Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PROLOGUE: The Necessity of Letting Go

  First Aid sighed and leaned back in his chair, offlining his optics as if the datapads on his desk would disappear if he simply couldn’t see them. He quickly peeked to see if it worked.

It did not.

The medic groaned and hung his helm back to stare at the ceiling, studying the weld marks and imperfections from attacks and rowdy patients. The mountain of datapads stayed. It wasn’t even hard work in all honesty, it was mostly just patient records and medical reports that needed signing off on. The problem was the work never ended.

No one had told him being CMO meant so much paperwork .

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go...” The medic grumbled to no one in particular.

After a long moment of staring at the ceiling, the back of his servo, and doing really anything that didn’t have to do with the reports, he let his helm fall forward and hit his desk with a quiet thunk . The stacks of paperwork seemed even more daunting from this angle.

This would be easier with Ambulon’s help.

The medic wilted.

Everything would be easier with Ambulon’s help.

First Aid lightly hit his helm on the desk again. 

Now isn’t the time to mourn.

With a performative huff, First Aid lifted his helm and focussed his thoughts on the records. Most of them were just sign offs anyway. Easy peasy. Well, easy peasy with base level organization.

Ambulon always had this system of sorting files as he went, signing off on logs and handing them to Aid to catalogue, then tossing things like prescriptions and future appointments into a 'Later' pile, only to rinse and repeat. It was nauseatingly efficient, sometimes First Aid would get distracted just watching how fluidly he worked.

Primus, stop thinking about Ambulon.

After a moment of sitting with his face in his servos to clear his head, the mech sat up, righted his posture, and got to work. Using Ambulon’s system, of course.

Or an alteration. Involving more stacks and no one next to him to help. God he missed Ambulon’s presence.

He should visit him.

Time flew as his servos did. It was almost funny how fast the stacks fell away from borderline mountains to a few stacks. Maybe there wasn’t so much work after all.

He stopped and glanced up as the light of a tablet notification filled the other half of the room. It was from Ambulon’s desk.

First Aid offlined his optics, scrunching his face up as if he could blink his problems away. When that didn’t work, he spun and turned away. Now really wasn't the time. He doesn’t even know why he hasn’t just moved into Ratchet’s old office and left the one he shares- shared with Ambulon closed, empty, and locked. He looked down and grabbed a stack of datapads to file.

Still, curiosity got the better of the medic. No one ever commed or messaged Ambulon anymore.

Well, besides him.

It really wasn’t weird! He just found comfort in the voicemails he could leave, the possibility that Ambulon could hear them from the Afterspark and just not hear. Little life updates and such. That’s all.

Setting down the stack he was working on, First Aid rose to his pedes and walked over to check what the notification was for. He picked up the tablet. There wasn’t a notification. First Aid shrugged it off, glitches can happen, after all. He set the tablet back down and turned his attention to the rest of the desk. This was closer than First Aid was ever allowed, he might as well make the most of a glitchy tablet.

Ambulon's desk was almost entirely untouched. Of course patient records and important notes were taken, reassigned, and catalogued in his absence, but every mech on the ship that had been in this office had made a point to leave his things unmoved. It felt sort of like a slap to the face, though, seeing such a lived-in desk, as if Ambulon was simply on break and would be back in 15 minutes. “Wake up First Aid. What do you mean you thought I died? I just went to Swerve’s.”

First Aid brushed a servo over the desk, kicking up a thick layer of dust. As he slumped into the chair, his optics took in everything there was to see. There were pictures for what looked like every station and hospital Ambulon had been at, and little models of planets First Aid has never even heard of. On the wall above, there were three pictures clipped on with magnets. First Aid’s optics darted to the rightmost picture, the photograph they had taken right before leaving Delphi. First Aid smiled under his mask.

Ambulon looks so happy in that picture.

After a moment of studying the picture, First Aid trailed to the other two. They were squadron photos, featuring a purple Ambulon and four other mechs. Well, not really featuring. Ambulon stood at the rightmost side of both photographs, dangerously close to being cut from them entirely.

After looking at both pictures, flicking between them, for what felt like ages, it clicked to First Aid. This was Ambulon’s old combiner team. The medic unclipped the second photograph from the wall, flipping it out of curiosity.

"AFTER.

Peds. Freehand. Arbitror. Manus. Ambulon.”

