjustments.

The back of Optimus's helm is where Ratchet worried about the most. After scanning Optimus's frame the first time, Ratchet's systems relayed that Optimus's spark was extinguished. Nobody comes back from that without the aid of dark energon. Ratchet suspected that the wound in Optimus's helm was the killing blow and that the trauma caused his processor to blow out, which would have disrupted energon transmission to his spark, and without energy, it could not function. Thus, dead spark.

And then Summer brought him back to life. As crazy as that sounds, it was the only explanation. As Ratchet explained it during a less taxing procedure, she had screamed and passed out in sync with the Prime returning from the Allspark.

As for Summer herself, Ultra Magnus didn't quite understand her injuries. The humans coated her arm in a thick cast before covering her leg, her head, and her back in white wrappings. Nurse Darby spoke of a concussion, a broken bone, blood loss, shock, and a few less memorable things.