After? First Aid flipped the picture around again and studied the mechs. Referencing the picture still on the wall, it clicked.

Pre-op and post-op. They were victims of an experiment.

It felt like an easy game of spot the difference, flicking between the photos and picking out turrents, wings, and wheels on the mechs' bodies that were absent in the second picture. Then Ambulon's original alt-mode hit the medic like a brick.

“ He was a rotary ?” First Aid all but shrieked to himself.

::First Aid?::

The ping of a comm notification rang through First Aid’s HUD, making him jump and tearing him out of the whirlwind of the discovery.

::You’re needed in Shuttle Bay 4::

+whats up?+

::Visitors, they’re not looking so hot. Just get over here::

Well this isn’t the most convenient. Still, after a second of processing the message, he jumped into action.

First Aid mindlessly shoved the picture into his subspace and started rifling around his side of the office for his kit. It had been a while since a real medical emergency had happened on the Lost Light (which is absolutely a good thing) and he was itching to do something that wasn’t routine checkups and paperwork. As he ran out the doors of the medbay and transformed, he shot Velocity a quick comm message.

+something happened in a shuttle bay, no clue how long i’ll be, ur in charge till then+

He set his hailing status to Do Not Disturb and tore through the halls of the starship. As soon as the doors to the shuttle bay were in view, he transformed back, stumbling over his feet a little and slowing to a jog.

First Aid took a second to vent and level his head before hustling into the bay. As he slipped through the still-opening door, he skimmed over the small crowd. A mangled heap of metal that might have once been an escape pod or shuttle sat in the middle of the hangar. Rodimus, Magnus, Megatron, Drift, and four astonishingly damaged mechs stood around it. Rather, the four high command mechs stood while the mystery mechs sat and laid down. Judging by the heavy damage on all of them, he had a feeling none of them could even stand un-aided, much less walk.

Even through the damage, they looked scarily familiar. 

First Aid stopped in his tracks, stumbling and nearly falling on his face.

When he righted himself he pulled the picture from where he had mindlessly shoved it in his subspace, glancing at the 5 photographed mechs and back up to the four in front of him.

For the third time that day, everything clicked.

No fragging way.

CHAPTER 1: Technically Free Healthcare

        Snap out of it, First Aid.

        “First Aid? Is everything okay?” Drift’s voice was laced with concern.

         Snap out of it, First Aid.

        The medic shook his helm to clear his mind. There were four near-deactivation mechs in front of him and right now it didn’t matter who they were to Ambulon.

“Yeah, I’m alright.”

He spun around and woke a sleeping diagnostic drone from where it sat clipped next to the door.

“You know, Captain,” First Aid called out as he started checking the nearest mech, “‘Not looking too hot’ usually means a little damaged, not next to deactivation. ”

He didn’t wait for any response Rodimus shot back, tuning him out to patch the mech below him. He pressed a small diagnostic chip into the mech’s upper neck. He was blown a little off his pedes as information of the mech below him surged into his HUD.

Designation: Peds

Vehicle Mode: Left Leg

Crew: 4-758

Status: Offline

Damage Notes: Main energon lines to legs and left arm are severed. Left servo heavily damaged. Superficial damage on entire frame.

Okay, that’s enough to work with. Okay. It was rare for MTOs to have diagnostic records that thorough, and it let First Aid have a well needed moment to process how he could handle this. He hummed in delight to know the damage was mostly scuffed paint and damage self-healing programs could fix.

Of course, he was still needed.

The energon lines were the most important to fix. First Aid took a deep vent and pulled a sterile rag from his subspace and a soldering iron from the kit by his side. It was an easy fix, really.

He stooped over Peds’s legs and felt around to find the energon line that was severed. He dug his servos just under the seam of his thigh armor and got a weak writhe in response to the circuit he struck. First Aid flinched and pulled away. Glancing down at his energon stained servo, he distressedly huffed.

At least he found the severed point.

He wiped the energon on his leg and reached for the solder in the kit. He pushed his EM field towards Peds, trying to front it with safety/healing/comfort. His breathing got a little less ragged. That was good!

“Okay, this is going to hurt a lot, I’m sorry,” He muttered to the unconscious mech, before weaving the iron between the seams of the armor and tracing along where he was confident the energon line was. Peds thrashed again and Aid quietly hushed him, pushing his EM field onto him.

Once he set down the soldering iron and felt the cautery he made for any missed pots, he let himself exvent. He took the rag off of where he tossed it on his shoulder and cleaned the thigh of excess energon. He turned his attention to the other leg , feeling around again for where the energon pressure vanished, where it was cut. He found it much less eventfully, getting another weak flail from Peds. He quickly withdrew his servos and repeated what he did with the first leg, quickly soldering the line closed.

 He cleaned up the mech’s legs more thoroughly and started pinning repair notes to the mech’s record. With a final “Undo energon line cauteries and repair leg functionality.” he sent the message away for a second time and crawled up to Peds’s arm.

He jumped as he got a ping from the diagnostic drone. It had gone to the mech it could repair unassisted, helpfully also the mech First Aid would have gotten to last. He braced a little for the records to flood his HUD.

Designation: Freehand

Vehicle Mode: Right Arm

Crew: 4-758

Status: Online

Damage Notes: Superficial damage, focussed on legs. Slightly damaged right leg.

The following stream of messages was a ‘brief’ summary of the repairs done by the drone, that he partially tuned out and confirmed with half a mind.

“Can one of you bring Freehand to the medbay to recover?” He returned his attention to the crowd standing around him and the wrecked shuttle. He kept his hands busy, following the same feel-around-and-cauterize-and-wipe-the-energon-away procedure on Peds’s arm.

“I can call someone,” Drift said. “Who is Freehand?”

First Aid vaguely gestured to the blue-green mech furthest from him. He finally turned his optics to the damage on the mech’s servo. It was marred almost beyond recognition, the metal was twisted and scorched and still smoking. He scanned over it and desperately tried to figure out how to salvage the servo, but every angle he viewed it in confirmed that he needed to remove it. Logic dictated that he should wait until he was in the medbay, though. He dug through the kit and put a few wraps on the arm that would soothe the scorching, but there was nothing more he could do.

Another note. “Amputation and replacement necessary”

First Aid leaned back on his heels and vented heavily. Maybe he did prefer when nothing happened.

After a quiet moment, he pushed himself to his pedes, brushing off his thighs and collecting the items of the kit to carry them to the next mech.

“Drift, can you call more than one mech? It would be nice if you could get him to the medbay too.” He called and gestured at Peds. “Tell them to tell Lotty to keep him comfortable and nothing else.”

 First Aid once again didn’t wait for an answer. He ducked to the next mech, the biggest one. He heard Megatron, Magnus, Rodimus, and Drift start arguing, something about sending them off, and Ambulon’s name. Despite his interest, he offlined his audials. Now wasn’t the time to get distracted by what isn’t his business.

The mech before him glower and his servo flew to the back of his neck. His EM field and face screamed Go away . But he was hurting, it was obvious. First Aid gently pulled the servo away and pressed a new diagnostic chip into the mech’s neck and braced for the information that filled his HUD.

Designation: Arbitror

Vehicle Mode: Torso

Crew: 4-758

Status: Online

Damage Notes: Left arm heavily damaged(missing?). Superficial frame injuries.

 First Aid stooped to the mech’s arm. It felt like it was wider than his entire frame, but that couldn’t be right. Well his arm was completely intact. First Aid started digging his fingers under the armor, feeling around for what could be wrong. It seemed the entire neural net to that arm was offline, but there was nothing physically wrong, by what he felt. His fingers brushed on something and he lightly tugged it out. Maybe he was being nosy, but it could be important to why his arm wasn’t working. It was a photograph. The same picture as the one in his own subspace. He quickly shoved it back in.

When he glanced up he saw Arbitror glaring at him.

“Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?” He asked. His EM field ripped with fear. Did he know how to draw it in?

“It’s free healthcare, appreciate it,” First Aid hissed.

“I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t trust you either, but I’m still helping you.” First Aid walked around the mech’s massive frame looking for any particularly rough patches. Arbitror wiggled away from his gaze. There was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with rest and self repair protocols, though. “Can you walk?”

The mech pushed himself

 First Aid stood up with a clap and shot a look at Drift. It was relieving that their exchanges could be silent. Drift nodded back and called for someone else to pick the mech up. 

He flinched as his HUD displayed a jarring red CORRUPTED FILE message.

Designation: N/A

Vehicle Mode: Left Arm

Crew: N/A

Status: N/A

Damage Notes: N/A

Fun.

There was time before someone came to pick up Arbitror, so he shot the giant mech a glance and nodded at the beary mech he was almost holding. What’s his name? He silently asked.

Arbitror glared, but sighed and answered.

“Manus. Is his file still corrupted?”

First Aid briskly nodded. The blue mech sighed harder.

“Freehand and Peds can help you, but I won’t.” He shuffled to turn fully away from First Aid.

The red mech wilted. Why did Arbitror hate him so much? He tried to focus on diagnosing Manus and rebuilding the record. Could it wait? Probably. But First Aid had everything he needed and there was nothing stopping him.

He’d been through the rounds of a physical inspection, he could do it in his sleep. So why not multitask? He could connect their neural nets and he could tear down whatever was blocking his records while fixing him up.

A preliminary visual scan told him he was one of the least damaged of the four mechs anyway. So he pulled the psychic patch from his kit and eased it into the ports on the mech’s upper neck. He filled with EM field with comforting thoughts and emotions and Manus’s head rolled a little. He squinted up at First Aid and smiled. Then Aid plugged himself in and fought for bodily consciousness.

A win on that front!

With 1/4 of his focus on his physical body, he let his physical consciousness float through Manus’s mind.

A virus.

He had a virus.

Red and black crystalline spikes were everywhere, pulsing with life and feeding off of his thoughts. It looked like nothing Aid had ever seen. By the looks of it, a new universe neural parasite that no mech had an immunity to.

Frag.

He floated past a memory, one that flickered to life with his movement. It was of the team. They were sitting in a field, laughing and sipping energon. Ambulon was there. He looked so happy. First Aid felt tears prick at his optics, jolting through his neural net. Not right now.

The parasites pulsed with vigor around the memory and it was crushed. Shattered like untempered glass.

First Aid screamed. The shattering of the memory hurt him as much as it probably hurt Manus.

He dragged his optics around the cavern of the mech’s psyche. So many of these memory chips were dead or shattered. First Aid let the tears fall from his optics and make his surrounding staticy.

This was awful.

He yanked himself out of the neural link and fell backwards with a yelp. He patted the floor of the shuttle bay and his chassis and faceplate. He was venting so so heavily. He needed to calm down and tame his EM field, Manus might start panicking too.

He shakily rose to his pedes.

Drift called out to him.

“First Aid, are you okay?”

The red mech shot back a thumbs up. He then doubled over and braced himself with servos on his thighs to take a heavy breath. He hugged the half conscious mech and transformed.

This was supposed to be an easy repair job.

Primus, why couldn’t things just be like they should.

///

The second he entered the medbay, he transformed and carried Manus bridal style to an empty medical berth. The way he fought to keep his head from lolling filled First Aid with dread.

If it was a parasitic virus just like the ones on Cybertron, it should be enough to start Manus on an anti-cyberviral drip. But there were too many variables, what if it was completely different on a CNA level, what if it built an immunity before the drip finished? Maybe it was in its final stage, Arbitror said his files had been corrupted for a long time. Manus might not walk out of this medbay and First Aid didn’t want to deal with having two members of this team die before him.

He couldn’t second guess himself.

He ran to Velocity and gave her the go ahead to replace Peds’s arm. He slid to the supply closet and grabbed a catheter and medium dosage.

This mech was going to be okay.

///

The waiting game was the worst part of being a doctor. Treating someone and waiting to see if you’d saved them or condemned them. It didn’t help that First Aid had nothing to consume his time, no dumb accidents from Whirl, or checkups, no friends. He whiled away the hours studying the offline mechs and cleaning Ambulon’s desk. Cleaning really only really meant dusting it off and putting files away, he didn’t have the strength to clear it and leave it empty, not with his team just a few walls away.. He pulled the photograph out of his subspace, taking another long while to look at it. In his heavy activity, he had accidentally crumpled it. He could place names to the faces now. He smiled under his mask a little.

As he clipped the photograph back onto the wall, an alert filled his HUD, making him jump. PATIENT 03, “ABRITROR” CALLING YOU.

He jumped up and dashed out of the office, slowing to a brisk walk as he approached the mech.

“Hello,” He tried (and mostly succeeded) to keep his voice steady as he checked Arbitror’s vitals.

Arbitror narrowed his optics and leaned away. “You’re an Autobot.”

“And you’re a Decepticon,” First Aid deadpanned. He leaned forward a little to continue checking the mech. “But you’re still injured, I’m a doctor, I’ve been generous enough to give you a berth in this medbay, the war’s over, and unless you’re intent on getting up and walking to a Decepticon medical station when you’re thousands of light years away from any other society, which I won’t stop you on, in a universe where neither Autobot nor Decepticon exist, you’re stuck with me.”

The mech froze. First Aid mentally hit himself, that was far too much to drop at once. He took advantage of it, though, finishing his examination of the larger mech’s arm and the rest of his vitals without argument. Spark, fuel pump, main energon lines, and filters were all good, aside from the small healing strain of his spark.

 Arbitror’s optics got glassy as he processed what Aid said. He frowned down at the medic. With a sigh he loosened up.

“I was going to ask you to tell me where I was. I guess I don’t have to.” His voice was sharp, like he was biting the words instead of saying them.

“The Lost Light,” First Aid responded. After a second, he realized Abritror had no clue what that meant. “You’re on the Lost Light. It’s an exploration ship, we sort of saved the universe,” First Aid paused to count on his digits before giving up. “Quite a few times.”

Arbitror paused, and nodded, as if content with the information. His face was still scrunched up and his EM field, despite being wrapped closely, was deeply saturated with confusion and worry.

“Where is everyone else?”

“This medbay. You were all in bad shape, it was only fair to fix you guys up here, rather than leave you in the shuttle bay.”

Arbitror hummed a little ‘okay.’

“One more question,” He started. “Where is Ambulon? He’s present on this ship, yes?”

First Aid froze. He tried to not tense up his frame and reel in his EM field, but judging by the newly bothered look on Arbitror's face, he wasn’t doing a very good job.

“I,” First Aid paused. “I can take you to see him when you’ve been repaired enough to leave. He’s not really in a place where he can visit others.”

The look turned slightly somber, maybe disappointed. “Okay.”

First Aid turned around and muttered an apology, before drawing the curtain and stepping away. A notification pinged on his HUD.

PATIENT 02, “PEDS” ONLINE.

He let out a relieved vent and hustled to check up on Peds.

Chapter Text

“Hello!” First Aid winced at how high his voice was.

Manus glanced up at him and gave a closed-mouth smile. A forced smile.

“Um, I’m your attending doctor.” He continued.

A brisk nod. Then a quiet. “Do you need anything from me?”

“Oh! No, no,” First Aid shook his helm a little too enthusiastically. “Just your permission. I need to, I guess load myself into your neural net to check on your recovery, I only did it without permission in the shuttle bay because it was an emergency and you were half conscious and I couldn’t run to the medbay to get forms and run back, you know?”

He dropped his face into his servos, why did he talk so much?

Manus smiled again, this one a bit more relaxed. “Of course. Do what you need to do.”

First Aid nodded in thanks and plugged the psychic patch in. He didn’t have time to brace himself and didn’t care to focus on his physical form. He offlined his optics, afraid of what he’d see. He peeked.

No spikes. There were crystal structures still firmly locked in the neural net, but the spikes had chipped away and decayed. They no longer pulsed with red life. And memories no longer shattered.

First Aid sighed with relief and floated around, using his servos to tear the dead virus away. It seemed as though once they broke off they simply dissolved. Fantastic! Less work for him and Manus.

When the neural net was completely clear, he floated to the center and let out a tired vent.

Maybe someday he could rebuild the broken memories.

He scrunched up his face in focus and pushed himself out of Manus’s head.

He gasped as he woke up in his physical form.

“Your head is clear! You had some cyberviral parasite, it was eating away at your memories and functionality, but it should be completely gone now!” First Aid clapped his servos together.

Manus’s face contorted in confusion, then his EM field flooded with realization that hit First Aid enough to knock him back.

“That explains so much .” He muttered.

First Aid nodded, a little in pride.

“We can rebuild your memories later, I want to hear about Ambulon.” First Aid turned to type up Manus’s medical record and rebuild it. It no longer blinked with corruption warnings, a good sign.

More confusion hit him from the mech’s EM field.

“Can’t you just ask him?” He tediously asked.

“I, no. Not anymore.” First Aid hit enter and closed the file. “It was nice talking to you, I have to go.”

“Oh,” Manus looked… sad. “Okay, goodbye.”

First Aid pulled the curtain around the mech’s berth and padded away.

He could only avoid the question for so long.

///

First Aid slipped into the room that Ambulon’s team was sitting in. He stopped and glanced down awkwardly as their small conversation stopped and they all stared at him.

“Um,” He stumbled over his words. “All of you are healthy, so you’re being released from the medbay. I have hab suite keys, you’re all in the same hall, I think. I can ask a friend to help you find them. You can also go to Swerve’s and “Visages,” but no heavy drinking. You just need to come down here once a week, Manus, we’re gonna need to talk about times to work on your memories.”

Manus nodded softly.

“Thank you, First Aid,” Freehand warmly smiled up at the medic.

Aid just briskly nodded a little ‘ you’re welcome.’ and turned around to leave the room. He gently placed four key cards, each with a little note and name, on the table by the door.

As soon as the door closed, he slumped forward.

It was now only a waiting game until they asked to meet Ambulon. How the hell was he going to explain what happened.

He sluggishly walked out of the medbay. After a quick “+ur in charge tonight lots+” comm to Velocity, he dragged his pedes to his hab suite.

The silence there was deafening, and every time his optics offlined he thought of Manus’s memory shattering before him.

How much that must have hurt.

He buried his face in a pillow and screamed, before clipping his mask and visor back on.

He should pay a visit to Swerve.

///

“Y’know usually people come here to socialize, not wallow.”

First Aid snapped his helm up and straightened his posture as he processed Swerve hovering over him.

“I’m not wallowing ,” Aid hissed. “I’m just,-”

“-Wallowing. You’re wallowing.” Swerve breathily laughed. His helm flicked up as a group of mechs entered the bar.

First Aid glanced up and followed Swerve’s focus to see the group of mechs that just walked into the bar.

It was Ambulon’s team.

No.

He felt something in his chest click. He desperately reeled in his EM field and covered his face with his servo.

“Actually I think I’m done wallowing and I’m gonna go leave now,” Aid said. Much too fast.

“What, are you scared of the newcomers?” Swerve laughed a little, before pausing and leaning closer to Aid. “Wait are you?”

“ Yes, ” First Aid hissed, just above a whisper. “They’re gonna ask me about Ambulon and I’m not ready to explain he’s been halved, haphazardly turned into a gun like a sparkling’s science fair project, and soldered back together, as if that would bring him any dignity, and shoved into the ship’s morgue without a formal goodbye or sending off because Primus forbid we pay proper respects to the nurse much less the De- .”

He stopped himself. With every word his voice has risen in pitch, making up for what he was trying to tone down in volume.

Swerve didn’t say anything. The space between the pair filled with a heavy silence.

“I, yeah okay I’ll let you run away this time,” Swerve said, turning away to clean a glass.

First Aid sighed and slid off the stool. He turned around and took a step before slamming into Arbitror’s massive frame.

Aid panicked. He didn’t catch himself and instead let himself fall to the floor. He avoided the gaze of the 4 mechs looming above him despite their optics practically cutting holes in his frame.

Peds spoke up first.

“… What?”

 First Aid thought about offlining all of his viscerae.

“This was dumb, I told you this was dumb and none of you listened to me!” Arbitror turned to them

“It wasn’t dumb-”

“But it was fruitless! Of course we were dumb to think Amby would be okay!”

“It wasn’t completely fruitless.” Manus finally spoke out. “We got that shuttle repaired and the red mech obviously knows a lot.”

“Can you just stop?” Freehand hissed.

“What?”

“With this objective thing! There’s no bright side to this! Stop pretending there is!”

First Aid shakily stood up and shot a panicked look at Swerve. The bartender shrugged and turned away. Fantastic.

“Hi,” First Aid gave a small wave. “Can you stop arguing?”

Peds tore his attention from the shouting match to glance at the red mech. He pursed his lips and nodded a bit. First Aid nodded a small thanks.

Slowly, Arbitror, Freehand, and Manus took the hint. They all turned their gazes to First Aid. He felt like his circuits could fry at just the looks. It took all his willpower to not physically shrivel away.

“I can take you to him, but if you’re going to be around me you can’t be squabbling every 20 seconds. We can think of something. I’m the best doctor of my time,” Maybe a bit of a lie. “And you’re his gestalt. We can think of something. So stop fighting .”

Peds looked at First Aid, then his team. He shrugged. Manus nodded. Freehand too. First Aid didn’t anticipate or wait for Arbitror’s agreement, and instead pushed through the group to the exit, waving a quick “ follow me .”